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my line, and you want to pay a decent price, maybe I'll take it on. But a lot of foolishness about smoking rats and pig-pens doesn't mean anything to me."
    "All right. I want Personville emptied of its crooks and grafters. Is that plain enough language for you?"
    "You didn't want it this morning," I said. "Why do you want it now?"
    The explanation was profane and lengthy and given to me in a loud and blustering voice. The substance of it was that he had built Personville brick by brick with his own hands and he was going to keep it or wipe it off the side of the hill. Nobody could threaten him in his own city, no matter who they were. He had let them alone, but when they started telling him, Elihu Willsson, what he had to do and what he couldn't do, he would show them who was who. He brought the speech to an end by pointing at the corpse and boasting:
    "That'll show them there's still a sting in the old man."
    I wished I were sober. His clowning puzzled me. I couldn't put my finger on the something behind it.
    "Your playmates sent him?" I asked, nodding at the dead man.
    "I only talked to him with this," he said, patting the automatic on the bed, "but I reckon they did."
    "How did it happen?"
    "It happened simple enough. I heard the door opening, and I switched on the light, and there he was, and I shot him, and there he is."
    "What time?"
    "It was about one o'clock."
    "And you've let him lie there all this time?"
    "That I have." The old man laughed savagely and began blustering again: "Does the sight of a dead man turn your stomach? Or is it his spirit you're afraid of?"
    I laughed at him. Now I had it. The old boy was scared stiff. Fright was the something behind his clowning. That was why he blustered, and why he wouldn't let them take the body away. He wanted it there to look at, to keep panic away, visible proof of his ability to defend himself. I knew where I stood.
    "You really want the town cleaned up?" I asked.
    "I said I did and I do."
    "I'd have to have a free hand-no favors to anybody-run the job as I pleased. And I'd have to have a ten-thousand-dollar retainer."
    "Ten thousand dollars! Why in hell should I give that much to a man I don't know from Adam? A man who's done nothing I know of but talk?"
    "Be serious. When I say me, I mean the Continental. You know them."
    "I do. And they know me. And they ought to know I'm good for-"
    "That's not the idea. These people you want taken to the cleaners were friends of yours yesterday. Maybe they will be friends again next week. I don't care about that. But I'm not playing politics for you. I'm not hiring out to help you kick them back in line-with the job being called off then. If you want the job done you'll plank down enough money to pay for a complete job. Any that's left over will be returned to you. But you're going to get a complete job or nothing. That's the way it'll have to be. Take it or leave it."
    "I'll damned well leave it," he bawled.
    He let me get half-way down the stairs before he called me back.
    "I'm an old man," he grumbled. "If I was ten years younger-" He glared at me and worked his lips together. "I'll give you your damned check."
    "And authority to go through with it in my own way?"
    "Yes."
    "We'll get it done now. Where's your secretary?"
    Willsson pushed a button on his bedside table and the silent secretary appeared from wherever he had been hiding. I told him:
    "Mr. Willsson wants to issue a ten-thousand-dollar check to the Continental Detective Agency, and he wants to write the Agency-San Francisco branch-a letter authorizing the Agency to use the ten thousand dollars investigating crime and political corruption in Personville. The letter is to state clearly that the Agency is to conduct the investigation as it sees fit."
    The secretary looked questioningly at the old man, who frowned and ducked his round white head.
    "But first," I told the secretary as he glided toward the door, "you'd better phone the police that we've got a dead burglar