going away to work on?”
“No. You're kind of interested in that shop of his.”
“Why not? He's an inventor, the shop's his place. I'd like to have a look at it some time.”
“Help yourself. Tell me some more about Morelli, and how you go about getting him to open up.”
“He likes to talk. Do you know a fellow called Sparrow? A big fat pale fellow with a pansy voice?”
Guild frowned. “No. Why?”
“He was there—with Miriam—and wanted to take a crack at me, but they wouldn't let him.”
“And what'd he want to do that for?”
“I don't know. Maybe because she told him I helped knock Nunheim off—helped you.”
Guild said: “Oh.” He scratched his chin with a thumb-nail, looked at his watch. “It's getting kind of late. Suppose you drop in and see me some time tomorrow—today”
I said, “Sure,” instead of the things I was thinking, nodded at him and Andy, and went out to the living- room.
Nora was sleeping on the sofa. Mimi put down the book she was reading and asked: “Is the secret session over?”
“Yes.” I moved towards the sofa.
Mimi said: “Let her sleep awhile, Nick. You're going to stay till after your police friends have gone, aren't you?”
“All right. I want to see Dorothy again.”
“But she's asleep.”
“That's all right. I'll wake her up.”
“But—”
Guild and Andy came in, said their good nights, Guild looked regretfully at the sleeping Nora, and they left.
Mimi sighed. “I'm tired of policemen,” she said. “You remember that story?”
“Yes.”
Gilbert came in. “Do they really think Chris did it?”
“No,” I said.
“Who do they think?”
“I could've told you yesterday. I can't today.”
“That's ridiculous,” Mimi protested. “They know very well and you know very well that Clyde did it.” When I said nothing she repeated more sharply: “You know very well that Clyde did it.”
“He didn't,” I said.
An expression of triumph brightened Mimi's face. “You are working for him, now aren't you?”
My “No” bounced off her with no effect whatever.
Gilbert asked, not argumentatively, but as if he wanted to know: “Why couldn't he?”
“He could've, but he didn't. Would he have written those letters throwing suspicion on Mimi. the one person who's helping him by hiding the chief evidence against him?”
“But maybe he didn't know that. Maybe he thought the police were simply not telling all they knew. They often do that, don't they? Or maybe he thought he could discredit her, so they wouldn't believe her if—”
“That's it,” Mimi said. “That's exactly what he did, Nick.”
I said to Gilbert: “You don't think he killed her.”
“No, I don't think he did, but I'd like to know why you don't think so—you know—your method.”
“And I'd like to know yours.”
His face flushed a little and there was some embarrassment in his smile. “Oh, but I—it's different.”
“He knows who killed her,” Dorothy said from the doorway. She was still dressed. She stared at me fixedly, as if afraid to look at anybody else. Her face was pale and she held her small body stiffly erect.
Nora opened her eyes, pushed herself up on an elbow, and asked, “What?” sleepily. Nobody answered her.
Mimi said: “Now, Dorry, don't let's have one of those idiotic dramatic performances.”
Dorothy said: “You can beat me after they've gone. You will.” She said it without taking her eyes off mine.
Mimi tried to look as if she did not know what her daughter was talking about.
“Who does he know killed her?” I asked.
Gilbert said: “You're making an ass of yourself, Dorry, you're—”
I interrupted him: “Let her. Let her say what she's got to say. Who killed her, Dorothy?”
She looked at her brother and lowered her eyes and no longer held herself erect. Looking at the floor, she said indistinctly: “I don't know. He knows.” She raised her eyes to mine and began to tremble. “Can't you see I'm afraid?” she cried. “I'm afraid of them. Take me away and I'll tell you, but I'm afraid of them.”
Mimi laughed at me. “You asked for it. It serves you right.”
Gilbert was blushing. “It's so silly,” he mumbled.
I said: “Sure, I'll take you away, but I'd like to have it out now while we're all together.”
Dorothy shook her head. “I'm afraid.”
Mimi said: “I wish you wouldn't baby her so, Nick. It only makes her worse. She—”
I asked Nora: “What do you say?”
She stood up and stretched without lifting her arms. Her face was pink and lovely as it always is when she has been sleeping. She smiled drowsily at me and said: “Let's go home. I don't like these people. Come on, get your hat and coat, Dorothy.”
Mimi said to Dorothy: “Go to bed.”
Dorothy put the tips of the fingers of her left hand to her mouth and whimpered through them: “Don't let her beat me, Nick.”
I was watching Mimi, whose face wore a placid half-smile, but her nostrils moved with her breathing and I could hear her breathing.
Nora went around to Dorothy. “Come on, we'll wash your face and—”
Mimi made an animal noise in her throat, muscles thickened on the back of her neck, and she put her weight on the balls of her feet.
Nora stepped between Mimi and Dorothy. I caught Mimi by a shoulder as she started forward, put my other arm around her waist from behind, and lifted her off her feet. She screamed and hit back at me with her fists and her hard sharp high heels made dents in my shins.
Nora pushed Dorothy out of the room and stood in the doorway watching us. Her face was very live. I saw it clearly, sharply: everything else was blurred. When clumsy, ineffectual blows on my back and shoulder brought me around to find Gilbert pommeling me, I could see him but dimly and I hardly felt the contact when I shoved him aside. “Cut it out. I don't want to hurt you, Gilbert.” I carried Mimi over to the sofa and dumped her on her back on it, sat on her knees, got a wrist in each hand.
Gilbert was at me again. I tried to pop his kneecap, but kicked him too low, kicked his leg from under him. He went down on the floor in a tangle. I kicked at him again, missed, and said: “We can fight afterwards. Get some water.”
Mimi's face was becoming purple. Her eyes protruded, glassy, senseless, enormous. Saliva bubbled and hissed between clenched teeth with her breathing, and her red throat—her whole body—was a squirming mass of veins and muscles swollen until it seemed they must burst. Her wrists were hot in my hands and sweat made them hard to hold.
Nora beside me with a glass of water was a welcome sight. “Chuck it in her face,” I said.
Nora chucked it. Mimi separated her teeth to gasp and she shut her eyes. She moved her head violently from side to side, but there was less violence in the squirming of her body.
“Do it again,” I said.
The second glass of water brought a spluttering protest from Mimi and the fight went out of hen body. She lay still, limp, panting.
I took my hands away from her wrists and stood up. Gilbert, standing on one foot, was leaning against a table nursing the leg I had kicked. Dorothy, big-eyed and pale, was in the doorway, undecided whether to come in
