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murder?"
    "No, but Max didn't kill him, if that's what you think, even if he was around."
    "Why?"
    "Lots of reasons. First place, Max wouldn't have done it himself. He'd have had somebody else do it, and he'd have been way off with an alibi nobody could shake. Second place, Max carries a.38, and anybody he sent to do the job would have had that much gun or more. What kind of a gunman would use a.3 2?"
    "Then who did it?"
    "I've told you all I know," she said. "I've told you too much."
    I stood up and said:
    "No, you've told me just exactly enough."
    "You mean you think you know who killed him?"
    "Yeah, though there's a couple of things I'll have to cover before I make the pinch."
    "Who? Who?" She stood up, suddenly almost sober, tugging at my lapels. "Tell me who did it."
    "Not now."
    "Be a good guy."
    "Not now."
    She let go my lapels, put her hands behind her, and laughed in my face.
    "All right. Keep it to yourself-and try to figure out which part of what I told you is the truth."
    I said:
    "Thanks for the part that is, anyhow, and for the gin. And if Max Thaler means anything to you, you ought to pass him the word that Noonan's trying to rib him."

V.
    Old Elihu Talks Sense
    It was close to two-thirty in the morning when I reached the hotel. With my key the night clerk gave me a memorandum that asked me to call Poplar 605. I knew the number. It was Elihu Willsson's.
    "When did this come?" I asked the clerk.
    "A little after one."
    That sounded urgent. I went back to a booth and put in the call. The old man's secretary answered, asking me to come out at once. I promised to hurry, asked the clerk to get me a taxi, and went up to my room for a shot of Scotch.
    I would rather have been cold sober, but I wasn't. If the night held more work for me I didn't want to go to it with alcohol dying in me. The snifter revived me a lot. I poured more of the King George into a flask, pocketed it, and went down to the taxi.
    Elihu Willsson's house was lighted from top to bottom. The secretary opened the front door before I could get my finger on the button. His thin body was shivering in pale blue pajamas and dark blue bathrobe. His thin face was full of excitement.
    "Hurry!" he said. "Mr. Willsson is waiting. And, please, will you try to persuade him to let us have the body removed?"
    I promised and followed him up to the old man's bedroom.
    Old Elihu was in bed as before, but now a black automatic pistol lay on the covers close to one of his pink hands.
    As soon as I appeared he took his head off the pillows, sat upright and barked at me:
    "Have you got as much guts as you've got gall?"
    His face was an unhealthy dark red. The film was gone from his eyes. They were hard and hot.
    I let his question wait while I looked at the corpse on the floor between door and bed.
    A short thick-set man in brown lay on his back with dead eves staring at the ceiling from under the visor of a gray cap. A piece of his jaw had been knocked off. His chin was tilted to show where another bullet had gone through tic and collar to make a hole in his neck. One arm was bent under him. The other hand held a blackjack as big as a milk bottle. There was a lot of blood.
    I looked up from this mess to the old man. His grin was vicious and idiotic.
    "You're a great talker," he said. "I know that. A two-fisted, you-bedamned man with your words. But have you got anything else? Have you got the guts to match your gall? Or is it just the language you've got?"
    There was no use in trying to get along with the old boy. I scowled and reminded him:
    "Didn't I tell you not to bother me unless you wanted to talk sense for a change?"
    "You did, my lad." There was a foolish sort of triumph in his voice. "And I'll talk you your sense. I want a man to clean this pig-sty of a Poisonville for me, to smoke out the rats, little and big. It's a man's job. Are you a man?"
    "What's the use of getting poetic about it?" I growled. "If you've got a fairly honest piece of work to be done in