Hammett's eyes fell at last to the cigarette his fingers had made. He ran a tongue along the edge, pressed it, and as he lit a match his eyes came back to Holmes'. “You're that Holmes, aren't you? The detective.”

“I am, yes.”

“I always thought . . .”

“That I was a fictional character?”

“That maybe there'd been some . . . exaggerations.”

Holmes laughed aloud. “One of the inadvertent side-effects of Watson's florid writing style coupled with Conan Doyle's name is that Sherlock Holmes tends to be either wildly overestimated, or the other extreme, dismissed entirely as something of a joke. It used to infuriate me—Doyle's a dangerously gullible lunatic—but apart from the blow to my ego, it's actually remarkably convenient.”

“You don't say,” Hammett responded, clearly taken aback at the idea of the flesh-and-blood man seated in his living-room being considered a piece of fiction. And no doubt wondering how he would feel, were someone to do the same to him.

It was all a bit dizzying.

Fortunately, Holmes had his eye on the ball. “Now, will you tell me who hired you to follow me?”

“Okay. You're right. But it was through the Pinkertons. I used to work for them, and like I said, I still do little jobs for them from time to time, when I feel up to it. I had a bad spell recently, but the rent's due, so when one of my old partners there called and said they needed a couple nights' work I said sure. But after I'd got the job, I began to wonder if he hadn't thought the job stunk and decided to palm it off on me. Here, let me show you.”

He went to the table and opened the top drawer, pulling out a thick brown file folder, which he laid on the small table and flipped open, sliding the top piece of paper over to Holmes. On it was printed:

I wish to know all possible details concerning the whereabouts and interests of Mr. S. Holmes and Miss M. Russell, staying at the St Francis Hotel. She owns a house in Pacific Heights. I shall phone you at 8:00 on the morning of Tuesday, 6 May for news.

“That's what I got, that and a 'phone call. Now, it's not unusual to get a case over the 'phone, but I like to meet my clients face-to-face, and the lady didn't seem all that eager to meet with me. Refused, in fact. And paid cash in an envelope delivered by messenger—not a service either, just a kid, a shabby one. The whole set-up made me feel pretty uncomfortable.”

“Thinking that perhaps you were being brought into something less than legal?”

“That there was something shady here, and I don't like being played for a chump.”

“‘Played for a chump',” Holmes repeated to himself as he bent over the note with his pocket magnifying-glass. “A flavourful sample of the vernacular. Hmm. What can you tell me about your telephone caller?”