The captain of detectives seized his arm. "Come inside!" he ordered.
Egan's face flushed. "Take your hand off me, damn you! By what right—"
"You watch your step, Egan," advised Hallet angrily. "You know why I'm here."
"I do not."
Hallet stared into the man's face. "Dan Winterslip was murdered last night," he said.
Jim Egan removed his hat, and looked helplessly out toward Kalakaua Avenue. "So I read in the morning paper," he replied. "What has his death to do with me?"
"You were the last person to see him alive," Hallet answered. "Now quit bluffing and come inside."
Egan cast one final baffled glance at the street, where a trolley bound for the city three miles away was rattling swiftly by. Then he bowed his head and led the way into the hotel.
They entered a huge, poorly furnished public room, deserted save for a woman tourist writing post-cards at a table, and a shabby Japanese clerk lolling behind the desk. "This way," Egan said, and they followed him past the desk and into a small private office. Here all was confusion, dusty piles of magazines and newspapers were everywhere, battered old ledgers lay upon the floor. On the wall hung a portrait of Queen Victoria; many pictures cut from the London illustrated weeklies were tacked up haphazardly. Jennison spread a newspaper carefully over the window-sill and sat down there. Egan cleared chairs for Hallet, Chan and John Quincy, and himself took his place before an ancient roll-top desk.
"If you will be brief, Captain," he suggested, "I might still have time—" He glanced at a clock above the desk.