Wales looked at the broken pane and closed his eyes. He closed them slowly, little by little, exactly as if he were falling asleep. He kept his stiffly sullen blank face turned straight to the window.
McCloor shot him three times.
The bullets knocked Wales down on the sofa, back against the wall. Wales’s eyes popped open, bulging. His lips crawled back over his teeth, leaving them naked to the gums. His tongue came out. Then his head fell down and he didn’t move any more.
When McCloor jumped away from the window I jumped to it. While I was pushing the curtain aside, unlocking the window and raising it, I heard his feet land on the cement paving below.
MacMan flung the door open and came in, the girl at his heels.
“Take care of this,” I ordered as I scrambled over the sill. “McCloor shot him.”
VI
Wales’s apartment was on the second floor. The fire-escape ended there with a counter-weighted iron ladder that a man’s weight would swing down into a cement-paved court.
I went down as Babe McCloor had gone, swinging down on the ladder till within dropping distance of the court, and then letting go.
There was only one street exit to the court. I took it.
A startled looking, smallish man was standing in the middle of the sidewalk close to the court, gaping at me as I dashed out.
I caught his arm, shook it.
“A big guy running.” Maybe I yelled. “Where?”
He tried to say something, couldn’t, and waved his arm at billboards standing across the front of a vacant lot on the other side of the street.
I forgot to say, “Thank you,” in my hurry to get over there.
I got behind the billboards by crawling under them instead of going to either end, where there were openings. The lot was large enough and weedy enough to give cover to anybody who wanted to lie down and bushwhack a pursuer—even anybody as large as Babe McCloor.
While I considered that, I heard a dog barking at one corner of the lot. He could have been barking at a man who had run by. I ran to that corner of the lot. The dog was in a board-fenced backyard, at the corner of a narrow alley that ran from the lot to a street.
I chinned myself on the board fence, saw a wire-haired terrier alone in the yard, and ran down the alley while he was charging my part of the fence.
I put my gun back into my pocket before I left the alley for the street.
A small touring car was parked at the curb in front of a cigar store some fifteen feet from the alley. A policeman was talking to a slim dark-faced man in the cigar store doorway.
“The big fellow that come out of the alley a minute ago,” I said. “Which way did he go?”
The policeman looked dumb. The slim man nodded his head down the street, said, “Down that way,” and went on with his conversation.
I said, “Thanks,” and went on down to the corner. There was a taxi phone there and two idle taxis. A block and a half below, a street car was going away.
“Did the big fellow who came down here a minute ago take a taxi or the street car?” I asked the two taxi chauffeurs who were leaning against one of the taxis.
The rattier looking one said:
“He didn’t take a taxi.”
I said:
“I’ll take one. Catch that street car for me.”
The street car was three blocks away before we got going. The street wasn’t clear enough for me to see who got on and off it. We caught it when it stopped at Market Street.
“Follow along,” I told the driver as I jumped out.
On the rear platform of the street car I looked through the glass. There were only eight or ten people aboard.
“There was a great big fellow got on at Hyde Street,” I said to the conductor. “Where’d he get off?”
The conductor looked at the silver dollar I was turning over in my fingers and remembered that the big man got off at Taylor Street. That won the silver dollar.
I dropped off as the street car turned into Market Street. The taxi, close behind, slowed down, and its door swung open.
“Sixth and Mission,” I said as I hopped in.
McCloor could have gone in any direction from Taylor Street. I had to guess. The best guess seemed to be that he would make for the other side of Market Street.
It was fairly dark by now. We had to go down to Fifth Street to get off Market, then over to Mission, and back up to Sixth. We got to Sixth Street without seeing McCloor. I couldn’t see him on Sixth Street—either way from the crossing.
“On up to Ninth,” I ordered, and while we rode told the driver what kind of man I was looking for.
We arrived at Ninth Street. No McCloor. I cursed and pushed my brains around.
The big man was a yegg. San Francisco was on fire for him. The yegg instinct would be to use a rattler to get away from trouble. The freight yards were in this end of town. Maybe he would be shifty enough to lie low instead of trying to powder. In that case, he probably hadn’t crossed Market Street at all. If he stuck, there would still be a chance of picking him up tomorrow. If he was hightailing, it was catch him now or not at all.
“Down to Harrison,” I told the driver.
We went down to Harrison Street, and down Harrison to Third, up Bryant to Eighth, down Brannan to Third again, and over to Townsend—and we didn’t see Babe McCloor.
“That’s tough, that is,” the driver sympathized as we stopped across the street
