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.”

The secretary’s mouth and eyes popped wide.

“What time did you leave Donald Willsson last night?” I asked.

“You mean night before last, the night he was killed?”

“Yeah.”

“At precisely half-past nine.”

“You were with him from five o’clock till then?”

“From a quarter after five. We went over some statements and that sort of thing in his office until nearly eight o’clock. Then we went to Bayard’s and finished our business over our dinners. He left at half-past nine, saying he had an engagement.”

“What else did he say about this engagement?”

“Nothing else.”

“Didn’t give you any hint of where he was going, who he was going to meet?”

“He merely said he had an engagement.”

“And you didn’t know anything about it?”

“No. Why? Did you think I did?”

“I thought he might have said something.” I switched back to tonight’s doings: “What visitors did Willsson have today, not counting the one he shot?”

“You’ll have to pardon me,” the secretary said, smiling apologetically, “I can’t tell you that without Mr. Willsson’s permission. I’m sorry.”

“Weren’t some of the local powers here? Say Lew Yard, or—”

The secretary shook his head, repeating:

“I’m sorry.”

“We won’t fight over it,” I said, giving it up and starting back toward the bedroom door.

The doctor came out, buttoning his overcoat.

“He will sleep now,” he said hurriedly. “Someone should stay with him. I shall be in in the morning.” He ran downstairs.

I went into the bedroom. The chief and the man who had questioned Willsson were standing by the bed. The chief grinned as if he were glad to see me. The other man scowled. Willsson was lying on his back, staring at the ceiling.

“That’s about all there is here,” Noonan said. “What say we mosey along?”

I agreed and said, “Good-night,” to the old man. He said, “Good-night,” without looking at me. The secretary came in with the chauffeur, a tall sunburned young husky.

The chief, the other sleuth—a police lieutenant named McGraw—and I went downstairs and got into the chief’s car. McGraw sat beside the driver. The chief and I sat in back.

“We’ll make the pinch along about daylight,” Noonan explained as we rode. “Whisper’s got a joint over on King Street. He generally leaves there along about daylight. We could crash the place, but that’d mean gun-play, and it’s just as well to take it easy. We’ll pick him up when he leaves.”

I wondered if he meant pick him up or pick him off. I asked:

“Got enough on him to make the rap stick?”

“Enough?” He laughed good-naturedly. “If what the Willsson dame give us ain’t enough to stretch him I’m a pickpocket.”

I thought of a couple of wisecrack answers to that. I kept them to myself.