A flicker of hopefulness passed over Feathers’ sullen brown face. “I know what kind of a pool it was, sir. It was a ship pool. All the dark boys bought chances in it. Not just on the ship. On the beach, too.”
“What is a ship pool?” Gordon said.
“Well, all the ships have numbers and if a ship came in with our number we won.”
Gordon straightened up in his chair as if someone had pressed a trigger in his spine. But his voice was almost casual when he said:
“I’m not sure I understand. You mean that Hector Land based his numbers game on the goings and comings of naval vessels in Pearl Harbor?”
“Yes, sir. When we were in Frisco he had the pool, too.”
“That’s impossible!” Eric said angrily. “Only officers have access to that information.”
“Where did Land get his information?” Gordon said.
“We could see the ships, sir,” Feathers said. “Everybody knows what ships are in. And he could always check up on the daily Ships Present list.”
“That’s a lie,” said Joe Doss, like the Chinaman who wrote on the wall where he had hidden his money that there was no money hidden there.
“I didn’t say anything about you, Joe,” said Albert Feathers, like the other Chinaman who wrote on the wall after he had stolen the money that he personally was innocent of the theft.
Eric turned on Joe Doss. “Have you been messing with the Captain’s Ships Present list?”
“No, sir, I don’t ever mess with anything on the Captain’s desk.” Drops of sweat came out on his high black forehead like globules of rendered fat. He swivelled a swift revengeful look at Albert Feathers.
“I want these men to make a deposition,” Gordon said to Eric. “This evidence is of first-rate importance.”
“You’re damned right it is. I’ll have to take the matter up with the Captain, but there’ll be no difficulty there.” He looked at Doss. “There’s another matter I’ll take up with the Captain at the same time. Doss, you’re coming with me to see the Master-at-Arms.”
Doss followed him out on hopeless legs. Feathers stood where he was, apparently occupied with intimations of disaster.
“You may go, Feathers,” Gordon said. “I’ll want to get in touch with you in the morning. If you’ve told a straight story and continue to tell one you have nothing to fear.” The faint trace of ham in his nature added with dramatic effectiveness: “The United States Government will appreciate your assistance.”
“Don’t talk this around,” I said before Feathers left the room.
Gordon turned to me with a tense smile. “By God, this case is breaking. Now to give the Mexican police a shot in the arm. We’ve got to get our hands on Land.”
“Land had a smooth way of gathering information. I wonder if he thought that up himself. He didn’t strike me as particularly bright.”
“I doubt it. There are real brains behind this business, Drake. With the possible exception of the Schneider case, this is the trickiest business I’ve worked on in this war. Schneider had the brains, but he was a piker compared with this outfit. This is nothing less than a conspiracy to give the Japs the whole outline of our naval movements in the Pacific.”
I said not without complacence: “I’ve suspected it for a hell of a long time.”
“The pattern is beginning to emerge,” Gordon said. “As I see it it’s something like this. Hector Land collected information which he passed on to another agent in Honolulu. It’s unlikely that he was the only one supplying information, but he’s the only one we know about so far. The second agent–”
“Sue Sholto?”
“Perhaps. We haven’t enough evidence to say certainly yet. The second agent sifted the information, encoded the significant items, and broadcast them via the marked records to be picked up by Nip submarines lying off the Islands. The information was then re-encoded and relayed to Tokyo, or it may have been taken to Wake Island for rebroadcast.”
“But where does Anderson come in?”
“Probably on the administrative end. He coordinated the whole thing from the mainland. There doesn’t seem much doubt that he used Black Israel to recruit, or develop, potential spies. I’d guess from what Hefler told me about Land’s background, that the race riot made him ripe for subversion, and then Black Israel sucked him in. Black Israel also made its contribution to psychological warfare, by stirring up interracial strife in an arsenal city like Detroit. The web has more than one strand, and it looks to me as if Anderson sat in the center of it.”
“You think he’s the head of the organization, then?”
“I can’t say. We’ve got so pitifully little to go on so far. I admit he didn’t strike me as particularly big, or particularly dangerous. But I gave up spot judgments long ago.”
Eric returned with a guarantee that Doss would be available when he was wanted. Gordon began to ask him questions about Land’s disappearance. I told them I had a date, and went ashore. The Officer of the Deck gave me a jeep to the main gate of the Repair Base, and I took a taxi from there. It was barely nine, and I had plenty of time to get to the hotel by ten.
On the way I decided to stop at the Santa Fe station for my bag. Eric had lent me the use of his razor, but I needed a change of linen. The taxi let me out at the side entrance of the station, and I asked the driver to wait.
The baggage room was crowded with sailors retrieving their sea-bags and foot-lockers, a few drunks there for the company, a few civilians in clothes that looked a little frivolous and a little pathetic among all the lean blues. The clothes of a woman at the counter caught my eye particularly. She was wearing a tall felt hat trimmed with long iridescent feathers, gold pendant earrings, and two silver foxes which curled amorously around her neck but stared with cold button eyes.
The counter was lined three deep but I moved towards it. A sailor said without looking at me: “Hey, quit your shoving!” – then turned and added, “Sir.”
The woman with the foxes looked around and caught my eye. She gave no sign of recognition, and quickly looked away again. But not before I had recognized the rouged and raddled face of Miss Green.
I said, “Miss Green,” but she didn’t look around. I pushed slowly towards her but before I reached her she left the counter. The sailors made way for her and she was at the door before I could work my way out of the crowd.
I caught her on the sidewalk and took her arm. “Miss Green, I’d like to talk to you.”
“Let me go, I don’t know you.” I looked closely into her face in the light of a streetlamp, and saw that her eyes were empty and hot. But it was not the evil look in her eyes which went through my brain like a knife and quivered there. It was the odor of ether on her breath.
13
SHE tore her arm from my grasp and ran laboriously on high heels to a long black sedan which was parked ahead of my taxi. A man in the front seat who seemed to be wearing a chauffeur’s cap opened the door for her. She climbed in, the door slammed behind her, the black car jumped forward with the long rising whoop of a powerful engine, and Miss Green was out of my life again. But not forever.
I jumped into my taxi and told the driver to follow that car.
“I will if I can,” he said as he shifted gears. “That’s a Cadillac.”
When we turned the corner the black car was out of sight. We took a chance on the next corner and saw it a block ahead at Broadway, held up by a red light.
“Slow up,” I said to the driver. “I don’t want them to know they’re being followed.”