“What did you do?”
“I walked home, every single, blessed step of the way.”
“You didn’t take a cab?”
“No. I didn’t have my purse; I didn’t have a cent.”
“And how did you intend to get in if you didn’t have a key?”
“I had a key.”
“I thought you said he took your key.”
“Took one of them, but there’s another key in the bottom of my mailbox. I always leave it there, just in case of an emergency. You see, there’s a spring lock on the door, and sometimes when I run down to the corner to get things from the grocery store, I’ll forget to take my key along, so I always leave an extra one there in the mailbox.”
“What time did you leave the soldiers?”
“Oh, about two o’clock, I guess. Somewhere around there.”
“And you walked home?”
“Yes.”
“What time did you get there?”
“At exactly twenty minutes past two.”
I said, “Why are you so positive in your time? Did you hear a shot?”
“No.”
“What did you hear?”
“I didn’t hear. I saw.”
“What?”
“My friend, Archibald C. Smith.”
I did a little thinking over that one, and said, “Wait a minute. You couldn’t have seen him. He was in New York that night.”
She smiled. “I saw him plainly.”
“What did he say to you? What did you talk about?”
“I didn’t talk with him. I saw him, but he didn’t see me.”
“Where?”
“Down in front of my apartment.”
“When?”
“Just as I’m telling you, at twenty minutes past two.”
“Go ahead,” I said. “What happened?”
She said, “I was very close to the apartment when he came past in a taxicab. He got out of the cab and ran up the three steps to the street door and rang the bell of my apartment.”
“Are you certain it was your apartment?”
“Well, reasonably certain. I could see the position of his finger. I couldn’t see the exact button he was touching, but it was — yes, it must have been my bell he was ringing.”
“And what happened after he found you weren’t home?”
“I don’t know.”
“Why? Didn’t he turn back and see you coming along the sidewalk just a step or two behind him?”
“No.”
“What did he do?”
“He went in.”
“You mean he entered the apartment house?”
“Yes.”
“How did he get in?”
“Somebody in my apartment pushed the buzzer for him.”
“And what did you do?”
“Up to that time I’d thought Paul Nostrander had taken my purse so that I wouldn’t have any money, and so he could go through it and-well, see if there was anything in there, a diary, or perhaps a letter from you, or something of that sort.”
I nodded, keeping my eyes on her. “And after you heard the buzzer sound?”
“Then I knew why he’d really taken it. He d gone up to my apartment, let himself in with my key, and was waiting up there.”
“A delicate approach,” I said.
“It wasn’t entirely that,” she said. “Of course that was part of it. The other part was that he d been accusing me all evening of being intimate with someone You see, the way I’d disappeared had made him feel that way. He’d advertised for me in the paper. A personal ad that had run for almost two years.”
“I know. I saw it.”
“Well, naturally, he thought I’d gone away with some man. I knew it was only a question of time until I’d run into him on the street somewhere, but I felt that the longer it was put off the more chance he’d have to fall in love with someone else and forget me. But he has that peculiar complex some men have — he only wants someone he can’t get. You know how some men are?”
I nodded.
“There he was,” she went on bitterly, “in my apartment, with his gun, and probably about two-thirds drunk, sitting there on the bed, waiting for me, and determined that he was going to find out whether anyone was sufficiently intimate with me to come to my apartment. He’d insisted that I’d promised you that if you’d go out without making any trouble, you could come back later, and — well, you know.”
“And so,” I said, “Archibald C. Smith pressed the doorbell at twenty minutes past two — and walked right into the middle of that situation.”
“Yes — he must have gone on up.”
“And you think Archibald Smith thought you would be in your apartment at that hour of the night, and would answer the bell?”
“Well, he certainly must have thought I’d be there, and the bell would get me up. It was reasonable to suppose that I’d at least pick up the telephone and ask who was there.”
“Did you hear any shot?” I asked.
“No.”
“Would you if one had been fired?”
“I don’t think so, not the way it was muffled by the pillow.”
“What did you do?”
“I crossed the street. I tried to look up to the window of my apartment. I couldn’t see anything. The shade was drawn.”
“Then what?”
“I started walking back toward town.”
“At what time?”
“It must have been just before two-thirty. When I had reached the corner, Marilyn Winton drove by. She was in a car with two other people — a man and a woman.”
“You know her?”
“Oh, I know who she is, and we speak when we meet in the hall. Her apartment is almost directly across from mine.”
“Then what did you do?”
“Went to one of the little hotels in the Quarter which isn’t too particular. I used an assumed name, because I thought Paul might try calling all the hotels.”
“And then what?”
“Shortly before nine I walked all the way down to the apartment. I wanted to get my purse, some of my toilet articles, grab a taxi, and go to work. There were a bunch of cars around the place, and a man who was standing at the curb told me a murder had been committed, said some lawyer had been found dead in a woman’s apartment, and the woman was missing. The police were looking for her.”
“And what did you do then?”
“Like a ninny, instead of making a clean breast of the situation and explaining it while it could have been explained, I got in a panic and dashed back to the hotel. I sent Edna a wire telling her to send money quickly, waiving identification and making the draft payable to that assumed name I’d registered under.”
“You wired?”
“Yes.”
“Didn’t you try telephoning collect?”
“Yes.”
“Got her?”
“No. She didn’t answer.”
“She answered the wire?”
“That afternoon. I got the hotel to cash it and took a late train to Shreveport.”
The waiter came and cleared away the dishes, brought the ice cream and coffee.
“Can you trust Edna?” I asked.
“I used to think I could. Now I’m not so certain. She acted strangely.”
I said, “It helps Edna’s case a lot having Nostrander out of the way.”
“Yes. I can see that — now.”
“It might make a motive for murder.”
“You mean that she might have killed him?”
“The police might think so.”
“But she was in Shreveport.”
“Not when you telephoned.”
“Well — no, perhaps not.”
“It was late the next afternoon before she sent you the money?”
“Yes.”
We finished our ice cream, sat smoking cigarettes and sipping coffee. Neither of us said much. We were both thinking.