I said to Nora: “For God’s sake, let’s have a drink.”
Nora said, “Sure,” picked up Dorothy’s coat, laid it across the back of a chair, and went into the pantry.
Dorothy said: “Please let me stay here, Nick. I won’t be any trouble, honestly, and you told me yourself I ought to walk out on them. You know you did, and I’ve got nowhere else to go. Please.”
“Take it easy. This thing needs a little figuring out. I’m as much afraid of Mimi as you are, you know. What did she think you’d told me?”
“She must know something—something about the murder that she thinks I know—but I don’t, Nick. Honest to God, I don’t.”
“That helps a lot,” I complained. “But listen, sister: there are things you know and we’re going to start with those. You come clean at and from the beginning—or we don’t play.”
She made a movement as if she were about to cross her heart. “I swear I will,” she said.
“That’ll be swell. Now let’s drink.” We took a glass apiece from Nora. “Tell her you were leaving for good?”
“No, I didn’t say anything. Maybe she doesn’t know yet I’m not in my room.”
“That helps some.”
“You’re not going to make me go back?” she cried.
Nora said over her glass: “The child can’t stay and be beaten like that, Nick.”
I said: “Sh-h-h. I don’t know. I was just thinking that if we’re going there for dinner maybe it’s better for Mimi not to know—”
Dorothy stared at me with horrified eyes while Nora said: “Don’t think you’re going to take me there now.”
Then Dorothy spoke rapidly: “But Mamma doesn’t expect you. I don’t even know whether she’ll be there. The papers said you were dying. She doesn’t think you’re coming.”
“So much the better,” I said. “We’ll surprise them.”
She put her face, white now, close to mine, spilling some of her drink on my sleeve in her excitement. “Don’t go. You can’t go there now. Listen to me. Listen to Nora. You can’t go.” She turned her white face around to look up at Nora. “Can he? Tell him he can’t.”
Nora, not shifting the focus of her dark eyes from my face, said: “Wait, Dorothy. He ought to know what’s best. What is it, Nick?”
I made a face at her. “I’m just fumbling around. If you say Dorothy stays here, she stays. I guess she can sleep with Asta. But you’ve got to leave me alone on the rest of it. I don’t know what I’m going to do because I don’t know what’s being done to me. I’ve got to find out. I’ve got to find out in my own way.”
“We won’t interfere,” Dorothy said. “Will we, Nora?”
Nora continued to look at me, saying nothing.
I asked Dorothy: “Where’d you get that gun? And nothing out of books this time.” She moistened her lower lip and her face became pinker. She cleared her throat. “Careful,” I said. “If it’s another piece of chewing-gum, I’ll phone Mimi to come to get you.”
“Give her a chance,” Nora said.
Dorothy cleared her throat again. “Can—can I tell you something that happened to me when I was a little child?”
“Has it got anything to do with the gun?”
“Not exactly, but it’ll help you understand why I—”
“Not now. Some other time. Where’d you get the gun?”
“I wish you’d let me.” She hung her head. “Where’d you get the gun?”
Her voice was barely audible. “From a man in a speakeasy.”
I said: “I knew we’d get the truth at last.” Nora frowned and shook her head at me. “All right, say you did. What speakeasy?”
Dorothy raised her head. “I don’t know. It was on Tenth Avenue, I think. Your friend Mr. Quinn would know. He took me there.”
“You met him after you left us that night?”
“Yes.”
“By accident, I suppose.”
She looked reproachfully at me. “I’m trying to tell you the truth, Nick. I’d promised to meet him at a place called the Palma Club. He wrote the address down for me. So after I said goodnight to you and Nora, I met him there and we went to a lot of places, winding up in this place where I got the gun. It was an awful tough place. You can ask him if I’m telling the truth.”
“Quinn get the gun for you?”
“No. He’d passed out then. He was sleeping with his head on the table. I left him there. They said they’d get him home all right.”
“And the gun?”
“I’m coming to it.” She began to blush. “He told me it was a gunmen’s hang-out. That’s why I’d said let’s go there. And after he went to sleep I got to talking to a man there, an awful tough-looking man. I was fascinated. And all the time I didn’t want to go home, I wanted to come back here, but I didn’t know if you’d let me.” Her face was quite red now and in her embarrassment she blurred her words. “So I thought perhaps if I—if you thought I was in a terrible fix—and, besides, that way I wouldn’t feel so silly. Anyhow, I asked this awful tough-looking gangster, or whatever he was, if he would sell me a pistol or tell me where I could buy one. He thought I was kidding and laughed at first, but I told him I wasn’t, and then he kept on grinning, but he said he’d see, and when he came back he said yes, he could get me one and asked how much I would pay for it. I didn’t have much money, but I offered him my bracelet, but I guess he didn’t think it was any good, because he said no, he’d have to have cash, so finally I gave him twelve dollars—all I had but a dollar for the taxi—and he gave me the pistol and I came over here and made up that about being afraid to go home because of Chris.” She finished so rapidly her words ran together, and she sighed as if very glad to have finished.
“Then Chris hasn’t been making passes at you?”
She bit her lip. “Yes, but not—not that bad.” She put both hands on my arm, and her face almost touched mine. “You’ve got to believe me. I couldn’t tell you all that, couldn’t make myself out such a cheap little lying fool, if it wasn’t the truth.”
“It makes more sense if I don’t believe you,” I said. “Twelve bucks isn’t enough money. We’ll let that rest for a minute, though. Did you know Mimi was going to see Julia Wolf that afternoon?”
“No. I didn’t even know she was trying to find my father then. They didn’t say where they were going that afternoon.”
“They?”
“Yes, Chris left the apartment with her.”
“What time was that?”
She wrinkled her forehead. “It must’ve been pretty close to three o’clock—after two-thirty, anyway—because I remember I was late for a date to go shopping with Elsie Hamilton and was hurrying into my clothes.”
“They come back together?”
“I don’t know. They were both home before I came.”
“What time was that?”
“Some time after six. Nick, you don’t think they—Oh, I remember something she said while she was dressing. I don’t know what Chris said, but she said: ‘When I ask her she’ll tell me,’ in that Queen-of-France way she talks sometimes. You know. I didn’t hear anything else. Does that mean anything?”
“What’d she tell you about the murder when you came home?”
“Oh, just about finding her and how upset she was and about the police and everything.”
“She seem very shocked?”
Dorothy shook her head. “No, just excited. You know Mamma.” She stared at me for a moment, asked slowly: “You don’t think she had anything to do with it?”
“What do you think?”
“I hadn’t thought. I just thought about my father.” A little later she said gravely: “If he did it, it’s because he’s crazy, but she’d kill somebody if she wanted to.”
“It doesn’t have to be either of them,” I reminded her. “The police seem to have picked Morelli. What’d she want to find your father for?”
“For money. We’re broke: Chris spent it all.” She pulled down the corners of he
r mouth. “I suppose we all helped, but he spent most of it. Mamma’s afraid he’ll leave her if she hasn’t any money.”
“How do you know that?”
“I’ve heard them talk.”
“Do you think he will?”
She nodded with certainty. “Unless she has money.”
I looked at my watch and said: “The rest of it’ll have to wait till we get back. You can stay here tonight, anyhow. Make yourself comfortable and have the restaurant send up your dinner. It’s probably better if you don’t go out.” She stared miserably at me and said nothing.
Nora patted her shoulder. “I don’t know what he’s doing, Dorothy, but if he says we ought to go there for dinner he probably knows what he’s talking about. He wouldn’t—”
Dorothy smiled and jumped up from the floor. “I believe you. I won’t be silly any more.”
I called the desk on the telephone and asked them to send up our mail. There were a couple of letters for Nora, one for me, some belated Christmas cards (including one from Larry Crowley, which was a copy of Haldeman-Julius Little Blue Book Number 1534, with “and a Merry Christmas,” followed by Larry’s name enclosed in a holly wreath, all printed in red under the book’s title, How to Test four Urine at Home), a number of telephone-call memoranda slips, and a telegram from Philadelphia:
NICK CHARLES
THE NORMANDIE NEW YORK NY
WILL YOU COMMUNICATE WITH HERBERT MACAULAY TO DISCUSS TAKING CHARGE OF INVESTIGATION OF WOLF MURDER STOP AM GIVING HIM FULL INSTRUCTIONS STOP BEST REGARDS
CLYDE MILLER WYNANT
I put the telegram in an envelope with a note saying it had just reached me and sent it by messenger to the Police Department Homicide Bureau.
10
In the taxicab Nora asked: “You’re sure you feel all right?”
“Sure.”
“And this isn’t going to be too much for you?”
“I’m all right. What’d you think of the girl’s story?”
She hesitated. “You don’t believe her, do you?”
“God forbid—at least till I’ve checked it up.”
“You know more about this kind of thing than I do,” she said, “but I think she was at least trying to tell the truth.”
“A lot fancier yarns come from people who are trying to do that. It’s not easy once you’re out of the habit.”
She said: “I bet you know a lot about human nature, Mr. Charles. Now don’t you? Some time you must tell me about your experiences as a detective.”
I said: “Buying a gun for twelve bucks in a speakeasy. Well, maybe, but …”
We rode a couple of blocks in silence. Then Nora asked: “What’s really the matter with her?”
“Her old man’s crazy: she thinks she is.”
“How do you know?”
“You asked me. I’m telling you.”
“You mean you’re guessing?”
“I mean that’s what’s wrong with her; I don’t know whether Wynant’s actually nuts and I don’t know whether she inherited any of it if he is, but she thinks both answers are yes, and it’s got her doing figure eights.”
When we stopped in front of the Courtland she said: “That’s horrible, Nick. Somebody ought to—”
I said I didn’t know: maybe Dorothy was right. “Likely as not she’s making doll clothes for Asta right now.”
We sent our name up to the Jorgensens and, after some delay, were told to go up. Mimi met us in the corridor when we stepped out of the elevator, met us with open arms and many words. “Those wretched newspapers. They had me frantic with their nonsense about your being at death’s door. I phoned twice, but they wouldn’t give me your apartment, wouldn’t tell me how you were.” She had both of my hands. “I’m so glad, Nick, that it was just a pack of lies, even if you will have to take pot luck with us tonight. Naturally I didn’t expect you and— But you’re pale. You really have been hurt.”
“Not much,” I said. “A bullet scraped my side, but it doesn’t amount to anything.”
“And you came to dinner in spite of that! That is flattering, but I’m afraid it’s foolish too.” She turned to Nora. “Are you sure it was wise to let him—”
“I’m not sure,” Nora said, “but he wanted to come.”
“Men are such idiots,” Mimi said. She put an arm around me. “They either make mountains out of nothing or utterly neglect things that may— But come in. Here, let me help you.”
“It’s not that bad,” I assured her, but she insisted on leading me to a chair and packing me in with half a dozen cushions.
Jorgensen came in, shook hands with me, and said he was glad to find me more alive than the newspapers had said. He bowed over Nora’s hand. “If I may be excused one little minute more I will finish the cocktails.” He went out.
Mimi said: “I don’t know where Dorry is. Off sulking somewhere, I suppose. You haven’t any children, have you?”
Nora said: “No.”
“You’re missing a lot, though they can be a great trial sometimes.” Mimi sighed. “I suppose I’m not strict enough. When I do have to scold Dorry she seems to think I’m a complete monster.” Her face brightened. “Here’s my other tot. You remember Mr. Charles, Gilbert. And this is Mrs. Charles.” Gilbert Wynant was two years younger than his sister, a gangling pale blond boy of eighteen with not too much chin under a somewhat slack mouth. The size of his remarkably clear blue eyes, and the length of the lashes, gave him a slightly effeminate look. I hoped he had stopped being the whining little nuisance he was as a kid.
Jorgensen brought in his cocktails, and Mimi insisted on being told about the shooting. I told her, making it even more meaningless than it had been. “But why should he have come to you?” she asked.
“God knows. I’d like to know. The police’d like to know.”
Gilbert said: “I read somewhere that when habitual criminals are accused of things they didn’t do—even little things—they’re much more upset by it than other people would be. Do you think that’s so, Mr. Charles?”
“It’s likely.”
“Except,” Gilbert added, “when it’s something big, you know, something they would like to’ve done.” I said again it was likely.
Mimi said: “Don’t be polite to Gil if he starts talking nonsense, Nick. His head’s so cluttered up with reading. Get us another cocktail, darling.” He went over to get the shaker. Nora and Jorgensen were in a corner sorting phonograph records.
I said: “I had a wire from Wynant today.”
Mimi looked warily around the room, then leaned forward, and her voice was almost a whisper: “What did he say?”
“Wanted me to find out who killed her. It was sent from Philadelphia this afternoon.”
She was breathing heavily. “Are you going to do it?”
I shrugged. “I turned it over to the police.” Gilbert came back with the shaker. Jorgensen and Nora had put Bach’s “Little Fugue” on the phonograph. Mimi quickly drank her cocktail and had Gilbert pour her another.
He sat down and said: “I want to ask you: can you tell dope-addicts by looking at them?” He was trembling.
“Very seldom. Why?”
“I was wondering. Even if they’re confirmed addicts?”
“The further along they are, the better the chances of noticing that something’s wrong, but you can’t often be sure it’s dope.”
“Another thing,” he said, “Gross says when you’re stabbed you only feel a sort of push at the time and it’s not until afterwards that it begins to hurt. Is that so?”
“Yes, if you’re stabbed reasonably hard with a reasonably sharp knife. A bullet’s the same way: you only feel the blow—and with a small-calibre steel-jacketed bullet not much of that—at first. The rest comes when the air gets to it.”
Mimi drank her third cocktail and said: “I think you’re both being indecently gruesome, especially after what happened to Nick today. Do try to find Dorry, Gil. You must know some of her friends. Phone them. I su
ppose she’ll be along presently, but I worry about her.”
“She’s over at our place,” I said.
“At your place?” Her surprise may have been genuine.
“She came over this afternoon and asked if she could stay with us awhile.”
She smiled tolerantly and shook her head. “These youngsters!” She stopped smiling. “Awhile?” I nodded. Gilbert, apparently waiting to ask me another question, showed no interest in this conversation between his mother and me.
Mimi smiled again and said: “I’m sorry she’s bothering you and your wife, but it’s a relief to know she’s there instead of off the Lord only knows where. She’ll have finished her pouting by the time you get back. Send her along home, will you?” She poured me a cocktail. “You’ve been awfully nice to her.” I did not say anything.
Gilbert began: “Mr. Charles, do criminals—I mean professional criminals—usually—”
“Don’t interrupt, Gil,” Mimi said. “You will send her along home, won’t you?” She was pleasant, but she was Dorothy’s Queen of France.
“She can stay if she wants. Nora likes her.”
She shook a crooked finger at me. “But I won’t have you spoiling her like that. I suppose she told you all sorts of nonsense about me.”
“She did say something about a beating.”
“There you are,” Mimi said complacently, as if that proved her point. “No, you’ll have to send her home, Nick.” I finished my cocktail. “Well?” she asked.
“She can stay with us if she wants, Mimi. We like having her.”
“That’s ridiculous. Her place is at home. I want her here.” Her voice was a little sharp. “She’s only a baby. You shouldn’t encourage her foolish notions.”
“I’m not doing anything. If she wants to stay, she stays.”
Anger was a very pretty thing in Mimi’s blue eyes. “She’s my child and she’s a minor. You’ve been very kind to her, but this isn’t being kind to her or to me, and I won’t have it. If you won’t send her home, I’ll take steps to bring her home. I’d rather not be disagreeable about it, but”—she leaned forward and deliberately spaced her words—“she’s coming home.”