A few blocks of walking, and I began to see that something was wrong with the part of town I was heading for. Noises for one thing—roaring, rattling, explosive noises. At Sutter Street a man passed me, holding his face with both hands and groaning as he tried to push a dislocated jaw back in place. His cheek was scraped red.
I went down Sutter Street. Traffic was in a tangle that reached to Montgomery Street. Excited, bareheaded men were running around. The explosive noises were clearer. An automobile full of policemen went down past me, going as fast as traffic would let it. An ambulance came up the street, clanging its gong, taking to the sidewalks where the traffic tangle was worst.
I crossed Kearny Street on the trot. Down the other side of the street two patrolmen were running. One had his gun out. The explosive noises were a drumming chorus ahead.
Rounding into Montgomery Street, I found few sightseers ahead of me. The middle of the street was filled with trucks, touring cars, taxis—deserted there. Up in the next block—between Bush and Pine Streets—hell was on a holiday.
The holiday spirit was gayest in the middle of the block, where the Seaman’s National Bank and the Golden Gate Trust Company faced each other across the street.
For the next six hours I was busier than a flea on a fat woman.
III
Late that afternoon I took a recess from bloodhounding and went up to the office for a powwow with the Old Man. He was leaning back in his chair, staring out the window, tapping on his desk with the customary long yellow pencil.
A tall, plump man in his seventies, this boss of mine, with a white-mustached, baby-pink grandfatherly face, mild blue eyes behind rimless spectacles, and no more warmth in him than a hangman’s rope. Fifty years of crook-hunting for the Continental had emptied him of everything except brains and a soft-spoken, gently smiling shell of politeness that was the same whether things went good or bad—and meant as little at one time as another. We who worked under him were proud of his cold-bloodedness. We used to boast that he could spit icicles in July, and we called him Pontius Pilate among ourselves, because he smiled politely when he sent us out to be crucified on suicidal jobs.
He turned from the window as I came in, nodded me to a chair, and smoothed his mustache with the pencil. On his desk the afternoon papers screamed the news of the Seaman’s National Bank and Golden Gate Trust Company double-looting in five colors.
“What is the situation?” he asked, as one would ask about the weather.
“The situation is a pip,” I told him. “There were a hundred and fifty crooks in the push if there was one. I saw a hundred myself—or think I did—and there were slews of them that I didn’t see—planted where they could jump out and bite when fresh teeth were needed. They bit, too. They bushwacked the police and made a merry wreck out of ’em—going and coming. They hit the two banks at ten sharp—took over the whole block—chased away the reasonable people—dropped the others. The actual looting was duck soup to a mob of that size. Twenty or thirty of ’em to each of the banks while the others held the street. Nothing to it but wrap up the spoils and take ’em home.
“There’s a highly indignant business men’s meeting down there now—wild-eyed stockbrokers up on their hind legs yelling for the chief of police’s heart’s blood. The police didn’t do any miracles, that’s a cinch, but no police department is equipped to handle a trick of that size—no matter how well they think they are. The whole thing lasted less than twenty minutes. There were, say, a hundred and fifty thugs in on it, loaded for bear, every play mapped to the inch. How are you going to get enough coppers down there, size up the racket, plan your battle, and put it over in that little time? It’s easy enough to say the police should look ahead—should have a dose for every emergency—but these same birds who are yelling, ‘Rotten,’ down there now would be the first to squawk, ‘Robbery,’ if their taxes were boosted a couple of cents to buy more policemen and equipment.
“But the police fell down—there’s no question about that—and there will be a lot of beefy necks feel the ax. The armored cars were no good, the grenading was about fifty-fifty, since the bandits knew how to play that game, too. But the real disgrace of the party was the police machine-guns. The bankers and brokers are saying they were fixed. Whether they were deliberately tampered with, or were only carelessly taken care of, is anybody’s guess, but only one of the damned things would shoot, and it not very well.
“The getaway was north on Montgomery to Columbus. Along Columbus the parade melted, a few cars at a time, into side streets. The police ran into an ambush between Washington and Jackson, and by the time they had shot their way through it the bandit cars had scattered all over the city. A lot of ’em have been picked up since then—empty.
“All the returns aren’t in yet, but right now the score stands something like this: The haul will run God only knows how far into the millions—easily the richest pickings ever got with civilian guns. Sixteen coppers were knocked off, and three times that many wounded. Twelve innocent spectators, bank clerks, and the like, were killed and about as many banged around. There are two dead and five shot-ups who might be either thugs or spectators that got too close. The bandits lost seven dead that we know of, and thirty-one prisoners, most of them bleeding somewhere.
“One of the dead was Fat Boy Clarke. Remember him? He shot his way out of a Des Moines courtroom
