Nightmare Town: Stories by Dashiell Hammett Page B

to have the first two found and investigated, I went after Orrett myself. A musical comedy named What For? was being widely-advertised just then with gaily printed plum-coloured handbills. I got one of them and, at a stationery store, an envelope to match, and mailed it to Orrett at the Montgomery Hotel. There are concerns that make a practice of securing the names of arrivals at the principal hotels and mailing them advertisements. I trusted that Orrett, knowing this, wouldn’t be suspicious when my gaudy envelope, forwarded from the hotel, reached him through the General Delivery window.
    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-coloured 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