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 will tell you when me and the boys got there—about five o’clock yesterday. Took the morning train from Cincinnati, which is where I live these days. I suspect I could find a few people who saw me there, if I needed to. This afternoon, me and the boys went to a baseball game—won ten dollars betting against the Cubs. Cap Anson got three hits. What’s all this got to do with me? I thought Farmer Jack was your man.”
“Maybe he is and maybe he isn’t,” said Berrigan. “But we have to follow all our clues, and that means talking to anyone we can find who knew him.”
“Seems to me you’ve come an awful long way for clues to a killin’ in New York City,” said Al Throckmorton, the shorter of the two brothers, speaking for the first time. He had a high-pitched voice, with a drawling accent halfway between western and southern. He was more respectably dressed than his brother Billy, although not by much. Something about his posture suggested that he might be the more dangerous of the two.
Berrigan opened his mouth again, but Mr. Clemens cut him off with a gesture. “Well, boys, the New York police think that Farmer Jack left town and came west, which is why the detective is here. But if you haven’t seen him, there’s not much else the man needs to know from you, Ed. Tell me, though, who else is still around that Jack might go looking for, if he was on the run? There can’t be many of that old crew left.”
McPhee took a sip of his whisky and thought a moment. “Well, let’s see. Little Wes and Heinie settled down. They run a saloon in Cincinnati—nice place if you’re ever in town, although neither of them was ever partic’lar friends with Jack. Reds Murphy went west a couple years ago, after he got out of jail—said he was going to open a betting parlor in Frisco, and for all I know, he did. Vinnie the Italian’s still playing the game, but he was always mostly a lone hand—never really palled around with the boys. I think he works out of St. Louie nowadays.
“Poor Tom Walker went after a pretty young thing in Louisville, and her old man come looking for him with a Navy revolver. Found him, too. Jury let the old fellow off when it turned out Tom had a derringer in his boot top at the time and somebody swore he made a move for it. Tom was the only man I ever saw give Jack a close run at billiards. I guess that mostly covers it, Sam. If I was making book, I’d figure Jack to head for Cincy. What little’s left of the old crowd is mostly down there.”
“Yes, not many of us left,” said Mr. Clemens. “I hoped there’d be a few more old river hands I could talk to for my book, and I remember
