“What’s the use of getting poetic about it?” I growled. “If you’ve got a fairly honest piece of work to be done in my line, and you want to pay a decent price, maybe I’ll take it on. But a lot of foolishness about smoking rats and pigpens doesn’t mean anything to me.”
“All right. I want Personville emptied of its crooks and grafters. Is that plain enough language for you?”
“You didn’t want it this morning,” I said. “Why do you want it now?”
The explanation was profane and lengthy and given to me in a loud and blustering voice. The substance of it was that he had built Personville brick by brick with his own hands and he was going to keep it or wipe it off the side of the hill. Nobody could threaten him in his own city, no matter who they were. He had let them alone, but when they started telling him, Elihu Willsson, what he had to do and what he couldn’t do, he would show them who was who. He brought the speech to an end by pointing at the corpse and boasting:
“That’ll show them there’s still a sting in the old man.”
I wished I were sober. His clowning puzzled me. I couldn’t put my finger on the something behind it.
“Your playmates sent him?” I asked, nodding at the dead man.
“I only talked to him with this,” he said, patting the automatic on the bed, “but I reckon they did.”
“How did it happen?”
“It happened simple enough. I heard the door opening, and I switched on the light, and there he was, and I shot him, and there he is.”
“What time?”