McGraw introduced us and asked them about the ice pick. They had not seen it, were positive it hadn’t been there. They wouldn’t have overlooked an article of its sort.
“Was it there last night?” McGraw asked me.
“I stood beside her while she chipped off pieces of ice with it.”
I described it. McGraw told the dicks to search her house again, and then to try to find the pick in the vicinity of the house.
“You knew her,” he said when Shepp and Vanaman had gone. “What’s your slant on it?”
“Too new for me to have one,” I dodged the question. “Give me an hour or two to think it over. What do you think?”
He fell back into sourness, growling, “How the hell do I know?”
But the fact that he let me go away without asking me any more questions told me he had already made up his mind that Whisper had killed the girl.
I wondered if the little gambler had done it, or if this was another of the wrong raps that Poisonville police chiefs liked to hang on him. It didn’t seem to make much difference now. It was a cinch he had—personally or by deputy—put Noonan out, and they could only hang him once.
There were a lot of men in the corridor when I left McGraw. Some of these men were quite young—just kids—quite a few were foreigners, and most of them were every bit as tough looking as any men should be.
Near the street door I met Donner, one of the coppers who had been on the Cedar Hill expedition.