Noonan looked at me out of his eye-corners and said:
“This is a tough one, no fooling.”
I said, “Well,” shrugged, and sauntered over to his car, where the driver was sitting at the wheel. I stood with my back to the house, talking to Pat. I don’t remember what we talked about. Presently Noonan and the other sleuths joined us.
Only a little flame showed through the open roadhouse door before we passed out of sight around the bend in the road.
XVI. Exit Jerry
There was a mob around the First National Bank. We pushed through it to the door, where we found sour-faced McGraw.
“Was six of them, masked,” he reported to the chief as we went inside. “They hit it about two-thirty. Five of them got away clean with the jack. The watchman here dropped one of them, Jerry Hooper. He’s over on the bench, cold. We got the roads blocked, and I wired around, if it ain’t too late. Last seen of them was when they made the turn into King Street, in a black Lincoln.”
We went over to look at the dead Jerry, lying on one of the lobby benches with a brown robe over him. The bullet had gone in under his left shoulder blade.
The bank watchman, a harmless looking old duffer, pushed up his chest and told us about it:
“There wasn’t no chance to do nothing at first. They were in ‘fore anybody knew anything. And maybe they didn’t work fast. Right down the line, scooping it up. No chance to do anything then. But I says to myself, ‘All righty, young fellows, you’ve got it all your own way now, but wait till you try to leave.’
“And I was as good as my word, you bet you. I runs right to the door after them and cut loose with the old firearm. I got that fellow just as he was stepping into the car. I bet you I’d of got more of them if I’d of had more cartridges, because it’s kind of hard shooting down like that, standing in the–”
Noonan stopped the monologue by patting the old duffer’s back till his lungs were empty, telling him, “That certainly is fine. That certainly is fine.”
McGraw pulled the robe up over the dead man again and growled:
“Nobody can identify anybody. But with Jerry on it, it’s a cinch it was Whisper’s caper.”
The chief nodded happily and said:
“I’ll leave it in your hands, Mac. Going to poke around here, or going back to the Hall with me?” he asked me.
“Neither. I’ve got a date, and I want to get into dry shoes.”
Dinah Brand’s little Marmon was standing in front of the hotel. I didn’t see her. I went up to my room, leaving the door unlocked. I had got my hat and coat off when she came in without knocking.
“My God, you keep a boozy smelling room,” she said.
“It’s my shoes. Noonan took me wading in rum.”
She crossed to the window, opened it, sat on the sill, and asked:
“What was that for?”
“He thought he was going to find your Max out in a dump called Cedar Hill Inn. So we went out there, shot the joint silly, murdered some dagoes, spilled gallons of liquor, and left the place burning.”
“Cedar Hill Inn? I thought it had been closed up for a year or more.”
“It looked it, but it was somebody’s warehouse.”
“But you didn’t find Max there?” she asked.
“While we were there he seems to have been knocking over Elihu’s First National Bank.”
“I saw that,” she said. “I had just come out of Bengren’s, the store two doors away. I had just got in my car when I saw a big boy backing out of the bank, carrying a sack and a gun, with a black handkerchief over his face.”
“Was Max with them?”
“No, he wouldn’t be. He’d send Jerry and the boys. That’s what he has them for. Jerry was there. I knew him as soon as he got out of the car, in spite of the black handkerchief. They all had black ones. Four of them came out of the bank, running down to the car at the curb. Jerry and another fellow were in the car. When the four came across the sidewalk, Jerry jumped out and went to meet them. That’s when the shooting started and Jerry dropped. The others jumped in the bus and lit out. How about that dough you owe me?”