When I arrived at the agency the next morning, Dick was waiting for me.
“What luck?” I asked.
“Damndest!” The little Canadian talks like a telegram when his peace of mind is disturbed, and just now he was decidedly peevish. “Took me two blocks. Shook me. Only taxi in sight.”
“Think he made you?”
“No. Wise head. Playing safe.”
“Try him again, then. Better have a car handy, in case he tries the same trick again.”
My telephone jingled as Dick was going out. It was Porky Grout, talking over the agency’s unlisted line.
“Turn up anything?” I asked.
“Plenty,” he bragged.
“Good! Are you in town?”
“Yes.”
“I’ll meet you in my rooms in twenty minutes,” I said.
The pasty-faced informant was fairly bloated with pride in himself when he came through the door I had left unlocked for him. His swagger was almost a cakewalk; and the side of his mouth that twitches was twisted into a knowing leer that would have fit a Solomon.