“Go up to his flophouse and find out who he is.”
The little Canadian was gone half an hour.
“Sam Arlie,” he said when he returned. “Been there six months. Supposed to be barber—when he’s working—if ever.”
“I’ve got two guesses about this Arlie,” I told Dick. “The first is that he’s the gink who carved me in Sausalito the other night. The second is that something’s going to happen to him.”
It was against Dick’s rules to waste words, so he said nothing.
I called Tom-Tom Carey’s hotel and got the swarthy man on the wire.
“Come over,” I invited him. “I’ve got some news for you.”
“As soon as I’m dressed and breakfasted,” he promised.
“When Carey leaves here you’re to go along behind him,” I told Dick after I had hung up. “If Arlie connects with him now, maybe there’ll be something doing. Try to see it.”
Then I phoned the detective bureau and made a date with Sergeant Hunt to visit Angel Grace Cardigan’s apartment. After that I busied myself with paper work until Tommy came in to announce the swarthy man from Nogales.
“The jobbie who’s tailing you,” I informed him when he had sat down and begun work on a cigarette, “is a barber named Arlie,” and I told him where Arlie lived.
“Yes. A slim-faced, sandy lad?”
I gave him the description Dick had given me.