“The vicious circle is this Occidental police, Mr. Kingsborough. They say a perfect circle can’t be squared; but this circle I guess has got a kink in the loop half the way around.”
“Colonel Mackenzie is a good man.”
“Why, sure, Mr. Kingsborough, he’s a wonderful man, but he’s not been in the police yet a quarter of a year. Still, that’s the business he’s up against. It’s a business run by old fox Don Manuel, in Santa Barbara, with all the resources of a thriving state to back him. But we are going to have it stopped.”
“In your investigations into this rum-running, Mr. Brown, did you ever hear of or come across a man called Hirsch, nicknamed Sagrado or Sagrado B., now living in Santa Barbara?”
“Sagrado, you say?”
“Yes, the Holy One.”
“I guess you’ve got the name wrong, Mr. Kingsborough; there’s no holy one in Santa Barbara. I guess you mean Sangrado, a blood-letter. They have a whole alphabet of them. But Hirsch and Sagrado, no.”
“I was warned against that man.”
“I guess it will be some nickname or gang-name. May I ask who it was who warned you, Mr. Kingsborough, against this man Hirsch?”
“A stranger.”