on it."

Karen Marshall was crying now, with the abandoned grief of a petted
child.

"Granted, Captain!" Judge Marshall snapped. "But it happens that I do
not 'tote' my gun with the silencer on it. If it interests you, I may as
well explain that I came by the silencer several years ago, when I was
on the bench. A notorious Chicago gunman, on trial for murder here, and
acquitted by a feeble-minded jury, made me a present of the very
silencer he had used in killing his victim--an ironic gesture, a gesture
of supreme insolence, but an entirely safe gesture, since he well knew
that a man once acquitted of a crime cannot again be placed in jeopardy
for the same offence."

"So you kept the silencer as a curiosity, Judge Marshall?" Dundee
interrupted the pompous flow of rhetoric.

"For years--yes," the ex-judge answered, then his face went yellow
and very old. "As I told you just now, I will withhold no fact that
may be of any relevance whatever.... About two months ago--in March,
I believe--our little group here took up target-shooting as a fad.
Several of us became quite expert with revolver and rifle. Mr.
Drake--" and he nodded toward the banker, who instantly averted his eyes,
"--conceived the idea of practising the draw-from-the-hip sort of
revolver-shooting--the kind one sees in Wild West movies, you know--"

"I think you might add, Hugo," Drake cut in angrily, "that I had in mind
the hope of being able to protect the bank in case of a holdup!"

"And the silencer, Judge Marshall?" Captain Strawn prodded.

Judge Marshall flushed, and fingered the end of a waxed mustache. "The
silencer, sir, was my wife's idea. You see, sir, we are fortunate enough
to be the parents of an infant son. He was just a month old when I
painted a bull's eye upon the brick wall of our back garden and invited
our friends to indulge their fad as our guests. The shooting awakened
the baby so frequently that Karen--Mrs. Marshall--dug up the silencer,
which I had shown her as a memento of my career on the bench. Thereafter
we confined our practice almost exclusively to drawing from the hip and
shooting without sighting. It is impossible to sight with a gun equipped
with a silencer, you know, since the silencer covers the sighter on the
barrel."

"It sure does," Strawn drawled. "So every last one of you folks had a
good deal of this sort of practice, I take it?"

Judge Marshall glanced about the room, as if he could not recall the
face of ev