“I used to think I knew men,” she complained; “but, by God! I don’t. They’re lunatics, all of them.”
“So I poked him to give him back some of his self-respect. You know, treated him as I would a man instead of a down-and-outer who could be slapped around by girls.”
“Anything you say,” she sighed. “I give up. We ought to have a drink.”
We had the drink, and I said:
“You were saying you’d work with me if there was a cut of the Willsson money in it for you. There is.”
“How much?”
“Whatever you earn. Whatever what you do is worth.”
“That’s uncertain.”
“So’s your help, so far as I know.”
“Is it? I can give you the stuff, brother, loads of it, and don’t think I can’t. I’m a girl who knows her Poisonville.” She looked down at her gray-stockinged knees, waved one leg at me, and exclaimed indignantly: “Look at that. Another run. Did you ever see anything to beat it? Honest to God! I’m going barefoot.”
“Your legs are too big,” I told her. “They put too much strain on the material.”
“That’ll do out of you. What’s your idea of how to go about purifying our village?”
“If I haven’t been lied to, Thaler, Pete the Finn, Lew Yard and Noonan are the men who’ve made Poisonville the sweet-smelling mess it is. Old Elihu comes in for his share of the blame, too, but it’s not all his fault, maybe. Besides, he’s my client, even if he doesn’t want to be, so I’d like to go easy on him.
“The closest I’ve got to an idea is to dig up any and all the dirty work I can that might implicate the others, and run it out. Maybe I’ll advertise–Crime Wanted–Male or Female. If they’re as crooked as I think they are I shouldn’t have a lot of trouble finding a job or two that I can hang on them.”
“Is that what you were up to when you uncooked the fight?”
“That was only an experiment–just to see what would happen.”
“So that’s the way you scientific detectives work. My God! for a fat, middle-aged, hard-boiled, pig-headed guy, you’ve got the vaguest way of doing things I ever heard of.”
“Plans are all right sometimes,” I said. “And sometimes just stirring things up is all right–if you’re tough enough to survive, and keep your eyes open so you’ll see what you want when it comes to the top.”
“That ought to be good for another drink,” she said.
XI. The Swell Spoon
We had another drink.
She put her glass down, licked her lips, and said:
“If stirring things up is your system, I’ve got a swell spoon for you. Did you ever hear of Noonan’s brother Tim, the one who committed suicide out at Mock Lake a couple of years ago?”
“No.”
“You wouldn’t have heard much good. Anyway, he didn’t commit suicide. Max killed him.”
“Yeah?”
“For God’s sake wake up. This I’m giving you is real. Noonan was like a father to Tim. Take the proof to him and he’ll be after Max like nobody’s business. That’s what you want, isn’t it?”
“We’ve got proof?”
“Two people got to Tim before he died, and he told them Max had done it. They’re both still in town, though one won’t live a lot longer. How’s that?”
She looked as if she were telling the truth, though with women, especially blue-eyed women, that doesn’t always mean anything.
“Let’s listen to the rest of it,” I said. “I like details and things.”
“You’ll get them. You ever been out to Mock Lake? Well, it’s our summer resort, thirty miles up the canyon road. It’s a dump, but it’s cool in summer, so it gets a good play. This was summer a year ago, the last week-end in August. I was out there with a fellow named Holly. He’s back in England now, but you don’t care anything about that, because he’s got nothing to do with it. He was a funny sort of old woman–used to wear white silk socks turned inside out so the loose threads wouldn’t hurt his feet. I got a letter from him last week. It’s around here somewhere, but that doesn’t make any difference.