“Oh, she went to the bank to get her Florentine box, with the diary, out of Ned’s safe-deposit drawer. She wasn’t in the Park at all — and she certainly wouldn’t have had time to put an end to a promising band leader’s career — even if she’d had the strength or the nerve. Which I doubt.”
Olive led him around the corner of the unburned end of the recreation hall.
“Here’s your man of mystery, Ben.”
The fireman in the Suit unsnapped the helmet from his fireproof garment. The headpiece hinged down. Shaner put up an asbestos paw and tried to scratch his nose, without success.
“Coach, seems every time I run across you lately, you’re down on the floor a-bundling with this luscious babe. Keeps up, you’ll have to marry the girl.”
“She’s already married, old Nick of Time.” Pedley grinned wearily. “And unless I’m wrong, she’ll stick to this husband for a while. After we bail him out. Where’d you get that hell-diver outfit?”
Shaner waggled a flipper at Olive.
“What’s the sense having the commish’s daughter around if she can’t come up with a bright idea, once upon a time?”
“I knew they had one on the fireboat,” Olive said. “I saw it on the way over. So I did some thimblerigging on the two-way with Barney — and first thing you know, here comes the Suit and there goes Shaner and here you are.”
Pedley said, “First time in years Shaner hasn’t lost the man he was after.”
“You,” Olive was reproachful, “nearly lost your firebug, Ben darling. It’ll take him six weeks to be able to stand trial.”
“Who?” Shaner demanded.
“Amery,” said Pedley. “And he’ll have more than six weeks to think it over.”
“He’ll have time to burn, coach.”
“Yair. My object most sublime,” agreed the marshal.
“No spik Ingles?” Shaner didn’t understand.
“It’s a quotation, Ed,” Olive explained. “It does seem to fit.”
“I never heard it.”
So Pedley finished it for him, staring up at the column of smoke towering up into the night sky from the gutted building: