But let me correct you on one thing. I am not in touch with Lennox. I scarcely know him. I'm an officer of the court, as all lawyers are. If I knew where Lennox was, I couldn't conceal the information from the District Attorney. The most I could do would be to agree to surrender him at a specified time and place after I had had an interview with him." "Nobody else would bother to send you here to help me." "Are you calling me a liar?" He reached down to rub out his cigarette stub on the underside of the table. "I seem to remember that you're a Virginian, Mr. Endicott. In this country we have a sort of historical fixation about Virginians. We think of them as the flower of southern chivalry and honor." He smiled. "That was nicely said. I only wish it was true. But we're wasting time. If you had had a grain of sense you'd have told the police you hadn't seen Lennox for a week. It didn't have to be true. Under oath you could always have told the real story. There's no law against lying to the cops. They expect it. They feel much happier when you lie to them than when you refuse to talk to them. That's a direct challenge to their authority. What do you expect to gain by it?" I didn't answer. I didn't really have an answer. He stood up and reached for his hat and snapped his cigarette case shut and put it in his pocket. "You had to play the big scene," he said coldly.  A crowd-pleaser like Springer could ride himself right into Attorney General on that show, and from there into the governor's chair and from there—"I stopped talking and let the rest of it float in the air. Endicott smiled a slow derisive smile. "I don't think you know very much about Mr. Harlan Potter," he said. "And if they don't get Lennox, they won't want to know how he got away, Mr. Endicott. They'll just want to forget the whole thing fast." "Got it all figured out, haven't you, Marlowe?" "I've had the time. All I know about Mr. Harlan Potter is that he is supposed to be worth a hundred million bucks a police shieldcould hold me upside down and drainmy gutschange your mind,