“He was too damned trusting to live long,” his brother explained. “This is the kind of hombre he was—the last time I saw him was four years ago, here in San Francisco. I’d come in from an expedition down to—never mind where. Anyway I was flat. Instead of pearls all I’d got out of the trip was a bullet-crease over my hip. Paddy was dirty with fifteen thousand or so he’d just nicked somebody for. The afternoon I saw him he had a date that he was leery of toting so much money to. So he gives me the fifteen thousand to hold for him till that night.”
Tom-Tom Carey blew out smoke and smiled softly past me at a memory.
“That’s the kind of hombre he was,” he went on. “He’d trust even his own brother. I went to Sacramento that afternoon and caught a train east. A girl in Pittsburgh helped me spend the fifteen thousand. Her name was Laurel. She liked rye whisky with milk for a chaser. I used to drink it with her till I was all curdled inside, and I’ve never had any appetite for schmierkäse since. So there’s a hundred thousand dollars reward on this Papadopoulos, is there?”
“And six. The insurance companies put up a hundred thousand, the bankers’ association five, and the city a thousand.”
Tom-Tom Carey chucked the remains of his cigarette in the cuspidor and began to assemble another one.
“Suppose I hand him to you?” he asked. “How many ways will the money have to go?”
“None of it will stop here,” I assured him. “The Continental Detective Agency doesn’t touch reward money—and won’t let its hired men. If any of the police are in on the pinch they’ll want a share.”
“But if they aren’t, it’s all mine?”
“If you turn him in without help, or without any help except ours.”