I went down to the yacht club.
There must have been fully three hundred morbid spectators milling around, peering through the meshed screen fences, walking aimlessly around on the outside, looking at the yachts from different angles.
Police cars came and went. Technical men were doing stuff aboard the yachts, searching for fingerprints, dusting with various powders.
Every once in a while some amateur photographer would try to crash the gates and an important-looking guard would ask for his pass. If the fellow didn’t have any, the guard would nod to a police officer who then came up and chased the guy away fast.
I stood around for an hour or two until I felt I was developing falling arches. Finally, when one of the officers relieved the club watchman and he went to get a cup of coffee, I fell into step beside him.
“I’d like some information,” I said, “and I’m a man who doesn’t want something for nothing.”
He flashed me an appraising sidelong glance. “The police told me to give out no information.”
“Oh, this isn’t about the murder,” I said, laughing. “I wouldn’t ask you about that. This is something else.”
“What?”
“I’m trying to find out something about one of the boats.”
“Which one?”
“Now there,” I told him, “you have the reason I’m coming to you. I don’t know which boat it was except that it had the insignia of this yacht club on it, and it was out cruising last Tuesday afternoon, a week ago. Now, my guess is that there aren’t many yachts go out for a cruise in the afternoon in the middle of the week.”
“You’d guess wrong,” he said grinning. “On Wednesday afternoon there are lots of them.”
“How about Monday?”
“Hardly any.”
“Tuesday?”
“Oh, a few.”
I said, “Do you keep any records of the yachts that go out?”
“No, we don’t.”
“You do, however, keep a record of the men who go through the gates?”
“That’s right.”
“Then by checking on the men who went through the gates last Tuesday afternoon, you could probably tell me something about what yachts were out?”
“The police have taken those records. They’ve taken the whole book as evidence. I’ve had to start another book.”
“That’s too bad.”
“It doesn’t make any difference except I don’t have any records I can refer to.”
“Tuesday afternoon,” I said, and took twenty dollars from my pocket.
“I’d like the twenty,” he said, “but I can’t help you.”
“Why?”
“My books are gone — the law took ‘em.”
“What’s your name?”
“Danby.”
“Perhaps you could make some dough anyway.”
“How?”
“What time do you get off today?”
“Six at night.”
“I could meet you and you could take a ride with me, sit in my car, and point out someone to me.”
“Who?”
“A man you know. I don’t know his name. I want to find out who he is. I’d give you twenty now. There’d be more later.”
Danby gave the matter thoughtful consideration.
“In the meantime,” I said, “I’d like to know a few things about your duties.”
“What?”
“You can’t be on duty every minute of the time,” I said. “There are times when you have your back turned. There are times when you’re out of the place, when you—”
“Look,” he interrupted. “You talk just like the cops. There ain’t no one going to get aboard one of those yachts without the man at the gate knowing it. If we leave that little cabin, even for thirty seconds, we throw a barrier gate inside of the first one and pull a switch which makes a bell ring on every float whenever someone steps on the platform. The members absolutely insist that no one except a member in good standing is permitted on the mooring. The club had a lot of trouble in a divorce case. The wife wanted to get some evidence. That was a couple of years ago. Detectives sneaked in and raided a yacht. It was quite a scandal. Since then the members have fixed things so no one who ain’t a member can get into that yacht club, no one, no time.”
“Doesn’t it inconvenience the members sometimes when you’re not there and—”
“I’m pretty nearly always right there. That’s my business to be there. If anything happens and I have to go away, I throw that barrier gate down into place and it’s locked. Whenever a member comes and sees that barrier gate locked he knows I’m out somewhere on the float. He also knows that the minute he pushes a foot down on that platform he rings a bell that’ll tell me he’s there. He knows I’m not going to keep him waiting, so he just steps into my little cabin. I don’t think any of them have ever had to wait more than two minutes. I’m right up there on the job. That’s my business. That’s what I’m paid for.”
I handed him the twenty dollars. “I’ll be waiting at six o’clock tonight, Danby. Just step right into my car.”
He looked at both sides of the twenty-dollar bill as though afraid it might be a counterfeit, then stalked into the restaurant without a word of thanks.
I went up and saw my broker.
“How you coming with the mining stock?” I asked.
“I’m buying it — scads of it, cheap. Lam, I wish you wouldn’t do that.”
“Why?”
“The stuff’s no good. It’s a mail-order promotion in the first place. In the second place the mine has been losing money on every carload of ore mined. In the third place it’s indebted to the bank on a big loan. In the fourth place the mainspring of the whole thing was this guy, Bishop, and he’s kicked the bucket.
“If you were trying to find the worst investment on earth you couldn’t have picked a more likely prospect.”
I grinned.
“That tells me all I want to know,” he said. “Would it be all right if I picked up a few shares for my personal account?”
“Don’t put the price up,” I warned.
“Hell’s bells, Lam, you couldn’t put in enough money to jack up the price of that stock if you used a steam shovel.”
“You getting a lot?”
“Lots of it.”
“Keep getting the stuff,” I said, and walked out.
At the appointed time I went to pick up Danby.
He wasn’t too glad to see me.
“The cops may not like this at all,” he said.
“The cops aren’t paying you money.”
“Cops have a way of getting mean when they don’t like things.”
I said, “Here’s fifty dollars. How much unpleasantness would that account for?”
His eyes were greedy and shrewd. “All but ten dollars’ worth,” he said.
I added another ten, and he slowly pocketed the money.
“What do you want to do?”
I said, “We’re going places.”
“What sort of places?”
“Where we can sit in an automobile.”
“And then what do we do?”
“If you see anyone you know you tell me.”
“That’s all?”
“That’s all.”
We drove rapidly out Van Ness Avenue, crossed Market Street, took the road to Daly City, and I slowed down as we came to the address of The Green Door.
It was an interesting enough place, pretty well disguised, all things considered.
Years ago San Francisco went in for a certain type of flat — a series of storerooms for little businesses on the ground floor, then two stories of flats above it, all with conventional bow windows and a type of architecture which is so typically San Franciscan that it can be recognized anywhere.
The Green Door was in one of these buildings.
On one side was a neighborhood grocery, a place with a small stock, that had a few neighborhood clients and carried charge accounts. The credit feature was the only way such a one-man business could compete with the big cashand- carry markets where buying is on a mass basis, selling is for spot cash, and there is no trouble with bookkeeping, deadbeats, or failures.