lad had been built of tougher stuff than the others. He had put up a fight, and Hook had had to kill him. You can measure the girl’s skill in her end of the game by the fact that not one of the half dozen youths who had been trimmed had said the least thing to implicate her; and some of them had gone to great trouble to keep her out of it.
The house in Turk Street had been the mob’s retreat, and, that it might be always a safe one, they had not worked their game in San Francisco. Hook and the girl were supposed by the neighbors to be the Quarres’ son and daughter—and Tai was the Chinese cook. The Quarres’ benign and respectable appearances had also come in handy when the mob had securities to be disposed of.
The Chinese went to the gallows. We threw out the widest and finest-meshed of dragnets for the red-haired girl; and we turned up girls with bobbed red hair by the scores. But the girl Elvira was not among them.