She had broken the stick of chewing-gum in half, put part between her lips, and the rest she was preparing to wrap up in tin-foil again for some other time. She evidently didn’t like to chew too much at a time.
Gilman absently thumbed a vest-pocket as though he would have liked some too. She noticed that. “May I offer you some?” she said gravely.
“I wish you would, my mouth’s kind of dry.” He put the second half-piece in his own trap. “And you didn’t deliver a package for Mr. Hessen at 415 Martine Street this evening?” he said around it.
“No, sir, I did not. I’m afraid I don’t even know where Martine Street is.”
That about concluded the formalities. And we were suddenly outside again, him and me, alone. In the dark. It was dark for me, anyway. All he said when we got back in the car was: “This ‘girl’ of yours, what kind of gum did she habitually chew, wintergreen or licorice or what have you?”
What could I tell him but the truth? “She didn’t use gum, she detested the habit.”
He just looked at me. Then he took the nugget he’d mooched from the brunette out of his mouth, and he took a little piece of paper out of his pocket that held another dab in it, and he compared them — by scent. “I scraped this off that desk in the office, and it’s the same as what she gave me just now. Tutti-frutti. Not a very common flavor in chewing-gum. She belongs in that office, she parked her gum there. She had a letter addressed to herself in her handbag, and the initials on the outside checked. What’s your racket, kid? Are you a pushover for mental observation? Or are you working off a grudge against this guy? Or did you do something to some little blonde blue-eyed number and are you trying to pass the buck in this way before we even found out about it?”
It was like a ton of bricks had landed all over my dome. I held my head with both hands to keep it in one piece and leaned way over toward the floor and said, “My God!”
He got me by the slack of the collar and snapped me back so viciously it’s a wonder my neck didn’t break.
“Things like this don’t happen,” I groaned. “They can’t. One minute all mine, the next she isn’t anywhere. And no one’ll believe me.”
“You haven’t produced a single person all evening long that actually laid eyes on this ‘blonde girl’ of yours,” he said hard as flint. “Nowhere, d’you understand?”
“Where’d I get the name from then, the address?”
He looked at me when I said that. “I’ll give you one more spin for your money. You stand or fall by the place she lived.” He leaned forward and he said “120 Farragut” to the driver. Then he kept eyeing me like he was waiting for me to break down and admit it was a hoax or I’d done something to her myself, whoever she was.
Once he said, “Remember, this girl at his place had a letter, three days old, addressed to her, giving this same address were heading for now. If you still want to go through with it...”
“I took her home there,” I said.
“Parents?”
“No, it’s a rooming-house. She was from Harrisburg. But the landlady— He—” Then I went, “O-oh,” and let my head loll limply back against the back of the seat. I’d just remembered he’d recommended the place to her.
He was merciless, noticed everything. “D’ye still want to make it there — or d’ye want to make it Headquarters? And the tougher you are with me, the tougher I’m going to be with you, buddy.” And his fist knotted up and his eyes iced over.
It was a case of self-preservation now. We were only minutes away. “Listen. Y’gotta listen to me. She took me up one night, just for a minute, to lend me a magazine she had in the room. Y’gotta listen to this, for heaven’s sake. Sticking in the mirror of the dresser she’s got a litho of the Holy Mother. On the radiator she’s got a rag doll that I won for her at Coney Island.” I split open my collar in front trying to bring it all back. “On a little shelf against the wall she’s got a gas-ring, with a tube running up to the jet. From the light-fixture to that jet there runs a string, and she’ll have stockings hanging from it to dry. Are you listening? Will you remember these things? Don’t you see I couldn’t make all these things up? Don’t you see she’s real?”
“You almost persuade me,” he said half under his breath. Which was a funny thing coming from a detective. And then we got there.
We stepped down and went in. “Now if you open your mouth,” he said to me, teeth interlocked, “and say one word the whole time we’re in here, I’ll split your lip so wide open you’ll be able to spit without opening your mouth.” He sent for the landlady. I’d never seen her before. “Y’got a girl named Stephanie Riska living in your house?”
“Yep. Fourth-floor front.” That was right.
“How long?”
“Riska?” She took a tuck in her cheek. “She’s been rooming with me now six months.” That was right too.
“I want to know what she looks like.” He took a wicked half-turn in my arm that dammed up the blood.
“Dark hair, sort of dark skin. About as tall as this young fellow you got with you. She talks kind of husky.”
“I want to see her room. I’m the police.” He had to practically support me all the way up the four flights of stairs.
She threw open a door, gave it the switch. I came back to life enough to open my eyes. On the mirror, no picture. On the radiator, no rag doll. On the shelf no gas-ring, but a row of books. The jet had no tube plugged-in, was soldered-over with lead. No string led from it to the light. No nothing.
“Has she always had it fixed this way?” Gilman asked.
“Always since the first day she’s here. She’s a real clean roomer, only one thing I got to complain about— There it is again.” She went over to the washstand and removed a little nugget of grayish substance that had been plastered to the underside of it. But she smiled indulgently, as though one such peccadillo were permissible.
Gilman took it from her on a scrap of paper, shifted it from left to right across his face. “Tutti-frutti,” he said.
“Look out, you better hold your friend!” she exclaimed in sharp alarm.
He swung me so that instead of going down flat, I landed against him and stayed up. “Let him fold,” he said to her. “That isn’t anything to the falls he’s going to be taking five or ten minutes from now.” And we started down the stairs again, with two pairs of workable feet between the three of us.
“What’d he do, murder her?” she breathed avidly on the way down.
“Not her, but I got a good hunch he murdered someone — and picked the wrong name out of a hat.”
She went: “Tsk-tsk-tsk-tsk. He don’t look like—”
I saw some rheumatic lodger’s knotty walking-stick up-ended out of a brass umbrella-stand at the foot of the stairs. As he marched me by, I was on that side, luckily. I let my right arm fall behind us instead of in front of us where it had been — he didn’t have me handcuffed yet, remember — and the curved handle of the stick caught in my hand, and it came up out of the holder after me.
Then I swung it and beaned him like no dick was ever beaned before. He didn’t go down, he just staggered sidewise against the wall and went, “Uff!”
She was bringing up in the rear. She went, “Oh!” and jumped back. I cleared the front steps at a bound. I went “Steffie! Steffie!” and I beat it away in the dark. I didn’t know where I was going and I didn’t care, I only knew I had to find her. I came out so fast the driver of the headquarters-car we’d left at the door wasn’t expecting me. I’d already flashed around the corner below before his belated “Hey, you!” came winging after me.