“You mean she not only refused you, but was — well — disagreeable about it?”
“I do mean that.”
Alec Rush sat back in his chair and brought fresh grotesqueries into his face by twisting his thick mouth crookedly up at one corner. His red eyes were evilly reflective on the ceiling.
“The only thing for it,” he decided, “is to go to Landow and give him what we’ve got.”
“But are you sure he —?” Millar objected indefinitely.
“Unless he’s one whale of an actor, he’s a lot in love with his wife,” the detective said with certainty. “That’s enough to justify taking the story to him.”
Millar was not convinced.
“You’re sure it would be wisest?”
“Yeah. We’ve got to go to one of three people with the tale —him, her, or the police. I think he’s the best bet, but take your choice.”
The younger man nodded reluctantly.
“All right. But you don’t have to bring me into it, do you?” with quick alarm. “You can handle it so I won’t be involved. You understand what I mean? She’s his wife, and it would be —”
“Sure,” Alec Rush promised, “I’ll keep you covered up.”
Hubert Landow, twisting the detective’s card in his fingers, received Alec Rush in a somewhat luxuriously furnished room in the second story of the Charles-Street Avenue house. He was standing — tall, blond, boyishly handsome — in the middle of the floor, facing the door, when the detective — fat, grizzled, battered and ugly — was shown in.
“You wish to see me? Here, sit down.”
Hubert Landow’s manner was neither restrained nor hearty. It was precisely the manner that might be expected of a young man receiving an unexpected call from so savage-visaged a detective.
“Yeah,” said Alec Rush as they sat in facing chairs. “I’ve got something to tell you. It won’t take much time, but it’s kind of wild. It might be a surprise to you, and it might not. But it’s on the level. I don’t want you to think I’m kidding you.”
Hubert Landow bent forward, his face all interest. . “I won’t,” he promised. “Go on.”
“A couple of days ago I got a line on a man who might be tied up in a job I’m interested in. He’s a crook. Trailing
him around, I discovered he was interested in your affairs, and your wife’s. He’s shadowed you and he’s shadowed her. He was loafing down the street from a Mount Royal Avenue apartment that you went in yesterday, and he went in there later himself.”
“But what the devil is he up to?” Landow exclaimed. “You think he’s —”
“Wait,” the ugly man advised. “Wait until you’ve heard it all, and then you can tell me what you make of it. He came out of there and went to Camden Station, where he met a young woman. They talked a bit, and later in the afternoon she was picked up in a department store — shoplifting. Her name is Polly Bangs, and she’s done a hitch in Wisconsin for the same racket. Your photograph was on her dresser.”
“My photograph?”
Alec Rush nodded placidly up into the face of the young man who was now standing.
“Yours. You know this Polly Bangs? A chunky, square-built girl of twenty-six or so, with brown hair and eyes — saucy looking?”
Hubert Landow’s face was a puzzled blank.
“No! What the devil could she be doing with my picture?” he demanded. “Are you sure it was mine?”
“Not dead sure, maybe, but sure enough to need proof that it wasn’t. Maybe she’s somebody you’ve forgotten, or maybe she ran across the picture somewhere and kept it because she liked it.”
“Nonsense!” The blond man squirmed at this tribute to his face, and blushed a vivid red beside which Alec Rush’s
complexion was almost colorless. “There must be some sensible reason. She has been arrested, you say?”
“Yeah, but she’s out on bail now. But let me get along with my story. Last night this thug I’ve told you about and I had a talk. He claims he has been hired to kill your wife.”
Hubert Landow, who had returned to his chair, now jerked in it so that its joints creaked strainingly. His face, crimson a second ago, drained paperwhite. Another sound than the chair’s creaking was faint in the room: the least of muffled gasps. The blond young man did not seem to hear it, but Alec Rush’s bloodshot eyes flicked sidewise for an instant to focus fleetingly on a closed door across the room.