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leave the premises while leading me a merry chase, but headed straight down to the storerooms. That suggests a purpose that had nothing to do with hiding, for there was no safe place he could have concealed himself there.”
    â€œWhat purpose?”
    â€œMy suspicion,” Quincannon said, “is that a rendezvous had been arranged in the utility room this morning. It’s seldom used, I was told. Lansing was consulting his watch when I found him in the fermenting room. That, too, is suggestive—that the time of the meeting was near at hand.”
    â€œA meeting with whom? Whoever killed him?”
    â€œYes. His accomplice in the theft of the steam beer recipe and the murder of Otto Ackermann.”
    Sabina considered this for a few seconds before she asked, “Why would Lansing need an accomplice? From what you’ve told me, Ackermann was an old man. It would hardly take two to coerce the combination to his safe from him and then to pitch him into the vat.”
    â€œThe plan required a certain amount of brain power, daring, and strong nerve, and Lansing had none of these. The accomplice may well have been the one recruited by Cyrus Drinkwater and/or Xavier Jones. He may also have had a hold of some sort on Lansing to force him into the crime.”
    â€œYou suspected all along there were two Golden State employees in cahoots, then?”
    â€œNaturally,” Quincannon lied. He should have suspected it from the first, given Lansing’s weak-stick nature. But he hadn’t until the discovery of the assistant brewmaster’s corpse. Well, even the best detectives suffered a blind spot now and then. Not that he would ever admit it to Sabina, or a client or any other party.
    â€œWas the shooting premeditated or a spur-of-the-moment crime, do you suppose?”
    â€œA combination of both.”
    Sabina raised an eyebrow. “That would seem to be a paradoxical statement, John.”
    â€œNot really. When Lansing escaped from me, he fled to the storerooms to tell his partner the game was up. He was the sort who would spill everything in an instant once he was captured, and the accomplice knew it. He had no choice but to dispose of Lansing then and there, before his name was revealed to me.”
    â€œThen he was the one armed with the LeMat revolver?”
    â€œEither that, or he planted it there himself earlier. Which means he planned to eliminate his partner for reasons of greed, self-protection, or both—his purpose in arranging the utility room meeting.”
    â€œAnd how did he manage after the shooting to escape from behind two locked doors and under your watchful eye?”
    Quincannon fluffed his whiskers. “I can’t say just yet.”
    â€œMeaning you have no idea?”
    â€œA glimmering of one, yes.” This was another prevarication. And Sabina wasn’t fooled; he could tell by the look in her eye. As was his wont when he was temporarily embarrassed, he resorted to bluster. “I’ll soon have the answer. No conundrum stumps John Frederick Quincannon for long, as you well know, my dear.”
    The corners of Sabina’s mouth quirked with wry amusement. “Oh, yes, I’m well aware of your prowess. You’re the rival of Vidocq and Sherlock Holmes when it comes to solving the seemingly insoluble.”
    â€œYou’re referring to the genuine Holmes, I trust, not that insufferable rattlepate charlatan who kept plaguing us last year.”
    â€œWell, he did help us solve several difficult crimes.”
    â€œBah. Sheer lunatic luck in every case.”
    The very thought of the crackbrain Sherlock raised Quincannon’s blood pressure. He finished scraping the cake from his pipe bowl with an angry swipe, scowled at the black residue on the knife blade, and produced his already soiled handkerchief to cleanse it.
    Sabina, watching him, said, “What’s that yellow residue?”
    â€œEh? Yellow?”
    â€œOn your