I spoke before Gilbert could speak: “You can’t ask that of him, Guild. It’s his own father.”
“I can’t, huh?” He scowled at me. “Ain’t it for his father’s good if he’s innocent?”
I said nothing.
Guild’s face cleared slowly. “All right, then, son, suppose I put you on a kind of parole. If your father or anybody else asks you to do anything, will you promise to tell them you can’t because you give me your word of honor you wouldn’t?”
The boy looked at me.
I said: “That sounds reasonable.”
Gilbert said: “Yes, sir, I’ll give you my word.”
Guild made a large gesture with one hand. “Oke. Run along.”
The boy stood up saying: “Thank you very much, sir.” He turned to me. “Are you going to be–”
“Wait for me outside,” I told him, “if you’re not in a hurry.”
“I will. Good-by, Lieutenant Guild, and thank you.” He went out.
Guild grabbed his telephone and ordered The Grand Manner and its contents found and brought to him. That done, he clasped his hands behind his head and rocked back in his chair. “So what?”
“It’s anybody’s guess,” I said.
“Look here, you don’t still think Wynant didn’t do it?”
“What difference does it make what I think? You’ve got plenty on him now with what Mimi gave you.”
“It makes a lot of difference,” he assured me. “I’d like a lot to know what you think and why.”
“My wife thinks he’s trying to cover up somebody else.”
“Is that so? Hm-m-m. I was never one to belittle women’s intuition and, if you don’t mind me saying so, Mrs. Charles is a mighty smart woman. Who does she think it is?”
“She hadn’t decided, the last I heard.”
He sighed. “Well, maybe that paper he sent the kid for will tell us something.”
But the paper told us nothing that afternoon: Guild’s men could not find it, could not find a copy of The Grand Manner in the dead woman’s rooms.
29
Guild had red-haired Flint in again and put the thumbscrews on him. The ned-haired man sweat away ten pounds, but he stuck to it that Gilbert had had no opportunity to disturb anything in the apartment and throughout Flint’s guardianship nobody hadn’t touched nothing. He did not remember having seen a book called The Grand Manner, but he was not a man you would expect to memorize book titles. He tried to be helpful and made idiotic suggestions until Guild chased him out.
“The kid’s probably waiting for me outside,” I said, “if you think talking to him again will do any good.”
“Do you?”
“No.”
“Well, then. But, by God, somebody took that book and I’m going to–”
“Why?” I asked.
“Why what?”
“Why’d it have to be there for somebody to take?”
Guild scratched his chin. “Just what do you mean by that?”
“He didn’t meet Macaulay at the Plaza the day of the murder, he didn’t commit suicide in Allentown, he says he only got a thousand from Julia Wolf when we thought he was getting five thousand, he says they were just friends when we think they were lovers, he disappoints us too much for me to have much confidence in what he says.”
“It’s a fact,” Guild said, “that I’d understand it better if he’d either come in or run away. Him hanging around like this, just messing things up, don’t fit in anywhcres that I can see.”
“Are you watching his shop?”
“We’re kind of keeping an eye on it. Why?”
“I don’t know,” I said truthfully, “except that he’s pointed his finger at a lot of things that got us nowhere. Maybe we ought to pay some attention to the things he hasn’t pointed at, and the shop’s one of them.”
Guild said: “Hm-m-m.”
I said, “I’ll leave you with that bright thought,” and put on my hat and coat. “Suppose I wanted to get hold of you late at night, how would I reach you?”
He gave me his telephone number, we shook hands, and I left.
Gilbert Wynant was waiting for me in the corridor. Neither of us said anything until we were in a taxicab. Then he asked: “He thinks I was telling the truth, doesn’t he?”