I threw myself sidewise – a blind tumbling away from the spot where I stood. But I wasn’t quite quick enough.
The blow that came from behind didn’t hit me fairly, but I got enough of it to fold up my legs as if the knees were hinged with paper – and I slammed into a heap on the floor…
Something dark crashed toward me. I caught it with both hands. It may have been a foot kicking at my face. I wrung it as a washerwoman wrings a towel.
Down my spine ran jar after jar. Perhaps somebody was beating me over the head. I don’t know. My head wasn’t alive. The blow that had knocked me down had numbed me all over. My eyes were no good. Shadows swam to and fro in front of them – that was all. I struck, gouged, tore at the shadows. Sometimes I found nothing. Sometimes I found things that felt like parts of bodies. Then I would hammer at them, tear at them. My gun was gone.
My hearing was no better than my sight – or not so good. There wasn’t a sound in the world. I moved in a silence that was more complete than any silence I had ever known. I was a ghost fighting ghosts.
I found presently that my feet were under me again, though some squirming thing was on my back, and kept me from standing upright: A hot, damp thing like a hand was across my face.
I put my teeth into it. I snapped my head back as far as it would go. Maybe it smashed into the face it was meant for. I don’t know. Anyhow the squirming thing was no longer on my back.
Dimly I realised that I was being buffeted about by blows that I was too numb to feel. Ceaselessly, with head and shoulders and elbows and fists and knees and feet, I struck at the shadows that were around me…
Suddenly I could see again – not clearly – but the shadows were taking on colours; and my ears came back a little, so that grunts and growls and curses and the impact of blows sounded in them. My straining gaze rested upon a brass cuspidor six inches or so in front of my eyes. I knew then that I was down on the floor again.
As I twisted about to hurl a foot into a soft body above me, something that was like a burn, but wasn’t a burn, ran down one leg – a knife. The sting of it brought consciousness back into me with a rush.
I grabbed the brass cuspidor and used it to club a way to my feet – to club a clear space in front of me. Men were hurling themselves upon me. I swung the cuspidor high and flung it over their heads through the frosted glass door into California Street.
Then we fought some more.
But you can’t throw a brass cuspidor through a glass door into California Street between Montgomery and Kearny without attracting attention – it’s too near the heart of daytime San Francisco. So presently – when I was on the floor again with six or eight hundred pounds of flesh hammering my face into the boards – we were pulled apart, and I was dug out of the bottom of the pile by a squad of policemen.
Big sandy-haired Coffee was one of them, but it took a lot of arguing to convince him that I was the Continental operative who had talked to him a little while before.
“Man! Man!” he said, when I finally convinced him. “Them lads sure – God! – have worked you over! You got a face like a wet geranium!”
I didn’t laugh. It wasn’t funny.
I looked out of the one eye which was working just now at the five men lined up across the office – Soules, the three inky printers, and the man with the blurred ‘s,’ who had started the slaughter by tapping me on the back of the head.
He was a rather tall man of thirty or so, with a round ruddy face that wore a few bruises now. He had been, apparently, rather well-dressed in expensive black clothing, but he was torn and ragged now. I knew who he was without asking – Hendrik Van Pelt.
“Well, man, what’s the answer?” Coffee was asking me.
By holding one side of my jaw firmly with one hand I found that I could talk without too much pain.
“This is the crowd that ran down Newhouse,” I said, “and it wasn’t an accident. I wouldn’t mind having a few more of the details myself, but I was jumped before I got around to all of them. Newhouse had a hundred-florin note in his hand when he was run down, and he was walking in the direction of police headquarters – was only half a block away from the Hall of Justice.
“Soules tells me that Newhouse said he was going up to Portsmouth Square to sit in the sun. But Soules didn’t seem to know that Newhouse was wearing a black eye – the one you told me you had investigated. If Soules didn’t see the shiner, then it’s a good bet that Soules didn’t see Newhouse’s face that day!
“Newhouse was walking from his printing shop toward police headquarters with a piece of foreign paper money in his hand – remember that!
“He had frequent spells of sickness, which, according to friend Soules, always before kept him at home for a week or ten days at a time. This time he was laid up for only two and a half days.
“Soules tells me that the shop is three days behind with its orders, and he says that’s the first time in eight years they’ve ever been behind. He blames Newhouse’s death – which only happened yesterday. Apparently, Newhouse’s previous sick spells never delayed things – why should this last spell?
“Two printers were fired last week, and two new ones hired the very next day – pretty quick work. The car with which Newhouse was run down was taken from just around the corner, and was deserted within quick walking distance of the shop. It was left facing north, which is pretty good evidence that its occupants went south after they got out. Ordinary car thieves wouldn’t have circled back in the direction from which they came.
“Here’s my guess: This Van Pelt is a Dutchman, and he had some plates for phoney hundred-florin notes. He hunted around until he found a printer who would go in with him. He found Soules, the foreman of a shop whose proprietor was now and then at home for a week or more at a time with a bad heart. One of the printers under Soules was willing to go in with them. Maybe the other two turned the offer down. Maybe Soules didn’t ask them at all. Anyhow, they were discharged, and two friends of Soules were given their places.
“Our friends then got everything ready, and waited for Newhouse’s heart to flop again. It did – Monday night. As soon as his wife called up next morning and said he was sick, these birds started running off their counterfeits. That’s why they fell behind with their regular work. But this spell of Newhouse’s was lighter than usual. He was up and moving around within two days, and yesterday afternoon he came down here for a few minutes.
“He must have walked in while all of our friends were extremely busy in some far corner. He must have spotted some of the phoney money, immediately sized up the situation, grabbed one bill to show the police, and started out for police headquarters – no doubt thinking he had not been seen by our friends here.
“They must have got a glimpse of him as he was leaving, however. Two of them followed him out. They couldn’t, afoot, safely knock him over within a block or two of the Hall of Justice. But, turning the corner, they found Chrostwaite’s car standing there with idling engine. That solved their getaway problem. They got in the car and went on after Newhouse. I suppose the original plan was to shoot him – but he crossed Clay Street with his eyes fastened upon the phoney money in his hand. That gave them a golden chance. They piled the car into him. It was sure death, they knew his bum heart would finish the job if the actual collision didn’t kill him. Then they deserted the car and came back here.
“There are a lot of loose ends to be gathered in – but this pipe-dream I’ve just told you fits in with all the facts we know – and I’ll bet a month’s salary I’m not far off anywhere. There ought be a three-day crop of Dutch notes cached somewhere! You people -“
I suppose I’d have gone on talking forever – in the giddy, head-swimming intoxication of utter exhaustion that filled me – if the big sandy-haired patrolman hadn’t shut me off by putting a big hand across my mouth.
“Be quiet, man,” he said, lifting me out the chair, and spreading me flat on my back on the desk. “I’ll have an ambulance here in a second for you.”
The office was swirling around in front of my one open eye – the yellow ceiling swung down toward me, rose again, disappeared, came back in odd shapes. I turned my head to one side to avoid it, and my glance rested upon the white dial of a spinning clock.
Presently the dial came to rest, and I read it – four o’clock.
I remembered that Chrostwaite had broken up our conference in Vance Richmond’s office at three, and I had started to work.
“One full hour!” I tried to tell Coffee before I went to sleep.
The police wound up the job while I was lying on my back in bed. In Van Pelt’s office on Bush Street they found a great bale of hundred-florin notes. Van Pelt, they learned, had a considerable reputation in Europe as a high-class counterfeiter. One of the printers came through, stating that Van Pelt and Soules were the two who
