From the Ashes (Ravenwood Mysteries #1)

A Gentleman Returns

TUESDAY, JANUARY 2, 1900

UNKNOWINGLY, HE HAD ARRIVED with the plague. It was fitting, divine almost, for he had left with death on his heels, and now he was bringing an old companion home.

The pair sailed into port on a four-masted steamer, the S.S Australia. It towered alongside the wharf, spewing passengers down its gangplank. The ramp bowed under their eager weight. Boots thudded on planks, voices clamored, and a surge of porters rushed forward to stake their claim on weary travelers.

A single gentleman stopped at the gangplank's end. He was not a tall man, nor a large one, but he was steady and unwavering and the tide of humanity flowed around his presence.

Atticus James Riot stared at the tips of his polished shoes. With methodical indifference to the glares directed at his back, he set down his Gladstone, removed his round spectacles, polished the glass with silk, and resettled the wire on his nose. Through an unblemished sheen, he scanned the docks.

They surged with chaos. Harried dockworkers swarmed over the steamers and wharves like an army of ants, unloading and loading goods into waiting wagons.

Seeking comfort, he raised his eyes to the city, to familiar hills and rising spires. His heart soared, but only for a moment. The sweetness left an aftertaste of bitterness and grief. Resigned, he took a breath, placed his stick on the dock and stepped forward, arriving in San Francisco, a city he had once known intimately.

California's Silver Mistress greeted him with a lush, sensuous embrace. She was a late riser who generally left at noon, returning in the evening like a slow crashing wave rolling relentlessly towards the port. Her touch was cool and it settled around his bones. He had missed her caress.

Turning his nose to the mist, he breathed her in, flipped up his collar, and waded into his old hunting ground.

The crowds flowed towards a clock tower to the north. Contrary to their rushing strides, he moved at a leisurely pace, circling a family of Italian immigrants. The infant bawled, the children squealed, and the parents looked lost and mystified all at once. He tipped his hat to the woman, and silently wished the family good luck.

Dreams only carried one so far in this city.

Riot had been abroad three years, and in his absence an ornate building had replaced the old wooden gateway to San Francisco's ferry terminals. Its tower, still caged in scaffolding, rose over the bristling bay of masts. Thunder rolled from its base where four tracks converged at the foot of Market.

Travelers poured on and off cable cars. Bells, horns, shouts, and a tumult of rattling hacks mingled with the earthquaking noise. He stopped beside a lamp post, leaning casually on his silver-knobbed stick, watching travelers argue over hacks and pile into cable cars, eager to escape the chaos.

Everyone had somewhere to be, except Riot. He was in no particular hurry to finish his journey. Home beckoned, but not with hope or promise.

However, the fates conspired, hurling a perceptive hackman in front of the well-dressed gentleman.

A cabriolet rolled to a stop in front of Riot. The nag that looked more donkey than horse nipped at his pinstriped trousers, and a driver who resembled his horse, bared his remaining teeth.

"Well if it isn't the detective who shanghaied himself," the hackman crowed around the stem of his pipe. "Finally found your way back to port, A.J."

"Only to fall into the hands of the very crimper who sent him far ashore." The hackman, in cap and peacoat, was certainly dressed like a seaman.

"If only I were so smart. Well don't stand there, climb in before I'm hijacked."