Mrs. Priestly often sat at a front window at night when she couldn’t sleep. On two of these nights she had seen the man. She said he was a tall man, and young, she thought, and he walked with his head thrust forward. The street was too poorly lighted for her to describe his coloring and clothes.
She had first seen him a week before. He had passed up and down on the other side of the street five or six times, at intervals of fifteen or twenty minutes, with his face turned as if watching something–or looking for something–on Mrs. Priestly’s–and the Leggetts’–side of the street. She thought it was between eleven and twelve o’clock that she had seen him the first time that night, and around one o’clock the last. Several nights later–Saturday–she had seen him again, not walking this time, but standing on the corner below, looking up the street, at about midnight. He went away after half an hour, and she had not seen him again.
Mrs. Priestly knew the Leggetts by sight, but knew very little about them, except that the daughter was said to be a bit wild. They seemed to be nice people, but kept to themselves. He had moved into the house in 1921, alone except for the housekeeper–a Mrs. Begg, who, Mrs. Priestly understood, was now with a family named Freemander in Berkeley. Mrs. Leggett and Gabrielle had not come to live with Leggett until 1923.
Mrs. Priestly said she had not been at her window the previous night and therefore had not seen the man Mrs. Leggett had seen on the corner.
A man named Warren Daley, who lived on the opposite side of the street, down near the corner where Mrs. Priestly had seen her man, had, when locking up the house Sunday night, surprised a man–apparently the same man–in the vestibule. Daley was not at home when I called, but, after telling me this much, Mrs. Daley got him on the phone for me.
Daley said the man had been standing in the vestibule, either hiding from or watching someone up the street. As soon as Daley opened the door, the man ran away, down the street, paying no attention to Daley’s “What are you doing there?” Daley said he was a man of thirty-two or three, fairly well dressed in dark clothes, and had a long, thin, and sharp nose.
That was all I could shake the neighborhood down for. I went to the Montgomery Street offices of Spear, Camp and Duffy and asked for Eric Collinson.
He was young, blond, tall, broad, sunburned, and dressy, with the good-looking unintelligent face of one who would know everything about polo, or shooting, or flying, or something of that sort–maybe even two things of that sort–but not much about anything else. We sat on a fatted leather seat in the customers’ room, now, after market hours, empty except for a weedy boy juggling numbers on the board. I told Collinson about the burglary and asked him about the man he and Miss Leggett had seen Saturday night.
“He was an ordinary-looking chap, as far as I could see. It was dark. Short and chunky. You think he took them?”
“Did he come from the Leggett house?” I asked.
“From the lawn, at least. He seemed jumpy–that’s why I thought perhaps he’d been nosing around where he shouldn’t. I suggested I go after him and ask him what he was up to, but Gaby wouldn’t have it. Might have been a friend of her father’s. Did you ask him? He goes in for odd eggs.”
“Wasn’t that late for a visitor to be leaving?”
He looked away from me, so I asked: “What time was it?”
“Midnight, I dare say.”
“Midnight?”
“That’s the word. The time when the graves give up their dead, and ghosts walk.”
“Miss Leggett said it was after three o’clock.”
“You see how it is!” he exclaimed, blandly triumphant, as if he had demonstrated something we had been arguing about. “She’s half blind and won’t wear glasses for fear of losing beauty. She’s always making mistakes like that. Plays abominable bridge–takes deuces for aces. It was probably a quarter after twelve, and she looked at the clock and got the hands mixed.”