“Paragraph on the Home Counties page,” I said, just to be moving my mouth.
He scratched his ear and listened. Steps were coming back up the stairs. The cop’s face went blank and he moved away from me and straightened up.
Captain Webber hurried over to the telephone and dialed the number and spoke, then held the phone away from his ear and looked back over his shoulder.
“Who’s deputy coroner this week, Al?”
“Ed Garland,” the big lieutenant said woodenly.
“Call Ed Garland,” Webber said into the phone. “Have him come over right away. And tell the flash squad to step on it.”
He put the phone down and barked sharply: “Who handled this gun?”
I said: “I did.”
He came over and teetered on his heels in front of me and pushed his small sharp chin up at me. He held the gun delicately on a handkerchief in his hand.
“Don’t you know enough not to handle a weapon found at the scene of a crime?”
“Certainly,” I said. “But when I handled it I didn’t know there had been a crime. I didn’t know the gun had been fired. It was lying on the stairs and I thought it had been dropped.”
“A likely story,” Webber said bitterly. “You get a lot of that sort of thing in your business?”
“A lot of what sort of thing?”
He kept his hard stare on me and didn’t answer.
I said: “How would it be for me to tell you my story as it happened?”
He bridled at me like a cockerel. “Suppose you answer my questions exactly as I choose to put them.”
I didn’t say anything to that. Webber swivelled sharply and said to the two uniformed men: “You boys can get back to your car and check in with the dispatcher.”
They saluted and went out, closing the door softly until, it stuck, then getting as mad at it as anybody else. Webber listened until their car went away. Then he put the bleak and callous eye on me once more.
“Let me see your identification.”
I handed him my wallet and he rooted in it. Degarmo sat in a chair and crossed his legs and stared up blankly at the ceiling. He got a match out of his pocket and chewed the end of it. Webber gave me back my wallet. I put it away.
“People in your line make a lot of trouble,” he said.
“Not necessarily,” I said.
He raised his voice. It had been sharp enough before. “I said they made a lot of trouble, and a lot of trouble is what I meant. But get this straight. You’re not going to make any in Bay City.”
I didn’t answer him. He jabbed a forefinger at me.
“You’re from the big town,” he said. “You think you’re tough and you think you’re wise. Don’t worry. We can handle you. We’re a small place, but we’re very compact. We don’t have any political tug-of-war down here. We work on the straight line and we work fast. Don’t worry about us, mister.”
“I’m not worrying,” I said. “I don’t have anything to worry about. I’m just trying to make a nice clean dollar.”
“And don’t give me any of the flip talk,” Webber said. “I don’t like it.”
Degarmo brought his eyes down from the ceiling and curled a forefinger to stare at the nail. He spoke in a heavy bored voice.
“Look, chief, the fellow downstairs is called Lavery. He’s dead. I knew him a little. He was a chaser.”
“What of it?” Webber snapped, not looking away from me.
“The whole set-up indicates a dame,” Degarmo said. “You know what these private eyes work at. Divorce stuff. Suppose we’d let him tie into it, instead of just trying to scare him dumb.”
“If I’m scaring him,” Webber said, “I’d like to know it. I don’t see any signs of it.”
He walked over to the front window and yanked the venetian blind up. Light poured into the room almost dazzlingly, after the long dimness. He came back bouncing on his heels and poked a thin hard finger at me and said: “Talk.”
I said, “I’m working for a Los Angeles business man who can’t take a lot of loud publicity. That’s why he hired me. A month ago his wife ran off and later a telegram came which indicated she had gone with Lavery. But my client met Lavery in town a couple of days ago and he denied it. The client believed him enough to get worried. It seems the lady is pretty reckless. She might have taken up with some bad company and got into a jam. I came down to see Lavery and he denied to me that he had gone with her. I half believed him but later I got reasonable proof that he had been with her in a San Bernardino hotel the night she was believed to have left the mountain cabin where she had been staying. With that in my pocket I came down to tackle Lavery again. No answer to the bell, the door was slightly open. I came inside, looked around, found the gun and searched the house. I found him. Just the way he is now.”
“You had no right to search the house,” Webber said coldly.
“Of course not,” I agreed. “But I wouldn’t be likely to pass up the chance either.”
“The name of this man you’re working for?”
