The Continental Op (Novelettes and short stories)

The House in Turk Street

Originally appeared in The Black Mask, 15 April 1924

I had been told that the man for whom I was hunting lived in a certain Turk Street block, but my informant hadn’t been able to give me his house number. Thus it came about that late one rainy afternoon I was canvassing this certain block, ringing each bell, and reciting a myth that went like this:

“I’m from the law office of Wellington and Berkeley. One of our clients — an elderly lady — was thrown from the rear platform of a street car last week and severely injured. Among those who witnessed the accident, was a young man whose name we don’t know. But we have been told that he lives in this neighborhood.” Then I would describe the man I wanted, and wind up: “Do you know of anyone who looks like that?”

All down one side of the block the answers were:

“No,” “No,” “No.”

I crossed the street and started to work the other side. The first house: “No.”

The second: “No.”

The third. The fourth.

The fifth—

No one came to the door in answer to my first ring. After a while, I rang again. I had just decided that no one was at home, when the knob turned slowly and a little old woman opened the door. She was a very fragile little old woman, with a piece of grey knitting in one hand, and faded eyes that twinkled pleasantly behind gold-rimmed spectacles. She wore a stiffly starched apron over a black dress and there was white lace at her throat.

“Good evening,” she said in a thin friendly voice. “I hope you didn’t mind waiting. I always have to peep out to see who’s here before I open the door — an old woman’s timidity.”

She laughed with a little gurgling sound in her throat.

“Sorry to disturb you,” I apologized. “But—”

“Won’t you come in, please?”

“No; I just want a little information. I won’t take much of your time.”

“I wish you would come in,” she said, and then added with mock severity, “I’m sure my tea is getting cold.”

She took my damp hat and coat, and I followed her down a narrow hall to a dim room, where a man got up as we entered. He was old too, and stout, with a thin white beard that fell upon a white vest that was as stiffly starched as the woman’s apron.

“Thomas,” the little fragile woman told him; “this is Mr.—”

“Tracy,” I said, because that was the name I had given the other residents of the block; but I came as near blushing when I said it, as I have in fifteen years. These folks weren’t made to be lied to.

Their name, I learned, was Quarre; and they were an affectionate old couple. She called him “Thomas” every time she spoke to him, rolling the name around in her mouth as if she liked the taste of it. He called her “my dear” just as frequently, and twice he got up to adjust a cushion more comfortably to her frail back.

I had to drink a cup of tea with them and eat some little spiced cookies before I could get them to listen to a question. Then Mrs. Quarre made little sympathetic clicking sounds with her tongue and teeth, while I told about the elderly lady who had fallen off a street car. The old man rumbled in his beard that it was “a damn shame,” and gave me a fat and oily cigar. I had to assure them that the fictitious elderly lady was being taken care of and was coming along nicely — I was afraid they were going to insist upon being taken to see her.

Finally I got away from the accident itself, and described the man I wanted. “Thomas,” Mrs. Quarre said; “isn’t that the young man who lives in the house with the railing — the one who always looks so worried?”

The old man stroked his snowy beard and pondered.

“But, my dear,” he rumbled at last; “hasn’t he got dark hair?”

She beamed upon her husband and then upon me.

“Thomas is so observant,” she said with pride. “I had forgotten; but the young man I spoke of does have dark hair, so he couldn’t be the one who saw the accident at all.”

The old man then suggested that one who lived in the block below might be my man. They discussed this one at some length before they decided that he was too tall and too old. Mrs. Quarre suggested another. They discussed that one, and voted against him. Thomas offered a candidate; he was weighed and discarded. They chattered on:

“But don’t you think, Thomas... Yes, my dear, but... Of course you’re right, Thomas, but...”

Two old folks enjoying a chance contact with the world that they had dropped out of.

Darkness settled. The old man turned on a light in a tall lamp that threw a soft yellow circle upon us, and left the rest of the room dim. The room was a large one, and heavy with the thick hangings and bulky horse-hair furniture of a generation ago. I burned the cigar the old man had given me, and slumped comfortably down in my chair, letting them run on, putting in a word or two whenever they turned to me. I didn’t expect to get any information here; but I was comfortable, and the cigar was a good one. Time enough to go out into the drizzle when I had finished my smoke.

Something cold touched the nape of my neck.

“Stand up!”

I didn’t stand up: I couldn’t. I was paralyzed. I sat and blinked at the Quarres.

And looking at them, I knew that something cold couldn’t be against the back of my neck; a harsh voice couldn’t have ordered me to stand up. It wasn’t possible!

Mrs. Quarre still sat primly upright against the cushions her husband had adjusted to her back; her eyes still twinkled with friendliness behind her glasses; her hands were still motionless in her lap, crossed at the wrists over the piece of knitting. The old man still stroked his white beard, and let cigar smoke drift unhurriedly from his nostrils.

They would go on talking about the young men in the neighborhood who might be the man I wanted. Nothing had happened. I had dozed.

“Get up!”

The cold thing against my neck jabbed deep into the flesh.

I stood up.

“Frisk him,” the harsh voice came from behind.

The old man carefully laid his cigar down, came to me, and ran his hands over my body. Satisfied that I was unarmed, he emptied my pockets, dropping the contents upon the chair that I had just left.

Mrs. Quarre was pouring herself some more tea.

“Thomas,” she said; “you’ve overlooked that little watch pocket in the trousers.”

He found nothing there.

“That’s all,” he told the man behind me, and returned to his chair and cigar.

“Turn around, you!” the harsh voice ordered.

I turned and faced a tall, gaunt, raw-boned man of about my own age, which is thirty-five. He had an ugly face — hollow-cheeked, bony, and spattered with big pale freckles. His eyes were of a watery blue, and his nose and chin stuck out abruptly.

“Know me?” he asked.

“No.”

“You’re a liar!”

I didn’t argue the point: he was holding a level gun in one big freckled hand.

“You’re going to know me pretty well before you’re through with me,” this big ugly man threatened. “You’re going to—”

“Hook!” a voice came from a portièred doorway — the doorway through which the ugly man had no doubt crept up behind me. “Hook, come here!”

The voice was feminine — young, clear, and musical.

“What do you want?” the ugly man called over his shoulder.

“He’s here.”

“All right!” He turned to Thomas Quarre. “Keep this joker safe.”

From somewhere among his whiskers, his coat, and his stiff white vest, the old man brought out a big black revolver, which he handled with no signs of either weakness or unfamiliarity.

The ugly man swept up the things that had been taken from my pockets, and carried them through the portières with him.

Mrs. Quarre smiled brightly up at me.

“Do sit down, Mr. Tracy,” she said.

I sat.

Through the portières a new voice came from the next room; a drawling baritone voice whose accent was unmistakably British; cultured British.

“What’s up, Hook?” this voice was asking.

The harsh voice of the ugly man:

“Plenty’s up, I’m telling you! They’re onto us! I started out a while ago; and as soon as I got to the street, I seen a man I knowed on the other side. He was pointed out to me in Philly five-six years ago. I don’t know his name, but I remembered his mug — he’s a Continental Detective Agency man. I came back in right away, and me and Elvira watched him out of the window. He went to every house on the other side of the street, asking questions or something. Then he came over and started to give this side a whirl, and after a while he rings the bell. I tell the old woman and her husband to get him in, stall him along, and see what he says for himself. He’s got a song and dance about looking for a guy what seen an old woman bumped by a street car — but that’s the bunk! He’s gunning for us. There ain’t nothing else to it. I went in and stuck him up just now. I meant to wait till you come, but I was scared he’d get nervous and beat it. Here’s his stuff if you want to give it the once over.”

The British voice:

“You shouldn’t have shown yourself to him. The others could have taken care of him.”

Hook:

“What’s the diff? Chances is he knows us all anyway. But supposing he didn’t, what diff does it make?”

The drawling British voice:

“It may make a deal of difference. It was stupid.”

Hook, blustering:

“Stupid, huh? You’re always bellyaching about other people being stupid. To hell with you, I say! If you don’t like my style, to hell with you! Who does all the work? Who’s the guy that swings all the jobs? Huh? Where—”

The young feminine voice:

“Now, Hook, for God’s sake don’t make that speech again. I’ve listened to it until I know it by heart!”

A rustle of papers, and the British voice:

“I say, Hook, you’re correct about his being a detective. Here is an identification card among his things.”

The Quarres were listening to the conversation in the next room with as much interest as I, but Thomas Quarre’s eyes never left me, and his fat fingers never relaxed about the gun in his lap. His wife sipped tea, with her head cocked on one side in the listening attitude of a bird.

Except for the weapon in the old man’s lap, there was not a thing to persuade the eye that melodrama was in the room; the Quarres were in every other detail still the pleasant old couple who had given me tea and expressed sympathy for the elderly lady who had been injured.

The feminine voice from the next room:

“Well, what’s to be done? What’s our play?”

Hook:

“That’s easy to answer. We’re going to knock this sleuth off, first thing!”

The feminine voice:

“And put our necks in the noose?”

Hook, scornfully:

“As if they ain’t there if we don’t! You don’t think this guy ain’t after us for the L. A. job, do you?”

The British voice:

“You’re an ass, Hook, and a quite hopeless one. Suppose this chap is interested in the Los Angeles affair, as is probable; what then? He is a Continental operative. Is it likely that his organization doesn’t know where he is? Don’t you think they know he was coming up here? And don’t they know as much about us — chances are — as he does? There’s no use killing him. That would only make matters worse. The thing to do is to tie him up and leave him here. His associates will hardly come looking for him until tomorrow — and that will give us all night to manage our disappearance.”

My gratitude went out to the British voice! Somebody was in my favor, at least to the extent of letting me live. I hadn’t been feeling very cheerful these last few minutes. Somehow, the fact that I couldn’t see these people who were deciding whether I was to live or die, made my plight seem all the more desperate. I felt better now, though far from gay; I had confidence in the drawling British voice; it was the voice of a man who habitually carries his point.

Hook, bellowing:

“Let me tell you something, brother: that guy’s going to be knocked off! That’s flat! I’m taking no chances. You can jaw all you want to about it, but I’m looking out for my own neck and it’ll be a lot safer with that guy where he can’t talk. That’s flat. He’s going to be knocked off!”

The feminine voice, disgustedly:

“Aw, Hook, be reasonable!”

The British voice, still drawling, but dead cold:

“There’s no use reasoning with you, Hook, you’ve the instincts and the intellect of a troglodyte. There is only one sort of language that you understand; and I’m going to talk that language to you, my son. If you are tempted to do anything silly between now and the time of our departure, just say this to yourself two or three times: ‘If he dies, I die. If he dies, I die.’ Say it as if it were out of the Bible — because it’s that true.”

There followed a long space of silence, with a tenseness that made my not particularly sensitive scalp tingle. Beyond the portière, I knew, two men were matching glances in a battle of wills, which might any instant become a physical struggle, and my chances of living were tied up in that battle.

When, at last, a voice cut the silence, I jumped as if a gun had been fired; though the voice was low and smooth enough.

It was the British voice, confidently victorious, and I breathed again.

“We’ll get the old people away first,” the voice was saying. “You take charge of our guest, Hook. Tie him up neatly. But remember — no foolishness. Don’t waste time questioning him — he’ll lie. Tie him up while I get the bonds, and we’ll be gone in less than half an hour.”

The portières parted and Hook came into the room — a scowling Hook whose freckles had a greenish tinge against the sallowness of his face. He pointed a revolver at me, and spoke to the Quarres:

“He wants you.”

They got up and went into the next room, and for a while an indistinguishable buzzing of whispers came from that room.

Hook, meanwhile, had stepped back to the doorway, still menacing me with his revolver; and pulled loose the plush ropes that were around the heavy curtains. Then he came around behind me, and tied me securely to the high-backed chair; my arms to the chair’s arms, my legs to the chair’s legs, my body to the chair’s back and seat; and he wound up by gagging me with the corner of a cushion that was too well-stuffed for my comfort. The ugly man was unnecessarily rough throughout; but I was a lamb. He wanted an excuse for drilling me, and I wanted above all else that he should have no excuse.

As he finished lashing me into place, and stepped back to scowl at me, I heard the street door close softly, and then light footsteps ran back and forth overhead.

Hook looked in the direction of those footsteps, and his little watery blue eyes grew cunning.

“Elvira!” he called softly.

The portières bulged as if someone had touched them, and the musical feminine voice came through.

“What?”

“Come here.”

“I’d better not. He wouldn’t—”

“Damn him!” Hook flared up. “Come here!”

She came into the room and into the circle of light from the tall lamp; a girl in her early twenties, slender and lithe, and dressed for the street, except that she carried her hat in one hand. A white face beneath a bobbed mass of flame-colored hair. Smoke-grey eyes that were set too far apart for trustworthiness — though not for beauty — laughed at me; and her red mouth laughed at me, exposing the edges of little sharp animal-teeth. She was beautiful; as beautiful as the devil, and twice as dangerous.

She laughed at me — a fat man all trussed up with red plush rope, and with the corner of a green cushion in my mouth — and she turned to the ugly man.

“What do you want?”

He spoke in an undertone, with a furtive glance at the ceiling, above which soft steps still padded back and forth.

“What say we shake him?”

Her smoke-grey eyes lost their merriment and became hard and calculating.

“There’s a hundred thousand he’s holding — a third of it’s mine. You don’t think I’m going to take a Mickey Finn on that, do you?”

“Course not! Supposing we get the hundred-grand?”

“How?”

“Leave it to me, kid; leave it to me! If I swing it, will you go with me? You know I’ll be good to you.”

She smiled contemptuously, I thought — but he seemed to like it.

“You’re whooping right you’ll be good to me,” she said. “But listen, Hook: we couldn’t get away with it — not unless you get him. I know him! I’m not running away with anything that belongs to him unless he is fixed so that he can’t come after it.”

Hook moistened his lips and looked around the room at nothing. Apparently he didn’t like the thought of tangling with the owner of the British drawl. But his desire for the girl was too strong for his fear of the other man.

“I’ll do it!” he blurted. “I’ll get him! Do you mean it, kid? If I get him, you’ll go with me?”

She held out her hand.

“It’s a bet,” she said, and he believed her.

His ugly face grew warm and red and utterly happy, and he took a deep breath and straightened his shoulders. In his place, I might have believed her myself — all of us have fallen for that sort of thing at one time or another — but sitting tied up on the side-lines, I knew that he’d have been better off playing with a gallon of nitro than with this baby. She was dangerous! There was a rough time ahead for this Hook!

“This is the lay—” Hook began, and stopped, tongue-tied.

A step had sounded in the next room.

Immediately the British voice came through the portières, and there was an edge of exasperation to the drawl now:

“This is really too much! I can’t” — he said reahly and cawnt — “leave for a moment without having things done all wrong. Now just what got into you, Elvira, that you must go in and exhibit yourself to our detective friend?”

Fear flashed into her smoke-grey eyes, and out again, and she spoke airily:

“Don’t be altogether yellow,” she said. “Your precious neck can get along all right without so much guarding.”

The portières parted, and I twisted my head around as far as I could get it for my first look at this man who was responsible for my still being alive. I saw a short fat man, hatted and coated for the street, and carrying a tan traveling bag in one hand.

Then his face came into the yellow circle of light, and I saw that it was a Chinese face. A short fat Chinese, immaculately clothed in garments that were as British as his accent.

“It isn’t a matter of color,” he told the girl — and I understood now the full sting of her jibe; “it’s simply a matter of ordinary wisdom.”

His face was a round yellow mask, and his voice was the same emotionless drawl that I had heard before; but I knew that he was as surely under the girl’s sway as the ugly man — or he wouldn’t have let her taunt bring him into the room. But I doubted that she’d find this Anglicized oriental as easily handled as Hook.

“There was no particular need,” the Chinese was still talking, “for this chap to have seen any of us.” He looked at me now for the first time, with little opaque eyes that were like two black seeds. “It’s quite possible that he didn’t know any of us, even by description. This showing ourselves to him is the most arrant sort of nonsense.”

“Aw, hell, Tai!” Hook blustered. “Quit your bellyaching, will you? What’s the diff? I’ll knock him off, and that takes care of that!”

The Chinese set down his tan bag and shook his head.

“There will be no killing,” he drawled, “or there will be quite a bit of killing. You don’t mistake my meaning, do you, Hook?”

Hook didn’t. His Adam’s apple ran up and down with the effort of his swallowing, and behind the cushion that was choking me, I thanked the yellow man again.

Then this red-haired she-devil put her spoon in the dish.

“Hook’s always offering to do things that he has no intention of doing,” she told the Chinese.

Hook’s ugly face blazed red at this reminder of his promise to get the Chinese, and he swallowed again, and his eyes looked as if nothing would have suited him better than an opportunity to crawl under something. But the girl had him; her influence was stronger than his cowardice.

He suddenly stepped close to the Chinese, and from his advantage of a full head in height scowled down into the round yellow face that was as expressionless as a clock without hands.

“Tai,” the ugly man snarled; “you’re done. I’m sick and tired of all this dog you put on — acting like you was a king or something. I’ve took all the lip I’m going to take from a Chink! I’m going to—”

He faltered, and his words faded away into silence. Tai looked up at him with eyes that were as hard and black and inhuman as two pieces of coal. Hook’s lips twitched and he flinched away a little.

I stopped sweating. The yellow man had won again. But I had forgotten the red-haired she-devil.

She laughed now — a mocking laugh that must have been like a knife to the ugly man.

A bellow came from deep in his chest, and he hurled one big fist into the round blank face of the yellow man.

The force of the punch carried Tai all the way across the room, and threw him on his side in one corner.

But he had twisted his body around to face the ugly man even as he went hurtling across the room — a gun was in his hand before he went down — and he was speaking before his legs had settled upon the floor — and his voice was a cultured British drawl.

“Later,” he was saying; “we will settle this thing that is between us. Just now you will drop your pistol and stand very still while I get up.”

Hook’s revolver — only half out of his pocket when the oriental had covered him — thudded to the rug. He stood rigidly still while Tai got to his feet, and Hook’s breath came out noisily, and each freckle stood ghastily out against the dirty scared white of his face.

I looked at the girl. There was contempt in the eyes with which she looked at Hook, but no disappointment.

Then I made a discovery: something had changed in the room near her!

I shut my eyes and tried to picture that part of the room as it had been before the two men had clashed. Opening my eyes suddenly, I had the answer.

On the table beside the girl had been a book and some magazines. They were gone now. Not two feet from the girl was the tan bag that Tai had brought into the room. Suppose the bag had held the bonds from the Los Angeles job that they had mentioned. It probably had. What then? It probably now held the book and magazines that had been on the table! The girl had stirred up the trouble between the two men to distract their attention while she made a switch. Where would the loot be, then? I didn’t know, but I suspected that it was too bulky to be on the girl’s slender person.

Just beyond the table was a couch, with a wide red cover that went all the way down to the floor. I looked from the couch to the girl. She was watching me, and her eyes twinkled with a flash of mirth as they met mine coming from the couch. The couch it was!

By now the Chinese had pocketed Hook’s revolver, and was talking to him:

“If I hadn’t a dislike for murder, and if I didn’t think that you will perhaps be of some value to Elvira and me in effecting our departure, I should certainly relieve us of the handicap of your stupidity now. But I’ll give you one more chance. I would suggest, however, that you think carefully before you give way to any more of your violent impulses.” He turned to the girl. “Have you been putting foolish ideas in our Hook’s head?”

She laughed.

“Nobody could put any kind in it.”

“Perhaps you’re right,” he said, and then came over to test the lashings about my arms and body.

Finding them satisfactory, he picked up the tan bag, and held out the gun he had taken from the ugly man a few minutes before.

“Here’s your revolver, Hook, now try to be sensible. We may as well go now. The old man and his wife will do as they were told. They are on their way to a city that we needn’t mention by name in front of our friend here, to wait for us and their share of the bonds. Needless to say, they will wait a long while — they are out of it now. But between ourselves there must be no more treachery. If we’re to get clear, we must help each other.”

According to the best dramatic rules, these folks should have made sarcastic speeches to me before they left, but they didn’t. They passed me without even a farewell look, and went out of sight into the darkness of the hall.

Suddenly the Chinese was in the room again, running tiptoe — an open knife in one hand, a gun in the other. This was the man I had been thanking for saving my life!

He bent over me.

The knife moved on my right side, and the rope that held that arm slackened its grip. I breathed again, and my heart went back to beating.

“Hook will be back,” Tai whispered, and was gone.

On the carpet, three feet in front of me, lay a revolver.

The street door closed, and I was alone in the house for a while.

You may believe that I spent that while struggling with the red plush ropes that bound me. Tai had cut one length, loosening my right arm somewhat and giving my body more play, but I was far from free. And his whispered “Hook will be back” was all the spur I needed to throw my strength against my bonds.

I understood now why the Chinese had insisted so strongly upon my life being spared. I was the weapon with which Hook was to be removed. The Chinese figured that Hook would make some excuse as soon as they reached the street, slip back into the house, knock me off, and rejoin his confederates. If he didn’t do it on his own initiative, I suppose the Chinese would suggest it.

So he had put a gun within reach — in case I could get loose — and had loosened my ropes as much as he could, not to have me free before he himself got away.

This thinking was a side-issue. I didn’t let it slow up my efforts to get loose. The why wasn’t important to me just now — the important thing was to have that revolver in my hand when the ugly man came into this room again.

Just as the front door opened, I got my right arm completely free, and plucked the strangling cushion from my mouth. The rest of my body was still held by the ropes — held loosely — but held. There was no time for more.

I threw myself, chair and all, forward, breaking the fall with my free arm. The carpet was thick. I went down on my face, with the heavy chair atop me, all doubled up any which way; but my right arm was free of the tangle, and my right hand grasped the gun.

My left side — the wrong side — was toward the hall door. I twisted and squirmed and wrestled under the bulky piece of furniture that sat on my back.

An inch — two inches — six inches, I twisted. Another inch. Feet were at the hall door. Another inch.

The dim light hit upon a man hurrying into the room — a glint of metal in his hand.

I fired.

He caught both hands to his belly, bent double, and slid out across the carpet.

That was over. But that was far from being all. I wrenched at the plush ropes that held me, while my mind tried to sketch what lay ahead.

The girl had switched the bonds, hiding them under the couch — there was no question of that. She had intended coming back for them before I had time to get free. But Hook had come back first, and she would have to change her plan. What more likely than that she would now tell the Chinese that Hook had made the switch? What then? There was only one answer: Tai would come back for the bonds — both of them would come. Tai knew that I was armed now, but they had said that the bonds represented a hundred thousand dollars. That would be enough to bring them back!

I kicked the last rope loose and scrambled to the couch. The bonds were beneath it: four thick bundles of Liberty Bonds, done up with heavy rubber bands. I tucked them under one arm, and went over to the man who was dying near the door. His gun was under one of his legs, I pulled it out, stepped over him, and went into the dark hall.

Then I stopped to consider.

The girl and the Chinese would split to tackle me. One would come in the front door and the other in the rear. That would be the safest way for them to handle me. My play, obviously, was to wait just inside one of those doors for them. It would be foolish for me to leave the house. That’s exactly what they would be expecting at first — and they would be lying in ambush.

Decidedly, my play was to lie low within sight of this front door and wait until one of them came through it — as one of them surely would, when they had tired of waiting for me to come out.

Toward the street door, the hall was lighted with the glow that filtered through the glass from the street lights. The stairway leading to the second-story threw a triangular shadow across part of the hall — a shadow that was black enough for any purpose. I crouched low in this three-cornered slice of night, and waited.

I had two guns: the one the Chinese had given me, and the one I had taken from Hook. I had fired one shot; that would leave me eleven still to use — unless one of the weapons had been used since it was loaded. I broke the gun Tai had given me, and in the dark ran my fingers across the back of the cylinder. My fingers touched one shell — under the hammer. Tai had taken no chances; he had given me one bullet — the bullet with which I had dropped Hook.

I put that gun down on the floor, and examined the one I had taken from Hook. It was empty. The Chinese had taken no chances at all! He had emptied Hook’s gun before returning it to him after their quarrel.

I was in a hole! Alone, unarmed, in a strange house that would presently hold two who were hunting me — and that one of them was a woman didn’t soothe me any — she was none the less deadly on that account.

For a moment I was tempted to make a dash for it; the thought of being out in the street again was pleasant; but I put the idea away. That would be foolishness, and plenty of it. Then I remembered the bonds under my arm. They would have to be my weapon; and if they were to serve me, they would have to be concealed.

I slipped out of my triangular shadow and went up the stairs. Thanks to the street lights, the upstairs rooms were not too dark for me to move around. Around and around I went through the rooms, hunting for a place to hide the Liberty Bonds.

But when suddenly a window rattled, as if from the draught created by the opening of an outside door somewhere, I still had the loot in my hands.

There was nothing to do now but to chuck them out of a window and trust to luck. I grabbed a pillow from a bed, stripped off the white case, and dumped the bonds into it. Then I leaned out of an already open window and looked down into the night, searching for a desirable dumping place: I didn’t want the bonds to land on an ash-can or a pile of bottles, or anything that would make a racket.

And, looking out of the window, I found a better hiding-place. The window opened into a narrow court, on the other side of which was a house of the same sort as the one I was in. That house was of the same height as this one, with a flat tin roof that sloped down the other way. The roof wasn’t far from me — not too far to chuck the pillow-case. I chucked it. It disappeared over the edge of the roof and crackled softly on the tin.

If I had been a movie actor or something of the sort, I suppose I’d have followed the bonds; I suppose I’d have jumped from the sill, caught the edge of the roof with my fingers, swung a while, and then pulled myself up and away. But dangling in space doesn’t appeal to me; I preferred to face the Chinese and the red-head.

Then I did another not at all heroic thing. I turned on all the lights in the room, lighted a cigarette (we all like to pose a little now and then), and sat down on the bed to await my capture. I might have stalked my enemies through the dark house, and possibly have nabbed them; but most likely I would simply have succeeded in getting myself shot. And I don’t like to be shot.

The girl found me.

She came creeping up the hall, an automatic in each hand, hesitated for an instant outside the door, and then came in on the jump. And when she saw me sitting peacefully on the side of the bed, her eyes snapped scornfully at me, as if I had done something mean. I suppose she thought I should have given her an opportunity to put lead in me.

“I got him, Tai,” she called, and the Chinese joined us.

“What did Hook do with the bonds?” he asked point blank.

I grinned into his round yellow face and led my ace.

“Why don’t you ask the girl?”

His face showed nothing, but I imagined that his fat body stiffened a little within its fashionable British clothing. That encouraged me, and I went on with my little lie that was meant to stir things up.

“Haven’t you rapped to it,” I asked; “that they were fixing up to ditch you?”

“You dirty liar!” the girl screamed, and took a step toward me.

Tai halted her with an imperative gesture. He stared through her with his opaque black eyes, and as he stared the blood slid out of her face. She had this fat yellow man on her string, right enough, but he wasn’t exactly a harmless toy.

“So that’s how it is?” he said slowly, to no one in particular. “So that’s how it is?” Then to me: “Where did they put the bonds?”

The girl went close to him and her words came out tumbling over each other:

“Here’s the truth of it, Tai, so help me God! I switched the stuff myself. Hook wasn’t in it. I was going to run out on both of you. I stuck them under the couch downstairs, but they’re not there now. That’s the God’s truth!”

He was eager to believe her, and her words had the ring of truth to them. And I knew that — in love with her as he was — he’d more readily forgive her treachery with the bonds than he would forgive her for planning to run off with Hook; so I made haste to stir things up again. The old timer who said “Divide to conquer,” or something of the sort, knew what he was talking about.

“Part of that is right enough,” I said. “She did stick the bonds under the couch — but Hook was in on it. They fixed it up between them while you were upstairs. He was to pick a fight with you, and during the argument she was to make the switch, and that is exactly what they did.”

I had him!

As she wheeled savagely toward me, he stuck the muzzle of an automatic in her side — a smart jab that checked the angry words she was hurling at me.

“I’ll take your guns, Elvira,” he said, and took them.

There was a purring deadliness in his voice that made her surrender them without a word.

“Where are the bonds now?” he asked me.

I grinned.

“I’m not with you, Tai. I’m against you.”

He studied me with his little eyes that were like black seeds for a while, and I studied him; and I hoped that his studying was as fruitless as mine.

“I don’t like violence,” he said slowly, “and I believe you are a sensible person. Let us traffic, my friend.”

“You name it,” I suggested.

“Gladly! As a basis for our bargaining, we will stipulate that you have hidden the bonds where they cannot be found by anyone else; and that I have you completely in my power, as the shilling shockers used to have it.”

“Reasonable enough,” I said, “go on.”

“The situation, then, is what gamblers call a standoff. Neither of us has the advantage. As a detective, you want us; but we have you. As thieves, we want the bonds; but you have them. I offer you the girl in exchange for the bonds, and that seems to me an equitable offer. It will give me the bonds and a chance to get away. It will give you no small degree of success in your task as a detective. Hook is dead. You will have the girl. All that will remain is to find me and the bonds again — by no means a hopeless task. You will have turned a defeat into more than half of a victory, with an excellent chance to make it a complete one.”

“How do I know that you’ll give me the girl?”

He shrugged.

“Naturally, there can be no guarantee. But, knowing that she planned to desert me for the swine who lies dead below, you can’t imagine that my feelings for her are the most friendly. Too, if I take her with me, she will want a share in the loot.”

I turned the lay-out over in my mind, and looked at it from this side and that and the other.

“This is the way it looks to me,” I told him at last. “You aren’t a killer. I’ll come through alive no matter what happens. All right; why should I swap? You and the girl will be easier to find again than the bonds, and they are the most important part of the job anyway. I’ll hold on to them, and take my chances on finding you folks again. Yes, I’m playing it safe.”

And I meant it, for the time being, at least.

“No, I’m not a killer,” he said, very softly; and he smiled the first smile I had seen on his face. It wasn’t a pleasant smile: and there was something in it that made you want to shudder. “But I am other things, perhaps, of which you haven’t thought. But this talking is to no purpose. Elvira!”

The girl, who had been standing a little to one side, watching us, came obediently forward.

“You will find sheets in one of the bureau drawers,” he told her. “Tear one or two of them into strips strong enough to tie up your friend securely.”

The girl went to the bureau. I wrinkled my head, trying to find a not too disagreeable answer to the question in my mind. The answer that came first wasn’t nice: torture.

Then a faint sound brought us all into tense motionlessness.

The room we were in had two doors: one leading into the hall, the other into another bedroom. It was through the hall door that the faint sound had come — the sound of creeping feet.

Swiftly, silently, Tai moved backward to a position from which he could watch the hall door without losing sight of the girl and me — and the gun poised like a live thing in his fat hand was all the warning we needed to make no noise.

The faint sound again, just outside the door.

The gun in TaI’s hand seemed to quiver with eagerness.

Through the other door — the door that gave to the next room — popped Mrs. Quarre, an enormous cocked revolver in her thin hand.

“Let go it, you nasty heathen,” she screeched.

Tai dropped his pistol before he turned to face her, and he held his hands up high — all of which was very wise.

Thomas Quarre came through the hall door then; he also held a cocked revolver — the mate of his wife’s — though, in front of his bulk, his didn’t look so enormously large.

I looked at the old woman again, and found little of the friendly fragile one who had poured tea and chatted about the neighbors. This was a witch if there ever was one — a witch of the blackest, most malignant sort. Her little faded eyes were sharp with ferocity, her withered lips were taut in a wolfish snarl, and her thin body fairly quivered with hate.

“I knew it,” she was shrilling. “I told Tom as soon as we got far enough away to think things over. I knew it was a frame-up! I knew this supposed detective was a pal of yours! I knew it was just a scheme to beat Thomas and me out of our shares! Well, I’ll show you, you yellow monkey! And the rest of you too! I’ll show the whole caboodle of you! Where are them bonds? Where are they?”

The Chinese had recovered his poise, if he had ever lost it.

“Our stout friend can tell you perhaps,” he said. “I was about to extract the information from him when you so — ah — dramatically arrived.”

“Thomas, for goodness sakes don’t stand there dreaming,” she snapped at her husband, who to all appearances was still the same mild old man who had given me an excellent cigar. “Tie up this Chinaman! I don’t trust him an inch, and I won’t feel easy until he’s tied up. Tie him, up, and then we’ll see what’s to be done.”

I got up from my seat on the side of the bed, and moved cautiously to a spot that I thought would be out of the line of fire if the thing I expected happened.

Tai had dropped the gun that had been in his hand, but he hadn’t been searched. The Chinese are a thorough people; if one of them carries a gun at all, he usually carries two or three or more. (I remember picking up one in Oakland during the last tong war, who had five on him — one under each armpit, one on each hip, and one in his waistband.) One gun had been taken from Tai, and if they tried to truss him up without frisking him, there was likely to be fireworks. So I moved off to one side.

Fat Thomas Quarre went phlegmatically up to the Chinese to carry out his wife’s orders — and bungled the job perfectly.

He put his bulk between Tai and the old woman’s gun.

Tai’s hands moved.

An automatic was in each.

Once more Tai ran true to racial form. When a Chinese shoots, he keeps on shooting until his gun is empty.

When I yanked Tai over backward by his fat throat, and slammed him to the floor, his guns were still barking metal; and they clicked empty as I got a knee on one of his arms. I didn’t take any chances. I worked on his throat until his eyes and tongue told me that he was out of things for a while.

Then I looked around.

Thomas Quarre was huddled against the bed, plainly dead, with three round holes in his starched white vest — holes that were brown from the closeness of the gun that had put them there.

Across the room, Mrs. Quarre lay on her back. Her clothes had somehow settled in place around her fragile body, and death had given her once more the gentle friendly look she had worn when I first saw her. One thin hand was on her bosom, covering, I found later, the two bullet-holes that were there.

The red-haired girl Elvira was gone.

Presently Tai stirred, and, after taking another gun from his clothes, I helped him sit up. He stroked his bruised throat with one fat hand, and looked coolly around the room.

“So this is how it came out?” he said.

“Uh-huh!”

“Where’s Elvira?”

“Got away — for the time being.”

He shrugged.

“Well, you can call it a decidedly successful operation. The Quarres and Hook dead; the bonds and I in your hands.”

“Not so bad,” I admitted, “but will you do me a favor?”

“If I may.”

“Tell me what the hell this is all about!”

“All about?” he asked.

“Exactly! From what you people have let me overhear, I gather that you pulled some sort of job in Los Angeles that netted you a hundred-thousand-dollars’ worth of Liberty Bonds; but I can’t remember any recent job of that size down there.”

“Why, that’s preposterous!” he said with what, for him, was almost wild-eyed amazement. “Preposterous! Of course you know all about it!”

“I do not! I was trying to find a young fellow named Fisher who left his Tacoma home in anger a week or two ago. His father wants him found on the quiet, so that he can come down and try to talk him into going home again. I was told that I might find Fisher in this block of Turk Street, and that’s what brought me here.”

He didn’t believe me. He never believed me. He went to the gallows thinking me a liar.

When I got out into the street again (and Turk Street was a lovely place when I came free into it after my evening in that house!) I bought a newspaper that told me most of what I wanted to know.

A boy of twenty — a messenger in the employ of a Los Angeles stock and bond house — had disappeared two days before, while on his way to a bank with a wad of Liberty Bonds. That same night this boy and a slender girl with bobbed red hair had registered at a hotel in Fresno as J. M. Riordan and wife. The next morning the boy had been found in his room — murdered. The girl was gone. The bonds were gone.

That much the paper told me. During the next few days, digging up a little here and a little there, I succeeded in piecing together most of the story.

The Chinese — whose full name was Tai Choon Tau — had been the brains of the mob. Their game had been a variation of the always-reliable badger game. Tai selected the victims, and he must have been a good judge of humans, for he seems never to have picked a bloomer. He would pick out some youth who was messenger or runner for a banker or broker — one who carried either cash or negotiable securities in large quantities around the city.

The girl Elvira would then make this lad, get him all fussed up over her — which shouldn’t have been very hard for her — and then lead him gently around to running away with her and whatever he could grab in the way of his employer’s bonds or currency.

Wherever they spent the first night of their flight, there Hook would appear — foaming at the mouth and loaded for bear. The girl would plead and tear her hair and so forth, trying to keep Hook — in his rôle of irate husband — from butchering the youth. Finally she would succeed, and in the end the youth would find himself without either girl or the fruits of his thievery.

Sometimes he had surrendered to the police. Two we found had committed suicide. The Los Angeles lad had been built of tougher stuff than the others. He had put up a fight, and Hook had had to kill him. You can measure the girl’s skill in her end of the game by the fact that not one of the half dozen youths who had been trimmed had said the least thing to implicate her; and some of them had gone to great trouble to keep her out of it.

The house in Turk Street had been the mob’s retreat, and, that it might be always a safe one, they had not worked their game in San Francisco. Hook and the girl were supposed by the neighbors to be the Quarres’ son and daughter — and Tai was the Chinese cook. The Quarres’ benign and respectable appearances had also come in handy when the mob had securities to be disposed of.

The Chinese went to the gallows. We threw out the widest and finest-meshed of drag-nets for the red-haired girl; and we turned up girls with bobbed red hair by the scores. But the girl Elvira was not among them.

I promised myself that some day...