The Thin Man

15

I had a stenographer in the next morning and got rid of most of the mail that had been accumulating; had a telephone conversation with our lawyer in San Francisco—we were trying to keep one of the mill's customers from being thrown into bankruptcy; spent an hour going over a plan we had for lowering our state taxes; was altogether the busy business man, and felt pretty virtuous by two o'clock, when I knocked off work for the day and went out to lunch with Nora.

She had a date to play bridge after lunch. I went down to see Guild: I had talked to him on the telephone earlier in the day.

“So it was a false alarm?” I said after we had shaken hands and made ourselves comfortable in chairs.

“That's what it was. He wasn't any more Wynant than I am. You know how it is: we told the Philly police he'd sent a wire from there and broadcasted his description, and for the next week anybody that's skinny and maybe got whiskers is Wynant to half of the State of Pennsylvania. This was a fellow named Barlow, a carpenter out of work as near as we can figure out, that got shot by a nigger trying to stick him up. He can't talk much yet.”

“He couldn't've been shot by somebody who made the same mistake the Allentown police did?” I asked.

“You mean thought he was Wynant? I guess that could be—if it helps any. Does it?”

I said I didn't know. “Did Macaulay tell you about the letter he got from Wynant?”

“He didn't tell me what was in it.”

I told him. I told him what I knew about Kelterman.

He said: “Now, that's interesting.”

I told him about the letter Wynant had sent his sister.

He said: “He writes a lot of people, don't he?”

“I thought of that.” I told him Sidney Kelterman's description with a few easy changes would fit Christian Jorgensen.

He said: “It don't hurt any to listen to a man like you. Don't let me stop you.”

I told him that was the crop.

He rocked back in his chair and screwed his pale gray eyes up at the ceiling. “There's some work to be done there,” he said presently.

“Was this fellow in Allentown shot with a .3 2?” I asked.

Guild stared curiously at me for a moment, then shook his head. “A .44. You got something on your mind?”

“No. Just chasing the set-up around in my head.”

He said, “I know what that is,” and leaned back to look at the ceiling some more. When he spoke again it was as if he was thinking of something else. “That alibi of Macaulay's you was asking about is all right. He was late for a date then and we know for a fact he was in a fellow's office named Hermann on Fifty-seventh Street from five minutes after three till twenty after, the time that counts.”

“What's the five minutes after three?”

“That's right, you don't know about that. Well, we found a fellow named Caress with a cleaning and dyeing place on First Avenue that called her up at five minutes after three to ask her if she had any work for him, and she said no and told him she was liable to go away. So that narrows the time down to from three five to three twenty. You ain't really suspicious of Macaulay?”

“I'm suspicious of everybody,” I said. “Where were you between three five and three twenty?”

He laughed. “As a matter of fact,” he said, “I'm just about the only one of the lot that ain't got an alibi. I was at the moving pictures.”

“The rest of them have?”

He wagged his head up and down. “Jorgensen left his place with Mrs. Jorgensen—that was about five minutes to three—and sneaked over on West Seventy-third Street to see a girl named Olga Fenton—we promised not to tell his wife—and stayed there till about five. 'We know what Mrs. Jorgensen did. The daughter was dressing when they left and she took a taxi at a quarter past and went straight to Bergdorf-Goodman's. The son was in the Public Library all afternoon—Jesus, he reads funny books. Morelli was in a joint over in the Forties.” He laughed. “And where was you?”

“I'm saving mine till I really need it. None of those look too airtight, but legitimate alibis seldom do. How about Nunheim?”

Guild seemed surprised. “What makes you think of him?”

“I hear he had a yen for the girl.”

“And where'd you hear it?”

“I heard it.”

He scowled. “Would you say it was reliable?”

“Yes.”

“Well,” he said slowly, “he's one guy we can check up on. But look here, what do you care about these people? Don't you think Wynant done it?”

I gave him the same odds I had given Studsy: “Twenty-five'll get you fifty he didn't.”

He scowled at me over that for a long silent moment, then said: “That's an idea, anyways. Who's your candidate?”

“I haven't got that far yet. Understand, I don't know anything. I'm not saying Wynant didn't do it. I'm just saying everything doesn't point at him.”

“And saying it two to one. What don't point at him?”

“Call it a hunch, if you want,” I said, “but—”

“I don't want to call it anything,” he said. “I think you're a smart detective. I want to listen to what you got to say.”

“Mostly I've got questions to say. For instance, how long was it from the time the elevator boy let Mrs. Jorgensen off at the Wolf girl's floor until she rang for him and said she heard groans?”

Guild pursed his lips, opened them to ask, “You think she might've—?” and left the rest of the question hanging in the air.

“I think she might've. I'd like to know where Nunheim was. I'd like to know the answers to the questions in Wynant's letter. I'd like to know where the four-thousand-dollar difference between what Macaulay gave the girl and what she seems to have given Wynant went. I'd like to know where her engagement ring came from.”

“We're doing the best we can,” Guild said. “Me—just now I'd like to know why, if he didn't do it, Wynant don't come in and answer questions for us.” —“One reason might be that Mrs. Jorgensen'd like to slam him in the squirrel cage again.” I thought of something. “Herbert Macaulay's working for Wynant: you didn't just take Macaulay's word for it that the man in Allentown wasn't him?”

“No. He was a younger man than Wynant, with damned little gray in his hair and no dye, and he didn't look like the pictures we got.” He seemed positive. “You got anything to do the next hour or so?”

“No.”

“That's fine.” He stood up. “I'll get some of the boys working on these things we been discussing and then maybe me and you will pay some visits.”

“Swell,” I said, and he went out of the office.

There was a copy of the Times in his wastebasket. I fished it out and turned to the Public Notices columns. Macaulay's advertisement was there:

“Abner. Yes. Bunny.”

When Guild returned I asked: “How about Wynant's help, whoever he had working in the shop? Have they been looked up?”

“Uh-huh, but they don't know anything. They was laid off at the end of the week that he went away—there's two of them—and haven't seen him since.”

“What were they working on when the shop was closed?”

“Some kind of paint or something—something about a permanent green. I don't know. I'll find out if you want.”

“I don't suppose it matters. Is it much of a shop?”

“Looks like a pretty good lay-out, far as I can tell. You think the shop might have something to do with it?”

“Anything might.”

“Uh-huh. Well, let's run along.”