I handed him the twenty dollars. “I’ll be waiting at six o’clock tonight, Danby. Just step right into my car.”

  He looked at both sides of the twenty-dollar bill as though afraid it might be a counterfeit, then stalked into the restaurant without a word of thanks.

  I went up and saw my broker.

  “How you coming with the mining stock?” I asked.

  “I’m buying it — scads of it, cheap. Lam, I wish you wouldn’t do that.”

  “Why?”

  “The stuff’s no good. It’s a mail-order promotion in the first place. In the second place the mine has been losing money on every carload of ore mined. In the third place it’s indebted to the bank on a big loan. In the fourth place the mainspring of the whole thing was this guy, Bishop, and he’s kicked the bucket.

  “If you were trying to find the worst investment on earth you couldn’t have picked a more likely prospect.”

  I grinned.

  “That tells me all I want to know,” he said. “Would it be all right if I picked up a few shares for my personal account?”

  “Don’t put the price up,” I warned.

  “Hell’s bells, Lam, you couldn’t put in enough money to jack up the price of that stock if you used a steam shovel.”

  “You getting a lot?”

  “Lots of it.”

  “Keep getting the stuff,” I said, and walked out.

  At the appointed time I went to pick up Danby.

  He wasn’t too glad to see me.

  “The cops may not like this at all,” he said.

  “The cops aren’t paying you money.”

  “Cops have a way of getting mean when they don’t like things.”

  I said, “Here’s fifty dollars. How much unpleasantness would that account for?”

  His eyes were greedy and shrewd. “All but ten dollars’ worth,” he said.

  I added another ten, and he slowly pocketed the money.

  “What do you want to do?”

  I said, “We’re going places.”

  “What sort of places?”

  “Where we can sit in an automobile.”

  “And then what do we do?”

  “If you see anyone you know you tell me.”

  “That’s all?”

  “That’s all.”

  We drove rapidly out Van Ness Avenue, crossed Market Street, took the road to Daly City, and I slowed down as we came to the address of The Green Door.

  It was an interesting enough place, pretty well disguised, all things considered.

  Years ago San Francisco went in for a certain type of flat — a series of storerooms for little businesses on the ground floor, then two stories of flats above it, all with conventional bow windows and a type of architecture which is so typically San Franciscan that it can be recognized anywhere.

  The Green Door was in one of these buildings.

  On one side was a neighborhood grocery, a place with a small stock, that had a few neighborhood clients and carried charge accounts. The credit feature was the only way such a one-man business could compete with the big cashand- carry markets where buying is on a mass basis, selling is for spot cash, and there is no trouble with bookkeeping, deadbeats, or failures.

  On the other side was a dry-cleaning establishment. In between the two was The Green Door, a plain, unpretentious place which had its door painted a distinctive shade of green.

  I cruised around and looked the place over.

  Apparently patrons had been requested to park their cars half a block away. Taxicabs could pull up in front of the door, but three big, high-powered automobile jobs I saw scattered around the neighborhood were parked in unostentatious places. The street in front of The Green Door and on the other side had a few broken-down automobiles quite evidently belonging to the tenants who lived in the district.

  The two stories of flats above The Green Door were just like any other flats in the neighborhood. One of them had a For Rent sign in the window, but the name of the real estate agency on that sign had been defunct for ten years. The others had various types of lace curtains, window shades, some of them with flowers in the window, but all giving the general outward impression of flats that were tenanted by people with different individualities and temperaments, having in common a low income and a desire for cheap rents.

  This appearance, of course, was only a stage setting, a false front which was presented to the street. It was an artistic job.

  Usually places running with police protection don’t have to bother about an elaborate camouflage, just something that will be a sop to the public, a camouflage for the payoff which permits it to operate — just enough to keep the amateur detective from being able to spot the place in case he happens to live in the neighborhood.

  In the case of The Green Door it looked as though a pretty clever attempt had been made at covering up, which might or might not indicate an absence of police protection.

  The stores on each side of The Green Door were, of course, places that enjoyed a remarkably low rental. It therefore stood to reason that the managers had been given to understand that the one great virtue which a small businessman could hope to attain was to learn to mind his own damn business.

  We parked the car where we could see The Green Door and settled down to wait.

  It was a long wait.

  Danby asked questions at first. I let him think that the person I wanted to case would be coming to the grocery store.

  Fog came drifting in over the hills. The white streamers were pushed along by a smart sea breeze. I felt the peculiar tang of fresh stimulation which is so characteristic of San Francisco air, particularly when the fog comes rolling in.

  A taxicab pulled up in front of The Green Door; two men got out, pushed the door open, and went in.

  There seemed to be no guard of any sort and the door apparently was kept unlocked.

  “Know either one of them?” I asked Danby.

  “Never saw them before, neither one of them. They didn’t go to the grocery store. They went up in the apartments.”

  “So they did,” I agreed.

  We waited.

  An expensive car containing a man and a woman swung around the corner, found a parking-place, and the man and woman came strolling back.

  I left Danby sitting there, walked down to a hot-dog stand at the corner, and got a couple of sandwiches.

  Danby was getting impatient.

  “How long is this apt to last?” he inquired.

  “Until midnight.”

  “Now wait a minute! I hadn’t bargained for anything like that.”

  I said, “You did plenty of bargaining.”

  “I know, but I hadn’t thought it was going to be like this.”

  “What did you think you’d be doing?”

  “Well, I thought I’d have a chance to walk around and—”

  “Get out and walk,” I invited.

  He didn’t like the idea of that, either.

  “You mean keep walking up and down the street until midnight?”

  “If that’s what you want.”

  “I’ll sit right here.”

  We didn’t say anything more for a while. Another taxi drove up; then a group of four men, who had evidently left their car parked on another street, came walking casually along, one of them looked rather sharply inside the car at the two of us sitting there; then they crossed over the street to The Green Door.

  I didn’t like that. Whoever was operating The Green Door had probably spotted us by this time and sent a delegation to look us over.

  I looked over at Danby and wondered what he’d say if he realized that his fee might also include compensation for a damned good working-over.

  He was a grouchy guy who had taken my money and then wished he hadn’t assumed any obligation.

  “This is going to be bad,” he said. “If the club finds out, I’ll have a hard time explaining—”

  “So what?” I asked. “Where is the club going to find someone else who has your experience, someone else who knows all of the people and all of the ropes? And what if it does? When it finds out what he wants in the line of wages it’ll get a terrific jolt. I’ll bet it doesn’t know how wages have gone up. It’s probably keeping you on at the same old wages.”

  “No, the club has given me a couple of raises.”

  “How much?”

  “One fifteen percent and one ten percent.”

  “Over how long a time?”

  “Five years.”

  I made my laugh mirthless and sarcastic. Danby began to meditate on whether he was underpaid and abused. I saw he liked the thought. I liked it, too. It kept his mind occupied.

  I looked at my wrist watch. It was nine-fifteen.

  A car drove up and parked. It was a club coupe, about three years old, but a good make and it looked well cared for. The man, who didn’t seem to give a damn whether he left the car parked right in front of The Green Door or not, jumped out and looked up and down the street, then entered through the green door.

  Danby said, “That’s Horace B. Catlin. If he sees me here he—”

  “You drive a car?” I interrupted.

  “Sure.”

  “This fellow is a member of the yacht club?”

  “That’s right.”

  I said, “Wait here for an hour. If I’m not back inside of an hour, drive the car to this address, ask for the man in charge, and tell him the entire story of what we’ve been doing this evening.”

  He took the card which had the address and looked at it curiously.

  “Let’s see,” he said, “that’s down there. Let me see—

  I’m trying to get the cross street.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” I told him. “Put the card in your pocket. Be sure to ask for the man who’s in charge and then tell him the story. It’s a quarter past nine. If I’m not out of here by ten-fifteen go tell your story.”

  I slid out of the car, tossed my hat over on the seat, walked bareheaded across the street, and, just before I got to the entrance to The Green Door, looked over my shoulder.

  Danby was sitting there studying the card.

  I hoped he wouldn’t realize that the address was that of police headquarters until he got there.

  I turned the knob and pushed the green door open.

  It swung back on well-oiled hinges and I stepped into a little hallway. A flight of worn board stairs, uncarpeted, echoing and splintered, stretched up to another door.

  I started to raise my hand to knock on the door, then realized it wasn’t necessary. I’d gone through a beam of invisible light and a little shutter slid open in the door. A pair of eyes regarded me through a small window of plate glass which must have been an inch thick.

  “Got a card?” a voice asked, which evidently came through a microphone and wires.

  I produced one of the cards I had picked up at Bishop’s place. I had written my name in the blank line.

  The eyes on the other side of the plate glass regarded the card, the voice through the loud-speaker said impatiently, “Well, shove it through the crack.”

  It was then I noticed for the first time the very narrow slit in the thick door.

  I pushed the card into the narrow opening.

  There was a period of complete silence, then I heard an electric mechanism pulling bolts back. The heavy door rumbled to one side, running on rollers on a steel rail. The heavy rumbling and the vibration of the stairs as the door moved showed the reason for the microphone and the amplification of the voice. That door must have been as heavy as the door of a vault. Looking curiously around me, I suddenly realized that the stairs were the only bits of wood in the entire entranceway. I had gone through the green door and entered a steel inspection room. A raiding party of police equipped with picks and sledge hammers couldn’t have done more than dent the defenses.

  “Well,” the voice said impatiently, “go on in.”

  I noticed that the voice had said “go in” instead of “come in,” so I wasn’t too surprised to find on entering that the guard was no longer standing by the door. He had stepped into a steel, bulletproof closet on one side of the door. I could see the closet, but I couldn’t see him. He probably had a revolver covering me.

  I walked over the sunken steel rail on which the door had slid, and entered a completely new world. My feet were in a soft, thick carpet which felt like moss in a forest. The hallway glowed with the soft effect of indirect lighting. There was that atmosphere of casual, easy wealth, which is so necessary to a high-class gambling place. It’s designed to put the customer on the defensive right at the start, to make him feel that he’s associating with wealth and standing.

  There’s enough of the social climber in most people so that they fall for this stuff and consider it a privilege to be admitted to a place that specializes in taking their money. They’d walk out the worse for wear financially, but still with a certain deferential restraint. It’s an atmosphere that cuts down on beefs and scenes, and makes even the thought of rigged wheels and marked cards seem a social sacrilege.

  That atmosphere is a business investment and doesn’t cost as much as one would think. It takes a few props. One is the paintings in heavy frames, carefully illuminated by shaded frame lamps. If the customer doesn’t appreciate them he shamefacedly considers it’s due to his own artistic ignorance. Actually the paintings are twenty-dollar copies in fifty-dollar frames, illuminated by ten-dollar lights.

  The customer who can appreciate the price of the frame better than the worth of the painting, thinks they must be old masters. Otherwise why all the frame and illumination on the painting?

  The other props are even more simple — Carpets with rich colors and sponge rubber underneath, and the artistic use of color in the draperies. In the soft, indirect lighting it looks like a million dollars. By daylight it would stink.

  I entered rooms containing exactly what I had expected to find.

  The first room was nothing but a conventional cocktail lounge. It had tables, cushioned stools, a bar, love seats, dim lighting, and the all but inaudible strains of organ music.

  Two or three couples were at the tables. A party of three stags were at the far end of the bar with money scattered in front of them, two bottles of champagne, and all of the external evidence of celebrating a huge financial success.

  I wondered whether they were also part of the props.

  A coldly courteous individual handed me the card which I had left with the doorman downstairs.

  “May I ask exactly what it was you were looking for, Mr. Lam?”

  “Exactly what you have here,” I said.

  The cold eyes softened a bit. “May I ask where you got your card? Who vouched for you when you got it?”

  I said, “The card’s properly signed.”

  “I know, but sometimes signed cards are given to various sources for distribution.”

  I said, “This was given me by the owner.”

  He looked a little surprised then, turned it over, and said, “You know Mr. Channing personally then?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Then the situation is entirely different,” he said. “Just go right on in, Mr. Lam.”

  Before I could move, and as though he had been struck with an afterthought, he said apologetically, “I am afraid I’m going to have to comply with the regulations and ask to look at your driving license and make sure you’re the person described on the card.”

  “Oh, sure,” I said, and flipped open my wallet, showing him my driving license.

  “From Los Angeles, eh?”

  “That’s right.”

  “That’s probably why I don’t place you. You’re going to be up here for a while, Mr. Lam?”

  “Not long. I want a little action while I’m here. I am familiar with Al’s place down in Los Angeles.”

  “Oh,” he said. “How is Al?”

  “I don’t know him personally,” I said, “just the place. I know the manager there—”

  I stopped abruptly as though I had caught myself just in time to keep from using a name.

  “Well?” he asked.

  I smiled. “If you know the man I mean, you know his name. If you don’t know the man I mean, there’s no point in mentioning his name.”

  He laughed. “Did you wish to make any arrangements for credit, for having checks cashed, or anything, Mr. Lam?”

  “I think I have enough cash to see me through.”

  “If you’d like to make any credit arrangements—”

  “I’ll do that when I run out of cash. I’ll run in and see Channing personally in case that happens.”

  “Go on in, Mr. Lam.”

  He indicated a door at the far end of the room, around the end of the bar.

  I walked around the bar, pushed open the door, and once more found myself in a hallway. At one end was a door marked His and at the other end a door marked Hers.

  An attendant stood in the hallway.

  A buzzer made sounds. Three quick distinct buzzes.

  The white-coated attendant, without a word, pulled on a lever and a concealed door slid back.

  I entered the gambling rooms. There wasn’t much of a crowd at the moment. Probably the heavy spenders would come later, after the dinner and theater hours.

  Here again the atmosphere of synthetic luxury was carried out. There were the usual roulette and crap tables, a couple of twenty-one games, and a poker game.

  From the fact that some six or eight of the persons present at the tables were dressed for the evening and were wagering rather large stakes with that impeccable hauteur which is the sucker’s idea of the well-bred, upper class gambler, I knew they were the stooges who are employed to keep the place from seeming too lonely during the early evening, and to encourage play during the later hours.

  Horace B. Catlin wasn’t among those present.