That pleased me and I said so. We purred at each other until a lanky man with an extremely upturned nose in the middle of a round and freckled face was ushered in. It was Peak Murry.

“We were just wondering about the time when Tim died,” the chief said when Murry had been given a chair and a cigar, “where Whisper was. You were out to the Lake that night, weren’t you?”

“Yep,” Murry said and the end of his nose got sharper.

“With Whisper?”

“I wasn’t with him all the time.”

“Were you with him at the time of the shooting?”

“Nope.”

The chief’s greenish eyes got smaller and brighter. He asked softly:

“You know where he was?”