The lad paused in his story to look at Holmes with wrinkled brow. “I shoulda asked—do you got any two-bits with you?”
“Yes, I have some quarter-dollars. Why?”
“It's just that I told my guys that, if them two make too many turns, we're gonna run out of boys, and they should ask someone who looks like they can use two bits to stand on the corner and let us know which way they've gone. So you might have to hand quarters out to a few bums.”
We all three looked at him with respect, and he blushed for a moment before throwing back his head with a cocky expression. “Only makes sense,” he asserted.
“How very true,” Holmes said. “And when we're through with this, you might talk to Mr Hammett here about local employment opportunities for promising lads.”
The taxi drove through the Market Street traffic for nearly a mile before the lad came upright on his seat. “There's Mick! Stop, up there,” he told the driver. The man cast a look at Holmes, who nodded. The motor pulled over and arms dragged another boy inside. This one was quite small and so excited he could not get his words to come out in any kind of order until Ricky grabbed his arm and shook him hard. The child gulped in gratitude and loosed a great torrent of words: “They went down Market and they got on a street-car and Rudy said we couldn't get on too they'd see us but then Kurt he said he could hang on the back he did it all the time but I don't think he did I think it was his brother who's bigger than him but anyway he ran over to the street-car and grabbed on and Rudy went with him and then Vince tried but you know Vince he's too fat so he fell off and I couldn't reach the thing it was too tall so Vince and Markie and me got left behind and Rudy shouted that we should wait until you came along and tell you where we'd gone but Vince and Markie said they could run as fast as the street-car and that I should wait until you came along and so even though I can run faster than Vince I did what they said I waited.”
The full stop at the end of that sentence came so abruptly, we all took a moment to recover, then everyone in the motor drew a simultaneous breath.
“Good lad,” Holmes said, and handed him a bright quarter-dollar. That shut the child up for good—I never heard another syllable from him.
We picked up the boy named Vince a short distance down Market, his plump face red as he stumped along with more determination than speed. He piled into the motor as well (which suddenly began to seem rather warm and crowded) and pantingly informed Ricky that Markie had run ahead but he'd thought he should go more slowly to lead us all when we came. Ricky gave a snort but the rest of us made soothing noises of understanding and appreciation, and Holmes handed Vince a silver quarter with great ceremony.
Just then some oddity in the city landscape caught the corner of my eye, and when I glanced out of the back window, I noticed a thin and ragged boy clinging to the back of a street-car that was headed in the opposite direction. “Is this a generally accepted means of travel for young males?” I asked with curiosity. Several of the others in the motor followed my gaze, and young Rick Garcia gave a great shout.
“Rudy! That's Rudy,” he repeated, but Holmes was already in action, exhorting the taxi driver to turn about and follow the trolley. The man grumbled, declared that if he got caught by a cop that it wasn't him that was going to pay the fine, and pulled over to the middle of the wide street to wait for a gap between the on-coming cars. Then just as he began to pull forward, all five of our younger companions began to shout furiously. “There's Kurt!” and “Wait, don't leave Kurt” contradicted by “No, go on, he'll be okay” and “Wait, here comes Markie too, c'mon, Markie, run faster!”
At that, Holmes told the driver to pull over to the side and stop for a moment. He dug two more silver coins from his apparently endless supply and whipped a five-dollar note out of his bill-fold, handing both coins and bill to the leader. “Mr Garcia, I shall have to ask you to leave us here for the time being. I should appreciate it if you would present yourself to the St Francis desk at nine o'clock tomorrow morning for a final accounting.”
The boy, naturally enough, protested, but Holmes was already propelling small and angry bodies out of the motor, assisted willingly by Hammett, and he overrode the protests. “Mr Garcia, if you wish to hear the details of what has taken place
It has always amazed me, how Holmes the bachelor understood so thoroughly the workings of the childhood mind. Here yet again he hit on exactly the thing that got the boys out of the motor without another word of protest. The leader's eyes merely narrowed with consideration for a moment, then he climbed out of the motor. As we drove away from the five standing lads and two more approaching at a run, we heard Ricky's voice call, “If you don't give over, you'll be really sorry.”
Holmes brushed himself off and gave me a grin. “I shall, too.”
We quickly caught the trolley up, and Holmes had the driver pull just close enough for him to give a sharp whistle, then drop away again. The dangling boy looked around, spotted Holmes, and instantly let go his precarious hold to stand in the midst of the traffic waiting for us to catch him up. Hammett kicked the door open and the boy scrambled in, without the taxi actually coming to a halt. We continued after the trolley while Holmes interrogated his final Irregular.
“You're Rudy, yes? We just dropped your friends down the street. May I take it that the two people you've been following are in this street-car?”
We'd have been well and truly wrecked if the lad said he'd just decided to ride the street-car on a whim, I reflected, but he was nodding. “They got off down near Sixteenth, went into a hotel and walked right out again about two minutes later with a coupla bags, and got onto another trolley going the other way. I left Kurt there to tell Ricky.”
“He found us,” Holmes reassured him, handing over the shiniest coin yet, this one an entire silver dollar. “We'll let you out here, lad. And you tell your friends that they should bring their appetites with them in the morning. I'll buy you all the biggest breakfast the St Francis serves.”
The boy's expression indicated that he did not often dine in establishments such as the St Francis, and we left him on the pavement, staring in wonder at our retreating vehicle.
We had the driver dawdle far enough back from the trolley so that our coinciding stops and starts might not attract the attention of the passengers, yet near enough that, if the two spotted us and attempted to fade into the downtown crowds without their bags, we might see them. But no one resembling the man and woman in the photograph Flo had given me descended from the trolley, and it continued up the die-straight path of Market in the direction of the Ferry Building.
The street-car reached the wide boulevard of the Embarcadero, onto which all the piers opened, and entered the turn-around in front of the Ferry Building. The afternoon traffic made for a positive ant-hill of taxis, private cars, bicycles, hand-trucks, and pedestrians. We waited, holding our collective breath, until we saw a man and a woman step down to the street, each carrying a valise; the man's hat was pulled down to hide his face. Holmes slapped some money into the driver's hand and the three of us got out as quickly and as smoothly as we could, trying not to look as if we were interested in anything much, closing casually but rapidly on the terminus.
But the woman spotted us. We were not exactly unobtrusive in a crowd, as even slumped into their coats, Holmes and Hammett towered above everyone else, and I am not far behind. She looked back and she spotted us and grabbed her companion's shoulder; he whirled around, looked straight in our direction, then seized her by the arm and ran, abandoning the two valises on the street. We ran, too, dodging through the traffic to the music of furious horns and the whistles of two outraged policemen, and gained the pavement in time to see the man pull a revolver from his pocket and aim it in our direction.
Knowing intellectually the theoretical inaccuracy of a pistol over a distance of several hundred yards is not the same as knowing one is safe: We all three dove behind the nearest large object until the shot had ceased echoing down the street and the screams and rushing about had started. Three heads slowly emerged, in time to see our quarry climb into a maroon-coloured Chrysler whose terrified driver, hands high in the air, stood in the street and watched his vehicle race off up the Embarcadero without him.
Holmes and I looked at each other, grimaced, and pulled out our own revolvers to commandeer a jazzy green open motor that, although nowhere near as powerful as the Chrysler, was low enough to corner well. Rather to my surprise Hammett, although he appeared eager to stay with us, made no move to shoulder me aside, but threw himself in the backseat so that I might leap behind the wheel. With Holmes shouting thanks and apologies at the man we left behind, I slammed my foot onto the accelerator.
