“Is that why you took him out in the corridor the night I was at your apartment?”
“Yes I knew he had a gun, and I was afraid he was going to do something desperate. When he saw you there he almost pulled his gun. I took him out m the corridor. He was insanely jealous of you. I told him I’d never seen you before, that you were a business visitor. He wouldn’t believe me. He thought, finding you in my apartment, that you were the privileged boy friend. He pulled his gun, said he’d shoot me and kill himself if I didn’t go out with him, and went through all for dramatics. So I told him that the reason I hadn’t seen him, and the reason I hadn’t gone with him was because of that very trait in his character, that if he’d put that gun back in his pocket and quit all that crazy jealousy, I’d go out to dinner with him, and we’d have a few drinks.”
“He wanted to know all about me?” I asked.
“Oh, of course.”
“What did you tell him?”
“I told him the truth. I told him you were a detective who was trying to find out something about a man by the name of Smith in order to close up an estate.”
“Did he ask you who Smith was?”
“Oh, certainly. You mention any man’s name, and he’d pounce on it like a hawk swooping on a baby chick. He’d want to know all about him, who he was, where he came from, how long you’d known him, and all that. I told him Smith was a friend of Edna’s.”
“And he did all that out in the corridor?”
“No, not out in the corridor. I told him that I didn’t have time to stand there and argue with him. I was going to have to get rid of you if I was going to dinner with him. So he agreed to wait.”
“That’s the point I’m interested in,” I said. “Where did he wait?”
“He said he’d wait outside somewhere, and come back after you’d gone.”
“Did he?”
“What?”
“Come back after I’d left?”
“Yes. Within less than a minute.”
She saw the expression on my face. “What’s the matter? What are you scowling about?”
“I was trying to think back,” I said. “As I remember it, there’s only one string of apartments in that building. It’s over a storeroom, and the corridor runs the length of the building, with apartments on both sides, isn’t that right?”
“Yes.”
“There are no bends or crooks in the corridor where a man might hide?”
“No.”
“I didn’t see him there when I went out.”
“He might have gone over to the far end and flattened himself in the shadows where he could watch you, without your knowing he was there. That’s the way he would do things. He was secretive and liked to spy on people. Good heavens, when I was living there in the Quarter, you’d have thought I was an enemy alien, and he was the whole F.B.I. He snooped around, watched my apartment window with binoculars. When I’d go out with anyone, he’d be hanging around somewhere to find out what time I got in. I didn’t even dare to take a boy friend upstairs to have a drink—”
The waiter appeared with a tray, put dishes on the table. We started eating.
“Want to hear the rest of it?” she asked, after a few moments.
“After dinner,” I said. “Let’s concentrate on eating now. I’m hungry.”-
We ate our way through dinner. I could see that her nerves were relaxing. The wine and the food generated a mood of expansive friendship.
“Know something, Donald?”
“What?”
“I feel that I can trust you. I’m going to tell you the whole truth.”
“Why not?”
She pushed away her plate, accepted one of my cigarettes, and leaned forward for a light. She reached up with her hands and held my hand and the match m both of hers. Her hands were soft and warm, the skin smooth. “Paul and I went out to dinner. He was going to kill you,” she said.
“He got drunk and crazy jealous again. He began asking me a lot of questions about you. He wouldn’t believe you were a detective. Finally I got sore, and told him that he hadn’t changed a bit m the last two years, that I’d tried to let him down easy once by simply moving out, but this time I was giving it to him the hard way; that I didn’t want to see him again ever and I didn’t want to have anything to do with him; that it he ever tried to force himself on me, I’d call the officers.”
“What did he do then?”
“He did something that frightened me, and at the same time it made me laugh.”
“What?”
“He grabbed my purse.”
“Why? So you wouldn’t have any money?”
“That’s what I thought at the time, but I realized later what it was.”
“You mean he wanted your key?”
“Yes.”
“Where were you when he took your purse?”
“In Jack O’Leary’s Bar down in the Quarter. That was always his regular hangout.”
“And just what did he do?”
She said, “I was telling him that I was tired of the way he did things, that I couldn’t stand that insane jealousy, and that I wasn’t ever going to see him again.
“The bar was crowded. I didn’t know what he’d do, but I did feel that if he tried to pull a gun or make any threats, there were enough people around to grab him before he could do anything. Even if there weren’t, I was just tired of living in perpetual terror of that man. Until he fell in love with me, he was simply wonderful.”
“You met him through Edna?”
“Yes.”
“How did he feel toward Edna?”
“I think he was — well, perhaps, playing around. I think he picked her up there in Jack O’Leary’s Bar, and they were going together for a while; then Edna told him her troubles, and he worked out this scheme by which she could fleece her husband. That must have been it. I can look back now and put two and two together.”
“But Edna never told you that?”
“No. She never confided in me the real reason she wanted me to take the apartment in her name. Just gave me some excuses as she did you when you first asked her. She didn’t let me know where she was. Paul Nostrander was the only one who knew that, but he claimed he didn’t. Every month Paul would give me enough money to cover all my living expenses, the apartment, clothes, meals, beauty treatments, and all the rest.”
“Did you give him the papers when you were served?”
“No. I tried to, but he wouldn’t take them. He said he had no authority. He told me Edna had simply arranged with him to give me money from a fund she’d left with him. He claimed he didn’t actually know where she was, and had no means of reaching her. He said she’d given him fifteen hundred dollars to apply on my expenses, that the money had nearly all been spent.”
“All right, you told Nostrander where to get off, and he took your purse. Then what?”
“Without a word, he walked out.”
“Pay the check?”
“They don’t have any checks there at Jack O’Leary’s. You pay for the drinks as you get them.”
“So he walked out and left you sitting there?”
“Yes.”
“What did you do?”
“I sat around there for a while, and a couple of soldiers who were on the loose started making eyes at me, and I thought, after all, why not? The boys were going to be shipped somewhere pretty soon. They were entitled to as much of a good time as I could show them, so I smiled back at them. They came over, and we had quite an evening. They were awfully nice boys, but they knew nothing whatever about New Orleans. It was their first night in town. They came from Milwaukee. I took them around and showed them some of the sights, told them stories about the Quarter, drank with them until they were just about able to navigate, and left them.”