“Did you hear from Wynant?”
“Yes.”
“I got a letter from him saying he had wired you. Are you too sick to—”
“No, I'm up and around. If you'll be in your office late this afternoon I'll drop in.”
“Swell,” he said. “I'll be here till six.”
I returned to the living-room. Nora was inviting Guild to have lunch while we had breakfast. He said it was mighty kind of her. I said I ought to have a drink before breakfast. Nora went to order meals and pour drinks.
Guild shook his head and said: “She's a mighty fine woman, Mr. Charles.”
I nodded solemnly.
He said: “Suppose you should get pushed into this thing, as you say, I'd like it a lot more to feel you were working with us than against us.”
“So would I.”
“That's a bargain then,” he said. He hunched his chair around a little. “I don't guess you remember me, but back when you were working this town I was walking beat on Forty-third Street.”
“Of course,” I said, lying politely. “I knew there was something familiar about— Being out of uniform makes a difference.”
“I guess it does. I'd like to be able to take it as a fact that you're not holding out anything we don't already know.”
“I don't mean to. I don't know what you know. I don't know very much. I haven't seen Macaulay since the murder and I haven't even been following it in the newspapers.”
The telephone was ringing again. Nora gave us our drinks and went to answer it.
“What we know ain't much of a secret,” Guild said, “and if you want to take the time to listen I don't mind giving it to you.” He tasted his drink and nodded approvingly. “Only there's a thing I'd like to ask first. When you went to Mrs. Jorgensen's last night, did you tell her about getting the telegram from him?”
“Yes, and I told her I'd turned it over to you.”
“What'd she say?”
“Nothing. She asked questions. She's trying to find him.”
He put his head a little to one side and partly closed one eye. “You don't think there's any chance of them being in cahoots, do you?” He held up a hand. “Understand I don't know why they would be or what it'd be all about if they were, but I'm just asking.”
“Anything's possible,” I said, “but I'd say it was pretty safe they aren't working together. Why?”
“I guess you're right.” Then he added vaguely: “But there's a couple of points.” He sighed. “There always is. Well, Mr. Charles, here's just about all we know for certain and if you can give us a little something more here and there as we go along I'll be mighty thankful to you.”
I said something about doing my best.
“Well, along about the 3rd of last October Wynant tells Macaulay he's got to leave town for a while. He don't tell Macaulay where he's going or what for, but Macaulay gets the idea that he's off to work on some invention or other that he wants to keep quiet—and he gets it out of Julia Wolf later that he's right—and he guesses Wynant's gone off to hide somewhere in the Adirondacks, but when he asks her about that later she says she don't know any more about it than he does.”
“She know what the invention was?”
Guild shook his head. “Not according to Macaulay, only that it was probably something that he needed room for and machinery or— things that cost money, because that's what he was fixing up with Macaulav. He was fixing it so Macaulay could get hold of his stocks and bonds and other things he owned and turn 'em into money when he wanted it and take care of his banking and everything just like Wynant himself.”
“Power of attorney covering everything, huh?”
“Exactly. And listen, when he wanted money, he wanted it in cash.”
“He was always full of screwy notions,” I said.
“That's what everybody says. The idea seems to be he don't want to take any chances on anybody tracing him through checks, or anybody up there knowing he's Wynant. That's why he didn't take the girl along with him— didn't even let her know where he was, if she was telling the truth—and let his whiskers grow.' With his left hand he stroked an imagi ary beard.
“'Up there,' “ I quoted. “So he was in the Adirondacks?”
Guild moved one shoulder. “I just aaid that because that and Philadelphia are the only ideas anybody's given us. We're trying the mountains, but we don't know. Maybe Australia.”
“And how much of this money in cash did Wynant want?”
“I can tell you that exactly.” He took a wad of soiled, bent and dogeared papers out of his pocket, selected an envelope that was a shade dirtier than most of the others, and stuffed the others back in his pocket. “The day after he talked to Macaulay he drew five thousand out of the bank himself, in cash. On the 28th—this iS October, you understand— he had Macaulay get another five for him, and twenty-five hundred on the 6th of November, and a thousand on the 15th, and seventy-five hundred on the 3oth, and fifteen hundred on the 6th—that would be December— and a thousand on the 18th, and five thousand on the 22nd, which was the day before she was killed.”
“Nearly thirty thou,” I said. “A nice bank balance he had.”
“Twenty-eight thousand five hundred, to be exact.” Guild returned the envelope to his pocket. “But you understand it wasn't all in there. After the first call Macaulay would sell something every time to raise the dough.” He felt in his pocket again. “I got a list of the stuff he sold, if you want to see it.”
I said I didn't. “How'd he turn the money over to Wynant?”
“Wynant would write the girl when he wanted it, and she'd get it ftom Macaulay. He's got her receipts.”
“And how'd she get it to Wynant?”
Guild shook his head. “She told Macaulay she used to meet him places he told her, but he thinks she knew where he was, though she always said she didn't.”
“And maybe she still had that last five thousand on her when she was killed, huh?”
“Which might make it robbery, unless”—Guild's watery gray eyes were almost shut—“he killed her when he came there to get it.”
“Or unless,” I suggested, “somebody else who killed her for some other reason found the money there and thought they might as well take it along.”
“Sure,” he agreed. “Things like that happen all the time. It even happens sometimes that the first people that find a body like that pick up a little something before they turn in the alarm.” He held up a big hand. “Of course, with Mrs. Jorgensen—a lady like that—I hope you don't think I'm—”
“Besides,” I said, “she wasn't alone, was she?”
“For a little while. The phone in the apartment was out of whack, and the elevator boy rode the superintendent down to phone from the office. But get me right on this, I'm not saying Mrs. Jorgensen did anything funny. A lady like that wouldn't be likely—”
“What was the matter with the phone?” I asked.
The doorbell rang.
“Well,” Guild said, “I don't know just what to make of it. The phone had—”
He broke off as a waiter came in and began to set a table.
“About the phone,” Guild said when we were sitting at the table, “I don't know just what to make of it, as I said. It had a bullet right smack through the mouthpiece of it.”
“Accidental or—?”
“I'd just as lief ask you. It was from the same gun as the four that hit her, of course, but whether he missed her with that one or did it on purpose I don't know. It seems like a kind of noisy way to put a phone on the bum.”
“That reminds me,” I said, “didn't anybody hear all this shooting? A .32's not a shotgun, but somebody ought to've heard it.”
“Sure,” he said disgustedly. “The place is lousy with people that think they heard things now, but nobody did anything about it then, and God knows they don't get together much on what they think they heard.”
