Richmond asks casually: "How serious was the accident?"

Kavanaugh: "Very serious."

Richmond, still casually: "Murder?"

Kavanaugh hesitates, makes a nervous gesture with his fingers, says reluctantly: "A man was-was killed."

Richmond tilts his head back a little to look at a plume of smoke he is blowing at the ceiling. He says thoughtfully, unemotionally: "Your client is legally guilty, then, of first-degree murder?"

Kavanaugh, startled, begins a protest: "No, that's-"

Richmond quietly interrupts him, speaking as before: "The thousand to help finance the bootlegger makes your man an a.s.sociate of the bootlegger's in the rum-running enterprise, maybe even makes him the princ.i.p.al and the bootlegger only his agent. Either way, rum-running's a felony and any killing done while committing a felony is first-degree murder and everybody involved in the felony-whether they have anything to do with the actual killing or not-is equally guilty. It's a tough spot for your man."

Kavanaugh puts his gla.s.ses on, and begins, unconvincingly: "It is, as I said, a very serious matter, but I think you-ah-exaggerate the-"

Richmond shrugs carelessly, and in his quiet, deliberate voice says: "Take him into court then."

Kavanaugh makes no reply to this. He puts his fingertips together again and looks at them with worried eyes. Then he raises his head, looks at Richmond, and asks: "Mr. Richmond, do you think that we-that you could extricate my client from this-ah-affair?"

Richmond, casually: "Why not? It'll cost money, though. I wouldn't touch it under twenty-five thousand down, and maybe it'll cost you a couple of hundred thousand before you're through."

Kavanaugh protests: "But that's exorbitant!"

Richmond makes a careless gesture with the hand holding his cigarette. "It's not so much"-he smiles gently-"for Pomeroy."

Kavanaugh's body jerks stiffly erect in his chair, his mouth and eyes open, his gla.s.ses fall off his nose. "What? How?" he stammers.

"I detect things," Richmond says drily. "I'm a detective. That's what you want, isn't it?" He puts his cigarette in a tray beside his chair and uncrosses his legs as if about to rise. "Well," he asks quietly, "do I go to work for you or don't I?"

Kavanaugh evades his gaze. "I'll have to-ah-discuss your-ah-terms with Mr. Po-with my client," he says in confusion.

Richmond rises, says politely: "Right. Let me know as soon as you can. The sooner we get going, the better." He holds out his hand.

Kavanaugh rises to take it spluttering: "Of course you understand this is all in the strictest confidence."

"Certainly," Richmond says easily, "if Pomeroy hires me."

Kavanaugh goggles at him in consternation, stammering: "You mean-?" He is unable to finish the sentence.

Richmond smiles coolly at the lawyer and tells him: "I'm a businessman. Like Pomeroy or any other businessman I use information that comes to me in my line for profit. I'd rather get my profit out of Pomeroy, and I can promise him good value for his money, but if he doesn't want to play along with me-" He finishes with a shrug.

Kavanaugh draws himself stiffly erect. "That is blackmail, sir," he says in a somewhat pompously accusing voice.

Richmond laughs. "You've been reading the dictionary," he says with derisive mildness. His face and voice become hard and cold: "Pomeroy's in a sweet jam. I can help him or I can hurt him. Make up your mind." He turns and walks out.

That same night. The dashboard clock shows 11:30 as Richmond parks his car in a quiet street and gets out. He goes up the front steps of a large dark house set a little apart from its neighbors and rings the bell.

The door is opened by a plump youngish man in dinner clothes who says, "Good evening, Mr. Richmond," politely, and steps aside to admit the detective.

Richmond pa.s.ses down the hallway to a room where there is a bar. He halts in the doorway to look casually at the occupants of the room, nods to a couple of them who greet him, exchanges a "h.e.l.lo" with one of the bartenders, and goes on to another room, where there is a c.r.a.p-game. He speaks to a couple of the players, watches the game for a moment, and then goes upstairs, through rooms where various games are in progress, repeating the same performance. Then he returns to the bar, has a drink, and leaves the house.

The dashboard clock shows 2:10 as he parks the car again in a shabby street of small stores, cheap hotels, etc.

He enters a small cigar store, says, "Evening, Mack," to the man in dirty shirtsleeves behind the counter, lifts a hinged section of the counter, and pa.s.ses through an inner door set in one corner of the store behind the counter. He mounts a flight of stairs to another door, and goes through it into a large room where there is a bar, booths, tables, etc. Forty or fifty people are there, eating and drinking at tables and bar. They are a tougher lot than those in the other establishment.

He strolls casually almost the length of the room-speaking to an acquaintance or two-and sits down at a small table with a slack-jawed, sharp-faced man of thirty in cheap, showy clothes. "h.e.l.lo, Barney," he says without warmth. "Been looking for you."

Barney's eyes move from side to side uneasily. "This is a h.e.l.l of a place to get chummy with me," he mutters.

Richmond's shoulders move in an indifferent shrug. "This is a swell place," he says. "n.o.body'll think you're a stool-pigeon with me meeting you in the open like this. n.o.body can hear us. Make the right kind of faces while we talk and they'll think I'm trying to get something out of you and you're not giving me any." He leans forward, making his face sterner than his voice: "Which of the rum-running boys is in trouble?"

Barney's eyes move uneasily again. He mumbles: "I don't know what you mean?"

Richmond: "Scowl at me, you sap. Shake your head no while you give me the answer. Who's having to hide out?"

Barney obeys orders, while mumbling: "I don't know-there's three or four of 'em."

Richmond: "Which one that just went in business for himself?"

Barney, sneering contemptuously to carry out their play, though his eyes are still uneasy: "You mean Cheaters Neely?"

Richmond: "Who's he?"

Barney, shaking his head again from side to side: "Used to be with Big Frank Barnes. He-" He breaks off as a waiter comes up, bl.u.s.ters: "I don't know nothing, wouldn't tell you nothing if I did."

Richmond, to the waiter: "Scotch-some of that Dunbar's Extra."

Barney says: "Same."

The waiter goes away.

Richmond, making an ostentatiously threatening gesture with a forefinger, asks softly: "What kind of jam is this Cheaters in?"

Barney raises his voice angrily: "Go to h.e.l.l!" Then, keeping the same angry expression on his face, he leans forward and says in a low rapid voice: "I only know what I heard third-hand. He's supposed to've had to blip a guy down the beach-undercover man for the narcotic squad, the way I hear it."

Richmond makes his ostentatious threatening gesture again. "Was he running dope too?"

Barney, sneering: "Must've had some with him."

Richmond scowls at Barney as if in disgust. One of his hands has brought a crumpled piece of paper money out of his pocket. He pa.s.ses it to Barney under the table, then leaning forward as if uttering a final threat, says: "See what else you can dig up on it. Break away now."

Barney pushes his chair back and rises, swaggering. "Go jump in the ocean, you small-time d.i.c.k," he says truculently in a fairly loud voice. "And don't come fooling around me until you got something on me. Nuts to you!" He puts on his hat and swaggers out.

Richmond, his face a mask, picks up the drink the waiter sets in front of him. Men at tables around him grin covertly.

The following morning. Babe Holliday is sitting in Richmond's chair, smoking and playing solitaire on his desk, when he arrives.

"Morning, beautiful," she says cheerfully.

He hangs up his coat and hat and turns toward her asking: "How'd you make out?"

She pushes the cards up together and laughs. "What a guy!" she says. "He took me to a movie and bought me a soda afterwards. Anybody thinks that kid ever saw any Caliente or any fast life is screwy."

Richmond looks quizzically at her. "You wouldn't let him fool you, would you?"

She laughs again. "You ought to spend an evening with him-for your sins."

Richmond sits on the side of his desk and takes out a cigarette. "What's the answer then?" he says.

She rocks back in the chair, and says: "Easy. He's been bragging down at the office, trying to make out he's a devil with the women and an all around man of the world. All kids do it some.

Richmond looks up from his cigarette. "Sure?"

Babe: "Yep. He did it to me in a mild way, but a couple of minutes of talking was enough to let me know he'd never been down to Caliente, or much of any place else. And it's a cinch he's got no dough. It's a bust, Gene."

Richmond nods. "Sounds like it. We'd better play safe by looking him up a little. Don't put in more than three or four hours on it."

"Oke," Babe says, rising. "My expenses last night were two and half for dinner and three dollars and eighty cents' worth of taxicabs."

Richmond smiles at her. "This isn't that kind of a job," he says. "Your expenses were two bucks for dinner and twenty cent street-car fare. Get it from Miss Crane as you go out."

"You cheap so-and-so," she says without ill-feeling, kisses him, and goes out.

He sits down to his morning mail.

Presently Miss Crane comes in. "The Andrews divorce comes up this morning, Mr. Richmond," she says.

Richmond looks up from his mail. "She pay us the rest of the money she owes us?" he asks.

"Not yet. She still says she thinks the expenses ran too high, but she'll pay it as soon as she gets a settlement from her husband."

Richmond returns his attention to his mail. "She'll have to try to get her divorce without my testimony, then," he says with quiet finality. "I'm not in this racket for fun."

Miss Crane says, "All right," and turns toward the door.

Richmond looks up from his mail again. "We're supposed to have two men working on that Kennedy kid job for Fields. We'll fake up their reports after I'm through with the mail. Better keep their expenses down around-say-eight or ten dollars a day apiece-at first."

Miss Crane nods and goes out.

Richmond's telephone bell rings. "Gene Richmond speaking," he says into the instrument.

The other end of the wire. Barney in a telephone booth. He says: "This is Barney, Gene. Happy Jones and Dis-and-Dat Kid were with Cheaters that night, and a mugg I don't know anything about called Buck. I don't know if that was all of 'em."

Richmond: "Where are they now?"

Barney: "I don't know where they're hiding out."

Richmond: "Find out. How about the guy who was killed?"

Barney: "I guess he was an undercover man for the narcotic people, all right, Gene, but I don't know nothing about him. The newspapers just said an unidentified man. They left their booze there, but if they had any dope they took it with them when they scrammed."

Richmond: "Right. Let me know as soon as you pick up anything else." He puts aside the phone.

Two men are walking in sunlight across a broad, carefully trimmed lawn. One is Ward Kavanaugh, in a business suit. The other, in tennis clothes, is the man who stood beside Kavanaugh during his phone conversation with Richmond-Herbert Pomeroy. Behind them a large house-a mansion-is seen, with a broad driveway leading up to it, and beyond the house part of a lake is visible, with a couple of sailboats and a motorboat cutting across it.

The two men cross the lawn slowly, both looking down with worried eyes at the gra.s.s.

"But how did he find out I was your client?" Pomeroy asks.

The lawyer shakes his head. "I don't know, Herbert, but I dare say they have ways of keeping in touch with much that happens."

Pomeroy frowns and works his lips together. "If it weren't for Ann," he mutters. Then: "You still think I shouldn't give myself up and stand trial?"

Kavanaugh, gently: "That's for you to decide, Herbert. I still am afraid that a prison sentence is the best you could hope for."

They walk a little further in silence. Then Pomeroy: "And there's no other way out except to engage this Richmond?"

Kavanaugh: "I'm afraid not."

Pomeroy: "But if I do, will he get me out of the mess, or will he simply bleed me?"

Before Kavanaugh can reply a Packard sedan squeals to an abrupt halt halfway up the drive behind them. Both men turn around quickly.

A man gets out of the sedan, waves his hand cheerfully at Pomeroy and Kavanaugh, and starts across the lawn toward them.

"Oh, Lord!" Pomeroy gasps. "It's Neely!"

Cheaters Neely is a full-fleshed man of medium height, about thirty-seven, carelessly dressed in moderately priced clothes topped by a Derby hat. He wears horn-rimmed spectacles, has a jovial hail-fellow manner, and might be mistaken for a third-rate salesman. Three more men get out of the sedan and follow him. The first is Happy Jones, a lanky man of forty with a mournfully lined thin face and dark clothes that seem mournful because, needing pressing, they sag close to his thin frame. The second is Buck, a big beetle-browed, hard-jawed man of thirty with deep-set smoldering eyes. He wears a grey suit not quite large enough for him and a grey cap. The third is the Dis-and-Dat Kid, a hatchet-faced boy of twenty-two in markedly collegiate clothes. A cigarette hangs from a corner of his mouth. He has no eyebrows. His eyes and his fingers are in constant fidgeting motion.

Neely, having reached the two men who stand waiting for him, grasps Pomeroy's hand and shakes it warmly, as if sure of his welcome. "How are you, Pomeroy?" he asks heartily.

Pomeroy, dazed, allows his hand to be shaken, but says nothing.

Holding Pomeroy's hand, Neely turns to make with his other hand a wide gesture at his three followers. "I want you to meet my friends." He indicates each with a motion of his hand. "Mr. Black, Mr. White, and Mr. Brown. Boys, this is Mr. Pomeroy." He drops the stockbroker's hand and looks at Kavanaugh. "This your father?" he asks.

Pomeroy says stiffly: "This is Mr. Kavanaugh, my attorney."

Neely grabs the lawyer's hand and shakes it. "Pleased to meet you, sir," he says heartily. He turns to his followers. "Boys, this is Mr. Kavanaugh."

The boys look at Mr. Kavanaugh with blank eyes and say nothing.

Neely claps Pomeroy lightly on the shoulder, "Well, now that everybody knows everybody, what's new?"

Pomeroy winces, clears his throat, asks weakly: "Why did you come up here?"

Neely raises his eyebrows a little and his face takes on an affably questioning look. He jerks his head slightly toward Kavanaugh.

Pomeroy says: "Mr. Kavanaugh knows about it."