Locked Rooms (17 page)

Chapter Eleven

I
t was both a challenge and an irritation to follow an individual such as
Russell without being seen. Had she been another person, Holmes would simply have trailed along in her wake, confident that a young woman in the hold of social impulse and illicit alcohol would be oblivious of a tail. Russell, however, even without her glasses, normally had eyes in the back of her head.

Not that she’d noticed him following practically on her heels all those hours on Monday afternoon. Still, Holmes kept his distance. He had his taxi park down the street from the St Francis until Russell’s friend arrived, then followed behind, stopping a street down from where the gaudy, bright blue Rolls-Royce disgorged its passengers. He studied the motor’s driver closely, taking note of the noise he made and the speed with which he drove—outside of a city’s streets, the taxi would never have kept up with him—but noting also the way the apparently careless young man gave wide berth to a woman walking with her two children, and how he always kept both his hands on the wheel and spoke over his shoulder instead of turning his head to speak to the passengers in back.

When the blue car had been driven away by the club’s valet, Holmes paid off his curious driver and took up surveillance in a more or less illicit dive across the way from the cabaret, a small and dingy space with air that looked as if the fog had moved in. He used his thumb-nail to scrape a patch of paint from the window-glass, which looked to have been applied half-heartedly at the descent of Prohibition five years before, absently cleaned the grime from underneath his nail with a pen-knife, then settled in to his surveillance with a glass of stale beer before him on the table.

An hour passed. Motorcars came and went from the sparkling gin palace, music spilt out onto the street, the uniformed doorman chatted unconcernedly with two passing policemen (confirming Holmes’ suspicions that the police department in this town was not as free of graft as one might wish—a two-year-old would have known that the alcohol inside flowed like water). And slowly, he became aware that he was himself being watched.

The man was good. Holmes had taken no particular note of him when he wandered in, other than noticing how tall, thin, and tidily dressed he was. He was simply one thirsty man among a dozen others—but when the man settled into the dimmest corner, when he nursed two whiskeys over the course of the hour and seemed uninterested in the company, and particularly when he seemed to relax into his corner and displace less air than a normal man, Holmes’ antennae twitched. He pondered his options: keep guard over the street and Russell, or pursue this new avenue?

After an hour and a quarter, with a full glass on the table, Holmes rose and headed towards the back of the establishment, weaving slightly. He felt the other man come to attention in the dim corner, and smiled to himself as he heard the soft clink of coins being laid on the damp table: The man was preparing to follow if Holmes did not return in a reasonable time, but not immediately—he wouldn’t want to risk a face-to-face meeting in the hall-way.

The noxious facilities were out-of-doors, in the delivery yard that was closed up for the night. Holmes slipped past them to the yard’s wooden gates. The lock was a joke, and he let himself out into the ill-lit alleyway beyond, leaving the gates ajar.

Four minutes after he’d come through it, the back door to the speakeasy opened and closed. There came a stifled oath and the quick sound of a man hurrying across sloppy paving stones. The stranger shouldered his way out of the gate, took two steps—and came to an immediate halt at the clear sound of a trigger being pulled back, a dozen feet away.

“Are you armed?” the stranger heard, in the drawl of an Englishman.

After a minute, the American answered. “I’m not much of one for guns.”

“Does that mean no?”

“No, I don’t have a gun.”

“Take off your coats and toss them over here,” came the command. The tall American unbuttoned his overcoat and tossed it in the direction of the other’s voice, then did the same with his jacket, standing motionless in the cold in his shirt-sleeves. “I trust you’ll pardon me if I don’t take your word on the matter. Would you be so good as to turn and place your hands against the wall?”

The man hesitated, loath to turn his back to a gun, but he had little choice. He faced the wall and leant against it with his hands. The bricks were briefly illuminated by the flare of a pocket-torch, and in a moment a hand patted all the obvious places for a weapon, and one or two not so obvious. Then the light winked out and he stood in the dark, listening to the sound of his garments being gone through. The overcoat was a good one, and relatively new; he’d be sore to lose it.

But after a minute the English voice said, “You may turn around again,” and in a moment, the two coats were flying out of the darkness at him. He put them on, grateful for the warmth, and coughed gently.

“Now your notecase—wallet, if you will.”

The American slid the leather object from his inner pocket and threw it across the alleyway, rather less concerned than at the loss of his coat. There wasn’t all that much in the wallet to lose.

The torch flared again, dazzling him at the same time it showed the Englishman the contents of the wallet and its various business cards and identifications. All but two of the cards were inventions that placed him in the employ of agencies ranging from insurance to newspapers. The two valid cards were those the Englishman unerringly pulled out.

“Pinkerton’s, eh?” he said. “And Samuel’s Jewelers.” The alleyway fell silent for a minute, then there was a faint click followed by the rustle of clothing, and the Englishman stepped out into the alley. Accident or intent placed him in a patch of light, and the American could see the man’s hands, the left one holding the wallet, the other outstretched and free of weaponry. “Holmes is my name, in the event you don’t know it already. Might I buy you a drink while we talk about why you’re following me?”

The American retrieved his wallet, looked at the open hand, and slowly extended his own. “The name’s Hammett, Dashiell Hammett. And I guess we might as well have a drink.”

They shook hands, with a certain amount of probing on both sides, and then Holmes released his grip and clapped Hammett on the shoulder. “I sincerely hope you do not wish to return to that . . . would it be called a ‘joint’ in American parlance? My palate may never recover.”

“You like our Volstead Act, huh? Sure, there’s a place up the street with liquor that’s never seen the inside of a bath-tub.”

“Actually, I have to say I’ve been pleasantly surprised at how civilised this city is when it comes to the availability of drink. I’d expected the whole country to be as dry as the Sahara.”

“This side of the country, it’s a bit of a joke, the cops don’t even charge much to turn a blind eye, but like you say, in some places, things are getting tough. Chicago—wow.”

Down the alley and out onto the street, and Hammett asked the question that had clearly been tormenting him since the moment he’d heard the trigger go back. “How’d you know I was on your tail, anyway? I’ve got something of a reputation as an invisible man.”

“Invisible, yes. But the Pinkertons might wish to reconsider their policy of sending out a man with a tubercular cough on surveillance, particularly on a cold night. When one hears the same cough coming from a lounger outside the St Francis, and later on the other side of a speakeasy, one begins to wonder.”

“Yeah,” Hammett admitted with chagrin. “It’s sometimes hard to sit quiet. But most people don’t notice.”

“I, however, am not most people.”

“I’m beginning to think that. C’mon, it’s down here.”

The place Hammett led him to was more neighbourhood pub than urban speakeasy; one table hosted a poker game and at another a friendly argument about boxing. There was even a darts board on the back wall. When they walked in, the man drying glasses behind the bar greeted Hammett as a longtime acquaintance.

“Hey there, Dash. Guy was looking for you earlier.”

“Evening, Jimmy. What sort of guy would that be?”

The man’s eyes slid sideways to take in Holmes, and his answer was oblique. “The sort of guy you sometimes work with, seen him with you once or twice a while back.”

“Well, he’ll find me if he wants me. I’ll have my usual, Jimmy. This is my friend Mr Smith. He’s got a doctor’s prescription you can fill.”

“What’s your medicament, Mr Smith?” the man asked as he reached for a bottle of whiskey, poured a glass, and set it in front of Hammett.

“No chance of a decent claret, I take it?” Holmes said wistfully.

“I could give you something red called wine, but I’m not sure a Frenchman would recognise it.”

“Very well. What about a single malt?”

The barman shook his head sadly. “The state of my cellar’s tragic, that’s all you can call it.”

“Never mind, I’ll take a—”

“Now, don’t be hasty. Said it was tragic, didn’t say it was completely empty. Just explaining to you why the good stuff’s limited and the price’ll make you wince.”

The quality was fine, although the price did truly make Holmes wince. But he counted out his money and followed Hammett over to a quiet table, taking out his cigarette case and offering one to his companion. When the tobacco was going, the two men sat back with their drinks, eyeing each other curiously.

They were of a size, Hammett an inch or so taller, but he possessed the folded-up quality of the man whose height fit him ill, and was so emaciated that his suit, nicely cut though it was, nonetheless draped his shoulders like one of the shrouded chairs in Russell’s house; when he spoke, one was aware of the skull’s movement. By comparison, Holmes looked positively robust. Hammett’s thick, light red hair, combed back from his high forehead, showed a great deal of white at the temples, although he couldn’t have been more than thirty. His clothes were good, his collar white, his ever-so-slightly flashy tie was precisely knotted beneath a face composed of watchful brown eyes, thick brows, knife-straight nose, and a mouth that skirted the edge of pretty. Strangers seeing the two men at the table might have taken them for father and son; certainly their long, thin, nervous fingers were of a type.

“So,” the American finally broke the silence. “You want to tell me why you didn’t shoot me in the face back there?”

“Personally, I’ve always found leaving a trail of corpses inconvenient, although I admit it has been some time since I lived in America—perhaps strictures have relaxed in the past ten years. However, as it was I who got the drop on you, perhaps I should be permitted the first questions.”

“Fair enough. Shoot.”

“Clearly, the most fundamental question in our relationship has to be, Why were you following me?”

“I was paid to.”

“By the Pinkertons?” Holmes had had dealings with the American detective agency before; not all of them had gone smoothly. His manner gave away none of this, merely his familiarity with the company.

“By whoever hired the Pinkertons.”

“You don’t know the identity of your employer?”

“Nope. Which also gives you the answer to your second fundamental question.”

Holmes took a swallow of the passable single-malt Scotch, slumping back into his chair in a way that made the other man think the Englishman was enjoying himself, and said, “That question being?”

“Why didn’t I have my pal Jimmy there pull out his shotgun and take your pistol away from you?”

“Two men having a drink together, Mr Hammett—surely that indicates a truce agreement, even in these farthest reaches of civilisation?” Holmes rested his cigarette in the flimsy tin ash-tray and picked up his glass again, left-handed; it occurred to Hammett that, other than their hand-shake and when he’d been paying for the drinks, the Englishman’s right hand was always kept free and never more than a few inches from the pocket holding the gun.

Hammett gave a sudden laugh, his haggard face lighting up unexpectedly. “Mr Holmes, something tells me that you only trust a truce when it’s fifty pages long and freshly written in the other guy’s blood.”

Holmes gave a small smile. “Superior strength is indeed a desirable component of negotiation.”

“Fine then, let’s negotiate away—you with your gun, me on my home ground.”

“Am I to understand that your version of my ‘second fundamental question’ indicates a certain lack of trust in the very people who hired you?”

“Now why would you say that?”

“Had you been wholeheartedly committed to the cause of your employer, I suspect that you would have made a play for the weapon, either on the way here or with the bar-keep to back you up. Not that you would have succeeded, mind you, and in the process of demonstrating that fact someone might have been hurt, so I do commend your decision. However, I assert that your willingness to go along with abduction is somewhat unusual, considering the Pinkertons’ reputation for professional behaviour.”

Hammett scowled. “The Pinkertons are in it for the money, that’s true. And they don’t always look too closely at where their clients’ cash comes from. It’s one of the disagreements I’ve had with them over the years. Why I only work for them from time to time, nowadays.”