“Yes.”

He said: “What I wanted to tell you: Chris didn’t come home last night. That’s why Mamma’s more upset than usual, and when I got the mail this morning there was a letter for him that I thought might have something in it, so I steamed it open.” He took a letter from his pocket and held it out to me. “You’d better read it and then I’ll seal it again and put it with tomorrow’s mail in case he comes back, though I don’t think he will.”

“Why don’t you?” I asked as I took the letter.

“Well, he’s really Rosewater”

“You say anything to him about it?”

“I didn’t have a chance. I haven’t seen him since you told me.”

I looked at the letter in my hand. The envelope was postmarked Boston, Massachusetts, December 27, 1932, and addressed in a slightly childish feminine hand to Mr. Christian Jorgensen, Courtland Apts., New York, N. Y. “How’d you happen to open it?” I asked, taking the letter out of the envelope.

“I don’t believe in intuition,” he said, “but there are probably odors, sounds, maybe something about the handwriting, that you can’t analyze, maybe aren’t even conscious of, that influence you sometimes. I don’t know what it was: I just felt there might be something important in it.”

“You often feel that way about the family’s mail?”

He glanced quickly at me as if to see whether I was spoofing, then said: “Not often, but I have opened their mail before. I told you I was interested in studying people.”

I read the letter:

Dear Vic—Olga wrote me about you being back in the U.S. married to another woman and using the name of Christian Jorgensen. That is not right Vic as you very well know the same as leaving me without word of any kind all these years. And no money. I know that you had to go away on account of that trouble you had with Mr. Wynant but am sure he has long since forgot all about that and I do think you might have written to me as you know very well I have always been your friend and am willing to do anything within my power for you at any time. I do not want to scold you Vic but I have to see you. I will be off from the store Sunday and Monday on account of New Years and will come down to N. Y. Saturday night and must have a talk with you. Write me where you will meet me and what time as I do not want to make any trouble for you. Be sure and write me right away so I will get it in time.

Your true wife, Georgia

There was a street address. I said, “Well, well, well,” and put the letter back in its envelope. “And you resisted the temptation to tell your mother about this?”

“Oh, I know what her reaction would be. You saw how she carried on with just what you told her. What do you think I ought to do about it?”

“You ought to let me tell the police.”

He nodded immediately. “If you think that’s the best thing. You can show it to them if you want.”

I said, “Thanks,” and put the letter in my pocket.

He said: “Now there’s another thing: I had some morphine I was experimenting with and somebody stole it, about twenty grains.”

“Experimenting how?”

“Taking it. I wanted to study the effects.”

“And how’d you like them?” I asked.

“Oh, I didn’t expect to like it. I just wanted to know about it. I don’t like things that dull my mind. That’s why I don’t very often drink, or even smoke. I want to try cocaine, though, because that’s supposed to sharpen the brain, isn’t it?”

“It’s supposed to. Who do you think copped the stuff?”

“I suspect Dorothy, because I have a theory about her. That’s why I’m going over to Aunt Alice’s for dinner: Dorry’s still there and I want to find out. I can make her tell me anything.”

“Well, if she’s been over there,” I asked, “how could she—”

“She was home for a little while last night,” he said, “and, besides, I don’t know exactly when it was taken. Today was the first time I opened the box it was in for three or four days.”

“Did she know you had it?”

“Yes. That’s one of the reasons I suspect her. I don’t think anybody else did. I experimented on her too.”

“How’d she like it?”

“Oh, she liked it all right, but she’d have taken it anyhow. But what I want to ask you is could she have become an addict in a little time like that?”

“Like what?”

“A week—no—ten days.”

“Hardly, unless she thought herself into it. Did you give her much?”

“No.”

“Let me know if you find out,” I said. “I’m going to grab a taxi here. Be seeing you.”

“You’re coming over later tonight, aren’t you?”

“If I can make it. Maybe I’ll see you then.”

“Yes,” he said, “and thanks awfully.”

At the first drug store I stopped to telephone Guild, not expecting to catch him in his office, but hoping to learn how to reach him at his home. He was still there, though. “Working late,” I said.

His “That’s what” sounded very cheerful.

I read Georgia’s letter to him, gave him her address.

“Good pickings,” he said.

I told him Jorgensen had not been home since the day before. “Think we’ll find him in Boston?” he asked.

“Either there,” I guessed, “or as far south as he could manage to get by this time.”

“We’ll try ’em both,” he said, still cheerful. “Now I got a bit of news for you. Our friend Nunheim was filled full of .32s just about an hour after he copped the sneak on us—deader’n hell. The pills look like they come from the same gun that cut down the Wolf dame. The experts are matching ’em up now. I guess he wishes he’d stayed and talked to us.”

20

Nora was eating a piece of cold duck with one hand and working on a jig-saw puzzle with the other when I got home.

“I thought you’d gone to live with her,” she said. “You used to be a detective: find me a brownish piece shaped something like a snail with a long neck.”

“Piece of duck or puzzle? Don’t let’s go to the Edges’ tonight: they’re dull folk.”

“All right, but they’ll be sore.”

“We wouldn’t be that lucky,” I complained. “They’d get sore at the Quinns and—”

“Harrison called you up. He told me to tell you now’s the time to buy some McIntyre Porcupine—I think that’s right—to go with your Dome stock. He said it closed at twenty and a quarter.” She put a finger on her puzzle. “The piece I want goes in there.” I found the piece she wanted and told her, almost word for word, what had been done and said at Mimi’s.

“I don’t believe it,” she said. “You made it up. There aren’t any people like that. What’s the matter with them? Are they the first of a new race of monsters?”

“I just tell you what happens; I don’t explain it.”

“How would you explain it? There doesn’t seem to be a single one in the family—now that Mimi’s turned against her Chris—who has even the slightest reasonably friendly feeling for any of the others, and yet there’s something very alike in all of them.”

“Maybe that explains it,” I suggested.

“I’d like to see Aunt Alice,” she said. “Are you going to turn that letter over to the police?”

“I’ve already phoned Guild,” I replied, and told her about Nunheim.

“What does that mean?” she asked.

“For one thing, if Jorgensen’s out of town, as I think he is, and the bullets are from the same gun that was used on Julia Wolf, and they probably are, then the police’ll have to find his accomplice if they want to hang anything on him.”

“I’m sure if you were a good detective you’d be able to make it much clearer to me than it is.” She went to work on her puzzle again. “Are you going back to see Mimi?”

“I doubt it. How about letting that dido rest while we get some dinner?”

The telephone rang and I said I would get it. It was Dorothy Wynant. “Hello. Nick?”

“The same. How are you, Dorothy?”

“Gil just got here and asked me about that you-know, and I wanted to tell you I did take it, but I only took it to try to keep him from becoming a dope-fiend.”