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

  “It’s still nearly impossible for me to imagine her doing what you say she did.”

  “Believe me, sir, she did it. You don’t know about that woman like I’ve come to know about her, following her across the country, talking to those she’s talked to, and so on. She’s a great deceiver, for certain.”

  A great deceiver. The phrase made Gunnison think of the title of the serial novel that had diverted Kenton to Denver. “The Grand Deception,” he muttered under his breath.

  “What did you say?” Best asked.

  “Oh, nothing. Just the name of a story. What you said made me think of it.”

  Best chuckled. “Name of a story. All righty.” He stood and touched the brim of his hat, nodding. In typical Texan style, he’d kept the big hat on his head throughout the whole conversation. “I’ll be leaving you now, Mr. Gunnison. I hope you recover nicely from getting beat up. By the way, your pistol and other things are stored for you in that box there in the corner.”

  “Thank you.”

  “The doc will be back in soon, I’m sure. Meantime, I think I’ll go see if I can’t find our fugitive woman. Wish me luck.”

  “I do.”

  “Take care of yourself, Mr. Gunnison.”

  “You do the same, Mr. Best.”

  CHAPTER 10

  DENVER, COLORADO

  AFTER the train came to a halt with a screech of brakes and bursts of steam, Gunnison stood, picking up his bag from the other seat. He realized he’d risen too quickly when a wave of instability made him almost stagger to the side, out into the aisle.

  He steadied himself and took a deep breath. He had to remember that it was going to take a while to get over the head blow he’d received. The doctor had warned him that he’d go through a lot of dizziness and even some disorientation for a few days. The doctor, in fact, had been strongly against him leaving Leadville so quickly.

  And Gunnison wouldn’t have done so if not for the arrival of a very unexpected telegram. It had come from William Darian of the American Popular Library, sent in care of the Tabor Grand Hotel. What it said had been short, direct, and enough to make Gunnison get back on his feet right away, no matter what the doctor advised, and catch the first train toward Denver.

  COME AT ONCE WORRIED ABOUT KENTON YOUR HELP NEEDED.

  What could be so wrong with Kenton that Darian, who didn’t know Gunnison all that well, would wire Gunnison? Was Kenton sick? Injured?

  The train journey had seemed to last forever, increasing Gunnison’s restless feeling and giving him lots of time to weave terrible scenarios about what might have happened to Kenton. He hardly noticed that now that Kenton was in trouble of some sort, he’d lost all desire to separate himself from him. All that mattered now was to find him and provide whatever help he needed. Now, with his bag swinging at his side, Gunnison was walking through Union Depot, dodging side to side in the crowd. Outside, he hailed a cab.

  “The offices of the American Popular Library, on Broadway,” Gunnison said to the cabby as he settled into the comfortable seat.

  “I know the place,” the cabby replied, clicking his tongue and snapping the leads. The horse trotted off, horseshoes clattering on the pavement.

  Gunnison tried to forget his worries for the duration of the ride. He’d always loved Denver, considering it one of the most beautiful, healthful, and generally pleasant cities he’d ever visited.

  He’d first visited Denver back in the seventies. At the time, it was a city trying hard to rebound from the difficult year of ’73, and soon to face the “grasshopper years” of ’75 and ’76, when crops would be wiped out throughout Colorado and the economy would suffer greatly.

  Those hard days were long past now. The city, populated by about 75,000 people, was a metropolis of the West, full of fine houses and thriving businesses, and watered by a series of irrigation channels that ran water pumped from the Platte all through the city. Cottonwoods and maples shaded lush yards; large gardens planted in sunny lots provided vegetables in abundance for the city’s families, and every corner and porchside flower bed was abloom with color. Gunnison found himself fantasizing about someday bringing his wife, and the horde of children they still hoped to have, here to live in this city a mile above the level of the distant ocean.

  The cab pulled to the curb directly outside the building whose lower and second levels housed the offices of the American Popular Library. Gunnison hopped out of the cab, paid the driver, and with bag in hand headed for the door.

  It opened before he reached it, and William Darian, a somewhat plump and bookish-looking man with that distinctive slight bloat that comes of too much liquor, came out with hand extended and reading spectacles propped up on his high forehead. Darian’s receding hairline provided him with increasing expanses of brow every time Gunnison saw him.

  “Alex, thank you so much for coming,” Darian said, talking fast and seeming nervous. “I’ve felt just terribly about the turn Kenton has taken … I’m afraid it’s my fault. I suppose the things I showed him must have pushed him over the edge.”

  “What’s happened, William?”

  “Come up to my office and I’ll tell you.”

  “Is Kenton hurt?”

  “No … hurting himself, though. Hurting himself. And it’s surely my fault. But what else could I have done?”

  Gunnison knew then what it was. Intuition and a thorough knowledge of Kenton’s ways spoke to him in a single voice.

  Kenton was drinking hard again. That was what Darian would tell him. Ironic that the news would come from a man whose own drinking Kenton himself had commented upon. Kenton had had drinking problems from time to time through the years, usually during times when he was brooding about his lost Victoria.

  Gunnison followed Darian through a maze of halls, into a large room filled with rows of desks, then up two staircases into a new hallway, off which opened a short passage that led to a suite of three offices, the central one being Darian’s.

  A large three-sectioned window with an arched top afforded an excellent view of the busy street below, and far beyond, snow-capped mountains. Darian, accustomed to the scene and distracted by his worries, paid it no attention, but Gunnison was for a few moments fully captivated.

  Denver for him and his family, one day. He vowed it to himself on the spot.

  “Alex, I didn’t know I would cause a problem. I only wanted to tell Kenton about what might be a clue to the mystery regarding his wife.”

  “This serial novel, you mean.”

  Darian was fumbling with a cigar he’d taken from his desk. “Yes. The Grand Deception, written by someone under the name of Horatio Brady. As soon as I read the opening chapters, I knew there was something very unusual here. Very unusual, indeed.”

  “An apparent connection to the disappearance of Victoria.”

  “Yes. Virtually an identical description of the incident, including the central female character vanishing from the scene, and a description of how it came about.” Darian lit the cigar, a cheap one with a strong smell. He tossed the match aside; it landed, still flaming, on a piece of paper, which caught fire. Darian noticed it a moment later, slapped the fire out and brushed the paper onto the floor.

  “What scenario does the novel present?”

  “If you haven’t read it for yourself, you should. The impact of the similarities will strike harder that way. To sum it up, though, in the novel, the character named Candice—Victoria’s seeming counterpart—is injured in the train crash and carried away from the scene by a doctor who was on the same train—on the train because of her.”

  “In love with her, you see. Obsessed with her even though she is married to another man … who happens to be a writer, I should note.” Darian flipped ashes at the laden ashtray. They all missed, but several sparks landed on scrap paper and burned holes in the papers before flashing out cold. Gunnison was a little taken aback. Darian with a lighted cigar, in a roomful of papers, was a dangerous fellow.

  “It could be co
incidental … or it could be that the story was inspired by Victoria’s disappearance, but with the details supplied by the writer’s imagination.”

  “That’s very true, and something I’ve thought of from the outset. But there are times a man must listen to his instincts, Alex. And mine told me that there was something in that novel, something below the surface. So I contacted Kenton…”

  “Just in time to cause Kenton to abandon his obligation to speak in Leadville, and leave me to fill in. It was a most unpopular choice among most of my listeners, I should note.”

  “I’m sorry. Also sorry that it cost Kenton as much as it has.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Alex, Kenton has been suspended by the Illustrated American.”

  CHAPTER 11

  “SUSPENDED…”

  “Yes. Your father sent him word by telegraph. Kenton is on a month’s suspension, without pay. During that time he is to rewrite two stories that the Illustrated American has rejected. If he fails, or if he has any further problems in terms of performance, or any public difficulty of any kind, he’ll be dismissed permanently, and publicly. Kenton read the telegram out loud to me. Didn’t try to hide it at all.”

  “But how did my father learn that Kenton didn’t make his Leadville appearance?”

  “There were complaints wired from Leadville by some unhappy townsfolk, and others who had come a long way to hear Kenton speak.”

  Gunnison, stunned, stared silently at another hot cigar ash burning out on another wad of scrap paper. It didn’t catch, but almost did.

  Darian was berating himself. “If only I’d waited a little longer before telling Kenton about The Grand Deception. He would have made his Leadville appearance and all would be well.”

  “Not necessarily, William. What’s happened to Kenton has been building up for some time. I knew that eventually my father would get around to imposing some discipline on him. Kenton has been performing very poorly lately—it’s becoming a pattern. Even if he’d followed through at Leadville, Kenton would only have turned around and gotten himself into some other kind of trouble later on.” Gunnison sighed. “So that’s the problem with Kenton, then. I was on pins and needles all the way here, wondering. To be honest, I’m a little relieved. I’d dreamed up worse things that could have happened to him.”

  “It’s not the only problem,” Darian said. “His reaction to it was … bad.”

  “He’s drinking again.”

  “That’s right. He’s rented a room in one of the worst parts of town and is going to seed there by himself.”

  Gunnison felt a knot in his stomach. Poor Kenton!

  “What about the Deception novel? Does he believe what you told him?”

  “It was hard to judge … but yes, I think so. When he read it, sitting right where you are, he went pale. I’ve never seen him do that. He took a pencil, started making notes in the margins, underlining portions … Here, I’ve still got it. It was odd. He just rose all at once, tossed it aside, and walked out. He didn’t come back for a couple of hours, and by then the telegram from your father had arrived. He read it—laughed, believe it or not—left, and never asked for the copy of the magazine he’d marked up.”

  “May I see it?”

  The magazine was in a wooden file cabinet. Darian didn’t even have to dig for it.

  Gunnison flipped through it until he found the beginning of The Grand Deception. There was nothing unusual about the presentation—the standard dramatic etching and stylized typography on the title and opening initial.

  Gunnison looked at the markings Kenton had made. He’d underlined several lines describing the train crash, added a couple of exclamation marks in the margins at certain points that apparently struck him as significant, and in one place triple-underscored and circled a couple of sentences, adding three exclamation points beside them. Also one word in the margin: “Kevington.” Exclamation marks after it.

  Gunnison frowned. “Did Kenton happen to say who this Kevington is?”

  “No. He said nothing, really. Just seemed very intense, very disturbed.”

  “Kevington … I can’t recall I’ve ever heard Kenton say that name.”

  “Notice something, Alex: he’s written it beside a paragraph in which the name of the kidnapping physician character is mentioned.”

  “You’re right. ‘Dr. Lanval.’ So, could he be saying that this Kevington fellow is Dr. Lanval’s real-life counterpart?”

  “I have no idea.” Gunnison stood. “William, are you free to leave at the moment?”

  “Yes.”

  “Let’s go to a restaurant somewhere. I’m starved. And I want to read this story, and learn everything I can from you before I go and find Kenton.”

  * * *

  It was definitely not one of Denver’s finer buildings.

  Gunnison stood on a rough boardwalk, looking up at the ugly edifice of poorly painted lumber and wondered if he could possibly be at the right place. He rechecked the note Darian had scribbled out in the restaurant. Yes, this was it.

  The door opened and a man staggered out, drunk, covered in his own dried vomit, and not seeming to care. He stumbled past Gunnison, reeking, mumbling under his breath. A window above opened and a harpylike woman leaned out, screeching at the departing man, waving her fist. The man staggered on, not looking back, reacting to her only by lifting his arm and waving dismissively.

  Gunnison braced himself and headed for the door. Kenton supposedly was on the third floor of this sorry place. He walked in and mounted the creaking stairs, hoping the place wouldn’t happen to catch fire while he was in it. This place would be a tinderbox, with no way out but to leap from a window.

  Room 302. Gunnison checked the note yet again, just to be sure, before rapping on the door. No one replied. He rapped again, leaning close to the door, and saying, “Kenton?” Still no answer came back.

  He jiggled the doorknob. Unexpectedly, the door moved away from him, not having been fully shut. It swung back into a dirty, poorly painted room. Gunnison stuck his head through the door, looking around. The place contained only a table, a couple of chairs, one of which was overturned … and Kenton’s folding drawing table. On the table was a whiskey bottle, half-empty, and a dirty glass.

  “Kenton! It’s me … Alex.”

  Silence. Gunnison walked through the little room and to the only door in the place, which led to a tiny bedroom. The bed was narrow, unmade. Several empty beer bottles stood or lay on the floor beside it.

  “Oh, Kenton,” Gunnison whispered. “How far have you let yourself fall? And why? Why now?”

  He walked back into the main room and over to Kenton’s drawing table. Kenton had been busy, it seemed, with more than drinking. Several sketches lay there; Gunnison recognized them as related to the assignments Kenton had recently failed to adequately complete.

  Gunnison stood looking at them, and began to feel sad. It was pitiful, seeing this evidence of Kenton struggling to rebound from the failures that suddenly had endangered his job. Gunnison could imagine that Kenton must have been taken aback by his suspension; the man did have an ego and a tendency to believe that his status and fame made him invulnerable.

  But Kenton was failing. The sketches were very much below his usual standards. Even the inevitable, subtly hidden images of Victoria that Kenton incorporated into almost every drawing he made were substandard.

  It was the alcohol. The one thing that sometimes proved itself stronger than Brady Kenton.

  Gunnison wondered where Kenton was. Gone out for food, maybe. There didn’t appear to be any food here.

  A ragged, dirty curtain hung over a west-facing window. Gunnison went to it and glanced out, hoping to see Kenton approaching.

  Only a moment after he looked out, a window shattered in a saloon across the street and a man tumbled out amid shards and splinters. He landed hard in a smear of mud caused by the just-finished urination of a horse. Stunned, he couldn’t even get up.

  Gunnison wa
tched, aghast, as a second man came out the window. This one, however, came out on a leap, voluntarily, unlike the most involuntary exit of the first man.

  Gunnison became even more aghast when he saw that the second man was Kenton. Kenton threw himself right atop the man, grabbing him by the collar, lifting him up and shaking him. He was yelling so loudly that Gunnison could hear him all the way up where he was, through the closed window. He couldn’t quite understand the words.

  Kenton’s victim, recovering, began to swing his fists up at Kenton, connecting a couple of times. Kenton let go of his collar with his right hand and began pounding back, much more effectively.

  Gunnison bolted out the door, down the stairs, and to the street, hoping to get to Kenton before he killed the man.

  CHAPTER 12

  KENTON was drunker than Gunnison had ever seen him, and for that Gunnison was actually glad, because the alcohol was making his blows a little less exact than they would have been otherwise.

  “No!” Gunnison yelled, grabbing at his partner’s shoulders. “Good lord, man, quit this! Let him go before you kill him!”

  Kenton, roaring and angry, tried to shrug Gunnison away. He laid three more hard blows against the face of the supine man below him, effective blows that clearly stunned the man.

  Gunnison rammed Kenton as hard as he could, knocking him off. Kenton yelled, swore, and came to his feet uncertainly. He pulled back his fist and clumsily lunged toward Gunnison.

  He froze when he saw who it was, and his face broke into a foolish-looking grin. “Alex!” he said. “Alex Gunnison, by gum and by golly! Who’d have thought I’d run into you here!”

  “Right. Who’d have thought it.”

  Kenton’s anger apparently had died upon the sight of Gunnison. He lumbered over and slipped an arm around Gunnison’s shoulder. His breath stank of whiskey and his body smelled as if it had not been washed for days.

  “Alex, I’m glad you’ve come to visit me in my time of distress.” Kenton had a big grin on his face as he said this.