She looked at me as if she were going to say I love you, and asked: “Is that a threat?”
“All right,” I said, “have me arrested for kidnapping, contributing to the delinquency of a minor and mopery.”
She said suddenly in a harsh enraged voice: “And tell your wife to stop pawing my husband.” Nora, looking for another phonograph record with Jorgensen, had a hand on his sleeve. They turned to look at Mimi in surprise.
I said: “Nora, Mrs. Jorgensen wants you to keep you hands off Mr. Jorgensen.”
“I’m awfully sorry.” Nora smiled at Mimi, then looked at me, put a very artificial expression of concern on her face, and in a somewhat singsong voice, as if she were a schoolchild reciting a piece, said: “Oh, Nick, you’re pale. I’m sure you have exceeded your strength and will have a relapse. I’m sorry, Mrs. Jorgensen, but I think I should get him home and to bed right away. You will forgive us, won’t you?” Mimi said she would. Everybody was the soul of politeness to everybody else. We went downstairs and got a taxicab.
“Well,” Nora said, “so you talked yourself out of a dinner. What do you want to do now? Go home and eat with Dorothy?”
I shook my head. “I can do without Wynants for a little while. Let’s go to Max’s: I’d like some snails.”
“Right. Did you find out anything?”
“Nothing.”
She said meditatively: “It’s a shame that guy’s so handsome.”
“What’s he like?”
“Just a big doll. It’s a shame.” We had dinner and went back to the Normandie. Dorothy was not there. I felt as if I had expected that. Nora went through the rooms, called up the desk. No note, no message had been left for us. “So what?” she asked.
It was not quite ten o’clock. “Maybe nothing,” I said.
“Maybe anything. My guess is she’ll show up about three in the morning, tight, with a machine-gun she bought in Childs’.”
Nora said: “To hell with her. Get into pyjamas and lie down.”
11
My side felt a lot better when Nora called me at noon the next day. “My nice policeman wants to see you,” she said. “How do you feel?”
“Terrible. I must’ve gone to bed sober.” I pushed Asta out of the way and got up.
Guild rose with a drink in his hand when I entered the living-room, and smiled all across his broad sandy face. “Well, well, Mr. Charles, you look spry enough this morning.” I shook hands with him and said yes I felt pretty good, and we sat down. He frowned good-naturedly. “Just the same, you oughtn’t’ve played that trick on me.”
“Trick?”
“Sure, running off to see people when I’d put off asking you questions to give you a chance to rest up. I kind of figured that ought to give me first call on you, as you might say.”
“I didn’t think,” I said. “I’m sorry. See that wire I got from Wynant?”
“Uh-huh. We’re running it out in Philly.”
“Now about that gun,” I began, “I—” He stopped me. “What gun? That ain’t a gun any more. The firing pin’s busted off, the guts are rusted and jammed. If anybody’s fired it in six months—or could—I’m the Pope of Rome. Don’t let’s waste any time talking about that piece of junk.”
I laughed. “That explains a lot. I took it away from a drunk who said he’d bought it in a speakeasy for twelve bucks. I believe him now.”
“Somebody’ll sell him the City Hall one of these days. Man to man, Mr. Charles, are you working on the Wolf job or ain’t you?”
“You saw the wire from Wynant.”
“I did. Then you ain’t working for him. I’m still asking you.”
“I’m not a private detective any more. I’m not any kind of detective.”
“I heard that. I’m still asking you.” “All right. No.”
He thought for a moment, said: “Then let me put it another way: are you interested in the job?”
“I know the people, naturally I’m interested.”
“And that’s all?”
“Yes.”
“And you don’t expect to be working on it?”
The telephone rang and Nora went to answer it.
“To be honest with you, I don’t know. If people keep on pushing me into it, I don’t know how far they’ll carry me.”
Guild wagged his head up and down. “I can see that. I don’t mind telling you I’d like to have you in on it—on the right side.”
“You mean not on Wynant’s side. Did he do it?”
“That I couldn’t say, Mr. Charles, but I don’t have to tell you he ain’t helping us any to find out who did it.”
Nora appeared in the doorway. “Telephone, Nick.”
Herbert Macaulay was on the wire. “Hello, Charles. How’s the wounded?”
“I’m all right, thanks.”
“Did you hear from Wynant?”
“Yes.”
“I got a letter from him saying he had wired you. Are you too sick to—”
“No, I’m up and around. If you’ll be in your office late this afternoon I’ll drop in.”
“Swell,” he said. “I’ll be here till six.”
I returned to the living-room. Nora was inviting Guild to have lunch while we had breakfast. He said it was mighty kind of her. I said I ought to have a drink before breakfast. Nora went to order meals and pour drinks. Guild shook his head and said: “She’s a mighty fine woman, Mr. Charles.” I nodded solemnly.
He said: “Suppose you should get pushed into this thing, as you say, I’d like it a lot more to feel you were working with us than against us.”
“So would I.”
“That’s a bargain then,” he said. He hunched his chair around a little. “I don’t guess you remember me, but back when you were working this town I was walking beat on Forty-second Street.”
“Of course,” I said, lying politely. “I knew there was something familiar about— Being out of uniform makes a difference.”
“I guess it does. I’d like to be able to take it as a fact that you’re not holding out anything we don’t already know.”
“I don’t mean to. I don’t know what you know. I don’t know very much. I haven’t seen Macaulay since the murder and I haven’t even been following it in the newspapers.” The telephone was ringing again. Nora gave us our drinks and went to answer it.
“What we know ain’t much of a secret,” Guild said, “and if you want to take the time to listen I don’t mind giving it to you.” He tasted his drink and nodded approvingly. “Only there’s a thing I’d like to ask first. When you went to Mrs. Jorgensen’s last night, did you tell her about getting the telegram from him?”
“Yes, and I told her I’d turned it over to you.”
“What’d she say?”
“Nothing. She asked questions. She’s trying to find him.”
He put his head a little to one side and partly closed one eye. “You don’t think there’s any chance of them being in cahoots, do you?” He held up a hand. “Understand I don’t know why they would be or what it’d be all about if they were, but I’m just asking.”
“Anything’s possible,” I said, “but I’d say it was pretty safe they aren’t working together. Why?”
“I guess you’re right.” Then he added vaguely: “But there’s a couple of points.” He sighed. “There always is. Well, Mr. Charles, here’s just about all we know for certain and if you give us a little something more here and there as we go along I’ll be mighty thankful to you.” I said something about doing my best.
“Well, along about the 3rd of last October Wynant tells Macaulay he’s got to leave town for a while. He don’t tell Macaulay where he’s going or what for, but Macaulay gets the idea that he’s off to work on some invention or other that he wants to keep quiet—and he gets it out of Julia Wolf later that he’s right—and he guesses Wynant’s gone off to hide somewhere in the Adirondacks, but when he asks her about that later she says she don’t know any more about it than he does.”
“She know what the invention was?”
Guild shook his head. “Not according to Macaulay, only that it was probably something that he needed room for and machinery or things that cost money, because that’s what he was fixing up with Macaulay. He was fixing it so Macaulay could get hold of his stocks and bonds and other things he owned and turn ’em into money when he wanted it and take care of his banking and everything just like Wynant himself.”