him up tomorrow. If he was hightailing, it was catch him now or not at all.
“Down to Harrison,” I told the driver.
We went down to Harrison Street, and down Harrison to Third, up Bryant to Eighth, down Brannan to Third again, and over to Townsend—and we didn’t see Babe McCloor.
“That’s tough, that is,” the driver sympathized as we stopped across the street from the Southern Pacific passenger station.
“I’m going over and look around in the station,” I said. “Keep your eyes open while I’m gone.”
When I told the copper in the station my trouble he introduced me to a couple of plainclothes men who had been planted there to watch for McCloor. That had been done after Sue Hambleton’s body was found. The shooting of Holy Joe Wales was news to them.
I went outside again and found my taxi in front of the door, its horn working overtime, but too asthmatically to be heard indoors. The ratty driver was excited.
“A guy like you said come up out of King Street just now and swung on a No. 16 car as it pulled away,” he said.
“Going which way?”
“Thataway,” pointing southeast.
“Catch him,” I said, jumping in.
The street car was out of sight around a bend in Third Street two blocks below. When we rounded the bend, the street car was slowing up, four