“It’s this important,” I assured him, “that another woman’s life depends on what I can learn about this one.”
“All right!” he said. “I’ll tell the clerk to let us know if she comes in before we are through; and we’ll go right up.”
The woman’s room held two valises and a trunk, all unlocked, and containing not the least thing of importance — no letters — nothing. So little, in fact, that I was more than half convinced that she had expected her things to be searched.
Downstairs again, I planted myself in a comfortable chair within sight of the key-rack, and waited for a view of this first Mrs. Estep.
She came in at 11:15 that night. A large woman of forty-five or fifty, well-dressed, and carrying herself with an air of assurance. Her face was a little too hard as to mouth and chin, but not enough to be ugly. A capable-looking woman — a woman who would get what she went after.
Three
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 wake. Her denial that a letter from her husband, written immediately before his death, had come to her didn’t fit in with the possibilities as I saw them. And a good motto for the detective business is, “When in doubt — shadow ’em.”
After eating breakfast at a restaurant on O’Farrell Street, she turned toward the shopping district; and for a long, long time — though I suppose it was a lot shorter than it seemed to me — she led me through the most densely packed portions of the most crowded department stores she could find.
She didn’t buy anything, but she did a lot of thorough looking, with me muddling along behind her, trying to act like a little fat guy on an errand for his wife, while stout women bumped me and thin ones prodded me and all sorts got in my way and walked on my feet.
Finally, after I had sweated off a couple of pounds, she left the shopping district, and cut up through Union Square, walking along casually, as if out for a stroll.
Three-quarters way through, she turned abruptly, and retraced her steps, looking sharply at everyone she passed. I was on a bench, reading a stray page from a day-old newspaper, when she went by. She walked on down Post Street to Kearney, stopping every now and then to look — or to pretend to look — in store windows, while I ambled along sometimes behind her, sometimes almost by her side, and sometimes in front.
She was trying to check up the people around her, trying to determine whether she was being followed or not. But here, in the busy part of town, that gave me no cause for worry. On a less crowded street it might have been different, though not necessarily so.
There are four rules for shadowing: Keep behind your subject as much as possible; never try to hide from him; act in a natural manner no matter what happens; and never meet his eye. Obey them, and, except in unusual circumstances, shadowing is the easiest thing that a sleuth has to do.
Assured, after a while, that no one was following her, Mrs. Estep turned back toward Powell Street, and got into a taxicab at the St. Francis stand. I picked out a modest touring car from the rank of hire-cars along the Geary Street side of Union Square, and set out after her.
Our route was out Post Street to Laguna, where the taxi presently swung into the curb and stopped. The woman got out, paid the driver, and went up the steps of an apartment building. With idling engine my own car had come to rest against the opposite curb in the block above.
As the taxicab disappeared around a corner, Mrs. Estep came out of the apartment-building doorway, went back to the sidewalk, and started down Laguna Street.
“Pass her,” I told my chauffeur, and we drew down upon her.
As we came abreast, she went up the front steps of another building, and this time she rang a bell. These steps belonged to a building apparently occupied by four flats, each with its separate door, and the button she had pressed belonged to the right-hand second-story flat.
Under cover of my car’s rear curtains, I kept my eye on the doorway while my driver found a convenient place to park in the next block.
I kept my eye on the vestibule until 5:35 p.m., when she came out, walked to the Sutter Street car line, returned to the Montgomery, and went to her room.
I called up the Old Man — the Continental Detective Agency’s San Francisco manager — and asked him to detail an operative to learn who and what were the occupants of the Laguna Street flat.
That night Mrs. Estep ate dinner at her hotel, and went to a show afterward, and she displayed no interest in possible shadowers. She went to her room at a little after eleven, and I knocked off for the day.
Four
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 ten.
“A guy named Jacob Ledwich lives there,” Bob said. “He’s a crook of some sort, but I don’t know just what. He and ‘Wop’ Healey are friendly, so he must be a crook! ‘Porky’ Grout says he’s an ex-bunko man who is in with a gambling ring now; but Porky would tell you a bishop was a safe-ripper if he thought it would mean five bucks for himself.
“This Ledwich goes out mostly at night, and he seems to be pretty prosperous. Probably a high-class worker of some sort. He’s got a Buick — license number 645–221 — that he keeps in a garage around the corner from his flat. But he doesn’t seem to use the car much.”
“What sort of looking fellow is he?”
“A big guy — six feet or better — and he’ll weigh a couple hundred easy. He’s got a funny mug on him. It’s broad and heavy around the cheeks and jaw, but his mouth is a little one that looks like it was made for a smaller man. He’s no youngster — middle-aged.”
“Suppose you tail him around for a day or two, Bob, and see what he’s up to. Try to get a room or apartment in the neighborhood — a place that you can cover his front door from.”
Five
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 a peculiarly inadequate mouth. I dropped in to see the doctor one day, and Ledwich was in the office. Dr. Estep introduced us.”
“What do you know about him?”
“Nothing.”
“Don’t you know whether he was intimate with the doctor, or just a casual acquaintance?”
“No. For all I know, he might have been a friend, a patient, or almost anything. The doctor never spoke of him to me, and nothing passed between them while I was there that afternoon. I simply gave the doctor some information he had asked for and left. Why?”
“Dr. Estep’s first wife — after going to a lot of trouble to see that she wasn’t followed — connected with Ledwich yesterday afternoon. And from what we can learn he seems to be a crook of some sort.”
“What would that indicate?”
“I’m not sure what it means, but I can do a lot of guessing. Ledwich knew both the doctor and the doctor’s first wife; then it’s not a bad bet that she knew where her husband was all the time. If she did, then it’s another good bet that she was getting money from him right along. Can you check up his accounts and see whether he was passing out any money that can’t be otherwise accounted for?”
The attorney shook his head.
“No, his accounts are in rather bad shape, carelessly kept. He must have had more than a little difficulty with his income-tax statements.”