planks.
“What . . . ?” I said.
Then I got it. You always did that with dangerous criminals. It immobilized them while you lifted their arsenals. I unbuckled bis gunbelt, caught it as it dropped, transferred the .38 to my pocket, and tossed the belt itself inside the door. They didn’t do it any better on Dragnet. He still made no move to straighten up, and I was about to order him to when I caught myself just in time.
It was his arrest, by God, and he wanted it to be carried out in the approved manner. I still hadn’t frisked him for a hidden gun. I stooped and ran my hands up both sides of his legs, one at a time, and then up his body and under his arms.
“All right,” I said curtly.
He straightened and turned to face me. The round pixie face was filled with the wonder of a child beholding old faithful for the first time “A G-man,” he said in awe. “The F.B.I. What you know about that?”
I took the folded mortgage form from my breast pocket and held it out to him. “This is the Federal warrant for your arrest.”
He accepted it gingerly, as if it might explode.
Then he unfolded it and stared blankly. “I can’t read nothing without my specs,” he said. “They’re inside.”
I nodded toward the door. “All right. Let’s go in.”
I was right behind him. At the first step he took to the left, toward the chest, I snapped crisply, “Never mind! Stay away from those drawers. Stand right there in the center of the room.”
“Yessir,” he said.
“Where are they?” I asked. “I’ll get them.”
“On top of that dresser.”
“All right,” I said. “Don’t move from there.” I stepped over to the chest, turning my head to look back at him as I picked up the glasses. They slipped from my fingers. I made a desperate stab at them with the other hand to catch them before they could hit the floor, and batted them against the wall. The lenses shattered.
“Damn it!” I said. I turned and faced him apologetically, “I’m sorry as the devil, Mr. Cliffords. We’ll get you another pair.”
“Oh, that’s all right,” he said.
I waited for him to mention the other pair in the trunk. When we didn’t find them, of course, I’d jump right down his throat for stalling, and divert his attention from a fact that could look quite fishy if he had the intelligence to grasp it. However, he said nothing about them. I glanced at him. He had taken the bait. He’d turned his head and was staring at the evidence on the kitchen table.
He shook his head resignedly. “I should have knowed,” he said. “I should have knowed I’d never get away with it.”
I was in. It was as easy as that.
I stepped over and gently lifted the warrant from his nerveless fingers, returning it to my pocket. “You’d better sit down,” I said, not unkindly.
He collapsed into the chair beside the table. When he took his eyes off the money and looked up at me, however, I was puzzled by the expression on his face. Instead of the blank despair I had expected, there was something odd in it. Dumb admiration was as near as I could come to it.
“How did you ever find it out?” he asked.
“Never mind,” I said. “We’ll get to that in a minute. Right now it’s my duty to warn you that anything you say can be used against you. You’ve got yourself in a bad jam, Mr. Cliffords.”
“Will there be reporters”” he asked. “You reckon they’ll take my picture and print it in the papers?”
He reminded me of a child hoping to be taken on a picnic.
“I don’t think you realize the mess you’re in,” I said, frowning.
“Oh?” he said. “What you reckon they’ll charge me with?”
I fired up a cigarette, closed the lighter, and returned it to my pocket, letting him wait. I had to scare him now, and scare him badly.
“Not nothing real serious?” he suggested. “After all, all I done was find it. . . .”
I exhaled smoke and stared at him for a long minute. “I’m afraid you’re not very familiar with the law, Mr. Cliffords. A man was killed in that hold-up, as you know. That, of course, is the equivalent of first-degree murder.”
“But, look, Mr. Ward . . . I didn’t have nothing to do with that.”
“Unfortunately,” I went on sternly, “that’s not quite the case. The minute you took that money