“She kept asking me, ‘What’ll I do?’ I asked her if anybody else had heard Tim, and she said the dick had. He came running up while she was trying to lift Tim’s head. She didn’t think anybody else had been near enough to hear, but the dick had.
“I didn’t want Max to get in a jam over killing a mutt like Tim Noonan. Max didn’t mean anything to me then, except that I liked him, and I didn’t like any of the Noonans. I knew the dick—MacSwain. I used to know his wife. He had been a pretty good guy, straight as ace-deuce-trey-four-five, till he got on the force. Then he went the way of the rest of them. His wife stood as much of it as she could and then left him.
“Knowing this dick, I told Myrtle I thought we could fix things. A little jack would ruin MacSwain’s memory, or, if he didn’t like that, Max could have him knocked off. She had Tim’s note threatening suicide. If the dick would play along, the hole in Tim’s head from his own gun and the note would smooth everything over pretty.
“I left Myrtle under the trees and went out to hunt for Max. He wasn’t around. There weren’t many people there, and I could hear the hotel orchestra still playing dance music. I couldn’t find Max, so I went back to Myrtle. She was all worked up over another idea. She didn’t want Max to know that she had found out that he had killed Tim. She was afraid of him.
“See what I mean? She was afraid that if she and Max ever broke off he’d put her out of the way if he knew she had enough on him to swing him. I know how she felt. I got the same notion later, and kept just as quiet as she did. So we figured that if it could be fixed up without his knowing about it, so much the better. I didn’t want to show in it either.
“Myrtle went back alone to the group around Tim and got hold of MacSwain. She took him off a little way and made the deal with him. She had some dough on her. She gave him two hundred and a diamond ring