“We don’t have to take him to no magistrate,” the man said.
“Where are you going to take him?”
“To jail.”
“I wouldn’t advise you to go anywhere without stopping to see the nearest and most accessible magistrate,” the lawyer said.
Bertha Cool said, “Now listen, you, this man’s working for me. I’m running a respectable detective agency. He was working. You yanked him off the job and chased him down here. Don’t think for a minute you’re going to pull this stuff and get away with it.”
The man from the district attorney’s office said, “Just a minute, boys. Stick around.” He said to the lawyer Bertha Cool had, “Let’s talk things over a minute.”
Bertha Cool horned in on the conference. Her diamonds caught the rays from the spotlight, and made blood-red scintillations as she moved her hands. “I’m in on this, too,” she said.
“Now listen,” the D.A.’s man said, obviously worried and pretty much on the defensive, “we don’t want to put any charges against this boy. For all we know, he’s just a nice kid that hasn’t done a thing in the world, but we’re trying to find out whether he’s the man who went into Jed Ringold’s room the night he was murdered. If he isn’t, that’s all there is to it. If he is, we’re going to charge him with murder.”
“So what?” Bertha Cool asked truculently.
The D.A. man looked at her and tried to outstare her. Bertha Cool pushed her face toward him, and, with her eyes glittering belligerently, demanded again and in a louder voice, “So what? You heard me, you worm. Go ahead and answer.”