I sat staring at it, and I felt spooked. Unless Miss Wonderly started talking I was in a sweet jam. I hoped she’d start talking soon.
We sat around for half an hour without saying anything. Miss Wonderly moved once or twice and moaned, but she didn’t come out of her faint. It was the longest faint on record. Maybe she wanted to earn herself a title.
As I was beginning to lose patience, the door was thrown open and a short, square man, wearing a big black hat, bustled in. He reminded me of Mussolini when Mussolini used to shake his fist from his balcony. He took in the room at a glance, and then came straight to me.
“Cain?” he said, offering his hand. “I’m Killeano. There’s nothing to worry about. I’ll see you get a straight deal. You’re my guest, and I know how to look after my guests.”
I didn’t shake his hand. I didn’t get up.
“Your political rival’s dead, Killeano,” I said, eyeing him up and down. “So you’ve got nothing to worry about either.”
He lowered his hand hurriedly and looked at Herrick.
“Poor fellow,” he said. I swear there were tears in his eyes. “He was a grand, clean fighter; this is a great loss to the Administration.”
“Save it for the newspapers.” I advised.
We were all posed there like a bunch of dummies when Miss Wonderly sat up and started to scream again.
7
Killeano turned out to be quite a guy for getting things organized. “We’re going to be fair to Cabin,” he said, thumping his fist on the back of a chair. “I know it looks bad for him, but he’s my guest, and I’m going to see he gets a break.”
Flaggerty muttered under his breath, but Killeano was the boss.
“So what?” Flaggerty asked, shrugging. “Why waste time? I want this guy down at headquarters for questioning.”
“We don’t know he’s guilty,” Killeano barked, “and I won’t have him arrested until I am satisfied you’ve got a case against him. We’ll question him here.”
“My pal.” I said.
He didn’t even look in my direction. “Keep that weman quiet,” he went on, pointing at Miss Wonderly, who sat alone, weeping into the house dick’s handkerchief. “I don’t want her shooting of her mouth until we’ve heard the other witnesses.”
I smoked and looked out of the window while Killeano yelled down the telephone and got things organized. Finally he had everything the way he wanted and we started. The reception clerk, the house dick, the elevator boy, Speratza and the barman from the Casino had been collected and lined up in the corridor outside. They were told to wait.
Miss Wonderly was taken into the bedroom in charge of a stout woman in black who’d been rushed up from the local jail to keep an eye on her. They told her to get dressed.
There were two tough-looking cops who stood behind my chair and pretended they weren’t going to slug me if I showed any signs of walking out on the assembly. There was Flaggerty, two plain-clothes dicks, a photographer and a doctor. There was a stenographer, a pop-eyed little man, who sat in a corner and scribbled away as if his life, and not mine, depended on him getting it all down straight. Then there was me, and, of course, my pal, Killeano.
“All right,” Kilieano said. “Now we start.”
Flaggerty nearly fell over himself to get his claws into me. He stood in front of me with his jaw thrust out and an ugly look in his beady little eyes. “You’re Chester Cain?” he demanded, as if he didn’t know.
“Yeah,” I said, “and you’re Lieutenant Flaggerty, the boy who hadn’t any friends to tell him.”
Killeano jumped up. “Look, Cain, this is a serious matter for you. Maybe you’d care to cut out the gags?”
“I’m the fall guy,” I said, smiling at him. “Why should you worry how I handle this louse?”
“Well, it won’t do you any good,” Killeano muttered, but he sat down.
Flaggerty was moving about restlessly, and as soon as Killeano had settled, he started in again.
“All right,” he said. “You’re Chester Cain, and you’re a gambler by profession.”
“I don’t call gambling a profession,” I said.
His face went a dusty red. “But you admit you earn your living by gambling?”
“No. I haven’t started to earn a living,” I told him. “I’m just out of the Army.”
“You’ve been out four months, and during that time you’ve been gambling?”
I nodded.
“You’ve made a heap of dough?”
“Fair,” I said.
“You call twenty grand just fair?”
“It’s not bad.”
He hesitated, then decided to let it go. He’d established that I gambled.
“Is it true you murdered five men in four months?” he suddenly shot out.
Killeano jumped to his feet. “Keep that out of the record,” he exclaimed, his little eyes wide with indignation. “Cain killed those men in self-defence!”
“He killed them!” Flaggerty shouted back. “Think of it! Five men in four months! What a record! Self-defence or not, it’s appalling, and every decent citizen in this country is appalled!”
Killeano sat down, muttering. I guess he wanted to be thought a decent citizen too.
“Come on,” Flaggerty snarled, standing over me. “You killed those five men, didn’t you?”
“Five punks with the trigger itch tried to shoot me and I defended myself,” I said quietly. “If that’s what you mean, then I did kill them.”
Flaggerty swung around to the stenographer and threw out his arms.
“A self-confessed killer of five innocent men!” he bawled.
That got Killeano on his feet again, but I was getting sick of this.
“Skip it,” I said to Killeano. “The facts are on record and the New York D.A.’s given me a clean bill. Who do you think cares what a lousy small-town copper says? Save your breath.”
Flaggerty looked like he was going to have a hemorrhage.
“Get on with it,” Killcano snapped, sitting down and giving me a hard look.
“We’ll see who cares or not,” Flaggerty said, clenching his fists. “Now I’ll tell you something.
You came to Paradise Palms because you knew it was a gold mine, and you planned to clean up at the gambling tables.”
“Aw nuts!” I said. “I came here for a vacation.”
“And yet you ain’t been in town a few hours when you rush around to the Casino,” Flaggerty sneered.
“I was invited by Speratza,” I said, “and not having anything better to do, I went.”
“How long have you known Speratza?”
“I don’t know him.”
Flaggerty raised his eyebrows. “So you don’t know him? Ain’t it odd Speratza should invite you over to the Casino when he didn’t know you?”
“Most odd,” I said, grinning at him.
“Yeah,” Flaggerty said. He took a step forward. “Maybe he didn’t invite you. Maybe you invited yourself because you wanted to horn in and clean up fast.” He was wagging his finger in my face and yelling at the top of his voice.
“Don’t do that,” I said gently, “unless you want a poke in your pan.”
He turned round, crossed the room, opened the door and hauled in Speratza.
