The Quest of Brady Kenton / Kenton's Challenge Read online

  “Why are you here?” he asked.

  “Because I need to find Brady Kenton, sir.”

  “So you followed me from Leadville!”

  “I didn’t follow you, sir. I came all on my own because you’d told me my father was here.”

  He’s not your father, Gunnison thought. “How’d you come?”

  “I rode in a freight car on a railroad train, sir, most of the way. But then a man got on that car and threw me off. So the rest of the way I walked, and once I rode some miles with a man in a wagon. I’ve almost exhausted myself getting here, sir … and he’s still after me. I’ve seen him.”

  So Jessup Best was here, too. Still continuing his search for the English murderess. Gunnison wished he’d caught her already. He wouldn’t be in this predicament. As unhappy as he was to see Rachel and as wary as he was about her based on what Best had told him, he still felt this instinctive urge to protect her. She seemed vulnerable and weak, not threatening.

  “Have you knocked on the door?” Gunnison asked her.

  “No … I didn’t know which door was the right one.”

  “How did you know Kenton has rented a room in this building?”

  “I asked a man on the street. He said that he’d seen Kenton come in and out of this building. But he didn’t know the room.” She paused, then added, “I wish I hadn’t asked the man. He wasn’t a good man … he took it wrong that I had spoken to him on the street. He thought me a different kind of woman than I am.”

  “The life you lead is dangerous, Rachel. Why do you run like you do?” Gunnison already figured he knew why, but was curious as to what she would say.

  “I’ve told you, sir. You know I’m being pursued … Mr. Gunnison, I hate to ask you, but might you have food I could eat? I haven’t eaten for a long time.”

  Gunnison still didn’t fully trust her, but as before in Leadville, he couldn’t help but trust her somewhat. She had an openness and sincerity about her that he couldn’t believe was the mask of a murderess. Yet he’d found Jessup Best just as believable. Gunnison was confused by his own instincts, not sure which to follow.

  But he couldn’t just send her away hungry.

  “There’s food inside,” he said. “I’ll let you in and give you some.”

  “Oh, thank you, sir. Is my father … is Brady Kenton inside?”

  “I don’t think so. I was, uh, with him elsewhere earlier, and we became separated. He may not have arrived back here yet.”

  Indeed he hadn’t. The room was empty. Gunnison wondered if Kenton had been caught. He hoped not. The publicity of another encounter with the law, particularly one involving breaking and entering, would surely be fatal to his career.

  Rachel Frye looked about the trashy, decrepit room as if it were the finest of dwellings. Gunnison wondered how long it had been since she’d had a real home.

  “I feel safe in here,” she said. “This is where my father lives!”

  Gunnison was not in a mood to play along with foolishness.

  “I told Brady Kenton about your claim to be his daughter,” he said. “He tells me he has no daughters, no children at all, certainly no English ones.”

  “He wouldn’t know about me, sir. There’s no way he could.”

  Gunnison knew he should pursue the issue, but he was distracted just now, worried about Kenton.

  “Sit down,” Gunnison snapped. “I’ll get you some bread and butter. It’s the best I can offer you right now.”

  “Bless you, Mr. Gunnison.” She seated herself at the rough little table, and examined Kenton’s sketching paraphernalia with interest, touching none of it, though.

  Gunnison brought her food, and a cup of water. He’d reholstered his pistol upon entering the room, but kept it on him.

  She ate ravenously, finishing the food within two minutes. She picked at the crumbs, then thanked him yet again for his kindness.

  “I’ll get you some more,” he said, bringing her the remainder of the loaf. He had purchased it at a nearby bakery the day before.

  She ate again, a little more slowly this time. Gunnison watched her, and also occasionally looked out the window, hoping to see Kenton approaching. He wondered how Kenton would react to finding Rachel here, and what she would say to him.

  But Kenton just didn’t appear. Gunnison worried more.

  “Did my father buy the bread I just ate?” she asked.

  “I wouldn’t be calling him your father just yet, Rachel,” he said. “I don’t think he’d agree to the title. And no, he didn’t buy it. I did.” He was finding her remarkably irritating right now.

  “I do thank you for it, sir.”

  Her cloying, deferential politeness did not sit well with him. He didn’t want her here right now, didn’t want to be having to watch her with one eye while spying for the returning Kenton with the other. Hard though it was to believe she could really be the murderess Jessup Best claimed, he had to be cautious. Maybe it was her very meekness that made it possible for her to position herself where she could do the most harm. She was very likely insane, very likely living in a world of delusion and planning to murder Brady Kenton as a deserting father.

  Yet she didn’t seem insane.

  Gunnison thought back on his first meeting with her in Leadville. Here was an opportunity to find the answers to some questions. Who had she fought with in the hall after Gunnison had left to buy her food? How had she escaped him? Why had her attacker had an English accent—might he be a pursuing husband, despite her claim to be unmarried?

  But he didn’t ask these questions just now. He was growing more worried by the moment about Kenton’s absence. Something was wrong.

  She crossed her arms on the table and laid her head on them.

  “Tired?” he asked.

  “Very tired.”

  “Go lie down on that cot there. Sleep, if you want.” If she really was a murderess, he’d much rather have her unconscious than otherwise.

  “May I?”

  “I invited you to, didn’t I? Go on … lie down.” He chided himself for talking in such a rude tone. She might remember it later during a murder frenzy and pump him full of bullets.

  The idea almost made him laugh. It was just too impossible to conceive. She just couldn’t be a killer.

  She fell asleep almost at once. Gunnison watched her, wondering who and what she was, and how much he needed to worry about her.

  There was a shout on the street outside. Gunnison looked out the window. A man was shouting at another, waving for him to follow. Both of them ran up the street together. Then a wave of other people, six or seven of them, and a couple of horsemen. All going in the same direction.

  Gunnison sniffed the air, frowning. He opened the window and thrust his head out.

  He smelled smoke, fairly strong. He looked up the street in the direction people were moving, but saw no flames or billows. He pulled his head back inside.

  She was still sleeping, breathing deeply. Clearly this was an exhausted woman.

  More people ran up the street. Still no sign of Kenton.

  Gunnison stood undecided, then headed for the door. She wouldn’t wake up for a long time. He’d find out what was drawing all the public attention, at the very least. And if Kenton didn’t show up soon, he’d go looking for him.

  Taking care to make little noise, Gunnison slipped out and into the hall. He didn’t bother to lock the door.

  CHAPTER 22

  DOWNSTAIRS and on the street, he almost ran into a large, darkly clothed fellow with a wide face. The man put out two arms like small logs and held Gunnison back.

  “Well!” the man laughed. “Slow down, my friend!”

  “I beg your pardon,” Gunnison said. “I was rushing out to see what the excitement was.” He gestured toward the people moving up the street.

  “There’s a fire, I hear,” the stranger said. “Someone was saying the office of that magazine on Broadway caught fire.”

  “Magazine? Not the American Popular Libra
ry?”

  “That’s the one.”

  Gunnison’s heart nearly stopped. He gaped at the man, unable to speak.

  The fellow laughed again. “What is it, young fellow? Have I sprouted devil horns on my brow all of a sudden?”

  “What? No … no … dear Lord…”

  Gunnison, forgetting all about the woman upstairs, turned and ran in the direction of the Popular Library office building.

  * * *

  The big man whom Gunnison had run into watched him run away, and chuckled. Odd that he should have encountered this fellow in particular. He had observed this fellow and the famous Brady Kenton coming and going from the building, since he lived nearby. A rented room, no doubt. He couldn’t quite account for someone as famous and presumably well off as Brady Kenton renting quarters in such a squalid place as this, but he had the evidence of his own observations.

  He watched Gunnison run until he was out of sight, chuckled again, and headed into the building. He’d seen Kenton leave the room much earlier in the day, and not return. With the younger one gone, the place should be empty. Maybe something worth having was lying around in there, waiting to be taken. It was worth a look, anyway. A quick visit in, a poke around, and he might come away with jingling pockets, at little risk.

  He began to climb the stairs, hoping he’d find the room unlocked.

  * * *

  Gunnison joined the crowd gathered at the Popular Library building, looking wildly about for Kenton.

  He was glad to see no flames, no sign that the building was significantly damaged, and that the crowd was dispersing rather than growing.

  Gunnison collared a nearby man. “What’s happened here?”

  “A fire … well, there was one, but it’s out now. It put out smoke, let me tell you, but not a lot of flame.”

  “How did it start?”

  “I heard one of the firemen saying it began on the third floor. Probably a dropped cigar. Some fellow working late in his office.”

  The third floor … Gunnison and Kenton had been on the second. Gunnison felt intensely relieved. At least the fire hadn’t begun because of something he and Kenton had done.

  “Was anyone hurt?”

  “A couple were. The man whose office the fire started in, and a security guard; both were knocked out by the smoke. But Brady Kenton was in there, Brady Kenton himself! He dragged them out. If not for him, they’d surely be dead.”

  So there had been not one, but two other people in that building while Kenton and Gunnison were pilfering through Bell’s office! Gunnison was surprised to learn this. “Is Kenton all right?” he asked.

  “Yep. But the police hauled him off to talk to him. I suppose about the fire, and maybe about that window the newspaper said he busted in a barroom here recently.”

  Gunnison frowned. Kenton was in the hands of the police? Might he be arrested, either for the broken window incident or for his unjustified presence in a burning building, or both?

  “Where did the police take him?”

  The man gave directions to the station, and Gunnison, having only barely caught his breath from his last run, set off running again, determined to find Kenton.

  * * *

  A block later, Gunnison stopped abruptly. He’d just seen someone he thought he recognized—a figure striding in the same direction he was going, lean and tall. Walking, though, on the boardwalk on the opposite side of the street, and slightly ahead of Gunnison.

  He paused long enough to catch his breath to a degree, then crossed the street.

  “Jessup Best?” he said, approaching the duster-clad figure.

  The man turned, and Gunnison stopped. “I beg your pardon,” he said. “I took you to be someone else.”

  “Think nothing of it, amigo,” the man said.

  I’ll be! thought Gunnison. He not only looks like Jessup Best, but sounds just as Texan.

  Gunnison nodded politely at the stranger and headed back to his own side of the street. He moved along quickly toward the police station. He was embarrassed at having misidentified the man … yet even disregarding the fact that he’d confused the man with Jessup Best, he was sure he had seen him before. Where?

  He remembered as he rounded the next corner. He’d seen that man walking alongside the policeman who had come to investigate Kenton’s breaking of that barroom window. Even then he’d noticed a similarity to Jessup Best.

  * * *

  The tall Texan across the street watched Gunnison, scratching at his whiskers and looking thoughtful, until Gunnison was out of sight. “What name did he call me?” he muttered to himself.

  Glancing up and down the street, he stepped off the boardwalk and fell in behind Gunnison, following at a distance.

  * * *

  Brady Kenton was struggling hard to keep his temper. As he sat in a very uncomfortable, straight-backed chair in a back room of the Denver Police Station, watching his interrogator pace back and forth before him, he was reciting to himself every reason he could think of why a man shouldn’t assault a police officer.

  The more time went by and the more smart-mouthed questions he received from Henry Turner, the man interrogating him, the less convincing his list of reasons became.

  Turner strode back and forth like a strutting rooster, chewing on an unlit cigar and seeming quite pleased to have a celebrity such as Brady Kenton at his mercy.

  “So let me get this straight,” he said, clipping the spit-sodden cigar between his first two fingers and removing it from his lips. “You just happened to be walking by this building after dark, looked up, and saw smoke coming out a window.”

  “That’s what I said. Congratulations on grasping such a difficult concept.”

  “Why, thank you, Mr. Kenton. I consider being congratulated by such a great man as you to be a true honor.”

  “If you’re trying to be subtle with your sarcasm, you’re failing miserably,” Kenton replied.

  Turner smirked at Kenton in a way that made Kenton want to strike him down. “Just following your lead, Mr. Kenton. Let’s think about this situation we’re talking about. Smoke coming out a window. Now, what does a man do when he sees smoke coming out a window of a closed-up building, with no lights on, after work hours at night?”

  “Gosh, I don’t know. Why don’t you tell me and break all the suspense?”

  “It seems to me that what a man does is go find the nearest policeman, or ring the nearest fire bell, or otherwise try to give some kind of alert to the proper authorities.” Turner stopped pacing and wheeled to face Kenton. “What it seems to me he don’t do is break inside the building and go poking around to see what’s going on, all on his lonesome.”

  CHAPTER 23

  KENTON could see where this was going, and didn’t like it. The truth was that Turner had a point, and Kenton was beginning to realize he might not have been wise to have lied to the man about how he’d come to be inside the building. But he certainly couldn’t have told him the truth! Why, yes, Officer Turner, I did break into that building. I was looking for a manuscript, you see, or a copy of a book contract, rifling without permission through the private property of an editor who would have had heart failure if he knew I was in his office.

  Unfortunately, the lie didn’t seem to be working out much better than the truth would have. And it had already come to Kenton’s mind that he’d probably be in trouble when the security guard, now being treated at a local hospital for having breathed too much smoke, got around to giving his own version of the story to Turner. His tale wasn’t likely to match Kenton’s.

  “I don’t know what you expect me to say,” Kenton said.

  “The truth would be helpful. You broke into that building, Mr. Kenton. I wouldn’t have expected it of a man of your fame and reputation, but then I wouldn’t expect a man of your fame and reputation to go around heaving other men through barroom windows, either. But you did that, in front of many witnesses.”

  Kenton sighed. He knew it would come around to that before lo
ng. Turner had already mentioned that he was the officer who had investigated that window-breaking incident, a fact Kenton knew already from having read J. B. Haddockson’s sensational story in The Denver Signpost. Even if he managed to talk his way out of the immediate situation, he still had that unresolved matter hanging over him. And it was obvious that Turner had it in for him. It was part of the price of fame, Kenton had learned: some people take pleasure in bringing down the proud and admired.

  “I broke into that building because I was afraid someone was up there, overcome by the smoke,” Kenton said. “And it’s a good thing I did, too, because two men are alive right now who probably wouldn’t be if not for me.”

  “Oh, I don’t dispute that,” Turner said. “It all turned out for the best, and that will certainly play in your favor. But when my gut tells me I’m being lied to, I get a little uppity.”

  “Why would I lie, sir? I listened to my own gut, and it told me to get into that building because people might be in danger there.” Kenton hoped against hope that he’d talk his way out of this and be released before any version to the contrary of his own came from the security guard. He wasn’t particularly worried about being contradicted by William Darian, who was unconscious when Kenton had found him in his burning office and dragged him out just in time. Kenton had fallen over the security guard’s prostrate body in that smoky hallway as he was pulling Darian to safety. The end result was that he’d saved the lives of both men—but at the cost of having his presence in the building betrayed. At least Gunnison had gotten away undetected.

  Turner leaned over, hands on his knees, face inches from Kenton’s. “I’m going to get you, Kenton. I’m going to bring you down like a falling star. You’ve come to this city and assaulted a man in a barroom, staggered around drunk in public, broken out a window, and now you’ve been found inside a building without authorization. A building that caught fire for reasons we don’t yet fully know. You’re at the very least a curse and a jinx, Mister Great American Journalist, and maybe worse than that. Maybe a common second-story man. I’m going to find you out and expose you, and let you explain it to your admiring public.”