was wanted at the phone. She excused herself and followed the maid out. She didn't go downstairs, but spoke over an extension within earshot of my seat.
I heard: "Mrs. Willsson speaking ... Yes ... I beg your pardon? ... Who? ... Can't you speak a little louder? ... What? ... Yes ... Yes ... Who is this? ... Hello! Hello!" The telephone hook rattled. Then her quick steps sounded down the hallway.
I set fire to a cigarette and stared at it until I heard her going downstairs. Than I went to a window, lifted the edge of the blind, and looked out at Laurel Avenue and at the small white garage that stood in the rear of the house on that side. Presently a slender woman in dark coat and hat came into sight, hurrying from house to garage. She drove away in a Buick coupé. It was Mrs. Willsson. I went back to my chair and waited.
Three quarters of an hour went by. At five minutes past eleven automobile brakes screeched outside. Two minutes later Mrs. Willsson came into the room. She had taken off hat and coat. Her face was white, her eyes almost black.
"I'm awfully sorry." Her little tightlipped mouth moved jerkily. "You've had all this waiting for nothing. My husband won't be home tonight."
I said I would get in touch with him at the Herald in the morning and went away—wondering why the green toe of her left slipper was dark and damp with something that could have been blood.
II
I walked over to Broadway and got into a street car. Three blocks north of my hotel I got off to see what the crowd was doing around a side entrance of the City Hall. Thirty or forty men and a sprinkling of women stood on the sidewalk looking at a door marked Police Department—a mixed crowd—men from mines and smelters still in their working clothes, gaudy boys from poolrooms and dance-halls, sleek men with cunning pale faces, men with the dull look of respectable fathers of families, a few just as respectable and dull women, and some ladies of the night.
On the edge of this congregation I stopped beside a square-set man in rumpled gray clothes. His face was grayish, too, even to the thick lips, though he didn't look much more than thirty—a broad, thick-featured face with intelligence in it. For color he depended on a red Windsor tie that blossomed over his gray flannel shirt.
"What's the rumpus?" I asked this fellow.
He looked at me carefully before he answered, as if to make sure that the information was going into safe hands. His eyes were as gray as his shirt, but not so soft.
"Don Willsson's gone to sit on the right hand of God—if God don't mind looking at the bullet holes in him."
"Who put them there?"
The gray man scratched the side of his neck and said: "Somebody with a gun."
I would have tried to find a less witty informant in the crowd if the red tie hadn't interested me.
"Sure. I'm a stranger in town," I said. "Hang the Punch and Judy on me—That's what strangers are for."
"Mr. Donald Willsson, publisher of the Morning and Evening Heralds, son of the well-known Mr. Elihu Willsson," he recited in a rapid sing-song, "was found lying in Hurricane Street a little while ago, very dead, having been shot several places. Does that keep your feelings from being hurt?"
"Yeah. Thanks." I put out a finger and touched a loose end of his tie. "Mean anything? Or just wearing it?"
"I'm Bill Quint."
"The hell you are!" I exclaimed, trying to placing the name. "By gad, I'm glad to meet you!"
I dug out my card case and ran through the collection of credentials I
