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office. “She had the opportunity, James. She has the strength. And she has the guts — look at the way she’s held up tonight.”
    Walter James leaned on the desk with his elbows, his hands folded under his chin. The light blue eyes that looked up at Clapp were flat and icy.
    “Quit acting like a dumb cop, Clapp. We’re both too old for that. You don’t have a case against the girl and you know it. You’re not after the girl and you know it. You’re after me.”
    “I know more than that,” said the big man heavily. “I know you won’t leave this building until you tell a long, long story.”
    “You can throw me in on a gun count. I’ll be out tomorrow on bail and Monday I’ll pay off the fine. About Tuesday you’ll get word from Atlanta. You’ll pull me in again because I killed three men there but you won’t be able to hold me. About next Saturday you’ll get a registry report on that .25 on your desk and you’ll pull me in again because that’s my gun. You won’t be able to charge me but you’ll put up a hell of a fight to hold me as a material witness. And you’ll lose. If you want to play that way, Clapp, I promise you, you’ll lose. I know this game as well as you do.”
    Clapp’s eyes were steady and leaden in his hard face. “How do you want to play, James?”
    Walter James leaned back and said softly, “I want to see us both co-operate. I want to tell my long, long story and walk out of here. I don’t want to see anything behind me but my own shadow. I don’t want to be booked on any 1898 charges because I’m a stranger in town.”
    Clapp sat down. “What are you bidding with?”
    “Two bodies right now. One in Atlanta and the one tonight.” Walter James smiled coldly. “I may raise you later.”
    Clapp cleared his throat. “Give us the story and you can leave tonight. If the story checks and if you can keep your nose clean, I think we’ll get along.”
    “I could stand another beer,” said Felix.
    “We all could,” agreed Clapp, “but close the icebox door this time.”
    “I decided to team up with Hal Lantz in 1942,” said Walter James. He ran his hand through his wavy brown hair. “I hadn’t known him except casually around town before then. We had offices about four blocks apart, on opposite sides of the city hall, but we’d meet occasionally in a bar or at police court. A private investigator has to keep an eye on the other half — how they’re living and who they are. Thanks, Felix.”
    He sipped at the beer reflectively. “I inquired around and found that Hal was a pretty shrewd operator. I put it up to him — if we went in as partners, we could do about ten times as much business as we were doing separately. That’s just the way it worked out. We put up a big, reputable-looking front and began drawing the people that wanted dirty little jobs done but were afraid of the dirty little agencies. We pushed a few of the shoestring boys out of business and hired the best ops away from the others, so pretty soon we had Atlanta just the way we wanted it. And there was enough money to go around. On those summer nights, a lot of husbands need following.
    “Furthermore, we made a big point of getting along with the local cops. We never crossed them up and our outfit kept a lot of trouble from ever getting out of the idea stage. Then, too, between Hal and me, we had a lot of stuff in our files that helped them out now and then. We even used our men in a few spots where they wouldn’t have dared used their own — politically speaking.”
    Felix nodded appreciatively.
    “I’m making a point of all this,” said Walter James, “so you’ll realize what an unblemished child I am.”
    “You mentioned three men,” Clapp said mildly.
    “You can’t keep out of trouble forever. All three were self-defense, and there was never any fuss over it. I shot two and ran down another with Hal’s Buick.”
    “So you’ve been buying Buicks ever since. That makes a nice