Babe liked Sue. Vassos liked Sue. Sue liked Babe. Vassos didn’t like that. Jealousy spoiled the Greek’s judgment. He kept the speakeasy door locked one night when Babe wanted to come in. Babe came in, bringing pieces of the door with him. Vassos got his gun out, but couldn’t shake Sue off his arm. He stopped trying when Babe hit him with the part of the door that had the brass knob on it. Babe and Sue went away from Vassos’ together.
Up to that time the New York office had managed to keep in touch with Sue. She hadn’t been kept under constant surveillance. Her father hadn’t wanted that. It was simply a matter of sending a man around every week or so to see that she was still alive, to pick up whatever information he could from her friends and neighbors, without, of course, letting her know she was being tabbed. All that had been easy enough, but when she and Babe went away after wrecking the gin mill, they dropped completely out of sight.
After turning the city upside-down, the New York office sent a journal on the job to the other Continental branches throughout the country, giving the information above and enclosing photographs and descriptions of Sue and her new playmate. That was late in 1927.
We had enough copies of the photographs to go around, and for the next month or so whoever had a little idle time on his hands spent it looking through San Francisco and Oakland for the missing pair. We didn’t find them. Operatives in other cities, doing the same thing, had the same luck.
Then, nearly a year later, a telegram came to us from the New York office. Decoded, it read:
Major Hambleton today received telegram from daughter in San Francisco quote
Please wire me thousand dollars care apartment two hundred six number six hundred one Eddis Street stop I will come home if you will let me stop Please tell me if I can come but please please wire money anyway
unquote Hambleton authorizes payment of money to her immediately stop Detail competent operative to call on her with money and to arrange for her return home stop If possible have man and woman operative accompany her here stop Hambleton wiring her stop Report immediately by wire.
II
The Old Man gave me the telegram and a check, saying:
“You know the situation. You’ll know how to handle it.”
I pretended I agreed with him, went down to the bank, swapped the check for a bundle of bills of several sizes, caught a street car, and went up to 601 Eddis Street, a fairly large apartment building on the corner of Larkin.
The name on Apartment 206’s vestibule mailbox was J. M. Wales.
I pushed 206’s button. When the locked door buzzed off I went into the building, past the elevator to the stairs, and up a flight. 206 was just around the corner from the stairs.
The apartment door was opened by a tall, slim man of thirty-something in neat dark clothes. He had narrow dark eyes set in a long pale face. There was some gray in the dark hair brushed flat to his scalp.
“Miss Hambleton,” I said.
“Uh—what about her?” His voice was smooth, but not too smooth to be agreeable.
“I’d like to see her.”
His upper eyelids came down a little and the brows over them came a little closer together. He asked, “Is it—?” and stopped, watching me steadily.
I didn’t say anything. Presently he finished his question:
“Something to do with a telegram?”
“Yeah.”
His long face brightened immediately. He asked:
“You’re from her father?”
“Yeah.”
He stepped back and swung the door wide open, saying:
“Come in. Major Hambleton’s wire came to her only a few minutes ago. He said someone would call.”
We went through a small passageway into a sunny living-room that was cheaply furnished, but neat and clean enough.
“Sit down,” the man said, pointing at a brown rocking chair.
I sat down. He sat on the burlap-covered sofa facing me. I looked around the room. I didn’t see anything to show that a woman was living there.
He rubbed the long bridge of his nose with a longer forefinger and asked slowly:
“You brought the money?”
I said I’d feel more like talking with her there.
He looked at the finger with which he had been rubbing his nose, and then up at me, saying softly:
“But I’m her friend.”
I said, “Yeah?” to that.
“Yes,” he repeated. He frowned slightly, drawing back the corners of his thin-lipped mouth. “I’ve only asked whether you’ve brought the money.”
I didn’t say anything.
“The point is,” he said quite reasonably, “that if you brought the money she doesn’t expect you to hand it over to anybody except her. If you didn’t bring it she doesn’t want to see you. I don’t think her mind can be changed about that. That’s why I asked if you had brought it.”
“I brought it.”
He looked doubtfully at me. I showed him the money I had got from the bank. He jumped up briskly from the sofa.
“I’ll have her here in a minute or two,” he said over his shoulder as his long legs moved him toward the door. At the door he stopped to ask: “Do you know her? Or shall I have her bring means of identifying herself?”
“That would be best,” I told him.
He went out, leaving the corridor door open.
III
In five minutes he was back with a slender blonde girl of twenty-three in pale green silk. The looseness of her small mouth and the puffiness around her blue eyes weren’t yet pronounced enough to spoil her prettiness.
I stood up.
“This is Miss Hambleton,” he said.
She gave
