mines and smelters still in their working clothes, gaudy boys from pool rooms and dance halls, sleek men with slick pale faces, men with the dull look of respectable husbands, a few just as respectable and dull women, and some ladies of the night.
On the edge of this congregation I stopped beside a square-set man in rumpled gray clothes. His face was grayish too, even the thick lips, though he wasn’t much older than thirty. His face was broad, thick-featured and intelligent. For color he depended on a red Windsor tie that blossomed over his gray flannel shirt.
“What’s the rumpus?” I asked him.
He looked at me carefully before he replied, as if he wanted to be sure that the information was going into safe hands. His eyes were gray as his clothes, but not so soft.
“Don Willsson’s gone to sit on the right hand of God, if God don’t mind looking at bullet-holes.”
“Who shot him?” I asked.
The gray man scratched the back of his neck and said:
“Somebody with a gun.”
I wanted information, not wit. I would have tried my luck with some other member of the crowd if the red tie hadn’t interested me. I said:
“I’m a stranger in town. Hang the Punch and Judy on me. That’s what strangers are for.”
“Donald Willsson, Esquire, publisher of the Morning and Evening Heralds , was found in Hurricane Street a little while ago, shot very dead by parties unknown,” he recited in a rapid singsong. “Does that keep your feelings from being hurt?”