“The jobbie who’s tailing you,” I informed him when he had sat down and begun work on a cigarette, “is a barber named Arlie,” and I told him where Arlie lived.
“Yes. A slim-faced, sandy lad?”
I gave him the description Dick had given me.
“That’s the hombre,” Tom-Tom Carey said. “Know anything else about him?”
“No.”
“You had Angel Grace vagged.”
It was neither an accusation nor a question, so I didn’t answer it.
“It’s just as well,” the tall man went on. “I’d have had to send her away. She was bound to gum things with her foolishness when I got ready to swing the loop.”
“That’ll be soon?”
“That all depends on how it happens.” He stood up, yawned and shook his wide shoulders. “But nobody would starve to death if they decided not to eat any more till I’d got him. I oughtn’t have accused you of having me shadowed.”
“It didn’t spoil my day.”
Tom-Tom Carey said, “So long,” and sauntered out.
I rode down to the Hall of Justice, picked up Hunt, and we went to the Bush Street apartment house in which Angel Grace Cardigan had lived. The manager—a highly scented fat woman with a hard mouth and soft eyes—already knew her tenant was in the cooler. She willingly took us up to the girl’s rooms.
The Angel wasn’t a good housekeeper. Things were clean enough, but upset. The kitchen sink was full of dirty dishes. The folding bed was worse than loosely made up. Clothes and odds and ends of feminine equipment hung over everything from bathroom to kitchen.
We got rid of the landlady and raked the place over thoroughly. We came away knowing all there was to know about the girl’s wardrobe, and a lot about her personal habits. But we didn’t find anything pointing Papadopoulos-ward.
No report came in on the Carey-Arlie combination that afternoon or evening, though I expected to hear from Dick every minute.
At three o’clock in the morning my bedside phone took my ear out of the pillows. The voice that came over the wire was the Canadian op’s.
“Exit Arlie,” he said.
“R.I.P.?”
“Yep.”
“How?”
“Lead.”
“Our lad’s?”
“Yep.”
“Keep till morning?”
“Yep.”
“See you at the office,” and I went back to sleep.
VII
When I arrived at the agency at nine o’clock, one of the clerks had just finished decoding a night letter from the Los Angeles operative who had been sent over to Nogales. It was a long telegram, and meaty.
It said that Tom-Tom Carey was well known along the border. For some six months he had been engaged in over-the-line traffic—guns going south, booze, and probably dope and immigrants, coming north. Just before leaving there the previous week he had made inquiries concerning one Hank Barrows. This Hank Barrows’ description fit the H. F. Barrows who had been cut into ribbons, who had fallen out the hotel window and died.
The Los Angeles operative hadn’t been able to get much of a line on Barrows, except that he hailed from San Francisco, had been on the border only a few days, and had apparently returned to San Francisco. The operative had turned up nothing new on the Newhall killing—the signs still read that he had been killed resisting capture by Mexican patriots.
Dick Foley came into my office while I was reading this news. When I had finished he gave me his contribution to the history of Tom-Tom Carey.
“Tailed him out of here. To hotel. Arlie on corner. Eight o’clock, Carey out. Garage. Hire car without driver. Back hotel. Checked out. Two bags. Out through park. Arlie after him in flivver. My boat after Arlie. Down boulevard. Off crossroad. Dark. Lonely. Arlie steps on gas. Closes in. Bang! Carey stops. Two guns going. Exit Arlie. Carey back to city. Hotel Marquis. Registers George F. Danby, San Diego. Room 622.”
“Did Tom-Tom frisk Arlie after he dropped him?”
“No. Didn’t touch him.”
“So? Take Mickey Linehan with you. Don’t let Carey get out of your sight. I’ll get somebody up to relieve you and Mickey late tonight, if I can, but he’s got to be shadowed twenty-four hours a day until—” I didn’t know what came after that so I stopped talking.
I took Dick’s story into the Old Man’s office and told it to him, winding up:
“Arlie shot first, according to Foley, so Carey gets a self-defense on it, but we’re getting action at last and I don’t want to do anything to slow it up. So I’d like to keep what we know about this shooting quiet for a couple of days. It won’t increase our friendship any with the county sheriff if he finds out what we’re doing, but I think it’s worth it.”
“If you wish,” the Old Man agreed, reaching for his ringing phone.
He spoke into the instrument and passed it on to me. Detective-sergeant Hunt was talking:
“Flora Brace and Grace Cardigan crushed out just before daylight. The chances are they—”
I wasn’t in a humor for details.
“A clean sneak?” I asked.
“Not a lead on ’em so far, but—”
“I’ll get the details when I see you. Thanks,” and I hung up.
“Angel Grace and Big Flora have escaped from the city prison,” I passed the news on to the Old Man.
He smiled courteously, as if at something that didn’t especially concern him.
“You were congratulating yourself on getting action,” he murmured.
I turned my scowl to a grin, mumbled, “Well, maybe,” went back to my office and telephoned Franklin Ellert. The lisping attorney said he would be glad to see me, so I went over to his office.
“And now, what progreth have you made?” he asked eagerly when I was seated beside his desk.
“Some. A man named Barrows was also in Nogales when Newhall was killed, and also came to San Francisco right after. Carey followed Barrows up here. Did you read about the man found walking the streets naked, all cut up?”
“Yeth.”
“That was Barrows. Then another man comes into the game—a barber named Arlie. He was spying on Carey. Last night, in a lonely road south of here, Arlie shot at Carey. Carey killed
