“Nuts!”
“That’s the truth. That’s what he’s told us anyway.”
“Who’s the lawyer?”
I grinned.
“What’s the angle?”
“We’re looking for a person who seems to have disappeared.”
“Oh.”
Rondler pulled a cigar from his pocket, puckered his lips as though he were going to whistle, but he didn’t whistle. He simply made little blowing noises as he carefully clipped oft the end of the cigar. Then, as he pulled a match from his pocket, he said, “Okay, here’s the dope. Around the latter part of 1936 we were troubled with a man who stuck up petting-parties. He’d take whatever the man had, and if the girl was good-looking, he’d take her, too. It made quite a stink. We put men out and staged mock petting-parties and did our damnedest to bait a trap he’d walk into. Nothing doing.”
“When it began to get cold and people didn’t sit out in automobiles and neck so much, our bandit suddenly quit. We thought we were rid of him; but in the spring of ’37 when things began to warm up, our petting-party bandit was right back again.”
“Several guys-put up a squawk when he started to take their women. This bird Craig was one of them. There were three altogether. Two of them were killed. One was shot, and recovered. Things got pretty serious. The chief told us to get this bird, or else.”