“I’m saving mine till I really need it. None of those look too airtight, but legitimate alibis seldom do. How about Nunheim?”
Guild seemed surprised. “What makes you think of him?”
“I hear he had a yen for the girl.”
“And where’d you hear it?”
“I heard it.”
He scowled. “Would you say it was reliable?”
“Yes.”
“Well,” he said slowly, “he’s one guy we can check up on. But look here, what do you care about these people? Don’t you think Wynant done it?”
I gave him the same odds I had given Studsy: “Twenty-five’ll get you fifty he didn’t.”
He scowled at me over that for a long silent moment, then said: “That’s an idea, anyways. Who’s your candidate?”
“I haven’t got that far yet. Understand, I don’t know anything. I’m not saying Wynant didn’t do it. I’m just saying everything doesn’t point at him.”
“And saying it two to one. What don’t point at him?”
“Call it a hunch, if you want,” I said, “but–”
“I don’t want to call it anything,” he said. “I think you’re a smart detective. I want to listen to what you got to say.”
“Mostly I’ve got questions to say. For instance, how long was it from the time the elevator boy let Mrs. Jorgensen off at the Wolf girl’s floor until she rang for him and said she heard groans?”
Guild pursed his lips, opened them to ask, “You think she might’ve–?” and left the rest of the question hanging in the air.
“I think she might’ve. I’d like to know where Nunheim was. I’d like to know the answers to the questions in Wynant’s letter. I’d like to know where the four-thousand-dollar difference between what Macaulay gave the girl and what she seems to have given Wynant went. I’d like to know where her engagement ring came from.”
“We’re doing the best we can,” Guild said. “Me–just now I’d like to know why, if he didn’t do it, Wynant don’t come in and answer questions for us.” –
“One reason might be that Mrs. Jorgensen’d like to slam him in the squirrel cage again.” I thought of something. “Herbert Macaulay’s working for Wynant: you didn’t just take Macaulay’s word for it that the man in Allentown wasn’t him?”
“No. He was a younger man than Wynant, with damned little gray in his hair and no dye, and he didn’t look like the pictures we got.” He seemed positive. “You got anything to do the next hour or so?”
“No.”
“That’s fine.” He stood up. “I’ll get some of the boys working on these things we been discussing and then maybe me and you will pay some visits.”
“Swell,” I said, and he went out of the office.
There was a copy of the Times in his wastebasket. I fished it out and turned to the Public Notices columns. Macaulay’s advertisement was there:
“Abner. Yes. Bunny.”
When Guild returned I asked: “How about Wynant’s help, whoever he had working in the shop? Have they been looked up?”
“Uh-huh, but they don’t know anything. They was laid off at the end of the week that he went away–there’s two of them–and haven’t seen him since.”
“What were they working on when the shop was closed?”
“Some kind of paint or something–something about a permanent green. I don’t know. I’ll find out if you want.”
“I don’t suppose it matters. Is it much of a shop?”
“Looks like a pretty good lay-out, far as I can tell. You think the shop might have something to do with it?”
“Anything might.”
“Uh-huh. Well, let’s run along.”
16
“First thing,” Guild said as we left his office, “we’ll go see Mr. Nunheim. He ought to be home: I told him to stick around till I phoned him.”
Mr. Nunheim’s home was on the fourth floor of a dark, damp, and smelly building made noisy by the Sixth Avenue elevated. Guild knocked on the door.
There were sounds of hurried movement inside, then a voice asked: “Who is it?” The voice was a man’s, nasal, somewhat irritable.
Guild said: “John.”
The door was hastily opened by a small sallow man of thirty-five or -six whose visible clothes were an undershirt, blue pants, and black silk stockings. “I wasn’t expecting you, Lieutenant,” he whined. “You said you’d phone.” He seemed frightened. His dark eyes were small and set close together; his mouth was wide, thin, and loose; and his nose was peculiarly limber, a long, drooping nose, apparently boneless.