Standing beside the cashier’s desk in the front office of the Continental Detective Agency’s San Francisco branch, I was watching Porter check up my expense account when the man came in. He was a tall man, rawboned, hard-faced. Grey clothes bagged loosely from his wide shoulders. In the late afternoon sunlight that came through partially drawn blinds, his skin showed the color of new tan shoes.
He opened the door briskly, and then hesitated, standing in the doorway, holding the door open, turning the knob back and forth with one bony hand. There was no indecision in his face. It was ugly and grim, and its expression was the expression of a man who is remembering something disagreeable.
Tommy Howd, our freckled and snub-nosed office boy, got up from his desk and went to the rail that divided the office.
“Do you—?” Tommy began, and jumped back.
The man had let go the doorknob. He crossed his long arms over his chest, each hand gripping a shoulder. His mouth stretched wide in a yawn that had nothing to do with relaxation. His mouth clicked shut. His lips snarled back from clenched yellow teeth.
“Hell!” he grunted, full of disgust, and pitched down on the floor.
I heaved myself over the rail, stepped across his body, and went out into the corridor.
Four doors away, Agnes Braden, a plump woman of thirty-something who runs a public stenographic establishment, was going into her office.