“Is that why you took him out in the corridor the night I was at your apartment?”
“Yes I knew he had a gun, and I was afraid he was going to do something desperate. When he saw you there he almost pulled his gun. I took him out m the corridor. He was insanely jealous of you. I told him I’d never seen you before, that you were a business visitor. He wouldn’t believe me. He thought, finding you in my apartment, that you were the privileged boy friend. He pulled his gun, said he’d shoot me and kill himself if I didn’t go out with him, and went through all for dramatics. So I told him that the reason I hadn’t seen him, and the reason I hadn’t gone with him was because of that very trait in his character, that if he’d put that gun back in his pocket and quit all that crazy jealousy, I’d go out to dinner with him, and we’d have a few drinks.”
“He wanted to know all about me?” I asked.
“Oh, of course.”
“What did you tell him?”
“I told him the truth. I told him you were a detective who was trying to find out something about a man by the name of Smith in order to close up an estate.”
“Did he ask you who Smith was?”
“Oh, certainly. You mention any man’s name, and he’d pounce on it like a hawk swooping on a baby chick. He’d want to know all about him, who he was, where he came from, how long you’d known him, and all that. I told him Smith was a friend of Edna’s.”
“And he did all that out in the corridor?”
“No, not out in the corridor. I told him that I didn’t have time to stand there and argue with him. I was going to have to get rid of you if I was going to dinner with him. So he agreed to wait.”