Jim Tarr picked up the cigar I rolled across his desk, looked at the band, bit off an end, and reached for a match. “Fifteen cents straight,” he said. “You must want me to break a couple of laws for y...

Harvey Gatewood had issued orders that I was to be admitted as soon as I arrived, so it only took me a little less than fifteen minutes to thread my way past the doorkeepers, office boys, and secretar...

“You are already familiar, of course, with the particulars of my father’s⁠—ah⁠—death?” “The papers are full of it, and have been for three days,” I said, “and I’ve read them; but I’ll have to have the...

“Now listen, Mr. Zumwalt, you’re holding out on me; and it won’t do! If I’m going to work on this for you I’ve got to have the whole story.” He looked thoughtfully at me for a moment through screwed-u...

The Montgomery Hotel’s regular detective had taken his last week’s rake-off from the hotel bootlegger in merchandise instead of cash, had drunk it down, had fallen asleep in the lobby, and had been fi...

“Mr. Leopold Gantvoort is not at home,” the servant who opened the door said, “but his son, Mr. Charles, is⁠—if you wish to see him.” “No. I had an appointment with Mr. Leopold Gantvoort for nine or a...

“Mr. Leopold Gantvoort is not at home,” the servant who opened the door said, “but his son, Mr. Charles, is⁠—if you wish to see him.” “No. I had an appointment with Mr. Leopold Gantvoort for nine or a...

O’Gar and I took Gantvoort around to the morgue to see his father, then. The dead man wasn’t pleasant to look at, even to O’Gar and me, who hadn’t known him except by sight. I remembered him as a smal...

At eleven o’clock that same morning, when, brisk and fresh with five hours’ sleep under my belt, I arrived at the police detective bureau, I found O’Gar slumped down at his desk, staring dazedly at a ...

What was left of the afternoon, O’Gar and I spent going over the street between Gantvoort’s house on Russian Hill and the building in which the Dexters lived. We questioned everyone we could find⁠—man...

Right or wrong, that’s what we did. We stowed all those lovely clues away in a drawer, locked the drawer, and forgot them. Then we set out to find Creda Dexter’s masculine acquaintances and sift them ...

Semiconsciousness! I found myself mechanically keeping afloat somehow and trying to get out of my overcoat. The back of my head throbbed devilishly. My eyes burned. I felt heavy and logged, as if I ha...

When I returned to consciousness for the second time that evening, I was lying on my back on a baggage truck, which was moving. Men and women were crowding around, walking beside the truck, staring at...

We worked upon Dexter for nearly ten minutes before he opened his eyes. As soon as he sat up we began to shoot questions and accusations at him, hoping to get a confession out of him before he recover...

The house was of red brick, large and square, with a green slate roof, whose wide overhang gave the building an appearance of being too squat for its two stories; and it stood on a grassy hill, well a...

The house was of red brick, large and square, with a green slate roof, whose wide overhang gave the building an appearance of being too squat for its two stories; and it stood on a grassy hill, well a...

Dr. Rench had just come down from a visit to his patient when Gallaway and I returned from the fields. He was a little wizened old man with mild manners and eyes, and a wonderful growth of hair on hea...

Breakfast that morning was a melancholy meal, except to Hilary Gallaway. He refrained from jesting openly about the night’s excitement; but his eyes twinkled whenever they met mine, and I knew he thou...

Hilary Gallaway, Shand⁠—who had come out from town again⁠—and I sat over coffee and cigarettes in the kitchen, while the rest of the household helped Dr. Rench battle for Exon’s life. The old man had ...

“All I know about Dr. Estep’s death,” I said, “is the stuff in the papers.” Vance Richmond’s lean gray face took on an expression of distaste. “The newspapers aren’t always either thorough or accurate...

“All I know about Dr. Estep’s death,” I said, “is the stuff in the papers.” Vance Richmond’s lean gray face took on an expression of distaste. “The newspapers aren’t always either thorough or accurate...

I spent the next couple of hours questioning the Estep servants, to no great advantage. None of them had been near the front of the house at the time of the shooting, and none had seen Mrs. Estep imme...

Eight o’clock was striking as I went into the Montgomery lobby the next morning and picked out a chair, this time, within eye-range of the elevators. At 10:30 Mrs. Estep left the hotel, with me in her...

The following morning I turned the woman over to Dick Foley, and went back to the agency to wait for Bob Teal, the operative who had investigated the Laguna Street flat. He came in at a little after t...

Vance Richmond’s lean face lighted up as soon as I mentioned Ledwich’s name to him. “Yes!” he exclaimed. “He was a friend, or at least an acquaintance, of Dr. Estep’s. I met him once⁠—a large man with...

From the attorney’s office, I returned to the agency, where I was told that Bob Teal had phoned in the address of a furnished apartment he had rented on Laguna Street. I hopped on a street car, and we...

The next morning I dressed myself up in an army shirt and shoes, an old faded cap, and a suit that wasn’t downright ragged, but was shabby enough not to stand out too noticeably beside John Boyd’s old...

Neither Bob nor I went home that night, but slept in the Laguna Street apartment. Bob went down to the corner grocer’s to get what we needed for breakfast in the morning, and he brought a morning pape...

The attorney sprang up from his desk as soon as his stenographer admitted me. His face was leaner and grayer than ever; its lines had deepened, and there was a hollowness around his eyes. “You’ve got ...

At a quarter to seven that evening, while O’Gar remained down the street, I rang Jacob Ledwich’s bell. As I had stayed with Bob Teal in our apartment the previous night, I was still wearing the clothe...

“There was once a young doctor in a town a long way from here,” Ledwich began. “He got mixed up in a scandal⁠—a pretty rotten one⁠—and escaped the pen only by the skin of his teeth. The state medical ...

Keeping my eye on Ledwich, I went to the telephone, and got Vance Richmond on the wire at his residence. “How is Mrs. Estep.” I asked. “Weaker! I talked with the doctor half an hour ago, and he says⁠—...

“This is Mr. Chrostwaite,” Vance Richmond said. Chrostwaite, wedged between the arms of one of the attorney’s large chairs, grunted what was perhaps meant for an acknowledgment of the introduction. I ...

“This is Mr. Chrostwaite,” Vance Richmond said. Chrostwaite, wedged between the arms of one of the attorney’s large chairs, grunted what was perhaps meant for an acknowledgment of the introduction. I ...

From the attorney’s office, I went down to the Hall of Justice, and, after hunting around a few minutes, found a policeman who had arrived at the corner of Clay and Kearny Streets a few seconds after ...

My next play was to canvass the vicinity of where the car had been stolen and where it had been deserted, and then interview the witnesses. The fact that the police had fruitlessly gone over this grou...

I had been told that the man for whom I was hunting lived in a certain Turk Street block, but my informant hadn’t been able to give me his house number. Thus it came about that late one rainy afternoo...

A bell jangled me into wakefulness. I rolled to the edge of my bed and reached for the telephone. The neat voice of the Old Man⁠—the Continental Detective Agency’s San Francisco manager⁠—came to my ea...

A bell jangled me into wakefulness. I rolled to the edge of my bed and reached for the telephone. The neat voice of the Old Man⁠—the Continental Detective Agency’s San Francisco manager⁠—came to my ea...

I turned the job over and over in my mind before answering him. The two great bugaboos of a reputable detective agency are the persons who bring in a crooked plan or a piece of divorce work all dresse...

R. F. Axford received me in an office-like room in his Russian Hill residence: a big blond man, whose forty-eight or -nine years had not blurred the outlines of an athlete’s body. A big, full-blooded ...

I telephoned Pangburn that his brother-in-law had given the job his approval. I sent a wire to the agency’s Baltimore branch, giving what information I had. Then I went up to Ashbury Avenue, to the ap...

Half an hour before the Golden Gate Trust Company opened for business the next morning I was inside, talking to Clement, the cashier. All the traditional caution and conservatism of bankers rolled tog...

Before going up to the Glenton Apartments to find out why Pangburn hadn’t come clean with me about the twenty thousand dollars, I dropped in at the agency, to see if any word had come from Baltimore. ...

Ten minutes of ringing Pangburn’s bell brought no answer. The elevator boy told me he thought Pangburn hadn’t been in all night. I put a note in his box and went down to the railroad company’s offices...

The next morning I called Pangburn’s apartment before I got out of bed, and got no answer. Then I telephoned Axford and made an appointment for ten o’clock at his office. “I don’t know what he’s up to...

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...

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! H...

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 ...

When I arrived at the agency the next morning, Dick was waiting for me. “What luck?” I asked. “Damndest!” The little Canadian talks like a telegram when his peace of mind is disturbed, and just now he...

At nine-thirty that evening I was sitting beside Axford on the front seat of a powerfully engined foreign car, and we were roaring down a road that led to Halfmoon Bay. Porky’s telephone call had come...

Methodically, Axford took off his gloves, folded them and put them in a pocket. Then he nodded his understanding of what I had told him, and walked toward where the crowd stood around the dead poet. I...

I spun away from him then, toward where I saw the dim yellow of an open door. I had heard no sounds of departure. I had been too busy. But I knew that Joplin had tied into me while the others made the...

“Stop playing, will you?” I said crossly, as I set the fingers of my left hand around her wrist and started to lead her back to the roadster. “This is a serious business. Don’t be so childish!” “You a...

Then she began to talk very rapidly⁠—as people talk when they fear interruptions before their stories are told⁠—and she sat leaning slightly forward, so that her beautiful oval face was very close to ...

Her voice died, and she shivered a little. The robe I had given her had fallen away from her white shoulders. Whether or not it was because she was so close against my shoulder, I shivered, too. And m...

At the foot of a long, shallow hill I applied the brakes and we snapped to motionlessness. I thrust my face close to the girl’s. “Furthermore, you are a liar!” I knew I was shouting foolishly, but I w...

A plump maid with bold green eyes and a loose, full-lipped mouth led me up two flights of steps and into an elaborately furnished boudoir, where a woman in black sat at a window. She was a thin woman ...

Walking over to California Street, I shook down my memory for what I had heard here and there of Bernard Gilmore. I could remember a few things⁠—the opposition papers had been in the habit of exposing...

In the vestibule of the Garford Apartments, I pressed the button tagged Miss Cara Kenbrook several times before the door clicked open. Then I mounted a flight of stairs and walked down a hall to her d...

From this unsatisfactory interview I went to the scene of the killing, only a few blocks away, to get a look at the neighborhood. I found the block just as I had remembered it and as O’Gar had describ...

I returned then to the Garford Apartments, walking, because I had a lot of things to arrange in my mind before I faced Cara Kenbrook again. And, even though I walked slowly, they weren’t all exactly f...

I lit a Fatima and breathed smoke in silence for a while, and the girl sat placidly watching me. Here I had two women⁠—neither normal. Mrs. Gilmore was hysterical, abnormally nervous. This girl was du...

Ten minutes later three uniformed policemen arrived. All three knew Tennant, and they treated him with respect. Tennant reeled of the story he and the girl had cooked up, with a few changes to take ca...

Kelly and the other uniformed policeman had left the office, which now held McTighe, O’Gar, Cara Kenbrook, Tennant and me. Tennant had crossed to my side, and was apologizing. “I hope you’ll let me sq...

“I haven’t anything very exciting to offer you this time,” Vance Richmond said as we shook hands. “I want you to find a man for me⁠—a man who is not a criminal.” There was an apology in his voice. The...

“I haven’t anything very exciting to offer you this time,” Vance Richmond said as we shook hands. “I want you to find a man for me⁠—a man who is not a criminal.” There was an apology in his voice. The...

On the afternoon of the first, I went down to the post office and got hold of Lusk, the inspector in charge of the division at the time. “I’ve got a line on a scratcher from up north,” I told Lusk, “w...

From the jail I went up to Vance Richmond’s office and turned my news over to him. “Ashcraft is getting his mail in Tijuana. He’s living down there under the name of Ed Bohannon, and maybe has a woman...

Tijuana hadn’t changed much in the two years I had been away. Still the same six or seven hundred feet of dusty and dingy street running between two almost solid rows of saloons⁠—perhaps thirty-five o...

The next two days were pretty much like the first one. Ashcraft and I were together twenty-four hours each of the days, and usually the girl was with us, and the only time we weren’t drinking was when...

San Diego was gay and packed when I got off the train early the next afternoon⁠—filled with the crowd that the first Saturday of the racing season across the border had drawn. Movie folk from Los Ange...

A bellhop with a telegram roused me at ten o’clock in the morning. The telegram was from Mexicali: Drove here last night Holed up with friends Sent two wires Gorman That was good news. The long-necked...

The car under me, I discovered, was surprisingly well engined for its battered looks⁠—its motor was so good that I knew it was a border-runner’s car. I nursed it along, not pushing it. There were stil...

“The hotel-sneak used to be my lay,” the Englishman said after a pause. “I came to the States after England and the Continent got uncomfortable. I was rather good at it. I had the proper manner⁠—the f...

“Teal was killed last night.” The Old Man⁠—the Continental Detective Agency’s San Francisco manager⁠—spoke without looking at me. His voice was as mild as his smile, and gave no indication of the turm...

I don’t know whether Jacob Coplin was tall or short. All of him I ever got a look at was his round head⁠—naked scalp and wrinkled face, both of them the color and texture of Manila paper⁠—propped up o...

It started in Boston, back in 1917. I ran into Lew Maher on the Tremont Street sidewalk of the Touraine Hotel one afternoon, and we stopped to swap a few minutes’ gossip in the snow. I was telling him...

It started in Boston, back in 1917. I ran into Lew Maher on the Tremont Street sidewalk of the Touraine Hotel one afternoon, and we stopped to swap a few minutes’ gossip in the snow. I was telling him...

Eight o’clock the next morning found me a block below the house in which the Kid had gone, waiting for him to appear. A steady, soaking rain was falling, but I didn’t mind that. I was closed up inside...

At the Marquis I am among friends. I found Duran, the house copper, on the mezzanine floor, and asked him: “Who is 761?” Duran is a white-haired old-timer who looks, talks, and acts like the president...

We didn’t go far, and when we came to rest again, the Cadillac was placed conveniently for its occupants to watch the Venetian Café, one of the gaudiest of the Italian restaurants that fill this part ...

“Is anybody supposed to be here?” I asked, putting her around to one side, where she wouldn’t be between me and the two doors across the passageway. “No! Just my little dog Frana, but⁠—” I slid my gun...

She poured more brandy. By speaking quick I held my drink down to a size suitable for a man who has work to do. Hers was as large as before. We drank, and she offered me cigarettes in a lacquered box⁠...

Billie wasn’t long getting up to us. I opened the door when he rang, the woman standing beside me. He didn’t wait for an invitation. He was through the doorway before I had the door half opened. He gl...

Fight interest went out of the woman’s face. Fear came in. Her fingers picked at her mouth. “Ask who’s there,” I told her. “Who⁠—who is there?” Her voice was flat and dry. “Mrs. Keil,” came from the c...

It was a pretty tableau. There is the Whosis Kid in the door⁠—a lean lad in his twenties, all the more wicked-looking because his face is weak and slack-jawed and dull-eyed. The cocked guns in his han...

“I said to you it was not here,” Inés told them triumphantly. “Now will you⁠—?” “You can’t tell me nothing I’ll believe.” The Kid snapped his knife shut and dropped it in his pocket. “I still think it...

Big Chin blew his breath out in a faint whistle. His eyes were bright on the sparkling stones. So were the eyes of Maurois, the woman, and the Kid. Big Chin’s inattention was a temptation. I could rea...

Huddled close to the wall inside the door, I stowed the silk bag away, and regretted that I hadn’t stayed plastered to the floor behind the Frenchman. This room was dark. It hadn’t been dark when the ...

I didn’t see Inés again before she was taken back East to be hit with a life-sentence in the Massachusetts big house. Neither of the policemen who crashed into her apartment that night knew me. The wo...

“We expected them home yesterday,” Alfred Banbrock wound up his story. “When they had not come by this morning, my wife telephoned Mrs. Walden. Mrs. Walden said they had not been down there⁠—had not b...

“We expected them home yesterday,” Alfred Banbrock wound up his story. “When they had not come by this morning, my wife telephoned Mrs. Walden. Mrs. Walden said they had not been down there⁠—had not b...

In a big limestone fortress on top a hill in Sea Cliff, looking down on ocean and bay, I had my talk with Mrs. Banbrock. She was a tall dark girl of not more than twenty-two years, inclined to plumpne...

Some telegraphic reports were in when I got to the office the next morning. None was of any value. Investigation of the names and addresses in other cities had revealed nothing. An investigation in Mo...

After Banbrock and his attorney had gone away together, I went back to the detectives’ assembly room to chew over the job with Pat Reddy, the police sleuth assigned to it. Pat was the youngest member ...

Paget was a countryman. I am not. I waited for him to move. He looked around the clearing, slowly, standing still between the Italian and me. His pale eyes lighted presently. He went around the Ford t...

Reddy lit one of his awful cigars. “We found the car,” the Old Man said. “Where?” “In Sacramento. It was left in a garage there either late Friday night or early Saturday. Foley has gone up to investi...

For four days I ground at the list. I hunted, found, questioned, and investigated friends and relatives of the women and girls on my list. My questions all hit in the same direction. Had she been acqu...

Pat Reddy and I went straight up the bush-hidden path to the yellow house’s front door, and rang the bell. A big black man in a red fez, red silk jacket over red-striped silk shirt, red zouave pants a...

Pat Reddy stood with one hand on a chair-back, holding his belly with the other. His face was mouse-colored under its blood. His eyes were glass agonies. He had the look of a man who had been kicked. ...

“He was a⁠—” She cleared her throat, and started again, staring down at her feet. “Raymond Elwood brought us here the first time. We thought it was funny. But Hador was a devil. He told you things and...

As soon as I was alone with the dead man I stepped over him and knelt in front of the safe, pushing letters and papers away, hunting for photographs. None was in sight. One compartment of the safe was...

Boiling like a coffee pot before we were five miles out of Filmer, the automobile stage carried me south into the shimmering heat, blinding sunlight, and bitter white dust of the Arizona desert. I was...

Boiling like a coffee pot before we were five miles out of Filmer, the automobile stage carried me south into the shimmering heat, blinding sunlight, and bitter white dust of the Arizona desert. I was...

The food inside me and a cigarette burning, I went out into the crooked street again. From the Border Palace came the clicking of pool balls. I followed the sound through the door. In a large room, fo...

Three steps from the door, a stooped, white-mustached man in a collarless stiff-bosomed shirt swooped down on me, as if he had been lying in wait. “My name’s Adderly,” he introduced himself, holding o...

Dunne driving, the car carried us out of Corkscrew at the street’s southern end, and then west along the sandy and rocky bottom of a shallow draw. The sand was deep and the rocks were numerous; we did...

When I woke up it was morning, and Milk River was prodding me with a finger. “You figuring on getting up for breakfast, or would you like it brung to you?” I moved cautiously until I found I was all i...

An hour later we were dismounting in front of the Border Palace, going indoors. A long, thin, blanket-wrapped body lay on two tables that had been pushed together. Half the citizens of Corkscrew were ...

Milk River and I were sitting in my room in the Canyon House an hour later, talking. I had sent word to the county seat that the coroner had a job down here, and had found a place to stow Vogel’s body...

There were only eight or ten diners in the dining-room. None of Peery’s men was there. Milk River and I sat at a table back in one corner of the room. Our meal was about half eaten when the dark-eyed ...

In the livery stable, where we had put our horses, I found Milk River saddling them, and we rode out of town together. Half a mile out, we split. He turned to the left, down a trail that led into the ...

Night was coming on when Milk River and I turned into Corkscrew’s crooked street. It was too late for the Canyon House’s dining-room, so we got down in front of the Jew’s shack. Chick Orr was standing...

My patching finished, we went down to the Jew’s for food. Three eaters were sitting at the counter. I had to exchange comments on the battle with them while I ate. We were interrupted by the running o...

Milk River’s knuckles on the door brought me out of bed to shiver in the cold of five-something in the morning. “This isn’t a farm!” I grumbled at him as I let him in. “You’re in the city now. You’re ...

Except for plenty of guns of all sizes and more than plenty of ammunition to fit, we didn’t find anything very exciting until we came to a heavy door⁠—barred and padlocked⁠—set half in the foundation ...

“Easy!” I cautioned Milk River, and stood up. But I didn’t raise my hands. “The excitement’s over,” I called. “Come on down.” Ten minutes passed. Peery rode into the light. His square-jawed face was g...

Nothing ever looked better to me than my bed in the Canyon House the next⁠—Wednesday⁠—night. My grandstand play with the yellow horse, my fight with Chick Orr, the unaccustomed riding I had been doing...

The sun was high and the room was hot when I woke to the familiar sound of someone knocking on the door. This time it was one of the volunteer guards⁠—the long-legged boy who had carried the warning t...

I was in bed when I came to. Dr. Haley was doing disagreeable things to my side. Behind him, Milk River held a basin in unsteady hands. “Milk River,” I whispered, because that was the best I could do ...

She was sitting straight and stiff in one of the Old Man’s chairs when he called me into his office⁠—a tall girl of perhaps twenty-four, broad-shouldered, deep-bosomed, in mannish grey clothes. That s...

She was sitting straight and stiff in one of the Old Man’s chairs when he called me into his office⁠—a tall girl of perhaps twenty-four, broad-shouldered, deep-bosomed, in mannish grey clothes. That s...

The Shan house was a big brownstone affair, set among sodded lawns. The place was hedged shoulder-high on three sides. The fourth boundary was the ocean, where it came in to make a notch in the shorel...

At nine the next morning, Tuesday, I was talking to Cipriano in the lobby of the apartment building that employs him. His eyes were black drops of ink in white saucers. He thought he had got something...

San Francisco’s Chinatown jumps out of the shopping district at California Street and runs north to the Latin Quarter⁠—a strip two blocks wide by six long. Before the fire nearly twenty-five thousand ...

The door was opened by another Chinese. But this one was none of your Cantonese runts. He was a big meat-eating wrestler⁠—bull-throated, mountain-shouldered, gorilla-armed, leather-skinned. The god th...

In my hired car again, I had the driver take me to the nearest village, where I bought a plug of chewing tobacco, a flashlight, and a box of cartridges at the general store. My gun is a .38 Special, b...

The little old Chinese with the rope neck didn’t open for me this time. Instead, a young Chinese with a smallpox-pitted face and a wide grin. “You wanna see Chang Li Ching,” he said before I could spe...

At ten minutes after ten the next morning Lillian Shan and I arrived at the front door of Fong Yick’s employment agency on Washington Street. “Give me just two minutes,” I told her as I climbed out. “...

The history of his young life, as he told it to me, began with his departure from home after falling into disgrace through slugging the Prohi. He had come to San Francisco to wait until his father coo...

At 10:15 that night I was pushing open the door opposite the grocery in Waverly Place⁠—an hour and three-quarters early for my date with Hsiu Hsiu. At 9:55 Dick Foley had phoned that The Whistler had ...

Two days later everything was cleared up to the satisfaction of police, press and public. The Whistler had been found in a dark street, hours dead from a cut in his back, killed in a bootlegging war, ...

Wedge-shaped Couffignal is not a large island, and not far from the mainland, to which it is linked by a wooden bridge. Its western shore is a high, straight cliff that jumps abruptly up out of San Pa...

Wedge-shaped Couffignal is not a large island, and not far from the mainland, to which it is linked by a wooden bridge. Its western shore is a high, straight cliff that jumps abruptly up out of San Pa...

In the dark, I got rid of the glowing end of my cigarette by grinding it in one of the sandwiches. Putting the book down, I picked up gun and flashlight, and moved away from the chair. Listening for n...

She was tall. I am short and thick. I had to look up to see her face⁠—to see as much of it as the rain-grey night would let me see. “You’ll be soaked to the hide, running around in this rain,” I objec...

“No good rushing that!” I said. “Roll out of it!” I set the example by revolving toward the back of the building we had just left. The man at the gun sprinkled the beach, but sprinkled it at random, h...

Out of a black pile where an engine sputtered, a black figure leaped⁠—to dash off across the soggy lawn. I cut after it, hoping that the others in the wreck were down for keeps. I was less than fiftee...

“I’ll be down later,” I told the others, and set out after the maid. She was running back to the Hendrixson house. I couldn’t run, couldn’t even walk fast. She and Hendrixson and more of his servants ...

“Oh!” she exclaimed, and then, recovering from her surprise, “your ankle is worse!” She ran down the steps to help me climb them. As she came I noticed that something heavy was sagging and swinging in...

“You said a little while ago that you didn’t care who I was,” she began immediately. “But I want you to know. There are so many of us Russians who once were somebodies and who now are nobodies that I ...

I raised my hands as high as I could without dropping my supporting crutch, meanwhile cursing myself for having been too careless, or too vain, to keep a gun in my hand while I talked to the girl. So ...

Standing beside the cashier’s desk in the front office of the Continental Detective Agency’s San Francisco branch, I was watching Porter check up my expense account when the man came in. He was a tall...

Standing beside the cashier’s desk in the front office of the Continental Detective Agency’s San Francisco branch, I was watching Porter check up my expense account when the man came in. He was a tall...

I opened my eyes sitting on the side of my bed in the dim light of a moon that was just coming up, with the ringing telephone in my hand. O’Gar’s voice: “1856 Broadway! On the hump!” “1856 Broadway,” ...

I found Paddy the Mex in Jean Larrouy’s dive. Paddy⁠—an amiable con man who looked like the King of Spain⁠—showed me his big white teeth in a smile, pushed a chair out for me with one foot, and told t...

In the morning I spent on hour in the agency file-room, digging through the gallery and records. We didn’t have anything on Red O’Leary, Denny Burke, Nancy Regan, Sylvia Yount, and only some guesses o...

Late that afternoon I took a recess from bloodhounding and went up to the office for a powwow with the Old Man. He was leaning back in his chair, staring out the window, tapping on his desk with the c...

I went back to the Hall and helped boil more prisoners in oil until around eight o’clock, when my appetite reminded me I hadn’t eaten since breakfast. I attended to that, and then turned down toward L...

The street-door of the rooming-house was not only unlocked but wide open. I went through it into a hallway, where a dim light burning upstairs outlined a flight of steps. I climbed them and turned tow...

A gray frame house in Fillmore Street was our destination. A lot of people stood in the street looking at the house. A police-wagon stood in front of it, and police uniforms were indoors and out. A re...

It was exactly 5 a.m. when I separated the sheets and crawled into my bed. I was asleep before the last draw of smoke from my good night Fatima was out of my lungs. The telephone woke me at 5:15. Fisk...

At four o’clock that afternoon Jack Counihan and I brought our hired automobile to rest within sight of the front door of the Stockton Street hotel. “He cleared himself with the police, so there’s no ...

It was nearly midnight when what the wolves waited for came. The last pretense of indifference went out of faces that had been gradually taking on tenseness. Chairs and feet scraped as men pushed them...

While Jack put the girl through the door, Red and I cleared a little space in front of us. He was good at that. When he chucked them back they went back. I didn’t dog it on him, but I did let him get ...

“We’d better get out of here if we can,” I said. “You’ve made too much rumpus for it to be safe.” “Don’t get it up in your neck, little man,” he told me. “Hold on to my coattails and I’ll pull you out...

The house was a small one in a row of small houses. We took the big boy out of the car and between us to the door. He could just about make it with our help. The street was dark. No light showed from ...

Fifteen minutes later the shabby little old man came running into the kitchen, saying he had heard feet on the roof. His faded brown eyes were dull as an ox’s with fright, and his withered lips writhe...

She was dressed for action in a pair of blue pants that were probably Pogy’s, beaded moccasins, a silk waist. A ribbon held her curly yellow hair back from her face. She had a gun in one hand, one in ...

The front door and the front window on the ground floor had been planked and braced like the rear ones. I didn’t like to risk opening them, even though it was fairly light by now. So I went upstairs, ...

“I’m Tom-Tom Carey,” he said, drawling the words. I nodded at the chair beside my desk and weighed him in while he moved to it. Tall, wide-shouldered, thick-chested, thin-bellied, he would add up to s...

“I’m Tom-Tom Carey,” he said, drawling the words. I nodded at the chair beside my desk and weighed him in while he moved to it. Tall, wide-shouldered, thick-chested, thin-bellied, he would add up to s...

Calling the late Taylor Newhall’s office on the phone, I was told that if I wanted any information about his affairs I should try his country residence, some miles south of San Francisco. I tried it. ...

An hour later I walked off the boat in Sausalito. Jack Counihan pushed through the crowd and began talking: “Coming down here on my way back⁠—” “Hold it till we get out of the mob,” I advised him. “It...

Here is something that happened next morning. I didn’t see it. I heard about it a little before noon and read about it in the papers that afternoon. I didn’t know then that I had any personal interest...

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...

I woke to a disagreeable rainy morning. Maybe it was the weather, maybe I’d been too frisky the day before, anyway the slit in my back was like a foot-long boil. I phoned Dr. Canova, who lived on the ...

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 ...

I went back into the operatives’ room, where Jack Counihan was slumped down in a chair reading a magazine. “I hope you’ve thought up something for me to do,” he greeted me. “I’m getting bedsores from ...

I had told the girl to talk fast. She did. For twenty minutes she stood there and turned out words in a chattering stream that had no breaks except where I cut in to keep her from straying from the pa...

“What are you up to?” Tom-Tom Carey asked suspiciously when I rejoined Jack and him. “Detective business.” “I ought to have come down and turned the trick all by myself,” he grumbled. “You haven’t don...

“Well, I found the open window,” the boy began. “I know all that part,” I cut in. “You came in and told your friends⁠—Papadopoulos and Flora⁠—about the girl’s escape, and that Carey and I were coming....

It was after eight in the morning when I got back to the city. I ate breakfast and then went up to the agency, where I found the Old Man going through his morning mail. “It’s all over,” I told him. “P...

The captain told me Hacken and Begg were handling the job. I caught them leaving the detectives’ assembly room. Begg was a freckled heavyweight, as friendly as a Saint Bernard puppy, but less intellig...

The train from Belgrade set me down in Stefania, capital of Muravia, in early afternoon⁠—a rotten afternoon. Cold wind blew cold rain in my face and down my neck as I left the square granite barn of a...

The train from Belgrade set me down in Stefania, capital of Muravia, in early afternoon⁠—a rotten afternoon. Cold wind blew cold rain in my face and down my neck as I left the square granite barn of a...

I found the Minister of Police’s offices in the Administration Building, a gloomy concrete pile next to the Executive Residence at the head of the plaza. In French that was even worse than my German, ...

Back at the hotel, I had no trouble learning that Lionel Grantham occupied a suite on the sixth floor and was in it at that time. I had his photograph in my pocket and his description in my head. I sp...

White light poured over us. Squinting into it, I saw the automobile standing down the road, its spotlight turned on me and my sparring partner. A big man in green and gold came into the light⁠—the flo...

Leaning his left elbow on the chest of drawers again, playing with his mustache-end with his left hand, standing indolently cross-legged, Einarson began to flog the soldier. His right arm raised the w...

We returned to the city in the officer’s car. He and Grantham sat in the rear. I sat beside the soldier who drove. The boy and I got out at our hotel. Einarson said good night and was driven away as i...

I slept till late the next morning and then had breakfast in my room. I was in the middle of it when knuckles tapped my door. A stocky man in a wrinkled gray uniform, set off with a short, thick sword...

At nine-thirty that night a cab set me down in front of the address the Minister of Police’s secretary had given in her note. It was a small two-story house in a badly paved street on the city’s easte...

“How did the Minister of Police stand, when the revolution was alive?” I asked. “Vasilije,” she told me, sipping wine between phrases, “is a peculiar man, an original. He is interested in nothing exce...

I got back to the hotel at eleven-thirty, loaded my hips with gun and blackjack, and went upstairs to Grantham’s suite. He was alone, but said he expected Einarson. He seemed glad to see me. “Tell me,...

The servant Marya, in a woolly gray bathrobe, opened the door and sent me up to the black, white, and gray room, where the Minister’s secretary, still in the pink gown, was propped up among cushions o...

I saw Einarson and Grantham that evening, and spent several hours with them. The boy was fidgety, nervous, without confidence in the revolution’s success, though he tried to pretend he was taking thin...

Rain drove into our faces as we went toward the center of the dark plaza. Other figures moved around us, though none came near. We halted at the foot of an iron statue of somebody on a horse. A pale y...

“The city is ours,” said Einarson, leaning forward in his seat, his sword’s point on the car floor, his hands on its hilt. “The President, the Deputies, nearly every official of importance, is taken. ...

I prodded Einarson into the room and closed the door. Romaine looked at him and at the automatic that was now uncovered in my hand. With burlesque disappointment she said: “Oh, you haven’t killed him ...

I found my king in a wine and gold drawing-room in the Executive Residence, surrounded by Muravia’s socially and politically ambitious. Uniforms were still in the majority, but a sprinkling of civilia...

Colonel Einarson sat very erect in an armchair in the middle of the room. Dark hair and mustache bristled. His chin was out, muscles bulged everywhere in his florid face, his eyes were hot⁠—he was in ...

It was a wandering daughter job. The Hambletons had been for several generations a wealthy and decently prominent New York family. There was nothing in the Hambleton history to account for Sue, the yo...

It was a wandering daughter job. The Hambletons had been for several generations a wealthy and decently prominent New York family. There was nothing in the Hambleton history to account for Sue, the yo...

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 bi...

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 spoi...

Walking over to the St. Martin⁠—only half a dozen blocks from Wales’s place⁠—I decided to go up against McCloor and the girl as a Continental op who suspected Babe of being in on a branch bank stickup...

MacMan opened the door for me when I returned to Wales’s apartment. “Anything doing?” I asked him. “Nothing⁠—except they’ve been bellyaching a lot.” Wales came forward, asking eagerly: “Satisfied now?...

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 h...

I thought I was moving silently down between two strings of box cars, but I had gone less than twenty feet when a light flashed in my face and a sharp voice ordered: “Stand still, you.” I stood still....

I Rode up to the Hall of Justice with Duff. MacMan was in the captain of detectives’ office with three or four police sleuths. “Wales die?” I asked. “Yep.” “Say anything before he went?” “He was gone ...

I talked to McCloor in the hospital. He lay on his back in bed with a couple of pillows slanting his head up. The skin was pale and tight around his mouth and eyes, but there was nothing else to show ...

The Old Man sat listening to me, tapping his desk lightly with the point of a long yellow pencil, staring past me with mild blue, rimless-spectacled, eyes. When I had brought my story up to date, he a...

I was the only one who left the train at Farewell. A man came through the rain from the passenger shed. He was a small man. His face was dark and flat. He wore a gray waterproof cap and a gray coat cu...

I was the only one who left the train at Farewell. A man came through the rain from the passenger shed. He was a small man. His face was dark and flat. He wore a gray waterproof cap and a gray coat cu...

Half a mile beyond the place where the flat-faced man had deserted me, I stopped the Stutz in front of a grilled steel gate that blocked the road. The gate was padlocked on the inside. From either sid...

I was in the doorway of a low-ceilinged oval room furnished and decorated in gray, white and silver. Two men and a woman were there. The older man⁠—he was somewhere in his fifties⁠—got up from a deep ...

I ran up to my room for hat, coat, flashlight and gun. The Ringgos were standing at the front door when I started downstairs again. He had put on a dark raincoat, buttoned tight over his injured arm, ...

The country was fresh and bright under clear sunlight the next morning. A warm breeze was drying the ground and chasing raw-cotton clouds across the sky. At ten o’clock I set out afoot for Captain She...

That day was Thursday. Nothing else happened that day. Friday morning I was awakened by the noise of my bedroom door being opened violently. Martin, the thin-faced valet, came dashing into my room and...

Sherry’s baggage remained uncalled for in the Los Angeles passenger station all day Saturday. Late that afternoon the sheriff made public the news that Sherry and the black were wanted for murder, and...

The district attorney ate up the rest of his thumb nails. The sheriff had the bewildered look of a child who had held a balloon in his hand, had heard a pop, and couldn’t understand where the balloon ...

Four days after Sherry’s acquittal, Mrs. Ringgo was shown into my office. She was in black. Her pretty, unintelligent, Oriental face was not placid. Worry was in it. “Please, you won’t tell Dolph I ha...

The bungalow’s windows were lighted when I passed it on my way uphill. I was tempted to get out of my coupe and do some snooping, but was afraid that I couldn’t out-Indian Marcus on his own grounds, a...

I’ve never been able to decide whether I would actually have gone on the witness stand and sworn that Sherry was alive when he nodded, and nodded voluntarily, if it had been necessary for me to do so ...

The Old Man introduced me to the other man in his office⁠—his name was Chappell⁠—and said: “Sit down.” I sat down. Chappell was a man of forty-five or so, solidly built and dark-complexioned, but shak...