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 eves 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 tic 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-bedamned 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?”