“Uh-huh,” he said. “Upton–that’s his right name–was once one of you private dicks–had a agency of his own–till ’23, when him and a guy named Harry Ruppert were sent over for trying to fix a jury. How’d you make out with the shine?”
“I don’t know. This Rhino Tingley’s carrying an eleven-hundred-case roll. Minnie says he got it with the rats and mice. Maybe he did: it’s twice what he could have peddled Leggett’s stuff for. Can you try to have it checked? He’s supposed to have got it at the Happy Day Social Club.”
O’Gar promised to do what he could and hung up.
I sent a wire to our New York branch, asking for more dope on Upton and Ruppert, and then went up to the county clerk’s office in the municipal building, where I dug into the August and September 1923 marriage-license file. The application I wanted was dated August z6 and bore Edgar Leggett’s statement that he was born in Atlanta, Georgia, on March 6, 1883, and that this was his second marriage; and Alice Dain’s statement that she was born in London, England, on October 22, 1888, and that she had not been married before.
When I returned to the agency, Eric Collinson, his yellow hair still further disarranged, was again lying in wait for me.
“I saw Minnie,” he said excitedly, “and she couldn’t tell me anything. She said Gaby was there last night to ask her to come back to work, but that’s all she knew about her. But she–she’s wearing an emerald ring that I’m positive is Gaby’s.”
“Did you ask her about it?”
“Who? Minnie? No. How could I? It would have been–you know.”
“That’s right,” I agreed, thinking of Fitzstephan’s Chevalier Bayard, “we must always be polite. Why did you lie to me about the time you and Miss Leggett got home the other night?”
Embarrassment made his face more attractive-looking and less intelligent.
“That was silly of me,” he stammered, “but I didn’t–you know–I thought you–I was afraid–”
He wasn’t getting anywhere. I suggested: “You thought that was a late hour and didn’t want me to get wrong notions about her?”
“Yes, that’s it.”
I shooed him out and went into the operatives’ room, where Mickey Linehan–big, loose-hung, red-faced–and Al Mason–slim, dark, sleek– were swapping lies about the times they had been shot at, each trying to pretend he had been more frightened than the other. I told them who was who and what was what on the Leggett job–as far as my knowledge went, and it didn’t go far when I came to putting it in words–and sent Al out to keep an eye on the Leggetts’ house, Mickey to see how Minnie and Rhino behaved.
Mrs. Leggett, her pleasant face shadowed, opened the door when I rang the bell an hour later. We went into the green, orange, and chocolate room, where we were joined by her husband. I passed on to them the information about Upton that O’Gar had received from New York and told them I had wired for more dope on Ruppert.
“Some of your neighbors saw a man who was not Upton loitering around,” I said, “and a man who fits the same description ran down the fire-escape from the room Upton was killed in. We’ll see what Ruppert looks like.”
I was watching Leggett’s face. Nothing changed in it. His too bright red-brown eyes held interest and nothing else.
I asked: “Is Miss Leggett in?”
He said: “No.”
“When will she be in?”
“Probably not for several days. She’s gone out of town.”
“Where can I find her?” I asked, turning to Mrs. Leggett. “I’ve some questions to ask her.”
Mrs. Leggett avoided my gaze, looking at her husband.
His metallic voice answered my question: “We don’t know, exactly. Friends of hers, a Mr. and Mrs. Harper, drove up from Los Angeles and asked her to go along on a trip up in the mountains. I don’t know which route they intended taking, and doubt if they had any definite destination.”
I asked questions about the Harpers. Leggett admitted knowing very little about them. Mrs. Harper’s first name was Carmel, he said, and everybody called the man Bud, but Leggett wasn’t sure whether his name was Frank or Walter. Nor did he know the Harpers’ Los Angeles address. He thought they had a house somewhere in Pasadena, but wasn’t sure, having, in fact, heard something about their selling the house, or perhaps only intending to. While he told me this nonsense, his wife sat staring at the floor, lifting her blue eyes twice to look swiftly, pleadingly, at her husband.