by Otto Penzler
“Could we talk to the teller who took in the twenty-thousand-dollar check that Miss Delano deposited?” I asked Clement.
He pressed one of his desk’s pearl buttons with a fumbling pink finger, and in a minute or two a little sallow man with a hairless head came in.
“Do you remember taking a check for twenty thousand from Miss Jeanne Delano a few weeks ago?” I asked him.
“Yes, sir! Yes, sir! Perfectly.”
“Just what do you remember about it?”
“Well, sir, Miss Delano came to my window with Mr. Burke Pangburn. It was his check. I thought it was a large check for him to be drawing, but the bookkeepers said he had enough money in his account to cover it. They stood there—Miss Delano and Mr. Pangburn— talking and laughing while I entered the deposit in her book, and then they left, and that was all.”
“This check,” Axford said slowly, after the teller had gone back to his cage, “is a forgery. But I shall make it good, of course. That ends the matter, Mr. Clement, and there must be no more to-do about it.”
“Certainly, Mr. Axford. Certainly.”
Clement was all enormously relieved smiles and head-noddings, with this twenty-thousand-dollar load lifted from his bank’s shoulders.
Axford and I left the bank then and got into his coupe, in which we had come from his office. But he did not immediately start the engine. He sat for a while staring at the traffic of Montgomery Street with unseeing eyes.
“I want you to find Burke,” he said presently, and there was no emotion of any sort in his bass voice. “I want you to find him without risking the least whisper of scandal. If my wife knew of all this— She mustn’t know. She thinks her brother is a choice morsel. I want you to find him for me. The girl doesn’t matter any more, but I suppose that where you find one you will find the other. I’m not interested in the money, and I don’t want you to make any special attempt to recover that; it could hardly be done, I’m afraid, without publicity. I want you to find Burke before he does something else.”
“If you want to avoid the wrong kind of publicity,” I said, “your best bet is to spread the right kind first. Let’s advertise him as missing, fill the papers up with his pictures and so forth. They’ll play him up strong. He’s your brother-in-law and he’s a poet. We can say that he has been ill—you told me that he had been in delicate health all his life—and that we fear he has dropped dead somewhere or is suffering under some mental derangement. There will be no necessity of mentioning the girl or the money, and our explanation may keep people— especially your wife—from guessing the truth when the fact that he is missing leaks out. It’s bound to leak out somehow.”
He didn’t like my idea at first, but I finally won him over.
We went up to Pangburn’s apartment then, easily securing admittance on Axford’s explanation that we had an engagement with him and would wait there for him. I went through the rooms inch by inch, prying into each hole and hollow and crack; reading everything that was written anywhere, even down to his manuscripts; and I found nothing that threw any light on his disappearance.
I helped myself to his photographs—pocketing five of the dozen or more that were there. Axford did not think that any of the poet’s bags or trunks were missing from the pack-room. I did not find his Golden Gate Trust Company deposit book.
I spent the rest of the day loading the newspapers up with what we wished them to have; and they gave my ex-client one grand spread: first-page stuff with photographs and all possible trimmings. Anyone in San Francisco who didn’t know that Burke Pangburn—brother-in-law of R. F. Axford and author of Sand-patches and Other Verse—was missing, either couldn’t read or wouldn’t.
This advertising brought results. By the following morning, reports were rolling in from all directions, from dozens of people who had seen the missing poet in dozens of places. A few of these reports looked promising—or at least possible—but the majority were ridiculous on their faces.
I came back to the agency from running out one that had—until run out—looked good, to find a note asking me to call up Axford.
“Can you come down to my office now?” he asked when I got him on the wire.
There was a lad of twenty-one or -two with Axford when I was ushered into his office: a narrow-chested, dandified lad of the sporting clerk type.
“This is Mr. Fall, one of my employees,” Axford told me. “He said he saw Burke Sunday night.”
“Where?” I asked Fall.
“Going into a roadhouse near Halfmoon Bay.”
“Sure it was him?”
“Absolutely! I’ve seen him come in here to Mr. Axford’s office often enough to know him. It was him all right.”
“How’d you come to see him?”
“I was coming up from further down the shore with some friends, and we stopped in at the roadhouse to get something to eat. As we were leaving, a car drove up and Mr. Pangburn and a girl or woman—I didn’t notice her particularly—got out and went inside. I didn’t think anything of it until I saw in the paper last night that he hadn’t been seen since Sunday. So then I thought to myself that—”
“What roadhouse was this?” I cut in.
“The White Shack.”
“About what time?”
“Somewhere between eleven-thirty and midnight, I guess.”
“He see you?”
“No. I was already in our car when he drove up.”
“What did the woman look like?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t see her face, and I can’t remember how she was dressed or even if she was short or tall.”
That was all Fall could tell me. We shooed him out of the office, and I used Axford’s telephone to call up “Wop” Healey’s dive in North Beach and leave word that when “Porky” Grout came in he was to call up “Jack.” That was a standing arrangement by which I got word to Porky whenever I wanted to see him, without giving anybody a chance to tumble to the connection between us.
“Know the White Shack?” I asked Axford, when I was through.
“I know where it is, but I don’t know anything about it.”
“Well, it’s a tough hole. Run by ‘Tin-Star’ Joplin, an ex-yegg who invested his winnings in the place when Prohibition made the roadhouse game good. He makes more money now than he ever heard of in his piking safe-ripping days. Retailing liquor is a sideline with him; his real profit comes from acting as a relay station for the booze that comes through Halfmoon Bay for points beyond; and the dope is that half the booze put ashore by the Pacific rum fleet is put ashore in Halfmoon Bay.
“The White Shack is a tough hole, and it’s no place for your brother-in-law to be hanging around. I can’t go down there myself without stirring things up; Joplin and I are old friends. But I’ve got a man I can put in there for a few nights. Pangburn may be a regular visitor, or he may even be staying there. He wouldn’t be the first one Joplin had ever let hide out there. I’ll put this man of mine in the place for a week, anyway, and see what he can find.”
“It’s all in your hands,” Axford said.
From Axford’s office I went straight to my rooms, left the outer door unlocked, and sat down to wait for Porky Grout. I had waited an hour and a half when he pushed the door open and came in. “ ‘Lo! How’s tricks?” He swaggered to a chair, leaned back in it, put his feet on the table and reached for a pack of cigarettes that lay there.
That was Porky Grout. A pasty-faced man in his thirties, neither large nor small, always dressed flashily—even if sometimes dirtily— and trying to hide an enormous cowardice behind a swaggering carriage, a blustering habit of speech, and an exaggerated pretense of self-assurance.
But I had known him for three years; so now I crossed the room and pushed his feet roughly off the table, almost sending him over backward.
“What’s the idea?” He came to his feet, crouching and snarling. “Where do you get that stuff? Do you want a smack in the—”
I took a step toward him. He sprang away, across the room.
“Shut up and sit down,” I advised him.
I had known this Porky Grout for three years, and had been using him for nearly that long, and I didn’t know a single thing that could be said in his favor. He was a coward. He was a liar. He was a thief, and a hop-head. He was a traitor to his kind and, if not watched, to his employers. A nice bird to deal with! But detecting is a hard business, and you use whatever tools come to hand. This Porky was an effective tool if handled right, which meant keeping your hand on his throat all the time and checking up every piece of information he brought in.
His cowardice was—for my purpose—his greatest asset. It was notorious throughout the criminal Coast; and though nobody—crook or not—could possibly think him a man to be trusted, nevertheless he was not actually distrusted. Most of his fellows thought him too much the coward to be dangerous; they thought he would be afraid to betray them; afraid of the summary vengeance that crookdom visits upon the squealer. But they didn’t take into account Porky’s gift for convincing himself that he was a lion-hearted fellow, when no danger was near. So he went freely where he desired and where I sent him, and brought me otherwise unobtainable bits of information.
For nearly three years I had used him with considerable success, paying him well, and keeping him under my heel. Informant was the polite word that designated him in my reports; the underworld has even less lovely names than the common stool-pigeon to denote his kind.
“I have a job for you,” I told him, now that he was seated again, with his feet on the floor. His loose mouth twitched up at the left corner, pushing that eye into a knowing squint. “I thought so.” He always says something like that.
“I want you to go down to Halfmoon Bay and stick around Tin-Star Joplin’s joint for a few nights. Here are two photos"—sliding one of Pangburn and one of the girl across the table. “Their names and descriptions are written on the backs. I want to know if either of them shows up down there, what they’re doing, and where they’re hanging out. It may be that Tin-Star is covering them up.”
Porky was looking knowingly from one picture to the other. “I think I know this guy,” he said out of the corner of his mouth that twitches. That’s another thing about Porky. You can’t mention a name or give a description that won’t bring that same remark, even though you make them up.
“Here’s some money.” I slid some bills across the table. “If you’re down there more than a couple of nights. I’ll get some more to you. Keep in touch with me, either over this phone or the under-cover one at the office. And—remember this—lay off the stuff! If I come down there and find you all snowed up, I promise that I’ll tip Joplin off to you.”
He had finished counting the money by now—there wasn’t a whole lot to count—and he threw it contemptuously back on the table.
“Save that for newspapers,” he sneered. “How am I goin’ to get anywheres if I can’t spend no money in the joint?”
“That’s plenty for a couple of days’ expenses; you’ll probably knock back half of it. If you stay longer than a couple of days, I’ll get more to you. And you get your pay when the job is done, and not before.”
He shook his head and got up. “I’m tired of pikin’ along with you. You can turn your own jobs. I’m through!”
“If you don’t get down to Halfmoon Bay tonight, you are through,” I assured him, letting him get out of the threat whatever he liked.
After a little while, of course, he took the money and left. The dispute over expense money was simply a preliminary that went with every job I sent him out on.
After Porky had cleared out, I leaned back in my chair and burned half a dozen Fatimas over the job. The girl had gone first with the twenty thousand dollars, and then the poet had gone; and both had gone, whether permanently or not, to the White Shack. On its face, the job was an obvious affair. The girl had given Pangburn the work to the extent of having him forge a check against his brother-in-law’s account; and then, after various moves whose value I couldn’t determine at the time, they had gone into hiding together.
There were two loose ends to be taken care of. One of them—the finding of the confederate who had mailed the letters to Pangburn and who had taken care of the girl’s baggage—was in the Baltimore branch’s hands. The other was: Who had ridden in the taxicab that I had traced from the girl’s apartment to the Marquis Hotel?
That might not have any bearing upon the job, or it might. Suppose I could find a connection between the Marquis Hotel and the White Shack. That would make a completed chain of some sort. I searched the back of the telephone directory and found the roadhouse number. Then I went up to the Marquis Hotel. The girl on duty at the hotel switchboard, when I got there, was one with whom I had done business before. “Who’s been calling Halfmoon Bay numbers?” I asked her.
“My God!” She leaned back in her chair and ran a pink hand gently over the front of her rigidly waved red hair. “I got enough to do without remembering every call that goes through. This ain’t a boarding-house. We have more’n one call a week.”
“You don’t have many Halfmoon Bay calls,” I insisted, leaning an elbow on the counter and letting a folded five-spot peep out between the fingers of one hand. “You ought to remember any you’ve had lately.”
“I’ll see,” she sighed, as if willing to do her best on a hopeless task.
She ran through her tickets.
“Here’s one—from room 522, a couple weeks ago.”
“What number was called?”
“Halfmoon Bay 51.”
That was the roadhouse number. I passed over the five-spot.
“Is 522 a permanent guest?”
“Yes. Mr. Kilcourse. He’s been here three or four months.”
“What is he?”
“I don’t know. A perfect gentleman, if you ask me.”
“That’s nice. What does he look like?”
“He’s a young man, but his hair is turning gray. He’s dark and handsome. Looks like a movie actor.”
“Bull Montana?” I asked, as I moved off toward the desk.
The key to 522 was in its place in the rack. I sat down where I could keep an eye on it. Perhaps an hour later a clerk took it out and gave it to a man who did look somewhat like an actor. He was a man of thirty or so, with dark skin, and dark hair that showed gray around the ears. He stood a good six feet of fashionably dressed slenderness.
Carrying the key, he disappeared into an elevator.
I called up the agency then and asked the Old Man to send Dick Foley over. Ten minutes later Dick arrived. He’s a little shrimp of a Canadian— there isn’t a hundred and ten pounds of him— who is the smoothest shadow I’ve ever seen, and I’ve seen most of them.
“I have a bird in here I want tailed,” I told Dick. “His name is Kilcourse and he’s in room 522. Stick around outside, and I’ll give you the spot on him.” I went back to the lobby and waited some more.
At eight o’clock Kilcourse came down and left the hotel. I went after him for half a block—far enough to turn him over to Dick— and then went home, so that I would be within reach of a telephone if Porky Grout tried to get in touch with me. No call came from him that night.
When I arrived at the agency the next morning, Dick was waiting for me. “What luck?” I asked.
“Damnedest!” The little Canadian talks like a telegram when his peace of mind is disturbed, and just now he was decidedly peevish. “Took me two blocks. Shook me. Only taxi in sight.”
“Think he made you?”
“No. Wise head. Playing safe.”
“Try him again, then. Better have a car handy, in case he tries the same trick again.”
My telephone jingled as Dick was going out. It was Porky Grout, talking over the agency’s unlisted line. “Turn up anything?” I asked.
“Plenty,” he bragged.
“Good! Are you in town?”
“Yes.”
“I
’ll meet you in my rooms in twenty minutes,” I said.
The pasty-faced informant was fairly bloated with pride in himself when he came through the door I had left unlocked for him. His swagger was almost a Cakewalk; and the side of his mouth that twitches was twisted into a knowing leer that would have fit a Solomon.
“I knocked it over for you, kid,” he boasted. “Nothin’ to it—for me! I went down there and talked to ever’body that knowed anything, seen ever’thing there was to see, and put the X-rays on the whole dump. I made a—”
“Uh-huh,” I interrupted. “Congratulations and so forth. But just what did you turn up?”
“Now le’me tell you.” He raised a dirty hand in a traffic-cop sort of gesture. “Don’t crowd me. I’ll give you all the dope.”
“Sure,” I said. “I know. You’re great, and I’m lucky to have you to knock off my jobs for me, and all that! But is Pangburn down there?”
“I’m gettin’ around to that. I went down there and—”
“Did you see Pangburn?”
“As I was sayin’, I went down there and—”
“Porky,” I said, “I don’t give a damn what you did! Did you see Pangburn?”
“Yes. I seen him.”
“Fine! Now what did you see?”
“He’s camping down there with Tin-Star. Him and the broad that you give me a picture of are both there. She’s been there a month. I didn’t see her, but one of the waiters told me about her. I seen Pangburn myself. They don’t show themselves much—stick back in Tin-Star’s part of the joint—where he lives—most of the time. Pangburn’s been there since Sunday. I went down there and—”
“Learn who the girl is? Or anything about what they’re up to?”
“No. I went down there and—”
“All right! Went down there again tonight. Call me up as soon as you know positively Pangburn is there—that he hasn’t gone out. Don’t make any mistakes. I don’t want to come down there and scare them up on a false alarm. Use the agency’s under-cover line, and just tell whoever answers that you won’t be in town until late. That’ll mean that Pangburn is there; and it’ll let you call up from Joplin’s without giving the play away.”