Nikky joined in. “Isn’t it terrible enough?”
I opened Walch’s wallet. “I’d say not. We have to put Walch where he can’t do any more damage.” I took out the snapshot of the kid in the polar-bear suit. “Who’s this, Miss Millett?”
She shook her head, weeping.
“Her son.” I handed the snap to Hacklin. “Saw Tony down in Kentucky. Swell youngster. Even if he does look a little like his father, there.”
Walch was doubled over in pain, didn’t retort. Tildy stopped crying.
“How’d you find out?”
“When I was over at the Icequadrille rehearsal yesterday, I happened to see this picture. So I recognized the boy soon’s I saw him down in Lexington. He resembles you more than he does your sister, too. Seemed funny Walch’d have the boy’s photograph in his wallet — and yet none of the mother, who’s his main source of income. Thought it was queer, too, that Walch hadn’t been in your suite at the hotel more. Why he hadn’t gone to the Stack O’ Jack show with you. Agent getting ten percent of your salary ought to have been around to smooth things out for you.”
MacGregory grunted, “I’d wondered about that, myself. Even in spite of Nikky’s crack about his making Tildy nervous.”
“The principal thing” — I watched Hacklin and Schneider trying to find likenesses between Tony’s picture and the man in manacles; there weren’t too many; he really resembled Tildy more than Walch — “was the emphasis on Lexington. That farewell note Miss Millett sent to Lanerd — it said she couldn’t elope with him because of ‘the way things are.’ Since she’d been doing a lot of long-distancing to Lexington, and Lanerd told Hacklin she might be on her way there, I thought probably it might be the way things were, down in Kentucky, which caused her to change her mind about eloping.”
Nikky snapped, “So you had to hound her all the way to Kentucky, even when she wasn’t there!”