“It isn’t a trick,” I said. “I came here to take the name of Smith and begin all over again. It wasn’t an alias. I just wanted to start life all over, but I guess you can’t do that—not when you have a man’s soul on your conscience.”

“Who did you kill?” the sheriff asked.

“A man by the name of Morgan Birks. You may have read about him. I killed the guy.”

I saw glances fly around the table the way a ball team snaps the ball around the infield in between plays. The sheriff said in a kindly tone, “Maybe it would make you feel better if you told us all about it, Lam. How did it happen?”

“I had a job,” I said, “as a detective, working for a woman named Bertha Cool. Morgan Birks had a wife. Her name was Sandra, and she had a friend staying with her, Alma Hunter, a girl who’s a little bit of all right.

“Well, I was hired to serve papers on Morgan Birks, but I saw someone had been choking Alma Hunter. I asked her about it and she said someone had been in her bedroom. She’d woke up just when he’d clamped down on her throat, and she managed to kick him loose. She was frightened to death.

“She was a good kid, and I started to fall for her. We staged a little necking party in an automobile and I thought she was just what the doctor ordered. I’d have gone to hell for her. Then she told me about this choking business. I didn’t want her to stay there in the apartment alone. I put it up to her that I was going to sneak in and spend the night standing guard in the closet. She said I couldn’t do that because Sandra Birks slept in the same room. So I told her I was going to come and stay until Sandra got in.