Part 9 (1/2)

”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?”

”n.o.body 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 ch.o.r.es 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 gla.s.ses.”

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 mugg like him, once a sleuth always a sleuth, and I'd rather lie 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 acc.u.mulating; 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 with 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 n.i.g.g.e.r 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 Rosewater. 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 Victor Rosewater'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 gp 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?”