“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.”