We rode down the street, jerking our eyes around, hunting for buildings that looked like deserted warehouses. It was light enough by now to see well.

Presently I spotted a big square rusty-red building set in the center of a weedy lot. Disuse stuck out all over lot and building. It had the look of a likely candidate.

“Pull up at the next corner,” I said. “That looks like the dump. You stick with the heap while I scout it.”

I walked two unnecessary blocks so I could come into the lot behind the building. I crossed the lot carefully, not sneaking, but not making any noises I could avoid.

I tried the back door cautiously. It was locked, of course. I moved over to a window, tried to look in, couldn’t because of gloom and dirt, tried the window, and couldn’t budge it.

I went to the next window with the same luck. I rounded the corner of the building and began working my way along the north side. The first window had me beaten. The second went up slowly with my push, and didn’t make much noise doing it.

Across the inside of the window frame, from top to bottom, boards were nailed. They looked solid and strong from where I stood.

I cursed them, and remembered hopefully that the window hadn’t made much noise when I raised it. I climbed up on the sill, put a hand against the boards, and tried them gently.

They gave.

I put more weight behind my hand. The boards went away from the left side of the frame, showing me a row of shiny nail points.

I pushed them back farther, looked past them, saw nothing but darkness, heard nothing.

With my gun in my right fist, I stepped over the sill, down into the building. Another step to the left put me out of the window’s gray light.

I switched my gun to my left hand and used my right to push the boards back over the window.

A full minute of breathless listening got me nothing. Holding my gun-arm tight to my side, I began exploring the joint. Nothing but the floor came under my feet as I inch-by-inched them forward. My groping left hand felt nothing until it touched a rough wall. I seemed to have crossed a room that was empty.

I moved along the wall, hunting for a door. Half a dozen of my under-sized steps brought me to one. I leaned an ear against it, and heard no sound.

I found the knob, turned it softly, eased the door back.

Something swished.

I did four things all together: let go the knob, jumped, pulled trigger, and had my left arm walloped with something hard and heavy as a tombstone.

The flare of my gun showed me nothing. It never does, though it’s easy to think you’ve seen things. Not knowing what else to do, I fired again, and once more.

An old man’s voice pleaded:

“Don’t do that, partner. You don’t have to do that.”

I said: “Make a light.”

A match spluttered on the floor, kindled, and put flickering yellow light on a battered face. It was an old face of the useless, characterless sort that goes well with park benches. He was sitting on the floor, his stringy legs sprawled far apart. He didn’t seem hurt anywhere. A table-leg lay beside him.

“Get up and make a light,” I ordered, “and keep matches burning until you’ve done it.”

He struck another match, sheltered it carefully with his hands as he got up, crossed the room, and lit a candle on a three-legged table.

I followed him, keeping close. My left arm was numb or I would have taken hold of him for safety.

“What are you doing here?” I asked when the candle was burning.

I didn’t need his answer. One end of the room was filled with wooden cases piled six high, branded Perfection Maple Syrup.

While the old man explained that as God was his keeper he didn’t know nothing about it, that all he knew was that a man named Yates had two days ago hired him as night watchman, and if anything was wrong he was as innocent as innocent, I pulled part of the top off one case.

The bottles inside had Canadian Club labels that looked as if they had been printed with a rubber stamp.

I left the cases and, driving the old man in front of me with the candle, searched the building. As I expected, I found nothing to indicate that this was the warehouse Whisper had occupied.

By the time we got back to the room that held the liquor my left arm was strong enough to lift a bottle. I put it in my pocket and gave the old man some advice:

“Better clear out. You were hired to take the place of some of the men Pete the Finn turned into special coppers. But Pete’s dead now and his racket has gone blooey.”

When I climbed out the window the old man was standing in front of the cases, looking at them with greedy eyes while he counted on his fingers.

∴

“Well?” Mickey asked when I returned to him and his coupé.

I took out the bottle of anything but Canadian Club, pulled the cork, passed it to him, and then put a shot into my own system.

He asked, “Well?” again.

I said: “Let’s try to find the old Redman warehouse.”

He said: “You’re going to ruin yourself some time telling people too much,” and started the car moving.

Three blocks farther up the street we saw a faded sign, Redman & Company. The building under the sign was long, low, and narrow, with corrugated iron roof and few windows.

“We’ll leave the boat around the corner,” I said. “And you’ll go with me this time. I didn’t have a whole lot of fun by myself last trip.”

When we climbed out of the coupé, an alley ahead promised a path to the warehouse’s rear. We took it.

A few people were wandering through the streets, but it was still too early for the factories that filled most of this part of town to come to life.

At the rear of our building we found something interesting. The back door was closed. Its edge, and the edge of the frame, close to the lock, were scarred. Somebody had worked there with a jimmy.

Mickey tried the door. It was unlocked. Six inches at a time, with pauses between, he pushed it far enough back to let us squeeze in.

When we squeezed in we could hear a voice. We couldn’t make out what the voice was saying. All we could hear was the faint rumble of a distant man’s voice, with a suggestion of quarrelsomeness in it.

Mickey pointed a thumb at the door’s scar and whispered.

“Not coppers.”

I took two steps inside, keeping my weight on my rubber heels. Mickey followed, breathing down the back of my neck.

Ted Wright had told me Whisper’s hiding place was in the back, upstairs. The distant rumbling voice could have been coming from there.

I twisted my face around to Mickey and asked:

“Flashlight?”

He put it in my left hand. I had my gun in my right. We crept forward.

The door, still a foot open, let in enough light to show us the way across this room to a doorless doorway. The other side of the doorway was black.

I flicked the light across the blackness, found a door, shut off the light, and went forward. The next squirt of light showed us steps leading up.

We went up the steps as if we were afraid they would break under our feet.

The rumbling voice had stopped. There was something else in the air. I didn’t know what. Maybe a voice not quite loud enough to be heard, if that means anything.

I had counted nine steps when a voice spoke clearly above us. It said:

“Sure, I killed the bitch.”

A gun said something, the same thing four times, roaring like a 16-inch rifle under the iron roof.

The first voice said: “All right.”

By that time Mickey and I had put the rest of the steps behind us, had shoved a door out of the way, and were trying to pull Reno Starkey’s hands away from Whisper’s throat.

It was a tough job and a useless one. Whisper was dead.

Reno recognized me and let his hands go limp.

His eyes were as dull, his horse face as wooden, as ever.

Mickey carried the dead gambler to the cot that stood in one end of the room, spreading him on it.

The room, apparently once an office, had two windows. In their light I could see a body stowed under the cot—Dan Rolff. A Colt’s service automatic lay in the middle of the floor.

Reno bent his shoulders, swaying.

“Hurt?” I asked.

“He put all four in me,” he said calmly, bending to press both forearms against his lower body.

“Get a doc,” I told Mickey.

“No good,” Reno said. “I got no more belly left than Peter Collins.”

I pulled a folding chair over and sat him down on it, so he could lean forward and hold himself together.

Mickey ran out and down the stairs.

“Did you know he wasn’t croaked?” Reno asked.

“No. I gave it to you the way I got it from Ted Wright.”

“Ted left too soon,” he said. “I was leary of something like that, and came to make sure. He trapped me pretty, playing dead till I was under the gun.” He stared dully at Whisper’s corpse. “Game at that, damn him. Dead, but wouldn’t lay down, bandaging hisself, laying here waiting by hisself.” He smiled, the only smile I had ever seen him use. “But he’s just meat and not much of it now.”

His voice was thickening. A little red puddle formed under the edge of his chair. I was afraid to touch him. Only the pressure of his arms, and his bent-forward position, were keeping him from falling apart.

He stared at the puddle and asked:

“How the hell did you figure you didn’t croak her?”

“I had to take it out in hoping I hadn’t, till just now,” I said. “I had you pegged for it, but couldn’t be sure. I was all hopped up that night, and had a lot of dreams, with bells ringing and voices calling, and a lot of stuff like that. I got an idea maybe it wasn’t straight dreaming so much as hop-head nightmares stirred up by things that were happening around me.

“When I woke up, the lights were out. I didn’t think I killed her, turned off the light, and went back to take hold of the ice pick. But it could have happened other ways. You knew I was there that night. You gave me my alibi without stalling. That got me thinking. Dawn tried blackmailing me after he heard Helen Albury’s story. The police, after hearing her story, tied you, Whisper, Rolff and me together. I found Dawn dead after seeing O’Marra half a block away. It looked like the shyster had tried blackmailing you. That and the police tying us together started me thinking the police had as much on the rest of you as on me. What they had on me was that Helen Albury had seen me go in or out or both that night. It was a good guess they had the same on the rest of you. There were reasons for counting Whisper and Rolff out. That left you—and me. But why you killed her’s got me puzzled.”

“I bet you,” he said, watching the red puddle grow on the floor. “It was her own damned fault. She calls me up, tells me Whisper’s coming to see her, and says if I get there first I can bushwhack him. I’d like that. I go over there, stick around, but he don’t show.”

He stopped, pretending interest in the shape the red puddle was taking. I knew pain had stopped him, but I knew he would go on talking as soon as he got himself in hand. He meant to die as he had lived, inside the same tough shell. Talking could be torture, but he wouldn’t stop on that account, not while anybody was there to see him. He was Reno Starkey who could take anything the world had without batting an eye, and he would play it out that way to the end.

“I got tired of waiting,” he went on after a moment. “I hit her door and asked howcome. She takes me in, telling me there’s nobody there. I’m doubtful, but she swears she’s alone, and we go back in the kitchen. Knowing her, I’m beginning to think maybe it’s me and not Whisper that’s being trapped.”

Mickey came in, telling us he had phoned for an ambulance.

Reno used the interruption to rest his voice, and then continued with his story:

“Later, I find that Whisper did phone her he was coming, and got there before me. You were coked. She was afraid to let him in, so he beat it. She don’t tell me that, scared I’ll go and leave her. You’re hopped and she wants protection against Whisper coming back. I don’t know none of that then. I’m leary that I’ve walked into something, knowing her. I think I’ll take hold of her and slap the truth out of her. I try it, and she grabs the pick and screams. When she squawks, I hear a man’s feet hitting the floor. The trap’s sprung, I think.”

He spoke slower, taking more time and pains to turn each word out calmly and deliberately, as talking became harder. His voice had become blurred, but if he knew it he pretended he didn’t.

“I don’t mean to be the only one that’s hurt. I twist the pick out of her hand and stick it in her. You gallop out, coked to the edges, charging at the whole world with both eyes shut. She tumbles into you. You go down, roll around till your hand hits the butt of the pick. Holding on to that, you go to sleep, peaceful as she is. I see it then, what I’ve done. But hell! she’s croaked. There’s nothing to do about it. I turn off the lights and go home. When you—”

A tired looking ambulance crew—Poisonville gave them plenty of work—brought a litter into the room, ending Reno’s tale. I was glad of it. I had all the information I wanted, and sitting there listening to and watching him talk himself to death wasn’t pleasant.

I took Mickey over to a corner of the room and muttered in his ear:

“The job’s yours from now on. I’m going to duck. I ought to be in the clear, but I know my Poisonville too well to take any chances. I’ll drive your car to some way station where I can catch a train for Ogden. I’ll be at the Roosevelt Hotel there, registered as P. F. King. Stay with the job, and let me know when it’s wise to either take my own name again or a trip to Honduras.”

I spent most of my week in Ogden trying to fix up my reports so they would not read as if I had broken as many Agency rules, state laws and human bones as I had.

Mickey arrived on the sixth night.

He told me that Reno was dead, that I was no longer officially a criminal, that most of the First National Bank stick-up loot had been recovered, that MacSwain had confessed killing Tim Noonan, and that Personville, under martial law, was developing into a sweet-smelling and thornless bed of roses.

Mickey and I went back to San Francisco.

I might just as well have saved the labor and sweat I had put into trying to make my reports harmless. They didn’t fool the Old Man. He gave me merry hell.