Nobody bothered to consult Nick Noble much any more save the old-timers of Finch’s generation. The younger men trusted mostly to the laboratories or, like Barker, to their own fists and maybe a rubber hose. “Not that you can’t crack ninety-nine of your cases with a lab or a hose,” Finch added. “But the hundredth one needs a man like Nick Noble, and Mac, this looks like the one in a hundred.”
The Chula Negra didn’t run to barflies or juke boxes. It catered to nothing but the single-minded eating and drinking of the local Mexicans. Finch walked over to the third of the ramshackle booths and, motioning MacDonald after him, slid in.
MacDonald had expected a fat and bloated hulk. But alcoholism makes some thin, and Nick Noble was one of these. He was a wizened man whose sharp nose seemed trying to push out of his dead white skin. His hair and heavy eyebrows were white too, and his eyes so pale a blue as almost to match them.
There was a water glass half-full of sherry before him. He took a long swig and made a swipe at his nose before he saw the officers. “Herman!” he said softly, and looked sidewise at MacDonald. “Friend?”
“Friend. Lieutenant MacDonald, homicide.”
“Glad,” said Nick Noble, and struck again at his nose. “Fly,” he explained. “Stays there.” There was no fly.
“I’m afraid,” Finch began, “it’s up to you again, Nick.”
A pale light glittered in the dead blue eyes. “Give,” said Nick Noble.
Finch gave.
Nick Noble finished another glass of sherry while Finch talked, and chased the invisible fly away from his nose six times. That nose seemed to grow sharper as he drank, and his pale eyes paler.
“Through?”
Finch nodded. Nick Noble leaned back and rested his head against the flimsy partition. A film glazed his eyes. He was silent so long that young MacDonald frowned and looked from the empty glass to Finch. But Finch shook his head.
Finally Nick Noble spoke. “Questions.”
“O.K., Nick.”
“Man on Skid Row. Lige Marsden. Occupation?”
“None, unless you count standing on street corners passing out pamphlets.”
“Pamphlets for what?”
“Kingdom something.”
“People of the Kingdom?”
“Check.”
The pale eyes glazed again. MacDonald remembered the minor sect. The priest’s housekeeper had mentioned it. Strange sort of anarchic idealism — civic disobedience as a religious principle. Denial of all rights of authority.
The eyes opened, and Nick Noble asked another question. “Dentist. No name?”
“Not yet. In a minute I’ll phone back and check.”
“Find out all about him. Especially Draft Board.”
“Draft Board?”
“Was he a member?”
Finch nodded. “What else, Nick?”
“Nothing.”
MacDonald started. “Aren’t you interested? Aren’t you going to—?”
“Interested? Oh yes. Pretty problem. Pattern. Thanks, Herman. Proof tomorrow.”
Finch grinned. “Don’t mind him, Mac. He can’t help grandstanding.”
“No grandstand. Murders tie together. Motive for time not quite clear yet. Only one murderer possible.”
MacDonald half-rose. “You mean we can—?”
“Tomorrow. Don’t rush it.”
“But if there’s a murderer loose — Damn it, Noble, our main job isn’t catching criminals; it’s preventing crime. And if—”
Nick Noble smiled faintly at Finch. “Young,” he said. Then to MacDonald, “All right, boy. No danger. No more murders. Not possibly. Check tomorrow. Now phone, Herman.”
When Finch came back, his grin spread from ear to ear. “Criminenty, Nick, you can always pull a rabbit out of the sherry bottle. You’ve done it again, you son of a biscuit-eater.”
“What did you find out?” MacDonald demanded.
“Ballistics check. Same gun killed all four of ’em. And that means the times are phony. Whole damn ‘struggle’ at Westcott’s was probably just to make that clock look plausible. But where Nick comes in with the Noble touch is this: The dentist’s name was Dr. Lyle Varney, and he was on his local Draft Board. In fact, he was chairman.”
Nick Noble nodded. “Good. Go home. Tomorrow, boys, I’ll show you your murderer.”
Half an hour and one sherry later, Nick Noble entered the lodging house on East Fifth Street. His slight figure, his pale worn features, his shabby once-respectable suit all seemed to belong there. The clerk didn’t give him a glance. They come and go.
There were two corridors on the second floor. From the end of one came laughter and clinkings. Two rooms at the end of the other were dark, silent. Nick Noble’s white hands fiddled for an instant with the lock of the last room. He went in, closed the door, and switched on the light.
The room was any one of a thousand others. All that distinguished it was the absence of ashes and beer bottles and the presence of blood on the floor and the bed. And the pamphlets.
There was a stack of these left undistributed, a stack that reached from floor to table level. Nick Noble picked up the top one and leafed through it. He set it down, then picked it up again, found a page, and reread the heading over a prophetic article:
Nick Noble said “Six” three times, and his eyes glazed. He stood motionless. Then his eyes came alive. He put the pamphlet back, and nodded.
There were steps far down the hall. Nick Noble switched off the light. The steps came as far as the next door and halted. Then they moved on. The door of the dead man’s room opened. The beam of a flashlight coursed around the walls, clicked off. The door closed.
Nick Noble crawled out from under the bed. He swatted at the fly that wasn’t on his nose and thereby knocked off the cockroach that was on his sleeve. He heard the door of the next room open and shut. He listened, but there was no click of the light switch.
He left the dead man’s room without a sound. He paused before the next door, the door to the room of Barker’s prisoner. A light came and went in the crack under the door. He drew back to the hinge side.
The door opened in a minute, covering him. Through the crack he saw a man coming out, a man he had never seen before. He carried a flashlight in one hand and something heavier in the other. This man set them both down on the floor and fished a tool out of his pocket, the same tool that Nick Noble had used on the other door.
The strange man closed the door. Nick Noble moved with agility. His hand was on the automatic on the floor when the stranger’s right connected.
This time Nick Noble’s eyes were glazed somewhat longer.
He was still in the hall when he came to. He felt his way into the dead man’s room and doused his head with stale water from the pitcher. He switched on the light and peered into the cracked mirror. The blood had clotted by now, black on his white skin. He looked closer. That was a heel mark on his cheek. His thin lips set tight.
Lieutenant MacDonald, reporting for duty next morning, was greeted by Finch. “For once, Mac, old Nick slipped up. He said no more murders. They found Padrino early this morning.”
“Padrino?”
“That’s right. Maybe you wouldn’t know. He runs a bigtime gambling setup. Roulette and the works. Official-like, we don’t know about him here. But he was shot sometime between one and three and his watch was broken and set to 7:06. Bullet checks, too.”
MacDonald gaped. Finch frowned as he loaded his corncob.
Lieutenant Dan Barker was filling out his report on the latest sweating of the bum he had arrested. He yelled admittance when he heard a knock on the door.