The next fact I want Charles to know is that whatever anybody may think or whatever was true some time ago Julia and I [“are now” was x’d out lightly] were at the time of her murder and had been for more than a year not anything more to each other than employee and employer. This relationship was the result of mutual agreement.
Next, I believe some attempt should be made to learn the present whereabouts of the Victor Rosewater with whom we had trouble some years ago inasmuch as the experiments I am now engaged in are in line with those he claimed I cheated him out of and I consider him quite insane enough to have killed Julia in a rage at her refusal to tell him where I could be found.
Fourth, and most important, has my divorced wife been in communication with Rosewater? How did she learn I was carrying out the experiments with which he once assisted me?
Fifth, the police must be convinced at once that I can tell them nothing about the murder so that they will take no steps to find me—steps that might lead to a discovery of and a premature exposure of my experiments, which I would consider very dangerous at this time. This can best be avoided by clearing up the mystery of her murder immediately, and that is what I wish to have done.
I will communicate with you from time to time and if in the meanwhile anything should arise to make communication with me imperative insert the following advertisement in the Times: Abner. Yes. Bunny.
I will thereupon arrange to get in touch with you.
I hope you sufficiently understand the necessity of persuading Charles to act for me, since he is already acquainted with the Rosewater trouble and knows most of the people concerned. Yours truly,
Clyde Miller Wynant
I put the letter down on Macaulay’s desk and said: “It makes a lot of sense. Do you remember what his row with Rosewater was about?”
“Something about changes in the structures of crystals. I can look it up.” Macaulay picked up the first sheet of the letter and frowned at it. “He says he got a thousand dollars from her that night. I gave her five thousand for him; she told me that’s what he wanted.”
“Four thousand from Uncle John’s estate?” I suggested.
“Looks like it. That’s funny: I never thought she’d gyp him. I’ll have to find out about the other money I turned over to her.”
“Did you know she’d done a jail sentence in Cleveland on a badger-game charge?”
“No. Had she really?”
“According to the police—under the name of Rhoda Stewart. Where’d Wynant find her?”
He shook his head. “I’ve no idea.”
“Know anything about where she came from originally, relatives, things like that?” He shook his head again. “Who was she engaged to?” I asked.
“I didn’t know she was engaged.”
“She was wearing a diamond ring on her finger.”
“That’s news to me,” he said. He shut his eyes and thought. “No, I can’t remember ever noticing an engagement ring.” He put his forearms on his desk and grinned over them at me. “Well, what are the chances of getting you to do what he wants?”
“Slim.”
“I thought so.” He moved a hand to touch the letter. “You know as much about how he feels as I do. What would make you change your mind?”
“I don’t—”
“Would it help any if I could persuade him to meet you? Maybe if I told him that was the only way you’d take it—”
“I’m willing to talk to him,” I said, “but he’d have to talk a lot straighter than he’s writing.”
Macaulay asked slowly: “You mean you think he may have killed her?”
“I don’t know anything about that,” I said. “I don’t know as much as the police do, and it’s a cinch they haven’t got enough on him to make the pinch even if they could find him.”
Macaulay sighed. “Being a goof’s lawyer is not much fun. I’ll try to make him listen to reason, but I know he won’t.”
“I meant to ask, how are his finances these days? Is he as well fixed as he used to be?”
“Almost. The depression’s hurt him some, along with the rest of us, and the royalties from his smelting process have gone pretty much to hell now that the metals are dead, but he can still count on fifty or sixty thousand a year from his glassine and soundproofing patents, with a little more coming in from odds and ends like—” He broke off to ask: “You’re not worrying abut his ability to pay whatever you’d ask?”
“No, I was just wondering.” I thought of something else: “Has he any relatives outside of his ex-wife and children?”
“A sister, Alice Wynant, that hasn’t been on speaking terms with him for—it must be four or five years now.”
I supposed that was the Aunt Alice the Jorgensens had not gone to see Christmas afternoon. “What’d they fall out about?” I asked.
“He gave an interview to one of the papers saying he didn’t think the Russian Five Year Plan was necessarily doomed to failure. Actually he didn’t make it much stronger than that.”
I laughed. “They’re a—”
“She’s even better than he is. She can’t remember things. The time her brother had his appendix out, she and Mimi were in a taxi going to see him the first afternoon and they passed a hearse coming from the direction of the hospital. Miss Alice turned pale and grabbed Mimi by the arm and said: ‘Oh, dear! If that should be what’s-his-name!’ ”
“Where does she live?”
“On Madison Avenue. It’s in the phone book.” He hesitated. “I don’t think—”
“I’m not going to bother her.” Before I could say anything else his telephone began to ring.
He put the receiver to his ear and said: “Hello…. Yes, speaking…. Who?… Oh, yes….” Muscles tightened around his mouth, and his eyes opened a little wider. “Where?” He listened some more. “Yes, surely. Can I make it?” He looked at the watch on his left wrist. “Right. See you on the train.” He put the telephone down. “That was Lieutenant Guild,” he told me. “Wynant’s tried to commit suicide in Allentown, Pennsylvania.”
13
Dorothy and Quinn were at the bar when I went into the Palma Club. They did not see me until I came up beside Dorothy and said: “Hello, folks.” Dorothy had on the same clothes I had last seen her in.
She looked at me and at Quinn and her face flushed. “You had to tell him.”
“The girl’s in a pet,” Quinn said cheerfully. “I got that stock for you. You ought to pick up some more and what are you drinking?”
“Old-fashioned. You’re a swell guest—ducking out without leaving a word behind you.”
Dorothy looked at me again. The scratches on her face were pale, the bruise barely showed, and her mouth was no longer swollen. “I trusted you,” she said. She seemed about to cry.
“What do you mean by that?”
“You know what I mean. Even when you went to dinner at Mamma’s I trusted you.”
“And why not?”
Quinn said: “She’s been in a pet all afternoon. Don’t bait her.” He put a hand on one of hers. “There, there, darling, don’t you—”
“Please shut up.” She took her hand away from him. “You know very well what I mean,” she told me. “You and Nora both made fun of me to Mamma and—”
I began to see what had happened. “She told you that and you believed it?” I laughed. “After twenty years you’re still a sucker for her lies? I suppose she phoned you after we left: we had a row and didn’t stay long.”