"I didn't poison him!" Garver pleaded. "You got to believe me!"
"You mean there wasn't any poison in that bottle?"
"Sure there was--if you say so. What I mean is I didn't put it there. I
didn't know it was there. I--"
"What you mean is you'd planned to get the guy out into the alley after
he was dead and you lost your nerve after he keeled over."
"No--no! Nothing like that."
"You had that bottle spiked, waiting for Davis to come in."
"No--no! It was just an ordinary bar bottle."
"What do you mean by that?"
"Every tavern has a brand of whisky they push--their bar whisky. When a
customer isn't particular about his brand we give him the bar liquor."
It seemed to me the guy was gaining courage. He wasn't quite as nervous
as he'd been. "You served other people out of that same bottle?" I
asked.
He licked his lips and dropped his eyes before he answered. "Sure I
did."
"But that was before you put the arsenic in it."
"I didn't put any poison in that bottle. And you guys can't pin this on
me!"
"What makes you think we can't?"
"Because I never knew the fellow and you can't prove I did. So how are
you going to make anybody believe I killed somebody I didn't know and
had nothing against. You think I'm nuts or something?"
"It's a possibility," I said.
* * * * *
Donovan narrowed his eyes at Garver and said, "You're holding
something back. Come on! Out with it."
Again that guilty look as Garver shook his head. But you can't send a
guilty look to the chair and it seemed Garver had us stymied. At least
for a while. We jugged him on suspicion but we knew unless we got
something else to strengthen the case we wouldn't get an indictment
against him. There just wasn't enough.
Donovan and I chewed it over with the Captain and he couldn't give us
any help except the advice to keep plugging. We told him we'd try to
come up with something and went on back to the tavern.
The owner had been there and gone and we still had a patrolman
stationed in front. Donovan unlocked the door and released the
patrolman for his regular beat and we went inside.
It was very quiet. Naturally. Nothing is quieter in this world than an
empty bar. I said, "Well, where do we start?"
Donovan shrugged. "You got me. And you know damn well nothing's going
to happen on this case until it breaks from the outside."
"That's right." What he meant was a new angle coming from a stoolie.
Or something opening up while we investigated Davis' background or
Garver's.
But something new was added right there in the tavern. Very suddenly. A
guy popped up from behind the bar and said, "Hello."
We whirled around and looked at him and Donovan snorted, "Who the hell
are you?"
"My name is Tennyson Dalrymple."
"What kind of a label is that?"
The man came around from behind the bar. "I liked it--I took it. If it
annoys you I'm sorry." But you could tell by the sneer on his face that
he wasn't sorry at all.
He was a medium-sized unattractive figure of a man and yet you couldn't
put your finger on just where the unattractiveness came from. He wasn't
good looking but neither was he repulsive. He didn't have a superman's
frame but neither was he a cripple nor a malformed freak. There was
just something about him you took an instant dislike to and the dislike
stayed with you.
And Dalrymple seemed to enjoy increasing the antagonism. He wore a
habitual sneer and his voice had a cutting quality to it.