I pushed open the door, faced a flight of stairs leading down into a dimly lit basement.
I walked down the stairs, making no more noise than a breath of wind. Hoskiss kept at my heels.
We reached the bottom of the stairs, moved along a passage. I pointed to a thick electric cable running along the wall near the ceiling. Hoskiss nodded, grinned.
At the end of the passage was a door. I paused outside, listened. I couldn’t hear anything.
“Shall we go in?” I whispered in Hoskiss’s ear.
“I suppose so,” he said. “G-men always go in.”
I turned the handle, pushed.
The room was big; elaborately equipped with printing presses. Green shaded lights illuminated the stacks of banknotes piled neatly on benches.
A dead man lay on the floor near the printing press. He had been shot. A small blue-red hole showed in the exact centre of his forehead.
Ed. Killeano knelt on the floor against the far wall. His fat face was yellow and glistening with fear. His pudgy hands were shoulder high, and his eyes started from his head like long stalked toadstools. Clairbold, the intrepid private investigator, complete with his cocoacoloured trick hat, stood over him, a Colt .45 in his small hand.