Talk of the town - By Charles Williams Page 0,36

you know?” Magruder asked, his eyes bright. “You suppose he can catch, as well as pitch?”

Redfield ignored him. “Well, Chatham, you have anything to say?”

“No,” I said.

“Oh, come now,” he said. He was smiling faintly, but his eyes were bitter.

“If they sent you a telegram,” I said, “they told you the whole thing, not half of it. So if you want to ignore the rest of it when they tell you, why should I bother?”

“Oh, sure,” he said contemptuously, “they said you resigned. Don’t they always?”

“I did,” I said. “And voluntarily. I drew a thirty-day suspension, but before it was up I decided to get out altogether.” Then I wondered why I bothered to explain; I seldom did to anybody. It was odd, but in spite of everything he was the kind of cop you instinctively liked and respected.

”Of course. And you weren’t guilty of the charge, anyway.”

“Yes,” I said. “I was guilty.”

He looked at me strangely, but remained silent for a moment. Then he went on, hard-faced, “So now you’re a free-lance muscle boy. A professional trouble-maker. What’s your connection with Mrs. Langston?”

“There is none. Except that I like her. And I’m beginning to have a great deal of admiration for her. I like people with her kind of poise under pressure.”

“Crap. What’s she paying you for?”

“I told you, Redfield, she’s not paying me for anything.”

“Then why are you still hanging around?”

“I could tell you it’s simply because my car's not ready yet. You can check that with the garage.”

“But that’s not it.”

“That’s right. It’s not. I could give you several reasons. One is that I don’t like being pushed. Another is that the motel itself interests me, but that’s business, and none of yours. But the principal one is that that acid job there was partly my fault. I started sticking my nose into something that didn’t concern me—as you told me yourself— and it was a little hint that I was just going to do her more harm than good by meddling. So now, after buying it for her, am I supposed to go off and leave her to enjoy it all by herself?”

“You got a license in this state to operate as a private detective?”

“No.”

“All right. Just stick your nose in one more thing around here and I’m going to shove it in your ear and pull it out the other side.”

“You’d better start checking things with your District Attorney, Redfield. As long as she’s not paying me, I’m not acting as a private detective. I’m a private citizen and that’s something else entirely.”

His face was bleak. “There are ways, Chatham. You ought to know.”

“I do. I’ve seen some of them used.”

“And you just keep going and you’ll see some of them used again. Now what’s this crap somebody took a shot at you, this note from Dr. Morley?”

I told him the whole thing, from the woman’s first call. It was easy and took only a few minutes with nobody barking irrelevant questions and leaning on the back of my neck. He sat on the edge of the desk, smoking a cigarette and listening with no expression at all. When I had finished, he glanced around at Magruder. “Any of this been checked yet?”

Magruder nodded. “Mitch is out there now.”

“Right.” He swung back to me, and snapped, “Let me see if I’ve got this fairy tale straight. The woman, whoever she was, set you up out there so the man in the loft, whoever he was, could kill you.”

“Yes.”

“That makes it premeditated, of course, so it would be first-degree murder. You’re still with me?”

“Sure.”

He leaned forward a little, jabbing a forefinger at me. “So, look—am I supposed to believe that this stupid pipe dream makes sense, even to you? Two people are so worried about you they’re going to kill you, commit first-degree murder with a chance of winding up in the death house, and for what? Simply because they’re afraid you’re going to find out they were the ones who threw the overalls in Mrs. Murphy’s chowder.” He sighed and shook his head. “Chatham, do you have any idea what they’d probably get for that acid job? If they were ever convicted?”

“A year. Six months. Maybe less.”

“But still I’m supposed to believe—”

“Cut it out. You know the answer as well as I do.”

“Do I?”

“They’re jumpy as hell about something, but it’s not I some two-bit rap for vandalism or malicious mischief.”

“Well, don’t keep us all a-twitter. Tell us what it is.”

“Try murder,” I said. “What