'Nobody else. Whisper was hiding out, with only me to go between him and the mob. He killed Noonan hisself, and he didn't want to have to trust nobody for a couple of days, till he could see what was what, excepting me.'
'So you, being a smart boy, thought you could run around to his enemies and pick up a little dough for killing him after he was dead?'
'I was clean, and this won't be no place for Whisper's pals when the word gets out that he's croaked,' Wright whined. 'I had to raise a getaway stake.'
'How'd you make out so far?'
'I got a century from Pete and a century and a half from Peak Murry--for Reno--with more promised from both when I turn the trick.' The whine changed into boasting as he talked. 'I bet you I could get McGraw to come across too, and I thought you'd kick in with something.'
'They must be high in the air to toss dough at a woozy racket like that.'
'I don't know,' he said superiorly. 'It ain't such a lousy one at that.' He became humble again. 'Give me a chance, chief. Don't gum it on me. I'll give you fifty bucks now and a split of whatever I get from McGraw if you'll keep your clam shut till I can put it over and grab a rattler.'
'Nobody but you knows where Whisper is?'
'Nobody else, except Dan, that's as dead as he is.'
'Where are they?'
'The old Redman warehouse down on Porter Street. In the back, upstairs, Whisper had a room fixed up with a bed, stove, and some grub. Give me a chance. Fifty bucks now and a cut on the rest.'
I let go of his arm and said:
'I don't want the dough, but go ahead. I'll lay off for a couple of hours. That ought to be long enough.'
'Thanks, chief. Thanks, thanks,' and he hurried away from me.
I put on my coat and hat, went out, found Green Street and the Rutledge Block. It was a wooden building a long while past any prime it might ever have had. Mr. Charles Proctor Dawn's establishment was on the second floor. There was no elevator. I climbed a worn and rickety flight of wooden steps.
The lawyer had two rooms, both dingy, smelly, and poorly lighted. I waited in the outer one while a clerk who went well with the rooms carried my name in to the lawyer. Half a minute later the clerk opened the door and beckoned me in.
Mr. Charles Proctor Dawn was a little fat man of fifty-something. He had prying triangular eyes of a very light color, a short fleshy nose, and a fleshier mouth whose greediness was only partly hidden between a ragged gray mustache and a ragged gray Vandyke beard. His clothes were dark and unclean looking without actually being dirty.
He didn't get up from his desk, and throughout my visit he kept his right hand on the edge of a desk drawer that was some six inches open.
He said:
'Ah, my dear sir, I am extremely gratified to find that you had the good judgment to recognize the value of my counsel.'
His voice was even more oratorical than it had been over the wire.
I didn't say anything.
Nodding his whiskers as if my not saying anything was another exhibition of good judgment, he continued:
'I may say, in all justice, that you will find it the invariable part of sound judgment to follow the dictates of my counsel in all cases. I may say this, my dear sir, without false modesty, appreciating with both fitting humility and a deep sense of true and lasting values, my responsibilities as well as my prerogatives as a--and why should I stoop to conceal the fact that there are those who feel justified in preferring to substitute the definite article for the indefinite?--recognized and accepted leader of the bar in this thriving state.'
He knew a lot of sentences like those, and he didn't mind using them on me. Finally he got along to:
'Thus, that conduct which in a minor practitioner might seem irregular, becomes, when he who exercises it occupies such indisputable prominence in his community--and, I might say, not merely the immediate community-- as serves to place him above fear of reproach, simply that greater ethic which scorns the pettier conventionalities when confronted with an opportunity to serve mankind through one of its individual representatives. Therefore, my dear sir, I have not hesitated to brush aside scornfully all trivial considerations of accepted precedent, to summon you, to say to you frankly and candidly, my dear sir, that your interests will best be served by and through retaining me as your legal representative.'
I asked:
'What'll it cost?'
'That,' he said loftily, 'is of but secondary importance. However, it is a detail which has its deserved place in our relationship, and must be not overlooked or neglected. We shall say, a thousand dollars now. Later, no doubt--'
He ruffled his whiskers and didn't finish the sentence.
I said I hadn't, of course, that much money on me.
'Naturally, my dear sir. Naturally. But that is of not the least importance in any degree. None whatever. Any time will do for that, any time up to ten o'clock tomorrow morning.'
'At ten tomorrow,' I agreed. 'Now I'd like to know why I'm supposed to need legal representatives.'
He made an indignant face.
