The waiter raised the clinking tray of glasses to shoulder height and carried them out on the flat of his hand.
"I suppose a gin fizz'll ruin all that whiskey but I'd like one. . . . Drink something with us wont you Congo?" Bullock put a foot up on the brass rail and took a sip. "I was wondering," he said slowly, "if there was any dope going round about this murder down the road."
"Everybody ave his teyorie . . ."
Jimmy caught a faint wink from one of Congo's deepset black eyes. "Do you live out here?" he asked to keep from giggling.
"In the middle of the night I hear an automobile go by very fast wid de cutout open. I tink maybe it run into someting because it stopped very quick and come back much faster, licketysplit."
"Did you hear a shot?"
Congo shook his head mysteriously. "I ear voices, very angree voices."
"Gosh I'm going to look into this," said Bullock tossing off the end of his drink. "Let's go back to the girls."
Ellen was looking at the face wrinkled like a walnut and the dead codfish eyes of the waiter pouring coffee. Baldwin was leaning back in his chair staring at her through his eyelashes. He was talking in a low monotone:
"Cant you see that I'll go mad if I cant have you. You are the only thing in the world I ever wanted."
"George I dont want to be had by anybody. . . . Cant you understand that a woman wants some freedom? Do be a sport about it. I'll have to go home if you talk like that."
"Why have you kept me dangling then? I'm not the sort of man you can play like a trout. You know that perfectly well."
She looked straight at him with wide gray eyes; the light gave a sheen of gold to the little brown specks in the iris.
"It's not so easy never to be able to have friends." She
