The Adventures of Johnny Vermillion by Loren D. Estleman Page A

their skill at playing one another’s roles upon short notice, and from the more detailed reviews of the company’s performances he was satisfied that the cast fulfilled all the body types mentioned in the criminal accounts, to wit:
    In the role of young Master Pip in Mr. Ragland’s ingenious abbreviation of
Great Expectations
, Miss April Clay engagingly and convincingly reverses the Elizabethan conceit for placing young male actors in the guise of women. Had your correspondent not spoken with the lady in costume shortly before the curtain went up on last night’s performance, he would have invoked Holy Scripture to maintain that the company had sneaked a boy into the cast, and unwittingly committed blasphemy.
    So read the notice in the same number of the
Cheyenne Leader
that had reported the robbery of the Cattleman’s Bank the previous evening. Rittenhouse wasn’t put off by the robber’s description, tall and rough-voiced. It would have been begging the question to present Miss Clay as a boy in both places. The company was bold, but not incautious.
    Rittenhouse shared his certainty with no one, not even the old man. Pinkerton responded to his wire reports with querulous telegrams, demanding to know what in thunder he was doing wasting fares and accommodations visiting such flea specks on the map as Tannery, when his orders were clearly to begin his investigation inSioux Falls. The fledgling field agent replied that all would be explained in the fullness of time, knowing the tightfisted old Scot would bite through his own lip before he’d incur the expense of withdrawing him and replacing him with a more easily intimidated subordinate. However, he knew also the boundaries of Pinkerton’s patience, and conducted his business posthaste, seldom staying in one place overnight before moving on to the next location.
    Marshal Fletcher of Tannery, Nebraska, was a man after his heart. An unprepossessing figure, fat and lethargic, and manifestly out of favor with the town council, which allowed him to remain in office only until an adequate replacement could be appointed, he impressed Rittenhouse with how quickly he’d acted to investigate the Prairie Rose the night the Planter State Bank was robbed. Although authorities in some of the other towns had taken the same course, none had done so with such alacrity, and still others had ignored the company entirely, choosing instead the standard action of assembling a posse of amateurs to go haring all over the countryside looking for incriminating tracks among the scores leading into and out of the city limits. Moreover, Fletcher remained confident about the propriety of his decision, even as he was at a loss to explain why a thorough search of the Prairie Rose’s traps and possessions failed to turn up so much as a silver dollar that couldn’t be accounted for. Asked for an inventory of what had been found, he produced a sheet from his desk, transposed in his own hand from notes taken by the deputies who’d conducted the search.
    â€œI won’t trouble you to return it,” said the marshal. “I won’t need it clerking at Pardon’s store.”
    Rittenhouse thanked him, and rose to leave. At the door, he turned back and retraced his steps to give Fletcher his card.
    â€œI can’t promise anything,” he said. “Mr. Pinkerton prefers his men fit.”
    â€œI expect Stella Pardon’ll work some of the tallow off me.” Fletcher stretched an arm and tucked the card into the corner of the bulletin board next to the picture of Black Jack Brixton.
    The detective reread the list frequently, riding in day coaches, hanging onto straps aboard the Butterfield, and resting his sore muscles on lumpy boardinghouse mattresses. None of the inventories he procured elsewhere was as exhaustive; Kansas City’s was oral and vague, and in Cheyenne and Sioux Falls the actors had not even been questioned, let alone