Dick Foley — the Agency’s shadow specialist — planted himself in the post office, to loiter around with an eye on the ‘O’ window until he saw my plum-colored enveloped passed out, and then to shadow the receiver.
I spent the next day trying to solve the mysterious J. J. Cooper’s game, but he was still a puzzle when I knocked off that night.
At a little before five the following morning Dick Foley dropped into my room on his way home to wake me up and tell me what he had done.
“This Orrett baby is our meat!” he said. “Picked him up when he got his mail yesterday afternoon. Got another letter besides yours. Got an apartment on Van Ness Avenue. Took it the day after the killing, under the name of B. T. Quinn. Packing a gun under his left arm — there’s that sort of a bulge there. Just went home to bed. Been visiting all the dives in North Beach. Who do you think he’s hunting for?”
“Who?”
“Guy Cudner.”
That was news! This Guy Cudner, alias ‘The Darkman,’ was the most dangerous bird on the Coast, if not in the country. He had only been nailed once, but if he had been convicted of all the crimes that everybody knew he had committed he’d have needed half a dozen lives to crowd his sentences into, besides another half-dozen to carry to the gallows. However, he had decidedly the right sort of backing — enough to buy him everything he needed — in the way of witnesses, alibis, even juries and an occasional judge.
I don’t know what went wrong with his support that one time he was convicted up North and sent over for a one-to-fourteen-year hitch; but it adjusted itself promptly, for the ink was hardly dry on the press notices of his conviction before he was loose again on parole.
“Is Cudner in town?”
“Don’t know,” Dick said, “but this Orrett, or Quinn, or whatever his name is, is surely hunting for him. In Rick’s place, at ‘Wop’ Healey’s, and at Pigatti’s. ‘Porky’ Grout tipped me off. Says Orrett doesn’t know Cudner by sight, but is trying to find him. Porky didn’t know what he wants with him.”
This Porky Grout was a dirty little rat who would sell out his family — if he ever had one — for the price of a flop. But with these lads who play both sides of the game it’s always a question of which side they’re playing when you think they’re playing yours.
“Think Porky was coming clean?” I asked.
“Chances are — but you can’t gamble on him.”
“Is Orrett acquainted here?”
“Doesn’t seem to be. Knows where he wants to go but has to ask how to get there. Hasn’t spoken to anybody that seemed to know him.”
“What’s he like?”
“Not the kind of egg you’d want to tangle with offhand, if you ask me. He and Cudner would make a good pair. They don’t look alike. This egg is tall and slim, but he’s built right — those fast, smooth muscles. Face is sharp without being thin, if you get me. I mean all the lines in it are straight. No curves. Chin, nose, mouth, eyes — all straight, sharp lines and angles. Looks like the kind of egg we know Cudner is. Make a good pair. Dresses well and doesn’t look like a rowdy — but harder than hell! A big-game hunter! Our meat, I bet you!”
“It doesn’t look bad,” I agreed. “He came to the hotel the morning of the day the men were killed, and checked out the next morning. He packs a rod, and changed his name after he left. And now he’s paired off with The Darkman. It doesn’t look bad at all!”
“I’m telling you,” Dick said, “this fellow looks like three killings wouldn’t disturb his rest any. I wonder where Cudner fits in.”
“I can’t guess. But, if he and Orrett haven’t connected yet, then Cudner, wasn’t in on the murders; but he may give us the answer.”
Then I jumped out of bed. “I’m going to gamble on Porky’s dope being on the level! How would you describe Cudner?”
“You know him better than I do.”
“Yes, but how would you describe him to me if I didn’t know him?”
“A little fat guy with a red forked scar on his left cheek. What’s the idea?”
“It’s a good one,” I admitted. “That scar makes all the difference in the world. If he didn’t have it and you were to describe him you’d go into all the details of his appearance. But he has it, so you simply say, ‘A little fat guy with a red forked scar on his left cheek.’ It’s a ten to one that that’s just how he has been described to Orrett. I don’t look like Cudner, but I’m his size and build, and with a scar on my face Orrett will fall for me.”
“What then?”
“There’s no telling; but I ought to be able to learn a lot if I can get Orrett talking to me as Cudner. It’s worth a try anyway.”
“You can’t get away with it — not in San Francisco. Cudner is too well-known.”
“What difference does that make, Dick? Orrett is the only one I want to fool. If he takes me for Cudner, well and good. If he doesn’t, still well and good. I won’t force myself on him.”
“How are you going to fake the scar?”
“Easy! We have pictures of Cudner, showing the scar, in the criminal gallery. I’ll get some collodion — it’s sold in drug stores under several trade names for putting on cuts and scratches — color it, and imitate Cudner’s scar on my cheek. It dries with a shiny surface and, put on thick, will stand out enough to look like an old scar.”
It was a little after eleven the following night when Dick telephoned me that Orrett was in Pigatti’s place, on Pacific Street, and apparently settled there for some little while. My scar already painted on, I jumped into a taxi and within a few minutes was talking to Dick, around the corner from Pigatti’s.
“He’s sitting at the last table back on the left side. And he was alone when I came out. You can’t miss him. He’s the only egg in the joint with a clean collar.”
“You better stick outside — half a block or so away — with the taxi,” I told Dick. “Maybe brother Orrett and I will leave together and I’d just as leave have you standing by in case things break wrong.”
Pigatti’s place is a long, narrow, low-ceilinged cellar, always dim with smoke. Down the middle runs a narrow strip of bare floor for dancing. The rest of the floor is covered with closely packed tables, whose cloths are always soiled.
Most of the tables were occupied when I came in, and half a dozen couples were dancing. Few of the faces to be seen were strangers to the morning ‘line-up’ at police headquarters.
Peering through the smoke, I saw Orrett at once, seated alone in a far corner, looking at the dancers with the set blank face of one who masks an all-seeing watchfulness. I walked down the other side of the room and crossed the strip of dance-floor directly under a light, so that the scar might be clearly visible to him. Then I selected a vacant table not far from his, and sat down facing him.
Ten minutes passed while he pretended an interest in the dancers and I affected a thoughtful stare at the dirty cloth on my table; but neither of us missed so much as a flicker of the other’s lids.
His eyes — gray eyes that were pale without being shallow, with black needle-point pupils — met mine after a while in a cold, steady, inscrutable stare; and, very slowly, he got to his feet. One hand — his right — in a side pocket of his dark coat, he walked straight across to my table and sat down.
“Cudner?”
“Looking for me, I hear,” I replied, trying to match the icy smoothness of his voice, as I was matching the steadiness of his gaze.
He had sat down with his left side turned slightly toward me, which put his right arm in not too cramped a position for straight shooting from the pocket that still held his hand.
“You were looking for me, too.”
I didn’t know what the correct answer to that would be, so I just grinned. But the grin didn’t come from my heart. I had, I realized, made a mistake — one that might cost me something before we were done. This bird wasn’t hunting for Cudner as a friend, as I had carelessly assumed, but was on the war path.