“You did live in Cleveland then?”
“Yes,” she said softly.
“You got to know Steelgrave how?”
“It was just that in those days it was fun to know a gangster. A form of inverted snobbery, I suppose. One went to the places where they were said to go and if one was lucky, perhaps some evening—”
“You let him pick you up.”
She nodded brightly. “Let us say I picked him up. He was a very nice little man. Really, he was.”
“What about the husband? Your husband. Or don’t you remember?”
She smiled. “The streets of the world are paved with discarded husbands,” she said.
“Isn’t it the truth? You find them everywhere. Even in Bay City.”
That bought me nothing. She shrugged politely. “I would not doubt it.”
“Might even be a graduate of the Sorbonne. Might even be mooning away in a measly small-town practice. Waiting and hoping. That’s one coincidence I’d like to eat. It has a touch of poetry.”
The polite smile stayed in place on her lovely face.
“We’ve slipped far apart,” I said. “Ever so far. And we got to be pretty clubby there for a while.”
I looked down at my fingers. My head ached. I wasn’t even forty per cent of what I ought to be. She reached me a crystal cigarette box and I took one. She fitted one for herself into the golden tweezers. She took it from a different box.
“I’d like to try one of yours,” I said.
“But Mexican tobacco is so harsh to most people.”
“As long as it’s tobacco,” I said, watching her. I made up my mind. “No, you’re right. I wouldn’t like it.”
“What,” she asked carefully, “is the meaning of this by-play?”
“Desk clerk’s a muggle-smoker.”
She nodded slowly. “I have warned him,” she said. “Several times.”
“Amigo,” I said.
“What?”
“You don’t use much Spanish do you? Perhaps you don’t know much Spanish. Amigo gets worn to shreds.”
“We are not going to be like yesterday afternoon, I hope,” she said slowly.
“We’re not. The only thing Mexican about you is a few words and a careful way of talking that’s supposed to give the impression of a person speaking a language they had to learn. Like saying ‘do not’ instead of ‘don’t.’ That sort of thing.”
She didn’t answer. She puffed gently on her cigarette and smiled.
“I’m in bad trouble downtown,” I went on. “Apparently Miss Weld had the good sense to tell it to her boss—Julius Oppenheimer—and he came through. Got Lee Farrell for her. I don’t think they think she shot Steelgrave. But they think I know who did, and they don’t love me any more.”
“And do you know, amigo?”
“Told you over the phone I did.”
She looked at me steadily for a longish moment. “I was there.” Her voice had a dry serious sound for once.
“It was very curious, really. The little girl wanted to see the gambling house. She had never seen anything like that and there had been in the papers—”
“She was staying here—with you?”
“Not in my apartment, amigo. In a room I got for her here.”
“No wonder she wouldn’t tell me,” I said. “But I guess you didn’t have time to teach her the business.”
She frowned very slightly and made a motion in the air with the brown cigarette. I watched its smoke write something unreadable in the still air.
“Please. As I was saying she wanted to go to that house. So I called him up and he said to come along. When we got there he was drunk. I have never seen him drunk before. He laughed and put his arm around little Orfamay and told her she had earned her money well. He said he had something for her, then he took from his pocket a billfold wrapped in a cloth of some kind and gave it to her. When she unwrapped it there was a hole in the middle of it and the hole was stained with blood.”
“That wasn’t nice,” I said. “I wouldn’t even call it characteristic.”
“You did not know him very well.”
“True. Go on.”
“Little Orfamay took the billfold and stared at it and then stared at him and her white little face was very still. Then she thanked him and opened her bag to put the billfold in it, as I thought—it was all very curious—”
“A scream,” I said. “It would have had me gasping on the floor.”
“—but instead she took a gun out of her bag. It was a gun he had given Mavis, I think. It was like the one—”
“I know exactly what it was like,” I said. “I played with it some.”
“She turned around and shot him dead with one shot. It was very dramatic.”
She put the brown cigarette back in her mouth and smiled at me. A curious, rather distant smile, as if she was thinking of something far away.
“You made her confess to Mavis Weld,” I said. She nodded.
“Mavis wouldn’t have believed you, I guess.”
“I did not care to risk it.”
“It wasn’t you gave Orfamay the thousand bucks, was it, darling? To make her tell? She’s a little girl who would go a long way for a thousand bucks.”
“I do not care to answer that,” she said with dignity.
“No. So last night when you rushed me out there, you already knew he was dead and there wasn’t anything to be afraid of and all that act with the gun was just an act.”
“I do not like to play God,” she said softly. “There was a situation and I knew that somehow or other you would get Mavis out of it. There was no one else who would. Mavis was determined to take the blame.”
“I better have a drink,” I said. “I’m sunk.”
She jumped up and went to the little cellarette. She came back with a couple of huge glasses of Scotch and water. She handed me one and watched me over her glass as I tried it out. It was wonderful. I drank some more. She sank down into her chair again, and reached for the golden tweezers.
“I chased her out,” I said, finally. “Mavis, I’m talking about. She told me she had shot him. She had the gun. The twin of the one you gave me. You didn’t probably notice that yours had been fired.”
“I know very little about guns,” she said softly.
“Sure. I counted the shells in it, and assuming it had been full to start with, two had been fired. Quest was killed with two shots from a .32 automatic. Same caliber. I picked up the empty shells in the den down there.”
“Down where, amigo?”
It was beginning to grate. Too much amigo, far too much.
“Of course I couldn’t know it was the same gun, but it seemed worth trying out. Only confuse things up a little anyhow, and give Mavis that much break. So I switched guns on him, and put his behind the bar. His was a black .38. More like what he would carry, if he carried one at all. Even with a checked grip you can leave prints, but with an ivory grip you’re apt to leave a fair set of finger marks on the left side. Steelgrave wouldn’t carry that kind of gun.”
Her eyes were round and empty and puzzled. “I am afraid I am not following you too well.”
“And if he killed a man he would kill him dead, and be sure of it. This guy got up and walked a bit.”
A flash of something showed in her eyes and was gone.
“I’d like to say he talked a bit,” I went on. “But he didn’t. His lungs were full of blood. He died at my feet. Down there.”
“But down where? You have not told me where it was that this—”
“Do I have to?”
She sipped from her glass. She smiled. She put the glass down. I said: “You were present when little Orfamay told him where to go.”
“Oh yes, of course.” Nice recovery. Fast and clean. But her smile looked a little more tired.
“Only he didn’t go,” I said.
Her cigarette stopped in midair. That was all. Nothing else. It went on slowly to her lips. She puffed elegantly.
“That’s what’s been the matter all along,” I said. “I just wouldn’t buy what was staring me in the face. Steelgrave is Weepy Moyer. That’s solid, isn’t it?”