closed curtains and drink his morning coffee in solitude, raising as much of a stink as he wished with the black and reeking tobacco he preferred for times of ratiocination.
The question was not so much a matter of whether or not he
The note sent to Hammett by the woman with the Southern accent had said that she would telephone to him on Tuesday morning at eight o'clock. By that time Hammett would need to decide: Should he openly decline her offer of employment and arrange the return of her money, or use the opportunity to lay a trap—feeding her false information, stressing the importance of a meeting?
Clearly, the trap was desirable, but pressing this ex-Pinkerton to be the active cause of the woman's downfall was fraught with delicate ethical considerations. As Hammett had put it, “If I get the better of a guy who's been cheating me, I've got no problems with helping myself to his wallet. But if I take his job and then sell him to someone else, that's worse than stealing, it's plain dirty. A verbal contract's still a contract, and it's got to be broken before it can be ignored.”
Holmes did not know if he ought to force the deception on him. Doing so ran the risk of alienating Hammett completely, having him simply declare a curse on both their houses and go home to the Underwood on his kitchen table.
Actually, Holmes reflected, knocking the first pipe out and reaching for the tobacco, on closer consideration the question might actually be whether he
In the end, the previous evening he had simply presented his case for bringing the lady—or even her agent— into the open, that she might be located, identified, and assessed. Then he had left Hammett to make up his own mind.
Holmes tried to console himself with the idea that, even were Hammett to decline the job, she would have to venture into the open to retrieve her cash. Of course, if she had any sense, she'd write the money off rather than risk exposure; whether or not she did so would in itself tell him a great deal.
When he had exhausted the possibilities of Hammett's telephone conversation, Holmes removed his mind from that and turned his thoughts to his father-in-law's will, his mother-in-law's garden journals, and the tantalising words on the burnt scraps of paper.
The hands of the clock moved with agonising slowness. Holmes sat, motionless for long periods on the cushions, his hooded eyes glittering in the dim light of the room, and waited for his telephone to ring.
At sixteen minutes after the hour, the device emitted the strangled burble that was its mechanical equivalent of a throat-clearing, and he snatched it up before it could go on to its ring.
“Yes,” he demanded.
“She 'phoned, right on the dot of eight,” Hammett's voice told him. “I told her I couldn't take the case.”
“I see.” Holmes was not surprised.
“She wasn't happy about it. Cursed me in a couple of languages, and I had to raise my voice to ask her where I should send her money. She finally heard me, said I should keep it for a while, that maybe I'd change my mind. Said it like a threat. So I had to tell her that, if I didn't hear from her by Friday morning, I was going to tack the envelope up to the entranceway of the apartment building and leave it there for anyone to help themselves to.”
“What was her response?”
“She just said she'd be in touch and hung up. With a bang. When I got the exchange, the girl said that the call had been put through from a public office on the other side of town, but when I called there, the woman had left already. She's pretty good at this.”
“I expected nothing less. Hammett, it might be a good idea—”
“Yeah, I know, I'll need to be back here before my wife comes home with the kid for lunch, just in case we have a visitor with a gun. But I think I'll use some of your money to send them both down to Santa Cruz for a couple of days. She's been talking about going. Once they're out of the way I'll be yours for what you need.”
“You might also make sure you don't leave any notes concerning the case lying about in the open.”
“I'll do that. So, what do you want me to do this morning?”
“How far did you get on the Ginzberg death?”
“Found the man in charge; he was tied up with a fresh case.”
“I'd like to have something to give Russell on that when she gets back tomorrow. See what you can do with it.”
“Right you are. You need me, I'm at police headquarters 'til noon, then back here.”
“And I shall check in with the hotel during the day, to ask if any messages have been left me,” Holmes told him, then, “Hammett?”
“Still here.”
“I was thinking of placing an advert in one of the papers, asking for information regarding the delivery of an envelope to your address. That lad might be able to tell us something.”
“Are you asking my opinion?”
“I suppose I am,” Holmes said, rather surprised at the fact.
“Then I'd say not. Later, maybe, but doing it now, you'd risk scaring them off. You'd also be risking their getting to the kid first.”
“You feel they could remove him?”
“Yeah, I do.”
“I'm afraid I agree with you, Hammett. Thank you.” Holmes set the earpiece back on its hook, and pulled back the curtains to let the day in. He leant his shoulder against the window-frame, staring unseeing down at the street, weighing his options—or, rather, weighing his opponent's options. His picture of her was more blank space than anything else, but he did not have the impression that the woman had unlimited resources. Her efforts had been too focussed for that, and her fury at Hammett's refusal indicated that she had rather a lot tied up in him— although her anger could as easily have been due to the waste of time rather than money. However, there was also the fact of her overgenerous payment to Hammett: In Holmes' experience, someone with a great deal of money was less likely to misjudge the cost of a thing, or of a person.
All in all, he thought that the woman's resources could well be somewhat stretched, and she would want that money back. He considered his available stock of Irregulars: Hammett was not only noticeable but known to the woman; Long would stand out anywhere outside Chinatown; the lad Tyson could not be trusted to keep to the shadows—he would want to sail in, guns blazing.
No, there was nothing for it: time to recruit.
Holmes went to the trunks that had been stashed, as he'd insisted, not in the hotel store-room but against the back wall of the bedroom. He unearthed the one he wanted and, sorting through the layers of clothing Oriental and Western, eventually put together a costume that would be unremarkable in the part of town he intended to visit. The lift-man looked at him askance, but said nothing.
His first task was to determine if a surveillance of the Hammett apartment was even a viable proposition— watching the front door of an apartment building was of little use without a detailed description of the quarry. He sought out the delivery alley that ran in back of Hammett's building, and was gratified to find that the fire-escape doors possessed small windows at each level. By the judicious rearrangement of dust-bins and the hook of his walking-stick, he scrambled onto the metal escape and moments later was looking straight down the hall-way at Hammett's door.
Humming a tune under his breath, he dropped out of the heights and went out to recruit a platoon of Irregulars.
The modern fashion for universal compulsory education had put a distinct cramp into the style of a consulting detective. In his Baker Street days, he'd been regularly able to summon a group of street arabs to serve at his beck and call, but now—and particularly in this democratic republic of America—all his most valuable resources were parked behind desks, chafing at the restrictions and wasting their most productive years while their heads were filled with mathematical formulae they would never use and the names of cities they would never visit.
Fortunately, the truant officer who worked Hammett's neighbourhood did not appear to be among the most stringent. Three streets away from Hammett's apartment, Holmes heard the sound of children's voices from down an alley. He sauntered down the dim recesses between two buildings until he could see their figures, gathered in a
