“Slim.”
“I thought so.” He moved a hand to touch the letter. “You know as much about how he feels as I do. What would make you change your mind?”
“I don't—”
“Would it help any if I could persuade him to meet you? Maybe if I told him that was the only way you'd take it—”
“I'm willing to talk to him,” I said, “but he'd have to talk a lot straighter than he's writing.”
Macanlay asked slowly: “You mean you think he may have killed her?”
“I don't know anything about that,” I said. “I don't know as much as the pohee do, and it's a cinch they haven't got enough on him to make the pinch even if they could find him.”
Macaulay sighed. “Being a goof's lawyer is not much fun. I'll try to make him listen to reason, hut I know he won't.”
“I meant to ask, how are his finances these days? Is he as well fixed as he used to be?”
“Almost. The depression's hurt him some, along with the rest of us, and the royalties from his smelting process have gone pretty much to hell now that the metals are dead, hut he can still count on flfty or sixty thousand a year from his glassine and saundproofing patents, with a little more conoag in from odds and ends like—” He broke off to ask: “You're not worrying about his ability to pay whatever you'd ask?”
“No, I was just wondering.” I thought of something else: “Has he any relatives outside of his ex-wife and children?”
“A sister, Alice Wynant, that hasn't been on speaking terms with him for—it must be four or five years' now.”
I supposed that was the Aunt Alice the Jorgensens had not gone to see Christmas afternoon. “Wbat'd they fall out about?” I asked.
“He gave an interview to one of the papers saying he didn't think the Russian Five Year Plan was necessarily doomed to failure. Actually he didn't make it much stronger than that.”
I laughed. “They're a—”
“She's even better than he is. She can't remember things. The time her brother had his appendix out, she and Mimi were in a taxi going to see him the first afternoon and they passed a hearse coming from the direction of the hospital. Miss Alice turned pale and grabbed Mimi by the arm and said: 'Oh, dear! If that should be what's-his- name!'”
“Where does she live?”
“On Madison Avenue. It's in the phone book.” He hesitated. “I don't think—”
“I'm not going to bother her.” Before I could say anything else his telephone began to ring.
He put the receiver to his ear and said: “Hello. . . . Yes, speaking. . . . Who? . . . Oh, yes. . . . Muscles tightened around his mouth, and his eyes opened a little wider. “Where?” He listened some more. “Yes, surely. Can I make it?” He looked at the watch on his left wrist. “Right. See you on the train.” He put the telephone down. “That was Lieutenant Guild,” he told me. “Wynant's tried to commit suicide in Allentown, Pennsylvania.”
13
Dorothy and Quinn were at the bar when I went into the Palma Club. They did not see me until I came up beside Dorothy and said: “Hello, folks.” Dorothy had on the same clothes I had last seen her in.
She looked at me and at Quinn and her face flushed. “You had to tell him.”
“The girls in a pet,” Quinn said cheerfully. “I got that stock for you. You ought to pick up some more and what are you drinking?”
“Old-fashioned. You're a swell guest—ducking out without leaving a word behind you.”
Dorothy looked at me again. The scratches on her face were pale, the bruise barely showed, and her mouth was no longer swollen. “I trusted you,” she said. She seemed about to cry.
“What do you mean by that?”
“You know what I mean. Even when you went to dinner at Mamma's I trusted you.”
“And why not?”
Quinn said: “She's been in a pet all afternoon. Don't bait her.” He put a hand on one of hers. “There, there, darling, don't you—”
“Please shut up.” She took her hand away from him. “You know very well what I mean,” she told me. “You and Nora both made fun of me to Mamma and—”
I began to see what had happened. “She told you that and you believed it?” I laughed. “After twenty years you're still a sucker for her lies? I suppose she phoned you after we left: we had a row and didn't stay long.”
She hung her head and said, “Oh, I am a fool,” in a low miserable voice. Then she grabbed me by both arms and said: “Listen, let's go over and see Nora now. I've got to square myself with her. I'm such an ass. It'd serve me right if she never—”
“Sure. There's plenty of time. Let's have this drink first.”
Quinn said: “Brother Charles, I'd like to shake your hand. You've brought sunshine back into the life of our little tot and joy to—” He emptied his glass. “Let's go over and see Nora. The booze there is just as good and costs us less.”
“Why don't you stay here?” she asked him.
He laughed and shook his head. “Not me. Maybe you can get Nick to stay here, but I'm going with you. I've put up with your snottiness all afternoon: now I'm going to bask in the sunshine.”
Gilbert Wynant was with Nora when we reached the Normandie. He kissed his sister and shook hands with me and, when he had been introduced, Harrison Quinn.
Dorothy immediately began to make long and earnest and none too coherent apologies to Nora.
Nora said: “Stop it. There's nothing to forgive. If Nick's told you I was sore or hurt or anything of the sort he's just a Greek liar. Let me take your coat.”
Quinn turned on the radio. At the stroke of the gong it was five thirty-one and one quarter, Eastern Standard Time.
Nora told Quinn, “Play bar-tender: you know where the stuff is,” and followed me into the bathroom. “Where'd you find her?”
“In a speak. What's Gilbert doing here?”
“He came over to see her, so he said. She didn't go home last night and he thought she was still here.” She laughed. “He wasn't surprised at not finding her, though. He said she was always wandering off somewhere, she has dromomania, which comes from a mother fixation and is very interesting. He said Stekel claims people who have it usually show kleptomaniac impulses too, and he's left things around to see if she'd steal them, but she never has yet that he knows of.”
“He's quite a lad. Did he say anything about his father?”
“No.”
“Maybe he hadn't heard. Wynant tried to commit suicide down in Allentown. Guild and Macaulay have gone down to see him. I don't know whether to tell the youngsters or not. I wonder if Mimi had a hand in his coming over here.”
“I wouldn't think so, but if you do—”
“I'm just wondering,” I said. “Has he been here long?”
“About an hour. He's a funny kid. He's studying Chinese and writing a book on Knowledge and Belief—not in Chinese—and thinks Jack Oakie's very good.”
“So do I. Are you tight?”
“Not very.”
When we returned to the living-room, Dorothy and Quinn were dancing to Eadie Was a Lady.
Gilbert put down the magazine he was looking at and politely said he hoped I was recovering from my injury.
I said I was.
