Her destination was a drugstore on the car line. Her business there was with the telephone. She spent ten minutes at it. I didn’t go into the store to try for an earful, but stayed on the other side of the street, contenting myself with a good look at her.
She was a girl of about twenty-five, medium in height, chunky in build, with pale gray eyes that had little pouches under them, a thick nose and a prominent lower lip. She had no hat over her brown hair. Her body was wrapped in a long blue cape.
From the drug store I shadowed her back to the Gungen house. She went in the back door. A servant, probably, but not the maid who had opened the door for me earlier in the evening.
I returned to my car, drove back to town, to the office.
“Is Dick Foley working on anything?” I asked Fiske, who sits on the Continental Detective Agency’s affairs at night.
“No. Did you ever hear the story about the fellow who had his neck operated on?”
With the slightest encouragement, Fiske is good for a dozen stories without a stop, so I said:
“Yes. Get hold of Dick and tell him I’ve got a shadow job out Westwood Park way for him to start on in the morning.”
I gave Fiske—to be passed on to Dick—Gungen’s address and a description of the girl who had 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.