Dinah Brand reached across the table and patted my hand. Her eyes were uneasy. She said:
“It’s not your fault, darling. You said yourself that there was nothing else you could do. Finish your drink and we’ll have another.”
“There was plenty else I could do,” I contradicted her. “Old Elihu ran out on me at first simply because these birds had too much on him for him to risk a break unless he was sure they could be wiped out. He couldn’t see how I could do it, so he played with them. He’s not exactly their brand of cutthroat, and, besides, he thinks the city is his personal property, and he doesn’t like the way they’ve taken it away from him.
“I could have gone to him this afternoon and showed him that I had them ruined. He’d have listened to reason. He’d have come over to my side, have given me the support I needed to swing the play legally. I could have done that. But it’s easier to have them killed off, easier and surer, and, now that I’m feeling this way, more satisfying. I don’t know how I’m going to come out with the Agency. The Old Man will boil me in oil if he ever finds out what I’ve been doing. It’s this damned town. Poisonville is right. It’s poisoned me.
“Look. I sat at Willsson’s table tonight and played them like you’d play trout, and got just as much fun out of it. I looked at Noonan and knew he hadn’t a chance in a thousand of living another day because of what I had done to him, and I laughed, and felt warm and happy inside. That’s not me. I’ve got hard skin all over what’s left of my soul, and after twenty years of messing around with crime I can look at any sort of a murder without seeing anything in it but my bread and butter, the day’s work. But this getting a rear out of planning deaths is not natural to me. It’s what this place has done to me.”
She smiled too softly and spoke too indulgently: