A burly man in a gray overcoat, with a gray hat pulled down over his eyes, came to meet us.
"Whisper's hep," the burly man told the chief. "He phoned Donohoe that he's going to stay in his joint. If you think you can pull him out, try it, he says."
Noonan chuckled, scratched an ear, and asked pleasantly:
"How many would you say was in there with him?"
"Fifty, anyhow."
"Aw, now! There wouldn't be that many, not at this time of morning."
"The hell there wouldn't," the burly man snarled. "They been drifting in since midnight."
"Is that so? A leak somewheres. Maybe you oughtn't to have let them in."
"Maybe I oughtn't." The burly man was angry. "But I did what you told me. You said let anybody go in or out that wanted to, but when Whisper showed to-"
"To pinch him," the chief said.
"Well, yes," the burly man agreed, looking savagely at me.
More men joined us and we held a talk-fest. Everybody was in a bad humor except the chief. He seemed to enjoy it all. I didn't know why.
Whisper's joint was a three-story brick building in the middle of the block, between two two-story buildings. The ground floor of his joint was occupied by a cigar store that served as entrance and cover for the gambling establishment upstairs. Inside, if the burly man's information was to be depended on, Whisper had collected half a hundred friends, loaded for a fight. Outside, Noonan's force was spread around the building, in the street in front, in the alley in back, and on the adjoining roofs.
"Well, boys," the chief said amiably after everybody had had his say, "I don't reckon Whisper wants trouble any more than we do, or he'd have tried to shoot his way out before this, if he's got that many with him, though I don't mind saying I don't think he has-not that many."
The burly man said: "The hell he ain't."
"So if he don't want trouble," Noonan went on, "maybe talking might do some good. You run over, Nick, and see if you can't argue him into being peaceable."
The burly man said: "The hell I will."
"Phone him, then," the chief suggested.
The burly man growled: "That's more like it," and went away.
When he came back lie looked completely satisfied.
"He says," he reported, "'Go to hell.'"
"Get the rest of the boys down here," Noonan said cheerfully. "We'll knock it over as soon as it gets light."
The burly Nick and I went around with the chief while he made sure his men were properly placed. I didn't think much of them-a shabby, shifty-eyed crew without enthusiasm for the job ahead of them.
The sky became a faded gray. The chief, Nick, and I stopped in a plumber's doorway diagonally across the street from our target.
Whisper's joint was dark, the upper windows blank, blinds down over cigar store windows and door.
"I hate to start this without giving Whisper a chance," Noonan said. "He's not a bad kid. But there's no use me trying to talk to him. He never did like me much."
He looked at me. I said nothing.
"You wouldn't want to make a stab at it?" he asked.
"Yeah, I'll try it."
"That's fine of you. I'll certainly appreciate it if you will. You just see if you can talk him into coming along without any fuss. You know what to say-for his own good and all that, like it is."
"Yeah," I said and walked across to the cigar store, taking pains to let my hands be seen swinging empty at my sides.
Day was still a little way off. The street was the color of smoke. My feet made a lot of noise on the pavement.
I stopped in front of the door and knocked the glass with a knuckle, not heavily. The green blind down inside the door made a mirror of the glass. In it I saw two men moving up the other side of the street.
No sound came from inside. I knocked harder, then slid my hand down to rattle the knob.
Advice came from indoors:
"Get away from there while you're able."
It was a muffled voice, but not a whisper, so probably not Whisper's.
"I want to talk to Thaler," I said.
"Go talk to the lard-can that sent you."
"I'm not talking for Noonan. Is Thaler where he can hear me?"
A pause. Then the muffled voice said: "Yes."
"I'm the Continental op who tipped Dinah Brand off that Noonan was framing you," I said. "I want five minutes' talk with you. I've got nothing to do with Noonan except to queer his racket. I'm alone. I'll drop my rod in the street if you say so. Let me in."
I waited. It depended on whether the girl had got to him with the story of my interview with her. I waited what seemed a long time.
The muffled voice said:
"When we open, come in quick. And no stunts."
"All set."
The latch clicked. I plunged in with the door.
Across the street a dozen guns emptied themselves. Class shot from door and windows tinkled around us.
Somebody tripped me. Fear gave me three brains and half a dozen eyes. I was in a tough spot. Noonan had slipped me a pretty dose. These birds couldn't help thinking I was playing his game.
I tumbled down, twisting around to face the door. My gun was in my hand by the time I hit the floor.
Across the street, burly Nick had stepped out of a doorway to pump slugs at us with both hands.
I steadied my gun-arm on the floor. Nick's body showed over the front sight. I squeezed the gun. Nick stopped shooting. He crossed his guns on his chest and went down in a pile on the sidewalk.
Hands on my ankles dragged me back. The floor scraped pieces off my chin. The door slammed shut. Some comedian said:
"Uh-huh, people don't like you."
I sat up and shouted through the racket:
"I wasn't in on this."
The shooting dwindled, stopped. Door and window blinds were dotted with gray holes. A husky whisper said in the darkness:
"Tod, you and Slats keep an eye on things down here. The rest of us might as well go upstairs."
We went through a room behind the store, into a passageway, up a flight of carpeted steps, and into a second-story room that held a green table banked for crap-shooting. It was a small room, had no windows, and the lights were on.
There were five of us. Thaler sat down and lit a cigarette, a small dark young man with a face that was pretty in a chorusman way until you took another look at the thin hard mouth. An angular blond kid of no more than twenty in tweeds sprawled on his back on a couch and blew cigarette smoke at the ceiling. Another boy, as blond and as young, but not so angular, was busy straightening his scarlet tie, smoothing his yellow hair. A thin-faced man of thirty with little or no chin under a wide loose mouth wandered up and down the room looking bored and humming Rosy Cheeks.
I sat in a chair two or three feet from Thaler's.
"How long is Noonan going to keep this up?" he asked. There was no emotion in his hoarse whispering voice, only a shade of annoyance.
"He's after you this trip," I said. "I think he's going through with it."
The gambler smiled a thin, contemptuous smile.
"He ought to know what a swell chance he's got of hanging a onelegged rap like that on me."
"He's not figuring on proving anything in court," I said.
"No?"
"You're to be knocked off resisting arrest, or trying to make a getaway. He won't need much of a case after that."
"He's getting tough in his old age." The thin lips curved in another smile. He didn't seem to think much of the fat chief's deadliness. "Any time he rubs me out I deserve rubbing. What's he got against you?"
"He's guessed I'm going to make a nuisance of myself."
"Too bad. Dinah told me you were a pretty good guy, except kind of Scotch with the roll."
"I had a nice visit. Will you tell me what you know about Donald Willsson's killing?"
"His wife plugged him."
"You saw her?"
"I saw her the next second-with the gat in her hand."
"That's no good to either of us," I said. "I don't know how far you've got it cooked. Rigged right, you could make it stick in court, maybe, but you'll not get a chance to make your play there. If Noonan takes you at all he'll take you stiff. Give me the straight of it. I only need that to pop the job."
He dropped his cigarette on the floor, mashed it under his foot, and asked:
"You that hot?"
"Give me your slant on it and I'm ready to make the pinch-if I can get out of here."
He lit another cigarette and asked:
"Mrs. Willsson said it was me that phoned her?"
"Yeah-after Noonan had persuaded her. She believes it now- maybe."
"You dropped Big Nick," he said. "I'll take a chance on you. A man phoned me that night. I don't know him, don't know who he was. He said Willsson had gone to Dinah's with a check for five grand. What the hell did I care? But, see, it was funny somebody I didn't know cracked it to me. So I went around. Dan stalled me away from the door. That was all right. But still it was funny as hell that guy phoned me.
"I went up the street and took a plant in a vestibule. I saw Mrs. Willsson's heap standing in the street, but I didn't know then that it was hers or that she was in it. He came out pretty soon and walked down the street. I didn't see the shots. I heard them. Then this woman jumps out of the heap and runs over to him. I knew she hadn't done the shooting. I ought to have beat it. But it was all funny as hell, so when I saw the woman was Willsson's wife I went over to them, trying to find out what it was all about. That was a break, see? So I had to make an out for myself, in case something slipped. I strung the woman. That's the whole damned works-on the level."
"Thanks," I said. "That's what I came for. Now the trick is to get out of here without being mowed down."
"No trick at all," Thaler assured me. "We go any time we want to."
"I want to now. If I were you, I'd go too. You've got Noonan pegged as a false-alarm, but why take a chance? Make the sneak and keep under cover till noon, and his frame-up will be a wash-out."
Thaler put his hand in his pants pocket and brought out a fat roll of paper money. He counted off a hundred or two, some fifties, twenties, tens, and held them out to the chinless man, saying:
"Buy us a get-away, Jerry, and you don't have to give anybody any more dough than he's used to."
Jerry took the money, picked up a hat from the table, and strolled out. Half an hour later he returned and gave some of the bills back to Thaler, saying casually:
"We wait in the kitchen till we get the office."
We went down to the kitchen. It was dark there. More men joined us.
Presently something hit the door.
Jerry opened the door and we went down three steps into the back yard. It was almost full daylight. There were ten of us in the party.
"This all?" I asked Thaler.
He nodded.
"Nick said there were fifty of you."
"Fifty of us to stand off that crummy force!" he sneered.
A uniformed copper held the back gate open, muttering nervously:
"Hurry it up, boys, please."
I was willing to hurry, but nobody else paid any attention to him.
We crossed an alley, were beckoned through another gate by a big man in brown, passed through a house, out into the next street, and climbed into a black automobile that stood at the curb.
One of the blond boys drove. He knew what speed was.
I said I wanted to be dropped off somewhere in the neighborhood of the Great Western Hotel. The driver looked at Whisper, who nodded. Five minutes later I got out in front of my hotel.
"See you later," the gambler whispered, and the car slid away.
The last I saw of it was its police department license plate vanishing around a corner.
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 eves 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 gunsharks 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 von?"
"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.