Free The Judge Is Reversed by Frances Lockridge Page A

them.
    â€œThat it was—was sitting right there,” she said. “Wasn’t that it, Jerry? About it? And—you were sitting there with Mr. Blanchard, you know. It sounded as if—”
    â€œNo,” the girl said, and spoke quickly. “There wasn’t anything like that. I don’t know why you say—I was a little embarrassed, because all at once everybody was looking at us and—there wasn’t anything like that.”
    Pam looked at Jerry.
    â€œThat’s the way I remember it,” Jerry said. “You said ‘Doug’ a couple of times as if—as if you were asking him to—call it behave himself. As if how he behaved concerned you.”
    â€œDoug Mears?” she said, in apparent astonishment. “Why on earth should what he does—oh, I didn’t want to be part of a scene. Nobody does. Perhaps I did say something to—to stop him. Said ‘Oh, Doug ’ the way one does, meaning—” She stopped again. She looked at Bill Weigand. “That was all,” she said. “If Doug said anything about John’s having what he wanted I don’t know what he meant. And, I don’t remember anything like—”
    The doorbell rang. Jerry went to the door. Two men were outside it—a rangy young man, hatless, with blond short hair; a heavier and somewhat older man, who wore a hat.
    â€œCompliments of Detective Shapiro,” the heavier man said. “A Mr. Doug Mears. Showed up at the apartment, Shapiro says, and—”
    â€œHildy!” Doug Mears said. “What the hell are you—” He did not finish. When he first saw the girl, Pam thought, there had been light in his face. The light went out.
    â€œCome in, Mr. Mears,” Bill Weigand said. “We were just talking about you.”
    Mears hesitated.
    â€œI’d do what the captain says, Mr. Mears,” the heavy man said. “Hiya, Al.”
    Mullins had moved closer to the door. He looked very large. He said, “Hiya, Jimmy. How’s tricks?” but not as if either remark were a question, requiring an answer.
    Mears came in. He stood in the room as the heavy man closed the door on them.
    â€œWhat about me?” Mears said. He didn’t look particularly like a kid. His face was young enough. His expression was not. He spoke, not to Bill Weigand, or to Mullins or the Norths. He spoke to Hilda Latham. “You’ve been doing the talking, Hildy?”
    â€œNothing,” she said. “They’ve got some crazy idea. I was just—just telling them how crazy—”
    Mears did not wait for her to finish. He looked now at the others. He said, “What kind of a deal is this, anyway? Seems to me I’m being pushed around. What’s the idea?”
    â€œNot pushed,” Bill Weigand said, and spoke pleasantly, without insistence, without rancor. “I’m a police captain. Investigating a murder. John Blanchard’s murder. This is a police sergeant. Mr. and Mrs. North are—friends of mine. Things happened to work out so that—” He paused; momentarily he blinked. When he told Deputy Chief Inspector Artemus O’Malley how things had “happened” to work out—And, until that moment, the course of events had seemed so natural. Momentarily, in his mind, Bill listened to the explosion of Deputy Chief Inspector Artemus O’Malley.
    â€œYou don’t need to say anything unless you want to,” he said, mildly, to the tall, the rangy—and most obviously the angry—tennis player.
    â€œYou’re damned right,” Mears said.
    â€œOnly,” Bill said, “I could take you in for questioning. To a station house. Even hold you for a while as a material witness. You could have a lawyer and—”
    â€œWhat’s she been telling you?” Mears said.
    â€œNothing,” Hilda Latham said. “Nothing, Doug. Because there’s