The Main Death and This King Business Read Online Free PDF Page B

done the phoning from the drugstore. Then I assured the night man that I had also heard the story about the pickaninny named Opium, and likewise the one about what the old man said to his wife on their golden wedding anniversary. Before he could try me with another, I escaped to my own office, where I composed and coded a telegram to our Los Angeles branch, asking that Main’s recent visit to that city be dug into.
    The next morning Hacken and Begg dropped in to see me and I gave them Gungen’s version of why the twenty thousand had been in cash. The police detectives told me a stool-pigeon had brought them word that Bunky Dahl—a local guerrilla who did a moderate business in hijacking—had been flashing a roll since about the time of Main’s death.
    â€œWe haven’t picked him up yet,” Hacken said. “Haven’t been able to place him, but we’ve got a line on his girl. Course, he might have got his dough somewhere else.”
    At ten o’clock that morning I had to go over to Oakland to testify against a couple of flimflammers who had sold bushels of stock in a sleight-of-hand rubber manufacturing business. When I got back to the Agency, at six that evening, I found a wire from Los Angeles on my desk.
    Jeffrey Main, the wire told me, had finished his business with Ogilvie Saturday afternoon, had checked out of his hotel immediately, and had left on the Owl that evening, which would have put him in San Francisco early Sunday morning. The hundred-dollar bills with which Ogilvie had paid for the tiara had been new ones, consecutively numbered, and Ogilvie’s bank had given the Los Angeles operative the numbers.
    Before I quit for the day, I phoned Hacken, gave him these numbers, as well as the other dope in the telegram.
    â€œHaven’t found Dahl yet,” he told me.
    Dick Foley’s report came in the next morning. The girl had left the Gungen house at 9:15 the previous night, had gone to the corner of Miramar Avenue and Southwood Drive, where a man was waiting for her in a Buick coupe. Dick described him: Age about 30; height about five feet ten; slender, weight about 140; medium complexion; brown hair and eyes; long, thin face with pointed chin; brown hat, suit and shoes and gray overcoat.
    The girl got into the car with him and they drove out to the beach, along the Great Highway for a little while, and then back to Miramar and Southwood, where the girl got out. She seemed to be going back to the house, so Dick let her go and tailed the man in the Buick down to the Futurity Apartments in Mason Street.
    The man stayed in there for half an hour or so and then came out with another man and two women. This second man was of about the same age as the first, about five feet eight inches tall, would weigh about a hundred and seventy pounds, had brown hair and eyes, a dark complexion, a flat, broad face with high cheek bones, and wore a blue suit, gray hat, tan overcoat, black shoes, and a pear-shaped pearl tie-pin.
    One of the women was about twenty-two years old, small, slender and blonde. The other was probably three or four years older, red-haired, medium in height and build, with a turned-up nose.
    The quartet had got in the car and gone to the Algerian Café, where they had stayed until a little after one in the morning. Then they had returned to the Futurity Apartments. At half-past three the two men had left, driving the Buick to a garage in Post Street, and then walking to the Mars Hotel.
    When I had finished reading this I called Mickey Linehan in from the operatives’ room, gave him the report and instructions:
    â€œFind out who these folks are.”
    Mickey went out. My phone rang.
    Bruno Gungen: “Good morning. May you have something to tell me today?”
    â€œMaybe,” I said. “You’re downtown?”
    â€œYes, in my shop. I shall be here until four.”
    â€œRight. I’ll be in to see you this afternoon.”
    At noon