Burkhardt brought his fist down on the desk with a sudden crash.
“If he has proofs, then it’s him or us,” he exclaimed, 50 while the blood suffused his face. “Him or us––and that means him! I’ll never go behind bars!”
“Sure not. None of us,” Vorse said.
“It will mean–––” Judge Gordon began in an agitated voice, but did not finish.
Sorenson gave a nod of his head. His bear-trap mouth was compressed in a determined evil line.
“Exactly. He’ll never use his proofs. We’re in too far to halt now if matters come to the point of his trying to use them. He has a grip on us in one way; he knows we can’t declare his father, Joe Weir, did the killing; that would make us––what do you call it, Judge?”
“Accomplices after the fact. Besides, it would then come out that we had taken over and shared among us his stuff, fifty thousand apiece. It’s a deplorable situation we’re in, gentlemen, deplorable. If we were but able to start the story Joe Weir believed and fled because of, it would cut the ground out from under this man’s feet at once.”
“It’s him we’ll cut, not the ground under him,” Burkhardt growled, thrusting his hairy chin forward towards the lawyer. “And cut his damned throat.”
“I hate to think of our being forced to––to homicide. Even justifiable homicide.”
“Homicide nothing! It’s just killing a rattlesnake waiting in the brush to strike. That’s the way we used to do in the old days, and if he’s going to bring them back that’s what we’ll do again.”