'Yeah, but what good does that do?'
'God knows. What good does putting them in jail do?'
'Relieves congestion,' I said. 'Put enough people in jail, and cities wouldn't have traffic problems. What do you know about this Gabrielle?'
'She hates her father. He worships her.'
'How come the hate?'
'I don't know; perhaps because he worships her.'
'There's no sense to that,' I complained. 'You're just being literary. What about Mrs. Leggett?'
'You've never eaten one of her meals, I suppose? You'd have no doubts if you had. None but a serene, sane soul ever achieved such cooking. I've often wondered what she thinks of the weird creatures who are her husband and daughter, though I imagine she simply accepts them as they are without even being conscious of their weirdness.'
'All this is well enough in its way,' I said, 'but you still haven't told me anything definite.'
'No, I haven't,' he replied, 'and that, my boy, is it. I've told you what I know and what I imagine, and none of it is definite. That's the point--in a year of trying I've learned nothing definite about Leggett. Isn't that-- remembering my curiosity and my usual skill in satisfying it--enough to convince you that the man is hiding something and knows how to hide it?'
'Is it? I don't know. But I know I've wasted enough time learning nothing that anybody can be jailed for. Dinner tomorrow night? Or the next?'
'The next. About seven o'clock?'
I said I would stop for him, and went out. It was then after five o'clock. Not having had any luncheon, I went up to Blanco's for food, and then to darktown for a look at Rhino Tingley.
I found him in Big-foot Gerber's cigar-store, rolling a fat cigar around in his mouth, telling something to the other Negroes--four of them--in the place.
'. . . says to him: 'Nigger, you talking yourself out of skin,' and I reaches out my hand for him, and, 'fore God, there weren't none of him there excepting his footprints in the ce-ment pavement, eight feet apart and leading home.'
Buying a package of cigarettes, I weighed him in while he talked. He was a chocolate man of less than thirty years, close to six feet tall and weighing two hundred pounds plus, with big yellow-balled pop eyes, a broad nose, a big blue-lipped and blue-gummed mouth, and a ragged black scar running from his lower lip down behind his blue and white striped collar. His clothes were new enough to look new, and he wore them sportily. His voice was a heavy bass that shook the glass of the showcases when he laughed with his audience.
I went out of the store while they were laughing, heard the laughter stop short behind me, resisted the temptation to look back, and moved down the street towards the building where he and Minnie lived. He came abreast of me when I was half a block from the flat.
I said nothing while we took seven steps side by side.
Then he said: 'You the man that been inquirying around about me?'
The sour odor of Italian wine was thick enough to be seen.
I considered, and said: 'Yeah.'
'What you got to do with me?' he asked, not disagreeably, but as if he wanted to know.
Across the street Gabrielle Leggett, in brown coat and brown and yellow hat, came out of Minnie's building and walked south, not turning her face towards us. She walked swiftly and her lower lip was between her teeth.
I looked at the Negro. He was looking at me. There was nothing in his face to show that he had seen Gabrielle Leggett, or that the sight of her meant anything to him.
I said: 'You've got nothing to hide, have you? What do you care who asks about you?'
'All the same, I'm the party to come to if you wants to know about me. You the man that got Minnie fired?'
'She wasn't fired. She quit.'
'Minnie don't have to take nobody's lip. She--'
'Let's go over and talk to her,' I suggested, leading the way across the street. At the front door he went ahead, up a flight of stairs, down a dark hail to a door which he opened with one of the twenty or more keys on his ring.
Minnie Hershey, in a pink kimono trimmed with yellow ostrich feathers that looked like little dead ferns, came out of the bedroom to meet us in the living-room. Her eyes got big when she saw me.
Rhino said: 'You know this gentleman, Minnie.'
Minnie said: 'Y-yes.'
I said: 'You shouldn't have left the Leggetts' that way. Nobody thinks you had anything to do with the diamonds. What did Miss Leggett want here?'
'There been no Miss Leggetts here,' she told me. 'I don't know what you talking about.'
'She came out as we were coming in.'
'Oh! Miss Leggett. I thought you said Mrs. Leggett. I beg your pardon. Yes, sir. Miss Gabrielle was sure enough here. She wanted to know if I wouldn't come back there. She thinks a powerful lot of me, Miss Gabrielle does.'
