“Elizabeth, I just thought! Do you suppose there’s an opening at the Duane Sanitarium?”
“There’s always an opening at the Duane Sanitarium. Staff turnover is something terrific. But I still think you’re crazy, Jessie.”
“Could you find out? First thing tomorrow? I’d be ever so grateful.”
“I’ll talk to Dr. Duane myself.” Jessie’s friend giggled. “I’m tight, do you know? Don’t worry, I’ll fix it for you, but you’re absolutely balmy.”
“Maybe Elizabeth has something on this,” Richard Queen said. “What sort of place is it, Miss Currie? I wouldn’t want Jessie getting into something—”
“That’s just what she’d be doing,” the nurse said confidentially. “Oh, it’s a lovely place and all that — like a lovely prison, that is. Those patients. Phoo.”
“Pretty sick people?”
“Pretty sick my eye. Bunch of hypochondriacs, most of ’em. Drive a nurse to drink. Which reminds me. Could I have another Manhattan, you nice man?”
“Better not, Elizabeth,” Jessie said. “Talking about patients. You get some pretty important people up there, don’t you?”
“Filthy rich people. Could I—?”
“Isn’t the Duane Sanitarium where they took that wealthy society woman — what was her name? You know, Elizabeth — that woman from around here somewhere, tragic case of the baby that suffocated in its crib. Last month.”
“Huh,” the nurse said. “Mrs. Humffrey.”
“Mrs. Humffrey!” Jessie said. “She’s the one.” She thought, If Elizabeth remembers the newspaper stories, I’m sunk. She glanced at her confederate doubtfully, but he nodded for her to go ahead. “She had a nervous breakdown or something, didn’t she?”
“Absolutely no control over herself,” Elizabeth Currie nodded contemptuously. “‘Bereavement shock,’ they called it. All right, it was a ter’ble experience, but my God. She had everybody running around in circles.”
“Had?” Richard Queen said. “‘Had,’ Miss Currie?”
“Huh?” the nurse said owlishly.
“Doesn’t she still have everybody running around in circles?”
“No, indeedy, you nice man.”
“Why not?” Jessie didn’t dare glance at him this time. “Elizabeth, you talk as if she isn’t at the Duane Sanitarium any more.”
“She isn’t. Big private limousine with two husky nurses in it took her away last Friday morning. And was Dr. Duane glad to see the last of her.”
“I wonder where they took her.”
“Nobody knows. Big hush-hush. Who cares? Richard — I may call you Richard, mayn’t I? — just one more teeny Manhattan? He’s real nice, Jessie...”
It was late afternoon before they got rid of Elizabeth Currie, blearily bewildered at Jessie’s sudden decision not to apply for a nursing job at the Duane Sanitarium after all.
He drove in a fury. “Last Friday morning! And I was up there Thursday asking about her. Duane must have phoned Humffrey, or Humffrey called and Duane mentioned my visit, and bango! the next morning Humffrey hauls her out of there.”
“But Richard, he was being followed.”
“He didn’t go himself. Didn’t you hear, Jessie?” He honked savagely at a slowpoke driver. “Arranged the switch to a new hideout by phone, and drew us off while the transfer was made by the new people, who could be anybody, anywhere — maybe Arizona, for all we know. He’s smart, Jessie. Smart and quick on his pins.”
Jessie shivered. “What do we do now?”
“Who knows? It might take us months to locate her. If ever.”
He stared ahead.
A few miles later Jessie touched his arm. “Richard.”
“Yes?”
“Why don’t we give up?”
“No!” he said.
“But it seems so hopeless.”
To Jessie’s surprise, he smiled. “Maybe not, Jessie.”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s his round, all right. But we’ve just learned something about Mr. Alton K. Humffrey.”
“We have?” Jessie sounded dubious.
“This business of snatching his wife out from under our noses confirms my belief that the murder of that baby is his weak spot. It’s not theory any more. We’ve learned something else, too. The way to get at Humffrey is to force his hand. If we can surprise him, get him off balance...”
“You’ve thought of something!”
He nodded. “If it works, it could finish this off at one stroke.”
“What is it, Richard?”
“Let me think it through.”
For some reason, Jessie felt no elation. The title of an old Robert Benchley book, After 1903, What?, crossed her mind. After Alton Humffrey, What? She slumped down and closed her eyes...
She opened them to see the airy span of the George Washington Bridge moving by on her right.
“I fell asleep,” Jessie murmured.
“And looked like a young chicken,” he said in a peculiar way.
Jessie grimaced and sat up. “I’d make pretty tough chewing, I’m afraid.”
“Jessie.”
“Yes, Richard.”
“Wasn’t it a funny feeling? Back there in Stamford, I mean?” He said it with a laugh.
“You mean when Elizabeth said Sarah Humffrey had been spirited away? I thought I’d die.”
“No, I mean you and me.” He was very red. “Pretending to be engaged.”
Jessie stared straight ahead at the traffic. “I didn’t see anything funny about it,” she said coldly. “I thought it was nice.”
“Well...”
Yes? Jessie thought. Yes?
But when he spoke again, it was to explain the plan he had worked out.
“It’s that one over there, Jessie,” Richard Queen said.
It was Wednesday evening, the 28th of September.
Jessie turned the coupé into the Pearl driveway and switched off her ignition. It was a spready old white clapboard house covered with wisteria and honeysuckle vines on a peaceful side street in Taugus. Great maples shaded the lawns, and on the old-fashioned open porch there were two rockers and a slide-swing.
He got out of the car, handling a large square flat package as if it contained eggs.
But Jessie was looking at the house. “What a lovely place for two people to live out their lives together.”
“It’s too big for two people, Abe says.”
“I’ll bet that’s not what Mrs. Pearl says.”
“You’d win,” he chuckled. “Becky’s children were born in this house, and to her that makes it holy. When Abe bought the beach shack, he had to fight to get her to go out there during the summer months. She isn’t really happy till they close it up in September and come back here.”
“She’s lucky.”
“So is Abe.” He added, “In more ways than one.”
Jessie sighed and got out. They went up on the porch, Richard Queen carrying the package carefully.
The door opened before he could ring the bell. “Richard, Jessie.” Beck Pearl embraced them enthusiastically. “Let me look at you two! Abe, they’re positively blooming. Did you ever see such a change in two people?”
“Well, get out of the way and let them come in,” Abe Pearl grumbled. “I don’t know why you wouldn’t let me go to the door till they came up on the porch—”
His wife’s glance withered him. “Let me have your things, Jessie. I can’t imagine why Abe didn’t insist on your coming for dinner. He’s so stupid about some things!”
She carted Jessie off, and Abe Pearl took his friend into the living room.
“I thought you’d never get here. What held you up, Dick?”
“Daylight.” The Inspector laid his package gently on the mahogany refectory table. “Mind if I pull the blinds?”
“You’re acting damn mysterious. What’s up?” The Taugus chief kept eying the package.