Hashita didn’t look at them. He looked at me. There was still that burning red light in his eyes.
I said, “All right, Hashita, you win.”
He didn’t smile. He kept looking at me with ominous intensity.
One of the men scrambled up from behind the desk. He lunged forward. I saw blue-steel in his hand. The Jap leaned across the desk and chopped down on the guy’s forearm with the edge of his open hand.
The man yelled with pain. His arm and the gun hit the desk together. The gun bounced. The arm lay there on the desk. The man couldn’t get enough strength in his muscles to move it.
Hashita walked around the desk with quick, businesslike steps.
I went to work. I went through that desk with as much attention to detail as the circumstances and time element permitted. The manager on the floor looked up at me with the dazed expression of a punch-drunk fighter.
I said, “Tell me where those Ashbury letters are hidden.”
He didn’t answer me. He may not even have heard me. If he did, the words probably didn’t make sense.
I went through the desk. I found an agreement which showed that C. Layton Crumweather owned a controlling interest in the Atlee Amusement Corporation. I found a statement of net profits, of gross income, a recapitulation of operating expense — I didn’t find any letters to Alta Ashbury. I was so disappointed I could have chewed up a bag of tenpenny nails.