“Yes,” slowly. “I have a—a friend who will hide me—down near—near the Latin Quarter.”
“Near the Latin Quarter?” That could be Chinatown. I did some sharpshooting. “Waverly Place?”
He jumped.
“How did you know?”
“I’m a detective. I know everything. Ever hear of Chang Li Ching?”
“No.”
I tried to keep from laughing into his puzzled face.
The first time I had seen this cut-up he was leaving a house in Waverly Place, with a Chinese woman’s face showing dimly in the doorway behind him. The house had been across the street from a grocery. The Chinese girl with whom I had talked at Chang’s had given me a slave-girl yarn and an invitation to that same house. Bighearted Jack here had fallen for the same game, but he didn’t know that the girl had anything to do with Chang Li Ching, didn’t know that Chang existed, didn’t know Chang and The Whistler were playmates. Now Jack is in trouble, and he’s going to the girl to hide!
I didn’t dislike this angle of the game. He was walking into a trap, but that was nothing to me—or, rather, I hoped it was going to help me.
“What’s your friend’s name?” I asked.
He hesitated.
“What is the name of the tiny woman whose door is across the street from the grocery?” I made myself plain.
“Hsiu Hsiu.”