I took hold of him here and there, and presently had him by the nape of his neck, with one of his arms bent up behind him.
Another Chinese piled on my back. The lean, grey-haired man did something to his face, and the Chinese went over in a corner and stayed there.
That was the situation when Lillian Shan came in.
I shook the flat-nosed boy at her.
“Yin Hung!” she exclaimed.
“Hoo Lun isn’t one of the others?” I asked, pointing to the spectators.
She shook her head emphatically, and began jabbering Chinese at my prisoner. He jabbered back, meeting her gaze.
“What are you going to do with him?” she asked me in a voice that wasn’t quite right.
“Turn him over to the police to hold for the San Mateo sheriff. Can you get anything out of him?”
“No.”
I began to push him toward the door.
There was no excitement in the street. We climbed into the taxicab and drove the block and a half to the Hall of Justice, where I yanked my prisoner out. The rancher Paul said he wouldn’t go in, that he had enjoyed the party, but now had some of his own business to look after. He went on up Kearney Street afoot.
Half-out of the taxicab, Lillian Shan changed her mind.
“Unless it’s necessary,” she said, “I’d rather not go in either. I’ll wait here for you.”
“Righto,” and I pushed my captive across the sidewalk and up the steps.
Inside, an interesting situation developed.
The San Francisco police weren’t especially interested in Yin Hung, though willing enough, of course, to hold him for the sheriff of San Mateo County.
Yin Hung pretended he didn’t know any English, and I was curious to know what sort of story he had to tell, so I hunted around in the detectives’ assembly room until I found Bill Thode of the Chinatown detail, who talks the language some.
He and Yin Hung jabbered at each other for some time.
Then Bill looked at me, laughed, bit off the end of a cigar, and leaned back in his chair.
“According to the way he tells it,” Bill said, “that Wan Lan woman and Lillian Shan had a row. The next day Wan Lan’s not anywheres around. The Shan girl and Wang Ma, her maid, say Wan Lan has left, but Hoo Lun tells this fellow he saw Wang Ma burning some of Wan Lan’s clothes.
“So Hoo Lun and this fellow think something’s wrong, and the next day they’re damned sure of it, because this fellow misses a spade from his garden tools. He finds it again that night, and it’s still wet with damp dirt, and he says no dirt was dug up anywheres around the place — not outside of the house anyways. So him and Hoo Lun put their heads together, didn’t like the result, and decided they’d better dust out before they went wherever Wan Lan had gone.”
“Where is Hoo Lun now?”
“He says he don’t know.”
“So Lillian Shan and Wang Ma were still in the house when this pair left?” I asked. “They hadn’t started for the East yet?”
“So he says.”
“Has he got any idea why Wan Lan was killed?”
“Not that I’ve been able to get out of him.”
“Thanks, Bill! You’ll notify the sheriff that you’re holding him?”
“Sure.”
Of course Lillian Shan and the taxicab were gone when I came out of the Hall of Justice door.
I went back into the lobby and used one of the booths to phone the office. A wire had come from the Richmond branch. It was to the effect that the Garthornes were a wealthy and well-known local family, that young Jack was usually in trouble, that he had slugged a Prohibition agent during a cafe raid a few months ago, that his father had taken him out of his will and chased him from the house, but that his mother was believed to be sending him money.
That fit in with what the girl had told me.
A street car carried me to the garage where I had stuck the roadster I had borrowed from the girl’s garage the previous morning.
I was a little inclined toward grouchiness as I turned the roadster west, driving out through Golden Gate Park to the Ocean Boulevard. The job wasn’t getting along as snappily as I wanted it to.
A bony-faced man with pinkish mustache opened the door when I rang Lillian Shan’s bell. I knew him — Tucker, a deputy sheriff.
“Hullo,” he said. “What d’you want?”
“I’m hunting for her too.”
“Keep on hunting,” he grinned. “Don’t let me stop you.”
“Not here, huh?”
“Nope. The Swede woman that works for her says she was in and out half an hour before I got here, and I’ve been here about ten minutes now.”
“Got a warrant for her?” I asked.
“You bet. Her chauffeur squawked.”
“Yes, I heard him,” I said. “I’m the bright boy who gathered him in.”
I spent five or ten minutes more talking to Tucker and then pointed the roadster at San Francisco again.
Just outside of Daly City a taxicab passed me, going south. Jack Garthorne’s face looked through the window.
I snapped on the brakes and waved my arm. The taxicab turned and came back to me.
I got down into the road and went over to him.
“There’s a deputy sheriff waiting in Miss Shan’s house, if that’s where you’re headed.”
His blue eyes narrowed as he looked suspiciously at me.
“Let’s go over to the side of the road and have a little talk,” I invited.
He got out of the taxicab and we crossed to a couple of comfortable-looking boulders on the other side.
“Where is Lil — Miss Shan?” he asked.
“Ask The Whistler,” I suggested.
“What do you mean?” he demanded.
I hadn’t meant anything. I had just wanted to see how the remark would hit him. I kept quiet.
“Has The Whistler got her?”
“I don’t think so,” I admitted, though I hated to do it. “But the point is that she has had to go in hiding to keep from being hanged for the murders The Whistler framed.”
“Hanged?”
“Uh-huh. The deputy waiting in her house has a warrant for her — for murder.”
He made gurgling noises in his throat.
“I’ll go there I I’ll tell everything I know!”
He started for his taxicab.
“Wait!” I called. “Maybe you’d better tell me what you know first. I’m working for her, you know.”
He spun around and came back. “Yes, that’s right. You’ll know what to do.”
“Now what do you really know, if anything?” I asked when he was standing in front of me.
“I know the whole thing!” he cried. “About the deaths and the booze and—”
“Easy! There’s no use wasting all that knowledge on the chauffeur.”
He quieted down, and I began to pump him. I spent nearly an hour getting all of it.
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 cooled off. Meanwhile his mother kept him in funds, but she didn’t send him all the money a young fellow in a wild city could use.
That was the situation when he ran into The Whistler, who suggested that a chap with Garthorne’s front could pick up some easy money in the rum-running game if he did what he was told to do.
The Whistler, it seemed, had boats and booze and waiting customers, but his landing arrangements were out of whack. He had his eye on a little cove down the shore line that was an ideal spot to land hooch. It was neither too close nor too far from San Francisco. It was sheltered on either side by rocky points, and screened from the road by a large house and high hedges. Given the use of that house, his troubles would be over. He could land his hooch in the cove, run it into the house, repack it innocently there, put it through the front door into his automobiles, and shoot it to the thirsty city.