Kessler grabbed Green’s arm, shouted, “Come on, Nick — I gotta telephone an’ I wanna talk to you.” They hurried towards Second Avenue.
Green grinned down at the tugging, puffing reporter.
“You look like a crazed bloodhound,” he said. “Don’t tell me you’ve got another one of those red-hot Kessler theories.”
“Theory my eye! I’ve got the whole business — the whole bloody shebang!”
“Uh-huh.” Green’s grunt was elaborately incredulous.
Kessler snorted. “Listen, John Sallust was released from Atlanta three days ago!”
“So what?”
Kessler’s mouth made an amazed O. “So what! So Bruce Maccunn was the man who rode Sallust — in the paper — an’ finally stuck him for the Arbor Day Parade bombing nearly five years ago. So Sallust swore by the beards of Marx and Lenin he’d get Maccunn. So, after a half-dozen appeals and new trials and whatnot he finally got a commutation and what does he do but make good and plant a pineapple under the man who put him behind the bars!”
They turned the corner.
Green murmured softly: “Blondie, my child — you’re just as dippy as a bedbug — an especially dippy bedbug.”