“You don’t know what men like Cord are capable of! Never forget that he’s spent most of his life on the run and he knows all the tricks! If he said he’d see you in Silver City, it’d probably turn into a point of pride with him to make good his boast.”
“I don’t think he was boasting, exactly,” I said slowly. “It was more like a… well, a casual statement of fact!”
Mark leaned forward, his voice urgent. “Then you do think he’s going to be there.”
“I didn’t say that! Perhaps he intended to, but I’m sure he will have changed his mind. He won’t turn up. He won’t dare!”
“He dared slip into your bedroom! He’s taken worse risks before. Look at the risk he took merely in bluffing you into believing that Elmer Bragg had sent him?”
I felt my hands get clammy inside my cotton gloves.
“Oh, Mark, don’t! I can’t bear to think of that poor old man…”
“But you have to! You have to be practical and realistic!” He leaned back in his seat with a sigh. “I won’t press you any further now, Rowena, but I beg you to think about it. If you will leave things in my hands I feel sure I can handle it. I’m acquainted with the town marshal and the judge.”
“How will you handle it, Mark? By having him killed if he’s found? By putting him jail to await lynching?”
“Rowena!” Mark sounded as shocked by my outburst as I was myself. “I don’t understand you! I thought you trust my judgment. I thought you realized that we are dealing with a k
iller just as dangerous as those mad dogs in India you were telling me of. But you sound as if you actually feel sorry for him!”
“I just do not like the thought of violence, Mark! We can’t be certain that Mr. Bragg is dead, or that Lucas Cord killed him. And if we took the law into our own hands, acting on an assumption, then we’d be just as guilty. Don’t you understand? You’re a lawyer.”
“You should have been the lawyer, Rowena!” Mark shook his head at me gently, but his voice remained hard. “All right, but suppose he commits some violent act? And I’ve already dispatched some wires to various places, trying to trace Mr. Bragg’s whereabouts. Suppose, when we arrive in Silver City, the marshal is able to confirm my worst suspicions?”
I said flatly, “Then, of course, I agree that he should be hunted down and killed like the wild animal you compared him to!”
Twelve
I had been in Silver City for two days, and during that time everyone I was introduced to kept assuring me that it was not only bigger but friendlier than most of the other big mining towns. My attention was proudly drawn to the grand new opera house, where the ball to honor the governor’s visit would be held, to the white-painted courthouse with a cellarlike jail forming its basement, the three churches.
I’m sure the good citizens of the town would have preferred me not to notice the innumerable saloons and gambling halls that lined the main street, nor the red lamp over the door of a tall, two-story building that sat a little way back off one end of the street.
Sir Edgar, in an effort to excite me out of my coldness, had once taken me on what he termed a grand tour of one of Paris’s most exclusive bordellos. Everything I had witnessed there had left me faintly disgusted, but otherwise unmoved. So Silver City’s house of ill repute did not arouse my curiosity, although Flo whispered to me, in an attempt to shock, that she would dearly like to see what went on in there.
“Personally,” I murmured idly, my fingers playing with the cord that held apart the draperies of the room we shared, “I would much rather see what the inside of one of those saloons looks like! They must be delightfully sordid, don’t you think?”
We had been forced into proximity once again because the one decent hotel that Silver City boasted of was filled to capacity. This particular afternoon was too hot to warrant our venturing outside, so we engaged in desultory conversation.
“I’ve heard what they are like!” Flo said. Too restless to sit still for long, she continued to walk about the room. “There would be a long bar, of course. Mahogany, in one of the better places. And a mirror behind it, so a man can see who comes up behind him. Sometimes there might even be a large picture of a naked woman hung there.”
She glanced at me to see if I was shocked, and I raised an eyebrow. “Oh? And what else?”
“Well, there’d be tables for the card players, of course. And females to wait on them.” She gave one of her high-pitched giggles. “I understand they don’t wear very much! And of course there would be rooms upstairs, in case one of the men wanted to pay for female company after he had done his drinking!”
I grimaced. “Those poor women could hardly lead a very pleasant life!”
“Oh, I don’t know! Of course they wouldn’t, but I’ve heard that in big cities like San Francisco and New York—and in Europe, of course—some of the most beautiful and charming women one sees are courtesans! They change lovers as they please, and of course I expect they’re simply showered with expensive gifts! It must be an interesting, exciting way to live—to have the power to make men your adoring slaves.”
“I would think it was the other way around!” I said dryly. “Do you think those women give nothing in return?”
“Oh, well, how would you know?”
Flo turned away sulkily and began fiddling with the toilet things she had laid out on top of the dresser. Changing the subject with her usual abruptness, she said, “Oh, Lord, but I’m bored! I wish something would happen! To think that silly old ball is all of three days away. I might easily go mad with boredom before then!”
“Well, who knows? Perhaps you’ll get your wish and there will be a gunfight or two,” I murmured, deliberately keeping my voice expressionless. “And perhaps they might have some really vicious criminals locked up in the local jail!”
She swung around sharply, and I thought I saw her eyes widen a trifle.