I didn’t know. I said:
“Don’t be a chump. We’re working for Hubert now, taking care of her.”
“Is it true that Mrs. Haldorn and Tom Fink were released because they had threatened to tell all they knew if they were held for trial?”
“Now you’re kidding me, Jack,” I said. “Is Andrews still here?”
“Yes.”
I went indoors and called Mickey in, asking him: “Seen Dick?”
“He drove past a couple of minutes after Andrews came.”
“Sneak away and find him. Tell him not to let the newspaper gang make him, even if he has to risk losing Andrews for a while. They’d go crazy all over their front pages if they learned we were shadowing him, and I don’t want them to go that crazy.”
Mrs. Herman was coming down the stairs. I asked her where Andrews was.
“Up in the front room.”
I went up there. Gabrielle, in a low-cut dark silk gown, was sitting stiff and straight on the edge of a leather rocker. Her face was white and sullen. She was looking at a handkerchief stretched between her hands. She looked up at me as if glad I had come in. Andrews stood with his back to the fireplace. His white hair, eyebrows, and mustache stood out every which way from his bony pink face. He shifted his scowl from the girl to me, and didn’t seem glad I had come in.
I said, “Hullo,” and found a table-corner to prop myself on.
He said: “I’ve come to take Mrs. Collinson back to San Francisco.”
She didn’t say anything. I said:
“Not to San Mateo?”
“What do you mean by that?” The white tangles of his brows came down to hide all but the bottom halves of his blue eyes.
“God knows. Maybe my mind’s been corrupted by the questions the newspapers have been asking me.”
He didn’t quite wince. He said, slowly, deliberately:
“Mrs. Haldorn sent for me professionally. I went to see her to explain how impossible it would be, in the circumstances, for me to advise or represent her.”
“That’s all right with me,” I said. “And if it took you thirty hours to explain that to her, it’s nobody’s business.”
“Precisely.”
“But–I’d be careful how I told the reporters waiting downstairs that. You know how suspicious they are–for no reason at all.”
He turned to Gabrielle again, speaking quietly, but with some impatience:
“Well, Gabrielle, are you going with me?”
“Should I?” she asked me.
“Not unless you especially want to.”
“I–I don’t.”
“Then that’s settled,” I said.
Andrews nodded and went forward to take her hand, saying:
“I’m sorry, but I must get back to the city now, my dear. You should have a phone put in, so you can reach me in case you need to.”
He declined her invitation to stay to dinner, said, “Good evening,” not unpleasantly, to me, and went out. Through a window I could see him presently getting into his car, giving as little attention as possible to the newspaper men gathered around him.
Gabrielle was frowning at me when I turned away from the window.
“What did you mean by what you said about San Mateo?” she asked.
“How friendly are he and Aaronia Haldorn?” I asked.
“I haven’t any idea. Why? Why did you talk to him as you did?”
“Detective business. For one thing, there’s a rumor that getting control of the estate may have helped him keep his own head above water. Maybe there’s nothing in it. But it won’t hurt to give him a little scare, so he’ll get busy straightening things out–if he has done any juggling– between now and clean-up day. No use of you losing money along with the rest of your troubles.”
“Then he–?” she began.
“He’s got a week–several days at least–to unjuggle in. That ought to be enough.”
“But–”
Mrs. Herman, calling us to dinner, ended the conversation.
Gabrielle ate very little. She and I had to do most of the talking until I got Mickey started telling about a job he had been on up in Eureka, where he posed as a foreigner who knew no English. Since English was the only language he did know, and Eureka normally held at least one specimen of every nationality there is, he’d had a hell of a time keeping people from finding out just what he was supposed to be. He made a long and laughable story of it. Maybe some of it was the truth: he always got a lot of fun out of acting like the other half of a half-wit.