Top of the Heap

“I’m buying it — scads of it, cheap. Lam, I wish you wouldn’t do that.”

“Why?”

“The stuff’s no good. It’s a mail-order promotion in the first place. In the second place the mine has been losing money on every carload of ore mined. In the third place it’s indebted to the bank on a big loan. In the fourth place the mainspring of the whole thing was this guy, Bishop, and he’s kicked the bucket.

“If you were trying to find the worst investment on earth you couldn’t have picked a more likely prospect.”

I grinned.

“That tells me all I want to know,” he said. “Would it be all right if I picked up a few shares for my personal account?”

“Don’t put the price up,” I warned.

“Hell’s bells, Lam, you couldn’t put in enough money to jack up the price of that stock if you used a steam shovel.”

“You getting a lot?”

“Lots of it.”

“Keep getting the stuff,” I said, and walked out.

At the appointed time I went to pick up Danby.

He wasn’t too glad to see me.

“The cops may not like this at all,” he said.

“The cops aren’t paying you money.”

“Cops have a way of getting mean when they don’t like things.”

I said, “Here’s fifty dollars. How much unpleasantness would that account for?”

His eyes were greedy and shrewd. “All but ten dollars’ worth,” he said.

I added another ten, and he slowly pocketed the money.

“What do you want to do?”

I said, “We’re going places.”

“What sort of places?”

“Where we can sit in an automobile.”

“And then what do we do?”

“If you see anyone you know you tell me.”

“That’s all?”

“That’s all.”

We drove rapidly out Van Ness Avenue, crossed Market Street, took the road to Daly City, and I slowed down as we came to the address of The Green Door.

It was an interesting enough place, pretty well disguised, all things considered.

Years ago San Francisco went in for a certain type of flat — a series of storerooms for little businesses on the ground floor, then two stories of flats above it, all with conventional bow windows and a type of architecture which is so typically San Franciscan that it can be recognized anywhere.

The Green Door was in one of these buildings.

On one side was a neighborhood grocery, a place with a small stock, that had a few neighborhood clients and carried charge accounts. The credit feature was the only way such a one-man business could compete with the big cashand- carry markets where buying is on a mass basis, selling is for spot cash, and there is no trouble with bookkeeping, deadbeats, or failures.

On the other side was a dry-cleaning establishment. In between the two was The Green Door, a plain, unpretentious place which had its door painted a distinctive shade of green.

I cruised around and looked the place over.

Apparently patrons had been requested to park their cars half a block away. Taxicabs could pull up in front of the door, but three big, high-powered automobile jobs I saw scattered around the neighborhood were parked in unostentatious places. The street in front of The Green Door and on the other side had a few broken-down automobiles quite evidently belonging to the tenants who lived in the district.

The two stories of flats above The Green Door were just like any other flats in the neighborhood. One of them had a For Rent sign in the window, but the name of the real estate agency on that sign had been defunct for ten years. The others had various types of lace curtains, window shades, some of them with flowers in the window, but all giving the general outward impression of flats that were tenanted by people with different individualities and temperaments, having in common a low income and a desire for cheap rents.

This appearance, of course, was only a stage setting, a false front which was presented to the street. It was an artistic job.

Usually places running with police protection don’t have to bother about an elaborate camouflage, just something that will be a sop to the public, a camouflage for the payoff which permits it to operate — just enough to keep the amateur detective from being able to spot the place in case he happens to live in the neighborhood.

In the case of The Green Door it looked as though a pretty clever attempt had been made at covering up, which might or might not indicate an absence of police protection.

The stores on each side of The Green Door were, of course, places that enjoyed a remarkably low rental. It therefore stood to reason that the managers had been given to understand that the one great virtue which a small businessman could hope to attain was to learn to mind his own damn business.

We parked the car where we could see The Green Door and settled down to wait.

It was a long wait.

Danby asked questions at first. I let him think that the person I wanted to case would be coming to the grocery store.

Fog came drifting in over the hills. The white streamers were pushed along by a smart sea breeze. I felt the peculiar tang of fresh stimulation which is so characteristic of San Francisco air, particularly when the fog comes rolling in.

A taxicab pulled up in front of The Green Door; two men got out, pushed the door open, and went in.

There seemed to be no guard of any sort and the door apparently was kept unlocked.

“Know either one of them?” I asked Danby.

“Never saw them before, neither one of them. They didn’t go to the grocery store. They went up in the apartments.”

“So they did,” I agreed.

We waited.

An expensive car containing a man and a woman swung around the corner, found a parking-place, and the man and woman came strolling back.

I left Danby sitting there, walked down to a hot-dog stand at the corner, and got a couple of sandwiches.

Danby was getting impatient.

“How long is this apt to last?” he inquired.

“Until midnight.”

“Now wait a minute! I hadn’t bargained for anything like that.”

I said, “You did plenty of bargaining.”

“I know, but I hadn’t thought it was going to be like this.”

“What did you think you’d be doing?”

“Well, I thought I’d have a chance to walk around and—”

“Get out and walk,” I invited.

He didn’t like the idea of that, either.

“You mean keep walking up and down the street until midnight?”

“If that’s what you want.”

“I’ll sit right here.”

We didn’t say anything more for a while. Another taxi drove up; then a group of four men, who had evidently left their car parked on another street, came walking casually along, one of them looked rather sharply inside the car at the two of us sitting there; then they crossed over the street to The Green Door.