The Thin Man

30

Mimi came in with the doctor, said, “Oh, how do you do,” a little stiffly to Macaulay, and shook hands with him. “This is Doctor Grant, Mr. Macaulay, Mr. Charles.”

“How's the patient?” I asked.

Doctor Grant cleared his throat and said he didn't think there was anything seriously the matter with Gilbert, effects of a beating, slight hemorrhage of course, should rest, though. He cleared his throat again and said he was happy to have met us, and Mimi showed him out.

“What happened to the boy?” Macaulay asked me.

“Wynant sent him on a wild-goose chase over to Julia's apartment and he ran into a tough copper.”

Mimi returned from the door. “Has Mr. Charles told you about the bonds and the check?” she asked.

“I had a note from Mr. Wynant saying he was giving them to you,” Macaulay said.

“Then there will be no—”

“Difficulty? Not that I know of.”

She relaxed a little and her eyes lost some of their coldness. “I didn't see why there should be, but he”—pointing at me—“likes to frighten me.”

Macaulay smiled politely. “May I ask whether Mr. Wynant said anything about his plans?”

“He said something about going away, but I don't suppose I was listening very attentively. I don't remember whether he told me when he was going on where.”

I grunted to show skepticism; Macaulay pretended he believed her “Did he say anything that you could repeat to me about Julia Wolf, or about his difficulties, or about anything connected with the murder and all?” he asked.

She shook her head emphatically. “Not a word I could either repeat or couldn't, not a word at all. I asked him about it, but you know how unsatisfactory he can be when he wants. I couldn't get as much as a grunt out of him about it.”

I asked the question Macaulay seemed too polite to ask: “What did he talk about?”

“Nothing, really, except ourselves and the children, particularly Gil. He was very anxious to see him and waited nearly an hour, hoping he'd come home. He asked about Dorry, but didn't seem very interested.”

“Did he say anything about having written Gilbert?”

“Not a word. I can repeat our whole conversation, if you want me to. I didn't know he was coming, he didn't even phone from downstairs. The doorbell just rang and when I went to the door there he was, looking a lot older than when I'd seen him last and even thinner, and I said, 'Why Clyde!' or something like that, and he said: 'Are you alone?' I told him I was and he came in. Then he—”

The doorbell rang and she went to answer it.

“What do you think of it?” Macaulay asked in a low voice.

“When I start believing Mimi,” I said, “I hope I have sense enough not to admit it.”

She returned from the door with Guild and Andy. Guild nodded to me and shook hands with Macaulay, then turned to Mimi and said: “Well, ma'am, I'll have to ask you to tell—”

Macaulay interrupted him: “Suppose you let me tell what I have to tell first, Lieutenant. It belongs ahead of Mrs. Jorgensen's story and—”

Guild waved a big hand at the lawyer. “Go ahead.” He sat down on an end of the sofa.

Macaulay told him what he had told me that morning. When he mentioned having told it to me that morning Guild glanced bitterly at me, once, and thereafter ignored me completely. Guild did not interrupt Macaulay, who told his story clearly and concisely. Twice Mimi started to say something, but each time broke off to listen. When Macaulay had finished, he handed Guild the note about the bonds and check. “That came by messenger this afternoon.”

Guild read the note very carefully and addressed Mimi: “Now then, Mrs. Jorgensen.”

She told him what she had told us about Wynant's visit, elaborating the details as he patiently questioned her, but sticking to her story that he had refused to say a word about anything connected with Julia Wolf or her murder, that in giving her the bonds and check he had simply said that he wished to provide for her and the children, and that though he had said he was going away she did not know where or when. She seemed not at all disturbed by everybody's obvious disbelief. She wound up smiling, saying: “He's a sweet man in a lot of ways, but quite mad.”

“You mean he's really insane, do you?” Guild asked; “not just nutty?”

“Yes.”

“What makes you think that?”

“Oh, you'd have to live with him to really know how mad he is,” she replied airily.

Guild seemed dissatisfied. “What kind of clothes was he wearing?”

“A brown suit and brown overcoat and hat and I think brown shoes and a white shirt and a grayish necktie with either red or reddish brown figures in it.”

Guild jerked his head at Andy. “Tell 'em.”

Andy went out.

Guild scratched his jaw and frowned thoughtfully. The rest of us watched him. When he stopped scratching, he looked at Mimi and Macaulay, but not at me, and asked: “Any of you know anybody that's got the initials of D. W. Q.?”

Macauhay shook his head from side to side slowly. Mimi said: “No. Why?”

Guild looked at me now. “Well?”

“I don't know them.”

“Why?” Mimi repeated.

Guild said: “Try to remember back. He'd most likely've had dealings with Wynant.”

“How far back?” Macaulay asked.

“That's hard to say right now. Maybe a few months, maybe a few years. He'd be a pretty large man, big bones, big belly, and maybe lame.”

Macaulay shook his head again. “I don't remember anybody like that.”

“Neither do I,” Mimi said, “but I'm bursting with curiosity. I wish you'd tell us what it's all about.”

“Sure, I'll tell you.” Guild took a cigar from his vest pocket, looked at it, and returned it to the pocket. “A dead man like that's buried under the floor of Wynant's shop.”

I said: “Ah .”

Mimi put both hands to her mouth and said nothing. Her eyes were round and glassy.

Macaulay, frowning, asked: “Are you sure?”

Guild sighed. “Now you know that ain't something anybody would guess at,” he said wearily.

Macaulay's face flushed and he smiled sheepishly. “That was a silly question. How did you happen to find him—it?”

“Well, Mn. Charles here kept hinting that we ought to pay more attention to that shop, so, figuring that Mr. Charles here is a man that's liable to know a lot more things than he tells anybody right out, I sent sonic men around this morning to see what they could find. We'd give it the once over before and hadn't turned up nothing, but this time I told 'em to take the dump apart, because Mr. Charles here had said we ought to pay more attention to it. And Mr. Charles here was right.” He looked at me with cool unfriendliness. “By and by they found a corner of the cement floor looking a little newer maybe than the rest and they cracked it and there was the mortal remains of Mr. D. W. Q. What do you think of that?”

Macauhay said: “I think it was a damned good guess of Charles's.” He turned to me. “How did you—”

Guild interrupted him. “1 don't think you ought to say that. 'When you call it just a guess, you ain't giving Mr. Charles here the proper credit for being as smart as he is.”

Macaulay was puzzled by Guild's tone. He looked questioningly at me.

“I'm being stood in the corner for not telling Lieutenant Guild about our conversation this morning,” I explained.

“There's that,” Guild agreed calmly, “among other things.”

Mimi laughed, and smiled apologetically at Guild when he stared at her.

“How was Mr. D. W. Q. killed?” I asked.

Guild hesitated, as if making up his mind whether to reply, then moved his big shoulders slightly and said: “I don't know yet, or how long ago. I haven't seen the remains yet, what there is of them, and the Medical Examiner wasn't through the last I heard.”

“What there is of them?” Macaulay repeated.

“Uh-huh. He'd been sawed up in pieces and buried in lime or something so there wasn't much flesh left on him, according to the report I got, but his clothes had been stuck in with him rolled up in a bundle, and enough was left of the inside ones to tell us something. There was part of a cane, too, with a rubber tip. That's why we thought he might be lame, and we—” He broke off as Andy came in. “Well?”

Andy shook his head gloomily. “Nobody sees him come, nobody sees him go. What was that joke about a guy being so thin he had to stand in the same place twice to throw a shadow?”

I laughed—not at the joke—and said: “Wynant's not that thin, but he's thin enough, say as thin as the paper in that check and in those letters people have been getting.”

“What's that?” Guild demanded, his face reddening, his eyes angry and suspicious.

“He's dead. He's been dead a long time except on paper. I'll give you even money they're his bones in the grave with the fat lame man's clothes.”

Macaulay leaned towards me. “Are you sure of that, Charles?”

Guild snarled at me: “What are you trying to pull?”

“There's the bet if you want it. Who'd go to all that trouble with a corpse and then leave the easiest thing of all to get rid of—the clothes— untouched unless they—”

“But they weren't untouched. They—”

“Of course not. That wouldn't look right. They'd have to be partly destroyed, only enough left to tell you what they were supposed to tell. I bet the initials were plenty conspicuous.”

“I don't know,” Guild said with less heat. “They were on a belt buckle.”

I laughed.

Mimi said angrily: “That's ridiculous, Nick. How could that be Clyde? You know he was here this afternoon. You know he—”

“Sh-h-h. It's very silly of you to play along with him,” I told her. “Wynant's dead, your children are probably his heirs, that's more money than you've got over there in the drawer. What do you want to take part of the loot for when you can get it all?”

“I don't know what you mean,” she said. She was very pale.

Macauhay said: “Charles thinks Wynant wasn't here this afternoon and that you were given those securities and the check by somebody else, or perhaps stole them yourself. Is that it?” he asked me.

“Practically.”

“But that's ridiculous,” she insisted.

“Be sensible, Mimi,” I said. “Suppose Wynant was killed three months ago and his corpse disguised as somebody else. He's supposed to have gone away leaving powers of attorney with Macaulay. All right, then, the estate's completely in Macaulay's hands for ever and ever, or at least until he finishes plundering it, because you can't even—”

Macaulay stood up saying: “I don't know what you're getting at, Charles, but I'm—”

“Take it easy,” Guild told him. “Let him have his say out.”

“He killed Wynant and he killed Julia and he killed Nunheim,” I assured Mimi. “What do you want to do? Be next on the list? YOu pught to know damned well that once you've come to his aid by saying you've seen Wynant alive—because that's his weak spot, being the only person up to now who claims to have seen Wynant since October—he's not going to take any chances on having you change your mind—not when it's only a matter of knocking you off with the same gun and putting the blame on Wynant. And what are you doing it for? For those few crunimy bonds in the drawer, a fraction of what you get your hands on through your children if we prove Wynant's dead.”

Mimi turned to Macaulay and said: “You son of a bitch.”

Guild gaped at her, more surprised by that than by anything else that had been said.

Macaulay started to move. I did not wait to see what he meant to do, but slammed his chin with my left fist. The punch was all right, it landed solidly and dropped him, but I felt a burning sensation on my left side and knew I had torn the bullet-wound open.

“What do you want me to do?” I growled at Guild. “Put him in Cellophane for you?”