Big Jim McLain Page #4

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persuade Willie to accompany me.

So, we separated.

You haven't seen him since?

Never. Last week he telephoned me.

Radiophone, you know.

The connection was bad.

He made little sense.

A few days later I received

a most incoherent letter from him,

in which he says he is returning

to the religion of his childhood.

I have it here.

You will see, he accuses himself,

using the Japanese word

kYodai-goroshi, which is fratricide.

A man who murders his brother.

Yes, he calls himself that.

He is obviously deranged.

He has no brother.

I know his family well, since infancy.

He's an only child.

Well, have you any idea

what he meant by this?

None.

Did you answer his letter?

No. Like any other who commits

a crime against humanity,

he will have to find his own way back

into the community of men.

I would not lift a hand

to help any conspirator,

any more than I would extend

a helping hand to a...

I was going to say leper,

but that, of course, is ridiculous.

Well, thank you, Mrs. Nomaka.

I'm sorry I had to bother you.

Oh, Mr. McLain...

lf, in the course of your duty,

you are forced to arrest Willie,

please remember,

he is suffering great torment of soul.

I recognize his predicament

as identical with my own in the past.

I have no control over this, Mrs. Nomaka.

I'm just an investigator.

But if I see Willie, I'll tell him I met

a splendid lady who wishes him well.

Jim...

This is the Reverend Ito.

He says that our man, Nomaka,

was here, all right.

He was in a very disturbed state of mind.

He came in,

placed many prayer papers on the altar

and kept raving

about he'd murdered his brother.

It was hard to tell whether or not

he was stating the truth

because the Reverend Father

tried to question him,

he screamed he had no brother

and ran away.

Well, was that the last he saw him?

That's the last time he saw him.

Thank you.

Mal.

The Chief wants to talk to you.

644 to No. 1. 644 to No. 1. Come in.

Mal, in checking Dr. Gelster's phone bill

we find toll charges

to a Sanford Sanitarium.

Your man Nomaka might be there.

We checked it. He wasn't there,

and they weren't cooperative.

Take officer Jones with you this time.

He has a search warrant.

TheY'll cooperate.

Right.

644 to No. 1. Check. Here 6-3-4-8.

Come on, Jonesy.

- Remember me?

- Yeah.

Well, I'm going to ask you just once more.

Do you have a patient named Nomaka?

No.

Do you have that man?

I've got a search warrant.

Why, sure. We have this man.

Calls himself Shige.

These drunks always hide under

a phony name. Here, follow me.

This is the man, isn't it?

Yeah, that's him.

I don't get this character for a drunk.

Looks more like he's on junk.

He makes no sense.

Nomaka, you're among friends.

Where's your telephone?

Give me the police department, Chief Liu.

Hey, Jack, we'd just as soon have

no trouble. We're in business, you know.

You want to stay in business?

- Yes, sir.

- Cooperate.

Hello, Chief. Yeah, we found him.

Can you send an ambulance over

to pick him up?

All right. Thanks.

We had Nomaka,

but between nervous breakdown

and the injections

his comrades had given him,

Nomaka was of no use to us.

Say, by the way,

I want you to meet Ed White.

I've been trying to bring him along

to take my place as business agent

when I leave next month.

I got a pretty good setup on the mainland,

but I want to make sure I leave this outfit

in the hands of guys that are on our team.

See, there he is now.

Hey, get out of the truck.

You can't do it. The hiring hall

sent me down here with a gang.

Well, I'm sending you back.

You're sending me back

because you think I'm a Commie?

I wouldn't send you back

because you're a Commie.

Then 80 jerks from here and there

would get together

and call a meeting about your civil rights.

I won't even say you're a Commie.

I'll just say you loose-Ioaded a sling

a couple of months ago

and a load of radar equipment

was smashed.

Accident.

Well, I don't like accidents

on my loading gang.

So get out of the area.

Maybe you'd like to make me.

Cinch.

Hey, mac.

You ain't man enough to do it by yourself.

Look, mister, if I belt you,

you could sue the company.

But if you want to come down

to Joe's after dinner,

we can talk about this thing a little more,

and my time is my own.

Hey, Whitey.

McLain and Baxter,

House Un-American Activities Committee.

You fellows are doing a good job.

Getting things pretty well cleaned up.

Well, we'd like to get together with you

and let you give us the lowdown

on what's going on.

Sure, you can have anything we got,

hey, Max?

Sure, anything.

About the only tip I can give you

are the names of some

of these parliamentary pirates.

Parliamentary pirates?

Yeah, those talkative characters

who babble for hours at a meeting

so the decent guys go home

before a vote's called.

Come on in the office.

Mr. McLain?

My name is Henried, Robert Henried.

- Mrs. Vallon.

- How do you do, Mrs. Vallon?

Mr. McLain, I'm a writer.

I don't suppose you've ever read

any of my works.

I write mostly historical

and research treatises.

My purpose in coming here today

is to give you some information

on the Communist Party.

I'll take a walk along the beach.

Don't leave on my account, Mrs. Vallon.

This information will become

public knowledge within a very few days,

just as soon as my next book

reaches the stands.

Won't you sit down?

Thank you, no.

I'm rather pressed for time.

As a matter of fact, what I have to say

will take just a very few minutes.

Mr. McLain, 10 years ago

I joined the Communist Party,

merely to see it firsthand

and observe its operation.

When I found it unworkable,

my scholar's interest stopped,

but I maintained the contacts

I had created during my time of study.

As I told Stalin at our last meeting,

the parallel between his organization

and the Venetian dictatorships

of the 16th century is most unusual.

May I have a glass

of that lemonade, please?

You saw Stalin?

Oh, my dear fellow, scads of times.

As a matter of fact, our last conversation

terminated in a rather frightful quarrel.

You see, I had flown over

in a new jet plane of my own design

to demonstrate

that his operation must fail

for the same reason

that Genghis Khan failed.

This is excellent lemonade.

May I pour you a glass, Mrs. Vallon?

No, thanks.

He's a very stubborn man, Stalin.

Finally, I had to threaten him

with my new secret weapon.

You know,

this lemonade tastes of lemons.

I must say, I heartily approve of that.

It's always a great mistake to use oranges

when making lemonade.

You say you threatened him?

Oh, yes. He was frightfully upset,

as a matter of fact.

You see, my new secret weapon, well,

it will make the atomic bomb

an obsolete nothing.

A mere child's plaything.

It will, incidentally,

eliminate any possibility of future wars.

And I reveal this to you, Mr. McLain,

only because

you have a certain kind of face.

You have a face that I can read like a book.

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