In the silence that followed, the little man with the straggly gray hair walked over to the detective who had fired the submachine gun.
"I can identify them," he said.
Then he realized how silly it sounded when the detective looked at him in bewilderment and from him to the body on the drive and the car with its two silent occupants.
"So can I," said the detective, with a grin.
"I mean," said the little man, "that I saw the robbery happen." And he went on and told how his telescope had been used, and the whole story. "Is there," he asked, although he knew very well that there wasn't, "any chance of my getting a reward?"
"What for?" asked the detective, and then grinned. "You're lucky we don't run you in as an accessory, allowing your spyglass to be used by a lookout in a jewelry-house burglary."
The little man winced, and the detective reassured him.
"Naw." he added. "They set off an alarm as they were leaving. We'd have got 'em anyway, a little bit down the boulevard, even if they hadn't stopped to take a pot shot at you."
The police ambulance had driven up, and the three bodies were loaded into it.
A cop got into the riddled car and found that it could be driven in under its own power.
The little man walked dispiritedly back to his telescope. A crowd had gathered--the shooting had drawn one of those tremendous mobs of the curious who always gather at the scene of an accident or crime in a city, whether it be noon or midnight. There were hundreds milling about. Excitement can always draw a throng.
The little man perked up. Crowds might mean business.
"The moon for a nickel," called the little man, standing beside his telescope.
"See the moon for a nickel."
But nobody much wanted to see the moon. He took in one nickel in five minutes.
He happened to look back toward the building across the boulevard. He saw the looted shop brightly lighted up. He focused the telescope on the windows. As though looking through from the very window sill, he could see the policemen, the detectives, going over the place. Back at one wall he could see a damaged safe. A man came in who looked liked a jeweler, probably the proprietor.
The little man had a big idea.
"See the scene of the crime!" he called. "Half a dollar to see the scene of the crime through a telescope!"
Some one shoved a half dollar into his hand and looked through the telescope.
Another. A knot gathered about the telescope. The little man beamed, and began to get heavy about the pockets. He hadn't known that there were that many half dollars.
It was hours later before he finally went home, and sixty-one dollars jingled in his pockets.
Suite for Flute & Tommy-gun
I waited till the train had pulled out, and still nobody had got off it. Nobody, that is, except the funny-looking little guy with the shell-rimmed glasses and the hat that looked like a country preacher's.
But the great McGuire wasn't on it. I was glad, in a way, because I--well, I might as well admit that I resented Old Man Remmel having thought I wasn't good enough for the job and having sent for the biggest-shot private detective in the country. Just on a matter of some threatening letters, too. Didn't even want me to call in a postal inspector; said he'd have the best detective in the country or none.
Well, I decided, he'd been stood up. I grinned and turned to head back home, figuring maybe this guy McGuire had phoned Remmel he'd be delayed and Remmel had phoned me and I wasn't there. But this funny-looking little guy I mentioned steps up to me and sticks out his hand. "Sheriff Clark?" he asked. And when I admitted it, he said, "My name is--"
Yeah, you guessed it.
I gawped at him. "Not the--"
He grinned at me. "Thanks for the compliment, sheriff, if it was meant for one.
If I disappoint you, I'm sorry, but--"
I'd recovered enough by then to take his hand and to stammer out something that was probably worse than if I'd kept my big mouth shut and let it go at that. But honesty, not subtlety, has always been my long suit, and the people here have elected me ten terms running, in spite of it. I don't mean in spite of the honesty; I mean in spite of my being not much of a diplomat.
"Well," I said, "I'm glad you're here anyway." I saw too late that the "anyway" was putting my foot in it farther, but a word's like a bullet in that once you've shot it you can't get it back into the gun and pretend you didn't. A guy really ought to be as careful about shooting off his yap as about shooting off his gun, come to think of it.
There'd be fewer murders either way.
"I'm sorry, Mr. McGuire," I told him sheepishly. "But, gosh, you sure don't look like--"
He laughed. "Never mind the mister, sheriff. Just call me Mac. And I'm not sensitive about my looks; they're an asset. Now about those letters. Got them with you?"
I took his arm. "Sure," I said. "I'll show 'em to you over a drink before we drive out to see Remmel. I'll give you the picture first, since we'll be working together. Anyway, I can say some things better if it isn't in front of him."
"You mean he isn't on the level?"
"Nix," I said. "I don't mean that at all. If anything, he's too much on the level.
He's not only interested in his own morals, but in everybody else's, see? He's a reformer, and he's a damn teetotaler. You know these smug teetotalers. Pains in the neck, all of them."
I jerked my thumb toward the building we were passing on the other side of our main street. "That's his bank," I said, "and if he'd stick to banking, he wouldn't have got those letters. But he had to stick his nose into politics and get himself elected to the county board. And with his ideas--" I shook my head.
"Such as--" McGuire prompted.
I steered him into Sam Frey's place that we'd just come to, before I answered.
If I was going out with him to see Remmel--and I had an appointment with Remmel to do just that--we'd be in for a long, dry conversation. A bit of prelubrication would come in handy.
I answered his question as we headed for the bar. "Such as tavern keepers and roadhouses, mostly. I know we're not too tight on the roadhouses down this way, but that's mostly because the people want it that way, and it brings a lot of business and money into the county. We keep 'em closely enough supervised that there's no rough stuff, you know, or anything really much wrong, but--"
"But what?"
"But this Remmel has a bill up before the county board--the gosh-awfulest bill you ever heard of. It would shut up all taverns and roadhouses at ten o'clock in the evening. Not midnight or one o'clock, mind you, but ten, when their trade is just starting. Naturally, the boys are sore. It's just the same thing, practically, as closing them up entirely."
I crooked a finger at Sam, and he came ambling down toward us behind the bar.
"And the worst of it is," I went on, "that there's a chance of it going through, with Remmel swinging all his influence back of it. Now, reform's a darn good thing where it's needed, but it isn't needed here, and it's going to play hell with things.
That's the trouble with these damn intemperate teetotalers--
"--Derryaire for mine, Sam, short beer for a wash. Yours, Mr. McG--I mean, Mac?"
His eyes twinkled at me from behind those shell-rimmed cheaters. He said,
"I'll have coffee, if Sam has some hot. Sorry, sheriff, but I'm a damn teetotaler."
That was my third boner since the train had pulled in at seven p.m., which was ten minutes ago. There wasn't anything to do but to laugh it off or else get down on my hands and knees and crawl for the back door. But the corners of McGuire's mouth showed me I could laugh it off all right, and I did.