Chapter 2 Chapter 2 The Long Nose

I spent two hours interviewing the neighborhood to ascertain the man Mrs. and Miss Leggett had seen.I was out of luck, but I did get a message.A Mrs. Presley—pale and apparently ill, who lived three doors down from the Leggetts—provided the first relevant clue. Mrs. Presley used to sit by the front window when she couldn't sleep at night.For two nights, she saw the man.She said he was tall, young, she thought, and walked with his head thrown forward.But the street was too dark for her to describe her skin tone and clothes. She had first seen him a week ago.He walked up and down the street five or six times, fifteen to twenty minutes each, with his face turned sideways, as if looking in the direction of Mrs. Presley's or Leggett's, or looking for something. .She thinks the first time she saw him that night was between eleven and twelve o'clock, and the last time she saw him was about one o'clock in the morning.A few nights later, on Saturday, she saw him again.But this time he didn't move. He just stood at the corner and looked towards the street. It was about midnight.He left half an hour later, and she hasn't seen him since.

Mrs. Presley had met the Leggetts but knew very little about them except that the daughter was said to be a bit wild.They seem like nice people, they just don't get along well with other people.Mr. moved here in 1921, and took no one with him except Mrs. Begg, the housekeeper.Mrs. Pressley knew that the butler was now at the Fumands' house in Berkeley.It was not until 1923 that Mrs. Leggett and Gabrielle moved in. Mrs. Presley said she hadn't been sitting at the window the night before, so she didn't see the man Mrs. Leggett had witnessed on the corner. A man named Warren Daly lived across the street, near the corner where the man Mrs. Presley had seen was standing.While locking the door Sunday night, he bumped into a man on the front porch—apparently the same man.Dudley wasn't home when I called, but his wife found him on the phone after talking to me.

Daly said the man had been standing on their front porch, probably trying to hide or watch someone in the street.As soon as Dali opened the door, the man ran towards the end of the street.Dali yelled at him, "What are you doing here?" He paid no heed.Dali said that the man was about thirty-two or thirty-three years old, well-dressed in dark clothes, with a long, thin and pointed nose. That's all I got from my neighbors.Then I went to see Eric Collinson at Spears, Kemp, and Duffy on Montgomery Street. The man was young, tall, fair-haired, bronzed, and stylishly dressed; his face was more than handsome and less than intelligent, and it was obvious at a glance that he had no interest in polo, shooting, flying, or the like-or even more than one of them. People who don't know, but not so much about other things.We sat on thick leather chairs in the client reception room.It was the closing time of the market, and the room was already empty, except for a frail young man who was calculating numbers on the blackboard.I told Collinson about the burglary, and then asked him what Miss Leggett and the man he had seen on Saturday night looked like.

"I remember him as plain looking. It was already dark. Stocky type. You think he took the diamonds?" "Did he come from Leggett's?" I asked. "Come out over the lawn, at least. He seemed flustered—so I thought then that there might be something wrong with him. I was going to follow and ask him what he was up to, but Gabriel wouldn't, saying Possibly her father's friend. Did you ask her father? He's got weird people." "Is it possible that the visitor left so late?" He avoided my eyes, so I asked, "What time was it?" "In the middle of the night, you want me to say something."

"midnight?" "That's right, in the middle of the night, when all the ghosts in the tomb come out." "Miss Leggett said it was past three o'clock in the morning." "You see that too!" he cried, smugly, as if he had justified himself in the argument, "she has poor eyesight, and she prefers to be pretty and refuses to wear glasses. She makes mistakes like this all the time, and she is bad at bridge." Terrible—often taking bad cards for trumps. It must have been a quarter past twelve, and she looked at the clock and got the hands mixed up."

"That's pretty bad," I said, "thanks," and off to Halsted & Beauchamp & Co. in Geary Street. Walter Halstead was a gentle, pale man, bald and stout, with tired eyes and a too-tight collar.I told him why I had come, and then asked him what he thought of Leggett. "I know there's nothing wrong with doing business with him, and he's well respected in the scientific community. Why do you ask?" "The burglary at his house is suspicious—something's wrong anyway." "Oh, then you'd be wrong. I mean, you'd be very wrong to think that a man of his stature would get involved in such a thing. Putting blame on a servant, of course, is possible." Yes—that sort of thing is commonplace, isn't it? But Leggett doesn't. He's a scientist of standing, and he's done a lot to the study of color. And, unless our credit department gets it wrong, he's Quite a fortune. Not that he's a rich man in the literal sense, but rich enough not to do that kind of thing. And—please don't spread the word—I just happen to know he's in Simon's Country The deposit in the bank is now over ten thousand dollars. You know, the total value of those eight diamonds is less than twelve or three hundred dollars."

"You mean the retail price? Then you paid five or six hundred yuan to buy it?" "Well," he smiled, "Seven hundred and five is closer to the truth." "How did you come up with the idea of ​​giving him the diamond?" "As I told you, he was a client of ours, and when I read about the experiments he did with glass, I thought it would be great if the same method could be applied to diamonds. Fitzstephan - I mostly It was through him that I found out what Leggett had done - a bit hesitant, but I thought it was worth a try then - and still is - so I asked Leggett to give it a try."

The name Fitzstephan sounds familiar. "Which Fitzstephan are you talking about?" I asked. "Owen Fitzstephan, a writer. Do you know him?" "Well, I didn't know he was on the West Coast though. We used to drink together. Do you know his address?" Halsted looked it up in the phone book for me, at the apartment in Nobby Hill. From the jewelry store, I was near Minnie Hershey's house.This is a black area, and it is even more difficult to get accurate information. I managed to ask these questions: Minnie came to San Francisco from the small town of Winchester, Virginia four or five years ago, and has been living with a black man nicknamed Rhino Tingley for the past six months.Someone told me Rhino's real name was Ed, and someone else said it was Bill, but they all said he was young, tall, dark, and easily recognizable with a scar on his chin.Others told me he lived off Minnie and pinball, and that he wasn't bad when he wasn't mad, but worse than the devil when he got mad.If you want to find him, you can go to Bunny Mike's barbershop or Bigfoot Gibb's cigar shop every evening.

I asked for directions to the two stores, then headed back downtown to the detective team at Police Headquarters.The team in charge of the pawn shop was empty.I walked down the corridor and asked Detective Duffy if anyone had been assigned to Leggett's case. "Ask Olga," he said. I walked into the meeting room, looking for Olga, and wondering what a murder detective like him might have to do with my job.Olga and his partner Pat Reddy were absent.I smoked a cigarette, guessed who else had been murdered, and decided to call Leggett. "Have any detectives been to your place since I left?" I asked as his hoarse voice drifted into my ears.

"No, but not long ago the police called and asked my wife and daughter to go to a place on Golden Gate Avenue to identify the body. They left a few minutes ago. I didn't follow because I had never seen the suspect." "Where on Golden Gate Avenue?" He couldn't remember the house number, but he knew where it was—North on Van Ness Avenue.I thanked and rushed over. In the area he mentioned, I saw a uniformed patrolman standing in front of a small apartment building.I asked him if Olga was in there. "Room 320." He replied. I took the creaking elevator up.On the third floor, I ran into Mrs. Leggett and Miss.

"Now you are satisfied that Minnie has nothing to do with the case." Mrs. Leggett stared at me. "Did the police find the man you mentioned?" "right." I turned again to Gabrielle Leggett. "Eric Collinson said it was midnight when you got home Saturday night, maybe a few minutes late." "Eric," she said impatiently as she passed me into the elevator, "is an idiot." "Oh dear," her mother chided gently as she followed her into the elevator. I walked down the corridor to the door, said hello to Pat Reddy, who was speaking to a few reporters, and squeezed through them into a short passage, through which I entered a poorly furnished room where the dead Lying on the bed against the wall. Phils of the Police Department's Identification Unit lifted his eyes from above the magnifying glass, nodded at me, and went on to examine the legs of the heavy, clean-lined wooden table. "So you're messing with us again?" Olga snarled at me, pulling his head and shoulders back from the window. Olga was fifty years old, strong and strong, and always loved to wear a sheriff's registered trademark in western movies-a big black hat with a wide brim.There's a lot going on in that bullet-hard head, and he's a comfort to work with. I looked at the corpse—a man in his forties, with a pale and dignified face, short gray hair, a furry dark mustache, and thick hands and feet.He had a bullet hole just above his navel, as well as one higher up his left chest. "It's a man," Olga said as I pulled the blanket back on him, "dead." "Is there any news?" I said. "Looks like he partnered with someone to steal the diamond, and then the other guy decided to keep it for himself. Here's the envelope," Olga pulled the envelope out of his pocket, rubbing his thumbs on it, "but the diamond isn't there, it was all taken by the other guy." He was taken away by the person who went down the fire escape not long ago. Someone watched him slip away, but he disappeared after crossing the alley. He was a tall man with a long nose." He pinched the envelope in his hand and pointed to the bed, "He's been living here for a week now. His name is Louis Upton, and his clothes are labeled New York. None of us knew of him. Not a single person in this dingy apartment has ever seen him with anyone else." Together, no one admits to knowing this long nose." Pat Reddy walked in.He was a tall, cheerful young lad with little experience, but what he lacked in brains more than made up for it.I told him and Olga about my current progress. "Long Nose and this guy take turns watching the Leggetts?" Reddy asked. "Perhaps," I said, "but it could also be a thief. How many envelopes do you have, Olga?" "Seven." "So the one with the diamond on the lawn is gone." "Where's the half-blood maid?" Reddy asked. "I'm going to find her man tonight," I said. "Will your guys check up on Upton with New York?" "Yes." Olga replied.