Chapter Three

 

“Jason!” The fall evening was crisp, but thanks to the captain’s cape—curse the man—and her gratitude at seeing her friend, she rushed out the door and over to his automobile, holding the cape up so that she wouldn’t trip on it and go sprawling. “Thank God you’re here. I’m afraid the poor man has a concussion.”

Giving her a friendly hug, Jason said, “I’ll check on him. What happened, for heaven’s sake? People don’t often get bashed in the Ladies’ soup kitchen.”

“I know. And I haven’t an idea in the world what happened. All I know is that I returned to the soup kitchen to fetch— Oh, my!” Loretta slapped her hands to her cheeks, recalling the evening’s dinner engagement, and almost losing her cloak. She grabbed it and held on.

“Don’t worry,” Jason said. “I was on my way out the door to go to your house for the party when you rang me. I called Miss MacTavish and told her you’d be delayed. I’m sure Miss Eunice will understand. Fetching cloak, by the way.”

Deciding to ignore his comment about the captain’s cloak, Loretta chuckled as she pictured little Miss Eunice Golightly, soon to be Eunice FitzRoy, since her stepfather was in the process of legally adopting her. “I’m sure she will. Thank you very much, Jason. I forgot all about the party until right this minute.”

He patted her on the back. “Think nothing of it. I know your mind is generally on loftier matters than mere dinner engagements.”

With a frown, Loretta tried to decide if he was ribbing her, and if she should be offended. Ultimately concluding that she was better off not becoming riled with a friend, and that Captain Quarles was enough of a problem for one evening, she yet frowned. “I’m sorry Eunice won’t get her present until later, though.”

“If anyone in the universe will understand that disappointment is a part of life, it’s Eunice, Loretta. Don’t fret.”

While Jason was absolutely correct, Eunice being something of a genius who already understood more about life than most adults, Loretta still shook her head, feeling not merely sorry for Eunice, but also feeling as if this whole problem was somehow her fault. But that was utter nonsense, and she knew it in her brain. Her heart, which occasionally behaved irrationally, was another matter. However, she chose not to fret, as Jason had suggested.

“As I already mentioned, that’s a fetching cape, Loretta, but it seems a trifle large for you.”

Unconsciously borrowing vocabulary from the despicable captain, Loretta said, “Huh.” Feeling emotionally unequipped to explain Malachai Quarles to Jason, she added, “They’re in the kitchen.”

“They?” Jason snapped his black bag open as Loretta led him kitchenwards.

“Yes.” She couldn’t repress a sniff of disapproval. “The man is a sailor, apparently, and his captain came looking for him.”

“Ah. Wonder why the man came here if he’s gainfully employed.”

Loretta thought that if she worked for Captain Quarles, she’d do anything within her power to keep away from him, but she didn’t say so. “I have no idea, although his mind seemed to be wandering when he was in here earlier today, and he seems to have a fixation on the Moors’ invasion of Spain.”

Jason’s eyes opened wide. “How remarkable.”

“Indeed. I can’t imagine how he got back in after the door was locked. Or maybe he never left.” She pondered that possibility. Had the man been hiding out in the soup kitchen all day? Why?

As they approached Captain Quarles and his crewman, Loretta noticed that the small yellow disks had vanished from the floor. She frowned at Captain Quarles, but didn’t mention the matter.

The captain rose to his feet and held out a large, rough, and very tanned hand for Jason to shake, which he did without even registering distaste, which Loretta considered faintly disloyal, although she knew she was being irrational. She allowed herself another significant frown, however.

“Captain Malachai Quarles,” said the captain in his rumbling bass voice.

“Aha!” Jason sounded delighted. Loretta glanced at him sharply. “I’m Dr. Jason Abernathy. I thought you looked familiar. I’ve seen your picture in the newspapers. Delighted to meet you, Captain Quarles.”

Loretta’s mouth dropped open and her bosom swelled with indignation. How dare Jason express delight in this wretched man’s company?

“Thank you, Dr. Abernathy. Likewise.” The captain’s gaze sought his stricken employee. “Peavey’s awake, and he seems to be coherent. I didn’t want to move him.”

Again, Loretta felt indignant. “You would have moved him, if I hadn’t stopped you.”

Both men glanced at her and away again, as if she were nothing more than a nettlesome insect whose presence had made itself felt only slightly and, having been judged insignificant, could be ignored.

Jason withdrew his stethoscope from his black bag and knelt beside Peavey. “How do you feel, Mr. Peavey.”

“Got a headache.” Peavey’s voice was rough around the edges, as if he’d had to force it through a space too small to hold it. “Feel like hell.” His gaze, which had been taking in the kitchen and the captain and the doctor, picked up on Loretta’s presence, and he swallowed. “Sorry, ma’am.”

“For God’s sake, don’t mind her,” the captain said. Loretta wanted to bop him one.

As if sensing Loretta’s mood, Jason spoke before anyone else could. “Let’s just see what’s going on here.” After unbuttoning the man’s shirt and shoving his undershirt up, he pressed the stethoscope to Peavey’s chest in several places. “Sounds all right so far.” He folded the scope and stuffed it into his bag. “I’m going to have to palpate your head. I’ll try not to hurt you.”

“Uh-huh.” Peavey braced himself, and the doctor started probing.

As she watched, Loretta winced in sympathy, then sought the captain. He was, naturally, looking at her and had caught her expression, which might be—and undoubtedly was, by him—interpreted as an example of womanly weakness. Drat him. She scowled at him. His sneer altered not. Beastly man. Wretched man.

She was saved by the sound of people at the door. Hurrying out of the kitchen, Loretta saw that the police had arrived. Had they done so at her bidding, she would have greeted them gladly. As it was, she resented them almost as much as she resented Captain Malachai Quarles.

A sergeant of police spotted her and came forward. “Good evening, ma’am. I understand there’s trouble here.”

“Yes. A man named—”

”Excuse me, ma’am, but I understand Captain Quarles is here.”

Loretta felt herself swelling, rather like a hot-air balloon she’d seen recently in Golden Gate Park. Only it wasn’t hot air inflating her, it was pure, unadulterated rage. “Captain Quarles has nothing to do with this!” she said, rather more loudly than she had intended.

“This way,” a voice rumbled at her back.

Loretta shut her eyes and counted to fifteen, ten seeming insufficient to the purpose.

“Sergeant Bowes, Captain Quarles.” The policemen, all with broad smiles on their faces, walked right past Loretta and up to the captain. The sergeant held out his hand, and the captain shook it. “It’s good to meet you. I’ve read all about your treasure ship in the Chronicle.”

As she glowered after them, Loretta’s brain commenced to whirl. The captain had been in the Chronicle? With his treasure ship? What treasure ship? Both the policeman and Jason had mentioned seeing the horrid captain in the newspaper. Had the man done something noteworthy? Loretta read the newspapers, but her interests were political and social. She didn’t pay much attention to other news, most of which she deemed frivolous.

Perceiving no alternative unless she wanted to be left out of the action entirely, she walked after the new arrivals and the captain and into the kitchen. Inspecting the captain from behind, she decided he still didn’t look like any self-respecting sea captain she’d ever seen. He looked more like a pirate. She hated to admit it, but he had quite the swashbuckling air about him.

Jason was still in the process of examining Mr. Peavey, so she stood back, leaned against a counter, and watched. Loretta Linden wasn’t accustomed to being out of the limelight. Nor was she accustomed to feeling left out and ignored. The sensations didn’t sit well with her.

While Jason continued to prod and probe Peavey’s body, the police sergeant began his interrogation of Mr. Peavey. The sergeant’s minions started inspecting the premises, for all the good that would do them, Loretta thought bitterly. She was intimately acquainted with the Ladies’ Benevolence League’s soup kitchen and, except for the body and blood on the floor, she hadn’t detected a single thing out of place.

She remembered those shiny yellow disks and her gaze sought the captain. He was no longer there. Damn the man to perdition, he’d probably escaped with the loot!

A deep voice behind her made her jump, and she whirled around. There he was, all right. He’d sneaked up behind her on the other side of the counter, the repellant, skulking brute. Giving him one of her more magnificent frowns, she hissed, “Who are you?”

His dark eyes gleamed maliciously. “I told you who I am. Captain Malachai Quarles.”

She knew he was toying with her. She hated him for it. “You know very well what I mean,” she said, giving a broad gesture that almost cost her the warmth of his cloak. She clutched it to her bosom, still frowning. “All these men seem to know you from the newspaper. What did you do? Murder someone?”

“You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” the captain said snidely. “I’m sorry to disappoint you, Miss Linden. These gentlemen have read about me in the newspapers because I am captain of the ship Moor’s Revenge, and my crew and I have recently discovered a sunken Moorish ship off the coast of a small, unnamed island in the Canaries, along with a king’s ransom in old Moorish and Spanish coins and other ancient treasure and historical artifacts.”

Merciful heavens. “Oh.” Her mind raced. “Is that why Mr. Peavey was raving about Moors earlier in the day, when he was taking luncheon with us?”

“I suppose. His mind goes off on tangents sometimes.” The captain shrugged his mammoth shoulders.

Loretta wished she hadn’t noticed his shoulders. They were at present straining the fabric of his fine lawn shirt as well as her feminist principles. She rather wished she could inspect those shoulders more closely. She also wished she hadn’t noticed the fineness of the cloth out of which his shirt was made, since she believed she ought to be above such things.

Curse her eyeglasses! She was sure that if she weren’t wearing them, she wouldn’t be so keenly aware of the captain’s manly charms. She also suspected the captain wouldn’t be treating her in this offhand, not to say ungentlemanly, way, if she weren’t wearing them. Captain Smith, of the doomed Titanic, had been the soul of courtesy. Then again, Captain Smith was dead.

Mentally smacking herself, Loretta brought her brain back to important issues. “Yes. I suppose that explains it, then.” She recalled the shiny yellow disks. “Is that what you picked up from the floor? Those golden coins? Were they part of the Moorish treasure?” She sniffed to let the captain know what she thought of people who stole from the incapacitated.

His eyes narrowed. “You saw the coins?”

“Of course, I saw the coins! I’m not blind, even if you did knock my spectacles off.”

“Huh.” One of his big brown hands lifted, and he stroked his chin. Loretta had a mad impulse to take over the operation from him.

Whatever was the matter with her? She’d never had these impulses before, not even with men whom she liked. She abominated the captain. “Well? Were they Moorish coins? Or Spanish coins? And did you steal them from Mr. Peavey?”

With a glower that was ever so much more magnificent than any she could produce, curse the man, Captain Quarles snarled, “I don’t steal. Yes, they were Moorish coins. Now will you be quiet about them? I don’t want the whole world to know about this!”

Loretta considered the possibility of a person exploding from an excess of built-up bile. “Well, you can jolly well tell me about them, Captain Quarles, because your employee was blackjacked in my soup kitchen! I’ll not let the matter rest,” she warned him.

“Why doesn’t that surprise me?” the captain muttered under his breath. “All right. If it’ll keep your mouth shut, I’ll tell you about it.” And with that, he reached across the counter, snagged Loretta’s arm in a grip like iron, and dragged her toward the kitchen door.

Only out of deference to the ill man, Loretta didn’t shriek with rage. “Stop that!” she whispered furiously.

“Huh.” He didn’t alter his path or lighten his grip on her arm, but led her relentlessly from the kitchen. After he’d shut the door behind them, Captain Quarles released Loretta’s arm. She had to command herself not to rub the bruised place—but she wouldn’t give the unmitigated animal the satisfaction of knowing he’d hurt her. “Sit down.”

“I prefer to stand.”

He eyed her evilly. “Suit yourself. And don’t go blabbing about this, Miss Linden. It’s not for public knowledge. If the press gets hold of it, God alone knows what will happen.”

“I,” said Loretta through tightly clenched teeth, “do not blab.”

With a look of utter disdain, the Captain said, “All women blab. But you’d better not this time.”

“Why, you insufferable lout! I’ll have you know—”

“Do you want to hear this or not?” demanded the captain. “If you do, quit blabbing.”

Irate that the captain should consider her legitimate concerns blabbing, Loretta perceived no way to alter his opinion without confirming it. In spite of herself, she obeyed him, shutting her mouth with a clack of teeth and wishing for the first time in her life that she carried a gun. Even a small one would result in satisfying pain to the overbearing captain. She said through her teeth, “Tell me.”

“I’m in partnership with William Frederick Tillinghurst.” One black eyebrow lifted over a devilishly dark eye. “You’ve heard of him, I suppose?”

“I know him. He’s a business associate of my father’s,” Loretta conceded, wondering as she spoke if she was unconsciously attempting to impress the captain with her social status, damn her ego to perdition.

If her ego had been seeking to undermine her egalitarian principles with snob appeal, the attempt failed. The captain said, “Tillinghurst is my partner in the treasure hunt. He provided the funding, along with Stanford University and the Museum of Natural History, and I provided the ship, the crew, and the expertise. We found the galleon, and my divers raised most of it. It was an incredible find, and of tremendous historical and monetary value.”

“You,” Loretta said in a scathing tone, “are primarily interested in the historical properties of the find, no doubt.” She gave him a sneer of her own. Not having had much practice, she feared her effort paled in comparison to any one of his sneers.

She was right, as she noticed immediately when he sneered back at her. “As surprising as I’m sure you find it, yes, that is my primary interest. I don’t need the money.”

How fascinating! Again borrowing from him, she said, “Huh.”

He went on, “The ship docked in San Francisco a week and a half ago. I’m surprised you haven’t read about it in the newspapers, because there was a lot of publicity. Tillinghurst likes that sort of thing.”

He frowned, leaving Loretta to deduce that Tillinghurst’s partner was not, unlike Tillinghurst himself, a publicity hound. She almost wished he was, because it would give her one more good reason, not that she needed another one, to hate him.

“About three days ago, some of the treasure disappeared, along with two of my crewmen, including Peavey.” He gestured at the closed kitchen door. “I don’t want it to get out that we’ve had any trouble of this nature, because it will reflect badly on my operation.”

Loretta sniffed. “Perhaps it will reflect the truth,” she said, taking venomous glee from the fact that her words made the captain wince.

“I’ve worked with Peavey and Jones for years. They’re both good men. I can’t believe they had anything to do with the missing artifacts.”

“There were those coins on the floor,” Loretta reminded the captain.

He didn’t appreciate the reminder. “Yes. I saw them.”

“Yet you still exonerate Mr. Peavey?”

A pause followed her question. Loretta thought at first that he didn’t intend to answer it, and she began to swell up again.

She deflated when he said suddenly, “Peavey’s not smart enough to plan a successful theft and disappearance. Jones is smart enough, but I can’t feature him doing it. He’s a good man, and an honest one, and he has a lot to lose if he were to be caught perpetrating a felony. Besides, if Peavey’s a crook, why was he sandbagged?”

“I have no idea. Why don’t you ask him?”

The captain’s alarming eyebrows dipped ominously over his eyes. “I intend to as soon as your friend the doctor is through with him.”

“Hmm.” In the silence following the captain’s remark, Loretta pondered Peavey’s case which, she hated to admit, held a good deal of interest. After thinking hard for a moment, she said, “I suspect Mr. Tillinghurst.”

“You suspect him of what?”

“Of stealing the treasure and kidnapping your crewmen.”

The captain’s eyes opened wide and he stared at Loretta as if she were some species of pernicious and hitherto-unknown-to-him beetle or worm. “Don’t be any more of a fool than you can help, Miss Linden, please. And I beg that you won’t spread that absurd lie around.”

“I do not spread lies,” Loretta stated in a measured voice in which even she could detect the outrage. “And I am not a fool.” She also disliked Mr. Tillinghurst a good deal.

The captain waved a hand in a gesture of dismissal. “Anyhow, I told you the story. Now I’m going to go back to Peavey. Stay out of the way, will you?” He turned around and would have left her there if she hadn’t hurried after him.

“Well?” she said, irate. “Why don’t you suspect Mr. Tillinghurst? If you know him, you must know he’s a money-grubbing, conscienceless, self-servicing oppressor of the masses.”

The captain stopped walking so abruptly, Loretta bumped into his back and bounced off. She was prevented from falling on an indelicate part of her anatomy by one of the captain’s huge hands when it whipped out and stopped her fall by means of grabbing on to the front of his own cloak. Roughly, he drew her upright, stood her on her two feet, and released her. With a couple of quick dance steps, Loretta managed to remain upright.

“Oppressor of the masses?” Quarles said, his voice ripe with sardonic amusement. “Are you a communist, Miss Linden?”

“No, I am not! And Mr. Tillinghurst is an awful man. He treats his employees like dirt.”

“Huh. That may or may not be so, but I doubt that he’d risk his reputation as a sound businessman—” He gave the two words a good deal of emphasis. “—by stealing his own treasure.”

“Aha,” said Loretta triumphantly, choosing to ignore their difference of opinion on the oppression issue. “But is he? Is the treasure his? Or yours? Aren’t there regulations governing the disposal of sunken treasure—after it’s been . . . unsunk? Retrieved? Especially if the expedition was carried out in conjunction with a museum or an educational institution? You said it was, with Stanford.”

“Recovered,” the captain said sourly. “And I know the regulations. So does Tillinghurst. Neither he nor I were responsible for the lost treasure. And I won’t believe Peavey or Jones is guilty, either, unless it’s established to me beyond doubt.”

“Hmm.” Deciding she’d better shut up now, since they’d entered the kitchen, she saw that Mr. Peavey now sat in a chair. She rushed over to Jason, who was just shutting his black bag. “Then he doesn’t have a concussion?”

“Doesn’t seem to,” Jason said, smiling at her. She valued him greatly in that instant, since he was a man who cared about her unconditionally and who, moreover, with very few lapses, recognized her as the intelligent, capable, and upstanding woman she was. “He was primarily only stunned, although there was quite a cut on his forehead. Head wounds tend to bleed copiously.” Lowering his voice, he told Loretta, “I don’t think Mr. Peavey is playing with a full deck.”

Recalling Mr. Peavey’s earlier remarks about Moors and what the captain had called Peavey’s “tangents,” she said, “I think you’re right.”

“How are you feeling now, Peavey?”

Loretta was astonished that the captain’s voice could carry such regard and genuine concern. It also didn’t rumble as it did when he spoke to her. Although she hated to give him credit for anything, she wondered if he might actually care about the men under his command. She decided to withhold judgment on the issue.

Peavey was a ghastly sight. Dr. Abernathy had cleaned his wound, stitched it, and the poor man’s head was now wrapped round with a white bandage. Blood had trickled down his neck and onto his shirt, and his trousers were dirty and ripped. He pressed a hand to his bandaged head and said with a moan, “Head hurts.”

“I can imagine.” Grinning, Captain Quarles added, “Although that’s probably the best place they could have hit you if they wanted to spare your life.”

Loretta huffed in sympathetic indignation.

Peavey grinned at his captain, “You’re right there, Cap’n Quarles.”

Loretta decided to save her indignation for someone who deserved it.

Quarles sat himself on a chair and drew it close to his injured crewman. Putting a large brown hand on Peavey’s shoulder, he said gently, “Can you remember what happened?”

The captain lifted his head and frowned at Loretta, who had drawn closer. She frowned back and didn’t budge. This was her soup kitchen, after all. Or . . . well . . . if it wasn’t hers exactly, she probably gave more to it by way of financial and physical support than any other charitable lady in San Francisco. Therefore, she didn’t move when the policeman frowned at her, either. He could jolly well stand there and take notes and ignore her. She wasn’t going anywhere.

Peavey had been thinking about the captain’s question, an activity that seemed to cause him a good deal of pain. “Uh-uh. I can’t remember nothing. There was this dungeon, and there was these gold coins. Moorish coins, Cap’n Quarles. I remember that much. But I don’t remember nothing more.”

“A dungeon?” Loretta repeated.

The captain scowled at her.

Peavey, glancing up at her, said, “Yeah. A dungeon. In a castle or something.”

“Was Jones with you?” the captain asked.

“Jones. Jones.” Peavey strained to think some more. “I don’t rightly recollect. I recollect Jones.” He smiled, as if proud of this feat of intelligence.

“You recollect Jones being with you in the dungeon with the treasure?”

The captain’s attempt at clarification met with a blank stare from Peavey. The captain sighed. Loretta decided to take a more active role in this interrogation. Kneeling before Mr. Peavey, whose eyes grew big and who shrank away from her as if from a goblin, she took his hand and held it in a comforting manner. “I’m so sorry you were hurt, Mr. Peavey.” She pitched her voice to a musical purr. To the devil with the captain and his black scowl. And that of the Sergeant Bowes, too. Jason, she saw out of the corner of her eye, was grinning like a sly cat. “Do you remember me? I was the one who served you soup this noontime.”

Peavey’s expression held a shade less terror. “Uh . . . yeah. I guess. Good soup.”

“Yes, it is good soup,” Loretta agreed tenderly. “And we serve good sandwiches.”

With more animation, Peavey said, “Yeah. With meat and cheese.”

“With meat and cheese. Do you remember where you were before you came to the soup kitchen, Mr. Peavey? The policemen would like to know that. It might help them in finding out who hurt you.”

Peavey’s brow furrowed in his effort to concentrate. “It wasn’t the Moors,” he said at last. With a glance at his captain, he added, “Must’ve been them Spaniards.” He nodded. “Must’ve been. They wanted their treasure back. But I didn’t take it. It were in the dungeon. I only took a couple coins to show the cap’n, so’s he could get it back again.”

“Do you remember where the dungeon was, Mr. Peavey?” Loretta, who feared the men on the case would discount this poor man’s words as mere rambling, hoped Peavey could give her a clue. She’d love to be able to solve Mr. Peavey’s case, especially if the police and Captain Quarles were baffled.

Peavey thought some more. He sighed heartily. “It were in town. I think. Or right out of town. A castle in town—or beyond the town limits. Full of treasure, it were, too. In Toledo?” He glanced a question at Loretta and then his captain. “Were it in Toledo?”

“Perhaps,” Loretta said, standing because her knees were aching. She offered the captain a cold glance. “I tell you, Captain Quarles, it’s Tillinghurst.”

Peavey nodded. “Toledo.”

To Loretta, Quarles said, “Don’t be an ass.”

# # #

Loretta was still seething when she parked her Runabout in front of her massive marble porch later that evening. Captain Quarles—and what a splendid name for him—had not only called her an ass to her face, but had scoffed at her suggestion that Mr. Peavey be brought to her house so that she could nurse him.

“I’d sooner leave him to the tender mercies of a school of piranha fishes,” were his exact words. “He’s coming back with me to the hotel.”

“What hotel?” she’d demanded, aiming to overrule him if he mentioned some dive on the Barbary Coast.

“The Fairfield,” he said, putting her arguments to an end before she’d presented them. The Fairfield was the most exclusive hotel in San Francisco. Perhaps the entire United States.

Jason pulled his automobile up behind hers. He quickly got out of it and hurried to escort her to the party going on inside her mansion. “I get the feeling you and the captain didn’t exactly hit it off.” As usual, he was amused. He was always amused by the human condition.

Loretta didn’t know how he maintained his sense of humor in the most trying of situations. She’d certainly lost hers, and she didn’t expect it to come back soon. “No,” she said crisply. “We did not. The man is an unmitigated bully and a beast.”

“My, my.”

The front door opened, and Marjorie MacTavish, standing in a pool of light and looking very pretty, which was moderately surprising, said, “Thank goodness you’ve come. Poor Eunice has been very worried about you.” She gave Jason a frigid look. “Dr. Abernathy didn’t explain what had happened.”

“I told you somebody’d been coshed,” said Jason, grinning like an imp.

Loretta squinted at her two friends, but decided not to intervene. They were always at daggers drawn with each other. The important thing now was that Eunice needed her. Shaking off Jason’s hand, Loretta trotted up the porch steps.

This was more like it. Loretta needed to feel useful, and now she could be of cheer to her friends. Casting aside her fury at the men of the world, she bustled past Marjorie and hurried to the dining room, where the guests were in the middle of Eunice’s birthday dinner.

Bursting into the room, she cried out, “Happy birthday, Eunice! I have such a tale to tell you!”