their boats for the night’s fishing. I thought about Miss Wonderly, and the more I nought about her, the worse I felt. I remembered the way she looked sitting on the raft at Dayden Beach. I remembered the way she looked lying in the sand when I was grilling the spareribs. It seemed a long time ago. Then I remembered Bat’s moronic face and Killeano saying, “Do you think you could handle her?” And Bat saying, “I guess I could sort of try.” I felt bad, all right.
The next three hours dragged away, and by the time it was dark I was lower than a snake’s belly.
Tim looked in about eight o’clock, gave me an evening paper. The Herrick killing was smeared over the front page. There was a picture of Miss Wonderly. She looked cute. They called her the Blonde Killer.
They had the confession in full, and I read it. It was cock-eyed enough to sound true. Miss Wonderly said she and I had returned to Palm Beach Hotel, and had had a lot of drinks. I was sore because Herrick wanted me to leave town. I said I’d show him he couldn’t talk that way to me, and Miss Wonderly admitted she goaded me to call him, thinking I was bluffing. I called Herrick and asked him over. He came. I was drunk by then. We were supposed to have quarrelled and Herrick got angry. We fought, and Miss Wonderly hit Herrick on the head with my gun. Herrick fell down and bust his head open on the fire curb. We passed out, and woke the next morning to find Herrick dead.
That was the story, and it was signed. The signature was shaky and indistinct. I felt like hell looking at it.
Tim came back after a while to say Davis was waiting for me at the end of the wharf. He had Mitchell with him.
I went down.
It was dark, and the stars reflected on the still water of the harbour. There was no one around. At the end of the wharf I found Davis with a big, beefy man who had copper written all over him.
“This is Mitchell,” Davis said.
I stepped up to the man, peered at him. I couldn’t see much of him in the dim light, but he didn’t look as if he would give me any trouble. He peered right back at me.
I didn’t beat about the bush. “I’m Cain,” I said. “How do you like that?”
He gulped, looked at Davis, then back at me.
“How am I supposed to like it?” he asked, in a thick voice.
“You love it,” I said.
He raised his hands shoulder high. “Okay,” he said.
“Relax,” I told him. “You don’t have to be scared of me. But if you start something, you won’t have time to be scared. Get it?”
He said he understood. I could see he was looking reproachfully at Davis.
“You don’t have to feel sore,” Davis said irritably. “We’re going to do you a bit of good.”
“How’d you like to get even with Flaggerty and pick up five Cs as well?” I asked.
Mitchell peered at me. “Doing what?” he asked, interest in his voice.
“Answering a few questions.”
“Sure would.”
“Where do you live?”
He told me.
I looked at Davis. “Is it far?”
“About five minutes.”
“We’ll go there, and mind, Mitchell, don’t start anything funny.”
“I won’t.”
We piled into Davis’s car, drove over to Mitchell’s place. He took us into the front room. It was plainly but comfortably furnished.
“You alone?” I asked.
“Yeah,” he said, flinching.
“You mean your wife’s giving Flaggerty a work out?” I said.
He clenched his fists; his face went yellow.
“Skip it,” I said. “We know what’s going on; so do you. The idea is to even things up, isn’t it? Well, that’s why I’m here.”
He turned away, brought out a bottle of Scotch. He set up three glasses. We all sat down round the table.
Mitchell was about forty-five. His big, simple face was fleshy and carried a lot of freckles. He wasn’t a bad- looking guy, but he had that look of gloom husbands get when their wives are twotiming.
“What’s your job in the jail?” I asked, as soon as we’d settled.
“I look after floor D.”
“On what floor is Miss Wonderly?”
He blinked, looked at Davis who didn’t meet his eye, looked back at me.
“Didn’t you say something about five Cs?” he asked cautiously.
“I did,” I said, and shot him a hundred. “That’s to sweeten you. You’ll get the rest when you’ve told me what I wart to know.”
He fingered the hundred, nodded.
“She’s on A floor.”
“Where’s that?”
“Top floor.”
“Get paper and pencil and show me the lay-out of the jail.”
He got paper and pencil and began to draw. We sat around drinking and smoking until he’d finished.
“This is it,” he said. “Here’s where you go in. There’re two sets of gates. Each has a different key and guard. You book your prisoner in here. Women are booked in on the left. You take your prisoner along—”
“Wait,” I said. “I’m only interested in the women’s side. Concentrate on the women.”
He nodded. “Okay,” he said. “Well, the women go in through this door and are booked. They’re taken along this passage—”
“What’s that square there you’ve drawn?”
“That’s the guards’ office. That next to it is the police surgeon’s office. That’s the mortuary behind it and the P.M. room. We keep them all together because Flaggerty likes to make the jail his headquarters.”
“Okay. Where’s A floor?”
“You reach it by this elevator. The women are not allowed] to use the stairs because the stairs give off to the other floors.”
“How many women prisoners have you got in there?”
“Four—no, three. One of ’em died this morning.”
“Where’s Miss Wonderly’s cell?”
He showed me the cell on the map he’d drawn. I made him mark it with a cross.
“How many guards have you up there?”
“There are three women guards. One goes around the cells every hour.”
“How about the men guards?”
“They don’t go to A floor, but they’re around on the other floors every hour. Two to each floor.”
“How many in the building?”
“Ten guards on duty, ten off. Since the girl came, Flaggerty has brought down another twenty from Station Headquarters to guard the outside of the jail. It has plenty of protection right now.”
I studied the map for several minutes, then sat back and stared at Mitchell.
“If you wanted to get someone out of that jail,” I said, “how would you set about it?”
He shook his head. “I wouldn’t,” he said. “It ain’t possible.”
I handed him the four Cs, and after he’d fingered them and put them away in his pocket, I took out a thousand-dollar bill.
“Ever seen one of these?” I asked him.
He gaped at it, his eyes round.
“’I’d give this to the guy who could tell me how to get that girl out,” I said.
