"I’m gettin’ sick of the whole game," said Donovan.
"So am I," said the lawyer blithely. "But what are we going to do about it? We’ve got to make a living, don’t we?"
"Anyhow, we’ve got to buy shoes for our kids, Hughie."
"Oh, come on," muttered Donovan, "let’s talk business."
They talked business until Quirk remembered another appointment and had to leave. When the lawyer had gone, Donovan put his head into the large room next his own and called to a sleepy officer seated at a desk.
"Anderson," he asked, "where’s Patrolman Guth?"
"Just come in, Lieutenant," he vouchsafed: "him and Mitchell. He’s in the locker-room."
Donovan closed the door and sat at his table, frowning at its surface, until Guth entered.
Guth was as big as the Lieutenant and more powerful. He would have been handsome, but his mouth had been torn in some obscure street-fight, and the scar from this wound carried the line of his lips to the left corner of his jaw-bone.
"What’s Reddy Rawn doin’ these days?" he presently continued.
Guth shifted his weight from one leg to the other. As much as that scar would permit, he smiled, the right corner of his mouth shooting upward and the left turning down.
"Well," he said, "you know how it is. I warned him he’d got to keep in the quiet ever since that night him and the Kid shot-up Crab Rotello for tryin’ to steal Reddy’s girl."
"Naw. You know these here guys: wouldn’t tell if they was dyin’—rather leave it to their own gang to square things. Crab’ll wait till he gets well, an’ then he’ll fix Reddy’s feet for himself."
"Still, you told Reddy what I said you should?"
"Tell him Rotello’s squealed: he’ll believe it because he hates him. Tell him the Dago’s goin’ to croak an’s give me an ante-mortem statement—see?"
"Tell him the only way for him to square me’s to do me a good turn," continued Donovan.
"Same’s we worked on the Crab himself ten or twelve weeks ago," he said. "I got you."
"That’s it. Remember, I don’t know much, an’ you know a lot less, an’ this guy’s got to know less than you do. He’s got to pull it off inside of two weeks. Now, sit down here, an’ I’ll tell you what he’s got to do. There maybe’ll be more later, but this is the start."
§4. The last talk that Judge Stein had that day was one with a brisk, bald-headed man, whose close-cropped mustache only accentuated the heavy mouth below it. This man called in person at the offices of Stein, Falconridge, Falconridge & Perry; he seemed to have come in a hurry, and he handed Miss Weston a card bearing the legend: