Max
The news of Whisper’s capture spread quickly. When Noonan, the coppers he had brought along, and I took the gambler and the now-conscious Jerry into the City Hall there were at least a hundred people standing around watching us.
All of them didn’t look pleased. Noonan’s coppers—a shabby lot at best—moved around with whitish strained faces. But Noonan was the most triumphant guy west of the Mississippi. Even the bad luck he had trying to third-degree Whisper couldn’t spoil his happiness.
Whisper stood up under all they could give him. He would talk to his lawyer, he said, and to nobody else, and he stuck to it. And, as much as Noonan hated the gambler, here was a prisoner he didn’t give the works, didn’t turn over to the wrecking crew. Whisper had killed the chief’s brother, and the chief hated his guts, but Whisper was still too much somebody in Poisonville to be roughed around.
Noonan finally got tired of playing with his prisoner, and sent him up—the prison was on the City Hall’s top floor—to be stowed away. I lit another of the chief’s cigars and read the detailed statement he had got from the woman in the hospital. There was nothing in it that I hadn’t learned from Dinah and MacSwain.
The chief wanted me to come out to his house for dinner, but I lied out of it, pretending that my wrist—now in a bandage—was bothering me. It was really little more than a burn.
While we were talking about it, a pair of plainclothes men brought in the red-faced bird who had stopped the slug I had missed Whisper with. It