The Thin Man

18

Mimi received me with both hands. “It's awfully, awfully nice of you to forgive me, Nick, but then you've always been awfully nice. I don't know what got into me Monday night.”

I said: “Forget it.”

Her face was somewhat pinker than usual and the firmness of its muscles made it seem younger. Her blue eyes were very bright. Her hands had been cold on mine. She was tense with excitement, but I could not figure out what kind of excitement it was.

She said: “It was awfully sweet of your wife, too, to—”

“Forget it.”

“Nick, what can they do to you for concealing evidence that somebody's guilty of a murder?”

“Make you an accomplice—accomplice after the fact is the technical term—if they want.”

“Even if you voluntarily change your mind and give them the evidence?”

“They can. Usually they don't.”

She looked around the room as if to make sure there was nobody else there and said: “Clyde killed Julia. I found the proof and hid it. What'll they do to me?”

“Probably nothing except give you hell—if you turn it in. He was once your husband: you and he are close enough together that no jury'd be likely to blame you for trying to cover him up—unless, of course, they had reason to think you had some other motive.”

She asked coolly, deliberately: “Do you?”

“I don't know,” I said. “My guess would be that you had intended to use this proof of his guilt to shake him down for some dough as soon as you could get in touch with him, and that now something else has come up to make you change your mind.”

She made a claw of her right hand and struck at my face with her pointed nails. Her teeth were together, her lips drawn far back over them.

I caught her wrist. “Women are getting tough,” I said, trying to sound wistful. “I just left one that heaved a skillet at a guy.”

She laughed, though her eyes did not change. “You're such a bastard. You always think the worst of me, don't you?”

I took my hand away from her wrist and she rubbed the marks my fingers had left on it.

“Who was the woman who threw the skillet?” she asked. “Anyone I know?”

“It wasn't Nora, if that's what you mean. Have they arrested SidneyChristian Kelterman-Jorgensen yet?”

“What?”

I believed in her bewilderment, though both it and my belief in it surprised me. “Jorgensen is Kelterman,” I said. “You remember him. I thought you knew.”

“You mean that horrible man who—?”

“Yes.”

“I won't believe it.” She stood up working her fingers together. “I won't. I won't.” Her face was sick with fear, her voice strained, unreal as a ventriloquist's. “I won't believe it.”

“That'll help a lot,” I said.

She was not listening to me. She turned her back to me and went to a window, where she stood with her back to me.

I said: “There's a couple of men in a car out front who look like they might be coppers waiting to pick him up when he—”

She turned around and asked sharply: “Are you sure he's Kelterman?” Most of the fear had already gone out of her face and her voice was at least human again.

“The police are.”

We stared at each other, both of us busy thinking. I was thinking she had not been afraid that Jorgensen killed Julia Wolf, or even that he might be arrested: she was afraid his only reason for marrying her had been as a move in some plot against Wynant.

When I laughed—not because the idea was funny, but because it had come to me so suddenly—she started and smiled uncertainly. “I won't believe it,” she said, and her voice was very soft now, “until he tells me himself.”

“And when he does—then what?”

She moved her shoulders a little, and her lower lip quivered. “He is my husband.”

That should have been funny, but it annoyed me. I said: “Mimi, this is Nick. You remember me, N-i-c-k.”

“I know you never think any good of me,” she said gravely. “You think I'm—”

“All right. All right. Let it pass. Let's get back to the dope on Wynant you found.”

“Yes, that,” she said, and turned away from me. When she turned back her lip was quivering again. “That was a lie, Nick. I didn't find anything.” She came close to me. “Clyde had no right to send those letters to Alice and Macaulay trying to make everybody suspicious of me and I thought it would serve him right if I made up something against him, because I really did think—I mean, I do think—he killed her and it was only—”

“What'd you make up?” I asked.

“I—I hadn't made it up yet. I wanted to find out about what they could do—you know, the things I asked you—first. I might've pretended she came to a little when I was alone with her, while the others were phoning, and told me he did it.”

“You didn't say you heard something and kept quiet, you said you found something and hid it.”

“But I hadn't really made up my mind what I—”

“When'd you hear about Wynant's letter to Macaulay?”

“This afternoon,” she said, “there was a man here from the police.”

“Didn't he ask you anything about Kelterman?”

“He asked me if I knew him or had ever known him, and I thought I was telling the truth when I said no.”

“Maybe you did,” I said, “and for the first time I now believe you were telling the truth when you said you found some sort of evidence against Wynant.”

She opened her eyes wider. “I don't understand.”

“Neither do I, but it could be like this: you could've found something and decided to hold it out, probably with the idea of selling it to Wynant; then when his letters started people looking you over, you decided to give up the money idea and both pay him back and protect yourself by turning it over to the police; and, finally, when you learn that Jorgensen is Kelterman, you make another about-face and hold it out, not for money this time, but to leave Jorgensen in as bad a spot as possible as punishment for having married you as a trick in his game against Wynant and not for love.”

She smiled calmly and asked: “You really think me capable of anything, don't you?”

“That doesn't matter,” I said. “What ought to matter to you is that you'll probably wind up your life in prison somewhere.”

Her scream was not loud, but it was horrible, and the fear that had been in her face before was as nothing to that there now. She caught my lapels and clung to them, babbling: “Don't say that, please don't. Say you don't think it.” She was trembling so I put an arm around her to keep her from falling.

We did not hear Gilbert until he coughed and asked: “Aren't you well, Mamma?”

She slowly took her hands down from my lapels and moved back a step and said: “Your mother's a silly woman.” She was still trembling, but she smiled at me and she made her voice playful: “You're a brute to frighten me like that.”

I said I was sorry.

Gilbert put his coat and hat on a chair and looked from one to the other of us with polite interest. When it became obvious that neither of us was going to tell him anything he coughed again, said, “I'm awfully glad to see you,” and came over to shake hands with me.

I said I was glad to see him.

Mimi said: “Your eyes look tired. I bet you've been reading all afternoon without your glasses again.” She shook her head and told me: “He's as unreasonable as his father.”

“Is there any news of Father?” he asked.

“Not since that false alarm about his suicide,” I said. “I suppose you heard it was a false alarm.”

“Yes.” He hesitated. “I'd like to see you for a few minutes before you go.”

“Sure.”

“But you're seeing him now, darling,” Mimi said. “Are there secrets between you that I'm not supposed to know about?” Her tone was light enough. She had stopped trembling.

“It would bore you.” He picked up his hat and coat, nodded at me, and left the room.

Mimi shook her head again and said: “I don't understand that child at all. I wonder what he made of our tableau.” She did not seem especially worried. Then, more seriously: “What made you say that, Nick?”

“About you winding up in—?”

“No, never mind.” She shuddered. “I don't want to hear it. Can't you stay for dinner? I'll probably be all alone.”

“I'm sorry I can't. Now how about this evidence you found?”

“I didn't really find anything. That was a lie.” She frowned earnestly. “Don't look at me like that. It really was a lie.”

“So you sent for me just to lie to me?” I asked. “Then why'd you change your mind?”

She chuckled. “You must really like me, Nick, or you wouldn't always be so disagreeable.”

I could not follow that line of reasoning. I said: “Well, I'll see what Gilbert wants and run along.”

“I wish you could stay.”

“I'm sorry I can't,” I said again. “Where'll I find him?”

“The second door to the— Will they really arrest Chris?”

“That depends,” I told her, “on what kind of answers he gives them. He'll have to talk pretty straight to stay out.”

“Oh, he'll—” she broke off, looked sharply at me, asked, “You're not playing a trick on me? He's really that Kelterman?”

“The police are sure enough of it.”

“But the man who was here this afternoon didn't ask a single question about Chris,” she objected. “He only asked me if I knew—”

“They weren't sure then,” I explained. “It was just a half-idea.”

“But they're sure now?”

I nodded.

“How'd they find out?”

“From a girl he knows,” I said.

“Who?” Her eyes darkened a little, but her voice was under control.

“I can't remember her name.” Then I went back to the truth: “The one that gave him his alibi for the afternoon of the murder.”

“Alibi?” she asked indignantly. “Do you mean to tell me the police would take the word of a girl like that?”

“Like what?”

“You know what I mean.”

“I don't. Do you know the girl?”

“No,” she said as if I had insulted her. She narrowed her eyes and lowered her voice until it was not much more than a whisper: “Nick, do you suppose he killed Julia?”

“What would lie do that for?”

“Suppose he married me to get revenge on Clyde,” she said, “and— You know he did urge me to conie over here and try to get some money from Clyde. Maybe I suggested it—I don't know—but he did urge me. And then suppose he happened to run into Julia. She knew him, of course, because they worked for Clyde at the same time. And he knew I was going over to see her that afternoon and was afraid if I made her mad she might expose him to me and so— Couldn't that be?”

“That doesn't make any sense at all. Besides, you and he left here together that afternoon. He wouldn't've had time to—”

“But my taxicab was awfully slow,” she said, “and then i may have stopped somewhere on— I think I did. I think I stopped at a drug store to get some aspirin.” She nodded energetically. “I remember I did.”

“And he knew you were going to stop, because you had told him,” I suggested. “You can't go on like this, Mimi. Murder's serious. It's nothing to frame people for just because then played tricks on you.”

“Tricks?” she asked, glaring at me. “Why, that . . .” She called Jorgensen all the usual profane, obscene, and otherwise insulting names, her voice gradually rising until towards the end she was screaming into my face.

When she stopped for breath I said: “That's pretty cursing, but it—”

“He even had the nerve to hint that I might've killed her,” she told me. “He didn't have nerve enough to ask me, but he kept leading up to it until I told him positively that—well, that I didn't do it.”

“That's not what you started to say. You told him positively what?”

She stamped her foot. “Stop heckling me.”

“All right and to hell with you,” I said. “Coming here wasn't my idea.” I started towards my hat and coat.

She ran after me, caught my arm. “Please, Nick, I'm sorry. It's this rotten temper of mine. I don't know what I—”

Gilbert came in and said: “I'll go along part of the way with you.”

Mimi scowled at him. “You were listening.”

“How could I help it, the way you screamed?” he asked. “Can I have some money?”

“And we haven't finished talking,” she said.

I looked at my watch. “I've got to run, Mimi. It's late.”

“Will you come back after you get through with your date?”

“If it's not too late. Don't wait for me.”

“I'll be here,” she said, “It doesn't matter how late it is.”

I said I would try to make it. She gave Gilbert his money. He and I went downstairs.