I said, “It was a cinch when I got to thinking it over. Someone heard a shot and notified the police. The police didn’t come until quite a while after Alma Hunter had left the apartment. I figured the person who notified the police must have heard a second shot, and no one had heard the first shot. The magazine held seven shells. There were only six in the gun. Alma’s bullet hit someone. Morgan Birks must have been shot, just as the police claim, while he was trying to get out of the door. Death was instantaneous. Therefore, he must have fallen in such a position that it was impossible to get the door open without moving his body. Alma Hunter didn’t move any body. She opened the door and ran out. Cunweather was interested in finding Morgan Birks. Cunweather had an organization. The slot-machine racket wasn’t a one-man business. It called for an organization. Morgan Birks was really hiding from his own organization. Sandra Birks had a lot of money in safety deposit boxes. Both Morgan and Sandra were trying to keep anyone from knowing about it. Sandra was trying to get it from Morgan. Alma slept in Sandra’s bed, and someone tried to choke her, someone with long fingernails. I noticed that Bleatie had slender, tapering hands, something like a woman. The fingers were long, and the nails were well manicured. If Sandra had died there wouldn’t have been any divorce. Morgan had Cunweather fooled on the Bleatie business, but Cunweather didn’t stay fooled. When he was beating up on me he’d have given a lot to have found Morgan Birks. When you went out and tried to shake him down, he didn’t give a damn. That meant he’d doped out what had happened after he realized I’d served the papers there in the hotel. It meant he’d already put the screws on Morgan Birks. Which one of the Cunweather gang was wounded?”

“Fred,” she said. “Alma’s shot hit him in the upper left arm. My God, Donald, do you know everything?”

“No,” I said. “But I told you when you hired me, I was never very strong as a boy. I couldn’t fight, so I had to think. I developed an imagination and an ability to scheme.”

She said, “You could have gone about solving this case without dragging yourself into it. My God, Donald, think of the chances you took—and think of the advertising I got! It’s tremendous, you darling!”

I said, “How could I have gone about it any other way? The gun was tied up to me, and the gun was hot. If I’d tried to tell the police what really happened, they’d have laughed at me. I could have advanced a theory—and the police would never have paid any attention to it—not after Alma Hunter told her story.”