ed back to let me pass him.

"Capehart tells me Worth's here," he said as we went in.

"When?" I gave him a sharp look. He seemed not to notice it.

"Just now. I came straight from there."

He came straight from there? Did he supply an alibi so neatly because of
that shadowy head on the door panel? For a long minute we each took
measure of the other, but Eddie's nerves were less reliable than mine;
he spoke first.

"Well?" he grunted, scarcely above his breath. And when I continued to
stare silently at him, he writhed a shoulder with, "What's doing? What
d'yuh want of me?"

Still silently, I pulled out with my thumb through the armhole of my
vest the police badge pinned to the suspender. His ill-colored face went
a shade nearer the yellow white of tallow.

"What for?" he asked huskily. "You haven't got nothin' on me. It was
suicide--cor'ner's jury says so. Lord! It has to be, him layin' there,
all hunched up on the floor, his gun so tight in his mitt that they had
to pry the fingers off it!"

"So you found the body?"

He nodded and gulped.

"I told all I knowed at the inquest," he said doggedly.

"Tell it again," I commanded.

Standing there, working his hands together as though he held some small,
accustomed tool that he was turning, shifting from foot to foot, with
long breaks in his speech, the chauffeur finally put me into possession
of what he knew--or what he wished me to know. He had been out all
night. That was usual with him Saturdays. Where? Over around the
canneries. Had friends that lived there. He got into this place about
dawn, and went straight to bed.

"Hold on, Hughes," I stopped him there. "You never went to bed--that
night, or any other night--until you'd had a jolt from the bottle
inside."

He gave me a surly, half frightened glance, then said quickly,

"Not a chance. Bolts on the doors, locks everywhere; all tight as a
jail. Take it from me, he wasn't the kind you want to have a run-in
with--any time. Always just as cool as ice himself; try to make you
believe he could tell what you were up to, clear across town. Hold it
over you as if he was God almighty that stuck folks together and set 'em
walkin' around and thinkin' things."

He broke off and looked over his shoulder in the direction of the study.
The walls were thick--concrete; the door heavy. No sound of Worth's
moving in there could be heard in this room. Apparently it was the old
terror of his employer, or the new terror