Read The Bughouse Affair for Free Online Page A

almost immediately.
    The first to break the frozen tableau was a small, round-faced gent with Lincolnesque whiskers and ears that resembled the handles on a pickle jar. He stepped forward and to one side so that he faced the Englishman. If the fellow was an Englishman. Quincannon was not at all sure the cultured accent was genuine.
    “Where did this man come from?” the large-eared gent demanded. “Who is he?”
    “On my stroll in the garden I spied him climbing over the fence. He claims to be a detective on the trail of a pannyman. Housebreaker, that is.”
    “I don’t claim to be a detective,” Quincannon said sourly. “I am a detective. Quincannon’s the name, John Quincannon.”
    “Doctor Caleb Axminster,” the large-eared fellow said. “What’s this about a housebreaker?”
    The exchange drew the others closer in a tight little group. It also brought the owner of the English voice out to where Quincannon could see him for the first time. He wasn’t such-a-much. Tall, excessively lean, with a thin, hawklike nose and a prominent chin. In one hand he carried a blackthorn walking stick, held midway along the shaft. Quincannon scowled. It must have been the stick, not a pistol, that had poked his spine and allowed the scruff to escape.
    “I’ll ask you again,” Dr. Axminster said. “What’s all this about a housebreaker?”
    “I chased him here from a neighbor’s property.” Quincannon shifted his gaze to the plump banker. He was not a man to mince words, even at the best of times. “Yours, Mr. Truesdale.”
    Mrs. Truesdale gasped. Her husband’s face lost its healthy color. “Mine? Good Lord, man, do you mean to say we’ve been robbed?”
    “Unfortunately, yes.”
    “Of what, do you know? What was stolen?”
    “A question only you can answer.”
    “Little enough, I pray. My wife’s jewelry and several stock certificates are kept in the safe in my office, but the thief couldn’t have gotten into it. It’s burglarproof.”
    No safe, in Quincannon’s experience, was burglarproof. But he allowed the statement to pass without comment, asking instead, “Do you also keep cash on hand?”
    “In my desk … a hundred dollars or so in greenbacks…” Truesdale shook his head; he seemed dazed. “You were on my property?”
    “I was, with every good intention. Waiting outside.”
    “Waiting? I don’t understand.”
    “To catch the burglar in the act.”
    “But how did you know…?”
    “Detective work, sir. Detective work.”
    The fifth man in the room had been silent to this point, one hand plucking at his middle as if he were suffering the effects of too much rich food. He was somewhat younger than the others, forty or so, dark-eyed, clean-shaven, with a nervous tic on one cheek; his most prominent feature was a misshapen knob of red-veined flesh, like a partially collapsed balloon, that seemed to hang unattractively between his eyes and a thin-lipped mouth. He aimed a brandy snifter at Quincannon, and said in aggrieved tones, “Thieves roaming everywhere in the city these days, like a plague, and you had the opportunity to put one out of commission and failed. If you’re such a good detective, why didn’t you catch the burglar? What happened?”
    “An unforeseen occurrence over which I had no control.” Quincannon glared sideways at his gaunt captor. “I would have chased him down if this man hadn’t accosted me.”
    “Accosted?” The Englishman arched an eyebrow. “Dear me, hardly that. I had no way of knowing you weren’t a prowler.”
    Mrs. Truesdale was tugging at her husband’s arm. “Samuel, shouldn’t we return home and find out what was stolen?”
    “Yes, yes, right away.”
    “Margaret,” Axminster said to one of the other women, a slender graying brunette with patrician features, “find James and have him drive the Truesdales.”
    The woman nodded and left the parlor with the banker and his wife in tow.
    The doctor said then, “This is most distressing,” but