losses on and gave me the prices. “Have you seen Dorothy Wynant?” I asked.
“Not since I left her in your place, but I’m meeting her at the Palma for cocktails this afternoon. Come to think of it, she told me not to tell you. How about that gold, Nick? You’re missing something if you don’t get in on it. Those wild men from the West are going to give us some kind of inflation as soon as Congress meets, that’s certain, and even if they don’t, everybody expects them to. As I told you last week, there’s already talk of a pool being—”
“All right,” I said and gave him an order to buy some Dome Mines at 12½.
He remembered then that he had seen something in the newspapers about my having been shot. He was pretty vague about it and paid very little attention to my assurances that I was all right. “I suppose that means no Ping-Pong for a couple of days,” he said with what seemed genuine regret. “Listen: you’ve got tickets for the opening tonight. If you can’t use them I’ll be—”
“We’re going to use them. Thanks just the same.” He laughed and said good-by.
A waiter was carrying away the table when I returned to the living-room. Guild had made himself comfortable on the sofa. Nora was telling him: “… have to go away over the Christmas holidays every year because what’s left of my family make a fuss over themand if we’re home they come to visit us or we have to visit them, and Nick doesn’t like it.” Asta was licking her paws in a corner.
Guild looked at his watch. “I’m taking up a lot of you folks’ time. I didn’t mean to impose—”
I sat down and said: “We were just about up to the murder, weren’t we?”
“Just about.” He relaxed on the sofa again. “That was on Friday the 23rd at some time before twenty minutes after three in the afternoon, which was the time Mrs. Jorgensen got there and found her. It’s kind of hard to say how long she’d been laying there dying before she was found. The only thing we know is that she was all right and answered the phone—and the phone was all right—at about half past two, when Mrs. Jorgensen called her up and was still all right around three, when Macaulay phoned.”
“I didn’t know Mrs. Jorgensen phoned.”
“It’s a fact.” Guild cleared his throat. “We didn’t suspect anything there, you understand, but we checked it up just as a matter of course and found out from the girl at the switchboard at the Courtland that she put the call through for Mrs. J. about two-thirty.”
“What did Mrs. J. say?”
“She said she called up to ask where she could find Wynant, but this Julia Wolf said she didn’t know, so Mrs. J., thinking she’s lying and maybe she can get her to tell the truth if she sees her, asks if she can drop in for a minute, and she says sure.” He frowned at my right knee. “Well, she went there and found her. The apartment-house people don’t remember seeing anybody going in or out of the Wolf apartment, but that’s easy. A dozen people could do it without being seen. The gun wasn’t there. There wasn’t any signs of anybody busting in, and things in the place hadn’t been disturbed any more than I’ve told you. I mean the place didn’t look like it had been frisked. She had on a diamond ring that must’ve been worth a few hundred and there was thirty-some bucks in her bag. The people there know Wynant and Morelli—both of ’em have been in and out enough—but claim they ain’t seen either for some time. The fire-escape window was locked and the fire-escape didn’tlook like it had been walked on recently.” He turned his hands over, palms up. “I guess that’s the crop.”
“No fingerprints?”
“Hers, some belonging to the people that clean up the place, near as we can figure. Nothing any good to us.”
“Nothing out of her friends?”
“She didn’t seem to have any—not any close ones.”
“How about the—what was his name?—Nunheim who identified her as
“Not since I left her in your place, but I’m meeting her at the Palma for cocktails this afternoon. Come to think of it, she told me not to tell you. How about that gold, Nick? You’re missing something if you don’t get in on it. Those wild men from the West are going to give us some kind of inflation as soon as Congress meets, that’s certain, and even if they don’t, everybody expects them to. As I told you last week, there’s already talk of a pool being—”
“All right,” I said and gave him an order to buy some Dome Mines at 12½.
He remembered then that he had seen something in the newspapers about my having been shot. He was pretty vague about it and paid very little attention to my assurances that I was all right. “I suppose that means no Ping-Pong for a couple of days,” he said with what seemed genuine regret. “Listen: you’ve got tickets for the opening tonight. If you can’t use them I’ll be—”
“We’re going to use them. Thanks just the same.” He laughed and said good-by.
A waiter was carrying away the table when I returned to the living-room. Guild had made himself comfortable on the sofa. Nora was telling him: “… have to go away over the Christmas holidays every year because what’s left of my family make a fuss over themand if we’re home they come to visit us or we have to visit them, and Nick doesn’t like it.” Asta was licking her paws in a corner.
Guild looked at his watch. “I’m taking up a lot of you folks’ time. I didn’t mean to impose—”
I sat down and said: “We were just about up to the murder, weren’t we?”
“Just about.” He relaxed on the sofa again. “That was on Friday the 23rd at some time before twenty minutes after three in the afternoon, which was the time Mrs. Jorgensen got there and found her. It’s kind of hard to say how long she’d been laying there dying before she was found. The only thing we know is that she was all right and answered the phone—and the phone was all right—at about half past two, when Mrs. Jorgensen called her up and was still all right around three, when Macaulay phoned.”
“I didn’t know Mrs. Jorgensen phoned.”
“It’s a fact.” Guild cleared his throat. “We didn’t suspect anything there, you understand, but we checked it up just as a matter of course and found out from the girl at the switchboard at the Courtland that she put the call through for Mrs. J. about two-thirty.”
“What did Mrs. J. say?”
“She said she called up to ask where she could find Wynant, but this Julia Wolf said she didn’t know, so Mrs. J., thinking she’s lying and maybe she can get her to tell the truth if she sees her, asks if she can drop in for a minute, and she says sure.” He frowned at my right knee. “Well, she went there and found her. The apartment-house people don’t remember seeing anybody going in or out of the Wolf apartment, but that’s easy. A dozen people could do it without being seen. The gun wasn’t there. There wasn’t any signs of anybody busting in, and things in the place hadn’t been disturbed any more than I’ve told you. I mean the place didn’t look like it had been frisked. She had on a diamond ring that must’ve been worth a few hundred and there was thirty-some bucks in her bag. The people there know Wynant and Morelli—both of ’em have been in and out enough—but claim they ain’t seen either for some time. The fire-escape window was locked and the fire-escape didn’tlook like it had been walked on recently.” He turned his hands over, palms up. “I guess that’s the crop.”
“No fingerprints?”
“Hers, some belonging to the people that clean up the place, near as we can figure. Nothing any good to us.”
“Nothing out of her friends?”
“She didn’t seem to have any—not any close ones.”
“How about the—what was his name?—Nunheim who identified her as
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