CodalSearch this book — or all of Codal…⌘K
nydus/Continental Op StoriesPublic

A collection of short stories about an unnamed agent of a detective agency in the early 1920s.

Page 444 of 1257
Table of Contents

VI

He would like it, but what was the work?

“I want you to go over to the Old Town with me and look at a man. Then you get your pay. There are no strings to it.”

That didn’t exactly satisfy him, but five bucks are five bucks; and he could drop out any time he didn’t like the looks of things. He decided to try it.

I put the farm hand over by a door, and went after another⁠—a little, plump man with round, optimistic eyes and a weak mouth. He was willing to earn five dollars in the simple and easy manner I had outlined. The next man I braced was a little too timid to take a chance on a blind game. Then I got a Filipino⁠—glorious in a fawn-colored suit, with a coat split to the neck and pants whose belled bottoms would have held a keg apiece⁠—and a stocky young Greek who was probably either a waiter or a barber.

Four men were enough. My quartet pleased me immensely. They didn’t look too intelligent for my purpose, and they didn’t look like thugs or sharpers. I put them in a jitney

444