Текст книги "The Thin Man"

Автор книги: Dashiell Hammett

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Текущая страница: 6 (всего у книги 14 страниц)

 

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 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 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 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?”

“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 layout, 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 eggyolks made fresher stains on the 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 roughhouse comedy. Get up and behave yourself.”

Nunheim got slowly to his feet. “She drives me nuts when she’s drinking,” he said. “She’s 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’ve 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 Rosewater.”

“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 Victor-Christian Rosewater-Jorgensen yet?”

“What?”

I believed in her bewilderment, though both it and my belief in it surprised me. “Jorgensen is Rosewater,” 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 Rosewater?” 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 Rosewater?”

“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 Rosewater, 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 Rosewater?”

“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.