I nodded, not very surprised. Croyden is maybe forty, forty-five miles away. There are two railroads and a new bus line connecting Boone with Croyden and no little traffic of various and interesting 6orts plies back and forth. A lot of good stuff comes in here directly from the Croyden distilleries without benefit of a middleman. Like the cigarettes in North Carolina, I suppose. We also used to have a visiting delegation of girls each weekend until the Civic Pride League broke out their tomahawks and forced the police to close the district.
As one of the sidelines I’ve developed since you lit out for Capitol City and the political newsbeats again, I now handle investigations of policy applicants and sometimes accident claims for an insurance company over there.
I said to Evans, “I know Rothman and Liebscher, and a couple of other boys there.”
It was his turn to nod knowingly. “The boys said you were the man for the job.”
“What job?”
Swiftly then he reached into an inner pocket and brought out a handsome leather wallet. He could just as easily have pulled the gun I glimpsed under his armpit. The wallet was dark brown, not too new, and had some gold-leaf lettering on the interior flap. Above the lettering was a single symbol of some kind, also imprinted in gold leaf, but the whole movement was too fast to enable me to identify the symbol or whatever it was.
The wallet was bulging with long, green leaves.
He extracted five of them without counting, and advancing to the desk, tossed the bills in front of me. They made a lovely heap.
“Tomorrow,” he growled bitterly, “tomorrow, or the next day, I’m going to be in jail. It may be the day after that. I don’t really know. You get me out — if you can.”
“What’ll you be in jail for?” I’m naturally curious, as you well know, Louise. Maybe I have the makings of a reporter, too.
“I don’t know,” he replied frankly, almost musingly. He sounded as though he were patiently awaiting an expected surprise. “Actually, I don’t know.”
“Perhaps for carrying a gun?” I pointed out.
He nodded again, his eyes searching me. “I have a permit, of course, but that can conveniently become lost or stolen. It may be for spitting on the sidewalk.”
“Or perhaps for crossing the street against the light?” I suggested, beginning to grin.
He was in quick agreement. “Or parking in a safety zone. Or shoplifting. Or resisting an officer.”
I stood up. “You talk like a frame job.”
“Exactly!” he bit out explosively. “That is precisely what I am implying. That is why I don’t know the reason for my arrest. Sometime during the next few days I’ll do something I shouldn’t have done, according to some unheard-of ordinance, and I’ll be jailed.”
I put my thumb to my chin and found I hadn’t shaved.
That was a funny one, Louise. You are fairly familiar with Boone; it hasn’t changed so much in the last three years. The mayor is a decent old codger even though he has been a politician all his life. And he has the chief of police in the palm of his hand because the chief’s job is an appointive one. Topping that, one of the members of the Board of Police and Fire Commissioners is now the publisher of the
You know the mayor; old top-hat Yancey is still in office. With the exception of one term he’s been there ever since the First World War. The chief, a man by name of Tanner, used to be the sheriff of some downstate county before he drifted into Boone.
So I said to Evans dubiously, “I’ll have to take your word for that.” He glared at me.
“Do that!” he commanded. “I happen to know what I’m talking about. I’m not throwing this around” — pushed the heaped-up stack of hundred dollar bills nearer me — “for nothing! I
And the way he said it convinced me. If he had declared in the next moment that little men from Mars were perched in the snow out on my window sill, I would have turned to look, and they would have been there.
“All right. You will be. What do I do then?”
He handed me a little card from the wallet. On it was printed in fine English script the name and address of an attorney in Croyden. I had never heard of the attorney. The man’s telephone number was down in one corner.
“Get in touch with the party immediately. At once. Do you understand? Before you do anything else, call this number. If he isn’t in, the girl at the switchboard will find him for you when you mention my name.
“Tell him what has happened. Also tell him that I have retained you. But this is important: don’t tell him why I have retained you — what instructions I have given you. Merely let him know that I have been arrested and
