“Out!”
Stanley withdrew at once with a wide grin and closed the door to discourage any flying objects that might come from that quarter. Matt Davis was known to throw things when he was in one of his black moods. Usually it was something soft. But one never knew.
MATT BROODED FOR HALF the day while he pursued his own pending cases, sending his agents out on various routine tasks. Most of his cases involved criminal activities of some sort. But one man had required an agent to follow a young woman—his wife, presumably—whom he suspected of infidelity. The Pinkerton Detective Agency, of which Matt had been an agent until two years before, had refused to accept cases that involved public or private morals. However, Matt had taken what business he could get when he started his own agency. He’d been amazed at how rapidly his clientele grew, and how wealthy he’d become in a relatively short time. Although he was able to be selective now, he also accepted cases on an individual basis, and his acceptance depended on his assessment of the client.
A rich widower wanted his daughter’s shady new boyfriend checked out because he suspected that the man was a gigolo. The girl was very young and innocent, and the man had a shady reputation. Matt had accepted the case because he felt sorry for the girl.
There were other assorted jobs on the books, none of the current ones very interesting. He leaned back in his swivel chair and remembered the exciting times he and the other Pinkertons had had chasing down yeggs, safecracking burglars who robbed banks across the country. They moved around like tramps, hiding by day and working at night. They used nitroglycerin to get into the safes and generally led the agency on a merry chase. One gang of yeggs was still operating and had achieved legendary status. Almost every Pinkerton man had some anecdote about the yeggs. One of the more ironic was that of a poor law enforcement officer whom a gang of safecrackers had taken with them at gunpoint when they went to blow up a safe at a post office somewhere out west. They’d tied him up in a canvas mailbag and stamped him for travel, leaving him otherwise unharmed.
Matt didn’t do much work on robberies anymore. He seemed to spend more and more of his time trapped in his second-floor office, dictating letters and talking to contacts and prospective clients. His men did most of the legwork now, and Matt missed the excitement of tracking down suspects, of extracting information. He must be getting old, he thought, to have allowed himself to get into such a rut.
He put the paperwork aside, still fuming about the attack on Tess. He didn’t like remembering how sick she looked when he left for work this morning, or how careless that doctor had been about her wound. Wounds brought on fever and infection and sometimes led to gangrene. He’d seen men die of it. He was worried and he was angry at himself for not checking the doctor’s work at the time. He could have punched that doctor for doing such a haphazard job. If Tess wasn’t better by morning, he was going to find another physician for her.
Why had Tess been attacked? He couldn’t answer that question. But he could make some reasonable assumptions. The assailant had to know her on sight. That narrowed down the possibilities. It could be someone from the hospital, which was highly unlikely, or someone connected with a woman who participated in the women’s rights rallies.
As he considered that last possibility, it began to make good sense. Tess had told him that she had a young friend who attended the meetings with her, whose husband disapproved of his wife’s involvement.
He shoved his chair back and stood up. Yes. That would be the most likely source.
He jerked open his office door in time to catch Stanley putting on his derby. “Stanley!”
“Yes, sir?”
“Hold on a minute. Before you go any further with your hunt for the man who attacked my cousin, I want to stop by my boardinghouse and check with her. I think I may have an easier way to find the culprit.”
“Yes, sir!”
Minutes later, Matt tapped briefly on Tess’s door and waited for Mrs. Hayes to admit him.
The older woman was chuckling as she shut him in the room with Tess and herself.
“Must have lit a fire under that pill pusher, Mr. Davis,” she mused, “because he treated herself here as if she were royalty. Looks better, don’t she?”
Indeed, Tess did look better. She was still feverish, but she was conscious and seemed aware of her surroundings.
“Matt,” she croaked, smiling through lips cracked with fever. “The doctor says my arm looks better. He put ten stitches in it this time.”
“Did he?” Matt asked with a faint smile. “Feeling up to a question?”
She nodded. Her lovely long blond hair was loose and hung over her shoulders like a cloud of gold. Matt stared at her appreciatively for a moment before he moved closer to the bed and looked down into her wan face.
“That young woman who goes to meetings with you, who is she?”
“You mean Nan?”
“Yes.”
“Her last name is Collier,” she said in a strained tone, wincing as she moved her sore arm. “Her husband, Dennis, is a telegraph clerk somewhere. Why do you ask?”
She didn’t know that she’d given him the information he wanted, without his having to pry it out of her.
“I wondered if you might like to have her visit you,” he said, lying through his teeth. “She’s the only real friend you’ve made since you came to Chicago.”
“That’s nice of you, Matt,” she said. Her tongue felt almost too thick for speech. “But I don’t think her husband would like it. He’s very angry that she comes to our meetings, and forbids her to attend more than one a week. She has to sneak out if she comes to more than that. I’m sure he wouldn’t approve of her coming here.”
Another wealth of information. He scowled as he saw her face contort.
“It must hurt a lot,” he said.
“My mouth is dry,” she replied. “Could I have some water, Mrs. Hayes?”
“Certainly, dear. Here you go.”
Matt took the cup from her with a smile. He lifted Tess’s head, his hand buried in that thick, silky blond hair, and he held the glass to her lips, watching them move weakly as she drank. Her hair felt soft, he thought, and her eyelashes were long and thick, too. Under them, her pale green eyes were the color of the leaves on the cottonwoods early in spring.
“Had enough?” he asked.
“Yes, thanks.” She smiled up at him, but the look in his eyes froze the smile. She couldn’t look away. Even in her weakened condition, Matt at close range was overwhelmingly attractive to her.
His face filling her eyes, his breath on her mouth, he eased her very slowly down onto the pillow. His eyes were black and unblinking. He hesitated there, the glass forgotten in his hand, as he searched Tess’s soft, shocked eyes.
“Mind that glass, Mr. Davis,” Mrs. Hayes murmured as she searched for her knitting needles. “I’ve already spilled one glass of water over her this morning and had to air the bedclothes.”
