"This last statement of yours, about the three men — is that fact?"
"Some of it. But the main point of it is that that's what you pay me with. If I can make them believe that I know more than I do, I may scare them into making some serious mistakes. That's why I'm making you a present of all the rest of that luscious literature."
The editor pulled at his under lip. He was a pear-shaped man with a long forbidding face that never smiled even when his eyes twinkled.
"It's good copy, anyway, so I'll print it," he said. "But don't blame me if you're the next human torch. Or if Kinglake has you brought in again and beats hell out of you."
"On the contrary, you're my insurance against that," said the Saint. "Going my own way, I might have had a lot more trouble with Kinglake at any moment. Now, he won't dare to do anything funny, because it would look as if he was scared of me."
"Kinglake's a good officer. He wouldn't do a thing like this unless there was a lot of pressure on him."
Simon recalled the Lieutenant's tight-lipped curtness, his harried and almost defensive belligerence.
"Maybe there was," he said. "But whose was it?"
The editor put his fingertips together.
"Galveston," he said, "has what is now called the commission form of government. Commissioner Number One — what other cities would call the mayor — is coming up for re-election soon. He appoints the Chief of Police. The Chief controls such men as Lieutenant Kinglake. Nobody wants any blemish on the record of the police department at this time. I'm quite confident that neither the Commissioner nor the Chief of Police is mixed up in inything crooked. It's just best for everybody concerned to let sleeping dogs — in this case, dead dogs — lie."