“Any trouble with them or anything against them except that they were Wobblies?”
“No – they were pretty good workers.”
“Any trouble with them after he fired them?” I asked.
“No real trouble, though they were pretty hot. They made red speeches all over the place before they left.”
“Remember what day that was?”
“Wednesday of last week, I think. Yes, Wednesday, because I hired two new men on Thursday.”
“How many men do you work?”
“Three, besides myself.”
“Was Mr. Newhouse sick very often?”
“Not sick enough to stay away very often, though every now and then his heart would go back on him, and he’d have to stay in bed for a week or ten days. He wasn’t what you could call real well at any time. He never did anything but the office work – I run the shop.”
“When was he taken sick this last time?”
“Mrs. Newhouse called up Tuesday morning and said he had had another spell, and wouldn’t be down for a few days. He came in yesterday – which was Thursday – for about ten minutes in the afternoon, and said he would be back on the job this morning. He was killed just after he left.”
“How did he look – very sick?”
“Not so bad. He never looked well, of course, but I couldn’t see much difference from usual yesterday. This last spell hadn’t been as bad as most, I reckon – he was usually laid up for a week or more.”
“Did he say where he was going when he left? The reason I ask is that, living out on Sacramento Street, he would naturally have taken a car at that street if he had been going home, whereas he was run down on Clay Street.”
“He said he was going up to Portsmouth Square to sit in the sun for half an hour or so. He had been cooped up indoors for two or three days, he said, and he wanted some sunshine before he went back home.”
“He had a piece of foreign money in his hand when he was hit. Know anything about it?”
“Yes. He got it here. One of our customers – a man named Van Pelt – came in to pay for some work we had done yesterday afternoon while the boss was here. When Van Pelt pulled out his wallet to pay his bill, this piece of Holland money – I don’t know what you call it – was among the bills. I think he said it was worth something like thirty-eight dollars. Anyway, the boss took it, giving Van Pelt his change. The boss said he wanted to show the Holland money to his boys – and he could have it changed back into American money later.”
“Who is this Van Pelt?”
“He’s a Hollander – is planning to open a tobacco importing business here in a month or two. I don’t know much about him outside of that.”
“Where’s his home, or office?”
“His office is on Bush Street, near Sansome.”
“Did he know that Newhouse had been sick?”
“I don’t think so. The boss didn’t look much different from usual.”
“What’s this Van Pelt’s full name?”
“Hendrik Van Pelt.”
“What does he look like?”
Before Soules could answer, three evenly spaced buzzes sounded above the rattle and whirring of the presses in the back of the shop.
I slid the muzzle of my gun – I had been holding it in my lap for five minutes – far enough over the edge of the desk for Ben Soules to see it.
“Put both of your hands on top of the desk,” I said.
He put them there.
The pressroom door was directly behind him, so that, facing him across the desk, I could look over his shoulder at it. His stocky body served to screen my gun from the view of whoever came through the door, in response to Soules’s signal.
I didn’t have long to wait.
Three men -black with ink – came to the door, and through it into the little office. They strolled in careless and casual, laughing and joking to one another.
But one of them licked his lips as he stepped through the door. Another’s eyes showed white circles all around the irises. The third was the best actor – but he held his shoulders a trifle too stiffly to fit his otherwise careless carriage.
“Stop right there!” I barked at them when the last one was inside the office – and I brought my gun up where they could see it.
They stopped as if they had all been mounted on the same pair of legs.
I kicked my chair back, and stood up.
I didn’t like my position at all. The office was entirely too small for me. I had a gun, true enough, and whatever weapons may have been distributed among these other men were out of sight. But these four men were too close to me; and a gun isn’t a thing of miracles. It’s a mechanical contraption that is capable of just so much and no more.
If these men decided to jump me, I could down just one of them before the other three were upon me. I knew it, and they knew it.
“Put your hands up,” I ordered, “and turn around!”
None of them moved to obey. One of the inked men grinned wickedly; Soules shook his head slowly; the other two stood and looked at me.
I was more or less stumped. You can’t shoot a man just because he refuses to obey an order – even if he is a criminal. If they had turned around for me, I could have lined them up against the wall, and, being behind them, have held them safe while I used the telephone.
But that hadn’t worked.
My next thought was to back across the office to the street door, keeping them covered, and then either stand in the door and yell for help, or take them into the street, where I could handle them. But I put that thought away as quickly as it came to me.
These four men were going to jump me – there was no doubt of that. All that was needed was a spark of any sort to explode them into action. They were standing stiff-legged and tense, waiting for some move on my part. If I took a step backward – the battle would be on.
We were close enough for any of the four to have reached out and touched me. One of them I could shoot before I was smothered – one out of four. That meant that each of them had only one chance out of four of being the victim – low enough odds for any but the most cowardly of men.
I grinned what was supposed to be a confident grin – because I was up against it hard – and reached for the telephone: I had to do something! Then I cursed myself! I had merely changed the signal for the onslaught. It would come now when I picked up the receiver.
But I couldn’t back down again – that, too, would be a signal – I had to go through with it.
The perspiration trickled across my temples from under my hat as I drew the phone closer with my left hand.
The street door opened! An exclamation of surprise came from behind me.
I spoke rapidly, without taking my eyes from the four men in front of me.
“Quick! The phone! The police!”
With the arrival of this unknown person – one of Newhouse’s customers, probably – I figured I had the edge again. Even if he took no active part beyond calling the police in, the enemy would have to split to take care of him – and that would give me a chance to pot at least two of them before I was knocked over. Two out of four – each of them had an even chance of being dropped – which is enough to give even a nervy man cause for thinking a bit before he jumps.
“Hurry!” I urged the newcomer.
“Yes! Yes!” he said – and in the blurred sound of the ‘s’ there was evidence of foreign birth.
Keyed up as I was, I didn’t need any more warning than that.
