The Thin Man

“Am I invited to your party or do I—”

“Sure. You’ve never met Macaulay, have you? He’s a pretty good guy. I was attached to his outfit for a few days once, up around Vaux, and we looked each other up after the war. He threw a couple of jobs my way, including the Wynant one. How about a drop of something to cut the phlegm?”

“Why don’t you stay sober today?”

“We didn’t come to New York to stay sober. Want to see a hockey game tonight?”

“I’d like to.” She poured me a drink and went to order breakfast.

I looked through the morning papers. They had the news of Jorgensen’s being picked up by the Boston police and of Nunheim’s murder, but further developments of what the tabloids called “The Hell’s Kitchen Gang War,” the arrest of “Prince Mike” Gerguson, and an interview with the “Jafsie” of the Lindbergh kidnapping negotiations got more space. Macaulay and the bellboy who brought Asta up arrived together. Asta liked Macaulay because when he patted her he gave her something to set her weight against: she was never very fond of gentleness.

He had lines around his mouth this morning and some of the rosiness was gone from his cheeks. “Where’d the police get this new line?” he asked. “Do you think—” He broke off as Nora came in. She had dressed.

“Nora, this is Herbert Macaulay,” I said. “My wife.”

They shook hands and Nora said: “Nick would only let me order some coffee for you. Can’t I—”

“No, thanks, I’ve just finished breakfast.”

I said: “Now what’s this about the police?” He hesitated.

“Nora knows practically everything I know,” I assured him, “so unless it’s something you’d rather not—”

“No, no, nothing like that,” he said. “It’s—well—for Mrs. Charles’s sake. I don’t want to cause her anxiety.”

“Then out with it. She only worries about things she doesn’t know. What’s the new police line?”

“Lieutenant Guild came to see me this morning,” he said. “First he showed me a piece of watch-chain with a knife attached to it and asked me if I’d ever seen them before. I had: they were Wynant’s. I told him I thought I had: I thought they looked like Wynant’s. Then he asked me if I knew of any way in which they could have come into anybody else’s possession and, after some beating about the bush, I discovered that by anybody else he meant you or Mimi. I told him certainly—Wynant could have given them to either of you, you could have stolen them or found them on the street or have been given them by somebody who stole them or found them on the street, or you could have got them from somebody Wynant gave them to. There were other ways, too, for you to have got them, I told him, but he knew I was kidding him, so he wouldn’t let me tell him about them.”

There were spots of color in Nora’s cheeks and her eyes were dark. “The idiot!”

“Now, now,” I said. “Maybe I should have warned you—he was heading in that direction last night. I think it’s likely my old pal Mimi gave him a prod or two. What else did he turn the searchlight on?”

“He wanted to know about—what he asked was: ‘Do you figure Charles and the Wolf dame was still playing around together? Or was that all washed up?’ ”

“That’s the Mimi touch, all right,” I said. “What’d you tell him?”

“I told him I didn’t know whether you were ‘still’ playing around together because I didn’t know that you had ever played around together, and reminded him that you hadn’t been living in New York for a long time anyway.”

Nora asked me: “Did you?”

I said: “Don’t try to make a liar out of Mac. What’d he say to that?”

“Nothing. He asked me if I thought Jorgensen knew about you and Mimi and, when I asked him what about you and Mimi, he accused me of acting the i

“That’s nice,” I said. “I’ve got lousy alibis.”

A waiter came in with our breakfast. We talked about this and that until he had set the table and gone away. Then Macaulay said: “You’ve nothing to be afraid of. I’m going to turn Wynant over to the police.” His voice was unsteady and a little choked.

“Are you sure he did it?” I asked. “I’m not.”

He said simply: “I know.” He cleared his throat. “Even if there was a chance in a thousand of my being wrong—and there isn’t—he’s a madman, Charles. He shouldn’t be loose.”

“That’s probably right enough,” I began, “and if you know—”

“I know,” he repeated. “I saw him the afternoon he killed her; it couldn’t’ve been half an hour after he’d killed her, though I didn’t know that, didn’t even know she’d been killed. I—well—I know it now.”

“You met him in Herma

“What?”

“You were supposed to have been in the office of a man named Herma

“That’s right,” he said. “I mean that’s the story they got. What really happened: after I failed to find Wynant or any news of him at the Plaza and phoned my office and Julia with no better results, I gave him up and started walking down to Herma

“What time was it when you saw Wynant?” I asked.

“It must’ve been fifteen or twenty minutes past three. It was twenty minutes to four when I got to Herma

“I take it you weren’t close enough to Wynant to see whether he looked excited, was wearing his watch-chain, smelled of gunpowder—things like that.”

“That’s right. All I saw was his profile going past, but don’t think I’m not sure it was Wynant.”

“I won’t. Go ahead,” I said.

“He didn’t phone again. I’d been back about an hour when the police phoned—Julia was dead. Now you must understand that I didn’t think Wynant had killed her—not for a minute. You can understand that—you still don’t think he did. So when I went over there and the police began to ask me questions about him and I could see they suspected him, I did what ninety-nine out of a hundred lawyers would’ve done for their clients—I said nothing about having seen him in that neighborhood at about the time that the murder must have been committed. I told them what I told you—about having the date with him and him not showing up—and let them understand that I had gone over to Herma