“You’ll have to drop this and take a plant on Willsson’s,” I said. “I hear Whisper Thaler’s holing-up there, and I’d like an eye kept on him till I make up my mind whether to turn him up for Noonan or not.”
Dick nodded and started the engine grinding. I got out and returned to the hotel.
There was a telegram from the Old Man:
SEND BY FIRST MAIL FULL EXPLANATION OF PRESENT OPERATION AND CIRCUMSTANCES UNDER WHICH YOU ACCEPTED IT WITH DAILY REPORTS TO DATE
I put the telegram in my pocket and hoped things would keep on breaking fast. To have sent him the dope he wanted at that time would have been the same as sending in my resignation.
I bent a fresh collar around my neck and trotted over to the City Hall.
“Hello,” Noonan greeted me. “I was hoping you’d show up. Tried to get you at your hotel but they told me you hadn’t been in.”
He wasn’t looking well this morning, but under his glad-handing he seemed, for a change, genuinely glad to see me.
As I sat down one of his phones rang. He put the receiver to his ear, said, “Yes?” listened for a moment, said, “You better go out there yourself, Mac,” and had to make two attempts to get the receiver back on its prong before he succeeded. His face had gone a little doughy, but his voice was almost normal as he told me:
“Lew Yard’s been knocked off–shot coming down his front steps just now.”
“Any details?” I asked while I cursed myself for having pulled Dick Foley away from Painter Street an hour too soon. That was a tough break.
Noonan shook his head, staring at his lap.
“Shall we go out and look at the remains?” I suggested, getting up.
He neither got up nor looked up.
“No,” he said wearily to his lap. “To tell the truth, I don’t want to. I don’t know as I could stand it just now. I’m getting sick of this killing. It’s getting to me–on my nerves, I mean.”
I sat down again, considered his low spirits, and asked:
“Who do you guess killed him?”
“God knows,” he mumbled. “Everybody’s killing everybody. Where’s it going to end?”
“Think Reno did it?”
Noonan winced, started to look up at me, changed his mind, and repeated:
“God knows.”
I went at him from another angle:
“Anybody knocked off in the battle at the Silver Arrow last night?”
“Only three.”
“Who were they?”
“A pair of Johnson-brothers named Blackie Whalen and Put Collings that only got out on bail around five yesterday, and Dutch Jake Wahl, a guerrilla.”
“What was it all about?”
“Just a roughhouse, I guess. It seems that Put and Blackie and the others that got out with them were celebrating with a lot of friends, and it wound up in smoke.”
“All of them Lew Yard’s men?”
“I don’t know anything about that,” he said.
I got up, said, “Oh, all right,” and started for the door.
“Wait,” he called. “Don’t run off like that. I guess they were.”
I came back to my chair. Noonan watched the top of his desk. His face was gray, flabby, damp, like fresh putty.
“Whisper’s staying at Willsson’s,” I told him.
He jerked his head up. His eyes darkened. Then his mouth twitched, and he let his head sag again. His eyes faded.
“I can’t go through with it,” he mumbled. “I’m sick of this butchering. I can’t stand any more of it.”
“Sick enough to give up the idea of evening the score for Tim’s killing, if it’ll make peace?” I asked.
“I am.”
“That’s what started it,” I reminded him. “If you’re willing to call it off, it ought to be possible to stop it.”
He raised his face and looked at me with eyes that were like a dog’s looking at a bone.
“The others ought to be as sick of it as you are,” I went on. “Tell them how you feel about it. Have a get-together and make peace.”
“They’d think I was up to some kind of a trick,” he objected miserably.
“Have the meeting at Willsson’s. Whisper’s camping there. You’d be the one risking tricks going there. Are you afraid of that?”