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Corby, the long-nosed little bookkeeper. He pushed his way forward, sucked in his breath audibly when he saw what lay at his feet.
    â€œMr. Lansing’s killed himself,” Malloy said.
    â€œKilled himself? Here?”
    â€œCrazy place for it, by all that’s holy.”
    â€œBut why? Why would he do such a thing?”
    â€œGod only knows.”
    â€œSuicide,” Corby said in awed tones. “Lansing, of all people.”
    Quincannon paid no attention to them. While they were gabbing, he finished his examination of the dead man and then picked up the LeMat revolver, hefted it, put it down again in the same place next to Lansing’s hand.
    Suicide?
    Bah!
    Murder, plain enough. Cold-blooded murder.

 
    5
    QUINCANNON
    Quincannon kept his suspicions to himself. He was tolerably certain that a hand other than Caleb Lansing’s had taken the man’s life, for four good reasons, but he needed more time to determine the who, how, and why of the deed. Proclaiming here and now that Lansing had not died alone behind not one but two locked doors, the outer one under Quincannon’s own surveillance, would have brought him scorn. Not to mention stirred the already boiling pot even more by adding unnecessary complications, and even more importantly, perhaps warned the scoundrel responsible for the crime.
    He ordered Jack Malloy to relock the storeroom doors and stand guard, sent Elias Corby to summon the law, and rode the freight elevator back upstairs in the hope that James Willard had returned from his meeting. A few minutes with his client before the police arrived, to explain Lansing’s involvement with the murder of Otto Ackermann to his client, would have prepared him for the interrogation to come. But Willard hadn’t yet returned. Until he did, Quincannon would have to bear the brunt of the questioning.
    He took himself downstairs to the brick-walled corridor leading to the cellars. A gaggle of workers had clustered there, drawn by fast-spread word of the shooting; he pushed his way through them to join the grim-faced Malloy. The two of them waited together in silence, the only sounds in the dank passage the muttering voices of the gathered men.
    The wait lasted no more than ten minutes, a fast response for a change by an “ace detective” from the Hall of Justice. Quincannon’s hope was that the officer in charge would be one he didn’t know or knew only slightly, but he had no such luck. In fact, the man leading the half-dozen coppers who arrived on the scene was the one he least wanted to see—the beefy, red-faced Prussian named Kleinhoffer with whom he’d had run-ins in the past. Kleinhoffer was an incompetent political toady with dubious morals and a strong dislike of private detectives. His opinion of Quincannon was on a par with Quincannon’s opinion of him.
    When the dick spied him, his color darkened and his beady eyes and thin mouth pinched into a glower. “You, Quincannon. What the devil are you doing here?”
    â€œPlying my trade, same as you.”
    â€œHe’s been here the past few days,” Malloy said.
    â€œHas he now. Doing what, exactly?”
    â€œInspecting the premises. He’s a safety inspector for the Department of Public Works … isn’t he?”
    â€œNo, he isn’t. He’s a flycop who keeps sticking his nose in places where it doesn’t belong. What are you really doing here, Quincannon?”
    â€œI’m not at liberty to say without permission of my client.”
    â€œAnd who would that be?”
    â€œJames Willard, the brewery’s owner.”
    â€œYes? Is he here now?”
    â€œNo. Away at a meeting. But he should be back soon.”
    Murmurs of surprise had rippled through the listening workmen. One of them piped up, “I saw this man chasing Mr. Lansing through the fermenting room a while ago.”
    â€œIs that so. Who’s Lansing?”
    â€œThe assistant