and that this was his second marriage. Alice Dain had given London as her birthplace, October 22, 1888, as the date, and had stated that she had never been married before.
That clicked with my opinion that Gabrielle, if not the daughter of both, was more likely the man's than the woman's.
When I got back to the Agency, Eric Collinson, his yellow hair still further disarranged, confronted me again.
"I saw Minnie," he said excitedly, "and she wouldn't tell me anything. She said Gaby was there last night to ask her to come back to work, but that's all she knows about her. But she―she was wearing an emerald ring which I'm positive is Gaby's."
"Did you ask her about it?"
"Who? Minnie? No. How could I? It would have been―you know."
"That's right," I agreed, "we must always be polite. Why did you lie to me about the time you and Miss Leggett got home the other night?"
His face got stupider than ever with embarrassment.
"That was silly of me," he stammered, "but I didn't―I was afraid you'd―I thought that―"
He wasn't getting anywhere. I suggested:
"You thought that was too late for her to be out and didn't want me to get wrong notions about her?"
"Yes, that's it."
I thought of Little's Chevalier Bayard, hid my grin, and shooed Collinson out.
In the operatives’ room, where Mickey Linehan—big, loose-hung, red-faced—and Al Mason—slim, dark, sleek—were swapping lies about the times they had been shot at, each pretending to have been more frightened than the other. I told them who was who in my diamond job and sent Al out to keep an eye on the Leggetts, Mickey to see how Minnie and Rhino behaved.
Mrs. Leggett, a worried shadow on her pleasant face, opened the door when I rang her bell an hour later. We went up to the green, orange and chocolate room, where we were joined by her husband.
I passed on to them the information about Upton that O'Gar had got from New York, and told them I had wired for additional information on Harry Ruppert.
"Some of your neighbors saw a man who was not Upton loitering around, and the same man was seen running down the fire-escape from Upton's room. There's no reason why he couldn't have been Ruppert."
Nothing changed in the scientist's too bright red-brown eyes They held interest and nothing else. No muscle flickered in his face.
I asked "Is Miss Leggett in?"
"No," he replied.
"When will she be?"
"Probably not for several days."
"Where can I find her?" I asked, turning to Mrs. Leggett. "I've some questions to ask her."
Mrs. Leggett avoided my gaze, looking at her husband. His metallic voice answered my question:
"We don't know, exactly. Friends of hers, a Mr. and Mrs. Harper, drove up from Los Angeles and asked her to go with them on their trip up in the mountains. I don't know which route they are taking, and doubt if they had any definite plans."
I didn't believe that. I asked questions about the Harpers. Edgar Leggett admitted knowing very little about them. Mrs. Harper's given name was Carmel, he said, and everybody called the man Bud, but he, Leggett, didn't know either his first name or his initials. Nor did he know their Los Angeles address. He thought they had a house somewhere near Pasadena, but he wasn't sure.
While he told me all this nonsense, his wife sat staring at the floor, lifting her blue eyes now and then to look swiftly, pleadingly, at her husband.
