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balance. I had to wrestle with my forehead to keep it from wrinkling, and I put too much calmness in my voice when I asked:
    â€œIs who dead?”
    â€œWho? How do I know? Who do you mean?”
    â€œWho did you think I meant?” I insisted.
    â€œHow do I know? Oh, all right! Old man Hambleton, Sue’s father.”
    â€œThat’s right,” I said, and took my hand away from his chin.
    â€œAnd he was murdered, you say?” He hadn’t moved his face an inch from the position into which I had lifted it. “How?”
    â€œArsenic—fly paper.”
    â€œArsenic fly paper.” He looked thoughtful. “That’s a funny one.”
    â€œYeah, very funny. Where’d you go about buying some if you wanted it?”
    â€œBuying it? I don’t know. I haven’t seen any since I was a kid. Nobody uses fly paper here in San Francisco anyway. There aren’t enough flies.”
    â€œSomebody used some here,” I said, “on Sue.”
    â€œSue?” He jumped so that the sofa squeaked under him.
    â€œYeah. Murdered yesterday morning—arsenical fly paper.”
    â€œBoth of them?” he asked incredulously.
    â€œBoth of who?”
    â€œHer and her father.”
    â€œYeah.”
    He put his chin far down on his chest and rubbed the back of one hand with the palm of the other.
    â€œThen I am in a hole,” he said slowly.
    â€œThat’s what,” I cheerfully agreed. “Want to try talking yourself out of it?”
    â€œLet me think.”
    I let him think, listening to the tick of the clock while he thought. Thinking brought drops of sweat out on his gray-white face. Presently he sat up straight, wiping his face with a fancily colored handkerchief.
    â€œI’ll talk,” he said. “I’ve got to talk now. Sue was getting ready to ditch Babe. She and I were going away. She— Here, I’ll show you.”
    He put his hand in his pocket and held out a folded sheet of thick notepaper to me. I took it and read:
    Dear Joe —
    I can’t stand this much longer—we’ve simply got to go soon. Babe beat me again tonight. Please, if you really love me, let’s make it soon.
    Sue
    The handwriting was a nervous woman’s, tall, angular, and piled up.
    â€œThat’s why I made the play for Hambleton’s grand,” he said. “I’ve been shatting on my uppers for a couple of months, and when that letter came yesterday I just had to raise dough somehow to get her away. She wouldn’t have stood for tapping her father though, so I tried to swing it without her knowing.”
    â€œWhen did you see her last?”
    â€œDay before yesterday, the day she mailed that letter. Only I saw her in the afternoon—she was here—and she wrote it that night.”
    â€œBabe suspect what you were up to?”
    â€œWe didn’t think he did. I don’t know. He was jealous as hell all the time, whether he had any reason to be or not.”
    â€œHow much reason did he have?”
    Wales looked me straight in the eye and said:
    â€œSue was a good kid.”
    I said: “Well, she’s been murdered.”
    He didn’t say anything.
    Day was darkening into evening. I went to the door and pressed the light button. I didn’t lose sight of Holy Joe Wales while I was doing it.
    As I took my finger away from the button, something clicked at the window. The click was loud and sharp.
    I looked at the window.
    A man crouched there on the fire-escape, looking in through glass and lace curtain. He was a thick-featured dark man whose size identified him as Babe McCloor. The muzzle of a big black automatic was touching the glass in front of him. He had tapped the glass with it to catch our attention.
    He had our attention.
    There wasn’t anything for me to do just then. I stood there and looked at him. I couldn’t tell whether he was looking at me or at Wales. I could see him clearly