He put his hat on very carefully and very carefully closed the door behind him when he went out.
At four o'clock I had some lunch, cigarettes, and an Evening Herald sent up to me.
Dinah Brand's murder, and the newer murder of Charles Proctor Dawn, divided the front page of the Herald, with Helen Albury connecting them.
Helen Albury was, I read, Robert Albury's sister, and she was, in spite of his confession, thoroughly convinced that her brother was not guilty of murder, but the victim of a plot. She had retained Charles Proctor Dawn to defend him. (I could guess that the late Charles Proctor had hunted her up, and not she him.) The brother refused to have Dawn or any other lawyer, but the girl (properly encouraged by Dawn, no doubt) had not given up the fight.
Finding a vacant flat across the street from Dinah Brand's house, Helen Albury had rented it, and had installed herself therein with a pair of field glasses and one idea--to prove that Dinah and her associates were guilty of Donald Willsson's murder.
I, it seems, was one of the 'associates.' The Herald called me 'a man supposed to be a private detective from San Francisco, who has been in the city for several days, apparently on intimate terms with Max ('Whisper') Thaler, Daniel Rolff, Oliver ('Reno') Starkey, and Dinah Brand.' We were the plotters who had framed Robert Albury.
The night that Dinah had been killed, Helen Albury, peeping through her window, had seen things that were, according to the Herald, extremely significant when considered in connection with the subsequent finding of Dinah's dead body. As soon as the girl heard of the murder, she took her important knowledge to Charles Proctor Dawn. He, the police learned from his clerks, immediately sent for me, and had been closeted with me that afternoon. He had later told his clerks that I was to return the next--this--morning at ten. This morning I had not appeared to keep my appointment. At twenty-five minutes past ten, the janitor of the Rutledge Block had found Charles Proctor Dawn's body in a corner behind the staircase, murdered. It was believed that valuable papers had been taken from the dead man's pockets.
At the very moment that the janitor was finding the dead lawyer, I, it seems, was in Helen Albury's flat, having forced an entrance, and was threatening her. After she succeeded in throwing me out, she hurried to Dawn's offices, arriving while the police were there, telling them her story. Police sent to my hotel had not found me there, but in my room they had found one Michael Linehan, who also represented himself to be a San Francisco private detective. Michael Linehan was still being questioned by the police. Whisper, Reno, Rolff and I were being hunted by the police, charged with murder. Important developments were expected.
Page two held an interesting half-column. Detectives Shepp and Vanaman, the discoverers of Dinah Brand's body, had mysteriously vanished. Foul play on the part of us 'associates' was feared.
There was nothing in the paper about last night's hijacking, nothing about the raid on Peak Murry's joint.
I went out after dark. I wanted to get in touch with Reno. From a drug store I phoned Peak Murry's pool room. 'Is Peak there?' I asked.
'This is Peak,' said a voice that didn't sound anything at all like his. 'Who's talking?'
I said disgustedly, 'This is Lillian Gish,' hung up the receiver, and removed myself from the neighborhood.
I gave up the idea of finding Reno and decided to go calling on my client, old Elihu, and try to blackjack him into good behavior with the love letters he had written Dinah Brand, and which I had stolen from Dawn's remains.
I walked, keeping to the darker side of the darkest streets. It was a fairly long walk for a man who sneers at exercise. By the time I reached Willsson's block I was in bad enough humor to be in good shape for the sort of interviews he and I usually had. But I wasn't to see him for a little while yet.
I was two pavements from my destination when somebody S-s-s-s-s'd at me.
I probably didn't jump twenty feet.
''S all right,' a voice whispered.
It was dark there. Peeping out under my bush--I was on my hands and knees in somebody's front yard--I could make out the form of a man crouching close to a hedge, on my side of it.
My gun was in my hand now. There was no special reason why I shouldn't take his word for it that it was all right.
I got up off my knees and went to him. When I got close enough I recognized him as one of the men who had let me into the Ronney Street house the day before.
I sat on my heels beside him and asked:
'Where'll I find Reno? Hank O'Marra said he wanted to see me.'
'He does that. Know where Kid McLeod's place is at?'
'No.'
'It's on Martin Street above King, corner the alley. Ask for the Kid. Co back that-away three blocks, and then down. You can't miss it.'
I said I'd try not to, and left him crouching behind his hedge, watching my client's place, waiting, I guessed, for a shot at Pete the Finn, Whisper, or any of Reno's other unfriends who might happen to call on old Elihu.
Following directions, I came to a soft drink and rummy establishment with red and yellow paint all over it. Inside I asked for Kid McLeod. I was taken into a back room, where a fat man with a dirty collar, a lot of gold teeth, and only one ear, admitted he was McLeod.
'Reno sent for me,' I said. 'Where'll I find him?'
'And who does that make you?' he asked.
I told him who I was. He went out without saying anything. I waited ten minutes. He brought a boy back with him, a kid of fifteen or so with a vacant expression on a pimply red face.
'Go with Sonny,' Kid McLeod told me.
I followed the boy out a side door, down two blocks of back street, across a sandy lot, through a ragged gate, and up to the back door of a frame house.
