most popular she is, sir, most popular. However, she is currently engaged.”
“How long has she been engaged?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Only a short while? Or for a longer period? It is possible to engage the services of one of your ladies by day as well as by hour, I’m sure.”
“Oh, yes. For as long as a gentleman requires. Ming Toy has been entertaining since yesterday and may continue to do so for the rest of today. Would you like to make a reservation?”
“What I’d like,” Quincannon said, “is to know if the lad she’s entertaining is young, slight, with thinning brown hair and a fondness for red wine?”
Lettie Carew raised one artfully plucked eyebrow. “And why would you want to know that?”
“Answer my question, please.”
“Our customers are entitled to privacy-”
“Balderdash.” Quincannon hardened his voice and his expression. “Is Ming Toy’s customer the gent I described?”
“And if he is? What’s your interest in him?”
“Professional. The lad’s a wanted felon.”
Lettie Carew’s subservient pose evaporated. “Oh, lordy, don’t tell me you’re a copper.”
He allowed his stern expression to convince her that he was. Identifying himself would have served no purpose; parlor house madams were terrified of the police, but not of detectives who had no official standing.
“Bloody hell!” she said.
“How long has he been here, Lettie?”
“Since yesterday afternoon.”
“But he did leave for a time in the evening?”
“He may have, I don’t know. Ask him or Ming Toy.”
“He’s here now, is he?”
“Upstairs. Will you let me roust him out so you can make your arrest outside? I have other customers. I run a quiet house and I paid my graft this week, same as always.…”
“No. Which room is Ming Toy’s?”
The madam muttered a naughty word. “There won’t be any shooting, will there?”
“Not if it can be avoided.”
“Well, if there’s any damage, the city will pay for it or I’ll sue. That includes bloodstains on the carpet, bedding, and furniture.”
“Which room, Lettie?”
She impaled him with a long smoky glare before she squeaked, “Nine,” and turned and flounced out of the room.
In the front hallway, a long carpeted staircase led to the second floor. Quincannon mounted it with his hand on the Navy Colt under his coat. The odd-numbered rooms were to the left of the stairs; in front of the door bearing a gilt-edged 9, he stopped to listen. No discernible sounds issued from within. He drew his revolver, depressed the latch, and stepped into a room decorated in an ostentatious Chinese-dragon style, dimly lighted by rice-paper lanterns and choked with incense and wine vapors.
He had no need for the Navy. Dodger Brown was sprawled supine on the near side of the four-poster bed, dressed in a pair of soiled long johns, flatulent snoring sounds emanating from his open mouth.
The girl who sat beside him was no more than twenty, delicate-featured, her comeliness marred by dark eyes already as old as Eve in the garden. She hopped off the bed, pulling a loose silk wrapper around her thin body, and hurried to where Quincannon stood. If she were aware of his weapon, it made no apparent impression on her.
“Busy,” she said in a singsong voice, “busy, busy.”
“Not anymore, Ming Toy. It’s the lad there I’m after, not you.”
“So?” The young-old eyes blinked several times. “Finished?” she asked hopefully.
“Finished,” he agreed. “He’ll spend this night in jail.”
She bobbed her head as if the prospect pleased her, then aimed a disgusted look at the snoring Dodger. “Wine,” she said.
“He won’t be drinking anything but water from now on.”
“Good-bye, Ming Toy?”
“Not until you answer my questions. What time did he leave last night?”
“Leave?”
“Yes, and what time did he return?”
“Not leave. Here all day, all night.”
“He never left at all? You’re sure he didn’t slip out while you were asleep?”
“I not sleep, he sleep. Drink, hump, sleep, snore. Drink, hump, sleep, snore. All day, all night.” Ming Toy wrinkled her nose. “Phooey,” she said.
“All right. Good-bye now.”
She went, vanishing as swiftly and silently as a wraith.
Quincannon padded to the bedside. Four rough shakes, and Dodger Brown stopped snoring and his eyes popped open. For several seconds he lay inert, peering up blearily at the face looming above him. Recognition came an instant before he levered himself off the bed in a single convulsive lunge.
The movement was so sudden, so swift, Quincannon had no time to straighten or set himself. Or to avoid the lowered head that thudded into his midsection and sent him staggering backward into a bamboo screen. The screen folded up with a clatter and he went down on top of it. Before he could untangle himself, Dodger Brown had the door open and was stumbling out into the hallway.
Quincannon shoved furiously to his feet. The damned scruff had gotten away from him once, but not this time. No, by Godfrey, not this time! He unholstered the Navy again as he charged into the hallway.
Brown was running for the stairs, and when Quincannon spied him he loosed a bellow that shook the walls, brought startled noises from behind closed doors. The little burglar’s head jerked around and his stride faltered, which caused one bare foot to slide and bind up in a carpet fold, which in turn caused him to stumble past the staircase into the newel post on its far side. He spun off with arms flailing, lurched sideways across the hallway, and thumped into the wall with such force that he bounced backward, somehow managing to remain upright as he did so. He threw a terrified glance at his fire-breathing pursuer, who was now almost to the stairs, and commenced a splay-footed run toward the end of the hall.
There was a street-front window there, but it was closed and covered with a red shade; the yegg’s only chance for escape, or so he thought, was through one of the rooms. He clawed at the latch on the nearest one, yanked it open, and plunged inside to the sound of alarmed cries from the occupants.
Quincannon got there in time to prevent the back-flung door from slamming in his face. He shouldered it wide and barreled through. A naked fat man and an equally naked, equally fat Mexican girl were in the process of scrambling off a rumpled bed in a confusion of arms and legs, while Dodger Brown sprinted past to an airshaft window on the opposite side. He was frantically trying to open the window far enough to squeeze his scrawny body through when Quincannon reached him, caught hold of the collar of his long johns, lifted him off his feet, and yanked him around.
Brown fought him with body twists, fisted hands, and a shin kick, but this time Quincannon was ready for his sly tricks. He slammed the burglar backward into the wall next to the window, deftly avoiding another attempted shin kick. Held him there with a cocked hip and poked the bore of the Navy squarely between his bloodshot eyeballs.
“You’re pinched, lad,” he panted. “Resign yourself to it if you want to keep on breathing.”
The Dodger, staring cross-eyed at the Colt, was neither brave nor stupid; he knew the game was up. All the struggle and sand left him at once and he sagged quiescently in Quincannon’s grip.
“Here … what’s the meaning of this … this outrage!”
The spluttering voice came from the fat man, who was crouched on the far side of the bed with some, though not all, of his nakedness now swaddled in bedclothes. He seemed to be trying to hide his face as well, but enough of it remained visible for Quincannon to recognize him. There was no sign of the Mexican girl; she was either cowering under the bed or had managed to flee during the skirmish.
