The doorbell rang and she went to answer it.
“What do you think of it?” Macaulay asked in a low voice.
“When I start believing Mimi,” I said, “I hope I have sense enough not to admit it.”
She returned from the door with Guild and Andy. Guild nodded to me and shook hands with Macaulay, then turned to Mimi and said: “Well, ma’am, I’ll have to ask you to tell–”
Macaulay interrupted him: “Suppose you let me tell what I have to tell first, Lieutenant. It belongs ahead of Mrs. Jorgensen’s story and–”
Guild waved a big hand at the lawyer. “Go ahead.” He sat down on an end of the sofa.
Macaulay told him what he had told me that morning. When he mentioned having told it to me that morning Guild glanced bitterly at me, once, and thereafter ignored me completely. Guild did not interrupt Macaulay, who told his story clearly and concisely. Twice Mimi started to say something, but each time broke off to listen. When Macaulay had finished, he handed Guild the note about the bonds and check. “That came by messenger this afternoon.”
Guild read the note very carefully and addressed Mimi: “Now then, Mrs. Jorgensen.”
She told him what she had told us about Wynant’s visit, elaborating the details as he patiently questioned her, but sticking to her story that he had refused to say a word about anything connected with Julia Wolf or her murder, that in giving her the bonds and check he had simply said that he wished to provide for her and the children, and that though he had said he was going away she did not know where or when. She seemed not at all disturbed by everybody’s obvious disbelief. She wound up smiling, saying: “He’s a sweet man in a lot of ways, but quite mad.”
“You mean he’s really insane, do you?” Guild asked; “not just nutty?”
“Yes.”
“What makes you think that?”
“Oh, you’d have to live with him to really know how mad he is,” she replied airily.
Guild seemed dissatisfied. “What kind of clothes was he wearing?”
“A brown suit and brown overcoat and hat and I think brown shoes and a white shirt and a grayish necktie with either red or reddish brown figures in it.”
Guild jerked his head at Andy. “Tell ’em.”
Andy went out.
Guild scratched his jaw and frowned thoughtfully. The rest of us watched him. When he stopped scratching, he looked at Mimi and Macaulay, but not at me, and asked: “Any of you know anybody that’s got the initials of D. W. Q.?”
Macauhay shook his head from side to side slowly. Mimi said: “No. Why?”
Guild looked at me now. “Well?”
“I don’t know them.”
“Why?” Mimi repeated.
Guild said: “Try to remember back. He’d most likely’ve had dealings with Wynant.”
“How far back?” Macaulay asked.
“That’s hard to say right now. Maybe a few months, maybe a few years. He’d be a pretty large man, big bones, big belly, and maybe lame.”
Macaulay shook his head again. “I don’t remember anybody like that.”
“Neither do I,” Mimi said, “but I’m bursting with curiosity. I wish you’d tell us what it’s all about.”
“Sure, I’ll tell you.” Guild took a cigar from his vest pocket, looked at it, and returned it to the pocket. “A dead man like that’s buried under the floor of Wynant’s shop.”
I said: “Ah .”
Mimi put both hands to her mouth and said nothing. Her eyes were round and glassy.
Macaulay, frowning, asked: “Are you sure?”
Guild sighed. “Now you know that ain’t something anybody would guess at,” he said wearily.
Macaulay’s face flushed and he smiled sheepishly. “That was a silly question. How did you happen to find him–it?”
“Well, Mn. Charles here kept hinting that we ought to pay more attention to that shop, so, figuring that Mr. Charles here is a man that’s liable to know a lot more things than he tells anybody right out, I sent sonic men around this morning to see what they could find. We’d give it the once over before and hadn’t turned up nothing, but this time I told ’em to take the dump apart, because Mr. Charles here had said we ought to pay more attention to it. And Mr. Charles here was right.” He looked at me with cool unfriendliness. “By and by they found a corner of the cement floor looking a little newer maybe than the rest and they cracked it and there was the mortal remains of Mr. D. W. Q. What do you think of that?”