The owner of the place is a good friend of mine, though, and he broke it up and talked me out of starting anything.

“Last evening when we docked, I got the word. About the divorce, I mean. She was in Reno, along with the car and most of the joint checking account. Around nine o’clock I came uptown from the refinery and stopped in the Sidelines for a few drinks, and the more I thought about it the more burned up I got. I mean, I wasn’t broken up about it—hell, we were about washed up anyway—but I don’t like being played for a sucker, at least not by types like Stedman. So I went up to his apartment.

“When he opened the door and saw who it was he tried to shut it again, but I pushed my way in and belted him one. He wasn’t wearing the gun and holster, of course, because he was off duty, but he was a long way from being a pushover. He was a little heavier than I am, and he could really punch. We made a hell of a mess out of his living room. The apartment-house manager started pounding on the door and saying he was going to call the police. We were both pretty well banged up and winded after about five minutes of it. When I went out Stedman was on his knees in the middle of the living room trying to get up, and I wasn’t in much better shape myself. I was groggy from some of the punches I’d taken, and I had blood on my hands and clothes from some of the cuts I’d opened on his face. The manager was gone from the hallway, but I met two tenants who knew me, at least by sight. I went back to the Sidelines, but before I got there I heard the siren and saw the police cruiser pull up in front of the Wakefield. At the bar, I went on through to the washroom to clean up. It took three or four minutes to get the blood off and straighten out my clothes, and then I heard some cops come in the front looking for me. I ducked out the back way into the alley. I didn’t want to spend the night in jail and take a chance on missing my ship in the morning. I figured that by the time I got back from the next trip it’d have blown over and at the most I’d just have to go in and pay a fine. It was starting to rain by then. I ducked into a movie.

“It was around one in the morning when I came out I called the Sidelines and asked Red Lanigan if the dust had settled enough so I could come back and have a drink, and that’s when the roof started to fall in. He pretended I was somebody else and said Stedman had died of a knife wound and that the police were taking the city apart trying to find a sailor named Foley. I thought he was kidding, but before I could say anything else he hung up on me. I called Stedman’s apartment. A man answered without saying who he was, and it wasn’t Stedman’s voice at all. It still didn’t make any sense, but I was beginning to be scared. I flagged a cab, thinking I’d ride by the apartment house and see if there were police cars in front of it. But the driver kept watching me in his mirror. At first I thought it was because of the shiner and the bruises on my face, but then I began to wonder.