“Did you say you came in on that Salt Lake plane?”
“Yes.”
He said, “Bring him over here, Bill.”
The curious faces melted away from in front of us and closed in behind as though they had been wisps of fog, clinging to a road. The manager picked up a telephone, got his number, said, “Was there a Donald Lam came in on that plane from Salt Lake today?… There was?… A chap in the twenties, regular features, wavy hair, weight about a hundred and twenty-seven pounds, about five-feet-five… The hell!.. Okay, thanks.”
He hung up the telephone, said to the officer, “Bring him upstairs, Bill.”
He opened a door. We climbed stairs to a cool office which looked out through broad windows on the constantly increasing activity of the town’s main stem. We all three sat down. The manager picked up a telephone and said, “Get Louie up here right away.”
He hung up the telephone, and almost immediately I heard steps on the stairs, then the door opened, and the attendant, still looking punch groggy, came into the room.
“Take a good look at this chap,” the manager said.
The attendant took a good look at me, said, “He’s the guy they ran in to make the clean-up. That means he’s the brains of the gang. He was cupping the machine.”
“How do you know?”