Текст книги "The Thin Man"

Автор книги: Dashiell Hammett

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Текущая страница: 12 (всего у книги 14 страниц)

 

29

Guild had red-haired Flint in again and put the thumbscrews 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 he 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 had got him bleeding somewhere inside.”

“I’ll kill that mugg,” 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 6½s, American Type Founders 6s, Certain-teed Products 5½s, Upper Austria 6½s, 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 he 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. 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 heart. “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 forever and ever, or at least until he finishes plundering it, because you can’t even—”

Macaulay stood up saying: “I 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?”