The captain told me Hacken and Begg were handling the job. I caught them leaving the detectives’ assembly room. Begg was a freckled heavyweight, as friendly as a Saint Bernard puppy, but less intelligent. Lanky detective-sergeant Hacken, not so playful, carried the team’s brains behind his worried hatchet face.
“In a hurry?” I inquired.
“Always in a hurry when we’re quitting for the day,” Begg said, his freckles climbing up his face to make room for his grin.
“What do you want?” Hacken asked.
“I want the low-down on the Main doings—if any.”
“You going to work on it?”
“Yes,” I said, “for Main’s boss—Gungen.”
“Then you can tell us something. Why’d he have the twenty thou in cash?”
“Tell you in the morning,” I promised. “I haven’t seen Gungen yet. Got a date with him tonight.”
While we talked we had gone into the assembly room, with its schoolroom arrangement of desks and benches. Half a dozen police detectives were scattered among them, doing reports. We three sat around Hacken’s desk and the lanky detective-sergeant talked:
“Main got home from Los Angeles at eight, Sunday night, with twenty thousand in his wallet. He’d gone down there to sell something for