I asked her: “Don’t you know anything more about them than that?”
“No,” she said weakly, darting another glance at her husband’s face, while he, paying no attention to her, stared levelly at me.
“When did they leave?” I asked.
“Early this morning,” Leggett said. “They were staying at one of the hotels–I don’t know which–and Gabrielle spent the night with them so they could start early.”
I had enough of the Harpers. I asked: “Did either of you–any of you–know anything about Upton–have any dealings with him of any sort–before this affair?”
Leggett said: “No.”
I had other questions, but the kind of replies I was drawing didn’t mean anything, so I stood up to go. I was tempted to tell him what I thought of him, but there was no profit in that.
He got up too, smiling politely, and said: “I’m sorry to have caused the insurance company all this trouble through what was, after all, probably my carelessness. I should like to ask your opinion: do you really think I should accept responsibility for the loss of the diamonds and make it good?”
“The way it stands,” I said, “I think you should; but that wouldn’t stop the investigation.”
Mrs. Leggett put her handkerchief to her mouth quickly.
Leggett said: “Thanks.” His voice was casually polite. “I’ll have to think it over.”
On my way back to the agency I dropped in on Fitzstephan for half an hour. He was writing, he told me, an article for the _Psychopathological Review_–that’s probably wrong, but it was something on that order– condemning the hypothesis of an unconscious or subconscious mind as a snare and a delusion, a pitfall for the unwary and a set of false whiskers for the charlatan, a gap in psychology’s roof that made it impossible, or nearly, for the sound scholar to smoke out such faddists as, for exaniple, the psychoanalyst and the behaviorist, or words to that effect. He went on like that for ten minutes or more, finally coming back to the United States with: “But how are you getting along with the problem of the elusive diamonds?”
“This way and that way,” I said, and told him what I had learned and done so far.
“You’ve certainly,” he congratulated me when I finished, “got it all as tangled and confused as possible.”
“It’ll be worse before it’s better,” I predicted. “I’d like to have ten minutes alone with Mrs. Leggett. Away from her husband, I imagine things could be done with her. Could you get anything out of her? I’d like to know why Gabrielle has gone, even if I can’t learn where.”
“I’ll try,” Fitzstephan said willingly. “Suppose I go out there tomorrow afternoon–to borrow a book. Waite’s _Rosy Cross_ will do it. They know I’m interested in that sort of stuff. He’ll be working in the laboratory, and I’ll refuse to disturb him. I’ll have to go at it in an offhand way, but maybe I can get something out of her.”
“Thanks,” I said. “See you tomorrow night.”
I spent most of the afternoon putting my findings and guesses on paper and trying to fit them together in some sort of order. Eric Collinson phoned twice to ask if I had any news of his Gabrielle. Neither Mickey Linehan nor Al Mason reported anything. At six o’clock I called it a day.
V. Gabrielle
The next day brought happenings.
Early in the morning there was a telegram from our New York office. Decoded, it read:
LOUIS UPTON FORMER PROPRIETOR DETECTIVE AGENCY HERE
STOP ARRESTED SEPTEMBER FIRST ONE NINE TWO THREE FOR
BRIBING TWO JURORS IN SEXTON MURDER TRIAL STOP TRIED TO
SAVE HIMSELF BY IMPLICATING HARRY RUPPERT OPERATIVE IN
HIS EMPLOY STOP BOTH MEN CONVICTED STOP BOTH RELEASED
FROM SING SING FEBRUARY SIX THIS YEAR STOP RUPPERT SAID TO
HAVE THREATENED TO KILL UPTON STOP RUPPERT THIRTY TWO
YEARS FIVE FEET ELEVEN INCHES HUNDRED FIFTY POUNDS BROWN
HAIR AND EYES SALLOW COMPLEXION THIN FACE LONG THIN NOSE
WALKS WITH STOOP AND CHIN OUT STOP MAILING PHOTOGRAPHS
That placed Ruppert definitely enough as the man Mrs. Priestly and Daley had seen and the man who had probably killed Upton.
O’Gar called me on the phone to tell me: “That dinge of yours–Rhino Tingley–was picked up in a hock shop last night trying to unload some jewelry. None of it was loose diamonds. We haven’t been able to crack him yet, just got him identified. I sent a man out to Leggett’s with some of the stuff, thinking it might be theirs, but they said no.”