The poor devils, he thought, and was surprised to find that he had reached the street which housed the Colliers. He stopped at the corner. Why go on? She was certainly still all right. Sheer curiosity, however, decided him in the end, and he found the number only a block or two from the East River. The building was a small apartment of the walk-up type, but with a smartly painted red door and a general effect of being rather better than its neighbors.
On the ground floor the tenants were having a party. One of the windows was partly raised, and he could hear laughter and the clinking of glasses. But as there was no one in sight on the street he stepped into the foyer and looked at the cards above the bells.
The first floor was Kerr, Joseph H. The second, neatly typed, was the Colliers. The third merely said bluntly "Jamison," and the fourth was evidently empty.
He was still looking at the names when a small, middle-aged man, neatly dressed and carrying an umbrella, stepped in from the street.
"Looking for somebody?" he inquired pleasantly.
Forsythe had to think fast.
"I was trying to locate a family named Blake," he said. "The William Blakes."
The stranger stepped forward and peered nearsightedly at the board.
"Don't see them," he said. "They may have moved out. The fourth floor's empty. I've only moved onto the third floor a week or so ago. Name's Jamison. That's my card there."
"I see. Well, thanks, Mr. Jamison. It isn't important anyhow. I was just taking a walk. I can call Blake in the morning."
He was about to leave when a door slammed above and someone started down the stairs. Forsythe had only time to turn his back when Fred Collier reached the foyer. He brushed roughly past the two men and out into the street, and Mr. Jamison looked annoyed.
"That's my only objection to this place," he said. "The man who just went out. He lives just below me, and when he's drunk he's nasty. The floors are thin, and I can hear him quarreling with his wife night after night. Bellows like a bull. I'm afraid he'll hurt her someday. Nice young woman, too."
Forsythe had a wild impulse to take advantage of Collier's absence to try to see Anne, but Mr. Jamison showed no inclination to move.
"I'm a bachelor," he said. "I have no family left, so I go to the movies most evenings. They fill in the time." He looked up at Forsythe. "I was wondering—if you're only taking a walk, perhaps you'd have a drink with me. The stairs are bad, but I'm only two flights up."
"I might at that," Forsythe agreed, anxious to stay in the building if possible. "Sure you want me?"
"My dear boy, if you have ever lived alone you realize what a visitor means."
The apartment when they reached it turned out to be rather bare but extremely neat. Forsythe learned that all in the building were the same, a small living room, three bedrooms, a kitchen with a dinette, and a bath.
"A little large for me, of course," Jamison explained, bringing ice from the kitchen, "but you know how things are today. Anyhow, it will look better too when I bring in my books. I'm waiting to have the shelves built."
He was a talkative little man. He said he was a bookkeeper for a real estate company downtown, and seemed not to notice Forsythe's abstraction. Forsythe was listening for sounds from the floor below, and finally they came. The door banged again, and he could hear Collier's voice raised, although not what he said.
"You see what I mean," said Jamison. "He's been out for a drink or two and probably brought a bottle back with him. Now he'll be really ugly."
Forsythe sat listening. He could see Anne in the room below, watching the great hulking brute who was her husband, but if she spoke at all he did not hear her.
"Probably locked in her own room," said Mr. Jamison, an ear cocked to the floor. "The superintendent says they don't live together. Maybe things would be better if they did. No peacemaker like a pillow," he said, and gave a cackling laugh.
All at once Forsythe disliked the little man, with his prying and spying, and disliked him intensely. He got up abruptly.
"Well, thanks a lot," he said. "My sister will wonder what's become of me. That was good Scotch, Mr. Jamison."
Jamison smiled.
"I don't drink much, but Dawson's is good Scotch. By the way, I don't think I know your name."
"Wade," said Forsythe, and got out as fast as he could. He would have stopped on the second floor on his way out, but Jamison was seeing him off from his landing. There was nothing to do but go on and out.
He slept badly that night, but when he reached the office the next morning he found Miss Potter waiting for him.
"Found the agent," she said, placing a neatly typed memorandum in front of him. "Got it from some clerk or other at the sponsor's. It's a cereal company, and her name's Simmons. Martha Simmons. That's her address there. She was kind of upset when I called her. Said she had an ironclad contract, so just to make it interesting I said there wasn't such a thing. She almost bit the telephone."
"Thanks, Potter," he said. "That's fine. I'll ring for you a little later. If a message comes for me put it through, will you?"
When it did come, however, at eleven o'clock, it was disappointing. Anne's voice was tense and hurried.
"Listen, Wade," she said. "I'm at the grocer's. Fred's outside, watching for me. I've just seen him. I don't dare to come to your office today."
He swallowed his disappointment.
"It's important. I needn't tell you that. But it's more important to know that you're all right."
"Of course I'm all right," she said, a little wearily. "He was bad last night, but he still doesn't know anything. He found my typewriter, so he thinks I'm writing a book. And he's afraid I'm getting a divorce. I'll come as soon as I can, Wade."
He worked on the tax return of the corporation the rest of the morning, indicating among other things that its salesmen itemize their expense sheets. His heart was not in it, however, and after a quick lunch he went to the address Miss Potter had given him for the Simmons woman. It was in a midtown office building, and he found her name on the directory. Her offices were on the seventh floor, a small anteroom with a covered typewriter which looked as though it had not been used lately, and beyond it a somewhat larger room, with a desk, a safe, a row of steel files, and two or three plain chairs.
Miss Simmons was behind the desk. A carton, which had contained coffee, and crumbs and waxed paper indicated that she had just finished a frugal meal, and he felt rather puzzled. After all, the agent's percentage of the Jessica Blake income over the years must have been substantial, but there was no evidence of it here, nor in the woman herself. Martha Simmons was a woman in her late thirties, rather slovenly in appearance but with a pair of very sharp eyes. She surveyed him without interest until he gave her his card.
"A lawyer!" she said. "What on earth have I done?"
He smiled.
"Perhaps you know that better than I do," he said pleasantly. "Personally I doubt if you've done anything actionable, but it makes things rather confusing. It's the Jessica Blake matter, Miss Simmons."
She gave him a hard stare.
"So what about it?" she said, her voice cold. "It's the way she wanted it. I told her at the start it was silly. She had some idea of making a man out of that hulk she married, as if even the Creator could do that! He's a total loss, if you ask me." Then she brightened somewhat. "Don't tell me she's come to her senses and is getting rid of him."
"I don't know about that," he said. "Actually, she wants to make a will."
She was jolted by this, profoundly shocked. She went pale.
"A will? For God's sake, why a will?"
"She didn't say, but I understand she has earned a rather large sum from