“Sure he did.”
“Did he give you Sue’s?”
“No.”
“How’d Kenny get hold of the stuff?”
“He didn’t say.”
“Where’s Kenny now?”
“I don’t know. He was on his way east, with something else on the fire, and couldn’t fool with this. That’s why he passed it on to me.”
“Bighearted Kenny,” I said. “You know Sue Hambleton?”
“No,” emphatically. “I’d never even heard of her till Kenny told me.”
“I don’t like this Kenny,” I said, “though without him your story’s got some good points. Could you tell it leaving him out?”
He shook his head slowly from side to side, saying:
“It wouldn’t be the way it happened.”
“That’s too bad. Conspiracies to defraud don’t mean as much to me as finding Sue. I might have made a deal with you.”
He shook his head again, but his eyes were thoughtful, and his lower lip moved up to overlap the upper a little.
The girl had stepped back so she could see both of us as we talked, turning her face, which showed she didn’t like us, from one to the other as we spoke our pieces. Now she fastened her gaze on the man, and her eyes were growing angry again.
I got up on my feet, telling him: