I had to push my client’s doorbell a lot before I got any play on it.

Finally the door was opened by the tall sunburned chauffeur. He was dressed in undershirt and pants, and had a billiard cue in one fist.

“What do you want?” he demanded, and then, when he got another look at me: “It’s you, is it? Well, what do you want?”

“I want to see Mr. Willsson.”

“At four in the morning? Go on with you,” and he started to close the door.

I put a foot against it. He looked from my foot to my face, hefted the billiard cue, and asked:

“You after getting your kneecap cracked?”

“I’m not playing,” I insisted. “I’ve got to see the old man. Tell him.”

“I don’t have to tell him. He told me no later than this afternoon that if you come around he didn’t want to see you.”

“Yeah?” I took the four love letters out of my pocket, picked out the first and least idiotic of them, held it out to the chauffeur, and said: “Give him that and tell him I’m sitting on the steps with the rest of them. Tell him I’ll sit here five minutes and then carry the rest of them to Tommy Robins of the Consolidated Press.”

The chauffeur scowled at the letter, said, “To hell with Tommy Robins and his blind aunt!” took the letter, and closed the door.

Four minutes later he opened the door again and said:

“Inside, you.”

I followed him upstairs to old Elihu’s bedroom.

My client sat up in bed with his love letter crushed in one round pink fist, its envelope in the other.

His short white hair bristled. His round eyes were as much red as blue. The parallel lines of his mouth and chin almost touched. He was in a lovely humor.

As soon as he saw me he shouted:

“So after all your brave talking you had to come back to the old pirate to have your neck saved, did you?”

I said I didn’t anything of the sort. I said if he was going to talk like a sap he ought to lower his voice so the people in Los Angeles wouldn’t learn what a sap he was.

The old boy let his voice out another notch, bellowing:

“Because you’ve stolen a letter or two that don’t belong to you, you needn’t think you—”

I put fingers in my ears. They didn’t shut out the noise, but they insulted him into cutting the bellowing short.

I took the fingers out and said:

“Send the flunkey away so we can talk. You won’t need him. I’m not going to hurt you.”

He said, “Get out,” to the chauffeur.

The chauffeur, looking at me without fondness, left us, closing the door.

Old Elihu gave me the rush act, demanding that I surrender the rest of the letters immediately, wanting to know loudly and profanely where I had got them, what I was doing with them, threatening me with this, that, and the other, but mostly just cursing me.

I didn’t surrender the letters. I said:

“I took them from the man you hired to recover them. A tough break for you that he had to kill the girl.”

Enough red went out of the old man’s face to leave it normally pink. He worked his lips over his teeth, screwed up his eyes at me, and said:

“Is that the way you’re going to play it?”

His voice came comparatively quiet from his chest. He had settled down to fight.

I pulled a chair over beside the bed, sat down, put as much amusement as I could in a grin, and said:

“That’s one way.”

He watched me, working his lips, saying nothing. I said:

“You’re the damndest client I ever had. What do you do? You hire me to clean town, change your mind, run out on me, work against me until I begin to look like a winner, then get on the fence, and now when you think I’m licked again, you don’t even want to let me in the house. Lucky for me I happened to run across those letters.”

He said: “Blackmail.”

I laughed and said:

“Listen who’s naming it. All right, call it that.” I tapped the edge of the bed with a forefinger. “I’m not licked, old top. I’ve won. You came crying to me that some naughty men had taken your little city away from you. Pete the Finn, Lew Yard, Whisper Thaler, and Noonan. Where are they now?

“Yard died Tuesday morning, Noonan the same night, Whisper Wednesday morning, and the Finn a little while ago. I’m giving your city back to you whether you want it or not. If that’s blackmail, O. K. Now here’s what you’re going to do. You’re going to get hold of your mayor, I suppose the lousy village has got one, and you and he are going to phone the governor—Keep still until I get through.

“You’re going to tell the governor that your city police have got out of hand, what with bootleggers sworn in as officers, and so on. You’re going to ask him for help—the national guard would be best. I don’t know how various ruckuses around town have come out, but I do know the big boys—the ones you were afraid of—are dead. The ones that had too much on you for you to stand up to them. There are plenty of busy young men working like hell right now, trying to get into the dead men’s shoes. The more, the better. They’ll make it easier for the white-collar soldiers to take hold while everything is disorganized. And none of the substitutes are likely to have enough on you to do much damage.

“You’re going to have the mayor, or the governor, whichever it comes under, suspend the whole Personville police department, and let the mail-order troops handle things till you can organize another. I’m told that the mayor and the governor are both pieces of your property. They’ll do what you tell them. And that’s what you’re going to tell them. It can be done, and it’s got to be done.

“Then you’ll have your city back, all nice and clean and ready to go to the dogs again. If you don’t do it, I’m going to turn these love letters of yours over to the newspaper buzzards, and I don’t mean your Herald crew—the press associations. I got the letters from Dawn. You’ll have a lot of fun proving that you didn’t hire him to recover them, and that he didn’t kill the girl doing it. But the fun you’ll have is nothing to the fun people will have reading these letters. They’re hot. I haven’t laughed so much over anything since the hogs ate my kid brother.”

I stopped talking.

The old man was shaking, but there was no fear in his shaking. His face was purple again. He opened his mouth and roared:

“Publish them and be damned!”

I took them out of my pocket, dropped them on his bed, got up from my chair, put on my hat, and said:

“I’d give my right leg to be able to believe that the girl was killed by somebody you sent to get the letters. By God, I’d like to top off the job by sending you to the gallows!”

He didn’t touch the letters. He said:

“You told me the truth about Thaler and Pete?”

“Yeah. But what difference does it make? You’ll only be pushed around by somebody else.”

He threw the bedclothes aside and swung his stocky pajamaed legs and pink feet over the edge of the bed.

“Have you got the guts,” he barked, “to take the job I offered you once before—chief of police?”

“No. I lost my guts out fighting your fights while you were hiding in bed and thinking up new ways of disowning me. Find another wet nurse.”

He glared at me. Then shrewd wrinkles came around his eyes.

He nodded his old head and said:

“You’re afraid to take the job. So you did kill the girl?”

I left him as I had left him the last time, saying, “Go to hell!” and walking out.

The chauffeur, still toting his billiard cue, still regarding me without fondness, met me on the ground floor and took me to the door, looking as if he hoped I would start something. I didn’t. He slammed the door after me.

∴

The street was gray with the beginning of daylight.

Up the street a black coupé stood under some trees. I couldn’t see if anyone was in it. I played safe by walking in the opposite direction. The coupé moved after me.

There is nothing in running down streets with automobiles in pursuit. I stopped, facing this one. It came on. I took my hand away from my side when I saw Mickey Linehan’s red face through the windshield.

He swung the door open for me to get in.

“I thought you might come up here,” he said as I sat beside him, “but I was a second or two too late. I saw you go in, but was too far away to catch you.”

“How’d you make out with the police?” I asked. “Better keep driving while we talk.”

“I didn’t know anything, couldn’t guess anything, didn’t have any idea of what you were working on, just happened to hit town and meet you. Old friends—that line. They were still trying when the riot broke. They had me in one of the little offices across from the assembly room. When the circus cut loose I back-windowed them.”

“How’d the circus wind up?” I asked.

“The coppers shot hell out of them. They got the tip-off half an hour ahead of time, and had the whole neighborhood packed with specials. Seems it was a juicy row while it lasted—no duck soup for the coppers at that. Whisper’s mob, I hear.”

“Yeah. Reno and Pete the Finn tangled tonight. Hear anything about it?”

“Only that they’d had it.”

“Reno killed Pete and ran into an ambush on the get-away. I don’t know what happened after that. Seen Dick?”

“I went up to his hotel and was told he’d checked out to catch the evening train.”

“I sent him back home,” I explained. “He seemed to think I’d killed Dinah Brand. He was getting on my nerves with it.”

“Well?”

“You mean, did I kill her? I don’t know, Mickey. I’m trying to find out. Want to keep riding with me, or want to follow Dick back to the Coast?”

Mickey said:

“Don’t get so cocky over one lousy murder that maybe didn’t happen. But what the hell? You know you didn’t lift her dough and pretties.”

“Neither did the killer. They were still there after eight that morning, when I left. Dan Rolff was in and out between then and nine. He wouldn’t have taken them. The—I’ve got it! The coppers that found the body—Shepp and Vanaman—got there at nine-thirty. Besides the jewelry and money, some letters old Willsson had written the girl were—must have been—taken. I found them later in Dawn’s pocket. The two dicks disappeared just about then. See it?

“When Shepp and Vanaman found the girl dead they looted the joint before they turned in the alarm. Old Willsson being a millionaire, his letters looked good to them, so they took them along with the other valuables, and turned them—the letters—over to the shyster to peddle back to Elihu. But Dawn was killed before he could do anything on that end. I took the letters. Shepp and Vanaman, whether they did or didn’t know that the letters were not found in the dead man’s possession, got cold feet. They were afraid the letters would be traced to them. They had the money and jewelry. They lit out.”

“Sounds fair enough,” Mickey agreed, “but it don’t seem to put any fingers on any murderers.”

“It clears the way some. We’ll try to clear it some more. See if you can find Porter Street and an old warehouse called Redman. The way I got it, Rolff killed Whisper there, walked up to him and stabbed him with the ice pick he had found in the girl. If he did it that way, then Whisper hadn’t killed her. Or he would have been expecting something of the sort, and wouldn’t have let the lunger get that close to him. I’d like to look at their remains and check up.”

“Porter’s over beyond King,” Mickey said. “We’ll try the south end first. It’s nearer and more likely to have warehouses. Where do you set this Rolff guy?”

“Out. If he killed Whisper for killing the girl, that marks him off. Besides, she had bruises on her wrist and cheek, and he wasn’t strong enough to rough her. My notion is that he left the hospital, spent the night God knows where, showed up at the girl’s house after I left that morning, let himself in with his key, found her, decided Whisper had done the trick, took the sticker out of her, and went hunting Whisper.”

“So?” Mickey said. “Now where do you get the idea that you might be the boy who put it over?”

“Stop it,” I said grouchily as we turned into Porter Street. “Let’s find our warehouse.”