young man's distaste for villainy. As unlike Watson as a person could be physically, nonetheless the two were brothers under the skin—and he had no doubt that, like the externally sensible Watson, Hammett's fictional maunderings would lay a thin coating of hard action over the most romantic of sensibilities.
“Very well, Mr Hammett. How would you like to work for me instead?”
“Turncoating has never had much appeal, Mr Holmes.”
“Have you spent any of the lady's money?”
“I told you I hadn't.”
“Has she given you a means of getting into contact with her?”
“That note was it. The boy brought it with the money, stuck it in my hand, and left. When I phoned my buddy to ask what the hell it all meant, he hadn't a clue, didn't know who it was, just some woman who needed a job done that he couldn't take on right away.”
“Then you've done no more than keep the lady's money safe for a few days until you might return it with your regrets. Is that not so?”
Hammett sat in thought, not caring for the situation, torn between the implied but undeclared contract represented by the money in the folder and the undeniable pull of curiosity. And another thing: “You think this has something to do with the person who took a shot at your wife?”
“Pacific Heights is an unlikely venue for a random madman with a gun,” Holmes pointed out grimly.
“Yeah, you're right. Okay, Mr Holmes, I'll take your job, so long as it doesn't involve outright betrayal. If it turns out that coming to me is what opens that lady up for a fall, I'm telling you now that I'm going to stand back and take my hands off both sides of it.”
“Your rigid sense of ethics, Mr Hammett, will have done you no good in the world of the Pinkertons. But I agree.”
The two men shook hands, and Hammett reached for the bottle again to seal the agreement.
“So, where do you want me to start?”
“First, you need to know what might be called ‘the full picture,'” Holmes said, rapping his pipe out into the ash-tray and pulling out his pouch. “It would appear to have its beginnings a number of years ago, when my wife's family died on a road south of the city.”
Hammett scrabbled through the debris on the table and came up with a note-book and a pen, which he uncapped and shook into life. His cigarette dangled unnoticed from between the fingers of his left hand as he hunched over the note-book on his knee, listening. After a few minutes, however, his occasional notes stopped, and his back slowly straightened against the chair-back, until finally he put up a hand.
“Whoa,” he said. “Sounds to me like you're laying pretty much everything out in front of me.”
“More or less,” Holmes agreed mildly.
“Her father's job, the falling balcony in Egypt—”
“Aden,” Holmes corrected.
“Aden. Do you honestly think all that's got anything to do with what's going on here?”
“Do I think so? There is not sufficient evidence one way or the other. But the balcony was a recent and unexplained event, and the possibility of its being linked should not be ignored.”
“If you say so. But really, are you sure you want me to know all this?”
“If you do not know the past, how can you know what of the present is of importance?”
“I just mean—”
“You mean that, seeing as our initial meeting was adversarial, I ought not to trust you too wholeheartedly.”
“Yeah, I guess I do.”
“Mr Hammett, are you trustworthy?”
The thin man opened his mouth to answer, closed it again, and then began to chuckle. “There's no answer I can give to that—‘yes' would probably mean ‘no,' and ‘no' would mean I'm a complete boob, and ‘I don't know' means you'd be a damned fool to trust me with so much as a butter-knife.”
Holmes was smiling in response. “Precisely.”
“So what you're saying is, ‘It's my look-out, shut up and listen'?”
“Mr Hammett, you have a way with the American vernacular that bodes well for your future as a writer of popular fiction.”
“Okay, it is your look-out. So I'll shut up and listen.”
And he did, attentively, his dark eyes alive in that gaunt face. His occasional grunt and question told Holmes all he needed to know about the man's brains, and he told Hammett even more than he had originally intended. Very nearly everything.
It was late when they finished, or early. Hammett took out his package of Bull Durham again, glancing over his notes as his fingers sprinkled the tobacco and rolled the paper, every motion precise.
Eventually he nodded. “Yeah, I can see that you need another set of hands here.”
“And eyes. In the normal run of events, those would belong to Russell—to my wife. However, of late she has been . . . indisposed.”
“Too close to things to see clearly,” Hammett suggested.
“It is temporary, I have no doubt. But until she returns to herself, she is . . .” Again Holmes paused, searching for a word that might be accurate without being traitorous; he was unable to find one, and finished the sentence with a sigh and the word “unreliable.”
“So what do you want me to do first?”
“Do you know anything about motorcars?”
“They have four wheels and tip over real easy—when I'm driving, anyway. I usually ask a friend to drive me.”
“You don't like guns and you don't like motorcars. Are you certain you're American?”
“I've hurt people with both of them, didn't like the feeling.”
“Very well, then; ask a friend to drive you.”
Holmes reached into his inner pocket and pulled out his long leather note-case, taking from it a slip of paper with some notes in a small, difficult, but precise hand: his handwriting. “This is what I know about the motorcar crash. What we're looking for is evidence of foul play, any evidence at all. The police report is quite clear that it was an accident, so the best we can hope for is a faint discrepancy.” He watched to see if Hammett looked puzzled, but the man was nodding.
“Something that smells off.”
“Quite. It is, after all this time, highly doubtful that there was enough of the motor to salvage, and even less of a chance the wreckage has anything to tell us, but it is just possible that no-one could decide what to do with the thing, and either left it on the cliffside or pulled it up and hauled it into a corner until its ownership was decided. The convolutions of the American legal system,” he added, “occasionally have inadvertent benefits.”
“Can't you just ask your wife's lawyer what happened to the car?”
“I'd rather not bring him into it.”
“I see. You'd rather pay me to go down on a fool's task and look at a ten-year-old burned-out hulk.”
“It is an avenue of enquiry that must be pursued to its end, no matter how soon that end is reached.”
Hammett studied the piece of paper for a moment with a faint smile on his expressive mouth, then he picked it up without comment and tucked it away in his note-book. Sure, investigating the car might be a red herring designed for nothing more than getting him out of town for a couple of days, but what of it? There was trust, and there was stupidity, and despite his snooty accent, this Holmes was no jerk.
And the Limey's money couldn't be any dirtier than the pile of bills in the file.
As if he had followed the line of thought, Holmes addressed himself to the leather wallet again, pulling out five twenty-dollar notes and laying them onto the table. “That should be sufficient as a retainer. You see, I do not make the mistake of paying too generously.”
“No, Mr Holmes, I don't think you make too many mistakes. Anything other than the car you want me to be getting on?”
“That is the first order of business, I think. Oh, but Hammett? You saw my wife tonight. Well enough to recognise her again?”
“Girl with glasses, her height, hair, and posture—she doesn't exactly fade into the crowd. But if she was
