'What are you trying to do?' she asked.
'Learn who killed him. Not who could have or might have, but who did.'
'I could give you some help,' she said, 'but there'd have to be something in it for me.'
'Safety,' I reminded her, but she shook her head.
'I mean it would have to get me something in a financial way. It'd be worth something to you, and you ought to pay something, even if not a fortune.'
'Can't be done.' I grinned at her. 'Forget the bank roll and go in for charity. Pretend I'm Bill Quint.'
Dan Rolff started up from his chair, lips white as the rest of his face. He sat down again when the girl laughed--a lazy, good-natured laugh.
'He thinks I didn't make any profit out of Bill, Dan.' She leaned over and put a hand on my knee. 'Suppose you knew far enough ahead that a company's employes were going to strike, and when, and then far enough ahead when they were going to call the strike off. Could you take that info and some capital to the stock market and do yourself some good playing with the company's stock? You bet you could!' she wound up triumphantly. 'So don't go around thinking that Bill didn't pay his way.'
'You've been spoiled,' I said.
'What in the name of God's the use of being so tight?' she demanded. 'It's not like it had to come out of your pocket. You've got an expense account, haven't you?'
I didn't say anything. She frowned at me, at the run in her stocking, and at Rolff. Then she said to him:
'Maybe he'd loosen up if he had a drink.'
The thin man got up and went out of the room.
She pouted at me, prodded my shin with her toe, and said:
'It's not so much the money. It's the principle of the thing. If a girl's got something that's worth something to somebody, she's a boob if she doesn't collect.'
I grinned.
'Why don't you be a good guy?' she begged.
Dan Rolff came in with a siphon, a bottle of gin, some lemons, and a bowl of cracked ice. We had a drink apiece. The lunger went away. The girl and I wrangled over the money question while we had more drinks. I kept trying to keep the conversation on Thaler and Willsson. She kept switching it to the money she deserved. It went on that way until the gin bottle was empty. My watch said one-fifteen.
She chewed a piece of lemon peel and said for the thirtieth or fortieth time:
'It won't come out of your pocket. What do you care?'
'It's not the money,' I said, 'it's the principle of the thing.'
She made a face at me and put her glass where she thought the table was. She was eight inches wrong. I don't remember if the glass broke when it hit the floor, or what happened to it. I do remember that I was encouraged by her missing the table.
'Another thing,' I opened up a new argumentative line, 'I'm not sure I really need whatever you can tell me. If I have to get along without it, I think I can.'
'It'll be nice if you can, but don't forget I'm the last person who saw him alive, except whoever killed him.'
'Wrong,' I said. 'His wife saw him come out, walk away, and fall.'
'His wife!'
'Yeah. She was sitting in a coupe down the street.'
'How did she know he was here?'
'She says Thaler phoned her that her husband had come here with the check.'
'You're trying to kid me,' the girl said. 'Max couldn't have known it.'
'I'm telling you what Mrs. Willsson told Noonan and me.'
The girl spit what was left of the lemon peel out on the floor, further disarranged her hair by running her fingers through it, wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, and slapped the table.
'All right, Mr. Knowitall,' she said, 'I'm going to play with you. You can think it's not going to cost you anything, but I'll get mine before we're through. You think I won't?' she challenged me, peering at me as if I were a block away.
This was no time to revive the money argument, so I said: 'I hope you do.' I think I said it three or four times, quite earnestly.
'I will. Now listen to me. You're drunk, and I'm drunk, and I'm just exactly drunk enough to tell you anything you want to know. That's the kind of girl I am. If I like a person I'll tell them anything they want to know. Just ask me. Go ahead, ask me.'
I did:
'What did Willsson give you five thousand dollars for?'
'For fun.' She leaned back to laugh. Then: 'Listen. He was hunting for scandal. I had some of it, some affidavits and things that I thought might be good for a piece of change some day. I'm a girl that likes to pick up a little jack when she can. So I had put these things away. When Donald began going after scalps I let him know that
