“Then you’ll have your city back, all nice and clean and ready to go to the dogs again. If you don’t do it, I’m going to turn these love letters of yours over to the newspaper buzzards, and I don’t mean your Herald crew⁠—the press associations. I got the letters from Dawn. You’ll have a lot of fun proving that you didn’t hire him to recover them, and that he didn’t kill the girl doing it. But the fun you’ll have is nothing to the fun people will have reading these letters. They’re hot. I haven’t laughed so much over anything since the hogs ate my kid brother.”

I stopped talking.

The old man was shaking, but there was no fear in his shaking. His face was purple again. He opened his mouth and roared:

“Publish them and be damned!”

I took them out of my pocket, dropped them on his bed, got up from my chair, put on my hat, and said: