'That,' I said, 'is what you ought to do. It was foolish, leaving like that.'
Rhino took the cigar out of his mouth and pointed the red end at the girl.
'You away from them,' he boomed, 'and you stay away from them. You don't have to take nothing from nobody.' He put a hand in his pants pocket, lugged out a thick bundle of paper money, thumped it down on the table, and rumbled: 'What for you have to work for folks?'
He was talking to the girl, but looking at me, grinning, gold teeth shining against purplish mouth. The girl looked at him scornfully, said: 'Lead him around, _vino_,' and turned to me again, her brown face tense, anxious to be believed, saying earnestly: 'Rhino got that money in a crap game, mister. Hope to die if he didn't.'
Rhino said: 'Ain't nobody's business where I got my money. I got it. I got--' He put his cigar on the edge of the table, picked up the money, wet a thumb as big as a heel on a tongue like a bath-mat, and counted his roll bill by bill down on the table. 'Twenty--thirty--eighty--hundred--hundred and ten--two hundred and ten--three hundred and ten--three hundred and thirty--three hundred and thirty-five--four hundred and thirty-five--five hundred and thirty-five--five hundred and eighty-five--six hundred and five--six hundred and ten--six hundred and twenty--seven hundred and twenty--seven hundred and seventy--eight hundred and twenty--eight hundred and thirty--eight hundred and forty--nine hundred and forty--nine hundred and sixty--nine hundred and seventy--nine hundred and seventy-five--nine hundred and ninety-five--ten hundred and fifteen--ten hundred and twenty--eleven hundred and twenty--eleven hundred and seventy. Anybody want to know what I got, that's what I got--eleven hundred and seventy dollars. Anybody want to know where I get it, maybe I tell them, maybe I don't. Just depend on how I feel about it.'
Minnie said: 'He won it in a crap game, mister, up the Happy Day Social Club. Hope to die if he didn't.'
'Maybe I did,' Rhino said, still grinning widely at me. 'But supposing I didn't?'
'I'm no good at riddles,' I said, and, after again advising Minnie to return to the Leggetts, left the flat. Minnie closed the door behind me. As I went down the hall I could hear her voice scolding and Rhino's chesty bass laughter.
In a downtown Owl drug-store I turned to the Berkeley section of the telephone directory, found only one Freemander listed, and called the number. Mrs. Begg was there and consented to see me if I came over on the next ferry.
The Freemander house was set off a road that wound uphill towards the University of California.
Mrs. Begg was a scrawny, big-boned woman, with not much gray hair packed close around a bony skull, hard gray eyes, and hard, capable hands. She was sour and severe, but plain-spoken enough to let us talk turkey without a lot of preliminary hemming and hawing.
I told her about the burglary and my belief that the thief had been helped, at least with information, by somebody who knew the Leggett household, winding up: 'Mrs. Priestly told me you had been Leggett's housekeeper, and she thought you could help me.'
Mrs. Begg said she doubted whether she could tell me anything that would pay me for my trip from the city, but she was willing to do what she could, being an honest woman and having nothing to conceal from anybody. Once started, she told me a great deal, damned near talking me earless. Throwing out the stuff that didn't interest me, I came away with this information:
Mrs. Begg had been hired by Leggett, through an employment agency, as housekeeper in the spring of 1921. At first she had a girl to help her, but there wasn't enough work for two, so, at Mrs. Begg's suggestion, they let the girl go. Leggett was a man of simple tastes and spent nearly all his time on the top floor, where he had his laboratory and a cubbyhole bedroom. He seldom used the rest of the house except when he had friends in for an evening. Mrs. Begg didn't like his friends, though she could say nothing against them except that the way they talked was a shame and a disgrace. Edgar Leggett was as nice a man as a person could want to know, she said, only so secretive that it made a person nervous. She was never allowed to go up on the third floor, and the door of the laboratory was always kept locked. Once a month a Jap would come in to clean it up under Leggett's supervision. Well, she supposed he had a lot of scientific secrets, and maybe dangerous chemicals, that he didn't want people poking into, but just the same it made a person uneasy. She didn't know anything about her employer's personal or family affairs and knew her place too well to ask him any questions.
In August 1923--it was a rainy morning, she remembered--a woman and a girl of fifteen, with a lot of suit- cases, had come to the house. She let them in and the woman asked for Mr. Leggett. Mrs. Begg went up to the laboratory door and told him, and he came down. Never in all her born days had she seen such a surprised man as he was when he saw them. He turned absolutely white, and she thought he was going to fall down, he shook that bad. She didn't know what Leggett and the woman and the girl said to one another that morning, because they jabbered away in some foreign language, though the lot of them could talk English as good as anybody else, and better than most, especially that Gabrielle when she got to cursing. Mrs. Begg had left them and gone on about her business. Pretty soon Leggett came out to the kitchen and told her his visitors were a Mrs. Dain, his sister-in-law, and her daughter, neither of whom he had seen for ten years; and that they were going to stay there with him. Mrs. Dain later told Mrs. Begg that they were English, but had been living in New York for several years. Mrs. Begg said she liked Mrs. Dain, who was a sensible woman and a first-rate housewife, but that Gabrielle was a tartar. Mrs. Begg always spoke of the girl as 'that Gabrielle.'
With the Dains there, and with Mrs. Dain's ability as a housekeeper, there was no longer any place for Mrs. Begg. They had been very liberal, she said, helping her find a new place and giving her a generous bonus when she left. She hadn't seen any of them since, but, thanks to the careful watch she habitually kept on the marriage, death, and birth notices in the morning papers, she had learned, a week after she left, that a marriage license had been issued to Edgar Leggett and Alice Dain.
IV. The Vague Harpers
When I arrived at the agency at nine the next morning, Eric Collinson was sitting in the reception room. His sunburned face was dingy without pinkness, and he had forgotten to put stickum on his hair.
'Do you know anything about Miss Leggett?' he asked, jumping up and meeting me at the door. 'She wasn't home last night, and she's not home yet. Her father wouldn't say he didn't know where she was, but I'm sure he didn't. He told me not to worry, but how can I help worrying? Do you know anything about it?'
I said I didn't and told him about seeing her leave Minnie Hershey's the previous evening. I gave him the mulatto's address and suggested that he ask her. He jammed his hat on his head and hurried off.
Getting O'Gar on the phone, I asked him if he had heard from New York yet.
'Uh-huh,' he said. 'Upton--that's his right name--was once one of you private dicks--had a agency of his own--till '23, when him and a guy named Harry Ruppert were sent over for trying to fix a jury. How'd you make out
