“Taking it. I wanted to study the effects.”
“And how'd you like them?” I asked.
“Oh, I didn't expect to like it. I just wanted to know about it. I don't like things that dull my mind. That's why I don't very often drink, or even smoke. I want to try cocaine, though, because that's supposed to sharpen the brain, isn't it?”
“It's supposed to. Who do you think copped the stuff?”
“I suspect Dorothy, because I have a theory about her. That's why I'm going over to Aunt Alice's for dinner: Dorry's still there and I want to find out. I can make her tell me anything.”
“Well, if she's been over there,” I asked, “how could she—”
“She was home for a little while last night,” he said, “and, besides, I don't know exactly when it was taken. Today was the first time I opened the box it was in for three or four days.”
“Did she know you had it?”
“Yes. That's one of the reasons I suspect her. I don't think anybody else did. I experimented on her too.”
“How'd she like it?”
“Oh, she liked it all right, but she'd have taken it anyhow. But what I want to ask you is could she have become an addict in a little time like that?”
“Like what?”
“A week—no—ten days.”
“Hardly, unless she thought herself into it. Did you give her much?”
“No.”
“Let me know if you find out,” I said. “I'm going to grab a taxi here. Be seeing you.”
“You're coming over later tonight, aren't you?”
“If I can make it. Maybe I'll see you then.”
“Yes,” he said, “and thanks awfully.”
At the first drug store I stopped to telephone Guild, not expecting to catch him in his office, but hoping to learn how to reach him at his home. He was still there, though.
“Working late,” I said.
His “That's what” sounded very cheerful.
I read Georgia's letter to him, gave him her address.
“Good pickings,” he said.
I told him Jorgensen had not been home since the day before.
“Think we'll find him in Boston?” he asked.
“Either there,” I guessed, “or as far south as he could manage to get by this time.”
“We'll try 'em both,” he said, still cheerful. “Now I got a bit of news for you. Our friend Nunheim was filled full of .32s just about an hour after he copped the sneak on us—deader'n hell. The pills look like they come from the same gun that cut down the Wolf dame. The experts are matching 'em up now. I guess he wishes he'd stayed and talked to us.”
20
Nora was eating a piece of cold duck with one hand and working on a jig-saw puzzle with the other when I got home.
“I thought you'd gone to live with her,” she said. “You used to be a detective: find me a brownish piece shaped something like a snail with a long neck.”
“Piece of duck or puzzle? Don't let's go to the Edges' tonight: they're dull folk.”
“All right, but they'll be sore.”
“We wouldn't be that lucky,” I complained. “They'd get sore at the Q uinns and—”
“Harrison called you up. He told me to tell you now's the time to buy some McIntyre Porcupine—I think that's right—to go with your Dome stock. He said it closed at twenty and a quarter.” She put a finger on her puzzle. “The piece I want goes in there.”
I found the piece she wanted and told her, almost word for word, what had been done and said at Mimi's.
“I don't believe it,” she said. “You made it up. There aren't any people like that. What's the matter with them? Are they the first of a new race of monsters?”
“I just tell you what happens; I don't explain it.”
“How would you explain it? There doesn't seem to be a single one in the family—now that Mimi's turned against her Chris—who has even the slightest reasonably friendly feeling for any of the others, and yet there's something very alike in all of them.”
“Maybe that explains it,” I suggested.
“I'd like to see Aunt Alice,” she said. “Are you going to turn that letter over to the police?”
“I've already phoned Guild,” I replied, and told her about Nunheim.
“What does that mean?” she asked.
“For one thing, if Jorgensen's out of town, as I think he is, and the bullets are from the same gun that was used on Julia Wolf, and they probably are, then the police'll have to find his accomplice if they want to hang anything on him.”
“I'm sure if you were a good detective you'd be able to make it much clearer to me than it is.” She went to work on her puzzle again. “Are you going back to see Mimi?”
“I doubt it. How about letting that dido rest while we get some dinner?”
The telephone rang and I said I would get it. It was Dorothy Wynant. “Hello. Nick?”
“The same. How are you, Dorothy?”
“Gil just got here and asked me about that you-know, and I wanted to tell you I did take it, but I only took it to try to keep him from becoming a dope-fiend.”
“What'd you do with it?” I asked.
“He made me give it back to him and he doesn't believe me, but, honestly, that's the only reason I took it.”
“I believe you.”
“Will you tell Gil, then? If you believe me, he will, because he thinks you know all about things like that.”
“I'll tell him as soon as I see him,” I promised.
There was a pause, then she asked: “How's Nora?”
“Looks all right to me. Want to talk to her?”
“Well, yes, but there's something I want to ask you. Did—did Mamma say anything about me when you were over there today?”
“Not that I remember. Why?”
“And did Gil?”
“Only about the morphine.”
“Are you sure?”
“Pretty sure,” I said. “Why?”
“It's nothing, really—if you're sure. It's just silly.”
“Right. I'll call Nora.” I went into the living-room. “Dorothy wants to talk to you. Don't ask her to eat with us.”
When Nora returned from the telephone she had a look in her eye.
“Now what's up?” I asked.
“Nothing. Just 'How are you' and all that.”
I said: “If you're lying to the old man, God'll punish you.”
We went over to a Japanese place on Fifty-eighth Street for dinner and then I let Nora talk me into going to
