“Well,” I said, paying no attention to the denial, “I’m hunting for the pair of yellow men who ducked out—Hoo Lun and Yin Hung. Know anything about them?”
“No.”
“It’s worth a couple of hundred dollars to you to find either of them for me. It’s worth another couple hundred to find out about the killings for me. It’s worth another to find the slim Chinese youngster with gold teeth who opened the door for the Shan girl and her maid.”
“I don’t know nothin’ about them things,” he said.
But he said it automatically while his mind was busy counting up the hundreds I had dangled before him. I suppose his dope-addled brains made the total somewhere in the thousands. He jumped up.
“I’ll see what I c’n do. S’pose you slip me a hundred now, on account.”
I didn’t see that.
“You get it when you deliver.”
We had to argue that point, but finally he went off grumbling and growling to get me my news.
I went back to the office. The Old Man hadn’t come in yet. It was nearly midnight when he arrived.
“I’m using Dummy Uhl again,” I told him, “and I’ve put a Filipino boy down there too. I’ve got another scheme, but I don’t know anybody to handle it. I think if we offered the missing chauffeur and houseman jobs in some out-of-the-way place up the country, perhaps they’d fall for it. Do you know anybody who could pull it for us?”
“Exactly what have you in mind?”