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  FLYING EAGLE

  FLYING EAGLE

  TIM CHAMPLIN

  M. EVANS

  Lanham • Boulder • New York • Toronto • Plymouth, UK

  Published by M. Evans

  An imprint of Rowman & Littlefield

  4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706

  www.rowman.com

  10 Thornbury Road, Plymouth PL6 7PP, United Kingdom

  Distributed by National Book Network

  Copyright © 1990 by Tim Champlin

  First paperback edition 2014

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review.

  British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  The hardback edition of this book was previously cataloged by the Library of Congress as follows:

  Champlin, Tim

  Flying Eagle / Tim Champlin

  p. cm.—(An Evans novel of the West)

  I. Title. II. Series.

  PS3553.H265F58 1989 90-43154 813’. 54—dc20

  ISBN: 978-1-59077-227-0 (pbk. : alk. paper)

  ISBN: 978-1-59077-228-7 (electronic)

  The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

  Printed in the United States of America

  For Gordon Shirreffs and Mary Ann Eckels

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter One

  Jay McGraw stared upward at the man who dangled in the sky more than a thousand feet above him. Jay’s mouth was dry and his heart pounding as he watched the tiny figure climbing down a rope hanging from the wicker basket of a tethered gas balloon. The man was reaching with his feet for a tiny, swing-type seat suspended a few feet below the basket.

  “Wish I’d brought my field glasses,” Fred Casey muttered, shading his eyes. Casey, dressed in the dark blue uniform of a San Francisco policeman, stood on the other side of Jay and shared his fascination at this amazing sight.

  “OOOHHH!!” A collective gasp from the crowd focused the attention on the aeronaut high above them. The man was clinging to the knotted rope, his feet kicking free as he twisted helplessly. The wind off the bay was gusting. The balloon strained against its long mooring, and the suspended seat was blowing away from him.

  Jay could see clearly the figure of a giant eagle with outspread wings painted on the surface of the balloon. He swallowed the lump in his throat. How long could the man’s arms hold him against the force of the wind and the pull of his own weight?

  The figure far above them was slowly working his way downward, reaching with his feet for the tiny, elusive seat. But the wind was twisting it away from him. Finally, the seat swung close enough for the man to snag it with his foot. Very slowly he was able to pull it near enough to shift his weight, reach from the rope to the lines holding the seat, and swivel himself into a sitting position. He sat there for another minute or two, either to rest or to wait for the late afternoon wind to subside. He used the time to adjust the straps of his parachute harness.

  A hush fell on the crowd as he took a long line in his hand and pulled, opening the rip panel in the top of the balloon. Gas escaped and the balloon began to drop, creating momentum to partially fill the yellow silk parachute. The balloon had pivoted into the bay breeze, adding wind to the inflating silk.

  With the parachute partially inflated, the man jumped.

  “OOOHHH!!” the crowd gasped as the figure plummeted downward. The parachute filled and buoyed him up. The taut, yellow silk seemed to hang against the blue sky, but then could be seen sweeping in great, arcing swings toward the grass of Golden Gate Park.

  Jay let out his breath in a rush and joined the surge of the crowd toward the open spot where the aeronaut was coming down. As the man struck the ground and rolled over, the yellow silk collapsing downwind of him, the crowd broke into spontaneous applause. Jay’s eyes shifted to some of the faces around him. How many of these men and women were thrill-seekers who had come here to see a foolhardy daredevil leap to his death from this balloon? But he saw no disappointment—only excitement and pleasure at the jump and safe landing.

  The crowd swarmed around the aeronaut before he could even get out of his harness. Jay McGraw and Fred Casey ran toward him, but they knew they could never get close to the balloonist as the crowd pressed in. In the crush of excitement, people were pressing against him from all sides: men in bowler hats and black suits, women in their long dresses, wide hats and capes to shut out the chill of the early autumn breeze.

  Jay lost Fred Casey in the crowd. He was gone. Then he spotted his friend running through the outer edges of the group, chasing a short man in a slouch hat who was ducking and dodging some ten yards ahead of him. A woman screamed as she was knocked aside. The small man broke free of the crowd and sprinted out across the grassy field with Casey right behind him. The taller policeman rapidly overtook the fleeing man and Jay watched in amazement as Fred launched himself in a perfect flying tackle at the back of the fleeing man’s legs and brought him down cleanly.

  Jay moved away from the crowd as fast as he could and came running up as Casey was snapping his handcuffs on the smaller man.

  “Marvin Cutter,” Casey said, “one of the more notorious pickpockets in the city.” He pulled the man to his feet, and Jay looked into the narrow face that was covered with black stubble. Lank, black hair hung down into the man’s eyes. His sack coat sagged open, heavily.

  With a deft motion, Casey reached inside the coat and withdrew a calfskin purse. “Ah, taken to carrying ladies’ handbags, now, have you?” he said, holding it up. Cutter stared at him stonily and made no reply. “Better check to see if you have your billfold,” Casey said over his shoulder.

  McGraw patted his hip pocket. “It’s gone!”

  “Yeah. I saw him brush up against you in the crowd. Figgered he got it.”

  By the time Casey had frisked the thief, he had four billfolds on the ground at his feet and a small, curious crowd was gathering.

  “You must like it in jail, Marvin,” Casey said. “Do you keep doing this just so you can get free room and board? One of these days, the judge is going to put you away for a long time.”

  “Fred, I had an entire week’s pay in here,” Jay said, accepting the bill­fold the policeman handed him. “Don’t know what I’d do without you. Guess I need you around to take care of me,” he said, grinning ruefully.

  “After you’ve been in police work for a few years, watching for things like this is just second nature,” the mustachioed Casey replied. “I’d better get Mr. Cutter to the station house,” he added, stuffing the remainder of the leather billfolds into his side coat pockets. “I ha
ve to get back to my beat in Chinatown.”

  Jay took a last look at the face of Marvin Cutter. The pickpocket did not seem fearful, angry, remorseful, or depressed. The narrow, stubbled face of the thief seemed placid, resigned, as if this were all in a day’s work. You take your chances while plying your trade, make a profit or you get caught. As Fred Casey led Cutter away, Jay thought that this must be a routine happening for an habitual petty criminal.

  This man could have made more today than the $1,000 that aeronaut got for that parachute jump, if he had gotten away, Jay thought as he moved through the thinning crowd toward the rented rig he had parked in a nearby grove of trees.

  He knew the promoter paid the balloonist a dollar a foot and also knew he wouldn’t have done it for a million dollars.

  Jay glanced back at the solid knot of people still packed around the aeronaut. His assistants were busy cranking in the mooring line that held the balloon. The daredevil was going to lecture at the Civic Auditorium tonight.

  San Francisco, in 1883, was a free-wheeling city of extravagant wealth where even housemaids were seen to wear gold jewelry. It was a city where people took it for granted that nothing—no scheme or feat—was too outrageous to try. A pioneer spirit of independence, danger and survival prevailed.

  Thus, the sight of a man flying a balloon in the sky captivated the imagination of many, including Jay McGraw who, just a year earlier, had arrived in California from the Midwest by way of the Arizona Territory. After escaping near-death at the hands of the Chinatown tongs during a robbery of the U.S. Mint, he had joined the Wells Fargo Co. as a messenger.

  As he drove the rented rig back to the livery, he thought of how routine and boring his job had become in the past few months in comparison to the thrilling life of an aeronaut. Jay made up his mind to attend the balloonist’s lecture that night. At least he could share vicariously in some adventures before starting his routine run to Chicago the next day.

  Chapter Two

  “What are you looking so glum about?” Jay inquired of Fred Casey as the policeman slid into the booth opposite him the next morning. The lean, handsome Casey was dressed in his best gray suit and vest, and had just come from ten o’clock Mass at the Mission Dolores, a few blocks away. It had been their habit, over the past several months, when neither of these two young bachelors was working, to meet every Sunday morning at Mitchell’s Restaurant for an early lunch. The food here was tasty, but not expensive.

  “I just saw Dick Benson at church, and he told me the thief, Marvin Cutter, escaped from jail late last night,” he replied, frowning. “Somebody down there was mighty careless. It was hardly worth my time and trouble bringing him in.”

  “Well, at least you recovered all the stuff he took,” Jay said.

  Casey nodded. “But he’s probably already back on the street somewhere, relieving people of their valuables. He’s one of the slickest I’ve ever seen.”

  A balding, white-aproned waiter sauntered over with a pot of coffee and two heavy mugs. Jay ordered a small steak and potatoes and Casey, ham and eggs and toast. The waiter nodded and disappeared.

  Casey shrugged and looked out the window beside him at the bright sunlight reflecting off a red and gold cable car rattling up the street. “Well, Cutter’s not my problem now. I have other things to think about.”

  “Such as?” Jay asked, stirring a dash of cream into his coffee.

  “Benson also told me there’s a message waiting for me at my boardinghouse to report to the station house for some overtime work.”

  “Oh? What’s up?” Jay arched his brows over the rim of his cup.

  “Do you know of Julian Octavian Brown?”

  Jay thought for a moment. “The banker?”

  “The same.”

  “Filthy rich, as I recall. One of the tycoons who made it big right after the big gold rush about thirty years back.”

  “Right. Almost on a level with Crocker and Huntington and Fair and Flood and that bunch.”

  “What about him?”

  “He disappeared the night before last.”

  “Disappeared? How?”

  “Don’t know, exactly. He’s been a widower for a long time. No children. A really odd duck, who has become a virtual recluse in that mansion of his for the past few years. Only spends a few hours each week at his bank in the city. Rumor has it that his fortune has been eroding away gradually as other banks have sprung up in competition, and his holdings in the Virginia City mines have begun to play out. Talk in the financial community is that he’s made some bad personal investments, also some large loans from his bank in an attempt to recoup. And some of the borrowers have gone bankrupt and defaulted. Of course, all of this is only what I’ve heard and read third-hand accounts of. A lowly policeman is not privy to those financial circles.”

  “So the man just vanished?” Jay urged, trying to bring his friend back to the point of his tale.

  Casey nodded. “His cook had the night off Friday. She came back in yesterday morning and found the old Chinese houseman murdered and Mr. Julian Octavian Brown gone. No ransom notes, no clues, no signs of a struggle. They must have taken him totally by surprise, or he would have put up a fight. Brown is a big, stocky man, in great shape for his age and not afraid of anything, they say.”

  “Why is your captain calling you in on this?” Jay asked, cutting the smoking steak the waiter set before him. “You’re a member of the Special Chinatown squad. Isn’t this a little out of your line?”

  “I’m in line for promotion to detective. I’ve been with the force more than five years now. And that business you and I were involved in last year in recovering half of the gold from the mint robbery gave my career a big boost in the eyes of my chiefs.”

  “I wonder what happened to the rest of that money. A million and a half in gold double eagles—just vanished.”

  “I wish I knew.” Casey shook his head.

  “Think this will be a simple case of robbery or kidnapping?”

  “Somehow I don’t think so. All I know about it is what I got from Benson this morning, because it’s being kept out of the papers for a day or two. But Brown’s houseman wasn’t just shot or stabbed. His murder has all the marks of a Chinese tong execution—his skull was split with a hatchet.”

  “Damn!” Jay grimaced.

  “Yeah, I know. Pretty gruesome. But until now, that sort of thing has been confined to the Chinese quarter of the city to prevent stirring up trouble with the white man’s law. Those tongs are great at fighting among themselves. I ought to know; I have to go down there every night and try to prevent some of it. That may be the reason they’re calling me in on this case, since I have as much experience with the tongs as any white man. I just don’t know what to make of it. Maybe the old Chinese houseman had some sort of ties with the tongs. But then, why would they take J. Octavian Brown? I’m pretty anxious to get down to the station and get going on this one. It sounds fascinating.”

  “You don’t seem to be in any hurry,” Jay remarked, watching Casey wiping up egg yolk with a piece of toast.

  “Man can’t work on an empty stomach,” he replied. “If I have to work on Sunday, I’m going to take my time getting there—even if I will get paid a little extra, and might be working toward a promotion. Besides, I don’t officially know they want me yet. I haven’t been back to my boardinghouse to get the message.”

  He wiped his plate clean, took a sip of coffee, and leaned back with a sigh.

  “I have to leave for Chicago this afternoon,” Jay announced. “I have a turnaround trip this time, but I still won’t be back for more than two weeks. You know, I’ve been making this run as a messenger for Wells Fargo for months now, and there are only two things I don’t like about it.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I’m gone too long on these cross-country trips, and the job so far has been boring. I have to stay locked up in that express car the entire way, eating and sleeping in there, unless I slip out for a meal now and the
n.”

  Fred started to reply, but Jay held up his hand. “I’m not complaining, mind you. I really appreciate the good word you put in at Wells Fargo to help me get the job after that mint robbery business. And it pays a lot better than driving a beer wagon. I just wish . . . well, I’d like to be working with you on this disappearance case. Seems like you have all the excitement. I just lucked into that last thing. After a few runs, this messenger job has gotten pretty dull. My life was a lot more interesting and exciting when I was a temporary detective with the San Francisco Police.”

  Casey grunted. “Excitement! Huh! Terror, you mean. I’m surprised I’ve lived to be twenty-six. I don’t think I want to stay in police work the rest of my life, but right now, it’s the only thing I know. You’ve got a good future with Wells Fargo. It’s one of the biggest and most respected companies in the country. And, most important, they appreciate good employees.”

  “Yeah. Guess I shouldn’t gripe. At least by laying over in Chicago, I’ve been able to go over and visit my folks in Iowa a couple of times since I’ve had this job.”

  “Wish I had some family to visit,” Fred said somewhat wistfully, glancing out the window. “I was an only child and my parents died when I was just a boy. Raised by my great aunt, but she’s gone now. Came out here to California to seek my fortune when I was still in my teens, and got hooked up with the police department sort of by accident.”

  They fell silent, sipping their coffee and thinking their own thoughts.

  “I got to meet that aeronaut last night after his lecture,” Jay said to change the subject and head off his friend’s sad mood.

  “Oh, yeah? What’s he like?”

  “I thought he was an arrogant loudmouth. The man’s a braggart. Over­bearing. But he comes across on stage as confident and knowledgeable. They had a reception for him afterwards and that’s where he let the mask slip.”

  “You really took a dislike to this fella, didn’t you?”