A languid gesture of denial met the question. “Oh, no. Not in that way. ’Course I learned a few things from her.”

“Never mind about her for the moment then. Tell me how Billy came to ask you to bear a hand. What did you have to do, and how much did you get out of it?”

In stumbling and random phrases Stebbins told what the inspector believed to be a truthful story of his association with the robbery. It was difficult always to keep him to the point, and Malone who was laboriously writing down his statement in longhand clicked his tongue impatiently at times, as he waited with poised pen, until a few incisive questions from Labar had unravelled the tangle.