She nodded, “That’s what I phoned you for, to ask if I ought to tell them.”
“I phoned Macaulay, too. He’s coming over.”
“He can’t do anything,” she said indignantly. “Clyde gave them to me of his own free will–they’re mine.”
“What’s yours?”
“Those bonds, the money.”
“What bonds? what money?”
She went to the table and pulled the drawer out. “See?”
Inside were three packages of bonds held together by thick rubber bands. Across the top of them lay a pink check on the Park Avenue Trust Company to the order of Mimi Jorgensen for ten thousand dollars, signed Clyde Miller Wynant, and dated January 3, 1933.
“Dated five days ahead,” I said. “What kind of nonsense is that?”
“He said he hadn’t that much in his account and might not be able to make a deposit for a couple of days.”
“There’s going to be hell about this,” I warned her. “I hope you’re ready for it.”
“I don’t see why,” she protested. “I don’t see why my husband–my former husband–can’t provide for me and his children if he wants to.”
“Cut it out. What’d you sell him?”
“Sell him?”
“Uh-huh. What’d you promise to do in the next few days or he fixes it so the check’s no good?”
She made an impatient face. “Really, Nick, I think you’re a half-wit sometimes with your silly suspicions.”
“I’m studying to be one. Three more lessons and I get my diploma. But remember I warned you yesterday that you’ll probably wind up in–”
“Stop it,” she cried. She put a hand over my mouth. “Do you have to keep saying that? You know it terrifies me and–” Her voice became soft and wheedling. “You must know what I’m going through these days, Nick. Can’t you be a little kinder?”
“Don’t worry about me,” I said. “Worry about the police.” I went back to the telephone and called up Alice Quinn. “This is Nick. Nora said you–”
“Yes. Have you seen Harrison?”
“Not since I left him with you.”
“Well, if you do, you won’t say anything about what I said last night, will you? I didn’t mean it, really I didn’t mean a word of it.”
“I didn’t think you did,” I assured her, “and I wouldn’t say anything about it anyway. How’s he feeling today?”
“He’s gone,” she said.
“What?”
“He’s gone. He’s left me.”
“He’s done that before. He’ll be back.”
“I know, but I’m afraid this time. He didn’t go to his office. I hope he’s just drunk somewhere and–but this time I’m afraid. Nick, do you think he’s really in hove with that girl?”
“He seems to think he is.”
“Did he tell you he was?”
“That wouldn’t mean anything.”
“Do you think it would do any good to have a talk with her?”
“No.”
“Why don’t you? Do you think she’s in love with him?”
“No.”
“What’s the matter with you?” she asked irritably.
“No, I’m not home.”
“What? Oh, you mean you’re some place where you can’t talk?”
“That’s it.”
“Are you–are you at her house?”
“Yes.”
“Is she there?”
“No.”
“Do you think she’s with him?”
“I don’t know. I don’t think so.”
“Will you call me when you can talk, or, better still, will you come up to see me?”
“Sure,” I promised, and we hung up.
Mimi was looking at me with amusement in her blue eyes. “Somebody’s taking my brat’s affairs seriously?” When I did not answer her, she laughed and asked: “Is Dorry still being the maiden in distress?”
“I suppose so.”
“She will be, too, as long as she can get anybody to believe in it. And you, of all people, to be fooled, you who are afraid to believe that–well–that I, for instance, am ever telling the truth.”
“That’s a thought,” I said. The doorbell rang before I could go on.
Mimi let the doctor in–he was a roly-poly elderly man with a stoop and a waddle–and took him in to Gilbert.
I opened the table-drawer again and looked at the bonds, Postal Telegraph & Cable 5s, Sao Paulo City 6½s, American Type Founders 6s, Certain-teed Products 5½s, Upper Austria 6½s, United Drugs 5s, Philippine Railway 4S, Tokio Ehectric Lighting 6s, about sixty thousand dollars at face value, I judged, and–guessing–between a quarter and a third of that at the market.