“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.
VII. That’s Why I Sewed You Up
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.”