With the Dains there, and with Mrs. Dain's ability as a housekeeper, there was no longer any place for Mrs. Begg. They had been very liberal, she said, helping her find a new place and giving her a generous bonus when she left. She hadn't seen any of them since, but, thanks to the careful watch she habitually kept on the marriage, death, and birth notices in the morning papers, she had learned, a week after she left, that a marriage license had been issued to Edgar Leggett and Alice Dain.
IV.The Vague Harpers
When I arrived at the agency at nine the next morning, Eric Collinson was sitting in the reception room. His sunburned face was dingy without pinkness, and he had forgotten to put stickum on his hair.
"Do you know anything about Miss Leggett?" he asked, jumping up and meeting me at the door. "She wasn't home last night, and she's not home yet. Her father wouldn't say he didn't know where she was, but I'm sure he didn't. He told me not to worry, but how can I help worrying? Do you know anything about it?"
I said I didn't and told him about seeing her leave Minnie Hershey's the previous evening. I gave him the mulatto's address and suggested that he ask her. He jammed his hat on his head and hurried off.
Getting O'Gar on the phone, I asked him if he had heard from New York yet.
"Uh-huh," he said. "Upton-that's his right name-was once one of you private dicks-had a agency of his own-till '23, when him and a guy named Harry Ruppert were sent over for trying to fix a jury. How'd you make out with the shine?"
"I don't know. This Rhino Tingley's carrying an eleven-hundred-case roll. Minnie says he got it with the rats and mice. Maybe he did: it's twice what he could have peddled Leggett's stuff for. Can you try to have it checked? He's supposed to have got it at the Happy Day Social Club."
O'Gar promised to do what he could and hung up.
I sent a wire to our New York branch, asking for more dope on Upton and Ruppert, and then went up to the county clerk's office in the municipal building, where I dug into the August and September 1923 marriage-license file. The application I wanted was dated August z6 and bore Edgar Leggett's statement that he was born in Atlanta, Georgia, on March 6, 1883, and that this was his second marriage; and Alice Dain's statement that she was born in London, England, on October 22, 1888, and that she had not been married before.
When I returned to the agency, Eric Collinson, his yellow hair still further disarranged, was again lying in wait for me.
"I saw Minnie," he said excitedly, "and she couldn't tell me anything. She said Gaby was there last night to ask her to come back to work, but that's all she knew about her. But she-she's wearing an emerald ring that I'm positive is Gaby's."
"Did you ask her about it?"
"Who? Minnie? No. How could I? It would have been-you know."
"That's right," I agreed, thinking of Fitzstephan's Chevalier Bayard, "we must always be polite. Why did you lie to me about the time you and Miss Leggett got home the other night?"
Embarrassment made his face more attractive-looking and less intelligent.
"That was silly of me," he stammered, "but I didn't-you know-I thought you-I was afraid-"
He wasn't getting anywhere. I suggested: "You thought that was a late hour and didn't want me to get wrong notions about her?"
"Yes, that's it."
I shooed him out and went into the operatives' room, where Mickey Linehan-big, loose-hung, red-faced-and Al Mason-slim, dark, sleek— were swapping lies about the times they had been shot at, each trying to pretend he had been more frightened than the other. I told them who was who and what was what on the Leggett job-as far as my knowledge went, and it didn't go far when I came to putting it in words-and sent Al out to keep an eye on the Leggetts' house, Mickey to see how Minnie and Rhino behaved.
Mrs. Leggett, her pleasant face shadowed, opened the door when I rang the bell an hour later. We went into the green, orange, and chocolate room, where we were joined by her husband. I passed on to them the information about Upton that O'Gar had received from New York and told them I had wired for more dope on Ruppert.
"Some of your neighbors saw a man who was not Upton loitering around," I said, "and a man who fits the same description ran down the fire-escape from the room Upton was killed in. We'll see what Ruppert looks like."
I was watching Leggett's face. Nothing changed in it. His too bright red-brown eyes held interest and nothing else.
I asked: "Is Miss Leggett in?"
He said: "No."
"When will she be in?"
"Probably not for several days. She's gone out of town."
"Where can I find her?" I asked, turning to Mrs. Leggett. "I've some questions to ask her."
Mrs. Leggett avoided my gaze, looking at her husband.
His metallic voice answered my question: "We don't know, exactly. Friends of hers, a Mr. and Mrs. Harper, drove up from Los Angeles and asked her to go along on a trip up in the mountains. I don't know which route they intended taking, and doubt if they had any definite destination."
I asked questions about the Harpers. Leggett admitted knowing very little about them. Mrs. Harper's first name was Carmel, he said, and everybody called the man Bud, but Leggett wasn't sure whether his name was Frank or Walter. Nor did he know the Harpers' Los Angeles address. He thought they had a house somewhere in Pasadena, but wasn't sure, having, in fact, heard something about their selling the house, or perhaps only intending to. While he told me this nonsense, his wife sat staring at the floor, lifting her blue eyes twice to look swiftly, pleadingly, at her husband.
I asked her: "Don't you know anything more about them than that?"
"No," she said weakly, darting another glance at her husband's face, while he, paying no attention to her, stared levelly at me.
"When did they leave?" I asked.
"Early this morning," Leggett said. "They were staying at one of the hotels-I don't know which-and Gabrielle spent the night with them so they could start early."
I had enough of the Harpers. I asked: "Did either of you-any of you-know anything about Upton-have any dealings with him of any sort-before this affair?"
Leggett said: "No."
I had other questions, but the kind of replies I was drawing didn't mean anything, so I stood up to go. I was tempted to tell him what I thought of him, but there was no profit in that.
He got up too, smiling politely, and said: "I'm sorry to have caused the insurance company all this trouble through what was, after all, probably my carelessness. I should like to ask your opinion: do you really think I should accept responsibility for the loss of the diamonds and make it good?"
"The way it stands," I said, "I think you should; but that wouldn't stop the investigation."
Mrs. Leggett put her handkerchief to her mouth quickly.
Leggett said: "Thanks." His voice was casually polite. "I'll have to think it over."
On my way back to the agency I dropped in on Fitzstephan for half an hour. He was writing, he told me, an article for the _Psychopathological Review_-that's probably wrong, but it was something on that order— condemning the hypothesis of an unconscious or subconscious mind as a snare and a delusion, a pitfall for the unwary and a set of false whiskers for the charlatan, a gap in psychology's roof that made it impossible, or nearly, for the sound scholar to smoke out such faddists as, for exaniple, the psychoanalyst and the behaviorist, or words to that effect. He went on like that for ten minutes or more, finally coming back to the United States with: "But how are you getting along with the problem of the elusive diamonds?"
"This way and that way," I said, and told him what I had learned and done so far.
"You've certainly," he congratulated me when I finished, "got it all as tangled and confused as possible."
"It'll be worse before it's better," I predicted. "I'd like to have ten minutes alone with Mrs. Leggett. Away from her husband, I imagine things could be done with her. Could you get anything out of her? I'd like to know why Gabrielle has gone, even if I can't learn where."
"I'll try," Fitzstephan said willingly. "Suppose I go out there tomorrow afternoon-to borrow a book. Waite's _Rosy Cross_ will do it. They know I'm interested in that sort of stuff. He'll be working in the laboratory, and I'll refuse to disturb him. I'll have to go at it in an offhand way, but maybe I can get something out of her."
"Thanks," I said. "See you tomorrow night."
I spent most of the afternoon putting my findings and guesses on paper and trying to fit them together in some sort of order. Eric Collinson phoned twice to ask if I had any news of his Gabrielle. Neither Mickey Linehan nor Al Mason reported anything. At six o'clock I called it a day.
V.Gabrielle
The next day brought happenings.
Early in the morning there was a telegram from our New York office. Decoded, it read:
LOUIS UPTON FORMER PROPRIETOR DETECTIVE AGENCY HERE
STOP ARRESTED SEPTEMBER FIRST ONE NINE TWO THREE FOR
BRIBING TWO JURORS IN SEXTON MURDER TRIAL STOP TRIED TO
SAVE HIMSELF BY IMPLICATING HARRY RUPPERT OPERATIVE IN
HIS EMPLOY STOP BOTH MEN CONVICTED STOP BOTH RELEASED
FROM SING SING FEBRUARY SIX THIS YEAR STOP RUPPERT SAID TO
HAVE THREATENED TO KILL UPTON STOP RUPPERT THIRTY TWO
YEARS FIVE FEET ELEVEN INCHES HUNDRED FIFTY POUNDS BROWN
HAIR AND EYES SALLOW COMPLEXION THIN FACE LONG THIN NOSE
WALKS WITH STOOP AND CHIN OUT STOP MAILING PHOTOGRAPHS
That placed Ruppert definitely enough as the man Mrs. Priestly and Daley had seen and the man who had probably killed Upton.
O'Gar called me on the phone to tell me: "That dinge of yours-Rhino Tingley-was picked up in a hock shop last night trying to unload some jewelry. None of it was loose diamonds. We haven't been able to crack him yet, just got him identified. I sent a man out to Leggett's with some of the stuff, thinking it might be theirs, but they said no."
That didn't fit in anywhere. I suggested: "Try Halstead and Beauchamp. Tell them you think the stuff is Leggett's. Don't tell them he said it wasn't."
Half an hour later the detective-sergeant phoned me again, from the jewelers', to tell me that Halstead had positively identified two pieces-a string of pearls and a topaz brooch-as articles Leggett had purchased there for his daughter.
"That's swell," I said. "Now will you do this? Go out to Rhino's flat and put the screws on his woman, Minnie Hershey. Frisk the joint, rough her up; the more you scare her, the better. She may be wearing an emerald ring. If she is, or if it-or any other jewelry that might be the Leggetts'— is there, you can take it away with you; but don't stay too long and don't bother her afterwards. I've got her covered. Just stir her up and beat it."