'So's your help, so far as I know.'
'Is it? I can give you the stuff, brother, loads of it, and don't think I can't. I'm a girl who knows her Poisonville.' She looked down at her gray-stockinged knees, waved one leg at me, and exclaimed indignantly: 'Look at that. Another run. Did you ever see anything to beat it? Honest to God! I'm going barefoot.'
'Your legs are too big,' I told her. 'They put too much strain on the material.'
'That'll do out of you. What's your idea of how to go about purifying our village?'
'If I haven't been lied to, Thaler, Pete the Finn, Lew Yard and Noonan are the men who've made Poisonville the sweet-smelling mess it is. Old Elihu comes in for his share of the blame, too, but it's not all his fault, maybe. Besides, he's my client, even if he doesn't want to be, so I'd like to go easy on him.
'The closest I've got to an idea is to dig up any and all the dirty work I can that might implicate the others, and run it out. Maybe I'll advertise--Crime Wanted--Male or Female. If they're as crooked as I think they are I shouldn't have a lot of trouble finding a job or two that I can hang on them.'
'Is that what you were up to when you uncooked the fight?'
'That was only an experiment--just to see what would happen.'
'So that's the way you scientific detectives work. My God! for a fat, middle-aged, hard-boiled, pig-headed guy, you've got the vaguest way of doing things I ever heard of.'
'Plans are all right sometimes,' I said. 'And sometimes just stirring things up is all right--if you're tough enough to survive, and keep your eyes open so you'll see what you want when it comes to the top.'
'That ought to be good for another drink,' she said.
XI. The Swell Spoon
We had another drink.
She put her glass down, licked her lips, and said:
'If stirring things up is your system, I've got a swell spoon for you. Did you ever hear of Noonan's brother Tim, the one who committed suicide out at Mock Lake a couple of years ago?'
'No.'
'You wouldn't have heard much good. Anyway, he didn't commit suicide. Max killed him.'
'Yeah?'
'For God's sake wake up. This I'm giving you is real. Noonan was like a father to Tim. Take the proof to him and he'll be after Max like nobody's business. That's what you want, isn't it?'
'We've got proof?'
'Two people got to Tim before he died, and he told them Max had done it. They're both still in town, though one won't live a lot longer. How's that?'
She looked as if she were telling the truth, though with women, especially blue-eyed women, that doesn't always mean anything.
'Let's listen to the rest of it,' I said. 'I like details and things.'
'You'll get them. You ever been out to Mock Lake? Well, it's our summer resort, thirty miles up the canyon road. It's a dump, but it's cool in summer, so it gets a good play. This was summer a year ago, the last week-end in August. I was out there with a fellow named Holly. He's back in England now, but you don't care anything about that, because he's got nothing to do with it. He was a funny sort of old woman--used to wear white silk socks turned inside out so the loose threads wouldn't hurt his feet. I got a letter from him last week. It's around here somewhere, but that doesn't make any difference.
'We were up there, and Max was up there with a girl he used to play around with--Myrtle Jennison. She's in the hospital now--City--dying of Bright's disease or something. She was a classy looking kid then, a slender blonde. I always liked her, except that a few drinks made her too noisy. Tim Noonan was crazy about her, but she couldn't see anybody but Max that summer.
'Tim wouldn't let her alone. He was a big good-looking Irishman, but a sap and a cheap crook who only got by because his brother was chief of police. Wherever Myrtle went, he'd pop up sooner or later. She didn't like to say anything to Max about it, not wanting Max to do anything to put him in wrong with Tim's brother, the chief.
'So of course Tim showed up at Mock Lake this Saturday. Myrtle and Max were just by themselves. Holly and I were with a bunch, but I saw Myrtle to talk to and she told me she had got a note from Tim, asking her to meet him for a few minutes that night, in one of the little arbor things on the hotel grounds. He said if she didn't he would kill himself. That was a laugh for us--the big false alarm. I tried to talk Myrtle out of going, but she had just enough booze in her to feel gay and she said she was going to give him an earful.
'We were all dancing in the hotel that night. Max was there for a while, and then I didn't see him any more. Myrtle was dancing with a fellow named Rutgers, a lawyer here in town. After a while she left him and went out one of the side doors. She winked at me when she passed, so I knew she was going down to see Tim. She had just got out when I heard the shot. Nobody else paid any attention to it. I suppose I wouldn't have noticed it either if I hadn't known about Myrtle and Tim.
'I told Holly I wanted to see Myrtle, and went out after her, by myself. I must have been about five minutes behind her in getting out. When I got outside I saw lights down by one of the summer houses, and people. I went down there, and-- This talking is thirsty work.'
I poured out a couple of hookers of gin. She went into the kitchen for another siphon and more ice. We mixed them up, drank, and she settled down to her tale again:
'There was Tim Noonan, dead, with a hole in his temple and his gun lying beside him. Perhaps a dozen people were standing around, hotel people, visitors, one of Noonan's men, a dick named MacSwain. As soon as Myrtle saw me she took me away from the crowd, back in the shade of some trees.
''Max killed him,' she said. 'What'll I do?'
