'Who were they?'
'A pair of Johnson-brothers named Blackie Whalen and Put Collings that only got out on bail around five yesterday, and Dutch Jake Wahl, a guerrilla.'
'What was it all about?'
'Just a roughhouse, I guess. It seems that Put and Blackie and the others that got out with them were celebrating with a lot of friends, and it wound up in smoke.'
'All of them Lew Yard's men?'
'I don't know anything about that,' he said.
I got up, said, 'Oh, all right,' and started for the door.
'Wait,' he called. 'Don't run off like that. I guess they were.'
I came back to my chair. Noonan watched the top of his desk. His face was gray, flabby, damp, like fresh putty.
'Whisper's staying at Willsson's,' I told him.
He jerked his head up. His eyes darkened. Then his mouth twitched, and he let his head sag again. His eyes faded.
'I can't go through with it,' he mumbled. 'I'm sick of this butchering. I can't stand any more of it.'
'Sick enough to give up the idea of evening the score for Tim's killing, if it'll make peace?' I asked.
'I am.'
'That's what started it,' I reminded him. 'If you're willing to call it off, it ought to be possible to stop it.'
He raised his face and looked at me with eyes that were like a dog's looking at a bone.
'The others ought to be as sick of it as you are,' I went on. 'Tell them how you feel about it. Have a get- together and make peace.'
'They'd think I was up to some kind of a trick,' he objected miserably.
'Have the meeting at Willsson's. Whisper's camping there. You'd be the one risking tricks going there. Are you afraid of that?'
He frowned and asked:
'Will you go with me?'
'If you want me.'
'Thanks,' he said. 'I--I'll try it.'
XIX. The Peace Conference
All the other delegates to the peace conference were on hand when Noonan and I arrived at Willsson's home at the appointed time, nine o'clock that night. Everybody nodded to us, but the greetings didn't go any further than that.
Pete the Finn was the only one I hadn't met before. The bootlegger was a big-boned man of fifty with a completely bald head. His forehead was small, his jaws enormous--wide, heavy, bulging with muscle.
We sat around Willsson's library table.
Old Elihu sat at the head. The short-clipped hair on his round pink skull was like silver in the light. His round blue eyes were hard, domineering, under their bushy white brows. His mouth and chin were horizontal lines.
On his right Pete the Finn sat watching everybody with tiny black eyes that never moved. Reno Starkey sat next to the bootlegger. Reno's sallow horse face was as stolidly dull as his eyes.
Max Thaler was tilted back in a chair on Willsson's left. The little gambler's carefully pressed pants legs were carelessly crossed. A cigarette hung from one corner of his tight-lipped mouth.
I sat next to Thaler. Noonan sat on my other side.
Elihu Willsson opened the meeting.
He said things couldn't go on the way they were going. We were all sensible men, reasonable men, grown men who had seen enough of the world to know that a man couldn't have everything his own way, no matter who he was. Compromises were things everybody had to make sometimes. To get what lie wanted, a man had to give other people what they wanted. He said he was sure that what we all most wanted now was to stop this insane killing. He said he was sure that everything could be frankly discussed and settled in an hour without turning Personville into a slaughter-house.
It wasn't a bad oration.
When it was over there was a moment of silence. Thaler looked past me, at Noonan, as if he expected something of him. The rest of us followed his example, looking at the chief of police.
Noonan's face turned red and he spoke huskily:
'Whisper, I'll forget you killed Tim.' He stood up and held out a beefy paw. 'Here's my hand on it.'
Thaler's thin mouth curved into a vicious smile.
'Your bastard of a brother needed killing, but I didn't kill him,' he whispered coldly.
Red became purple in the chief's face.
