another crackpot, and he’s no windbag. People are beginning to listen to him, people who don’t usually pay much attention to rabble-rousers and crusaders with ants in their pants.”
“All right,” I said. “What do we do?” I knew what I wanted to do. I wanted to get out of the whole stinking mess and get a job washing cars or digging ditches, but that’s the bad part of that kind of business—it’s not easy to get loose, especially when the heat starts.
“We do just what anybody else does with gasoline on his clothes—we don’t light any cigarettes. I want you to tell Abbie Bell and that woman out on Cypress Street to keep the lid clamped on those places, because if we have any more trouble down there I’m going to run them out of town before we all get caught in the wringer. And slip the word to all the rest of them. Sometime today drive out to Moss Inn and tell Carpenter he’d better start looking his customers over a little more carefully before he lets them go back where the games are. There’s no telling who Soames is getting his information from, but he’s getting it straight. However, it’s the cat houses he’s got his guns leveled on right now, and particularly Abbie Bell’s. But the whole thing’s dynamite, at least until after the grand jury adjourns.”
“O.K.,” I said. “I’ll tell ‘em.” It didn’t show much on his face, but I knew he was worried.
As it turned out, I didn’t get a chance to tell anybody anything. Trouble started almost before we got back to the office. The telephone was ringing as we walked in the door. Lorraine picked it up.
“Yes? Yes. He’s here now. He just came in. Hold on a minute.” She handed it to Buford.
“Yes, speaking,” he said. He listened for a moment. “All right. Just keep your shirt on. Yes, Marshall. Of course I’ll send Marshall. He’ll be there before you can stop screaming.” He hung up.
“You can get your coffee if you want, Lorraine, I’ll stick around.” She looked at him, grabbed her purse, and left, knowing it was an order.
When she was out the door he turned to me. “It’s that Bell woman. Yelling her head off. Some big sawmill hand’s gone berserk and is trying to kill one of the girls. She wants you. For God’s sake, try to get it quieted down without anybody getting hurt.”
I knew what he meant, and didn’t even get the gun out of the filing cabinet where I’d left it Monday. I don’t like guns anyway; I had enough of them during the war. I was out the door before he’d finished talking.
I took my own car because there wasn’t time to go to the county garage after one. Traffic was snarled in the square, as it always is on Saturdays, and I had to creep through it, cursing. When I got clear of that I shot down the next six blocks giving it the gun all the way. All we needed now was for somebody to be killed in one of those places and the county would blow up right in our faces. I slid to a stop in front of the chili joint and ran across the street to the hotel. The street was quiet except for the wailing of a juke box in one of the beer joints, and fortunately there wasn’t any crowd gathering. I could hear a noise as of someone hammering in the back of the building.
Abbie let me in the door and then slammed it shut, fast. She had the filmy blue robe clutched around her with one hand and was waving an empty gin bottle in the other. The tight curls seemed to strain outward from her head as if she carried an electrical charge.
“Stop the crazy fool!” she was yelling. “He’ll kill somebody!”
“All right, relax,” I said. “Where is he?”
“Upstairs. At the end of the hall. My God, stop him!” I went up the stairs on the run, still hearing the pounding. The hallway had no windows at the ends and was dimly lighted with one small, unshaded bulb, and all the doors were closed. I could see him down at the end and ran toward him. He was a big devil, naked except for a pair of shorts and one sock, and he was swinging a small table by one leg like a footstool, hammering on the door with it. He had one of