of last night's murder. That was fine! I didn't think anybody wanted my life badly enough to assassinate me in front of all these witnesses.
I jumped up, trotted down the front steps, waved my hand gratefully at the audience, and went away from the neighborhood. I turned most of the corners I came to, making sure that nobody turned them after me. Presently I got lost, but I kept on turning corners. After a while I found myself down in Union Street, four or five blocks from my hotel. I got back to it without anything happening to me.
With my key the night clerk gave me a memorandum that asked me to call Poplar 605. I knew the number, had called it earlier, it was Elihu Willsson's.
"How long has it been here?" I asked.
"Since a little after one o'clock."
That sounded urgent. I went back to a booth and put in the call. The secretary answered, and told me the old man desired my company at once. I promised to hustle, asked the night clerk to get me a taxi, and went up to my room for a couple of shots of Scotch. I would rather have been clod sober. But I wasn't, and if the night held more work for me I didn't want it to catch me in the raggedy condition that sobering-up brings. Two snifters revived me a lot. I poured more of the King George into a flask, pocketed it, and went down to the taxi.
Elihu Willsson's house was lighted from top to bottom. The secretary opened the door before I could get my finger on the button. His thin body was shivering in pale blue pajamas and dark blue bathrobe. His face was full of excitement.
"Hurry!" he begged. "Mr. Willsson is waiting." His dark eyes had something horrified in them. "And please, will you try to persuade him to let us remove the body!"
I nodded and followed him up to the old man's bathroom. He was in bed as before, but now a black automatic pistol lay on the covers under one of his hands.
As soon as I appeared he took his head off the pillows, leaned forward, and barked at me:
"Have you got as much guts as you've got gall?"
His face was an unhealthy dark red. The film was gone from his eyes. They were hard and hot.
I let his question wait while I looked at the corpse on the floor between door and bed. A short thick-set man in brown, half on his side, half on his back, with dead eyes staring at the ceiling from under the visor of a gray cap. A piece of his jaw had been knocked off. His chin was tilted to show where another bullet had gone through tie and collar to make a hole in his neck. One hand was bent under him. The other still held a blackjack as big as a milk bottle. There was a lot of blood.
I looked up from this mess at the old man again. His grin was both vicious and idiotic.
"You're a great talker, he said. "I know that. A two-fisted, you-be-damned man with your words! But have you got anything else? Have you got the guts to match your gall? Or is it just the gab you've got?"
There was no use trying to get along with the old boy. I scowled and reminded him:
"Didn't I tell you not to bother me unless you wanted to talk sense for a change?"
"You did, my boy!" There was a foolish sort of triumph in his sneer. "And I'll talk you your sense. I want a an to clean this pig-sty of a Personville for me, to smoke out the big rats and the little ones. It's a man's job. Are you a man?"
"What's the use of getting poetic about it?" I growled. "If you've got an honest job to be done, and want to pay an honest price for it, maybe I'll take it. But a lot of howling about
