“She could have left it at the Mains’ some time when she was visiting Mrs. Main,” I suggested.
“That is not possible,” he corrected me eagerly. “My darling and Mrs. Main are not acquainted.”
“But your wife and Main were acquainted?”
He giggled and brushed his tie with his whisker again.
“How well acquainted?”
He shrugged his padded shoulders up to his ears.
“I know not,” he said merrily. “I employ a detective.”
“Yeah?” I scowled at him. “You employ this one to find out who killed and robbed Main—and for nothing else. If you think you’re employing him to dig up your family secrets, you’re as wrong as Prohibition.”
“But why? But why?” He was flustered. “Have I not the right to know? There will be no trouble over it, no scandal, no divorce suing, of that be assured. Even Jeffrey is dead, so it is what one calls ancient history. While he lived I knew nothing, was blind. After he died I saw certain things. For my own satisfaction—that is all, I beg you to believe—I should like to know with certainty.”
“You won’t get it out of me,” I said bluntly. “I don’t know anything about it except what you’ve told me, and you can’t hire me to go further into it. Besides, if you’re not going to do anything about it, why don’t you keep your hands off—let it sleep?”
“No, no, my friend.” He had recovered his bright-eyed cheerfulness. “I am not an old man, but I am fifty-two. My dear wife is eighteen, and a truly lovely person.” He giggled. “This thing happened. May it not happen again? And would it not be the part of husbandly wisdom to have—shall I say—a hold on her? A rein? A check? Or if it never happen again, still might not one’s dear wife be the more docile for certain information which her husband possesses?”
“It’s your business.” I stood up, laughing. “But I don’t want any part of it.”
“Ah, do not let us quarrel!” He jumped up and took one of my hands in his. “If you will not, you will not. But there remains the criminal aspect of the situation—the aspect that has engaged you thus far. You will not forsake that? You will fulfill your engagement there? Surely?”
“Suppose—just suppose—it should turn out that your wife had a hand in Main’s death. What then?”
“That”—he shrugged, holding his hands out, palms up—“would be a matter for the law.”
“Good enough. I’ll stick—if you understand that you’re entitled to no information except what touches your ‘criminal aspect.’ ”
“Excellent! And if it so happens you cannot separate my darling from that—”
I nodded. He grabbed my hand again, patting it. I took it away from him and returned to the agency.
A memorandum on my desk asked me to phone detective-sergeant Hacken. I did.
“Bunky Dahl wasn’t in on the Main job,” the hatchet-faced man told me. “He and a pal named Coughing Ben Weel were putting on a party in a roadhouse near Vallejo that night. They were there from around ten until they were thrown out after two in the morning for starting a row. It’s on the up-and-up. The guy that gave it to me is right—and I got a checkup on it from two others.”
I thanked Hacken and phoned Gungen’s residence, asking for Mrs. Gungen, asking her if she would see me if I came out there.
“Oh, yes,” she said. It seemed to be her favorite expression, though the way she said it didn’t express anything.
Putting the photos of Dahl and Weel in my pocket, I got a taxi and set out for Westwood Park. Using Fatima-smoke on my brains while I rode, I concocted a wonderful series of lies to be told my client’s wife—a series that I thought would get me the information I wanted.
A hundred and fifty yards or so up the drive from the house I saw Dick Foley’s car standing.
A thin, pasty-faced maid opened the Gungens’ door and took me into a sitting room on the second floor, where Mrs. Gungen put down a copy of The Sun Also Rises and waved a cigarette at a nearby chair. She was very much the expensive doll this afternoon in a Persian orange dress, sitting with one foot tucked under her in a brocaded chair.
Looking at her while I lighted a cigarette, remembering my first interview with her and her husband, and my second one with him, I decided to chuck the tale-of-woe I had spent my ride building.
“You’ve a maid—Rose Rubury,” I began. “I don’t want her to hear what’s said.”
She said, “Very well,” without the least sign of surprise, added, “Excuse me a moment,” and left her chair and the room.
Presently she was back, sitting down with both feet tucked under her now.
“She will be away for at least half an hour.”
“That will be long enough. This Rose is friendly with an ex-convict named Weel.”
The doll face frowned, and the plump painted lips pressed themselves together. I waited, giving her time to say something. She didn’t say it. I took Weel’s and Dahl’s pictures out and held them out to her.
“The thin-faced one is your Rose’s friend. The other’s a pal of his—also a crook.”
She took the photographs with a tiny hand that was as steady as mine, and looked at them carefully. Her mouth became smaller and tighter, her brown eyes darker. Then, slowly, her face cleared, she murmured, “Oh, yes,” and returned the pictures to me.
“When I told your husband about it”—I spoke deliberately—“he said, ‘She’s my wife’s maid,’ and laughed.”
Enid Gungen said nothing.
“Well?” I asked. “What did he mean by that?”
“How should I know?” she sighed.
“You know your handkerchief was found with Main’s empty wallet.” I dropped this in a by-the-way tone, pretending to be chiefly occupied putting cigarette ash in a jasper tray that was carved in the form of a lidless coffin.
“Oh, yes,” she said wearily, “I’ve been told that.”
“How do you think it happened?”
“I can’t imagine.”
“I can,” I said,
