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nydus/Continental Op StoriesPublic

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

Page 445 of 1257
Table of Contents

VI

and took them over to the Old Town.

“Now this is it,” I coached them when we had arrived. “I’m going into the Golden Horseshoe Café, around the corner. Give me two or three minutes, and then come in and buy yourselves a drink.” I gave the farm hand a five-dollar bill. “You pay for the drinks with that⁠—it isn’t part of your wages. There’s a tall, broad-shouldered man with a long, yellow neck and a small ugly face in there. You can’t miss him. I want you all to take a good look at him without letting him get wise. When you’re sure you’d know him again anywhere, give me the nod, and come back here and you get your money. Be careful when you give me the nod. I don’t want anybody in there to find out that you know me.”

It sounded queer to them, but there was the promise of five dollars apiece, and there were the games back in the casino, where five dollars might buy a man into a streak of luck that⁠—write the rest of it yourself. They asked questions, which I refused to answer, but they stuck.

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