“I know what you told me,” he interrupted. “But that was then and this is now. The thing’s coming unwound on rne, and I can see just enough to get myself tangled up if I don’t watch Harvey. I found your mysterious man, talked to him. He was following Mrs. Landow, right enough. According to the way he tells it, he’s been hired
to kill her.”
Millar leaped from his chair to lean over the yellow desk, his face close to the detective’s.
“My God, Rush, what are you saying? To kill her?”
“Now, now! Take it easy. He’s not going to kill her. I don’t think he ever meant to. But he claims he was hired to do it.”
“You’ve arrested him? You’ve found the man who hired him?”
The detective squinted up his bloodshot eyes and studied the younger man’s passionate face.
“As a matter of fact,” he croaked calmly when he had finished his examination, “I haven’t done either of those things. She’s in no danger just now. Maybe the lad was stringing me, maybe he wasn’t, but either way he wouldn’t have spilled it to me if he meant to do anything. And when it comes right down to it, Mr. Millar, do you want him arrested?”
“Yes! That is — ” Millar stepped back from the desk, sagged limply down on the chair again, and put shaking hands over his face. “My God, Rush, I don’t know!” he gasped.
“Exactly,” said Alec Rush. “Now here it is. Mrs. Landow was Jerome Falsoner’s niece and heir. She worked for your trust company. She married Landow the morning her uncle was found dead. Yesterday Landow visited the building where Madeline Boudin lives. She was the last person known to have been in Falsoner’s rooms before he was killed. But her alibi seems to be as air-tight as the Landows’. The man who claims he was hired to kill Mrs. Landow also visited Madeline Boudin’s building yesterday. I saw him go in. I saw him meet another woman. A shoplifter, the second one. In her rooms I found a photograph
of Hubert Landow. Your dark man claims he was hired twice to kill Mrs. Landow — by two women neither knowing the other had hired him. He won’t tell me who they are, but he doesn’t have to.”
The hoarse voice stopped and Alec Rush waited for Millar to speak. But Millar was for the time without a voice. His eyes were wide and despairingly empty. Alec Rush raised one big hand, folded it into a fist that was almost perfectly spherical, and thumped his desk softly.
“There it is, Mr. Millar,” he rasped. “A pretty tangle. If you’ll tell me what you know, we’ll get it straightened out, never fear. If you don’t — I’m out!”
Now Millar found words, however jumbled.
“You couldn’t, Rush! You can’t desert me —us —her!
It’s not — You’re not —” But Alec Rush shook his ugly pear-shaped head with
slow emphasis.
“There’s murder in this and the Lord knows what all. I’ve got no liking for a blindfolded game. How do I know what you’re up to? You can tell me what you know — everything — or you can find yourself another detective.
That’s flat.”
Ralph Millar’s fingers picked at each other, his teeth pulled at his lips, his harassed eyes pleaded with the detective.
“You can’t, Rush,” he begged. “She’s still in danger. Even if you are right about that man not attacking her, she’s not safe. The women who hired him can hire another. You’ve got to protect her, Rush.”
“Yeah? Then you’ve got to talk.”
“I’ve got to —? Yes, I’ll talk, Rush. I’ll tell you anything you ask. But there’s really nothing — or almost nothing — I know beyond what you’ve already learned.”
“She worked for your trust company?”
“Yes, in my department.”
“Left there to be married?”
“Yes. That is — No, Rush, the truth is she was discharged. It was an outrage, but —”
“When was this?”
“It was the day before the — before she was married.”
“Tell me about it.”
“She had — I’ll have to explain her situation to you first, Rush. She is an orphan. Her father, Ben Falsoner, had been wild in his youth — and perhaps not only in his youth — as I believe all the Falsoners have been. However, he had quarreled with his father — old Howard Falsoner — and the old man had cut him out of the will. But not altogether out. The old man hoped Ben would mend his ways, and he didn’t mean to leave him with nothing in that event. Unfortunately he trusted it to his other son, Jerome.