“Of course, Miss Swiftwater,” Hopper said. “You mean that when he was supposed to come and visit you, you’ve discovered he was with this other woman…”
“I wouldn’t know about that,” she cut in shortly. “But I can tell you this. He’s with her right now. Sitting with her and guzzling…”
“And where is Mr. Hanna right now?” Hopper asked in a bored voice.
“Some place here in New York. A place called Cavern On The Green. And that woman has just come in and joined him.”
“Perhaps a relative…”
“It certainly is not,” Maryjane said in indignation. “I know all of Gerald’s relatives and business acquaintances. This girl is a blonde, a painted-up blonde. Her name’s Dunne. I heard her give it to the waiter when she came here and asked for him. I heard…”
“What did you say?” This time the voice at the other end of the line was hard and sharp. “What did you say the girl’s name was?”
“Dunne. I heard her very distinctly. She came in a taxi and she told the headwaiter Mr. Hanna was expecting her. She said her name was Dunne. Mr. Hanna is my fiance and I want…”
It took Hopper another three minutes to get her off the wire and hang up. It took him a little less than two minutes to reach Detective Finn.
They’d been together for more than half an hour now, sitting across from each other at the small, round-topped table in the secluded corner of the terrace. She hadn’t touched the Martini which the waiter had brought and put down in front of her and he himself had let the gin and tonic grow lukewarm in the tall glass.
She wore a cheap little cotton suit, but well cut as though she might have made it herself, and her makeup was smeared. Her slender-fingered hands beat an insistent tattoo on the edge of the table and when she spoke there was a note of controlled hysteria in her voice. When she looked at him, the azure eyes were filled with loathing.
But in spite of her expression, he could tell that she was very pretty. Her eyes were really beautiful. He only wished he could see them without the anger. Nothing, of course, could detract from her slender, perfect figure.
Looking at her, Gerald’s mind unconsciously went to his fiancee, Maryjane. She would never have approved of this lovely golden girl. Maryjane didn’t like women who wore their hair free and careless, who…
She reached across the table suddenly, jerking him by the sleeve of his jacket and interrupting his thoughts.
“You wanted to talk to me, Mister,” she said, fury in her low, husky voice. “What kind of man are you, anyway? Don’t just sit there staring at me. Tell me…”
“I’m sorry,” he said, refocusing his eyes on her.
“I don’t understand you,” Sue Dunne said. “I don’t understand you at all. I have to believe you, but I simply can’t understand you. You don’t look like a hoodlum-and God knows, I’ve seen enough of them to know. You don’t look like a thief or a crook. Maybe you are an insurance man like you say. Maybe you are legitimate.
“And yet you come here, or rather bring me here, and tell me about my brother. Tell me about his getting into your car. You say that he had the jewels and that now you have them. Or that you know how to get hold of them.
“Why? Why in the name of God do you come to me?”
“It’s like I explained,” Gerald said. “There was nothing I could have done for your brother. He died within minutes of the time he got into the car. There was nothing I could have done for him. But, I want to know who else is mixed up in the thing. If anyone else was involved in the robbery. I want to know how they planned to get rid of the stuff once they had it.”
“But why? Why do you want to know? Say, are you some kind of cop or something? You said you were an insurance man. Is that why…”
Gerald slowly shook his head.
“No,” he said. “No that isn’t why. And I am not any sort of cop or anything like that. It’s like I have told you. Five men have already died because of these jewels. One of them was your brother. Nothing can be done about that part of it any longer. But you have to be sensible, be realistic. It doesn’t make the jewels any less valuable.”
He hesitated a second and watched her closely.
“You see,” he said, “I don’t know anything about mobs, or gangsters, or fences, or anything like that. I just assumed that maybe you, being the sister of one of the men who took the stuff…”
She pushed back her chair and angrily got to her feet, leaning down with her hands on the table and staring into his face.
“My brother’s dead,” she said. “I don’t say that he didn’t get what was coming to him; I don’t even blame the policeman who fired the bullet which killed him. But the very thought of those jewels makes me sick. Makes me want to vomit. Do you understand? I hate the jewels and I hate the men who helped Vincent steal them.”
Her slender body suddenly began to shake and Gerald himself leaned forward, taking her by the arms. In a moment she again sat down, half collapsing in the seat.
He leaned forward, still holding her.
“Please,” he said. “Please. Just take it easy. I’m not trying to hurt you. I don’t want to…”
She swallowed a sob and looked up at him. The hatred was still there, but there was a difference. He could tell that the hatred had nothing to do with him personally. He was no longer important.
“If there is anything I could do to see that the man who got Vince into this thing was arrested,” she said in a low, choked voice, “anything I could do at all, why I’d give my life.”
She lifted her eyes again and stared at him intently. “And you expect me to help you contact him? You expect me to help you make money out of the very thing which killed my brother? You must be a fool as well as a scoundrel!”
She leaned back in her seat in sudden tired resignation and he could see the tears forming in the corners of her eyes.
“Vince was weak,” she said, her voice soft and barely above a whisper, as though she were speaking to herself and had forgotten his very presence. “Yes, Vince was weak. I always knew that he wasn’t much good. But if they’d let him alone, if they’d only left him alone! He could have turned out all right. I would have seen to that. I could have helped him, protected him.”
She looked up again and once more her mood changed.
“Yes,” she said, bitterly. “Yes, I could have helped him. But they didn’t. They didn’t leave him alone. They need kids like Vince to do their dirty work-take the chances they are afraid to take themselves.”
Suddenly she reached for the Martini and lifting it to her lips, swallowed it in one long draught. She made a wry face as she replaced the glass.
“As far as you’re concerned,” she said, looking into his face and not bothering to conceal the repugnance in her voice, “as far as you’re concerned, if you have the jewels like you say you do, then keep them. Or, if you aren’t just a cheap thief, give them back to the people they belong to.
“I wouldn’t help you if I could. I don’t even know why I’m stupid enough to sit here talking to you. I think maybe you are as bad as Fred Slaughter himself. There’s something darned funny about you and I think maybe I should just go to the telephone and…”
“Slaughter? Was this Fred Slaughter the man-the fence or whatever it is?”
For a long moment she stared at him and then quickly looked away.
“If you are smart,” she said, “you’ll forget that name. Forget that you ever heard it.”
This time when she stood up there was no doubt about what her intentions were.
“I don’t know what your angle is, Mister,” she said. “Maybe you are just a screwball after all. You certainly don’t look like a thief and you don’t look like a cop. But if you should by any chance know anything about those stolen jewels, I would advise you to get rid of them just as quickly as you can. I’d advise you to go right to the police and tell them everything you know.”