The hotel management said the man had been there two days. He was registered as H. F. Barrows, City. He had a black gladstone bag in which, besides clothes, shaving implements and so on, the police found a box of .38 cartridges, a black handkerchief with eyeholes cut in it, four skeleton keys, a small jimmy, and a quantity of morphine, with a needle and the rest of the kit. Elsewhere in the room they found the rest of his clothes, a .38 revolver and two quarts of liquor. They didn’t find a cent.
The supposition was that Barrows had been a burglar, and that he had been tied up, tortured and robbed, probably by pals, between eight and nine that morning. Nobody knew anything about him. Nobody had seen his visitor or visitors. The room next to his on the left was unoccupied. The occupant of the room on the other side had left for his work in a furniture factory before seven o’clock.
While this was happening I was at the office, sitting forward in my chair to spare my back, reading reports, all of which told how operatives attached to various Continental Detective Agency branches had continued to fail to turn up any indications of the past, present, or future whereabouts of Papadopoulos and Nancy Regan. There was nothing novel about these reports—I had been reading similar ones for three weeks.
The Old Man and I went out to luncheon together, and I told him about the previous night’s adventures in Sausalito while we ate. His grandfatherly face was as attentive as always, and his smile as politely interested, but when I was half through my story he turned his mild blue eyes from my face to his salad and he stared at his salad until I had finished talking. Then, still not looking up, he said he was sorry I had been cut. I thanked him and we ate a while.
Finally he looked at me. The mildness and courtesy he habitually wore over his cold-bloodedness were in face and eyes and voice as he said:
“This first indication that Papadopoulos is still alive came immediately after Tom-Tom Carey’s arrival.”
It was my turn to shift my eyes.
I looked at the roll I was breaking while I said: “Yes.”
That afternoon a phone call came in from a woman out in the Mission who had seen some highly mysterious happenings and was sure they had something to do with the well-advertised bank robberies. So I went out to see her and spent most of the afternoon learning that half of her happenings were imaginary and the other half were the efforts of a jealous wife to get the low-down on her husband.
It was nearly six o’clock when I returned to the agency. A few minutes later Dick Foley called me on the phone. His teeth were chattering until I could hardly get the words.
“C-c-canyoug-g-get-t-townt-t-tooth-ar-r-rbr-r-spittle?”
“What?” I asked, and he said the same thing again, or worse. But by this time I had guessed that he was asking me if I could get down to the Harbor Hospital.
I told him I could in ten minutes, and with the help of a taxi I did.
V
The little Canadian operative met me at the hospital door. His clothes and hair were dripping wet, but he had had a shot of whisky and his teeth had stopped chattering.
“Damned fool jumped in bay!” he barked as if it were my fault.
“Angel Grace?”
“Who else was I shadowing? Got on Oakland ferry. Moved off by self by rail. Thought she was going to throw something over. Kept eye on her. Bingo! She jumps.” Dick sneezed. “I was goofy enough to jump after her. Held her up. Were fished out. In there,” nodding his wet head toward the interior of the hospital.
“What happened before she took the ferry?”
“Nothing. Been in joint all day. Straight out to ferry.”
“How about yesterday?”
“Apartment all day. Out at night with man. Roadhouse. Home at four. Bad break. Couldn’t tail him off.”
“What did he look like?”
The man Dick described was Tom-Tom Carey.
“Good,” I said. “You’d better beat it home for a hot bath and some dry rags.”
I went in to see the near-suicide.
She was lying on her back on a cot, staring at the ceiling. Her face was pale, but it always was, and her green eyes were no more sullen than usual. Except that her short hair was dark with dampness she didn’t look as if anything out of the ordinary had happened.
“You think of the funniest things to do,” I said when I was beside the bed.
She jumped and her face jerked around to me, startled. Then she recognized me and smiled—a smile that brought into her face the attractiveness that habitual sullenness kept out.
“You have to keep in practice—sneaking up on people?” she asked. “Who told you I was here?”
“Everybody knows it. Your pictures are all over the front pages of the newspapers, with your life history and what you said to the Prince of Wales.”
She stopped smiling and looked steadily at me.
“I got it!” she exclaimed after a few seconds. “That runt who came in after me was one of your ops—tailing me. Wasn’t he?”
“I didn’t know anybody had to go in after you,” I answered. “I thought you came ashore after you had finished your swim. Didn’t you want to land?”
She wouldn’t smile. Her eyes began to look at something horrible.
“Oh! Why didn’t they let me alone?” she wailed, shuddering. “It’s a rotten thing, living.”
I sat down on a small chair beside the white bed and patted the lump her shoulder made in the sheets.
“What was it?” I was surprised at the fatherly tone I achieved. “What did you want to die for, Angel?”
Words that wanted to be said were shiny in her eyes, tugged at muscles in her face, shaped her lips—but that was all. The words she said came out listlessly, but with a reluctant sort
