That didn’t fit in anywhere. I suggested: “Try Halstead and Beauchamp. Tell them you think the stuff is Leggett’s. Don’t tell them he said it wasn’t.”
Half an hour later the detective-sergeant phoned me again, from the jewelers’, to tell me that Halstead had positively identified two pieces–a string of pearls and a topaz brooch–as articles Leggett had purchased there for his daughter.
“That’s swell,” I said. “Now will you do this? Go out to Rhino’s flat and put the screws on his woman, Minnie Hershey. Frisk the joint, rough her up; the more you scare her, the better. She may be wearing an emerald ring. If she is, or if it–or any other jewelry that might be the Leggetts’– is there, you can take it away with you; but don’t stay too long and don’t bother her afterwards. I’ve got her covered. Just stir her up and beat it.”
“I’ll turn her white,” O’Gar promised.
Dick Foley was in the operatives’ room, writing his report on a warehouse robbery that had kept him up all night. I chased him out to help Mickey with the mulatto.
“Both of you tail her if she leaves her joint after the police are through,” I said, “and as soon as you put her in anywhere, one of you get to a phone and let me know.”
I went back to my office and burned cigarettes. I was ruining the third one when Eric Collinson phoned to ask if I had found his Gabrielle yet.
“Not quite, but I’ve got prospects. If you aren’t busy, you might come over and go along with me–if it so happens that there turns out to be some place to go.”
He said, very eagerly, that he would do that.
A few minutes later Mickey Linehan phoned: “The high yellow’s gone visiting,” and gave me a Pacific Avenue address.
The phone rang again before I got it out of my hand.
“This is Watt Halstead,” a voice said. “Can you come down to see me for a minute or two?”
“Not now. What is it?”
“It’s about Edgar Leggett, and it’s quite puzzling. The police brought some jewelry in this morning, asking whether we knew whose it was. I recognized a string of pearls and a brooch that Edgar Leggett bought from us for his daughter last year–the brooch in the spring, the pearls at Christmas. After the police had gone, I, quite naturally, phoned Leggett; and he took the most peculiar attitude. He waited until I had told him about it, then said: ‘I thank you very much for your interference in my affairs,’ and hung up. What do you suppose is the matter with him?”
“God knows. Thanks. I’ve got to run now, but I’ll stop in when I get a chance.”
I hunted up Owen Fitzstephan’s number, called it, and heard his drawled: “Hello.”
“You’d better get busy on your book-borrowing if any good’s to come of it,” I said.
“Why? Are things taking place?”
“Things are.”
“Such as?” he asked.
“This and that, but it’s no time for anybody who wants to poke his nose into the Leggett mysteries to be dilly-dallying with pieces about unconscious minds.”
“Right,” he said: “I’m off to the front now.”
Eric Collinson had come in while I was talking to the novelist.
“Come on,” I said, leading the way out towards the elevators. “This might not be a false alarm.”
“Where are we going?” he asked impatiently. “Have you found her? Is she all right?”
I replied to the only one of his questions that I had the answer to by giving him the Pacific Avenue address Mickey had given me. It meant something to Collinson. He said: “That’s Joseph’s place.”
We were in the elevator with half a dozen other people. I held my response down to a “Yeah?”
He had a Chrysler roadster parked around the corner. We got into it and began bucking traffic and traffic signals towards Pacific Avenue.
I asked: “Who is Joseph?”
“Another cult. He’s the head of it. He calls his place the Temple of the Holy Grail. It’s the fashionable one just now. You know how they come and go in California. I don’t like having Gabrielle there, if that’s where she is–though–I don’t know–they may be all right. He’s one of Mr. Leggett’s queer friends. Do you know that she’s there?”