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desk. “You think I’m doing this for fun?”
    “That’s what puzzles me. I’d like to know myself.”
    We alternately glared and shouted at each other until George arrived in a little over ten minutes. He’s 51, six feet tall, ramrod straight, with graying hair and a clipped gray mustache. At first glance he always strikes you as a little on the stuffy side, or at least over-correct, but he unbends when he knows you and he’s a very astute lawyer and a deadly, if cautious, poker player. He’s a passionate big-game fisherman, makes several trips to Florida or the Bahamas each year, and has two mounted sails and a dolphin in his offices, which take up a good part of the second floor of the Duquesne building. Fleurelle, his wife, is very wealthy, and the acknowledged leader of everything social in town, though it is my private opinion she has more than a trace of dragon blood and that George is pretty well policed. She’s always regarded me as a roughneck.
    George smiled and nodded to the others. “Good evening, Sheriff. Mr. Mulholland.” He turned to me then. “Well, Hotspur, what seems to be the trouble?”
    “I’m not sure myself,” I said. “All I know is Scanlon sent this musical-comedy Gestapo agent to haul me out of bed—”
    Everybody erupted at once. Mulholland started to get up as if he were going to take a swing at me. Scanlon waved him off curtly. “Sit down!”
    “I’ve had a bellyful of this guy!” Mulholland snapped.
    “Who hasn’t?” Scanlon asked. “Anyway, there’s no use your hanging around any longer. You might as well go home.”
    “Sheriff,” George put in quietly, “maybe if I could speak to Duke alone for a moment—”
    Scanlon ground out his cigar, rattling the ashtray. “Hell, yes. If you could knock some sense into that pig head, maybe we’d get somewhere.”
    Mulholland shucked off his gunbelt and holster, dropped them in a desk drawer, stared coldly at me, and stalked out. George and I moved over to one of the desks at the far corner of the room. I felt better now that he was here, and wondered if part of my anger had been merely to cover up the fact I was scared. We lighted cigarettes, and he said, “All right, let’s have it.”
    I told him about the anonymous telephone call, and added, “So she probably called Scanlon too.”
    He nodded. “It seems likely. But he hasn’t actually said so?”
    “No. That’s what burns me. He wouldn’t dare admit he took any stock in a nut telephone call, but still he’d haul me down here and put me through the wringer. As far as I’m concerned, he can go to hell.”
    He shook his head with a wry smile. “Well, you’re consistent, anyway. So far, you haven’t done anything right.”
    “But, dammit, George—”
    “No, you listen to me a minute. The girl, of course, is obviously a mental case, but no police officer worth his salt ever ignores any lead that comes up, no matter how tenuous. So Scanlon is obliged to check out her tip if he possibly can, even though he knows there’s nothing to it. But instead of helping him eliminate it, so far you’ve done everything you could to convince him there might be some truth in it after all. Now stop acting like a wild boar with a toothache, or you will need a lawyer.”
    “You mean I could be charged with murder just on the strength of a poison telephone call and the fact I happened to be out at Crossman Slough when he was killed?”
    “It’s not likely, without some kind of proof, unless you keep insisting on giving the impression you’ve got something to hide. But there are a couple of other factors you’ve apparently overlooked. In the first place, Scanlon can make it very tough for you if you don’t cooperate. Legally, too, and there’s nothing I could do for you. With the weekend coming up, he could hold you without any charge at all until Monday. And in the second place, hindering the investigation by fighting him just makes it that much harder for him to find out