“Nope. Which also gives you the answer to your second fundamental question.”
Holmes took a swallow of the passable single-malt Scotch, slumping back into his chair in a way that made the other man think the Englishman was enjoying himself, and said, “That question being?”
“Why didn't I have my pal Jimmy there pull out his shotgun and take your pistol away from you?”
“Two men having a drink together, Mr Hammett—surely that indicates a truce agreement, even in these farthest reaches of civilisation?” Holmes rested his cigarette in the flimsy tin ash-tray and picked up his glass again, left-handed; it occurred to Hammett that, other than their hand-shake and when he'd been paying for the drinks, the Englishman's right hand was always kept free and never more than a few inches from the pocket holding the gun.
Hammett gave a sudden laugh, his haggard face lighting up unexpectedly. “Mr Holmes, something tells me that you only trust a truce when it's fifty pages long and freshly written in the other guy's blood.”
Holmes gave a small smile. “Superior strength is indeed a desirable component of negotiation.”
“Fine then, let's negotiate away—you with your gun, me on my home ground.”
“Am I to understand that your version of my ‘second fundamental question' indicates a certain lack of trust in the very people who hired you?”
“Now why would you say that?”
“Had you been wholeheartedly committed to the cause of your employer, I suspect that you would have made a play for the weapon, either on the way here or with the bar-keep to back you up. Not that you would have succeeded, mind you, and in the process of demonstrating that fact someone might have been hurt, so I do commend your decision. However, I assert that your willingness to go along with abduction is somewhat unusual, considering the Pinkertons' reputation for professional behaviour.”
Hammett scowled. “The Pinkertons are in it for the money, that's true. And they don't always look too closely at where their clients' cash comes from. It's one of the disagreements I've had with them over the years. Why I only work for them from time to time, nowadays.”
Holmes squinted through the smoke at the younger man, thinking over the man's words. “If I hear you aright, you are telling me that you prefer to act in cases that suit your moral stance, and that this particular case you are on is making you suspect that your employers are not on the side of the angels.”
“Yeah, well, a man's got to live with the person in the mirror.”
Especially, thought Holmes, when the man's own mortality stood so clearly outlined at his shoulder.
“Your doubts therefore explain why you came with me so willingly. To see if my side, as it were, suited your ethics more comfortably.”
“I thought I'd listen to what you had to say.”
Which suggested the possibility, Holmes reflected, that the man had not only willingly permitted himself to be taken in the alley, but might even have set it up with precisely that end in view. He raised a mental eyebrow, reappraising the thin man before him: It had been a long time since he'd come across that combination of intelligence and fearlessness.
Russell had it, and half a dozen others he'd known through the years.
One of whom had been Professor Moriarty.
“So, do I get to ask a question now?” Hammett said.
“You may ask.”
“Yeah, I know, and you might not answer. But that would be the end of a beautiful friendship, wouldn't it?”
Again the faint glint of amusement from the grey eyes. “Your question being, Why didn't I shoot you in the face when we met in the alley?”
“That's as good a place to start as any.”
“I suppose one might say, better a known enemy than an unseen potential.”
Hammett blinked. “You have a lot of ‘unseen potentials' around?”
“One, at least. Unless that was you who took a shot at my wife the other evening?”
The thin man's jaw dropped as his features went slack for a moment, an expression of shock that only the most subtle of actors could produce at will; Holmes did not think this man an actor. “Your wife? I didn't know—Wait a minute. Is that the girl you were following tonight?”
“In the dark green frock, yes. Although I don't know that she has been a ‘girl' in all the years I've known her.”
“And someone took a shot at her?”
“Wednesday night, about six o'clock, in Pacific Heights.”
“At the house?”
“So you know where her house is?”
Instead of answering, Hammett sat for a minute drumming the finger-tips of his right hand on the table while he studied the man across from him, weighing the fancy accent and clothes against the man's undeniable competence and the vein of toughness Hammett could feel in him. Toughness was a quality that Hammett respected.
“Why'd you take those two business cards from my wallet?” he asked suddenly.
Holmes reached into his pocket and laid the scraps of pasteboard on the table, pushing them slightly apart with a long finger. “Because they're yours. The others are fakes.” He looked into Hammett's eyes, and smiled. “You're an investigator, of some kind. The Pinkerton's card was real because no sane investigator would disguise himself as an investigator. Of the others, all of them provided you with a front for asking questions—insurance, municipal water company, local newspaper, voting registry—except for the jeweller's. Therefore, that is real, too.”
“Yeah,” Hammett told him. “I write ad copy for them, sometimes. Pays the rent.”
He looked at the cards for a moment, then his right hand clenched into a fist and beat gently once on the table-top, the gesture of a judge's gavel, before the fingers spread out to brace his weight as he rose.
“Come on, I need to show you what I got.”
Holmes did not hesitate: Russell would simply have to look after herself. Outside the bar, Hammett threw up a hand to hail a passing taxi, giving an address on Eddy Street. Hammett knew the driver by name, and during the brief ride the two residents tossed around speculations concerning “the Babe's” homers this season (Babe, Holmes eventually decided, being the name of a sports figure and neither an affectionate term for a female nor a mythic blue ox; from his earlier time living in Chicago he knew that “homer” referred not to a Greek philosopher but a baseball play—the home run); Harry Wills's chances against Dempsey in the September fight that had just been announced (Wills and Dempsey apparently being professional boxers, not street thugs); the ludicrous conversation the driver had overheard recently between two passengers concerning the bridging of the Golden Gate, which both he and Hammett agreed would provide a huge opportunity for graft and never so much as a jungle foot-bridge to show for it; and the ever more lamentable state of the city's traffic. Holmes contributed nothing but sat absorbing local vocabulary with his ears while his eyes studied the passing streets. He also noted Hammett's careful survey of his surroundings before he climbed out of the cab, as well as the fact that the house number he had given the driver was down the street from the one they eventually entered.
He'd have been one of the better Pinkerton operatives Holmes had seen—if he'd been a Pinkerton.
The Eddy address was an apartment house. Just inside the door, the air was thick with the smell of alcohol.
“Boot-leggers,” Hammett explained. “It's not usually this bad, but they dropped a box last night.”
Upstairs, the Hammett residence proved to be a small, worn, scrupulously clean space with aggressively fresh air overcoming the reek of alcohol. Hammett left his coat on but dropped his grey hat onto the stand before he led his guest into the front room, closing its door quietly and crossing over to close the wide-open windows. “My wife's a nurse,” he said. “Fresh air's a religion to her. It'll warm up in a minute.”
He took a half-full bottle from a cluttered table set against the wall, poured two glasses, and brought them to the chairs in the front window, picking up a limp rag-doll from one. He brushed its skirt straight and set it on the sofa, where it made a miniature third party to their discussion, then took the other chair and pulled a tobacco pouch and papers from his pocket. With the windows closed, a faint trace of ammonia did battle with the boot-legger's accident: a child's nappies.
Holmes took one sip of his drink, to demonstrate that the declared truce still held, then set the glass down
