“What is the meaning of this damned nonsense?” he demanded.
“Them’s harsh words to come from a fellow like you,” O’Gar growled at him. “If this is nonsense, what do you make of that yarn you told us about creeping Siamese and mysterious bundles, and God knows what all?”
“Don’t be too hard on him,” I told O’Gar. “Being around movies all the time has poisoned his idea of what sounds plausible. If it hadn’t, he’d have known better than to see a Siamese in the moonlight at 11:45, when the moon was just coming up at somewhere around 12:45, when you phoned me.”
Richter stood up on his one good leg.
The husky police corporal stepped close to him.
“Hadn’t I better frisk him, sergeant?”
O’Gar shook his bullet head.
“Waste of time. He’s got nothing on him. They cleaned the place of weapons. The chances are the lady dropped them in the bay when she rode over to Oakland to get a table cover to take the place of the sarong her husband carried away with him.”
That shook the pair of them. Richter pretended he hadn’t gulped, and the woman had a fight of it before she could make her eyes stay still on mine.
O’Gar struck while the iron was hot by bringing the buttons and garters clasps we had salvaged out of his pocket, and letting them trickle from one hand to another. That used up the last bit of the facts we had.
I threw a lie at them.