It was half-past five. I walked around a few blocks until I came to an unlighted electric sign that said Hotel Crawford, climbed a flight of steps to the second floor office, registered, left a call for ten o’clock, was shown into a shabby room, moved some of the Scotch from my flask to my stomach, and took old Elihu’s ten-thousand-dollar check and my gun to bed with me.

At ten I dressed, went up to the First National Bank, found young Albury, and asked him to certify Willsson’s check for me. He kept me waiting a while. I suppose he phoned the old man’s residence to find out if the check was on the up-and-up. Finally he brought it back to me, properly scribbled on.

I sponged an envelope, put the old man’s letter and check in it, addressed it to the Agency in San Francisco, stuck a stamp on it, and went out and dropped it in the mail-box on the corner.

Then I returned to the bank and said to the boy:

“Now tell me why you killed him.”

He smiled and asked:

“Cock Robin or President Lincoln?”

“You’re not going to admit off-hand that you killed Donald Willsson?”

“I don’t want to be disagreeable,” he said, still smiling, “but I’d rather not.”

“That’s going to make it bad,” I complained. “We can’t stand here and argue very long without being interrupted. Who’s the stout party with cheaters coming this way?”

The boy’s face pinkened. He said:

“Mr. Dritton, the cashier.”

“Introduce me.”

The boy looked uncomfortable, but he called the cashier’s name. Dritton—a large man with a smooth pink face, a fringe of white hair around an otherwise bald pink head, and rimless nose glasses—came over to us.

The assistant cashier mumbled the introductions. I shook Dritton’s hand without losing sight of the boy.

“I was just saying,” I addressed Dritton, “that we ought to have a more private place to talk in. He probably won’t confess till I’ve worked on him a while, and I don’t want everybody in the bank to hear me yelling at him.”

“Confess?” The cashier’s tongue showed between his lips.

“Sure.” I kept my face, voice and manner bland, mimicking Noonan. “Didn’t you know that Albury is the fellow who killed Donald Willsson?”

A polite smile at what he thought an asinine joke started behind the cashier’s glasses, and changed to puzzlement when he looked at his assistant. The boy was rouge-red and the grin he was forcing his mouth to wear was a terrible thing.

Dritton cleared his throat and said heartily:

“It’s a splendid morning. We’ve been having splendid weather.”

“But isn’t there a private room where we can talk?” I insisted.

Dritton jumped nervously and questioned the boy:

“What—what is this?”

Young Albury said something nobody could have understood.

I said: “If there isn’t I’ll have to take him down to the City Hall.”

Dritton caught his glasses as they slid down his nose, jammed them back in place and said:

“Come back here.”

We followed him down the length of the lobby, through a gate, and into an office whose door was labeled President—old Elihu’s office. Nobody was in it.

I motioned Albury into one chair and picked another for myself. The cashier fidgeted with his back against the desk, facing both of us.

“Now, sir, will you explain this,” he said.

“We’ll get around to that,” I told him and turned to the boy. “You’re an ex-boy-friend of Dinah’s who was given the air. You’re the only one who knew her intimately who could have known about the certified check in time to phone Mrs. Willsson and Thaler. Willsson was shot with a .32. Banks like that caliber. Maybe the gun you used wasn’t a bank gun, but I think it was. Maybe you didn’t put it back. Then there’ll be one missing. Anyway I’m going to have a gun expert put his microscopes and micrometers on the bullets that killed Willsson and bullets fired from all the bank guns.”

The boy looked calmly at me and said nothing. He had himself under control again. That wouldn’t do. I had to be nasty. I said:

“You were cuckoo over the girl. You confessed to me that it was only because she wouldn’t stand for it that you didn’t—”

“Don’t—please don’t,” he gasped. His face was red again.

I made myself sneer at him until his eyes went down. Then I said:

“You talked too much, son. You were too damned anxious to make your life an open book for me. That’s a way you amateur criminals have. You’ve always got to overdo the frank and open business.”

He was watching his hands. I let him have the other barrel:

“You know you killed him. You know if you used a bank gun, and if you put it back. If you did you’re nailed now, without an out. The gun-sharks will take care of that. If you didn’t, I’m going to nail you anyhow. All right. I don’t have to tell you whether you’ve got a chance or not. You know.

“Noonan is framing Whisper Thaler for the job. He can’t convict him, but the frame-up is tight enough that if Thaler’s killed resisting arrest, the chief will be in the clear. That’s what he means to do—kill Thaler. Thaler stood off the police all night in his King Street joint. He’s still standing them off—unless they’ve got to him. The first copper that gets to him—exit Thaler.

“If you figure you’ve got a chance to beat your rap, and you want to let another man be killed on your account, that’s your business. But if you know you haven’t got a chance—and you haven’t if the gun can be found—for God’s sake give Thaler one by clearing him.”

“I’d like,” Albury’s voice was an old man’s. He looked up from his hands, saw Dritton, said, “I’d like,” again and stopped.

“Where is the gun?” I asked.

“In Harper’s cage,” the boy said.

I scowled at the cashier and asked him:

“Will you get it?”

He went out as if he were glad to go.

“I didn’t mean to kill him,” the youngster said. “I don’t think I meant to.”

I nodded encouragingly, trying to look solemnly sympathetic.

“I don’t think I meant to kill him,” he repeated, “though I took the gun with me. You were right about my being cuckoo over Dinah—then. It was worse some days than others. The day Willsson brought the check in was one of the bad ones. All I could think about was that I had lost her because I had no more money, and he was taking five thousand dollars to her. It was the check. Can you understand that? I had known that she and Thaler were—you know. If I had learned that Willsson and she were too, without seeing the check, I wouldn’t have done anything. I’m sure of it. It was seeing the check—and knowing I’d lost her because my money was gone.

“I watched her house that night and saw him go in. I was afraid of what I might do, because it was one of the bad days, and I had the gun in my pocket. Honestly I didn’t want to do anything. I was afraid. I couldn’t think of anything but the check, and why I had lost her. I knew Willsson’s wife was jealous. Everybody knew that. I thought if I called her up and told her—I don’t know exactly what I thought, but I went to a store around the corner and phoned her. Then I phoned Thaler. I wanted them there. If I could have thought of anyone else who had anything to do with either Dinah or Willsson I’d have called them too.

“Then I went back and watched Dinah’s house again. Mrs. Willsson came, and then Thaler, and both of them stayed there, watching the house. I was glad of that. With them there I wasn’t so afraid of what I might do. After a while Willsson came out and walked down the street. I looked up at Mrs. Willsson’s car and at the doorway where I knew Thaler was. Neither of them did anything, and Willsson was walking away. I knew then why I had wanted them there. I had hoped they would do something—and I wouldn’t have to. But they didn’t, and he was walking away. If one of them had gone over and said something to him, or even followed him, I wouldn’t have done anything.

“But they didn’t. I remember taking the gun out of my pocket. Everything was blurred in front of my eyes, like I was crying. Maybe I was. I don’t remember shooting—I mean I don’t remember deliberately aiming and pulling the trigger—but I can remember the sound the shots made, and that I knew the noise was coming from the gun in my hand. I don’t remember how Willsson looked, if he fell before I turned and ran up the alley, or not. When I got home I cleaned and reloaded the pistol, and put it back in the paying teller’s cage the next morning.”

∴

On the way down to the City Hall with the boy and the gun I apologized for the village cut-up stuff I had put in the early part of the shake-down, explaining:

“I had to get under your skin, and that was the best way I knew. The way you’d talked about the girl showed me you were too good an actor to be broken down by straight hammering.”

He winced, and said slowly:

“That wasn’t acting, altogether. When I was in danger, facing the gallows, she didn’t—didn’t seem so important to me. I couldn’t—I can’t now—quite understand—fully—why I did what I did. Do you know what I mean? That somehow makes the whole thing—and me—cheap. I mean, the whole thing from the beginning.”

I couldn’t find anything to say except something meaningless, like:

“Things happen that way.”

In the chief’s office we found one of the men who had been on the storming party the night before—a red-faced official named Biddle. He goggled at me with curious gray eyes, but asked no questions about the King Street doings.

Biddle called in a young lawyer named Dart from the prosecuting attorney’s office. Albury was repeating his story to Biddle, Dart and a stenographer, when the chief of police, looking as if he had just crawled out of bed, arrived.

“Well, it certainly is fine to see you,” Noonan said, pumping my hand up and down while patting my back. “By God! you had a narrow one last night—the rats! I was dead sure they’d got you till we kicked in the doors and found the joint empty. Tell me how those son-of-a-guns got out of there.”

“A couple of your men let them out the back door, took them through the house in back, and sent them away in a department car. They took me along so I couldn’t tip you off.”

“A couple of my men did that?” he asked, with no appearance of surprise. “Well, well! What kind of looking men were they?”

I described them.

“Shore and Riordan,” he said. “I might of known it. Now what’s all this?” nodding his fat face at Albury.

I told him briefly while the boy went on dictating his statement.

The chief chuckled and said:

“Well, well, I did Whisper an injustice. I’ll have to hunt him up and square myself. So you landed the boy? That certainly is fine. Congratulations and thanks.” He shook my hand again. “You’ll not be leaving our city now, will you?”

“Not just yet.”

“That’s fine,” he assured me.

I went out for breakfast-and-lunch. Then I treated myself to a shave and hair-cut, sent a telegram to the Agency asking to have Dick Foley and Mickey Linehan shipped to Personville, stopped in my room for a change of clothes, and set out for my client’s house.

Old Elihu was wrapped in blankets in an armchair at a sunny window. He gave me a stubby hand and thanked me for catching his son’s murderer.

I made some more or less appropriate reply. I didn’t ask him how he had got the news.

“The check I gave you last night,” he said, “is only fair pay for the work you have done.”

“Your son’s check more than covered that.”

“Then call mine a bonus.”

“The Continental’s got rules against taking bonuses or rewards,” I said.

His face began to redden.

“Well, damn it—”

“You haven’t forgotten that your check was to cover the cost of investigating crime and corruption in Personville, have you?” I asked.

“That was nonsense,” he snorted. “We were excited last night. That’s called off.”

“Not with me.”

He threw a lot of profanity around. Then:

“It’s my money and I won’t have it wasted on a lot of damn-foolery. If you won’t take it for what you’ve done, give it back to me.”

“Stop yelling at me,” I said. “I’ll give you nothing except a good job of city-cleaning. That’s what you bargained for, and that’s what you’re going to get. You know now that your son was killed by young Albury, and not by your playmates. They know now that Thaler wasn’t helping you double-cross them. With your son dead, you’ve been able to promise them that the newspapers won’t dig up any more dirt. All’s lovely and peaceful again.

“I told you I expected something like that. That’s why I sewed you up. And you are sewed up. The check has been certified, so you can’t stop payment. The letter of authority may not be as good as a contract, but you’ll have to go into court to prove that it isn’t. If you want that much of that kind of publicity, go ahead. I’ll see that you get plenty.

“Your fat chief of police tried to assassinate me last night. I don’t like that. I’m just mean enough to want to ruin him for it. Now I’m going to have my fun. I’ve got ten thousand dollars of your money to play with. I’m going to use it opening Poisonville up from Adam’s apple to ankles. I’ll see that you get my reports as regularly as possible. I hope you enjoy them.”

And I went out of the house with his curses sizzling around my head.