
* A Project Gutenberg Canada Ebook *

This ebook is made available at no cost and with very few
restrictions. These restrictions apply only if (1) you make
a change in the ebook (other than alteration for different
display devices), or (2) you are making commercial use of
the ebook. If either of these conditions applies, please
check gutenberg.ca/links/licence.html before proceeding.

This work is in the Canadian public domain, but may be
under copyright in some countries. If you live outside Canada,
check your country's copyright laws. IF THE BOOK IS UNDER
COPYRIGHT IN YOUR COUNTRY, DO NOT DOWNLOAD
OR REDISTRIBUTE THIS FILE.

Title: The Thin Man
Author: Hammett, Dashiell [Samuel Dashiell] (1894-1961)
Date of first publication: 8 January 1934
Edition used as base for this ebook:
   New York: Alfred A. Knopf, October 1965
   [The Novels of Dashiell Hammett,
   "reset and printed from new plates"]
Date first posted: 4 December 2016
Date last updated: 4 December 2016
Project Gutenberg Canada ebook #1379

This ebook was produced by Al Haines, Cindy Beyer,
Mark Akrigg & the Online Distributed Proofreading Canada
Team at http://www.pgdpcanada.net


PUBLISHER'S NOTE

Italics in the original printed edition are indicated _thus_.

Obvious typographical errors have been silently corrected.

As part of the conversion of the book to its new digital
format, we have made certain minor adjustments in its layout.






                              THE THIN MAN

                           by Dashiell Hammett





                              TO _LILLIAN_





                                   1


I was leaning against the bar in a speakeasy on Fifty-second Street,
waiting for Nora to finish her Christmas shopping, when a girl got up
from the table where she had been sitting with three other people and
came over to me. She was small and blonde, and whether you looked at her
face or at her body in powder-blue sports clothes the result was
satisfactory. "Aren't you Nick Charles?" she asked.

I said: "Yes."

She held out her hand. "I'm Dorothy Wynant. You don't remember me, but
you ought to remember my father, Clyde Wynant. You--"

"Sure," I said, "and I remember you now, but you were only a kid of
eleven or twelve then, weren't you?"

"Yes, that was eight years ago. Listen: remember those stories you told
me? Were they true?"

"Probably not. How is your father?"

She laughed. "I was going to ask you. Mamma divorced him, you know, and
we never hear from him--except when he gets in the newspapers now and
then with some of his carryings on. Don't you ever see him?"

My glass was empty. I asked her what she would have to drink, she said
Scotch and soda, I ordered two of them and said: "No, I've been living
in San Francisco."

She said slowly: "I'd like to see him. Mamma would raise hell if she
found it out, but I'd like to see him."

"Well?"

"He's not where we used to live, on Riverside Drive, and he's not in the
phone book or city directory."

"Try his lawyer," I suggested.

Her face brightened. "Who is he?"

"It used to be a fellow named Mac-something-or-other--Macaulay, that's
it, Herbert Macaulay. He was in the Singer Building."

"Lend me a nickel," she said, and went out to the telephone. She came
back smiling. "I found him. He's just round the corner on Fifth Avenue."

"Your father?"

"The lawyer. He says my father's out of town. I'm going round to see
him." She raised her glass to me. "Family reunions. Look, why don't--"

Asta jumped up and punched me in the belly with her front feet. Nora, at
the other end of the leash, said: "She's had a swell afternoon--knocked
over a table of toys at Lord & Taylor's, scared a fat woman silly by
licking her leg in Saks', and's been patted by three policemen."

I made introductions. "My wife, Dorothy Wynant. Her father was once a
client of mine, when she was only so high. A good guy, but screwy."

"I was fascinated by him," Dorothy said, meaning me, "a real live
detective, and used to follow him around making him tell me about his
experiences. He told me awful lies, but I believed every word."

I said: "You look tired, Nora."

"I am. Let's sit down."

Dorothy Wynant said she had to go back to her table. She shook hands
with Nora; we must drop in for cocktails, they were living at the
Courtland, her mother's name was Jorgensen now. We would be glad to and
she must come see us some time, we were at the Normandie and would be in
New York for another week or two. Dorothy patted the dog's head and left
us.

We found a table. Nora said: "She's pretty."

"If you like them like that."

She grinned at me. "You got types?"

"Only you, darling--lanky brunettes with wicked jaws."

"And how about the red-head you wandered off with at the Quinns' last
night?"

"That's silly," I said. "She just wanted to show me some French
etchings."




                                   2


The next day Herbert Macaulay telephoned me. "Hello. I didn't know you
were back in town till Dorothy Wynant told me. How about lunch?"

"What time is it?"

"Half past eleven. Did I wake you up?"

"Yes," I said, "but that's all right. Suppose you come up here for
lunch: I've got a hangover and don't feel like running around much....
O. K., say one o'clock."

I had a drink with Nora, who was going out to have her hair washed, then
another after a shower, and was feeling better by the time the telephone
rang again.

A female voice asked: "Is Mr. Macaulay there?"

"Not yet."

"Sorry to trouble you, but would you mind asking him to call his office
as soon as he gets there? It's important."

I promised to do that.

Macaulay arrived about ten minutes later. He was a big curly-haired,
rosy-cheeked, rather good-looking chap of about my
age--forty-one--though he looked younger. He was supposed to be a pretty
good lawyer. I had worked on several jobs for him when I was living in
New York and we had always got along nicely.

Now we shook hands and patted each other's backs, and he asked me how
the world was treating me, and I said, "Fine," and asked him and he
said, "Fine," and I told him to call his office.

He came away from the telephone frowning. "Wynant's back in town," he
said, "and wants me to meet him."

I turned around with the drinks I had poured. "Well, the lunch can--"

"Let him wait," he said, and took one of the glasses from me.

"Still as screwy as ever?"

"That's no joke," Macaulay said solemnly. "You heard they had him in a
sanatorium for nearly a year back in '29?"

"No."

He nodded. He sat down, put his glass on a table beside his chair, and
leaned towards me a little. "What's Mimi up to, Charles?"

"Mimi? Oh, the wife--the ex-wife. I don't know. Does she have to be up
to something?"

"She usually is," he said dryly, and then very slowly, "and I thought
you'd know."

So that was it. I said: "Listen, Mac, I haven't been a detective for six
years, since 1927."

He stared at me.

"On the level," I assured him, "a year after I got married, my wife's
father died and left her a lumber mill and a narrow-gauge railroad and
some other things and I quit the Agency to look after them. Anyway I
wouldn't be working for Mimi Wynant, or Jorgensen, or whatever her name
is--she never liked me and I never liked her."

"Oh, I didn't think you--" Macaulay broke off with a vague gesture and
picked up his glass. When he took it away from his mouth, he said: "I
was just wondering. Here Mimi phones me three days ago--Tuesday--trying
to find Wynant; then yesterday Dorothy phones, saying you told her to,
and comes around, and--I thought you were still sleuthing, so I was
wondering what it was all about."

"Didn't they tell you?"

"Sure--they wanted to see him for old times' sake. That means a lot."

"You lawyers are a suspicious crew," I said. "Maybe they did--that and
money. But what's the fuss about? Is he in hiding?"

Macaulay shrugged. "You know as much about it as I do. I haven't seen
him since October." He drank again. "How long are you going to be in
town?"

"Till after New Year's," I told him and went to the telephone to ask
room service for menus.




                                   3


Nora and I went to the opening of _Honeymoon_ at the Little Theatre that
night and then to a party given by some people named Freeman or Fielding
or something. I felt pretty low when she called me the next morning. She
gave me a newspaper and a cup of coffee and said: "Read that."

I patiently read a paragraph or two, then put the paper down and took a
sip of coffee. "Fun's fun," I said, "but right now I'd swap you all the
interviews with Mayor-elect O'Brien ever printed--and throw in the
Indian picture--for a slug of whis--"

"Not that, stupid." She put a finger on the paper. "That."

                I N V E N T O R ' S   S E C R E T A R Y
               M U R D E R E D   I N   A P A R T M E N T

                 *        *        *        *        *

    J U L I A   W O L F ' S   B U L L E T - R I D D L E D   B O D Y
    F O U N D ;   P O L I C E   S E E K   H E R   E M P L O Y E R ,
                        C L Y D E   W Y N A N T

                 *        *        *        *        *

    The bullet-riddled body of Julia Wolf, thirty-two-year-old
    confidential secretary to Clyde Miller Wynant, well-known
    inventor, was discovered late yesterday afternoon in the dead
    woman's apartment at 411 East Fifty-fourth St. by Mrs. Christian
    Jorgensen, divorced wife of the inventor, who had gone there in
    an attempt to learn her former husband's present address.

    Mrs. Jorgensen, who returned Monday after a six-year stay in
    Europe, told police that she heard feeble groans when she rang
    the murdered woman's doorbell, whereupon she notified an
    elevator boy, Mervin Holly, who called Walter Meany,
    apartment-house superintendent. Miss Wolf was lying on the
    bedroom floor with four .32-calibre bullet-wounds in her chest
    when they entered the apartment, and died without having
    recovered consciousness before police and medical aid arrived.

    Herbert Macaulay, Wynant's attorney, told the police that he had
    not seen the inventor since October. He stated that Wynant
    called him on the telephone yesterday and made an appointment,
    but failed to keep it; and disclaimed any knowledge of his
    client's whereabouts. Miss Wolf, Macaulay stated, had been in
    the inventor's employ for the past eight years. The attorney
    said he knew nothing about the dead woman's family or private
    affairs and could throw no light on her murder.

    The bullet-wounds could not have been self-inflicted, according
    to...

The rest of it was the usual police department hand-out.

"Do you suppose he killed her?" Nora asked when I put the paper down
again.

"Wynant? I wouldn't be surprised. He's batty as hell."

"Did you know her?"

"Yes. How about a drop of something to cut the phlegm?"

"What was she like?"

"Not bad," I said. "She wasn't bad-looking and she had a lot of sense
and a lot of nerve--and it took both to live with that guy."

"She lived with him?"

"Yes. I want a drink, please. That is, it was like that when I knew
them."

"Why don't you have some breakfast first? Was she in love with him or
was it just business?"

"I don't know. It's too early for breakfast."

When Nora opened the door to go out, the dog came in and put her front
feet on the bed, her face in my face. I rubbed her head and tried to
remember something Wynant had once said to me, something about women and
dogs. It was not the woman-spaniel-walnut-tree line. I could not
remember what it was, but there seemed to be some point in trying to
remember.

Nora returned with two drinks and another question: "What's he like?"

"Tall--over six feet--and one of the thinnest men I've ever seen. He
must be about fifty now, and his hair was almost white when I knew him.
Usually needs a haircut, ragged brindle mustache, bites his
fingernails." I pushed the dog away to reach for my drink.

"Sounds lovely. What were you doing with him?"

"A fellow who'd worked for him accused him of stealing some kind of idea
or invention from him. Kelterman was his name. He tried to shake Wynant
down by threatening to shoot him, bomb his house, kidnap his children,
cut his wife's throat--I don't know what all--if he didn't come across.
We never caught him--must've scared him off. Anyway, the threats stopped
and nothing happened."

Nora stopped drinking to ask: "Did Wynant really steal it?"

"Tch, tch, tch," I said. "This is Christmas Eve: try to think good of
your fellow man."




                                   4


That afternoon I took Asta for a walk, explained to two people that she
was a Schnauzer and not a cross between a Scottie and an Irish terrier,
stopped at Jim's for a couple of drinks, ran into Larry Crowley, and
brought him back to the Normandie with me. Nora was pouring cocktails
for the Quinns, Margot Innes, a man whose name I did not catch, and
Dorothy Wynant.

Dorothy said she wanted to talk to me, so we carried our cocktails into
the bedroom.

She came to the point right away. "Do you think my father killed her,
Nick?"

"No," I said. "Why should I?"

"Well, the police have--Listen, she was his mistress, wasn't she?"

I nodded. "When I knew them."

She stared at her glass while saying, "He's my father. I never liked
him. I never liked Mamma." She looked up at me. "I don't like Gilbert."
Gilbert was her brother.

"Don't let that worry you. Lots of people don't like their relatives."

"Do you like them?"

"My relatives?"

"Mine." She scowled at me. "And stop talking to me as if I was still
twelve."

"It's not that," I explained. "I'm getting tight."

"Well, do you?"

I shook my head. "You were all right, just a spoiled kid. I could get
along without the rest of them."

"What's the matter with us?" she asked, not argumentatively, but as if
she really wanted to know.

"Different things. Your--"

Harrison Quinn opened the door and said: "Come on over and play some
ping-pong, Nick."

"In a little while."

"Bring beautiful along." He leered at Dorothy and went away.

She said: "I don't suppose you know Jorgensen."

"I know a Nels Jorgensen."

"Some people have all the luck. This one's named Christian. He's a
honey. That's Mamma--divorces a lunatic and marries a gigolo." Her eyes
became wet. She caught her breath in a sob and asked: "What am I going
to do, Nick?" Her voice was a frightened child's.

I put an arm around her and made what I hoped were comforting sounds.
She cried on my lapel. The telephone beside the bed began to ring. In
the next room _Rise and Shine_ was coming through the radio. My glass
was empty. I said: "Walk out on them."

She sobbed again. "You can't walk out on yourself."

"Maybe I don't know what you're talking about."

"Please don't tease me," she said humbly.

Nora, coming in to answer the telephone, looked questioningly at me. I
made a face at her over the girl's head.

When Nora said "Hello" into the telephone, the girl stepped quickly back
away from me and blushed. "I--I'm sorry," she stammered, "I didn't--"

Nora smiled sympathetically at her. I said: "Don't be a dope." The girl
found her handkerchief and dabbed at her eyes with it.

Nora spoke into the telephone: "Yes.... I'll see if he's in. Who's
calling, please?" She put a hand over the mouthpiece and addressed me:
"It's a man named Norman. Do you want to talk to him?"

I said I didn't know and took the telephone. "Hello."

A somewhat harsh voice said: "Mr. Charles?... Mr. Charles, I
understand that you were formerly connected with the Trans-American
Detective Agency."

"Who is this?" I asked.

"My name is Albert Norman, Mr. Charles, which probably means nothing to
you, but I would like to lay a proposition before you. I am sure you
will--"

"What kind of a proposition?"

"I can't discuss it over the phone, Mr. Charles, but if you will give me
half an hour of your time, I can promise--"

"Sorry," I said. "I'm pretty busy and--"

"But, Mr. Charles, this is--" Then there was a loud noise: it could have
been a shot or something falling or anything else that would make a loud
noise. I said, "Hello," a couple of times, got no answer, and hung up.

Nora had Dorothy over in front of a looking-glass soothing her with
powder and rouge. I said, "A guy selling insurance," and went into the
living-room for a drink.

Some more people had come in. I spoke to them. Harrison Quinn left the
sofa where he had been sitting with Margot Innes and said: "Now
ping-pong." Asta jumped up and punched me in the belly with her front
feet. I shut off the radio and poured myself a cocktail. The man whose
name I had not caught was saying: "Comes the revolution and we'll all be
lined up against the wall--first thing." He seemed to think it was a
good idea.

Quinn came over to refill his glass. He looked towards the bedroom door.
"Where'd you find the little blonde?"

"Used to bounce it on my knee."

"Which knee?" he asked. "Could I touch it?"

Nora and Dorothy came out of the bedroom. I saw an afternoon paper on
the radio and picked it up. Headlines said:

         J U L I A   W O L F   O N C E   R A C K E T E E R ' S
     G I R L ;   A R T H U R   N U N H E I M   I D E N T I F I E S
                  B O D Y ;   W Y N A N T   S T I L L
                             M I S S I N G

Nora, at my elbow, spoke in a low voice: "I asked her to have dinner
with us. Be nice to the child"--Nora was twenty-six--"she's all upset."

"Whatever you say." I turned around. Dorothy, across the room, was
laughing at something Quinn was telling her. "But if you get mixed up in
people's troubles, don't expect me to kiss you where you're hurt."

"I won't. You're a sweet old fool. Don't read that here now." She took
the newspaper away from me and stuck it out of sight behind the radio.




                                   5


Nora could not sleep that night. She read Chaliapin's memoirs until I
began to doze and then woke me up by asking: "Are you asleep?"

I said I was.

She lit a cigarette for me, one for herself. "Don't you ever think you'd
like to go back to detecting once in a while just for the fun of it? You
know, when something special comes up, like the Lindb--"

"Darling," I said, "my guess is that Wynant killed her, and the
police'll catch him without my help. Anyway, it's nothing in my life."

"I didn't mean just that, but--"

"But besides I haven't the time: I'm too busy trying to see that you
don't lose any of the money I married you for." I kissed her. "Don't you
think maybe a drink would help you to sleep?"

"No, thanks."

"Maybe it would if I took one." When I brought my Scotch and soda back
to bed, she was frowning into space. I said: "She's cute, but she's
cuckoo. She wouldn't be his daughter if she wasn't. You can't tell how
much of what she says is what she thinks and you can't tell how much of
what she thinks ever really happened. I like her, but I think you're
letting--"

"I'm not sure I like her," Nora said thoughtfully, "she's probably a
little bastard, but if a quarter of what she told us is true, she's in a
tough spot."

"There's nothing I can do to help her."

"She thinks you can."

"And so do you, which shows that no matter what you think, you can
always get somebody else to go along with you."

Nora sighed. "I wish you were sober enough to talk to." She leaned over
to take a sip of my drink. "I'll give you your Christmas present now if
you'll give me mine."

I shook my head. "At breakfast."

"But it's Christmas now."

"Breakfast."

"Whatever you're giving me," she said, "I hope I don't like it."

"You'll have to keep them anyway, because the man at the Aquarium said
he positively wouldn't take them back. He said they'd already bitten the
tails off the--"

"It wouldn't hurt you any to find out if you can help her, would it?
She's got so much confidence in you, Nicky."

"Everybody trusts Greeks."

"Please."

"You just want to poke your nose into things that--"

"I meant to ask you: did his wife know the Wolf girl was his mistress?"

"I don't know. She didn't like her."

"What's the wife like?"

"I don't know--a woman."

"Good-looking?"

"Used to be very."

"She old?"

"Forty, forty-two. Cut it out, Nora. You don't want any part of it. Let
the Charleses stick to the Charleses' troubles and the Wynants stick to
the Wynants'."

She pouted. "Maybe that drink would help me."

I got out of bed and mixed her a drink. As I brought it into the
bedroom, the telephone began to ring. I looked at my watch on the table.
It was nearly five o'clock.

Nora was talking into the telephone: "Hello.... Yes, speaking." She
looked sidewise at me. I shook my head no. "Yes.... Why, certainly....
Yes, certainly." She put the telephone down and grinned at me.

"You're wonderful," I said. "Now what?"

"Dorothy's coming up. I think she's tight."

"That's great." I picked up my bathrobe. "I was afraid I was going to
have to go to sleep."

She was bending over looking for her slippers. "Don't be such an old
duff. You can sleep all day." She found her slippers and stood up in
them. "Is she really as afraid of her mother as she says?"

"If she's got any sense. Mimi's poison."

Nora screwed up her dark eyes at me and asked slowly: "What are you
holding out on me?"

"Oh, dear," I said, "I was hoping I wouldn't have to tell you. Dorothy
is really my daughter. I didn't know what I was doing, Nora. It was
spring in Venice and I was so young and there was a moon over the--"

"Be funny. Don't you want something to eat?"

"If you do. What do you want?"

"Raw chopped beef sandwich with a lot of onion and some coffee."

Dorothy arrived while I was telephoning an all-night delicatessen. When
I went into the living-room, she stood up with some difficulty and said:
"I'm awfully sorry, Nick, to keep bothering you and Nora like this, but
I can't go home this way tonight. I can't. I'm afraid to. I don't know
what'd happen to me, what I'd do. Please don't make me." She was very
drunk. Asta sniffed at her ankles.

I said: "Sh-h-h. You're all right here. Sit down. There'll be some
coffee in a little while. Where'd you get the snoutful?"

She sat down and shook her head stupidly. "I don't know. I've been
everywhere since I left you. I've been everywhere except home because I
can't go home this way. Look what I got." She stood up again and took a
battered automatic pistol out of her coat pocket. "Look at that." She
waved it at me while Asta, wagging her tail, jumped happily at it.

Nora made a noise with her breathing. The back of my neck was cold. I
pushed the dog aside and took the pistol away from Dorothy. "What kind
of clowning is this? Sit down." I dropped the pistol into a bathrobe
pocket and pushed Dorothy down in her chair.

"Don't be mad at me, Nick," she whined. "You can keep it. I don't want
to make a nuisance of myself."

"Where'd you get it?" I asked.

"In a speakeasy on Tenth Avenue. I gave a man my bracelet--the one with
the emeralds and diamonds--for it."

"And then won it back from him in a crap game," I said. "You've still
got it on."

She stared at her bracelet. "I thought I did."

I looked at Nora and shook my head. Nora said: "Aw, don't bully her,
Nick. She's--"

"He's not bullying me, Nora, he's really not," Dorothy said quickly.
"He--he's the only person I got in the world to turn to."

I remembered Nora had not touched her Scotch and soda, so I went into
the bedroom and drank it. When I came back, Nora was sitting on the arm
of Dorothy's chair with an arm around the girl. Dorothy was sniffling;
Nora was saying: "But Nick's not mad, dear. He likes you." She looked up
at me. "You're not mad, are you, Nicky?"

"No, I'm just hurt." I sat on the sofa. "Where'd you get the gun,
Dorothy?"

"From a man--I told you."

"What man?"

"I told you--a man in a speakeasy."

"And you gave him a bracelet for it."

"I thought I did, but--look--I've still got my bracelet."

"I noticed that."

Nora patted the girl's shoulder. "Of course you've still got your
bracelet."

I said: "When the boy comes with that coffee and stuff, I'm going to
bribe him to stick around. I'm not going to stay alone with a couple
of--"

Nora scowled at me, told the girl: "Don't mind him. He's been like that
all night."

The girl said: "He thinks I'm a silly little drunken fool."

Nora patted her shoulder some more.

I asked: "But what'd you want a gun for?"

Dorothy sat up straight and stared at me with wide drunken eyes. "Him,"
she whispered excitedly, "if he bothered me. I was afraid because I was
drunk. That's what it was. And then I was afraid of that, too, so I came
here."

"You mean your father?" Nora asked, trying to keep excitement out of her
voice.

The girl shook her head. "Clyde Wynant's my father. My stepfather." She
leaned against Nora's breast.

Nora said, "Oh," in a tone of very complete understanding. Then she
said, "You poor child," and looked significantly at me.

I said: "Let's all have a drink."

"Not me." Nora was scowling at me again. "And I don't think Dorothy
wants one."

"Yes, she does. It'll help her sleep." I poured her a terrific dose of
Scotch and saw that she drank it. It worked nicely: she was sound asleep
by the time our coffee and sandwiches came.

Nora said: "Now you're satisfied."

"Now I'm satisfied. Shall we tuck her in before we eat?"

I carried her into the bedroom and helped Nora undress her. She had a
beautiful little body.

We went back to our food. I took the pistol out of my pocket and
examined it. It had been kicked around a lot. There were two cartridges
in it, one in the chamber, one in the magazine.

"What are you going to do with it?" Nora asked.

"Nothing till I find out if it's the one Julia Wolf was killed with.
It's a .32."

"But she said--"

"She got it in a speakeasy--from a man--for a bracelet. I heard her."

Nora leaned over her sandwich at me. Her eyes were very shiny and almost
black. "Do you suppose she got it from her stepfather?"

"I do," I said, but I said it too earnestly.

Nora said: "You're a Greek louse. But maybe she did; you don't know. And
you don't believe her story."

"Listen, darling, tomorrow I'll buy you a whole lot of detective
stories, but don't worry your pretty little head over mysteries tonight.
All she was trying to tell you was that she was afraid Jorgensen was
waiting to try to make her when she got home and she was afraid she was
drunk enough to give in."

"But her mother!"

"This family's a family. You can--"

Dorothy Wynant, standing unsteadily in the doorway in a nightgown much
too long for her, blinked at the light and said: "Please, can I come in
for a little while? I'm afraid in there alone."

"Sure."

She came over and curled up beside me on the sofa while Nora went to get
something to put around her.




                                   6


The three of us were at breakfast early that afternoon when the
Jorgensens arrived. Nora answered the telephone and came away from it
trying to pretend she was not tickled. "It's your mother," she told
Dorothy. "She's downstairs. I told her to come up."

Dorothy said: "Damn it. I wish I hadn't phoned her."

I said: "We might just as well be living in the lobby."

Nora said: "He doesn't mean that." She patted Dorothy's shoulder.

The doorbell rang. I went to the door.

Eight years had done no damage to Mimi's looks. She was a little riper,
showier, that was all. She was larger than her daughter, and her
blondness was more vivid. She laughed and held her hands out to me.
"Merry Christmas. It's awfully good to see you after all these years.
This is my husband. Mr. Charles. Chris."

I said, "I'm glad to see you, Mimi," and shook hands with Jorgensen. He
was probably five years younger than his wife, a tall thin erect dark
man, carefully dressed and sleek, with smooth hair and a waxed mustache.

He bowed from the waist. "How do you do, Mr. Charles?" His accent was
heavy, Teutonic, his hand was lean and muscular.

We went inside.

Mimi, when the introductions were over, apologized to Nora for popping
in on us. "But I did want to see your husband again, and then I know the
only way to get this brat of mine anywhere on time is to carry her off
bodily." She turned her smile on Dorothy. "Better get dressed, honey."

Honey grumbled through a mouthful of toast that she didn't see why she
had to waste an afternoon at Aunt Alice's even if it was Christmas. "I
bet Gilbert's not going."

Mimi said Asta was a lovely dog and asked me if I had _any_ idea where
that ex-husband of hers might be.

"No."

She went on playing with the dog. "He's crazy, absolutely crazy, to
disappear at a time like this. No wonder the police at first thought he
had something to do with it."

"What do they think now?" I asked.

She looked up at me. "Haven't you seen the papers?"

"No."

"It's a man named Morelli--a gangster. He killed her. He was her lover."

"They caught him?"

"Not yet, but he did it. I wish I could find Clyde. Macaulay won't help
me at all. He says he doesn't know where he is, but that's ridiculous.
He has powers of attorney from him and everything and I know very well
he's in touch with Clyde. Do you think Macaulay's trustworthy?"

"He's Wynant's lawyer," I said. "There's no reason why you should trust
him."

"Just what I thought." She moved over a little on the sofa. "Sit down.
I've got millions of things to ask you."

"How about a drink first?"

"Anything but egg-nog," she said. "It makes me bilious."

When I came out of the pantry, Nora and Jorgensen were trying their
French on each other, Dorothy was still pretending to eat, and Mimi was
playing with the dog again. I distributed the drinks and sat down beside
Mimi.

She said: "Your wife's lovely."

"I like her."

"Tell me the truth, Nick: do you think Clyde's really crazy? I mean
crazy enough that something ought to be done about it."

"How do I know?"

"I'm worried about the children," she said. "I've no claim on him any
more--the settlement he made when I divorced him took care of all
that--but the children have. We're absolutely penniless now and I'm
worried about them. If he is crazy he's just as likely as not to throw
away everything and leave them without a cent. What do you think I ought
to do?"

"Thinking about putting him in the booby-hatch?"

"No-o," she said slowly, "but I would like to talk to him." She put a
hand on my arm. "You could find him."

I shook my head.

"Won't you help me, Nick? We used to be friends." Her big blue eyes were
soft and appealing.

Dorothy, at the table, was watching us suspiciously.

"For Christ's sake, Mimi," I said, "there's a thousand detectives in New
York. Hire one of them. I'm not working at it any more."

"I know, but--Was Dorry very drunk last night?"

"Maybe I was. She seemed all right to me."

"Don't you think she's gotten to be a pretty little thing?"

"I always thought she was."

She thought that over for a moment, then said: "She's only a child,
Nick."

"What's that got to do with what?" I asked.

She smiled. "How about getting some clothes on, Dorry?"

Dorothy sulkily repeated that she didn't see why she had to waste an
afternoon at Aunt Alice's.

Jorgensen turned to address his wife: "Mrs. Charles has the great
kindness to suggest that we do not--"

"Yes," Nora said, "why don't you stay awhile? There'll be some people
coming in. It won't be very exciting, but--" She waved her glass a
little to finish the sentence.

"I'd love to," Mimi replied slowly, "but I'm afraid Alice--"

"Make our apologies to her by telephone," Jorgensen suggested.

"I'll do it," Dorothy said.

Mimi nodded. "Be nice to her."

Dorothy went into the bedroom. Everybody seemed much brighter. Nora
caught my eye and winked merrily and I had to take it and like it
because Mimi was looking at me then.

Mimi asked me: "You really didn't want us to stay, did you?"

"Of course."

"Chances are you're lying. Weren't you sort of fond of poor Julia?"

"'Poor Julia' sounds swell from you. I liked her all right."

Mimi put her hand on my arm again. "She broke up my life with Clyde.
Naturally I hated her--then--but that's a long time ago. I had no
feeling against her when I went to see her Friday. And, Nick, I saw her
die. She didn't deserve to die. It was horrible. No matter what I'd
felt, there'd be nothing left but pity now. I meant 'poor Julia' when I
said it."

"I don't know what you're up to," I said. "I don't know what any of you
are up to."

"Any of us," she repeated. "Has Dorry been--"

Dorothy came in from the bedroom. "I squared it." She kissed her mother
on the mouth and sat down beside her.

Mimi, looking in her compact-mirror to see her mouth had not been
smeared, asked: "She wasn't peevish about it?"

"No, I squared it. What do you have to do to get a drink?"

I said: "You have to walk over to that table where the ice and bottles
are and pour it."

Mimi said: "You drink too much."

"I don't drink as much as Nick." She went over to the table.

Mimi shook her head. "These children! I mean you were pretty fond of
Julia Wolf, weren't you?"

Dorothy called: "You want one, Nick?"

"Thanks," I said; then to Mimi, "I liked her well enough."

"You're the damnedest evasive man," she complained. "Did you like her as
much as you used to like me, for instance?"

"You mean those couple of afternoons we killed?"

Her laugh was genuine. "That's certainly an answer." She turned to
Dorothy, carrying glasses towards us. "You'll have to get a robe that
shade of blue, darling. It's very becoming to you."

I took one of the glasses from Dorothy and said I thought I had better
get dressed.




                                   7


When I came out of the bathroom, Nora and Dorothy were in the bedroom,
Nora combing her hair, Dorothy sitting on the side of the bed dangling a
stocking.

Nora made a kiss at me in the dressing-table mirror. She looked very
happy.

"You like Nick a lot, don't you, Nora?" Dorothy asked.

"He's an old Greek fool, but I'm used to him."

"Charles isn't a Greek name."

"It's Charalambides," I explained. "When the old man came over, the mug
that put him through Ellis Island said Charalambides was too long--too
much trouble to write--and whittled it down to Charles. It was all right
with the old man; they could have called him X so they let him in."

Dorothy stared at me. "I never know when you're lying." She started to
put on the stocking, stopped. "What's Mamma trying to do to you?"

"Nothing. Pump me. She'd like to know what you did and said last night."

"I thought so. What'd you tell her?"

"What could I tell her? You didn't do or say anything."

She wrinkled her forehead over that, but when she spoke again it was
about something else: "I never knew there was anything between you and
Mamma. Of course I was only a kid then and wouldn't have known what it
was all about even if I'd noticed anything, but I didn't even know you
called each other by your first names."

Nora turned from the mirror laughing. "Now we're getting somewhere." She
waved the comb at Dorothy. "Go on, dear."

Dorothy said earnestly: "Well, I didn't know."

I was taking laundry pins out of a shirt. "What do you know now?" I
asked.

"Nothing," she said slowly, and her face began to grow pink, "but I can
guess." She bent over her stocking.

"Can and do," I growled. "You're a dope, but don't look so embarrassed.
You can't help it if you've got a dirty mind."

She raised her head and laughed, but when she asked, "Do you think I
take after Mamma much?" she was serious.

"I wouldn't be surprised."

"But do you?"

"You want me to say no. No."

"That's what I have to live with," Nora said cheerfully. "You can't do
anything with him."

I finished dressing first and went out to the living-room. Mimi was
sitting on Jorgensen's knees. She stood up and asked: "What'd you get
for Christmas?"

"Nora gave me a watch." I showed it to her.

She said it was lovely, and it was. "What'd you give her?"

"Necklace."

Jorgensen said, "May I?" and rose to mix himself a drink.

The doorbell rang. I let the Quinns and Margot Innes in, introduced them
to the Jorgensens. Presently Nora and Dorothy finished dressing and came
out of the bedroom, and Quinn attached himself to Dorothy. Larry Crowley
arrived, with a girl named Denis, and a few minutes later the Edges. I
won thirty-two dollars--on the cuff--from Margot at backgammon. The
Denis girl had to go into the bedroom and lie down awhile. Alice Quinn,
with Margot's help, tore her husband away from Dorothy at a little after
six and carried him off to keep a date they had. The Edges left. Mimi
put on her coat, got her husband and daughter into their coats.

"It's awful short notice," she said, "but can't you come to dinner
tomorrow night?"

Nora said: "Certainly."

We shook hands and made polite speeches all around and they went away.

Nora shut the door after them and leaned her back against it. "Jesus,
he's a handsome guy," she said.




                                   8


So far I had known just where I stood on the Wolf-Wynant-Jorgensen
troubles and what I was doing--the answers were, respectively, nowhere
and nothing--but when we stopped at Reuben's for coffee on our way home
at four the next morning, Nora opened a newspaper and found a line in
one of the gossip columns: "Nick Charles, former Trans-American
Detective Agency ace, on from Coast to sift the Julia Wolf murder
mystery"; and when I opened my eyes and sat up in bed some six hours
later Nora was shaking me and a man with a gun in his hand was standing
in the bedroom doorway.

He was a plump dark youngish man of medium height, broad through the
jaws, narrow between the eyes. He wore a black derby hat, a black
overcoat that fitted him very snugly, a dark suit, and black shoes, all
looking as if he had bought them within the past fifteen minutes. The
gun, a blunt black .38-calibre automatic, lay comfortably in his hand,
not pointing at anything.

Nora was saying: "He made me let him in, Nick. He said he had to--"

"I got to talk to you," the man with the gun said. "That's all, but I
got to do that." His voice was low, rasping.

I had blinked myself awake by then. I looked at Nora. She was excited,
but apparently not frightened: she might have been watching a horse she
had a bet on coming down the stretch with a nose lead.

I said: "All right, talk, but do you mind putting the gun away? My wife
doesn't care, but I'm pregnant and I don't want the child to be born
with--"

He smiled with his lower lip. "You don't have to tell me you're tough. I
heard about you." He put the pistol in his overcoat pocket. "I'm Shep
Morelli."

"I never heard about you," I said.

He took a step into the room and began to shake his head from side to
side. "I didn't knock Julia off."

"Maybe you didn't, but you're bringing the news to the wrong place. I
got nothing to do with it."

"I haven't seen her in three months," he said. "We were washed up."

"Tell the police."

"I wouldn't have any reason to hurt her: she was always on the up and up
with me."

"That's all swell," I said, "only you're peddling your fish in the wrong
market."

"Listen." He took another step towards the bed. "Studsy Burke tells me
you used to be O. K. That's why I'm here. Do the--"

"How is Studsy?" I asked. "I haven't seen him since the time he went up
the river in '23 or '24."

"He's all right. He'd like to see you. He's got a joint on West
Forty-ninth, the Pigiron Club. But listen, what's the law doing to me?
Do they think I did it? Or is it just something else to pin on me?"

I shook my head. "I'd tell you if I knew. Don't let newspapers fool you:
I'm not in this. Ask the police."

"That'd be very smart." He smiled with his lower lip again. "That'd be
the smartest thing I ever did. Me that a police captain's been in a
hospital three weeks on account we had an argument. The boys would like
me to come in and ask 'em questions. They'd like it right down to the
end of their blackjacks." He turned a hand over, palm up. "I come to you
on the level. Studsy says you're on the level. Be on the level."

"I'm being on the level," I assured him. "If I knew anything I'd--"

Knuckles drummed on the corridor door, three times, sharply. Morelli's
gun was in his hand before the noise stopped. His eyes seemed to move in
all directions at once. His voice was a metallic snarl deep in his
chest: "Well?"

"I don't know." I sat up a little higher in bed and nodded at the gun in
his hand. "That makes it your party." The gun pointed very accurately at
my chest. I could hear the blood in my ears, and my lips felt swollen. I
said: "There's no fire-escape." I put my left hand out towards Nora, who
was sitting on the far side of the bed.

The knuckles hit the door again, and a deep voice called: "Open up.
Police."

Morelli's lower lip crawled up to lap the upper, and the whites of his
eyes began to show under the irises. "You son of a bitch," he said
slowly, almost as if he were sorry for me. He moved his feet the least
bit, flattening them against the floor.

A key touched the outer lock.

I hit Nora with my left hand, knocking her down across the room. The
pillow I chucked with my right hand at Morelli's gun seemed to have no
weight; it drifted slow as a piece of tissue paper. No noise in the
world, before or after, was ever as loud as Morelli's gun going off.
Something pushed my left side as I sprawled across the floor. I caught
one of his ankles and rolled over with it, bringing him down on me, and
he clubbed my back with the gun until I got a hand free and began to hit
him as low in the body as I could.

Men came in and dragged us apart.

It took us five minutes to bring Nora to.

She sat up holding her cheek and looked around the room until she saw
Morelli, nippers on one wrist, standing between two detectives.
Morelli's face was a mess: the coppers had worked him over a little just
for the fun of it. Nora glared at me. "You damned fool," she said, "you
didn't have to knock me cold. I knew you'd take him, but I wanted to see
it."

One of the coppers laughed. "Jesus," he said admiringly, "there's a
woman with hair on her chest."

She smiled at him and stood up. When she looked at me she stopped
smiling. "Nick, you're--"

I said I didn't think it was much and opened what was left of my
pyjama-coat. Morelli's bullet had scooped out a gutter perhaps four
inches long under my left nipple. A lot of blood was running out of it,
but it was not very deep.

Morelli said: "Tough luck. A couple of inches over would make a lot of
difference the right way."

The copper who had admired Nora--he was a big sandy man of forty-eight
or fifty in a gray suit that did not fit him very well--slapped
Morelli's mouth.

Keyser, the Normandie's manager, said he would get a doctor and went to
the telephone. Nora ran to the bathroom for towels.

I put a towel over the wound and lay down on the bed. "I'm all right.
Don't let's fuss over it till the doctor comes. How'd you people happen
to pop in?"

The copper who had slapped Morelli said: "We happen to hear this is
getting to be kind of a meeting-place for Wynant's family and his lawyer
and everybody, so we think we'll kind of keep an eye on it in case he
happens to show up, and this morning when Mack here, who was the eye we
were kind of keeping on it at the time, sees this bird duck in, he gives
us a ring and we get hold of Mr. Keyser and come on up, and pretty lucky
for you."

"Yes, pretty lucky for me, or maybe I wouldn't've got shot."

He eyed me suspiciously. His eyes were pale gray and watery. "This bird
a friend of yours?"

"I never saw him before."

"What'd he want of you?"

"Wanted to tell me he didn't kill the Wolf girl."

"What's that to you?"

"Nothing."

"What'd he think it was to you?"

"Ask him. I don't know."

"I'm asking you."

"Keep on asking."

"I'll ask you another one: you're going to swear to the complaint on him
shooting you?"

"That's another one I can't answer right now. Maybe it was an accident."

"Oke. There's plenty of time. I guess we got to ask you a lot more
things than we'd figured on." He turned to one of his companions: there
were four of them. "We'll frisk the joint."

"Not without a warrant," I told him.

"So you say. Come on, Andy." They began to search the place.

The doctor--a colorless wisp of a man with the snuffles--came in,
clucked and sniffed over my side, got the bleeding stopped and a bandage
on, and told me I would have nothing to worry about if I lay still for a
couple of days. Nobody would tell the doctor anything. The police would
not let him touch Morelli. He went away looking even more colorless and
vague.

The big sandy man had returned from the living-room holding one hand
behind him. He waited until the doctor had gone, then asked: "Have you
got a pistol permit?"

"No."

"Then what are you doing with this?" He brought from behind him the gun
I had taken from Dorothy Wynant.

There was nothing I could say.

"You've heard about the Sullivan Act?" he asked.

"Yes."

"Then you know where you stand. This gun yours?"

"No."

"Whose is it?"

"I'll have to try to remember."

He put the pistol in his pocket and sat down on a chair beside the bed.
"Listen, Mr. Charles," he said. "I guess we're both of us doing this
wrong. I don't want to get tough with you and I don't guess you really
want to get tough with me. That hole in your side can't be making you
feel any too good, so I ain't going to bother you any more till you've
had a little rest. Then maybe we can get together the way we ought to."

"Thanks," I said and meant it. "We'll buy a drink."

Nora said, "Sure," and got up from the edge of the bed.

The big sandy man watched her go out of the room. He shook his head
solemnly. His voice was solemn: "By God, sir, you're a lucky man." He
suddenly held out his hand. "My name's Guild, John Guild."

"You know mine." We shook hands.

Nora came back with a siphon, a bottle of Scotch, and some glasses on a
tray. She tried to give Morelli a drink, but Guild stopped her. "It's
mighty kind of you, Mrs. Charles, but it's against the law to give a
prisoner drinks or drugs except on a doctor's say-so." He looked at me.
"Ain't that right?"

I said it was. The rest of us drank.

Presently Guild set down his empty glass and stood up. "I got to take
this gun along with me, but don't you worry about that. We got plenty of
time to talk when you're feeling better." He took Nora's hand and made
an awkward bow over it. "I hope you didn't mind what I said back there
awhile ago, but I meant it in a--"

Nora can smile very nicely. She gave him one of her nicest smiles.
"Mind? I liked it."

She let the policemen and their prisoner out. Keyser had gone a few
minutes before.

"He's sweet," she said when she came back from the door. "Hurt much?"

"No."

"It's pretty much my fault, isn't it?"

"Nonsense. How about another drink?"

She poured me one. "I wouldn't take too many of these today."

"I won't," I promised. "I could do with some kippers for breakfast. And,
now our troubles seem to be over for a while, you might have them send
up our absentee watchdog. And tell the operator not to give us any
calls; there'll probably be reporters."

"What are you going to tell the police about Dorothy's pistol? You'll
have to tell them something, won't you?"

"I don't know yet."

"Tell me the truth, Nick: have I been too silly?"

I shook my head. "Just silly enough."

She laughed, said, "You're a Greek louse," and went around to the
telephone.




                                   9


Nora said: "You're just showing off, that's all it is. And what for? I
know bullets bounce off you. You don't have to prove it to me."

"It's not going to hurt me to get up."

"And it's not going to hurt you to stay in bed at least one day. The
doctor said--"

"If he knew anything he'd cure his own snuffles." I sat up and put my
feet on the floor. Asta tickled them with her tongue.

Nora brought me slippers and robe. "All right, hard guy, get up and
bleed on the rugs."

I stood up cautiously and seemed to be all right as long as I went easy
with my left arm and kept out of the way of Asta's front feet.

"Be reasonable," I said. "I didn't want to get mixed up with these
people--still don't--but a fat lot of good that's doing me. Well, I
can't just blunder out of it. I've got to see."

"Let's go away," she suggested. "Let's go to Bermuda or Havana for a
week or two, or back to the Coast."

"I'd still have to tell the police some kind of story about that gun.
And suppose it turns out to be the gun she was killed with? If they
don't know already they're finding out."

"Do you really think it is?"

"That's guessing. We'll go there for dinner tonight and--"

"We'll do nothing of the kind. Have you gone completely nuts? If you
want to see anybody have them come here."

"It's not the same thing." I put my arms around her. "Stop worrying
about this scratch. I'm all right."

"You're showing off," she said. "You want to let people see you're a
hero who can't be stopped by bullets."

"Don't be nasty."

"I will be nasty. I'm not going to have you--"

I shut her mouth with a hand over it. "I want to see the Jorgensens
together at home, I want to see Macaulay, and I want to see Studsy
Burke. I've been pushed around too much. I've got to see about things."

"You're so damned pig-headed," she complained. "Well, it's only five
o'clock. Lie down till it's time to dress."

I made myself comfortable on the living-room sofa. We had the afternoon
papers sent up. Morelli, it seemed, had shot me--twice for one of the
papers and three times for another--when I tried to arrest him for Julia
Wolf's murder, and I was too near death to see anybody or to be moved to
a hospital. There were pictures of Morelli and a thirteen-year-old one
of me in a pretty funny-looking hat, taken, I remembered, when I was
working on the Wall Street explosion. Most of the follow-up stories on
the murder of Julia Wolf were rather vague. We were reading them when
our little constant visitor, Dorothy Wynant, arrived.

I could hear her at the door when Nora opened it: "They wouldn't send my
name up, so I sneaked up. Please don't send me away. I can help you
nurse Nick. I'll do anything. Please, Nora."

Nora had a chance then to say: "Come on in."

Dorothy came in. She goggled at me. "B--but the papers said you--"

"Do I look like I'm dying? What's happened to you?" Her lower lip was
swollen and cut near one corner, there was a bruise on one cheek-bone
and two fingernail scratches down the other cheek, and her eyes were red
and swollen.

"Mamma beat me," she said. "Look." She dropped her coat on the floor,
tore off a button unbuttoning her dress, took an arm out of its sleeve,
and pushed the dress down to show her back. There were dark bruises on
her arm, and her back was criss-crossed by long red welts. She was
crying now. "See?"

Nora put an arm around her. "You poor kid."

"What'd she beat you for?" I asked.

She turned from Nora and knelt on the floor beside my sofa. Asta came
over and nuzzled her. "She thought I came--came to see you about Father
and Julia Wolf." Sobs broke up her sentences. "That's why she came over
here--to find out--and you made her think I didn't. You--you made her
think you didn't care anything about what happened--just like you made
me--and she was all right till she saw the papers this afternoon. Then
she knew--she knew you'd been lying about not having anything to do with
it. She beat me to try to make me tell her what I'd told you."

"What'd you tell her?"

"I couldn't tell her anything. I--I couldn't tell her about Chris. I
couldn't tell her anything."

"Was he there?"

"Yes."

"And he let her beat you like this?"

"But he--he never makes her stop."

I said to Nora: "For God's sake, let's have a drink."

Nora said, "Sure," picked up Dorothy's coat, laid it across the back of
a chair, and went into the pantry.

Dorothy said: "Please let me stay here, Nick. I won't be any trouble,
honestly, and you told me yourself I ought to walk out on them. You know
you did, and I've got nowhere else to go. Please."

"Take it easy. This thing needs a little figuring out. I'm as much
afraid of Mimi as you are, you know. What did she think you'd told me?"

"She must know something--something about the murder that she thinks I
know--but I don't, Nick. Honest to God, I don't."

"That helps a lot," I complained. "But listen, sister: there are things
you know and we're going to start with those. You come clean at and from
the beginning--or we don't play."

She made a movement as if she were about to cross her heart. "I swear I
will," she said.

"That'll be swell. Now let's drink." We took a glass apiece from Nora.
"Tell her you were leaving for good?"

"No, I didn't say anything. Maybe she doesn't know yet I'm not in my
room."

"That helps some."

"You're not going to make me go back?" she cried.

Nora said over her glass: "The child can't stay and be beaten like that,
Nick."

I said: "Sh-h-h. I don't know. I was just thinking that if we're going
there for dinner maybe it's better for Mimi not to know--"

Dorothy stared at me with horrified eyes while Nora said: "Don't think
you're going to take me there now."

Then Dorothy spoke rapidly: "But Mamma doesn't expect you. I don't even
know whether she'll be there. The papers said you were dying. She
doesn't think you're coming."

"So much the better," I said. "We'll surprise them."

She put her face, white now, close to mine, spilling some of her drink
on my sleeve in her excitement. "Don't go. You can't go there now.
Listen to me. Listen to Nora. You can't go." She turned her white face
around to look up at Nora. "Can he? Tell him he can't."

Nora, not shifting the focus of her dark eyes from my face, said: "Wait,
Dorothy. He ought to know what's best. What is it, Nick?"

I made a face at her. "I'm just fumbling around. If you say Dorothy
stays here, she stays. I guess she can sleep with Asta. But you've got
to leave me alone on the rest of it. I don't know what I'm going to do
because I don't know what's being done to me. I've got to find out. I've
got to find out in my own way."

"We won't interfere," Dorothy said. "Will we, Nora?"

Nora continued to look at me, saying nothing.

I asked Dorothy: "Where'd you get that gun? And nothing out of books
this time."

She moistened her lower lip and her face became pinker. She cleared her
throat.

"Careful," I said. "If it's another piece of chewing-gum, I'll phone
Mimi to come get you."

"Give her a chance," Nora said.

Dorothy cleared her throat again. "Can--can I tell you something that
happened to me when I was a little child?"

"Has it got anything to do with the gun?"

"Not exactly, but it'll help you understand why I--"

"Not now. Some other time. Where'd you get the gun?"

"I wish you'd let me." She hung her head.

"Where'd you get the gun?"

Her voice was barely audible. "From a man in a speakeasy."

I said: "I knew we'd get the truth at last." Nora frowned and shook her
head at me. "All right, say you did. What speakeasy?"

Dorothy raised her head. "I don't know. It was on Tenth Avenue, I think.
Your friend Mr. Quinn would know. He took me there."

"You met him after you left us that night?"

"Yes."

"By accident, I suppose."

She looked reproachfully at me. "I'm trying to tell you the truth, Nick.
I'd promised to meet him at a place called the Palma Club. He wrote the
address down for me. So after I said good-night to you and Nora, I met
him there and we went to a lot of places, winding up in this place where
I got the gun. It was an awful tough place. You can ask him if I'm not
telling the truth."

"Quinn get the gun for you?"

"No. He'd passed out then. He was sleeping with his head on the table. I
left him there. They said they'd get him home all right."

"And the gun?"

"I'm coming to it." She began to blush. "He told me it was a gunman's
hang-out. That's why I'd said let's go there. And after he went to sleep
I got to talking to a man there, an awful tough-looking man. I was
fascinated. And all the time I didn't want to go home, I wanted to come
back here, but I didn't know if you'd let me." Her face was quite red
now and in her embarrassment she blurred her words. "So I thought
perhaps if I--if you thought I was in a terrible fix--and, besides, that
way I wouldn't feel so silly. Anyhow, I asked this awful tough-looking
gangster, or whatever he was, if he would sell me a pistol or tell me
where I could buy one. He thought I was kidding and laughed at first,
but I told him I wasn't, and then he kept on grinning, but he said he'd
see, and when he came back he said yes, he could get me one and asked
how much I would pay for it. I didn't have much money, but I offered him
my bracelet, but I guess he didn't think it was any good, because he
said no, he'd have to have cash, so finally I gave him twelve
dollars--all I had but a dollar for the taxi--and he gave me the pistol
and I came over here and made up that about being afraid to go home
because of Chris." She finished so rapidly her words ran together, and
she sighed as if very glad to have finished.

"Then Chris hasn't been making passes at you?"

She bit her lip. "Yes, but not--not that bad." She put both hands on my
arm, and her face almost touched mine. "You've got to believe me. I
couldn't tell you all that, couldn't make myself out such a cheap little
lying fool, if it wasn't the truth."

"It makes more sense if I don't believe you," I said. "Twelve bucks
isn't enough money. We'll let that rest for a minute, though. Did you
know Mimi was going to see Julia Wolf that afternoon?"

"No. I didn't even know she was trying to find my father then. They
didn't say where they were going that afternoon."

"They?"

"Yes, Chris left the apartment with her."

"What time was that?"

She wrinkled her forehead. "It must've been pretty close to three
o'clock--after two thirty, anyway--because I remember I was late for a
date to go shopping with Elsie Hamilton and was hurrying into my
clothes."

"They come back together?"

"I don't know. They were both home before I came."

"What time was that?"

"Some time after six. Nick, you don't think they--Oh, I remember
something she said while she was dressing. I don't know what Chris said,
but she said: 'When I ask her she'll tell me,' in that Queen-of-France
way she talks sometimes. You know. I didn't hear anything else. Does
that mean anything?"

"What'd she tell you about the murder when you came home?"

"Oh, just about finding her and how upset she was and about the police
and everything."

"She seem very shocked?"

Dorothy shook her head. "No, just excited. You know Mamma." She stared
at me for a moment, asked slowly: "You don't think she had anything to
do with it?"

"What do you think?"

"I hadn't thought. I just thought about my father." A little later she
said gravely: "If he did it, it's because he's crazy, but she'd kill
somebody if she wanted to."

"It doesn't have to be either of them," I reminded her. "The police seem
to have picked Morelli. What'd she want to find your father for?"

"For money. We're broke: Chris spent it all." She pulled down the
corners of her mouth. "I suppose we all helped, but he spent most of it.
Mamma's afraid he'll leave her if she hasn't any money."

"How do you know that?"

"I've heard them talk."

"Do you think he will?"

She nodded with certainty. "Unless she has money."

I looked at my watch and said: "The rest of it'll have to wait till we
get back. You can stay here tonight, anyhow. Make yourself comfortable
and have the restaurant send up your dinner. It's probably better if you
don't go out."

She stared miserably at me and said nothing.

Nora patted her shoulder. "I don't know what he's doing, Dorothy, but if
he says we ought to go there for dinner he probably knows what he's
talking about. He wouldn't--"

Dorothy smiled and jumped up from the floor. "I believe you. I won't be
silly any more."

I called the desk on the telephone and asked them to send up our mail.
There were a couple of letters for Nora, one for me, some belated
Christmas cards (including one from Larry Crowley, which was a copy of
Haldeman-Julius Little Blue Book Number 1534, with "and a Merry
Christmas," followed by Larry's name enclosed in a holly wreath, all
printed in red under the book's title, _How to Test Your Urine at
Home_), a number of telephone-call memoranda slips, and a telegram from
Philadelphia:

    NICK CHARLES

    THE NORMANDIE NEW YORK N Y

    WILL YOU COMMUNICATE WITH HERBERT MACAULAY TO DISCUSS TAKING
    CHARGE OF INVESTIGATION OF WOLF MURDER STOP AM GIVING HIM FULL
    INSTRUCTIONS STOP BEST REGARDS

                                                CLYDE MILLER WYNANT

I put the telegram in an envelope with a note saying it had just reached
me and sent it by messenger to the Police Department Homicide Bureau.




                                   10


In the taxicab Nora asked: "You're sure you feel all right?"

"Sure."

"And this isn't going to be too much for you?"

"I'm all right. What'd you think of the girl's story?"

She hesitated. "You don't believe her, do you?"

"God forbid--at least till I've checked it up."

"You know more about this kind of thing than I do," she said, "but I
think she was at least trying to tell the truth."

"A lot of the fancier yarns come from people who are trying to do that.
It's not easy once you're out of the habit."

She said: "I bet you know a lot about human nature, Mr. Charles. Now
don't you? Some time you must tell me about your experiences as a
detective."

I said: "Buying a gun for twelve bucks in a speakeasy. Well, maybe,
but..."

We rode a couple of blocks in silence. Then Nora asked: "What's really
the matter with her?"

"Her old man's crazy: she thinks she is."

"How do you know?"

"You asked me. I'm telling you."

"You mean you're guessing?"

"I mean that's what's wrong with her; I don't know whether Wynant's
actually nuts and I don't know whether she inherited any of it if he is,
but she thinks both answers are yes, and it's got her doing figure
eights."

When we stopped in front of the Courtland she said: "That's horrible,
Nick. Somebody ought to--"

I said I didn't know: maybe Dorothy was right. "Likely as not she's
making doll clothes for Asta right now."

We sent our names up to the Jorgensens and, after some delay, were told
to go up. Mimi met us in the corridor when we stepped out of the
elevator, met us with open arms and many words. "Those wretched
newspapers. They had me frantic with their nonsense about your being at
death's door. I phoned twice, but they wouldn't give me your apartment,
wouldn't tell me how you were." She had both of my hands. "I'm so glad,
Nick, that it was just a pack of lies, even if you will have to take pot
luck with us tonight. Naturally I didn't expect you and--But you're
pale. You really have been hurt."

"Not much," I said. "A bullet scraped my side, but it doesn't amount to
anything."

"And you came to dinner in spite of that! That is flattering, but I'm
afraid it's foolish too." She turned to Nora. "Are you sure it was wise
to let him--"

"I'm not sure," Nora said, "but he wanted to come."

"Men are such idiots," Mimi said. She put an arm around me. "They either
make mountains out of nothing or utterly neglect things that may--But
come in. Here, let me help you."

"It's not that bad," I assured her, but she insisted on leading me to a
chair and packing me in with half a dozen cushions.

Jorgensen came in, shook hands with me, and said he was glad to find me
more alive than the newspapers had said. He bowed over Nora's hand. "If
I may be excused one little minute more I will finish the cocktails." He
went out.

Mimi said: "I don't know where Dorry is. Off sulking somewhere, I
suppose. You haven't any children, have you?"

Nora said: "No."

"You're missing a lot, though they can be a great trial sometimes." Mimi
sighed. "I suppose I'm not strict enough. When I do have to scold Dorry
she seems to think I'm a complete monster." Her face brightened. "Here's
my other tot. You remember Mr. Charles, Gilbert. And this is Mrs.
Charles."

Gilbert Wynant was two years younger than his sister, a gangling pale
blond boy of eighteen with not too much chin under a somewhat slack
mouth. The size of his remarkably clear blue eyes, and the length of the
lashes, gave him a slightly effeminate look. I hoped he had stopped
being the whining little nuisance he was as a kid.

Jorgensen brought in his cocktails, and Mimi insisted on being told
about the shooting. I told her, making it even more meaningless than it
had been.

"But why should he have come to you?" she asked.

"God knows. I'd like to know. The police'd like to know."

Gilbert said: "I read somewhere that when habitual criminals are accused
of things they didn't do--even little things--they're much more upset by
it than other people would be. Do you think that's so, Mr. Charles?"

"It's likely."

"Except," Gilbert added, "when it's something big, you know, something
they would like to've done."

I said again it was likely.

Mimi said: "Don't be polite to Gil if he starts talking nonsense, Nick.
His head's so cluttered up with reading. Get us another cocktail,
darling."

He went over to get the shaker. Nora and Jorgensen were in a corner
sorting phonograph records.

I said: "I had a wire from Wynant today."

Mimi looked warily around the room, then leaned forward, and her voice
was almost a whisper: "What did he say?"

"Wanted me to find out who killed her. It was sent from Philadelphia
this afternoon."

She was breathing heavily. "Are you going to do it?"

I shrugged. "I turned it over to the police."

Gilbert came back with the shaker. Jorgensen and Nora had put Bach's
_Little Fugue_ on the phonograph. Mimi quickly drank her cocktail and
had Gilbert pour her another.

He sat down and said: "I want to ask you: can you tell dope-addicts by
looking at them?" He was trembling.

"Very seldom. Why?"

"I was wondering. Even if they're confirmed addicts?"

"The further along they are, the better the chances of noticing that
something's wrong, but you can't often be sure it's dope."

"Another thing," he said, "Gross says when you're stabbed you only feel
a sort of push at the time and it's not until afterwards that it begins
to hurt. Is that so?"

"Yes, if you're stabbed reasonably hard with a reasonably sharp knife. A
bullet's the same way: you only feel the blow--and with a small-calibre
steel-jacketed bullet not much of that--at first. The rest comes when
the air gets to it."

Mimi drank her third cocktail and said: "I think you're both being
indecently gruesome, especially after what happened to Nick today. Do
try to find Dorry, Gil. You must know some of her friends. Phone them. I
suppose she'll be along presently, but I worry about her."

"She's over at our place," I said.

"At your place?" Her surprise may have been genuine.

"She came over this afternoon and asked if she could stay with us
awhile."

She smiled tolerantly and shook her head. "These youngsters!" She
stopped smiling. "Awhile?"

I nodded.

Gilbert, apparently waiting to ask me another question, showed no
interest in this conversation between his mother and me.

Mimi smiled again and said: "I'm sorry she's bothering you and your
wife, but it's a relief to know she's there instead of off the Lord only
knows where. She'll have finished her pouting by the time you get back.
Send her along home, will you?" She poured me a cocktail. "You've been
awfully nice to her."

I did not say anything.

Gilbert began: "Mr. Charles, do criminals--I mean professional
criminals--usually--"

"Don't interrupt, Gil," Mimi said. "You will send her along home, won't
you?" She was pleasant, but she was Dorothy's Queen of France.

"She can stay if she wants. Nora likes her."

She shook a crooked finger at me. "But I won't have you spoiling her
like that. I suppose she told you all sorts of nonsense about me."

"She did say something about a beating."

"There you are," Mimi said complacently, as if that proved her point.
"No, you'll have to send her home, Nick."

I finished my cocktail.

"Well?" she asked.

"She can stay with us if she wants, Mimi. We like having her."

"That's ridiculous. Her place is at home. I want her here." Her voice
was a little sharp. "She's only a baby. You shouldn't encourage her
foolish notions."

"I'm not doing anything. If she wants to stay, she stays."

Anger was a very pretty thing in Mimi's blue eyes. "She's my child and
she's a minor. You've been very kind to her, but this isn't being kind
to her or to me, and I won't have it. If you won't send her home, I'll
take steps to bring her home. I'd rather not be disagreeable about it,
but"--she leaned forward and deliberately spaced her words--"she's
coming home."

I said: "You don't want to pick a fight with me, Mimi."

She looked at me as if she were going to say "I love you," and asked:
"Is that a threat?"

"All right," I said, "have me arrested for kidnapping, contributing to
the delinquency of a minor, and mopery."

She said suddenly in a harsh enraged voice: "And tell your wife to stop
pawing my husband."

Nora, looking for another phonograph record with Jorgensen, had a hand
on his sleeve. They turned to look at Mimi in surprise.

I said: "Nora, Mrs. Jorgensen wants you to keep your hands off Mr.
Jorgensen."

"I'm awfully sorry." Nora smiled at Mimi, then looked at me, put a very
artificial expression of concern on her face, and in a somewhat
sing-song voice, as if she were a schoolchild reciting a piece, said:
"Oh, Nick, you're pale. I'm sure you have exceeded your strength and
will have a relapse. I'm sorry, Mrs. Jorgensen, but I think I should get
him home and to bed right away. You will forgive us, won't you?"

Mimi said she would. Everybody was the soul of politeness to everybody
else. We went downstairs and got a taxicab.

"Well," Nora said, "so you talked yourself out of a dinner. What do you
want to do now? Go home and eat with Dorothy?"

I shook my head. "I can do without Wynants for a little while. Let's go
to Max's: I'd like some snails."

"Right. Did you find out anything?"

"Nothing."

She said meditatively: "It's a shame that guy's so handsome."

"What's he like?"

"Just a big doll. It's a shame."

We had dinner and went back to the Normandie. Dorothy was not there. I
felt as if I had expected that.

Nora went through the rooms, called up the desk. No note, no message had
been left for us.

"So what?" she asked.

It was not quite ten o'clock. "Maybe nothing," I said. "Maybe anything.
My guess is she'll show up about three in the morning, tight, with a
machine-gun she bought in Childs'."

Nora said: "To hell with her. Get into pyjamas and lie down."




                                   11


My side felt a lot better when Nora called me at noon the next day. "My
nice policeman wants to see you," she said. "How do you feel?"

"Terrible. I must've gone to bed sober." I pushed Asta out of the way
and got up.

Guild rose with a drink in his hand when I entered the living-room, and
smiled all across his broad sandy face. "Well, well, Mr. Charles, you
look spry enough this morning."

I shook hands with him and said yes I felt pretty good, and we sat down.

He frowned good-naturedly. "Just the same, you oughtn't've played that
trick on me."

"Trick?"

"Sure, running off to see people when I'd put off asking you questions
to give you a chance to rest up. I kind of figured that ought to give me
first call on you, as you might say."

"I didn't think," I said. "I'm sorry. See that wire I got from Wynant?"

"Uh-huh. We're running it out in Philly."

"Now about that gun," I began, "I--"

He stopped me. "What gun? That ain't a gun any more. The firing pin's
busted off, the guts are rusted and jammed. If anybody's fired it in six
months--or could--I'm the Pope of Rome. Don't let's waste any time
talking about that piece of junk."

I laughed. "That explains a lot. I took it away from a drunk who said
he'd bought it in a speakeasy for twelve bucks. I believe him now."

"Somebody'll sell him the City Hall one of these days. Man to man, Mr.
Charles, are you working on the Wolf job or ain't you?"

"You saw the wire from Wynant."

"I did. Then you ain't working for him. I'm still asking you."

"I'm not a private detective any more. I'm not any kind of a detective."

"I heard that. I'm still asking you."

"All right. No."

He thought for a moment, said: "Then let me put it another way: are you
interested in the job?"

"I know the people, naturally I'm interested."

"And that's all?"

"Yes."

"And you don't expect to be working on it?"

The telephone rang and Nora went to answer it.

"To be honest with you, I don't know. If people keep on pushing me into
it, I don't know how far they'll carry me."

Guild wagged his head up and down. "I can see that. I don't mind telling
you I'd like to have you in on it--on the right side."

"You mean not on Wynant's side. Did he do it?"

"That I couldn't say, Mr. Charles, but I don't have to tell you he ain't
helping us any to find out who did it."

Nora appeared in the doorway. "Telephone. Nick."

Herbert Macaulay was on the wire. "Hello, Charles. How's the wounded?"

"I'm all right, thanks."

"Did you hear from Wynant?"

"Yes."

"I got a letter from him saying he had wired you. Are you too sick to--"

"No, I'm up and around. If you'll be in your office late this afternoon
I'll drop in."

"Swell," he said. "I'll be here till six."

I returned to the living-room. Nora was inviting Guild to have lunch
while we had breakfast. He said it was mighty kind of her. I said I
ought to have a drink before breakfast. Nora went to order meals and
pour drinks.

Guild shook his head and said: "She's a mighty fine woman, Mr. Charles."

I nodded solemnly.

He said: "Suppose you should get pushed into this thing, as you say, I'd
like it a lot more to feel you were working with us than against us."

"So would I."

"That's a bargain then," he said. He hunched his chair around a little.
"I don't guess you remember me, but back when you were working this town
I was walking beat on Forty-third Street."

"Of course," I said, lying politely. "I knew there was something
familiar about--Being out of uniform makes a difference."

"I guess it does. I'd like to be able to take it as a fact that you're
not holding out anything we don't already know."

"I don't mean to. I don't know what you know. I don't know very much. I
haven't seen Macaulay since the murder and I haven't even been following
it in the newspapers."

The telephone was ringing again. Nora gave us our drinks and went to
answer it.

"What we know ain't much of a secret," Guild said, "and if you want to
take the time to listen I don't mind giving it to you." He tasted his
drink and nodded approvingly. "Only there's a thing I'd like to ask
first. When you went to Mrs. Jorgensen's last night, did you tell her
about getting the telegram from him?"

"Yes, and I told her I'd turned it over to you."

"What'd she say?"

"Nothing. She asked questions. She's trying to find him."

He put his head a little to one side and partly closed one eye. "You
don't think there's any chance of them being in cahoots, do you?" He
held up a hand. "Understand I don't know why they would be or what it'd
be all about if they were, but I'm just asking."

"Anything's possible," I said, "but I'd say it was pretty safe they
aren't working together. Why?"

"I guess you're right." Then he added vaguely: "But there's a couple of
points." He sighed. "There always is. Well, Mr. Charles, here's just
about all we know for certain and if you can give us a little something
more here and there as we go along I'll be mighty thankful to you."

I said something about doing my best.

"Well, along about the 3rd of last October Wynant tells Macaulay he's
got to leave town for a while. He don't tell Macaulay where he's going
or what for, but Macaulay gets the idea that he's off to work on some
invention or other that he wants to keep quiet--and he gets it out of
Julia Wolf later that he's right--and he guesses Wynant's gone off to
hide somewhere in the Adirondacks, but when he asks her about that later
she says she don't know any more about it than he does."

"She know what the invention was?"

Guild shook his head. "Not according to Macaulay, only that it was
probably something that he needed room for and machinery or things that
cost money, because that's what he was fixing up with Macaulay. He was
fixing it so Macaulay could get hold of his stocks and bonds and other
things he owned and turn 'em into money when he wanted it and take care
of his banking and everything just like Wynant himself."

"Power of attorney covering everything, huh?"

"Exactly. And listen, when he wanted money, he wanted it in cash."

"He was always full of screwy notions," I said.

"That's what everybody says. The idea seems to be he don't want to take
any chances on anybody tracing him through checks, or anybody up there
knowing he's Wynant. That's why he didn't take the girl along with
him--didn't even let her know where he was, if she was telling the
truth--and let his whiskers grow." With his left hand he stroked an
imaginary beard.

"'Up there,'" I quoted. "So he was in the Adirondacks?"

Guild moved one shoulder. "I just said that because that and
Philadelphia are the only ideas anybody's given us. We're trying the
mountains, but we don't know. Maybe Australia."

"And how much of this money in cash did Wynant want?"

"I can tell you that exactly." He took a wad of soiled, bent and
dog-eared papers out of his pocket, selected an envelope that was a
shade dirtier than most of the others, and stuffed the others back in
his pocket. "The day after he talked to Macaulay he drew five thousand
out of the bank himself, in cash. On the 28th--this is October, you
understand--he had Macaulay get another five for him, and twenty-five
hundred on the 6th of November, and a thousand on the 15th, and
seventy-five hundred on the 30th, and fifteen hundred on the 6th--that
would be December--and a thousand on the 18th, and five thousand on the
22nd, which was the day before she was killed."

"Nearly thirty thou," I said. "A nice bank balance he had."

"Twenty-eight thousand five hundred, to be exact." Guild returned the
envelope to his pocket. "But you understand it wasn't all in there.
After the first call Macaulay would sell something every time to raise
the dough." He felt in his pocket again. "I got a list of the stuff he
sold, if you want to see it."

I said I didn't. "How'd he turn the money over to Wynant?"

"Wynant would write the girl when he wanted it, and she'd get it from
Macaulay. He's got her receipts."

"And how'd she get it to Wynant?"

Guild shook his head. "She told Macaulay she used to meet him places he
told her, but he thinks she knew where he was, though she always said
she didn't."

"And maybe she still had that last five thousand on her when she was
killed, huh?"

"Which might make it robbery, unless"--Guild's watery gray eyes were
almost shut--"he killed her when he came there to get it."

"Or unless," I suggested, "somebody else who killed her for some other
reason found the money there and thought they might as well take it
along."

"Sure," he agreed. "Things like that happen all the time. It even
happens sometimes that the first people that find a body like that pick
up a little something before they turn in the alarm." He held up a big
hand. "Of course, with Mrs. Jorgensen--a lady like that--I hope you
don't think I'm--"

"Besides," I said, "she wasn't alone, was she?"

"For a little while. The phone in the apartment was out of whack, and
the elevator boy rode the superintendent down to phone from the office.
But get me right on this, I'm not saying Mrs. Jorgensen did anything
funny. A lady like that wouldn't be likely--"

"What was the matter with the phone?" I asked.

The doorbell rang.

"Well," Guild said, "I don't know just what to make of it. The phone
had--"

He broke off as a waiter came in and began to set a table.

"About the phone," Guild said when we were sitting at the table, "I
don't know just what to make of it, as I said. It had a bullet right
smack through the mouthpiece of it."

"Accidental or--?"

"I'd just as lief ask you. It was from the same gun as the four that hit
her, of course, but whether he missed her with that one or did it on
purpose I don't know. It seems like a kind of noisy way to put a phone
on the bum."

"That reminds me," I said, "didn't anybody hear all this shooting? A
.32's not a shotgun, but somebody ought to've heard it."

"Sure," he said disgustedly. "The place is lousy with people that think
they heard things now, but nobody did anything about it then, and God
knows they don't get together much on what they think they heard."

"It's always like that," I said sympathetically.

"Don't I know it." He put a forkful of food in his mouth. "Where was I?
Oh, yes, about Wynant. He gave up his apartment when he went away, and
put his stuff in storage. We been looking through it--the stuff--but
ain't found anything yet to show where he went or even what he was
working on, which we thought maybe might help. We didn't have any better
luck in his shop on First Avenue. It's been locked up too since he went
away, except that she used to go down there for an hour or two once or
twice a week to take care of his mail and things. There's nothing to
tell us anything in the mail that's come since she got knocked off. We
didn't find anything in her place to help." He smiled at Nora. "I guess
this must be pretty dull to you, Mrs. Charles."

"Dull?" She was surprised. "I'm sitting on the edge of my chair."

"Ladies usually like more color," he said, and coughed, "kind of
glamour. Anyways, we got nothing to show where he's been, only he phones
Macaulay last Friday and says to meet him at two o'clock in the Plaza
lobby. Macaulay wasn't in, so he just left the message."

"Macaulay was here," I said, "for lunch."

"He told me. Well, Macaulay don't get to the Plaza till nearly three and
he don't find any Wynant there and Wynant ain't registered there. He
tries describing him, with and without a beard, but nobody at the Plaza
remembers seeing him. He phones his office, but Wynant ain't called up
again. And when he phones Julia Wolf and she tells him she don't even
know Wynant's in town, which he figures is a lie, because he had just
give her five thousand dollars for Wynant yesterday and figures Wynant's
come for it, but he just says all right and hangs up and goes on about
his business."

"His business such as what?" I asked.

Guild stopped chewing the piece of roll he had just bitten off. "I guess
it wouldn't hurt to know, at that. I'll find out. There didn't seem to
be anything pointing at him, so we didn't bother with that, but it don't
ever hurt any to know who's got an alibi and who ain't."

I shook my head no at the question he had decided not to ask. "I don't
see anything pointing at him, except that he's Wynant's lawyer and
probably knows more than he's telling."

"Sure. I understand. Well, that's what people have lawyers for, I guess.
Now about the girl: maybe Julia Wolf wasn't her real name at all. We
ain't been able to find out for sure yet, but we have found out she
wasn't the kind of dame you'd expect him to be trusting to handle all
that dough--I mean if he knew about her."

"Had a record?"

He wagged his head up and down. "This is elegant stew. A couple of years
before she went to work for him she did six months on a badger-game
charge out West, in Cleveland, under the name of Rhoda Stewart."

"You suppose Wynant knew that?"

"Search me. Don't look like he'd turned her loose with that dough if he
did, but you can't tell. They tell me he was kind of nuts about her, and
you know how guys can go. She was running around off and on with this
Shep Morelli and his boys too."

"Have you really got anything on him?" I asked.

"Not on this," he said regretfully, "but we wanted him for a couple of
other things." He drew his sandy brows together a little. "I wish I knew
what sent him here to see you. Of course these junkies are likely to do
anything, but I wish I knew."

"I told you all I knew."

"I'm not doubting that," he assured me. He turned to Nora. "I hope you
don't think we were too rough with him, but you see you got to--"

Nora smiled and said she understood perfectly and filled his cup with
coffee.

"Thank you, ma'am."

"What's a junkie?" she asked.

"Hop-head."

She looked at me. "Was Morelli--?"

"Primed to the ears," I said.

"Why didn't you tell me?" she complained. "I miss everything." She left
the table to answer the telephone.

Guild asked: "You going to prosecute him for shooting you?"

"Not unless you need it."

He shook his head. His voice was casual, though there was some curiosity
in his eyes. "I guess we got enough on him for a while."

"You were telling me about the girl."

"Yes," he said. "Well, we found out she's been spending a lot of nights
away from her apartment--two or three days at a stretch sometimes. Maybe
that's when she was meeting Wynant. I don't know. We ain't been able to
knock any holes in Morelli's story of not seeing her for three months.
What do you make of that?"

"The same thing you do," I replied. "It's just about three months since
Wynant went off. Maybe it means something, maybe not."

Nora came in and said Harrison Quinn was on the telephone. He told me he
had sold some bonds I was writing off losses on and gave me the prices.

"Have you seen Dorothy Wynant?" I asked.

"Not since I left her in your place, but I'm meeting her at the Palma
for cocktails this afternoon. Come to think of it, she told me not to
tell you. How about that gold, Nick? You're missing something if you
don't get in on it. Those wild men from the West are going to give us
some kind of inflation as soon as Congress meets, that's certain, and
even if they don't, everybody expects them to. As I told you last week,
there's already talk of a pool being--"

"All right," I said and gave him an order to buy some Dome Mines at 12.

He remembered then that he had seen something in the newspapers about my
having been shot. He was pretty vague about it and paid very little
attention to my assurances that I was all right. "I suppose that means
no ping-pong for a couple of days," he said with what seemed genuine
regret. "Listen: you've got tickets for the opening tonight. If you
can't use them I'll be--"

"We're going to use them. Thanks just the same."

He laughed and said good-by.

A waiter was carrying away the table when I returned to the living-room.
Guild had made himself comfortable on the sofa. Nora was telling him:
"...have to go away over the Christmas holidays every year because
what's left of my family make a fuss over them and if we're home they
come to visit us or we have to visit them, and Nick doesn't like it."
Asta was licking her paws in a corner.

Guild looked at his watch. "I'm taking up a lot of you folks' time. I
didn't mean to impose--"

I sat down and said: "We were just about up to the murder, weren't we?"

"Just about." He relaxed on the sofa again. "That was on Friday the 23rd
at some time before twenty minutes after three in the afternoon, which
was the time Mrs. Jorgensen got there and found her. It's kind of hard
to say how long she'd been laying there dying before she was found. The
only thing we know is that she was all right and answered the phone--and
the phone was all right--at about half past two, when Mrs. Jorgensen
called her up and was still all right around three, when Macaulay
phoned."

"I didn't know Mrs. Jorgensen phoned."

"It's a fact." Guild cleared his throat. "We didn't suspect anything
there, you understand, but we checked it up just as a matter of course
and found out from the girl at the switchboard at the Courtland that she
put the call through for Mrs. J. about two thirty."

"What did Mrs. J. say?"

"She said she called up to ask where she could find Wynant, but this
Julia Wolf said she didn't know, so Mrs. J., thinking she's lying and
maybe she can get her to tell the truth if she sees her, asks if she can
drop in for a minute, and she says sure." He frowned at my right knee.
"Well, she went there and found her. The apartment-house people don't
remember seeing anybody going in or out of the Wolf apartment, but
that's easy. A dozen people could do it without being seen. The gun
wasn't there. There wasn't any signs of anybody busting in, and things
in the place hadn't been disturbed any more than I've told you. I mean
the place didn't look like it had been frisked. She had on a diamond
ring that must've been worth a few hundred and there was thirty-some
bucks in her bag. The people there know Wynant and Morelli--both of 'em
have been in and out enough--but claim they ain't seen either for some
time. The fire-escape window was locked and the fire-escape didn't look
like it had been walked on recently." He turned his hands over, palms
up. "I guess that's the crop."

"No fingerprints?"

"Hers, some belonging to the people that clean up the place, near as we
can figure. Nothing any good to us."

"Nothing out of her friends?"

"She didn't seem to have any--not any close ones."

"How about the--what was his name?--Nunheim who identified her as a
friend of Morelli's?"

"He just knew her by sight through seeing her around with Morelli and
recognized her picture when he saw it in the paper."

"Who is he?"

"He's all right. We know all about him."

"You wouldn't hold out on me, would you," I asked, "after getting me to
promise not to hold out on you?"

Guild said: "Well, if it don't go any further, he's a fellow that does
some work for the department now and then."

"Oh."

He stood up. "I hate to say it, but that's just about as far as we've
got. You got anything you can help with?"

"No."

He looked at me steadily for a moment. "What do you think of it?"

"That diamond ring, was it an engagement ring?"

"She had it on that finger." After a pause he asked: "Why?"

"It might help to know who bought it for her. I'm going to see Macaulay
this afternoon. If anything turns up I'll give you a ring. It looks like
Wynant, all right, but--"

He growled good-naturedly, "Uh-huh, but," shook hands with Nora and me,
thanked us for our whisky, our lunch, our hospitality, and our kindness
in general, and went away.

I told Nora: "I'm not one to suggest that your charm wouldn't make any
man turn himself inside out for you, but don't be too sure that guy
isn't kidding us."

"So it's come to that," she said. "You're jealous of policemen."




                                   12


Macaulay's letter from Clyde Wynant was quite a document. It was very
badly typewritten on plain white paper and dated Philadelphia, Pa.,
December 26, 1932. It read:

    _Dear Herbert_:

    _I am telegraphing Nick Charles who worked for me you will
    remember some years ago and who is in New York to get in touch
    with you about the terrible death of poor Julia. I want you to
    do everything in your power to_ [a line had been x'd and m'd out
    here so that it was impossible to make anything at all of it]
    _persuade him to find her murderer. I don't care what it
    costs--pay him!_

    _Here are some facts I want you to give him outside of all you
    know about it yourself. I don't think he should tell these facts
    to the police, but he will know what is best and I want him to
    have a completely free hand as I have got the utmost confidence
    in him. Perhaps you had better just show him this letter, after
    which I must ask you to carefully destroy it._

    _Here are the facts._

    _When I met Julia Thursday night to get that $1000 from her she
    told me she wanted to quit her job. She said she hadn't been at
    all well for some time and her doctor had told her she ought to
    go away and rest and now that her uncle's estate had been
    settled she could afford to and wanted to do it. She had never
    said anything about bad health before and I thought she was
    hiding her real reason and tried to get it out of her, but she
    stuck to what she had said. I didn't know anything about her
    uncle dying either. She said it was her Uncle John in Chicago. I
    suppose that could be looked up if it's important. I couldn't
    persuade her to change her mind, so she was to leave the last
    day of the month. She seemed worried or frightened, but she said
    she wasn't. I was sorry at first that she was going, but then I
    wasn't, because I had always been able to trust her and now I
    wouldn't be if she was lying, as I thought she was._

    _The next fact I want Charles to know is that whatever anybody
    may think or whatever was true some time ago Julia and I_ ["are
    now" was x'd out lightly] _were at the time of her murder_ and
    had been for more than a year _not anything more to each other
    than employee and employer. This relationship was the result of
    mutual agreement._

    _Next, I believe some attempt should be made to learn the
    present whereabouts of the Sidney Kelterman with whom we had
    trouble some years ago inasmuch as the experiments I am now
    engaged in are in line with those he claimed I cheated him out
    of and I consider him quite insane enough to have killed Julia
    in a rage at her refusal to tell him where I could be found._

    _Fourth_, and most important, _has my divorced wife been in
    communication with Kelterman? How did she learn I was carrying
    out the experiments with which he once assisted me?_

    _Fifth, the police must be convinced at once that I can tell
    them nothing about the murder so that they will take no steps to
    find me--steps that might lead to a discovery of and a premature
    exposure of my experiments, which I would consider_ very
    dangerous _at this time. This can best be avoided by clearing up
    the mystery of her murder immediately, and that is what I wish
    to have done._

    _I will communicate with you from time to time and if in the
    meanwhile anything should arise to make communication with me_
    imperative _insert the following advertisement in the Times_:

    Abner. Yes. Bunny.

    _I will thereupon arrange to get in touch with you._

    _I hope you sufficiently understand the necessity of persuading
    Charles to act for me, since he is already acquainted with the
    Kelterman trouble and knows most of the people concerned._

                                                _Yours truly_,
                                             _Clyde Miller Wynant_

I put the letter down on Macaulay's desk and said: "It makes a lot of
sense. Do you remember what his row with Kelterman was about?"

"Something about changes in the structure of crystals. I can look it
up." Macaulay picked up the first sheet of the letter and frowned at it.
"He says he got a thousand dollars from her that night. I gave her five
thousand for him; she told me that's what he wanted."

"Four thousand from Uncle John's estate?" I suggested.

"Looks like it. That's funny: I never thought she'd gyp him. I'll have
to find out about the other money I turned over to her."

"Did you know she'd done a jail sentence in Cleveland on a badger-game
charge?"

"No. Had she really?"

"According to the police--under the name of Rhoda Stewart. Where'd
Wynant find her?"

He shook his head. "I've no idea."

"Know anything about where she came from originally, relatives, things
like that?"

He shook his head again.

"Who was she engaged to?" I asked.

"I didn't know she was engaged."

"She was wearing a diamond ring on that finger."

"That's news to me," he said. He shut his eyes and thought. "No, I can't
remember ever noticing an engagement ring." He put his forearms on his
desk and grinned over them at me. "Well, what are the chances of getting
you to do what he wants?"

"Slim."

"I thought so." He moved a hand to touch the letter. "You know as much
about how he feels as I do. What would make you change your mind?"

"I don't--"

"Would it help any if I could persuade him to meet you? Maybe if I told
him that was the only way you'd take it--"

"I'm willing to talk to him," I said, "but he'd have to talk a lot
straighter than he's writing."

Macaulay asked slowly: "You mean you think he may have killed her?"

"I don't know anything about that," I said. "I don't know as much as the
police do, and it's a cinch they haven't got enough on him to make the
pinch even if they could find him."

Macaulay sighed. "Being a goof's lawyer is not much fun. I'll try to
make him listen to reason, but I know he won't."

"I meant to ask, how are his finances these days? Is he as well fixed as
he used to be?"

"Almost. The depression's hurt him some, along with the rest of us, and
the royalties from his smelting process have gone pretty much to hell
now that the metals are dead, but he can still count on fifty or sixty
thousand a year from his glassine and soundproofing patents, with a
little more coming in from odds and ends like--" He broke off to ask:
"You're not worrying about his ability to pay whatever you'd ask?"

"No, I was just wondering." I thought of something else: "Has he any
relatives outside of his ex-wife and children?"

"A sister, Alice Wynant, that hasn't been on speaking terms with him
for--it must be four or five years now."

I supposed that was the Aunt Alice the Jorgensens had not gone to see
Christmas afternoon. "What'd they fall out about?" I asked.

"He gave an interview to one of the papers saying he didn't think the
Russian Five Year Plan was necessarily doomed to failure. Actually he
didn't make it much stronger than that."

I laughed. "They're a--"

"She's even better than he is. She can't remember things. The time her
brother had his appendix out, she and Mimi were in a taxi going to see
him the first afternoon and they passed a hearse coming from the
direction of the hospital. Miss Alice turned pale and grabbed Mimi by
the arm and said: 'Oh, dear! If that should be what's-his-name!'"

"Where does she live?"

"On Madison Avenue. It's in the phone book." He hesitated. "I don't
think--"

"I'm not going to bother her." Before I could say anything else his
telephone began to ring.

He put the receiver to his ear and said: "Hello.... Yes, speaking....
Who?... Oh, yes...." Muscles tightened around his mouth, and
his eyes opened a little wider. "Where?" He listened some more. "Yes,
surely. Can I make it?" He looked at the watch on his left wrist.
"Right. See you on the train." He put the telephone down. "That was
Lieutenant Guild," he told me. "Wynant's tried to commit suicide in
Allentown, Pennsylvania."




                                   13


Dorothy and Quinn were at the bar when I went into the Palma Club. They
did not see me until I came up beside Dorothy and said: "Hello, folks."
Dorothy had on the same clothes I had last seen her in.

She looked at me and at Quinn and her face flushed. "You had to tell
him."

"The girl's in a pet," Quinn said cheerfully. "I got that stock for you.
You ought to pick up some more and what are you drinking?"

"Old-fashioned. You're a swell guest--ducking out without leaving a word
behind you."

Dorothy looked at me again. The scratches on her face were pale, the
bruise barely showed, and her mouth was no longer swollen. "I trusted
you," she said. She seemed about to cry.

"What do you mean by that?"

"You know what I mean. Even when you went to dinner at Mamma's I trusted
you."

"And why not?"

Quinn said: "She's been in a pet all afternoon. Don't bait her." He put
a hand on one of hers. "There, there, darling, don't you--"

"Please shut up." She took her hand away from him. "You know very well
what I mean," she told me. "You and Nora both made fun of me to Mamma
and--"

I began to see what had happened. "She told you that and you believed
it?" I laughed. "After twenty years you're still a sucker for her lies?
I suppose she phoned you after we left: we had a row and didn't stay
long."

She hung her head and said, "Oh, I am a fool," in a low miserable voice.
Then she grabbed me by both arms and said: "Listen, let's go over and
see Nora now. I've got to square myself with her. I'm such an ass. It'd
serve me right if she never--"

"Sure. There's plenty of time. Let's have this drink first."

Quinn said: "Brother Charles, I'd like to shake your hand. You've
brought sunshine back into the life of our little tot and joy to--" He
emptied his glass. "Let's go over and see Nora. The booze there is just
as good and costs us less."

"Why don't you stay here?" she asked him.

He laughed and shook his head. "Not me. Maybe you can get Nick to stay
here, but I'm going with you. I've put up with your snottiness all
afternoon: now I'm going to bask in the sunshine."

Gilbert Wynant was with Nora when we reached the Normandie. He kissed
his sister and shook hands with me and, when he had been introduced,
Harrison Quinn.

Dorothy immediately began to make long and earnest and none too coherent
apologies to Nora.

Nora said: "Stop it. There's nothing to forgive. If Nick's told you I
was sore or hurt or anything of the sort he's just a Greek liar. Let me
take your coat."

Quinn turned on the radio. At the stroke of the gong it was five
thirty-one and one quarter, Eastern Standard Time.

Nora told Quinn, "Play bar-tender: you know where the stuff is," and
followed me into the bathroom. "Where'd you find her?"

"In a speak. What's Gilbert doing here?"

"He came over to see her, so he said. She didn't go home last night and
he thought she was still here." She laughed. "He wasn't surprised at not
finding her, though. He said she was always wandering off somewhere, she
has dromomania, which comes from a mother fixation and is very
interesting. He said Stekel claims people who have it usually show
kleptomaniac impulses too, and he's left things around to see if she'd
steal them, but she never has yet that he knows of."

"He's quite a lad. Did he say anything about his father?"

"No."

"Maybe he hadn't heard. Wynant tried to commit suicide down in
Allentown. Guild and Macaulay have gone down to see him. I don't know
whether to tell the youngsters or not. I wonder if Mimi had a hand in
his coming over here."

"I wouldn't think so, but if you do--"

"I'm just wondering," I said. "Has he been here long?"

"About an hour. He's a funny kid. He's studying Chinese and writing a
book on Knowledge and Belief--not in Chinese--and thinks Jack Oakie's
very good."

"So do I. Are you tight?"

"Not very."

When we returned to the living-room, Dorothy and Quinn were dancing to
_Eadie Was a Lady_.

Gilbert put down the magazine he was looking at and politely said he
hoped I was recovering from my injury.

I said I was.

"I've never been hurt, really hurt," he went on, "that I can remember.
I've tried hurting myself, of course, but that's not the same thing. It
just made me uncomfortable and irritable and sweat a lot."

"That's pretty much the same thing," I said.

"Really? I thought there'd be more--well, more to it." He moved a little
closer to me. "It's things like that I don't know. I'm so horribly young
I haven't had a chance to--Mr. Charles, if you're too busy or don't want
to, I hope you'll say so, but I'd appreciate it very much if you'd let
me talk to you some time when there aren't a lot of people around to
interrupt us. There are so many things I'd like to ask you, things I
don't know anybody else could tell me and--"

"I'm not so sure about that," I said, "but I'll be glad to try any time
you want."

"You really don't mind? You're not just being polite?"

"No, I mean it, only I'm not sure you'll get as much help as you expect.
It depends on what you want to know."

"Well, things like cannibalism," he said. "I don't mean in places like
Africa and New Guinea--in the United States, say. Is there much of it?"

"Not nowadays. Not that I know of."

"Then there was once?"

"I don't know how much, but it happened now and then before the country
was completely settled. Wait a minute: I'll give you a sample." I went
over to the bookcase and got the copy of Duke's _Celebrated Criminal
Cases of America_ that Nora had picked up in a second-hand-book store,
found the place I wanted, and gave it to him. "It's only three or four
pages."

    ALFRED G. PACKER, THE "MANEATER," WHO MURDERED HIS FIVE
    COMPANIONS IN THE MOUNTAINS OF COLORADO, ATE THEIR BODIES AND
    STOLE THEIR MONEY.

    In the fall of 1873 a party of twenty daring men left Salt Lake
    City, Utah, to prospect in the San Juan country. Having heard
    glowing accounts of the fortunes to be made, they were
    light-hearted and full of hope as they started on their journey,
    but as the weeks rolled by and they beheld nothing but barren
    wastes and snowy mountains, they grew despondent. The further
    they proceeded, the less inviting appeared the country, and they
    finally became desperate when it appeared that their only reward
    would be starvation and death.

    Just as the prospectors were about to give up in despair, they
    saw an Indian camp in the distance, and while they had no
    assurance as to what treatment they would receive at the hands
    of the "Reds," they decided that any death was preferable to
    starvation, so they agreed to take a chance.

    When they approached the camp they were met by an Indian who
    appeared to be friendly and escorted them to Chief Ouray. To
    their great surprise, the Indians treated them with every
    consideration and insisted upon their remaining in the camp
    until they had fully recuperated from their hardships.

    Finally the party decided to make another start, with the Los
    Pinos Agency as their goal. Ouray attempted to dissuade them
    from continuing the journey, and did succeed in influencing ten
    of the party to abandon the trip and return to Salt Lake. The
    other ten determined to continue, so Ouray supplied them with
    provisions and admonished them to follow the Gunnison River,
    which was named after Lieutenant Gunnison, who was murdered in
    1852. (See life of Joe Smith, the Mormon.)

    Alfred G. Packer, who appeared as the leader of the party which
    continued the journey, boasted of his knowledge of the
    topography of the country and expressed confidence in his
    ability to find his way without difficulty. When his party had
    traveled a short distance, Packer told them that rich mines had
    recently been discovered near the headwaters of the Rio Grande
    River, and he offered to guide the party to the mines.

    Four of the party insisted that they follow Ouray's
    instructions, but Packer persuaded five men, named Swan, Miller,
    Noon, Bell and Humphreys, to accompany him to the mines, while
    the other four proceeded along the river.

    Of the party of four, two died from starvation and exposure, but
    the other two finally reached the Los Pinos Agency in February,
    1874, after enduring indescribable hardships. General Adams was
    in command of this agency, and the unfortunate men were treated
    with every consideration. When they regained their strength they
    started back to civilization.

    In March, 1874, General Adams was called to Denver on business,
    and one cold, blizzardy morning, while he was still away, the
    employees of the Agency, who were seated at the breakfast table,
    were startled by the appearance at the door of a wild-looking
    man who begged piteously for food and shelter. His face was
    frightfully bloated but otherwise he appeared to be in fairly
    good condition, although his stomach would not retain the food
    given him. He stated that his name was Packer and claimed that
    his five companions had deserted him while he was ill, but had
    left a rifle with him which he brought into the Agency.

    After partaking of the hospitality of the employees at the
    Agency for ten days, Packer proceeded to a place called
    Saquache, claiming that he intended to work his way to
    Pennsylvania, where he had a brother. At Saquache, Packer drank
    heavily and appeared to be well supplied with money. While
    intoxicated, he told many conflicting stories regarding the fate
    of his companions, and it was suspected that he had disposed of
    his erstwhile associates by foul means.

    At this time General Adams stopped at Saquache on his return
    from Denver to the Agency, and while at the home of Otto Mears
    he was advised to arrest Packer and investigate his movements.
    The General decided to take him back to the Agency, and while en
    route they stopped at the cabin of Major Downey, where they met
    the ten men who listened to the Indian chief and abandoned the
    trip. It was then proven that a great part of Packer's statement
    was false, so the General decided that the matter required a
    complete investigation, and Packer was bound and taken to the
    Agency, where he was held in close confinement.

    On April 2, 1874, two wildly excited Indians ran into the
    Agency, holding strips of flesh in their hands which they called
    "white man's meat," and which they stated they found just
    outside the Agency. As it had been lying on the snow and the
    weather had been extremely cold, it was still in good condition.

    When Packer caught sight of the exhibits, his face became livid,
    and with a low moan he sank to the floor. Restoratives were
    administered and after pleading for mercy, he made a statement
    substantially as follows:

    "When I and five others left Ouray's camp, we estimated that we
    had sufficient provisions for the long and arduous journey
    before us, but our food rapidly disappeared and we were soon on
    the verge of starvation. We dug roots from the ground upon which
    we subsisted for some days, but as they were not nutritious and
    as the extreme cold had driven all animals and birds to shelter,
    the situation became desperate. Strange looks came into the eyes
    of each of the party and they all became suspicious of each
    other. One day I went out to gather wood for the fire and when I
    returned I found that Mr. Swan, the oldest man in the party, had
    been struck on the head and killed, and the remainder of the
    party were in the act of cutting up the body preparatory to
    eating it. His money, amounting to $2000.00, was divided among
    the remainder of the party.

    "This food only lasted a few days, and I suggested that Miller
    be the next victim because of the large amount of flesh he
    carried. His skull was split open with a hatchet as he was in
    the act of picking up a piece of wood. Humphreys and Noon were
    the next victims. Bell and I then entered into a solemn compact
    that as we were the only ones left we would stand by each other
    whatever befell, and rather than harm each other we would die of
    starvation. One day Bell said, 'I can stand it no longer,' and
    he rushed at me like a famished tiger, at the same time
    attempting to strike me with his gun. I parried the blow and
    killed him with a hatchet. I then cut his flesh into strips
    which I carried with me as I pursued my journey. When I espied
    the Agency from the top of the hill, I threw away the strips I
    had left, and I confess I did so reluctantly as I had grown fond
    of human flesh, especially that portion around the breast."

    After relating this gruesome story, Packer agreed to guide a
    party in charge of H. Lauter to the remains of the murdered men.
    He led them to some high, inaccessible mountains, and as he
    claimed to be bewildered, it was decided to abandon the search
    and start back the next day.

    That night Packer and Lauter slept side by side, and during the
    night Packer assaulted him with the intent to commit murder and
    escape, but he was overpowered, bound, and after the party
    reached the Agency, he was turned over to the Sheriff.

    Early in June of that year, an artist named Reynolds, from
    Peoria, Ill., while sketching along the shores of Lake
    Christoval, discovered the remains of the five men lying in a
    grove of hemlocks. Four of the bodies were lying together in a
    row, and the fifth, minus the head, was found a short distance
    away. The bodies of Bell, Swan, Humphreys and Noon had rifle
    bullet wounds in the back of the head, and when Miller's head
    was found it was crushed in, evidently by a blow from a rifle
    which was lying near by, the stock being broken from the barrel.

    The appearance of the bodies clearly indicated that Packer had
    been guilty of cannibalism as well as murder. He probably spoke
    the truth when he stated his preference for the breast of man,
    as in each instance the entire breast was cut away to the ribs.

    A beaten path was found leading from the bodies to a near-by
    cabin, where blankets and other articles belonging to the
    murdered men were discovered, and everything indicated that
    Packer lived in this cabin for many days after the murders, and
    that he made frequent trips to the bodies for his supply of
    human meat.

    After these discoveries the Sheriff procured warrants charging
    Packer with five murders, but during his absence the prisoner
    escaped.

    Nothing was heard of him again until January 29, 1883, nine
    years later, when General Adams received a letter from Cheyenne,
    Wyoming, in which a Salt Lake prospector stated that he had met
    Packer face to face in that locality. The informant stated that
    the fugitive was known as John Schwartze, and was suspected of
    being engaged in operations with a gang of outlaws.

    Detectives began an investigation, and on March 12, 1883,
    Sheriff Sharpless of Laramie County arrested Packer, and on the
    17th inst. Sheriff Smith of Hinsdale County brought the prisoner
    back to Lake City, Col.

    His trial on the charge of murdering Israel Swan in Hinsdale
    County on March 1, 1874, was begun on April 3, 1883. It was
    proven that each member of the party except Packer possessed
    considerable money. The defendant repeated his former statement,
    wherein he claimed that he had only killed Bell, and had done so
    in self-defense.

    On April 13, the jury found the defendant guilty with the death
    penalty attached. A stay of execution was granted to Packer, who
    immediately appealed to the Supreme Court. In the meantime he
    was transferred to the Gunnison jail to save him from mob
    violence.

    In October, 1885, the Supreme Court granted a new trial and it
    was then decided to bring him to trial on five charges of
    manslaughter. He was found guilty on each charge and was
    sentenced to serve eight years for each offense, making a total
    of forty years.

    He was pardoned on January 1, 1901, and died on a ranch near
    Denver on April 24, 1907.

While Gilbert was reading this, I got myself a drink. Dorothy stopped
dancing to join me. "Do you like him?" she asked, jerking her head to
indicate Quinn.

"He's all right."

"Maybe, but he can be terribly silly. You didn't ask me where I stayed
last night. Don't you care?"

"It's none of my business."

"But I found out something for you."

"What?"

"I stayed at Aunt Alice's. She's not exactly right in the head, but
she's awfully sweet. She told me she had a letter from my father today
warning her against Mamma."

"Warning her how? Just what did he say?"

"I didn't see it. Aunt Alice has been mad with him for several years and
she tore it up. She says he's become a Communist and she's sure the
Communists killed Julia Wolf and will kill him in the end. She thinks
it's all over some secret they betrayed."

I said: "Oh my God!"

"Well, don't blame me. I'm just telling you what she told me. I told you
she wasn't exactly right in the head."

"Did she tell you that junk was in the letter?"

Dorothy shook her head. "No. She only said the warning was. As near as I
remember she said he wrote her not to trust Mamma under any
circumstances and not to trust anybody connected with her, which I
suppose means all of us."

"Try to remember more."

"But there wasn't any more. That's all she told me."

"Where was the letter from?" I asked.

"She didn't know--except that it had come air-mail. She said she wasn't
interested."

"What did she think of it? I mean, did she take the warning seriously?"

"She said he was a dangerous radical--they're her very words--and she
wasn't interested in anything he had to say."

"How seriously do you take it?"

She stared at me for a long moment and she moistened her lips before she
spoke. "I think he--"

Gilbert, book in hand, came over to us. He seemed disappointed in the
story I had given him. "It's very interesting," he said, "but, if you
know what I mean, it's not a pathological case." He put an arm around
his sister's waist. "It was more a matter of that or starving."

"Not unless you want to believe him," I said.

Dorothy asked: "What is it?"

"A thing in the book," Gilbert replied.

"Tell him about the letter your aunt got," I said to Dorothy.

She told him.

When she had finished, he grimaced impatiently. "That's silly. Mamma's
not really dangerous. She's just a case of arrested development. Most of
us have outgrown ethics and morals and so on. Mamma's just not grown up
to them yet." He frowned and corrected himself thoughtfully: "She might
be dangerous, but it would be like a child playing with matches."

Nora and Quinn were dancing.

"And what do you think of your father?" I asked.

Gilbert shrugged. "I haven't seen him since I was a child. I've got a
theory about him, but a lot of it's guess-work. I'd like--the chief
thing I'd like to know is if he's impotent."

I said: "He tried to kill himself today, down in Allentown."

Dorothy cried, "He didn't," so sharply that Quinn and Nora stopped
dancing, and she turned and thrust her face up at her brother's.
"Where's Chris?" she demanded.

Gilbert looked from her face to mine and quickly back to hers. "Don't be
an ass," he said coldly. "He's off with that girl of his, that Fenton
girl."

Dorothy did not look as if she believed him.

"She's jealous of him," he explained to me. "It's that mother fixation."

I asked: "Did either of you ever see the Sidney Kelterman your father
had trouble with back when I first knew you?"

Dorothy shook her head. Gilbert said: "No. Why?"

"Just an idea I had. I never saw him either, but the description they
gave me, with some easy changes, could be made to fit your Chris
Jorgensen."




                                   14


That night Nora and I went to the opening of the Radio City Music Hall,
decided we had had enough of the performance after an hour, and left.
"Where to?" Nora asked.

"I don't care. Want to hunt up that Pigiron Club that Morelli told us
about? You'll like Studsy Burke. He used to be a safe-burglar. He claims
to've cracked the safe in the Hagerstown jail while he was doing thirty
days there for disorderly conduct."

"Let's," she said.

We went down to Forty-ninth Street and, after asking two taxi-drivers,
two newsboys, and a policeman, found the place. The doorman said he
didn't know about any Burkes, but he'd see. Studsy came to the door.
"How are you, Nick?" he said. "Come on in."

He was a powerfully built man of medium height, a little fat now, but
not soft. He must have been at least fifty, but looked ten years younger
than that. He had a broad, pleasantly ugly, pockmarked face under not
much hair of no particular color, and even his baldness could not make
his forehead seem large. His voice was a deep bass growl.

I shook hands with him and introduced him to Nora.

"A wife," he said. "Think of that. By God, you'll drink champagne or
you'll fight me."

I said we wouldn't fight and we went inside. His place had a comfortably
shabby look. It was between hours: there were only three customers in
the place. We sat at a table in a corner and Studsy told the waiter
exactly which bottle of wine to bring. Then he examined me carefully and
nodded. "Marriage done you good." He scratched his chin. "It's a long
time I don't see you."

"A long time," I agreed.

"He sent me up the river," he told Nora.

She clucked sympathetically. "Was he a good detective?"

Studsy wrinkled what forehead he had. "Folks say, but I don't know. The
once he caught me was a accident: I led with my right."

"How come you sicked this wild man Morelli on me?" I asked.

"You know how foreigners are," he said; "they're hysterical. I don't
know he's going to do nothing like that. He's worrying about the coppers
trying to hang that Wolf dame's killing on him and we see in the paper
you got something to do with it and I say to him, 'Nick might not maybe
sell his own mother out and you feel like you got to talk to somebody,'
so he says he will. What'd you do, make faces at him?"

"He let himself be spotted sneaking in and then blamed me for it. How'd
he find me?"

"He's got friends and you wasn't hiding, was you?"

"I'd only been in town a week and there was nothing in the paper saying
where I was staying."

"Is that so?" Studsy asked with interest. "Where you been?"

"I live in San Francisco now. How'd he find me?"

"That's a swell town. I ain't been there in years, but it's one swell
town. I oughtn't tell you, Nick. Ask him. It's his business."

"Except that you sent him to me."

"Well, yes," he said, "except that, of course; but then, see, I was
putting in a boost for you." He said it seriously.

I said: "My pal."

"How did I know he was going to blow his top? Anyways, he didn't hurt
you much, did he?"

"Maybe not, but it didn't do me any good and I--" I stopped as the
waiter arrived with the champagne. We tasted it and said it was swell.
It was pretty bad. "Think he killed the girl?" I asked.

Studsy shook his head sidewise with certainty. "No chance."

"He's a fellow you can persuade to shoot," I said.

"I know--these foreigners are hysterical--but he was around here all
that afternoon."

"All?"

"All. I'll take my oath to it. Some of the boys and girls were
celebrating upstairs and I know for a fact he wasn't off his hip, let
alone out of here, all afternoon. No kidding, that's a thing he can
prove."

"Then what was he worried about?"

"Do I know? Ain't that what I been asking him myself? But you know how
these foreigners are."

I said: "Uh-huh. They're hysterical. He wouldn't've sent a friend around
to see her, would he?"

"I think you got the boy wrong," Studsy said. "I knew the dame. She used
to come in here with him sometimes. They was just playing. He wasn't
nuts enough about her that he'd have any reason for weighting her down
like that. On the level."

"Was she on the stuff too?"

"I don't know. I seen her take it sometimes, but maybe she was just
being sociable, taking a shot because he did."

"Who else did she play around with?"

"Nobody I know," Studsy replied indifferently. "There was a rat named
Nunheim used to come in here that was on the make for her, but he didn't
get nowhere that I could see."

"So that's where Morelli got my address."

"Don't be silly. All Morelli'd want of him would be a crack at him.
What's it to him telling the police Morelli knew the dame? A friend of
yours?"

I thought it over and said: "I don't know him. I hear he does chores for
the police now and then."

"M-m-m. Thanks."

"Thanks for what? I haven't said anything."

"Fair enough. Now you tell me something: what's all this fiddlededee
about, huh? That guy Wynant killed her, didn't he?"

"A lot of people think so," I said, "but fifty bucks'll get you a
hundred he didn't."

He shook his head. "I don't bet with you in your own racket"--his face
brightened--"but I tell you what I will do and we can put some dough on
it if you want. You know that time you copped me, I did lead with my
right like I said, and I always wondered if you could do it again. Some
time when you're feeling well I'd like--"

I laughed and said: "No, I'm all out of condition."

"I'm hog-fat myself," he insisted.

"Besides, that was a fluke: you were off balance and I was set."

"You're just trying to let me down easy," he said, and then more
thoughtfully, "though I guess you did get the breaks at that. Well, if
you won't--Here, let me fill your glasses."

Nora decided that she wanted to go home early and sober, so we left
Studsy and his Pigiron Club at a little after eleven o'clock. He
escorted us to a taxicab and shook our hands vigorously. "This has been
a fine pleasure," he told us.

We said equally polite things and rode away.

Nora thought Studsy was marvelous. "Half his sentences I can't
understand at all."

"He's all right."

"You didn't tell him you'd quit gum-shoeing."

"He'd've thought I was trying to put something over on him," I
explained. "To a mug like him, once a sleuth always a sleuth, and I'd
rather he to him than have him think I'm lying. Have you got a
cigarette? He really trusts me, in a way."

"Were you telling the truth when you said Wynant didn't kill her?"

"I don't know. My guess is I was."

At the Normandie there was a telegram for me from Macaulay in Allentown:

    MAN HERE IS NOT WYNANT AND DID NOT TRY TO COMMIT SUICIDE




                                   15


I had a stenographer in the next morning and got rid of most of the mail
that had been accumulating; had a telephone conversation with our lawyer
in San Francisco--we were trying to keep one of the mill's customers
from being thrown into bankruptcy; spent an hour going over a plan we
had for lowering our state taxes; was altogether the busy business man,
and felt pretty virtuous by two o'clock, when I knocked off work for the
day and went out to lunch with Nora.

She had a date to play bridge after lunch. I went down to see Guild: I
had talked to him on the telephone earlier in the day.

"So it was a false alarm?" I said after we had shaken hands and made
ourselves comfortable in chairs.

"That's what it was. He wasn't any more Wynant than I am. You know how
it is: we told the Philly police he'd sent a wire from there and
broadcasted his description, and for the next week anybody that's skinny
and maybe got whiskers is Wynant to half of the State of Pennsylvania.
This was a fellow named Barlow, a carpenter out of work as near as we
can figure out, that got shot by a nigger trying to stick him up. He
can't talk much yet."

"He couldn't've been shot by somebody who made the same mistake the
Allentown police did?" I asked.

"You mean thought he was Wynant? I guess that could be--if it helps any.
Does it?"

I said I didn't know. "Did Macaulay tell you about the letter he got
from Wynant?"

"He didn't tell me what was in it."

I told him. I told him what I knew about Kelterman.

He said: "Now, that's interesting."

I told him about the letter Wynant had sent his sister.

He said: "He writes a lot of people, don't he?"

"I thought of that." I told him Sidney Kelterman's description with a
few easy changes would fit Christian Jorgensen.

He said: "It don't hurt any to listen to a man like you. Don't let me
stop you."

I told him that was the crop.

He rocked back in his chair and screwed his pale gray eyes up at the
ceiling. "There's some work to be done there," he said presently.

"Was this fellow in Allentown shot with a .32?" I asked.

Guild stared curiously at me for a moment, then shook his head. "A .44.
You got something on your mind?"

"No. Just chasing the set-up around in my head."

He said, "I know what that is," and leaned back to look at the ceiling
some more. When he spoke again it was as if he was thinking of something
else. "That alibi of Macaulay's you was asking about is all right. He
was late for a date then and we know for a fact he was in a fellow's
office named Hermann on Fifty-seventh Street from five minutes after
three till twenty after, the time that counts."

"What's the five minutes after three?"

"That's right, you don't know about that. Well, we found a fellow named
Caress with a cleaning and dyeing place on First Avenue that called her
up at five minutes after three to ask her if she had any work for him,
and she said no and told him she was liable to go away. So that narrows
the time down to from three five to three twenty. You ain't really
suspicious of Macaulay?"

"I'm suspicious of everybody," I said. "Where were you between three
five and three twenty?"

He laughed. "As a matter of fact," he said, "I'm just about the only one
of the lot that ain't got an alibi. I was at the moving pictures."

"The rest of them have?"

He wagged his head up and down. "Jorgensen left his place with Mrs.
Jorgensen--that was about five minutes to three--and sneaked over on
West Seventy-third Street to see a girl named Olga Fenton--we promised
not to tell his wife--and stayed there till about five. We know what
Mrs. Jorgensen did. The daughter was dressing when they left and she
took a taxi at a quarter past and went straight to Bergdorf-Goodman's.
The son was in the Public Library all afternoon--Jesus, he reads funny
books. Morelli was in a joint over in the Forties." He laughed. "And
where was you?"

"I'm saving mine till I really need it. None of those look too
air-tight, but legitimate alibis seldom do. How about Nunheim?"

Guild seemed surprised. "What makes you think of him?"

"I hear he had a yen for the girl."

"And where'd you hear it?"

"I heard it."

He scowled. "Would you say it was reliable?"

"Yes."

"Well," he said slowly, "he's one guy we can check up on. But look here,
what do you care about these people? Don't you think Wynant done it?"

I gave him the same odds I had given Studsy: "Twenty-five'll get you
fifty he didn't."

He scowled at me over that for a long silent moment, then said: "That's
an idea, anyways. Who's your candidate?"

"I haven't got that far yet. Understand, I don't know anything. I'm not
saying Wynant didn't do it. I'm just saying everything doesn't point at
him."

"And saying it two to one. What don't point at him?"

"Call it a hunch, if you want," I said, "but--"

"I don't want to call it anything," he said. "I think you're a smart
detective. I want to listen to what you got to say."

"Mostly I've got questions to say. For instance, how long was it from
the time the elevator boy let Mrs. Jorgensen off at the Wolf girl's
floor until she rang for him and said she heard groans?"

Guild pursed his lips, opened them to ask, "You think she might've--?"
and left the rest of the question hanging in the air.

"I think she might've. I'd like to know where Nunheim was. I'd like to
know the answers to the questions in Wynant's letter. I'd like to know
where the four-thousand-dollar difference between what Macaulay gave the
girl and what she seems to have given Wynant went. I'd like to know
where her engagement ring came from."

"We're doing the best we can," Guild said. "Me--just now I'd like to
know why, if he didn't do it, Wynant don't come in and answer questions
for us."

"One reason might be that Mrs. Jorgensen'd like to slam him in the
squirrel cage again." I thought of something. "Herbert Macaulay's
working for Wynant: you didn't just take Macaulay's word for it that the
man in Allentown wasn't him?"

"No. He was a younger man than Wynant, with damned little gray in his
hair and no dye, and he didn't look like the pictures we got." He seemed
positive. "You got anything to do the next hour or so?"

"No."

"That's fine." He stood up. "I'll get some of the boys working on these
things we been discussing and then maybe me and you will pay some
visits."

"Swell," I said, and he went out of the office.

There was a copy of the Times in his wastebasket. I fished it out and
turned to the Public Notices columns. Macaulay's advertisement was
there:

"_Abner. Yes. Bunny._"

When Guild returned I asked: "How about Wynant's help, whoever he had
working in the shop? Have they been looked up?"

"Uh-huh, but they don't know anything. They was laid off at the end of
the week that he went away--there's two of them--and haven't seen him
since."

"What were they working on when the shop was closed?"

"Some kind of paint or something--something about a permanent green. I
don't know. I'll find out if you want."

"I don't suppose it matters. Is it much of a shop?"

"Looks like a pretty good lay-out, far as I can tell. You think the shop
might have something to do with it?"

"Anything might."

"Uh-huh. Well, let's run along."




                                   16


"First thing," Guild said as we left his office, "we'll go see Mr.
Nunheim. He ought to be home: I told him to stick around till I phoned
him."

Mr. Nunheim's home was on the fourth floor of a dark, damp, and smelly
building made noisy by the Sixth Avenue elevated. Guild knocked on the
door.

There were sounds of hurried movement inside, then a voice asked: "Who
is it?" The voice was a man's, nasal, somewhat irritable.

Guild said: "John."

The door was hastily opened by a small sallow man of thirty-five or -six
whose visible clothes were an undershirt, blue pants, and black silk
stockings. "I wasn't expecting you, Lieutenant," he whined. "You said
you'd phone." He seemed frightened. His dark eyes were small and set
close together; his mouth was wide, thin, and loose; and his nose was
peculiarly limber, a long, drooping nose, apparently boneless.

Guild touched my elbow with his hand and we went in. Through an open
door to the left an unmade bed could be seen. The room we entered was a
living-room, shabby and dirty, with clothing, newspapers, and dirty
dishes sitting around. In an alcove to the right there was a sink and a
stove. A woman stood between them holding a sizzling skillet in her
hand. She was a big-boned, full-fleshed, red-haired woman of perhaps
twenty-eight, handsome in a rather brutal, sloppy way. She wore a
rumpled pink kimono and frayed pink mules with lopsided bows on them.
She stared sullenly at us.

Guild did not introduce me to Nunheim and he paid no attention to the
woman. "Sit down," he said, and pushed some clothing out of the way to
make a place for himself on an end of the sofa.

I removed part of a newspaper from a rocking-chair and sat down. Since
Guild kept his hat on I did the same with mine.

Nunheim went over to the table, where there was about two inches of
whisky in a pint bottle and a couple of tumblers, and said: "Have a
shot?"

Guild made a face. "Not that vomit. What's the idea of telling me you
just knew the Wolf girl by sight?"

"That's all I did, Lieutenant, that's the Christ's truth." Twice his
eyes slid sidewise towards me and he jerked them back. "Maybe I said
hello to her or how are you or something like that when I saw her, but
that's all I knew her. That's the Christ's truth."

The woman in the alcove laughed, once, derisively, and there was no
merriment in her face.

Nunheim twisted himself around to face her. "All right," he told her,
his voice shrill with rage, "put your mouth in and I'll pop a tooth out
of it."

She swung her arm and let the skillet go at his head. It missed,
crashing into the wall. Grease and egg-yolks made fresher stains on
wall, floor, and furniture.

He started for her. I did not have to rise to put out a foot and trip
him. He tumbled down on the floor. The woman had picked up a paring
knife.

"Cut it out," Guild growled. He had not stood up either. "We come here
to talk to you, not to watch this rough-house comedy. Get up and behave
yourself."

Nunheim got slowly to his feet. "She drives me nuts when she's
drinking," he said. "She been ragging me all day." He moved his right
hand back and forth. "I think I sprained my wrist."

The woman walked past us without looking at any of us, went into the
bedroom, and shut the door.

Guild said: "Maybe if you'd quit sucking around after other women you
wouldn't have so much trouble with this one."

"What do you mean, Lieutenant?" Nunheim was surprised and innocent and
perhaps pained.

"Julia Wolf."

The little sallow man was indignant now. "That's a lie, Lieutenant.
Anybody that say I ever--"

Guild interrupted him by addressing me: "If you want to take a poke at
him, I wouldn't stop on account of his bum wrist: he couldn't ever hit
hard anyhow."

Nunheim turned to me with both hands out. "I didn't mean you were a
liar. I meant maybe somebody made a mistake if they--"

Guild interrupted him again: "You wouldn't've taken her if you could've
gotten her?"

Nunheim moistened his lower lip and looked warily at the bedroom door.
"Well," he said slowly in a cautiously low voice, "of course she was a
classy number. I guess I wouldn't've turned it down."

"But you never tried to make her?"

Nunheim hesitated, then moved his shoulders and said: "You know how it
is. A fellow knocking around tries most everything he runs into."

Guild looked sourly at him. "You'd done better to tell me that in the
beginning. Where were you the afternoon she was knocked off?"

The little man jumped as if he had been stuck with a pin. "For Christ's
sake, Lieutenant, you don't think I had anything to do with that. What
would I want to hurt her for?"

"Where were you?"

Nunheim's loose lips twitched nervously. "What day was she--" He broke
off as the bedroom door opened.

The big woman came out carrying a suitcase. She had put on street
clothes.

"Miriam," Nunheim said.

She stared at him dully and said: "I don't like crooks, and even if I
did, I wouldn't like crooks that are stool-pigeons, and if I liked
crooks that are stool-pigeons, I still wouldn't like you." She turned to
the outer door.

Guild, catching Nunheim's arm to keep him from following the woman,
repeated: "Where were you?"

Nunheim called: "Miriam. Don't go. I'll behave, I'll do anything. Don't
go, Miriam."

She went out and shut the door.

"Let me go," he begged Guild. "Let me bring her back. I can't get along
without her. I'll bring her right back and tell you anything you want to
know. Let me go. I've got to have her."

Guild said: "Nuts. Sit down." He pushed the little man down in a chair.
"We didn't come here to watch you and that broad dance around a maypole.
Where were you the afternoon the girl was killed?"

Nunheim put his hands over his face and began to cry.

"Keep on stalling," Guild said, "and I'm going to slap you silly."

I poured some whisky in a tumbler and gave it to Nunheim.

"Thank you, sir, thank you." He drank it, coughed, and brought out a
dirty handkerchief to wipe his face with. "I can't remember offhand,
Lieutenant," he whined. "Maybe I was over at Charlie's shooting pool,
maybe I was here. Miriam would remember if you'll let me go bring her
back."

Guild said: "The hell with Miriam. How'd you like to be thrown in the
can on account of not remembering?"

"Just give me a minute. I'll remember. I'm not stalling, Lieutenant. You
know I always come clean with you. I'm just upset now. Look at my
wrist." He held up his right wrist to let us see it was swelling. "Just
one minute." He put his hands over his face again.

Guild winked at me and we waited for the little man's memory to work.

Suddenly he took his hands down from his face and laughed. "Holy hell!
It would serve me right if you had pinched me. That's the afternoon I
was--Wait, I'll show you." He went into the bedroom.

After a few minutes Guild called: "Hey, we haven't got all night. Shake
it up."

There was no answer.

The bedroom was empty when we went into it and when we opened the
bathroom door the bathroom was empty. There was an open window and a
fire-escape.

I said nothing, tried to look nothing.

Guild pushed his hat back a little from his forehead and said: "I wish
he hadn't done that." He went to the telephone in the living-room.

While he was telephoning, I poked around in drawers and closets, but
found nothing. My search was not very thorough and I gave it up as soon
as he had finished putting the police machinery in action.

"I guess we'll find him, all right," he said. "I got some news. We've
identified Jorgensen as Kelterman."

"Who made the identification?"

"I sent a man over to talk to the girl that gave him his alibi, this
Olga Fenton, and he finally got it out of her. He says he couldn't shake
her on the alibi, though. I'm going over and have a try at her. Want to
come along?"

I looked at my watch and said: "I'd like to, but it's too late. Picked
him up yet?"

"The order's out." He looked thoughtfully at me. "And will that baby
have to do some talking!"

I grinned at him. "Now who do you think killed her?"

"I'm not worrying," he said. "Just let me have things to squeeze enough
people with and I'll turn up the right one before the whistle blows."

In the street he promised to let me know what happened, and we shook
hands and separated. He ran after me a couple of seconds later to send
his very best regards to Nora.




                                   17


Home, I delivered Guild's message to Nora and told her the day's news.

"I've got a message for you, too," she said. "Gilbert Wynant dropped in
and was quite disappointed at missing you. He asked me to tell you he
has something of the 'utmost importance' to tell you."

"He's probably discovered that Jorgensen has a mother fixation."

"Do you think Jorgensen killed her?" she asked.

"I thought I knew who did it," I said, "but it's too mixed up right now
for anything but guesses."

"And what's your guess?"

"Mimi, Jorgensen, Wynant, Nunheim, Gilbert, Dorothy, Aunt Alice,
Morelli, you, me, or Guild. Maybe Studsy did it. How about shaking up a
drink?"

She mixed some cocktails. I was on my second or third when she came back
from answering the telephone and said: "Your friend Mimi wants to talk
to you."

I went to the telephone. "Hello, Mimi."

"I'm awfully sorry I was so rude the other night, Nick, but I was so
upset and I just simply lost my temper and made a show of myself. Please
forgive me." She ran through this very rapidly, as if anxious to get it
over with.

"That's all right," I said.

She hardly let me get my three words out before she was speaking again,
but slower and more earnestly now: "Can I see you, Nick? Something
horrible has happened, something--I don't know what to do, which way to
turn."

"What is it?"

"I can't tell you over the phone, but you've got to tell me what to do.
I've got to have somebody's advice. Can't you come over?"

"You mean now?"

"Yes. Please."

I said, "All right," and went back to the living-room. "I'm going to run
over and see Mimi. She says she's in a jam and needs help."

Nora laughed. "Keep your legs crossed. She apologize to you? She did to
me."

"Yes, all in one breath. Is Dorothy home or still at Aunt Alice's?"

"Still at Auntie's, according to Gilbert. How long will you be?"

"No longer than I have to. The chances are they've copped Jorgensen and
she wants to know if it can be fixed."

"Can they do anything to him? I mean if he didn't kill the Wolf girl."

"I suppose the old charges against him--threats by mail, attempted
extortion--could be raked up." I stopped drinking to ask Nora and myself
a question: "I wonder if he and Nunheim know each other." I thought that
over, but could make nothing more than a possibility of it. "Well, I'm
on my way."




                                   18


Mimi received me with both hands. "It's awfully, awfully nice of you to
forgive me, Nick, but then you've always been awfully nice. I don't know
what got into me Monday night."

I said: "Forget it."

Her face was somewhat pinker than usual and the firmness of its muscles
made it seem younger. Her blue eyes were very bright. Her hands had been
cold on mine. She was tense with excitement, but I could not figure out
what kind of excitement it was.

She said: "It was awfully sweet of your wife, too, to--"

"Forget it."

"Nick, what can they do to you for concealing evidence that somebody's
guilty of a murder?"

"Make you an accomplice--accomplice after the fact is the technical
term--if they want."

"Even if you voluntarily change your mind and give them the evidence?"

"They can. Usually they don't."

She looked around the room as if to make sure there was nobody else
there and said: "Clyde killed Julia. I found the proof and hid it.
What'll they do to me?"

"Probably nothing except give you hell--if you turn it in. He was once
your husband: you and he are close enough together that no jury'd be
likely to blame you for trying to cover him up--unless, of course, they
had reason to think you had some other motive."

She asked coolly, deliberately: "Do you?"

"I don't know," I said. "My guess would be that you had intended to use
this proof of his guilt to shake him down for some dough as soon as you
could get in touch with him, and that now something else has come up to
make you change your mind."

She made a claw of her right hand and struck at my face with her pointed
nails. Her teeth were together, her lips drawn far back over them.

I caught her wrist. "Women are getting tough," I said, trying to sound
wistful. "I just left one that heaved a skillet at a guy."

She laughed, though her eyes did not change. "You're such a bastard. You
always think the worst of me, don't you?"

I took my hand away from her wrist and she rubbed the marks my fingers
had left on it.

"Who was the woman who threw the skillet?" she asked. "Anyone I know?"

"It wasn't Nora, if that's what you mean. Have they arrested
Sidney-Christian Kelterman-Jorgensen yet?"

"What?"

I believed in her bewilderment, though both it and my belief in it
surprised me. "Jorgensen is Kelterman," I said. "You remember him. I
thought you knew."

"You mean that horrible man who--?"

"Yes."

"I won't believe it." She stood up working her fingers together. "I
won't. I won't." Her face was sick with fear, her voice strained, unreal
as a ventriloquist's. "I won't believe it."

"That'll help a lot," I said.

She was not listening to me. She turned her back to me and went to a
window, where she stood with her back to me.

I said: "There's a couple of men in a car out front who look like they
might be coppers waiting to pick him up when he--"

She turned around and asked sharply: "Are you sure he's Kelterman?" Most
of the fear had already gone out of her face and her voice was at least
human again.

"The police are."

We stared at each other, both of us busy thinking. I was thinking she
had not been afraid that Jorgensen killed Julia Wolf, or even that he
might be arrested: she was afraid his only reason for marrying her had
been as a move in some plot against Wynant.

When I laughed--not because the idea was funny, but because it had come
to me so suddenly--she started and smiled uncertainly. "I won't believe
it," she said, and her voice was very soft now, "until he tells me
himself."

"And when he does--then what?"

She moved her shoulders a little, and her lower lip quivered. "He is my
husband."

That should have been funny, but it annoyed me. I said: "Mimi, this is
Nick. You remember me, N-i-c-k."

"I know you never think any good of me," she said gravely. "You think
I'm--"

"All right. All right. Let it pass. Let's get back to the dope on Wynant
you found."

"Yes, that," she said, and turned away from me. When she turned back her
lip was quivering again. "That was a lie, Nick. I didn't find anything."
She came close to me. "Clyde had no right to send those letters to Alice
and Macaulay trying to make everybody suspicious of me and I thought it
would serve him right if I made up something against him, because I
really did think--I mean, I do think--he killed her and it was only--"

"What'd you make up?" I asked.

"I--I hadn't made it up yet. I wanted to find out about what they could
do--you know, the things I asked you--first. I might've pretended she
came to a little when I was alone with her, while the others were
phoning, and told me he did it."

"You didn't say you heard something and kept quiet, you said you found
something and hid it."

"But I hadn't really made up my mind what I--"

"When'd you hear about Wynant's letter to Macaulay?"

"This afternoon," she said, "there was a man here from the police."

"Didn't he ask you anything about Kelterman?"

"He asked me if I knew him or had ever known him, and I thought I was
telling the truth when I said no."

"Maybe you did," I said, "and for the first time I now believe you were
telling the truth when you said you found some sort of evidence against
Wynant."

She opened her eyes wider. "I don't understand."

"Neither do I, but it could be like this: you could've found something
and decided to hold it out, probably with the idea of selling it to
Wynant; then when his letters started people looking you over, you
decided to give up the money idea and both pay him back and protect
yourself by turning it over to the police; and, finally, when you learn
that Jorgensen is Kelterman, you make another about-face and hold it
out, not for money this time, but to leave Jorgensen in as bad a spot as
possible as punishment for having married you as a trick in his game
against Wynant and not for love."

She smiled calmly and asked: "You really think me capable of anything,
don't you?"

"That doesn't matter," I said. "What ought to matter to you is that
you'll probably wind up your life in prison somewhere."

Her scream was not loud, but it was horrible, and the fear that had been
in her face before was as nothing to that there now. She caught my
lapels and clung to them, babbling: "Don't say that, please don't. Say
you don't think it." She was trembling so I put an arm around her to
keep her from falling.

We did not hear Gilbert until he coughed and asked: "Aren't you well,
Mamma?"

She slowly took her hands down from my lapels and moved back a step and
said: "Your mother's a silly woman." She was still trembling, but she
smiled at me and she made her voice playful: "You're a brute to frighten
me like that."

I said I was sorry.

Gilbert put his coat and hat on a chair and looked from one to the other
of us with polite interest. When it became obvious that neither of us
was going to tell him anything he coughed again, said, "I'm awfully glad
to see you," and came over to shake hands with me.

I said I was glad to see him.

Mimi said: "Your eyes look tired. I bet you've been reading all
afternoon without your glasses again." She shook her head and told me:
"He's as unreasonable as his father."

"Is there any news of Father?" he asked.

"Not since that false alarm about his suicide," I said. "I suppose you
heard it was a false alarm."

"Yes." He hesitated. "I'd like to see you for a few minutes before you
go."

"Sure."

"But you're seeing him now, darling," Mimi said. "Are there secrets
between you that I'm not supposed to know about?" Her tone was light
enough. She had stopped trembling.

"It would bore you." He picked up his hat and coat, nodded at me, and
left the room.

Mimi shook her head again and said: "I don't understand that child at
all. I wonder what he made of our tableau." She did not seem especially
worried. Then, more seriously: "What made you say that, Nick?"

"About you winding up in--?"

"No, never mind." She shuddered. "I don't want to hear it. Can't you
stay for dinner? I'll probably be all alone."

"I'm sorry I can't. Now how about this evidence you found?"

"I didn't really find anything. That was a lie." She frowned earnestly.
"Don't look at me like that. It really was a lie."

"So you sent for me just to lie to me?" I asked. "Then why'd you change
your mind?"

She chuckled. "You must really like me, Nick, or you wouldn't always be
so disagreeable."

I could not follow that line of reasoning. I said: "Well, I'll see what
Gilbert wants and run along."

"I wish you could stay."

"I'm sorry I can't," I said again. "Where'll I find him?"

"The second door to the--Will they really arrest Chris?"

"That depends," I told her, "on what kind of answers he gives them.
He'll have to talk pretty straight to stay out."

"Oh, he'll--" she broke off, looked sharply at me, asked, "You're not
playing a trick on me? He's really that Kelterman?"

"The police are sure enough of it."

"But the man who was here this afternoon didn't ask a single question
about Chris," she objected. "He only asked me if I knew--"

"They weren't sure then," I explained. "It was just a half-idea."

"But they're sure now?"

I nodded.

"How'd they find out?"

"From a girl he knows," I said.

"Who?" Her eyes darkened a little, but her voice was under control.

"I can't remember her name." Then I went back to the truth: "The one
that gave him his alibi for the afternoon of the murder."

"Alibi?" she asked indignantly. "Do you mean to tell me the police would
take the word of a girl like that?"

"Like what?"

"You know what I mean."

"I don't. Do you know the girl?"

"No," she said as if I had insulted her. She narrowed her eyes and
lowered her voice until it was not much more than a whisper: "Nick, do
you suppose he killed Julia?"

"What would he do that for?"

"Suppose he married me to get revenge on Clyde," she said, "and--You
know he did urge me to come over here and try to get some money from
Clyde. Maybe I suggested it--I don't know--but he did urge me. And then
suppose he happened to run into Julia. She knew him, of course, because
they worked for Clyde at the same time. And he knew I was going over to
see her that afternoon and was afraid if I made her mad she might expose
him to me and so--Couldn't that be?"

"That doesn't make any sense at all. Besides, you and he left here
together that afternoon. He wouldn't've had time to--"

"But my taxicab was awfully slow," she said, "and then I may have
stopped somewhere on--I think I did. I think I stopped at a drug store
to get some aspirin." She nodded energetically. "I remember I did."

"And he knew you were going to stop, because you had told him," I
suggested. "You can't go on like this, Mimi. Murder's serious. It's
nothing to frame people for just because they played tricks on you."

"Tricks?" she asked, glaring at me. "Why, that..." She called
Jorgensen all the usual profane, obscene, and otherwise insulting names,
her voice gradually rising until towards the end she was screaming into
my face.

When she stopped for breath I said: "That's pretty cursing, but it--"

"He even had the nerve to hint that I might've killed her," she told me.
"He didn't have nerve enough to ask me, but he kept leading up to it
until I told him positively that--well, that I didn't do it."

"That's not what you started to say. You told him positively what?"

She stamped her foot. "Stop heckling me."

"All right and to hell with you," I said. "Coming here wasn't my idea."
I started towards my hat and coat.

She ran after me, caught my arm. "Please, Nick, I'm sorry. It's this
rotten temper of mine. I don't know what I--"

Gilbert came in and said: "I'll go along part of the way with you."

Mimi scowled at him. "You were listening."

"How could I help it, the way you screamed?" he asked. "Can I have some
money?"

"And we haven't finished talking," she said.

I looked at my watch. "I've got to run, Mimi. It's late."

"Will you come back after you get through with your date?"

"If it's not too late. Don't wait for me."

"I'll be here," she said. "It doesn't matter how late it is."

I said I would try to make it. She gave Gilbert his money. He and I went
downstairs.




                                   19


"I was listening," Gilbert told me as we left the building. "I think
it's silly not to listen whenever you get a chance if you're interested
in studying people, because they're never exactly the same as when
you're with them. People don't like it when they know about it, of
course, but"--he smiled--"I don't suppose birds and animals like having
naturalists spying on them either."

"Hear much of it?" I asked.

"Oh, enough to know I didn't miss any of the important part."

"And what'd you think of it?"

He pursed his lips, wrinkled his forehead, said judicially: "It's hard
to say exactly. Mamma's good at hiding things sometimes, but she's never
much good at making them up. It's a funny thing--I suppose you've
noticed it--the people who lie the most are nearly always the clumsiest
at it, and they're easier to fool with lies than most people, too. You'd
think they'd be on the look-out for lies, but they seem to be the very
ones that will believe almost anything at all. I suppose you've noticed
that, haven't you?"

"Yes."

He said: "What I wanted to tell you: Chris didn't come home last night.
That's why Mamma's more upset than usual, and when I got the mail this
morning there was a letter for him that I thought might have something
in it, so I steamed it open." He took a letter from his pocket and held
it out to me. "You'd better read it and then I'll seal it again and put
it with tomorrow's mail in case he comes back, though I don't think he
will."

"Why don't you?" I asked as I took the letter.

"Well, he's really Kelterman...."

"You say anything to him about it?"

"I didn't have a chance. I haven't seen him since you told me."

I looked at the letter in my hand. The envelope was postmarked Boston,
Massachusetts, December 27, 1932, and addressed in a slightly childish
feminine hand to Mr. Christian Jorgensen, Courtland Apts., New York, N.
Y. "How'd you happen to open it?" I asked, taking the letter out of the
envelope.

"I don't believe in intuition," he said, "but there are probably odors,
sounds, maybe something about the handwriting, that you can't analyze,
maybe aren't even conscious of, that influence you sometimes. I don't
know what it was: I just felt there might be something important in it."

"You often feel that way about the family's mail?"

He glanced quickly at me as if to see whether I was spoofing, then said:
"Not often, but I have opened their mail before. I told you I was
interested in studying people."

I read the letter:

    _Dear Sid--_

    _Olga wrote me about you being back in the U. S. married to
    another woman and using the name of Christian Jorgensen. That is
    not right Sid as you very well know the same as leaving me
    without word of any kind all these years. And no money. I know
    that you had to go away on account of that trouble you had with
    Mr. Wynant but am sure he has long since forgot all about that
    and I do think you might have written to me as you know very
    well I have always been your friend and am willing to do
    anything within my power for you at any time. I do not want to
    scold you Sid but I have to see you. I will be off from the
    store Sunday and Monday on account of New Years and will come
    down to N. Y. Saturday night and must have a talk with you.
    Write me where you will meet me and what time as I do not want
    to make any trouble for you. Be sure and write me right away so
    I will get it in time._

                                               _Your true wife_,
                                                         _Georgia_

There was a street address.

I said, "Well, well, well," and put the letter back in its envelope.
"And you resisted the temptation to tell your mother about this?"

"Oh, I knew what her reaction would be. You saw how she carried on with
just what you told her. What do you think I ought to do about it?"

"You ought to let me tell the police."

He nodded immediately. "If you think that's the best thing. You can show
it to them if you want."

I said, "Thanks," and put the letter in my pocket.

He said: "Now there's another thing: I had some morphine I was
experimenting with and somebody stole it, about twenty grains."

"Experimenting how?"

"Taking it. I wanted to study the effects."

"And how'd you like them?" I asked.

"Oh, I didn't expect to like it. I just wanted to know about it. I don't
like things that dull my mind. That's why I don't very often drink, or
even smoke. I want to try cocaine, though, because that's supposed to
sharpen the brain, isn't it?"

"It's supposed to. Who do you think copped the stuff?"

"I suspect Dorothy, because I have a theory about her. That's why I'm
going over to Aunt Alice's for dinner: Dorry's still there and I want to
find out. I can make her tell me anything."

"Well, if she's been over there," I asked, "how could she--"

"She was home for a little while last night," he said, "and, besides, I
don't know exactly when it was taken. Today was the first time I opened
the box it was in for three or four days."

"Did she know you had it?"

"Yes. That's one of the reasons I suspect her. I don't think anybody
else did. I experimented on her too."

"How'd she like it?"

"Oh, she liked it all right, but she'd have taken it anyhow. But what I
want to ask you is could she have become an addict in a little time like
that?"

"Like what?"

"A week--no--ten days."

"Hardly, unless she thought herself into it. Did you give her much?"

"No."

"Let me know if you find out," I said. "I'm going to grab a taxi here.
Be seeing you."

"You're coming over later tonight, aren't you?"

"If I can make it. Maybe I'll see you then."

"Yes," he said, "and thanks awfully."

At the first drug store I stopped to telephone Guild, not expecting to
catch him in his office, but hoping to learn how to reach him at his
home. He was still there, though.

"Working late," I said.

His "That's what" sounded very cheerful.

I read Georgia's letter to him, gave him her address.

"Good pickings," he said.

I told him Jorgensen had not been home since the day before.

"Think we'll find him in Boston?" he asked.

"Either there," I guessed, "or as far south as he could manage to get by
this time."

"We'll try 'em both," he said, still cheerful. "Now I got a bit of news
for you. Our friend Nunheim was filled full of .32s just about an hour
after he copped the sneak on us--deader'n hell. The pills look like they
come from the same gun that cut down the Wolf dame. The experts are
matching 'em up now. I guess he wishes he'd stayed and talked to us."




                                   20


Nora was eating a piece of cold duck with one hand and working on a
jig-saw puzzle with the other when I got home.

"I thought you'd gone to live with her," she said. "You used to be a
detective: find me a brownish piece shaped something like a snail with a
long neck."

"Piece of duck or puzzle? Don't let's go to the Edges' tonight: they're
dull folk."

"All right, but they'll be sore."

"We wouldn't be that lucky," I complained. "They'd get sore at the
Quinns and--"

"Harrison called you up. He told me to tell you now's the time to buy
some McIntyre Porcupine--I think that's right--to go with your Dome
stock. He said it closed at twenty and a quarter." She put a finger on
her puzzle. "The piece I want goes in there."

I found the piece she wanted and told her, almost word for word, what
had been done and said at Mimi's.

"I don't believe it," she said. "You made it up. There aren't any people
like that. What's the matter with them? Are they the first of a new race
of monsters?"

"I just tell you what happens; I don't explain it."

"How would you explain it? There doesn't seem to be a single one in the
family--now that Mimi's turned against her Chris--who has even the
slightest reasonably friendly feeling for any of the others, and yet
there's something very alike in all of them."

"Maybe that explains it," I suggested.

"I'd like to see Aunt Alice," she said. "Are you going to turn that
letter over to the police?"

"I've already phoned Guild," I replied, and told her about Nunheim.

"What does that mean?" she asked.

"For one thing, if Jorgensen's out of town, as I think he is, and the
bullets are from the same gun that was used on Julia Wolf, and they
probably are, then the police'll have to find his accomplice if they
want to hang anything on him."

"I'm sure if you were a good detective you'd be able to make it much
clearer to me than it is." She went to work on her puzzle again. "Are
you going back to see Mimi?"

"I doubt it. How about letting that dido rest while we get some dinner?"

The telephone rang and I said I would get it. It was Dorothy Wynant.
"Hello. Nick?"

"The same. How are you, Dorothy?"

"Gil just got here and asked me about that you-know, and I wanted to
tell you I did take it, but I only took it to try to keep him from
becoming a dope-fiend."

"What'd you do with it?" I asked.

"He made me give it back to him and he doesn't believe me, but,
honestly, that's the only reason I took it."

"I believe you."

"Will you tell Gil, then? If you believe me, he will, because he thinks
you know all about things like that."

"I'll tell him as soon as I see him," I promised.

There was a pause, then she asked: "How's Nora?"

"Looks all right to me. Want to talk to her?"

"Well, yes, but there's something I want to ask you. Did--did Mamma say
anything about me when you were over there today?"

"Not that I remember. Why?"

"And did Gil?"

"Only about the morphine."

"Are you sure?"

"Pretty sure," I said. "Why?"

"It's nothing, really--if you're sure. It's just silly."

"Right. I'll call Nora." I went into the living-room. "Dorothy wants to
talk to you. Don't ask her to eat with us."

When Nora returned from the telephone she had a look in her eye.

"Now what's up?" I asked.

"Nothing. Just 'How are you' and all that."

I said: "If you're lying to the old man, God'll punish you."

We went over to a Japanese place on Fifty-eighth Street for dinner and
then I let Nora talk me into going to the Edges' after all.

Halsey Edge was a tall scrawny man of fifty-something with a pinched
yellow face and no hair at all. He called himself "a ghoul by profession
and inclination"--his only joke, if that is what it was--by which he
meant he was an archologist, and he was very proud of his collection of
battle-axes. He was not so bad once you had resigned yourself to the
fact that you were in for occasional catalogings of his armory--stone
axes, copper axes, bronze axes, double-bladed axes, faceted axes,
polygonal axes, scalloped axes, hammer axes, adze axes, Mesopotamian
axes, Hungarian axes, Nordic axes, and all of them looking pretty
moth-eaten. It was his wife we objected to. Her name was Leda, but he
called her Tip. She was very small and her hair, eyes, and skin, though
naturally of different shades, were all muddy. She seldom sat--she
perched on things--and liked to cock her head a little to one side. Nora
had a theory that once when Edge opened an antique grave, Tip ran out of
it, and Margot Innes always spoke of her as the gnome, pronouncing all
the letters. She once told me that she did not think any literature of
twenty years ago would live, because it had no psychiatry in it. They
lived in a pleasant old three-story house on the edge of Greenwich
Village and their liquor was excellent.

A dozen or more people were there when we arrived. Tip introduced us to
the ones we did not know and then backed me into a corner. "Why didn't
you tell me that those people I met at your place Christmas were mixed
up in a murder mystery?" she asked, tilting her head to the left until
her ear was practically resting on her shoulder.

"I don't know that they are. Besides, what's one murder mystery
nowadays?"

She tilted her head to the right. "You didn't even tell me you had taken
the case."

"I had done what? Oh, I see what you mean. Well, I hadn't and haven't.
My getting shot ought to prove I was an innocent bystander."

"Does it hurt much?"

"It itches. I forgot to have the dressing changed this afternoon."

"Wasn't Nora utterly terrified?"

"So was I and so was the guy that shot me. There's Halsey. I haven't
spoken to him yet."

As I slid around her to escape she said: "Harrison promised to bring the
daughter tonight."

I talked to Edge for a few minutes--chiefly about a place in
Pennsylvania he was buying--then found myself a drink and listened to
Larry Crowley and Phil Thames swap dirty stories until some woman came
over and asked Phil--he taught at Columbia--one of the questions about
technocracy that people were asking that week. Larry and I moved away.

We went over to where Nora was sitting. "Watch yourself," she told me.
"The gnome's hell-bent on getting the inside story of Julia Wolf's
murder out of you."

"Let her get it out of Dorothy," I said. "She's coming with Quinn."

"I know."

Larry said: "He's nuts over that girl, isn't he? He told me he was going
to divorce Alice and marry her."

Nora said, "Poor Alice," sympathetically. She did not like Alice.

Larry said: "That's according to how you look at it." He liked Alice. "I
saw that fellow who's married to the girl's mother yesterday. You know,
the tall fellow I met at your house."

"Jorgensen?"

"That's it. He was coming out of a pawnshop on Sixth Avenue near
Forty-sixth."

"Talk to him?"

"I was in a taxi. It's probably polite to pretend you don't see people
coming out of pawnshops, anyhow."

Tip said, "Sh-h-h," in all directions, and Levi Oscant began to play the
piano. Quinn and Dorothy arrived while he was playing. Quinn was drunk
as a lord and Dorothy seemed to have something better than a glow.

She came over to me and whispered: "I want to leave when you and Nora
do."

I said: "You won't be here for breakfast."

Tip said, "Sh-h-h," in my direction.

We listened to some more music.

Dorothy fidgeted beside me for a minute and whispered again: "Gil says
you're going over to see Mamma later. Are you?"

"I doubt it."

Quinn came unsteadily around to us. "How're you, boy? How're you, Nora?
Give him my message?" (Tip said, "Sh-h-h," at him. He paid no attention
to her. Other people looked relieved and began to talk.) "Listen, boy,
you bank at the Golden Gate Trust in San Francisco, don't you?"

"Got a little money there."

"Get it out, boy. I heard tonight they're plenty shaky."

"All right. I haven't got much there, though."

"No? What do you do with all your money?"

"Me and the French hoard gold."

He shook his head solemnly. "It's fellows like you that put the country
on the bum."

"And it's fellows like me that don't go on the bum with it," I said.
"Where'd you get the skinful?"

"It's Alice. She's been sulking for a week. If I didn't drink I'd go
crazy."

"What's she sulking about?"

"About my drinking. She thinks--" He leaned forward and lowered his
voice confidentially. "Listen. You're all my friends and I'm going to
tell you what I'm going to do. I'm going to get a divorce and marry--"

He had tried to put an arm around Dorothy. She pushed it away and said:
"You're silly and you're tiresome. I wish you'd leave me alone."

"She thinks I'm silly and tiresome," he told me. "You know why she don't
want to marry me? I bet you don't. It's because she's in--"

"Shut up! Shut up, you drunken fool!" Dorothy began to beat his face
with both hands. Her face was red, her voice shrill. "If you say that
again I'll kill you!"

I pulled Dorothy away from Quinn; Larry caught him, kept him from
falling. He whimpered: "She hit me, Nick." Tears ran down his cheeks.

Dorothy had her face against my coat and seemed to be crying.

We had what audience there was. Tip came running, her face bright with
curiosity. "What is it, Nick?"

I said: "Just a couple of playful drunks. They're all right. I'll see
that they get home all right."

Tip was not for that: she wanted them to stay at least until she had a
chance to discover what had happened. She urged Dorothy to lie down
awhile, offered to get something--whatever she meant by that--for Quinn,
who was having trouble standing up now.

Nora and I took them out. Larry offered to go along, but we decided that
was not necessary. Quinn slept in a corner of the taxicab during the
ride to his apartment, and Dorothy sat stiff and silent in the other
corner, with Nora between them. I clung to a folding seat and thought
that anyway we had not stayed long at the Edges'.

Nora and Dorothy remained in the taxicab while I took Quinn upstairs. He
was pretty limp.

Alice opened the door when I rang. She had on green pyjamas and held a
hairbrush in one hand. She looked wearily at Quinn and spoke wearily:
"Bring it in."

I took it in and spread it on a bed. It mumbled something I could not
make out and moved one hand feebly back and forth, but its eyes stayed
shut.

"I'll tuck him in," I said and loosened his tie.

Alice leaned on the foot of the bed. "If you want to. I've given up
doing it."

I took off his coat, vest, and shirts.

"Where'd he pass out this time?" she asked with not much interest. She
was still standing at the foot of the bed, brushing her hair now.

"The Edges'." I unbuttoned his pants.

"With that little Wynant bitch?" The question was casual.

"There were a lot of people there."

"Yes," she said. "He wouldn't pick a secluded spot." She brushed her
hair a couple of times. "So you don't think it's clubby to tell me
anything."

Her husband stirred a little and mumbled: "Dorry."

I took off his shoes.

Alice sighed. "I can remember when he had muscles." She stared at her
husband until I took off the last of his clothes and rolled him under
the covers. Then she sighed again and said: "I'll get you a drink."

"You'll have to make it short: Nora's waiting in the cab."

She opened her mouth as if to speak, shut it, opened it again to say:
"Righto."

I went into the kitchen with her.

Presently she said: "It's none of my business, Nick, but what do people
think of me?"

"You're like everybody else: some people like you, some people don't,
and some have no feeling about it one way or the other."

She frowned. "That's not exactly what I meant. What do people think
about my staying with Harrison with him chasing everything that's hot
and hollow?"

"I don't know, Alice."

"What do you think?"

"I think you probably know what you're doing and whatever you do is your
own business."

She looked at me with dissatisfaction. "You'll never talk yourself into
any trouble, will you?" She smiled bitterly. "You know I'm only staying
with him for his money, don't you? It may not be a lot to you, but it is
to me--the way I was raised."

"There's always divorce and alimony. You ought to have--"

"Drink your drink and get to hell out of here," she said wearily.




                                   21


Nora made a place for me between her and Dorothy in the taxicab. "I want
some coffee," she said. "Reuben's?"

I said, "All right," and gave the driver the address.

Dorothy asked timidly: "Did his wife say anything?"

"She sent her love to you."

Nora said: "Stop being nasty."

Dorothy said: "I don't really like him, Nick. I won't ever see him
again--honestly." She seemed pretty sober now. "It was--well, I was
lonesome and he was somebody to run around with."

I started to say something, but stopped when Nora poked me in the side.

Nora said: "Don't worry about it. Harrison's always been a simpleton."

"I don't want to stir things up," I said, "but I think he's really in
love with the girl."

Nora poked me in the side again.

Dorothy peered at my face in the dim light. "You're--you're not--You're
not making fun of me, Nick?"

"I ought to be."

"I heard a new story about the gnome tonight," Nora said in the manner
of one who did not mean to be interrupted, and explained to Dorothy,
"That's Mrs. Edge. Levi says..." The story was funny enough if you
knew Tip. Nora went on talking about her until we got out of the taxicab
at Reuben's.

Herbert Macaulay was in the restaurant, sitting at a table with a plump
dark-haired girl in red. I waved at him and, after we had ordered some
food, went over to speak to him.

"Nick Charles, Louise Jacobs," he said. "Sit down. What's news?"

"Jorgensen's Kelterman," I told him.

"The hell he is!"

I nodded. "And he seems to have a wife in Boston."

"I'd like to see him," he said slowly. "I knew Kelterman. I'd like to
make sure."

"The police seem sure enough. I don't know whether they've found him
yet. Think he killed Julia?"

Macaulay shook his head with emphasis. "I can't see Kelterman killing
anybody--not as I knew him--in spite of those threats he made. You
remember I didn't take them very seriously at the time. What else has
happened?" When I hesitated, he said: "Louise is all right. You can
talk."

"It's not that. I've got to go back to my folks and food. I came over to
ask if you'd got an answer to your ad in this morning's _Times_."

"Not yet. Sit down, Nick, there's a lot I want to ask you. You told the
police about Wynant's letter, didn't--"

"Come up to lunch tomorrow and we'll bat it around. I've got to get back
to my folks."

"Who is the little blonde girl?" Louise Jacobs asked. "I've seen her
places with Harrison Quinn."

"Dorothy Wynant."

"You know Quinn?" Macaulay asked me.

"Ten minutes ago I was putting him to bed."

Macaulay grinned. "I hope you keep his acquaintance like that--social."

"Meaning what?"

Macaulay's grin became rueful. "He used to be my broker, and his advice
led me right up to the poor-house steps."

"That's sweet," I said. "He's my broker now and I'm following his
advice."

Macaulay and the girl laughed. I pretended I was laughing and returned
to my table.

Dorothy said: "It's not midnight yet and Mamma said she'd be expecting
you. Why don't we all go to see her?"

Nora was very carefully pouring coffee into her cup.

"What for?" I asked. "What are you two up to now?"

It would have been hard to find two more innocent faces than theirs.

"Nothing, Nick," Dorothy said. "We thought it would be nice. It's early
and--"

"And we all love Mimi."

"No--o, but--"

"It's too early to go home," Nora said.

"There are speakeasies," I suggested, "and nightclubs and Harlem."

Nora made a face. "All your ideas are alike."

"Want to go over to Barry's and try our luck at faro?"

Dorothy started to say yes, but stopped when Nora made another face.

"That's the way I feel about seeing Mimi again," I said. "I've had
enough of her for one day."

Nora sighed to show she was being patient. "Well, if we're going to wind
up in a speakeasy as usual, I'd rather go to your friend Studsy's, if
you won't let him give us any more of that awful champagne. He's cute."

"I'll do my best," I promised and asked Dorothy, "Did Gilbert tell you
he caught Mimi and me in a compromising position?"

She tried to exchange glances with Nora, but Nora's glance was occupied
with a cheese blintz on her plate. "He--he didn't exactly say that."

"Did he tell you about the letter?"

"From Chris's wife? Yes." Her blue eyes glittered. "Won't Mamma be
furious!"

"You like it, though."

"Suppose I do? What of it? What did she ever do to make me--"

Nora said: "Nick, stop bullying the child."

I stopped.




                                   22


Business was good at the Pigiron Club. The place was full of people,
noise, and smoke. Studsy came from behind the cash register to greet us.
"I was hoping you'd come in." He shook my hand and Nora's and grinned
broadly at Dorothy.

"Anything special?" I asked.

He made a bow. "Everything's special with ladies like these."

I introduced him to Dorothy.

He bowed to her and said something elaborate about any friend of Nick's
and stopped a waiter. "Pete, put a table up here for Mr. Charles."

"Pack them in like this every night?" I asked.

"I got no kick," he said. "They come once, they come back again. Maybe I
ain't got no black marble cuspidors, but you don't have to spit out what
you buy here. Want to lean against the bar whilst they're putting up
that table?"

We said we did and ordered drinks.

"Hear about Nunheim?" I asked.

He looked at me for a moment before making up his mind to say: "Uh-huh,
I heard. His girl's down there"--he moved his head to indicate the other
end of the room--"celebrating, I guess."

I looked past Studsy down the room and presently picked out big
red-haired Miriam sitting at a table with half a dozen men and women.
"Hear who did it?" I asked.

"She says the police done it--he knew too much."

"That's a laugh," I said.

"That's a laugh," he agreed. "There's your table. Set right down. I'll
be back in a minute."

We carried our glasses over to a table that had been squeezed in between
two tables which had occupied a space large enough for one and made
ourselves as nearly comfortable as we could.

Nora tasted her drink and shuddered. "Do you suppose this could be the
'bitter vetch' they used to put in cross-word puzzles?"

Dorothy said: "Oh, look."

We looked and saw Shep Morelli coming towards us. His face had attracted
Dorothy's attention. Where it was not dented it was swollen and its
coloring ranged from deep purple around one eye to the pale pink of a
piece of court-plaster on his chin.

He came to our table and leaned over a little to put both fists on it.
"Listen," he said, "Studsy says I ought to apologize."

Nora murmured, "Old Emily Post Studsy," while I asked, "Well?"

Morelli shook his battered head. "I don't apologize for what I
do--people've got to take it or leave it--but I don't mind telling you
I'm sorry I lost my noodle and cracked down on you and I hope it ain't
bothering you much and if there's anything I can do to square it I--"

"Forget it. Sit down and have a drink. This is Mr. Morelli, Miss
Wynant."

Dorothy's eyes became wide and interested.

Morelli found a chair and sat down. "I hope you won't hold it against
me, neither," he told Nora.

She said: "It was fun."

He looked at her suspiciously.

"Out on bail?" I asked.

"Uh-huh, this afternoon." He felt his face gingerly with one hand.
"That's where the new ones come from. They had me resisting some more
arrest just for good measure before they turned me loose."

Nora said indignantly: "That's horrible. You mean they really--"

I patted her hand.

Morelli said: "You got to expect it." His swollen lower lip moved in
what was meant for a scornful smile. "It's all right as long as it takes
two or three of 'em to do it."

Nora turned to me. "Did you do things like that?"

"Who? Me?"

Studsy came over to us carrying a chair. "They lifted his face, huh?" he
said, nodding at Morelli. We made room for him and he sat down. He
grinned complacently at Nora's drink and at Nora. "I guess you don't get
no better than that in your fancy Park Avenue joints--and you pay four
bits a slug for it here."

Nora's smile was weak, but it was a smile. She put her foot on mine
under the table.

I asked Morelli: "Did you know Julia Wolf in Cleveland?"

He looked sidewise at Studsy, who was leaning back in his chair, gazing
around the room, watching his profits mount.

"When she was Rhoda Stewart," I added.

He looked at Dorothy.

I said: "You don't have to be cagey. She's Clyde Wynant's daughter."

Studsy stopped gazing around the room and beamed on Dorothy. "So you
are? And how is your pappy?"

"But I haven't seen him since I was a little girl," she said.

Morelli wet the end of a cigarette and put it between his swollen lips.
"I come from Cleveland." He struck a match. His eyes were dull--he was
trying to keep them dull. "She wasn't Rhoda Stewart except once--Nancy
Kane." He looked at Dorothy again. "Your father knows it."

"Do you know my father?"

"We had some words once."

"What about?" I asked.

"Her." The match in his hand had burned down to his fingers. He dropped
it, struck another, and lit his cigarette. He raised his eyebrows at me,
wrinkling his forehead. "Is this O. K.?"

"Sure. There's nobody here you can't talk in front of."

"O. K. He was jealous as hell. I wanted to take a poke at him, but she
wouldn't let me. That was all right: he was her bank-roll."

"How long ago was this?"

"Six months, eight months."

"Have you seen him since she got knocked off?"

He shook his head. "I never seen him but a couple of times, and this
time I'm telling you about is the last."

"Was she gypping him?"

"She don't say she is. I figure she is."

"Why?"

"She's a wise head--plenty smart. She was getting dough somewheres. Once
I wanted five grand." He snapped his fingers. "Cash."

I decided against asking if he had paid her back. "Maybe he gave it to
her."

"Sure--maybe."

"Did you tell any of this to the police?" I asked.

He laughed once, contemptuously. "They thought they could smack it out
of me. Ask 'em what they think now. You're a right guy, I don't--" He
broke off, took the cigarette from between his lips. "The earysipelas
kid," he said and put out a hand to touch the ear of a man who, sitting
at one of the tables we had been squeezed in between, had been leaning
further and further back towards us.

The man jumped and turned a startled pale pinched face around over his
shoulder at Morelli.

Morelli said: "Pull in that lug--it's getting in our drinks."

The man stammered, "I d-didn't mean nothing, Shep," and rammed his belly
into his table trying to get as far as possible from us, which still did
not take him out of ear-shot.

Morelli said, "You won't ever mean nothing, but that don't keep you from
trying," and returned his attention to me. "I'm willing to go all the
way with you--the kid's dead, it's not going to hurt her any--but
Mulrooney ain't got a wrecking crew that can get it out of me."

"Swell," I said. "Tell me about her, where you first ran into her, what
she did before she tied up with Wynant, where he found her."

"I ought to have a drink." He twisted himself around in his chair and
called: "Hey, garsong--you with the boy on your back!"

The somewhat hunchbacked waiter Studsy had called Pete pushed through
people to our table and grinned affectionately down at Morelli. "What'll
it be?" He sucked a tooth noisily.

We gave our orders and the waiter went away.

Morelli said: "Me and Nancy lived in the same block. Old man Kane had a
candy store on the corner. She used to pinch cigarettes for me." He
laughed. "Her old man kicked hell out of me once for showing her how to
get nickels out of the telephone with a piece of wire. You know, the old
style ones. Jesus, we couldn't've been more than in the third grade." He
laughed again, low in his throat. "I wanted to glean some fixtures from
a row of houses they were building around the corner and plant 'em in
his cellar and tell Schultz, the cop on the heat, to pay him back, but
she wouldn't let me."

Nora said: "You must've been a little darling."

"I was that," he said fondly. "Listen. Once when I was no more'n five
or--"

A feminine voice said: "I thought that was you."

I looked up and saw it was red-haired Miriam speaking to me. I said:
"Hello."

She put her hands on her hips and stared somberly at me. "So he knew too
much for you."

"Maybe, but he took it on the lam down the fire-escape with his shoes in
his hand before he told us any of it."

"Balls!"

"All right. What do you think he knew that was too much for us?"

"Where Wynant is," she said.

"So? Where is he?"

"I don't know. Art knew."

"I wish he'd told us. We--"

"Balls!" she said again. "You know and the police know. Who do you think
you're kidding?"

"I'm not kidding. I don't know where Wynant is."

"You're working for him and the police are working with you. Don't kid
me. Art thought knowing was going to get him a lot of money, poor sap.
He didn't know what it was going to get him."

"Did he tell you he knew?" I asked.

"I'm not as dumb as you think. He told me he knew something that was
going to get him big dough and I've seen how it worked out. I guess I
can put two and two together."

"Sometimes the answer's four," I said, "and sometimes it's twenty-two.
I'm not working for Wynant. Now don't say, 'Balls,' again. Do you want
to help--"

"No. He was a rat and he held out on the people he was ratting for. He
asked for what he got, only don't expect me to forget that I left him
with you and Guild, and the next time anybody saw him he was dead."

"I don't want you to forget anything. I'd like you to remember
whether--"

"I've got to go to the can," she said and walked away. Her carriage was
remarkably graceful.

"I don't know as I'd want to be mixed up with that dame," Studsy said
thoughtfully. "She's mean medicine."

Morelli winked at me.

Dorothy touched my arm. "I don't understand, Nick."

I told her that was all right and addressed Morelli: "You were telling
us about Julia Wolf."

"Uh-huh. Well, old man Kane booted her out when she was fifteen or
sixteen and got in some kind of a jam with a high-school teacher and she
took up with a guy called Face Peppler, a smart kid if he didn't talk
too much. I remember once me and Face were--" He broke off and cleared
his throat. "Anyways, Face and her stuck together--what the hell--it
must be five, six years, throwing out the time he was in the army and
she was living with some guy that I can't remember his name--a cousin of
Dick O'Brien's, a skinny dark-headed guy that liked his liquor. But she
went back to Face when he come out of the army, and they stuck together
till they got nailed trying to shake down some bird from Toronto. Face
took it and got her off with six months--they give him the business.
Last I heard he was still in. I saw her when she came out--she touched
me for a couple hundred to blow town. I hear from her once, when she
sends it back to me and tells me Julia Wolf's her name now and she likes
the big city fine, but I know Face is hearing from her right along. So
when I move here in '28, I look her up. She's--"

Miriam came back and stood with her hands on her hips as before. "I've
been thinking over what you said. You must think I'm pretty dumb."

"No," I said, not very truthfully.

"It's a cinch I'm not dumb enough to fall for that song and dance you
tried to give me. I can see things when they're right in front of me."

"All right."

"It's not all right. You killed Art and--"

"Not so loud, girlie." Studsy rose and took her arm. His voice was
soothing. "Come along. I want to talk to you." He led her towards the
bar.

Morelli winked again. "He likes that. Well, I was saying I looked her up
when I moved here, and she told me she had this job with Wynant and he
was nuts about her and she was sitting pretty. It seems they learned her
shorthand in Ohio when she was doing her six months and she figures
maybe it'll be an in to something--you know, maybe she can get a job
somewheres where they'll go out and leave the safe open. A agency had
sent her over to do a couple days' work for Wynant and she figured maybe
he'd be worth more for a long pull than for a quick tap and a getaway,
so she give him the business and wound up with a steady connection. She
was smart enough to tell him she had a record and was trying to go
straight now and all that, so's not to have the racket spoiled if he
found out anyhow, because she said his lawyer was a little leery of her
and might have her looked up. I don't know just what she was doing, you
understand, because it's her game and she don't need my help, and even
if we are pals in a way, there's no sense in telling me anything I might
want to go to her boss with. Understand, she wasn't my girl or
anything--we was just a couple old friends, been kids playing together.
Well, I used to see her ever once in a while--we used to come here a
lot--till he kicked up too much of a fuss and then she said she was
going to cut it out, she wasn't going to lose a soft bed over a few
drinks with me. So that was that. That was October, I guess, and she
stuck to it. I haven't seen her since."

"Who else did she run around with?" I asked.

Morelli shook his head. "I don't know. She don't do much talking about
people."

"She was wearing a diamond engagement ring. Know anything about it?"

"Nothing except she didn't get it from me. She wasn't wearing it when I
see her."

"Do you think she meant to throw in with Peppler again when he got out?"

"Maybe. She didn't seem to worry much about him being in, but she liked
to work with him all right and I guess they'd've teamed up again."

"And how about the cousin of Dick O'Brien, the skinny dark-headed lush?
What became of him?"

Morelli looked at me in surprise. "Search me."

Studsy returned alone. "Maybe I'm wrong," he said as he sat down, "but I
think somebody could do something with that cluck if they took hold of
her right."

Morelli said: "By the throat."

Studsy grinned good-naturedly. "No. She's trying to get somewhere. She
works hard at her singing lessons and--"

Morelli looked at his empty glass and said: "This tiger milk of yours
must be doing her pipes a lot of good." He turned his head to yell at
Pete: "Hey, you with the knapsack, some more of the same. We got to sing
in the choir tomorrow."

Pete said: "Coming up, Sheppy." His lined gray face lost its dull apathy
when Morelli spoke to him.

An immensely fat blond man--so blond he was nearly albino--who had been
sitting at Miriam's table came over and said to me in a thin, tremulous,
effeminate voice: "So you're the party who put it to little Art
Nunhei--"

Morelli hit the fat man in his fat belly, as hard as he could without
getting up. Studsy, suddenly on his feet, leaned over Morelli and
smashed a big fist into the fat man's face. I noticed, foolishly, that
he still led with his right. Hunchbacked Pete came up behind the fat man
and banged his empty tray down with full force on the fat man's head.
The fat man fell back, upsetting three people and a table. Both
bar-tenders were with us by then. One of them hit the fat man with a
blackjack as he tried to get up, knocking him forward on hands and
knees, the other put a hand down inside the fat man's collar in back,
twisting the collar to choke him. With Morelli's help they got the fat
man to his feet and hustled him out.

Pete looked after them and sucked a tooth. "That God-damned Sparrow," he
explained to me, "you can't take no chances on him when he's drinking."

Studsy was at the next table, the one that had been upset, helping
people pick up themselves and their possessions. "That's bad," he was
saying, "bad for business, but where you going to draw the line? I ain't
running a dive but I ain't trying to run a young ladies' seminary
neither."

Dorothy was pale, frightened; Nora wide-eyed and amazed. "It's a
madhouse," she said. "What'd they do that for?"

"You know as much about it as I do," I told her.

Morelli and the bar-tenders came in again, looking pretty pleased with
themselves. Morelli and Studsy returned to their seats at our table.

"You boys are impulsive," I said.

Studsy repeated, "Impulsive," and laughed, "Ha-ha-ha."

Morelli was serious. "Any time that guy starts anything, you got to
start it first. It's too late when he gets going. We seen him like that
before, ain't we, Studsy?"

"Like what?" I asked. "He hadn't done anything."

"He hadn't, all right," Morelli said slowly, "but it's a kind of feeling
you get about him sometimes. Ain't that right, Studsy?"

Studsy said: "Uh-huh, he's hysterical."




                                   23


It was about two o'clock when we said good-night to Studsy and Morelli
and left the Pigiron Club.

Dorothy slumped down in her corner of the taxicab and said: "I'm going
to be sick. I know I am." She sounded as if she was telling the truth.

Nora said: "That booze." She put her head on my shoulder. "Your wife is
drunk, Nicky. Listen, you've got to tell me what happened--everything.
Not now, tomorrow. I don't understand a thing that was said or a thing
that was done. They're marvelous."

Dorothy said: "Listen, I can't go to Aunt Alice's like this. She'd have
a fit."

Nora said: "They oughtn't've hit that fat man like that, though it
must've been funny in a cruel way."

Dorothy said: "I suppose I'd better go to Mamma's."

Nora said: "Erysipelas hasn't got anything to do with ears. What's a
lug, Nicky?"

"An ear."

Dorothy said: "Aunt Alice would have to see me because I forgot the key
and I'd have to wake her up."

Nora said: "I love you, Nicky, because you smell nice and know such
fascinating people."

Dorothy said: "It's not much out of your way to drop me at Mamma's, is
it?"

I said, "No," and gave the driver Mimi's address.

Nora said: "Come home with us."

Dorothy said: "No-o, I'd better not."

Nora asked, "Why not?" and Dorothy said, "Well, I don't think I ought
to," and that kind of thing went on until the taxicab stopped at the
Courtland.

I got out and helped Dorothy out. She leaned heavily on my arm. "Please
come up, just for a minute."

Nora said, "Just for a minute," and got out of the taxicab.

I told the driver to wait. We went upstairs. Dorothy rang the bell.
Gilbert, in pyjamas and bathrobe, opened the door. He raised one hand in
a warning gesture and said in a low voice: "The police are here."

Mimi's voice came from the living-room: "Who is it, Gil?"

"Mr. and Mrs. Charles and Dorothy."

Mimi came to meet us as we went in. "I never was so glad to see anybody.
I just didn't know which way to turn." She had on a pinkish satin robe
over a pinkish silk nightgown, and her face was pink and by no means
unhappy. She ignored Dorothy, squeezed one of Nora's hands, one of mine.
"Now I'm going to stop worrying and leave it all up to you, Nick. You'll
have to tell the foolish little woman what to do."

Dorothy, behind me, said, "Balls!" under her breath, but with a lot of
feeling.

Mimi did not show that she had heard her daughter. Still holding our
hands, she drew us back towards the living-room, chattering: "You know
Lieutenant Guild. He's been very nice, but I'm sure I must have tried
his patience. I've been so--well--I mean I've been so bewildered. But
now you're here and--"

We went into the living-room.

Guild said, "Hello," to me and, "Good evening, ma'am," to Nora. The man
with him, the one he had called Andy and who had helped him search our
rooms the morning of Morelli's visit, nodded and grunted at us.

"What's up?" I asked.

Guild looked at Mimi out the corners of his eyes, then at me, and said:
"The Boston police found Jorgensen or Kelterman or whatever you want to
call him at his first wife's place and asked him some questions for us.
The chief answer seems to be he don't have anything to do with Julia
Wolf getting killed or not getting killed and Mrs. Jorgensen can prove
it because she's been holding out what amounts to the goods on Wynant."
His eyes slid sidewise in their sockets to focus on Mimi again. "The
lady kind of don't want to say yes and kind of don't want to say no. To
tell you the truth, Mr. Charles, I don't know what to make of her in a
lot of ways."

I could understand that. I said, "She's probably frightened," and Mimi
tried to look frightened. "Has he been divorced from the first wife?"

"Not according to the first wife."

Mimi said: "She's lying, I bet."

I said: "Sh-h-h. Is he coming back to New York?"

"It looks like he's going to make us extradite him if we want him.
Boston says he's squawking his head off for a lawyer."

"Do you want him that bad?"

Guild moved his big shoulders. "If bringing him back'll help us on this
murder. I don't care much about any of the old charges or the bigamy. I
never believe in hounding a man over things that are none of my
business."

I asked Mimi: "Well?"

"Can I talk to you alone?"

I looked at Guild, who said: "Anything that'll help."

Dorothy touched my arm. "Nick, listen to me first. I--" She broke off.
Everybody was staring at her.

"What?" I asked.

"I--I want to talk to you first."

"Go ahead."

"I mean alone," she said.

I patted her hand. "Afterwards."

Mimi led me into her bedroom and carefully shut the door. I sat on the
bed and lit a cigarette. Mimi leaned back against the door and smiled at
me very gently and trustingly. Half a minute passed that way.

Then she said, "You do like me, Nick," and when I said nothing she
asked, "Don't you?"

"No."

She laughed and came away from the door. "You mean you don't approve of
me." She sat on the bed beside me. "But you do like me well enough to
help me?"

"That depends."

"Depends on wha--"

The door opened and Dorothy came in. "Nick, I've got to--"

Mimi jumped up and confronted her daughter. "Get out of here," she said
through her teeth.

Dorothy flinched, but she said: "I won't. You're not going to make a--"

Mimi slashed Dorothy across the mouth with the back of her right hand.
"Get out of here."

Dorothy screamed and put a hand to her mouth. Holding it there, holding
her wide frightened eyes on Mimi's face, she backed out of the room.

Mimi shut the door again.

I said: "You must come over to our place some time and bring your little
white whips."

She did not seem to hear me. Her eyes were heavy, brooding, and her lips
were thrust out a little in a half-smile, and when she spoke, her voice
seemed heavier, throatier, than usual. "My daughter's in love with you."

"Nonsense."

"She is and she's jealous of me. She has absolute spasms whenever I get
within ten feet of you." She spoke as if thinking of something else.

"Nonsense. Maybe she's got a little hangover from that crush she had on
me when she was twelve, but that's all it is."

Mimi shook her head. "You're wrong, but never mind." She sat down on the
bed beside me again. "You've got to help me out of this. I--"

"Sure," I said. "You're a delicate _fleur_ that needs a great big man's
protection."

"Oh, that?" She waved a hand at the door through which Dorothy had gone.
"You're surely not getting--Why, it's nothing you haven't heard about
before--and seen and done, for that matter. It's nothing to worry you."
She smiled as before, with heavy, brooding eyes, and lips thrust out a
little. "If you want Dorry, take her, but don't get sentimental about
it. But never mind that. Of course I'm not a delicate _fleur_. You never
thought I was."

"No," I agreed.

"Well, then," she said with an air of finality.

"Well then what?"

"Stop being so damned coquettish," she said. "You know what I mean. You
understand me as well as I understand you."

"Just about, but you've been doing the coquetting ever since--"

"I know. That was a game. I'm not playing now. That son of a bitch made
a fool of me, Nick, an out and out fool, and now he's in trouble and
expects me to help him. I'll help him." She put a hand on my knee and
her pointed nails dug into my flesh. "The police, they don't believe me.
How can I make them believe that he's lying, that I know nothing more
than I've told them about the murder?"

"You probably can't," I said slowly, "especially since Jorgensen's only
repeating what you told me a few hours ago."

She caught her breath, and her nails dug into me again. "Did you tell
them that?"

"Not yet." I took her hand off my knee.

She sighed with relief. "And of course you won't tell them now, will
you?"

"Why not?"

"Because it's a lie. He lied and I lied. I didn't find anything,
anything at all."

I said: "We're back where we were earlier, and I believe you just as
much now as I did then. What happened to those new terms we were on? You
understanding me, me understanding you, no coquetting, no games, no
playing."

She slapped my hand lightly. "All right. I did find something--not much
but something--and I'm not going to give it up to help that son of a
bitch. You can understand how I feel about it, Nick. You'd feel the
same--"

"Maybe," I said, "but the way it stands, I've got no reason for putting
in with you. Your Chris is no enemy of mine. I've got nothing to gain by
helping you frame him."

She sighed. "I've been thinking about that a lot. I don't suppose what
money I could give you would mean much to you now"--she smiled
crookedly--"nor my beautiful white body. But aren't you interested in
saving Clyde?"

"Not necessarily."

She laughed at that. "I don't know what that means."

"It might mean I don't think he needs saving. The police haven't got
much on him. He's screwy, he was in town the day Julia was killed, and
she had been gypping him. That's not enough to arrest him on."

She laughed again. "But with my contribution?"

"I don't know. What is it?" I asked, and went on without waiting for the
answer I did not expect. "Whatever it is, you're being a sap, Mimi.
You've got Chris cold on bigamy. Sock that to him. There's no--"

She smiled sweetly and said: "But I am holding that in reserve to use
after this if he--"

"If he gets past the murder charge, huh? Well, it won't work out that
way, lady. You can get him about three days in jail. By that time the
District Attorney will have questioned him and checked up on him enough
to know that he didn't kill Julia and that you've been making a chump of
the D. A., and when you spring your little bigamy charge the D. A. will
tell you to go jump in the lake, and he'll refuse to prosecute."

"But he can't do that, Nick."

"Can and will," I assured her, "and if he can dig up proof that you're
holding out something he'll make it as tough for you as he can."

She chewed her lower lip, asked: "You're being honest with me?"

"I'm telling you exactly what'll happen, unless district attorneys have
changed a lot since my day."

She chewed her lip some more. "I don't want him to get off," she said
presently, "and I don't want to get into any trouble myself." She looked
up at me. "If you're lying to me, Nick..."

"There's nothing you can do about it except believe me or disbelieve
me."

She smiled and put a hand on my cheek and kissed me on the mouth and
stood up. "You're such a bastard. Well, I'm going to believe you." She
walked down to the other end of the room and back again. Her eyes were
shiny, her face pleasantly excited.

"I'll call Guild," I said.

"No, wait. I'd rather--I'd rather see what you think of it first."

"All right, but no clowning."

"You're certainly afraid of your shadow," she said, "but don't worry,
I'm not going to play any tricks on you."

I said that would be swell and how about showing me whatever she had to
show me. "The others will be getting restless."

She went around the bed to a closet, opened the door, pushed some
clothes aside, and put a hand among other clothes behind them. "That's
funny," she said.

"Funny?" I stood up. "It's a panic. It'll have Guild rolling on the
floor." I started towards the door.

"Don't be so bad-tempered," she said. "I've got it." She turned to me
holding a wadded handkerchief in her hand. As I approached, she opened
the handkerchief to show me a three-inch length of watch-chain, broken
at one end, attached at the other to a small gold knife. The
handkerchief was a woman's and there were brown stains on it.

"Well?" I asked.

"It was in her hand and I saw it when they left me with her and I knew
it was Clyde's, so I took it."

"You're sure it's his?"

"Yes," she said impatiently. "See, they're gold, silver, and copper
links. He had it made out of the first batches of metal that came
through that smelting process he invented. Anybody who knows him at all
well can identify it--there can't be another like it." She turned the
knife over to let me see the C M W engraved in it. "They're his
initials. I never saw the knife before, but I'd know the chain anywhere.
Clyde's worn it for years."

"Did you remember it well enough that you could've described it without
seeing it again?"

"Of course."

"Is that your handkerchief?"

"Yes."

"And the stain on its blood?"

"Yes. The chain was in her hand--I told you--and there was some blood on
them." She frowned at me. "Don't you--You act as if you don't believe
me."

"Not exactly," I said, "but I think you ought to be sure you're telling
your story straight this time."

She stamped her foot. "You're--" She laughed and anger went out of her
face. "You can be the most annoying man. I'm telling the truth now,
Nick. I've told you everything that happened exactly as it happened."

"I hope so. It's about time. You're sure Julia didn't come to enough to
say anything while you were alone with her?"

"You're trying to make me mad again. Of course I'm sure."

"All right," I said. "Wait here. I'll get Guild, but if you tell him the
chain was in Julia's hand and she wasn't dead yet he's going to wonder
whether you didn't have to rough her up a little to get it away from
her."

She opened her eyes wide. "What should I tell him?"

I went out and shut the door.




                                   24


Nora, looking a little sleepy, was entertaining Guild and Andy in the
living-room. The Wynant offspring were not in sight.

"Go ahead," I told Guild. "First door to the left. I think she's readied
up for you."

"Crack her?" he asked.

I nodded.

"What'd you get?"

"See what you get and we'll put them together and see how they add up,"
I suggested.

"O. K. Come on, Andy." They went out.

"Where's Dorothy?" I asked.

Nora yawned. "I thought she was with you and her mother. Gilbert's
around somewhere. He was here till a few minutes ago. Do we have to hang
around long?"

"Not long." I went back down the passageway past Mimi's door to another
bedroom door, which was open, and looked in. Nobody was there. A door
facing it was shut. I knocked on it.

Dorothy's voice: "What is it?"

"Nick," I said and went in.

She was lying on her side on a bed, dressed except for her slippers.
Gilbert was sitting on the bed beside her. Her mouth seemed a little
puffy, but it may have been from crying: her eyes were red. She raised
her head to stare sullenly at me.

"Still want to talk to me?" I asked.

Gilbert got up from the bed. "Where's Mamma?"

"Talking to the police."

He said something I did not catch and left the room.

Dorothy shuddered. "He gives me the creeps," she said, and then
remembered to stare sullenly at me again.

"Still want to talk to me?"

"What made you turn against me like that?"

"You're being silly." I sat down where Gilbert had been sitting. "Do you
know anything about this knife and chain your mother's supposed to have
found?"

"No. Where?"

"What'd you want to tell me?"

"Nothing--now," she said disagreeably, "except you might at least wipe
her lipstick off your mouth."

I wiped it off. She snatched the handkerchief from my hand and rolled
over to pick up a package of matches from the table on that side of the
bed. She struck a match.

"That's going to stink like hell," I said.

She said, "I don't care," but she blew out the match. I took the
handkerchief, went to a window, opened it, dropped the handkerchief out,
shut the window, and went back to my seat on the bed. "If that makes you
feel any better."

"What did Mamma say--about me?"

"She said you're in love with me."

She sat up abruptly. "What did you say?"

"I said you just liked me from when you were a kid."

Her lower lip twitched. "Do--do you think that's what it is?"

"What else could it be?"

"I don't know." She began to cry. "Everybody's made so much fun of me
about it--Mamma and Gilbert and Harrison--I--"

I put my arms around her. "To hell with them."

After a while she asked: "Is Mamma in love with you?"

"Good God, no! She hates men more than any woman I've ever known who
wasn't a Lesbian."

"But she's always having some sort of--"

"That's the body. Don't let it fool you. Mimi hates men--all of
us--bitterly."

She had stopped crying. She wrinkled her forehead and said: "I don't
understand. Do you hate her?"

"Not as a rule."

"Now?"

"I don't think so. She's being stupid and she's sure she's being very
clever, and that's a nuisance, but I don't think I hate her."

"I do," Dorothy said.

"So you told me last week. Something I meant to ask you: did you know or
did you ever see the Arthur Nunheim we were talking about in the
speakeasy tonight?"

She looked sharply at me. "You're just trying to change the subject."

"I want to know. Did you?"

"No."

"He was mentioned in the newspapers," I reminded her. "He was the one
who told the police about Morelli knowing Julia Wolf."

"I didn't remember his name," she said. "I don't remember ever having
heard it until tonight."

I described him. "Ever see him?"

"No."

"He may have been known as Albert Norman sometimes. Does that sound
familiar?"

"No."

"Know any of the people we saw at Studsy's tonight? Or anything about
them?"

"No. Honestly, Nick, I'd tell you if I knew anything at all that might
help you."

"No matter who it hurt?"

"Yes," she said immediately, then, "What do you mean?"

"You know damned well what I mean."

She put her hands over her face, and her words were barely audible: "I'm
afraid, Nick. I--" She jerked her hands down as someone knocked on the
door.

"All right," I called.

Andy opened the door far enough to stick his head in. He tried to keep
curiosity from showing in his face while saying: "The Lieutenant wants
to see you."

"Be right out," I promised.

He opened the door wider. "He's waiting." He gave me what was probably
meant to be a significant wink, but a corner of his mouth moved more
than his eye did and the result was a fairly startling face.

"I'll be back," I told Dorothy, and followed him out.

He shut the door behind me and put his mouth close to my ear. "The kid
was at the keyhole," he muttered.

"Gilbert?"

"Yep. He had time to get away from it when he heard me coming, but he
was there, right enough."

"That's mild for him," I said. "How'd you all make out with Mrs. J.?"

He puckered his thick lips up in an _o_ and blew breath out noisily.
"What a dame!"




                                   25


We went into Mimi's bedroom. She was sitting in a deep chair by a window
looking very pleased with herself. She smiled gaily at me and said: "My
soul is spotless now. I've confessed everything."

Guild stood by a table wiping his face with a handkerchief. There were
still some drops of sweat on his temples, and his face seemed old and
tired. The knife and chain, and the handkerchief they had been wrapped
in, were on the table.

"Finished?" I asked.

"I don't know, and that's a fact," he said. He turned his head to
address Mimi: "Would you say we were finished?"

Mimi laughed. "I can't imagine what more there would be."

"Well," Guild said slowly, somewhat reluctantly, "in that case I guess
I'd like to talk to Mr. Charles, if you'll excuse us for a couple of
minutes." He folded his handkerchief carefully and put it in his pocket.

"You can talk here." She got up from the chair. "I'll go out and talk to
Mrs. Charles till you're through." She tapped my cheek playfully with
the tip of a forefinger as she passed me. "Don't let them say too horrid
things about me, Nick."

Andy opened the door for her, shut it behind her, and made the _o_ and
the blowing noise again.

I lay down on the bed. "Well," I asked, "what's what?"

Guild cleared his throat. "She told us about finding this here chain and
knife on the floor where the Wolf dame had most likely broke it off
fighting with Wynant, and she told us the reasons why she'd hid it till
now. Between me and you, that don't make any too much sense, looking at
it reasonably, but maybe that ain't the way to look at it in this case.
To tell you the plain truth, I don't know what to make of her in a lot
of ways, I don't for a fact."

"The chief thing," I advised them, "is not to let her tire you out. When
you catch her in a lie, she admits it and gives you another lie to take
its place and, when you catch her in that one, admits it and gives you
still another, and so on. Most people--even women--get discouraged after
you've caught them in the third or fourth straight lie and fall back on
either the truth or silence, but not Mimi. She keeps trying and you've
got to be careful or you'll find yourself believing her, not because she
seems to be telling the truth, but simply because you're tired of
disbelieving her."

Guild said: "Hm-m-m. Maybe." He put a finger inside his collar. He
seemed very uncomfortable. "Look here, do you think she killed that
dame?"

I discovered that Andy was staring at me so intently that his eyes
bulged. I sat up and put my feet on the floor. "I wish I knew. That
chain business looks like a plant, all right, but... We can find out
whether he had a chain like that, maybe whether he still has it. If she
remembered the chain as well as she said she did, there's no reason why
she couldn't have told a jeweler how to make one, and anybody can buy a
knife and have any initials they want engraved on it. There's plenty to
be said against the probability of her having gone that far. If she did
plant it, it's more likely she had the original chain--maybe she's had
it for years--but all that's something for you folks to check up."

"We're doing the best we can," Guild said patiently. "So you do think
she did it?"

"The murder?" I shook my head. "I haven't got that far yet. How about
Nunheim? Did the bullets match up?"

"They did--from the same gun as was used on the dame--all five of them."

"He was shot five times?"

"He was, and close enough to burn his clothes."

"I saw his girl, the big red-head, tonight in a speak," I told him.
"She's saying you and I killed him because he knew too much."

He said: "Hm-m-m. What speak was that? I might want to talk to her."

"Studsy Burke's Pigiron Club," I said, and gave him the address.
"Morelli hangs out there too. He tells me Julia Wolf's real name is
Nancy Kane and she has a boy friend doing time in Ohio--Face Peppler."

From the tone of Guild's "Yes?" I imagined he had already found out
about Peppier and about Julia's past. "And what else did you pick up in
your travels?"

"A friend of mine--Larry Crowley, a press agent--saw Jorgensen coming
out of a hock-shop on Sixth near Forty-sixth yesterday afternoon."

"Yes?"

"You don't seem to get excited about my news. I'm--"

Mimi opened the door and came in with glasses, whisky, and mineral water
on a tray. "I thought you'd like a drink," she said cheerfully.

We thanked her.

She put the tray on the table, said, "I don't mean to interrupt," smiled
at us with that air of amused tolerance which women like to affect
towards male gatherings, and went out.

"You were saying something," Guild reminded me.

"Just that if you people think I'm not coming clean with you, you ought
to say so. We've been playing along together so far and I wouldn't
want--"

"No, no," Guild said hastily, "it's nothing like that, Mr. Charles." His
face had reddened a little. "I been--The fact is the Commissioner's been
riding us for action and I guess I been kind of passing it on. This
second murder's made things tough." He turned to the tray on the table.
"How'll you have yours?"

"Straight, thanks. No leads on it?"

"Well, the same gun and a lot of bullets, same as with her, but that's
about all. It was a rooming-house hallway in between a couple stores.
Nobody there claims they know Nunheim or Wynant or anybody else we can
connect. The door's left unlocked, anybody could walk in, but that don't
make too much sense when you come to think of it."

"Nobody saw or heard anything?"

"Sure, they heard the shooting, but they didn't see anybody doing it."
He gave me a glass of whisky.

"Find any empty shells?" I asked.

He shook his head. "Neither time. Probably a revolver."

"And he emptied it both times--counting the shot that hit her
telephone--if, like a lot of people, he carried an empty chamber under
the hammer."

Guild lowered the glass he was raising towards his mouth. "You're not
trying to find a Chinese angle on it, are you?" he complained, "just
because they shoot like that."

"No, but any kind of angle would help some. Find out where Nunheim was
the afternoon the girl was killed?"

"Uh-huh. Hanging around the girl's building--part of the time anyhow. He
was seen in front and he was seen in back, if you're going to believe
people that didn't think much of it at the time and haven't got any
reason for lying about it. And the day before the killing he had been up
to her apartment, according to an elevator boy. The boy says he came
down right away and he don't know whether he got in or not."

I said: "So. Maybe Miriam's right, maybe he did know too much. Find out
anything about the four thousand difference between what Macaulay gave
her and what Clyde Wynant says he got from her?"

"No."

"Morelli says she always had plenty of money. He says she once lent him
five thousand in cash."

Guild raised his eyebrows. "Yes?"

"Yes. He also says Wynant knew about her record."

"Seems to me," Guild said slowly, "Morelli did a lot of talking to you."

"He likes to talk. Find out anything more about what Wynant was working
on when he left, or what he was going away to work on?"

"No. You're kind of interested in that shop of his."

"Why not? He's an inventor, the shop's his place. I'd like to have a
look at it some time."

"Help yourself. Tell me some more about Morelli, and how you go about
getting him to open up."

"He likes to talk. Do you know a fellow called Sparrow? A big fat pale
fellow with a pansy voice?"

Guild frowned. "No. Why?"

"He was there--with Miriam--and wanted to take a crack at me, but they
wouldn't let him."

"And what'd he want to do that for?"

"I don't know. Maybe because she told him I helped knock Nunheim
off--helped you."

Guild said: "Oh." He scratched his chin with a thumb-nail, looked at his
watch. "It's getting kind of late. Suppose you drop in and see me some
time tomorrow--today."

I said, "Sure," instead of the things I was thinking, nodded at him and
Andy, and went out to the living-room.

Nora was sleeping on the sofa. Mimi put down the book she was reading
and asked: "Is the secret session over?"

"Yes." I moved towards the sofa.

Mimi said: "Let her sleep awhile, Nick. You're going to stay till after
your police friends have gone, aren't you?"

"All right. I want to see Dorothy again."

"But she's asleep."

"That's all right. I'll wake her up."

"But--"

Guild and Andy came in, said their good nights, Guild looked regretfully
at the sleeping Nora, and they left.

Mimi sighed. "I'm tired of policemen," she said. "You remember that
story?"

"Yes."

Gilbert came in. "Do they really think Chris did it?"

"No," I said.

"Who do they think?"

"I could've told you yesterday. I can't today."

"That's ridiculous," Mimi protested. "They know very well and you know
very well that Clyde did it." When I said nothing she repeated more
sharply: "You know very well that Clyde did it."

"He didn't," I said.

An expression of triumph brightened Mimi's face. "You are working for
him, now aren't you?"

My "No" bounced off her with no effect whatever.

Gilbert asked, not argumentatively, but as if he wanted to know: "Why
couldn't he?"

"He could've, but he didn't. Would he have written those letters
throwing suspicion on Mimi, the one person who's helping him by hiding
the chief evidence against him?"

"But maybe he didn't know that. Maybe he thought the police were simply
not telling all they knew. They often do that, don't they? Or maybe he
thought he could discredit her, so they wouldn't believe her if--"

"That's it," Mimi said. "That's exactly what he did, Nick."

I said to Gilbert: "You don't think he killed her."

"No, I don't think he did, but I'd like to know why you don't think
so--you know--your method."

"And I'd like to know yours."

His face flushed a little and there was some embarrassment in his smile.
"Oh, but I--it's different."

"He _knows_ who killed her," Dorothy said from the doorway. She was
still dressed. She stared at me fixedly, as if afraid to look at anybody
else. Her face was pale and she held her small body stiffly erect.

Nora opened her eyes, pushed herself up on an elbow, and asked, "What?"
sleepily. Nobody answered her.

Mimi said: "Now, Dorry, don't let's have one of those idiotic dramatic
performances."

Dorothy said: "You can beat me after they've gone. You will." She said
it without taking her eyes off mine.

Mimi tried to look as if she did not know what her daughter was talking
about.

"Who does he know killed her?" I asked.

Gilbert said: "You're making an ass of yourself, Dorry, you're--"

I interrupted him: "Let her. Let her say what she's got to say. Who
killed her, Dorothy?"

She looked at her brother and lowered her eyes and no longer held
herself erect. Looking at the floor, she said indistinctly: "I don't
know. He knows." She raised her eyes to mine and began to tremble.
"Can't you see I'm afraid?" she cried. "I'm afraid of them. Take me away
and I'll tell you, but I'm afraid of them."

Mimi laughed at me. "You asked for it. It serves you right."

Gilbert was blushing. "It's so silly," he mumbled.

I said: "Sure, I'll take you away, but I'd like to have it out now while
we're all together."

Dorothy shook her head. "I'm afraid."

Mimi said: "I wish you wouldn't baby her so, Nick. It only makes her
worse. She--"

I asked Nora: "What do you say?"

She stood up and stretched without lifting her arms. Her face was pink
and lovely as it always is when she has been sleeping. She smiled
drowsily at me and said: "Let's go home. I don't like these people. Come
on, get your hat and coat, Dorothy."

Mimi said to Dorothy: "Go to bed."

Dorothy put the tips of the fingers of her left hand to her mouth and
whimpered through them: "Don't let her beat me, Nick."

I was watching Mimi, whose face wore a placid half-smile, but her
nostrils moved with her breathing and I could hear her breathing.

Nora went around to Dorothy. "Come on, we'll wash your face and--"

Mimi made an animal noise in her throat, muscles thickened on the back
of her neck, and she put her weight on the balls of her feet.

Nora stepped between Mimi and Dorothy. I caught Mimi by a shoulder as
she started forward, put my other arm around her waist from behind, and
lifted her off her feet. She screamed and hit back at me with her fists
and her hard sharp high heels made dents in my shins.

Nora pushed Dorothy out of the room and stood in the doorway watching
us. Her face was very live. I saw it clearly, sharply: everything else
was blurred. When clumsy, ineffectual blows on my back and shoulder
brought me around to find Gilbert pommeling me, I could see him but
dimly and I hardly felt the contact when I shoved him aside. "Cut it
out. I don't want to hurt you, Gilbert." I carried Mimi over to the sofa
and dumped her on her back on it, sat on her knees, got a wrist in each
hand.

Gilbert was at me again. I tried to pop his kneecap, but kicked him too
low, kicked his leg from under him. He went down on the floor in a
tangle. I kicked at him again, missed, and said: "We can fight
afterwards. Get some water."

Mimi's face was becoming purple. Her eyes protruded, glassy, senseless,
enormous. Saliva bubbled and hissed between clenched teeth with her
breathing, and her red throat--her whole body--was a squirming mass of
veins and muscles swollen until it seemed they must burst. Her wrists
were hot in my hands and sweat made them hard to hold.

Nora beside me with a glass of water was a welcome sight. "Chuck it in
her face," I said.

Nora chucked it. Mimi separated her teeth to gasp and she shut her eyes.
She moved her head violently from side to side, but there was less
violence in the squirming of her body.

"Do it again," I said.

The second glass of water brought a spluttering protest from Mimi and
the fight went out of her body. She lay still, limp, panting.

I took my hands away from her wrists and stood up. Gilbert, standing on
one foot, was leaning against a table nursing the leg I had kicked.
Dorothy, big-eyed and pale, was in the doorway, undecided whether to
come in or run off and hide. Nora, beside me, holding the empty glass in
her hand, asked: "Think she's all right?"

"Sure."

Presently Mimi opened her eyes, tried to blink the water out of them. I
put a handkerchief in her hand. She wiped her face, gave a long
shivering sigh, and sat up on the sofa. She looked around the room,
still blinking a little. When she saw me she smiled feebly. There was
guilt in her smile, but nothing you could call remorse. She touched her
hair with an unsteady hand and said: "I've certainly been drowned."

I said: "Some day you're going into one of those things and not come out
of it."

She looked past me at her son. "Gil. What's happened to you?" she asked.

He hastily took his hand off his leg and put his foot down on the floor.
"I--uh--nothing," he stammered. "I'm perfectly all right." He smoothed
his hair, straightened his necktie.

She began to laugh. "Oh, Gil, did you really try to protect me? And from
Nick?" Her laughter increased. "It was awfully sweet of you, but awfully
silly. Why, he's a monster, Gil. Nobody could--" She put my handkerchief
over her mouth and rocked back and forth.

I looked sidewise at Nora. Her mouth was set and her eyes were almost
black with anger. I touched her arm. "Let's blow. Give your mother a
drink, Gilbert. She'll be all right in a minute or two."

Dorothy, hat and coat in her hands, tiptoed to the outer door. Nora and
I found our hats and coats and followed her out, leaving Mimi laughing
into my handkerchief on the sofa.

None of the three of us had much to say in the taxicab that carried us
over to the Normandie. Nora was brooding, Dorothy seemed still pretty
frightened, and I was tired--it had been a full day.

It was nearly five o'clock when we got home. Asta greeted us
boisterously. I lay down on the floor to play with her while Nora went
into the pantry to make coffee. Dorothy wanted to tell me something that
happened to her when she was a little child.

I said: "No. You tried that Monday. What is it? a gag? It's late. What
was it you were afraid to tell me over there?"

"But you'd understand better if you'd let me--"

"You said _that_ Monday. I'm not a psychoanalyst. I don't know anything
about early influences. I don't give a damn about them. And I'm tired--I
been ironing all day."

She pouted at me. "You seem to be trying to make it as hard for me as
you can."

"Listen, Dorothy," I said, "you either know something you were afraid to
say in front of Mimi and Gilbert or you don't. If you do, spit it out.
I'll ask you about any of it I find myself not understanding."

She twisted a fold of her skirt and looked sulkily at it, but when she
raised her eyes they became bright and excited. She spoke in a whisper
loud enough for anybody in the room to hear: "Gil's been seeing my
father and he saw him today and my father told him who killed Miss
Wolf."

"Who?"

She shook her head. "He wouldn't tell me. He'd just tell me that."

"And that's what you were afraid to say in front of Gil and Mimi?"

"Yes. You'd understand that if you'd let me tell you--"

"Something that happened when you were a little child. Well, I won't.
Stop it. What else did he tell you?"

"Nothing."

"Nothing about Nunheim?"

"No, nothing."

"Where is your father?"

"Gil didn't tell me."

"When did he meet him?"

"He didn't tell me. Please don't be mad, Nick. I've told you everything
he told me."

"And a fat lot it is," I growled. "When'd he tell you this?"

"Tonight. He was telling me when you came in my room, and, honest,
that's all he told me."

I said: "It'd be swell if just once one of you people would make a clear
and complete statement about something--it wouldn't matter what."

Nora came in with the coffee. "What's worrying you now, son?" she asked.

"Things," I said, "riddles, lies, and I'm too old and too tired for them
to be any fun. Let's go back to San Francisco."

"Before New Year's?"

"Tomorrow, today."

"I'm willing." She gave me a cup. "We can fly back, if you want, and be
there for New Year's Eve."

Dorothy said tremulously: "I didn't lie to you, Nick. I told you
everything I--Please, please don't be mad with me. I'm so--" She stopped
talking to sob.

I rubbed Asta's head and groaned.

Nora said: "We're all worn out and jumpy. Let's send the pup downstairs
for the night and turn in and do our talking after we've had some rest.
Come on, Dorothy, I'll bring your coffee into the bedroom and give you
some night-clothes."

Dorothy got up, said, "Good-night," to me, "I'm sorry I'm so silly," and
followed Nora out.

When Nora returned she sat down on the floor beside me. "Our Dorry does
her share of weeping and whining," she said. "Admitting life's not too
pleasant for her just now, still..." She yawned. "What was her
fearsome secret?"

I told her what Dorothy had told me. "It sounds like a lot of hooey."

"Why?"

"Why not? Everything else we've got from them has been hooey."

Nora yawned again. "That may be good enough for a detective, but it's
not convincing enough for me. Listen, why don't we make a list of all
the suspects and all the motives and clues, and check them off
against--"

"You do it. I'm going to bed. What's a clue, Mamma?"

"It's like when Gilbert tiptoed over to the phone tonight when I was
alone in the living-room, and he thought I was asleep, and told the
operator not to put through any in-coming calls until morning."

"Well, well."

"And," she said, "it's like Dorothy discovering that she had Aunt
Alice's key all the time."

"Well, well."

"And it's like Studsy nudging Morelli under the table when he started to
tell you about the drunken cousin of--what was it?--Dick O'Brien's that
Julia Wolf knew."

I got up and put our cups on a table. "I don't see how any detective can
hope to get along without being married to you, but, just the same,
you're overdoing it. Studsy nudging Morelli is my idea of something to
spend a lot of time not worrying about. I'd rather worry about whether
they pushed Sparrow around to keep me from being hurt or to keep me from
being told something. I'm sleepy."

"So am I. Tell me something, Nick. Tell me the truth: when you were
wrestling with Mimi, didn't you have an erection?"

"Oh, a little."

She laughed and got up from the floor. "If you aren't a disgusting old
lecher," she said. "Look, it's daylight."




                                   26


Nora shook me awake at quarter past ten. "The telephone," she said.
"It's Herbert Macaulay and he says it's important."

I went into the bedroom--I had slept in the living-room--to the
telephone. Dorothy was sleeping soundly. I mumbled, "Hello," into the
telephone.

Macaulay said: "It's too early for that lunch, but I've got to see you
right away. Can I come up now?"

"Sure. Come up for breakfast."

"I've had it. Get yours and I'll be up in fifteen minutes."

"Right."

Dorothy opened her eyes less than half-way, said, "It must be late,"
sleepily, turned over, and returned to unconsciousness.

I put cold water on my face and hands, brushed my teeth and hair, and
went back to the living-room. "He's coming up," I told Nora. "He's had
breakfast, but you'd better order some coffee for him. I want chicken
livers."

"Am I invited to your party or do I--"

"Sure. You've never met Macaulay, have you? He's a pretty good guy. I
was attached to his outfit for a few days once, up around Vaux, and we
looked each other up after the war. He threw a couple of jobs my way,
including the Wynant one. How about a drop of something to cut the
phlegm?"

"Why don't you stay sober today?"

"We didn't come to New York to stay sober. Want to see a hockey game
tonight?"

"I'd like to." She poured me a drink and went to order breakfast.

I looked through the morning papers. They had the news of Jorgensen's
being picked up by the Boston police and of Nunheim's murder, but
further developments of what the tabloids called "The Hell's Kitchen
Gang War," the arrest of "Prince Mike" Gerguson, and an interview with
the "Jafsie" of the Lindbergh kidnapping negotiations got more space.

Macaulay and the bellboy who brought Asta up arrived together. Asta
liked Macaulay because when he patted her he gave her something to set
her weight against: she was never very fond of gentleness.

He had lines around his mouth this morning and some of the rosiness was
gone from his cheeks. "Where'd the police get this new line?" he asked.
"Do they think--" He broke off as Nora came in. She had dressed.

"Nora, this is Herbert Macaulay," I said. "My wife."

They shook hands and Nora said: "Nick would only let me order some
coffee for you. Can't I--"

"No, thanks, I've just finished breakfast."

I said: "Now what's this about the police?"

He hesitated.

"Nora knows practically everything I know," I assured him, "so unless
it's something you'd rather not--"

"No, no, nothing like that," he said. "It's--well--for Mrs. Charles's
sake. I don't want to cause her anxiety."

"Then out with it. She only worries about things she doesn't know.
What's the new police line?"

"Lieutenant Guild came to see me this morning," he said. "First he
showed me a piece of watch-chain with a knife attached to it and asked
me if I'd ever seen them before. I had: they were Wynant's. I told him I
thought I had: I thought they looked like Wynant's. Then he asked me if
I knew of any way in which they could have come into anybody else's
possession and, after some beating about the bush, I discovered that by
anybody else he meant you or Mimi. I told him certainly--Wynant could
have given them to either of you, you could have stolen them or found
them on the street or have been given them by somebody who stole them or
found them on the street, or you could have got them from somebody
Wynant gave them to. There were other ways, too, for you to have got
them, I told him, but he knew I was kidding him, so he wouldn't let me
tell him about them."

There were spots of color in Nora's cheeks and her eyes were dark. "The
idiot!"

"Now, now," I said. "Maybe I should have warned you--he was heading in
that direction last night. I think it's likely my old pal Mimi gave him
a prod or two. What else did he turn the searchlight on?"

"He wanted to know about--what he asked was: 'Do you figure Charles and
the Wolf dame was still playing around together? Or was that all washed
up?'"

"That's the Mimi touch, all right," I said. "What'd you tell him?"

"I told him I didn't know whether you were 'still' playing around
together because I didn't know that you had ever played around together,
and reminded him that you hadn't been living in New York for a long time
anyway."

Nora asked me: "Did you?"

I said: "Don't try to make a liar out of Mac. What'd he say to that?"

"Nothing. He asked me if I thought Jorgensen knew about you and Mimi
and, when I asked him what about you and Mimi, he accused me of acting
the innocent--they were his words--so we didn't get very far. He was
interested in the times I had seen you, also, where and when to the
exact inch and second."

"That's nice," I said. "I've got lousy alibis."

A waiter came in with our breakfast. We talked about this and that until
he had set the table and gone away.

Then Macaulay said: "You've nothing to be afraid of. I'm going to turn
Wynant over to the police." His voice was unsteady and a little choked.

"Are you sure he did it?" I asked. "I'm not."

He said simply: "I know." He cleared his throat. "Even if there was a
chance in a thousand of my being wrong--and there isn't--he's a madman,
Charles. He shouldn't be loose."

"That's probably right enough," I began, "and if you know--"

"I know," he repeated. "I saw him the afternoon he killed her; it
couldn't've been half an hour after he'd killed her, though I didn't
know that, didn't even know she'd been killed. I--well--I know it now."

"You met him in Hermann's office?"

"What?"

"You were supposed to have been in the office of a man named Hermann, on
Fifty-seventh Street, from around three o'clock till around four that
afternoon. At least, that's what the police told me."

"That's right," he said. "I mean that's the story they got. What really
happened: after I failed to find Wynant or any news of him at the Plaza
and phoned my office and Julia with no better results, I gave him up and
started walking down to Hermann's. He's a mining engineer, a client of
mine; I had just finished drawing up some articles of incorporation for
him, and there were some minor changes to be made in them. When I got to
Fifty-seventh Street I suddenly got a feeling that I was being
followed--you know the feeling. I couldn't think of any reason for
anybody shadowing me, but, still, I'm a lawyer and there might be.
Anyhow, I wanted to find out, so I turned east on Fifty-seventh and
walked over to Madison and still wasn't sure. There was a small sallow
man I thought I'd seen around the Plaza, but--The quickest way to find
out seemed to be by taking a taxi, so I did that and told the driver to
drive east. There was too much traffic there for me to see whether this
small man or anybody else took a taxi after me, so I had my driver turn
south at Third, east again on Fifty-sixth, and south again on Second
Avenue, and by that time I was pretty sure a yellow taxi was following
me. I couldn't see whether my small man was in it, of course; it wasn't
close enough for that. And at the next corner, when a red light stopped
us, I saw Wynant. He was in a taxicab going west on Fifty-fifth Street.
Naturally, that didn't surprise me very much: we were only two blocks
from Julia's and I took it for granted she hadn't wanted me to know he
was there when I phoned and that he was now on his way over to meet me
at the Plaza. He was never very punctual. So I told my driver to turn
west, but at Lexington Avenue--we were half a block behind him--Wynant's
taxicab turned south. That wasn't the way to the Plaza and wasn't even
the way to my office, so I said to hell with him and turned my attention
back to the taxi following me--and it wasn't there any more. I kept a
look-out behind all the way over to Hermann's and saw no sign at all of
anybody following me."

"What time was it when you saw Wynant?" I asked.

"It must've been fifteen or twenty minutes past three. It was twenty
minutes to four when I got to Hermann's and I imagine that was twenty or
twenty-five minutes later. Well, Hermann's secretary--Louise Jacobs, the
girl I was with when I saw you last night--told me he had been locked up
in a conference all afternoon, but would probably be through in a few
minutes, and he was, and I got through with him in ten or fifteen
minutes and went back to my office."

"I take it you weren't close enough to Wynant to see whether he looked
excited, was wearing his watch-chain, smelled of gunpowder--things like
that."

"That's right. All I saw was his profile going past, but don't think I'm
not sure it was Wynant."

"I won't. Go ahead," I said.

"He didn't phone again. I'd been back about an hour when the police
phoned--Julia was dead. Now you must understand that I didn't think
Wynant had killed her--not for a minute. You can understand that--you
still don't think he did. So when I went over there and the police began
to ask me questions about him and I could see they suspected him, I did
what ninety-nine out of a hundred lawyers would've done for their
clients--I said nothing about having seen him in that neighborhood at
about the time that the murder must have been committed. I told them
what I told you--about having the date with him and him not showing
up--and let them understand that I had gone over to Hermann's straight
from the Plaza."

"That's understandable enough," I agreed. "There was no sense in your
saying anything until you had heard his side of the story."

"Exactly and, well, the catch is I never heard his side of the story.
I'd expected him to show up, phone me, something, but he didn't--until
Tuesday, when I got that letter from him from Philadelphia, and there
was not a word in it about his failure to meet me Friday, nothing
about--but you saw the letter. What'd you think of it?"

"You mean did it sound guilty?"

"Yes."

"Not particularly," I said. "It's about what could be expected from him
if he didn't kill her--no great alarm over the police suspecting him
except as it might interfere with his work, a desire to have it all
cleaned up with no inconvenience to him--not too bright a letter to have
come from anybody else, but in line with his particular form of
goofiness. I can see him sending it off without the faintest notion that
the best thing he could do would be to account for his own actions on
the day of the murder. How sure are you he was coming from Julia's when
you saw him?"

"I'm sure now. I thought it likely at first. Then I thought he may have
been to his shop. It's on First Avenue, just a few blocks from where I
saw him, and, though it's been closed since he went away, we renewed the
lease last month and everything's there waiting for him to come back to
it, and he could have been there that afternoon. The police couldn't
find anything there to show whether he had or hadn't."

"I meant to ask you: there was some talk about his having grown
whiskers. Was he--"

"No--the same long bony face with the same ragged near-white mustache."

"Another thing: there was a fellow named Nunheim killed yesterday, a
small--"

"I'm coming to that," he said.

"I was thinking about the little fellow you thought might be shadowing
you."

Macaulay stared at me. "You mean that might've been Nunheim?"

"I don't know. I was wondering."

"And I don't know," he said. "I never saw Nunheim, far as I--"

"He was a little fellow, not more than five feet three, and would weigh
maybe a hundred and twenty. I'd say he was thirty-five or -six. Sallow,
dark hair and eyes, with the eyes set pretty close together, big mouth,
long limp nose, bat-wing ears--shifty-looking."

"That could easily be him," he said, "though I didn't get too close a
view of my man. I suppose the police would let me see him"--he
shrugged--"not that it matters now. Where was I? Oh, yes, about not
being able to get in touch with Wynant. That put me in an uncomfortable
position, since the police clearly thought I was in touch with him and
lying about it. So did you, didn't you?"

"Yes," I admitted.

"And you also, like the police, probably suspected that I _had_ met him,
either at the Plaza or later, on the day of the murder."

"It seemed possible."

"Yes. And of course you were partly right. I had at least seen him, and
seen him at a place and time that would've spelled Guilty with a capital
G to the police, so, having lied instinctively and by inference, I now
lied directly and deliberately. Hermann had been tied up in a conference
all that afternoon and didn't know how long I had been waiting to see
him. Louise Jacobs is a good friend of mine. Without going into details,
I told her she could help me help a client by saying I had arrived there
at a minute or two after three o'clock and she agreed readily enough. To
protect her in case of trouble, I told her that if anything went wrong
she could always say that she hadn't remembered what time I arrived, but
that I, the next day, had casually mentioned my arrival at that time and
she had no reason for doubting me--throwing the whole thing on me."
Macaulay took a deep breath. "None of that's important now. What's
important is that I heard from Wynant this morning."

"Another one of those screwy letters?" I asked.

"No, he phoned. I made a date with him for tonight--for you and me. I
told him you wouldn't do anything for him unless you could see him, so
he promised to meet us tonight. I'm going to take the police, of course.
I can't go on justifying my shielding him like this. I can get him an
acquittal on grounds of insanity and have him put away. That's all I can
do, all I want to do."

"Have you told the police yet?"

"No. He didn't phone till just after they'd left. Anyway, I wanted to
see you first. I wanted to tell you I hadn't forgotten what I owed you
and--"

"Nonsense," I said.

"It's not." He turned to Nora. "I don't suppose he ever told you he
saved my life once in a shell-hole in--"

"He's nuts," I told her. "He fired at a fellow and missed and I fired at
him and didn't and that's all there was to it." I addressed him again:
"Why don't you let the police wait awhile? Suppose you and I keep this
date tonight and hear what he's got to say. We can sit on him and blow
whistles when the meeting's about to break up if we're convinced he's
the murderer."

Macaulay smiled wearily. "You're still doubtful, aren't you? Well, I'm
willing to do it that way if you want, though it seems like a--But
perhaps you'll change your mind when I tell you about our telephone
conversation."

Dorothy, wearing a nightgown and a robe of Nora's, both much too long
for her, came in yawning. "Oh!" she exclaimed when she saw Macaulay, and
then, when she had recognized him, "Oh, hello, Mr. Macaulay. I didn't
know you were here. Is there any news of my father?"

He looked at me. I shook my head. He told her: "Not yet, but perhaps
we'll have some today."

I said: "Dorothy's had some, indirectly. Tell Macaulay about Gilbert."

"You mean about--about my father?" she asked hesitantly, staring at the
floor.

"Oh, dear me, no," I said.

Her face flushed and she glanced reproachfully at me; then, hastily, she
told Macaulay: "Gil saw my father yesterday and he told Gil who killed
Miss Wolf."

"What?"

She nodded four or five times, earnestly.

Macaulay looked at me with puzzled eyes.

"This doesn't have to've happened," I reminded him. "It's what Gil says
happened."

"I see. Then you think he might be--?"

"You haven't done much talking to that family since hell broke loose,
have you?" I asked.

"No."

"It's an experience. They're all sex-crazy, I think, and it backs up
into their heads. They start off--"

Dorothy said angrily: "I think you're horrid. I've done my best to--"

"What are you kicking about?" I demanded. "I'm giving you the break this
time: I'm willing to believe Gil did tell you that. Don't expect too
much of me."

Macaulay asked: "And who killed her?"

"I don't know. Gil wouldn't tell me."

"Had your brother seen him often?"

"I don't know how often. He said he had been seeing him."

"And was anything said--well--about the man Nunheim?"

"No. Nick asked me that. He didn't tell me anything else at all."

I caught Nora's eye and made signals. She stood up saying: "Let's go in
the other room, Dorothy, and give these lads a chance to do whatever it
is they think they're doing."

Dorothy went reluctantly, but she went out with Nora.

Macaulay said: "She's grown up to be something to look at." He cleared
his throat. "I hope your wife won't--"

"Forget it. Nora's all right. You started to tell me about your
conversation with Wynant."

"He phoned right after the police left and said he'd seen the ad in the
_Times_ and wanted to know what I wanted. I told him you weren't anxious
to get yourself mixed up in his troubles and had said you wouldn't touch
it at all without talking it over with him first, and we made the date
for tonight. Then he asked if I'd seen Mimi and I told him I'd seen her
once or twice since her return from Europe and had also seen his
daughter. And then he said this: 'If my wife should ask for money, give
her any sum in reason.'"

"I'll be damned," I said.

Macaulay nodded. "That's the way I felt about it. I asked him why and he
said what he'd read in the morning papers had convinced him that she was
Rosewater's dupe, not his confederate, and he had reason to believe she
was 'kindly disposed' towards him, Wynant. I began to see what he was up
to, then, and I told him she had already turned the knife and chain over
to the police. And try to guess what he said to that."

"I give up."

"He hemmed and hawed a bit--not much, mind you--and then as smooth as
you like asked: 'You mean the chain and knife on the watch I left with
Julia to be repaired?'"

I laughed. "What'd you say?"

"That stumped me. Before I could think up an answer he was saying:
'However, we can discuss that more fully when we meet tonight.' I asked
him where and when we'd meet him and he said he'd have to phone me, he
didn't know where he'd be. He's to phone me at my house at ten o'clock.
He was in a hurry now, though he had seemed leisurely enough before, and
hadn't time to answer any of the things I wanted to ask, so he hung up
and I phoned you. What do you think of his innocence now?"

"Not as much as I did," I replied slowly. "How sure are you of hearing
from him at ten tonight?"

Macaulay shrugged. "You know as much about that as I do."

"Then if I were you I wouldn't bother the police till we've grabbed our
wild man and can turn him over to them. This story of yours isn't going
to make them exactly love you and, even if they don't throw you in the
can right away, they'll make things pretty disagreeable for you if
Wynant gives us a run-around tonight."

"I know, but I'd like to get the load off my shoulders."

"A few hours more oughtn't to matter much," I said. "Did either of you
say anything about his not keeping the date at the Plaza?"

"No. I didn't get a chance to ask him. Well, if you say wait, I'll wait,
but--"

"Let's wait till tonight, anyhow, till he phones you--if he does--and
then we can make up our minds whether to take the police along."

"You don't think he'll phone?"

"I'm not too sure," I said. "He didn't keep his last date with you, and
he seems to have gone pretty vague on you as soon as he learned that
Mimi had turned in the watch-chain and knife. I wouldn't be too
optimistic about it. We'll see, though. I'd better get out to your house
at about nine o'clock, hadn't I?"

"Come for dinner."

"I can't, but I'll make it as early as I can, in case he's ahead of
time. We'll want to move fast. Where do you live?"

Macaulay gave me his address, in Scarsdale, and stood up. "Will you say
good-by to Mrs. Charles for me and thank--Oh, by the way, I hope you
didn't misunderstand me about Harrison Quinn last night. I meant only
just what I said, that I'd had bad luck taking his advice on the market.
I didn't mean to insinuate that there was anything--you know--or that he
might not've made money for his other customers."

"I understand," I said, and called Nora.

She and Macaulay shook hands and made polite speeches to each other and
he pushed Asta around a little and said, "Make it as early as you can,"
to me and went away.

"There goes the hockey game," I said, "unless you find somebody else to
go with."

"Did I miss anything?" Nora asked.

"Not much." I told her what Macaulay had told me. "And don't ask me what
I think of it. I don't know. I know Wynant's crazy, but he's not acting
like a crazy man and he's not acting like a murderer. He's acting like a
man playing some kind of game. God only knows what the game is."

"I think," she said, "that he's shielding somebody else."

"Why don't you think he did it?"

She looked surprised. "Because you don't."

I said that was a swell reason. "Who is the somebody else?"

"I don't know yet. Now don't make fun of me: I've thought about it a
lot. It wouldn't be Macaulay, because he's using him to help shield
whoever it is and--"

"And it wouldn't be me," I suggested, "because he wants to use me."

"That's right," she said, "and you're going to feel very silly if you
make fun of me and then I guess who it is before you do. And it wouldn't
be either Mimi or Jorgensen, because he tried to throw suspicion on
them. And it wouldn't be Nunheim, because he was most likely killed by
the same person and, furthermore, wouldn't have to be shielded now. And
it wouldn't be Morelli, because Wynant was jealous of him and they'd had
a row." She frowned at me. "I wish you'd found out more about that big
fat man they called Sparrow and that big red-haired woman."

"But how about Dorothy and Gilbert?"

"I wanted to ask you about them. Do you think he's got any very strong
paternal feeling for them?"

"No."

"You're probably just trying to discourage me," she said. "Well, knowing
them, it's hard to think either of them might've been guilty, but I
tried to throw out my personal feelings and stick to logic. Before I
went to sleep last night I made a list of all the--"

"There's nothing like a little logic-sticking to ward off insomnia. It's
like--"

"Don't be so damned patronizing. Your performance so far has been a
little less than dazzling."

"I didn't mean no harm," I said and kissed her. "That a new dress?"

"Ah! Changing the subject, you coward."




                                   27


I went to see Guild early in the afternoon and went to work on him as
soon as we had shaken hands. "I didn't bring my lawyer along. I thought
it looked better if I came by myself."

He wrinkled his forehead and shook his head as if I had hurt him. "Now
it was nothing like that," he said patiently.

"It was too much like that."

He sighed. "I wouldn't've thought you'd make the mistake that a lot of
people make thinking just because we--You know we got to look at every
angle, Mr. Charles."

"That sounds familiar. Well, what do you want to know?"

"All I want to know is who killed her--and him."

"Try asking Gilbert," I suggested.

Guild pursed his lips. "Why him exactly?"

"He told his sister he knew who did it, told her he got it from Wynant."

"You mean he's been seeing the old man?"

"So she says he said. I haven't had a chance to ask him about it."

He squinted his watery eyes at me. "Just what is that lay-out over
there, Mr. Charles?"

"The Jorgensen family? You probably know as much about it as I do."

"I don't," he said, "and that's a fact. I just can't size them up at
all. This Mrs. Jorgensen, now, what is she?"

"A blonde."

He nodded gloomily. "Uh-huh, and that's all I know. But look, you've
known them a long time and from what she says you and her--"

"And me and her daughter," I said, "and me and Julia Wolf and me and
Mrs. Astor. I'm hell with the women."

He held up a hand. "I'm not saying I believe everything she says, and
there's nothing to get sore about. You're taking the wrong attitude, if
you don't mind me saying it. You're acting like you thought we were out
to get you, and that's all wrong, absolutely all wrong."

"Maybe, but you've been talking double to me ever since last--"

He looked at me with steady pale eyes and said calmly: "I'm a copper and
I got my work to do."

"That's reasonable enough. You told me to come in today. What do you
want?"

"I didn't tell you to come in, I asked you."

"All right. What do you want?"

"I don't want this," he said. "I don't want anything like this. We've
been talking man to man up to this time and I'd kind of like to go on
thataway."

"You made the change."

"I don't think that's a fact. Look here, Mr. Charles, would you take
your oath, or even just tell me straight out, that you've been emptying
your pockets to me right along?"

There was no use saying yes--he would not have believed me. I said:
"Practically."

"Practically, yes," he grumbled. "Everybody's been telling me
practically the whole truth. What I want's some impractical son of a gun
that'll shoot the works."

I could sympathize with him: I knew how he felt. I said: "Maybe nobody
you've found knows the whole truth."

He made an unpleasant face. "That's very likely, ain't it? Listen, Mr.
Charles, I've talked to everybody I could find. If you can find any more
for me, I'll talk to them too. You mean Wynant? Don't you suppose we got
every facility the department's got working night and day trying to turn
him up?"

"There's his son," I suggested.

"There's his son," he agreed. He called in Andy and a swarthy bow-legged
man named Kline. "Get me that Wynant kid--the punk--I want to talk to
him." They went out. He said: "See, I want people to talk to."

I said: "Your nerves are in pretty bad shape this afternoon, aren't
they? Are you bringing Jorgensen down from Boston?"

He shrugged his big shoulders. "His story listens all right to me. I
don't know. Want to tell me what you think of it?"

"Sure."

"I'm kind of jumpy this afternoon, for a fact," he said. "I didn't get a
single solitary wink of sleep last night. It's a hell of a life. I don't
know why I stick at it. A fellow can get a piece of land and some wire
fencing and a few head of silver fox and--Well, anyways, when you people
scared Jorgensen off back in '25, he says he lit out for Germany,
leaving his wife in the lurch--though he don't say much about that--and
changing his name to give you more trouble finding him, and on the same
account he's afraid to work at his regular job--he calls himself some
kind of a technician or something--so pickings are kind of slim. He says
he worked at one thing and another, whatever he could get, but near as I
can figure out he was mostly gigoloing, if you know what I mean, and not
finding too many heavy-money dames. Well, along about '27 or '28 he's in
Milan--that's a city in Italy--and he sees in the Paris _Herald_ where
this Mimi, recently divorced wife of Clyde Miller Wynant, has arrived in
Paris. He don't know her personally and she don't know him, but he knows
she's a dizzy blonde that likes men and fun and hasn't got much sense.
He figures a bunch of Wynant's dough must've come to her with the
divorce and, the way he looks at it, any of it he could take away from
her wouldn't be any more than what Wynant had gypped him out of--he'd
only be getting some of what belonged to him. So he scrapes up the fare
to Paris and goes up there. All right so far?"

"Sounds all right."

"That's what I thought. Well, he don't have any trouble getting to know
her in Paris--either picking her up or getting somebody to introduce him
or whatever happened--and the rest of it's just as easy. She goes for
him in a big way--bing, according to him--right off the bat, and the
first thing you know she's one jump ahead of him, she's thinking about
marrying him. Naturally he don't try to talk her out of that. She'd
gotten a lump sum--two hundred thousand berries, by God!--out of Wynant
instead of alimony, so her marrying again wasn't stopping any payments,
and it'll put him right in the middle of the cash-drawer. So they do it.
According to him, it was a trick marriage up in some mountains he says
are between Spain and France and was done by a Spanish priest on what
was really French soil, which don't make it legal, but I figure he's
just trying to discourage a bigamy rap. Personally, I don't care one way
or the other. The point is he got his hands on the dough and kept them
on it till there wasn't any more dough. And all this time, understand,
he says she didn't know he was anybody but Christian Jorgensen, a fellow
she met in Paris, and still didn't know it up to the time we grabbed him
in Boston. Still sound all right?"

"Still sounds all right," I said, "except, as you say, about the
marriage, and even that could be all right."

"Uh-huh, and what difference does it make anyways? So comes the winter
and the bank-roll's getting skinny and he's getting ready to take a
run-out on her with the last of it, and then she says maybe they could
come back to America and tap Wynant for some more. He thinks that's fair
enough if it can be done, and she thinks it can be done, so they get on
a boat and--"

"The story cracks a little there," I said.

"What makes you think so? He's not figuring on going to Boston, where he
knows his first wife is, and he's figuring on keeping out of the way of
the few people that know him, including especially Wynant, and
somebody's told him there's a statute of limitation making everything
just lovely after seven years. He don't figure he's running much risk.
They ain't going to stay here long."

"I still don't like that part of his story," I insisted, "but go ahead."

"Well, the second day he's here--while they're still trying to find
Wynant--he gets a bad break. He runs into a friend of his first
wife's--this Olga Fenton--on the street and she recognizes him. He tries
to talk her out of tipping off the first wife and does manage to stall
her along a couple days with a moving-picture story he makes up--what an
imagination that guy's got!--but he don't fool her long, and she goes to
her parson and tells him about it and asks him what she ought to do and
he says she ought to tell the first wife, and so she does, and the next
time she sees Jorgensen she tells him what she'd done, and he lights out
for Boston to try to keep his wife from kicking up trouble and we pick
him up there."

"How about his visit to the hock-shop?" I asked.

"That was part of it. He says there was a train for Boston leaving in a
few minutes and he didn't have any dough with him and didn't have time
to go home for some--besides not being anxious to face the second wife
till he had the first one quieted down--and the banks were closed, so he
soaked his watch. It checks up."

"Did you see the watch?"

"I can. Why?"

"I was wondering. You don't think it was once on the other end of that
piece of chain Mimi turned over to you?"

He sat up straight. "By God!" Then he squinted at me suspiciously and
asked: "Do you know anything about it or are you--"

"No. I was just wondering. What does he say about the murders now? Who
does he think did them?"

"Wynant. He admits for a while he thought Mimi might've, but he says she
convinced him different. He claims she wouldn't tell him what she had on
Wynant. He might be just trying to cover himself up on that. I don't
guess there's any doubt about them meaning to use it to shake him down
for that money they wanted."

"Then you don't think she planted the knife and chain?"

Guild pulled down the ends of his mouth. "She could've planted them to
shake him down with. What's wrong with that?"

"It's a little complicated for a fellow like me," I said. "Find out if
Face Peppler's still in the Ohio pen?"

"Uh-huh. He gets out next week. That accounts for the diamond ring. He
had a pal of his on the outside send it to her for him. Seems they were
planning to get married and go straight together after he got out, or
some such. Anyways, the warden says he saw letters passing between them
reading like that. This Peppler won't tell the warden that he knows
anything that'll help us, and the warden don't call to mind anything
that was in their letters that's any good to us. Of course, even this
much helps some, with the motive. Say Wynant's jealous and she's wearing
this other guy's ring and getting ready to go away with him. That'll--"
he broke off to answer his telephone. "Yes," he said into it.
"Yes.... What?... Sure.... Sure, but leave somebody
there.... That's right." He pushed the telephone aside. "Another bum
steer on that West Twenty-ninth Street killing yesterday."

"Oh," I said. "I thought I heard Wynant's name. You know how some
telephone voices carry."

He blushed, cleared his throat. "Maybe something sounded like it--_why
not_, I guess. Uh-huh, that could sound like it--_why not_. I almost
forgot: we looked up that fellow Sparrow for you."

"What'd you find out?"

"It looks like there's nothing there for us. His name's Jim Brophy. It
figures out that he was making a play for that girl of Nunheim's and she
was sore at you and he was just drunk enough to think he could put
himself in solid with her by taking a poke at you."

"A nice idea," I said. "I hope you didn't make any trouble for Studsy."

"A friend of yours? He's an ex-con, you know, with a record as long as
your arm."

"Sure. I sent him over once." I started to gather up my hat and
overcoat. "You're busy. I'll run along and--"

"No, no," he said. "Stick around if you got the time. I got a couple
things coming in that'll maybe interest you, and you can give me a hand
with that Wynant kid, too, maybe."

I sat down again.

"Maybe you'd like a drink," he suggested, opening a drawer of his desk,
but I had never had much luck with policemen's liquor, so I said: "No,
thanks."

His telephone rang again and he said into it: "Yes.... Yes....
That's all right. Come on in." This time no words leaked out to me.

He rocked back in his chair and put his feet on his desk. "Listen, I'm
on the level about that silver fox farming and I want to ask you what
you think of California for a place."

I was trying to decide whether to tell him about the lion and ostrich
farms in the lower part of the state when the door opened and a fat
red-haired man brought Gilbert Wynant in. One of Gilbert's eyes was
completely shut by swollen flesh around it and his left knee showed
through a tear in his pants-leg.




                                   28


I said to Guild: "When you say bring 'em in, they bring 'em in, don't
they?"

"Wait," he told me. "This is more'n you think." He addressed the fat
red-haired man: "Go ahead, Flint, let's have it."

Flint wiped his mouth with the back of a hand. "He's a wildcat for fair,
the young fellow. He don't look tough, but, man, he didn't want to come
along, I can tell you that. And can he run!"

Guild growled: "You're a hero and I'll see the Commissioner about your
medal right away, but never mind that now. Talk turkey."

"I wasn't saying I did anything great," Flint protested. "I was just--"

"I don't give a damn what you did," Guild said. "I want to know what he
did."

"Yes, sir, I was getting to that. I relieved Morgan at eight o'clock
this morning and everything went along smooth and quiet as per usual,
with not a creature was stirring, as the fellow says, till along about
ten minutes after two, and then what do I hear but a key in the lock."
He sucked in his lips and gave us a chance to express our amazement.

"The Wolf dame's apartment," Guild explained to me. "I had a hunch."

"And what a hunch!" Flint exclaimed, practically top-heavy with
admiration. "Man, what a hunch!" Guild glared at him and he went on
hastily: "Yes, sir, a key, and then the door opens and this young fellow
comes in." He grinned proudly, affectionately, at Gilbert. "Scared
stiff, he looked, and when I went for him he was out and away like a
streak and it wasn't till the first floor that I caught him, and then,
by golly, he put up a tussle and I had to bat him in the eye to tone him
down. He don't look tough, but--"

"What'd he do in the apartment?" Guild asked.

"He didn't have a chance to do nothing. I--"

"You mean you jumped him without waiting to see what he was up to?"
Guild's neck bulged over the edge of his collar, and his face was as red
as Flint's hair.

"I thought it was best not to take no chances."

Guild stared at me with angry incredulous eyes. I did my best to keep my
face blank. He said in a choking voice: "That'll do, Flint. Wait
outside."

The red-haired man seemed puzzled. He said, "Yes, sir," slowly. "Here's
his key." He put the key on Guild's desk and went to the door. There he
twisted his head over a shoulder to say: "He claims he's Clyde Wynant's
son." He laughed merrily.

Guild, still having trouble with his voice, said: "Oh, he does, does
he?"

"Yeah. I seen him somewhere before. I got an idea he used to belong to
Big Shorty Dolan's mob. Seems to me I used to see him around--"

"Get out!" Guild snarled, and Flint got out. Guild groaned from deep
down in his big body. "That mug gets me. Big Shorty Dolan's mob.
Christ." He shook his head hopelessly and addressed Gilbert: "Well,
son?"

Gilbert said: "I know I shouldn't've done it."

"That's a fair start," Guild said genially. His face was becoming normal
again. "We all make mistakes. Pull yourself up a chair and let's see
what we can do about getting you out of the soup. Want anything for that
eye?"

"No, thank you, it's quite all right." Gilbert moved a chair two or
three inches towards Guild and sat down.

"Did that bum smack you just to be doing something?"

"No, no, it was my fault. I--I did resist."

"Oh, well," Guild said, "nobody likes to be arrested, I guess. Now
what's the trouble?"

Gilbert looked at me with his one good eye.

"You're in as bad a hole as Lieutenant Guild wants to put you," I told
him. "You'll make it easy for yourself by making it easy for him."

Guild nodded earnestly. "And that's a fact." He settled himself
comfortably in his chair and asked, in a friendly tone: "Where'd you get
the key?"

"My father sent it to me in his letter." He took a white envelope from
his pocket and gave it to Guild.

I went around behind Guild and looked at the envelope over his shoulder.
The address was typewritten, _Mr. Gilbert Wynant, The Courtland_, and
there was no postage stamp stuck on it.

"When'd you get it?" I asked.

"It was at the desk when I got in last night, around ten o'clock. I
didn't ask the clerk how long it had been there, but I don't suppose it
was there when I went out with you, or they'd have given it to me."

Inside the envelope were two sheets of paper covered with the familiar
unskillful typewriting. Guild and I read together:

    _Dear Gilbert_:

    _If all these years have gone by without my having communicated
    with you, it is only because your mother wished it so and if now
    I break this silence with a request for your assistance it is
    because only great need could make me go against your mother's
    wishes. Also you are a man now and I feel that you yourself are
    the one to decide whether or not we should go on being strangers
    or whether we should act in accordance with our ties of blood.
    That I am in an embarrassing situation now in connection with
    Julia Wolf's so-called murder I think you know and I trust that
    you still have remaining enough affection for me to at least
    hope that I am in all ways guiltless of any complicity therein,
    which is indeed the case. I turn to you now for help in
    demonstrating my innocence once and for all to the police and to
    the world with every confidence that even could I not count on
    your affection for me I nevertheless could count on your natural
    desire to do anything within your power to keep unblemished the
    name that is yours and your sister's as well as your Father's. I
    turn to you also because while I have a lawyer who is able and
    who believes in my innocence and who is leaving no stone
    unturned to prove it and have hopes of engaging Mr. Nick Charles
    to assist him I cannot ask either of them to undertake what is
    after all a patently illegal act nor do I know anybody else
    except you that I dare confide in. What I wish you to do is
    this, tomorrow go to Julia Wolf's apartment at 411 East 54th St.
    to which the enclosed key will admit you and between the pages
    of a book called_ The Grand Manner _you will find a certain
    paper or statement which you are to read and destroy
    immediately. You are to be sure you destroy it completely
    leaving not so much as an ash and when you have read it you will
    know why this must be done and will understand why I have
    entrusted this task to you. In the event that something should
    develop to make a change in our plans advisable I will call you
    on the telephone late tonight. If you do not hear from me I will
    telephone you tomorrow evening to learn if you have carried out
    my instructions and to make arrangements for a meeting. I have
    every confidence that you will realize the tremendous
    responsibility I am placing on your shoulders and that my
    confidence is not misplaced._

                                               _Affectionately_,
                                                     _Your Father_

Wynant's sprawling signature was written in ink beneath "Your Father."

Guild waited for me to say something. I waited for him. After a little
of that he asked Gilbert: "And did he phone?"

"No, sir."

"How do you know?" I asked. "Didn't you tell the operator not to put any
calls through?"

"I--yes, I did. I was afraid you'd find out who it was if he called up
while you were there, but he'd've left some kind of message with the
operator, I think, and he didn't."

"Then you haven't been seeing him?"

"No."

"And he didn't tell you who killed Julia Wolf?"

"No."

"You were lying to Dorothy?"

He lowered his head and nodded at the floor. "I was--it was--I suppose
it was jealousy really." He looked up at me now and his face was pink.
"You see, Dorry used to look up to me and think I knew more than anybody
else about almost everything and--you know--she'd come to me if there
was anything she wanted to know and she always did what I told her, and
then, when she got to seeing you, it was different. She looked up to you
and respected you more--She naturally would, I mean, she'd've been silly
if she hadn't, because there's no comparison, of course, but I--I
suppose I was jealous and resented--well, not exactly resented it,
because I looked up to you too--but I wanted to do something to impress
her again--show off, I guess you'd call it--and when I got that letter I
pretended I'd been seeing my father and he'd told me who committed those
murders, so she'd think I knew things even you didn't." He stopped, out
of breath, and wiped his face with a handkerchief.

I outwaited Guild again until presently he said: "Well, I guess there
ain't been a great deal of harm done, sonny, if you're sure you ain't
doing harm by holding back some other things we ought to know."

The boy shook his head. "No, sir, I'm not holding back anything."

"You don't know anything about that knife and chain your mother give
us?"

"No, sir, and I didn't know a thing about it till after she had given it
to you."

"How is she?" I asked.

"Oh, she's all right, I think, though she said she was going to stay in
bed today."

Guild narrowed his eyes. "What's the matter with her?"

"Hysteria," I told him. "She and the daughter had a row last night and
she blew up."

"A row about what?"

"God knows--one of those feminine brain-storms."

Guild said, "Hm-m-m," and scratched his chin.

"Was Flint right in saying you didn't get a chance to hunt for your
paper?" I asked the boy.

"Yes. I hadn't even had time to shut the door when he ran at me."

"They're grand detectives I got working for me," Guild growled. "Didn't
he yell, 'Boo!' when he jumped out at you? Never mind. Well, son, I can
do one of two things, and the which depends on you. I can hold you for a
while or I can let you go in exchange for a promise that you'll let me
know as soon as your father gets in touch with you and let me know what
he tells you and where he wants you to meet him, if any."

I spoke before Gilbert could speak: "You can't ask that of him, Guild.
It's his own father."

"I can't, huh?" He scowled at me. "Ain't it for his father's good if
he's innocent?"

I said nothing.

Guild's face cleared slowly. "All right, then, son, suppose I put you on
a kind of parole. If your father or anybody else asks you to do
anything, will you promise to tell them you can't because you give me
your word of honor you wouldn't?"

The boy looked at me.

I said: "That sounds reasonable."

Gilbert said: "Yes, sir, I'll give you my word."

Guild made a large gesture with one hand. "Oke. Run along."

The boy stood up saying: "Thank you very much, sir." He turned to me.
"Are you going to be--"

"Wait for me outside," I told him, "if you're not in a hurry."

"I will. Good-by, Lieutenant Guild, and thank you." He went out.

Guild grabbed his telephone and ordered _The Grand Manner_ and its
contents found and brought to him. That done, he clasped his hands
behind his head and rocked back in his chair. "So what?"

"It's anybody's guess," I said.

"Look here, you don't still think Wynant didn't do it?"

"What difference does it make what I think? You've got plenty on him now
with what Mimi gave you."

"It makes a lot of difference," he assured me. "I'd like a lot to know
what you think and why."

"My wife thinks he's trying to cover up somebody else."

"Is that so? Hm-m-m. I was never one to belittle women's intuition and,
if you don't mind me saying so, Mrs. Charles is a mighty smart woman.
Who does she think it is?"

"She hadn't decided, the last I heard."

He sighed. "Well, maybe that paper he sent the kid for will tell us
something."

But the paper told us nothing that afternoon: Guild's men could not find
it, could not find a copy of _The Grand Manner_ in the dead woman's
rooms.




                                   29


Guild had red-haired Flint in again and put the thumb-screws on him. The
red-haired man sweat away ten pounds, but he stuck to it that Gilbert
had had no opportunity to disturb anything in the apartment and
throughout Flint's guardianship nobody hadn't touched nothing. He did
not remember having seen a book called _The Grand Manner_, but he was
not a man you would expect to memorize book titles. He tried to be
helpful and made idiotic suggestions until Guild chased him out.

"The kid's probably waiting for me outside," I said, "if you think
talking to him again will do any good."

"Do you?"

"No."

"Well, then. But, by God, somebody took that book and I'm going to--"

"Why?" I asked.

"Why what?"

"Why'd it have to be there for somebody to take?"

Guild scratched his chin. "Just what do you mean by that?"

"He didn't meet Macaulay at the Plaza the day of the murder, he didn't
commit suicide in Allentown, he says he only got a thousand from Julia
Wolf when we thought he was getting five thousand, he says they were
just friends when we think they were lovers, he disappoints us too much
for me to have much confidence in what he says."

"It's a fact," Guild said, "that I'd understand it better if he'd either
come in or run away. Him hanging around like this, just messing things
up, don't fit in anywheres that I can see."

"Are you watching his shop?"

"We're kind of keeping an eye on it. Why?"

"I don't know," I said truthfully, "except that he's pointed his finger
at a lot of things that got us nowhere. Maybe we ought to pay some
attention to the things he hasn't pointed at, and the shop's one of
them."

Guild said: "Hm-m-m."

I said, "I'll leave you with that bright thought," and put on my hat and
coat. "Suppose I wanted to get hold of you late at night, how would I
reach you?"

He gave me his telephone number, we shook hands, and I left.

Gilbert Wynant was waiting for me in the corridor. Neither of us said
anything until we were in a taxicab. Then he asked: "He thinks I was
telling the truth, doesn't he?"

"Sure. Weren't you?"

"Oh, yes, but people don't always believe you. You won't say anything to
Mamma about this, will you?"

"Not if you don't want me to."

"Thank you," he said. "In your opinion, is there more opportunity for a
young man out West than here in the East?"

I thought of him working on Guild's fox farm while I replied: "Not now.
Thinking of going west?"

"I don't know. I want to do something." He fidgeted with his necktie.
"You'll think it's a funny question: is there much incest?"

"There's some," I told him; "that's why they've got a name for it."

His face flushed.

I said: "I'm not making fun of you. It's one of the things nobody knows.
There's no way of finding out."

We had a couple of blocks of silence after that. Then he said: "There's
another funny question I'd like to ask you: what do you think of me?" He
was more self-conscious about it than Alice Quinn had been.

"You're all right," I told him, "and you're all wrong."

He looked away, out the window. "I'm so awfully young."

We had some more silence. Then he coughed and a little blood trickled
from one corner of his mouth.

"That guy did hurt you," I said.

He nodded shamefacedly and put his handkerchief to his mouth. "I'm not
very strong."

At the Courtland he would not let me help him out of the taxicab and he
insisted he could manage alone, but I went upstairs with him, suspecting
that otherwise he would say nothing to anybody about his condition.

I rang the apartment bell before he could get his key out, and Mimi
opened the door. She goggled at his black eye.

I said: "He's hurt. Get him to bed and get him a doctor."

"What happened?"

"Wynant sent him into something."

"Into what?"

"Never mind that until we get him fixed up."

"But Clyde was here," she said. "That's why I phoned you."

"What?"

"He was." She nodded vigorously. "And he asked where Gil was. He was
here for an hour or more. He hasn't been gone ten minutes."

"All right, let's get him to bed."

Gilbert stubbornly insisted that he needed no help, so I left him in the
bedroom with his mother and went out to the telephone.

"Any calls?" I asked Nora when I had her on the line.

"Yes, sir. Messrs. Macaulay and Guild want you to phone them, and
Mesdames Jorgensen and Quinn want you to phone them. No children so
far."

"When did Guild call?"

"About five minutes ago. Mind eating alone? Larry asked me to go see the
new Osgood Perkins show with him."

"Go ahead. See you later."

I called up Herbert Macaulay.

"The date's off," he told me. "I heard from our friend and he's up to
God knows what. Listen, Charles, I'm going to the police. I've had
enough of it."

"I guess there's nothing else to do now," I said. "I was thinking about
telephoning some policemen myself. I'm at Mimi's. He was here a few
minutes ago. I just missed him."

"What was he doing there?"

"I'm going to try to find out now."

"Were you serious about phoning the police?"

"Sure."

"Then suppose you do that and I'll come on over."

"Right. Be seeing you."

I called up Guild.

"A little news came in right after you left," he said. "Are you where I
can give it to you?"

"I'm at Mrs. Jorgensen's. I had to bring the kid home. That red-head lad
of yours has got him bleeding somewhere inside."

"I'll kill that mug," he snarled. "Then I better not talk."

"I've got some news, too. Wynant was here for about an hour this
afternoon, according to Mrs. Jorgensen, and left only a few minutes
before I got here."

There was a moment of silence, then he said: "Hold everything. I'll be
right up."

Mimi came into the living-room while I was looking up the Quinns'
telephone number. "Do you think he's seriously hurt?" she asked.

"I don't know, but you ought to get your doctor right away." I pushed
the telephone towards her. When she was through with it, I said: "I told
the police Wynant had been here."

She nodded. "That's what I phoned you for, to ask if I ought to tell
them."

"I phoned Macaulay, too. He's coming over."

"He can't do anything," she said indignantly. "Clyde gave them to me of
his own free will--they're mine."

"What's yours?"

"Those bonds, the money."

"What bonds? what money?"

She went to the table and pulled the drawer out. "See?"

Inside were three packages of bonds held together by thick rubber bands.
Across the top of them lay a pink check on the Park Avenue Trust Company
to the order of Mimi Jorgensen for ten thousand dollars, signed Clyde
Miller Wynant, and dated January 3, 1933.

"Dated five days ahead," I said. "What kind of nonsense is that?"

"He said he hadn't that much in his account and might not be able to
make a deposit for a couple of days."

"There's going to be hell about this," I warned her. "I hope you're
ready for it."

"I don't see why," she protested. "I don't see why my husband--my former
husband--can't provide for me and his children if he wants to."

"Cut it out. What'd you sell him?"

"Sell him?"

"Uh-huh. What'd you promise to do in the next few days or he fixes it so
the check's no good?"

She made an impatient face. "Really, Nick, I think you're a half-wit
sometimes with your silly suspicions."

"I'm studying to be one. Three more lessons and I get my diploma. But
remember I warned you yesterday that you'll probably wind up in--"

"Stop it," she cried. She put a hand over my mouth. "Do you have to keep
saying that? You know it terrifies me and--" Her voice became soft and
wheedling. "You must know what I'm going through these days, Nick. Can't
you be a little kinder?"

"Don't worry about me," I said. "Worry about the police." I went back to
the telephone and called up Alice Quinn. "This is Nick. Nora said you--"

"Yes. Have you seen Harrison?"

"Not since I left him with you."

"Well, if you do, you won't say anything about what I said last night,
will you? I didn't mean it, really I didn't mean a word of it."

"I didn't think you did," I assured her, "and I wouldn't say anything
about it anyway. How's he feeling today?"

"He's gone," she said.

"What?"

"He's gone. He's left me."

"He's done that before. He'll be back."

"I know, but I'm afraid this time. He didn't go to his office. I hope
he's just drunk somewhere and--but this time I'm afraid. Nick, do you
think he's really in love with that girl?"

"He seems to think he is."

"Did he tell you he was?"

"That wouldn't mean anything."

"Do you think it would do any good to have a talk with her?"

"No."

"Why don't you? Do you think she's in love with him?"

"No."

"What's the matter with you?" she asked irritably.

"No, I'm not home."

"What? Oh, you mean you're some place where you can't talk?"

"That's it."

"Are you--are you at her house?"

"Yes."

"Is she there?"

"No."

"Do you think she's with him?"

"I don't know. I don't think so."

"Will you call me when you can talk, or, better still, will you come up
to see me?"

"Sure," I promised, and we hung up.

Mimi was looking at me with amusement in her blue eyes. "Somebody's
taking my brat's affairs seriously?" When I did not answer her, she
laughed and asked: "Is Dorry still being the maiden in distress?"

"I suppose so."

"She will be, too, as long as she can get anybody to believe in it. And
you, of all people, to be fooled, you who are afraid to believe
that--well--that I, for instance, am ever telling the truth."

"That's a thought," I said. The doorbell rang before I could go on.

Mimi let the doctor in--he was a roly-poly elderly man with a stoop and
a waddle--and took him in to Gilbert.

I opened the table-drawer again and looked at the bonds, Postal
Telegraph & Cable 5s, Sao Paulo City 6s, American Type Founders 6s,
Certain-teed Products 5s, Upper Austria 6s, United Drugs 5s,
Philippine Railway 4s, Tokio Electric Lighting 6s, about sixty thousand
dollars at face value, I judged, and--guessing--between a quarter and a
third of that at the market.

When the doorbell rang I shut the drawer and let Macaulay in.

He looked tired. He sat down without taking off his overcoat and said:
"Well, tell me the worst. What was he up to here?"

"I don't know yet, except that he gave Mimi some bonds and a check."

"I know that." He fumbled in his pocket and gave me a letter:

    _Dear Herbert_:

    _I am today giving Mrs. Mimi Jorgensen the securities listed
    below and a ten thousand dollar check on the Park Ave. Trust
    dated Jan. 3. Please arrange to have sufficient money there on
    that date to cover it. I would suggest that you sell some more
    of the public utility bonds, but use your own judgment. I find
    that I cannot spend any more time in New York at present and
    probably will not be able to get back here for several months,
    but will communicate with you from time to time. I am sorry I
    will not be able to wait over to see you and Charles tonight._

                                                          _Yours truly_,
                                                   _Clyde Miller Wynant_

Under the sprawling signature was a list of the bonds.

"How'd it come to you?" I asked.

"By messenger. What do you suppose he was paying her for?"

I shook my head. "I tried to find out. She said he was 'providing for
her and his children.'"

"That's likely, as likely as that she'd tell the truth."

"About these bonds?" I asked. "I thought you had all his property in
your hands."

"I thought so too, but I didn't have these, didn't know he had them." He
put his elbows on his knees, his head in his hands. "If all the things I
don't know were laid end to end...."




                                   30


Mimi came in with the doctor, said, "Oh, how do you do," a little
stiffly to Macaulay, and shook hands with him. "This is Doctor Grant,
Mr. Macaulay, Mr. Charles."

"How's the patient?" I asked.

Doctor Grant cleared his throat and said he didn't think there was
anything seriously the matter with Gilbert, effects of a beating, slight
hemorrhage of course, should rest, though. He cleared his throat again
and said he was happy to have met us, and Mimi showed him out.

"What happened to the boy?" Macaulay asked me.

"Wynant sent him on a wild-goose chase over to Julia's apartment and he
ran into a tough copper."

Mimi returned from the door. "Has Mr. Charles told you about the bonds
and the check?" she asked.

"I had a note from Mr. Wynant saying he was giving them to you,"
Macaulay said.

"Then there will be no--"

"Difficulty? Not that I know of."

She relaxed a little and her eyes lost some of their coldness. "I didn't
see why there should be, but he"--pointing at me--"likes to frighten
me."

Macaulay smiled politely. "May I ask whether Mr. Wynant said anything
about his plans?"

"He said something about going away, but I don't suppose I was listening
very attentively. I don't remember whether he told me when he was going
or where."

I grunted to show skepticism; Macaulay pretended he believed her. "Did
he say anything that you could repeat to me about Julia Wolf, or about
his difficulties, or about anything connected with the murder and all?"
he asked.

She shook her head emphatically. "Not a word I could either repeat or
couldn't, not a word at all. I asked him about it, but you know how
unsatisfactory he can be when he wants. I couldn't get as much as a
grunt out of him about it."

I asked the question Macaulay seemed too polite to ask: "What did he
talk about?"

"Nothing, really, except ourselves and the children, particularly Gil.
He was very anxious to see him and waited nearly an hour, hoping he'd
come home. He asked about Dorry, but didn't seem very interested."

"Did he say anything about having written Gilbert?"

"Not a word. I can repeat our whole conversation, if you want me to. I
didn't know he was coming, he didn't even phone from downstairs. The
doorbell just rang and when I went to the door there he was, looking a
lot older than when I'd seen him last and even thinner, and I said, 'Why
Clyde!' or something like that, and he said: 'Are you alone?' I told him
I was and he came in. Then he--"

The doorbell rang and she went to answer it.

"What do you think of it?" Macaulay asked in a low voice.

"When I start believing Mimi," I said, "I hope I have sense enough not
to admit it."

She returned from the door with Guild and Andy. Guild nodded to me and
shook hands with Macaulay, then turned to Mimi and said: "Well, ma'am,
I'll have to ask you to tell--"

Macaulay interrupted him: "Suppose you let me tell what I have to tell
first, Lieutenant. It belongs ahead of Mrs. Jorgensen's story and--"

Guild waved a big hand at the lawyer. "Go ahead." He sat down on an end
of the sofa.

Macaulay told him what he had told me that morning. When he mentioned
having told it to me that morning Guild glanced bitterly at me, once,
and thereafter ignored me completely. Guild did not interrupt Macaulay,
who told his story clearly and concisely. Twice Mimi started to say
something, but each time broke off to listen. When Macaulay had
finished, he handed Guild the note about the bonds and check. "That came
by messenger this afternoon."

Guild read the note very carefully and addressed Mimi: "Now then, Mrs.
Jorgensen."

She told him what she had told us about Wynant's visit, elaborating the
details as he patiently questioned her, but sticking to her story that
he had refused to say a word about anything connected with Julia Wolf or
her murder, that in giving her the bonds and check he had simply said
that he wished to provide for her and the children, and that though he
had said he was going away she did not know where or when. She seemed
not at all disturbed by everybody's obvious disbelief. She wound up
smiling, saying: "He's a sweet man in a lot of ways, but quite mad."

"You mean he's really insane, do you?" Guild asked; "not just nutty?"

"Yes."

"What makes you think that?"

"Oh, you'd have to live with him to really know how mad he is," she
replied airily.

Guild seemed dissatisfied. "What kind of clothes was he wearing?"

"A brown suit and brown overcoat and hat and I think brown shoes and a
white shirt and a grayish necktie with either red or reddish brown
figures in it."

Guild jerked his head at Andy. "Tell 'em."

Andy went out.

Guild scratched his jaw and frowned thoughtfully. The rest of us watched
him. When he stopped scratching, he looked at Mimi and Macaulay, but not
at me, and asked: "Any of you know anybody that's got the initials of D.
W. Q.?"

Macaulay shook his head from side to side slowly.

Mimi said: "No. Why?"

Guild looked at me now. "Well?"

"I don't know them."

"Why?" Mimi repeated.

Guild said: "Try to remember back. He'd most likely've had dealings with
Wynant."

"How far back?" Macaulay asked.

"That's hard to say right now. Maybe a few months, maybe a few years.
He'd be a pretty large man, big bones, big belly, and maybe lame."

Macaulay shook his head again. "I don't remember anybody like that.

"Neither do I," Mimi said, "but I'm bursting with curiosity. I wish
you'd tell us what it's all about."

"Sure, I'll tell you." Guild took a cigar from his vest pocket, looked
at it and returned it to the pocket. "A dead man like that's buried
under the floor of Wynant's shop."

I said: "Ah."

Mimi put both hands to her mouth and said nothing. Her eyes were round
and glassy.

Macaulay, frowning, asked: "Are you sure?"

Guild sighed. "Now you know that ain't something anybody would guess
at," he said wearily.

Macaulay's face flushed and he smiled sheepishly. "That was a silly
question. How did you happen to find him--it?"

"Well, Mr. Charles here kept hinting that we ought to pay more attention
to that shop, so, figuring that Mr. Charles here is a man that's liable
to know a lot more things than he tells anybody right out, I sent some
men around this morning to see what they could find. We'd give it the
once over before and hadn't turned up nothing, but this time I told 'em
to take the dump apart, because Mr. Charles here had said we ought to
pay more attention to it. And Mr. Charles here was right." He looked at
me with cool unfriendliness. "By and by they found a corner of the
cement floor looking a little newer maybe than the rest and they cracked
it and there was the mortal remains of Mr. D. W. Q. What do you think of
that?"

Macaulay said: "I think it was a damned good guess of Charles's." He
turned to me. "How did you--"

Guild interrupted him. "I don't think you ought to say that. When you
call it just a guess, you ain't giving Mr. Charles here the proper
credit for being as smart as he is."

Macaulay was puzzled by Guild's tone. He looked questioningly at me.

"I'm being stood in the corner for not telling Lieutenant Guild about
our conversation this morning," I explained.

"There's that," Guild agreed calmly, "among other things."

Mimi laughed, and smiled apologetically at Guild when he stared at her.

"How was Mr. D. W. Q. killed?" I asked.

Guild hesitated, as if making up his mind whether to reply, then moved
his big shoulders slightly and said: "I don't know yet, or how long ago.
I haven't seen the remains yet, what there is of them, and the Medical
Examiner wasn't through the last I heard."

"What there is of them?" Macaulay repeated.

"Uh-huh. He'd been sawed up in pieces and buried in lime or something so
there wasn't much flesh left on him, according to the report I got, but
his clothes had been stuck in with him rolled up in a bundle, and enough
was left of the inside ones to tell us something. There was part of a
cane, too, with a rubber tip. That's why we thought he might be lame,
and we--" He broke off as Andy came in. "Well?"

Andy shook his head gloomily. "Nobody sees him come, nobody sees him go.
What was that joke about a guy being so thin he had to stand in the same
place twice to throw a shadow?"

I laughed--not at the joke--and said: "Wynant's not that thin, but he's
thin enough, say as thin as the paper in that check and in those letters
people have been getting."

"What's that?" Guild demanded, his face reddening, his eyes angry and
suspicious.

"He's dead. He's been dead a long time except on paper. I'll give you
even money they're his bones in the grave with the fat lame man's
clothes."

Macaulay leaned towards me. "Are you sure of that, Charles?"

Guild snarled at me: "What are you trying to pull?"

"There's the bet if you want it. Who'd go to all that trouble with a
corpse and then leave the easiest thing of all to get rid of--the
clothes--untouched unless they--"

"But they weren't untouched. They--"

"Of course not. That wouldn't look right. They'd have to be partly
destroyed, only enough left to tell you what they were supposed to tell.
I bet the initials were plenty conspicuous."

"I don't know," Guild said with less heat. "They were on a belt buckle."

I laughed.

Mimi said angrily: "That's ridiculous, Nick. How could that be Clyde?
You know he was here this afternoon. You know he--"

"Sh-h-h. It's very silly of you to play along with him," I told her.
"Wynant's dead, your children are probably his heirs, that's more money
than you've got over there in the drawer. What do you want to take part
of the loot for when you can get it all?"

"I don't know what you mean," she said. She was very pale.

Macaulay said: "Charles thinks Wynant wasn't here this afternoon and
that you were given those securities and the check by somebody else, or
perhaps stole them yourself. Is that it?" he asked me.

"Practically."

"But that's ridiculous," she insisted.

"Be sensible, Mimi," I said. "Suppose Wynant was killed three months ago
and his corpse disguised as somebody else. He's supposed to have gone
away leaving powers of attorney with Macaulay. All right, then, the
estate's completely in Macaulay's hands for ever and ever, or at least
until he finishes plundering it, because you can't even--"

Macaulay stood up saying: "I don't know what you're getting at, Charles,
but I'm--"

"Take it easy," Guild told him. "Let him have his say out."

"He killed Wynant and he killed Julia and he killed Nunheim," I assured
Mimi. "What do you want to do? Be next on the list? You ought to know
damned well that once you've come to his aid by saying you've seen
Wynant alive--because that's his weak spot, being the only person up to
now who claims to have seen Wynant since October--he's not going to take
any chances on having you change your mind--not when it's only a matter
of knocking you off with the same gun and putting the blame on Wynant.
And what are you doing it for? For those few crummy bonds in the drawer,
a fraction of what you get your hands on through your children if we
prove Wynant's dead."

Mimi turned to Macaulay and said: "You son of a bitch."

Guild gaped at her, more surprised by that than by anything else that
had been said.

Macaulay started to move. I did not wait to see what he meant to do but
slammed his chin with my left fist. The punch was all right, it landed
solidly and dropped him, but I felt a burning sensation on my left side
and knew I had torn the bullet-wound open.

"What do you want me to do?" I growled at Guild. "Put him in Cellophane
for you?"




                                   31


It was nearly three in the morning when I let myself into our apartment
at the Normandie. Nora, Dorothy, and Larry Crowley were in the
living-room, Nora and Larry playing backgammon, Dorothy reading a
newspaper.

"Did Macaulay really kill them?" Nora asked immediately.

"Yes. Did the morning papers have anything about Wynant?"

Dorothy said: "No, just about Macaulay being arrested. Why?"

"Macaulay killed him too."

Nora said, "Really?" Larry said, "I'll be damned." Dorothy began to cry.
Nora looked at Dorothy in surprise.

Dorothy sobbed: "I want to go home to Mamma."

Larry said not very eagerly: "I'll be glad to take you home if..."

Dorothy said she wanted to go. Nora fussed over her, but did not try to
talk her out of going. Larry, trying not to look too unwilling, found
his hat and coat. He and Dorothy left.

Nora shut the door behind them and leaned against it. "Explain that to
me, Mr. Charalambides," she said.

I shook my head.

She sat on the sofa beside me. "Now out with it. If you skip a single
word, I'll--"

"I'd have to have a drink before I could do any talking."

She cursed me and brought me a drink. "Has he confessed?"

"Why should he? You can't plead guilty of murder in the first degree.
There were too many murders--and at least two of them were too obviously
done in cold blood--for the District Attorney to let him plead guilty of
second-degree murder. There's nothing for him to do but fight it out."

"But he did commit them?"

"Sure."

She pushed my glass down from my mouth. "Stop stalling and tell me about
it."

"Well, it figures out that he and Julia had been gypping Wynant for some
time. He'd dropped a lot of money in the market and he'd found out about
her past--as Morelli hinted--and the pair of them teamed up on the old
man. We're sicking accountants on Macaulay's books and Wynant's and
shouldn't have much trouble tracing some of the loot from one to the
other."

"Then you don't know positively that he was robbing Wynant?"

"Sure we know. It doesn't click any other way. The chances are Wynant
was going away on a trip the 3rd of October, because he did draw five
thousand dollars out of the bank in cash, but he didn't close up his
shop and give up his apartment. That was done by Macaulay a few days
later. Wynant was killed at Macaulay's in Scarsdale on the night of the
3rd. We know that because on the morning of the 4th, when Macaulay's
cook, who slept at home, came to work, Macaulay met her at the door with
some kind of trumped-up complaint and two weeks' wages and fired her on
the spot, not letting her in the house to find any corpses or
bloodstains."

"How did you find that out? Don't skip details."

"Ordinary routine. Naturally after we grabbed him we went to his office
and house to see what we could find out--you know,
where-were-you-on-the-night-of-June-6, 1894-stuff--and the present cook
said she'd only been working for him since the 8th of October, and that
led to that. We also found a table with a very faint trace of what we
hope is human blood not quite scrubbed out. The scientific boys are
making shavings of it now to see if they can soak out any results for
us." (It turned out to be beef blood.)

"Then you're not sure he--"

"Stop saying that. Of course we're sure. That's the only way it clicks.
Wynant had found out that Julia and Macaulay were gypping him and also
thought, rightly or wrongly, that Julia and Macaulay were cheating on
him--and we know he was jealous--so he went up there to confront him
with whatever proof he had, and Macaulay, with prison looking him in the
face, killed the old man. Now don't say we're not sure. It doesn't make
any sense otherwise. Well, there he is with a corpse, one of the harder
things to get rid of. Can I stop to take a swallow of whisky?"

"Just one," Nora said. "But this is just a theory, isn't it?"

"Call it any name you like. It's good enough for me."

"But I thought everybody was supposed to be considered innocent until
they were proved guilty and if there was any reasonable doubt, they--"

"That's for juries, not detectives. You find the guy you think did the
murder and you slam him in the can and let everybody know you think he's
guilty and put his picture all over newspapers, and the District
Attorney builds up the best theory he can on what information you've got
and meanwhile you pick up additional details here and there, and people
who recognize his picture in the paper--as well as people who'd think he
was innocent if you hadn't arrested him--come in and tell you things
about him and presently you've got him sitting on the electric chair."
(Two days later a woman in Brooklyn identified Macaulay as a George
Foley who for the past three months had been renting an apartment from
her.)

"But that seems so loose."

"When murders are committed by mathematics," I said, "you can solve them
by mathematics. Most of them aren't and this one wasn't. I don't want to
go against your idea of what's right and wrong, but when I say he
probably dissected the body so he could carry it into town in bags I'm
only saying what seems most probable. That would be on the 6th of
October or later, because it wasn't until then that he laid off the two
mechanics Wynant had working in the shop--Prentice and McNaughton--and
shut it up. So he buried Wynant under the floor, buried him with a fat
man's clothes and a lame man's stick and a belt marked D. W. Q., all
arranged so they wouldn't get too much of the lime--or whatever he used
to eat off the dead man's features and flesh--on them, and he
re-cemented the floor over the grave. Between police routine and
publicity we've got more than a fair chance of finding out where he
bought or otherwise got the clothes and stick and the cement." (We
traced the cement to him later--he had bought it from a coal and wood
dealer uptown--but had no luck with the other things.)

"I hope so," she said, not too hopefully.

"So now that's taken care of. By renewing the lease on the shop and
keeping it vacant--supposedly waiting for Wynant to return--he can make
sure--reasonably sure--that nobody will discover the grave, and if it is
accidentally discovered, then fat Mr. D. W. Q.--by that time Wynant's
bones would be pretty bare and you can't tell whether a man was thin or
fat by his skeleton--was murdered by Wynant, which explains why Wynant
has made himself scarce. That taken care of, Macaulay forges the power
of attorney and, with Julia's help, settles down to the business of
gradually transferring the late Clyde's money to themselves. Now I'm
going theoretical again. Julia doesn't like murder, and she's
frightened, and he's not too sure she won't weaken on him. That's why he
makes her break with Morelli--giving Wynant's jealousy as an excuse.
He's afraid she might confide to Morelli in a weak moment and, as the
time draws near for her still closer friend, Face Peppler, to get out of
prison, he gets more and more worried. He's been safe there as long as
Face stayed in, because she's not likely to put anything dangerous in a
letter that has to pass through the warden's hands, but now... Well,
he starts to plan, and then all hell breaks loose. Mimi and her children
arrive and start hunting for Wynant and I come to town and am in touch
with them and he thinks I'm helping them. He decides to play safe on
Julia by putting her out of the way. Like it so far?"

"Yes, but..."

"It gets worse as it goes along," I assured her. "On his way here for
lunch that day he stops and phones his office, pretending he's Wynant,
and making that appointment at the Plaza, the idea being to establish
Wynant's presence in town. When he leaves here he goes to the Plaza and
asks people if they've seen Wynant, to make that plausible, and for the
same reason phones his office to ask if any further word has come from
Wynant, and phones Julia. She tells him she's expecting Mimi and she
tells him Mimi thought she was lying when she said she didn't know where
Wynant was, and Julia probably sounds pretty frightened. So he decides
he's got to beat Mimi to the interview and he does. He beats it over
there and kills her. He's a terrible shot. I saw him shoot during the
war. It's likely he missed her with the first shot, the one that hit the
telephone, and didn't succeed in killing her right away with the other
four, but he probably thought she was dead, and, anyhow, he had to get
out before Mimi arrived, so he dropped the piece of Wynant's chain that
he had brought along as a clincher--and his having saved that for three
months makes it look as if he'd intended killing her from the
beginning--and scoots over to the engineer Hermann's office, where he
takes advantage of the breaks and fixes himself up with an alibi. The
two things he doesn't expect--couldn't very well have foreseen--are that
Nunheim, hanging around trying to get at the girl, had seen him leave
her apartment--may even have heard the shots--and that Mimi, with
blackmail in her heart, was going to conceal the chain for use in
shaking down her ex-husband. That's why he had to go down to
Philadelphia and send me that wire and the letter to himself and one to
Aunt Alice later--if Mimi thinks Wynant's throwing suspicion on her
she'll get mad enough to give the police the evidence she's got against
him. Her desire to hurt Jorgensen nearly gummed that up, though.
Macaulay, by the way, knew Jorgensen was Kelterman. Right after he
killed Wynant he had detectives look Mimi and her family up in
Europe--their interest in the estate made them potentially
dangerous--and the detectives found out who Jorgensen was. We found the
reports in Macaulay's files. He pretended he was getting the information
for Wynant, of course. Then he started worrying about me, about my not
thinking Wynant guilty and--"

"And why didn't you?"

"Why should he write letters antagonizing Mimi, the one who was helping
him by holding back incriminating evidence? That's why I thought the
chain had been planted when she did turn it in, only I was a little bit
too willing to believe she had done the planting. Morelli worried
Macaulay, too, because he didn't want suspicion thrown on anybody who
might, in clearing themselves, throw it in the wrong direction. Mimi was
all right, because she'd throw it back on Wynant, but everybody else was
out. Suspicion thrown on Wynant was the one thing that was guaranteed to
keep anybody from suspecting that Wynant was dead, and if Macaulay
hadn't killed Wynant, then there was no reason for his having killed
either of the others. The most obvious thing in the whole lay-out and
the key to the whole lay-out was that Wynant had to be dead."

"You mean you thought that from the beginning?" Nora demanded, fixing me
with a stern eye.

"No, darling, though I ought to be ashamed of myself for not seeing it,
but once I heard there was a corpse under the floor, I wouldn't have
cared if doctors swore it was a woman's, I'd have insisted it was
Wynant's. It had to be. It was the one right thing."

"I guess you're awfully tired. That must be what makes you talk like
this."

"Then he had Nunheim to worry about too. After pointing the finger at
Morelli, just to show the police he was being useful, he went to see
Macaulay. I'm guessing again, sweetheart. I had a phone-call from a man
who called himself Albert Norman, and the conversation ended with a
noise on his end of the wire. My guess is that Nunheim went to see
Macaulay and demanded some dough to keep quiet and, when Macaulay tried
to bluff him, Nunheim said he'd show him and called me up to make a date
with me to see if I'd buy his information--and Macaulay grabbed the
phone and gave Nunheim something, if only a promise, but when Guild and
I had our little talk with Nunheim, and he ran out on us, then he phoned
Macaulay and demanded real action, probably a lump sum, with a promise
to beat it out of town, away from us meddling sleuths. We do know he
called up that afternoon--Macaulay's telephone-operator remembers a Mr.
Albert Norman calling up, and she remembers that Macaulay went out right
after talking to him, so don't get snooty about this--uh--reconstruction
of mine. Macaulay wasn't silly enough to think Nunheim was to be trusted
even if he paid him, so he lured him down to this spot he had probably
picked out ahead of time and let him have it--and that took care of
that."

"Probably," Nora said.

"It's a word you've got to use a lot in this business. The letter to
Gilbert was only for the purpose of showing that Wynant had a key to the
girl's apartment, and sending Gilbert there was only a way of making
sure that he'd fall into the hands of the police, who'd squeeze him and
not let him keep the information about the letter and the key to
himself. Then Mimi finally comes through with the watch-chain, but
meanwhile another worry comes up. She's persuaded Guild to suspect me a
little. I've an idea that when Macaulay came to me this morning with
that hooey he intended to get me up to Scarsdale and knock me off,
making me number three on the list of Wynant's victims. Maybe he just
changed his mind, maybe he thought I was suspicious, too willing to go
up there without policemen. Anyhow, Gilbert's lie about having seen
Wynant gave him another idea. If he could get somebody to say they had
seen Wynant and stick to it... Now this part we know definitely."

"Thank God."

"He went to see Mimi this afternoon--riding up two floors above hers and
walking down so the elevator boys wouldn't remember having carried him
to her floor--and made her a proposition. He told her there was no
question about Wynant's guilt, but that it was doubtful if the police
would ever catch him. Meanwhile he, Macaulay, had the whole estate in
his hands. He couldn't take a chance on appropriating any of it, but
he'd fix it so she could--if she would split with him. He'd give her
these bonds he had in his pocket and this check, but she'd have to say
that Wynant had given them to her and she'd have to send this note,
which he also had, over to Macaulay as if from Wynant. He assured her
that Wynant, a fugitive, could not show up to deny his gift, and, except
for herself and her children, there was no one else who had any interest
in the estate, any reason for questioning the deal. Mimi's not very
sensible where she sees a chance to make a profit, so it was all O. K.
with her, and he had what he wanted--somebody who'd seen Wynant alive.
He warned her that everybody would think Wynant was paying her for some
service, but if she simply denied it there would be nothing anybody
could prove."

"Then what he told you this morning about Wynant instructing him to give
her any amount she asked for was simply in preparation?"

"Maybe, maybe it was an earlier fumbling towards that idea. Now are you
satisfied with what we've got on him?"

"Yes, in a way. There seems to be enough of it, but it's not very neat."

"It's neat enough to send him to the chair," I said, "and that's all
that counts. It takes care of all the angles and I can't think of any
other theory that would. Naturally it wouldn't hurt to find the pistol,
and the typewriter he used for the Wynant letters, and they must be
somewhere around where he can get at them when he needs them." (We found
them in the Brooklyn apartment he had rented as George Foley.)

"Have it your own way," she said, "but I always thought detectives
waited until they had every little detail fixed in--"

"And then wonder why the suspect's had time to get to the farthest
country that has no extradition treaty."

She laughed. "All right, all right. Still want to leave for San
Francisco tomorrow?"

"Not unless you're in a hurry. Let's stick around awhile. This
excitement has put us behind in our drinking."

"It's all right by me. What do you think will happen to Mimi and Dorothy
and Gilbert now?"

"Nothing new. They'll go on being Mimi and Dorothy and Gilbert just as
you and I will go on being us and the Quinns will go on being the
Quinns. Murder doesn't round out anybody's life except the murdered's
and sometimes the murderer's."

"That may be," Nora said, "but it's all pretty unsatisfactory."

                                THE END






[End of The Thin Man, by Dashiell Hammett]
