The Thin Man Read Free

was twenty-six—“she’s all upset.”
    “Whatever you say.” I turned around. Dorothy, across the room, was laughing at something Quinn was telling her. “But if you get mixed up in people’s troubles, don’t expect me to kiss you where you’re hurt.”
    “I won’t. You’re a sweet old fool. Don’t read that here now.” She took the newspaper away from me and stuck it out of sight behind the radio.

 
5

    Nora could not sleep that night. She read Chaliapin’s memoirs until I began to doze and then woke me up by asking: “Are you asleep?” I said I was. She lit a cigarette for me, one for herself. “Don’t you ever think you’d like to go back to detecting once in a while just for the fun of it? You know, when something special comes up, like the Lindb—”
    “Darling,” I said, “my guess is that Wynant killed her, and the police’ll catch him without my help. Anyway, it’s nothing in my life.”
    “I didn’t mean just that, but—”
    “But besides I haven’t the time: I’m too busy trying to see that you don’t lose any of the money I married you for.” I kissed her. “Don’t you think maybe a drink would help you to sleep?”
    “No, thanks.”
    “Maybe it would if I took one.” When I brought my Scotch and soda back to bed, she was frowning into space. I said: “She’s cute, but she’s cuckoo. She wouldn’t be his daughter if she wasn’t. You can’t tell how much of what she says is what she thinks and you can’t tell how much of what she thinks ever really happened. I like her, but I think you’re letting—”
    “I’m not sure I like her,” Nora said thoughtfully, “she’s probablya little bastard, but if a quarter of what she told us is true, she’s in a tough spot.”
    “There’s nothing I can do to help her.”
    “She thinks you can.”
    “And so do you, which shows that no matter what you think, you can always get somebody else to go along with you.”
    Nora sighed. “I wish you were sober enough to talk to.” She leaned over to take a sip of my drink. “I’ll give you your Christmas present now if you’ll give me mine.”
    I shook my head. “At breakfast.”
    “But it’s Christmas now.”
    “Breakfast.”
    “Whatever you’re giving me,” she said, “I hope I don’t like it.”
    “You’ll have to keep them anyway, because the man at the Aquarium said he positively wouldn’t take them back. He said they’d already bitten the tails off the—”
    “It wouldn’t hurt you any to find out if you can help her, would it? She’s got so much confidence in you, Nicky.”
    “Everybody trusts Greeks.”
    “Please.”
    “You just want to poke your nose into things that—”
    “I meant to ask you: did his wife know the Wolf girl was his mistress?”
    “I don’t know. She didn’t like her.”
    “What’s the wife like?”
    “I don’t know—a woman.”
    “Good-looking?”
    “Used to be very.”
    “She old?”
    “Forty, forty-two. Cut it out, Nora. You don’t want any part of it. Let the Charleses stick to the Charleses’ troubles and the Wynants stick to the Wynants’.”
    She pouted. “Maybe that drink would help me.”
    I got out of bed and mixed her a drink. As I brought it intothe bedroom, the telephone began to ring. I looked at my watch on the table. It was nearly five o’clock.
    Nora was talking into the telephone: “Hello…. Yes, speaking.” She looked sidewise at me. I shook my head no. “Yes…. Why, certainly…. Yes, certainly.” She put the telephone down and grinned at me.
    “You’re wonderful,” I said. “Now what?”
    “Dorothy’s coming up. I think she’s tight.”
    “That’s great.” I picked up my bathrobe. “I was afraid I was going to have to go to sleep.”
    She was bending over looking for her slippers. “Don’t be such an old fluff. You can sleep all day.” She found her slippers and stood up in them. “Is she really as afraid of her mother as she says?”
    “If she’s got any sense.