The secretary came in with the letter and the check. I gave them to the old man instead of an answer to his question. He put a shaky signature on each, and I had them folded in my pocket when the police arrived.

The first copper into the room was the chief himself, fat Noonan. He nodded amiably at Willsson, shook hands with me, and looked with twinkling greenish eyes at the dead man.

“Well, well,” he said. “It’s a good job he did, whoever did it. Yakima Shorty. And will you look at the sap he’s toting?” He kicked the blackjack out of the dead man’s hand. “Big enough to sink a battleship. You drop him?” he asked me.

“ Mr. Willsson.”

“Well, that certainly is fine,” he congratulated the old man. “You saved a lot of people a lot of troubles, including me. Pack him out, boys,” he said to the four men behind him.