She was neither tall nor short, thin nor plump. She wore a black Russian tunic affair, green-trimmed and hung with silver dinguses. A black fur coat was spread over the chair behind her. She was probably twenty. Her eyes were blue, her mouth red, her teeth white, the hair-ends showing under her black-green-and-silver turban were brown, and she had a nose. Without getting steamed up over the details, she was nice. I said so. Paddy the Mex agreed with a “That’s what,” and Angel Grace suggested that I go over and tell Red O’Leary I thought her nice.
“Red O’Leary the big bird?” I asked, sliding down in my seat so I could stretch a foot under the table between Paddy and Angel Grace. “Who’s his nice girl friend?”
“Nancy Regan, and the other one’s Sylvia Yount.”
“And the slicker with his back to us?” I probed.
Paddy’s foot, hunting the girl’s under the table, bumped mine.
“Don’t kick me, Paddy,” I pleaded. “I’ll be good. Anyway, I’m not going to stay here to be bruised. I’m going home.”
I swapped so-longs with them and moved toward the street, keeping my back to Bluepoint Vance.
At the door I had to step aside to let two men come in. Both knew me, but neither gave me a tumble—Sheeny Holmes (not the old-timer who staged the Moose Jaw looting back in the buggy-riding days) and Denny Burke, Baltimore’s King of Frog Island. A good pair—neither of them would think of taking a life unless assured of profit and political protection.
Outside, I turned down toward Kearny Street, strolling along, thinking that Larrouy’s joint had been full of crooks this one night, and that there seemed to be more than a sprinkling of prominent visitors in our midst. A shadow in a doorway interrupted my brain-work.
The shadow said, “Ps‑s‑s‑s! Ps‑s‑s‑s!”
Stopping, I examined the shadow until I saw it was Beno, a hophead newsie who had given me a tip now and then in the past—some good, some phony.
“I’m sleepy,” I growled as I joined Beno and his arm-load of newspapers in the doorway, “and I’ve heard the story about the Mormon who stuttered, so if that’s what’s on your mind, say so, and I’ll keep going.”
“I don’t know nothin’ about no Mormons,” he protested, “but I know somethin’ else.”
“Well?”
“ ’S all right for you to say ‘Well,’ but what I want to know is, what am I gonna get out of it?”
“Flop in the nice doorway and go shuteye,” I advised him, moving toward the street again. “You’ll be all right when you wake up.”
“Hey! Listen, I got somethin’ for you. Hones’ to Gawd!”
“Well?”
“Listen!” He came close, whispering. “There’s a caper rigged for the Seaman’s National. I don’t know what’s the racket, but it’s real. Hones’ to Gawd! I ain’t stringin’ you. I can’t give you no monickers. You know I would if I knowed ’em. Hones’ to Gawd! Gimme ten bucks. It’s worth that to you, ain’t it? This is straight dope—hones’ to Gawd!”
“Yeah, straight from the nose-candy!”
“No! Hones’ to Gawd! I—”
“What is the caper, then?”
“I don’t know. All I got was that the Seaman’s is gonna be nicked. Hones’ to—”
“Where’d you get it?”
Beno shook his head. I put a silver dollar in his hand.
“Get another shot and think up the rest of it,” I told him, “and if it’s amusing enough I’ll give you the other nine bucks.”
I walked on down to the corner, screwing up my forehead over Beno’s tale. By itself, it sounded like what it probably was—a yarn designed to get a dollar out of a trusting gumshoe. But it wasn’t altogether by itself. Larrouy’s—just one drum in a city that had a number—had been heavy with grifters who were threats against life and property. It was worth a look-see, especially since the insurance company covering the Seaman’s National Bank was a Continental Detective Agency client.
Around the corner, twenty feet or so along Kearny Street, I stopped.
From the street I had just quit came two bangs—the reports of a heavy pistol. I went back the way I had come. As I rounded the corner I saw men gathering in a group up the street. A young Armenian—a dapper boy of nineteen or twenty—passed me, going the other way, sauntering along, hands in pockets, softly whistling “Brokenhearted Sue.”
I joined the group—now becoming a crowd—around Beno. Beno was dead, blood from two holes in his chest staining the crumpled newspapers under him.
I went up to Larrouy’s and looked in. Red O’Leary, Bluepoint Vance, Nancy Regan, Sylvia Yount, Paddy the Mex, Angel Grace, Denny Burke, Sheeny Holmes, Happy Jim Hacker—not one of them was there.
Returning to Beno’s vicinity, I loitered with my back to a wall while the police arrived, asked questions, learned nothing, found no witnesses, and departed, taking what was left of the newsie with them.
I went home and to bed.
II
In the morning I spent on hour in the agency file-room, digging through the gallery and records. We didn’t have anything on Red O’Leary, Denny Burke, Nancy Regan, Sylvia Yount, and only some guesses on Paddy the Mex. Nor were there any open jobs definitely chalked against Angel Grace, Bluepoint Vance, Sheeny Holmes and Happy Jim Hacker, but their photos were there. At ten o’clock—bank opening time—I set out for the Seaman’s National, carrying these photos and Beno’s tip.
The Continental Detective Agency’s San Francisco office is located in a Market Street office building. The Seaman’s National Bank occupies the ground floor of a tall gray building in Montgomery Street, San Francisco’s financial center. Ordinarily, since I don’t like even seven blocks of unnecessary walking, I would have taken a street car. But there was some sort of traffic jam on Market
