Mr. Clemens stared at the hand as if it were a loaded gun. “Slippery Ed McPhee,” he said. “I wish I could forget you.”
Iinstantly pushed my way to the front of the group around Mr. Clemens, prepared to take action. My employer had made it clear that he considered McPhee dangerous, and I needed no prompting to recognize a situation that might turn nasty. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed that Detective Berrigan had also stepped forward to within an easy arm’s length of McPhee. So had someone else—a big, rough-looking man from the back of the crowd.
McPhee broke the tension by laughing. “You always was a joker, Sam. Damn me if it ain’t been nigh on thirty years. Put ’er there, you ol’ dog!” And he reached out to grab Mr. Clemens’s hand with both of his, forcing a vigorous handshake on him willy-nilly. I could see from my employer’s face that he wanted no part of this artificial camaraderie, but as long as both McPhee’s hands were engaged, I saw no immediate threat.
Mr. Clemens pulled his hand free, inspecting it as if to count the fingers. “Well, Ed, I haven’t seen you since Nevada,” he said, looking the fellow up and down. “You left Virginia City pretty fast, if I remember right.”
“You sure do,” said McPhee, laughing again. “There was a big Texan took exception to some bad luck at cards, and he didn’t want to listen to common sense. The scrapes I used to get into in those days! But you left mighty fast yourself, Sam—or so I heard tell. Some story about a duel, wasn’t it?”
“True enough, although I got out without fighting the fellow after all,” said Mr. Clemens. His expression had softened, and his voice took on the drawling inflections of his stage presentation. “But you’re the last person I ever thought to see come to a lecture. What sort of deviltry brings you to Chicago?”
“Business, Sam, business. A man’s got to keep hustling, keep moving all the time, if he’s going to keep his head above water. But I couldn’t resist coming to see you—we got into town last night, and the first thing I saw was a poster for your show. I told my boys, here’s a fellow I knew when we was both no more than tadpoles, and now he’s rich and famous, and damn me if I’m going to miss seeing him. Ain’t that what I said, Billy?” He turned to the rough-looking man I’d noticed moving forward in the crowd; the fellow responded with a wordless nod, smirking at me around a chaw of tobacco.
I’d seen the same expression more than once on the face of fellows across a scrimmage line—sizing me up as an opponent and deciding they could handle me. Billy was perhaps an inch shorter than I, but stockier and a good bit older—probably at least thirty-five. I didn’t think he’d have as easy a time of it as he expected; I had the reach on him, and was almost certainly faster. On the other hand, he was unlikely to restrict himself to Marquis of Queensberry rules. One thing for certain: we’d each seen the other move forward, and recognized what it meant. If there was going to be trouble, he and I would be in the thick of it, and on opposite sides.
All that was communicated in a glance; then Detective Berrigan broke into the conversation. “Mr. McPhee, were you by any chance in New York City recently?”
“What are you, a Pinkerton?” said McPhee, eyeing the detective. “Not that it’s any of your business, but I’ve never set foot in the place in my life. And what makes you think you can step up to a total stranger and interrupt a pleasant bit of talk I’m having with my old pal Sam?”
“Perhaps this crowd isn’t the best place for us to talk,” said Berrigan. He showed his badge. “But we do need to talk, Mr. McPhee.”
“I’d like to be in on that talk,” said Mr. Clemens. “Come on down to my dressing room, Ed, and we’ll do it over a drink. I’ll even give the detective a glass, if he’ll take it. This is about somebody we both know from the old days.”
“I’ll be damned,” said McPhee. “You know I don’t take to policemen, Sam.”
“I’d be lying if I told you I much liked them either, Ed. But this fellow’s trying to track down somebody we both know, and he thinks that person might be following me. And the sooner he realizes he’s barking up the wrong tree, the sooner he’s off my back and on his way home to New York City. Besides, I’m working on a book, and need to find out where some of the old-timers are these days. I reckon you know as much about that as anybody I’m likely to meet in Chicago.”
“You’ve got me curious, Sam—somebody we both know, hey? Well, I’ve got a clear enough alibi, which is never having set foot in Mr. New York Detective’s jurisdiction. But I’m here with a couple of boys who work for me; this is Billy Throckmorton, and his brother Al—that’s short for Alligator. If you don’t mind them sitting in, just to insure that Mr. Detective doesn’t try anything unsportsmanlike, I think I’ll take you up on that drink, Sam.” The big fellow stepped forward, along with another man who bore a distinct family resemblance, though he was a smaller and smoother-looking model. Billy was still grinning malevolently, but his brother looked worried.
“Plenty of room—my secretary will join us too, so that’ll be just six. Come along, Cabot!” He dismissed the rest of the crowd with a wave, and the six of us tramped down the hall to his dressing room.
* * *
After a bit of maneuvering for seats and fixing of drinks—somewhat to my surprise, the detective did avail himself of Mr. Clemens’s hospitality, to the extent of two fingers of whisky—my employer turned to Berrigan. “Why don’t I start, and let you ask your questions after these boys know the lay of the land.”
The detective nodded. Mr. Clemens still wore the formal black evening dress that was his stage attire. He had remained standing, one hand on the back of his dressing-table chair, while McPhee and the brothers sat in a defensive line on a wide sofa that dominated the room. I had taken a folding chair near the door, while Detective Berrigan leaned against the edge of Mr. Clemens’s dressing table and puffed on a battered-looking briar pipe.
“To put it in a nutshell,” said my employer, “there’s been a murder in New York, and Farmer Jack Hubbard is right in the thick of it. You remember Farmer Jack, don’t you, Ed?”
Slouched on a sofa between his two henchmen, and still wearing his hat, McPhee held a match to a nasty-looking cheroot for a moment before answering. “Yeah, Jack and me go back a long ways. Don’t tell me he’s gone and killed somebody! That don’t seem like his style, Sam.”
“It doesn’t make sense to me, either,” said Mr. Clemens. “Jack was always pretty easygoing, even when somebody else might have gotten hot under the collar. But his name’s come up in this murder case, and the police have to follow up their clues. When’s the last time you saw him, Ed?”
McPhee scratched behind his left ear, meditatively. “Must have been at Richie Clark’s funeral—that was in Cincinnati, four, maybe five years ago. Richie owed me three hundred dollars to the day he died—not that I was ever going to see it as long as there was an unopened bottle in the country. A bunch of the regulars was there: Little Wes Horton, and that Italian fellow that the girls all used to like before he got his teeth knocked out—Vinnie something; Charlie Snipes and Heinie Schussler, too. Been a long time since I saw so many of the boys in one place. But Farmer Jack was there. We stayed up all night, playing cards—him losing, as usual—and shooting the breeze about the old riverboat days. Jack was talking about going east to take one last shot at being an actor, and I heard a few weeks later that he’d gone and done it.”
“So you knew he was in New York,” said Detective Berrigan, perched on the edge of the dressing table.
“Same as I know the president’s in Washington, not that I’ve ever been there, either.” retorted McPhee.
“If it came down to it, could you prove your whereabouts for the last few days?”
“Well, the clerk in the Windsor Hotel