She pouted at me, prodded my shin with her toe, and said:
“It’s not so much the money. It’s the principle of the thing. If a girl’s got something that’s worth something to somebody, she’s a boob if she doesn’t collect.”
I grinned.
“Why don’t you be a good guy?” she begged.
Dan Rolff came in with a siphon, a bottle of gin, some lemons, and a bowl of cracked ice. We had a drink apiece. The lunger went away. The girl and I wrangled over the money question while we had more drinks. I kept trying to keep the conversation on Thaler and Willsson. She kept switching it to the money she deserved. It went on that way until the gin bottle was empty. My watch said one-fifteen.
She chewed a piece of lemon peel and said for the thirtieth or fortieth time:
“It won’t come out of your pocket. What do you care?”
“It’s not the money,” I said, “it’s the principle of the thing.”
She made a face at me and put her glass where she thought the table was. She was eight inches wrong. I don’t remember if the glass broke when it hit the floor, or what happened to it. I do remember that I was encouraged by her missing the table.
“Another thing,” I opened up a new argumentative line, “I’m not sure I really need whatever you can tell me. If I have to get along without it, I think I can.”
“It’ll be nice if you can, but don’t forget I’m the last person who saw him alive, except whoever killed him.”
“Wrong,” I said. “His wife saw him come out, walk away, and fall.”
“His wife!”
“Yeah. She was sitting in a coupe down the street.”
“How did she know he was here?”
“She says Thaler phoned her that her husband had come here with the check.”
“You’re trying to kid me,” the girl said. “Max couldn’t have known it.”
“I’m telling you what Mrs. Willsson told Noonan and me.”
The girl spit what was left of the lemon peel out on the floor, further disarranged her hair by running her fingers through it, wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, and slapped the table.
“All right, Mr. Knowitall,” she said, “I’m going to play with you. You can think it’s not going to cost you anything, but I’ll get mine before we’re through. You think I won’t?” she challenged me, peering at me as if I were a block away.
This was no time to revive the money argument, so I said: “I hope you do.” I think I said it three or four times, quite earnestly.
“I will. Now listen to me. You’re drunk, and I’m drunk, and I’m just exactly drunk enough to tell you anything you want to know. That’s the kind of girl I am. If I like a person I’ll tell them anything they want to know. Just ask me. Go ahead, ask me.”
I did:
“What did Willsson give you five thousand dollars for?”
“For fun.” She leaned back to laugh. Then: “Listen. He was hunting for scandal. I had some of it, some affidavits and things that I thought might be good for a piece of change some day. I’m a girl that likes to pick up a little jack when she can. So I had put these things away. When Donald began going after scalps I let him know that I had these things, and that they were for sale. I gave him enough of a peep at them to let him know they were good. And they were good. Then we talked about how much. He wasn’t as tight as you—nobody ever was—but he was a little bit close. So the bargain hung fire, till yesterday.
“Then I gave him the rush, phoned him and told him I had another customer for the stuff and that if he wanted it he’d have to show up that night with either five thousand smacks in cash or a certified check. That was hooey, but he hadn’t been around much, so he fell for it.”
“Why ten o’clock?” I asked.
“Why not? That’s as good a time as any other. The main thing on a deal like that is to give them a definite time. Now you want to know why it had to be cash or a certified check? All right, I’ll tell you. I’ll tell you anything you want to know. That’s the kind of girl I am. Always was.”
She went on that way for five minutes, telling me in detail just which and what sort of a girl she was, and always had been, and why. I yes-yes’d her until I got a chance to cut in with:
“All right, now why did it have to be a certified check?”
She shut one eye, waggled a forefinger at me, and said:
“So he couldn’t stop payment. Because he couldn’t have used the stuff I sold him. It was good, all right. It was too good. It would have put his old man in jail with the rest of them. It would have nailed Papa Elihu tighter than anyone else.”
I laughed with her while I tried to keep my head above the gin I had guzzled.
“Who else would it nail?” I asked.
“The whole damned lot of them.” She waved a hand. “Max, Lew Yard, Pete, Noonan, and Elihu Willsson—the whole damned lot of them.”
“Did Max Thaler know what you were doing?”
“Of course not—nobody but Donald Willsson.”
“Sure of that?”
“Sure I’m sure. You don’t think I was going around bragging about it ahead of time, do you?”
“Who do you think knows about it now?”
“I don’t care,” she said. “It was only a joke on him. He couldn’t have used the stuff.”
“Do you think the birds whose secrets you sold will see anything funny in it? Noonan’s trying to hang the killing on you and Thaler. That means he found the stuff in Donald Willsson’s pocket. They all thought old Elihu was using his son to break them, didn’t they?”
“Yes, sir,” she said, “and I’m one who thinks the same thing.”
“You’re probably wrong, but that doesn’t matter. If Noonan found the things you sold Donald Willsson in his pocket, and learned you had sold them to him, why shouldn’t he add that up to mean that you and your friend Thaler had gone over to old Elihu’s side?”
“He can see that old Elihu would be hurt as much as anybody else.”
“What was this junk you sold him?”
“They built a new City Hall three years ago,” she said, “and none of them lost any money on it. If Noonan got the papers he’ll pretty soon find out that they tied as much on old Elihu, or more, than on anybody else.”
“That doesn’t make any difference. He’ll take it for granted that the old man had found an out for himself. Take my word for it, sister, Noonan and his friends think you and Thaler and Elihu are double-crossing them.”
“I don’t give a damn what they think,” she said obstinately. “It was only a joke. That’s all I meant it for. That’s all it was.”
“That’s good,” I growled. “You can go to the gallows with a clear conscience. Have you seen Thaler since the murder?”
“No, but Max didn’t kill him, if that’s what you think, even if he was around.”
“Why?”
“Lots of reasons. First place, Max wouldn’t have done it himself. He’d have had somebody else do it, and he’d have been way off with an alibi nobody could shake. Second place, Max carries a .38, and anybody he sent to do the job would have had that much gun or more. What kind of a gunman would use a .32?”
“Then who did it?”
“I’ve told you all I know,” she said. “I’ve told you too much.”
I stood up and said:
“No, you’ve told me just exactly enough.”
“You mean you think you know who killed him?”
“Yeah, though there’s a couple of things I’ll have to cover before I make the pinch.”
“Who? Who?” She stood up, suddenly almost sober, tugging at my lapels. “Tell me who did it.”
“Not now.”
“Be a good guy.”
“Not now.”
She let go my lapels, put her hands behind her, and laughed in my face.
“All right. Keep it to yourself—and try to figure out which part of what I told you is the truth.”
I said:
“Thanks for the part that is, anyhow, and for the gin. And if Max Thaler means anything to you, you ought to pass him the word that Noonan’s trying to rib him.”
5
OLD ELIHU TALKS SENSE
It was close to two-thirty in the morning when I reached the hotel. With my key the night clerk gave me a memorandum that asked me to call Poplar 605. I knew the number. It was Elihu Willsson’s.
“When did this come?” I asked the clerk.
“A little after one.”
That sounded urgent. I went back to a booth and put in the call. The old man’s secretary answered, asking me to come out at once. I promised to hurry, asked the clerk to get me a taxi, and went up to my room for a shot of Scotch.
I would rather have been cold sober, but I wasn’t. If the night held more work for me I didn’t want to go to it with alcohol dying in me. The snifter revived me a lot. I poured more of the King George into a flask, pocketed it, and went down to the taxi.
Elihu Willsson’s house was lighted from top to bottom. The secretary opened the front door before I could get my finger on the button. His thin body was shivering in pale blue pajamas and dark blue bathrobe. His thin face was full of excitement.
“Hurry!” he said. “Mr. Willsson is waiting. And, please, will you try to persuade him to let us have the body removed?”
I promised and followed him up to the old man’s bedroom.
Old Elihu was in bed as before, but now a black automatic pistol lay on the covers close to one of his pink hands.
As soon as I appeared he took his head off the pillows, sat upright and barked at me:
“Have you got as much guts as you’ve got gall?”
His face was an unhealthy dark red. The film was gone from his eyes. They were hard and hot.
I let his question wait while I looked at the corpse on the floor between door and bed.
A short thick-set man in brown lay on his back with dead eyes staring at the ceiling from under the visor of a gray cap. A piece of his jaw had been knocked off. His chin was tilted to show where another bullet had gone through tie and collar to make a hole in his neck. One arm was bent under him. The other hand held a blackjack as big as a milk bottle. There was a lot of blood.
I looked up from this mess to the old man. His grin was vicious and idiotic.
“You’re a great talker,” he said. “I know that. A two-fisted, you-be-damned man with your words. But have you got anything else? Have you got the guts to match your gall? Or is it just the language you’ve got?”
There was no use in trying to get along with the old boy. I scowled and reminded him:
“Didn’t I tell you not to bother me unless you wanted to talk sense for a change?”
“You did, my lad.” There was a foolish sort of triumph in his voice. “And I’ll talk you your sense. I want a man to clean this pig-sty of a Poisonville for me, to smoke out the rats, little and big. It’s a man’s job. Are you a man?”
“What’s the use of getting poetic about it?” I growled. “If you’ve got a fairly honest piece of work to be done in my line, and you want to pay a decent price, maybe I’ll take it on. But a lot of foolishness about smoking rats and pig-pens doesn’t mean anything to me.”
“All right. I want Personville emptied of its crooks and grafters. Is that plain enough language for you?”
“You didn’t want it this morning,” I said. “Why do you want it now?”
The explanation was profane and lengthy and given to me in a loud and blustering voice. The substance of it was that he had built Personville brick by brick with his own hands and he was going to keep it or wipe it off the side of the hill. Nobody could threaten him in his own city, no matter who they were. He had let them alone, but when they started telling him, Elihu Willsson, what he had to do and what he couldn’t do, he would show them who was who. He brought the speech to an end by pointing at the corpse and boasting:
“That’ll show them there’s still a sting in the old man.”
I wished I were sober. His clowning puzzled me. I couldn’t put my finger on the something behind it.
“Your playmates sent him?” I asked, nodding at the dead man.
“I only talked to him with this,” he said, patting the automatic on the bed, “but I reckon they did.”
“How did it happen?”
“It happened simple enough. I heard the door opening, and I switched on the light, and there he was, and I shot him, and there he is.”
“What time?”
“It was about one o’clock.”
“And you’ve let him lie there all this time?”
“That I have.” The old man laughed savagely and began blustering again: “Does the sight of a dead man turn your stomach? Or is it his spirit you’re afraid of?”
I laughed at him. Now I had it. The old boy was scared stiff. Fright was the something behind his clowning. That was why he blustered, and why he wouldn’t let them take the body away. He wanted it there to look at, to keep panic away, visible proof of his ability to defend himself. I knew where I stood.
“You really want the town cleaned up?” I asked.
“I said I did and I do.”
“I’d have to have a free hand—no favors to anybody—run the job as I pleased. And I’d have to have a ten-thousand-dollar retainer.”
“Ten thousand dollars! Why in hell should I give that much to a man I don’t know from Adam? A man who’s done nothing I know of but talk?”
“Be serious. When I say me, I mean the Continental. You know them.”
“I do. And they know me. And they ought to know I’m good for—”
“That’s not the idea. These people you want taken to the cleaners were friends of yours yesterday. Maybe they will be friends again next week. I don’t care about that. But I’m not playing politics for you. I’m not hiring out to help you kick them back in line—with the job being called off then. If you want the job done you’ll plank down enough money to pay for a complete job. Any that’s left over will be returned to you. But you’re going to get a complete job or nothing. That’s the way it’ll have to be. Take it or leave it.”
“I’ll damned well leave it,” he bawled.
He let me get half-way down the stairs before he called me back.
“I’m an old man,” he grumbled. “If I was ten years younger—” He glared at me and worked his lips together. “I’ll give you your damned check.”
“And authority to go through with it in my own way?”
“Yes.”
“We’ll get it done now. Where’s your secretary?”
Willsson pushed a button on his bedside table and the silent secretary appeared from wherever he had been hiding. I told him:
“Mr. Willsson wants to issue a ten-thousand-dollar check to the Continental Detective Agency, and he wants to write the Agency—San Francisco branch—a letter authorizing the Agency to use the ten thousand dollars investigating crime and political corruption in Personville. The letter is to state clearly that the Agency is to conduct the investigation as it sees fit.”
The secretary looked questioningly at the old man, who frowned and ducked his round white head.
“But first,” I told the secretary as he glided toward the door, “you’d better phone the police that we’ve got a dead burglar here. Then call Mr. Willsson’s doctor.”
The old man declared he didn’t want any damned doctors.
“You’re going to have a nice shot in the arm so you can sleep,” I promised him, stepping over the corpse to take the black gun from the bed. “I’m going to stay here tonight and we’ll spend most of tomorrow sifting Poisonville affairs.”
The old man was tired. His voice, when he profanely and somewhat long-windedly told me what he thought of my impudence in deciding what was best for him, barely shook the windows.
I took off the dead man’s cap for a better look at his face. It didn’t mean anything to me. I put the cap back in place.
When I straightened up
the old man asked, moderately:
“Are you getting anywhere in your hunt for Donald’s murderer?”
“I think so. Another day ought to see it finished.”
“Who?” he asked.
The secretary came in with the letter and the check. I gave them to the old man instead of an answer to his question. He put a shaky signature on each, and I had them folded in my pocket when the police arrived.
The first copper into the room was the chief himself, fat Noonan. He nodded amiably at Willsson, shook hands with me, and looked with twinkling greenish eyes at the dead man.
“Well, well,” he said. “It’s a good job he did, whoever did it. Yakima Shorty. And will you look at the sap he’s toting?” He kicked the blackjack out of the dead man’s hand. “Big enough to sink a battleship. You drop him?” he asked me.
“Mr. Willsson.”
“Well, that certainly is fine,” he congratulated the old man. “You saved a lot of people a lot of troubles, including me. Pack him out, boys,” he said to the four men behind him.
The two in uniform picked Yakima Shorty up by legs and arm-pits and went away with him, while one of the others gathered up the blackjack and a flashlight that had been under the body.
“If everybody did that to their prowlers, it would certainly be fine,” the chief babbled on. He brought three cigars out of a pocket, threw one over on the bed, stuck one at me, and put the other in his mouth. “I was just wondering where I could get hold of you,” he told me as we lighted up. “I got a little job ahead that I thought you’d like to be in on. That’s how I happened to be on tap when the rumble came.” He put his mouth close to my ear and whispered: “Going to pick up Whisper. Want to go along?”
“Yeah.”
“I thought you would. Hello, Doc!”
He shook hands with a man who had just come in, a little plump man with a tired oval face and gray eyes that still had sleep in them.
The doctor went to the bed, where one of Noonan’s men was asking Willsson about the shooting. I followed the secretary into the hall and asked him:
“Any men in the house besides you?”
“Yes, the chauffeur, the Chinese cook.”
“Let the chauffeur stay in the old man’s room tonight. I’m going out with Noonan. I’ll get back as soon as I can. I don’t think there’ll be any more excitement here, but no matter what happens don’t leave the old man alone. And don’t leave him alone with Noonan or any of Noonan’s crew.”