The Thin Man

5

Nora could not sleep that night. She read Chaliapin's memoirs until I began to doze and then woke me up by asking: “Are you asleep?”

I said I was.

She lit a cigarette for me, one for herself. “Don't you ever think you'd like to go back to detecting once in a while just for the fun of it? You know, when something special comes up, like the Lindb—”

“Darling,” I said, “my guess is that Wynant killed her, and the police'll catch him without my help. Anyway, it's nothing in my life.”

“I didn't mean just that, but—”

“But besides I haven't the time: I'm too busy trying to see that you don't lose any of the money I married you for.” I kissed her. “Don't you think maybe a drink would help you to sleep?”

“No, thanks.”

“Maybe it would if I took one.” When I brought my Scotch and soda back to bed, she was frowning into space. I said: “She's cute, but she's cuckoo. She wouldn't be his daughter if she wasn't. You can't tell how much of what she says is what she thinks and you can't tell how much of what she thinks ever really happened. I like her, but I think you're letting—”

“I'm not sure I like her,” Nora said thoughtfully, “she's probably a little bastard, but if a quarter of what she told us is true, she's in a tough spot.”

“There's nothing I can do to help her.”

“She thinks you can.”

“And so do you, which shows that no matter what you think, you can always get somebody else to go along with you.”

Nora sighed. “I wish you were sober enough to talk to.” She leaned over to take a sip of my drink. “I'll give you your Christmas present now if you'll give me mine.”

I shook my head. “At breakfast.”

“But it's Christmas now.”

“Breakfast.”

“Whatever you're giving me,” she said, “I hope I don't like it.”

“You'll have to keep them anyway, because the man at the Aquarium said he positively wouldn't take them back. He said they'd already bitten the tails off the—”

“It wouldn't hurt you any to find out if you can help her, would it? She's got so much confidence in you, Nicky.”

“Everybody trusts Greeks.”

“Please.”

“You just want to poke your nose into things that—”

“I meant to ask you: did his wife know the Wolf girl was his mistress?”

“I don't know. She didn't like her.”

“What's the wife like?”

“I don't know—a woman.”

“Good-looking?”

“Used to be very.”

“She old?”

“Forty, forty-two. Cut it out, Nora. You don't want any part of it. Let the Charleses stick to the Charleses' troubles and the Wynants stick to the Wynants'.”

She pouted. “Maybe that drink would help me.”

I got out of bed and mixed her a drink. As I brought it into the bedroom, the telephone began to ring. I looked at my watch on the table. It was nearly five o'clock.

Nora was talking into the telephone: “FIelloYes, speaking.” She looked sidewise at me. I shook my head no. “Yes Why, certainly. . . . Yes, certainly.” She put the telephone down and grinned at me.

“You're wonderful,” I said. “Now what?”

“Dorothy's coming up. I think she's tight.”

“That's great.” I picked up my bathrobe. “I was afraid I was going to have to go to sleep.”

She was bending over looking for her slippers. “Don't be such an old fuff. You can sleep all day.” She found her slippers and stood up in them. “Is she really as afraid of her mother as she says?”

“If she's got any sense. Mimi's poison.”

Nora screwed up her dark eyes at me and asked slowly: “What are you holding out on me?”

“Oh, dear,” I said, “I was hoping I wouldn't have to tell you. Dorothy is really my daughter. I didn't know what I was doing, Nora. It was spring in Venice and I was so young and there was a moon over the—”

“Be funny. Don't you want something to eat?”

“If you do. What do you want?”

“Raw chopped beef sandwich with a lot of onion and some coffee.”

Dorothy arrived while I was telephoning an all-night delicatessen. When I went into the living-room, she stood up with some difficulty and said: “I'm awfully sorry, Nick, to keep bothering you and Nora like this, but I can't go home this way tonight. I can't. I'm afraid to. I don't know what'd happen to me, what I'd do. Please don't make me.” She was very drunk. Asta sniffed at her ankles.

I said: “Sb-h-h. You're all right here. Sit down. There'll be some coffee in a little while. Where'd you get the snoutful?”

She sat down and shook her head stupidly. “I don't know. I've been everywhere since I left you. I've been everywhere except home because I can't go home this way. Look what I got.” She stood up again and Look a battered automatic pistol out of her coat pocket. “Look at that.” She waved it at me while Asta, wagging her tail, jumped happily at it.

Nora made a noise with her breathing. The back of my neck was cold. I pushed the dog aside and took the pistol away from Dorothy. “What kind of clowning is this? Sit down.” I dropped the pistol into a bathrobe pocket and pushed Dorothy down in her chair.

“Don't be mad at me, Nick,” she whined. “You can keep it. I don't want to make a nuisance of myself.”

“Where'd you get it?” I asked.

“In a speakeasy on Tenth Avenue. I gave a man my bracelet—the one with the emeralds and diamonds—for it.”

“And then won it back from him in a crap game,” I said. “You've still got it on.”

She stared at her bracelet. “I thought I did.”

I looked at Nora and shook my head. Noma said: “Aw, don't bully her, Nick. She's—”

“He's not bullying me, Noma, he's really not,” Dorothy said quickly. “He—he's the only person I got in the world to turn to.”

I remembered Nora had not touched her Scotch and soda, so I went into the bedroom and drank it. When I came back, Nora was sitting on the arm of Dorothy's chair with an arm around the girl. Dorothy was sniffling; Nora was saying: “But Nick's not mad, dear. He likes you.” She looked up at me. “You're not mad, are you, Nicky?”

“No, I'm just hurt.” I sat on the sofa. “Where'd you get the gun, Dorothy?”

“From a man—I told you.”

“What man?”

“I told you—a man in a speakeasy.”

“And you gave him a bracelet for it.”

“I thought I did, but—look—I've still got my bracelet.”

“I noticed that.”

Nora patted the girl's shoulder. “Of course you've still got your bracelet.”

I said: “When the boy comes with that coffee and stuff, I'm going to bribe him to stick around. I'm not going to stay alone with a couple of—”

Nora scowled at me, told the girl: “Don't mind him. He's been like that all night.”

The girl said: “Fle thinks I'm a silly little drunken fool.”

Nora patted her shoulder some more.

I asked: “But what'd you want a gun for?”

Dorothy sat up straight and stared at me with wide drunken eyes. “Him,” she whispered excitedly, “if he bothered me. I was afraid because I was drunk. That's what it was. And then I was afraid of that, too, so I came here.”

“You mean your father?” Nora asked, trying to keep excitement out of her voice.

The girl shook her head. “Clyde Wynant's my father. My stepfather.” She leaned against Nona's breast.

Nora said, “Oh,” in a tone of very complete understanding. Then she said, “You poor child,” and looked significantly at me.

I said: “Let's all have a drink.”

“Not me.” Nora was scowling at me again. “And I don't think Dorothy wants one.”

“Yes, she does. It'll help her sleep.” I poured her a terrific dose of Scotch and saw that she drank it. It workcd nicely: she was sound asleep by the time our coffee and sandwiches came.

Nora said: “Now you're satisfied.”

“Now I' m satisfied S hall we tuck her in before we eat?”

I carried her into the bedroom and helped Nora undress her. She had a beautiful little body.

We went back to our food. I took the pistol out of my pocket and examined it. It had been kicked around a lot. There were two cartridges in it, one in the chamber, one in the magazine.

“What are you going to do with it?” Nora asked.

“Nothing till I find out if it's the one Julia Wolf was killed with. It's a .32.”

“But she said—”

“She got it in a speakeasy—from a man—for a bracelet. I heard her.”

Nora leaned over her sandwich at me. Her eyes were very shiny and almost black. “Do you suppose she got it from her stepfather?”

“I do,” I said, but I said it too earnestly.

Nora said: “You're a Greek louse. But maybe she did; you don't know. And you don't believe her story.”

“Listen, darling, tomorrow I'll buy you a whole lot of detective stories, but don't worry your pretty little head over mysteries tonight. All she was trying to tell you was that she was afraid Jorgensen was waiting to try to make her when she got home and she was afraid she was drunk enough to give in.”

“But her mother!”

“This family's a family. You can—”

Dorothy Wynant, standing unsteadily in the doorway in a nightgown much too long for her, blinked at the light and said: “Please, can I come in for a little while? I'm afraid in there alone.”

“Sure.”

She came over and curled up beside me on the sofa while Nora went to get something to put around her.