General Manager.
Bill looked up from his reading and encountered the searching gaze of his friend.
“There’s a nasty bite in that ‘brief’,” the policeman smiled.
The gold man nodded seriously.
“Not more than I’d have put in it if I’d been general manager of that corporation.”
“No. And you’d have been right. That letter’s mighty reasonable, and I’m with the feller who wrote it.”
Superintendent Raymes turned to his desk and opened the rusty-looking file that was lying in front of him.
“You know, Bill, that letter got me right away. But I was a bit helpless. Here, now, you sit right there and smoke that cheap cigar I pushed at you while I do a talk. I’ve got a yarn to hand you that’ll maybe set you thinking hard.”
He sat back tilting his chair, and the rusty file lay open on his lap. The papers it held had lost their pristine whiteness. There were distinct signs of age in their hues.
“You know I’ve only had charge of Placer City for something like seven years, and things have been so darned busy since I first got around I haven’t had a great chance of looking into the remoter things my predecessor left behind him. Eighteen years of police life is liable to accumulate a bunch of stories it would take a lifetime reading.