"If you"d taken the trouble to ask, you"d have found out long ago," I remarked uppishly. "The name is R. Walsh, Princeton "32."

He didn"t pop any collar-b.u.t.tons over it. "Well, meet B. Doyle, P. S. 62," he said, without offering his hand.

I thought I"d kid him a little. "Howju?" I said gravely, ducking my chin. "I"m this chap"s flat-mate and slated to be his best man. Anything else you"d like to know?"

"Liking," he said, "has nothing to do with it, Trained Tonsils. I"d like never even to have seen you yet, much less heard of you, but this is business. So pop open your trick hat and tail us."

"Tail you?" I said, "What am I, a collie?"

"Oh," he protested coyly, "now don"t pin me down that closely!" and went out after Tom and Evans. I caught up with them at the elevator, which I suppose is what he meant by tailing in the first place. The last thing I heard, at the far end of the corridor, was that poor policeman with hay-fever still sneezing his brains out back there.

The four of us got in a taxi technically Tom was accompanying them voluntarily, there was no question of an arrest and went up there to where he"d bought the flowers, which Evans had brought along, box and all, under his arm.

The proprietor was a silly-looking duck wearing a morning-coat. "Ah, yes," he said, taking a peep under the lid, "these are from my shop. Is there something wrong?" And he washed his hands without soap or water.

"That," said Evans bluntly, "is none of your business. The main idea is, who bought "em?"

"Why, this gentleman did, of course." He turned to Tom, and even asked for corroboration from that quarter. "Didn"t you, sir?"

Tom said quietly, "I bought two dozen roses from you and told you to send them where these were sent, yes. But I hardly think these are the same ones you brought out of the case to show me or else there"s something wrong with your stock. You see, they say one of them killed my fiancee"s young sister." And he looked down at the floor again, like he seemed to be doing all evening.

The florist went "Ip!" and jumped back about a foot from the box Evans had been holding under his nose.

Doyle said, "Yeah, let"s see the rest of "em he picked these out of."

Evans gave Tom a dirty look. "Why don"t you let us do the talking? We"ll tell him anything we think he needs to know."

He didn"t answer, so I chipped in: "What"s so secret about it? She did die, didn"t she, or are we having hallucinations?"

Doyle, who seemed to have it in for me inferiority-complex probably growled softly out of the corner of his mouth: "One more twenty-five-cent word like that outa you, and I"ll send you home with a note to your mother."

The florist shoved back a gla.s.s slide all sweaty with steam and showed us triple tiers of long-stemmed roses. They had a blue light shining on them why blue I don"t know, either to make them look pretty or ultraviolet rays to take the place of sunlight. "They came out of here," he said nervously, "but I"m sure you won"t find anything the mat "

Doyle reached in, said: "Mind if we take a few samples for the research lab on Poplar Street? Nothing like making sure. And don"t sell any more of them till we get the results that"s a police order!"

The poor florist acted like he wanted to break down and cry. "They"ll be a total loss, you"re quarantining one of the most perishable items I carry in stock!"

"Watch it," Evans advised his pal, who was pawing at them clumsily, "don"t get a puncture like she did."

"In which case," I murmured softly to no one in particular, "the poor rose"ll probably be the one to curl up and die!"

Doyle blew up, violently and completely. I seemed to have that sort of effect on him. "This cake-eater," he yelled at his partner, "is getting in my hair! He must think he"s out on a party! Do we have to have him along, what"s he doing here with us anyway?"

"Slumming," I said nastily.

Evans didn"t seem interested in this side-feud. "How is it," he drawled indifferently, "you didn"t put a card with them when you bought them, Mr Nye?" But he was looking straight at the florist and not Tom as he asked it.

"I didn"t have one with me, and I was in a hurry to get down there, we were late as it was. It was my engagement party, after all."

The jittery shop-owner, whom Evans was watching, didn"t seem to have any control over his eye-, eyebrow-, or lip-muscles; they all moved simultaneously. Evans didn"t wait for the signs to become audible. "Meaning he did write out a card or what? You told me over the phone he didn"t!"

"N-no, he didn"t." He stumbled over it, and yet he seemed to mean it. "Did you, sir?"

"You"re talking to us, not him!" Doyle jumped down his throat.

Tom was standing over by some kind of a potted plant, idly poking his index-finger into the soft mould around the bottom. I could see him getting sorer by the minute, a pulse in his jaw started bobbing up and down. He looked hard at the florist, then at them. "I didn"t," he said irritably, coming back again to where the rest of us were. "What"s all this business about a card, anyway? I bought two dozen roses in this shop without even putting my hands on them, just pointed at the ones I wanted! I didn"t take them down there with me, didn"t even lay eyes on them again, until you two men brought them back here with you just now! Am I supposed to have doctored them up or something? With what object? To to endanger the girl that"s going to be my wife?" His voice was shaking uncontrollably, which showed me if not them how deeply affected he was by the tragedy.

Loyal-friend-like, I gave them a dirty look, most of it for Doyle. "They"ve got to make a mystery out of it, that"s what detectives are for," I said scathingly. "You and I, Tom, we"re just laymen. It"d be obvious to us, or to anybody else for that matter, what must have happened. Some sort of spray or insecticide was used on them and wasn"t properly removed afterward. That"s all there is to it, just a frightful accident. But of course that isn"t enough for our fine feathered friends here, they"ve got to go around wanting to know why you didn"t send a copy of your birth-certificate down there with them!"

Doyle threw down the flowers, stepped up close. "I don"t like your face," he said, "and haven"t all evening! Here"s where I change it around a little!" And he swung back, in good old 1890 style.

"Fine!" I said agreeably, "but not in here where there"s so much gla.s.s. There"s a perfectly good sidewalk outside "

"Not there or anyplace else," said Evans, getting in between the two of us. "Grow up, Doyle." And to me he remarked less than affably, "You"re excused, Mr Walsh. We can get along without your company, if you don"t mind. We"re just a pair of ignorant d.i.c.ks, I know, and you could carry out our routine much better; that"s why we"re being paid and you"re not. The police-lab will tell the story; shoot out there with those roses, Doyle. Keep the two bunches separate."

"Lounge-lizard!" Doyle was muttering throatily in the background, "Ice-cream destroyer!"

"You"ll never get to meet the right people that way," I warned lightly over my shoulder as I went out.

Tom and the two d.i.c.ks got back in the cab and left me behind, sort of persona non grata. Evans wanted to ask him a few more routine questions at Headquarters again it was a request, not an order.

"See you up at the place later," he said to me. "Leave the key under the mat if you turn in before I get home."

"And don"t forget to brush your teeth like a good little boy!" was Doyle"s insulting farewell out the cab-window.

"Come back and I"ll brush yours with my foot," I promised.

The last thing I saw was the two of them holding him back by main force from jumping out then and there and taking me up on it.

It had been warm in the flower-shop and I"d taken off my neckcloth and crammed it in my pocket while we were in there. Also my gloves. When I started to put them on again, I saw that one had fallen out, I"d lost it. I turned around and went in again abruptly.

The proprietor, who evidently hadn"t gotten over the effects of our visit yet, gave a jittery jump when he saw me show up like that again. I wouldn"t have thought anything of it, but he happened to be standing close to that potted plant when he did so.

"I dropped a glove," I said, but I let him look around for it. I looked, instead, at the finger-holes Tom had absent-mindedly punched into the mould around the plant that time when that card-business was going on.

"Here it is, I"ve found it," he said. He meant the glove, but I suited my action to his words, pulled a hundred-dollar bill, rolled into a cylinder, out of one of the finger-holes. He promptly dropped the glove a second time and a lot of complexion with it.

"What was he slipping you this for?" I asked quietly.

"Why, why I"m sure he didn"t mean that for me! He must have dropped that in there by m-mistake "

"Oh no," I said tonelessly. "He gave you a hard look just then, I saw him. I thought he was sore at the time, but it was a signal it seems. Not to tell what?"

He didn"t know, hadn"t any idea, and all that sort of stuff.

"You"re not thinking hard enough," I chided coldly. "I"m his friend. Wouldn"t you prefer to tell me and keep it sort of en famille? Or suppose I page those two missing links and let them start the whole thing over again?"

I wouldn"t have dreamed of doing it, because this didn"t look so hot for Tom. They"d gone already, anyway, but he didn"t know that.

Since then, people have said to me, Why didn"t you b.u.t.t out? Why be nosey? I mean, what business was it of yours whether your friend had left a century-note in a florist-shop or not? Well, that"s just the whole point. If he"d been only an acquaintance, I certainly wouldn"t have snooped. He was like a brother to me; either you get the idea or you don"t.

He gave in, rather than face the detectives again. "I"m really not absolutely certain what he meant by it myself," he stammered, and possibly he was telling the truth, "but I judge, I imagine, he didn"t want the second two-dozen roses mentioned in front of them. So I didn"t."

He evidently hadn"t, if there"d been any such, because he"d neglected even to mention them to me. "I imagine so," I agreed, as though I"d been in on it all along.

He wasn"t sure I had been, though, I could see that; the mere fact I"d cross-questioned him about the bribe made him wonder. "You know about the other young lady of course?" he said hopefully.

I did now. And it wasn"t in character at all. I nodded non-committally. He shrugged, trying to appear sophisticated. "I know how those things go, young fellows about town like you. But if I"d told them, right away it would have been in the papers one of those gossip-columns maybe how he sent flowers to his ex the same night he was getting engaged. Get him in hot water. That"s why I caught on and shut up about it."

I"d been racking my brains. But there wasn"t really much of a list to check. "Fortescue?"

"Yes, on 54th, over by the river."

"You don"t have to tell me," I a.s.sured him. I was remembering the year before. How often he"d come away from there with bites on his neck. "Same messenger take them to both places?"

"Yes, he stopped off there first, then went on the Park-Ashley."

I locked my teeth. "Why, that devil!" I thought "Is it possible she snagged them away from him the second bunch long enough to do something to them, hoping to harm Marcia? She must have caught on whom they were for, no trick to that at all; pumped the kid." I walloped my gloves viciously against the edge of the case. "I"m going down there," I said to myself, "now right now! Dirty little murderess!"

I speared my finger toward him, with the century curled around it the way it must have been curled around Tom"s when he stuck it into the mould. "Well, this is yours," I said disapprovingly. "He seemed to want you to have it and it"s his money, not mine." It would have to come out, anyway, if she"d really done what I thought she had Tom or no Tom.

He took it all right; I would have collapsed if he hadn"t. "D"you think I"ll get in trouble?" he wanted to know, though. "They didn"t ask me point-blank, you know "

I wasn"t interested. "See you around," I said, and went out.

I got in a cab and went down seven blocks to 54th and over five to the river. I thought: would that torch-bearer be capable of doing a thing like that? But how had she known ahead of time he was going to send her flowers? How had she managed to have whatever it was ready? Was she a modern Lucretia Borgia or something? And yet it didn"t seem possible she"d kept the messenger-boy waiting there any length of time, Marcia"s flowers had gotten down to the hotel ahead of us, and we"d had just a straight ride in a taxi.

I vowed, I"ll knock all her front teeth out with my own little fist, if I find out ! And that sap I thought he knew his way around! That"s what comes of picking up loose odds and ends at Twenty-One on rainy Fall nights!

But the sight of Third Avenue through the cab-window seemed to bring out the good old-fashioned qualities in me, the sense of fair-play and even a vestige of chivalry that I hadn"t known was left any more. She hasn"t brains enough, I told myself. Her speed would be to try to have him beaten up, like she did once before. Why jump at conclusions? That"s what comes of a.s.sociating with detectives, even for half-an-hour! Simply an accident and what"s more, if one bunch was tainted, then the whole consignment was, and she"s in danger of having the same thing happen to her if she fools around with them! So between wanting to sock her in the teeth and wanting to save her from a fate worse than death, I was in a hurry to get over there.

"Get across, get across there!" I prodded the driver.

"That pretty color up ahead," he said sarcastically, "is red. They put it on just to make the street look nice. It don"t mean a thing. This your first time in a New York cab?"

"Did I ask you for a civil service examination?" I flared. "You"ve talked yourself out of a quarter tip."

"You were just looking for an excuse to welsh, you probably haven"t got one," he let me know. "Just for that you can open the door yourself. No tip, no service."

I didn"t seem to get along with anyone tonight. I got out, bent down, and put sixty cents on the curbstone just out of reach. "You can get out and pick it up if you want it!" I said.

A bedecked janissary inside the Taj Mahal (the decor suggested that, with just a dash of the Colosseum and a touch of the Kremlin) wanted to know who was calling on Miss Fortescue. For which bit of red tape she, I mean Somebody, paid $5 a month extra on her rent.

"Mr Tom Nye," I said unblushingly.

It was all right, it seemed, for Mr Tom Nye to go up. Whether it would have been just as all right for Mr d.i.c.k Walsh, I mis...o...b..ed me. She"d never bit me on the neck that I recalled and I have a very good memory for those things, the twice it"s happened.

I read into his look that Mr Tom Nye carried an aura of something as far as he was concerned interest, without friendliness but since he obviously didn"t know him by sight, I couldn"t get it. Had the lady spoken out of turn when she was being poured home drunk once or twice?

I tipped my hat elaborately upstairs. Well, at least her roses hadn"t played a dirty trick on her. "Hi, Fritzie," I greeted her.

Her face dropped down to her scanties nearly and there wasn"t very much interference in between, I a.s.sure you. "What"s the idea?" she said huskily, "Don"t you know your own name any more?"

"I know how it is," I soothed her, "a nickel"s worth of last-minute perfume behind the ears shot to h.e.l.l! And all the sofa-pillows punched together for nothing! Wouldn"t I do for a stand-in, at least?"

"Don"t get so wise," she said sultrily. "You"re jealous "cause you never got to first base, that"s all."

She never poisoned anyone, I told myself; just a child of nature. I walked past her as though I owned the place. "My, what nice flowers," I said. "And some tastefully arranged too. Some guys get flowers. When I call anywhere I seem to get grocery-bills." I sat down, flattened my hat with my elbow. Pop!

She took something out of the folds of her negligee, stuck it under one of the pillows, sat back against it. I caught a flash through her fingers, though.

"Mmm," I said, "so he was going to get flowers in a different way, without being able to smell them. I thought you liked him."

"What"s on your mind," she said wearily. "Do I have to sit here all night and listen to you talk like Noel Coward?"

She had one pinned to the shoulder of her gray negligee. There was another spray of them arranged in a flat blue bowl near me. I pulled one out with a wicked webbed thorn sticking up from its stem started to play around with it. Prod it gently with my thumb, watching her. Not hard enough to break the skin, I a.s.sure you.

Judging by her look, she didn"t seem to give a rap whether I lived or died not even if it happened right there on her premises. So I quit doing it, because I did give a rap. I pitched the thing over my shoulder.

"Why did you figure you"d need a gun if he came here to see you tonight?" Doyle couldn"t have done it any better. "What"d you done to make you afraid of him? What was on your mind?"

She looked hostile, rather than frightened or guilty. "What"d I done?" she yapped. "That"s a good one! What"ve I ever done to make me afraid of him? When haven"t I been afraid of him?"

Which didn"t make sense to me. "Well, when haven"t you been?" I parroted.

"Not since after I first found out " Then she let it down easy. "A few things about him."

There was a tap at the door. One of those prearranged taps, I somehow got the feeling. She went over and opened it and the janissary was standing there. He didn"t say anything, just looked at her.

"No, it"s all right," she said, "it wasn"t Mr Nye." So she"d coached him over the house-phone before she let whom she thought was Tom in, "Look in on me in a minute or two, I might need you!"

Meanwhile I switched the gun to under my own pillow.

She came back and said to me virtuously, "You know, I ought to go to the police. I should have long ago."

I knew how she meant it, but I distorted the meaning. "You ought to," I agreed. "And maybe you will yet before the night"s over."

"If he comes near me again I will."

"No, it"s not a case of his coming near you. You know, a young girl died down there tonight "

She took it big. Closed her eyes and let her head loll back and put the back of one hand between her eyes. "Oh my G.o.d!" she shuddered, "Oh, that poor girl I should have phoned oh, if I"d only had the courage to phone down there! I was afraid, oh I was so afraid !" She got up and did a couple of half-turns, this way and that. "I"ve really killed her I"m to blame !"

"Now d.i.c.kie," I said softly to myself, "we"re really getting somewhere. And Doyle thinks he"s so hot! Why, there"s nothing to it!"

"I"ve got to have a drink!" she shivered, and poured herself enough to launch a battleship in.

"Have one on me too," I encouraged when she"d downed it without stopping to breathe. "And then I suppose it"ll be up to me to call the police or something. Although I hate to be a snitcher. Maybe I"ll let them do their own dirty-work." She looked at me and I looked back at her. "So you should have phoned!" I mimicked. "That and a couple of other little things. I"ll tell you what you should have done! You should have let those g.d. flowers alone then there wouldn"t have been anything to phone about. You"ll probably get away with it at that. "Beautiful love-slave mad with jealousy. I didn"t know what I was doing, I didn"t want her to have him.""