“I wasn’t aiming to,” Pres assured him. “I’ve been a peace officer myself.”
“What’s the matter with ’em?” Graney asked.
“Nothing. Only he didn’t usually wear a red handkerchief around his neck. Let’s go!”
Through steel bars, Pres talked with Curly Bratton. Detective Graney was kind enough to stand back out of earshot.
“Right off, firsthand,” Campbell said, “I’ll tell you, son, I don’t believe you did it. And Millie, she was right positive. Wouldn’t make any difference how much evidence these police thought they had, she’d know better.”
“They haven’t told me all the details of what they think,” Curly remarked, “but they’ve got hold of that quarrel the Kid and me had this afternoon. I don’t know how much the boys heard—I don’t think they heard anything I said—but I was declaring myself to him after I found out him and her were going out to supper together.”
“They were?” exclaimed Pres. “They didn’t.”
It was Curly’s turn to exhibit astonishment.
“She told me they were going to,” he said. “If she hadn’t—— Tell you the truth, judge, she and me had a date for supper tonight and when you come up on the Kid and me, that-a-way, she had just a few minutes before turned me down and said she was going with him—told me with him present. And while I didn’t so much care right at that minute about her going with me, thinking of her going out with him got me mad.”
“Why didn’t you want her to go with you? If she didn’t, were you going to meet the Florrine lady?”