“It’s rather a peculiar story.”
“Let’s hear it.”
He said, “I looked up the landlady who owns that apartment. I told her that when you folks were finished with it, I’d like to move in. I said I didn’t want to put you out, but that I’d pay double the rent she was getting at the present time. I understood you only wanted it for a week and—”
“Go ahead,” I said. “Skip the alibis.”
“I explained to the landlady that my wife, Edna, had lived in the apartment. She said Edna had been there for several months around three years ago, that she could look it up, and let me have the exact dates. I told her I’d want her as a witness. I took Edna’s picture from my pocket, showed it to her, and asked her to identify it. She said that wasn’t the woman. Then she got suspicious and wanted to know what it was all about. In the course of the conversation it came out that you had appeared on the scene a few days earlier and showed her a picture of the woman who actually had rented the apartment, and that she had identified the photographs for you.
“Naturally, that bothered me. You’ll understand why. I went up to the apartment at once, trying to get you. You weren’t there. I was excited. I kept pounding on the door. A man told me to go away and stay away. I told him I had to see him at once on a matter of life and death, and finally he grumblingly opened the door. I’d expected to find you there or the heavy-set woman. This man was something of a surprise.”
“What did you tell him? How much?”
“I told him that my wife had occupied that apartment some three years ago, that I was trying to check up on it to prove that certain papers had been served on her there, that I’d talked with you, and that I simply must talk with you again.”
“What did he say?”
“He said he thought I could reach you at the hotel, that you hadn’t said anything to him about it, but that if there was anything I wished investigated, you were a very fine private detective. I think he was trying to get you a job. He praised you to the skies.