“I’m safer with a Steinway,” he said.
The door opened and a uniformed man came in with a tray.
We ate canned cornbeef hash and drank hot but weak coffee. By that time it was full morning.
At eight-fifteen Christy French came in and stood with his hat on the back of his head and dark smudges under his eyes.
I looked from him to the little man across the table. But he wasn’t there any more. The cards weren’t there either. Nothing was there but a chair pushed in neatly to the table and the dishes we had eaten off gathered on a tray. For a moment I had that creepy feeling.
Then Christy French walked around the table and jerked the chair out and sat down and leaned his chin on his hand. He took his hat off and rumpled his hair. He stared at me with hard morose eyes. I was back in coptown again.
31
“The D.A. wants to see you at nine o’clock,” he said. “After that I guess you can go on home. That is, if he doesn’t hang a pinch on you. I’m sorry you had to sit up in that chair all night.”
“It’s all right,” I said. “I needed the exercise.”
“Yeah, back in the groove again,” he said. He stared moodily at the dishes on the tray.
“Got Lagardie?” I asked him.
“No. He’s a doctor all right, though.” His eyes moved to mine. “He practiced in Cleveland.”
I said: “I hate it to be that tidy.”
“How do you mean?”
“Young Quest wants to put the bite on Steelgrave. So he just by pure accident runs into the one guy in Bay City that could prove who Steelgrave was. That’s too tidy.”
“Aren’t you forgetting something?”
“I’m tired enough to forget my name. What?”
“Me too,” French said. “
“I guess Miss Weld knew,” I said. “And Quest was her brother.”
“You’re not making much sense, chum.” He grinned a tired grin. “Would she help her brother put the bite on her boy friend and on her too?”
“I give up. Maybe the photo was just a fluke. His other sister—my client that was—said he liked to take candid camera shots. The candider the better. If he’d lived long enough you’d have had him up for mopery.”
“For murder,” French said indifferently.
“Oh?”
“Maglashan found that ice pick all right. He just wouldn’t give out to you.”
“There’d have to be more than that.”
“There is, but it’s a dead issue. Clausen and Mileaway Marston both had records. The kid’s dead. His family’s respectable. He had an off streak in him and he got in with the wrong people. No point in smearing his family just to prove the police can solve a case.”
“That’s white of you. How about Steelgrave?”
“That’s out of my hands.” He started to get up. “When a gangster gets his how long does the investigation last?”
“Just as long as it’s front-page stuff,” I said. “But there’s a question of identity involved here.”
“No.”
I stared at him. “How do you mean, no?”
“Just no. We’re sure.” He was on his feet now. He combed his hair with his fingers and rearranged his tie and hat. Out of the corner of his mouth he said in a low voice: “Off the record—we were always sure. We just didn’t have a thing on him.”
“Thanks,” I said, “I’ll keep it to myself. How about the guns?”
He stopped and stared down at the table. His eyes came up to mine rather slowly. “They both belonged to Steelgrave. What’s more he had a permit to carry a gun. From the sheriff’s office in another county. Don’t ask me why. One of them—” he paused and looked up at the wall over my head—“one of them killed Quest… The same gun killed Stein.”
“Which one?”
He smiled faintly. “It would be hell if the ballistics man got them mixed up and we didn’t know,” he said.
He waited for me to say something. I didn’t have anything to say. He made a gesture with his hand.
“Well, so long. Nothing personal you know, but I hope the D.A. takes your hide off—in long thin strips.”
He turned and went out.
I could have done the same, but I just sat there and stared across the table at the wall, as if I had forgotten how to get up. After a while the door opened and the orange queen came in. She unlocked her roll top desk and
