31

“The D.A. wants to see you at nine o’clock,” he said. “After that I guess you can go on home. That is, if he doesn’t hang a pinch on you. I’m sorry you had to sit up in that chair all night.”

“It’s all right,” I said. “I needed the exercise.”

“Yeah, back in the groove again,” he said. He stared moodily at the dishes on the tray.

“Got Lagardie?” I asked him.

“No. He’s a doctor all right, though.” His eyes moved to mine. “He practiced in Cleveland.”

I said: “I hate it to be that tidy.”

“How do you mean?”

“Young Quest wants to put the bite on Steelgrave. So he just by pure accident runs into the one guy in Bay City that could prove who Steelgrave was. That’s too tidy.”

“Aren’t you forgetting something?”

“I’m tired enough to forget my name. What?”

“Me too,” French said. “Somebody had to tell him who Steelgrave was. When that photo was taken Moe Stein hadn’t been squibbed off. So what good was the photo unless somebody knew who Steelgrave was?”

“I guess Miss Weld knew,” I said. “And Quest was her brother.”

“You’re not making much sense, chum.” He grinned a tired grin. “Would she help her brother put the bite on her boy friend and on her too?”

“I give up. Maybe the photo was just a fluke. His other sister—my client that was—said he liked to take candid camera shots. The candider the better. If he’d lived long enough you’d have had him up for mopery.”

“For murder,” French said indifferently.

“Oh?”

“Maglashan found that ice pick all right. He just wouldn’t give out to you.”

“There’d have to be more than that.”

“There is, but it’s a dead issue. Clausen and Mileaway Marston both had records. The kid’s dead. His family’s respectable. He had an off streak in him and he got in with the wrong people. No point in smearing his family just to prove the police can solve a case.”

“That’s white of you. How about Steelgrave?”

“That’s out of my hands.” He started to get up. “When a gangster gets his how long does the investigation last?”

“Just as long as it’s front-page stuff,” I said. “But there’s a question of identity involved here.”

“No.”

I stared at him. “How do you mean, no?”

“Just no. We’re sure.” He was on his feet now. He combed his hair with his fingers and rearranged his tie and hat. Out of the corner of his mouth he said in a low voice: “Off the record—we were always sure. We just didn’t have a thing on him.”

“Thanks,” I said, “I’ll keep it to myself. How about the guns?”

He stopped and stared down at the table. His eyes came up to mine rather slowly. “They both belonged to Steelgrave. What’s more he had a permit to carry a gun. From the sheriff’s office in another county. Don’t ask me why. One of them—” he paused and looked up at the wall over my head—”one of them killed Quest … The same gun killed Stein.”

“Which one?”

He smiled faintly. “It would be hell if the ballistics man got them mixed up and we didn’t know,” he said.

He waited for me to say something. I didn’t have anything to say. He made a gesture with his hand.

“Well, so long. Nothing personal you know, but I hope the D.A. takes your hide off—in long thin strips.”

He turned and went out.

I could have done the same, but I just sat there and stared across the table at the wall, as if I had forgotten how to get up. After a while the door opened and the orange queen came in. She unlocked her rolltop desk and took her hat off of her impossible hair and hung her jacket on a bare hook in the bare wall. She opened the window near her and uncovered her typewriter and put paper in it. Then she looked across at me. “Waiting for somebody?”

“I room here,” I said. “Been here all night.”

She looked at me steadily for a moment. “You were here yesterday afternoon. I remember.”

She turned to her typewriter and her fingers began to fly. From the open window behind her came the growl of cars filling up the parking lot. The sky had a white glare and there was not much smog. It was going to be a hot day.

The telephone rang on the orange queen’s desk. She talked into it inaudibly, and hung up. She looked across at me again.

“Mr. Endicott’s in his office,” she said. “Know the way?”

“I worked there once. Not for him, though. I got fired.”

She looked at me with that City Hall look they have. A voice that seemed to come from anywhere but her mouth said:

“Hit him in the face with a wet glove.”

I went over near her and stood looking down at the orange hair. There was plenty of gray at the roots.

“Who said that?”

“It’s the wall,” she said. “It talks. The voices of the dead men who have passed through on the way to hell.”

I went out of the room walking softly and shut the door against the closer so that it wouldn’t make any noise.