Chapter 2

   For the next day, Monday, October 7, my memo pad showed two appointments. Neither displayed any promise of being either lucrative or exciting.
   The first one, down for 3:30 in the afternoon, was with a guy named Anthony D. Perry. He was a tycoon, a director of the Metropolitan Trust Company, the bank we did business with, and president of the Seaboard Products Corporation—one of those vague firms occupying six floors of a big skyscraper and selling annually a billion dollars’ worth of something nobody ever actually saw, like soy beans or powdered coconut shells or dried llama’s hoofs. As I say. Perry was a tycoon; he presided at meetings and was appointed on Mayor’s Committees and that kind of hooey. Wolfe had handled a couple of investigations for him in previous years—nothing of any importance. We didn’t know what was on his mind this time; he had telephoned for an appointment.
   The second appointment was for 6 P.M. It was a funny one, but we often had funny ones. Saturday morning, October 5, a female voice had phoned that she wanted to see Nero Wolfe. I said okay. She said, yes, but she wanted to bring someone with her who would not arrive in New York until Monday morning, and she would be busy all day, so could they come at 5:30. I said, no, but they could come at six, picking up a pencil to put down her name. But she wasn’t divulging it; she said she would bring her name along with her, and they would arrive at six sharp, and it was very important. It wasn’t much of a date, but I put it on the memo pad and hoped she would turn up, for she had the kind oЈ voice that makes you want to observe it in the Hesh.
   Anthony D. Perry was there on the dot at 3:30. Fritz answered the door and brought him to the office. Wolfe was at his desk drinking beer. I sat in my comer and scowled at the probability that Perry was going to ask us to follow the scent of some competitor suspected of unfair trade practices, as he had before, and I did not regard that as a treat. But this time he had a different kind of difficulty, though it was nothing to make your blood run cold. He asked after our health, including me because he was democratic, inquired politely regarding the orchids, and then hitched his chair up and smiled at Wolfe as one man of affairs to another.
   “I came to see you, Mr. Wolfe, instead of asking you to call on me, for two reasons. First, because I know you refuse to leave your home to call on anyone whatever, and, second, because the errand I want you to undertake is private and confidential.”
   Wolfe nodded. “Either would have sufficed, sir. And the errand?”
   “Is, as I say, confidential.” Perry cleared his throat, glancing at me as I opened up my notebook. “I suppose Mr…”
   “Goodwin.” Wolfe poured a glass of beer. “Mr. Goodwin’s discretion reaches to infinity. Anything too confidential for him would find me deaf.”
   “Very well. I want to engage you for a delicate investigation, one that will require most careful handling. It is in connection with an unfortunate situation that has arisen in our executive offices.” Perry cleared his throat again. “I fear that a young woman, one of our employees, is going to suffer an injustice—a victim of circumstances—unless something is done about it.”
   He paused. Wolfe said, “But, Mr. Perry, surely, as the directing head of your corporation, you are its fount of justice—or its opposite?”
   Perry smiled. “Not absolutely. At best, a constitutional monarch. Let me eacplain. Our executive offices are on the thirty-second floor of our building—the Seaboard Building. We have some thirty private offices on that floor, officers of the corporation, department heads, and so on. Last Friday one of the officers had in his desk a sum of money in currency, a fairly large sum, which disappeared under circumstances which led him to suspect that it had been taken by—by the employee I spoke of. It was not reported to me until Saturday morning. The officer requested immediate action, but I could not bring myself to believe the employee guilty. She has been—that is, she has always seemed to merit the most complete confidence. In spite of appearances …”
   He halted. Wolfe asked, “And you wish us to learn the truth of the matter?”
   “Yes. Of course. That’s what I want.” Perry cleared his throat. “But I also want you to consider her record of probity and faithful service. And I would like to ask you, in discussing the affair with Mr. Muir, to give him to understand that you have been engaged to handle it as you would any investigation of a similar nature. In addition, I wish your reports to be made to me personally.”
   “I see.” Wolfe’s eyes were halt closed. “It seems a little complex. I would like to avoid any possibility of misunderstanding. Let us make it clear. You are not asking us to discover an arrangement of evidence that will demonstrate the employee’s guilt. Nor are you engaging us to devise satisfactory proof of her innocence. You merely want us to find out the truth.”
   “Yes,” Perry smiled. “But I hope and believe that the truth will be her innocence.”
   “As it may be. And who is to be our client, you or the Seaboard Products Corporation?”
   “Why,.. that hadn’t occurred to me. The corporation, I should think.
   That would be best.”
   “Good.” Wolfe looked at me. “If you please, Archie.” He leaned back in his chair, twined his fingers at the peak of his middle mound, and closed his eyes.
   I whirled on my swivel, with my notebook. “First the money, Mr. Perry.”
   “How much?”
   “Thirty thousand dollars. In hundred-dollar bills.”
   “Egad. Payroll?”
   “No.” He hesitated. “Well, yes, call it payroll.”
   “It would be better if we knew about it.”
   “Is it necessary?”
   “Not necessary. Just better. The more we know the less we have to find out.”
   “Well… since it is understood this is strictly confidential… you know of course that in connection with our business we need certain privileges in certain foreign countries. In our dealings with the representatives of those countries we sometimes need to employ cash sums.”
   “Okay. This Mr. Muir you mentioned, he’s the paymaster?”
   “Mr. Ramsey Muir is the senior vice-president of the corporation. He usually handles such. contacts. On this occasion, last Friday, he had a luncheon appointment with a gentleman from Washington. The gentleman missed his train and telephoned that he would come on a later one, arriving at our office at five-thirty. He did so. When the moment arrived for Mr.Muir to open the drawer of his desk, the money was gone. He was of course gready embarrassed.”
   “Yeah. When had he put it there?”
   An interruption came from Wolfe. He moved to get upright in his chair, then to arise from it.
   He looked down at Perry. “You will excuse me, sir. It is the hour for my prescribed exercise and, following that, attention to my plants. If it would amuse you, when you have finished with Mr. Goodwin, to come to the roof and look at them, I would be pleased to have you.” He moved halfway to the door, and turned. “It would be advisable, I think, for Mr. Goodwin to make a preliminary investigation before we definitely undertake the commission you offer us. It appears to present complexities. Good day, sir.”
   He went on out. The poker-dart board had been moved to his bedroom that morning, it being a business day with appointments.
   “A cautious man.” Perry smiled at me. “Of course his exceptional ability permits him to afford it.”
   I saw Perry was sore by the color above his cheekbones. I said, “Yeah. When had he put it there?”
   “What? Oh, to be sure. The money had been brought from the bank and placed in Mr. Muir’s desk that morning, but he had looked in the drawer when he returned from lunch, around three o’clock, and saw it intact. At five-thirty it was gone.”
   “Was he there all the time?”
   “Oh, no. He was in and out. He was with me in my office for twenty minutes or so. He went once to the toilet. For over half an hour, from four to until about four forty, he was in the directors’ room, conferring with other officers and Mr. Savage, our public relations counsel.”
   “Was the drawer locked?”
   “No.”
   “Then anyone might have lifted it.”
   Perry shook his head. “The executive reception clerk is at a desk with a view of the entire corridor; that’s her job, to know where everyone is all the time, to facilitate interviews. She knows who went in Muir’s room, and when.”
   “Who did?”
   “Five people. An office boy with correspondence, another vice-president of the company, Muir’s stenographer, Clara Fox, and myself.”
   “Let’s eliminate. I suppose you didn’t take it?”
   “No. I almost wish I had. When the office boy was there, Muir was there too. The vice-president, Mr. Arbuthnot, is out of the question. As for Muir’s stenographer, she was still there when the loss was discovered—most of the others had gone home—and she insisted that Muir search her belongings. She has a little room next to Muir’s, and had not been out of it except to enter his room. Besides, he has had her for eleven years, and trusts her.”
   “Which leaves Clara Fox.”
   “Yes.” Perry cleared his throat. “Clara Fox is our cable clerk—a most responsible position. She translates and decodes all cables and telegrams. She went to Muir’s office around a quarter after four, during his absence, with a decoded message, and waited there while Muir’s stenographer went to her own room to type a copy of it.”
   “Has she been with you long?”
   “Three years. A little over”
   “Did she know the money was there?”
   “She probably knew it was in Muir’s office. Two days previously she had handled a cablegram giving instructions for the payment.”
   “But you think she didn’t take it.”
   Perry opened his mouth and closed it again. I put the eye on him. He didn’t look as if he was really undecided; it seemed rather that he was hunting for the right words. I waited and looked him over. He had clever, careful, blue-gray eyes, a good jaw but a little too square for comfort, hair no grayer than it should be considering be must have been over sixty, a high forehead with a mole on the right temple, and a well-kept healthy skin. Not a layout that you would ordinarily regard as hideous, but at that moment I wasn’t observing it with great favor, because it seemed likely that there was something phony about the pie he was inviting me to stick my finger into; and I give low marks to a guy that asks you to help him work a puzzle and then holds out one of the pieces on you. I don’t mind looking for the fly in a client’s ointment, but why throw in a bunch of hornets?
   Perry finally spoke. “In spite of appearances, I am personally of the opinion that Clara Fox did not take that money. It would be a great shock to me to know that she did, and the proof would have to be unassailable.”
   “What does she say about it?”
   “She hasn’t been asked. Nothing has been said, except to Arbuthnot, Miss Vawter—the executive reception clerk—and Muir’s stenographer. I may as well tell you, Muir wanted to send for the police this morning, and I restrained him.”
   “Maybe Miss Vawter took it.”
   “She has been with us eighteen years. I would sooner suspect myself. Besides, someone is constantly passing in the corridor. If she left her desk even for a minute it would be noticed.”
   “How old is Clara Fox?”
   “Twenty-six.”
   “Oh. A bit junior, huh? For such a responsible position. Married?”
   “No. She is a remarkably competent person.”
   “Do you know anything of her habits? Does she collect diamonds or frolic with the geegees?”
   Perry stared at me. I said, “Does she bet on horse races?”
   He frowned. “Not that I know of. I am not personally intimate with her, and I have not had her spied on.”
   “How much does she get and how do you suppose she spends it?”
   “Her salary is thirty-six hundred. So far as I know, she lives sensibly and respectably. She has a small flat somewhere, I believe, and she has a little car—1 have seen her driving it. She—1 understand she enjoys the theater.”
   “Uh-huh.” I flipped back a page of my notebook and ran my eye over it. “And this Mr. Muir who leaves his drawer unlocked with thirty grand inside—might he have been caught personally with his financial pants down and made use of the money himself?”
   Perry smiled and shook his head. “Muir owns some twenty-eight thousand shares of the stock of our corporation, worth over two million dollars at the present market, besides other properties. It was quite usual for him to leave the drawer unlocked under those circumstances.”
   I glanced at my notebook again, and lifted my shoulders a shade and let them drop negligently, which meant that I was mildly provoked. The thing looked like a mess, possibly a little nasty, with nothing much to be expected in the way of action or profit. The first step, of course, after what Wolfe had said, was for me to go take a look at the thirty-second floor of the Seaboard Building and enter into conversation. But the clock on the wall said 4:20. At six the attractive telephone voice with her out-of-town friend was expected to arrive; I wanted to be there, and I probably wouldn’t be it I once got started chasing that thirty grand.
   I said to Perry, “Okay. I suppose you’ll be at your office in the morning? I’ll be there at nine sharp to look things over. I’ll want to see most of—”
   “Tomorrow morning?” Perry was frowning. “Why not now?”
   “I have another appointment.”
   “Cancel it.” The color topped his cheekbones again. “This is urgent. I am one of Wolfe’s oldest clients. I took the trouble to come here personally—”
   “Sorry, Mr. Perry. Won’t tomorrow do? My appointment can’t very well be postponed.”
   “Send someone else.”
   ‘There’s no one available who could handle it.”
   This is outrageous!” Perry jerked up in his chair. “I insist on seeing Wolfel”
   I shook my head. “You know you can’t. You know darned well he’s ec– centric.” But then I thought, after all, I’ve seen worse guys, and he’s a client, and maybe he can’t help it if he gets on Mayors” Committees, perhaps they nag him. So I got out of my chair and said, “I’ll go upstairs and put it up to Wolfe, he’s the boss. If he says—”
   The door of the office opened. I turned– Fritz came in, walking formal as he always did to announce a caller. But he didn’t get to announce this one. The caller came right along, two steps behind Fritz, and I grinned when I saw he was stepping so soft that Fritz didn’t loiow he was there.
   Fritz started, “A gentleman to—”
   “Yeah, I see him. Okay.”
   Fritz turned and saw he had been stalked, blinked, and beat it. I went on observing the caller, because he was a specimen. He was about six feet three inches tall, wearing an old blue serge suit with no vest and the sleeves a mile short, carrying a cream-colored ten-gallon hat, with a face that looked as if it had been left out on the fire escape for over half a century, and walking like a combination of a rodeo cowboy and a panther in the zoo.
   He announced in a smooth low voice, “My name’s Harlan Scovil.” He went up to Anthony D. Perry and stared at him with half-shut eyes. Perry moved in his chair and looked annoyed. The caller said, “Are you Mr. Nero Wolfe?”
   I butted in, suavely. “Mr. Wolfe is not here. I’m his assistant. I’m engaged with this gentleman. If you’ll excuse us …”
   The caller nodded, and turned to stare again at Perry. “Then who—you ain’t Mike Walsh? Hell no, Mike was a runt.” He gave Perry up, and glanced around the room, then looked at me. “What do I do now, sit down and hang my hat on my ear?”
   I grinned. “Yeah. Try that leather one over there.” He panthered for it, and I started For the door, throwing over my shoulder to Perry, “I won’t keep you waiting long.”
   Upstairs, in the plant rooms on the roof, glazed in, where Wolfe kept his ten thousand orchids, I found him in the middle room turning some offseason Oncidiums that were about to bud, while Horstmann fussed around with a pot of charcoal and osmundine. Wolfe, of course, didn’t look at me or halt operations; whenever I interrupted him in the plant rooms he pretended he was Joe Louis in his training camp and I was a boy peeking through the fence.
   I said, loud so he couldn’t also pretend he didn’t hear me, “That millionaire downstairs says I’ve got to go to his office right now and begin looking under the rugs for his thirty grand, and there’s an appointment here for six o’clock. I expressed a preference to go tomorrow morning.”
   Wolfe said, “And if your pencil fell to the floor and you were presented with the alternative of either picking it up or leaving it there, would you also need to consult me about that?”
   “He’s exasperated.”
   “So am I.”
   “He says it’s urgent, I’m outrageous, and he’s an old client.”
   “He is probably correct all around. I like particularly the second of his conclusions. Leave me.”
   “Very well. Another caller ]ust arrived. Name of Harlan Scovil. A weather-beaten plainsman who stared at Anthony D. Perry and said he wasn’t Mike Walsh.”
   Wolfe looked at me. “You expect, I presume, to draw your salary at the end of the month.”
   “Okay.” I wanted to reach out and tip over one of the Oncidiums, but decided it wouldn’t be diplomatic, so I faded.
   When I got back downstairs Perry was standing in the door of the office with his hat on and his stick in his hand. I told him, “Sorry to keep you waiting.”
   “Well?”
   “It’ll have to be tomorrow, Mr. Perry. The appointment can’t be postponed. Anyhow, the day’s nearly gone, and I couldn’t do much. Mr. Wolfe sincerely regrets—”
   “All right,” Perry snapped. “At nine o’clock, you said?”
   “I’ll be there on the dot.”
   “Come to my office.”
   “Right.”
   I went and opened the front door for him.
   In the office Harlan Scovil sat in the leather chair over by the bookshelves. As, entering, I lamped him from the door, I saw that his head was drooping and he looked tired and old and all in; but at sound of me he jerked up and I caught the bright points of his eyes. I went over and wheeled my chair around to face him.
   “You want to see Nero Wolfe?”
   He nodded. “That was my idea. Yes, sir.”
   “Mr. Wolfe will be engaged until six o’clock, and at that time he has another appointment. My name’s Archie Goodwin. I’m Mr. Wolfe’s confidential assistant. Maybe I could help you?”
   “The hell you are.” He certainly had a smooth sort voice for his age and bulk and his used-up face. He had his half-shut eyes on me. “Listen, sonny. What sort of a man is this Nero Wolfe?”
   I grinned. “A fat man.”
   He shook his head in slow impatience. “It ain’t to the point to tease a steer. You see the kind of man I am. I’m out of my county.” His eyes twin– kled a little. “Hell, I’m clear over the mountains. Who was that man that was in here when I came?”
   “Just a man. A client of Mr. Wolfe’s.”
   “What kind of a client? Anybody ever give him a name?”
   “I expect so. Next time you see him, ask him. Is there anything I can do for you?”
   “All right, sonny.” He nodded. “Naturally I had my suspicions up, seeing any kind of a man here at this time, but you heard me remark that he wasn’t Mike Walsh. And God knows he wasn’t Vie Lindquist’s daughter. Thanks for leaving my ideas free. Could I have a piece of paper? Any kind.”
   I handed him a sheet of typewriter bond from my desk. He took it and held it in front of him spread on the palms of his hands, bent his head over it, and opened his mouth, and out popped a chew of tobacco the size of a hen’s egg. I’m fairly observant, but I hadn’t suspected its existence. He wrapped the paper around it, clumsily but thoroughly, got up and took it to the wastebasket, and came back and sat down again. His eyes twinkled at me.
   “There seems to be very little spittin’ done east of the Mississippi. A swallower like me don’t mind, but if John Orcutt was here he wouldn’t tolerate it. But you was asking me if there’s anything you can do for me. I wish to God I knew. I wish to God there was a man in this town you could let put your saddle on.”
   I grinned at him. “If you mean an honest man, Mr. Scovil, you must have got an idea from a movie or something. There’s just as many honest men here as the other side of the mountains. And just as few. I’m one. I’m so damn honest I often double-cross myself. Nero Wolfe is almost as bad. Go ahead. You must have come here to spill something besides that chew.”
   With his eyes still on me, he lifted his right hand and drew the back of it slowly across his nostrils from left to right, and then, after a pause, from right to left.
   He nodded. “I’ve traveled over two thousand miles, from Hiller County, Wyoming, to come here on an off chance. I sold thirty calves to get the money to come on, and for me nowadays that’s a lot of calves. I didn’t know till this morning I was going to see any kind of a man called Nero Wolfe. All that is to me is just a name and address on a piece of paper I’ve got in my pocket. All I knew was I was going to see Mike Walsh and Vic’s daughter and Gil’s daughter, and I was supposed to be going to see George Rowley, and by God if I see him and what they say is true I’ll be able to fix up some fences this winter and get something besides lizards and coyotes inside of ‘em. One thing you can tell me anyhow, did you ever hear of any kind of a man called a Marquis of Clivers?”
   I nodded. “I’ve read in the paper about that kind of a man.”
   “Good for you. I don’t read much. One reason, I’m so damn suspicious I don’t believe it even if I do read it, so it don’t seem worth the trouble. I’m here now because I’m suspicious. I was supposed to come here at six o’clock with the rest of those others, but I had my time on my hands anyhow, so I thought I might as well ride out and take a look. I want to see this Nero Wolfe man. You don’t look to me like a man that goes out at night after lambs, but I want to see him. What really made me suspicious was the two daughters. God knows a man is bad enough when you don’t know him, but I doubt if you ever could get to know a woman well enough to leave her loose around you. I never really tried, because it didn’t ever seem to be worth the trouble.”
   He stopped, and drew the back of his hand across his nostrils again, back and forth, slowly. His eyes twinkled at me. “Naturally, your opinion is that I talk a good deal. That’s the truth. It won’t hurt you any, and it may even do you good. Out in Wyoming I’ve been talking to myself like this for thirty years, and by God if I can stand it you can.”
   It appeared to me that I was going to stand it whether I wanted to or not, but something interfered. The phone rang. I turned to my desk and plucked the receiver, a female voice asked me to hold the wire, and then another voice came at me.
   “Goodwin? Anthony D. Perry. I just got back to my office, and you must come here at once. Any appointments you have, cancel them, if there’s any damage I’ll pay it. The situation here has developed. A taxi will get you here in five minutes.”
   I love these guys that think the clock stops every time they sneeze. But by the tone of his voice it was a case either of aye, aye, sir, or a plain go to hell, and by nature I’m a courteous man. So I told him okay.
   “You’ll come at once?”
   “I said okay.”
   I shoved the phone back and turned to the caller.
   “I’ve got to leave you, Mr. Scovil. Urgent business. But if I heard you right, you’ve been invited here to the six o’clock party, so I’ll see you again. Correct?”
   He nodded. “But look here, sonny, I wanted to ask you—”
   “Sorry, I’ve got to run.” I was on my way. I looked back from the door.
   “Don’t nurse any suspicions about any kind of a man named Nero Wolfe. He’s as straight as he is fat. So long.”
   I went to the kitchen, where Fritz had about nine kinds of herbs spread out on the shredding board all at once, and told him, “I’m going out. Back at six. Leave the door open so you can see the hall. There’s an object in the office waiting for a six-o’clock appointment, and if you have any good deeds to spare like offering a man a drink and a plate of cookies, I assure you he is worthy. If Wolfe comes down before I get back, tell him he’s there.”
   Fritz, nibbling a morsel of tarragon, nodded. I went to the hall and snared my hat and beat it.

Chapter 3

   I didn’t fool with a taxi, and it wasn’t worth while to take the roadster, which as usual was at the curb, and fight to park it. From Wolfe’s house in West 35th Street, not far from the Hudson, where he had lived for over twenty years, and I had slept on the same floor with him for eight, it was only a hop, skip, and jump to the new Seaboard Building, in the twenties, also near the river. I hoofed it, considering meanwhile the oddities of my errand. Why had Anthony D. Perry, president of the Seaboard Products Corporation, taken the trouble to come to our office to tell us about an ordinary good clean theft? As the Tel & Tel say in their ads, why not telephone? And if he felt so confident that Clara Fox hadn’t done it, did he suspect she was being framed or what? And so on.
   Having been in the Seaboard Building before, and even, if you would believe it, in the office of the president himself, I knew my way around. I remembered what the executive reception clerk on the thirty-second floor looked like, and so was expecting no treat in that quarter, and got none. I now knew also that she was called Miss Vawter, and so addressed her, noting that her ears stuck out at about the same angle as three years previously. She was expecting me, and without bothering to pry her thin lips open she waved me to the end of the corridor.
   In Perry’s office, which was an enormous room furnished in The Office Beautiful style with four big windows giving a sweeping view of the river, there was a gathering waiting for me. I went in and shut the door behind me and looked them over. Perry was seated at his desk with his back to the windows, frowning at his cigar smoke. A bony-looking medium-sized man, with hair somewhat grayer than Perry’s, brown eyes too close together, and pointed ears, sat nearby. A woman something over thirty, with a flat nose, who could have got a job as schoolteacher just on her looks, stood at a comer of Perry’s desk. She looked as it she might have been doing some crying. In another chair, out a little, another woman sat with her back to me as I entered. On my way approaching Perry I caught a glimpse of her face as I went by, and saw that additional glimpses probably wouldn’t hurt me any.
   Perry grunted at me. He spoke to the others. “This is the man. Mr. Goodwin, from Nero Wolfe’s office.” He indicated with nods, in succession, the woman sitting, the one standing, and the man. “Miss Fox. Miss Garish. Mr. Muir.”
   I nodded around, and looked at Perry. “You said you’ve got some developments?”
   “Yes.” He knocked ashes from his cigar, looked at Muir, and then at me. ««You know most of the facts, Goodwin. Let’s come to the point. When I returned I found that Mr. Muir had called Miss Fox to his office, had accused her of stealing the money, and was questioning her in the presence of Miss Barish. This was contrary to the instructions I had given. He now insists on calling in the police.”
   Muir spoke to me, smoothly. “You’re in on a family quarrel, Mr. Goodwin.” He leveled his eyes at Perry. “As I’ve said. Perry, I accept your instructions on all business matters. This is more personal than business. The money was taken from my desk. I was responsible for it. I know who stole it, I am prepared to swear out a warrant, and I intend to do so.”
   Perry stared back at him. “Nonsense. I’ve told you that my authority extends to all the affairs of this office.” His tone could have been used to ice a highball. “You may be ready to swear out a warrant and expose yourself to the risk of being sued for false arrest, but I will not permit a vicepresident of this corporation to take that risk. I went to the trouble of engaging the best man in New York City, Nero Wolfe, to investigate this. I even took pains that Miss Fox should not know she was suspected before the investigation. I admit that I do not believe she is a thief. That is my opinion. If evidence is uncovered to prove me wrong, then I’m wrong.”
   “Evidence?” Muir’s jaw had tightened. “Uncovered? A clever man like Nero Wolfe might either cover or uncover. No? Depending on what you paid him for.”
   Perry smiled a controlled smile. “You’re an ass, Muir, to say a thing like that. I’m the president of this company, and you’re an ass to suggest I might betray its interests, either the most important or the most trivial. Mr. Goodwin heard my conversation with his employer. He can tell you what I engaged him to do.”
   No doubt he could tell me what he has been instructed to tell me.”
   “I’d go easy, Muir.” Perry was sdll smiling. “The kind of insinuations you re making might run into something serious. You shouldn’t bark around without considering the chances of starting a real dogfight, and I shouldn’t think you’d want a fight over a triviality like this.”
   1’riviality?” Muir started to tremble. I saw his hand on the chair arm begin to shake, and he gripped the wood. He turned his eyes from Perry onto Clara Fox, sitting a few feet away, and the look in them made it plain why trivialities were out. Of course I didn’t know whether he was hating her because she had lifted the thirty grand or because she had stepped on his toe, but from where I stood it looked like something much fancier than either of those. If looks could kill she would have been at least a darned sick woman.
   Then he shifted from her to me, and he had to pinch his voice. “I won’t ask you to report the conversation you heard, Mr. Goodwin. But of course you’ve had instructions and hints from Mr. Perry, so you might as well have some from me.” He got up, walked around the desk, and stood in front of me. “I presume that an important part of your investigation will be to follow Miss Fox’s movements, to learn if possible what she has done with the money. When you see her entering a theater or an expensive restaurant with Mr. Perry, don’t suppose she is squandering the money that way. Mr. Perry will be paying. Or if you see Mr. Perry entering her apartment of an evening, it will not he to help her dispose of the evidence. His visit will be for another purpose.”
   He turned and left the room, neither slow nor fast. He shut the door behind him, softly. I didn’t see him, I heard him; I was looking at the others. Miss Barish stared at Miss Fox and turned pale. Perry’s only visible reaction was to drop his dead cigar into the ash tray and push she tray away. The first move came from Miss Fox. She stood up.
   The idea occurred to me that on account of active emotions she was probably better looking at that moment than she ordinarily was, but even discounting for that there was plenty to go on. In my detached impersonal way I warmed to her completely at exactly that moment when she stood up and looked at Anthony D. Perry. She had brown hair, neither long nor boyish bob, just a swell lot of careless hair, and her eyes were brown too and you could see at a glance that they would never tell you anything except what she wanted them to.
   She spoke. “May I go now, Mr. Perry? It’s past five o’clock, and I have an appointment.”
   Perry looked at her with no surprise. Evidently he knew her. He said, “Mr. Goodwin will want to talk with you.”
   “I know he will. Will the morning do? Am I to come to work tomorrow?”
   “Of course. I refer you to Goodwin. He has charge of this now, and the responsibility is his.”
   I shook my head. “Excuse me, Mr. Perry. Mr. Wolfe said he would decide whether he’d handle this or not after my preliminary investigation. As far as Miss Fox is concerned, tomorrow will suit me fine.” I looked at her. “ Nine o’clock?”
   She nodded– “Not that I have anything to tell you about that money, except that I didn’t take it and never saw it. I have told Mr. Perry and Mr. Muir that. I may go then? Good night.”
   She was perfectly cool and sweet. From the way she was handling herself, no one would have supposed she had any notion that she was standing on a hot spot. She included all of us in her good-night glance, and turned and walked out as self-possessed as a young doe not knowing that there’s a gun pointed at it and a finger on the trigger.
   When the door was shut Perry turned to me briskly. “Where do you want to start, Goodwin? Would fingerprints around the drawer of Muir’s desk do any good?”
   I grinned at him and shook my head. “Only for practice, and I don’t need any. I’d like to have a chat with Muir. He must know it won’t do to have Miss Fox arrested just because she was in his room. Maybe he thinks he knows where the money is.”
   Perry said, “Miss Barish is Mr. Muir’s secretary.”
   “Oh.” I looked at the woman with the flat nose still standing there. I said to her, “It was you that typed the cablegram while Miss Fox waited in Muir’s room. Did you notice—”
   Perry homed in. “You can talk with Miss Barish later.” He glanced at the clock on the wall, which said 5:20. “Or, if you prefer, you can talk with her here, now.” He shoved his chair back and got up. “If you need me, I’ll be in the directors’ room, at the other end. I’m late now, for a conference. It won’t take long. I’ll ask Muir to stay, and Miss Vawter also, in case you want to see her.” He had moved around to the front of his desk, and halted there. “One thing, Goodwin, about Muir. I advise you to forget his ridiculous outburst. He’s jerky and nervous, and the truth is he’s too old for the strain business puts on a man nowadays. Disregard his nonsense. Well?”
   “Sure.” I waved a hand. “Let him rave.”
   Perry frowned at me, nodded, and left the room.
   The best chair in sight was the one Perry had just vacated, so I went around and took it. Miss Barish stood with her shoulders hanging, squeezing her handkerchief and looking straight at me. I said, friendly, “Move around and sit down—there, where Muir was. So you’re Muir’s secretary.”
   “Yes, sir.” She got onto the edge of the chair.
   “Been his secretary eleven years.”
   “Yes, sir.”
   “Cut out the sir. Okay? I’m not gray-headed. So Muir looked through your belongings last Friday and didn’t find the money?”
   Her eyes darkened. “Certainly he didn’t find it.”
   “Right. Did he make a thorough search of your room?”
   “I don’t know. I don’t care if he did.”
   “Now don’t get sore. I don’t care either. After you copied the cablegram and took the original back to Miss Fox in Muir’s room, what was she carrying when she left there?”
   “She was carrying the cablegram.”
   “But where did she have the thirty grand, down her sock? Didn’t it show?”
   Miss Barish compressed her lips to show that she was putting up with me. “I did not see Miss Fox carrying anything except the cablegram. I have told Mr. Muir and Mr. Perry that I did not see Miss Fox carrying anything except the cablegram.”
   I grinned at her. “And you are now telling Mr. Goodwin that you did not see Miss Fox carrying anything except the cablegram. Check. Are you a friend of Miss Fox’s?”
   “No. Not a real friend. I don’t like her.”
   “Egad. Why don’t you like her?”
   “Because she is extremely attractive, and I am homely. Because she has been here only three years and she could be Mr. Perry’s private secretary tomorrow if she wanted to, and that is the job I have wanted ever since I came here. Also because she is cleverer than I am.”
   I looked at Miss Barish more interested, at all the frankness. Deciding to see how far down the frankness went, I popped at her, “How long has Miss Fox been Perry’s mistress?”
   She went red as a beet. Her eyes dropped, and she shook her head. Finally she looked up at me again, but didn’t say anything.
   I tried another one. “Then tell me this. How long has Muir been trying to get her away from Perry?”
   Her eyes got dark again, and the color stayed. She stared at me a minute, then all at once rose to her feet and stood there squeezing her handkerchief. Her voice trembled a little, but it didn’t seem to bother her.
   “I don’t know whether that’s any of your business, Mr. Goodwin, but it’s none of mine. Don’t you see … don’t you see how this is a temptation to me? Couldn’t I have said I saw her carrying something out of that room?” She squeezed the handkerchief harder. “Well … I didn’t say it. Don’t I have to keep my self-respect? I’ll go out of my way too, I don’t know anything about it, but I don’t believe Clara Fox has ever been anybody’s mistress. She wouldn’t have to be, she’s too clever. I don’t know anything about that money either, but if you want to ask me questions to see if I do, go ahead.”
   I said, “School’s out. Go on home. I may want you again in the morning, but I doubt it.”
   She turned pale as fast as she had turned red. She certainly was a creature of moods. I got up from Perry’s chair and walked all the way across the room to open the door and stand and hold it. She went past, still squeezing the handkerchief and mumbling good night to me, and I shut the door.
   Feeling for a cigarette and finding I didn’t have any, I went back to the windows and stood surveying the view. As I had suspected, the thing wasn’t a good clean theft at all, it was some kind of a mess. From the business standpoint, it was obvious that the thing to do was go back and tell Nero Wolfe it was a case of refusing to let the administrative heads of the Seaboard Products Corporation use our office for a washtub to dump their dirty linen in. But what reined me up on that was my professional curiosity about Clara Fox. If sneak thieves came as cool and sweet as that, it was about time I found it out. And if she wasn’t one, my instinctive dislike of a frame-up made me hesitate about leaving her parked against a fireplug.
   I was fairly well disgusted, and got more disgusted, after gazing out of the window for a while, when I felt in my pockets again for a cigarette with no results.
   I wandered around The Office Beautiful a little, sightseeing and cogitating, and then went out to the corridor. It was empty. Of course, it was after office hours. All its spacious width and length, there was no traffic, and it was dimmer than it had been when I entered, for no more lights were turned on and it was getting dark outdoors. There were doors along one side, and at the farther end the double doors, closed, of the director’s room. I heard a cough, and turned, and saw Miss Vawter, the executive reception clerk, sitting in the comer under a light with a magazine.
   She said in a vinegar voice, “I’m remaining after hours because Mr. Perry said you might want to speak to me.”
   She was a pain all around. I said, “Please continue remaining. Which is Muir’s room?”
   She pointed to one of the doors, and I headed for it I was reaching out for the knob when she screeched at me, “You can’t go in there like that! Mr. Muir is out.”
   I called to her, “Do tell. If you want to interrupt Mr. Perry in his conference, go to the directors’ room and give the alarm. I’m investigating.”
   I went on in, shut the door, found the wall switch, and turned on the lights. As I did so, a door in another wall opened, and Miss Barish appeared. She stood and looked without saying anything.
   I observed, “I thought I told you to go home.”
   “I can’t.” Her color wasn’t working either way. “When Mr. Muir is here I’m not supposed to go until he dismisses me. He is in conference.”
   “I see. That your room? May I come in?”
   She stepped back and I entered– It was a small neat room with one window and the usual stenographic and filing equipment. I let the eyes rove, and then asked her, “Would you mind leaving me here for a minute with the door shut, while you go to Muir’s desk and open and dose a couple of drawers? I’d like to see how much din it makes.”
   She said, “I was typing.” “So you were. All right, forget it. Come and show me which drawer the money was in.”
   She moved ahead of me, led the way to Muir’s desk, and pulled open one of the drawers, the second one from the top on the right. There was nothing in it but a stack of envelopes. I reached out and closed it, then opened and closed it again, grinning as I remembered Perry’s suggestion about fingerprints. Then I left the desk and strolled around a little. It was just a vice-president’s office, smaller and modester than Perry’s but still by no means a pigpen. I noticed one detail, or rather three, a little out of the ordinary. There was no portrait of Abraham Lincoln nor replica of the Declaration of Independence on the walls, but there were three different good-sized photographs of three different good-looking women, hanging framed.
   I turned to Miss Barish, who was still standing by the desk. “Who are all the handsome ladies?”
   “They are Mr. Muir’s wives.”
   “Nol Honest to God? Mostly dead?”
   “I don’t know. None of them is with him now.”
   “Too bad. It looks like he’s sentimental.”
   She shook her head. “Mr. Muir is a sensual man.”
   She was having another frank spell. I glanced at my watch. It was a quarter to six, giving me another five minutes, so I thought I might as well use them on her. I opened up, friendly, but although she seemed to be willing to risk a little more chat with me, I didn’t really get any facts. All I learned was what I already knew, that she had no reason to suppose that Clara Fox had lifted the jack, and that if there was a frame-up she wasn’t in on it. When the five minutes was up I turned to go, and at that moment the door opened and Muir came in.
   Seeing us, he stopped, then came on again, to his desk. “You may go, Miss Barish. If you want to talk with me, Goodwin, sit down.”
   Miss Barish disappeared into her room. I said, “I won’t keep you now, Mr. Muir. I suppose you’ll be here in the morning?”
   “Where else would I be?”
   That kind of childishness never riles me. I grinned at the old goat, said, “Okay,” and left him.
   Outside in the corridor, down a few paces toward the directors’ room, a group of four or five men stood talking. I saw Perry was among them, and approached. He saw me and came to meet me.
   I said, “Nothing more tonight, Mr. Perry. Let’s let Mr. Muir have a chance to cool off. I’ll report to Nero Wolfe.”
   Perry frowned. “He can phone me at my home any time this evening. It’s in the book.”
   “Thanks. I’ll tell him.”
   As I passed Miss Vawter on my way out, still sitting in the corner with her magazine, I said to her out of the side of my mouth, “See you at the Rainbow Room.”

Chapter 4

   Down on the sidewalk the shades of night were not keeping the metropolitan bipeds from the swift completion of their appointed rounds. Striding north toward 3^ th Street, I let the brain skip from this to that and back again, and decided that the spot Clara Fox was standing on was probably worse than hot, it was sizzling. Had she lit the fire herself? I left that in unfinished business.
   I got home just at six o’clock and, knowing that Wolfe wouldn’t be down for a few minutes yet, I went to the office to see if the Wyoming wonder had thought of any new suspicions and if his colleagues had shown up.
   The office was empty. I went through to the front room to see if he had moved his base there, but it was empty too. I beat it to the kitchen. Fritz was there, sitting with his slippers off, reading that newspaper in French.
   I asked him, “What did you do with him?”
   “Qui? Aui, Ie monsieur—” Fritz giggled. “Excuse me, Archie. You mean the gentleman who was waiting.”
   “Yeah, him.”
   “He received a telephone call.” Fritz leaned over and began pulling on his slippers. “Time already for Mr. Wolfe!”
   “He got a phone call here?”
   Fritz nodded. “About half an hour after you left. More maybe. Wait till I look.” He went to the stand where the kitchen phone extension was kept, and glanced at his memo pad. “That’s right. Five-twenty-six. Twenty-six minutes past five.”
   “Who was it?”
   Fritz’s brows went up. “Should I know, Archie.” He thought he was using slang. “A gentleman said he wished to speak to Mr. Scovil in case he was here, and I went to the office and asked if it was Mr. Scovil, and he talked from your desk, and then he got up and put on his hat and went out.”
   “Leave any message?”
   “No. I had come back to the kitchen, closing the office door for his privacy but leaving this one open as you said, and he came out and went in a hurry. He said nothing at all.” I lifted the shoulders and let them drop. “He’ll be back. He wants to see a kind of a man named Nero Wolfe. What’s on the menu?”
   Fritz told me, and let me take a sniff at the sauce steaming on the simmer plate; then I heard the elevator and went back to the office. Wolfe entered, crossed to his chair and got himself lowered, rang for beer and took the opener out of the drawer, and then vouchsafed me a glance.
   “Pleasant afternoon, Archie?”
   “No, sir. Putrid. I went around to Perry’s office.”
   “Indeed. A man of action must expect such vexations. Tell me about it.”
   “Well, Perry left here just after I came down, but about eight minutes after that he phoned and instructed me to come galloping. Having the best interests of my employer in mind I went.”
   “Notwithstanding the physical law that the contents can be no larger than the container.” Fritz arrived with two botdes of beer; Wolfe opened and poured one, and drank. “Go on.”
   “Yes, sir. I disregard your wit, because I’d like to show you this picture before the company arrives, and they’re already ten minutes late. By the way, the company we already had has departed. He claimed to be part of the six-o’clock appointment and said he would wait, but Fritz says he got a phone call and went in a hurry. Maybe the appointment is off. Anyhow, here’s the Perry puzzle….”
   I laid it out for him, in the way that he always liked to get a crop of facts, no matter how trivial or how crucial. I told him what everybody looked like, and what they did, and what they said fairly verbatim. He finished the first botde of beer meanwhile, and had the second well on its way when I got through. I ratded it off and then leaned back and took a sip from a glass of milk I had brought from the kitchen.
   Wolfe pinched his nose. “Ptui! Hyenas. And your conclusions?”
   “Maybe hyenas. Yeah.” I took another sip. “On principle I don’t like Perry, but it’s possible he’s just using all the decency he has left after a life of evil. You have forbidden me to use the word louse, so I would say that Muir is an insect. Clara Fox is the ideal of my dreams, but it wouldn’t stun me to know that she lifted the roll, though I’d be surprised.”
   Wolfe nodded. “You may remember that four years ago Mr. Perry objected to our bill for an investigation of his competitors’ trade practices. I presume that now he would like us to shovel the mud from his executive offices for twelve dollars a day. It is not practicable always to sneer at mud; there’s too much of it. So it gives the greater pleasure to do so when we can afford it. At present our bank balance is agreeable to contemplate. Pfui!” He lifted his glass and emptied it and wiped his lips with his handkerchief.
   “Okay,” I agreed. “But there’s something else to consider. Perry wants you to phone him this evening. If you take the case on we’ll at least get expenses, and if you don’t take it on Clara Fox may get five years for grand larceny and I’ll have to move to Ossining so as to be near her and take her tidbits on visiting day. Balance the mud-shoveling against the loss of my services—but that sounds like visitors. I’ll finish my appeal later.”
   I had heard the doorbell sending Fritz into the hall and down it to the door. I glanced at the clock: 6:30; they were half an hour late. I remembered the attractive telephone voice, and wondered if we were going to have another nymph, cool and sweet in distress, on our hands.
   Fritz came in and shut the door behind him, and announced callers. Wolfe nodded. Fritz went out, and after a second in came a man and two women. The man and the second woman I was barely aware of, because I was busy looking at the one in front. It certainly was a nymph cool and sweet in distress. Evidently she knew enough about Nero Wolfe to recognize him, for with only a swift glance at me she came forward to Wolte’s desk and spoke.
   “Mr. Wolfe? I telephoned on Saturday. I’m sorry to be late for the appointment. My name is Clara Fox.” She turned. “This is Miss Hilda Lindquist and Mr. Michael Walsh.”
   Wolfe nodded at her and at them. “It is bulk, not boorishness, that keeps me in my chair.” He wiggled a finger at me. “Mr. Archie Goodwin. Chairs, Archie?”
   I obliged, while Clara Fox was saying, “I met Mr. Goodwin this afternoon, in Mr. Perry’s office.” I thought to myself, you did indeed, and for not recognizing your voice I’ll let them lock roe in the cell next to yours when you go up the river.
   “Indeed.” Wolfe had his eyes half closed, which meant he was missing nothing. “Mr. Walsh’s chair to the right, please. Thank you.”
   Miss Fox was taking off her gloves. “First I’d like to explain why we’re late. I said on the telephone that I couldn’t make the appointment before Monday because I was expecting someone from out of town who had to be here. It was a man from out west named Harlan Scovil. He arrived this morning, and I saw him during the lunch hour, and arranged to meet him at a quarter past five, at his hotel, to bring him here. I went for him, but he wasn’t there. I waited and … well, I tried to make some inquiries. Then I met Miss Lindquist and Mr. Walsh, as agreed, and we went back to Mr. Scovil’s hotel again. We waited until a quarter past six, and decided it would be better to come on without him.”
   “Is his presence essential?”
   “I wouldn’t say essential. At least not at this moment. We left word, and he may join us here any second. He must see you too, before we can do anything. I should warn you, Mr. Wolfe, I have a very long story to tell.”
   She hadn’t looked at me once. I decided to quit looking at her, and tried her companions. They were just barely people. Of course I remembered Harlan Scovil telling Anthony D. Perry that he wasn’t Mike Walsh.
   Apparently this bird was. He was a scrawny little mick, built wiry, over sixty and maybe even seventy, dressed cheap but dean, sitting only half in his chair and keeping an ear palmed with his right hand. The Lindquist dame, with a good square face and wearing a good brown dress, had size, though I wouldn’t have called her massive, first because it would have been only a half-truth, and second because she might have socked me. I guess she was a fine woman, of the kind that would be more apt to be snapping a coffee cup in her fingers than a champagne glass. Remembering Harlan Scovil to boot, it looked to me as if, whatever game Miss Fox was training for, she was picking some odd numbers for her team.
   Wolfe had told her that the longer the story the sooner it ought to begin, and she was saying, “It began forty years ago, in Silver City, Nevada. But before I start it, Mr. Wolfe, I ought to tell you something that I hope will make you interested. I’ve found out all I could about you, and I understand that you have remarkable abilities and an equally remarkable opinion of their cash value to people you do things for.”
   Wolfe sighed. “Each of us must choose his own brand of banditry, Miss Fox.”
   “Certainly. That is what I have done. If you agree to help us, and if we are successful, your fee will be one hundred thousand dollars.”
   Mike Walsh leaned forward and blurted, “Ten per cent! Fair enough?”
   Hilda Undquist frowned at him. Clara Fox paid no attention. Wolfe said, “The fee always depends. You couldn’t hire me to hand you the moon.”
   She laughed at him, and although I had my notebook out I decided to look at her in the pauses. She said, “I won’t need it. Is Mr. Goodwin going to take down everything? With the understanding that if you decide not to help us his notes are to be given to me?”
   Cagey Clara. The creases of Wolfe’s cheeks unfolded a little. “By all means.”
   “All right.” She brushed her hair back. “I said it began forty years ago, but I won’t start there. I’ll start when I was nine years old, in 1918, the year my father was killed in the war, in France. I don’t remember my father much. He was killed in 1918, and he sent my mother a letter which she didn’t get until nearly a year later, because instead of trusting it to the army mail he gave it to another soldier to bring home. My mother read it then, but I never knew of it until seven years later, in 192,6, when my mother gave it to me on her deathbed. I was seventeen years old. I loved my mother very dearly.”
   She stopped. It would have been a good spot for a moist film over her eyes or a catch in her voice, but apparently she had just stopped to swallow. She swallowed twice, ha the pause I was looking at her. She went on.
   “I didn’t read the letter until a month later. I knew it was a letter father had written to mother eight years before, and with mother gone it didn’t seem to be of any importance to me. But on account of what mother had said, about a month after she died I read it. I have it with me. I’ll have to read it to you.”
   She opened her alligator-skin handbag and took out a folded paper. She jerked it open and glanced at it, and back at Wolfe. “May I?”
   “Do I see typewriting?”
   She nodded. “This is a copy. The original is put away.” She brushed her hair back with a hand up and dipping swift like a bird. “This isn’t a complete copy. There is—this is—just the part to read.
   “So, dearest Lola, since a man can’t tell what is going to nap-pen to him ‘here, or when, I’ve decided to write you about a little incident that occurred last week, and make arrangements to he sure it gets to you, in case I never get home to tell you about it. Ill have to begin away hack.
   “I’ve told you a lot of wild tales about the old days in Nevada. I’ve told you this one too, hut I’ll repeat it here hriefty. It was at Silver City, in 189?. I was 25 years old, so it was 10 years before I met you. I was broke, and so was the gang of youngsters I’m telling about. They were all youngsters but one. We weren’t friends, there was no such thing as a friend around there. Most of the bunch of 2000 or so that inhabited Silver City camp at that time were a good deal older than us, which was how we happened to get together—temporarily. Everything was temporaryi “The ringleader of our gang was a kid we called Rubber on account of the way he bounced back up when he got knocked down. His name was Cole-man, but I never knew his first name, or if 1 did 1 can’t remember it, though I’ve often tried. Because Rubber was our leader, someone cracked a joke one day that we should call ourselves The Rubber Band, and we did. Pretty soon most of Silver City was calling us that.
   “One of the gang, a kid named George Rowley, shot a man and killed him. From what I heard—I didn’t see it—he had as good a right to shoot as was usually needed around there, but the trouble was that the one he killed happened to he a member of the Vigilance Committee. It was at night, 24 hows after the shooting, that they decided to hang him. Rowley hadn’t had sense enough to make a getaway, so they took him and shut him up in a shanty until daylight, with one of their number for a guard, an Irishman. As Harlan Scovil would say—I’ll never forget Harlan—he was a kind of a man named Mike Walsh.
   “Rowley went after his guard, Mike Walsh. I mean talking to him. Finally, around midnight, he persuaded Mike to send for Rubber Cole-man. Rubber had a talk with him and. Mike. Then there was a lot of conspiring, and Rubber did a lot of dickering with Rowley. We were gathered in the dark in the sagebrush out hack of John’s Palace, a shack out at the edge of the city—”
   Clara Fox looked up. “My father underscored the word city.”
   Wolfe nodded. “Properly, no doubt.”
   She went on: “—and we had been drinking some and were having a swell time. Around two o’clock Rubber showed up again and lit matches to show us a paper George Rowley had signed, with him and Mike Walsh as witnesses. I’ve told you about it. I cant give it to you word for word, hut this is exactly what it said. It said that his real name wasnt George Rowley, and that he wasn’t giving his real name in writing, hut that he had told it to Rubber Coleman. It said that he was from a wealthy family in England, and that if he got out of Silver City alive he would go hack there, and some day he would get a share of the family pile. It said it wouldn’t be a major share because he wasn’t an oldest son. Then it hereby agreed that whenever and whatever he got out of his family connections, he would give us half of it, provided we got him safe out of Silver City and safe from pursuit, before the time came to hang him.
   “We were young, and thought we were adventurers, and we were half drunk or maybe more. I doubt if any of us had any idea that we would ever get hold of any of the noble English wealth, except possibly Rubber Cole-man, but the idea of the night rescue of a member of our gang was all to the good. Rubber had another paper ready too, all written up. It was headed, PLEDGE OF THE RUBBER BAND, and we all signed it. It had already been signed by Mike Walsh. In it we agreed to an equal division of anything coming from George Rowley, no matter who got it or when.
   “We were all broke except Vie Lindquist, who had a bag of gold dust. It was Rubber’s suggestion that we get Turtle-back in. Turtle-back was an oldtimer who owned the fastest horse in Silver City. tie had no use for that kind of a horse; he only happened to own it because he had won it in a poker game a few days before. I went with Rubber down to Turtle-back’s shanty. We offered him Vie Lindquist’s dust for the horse, but he said it wasn’t enough. We had expected that. Then Rubber explained to him what was up, told him the whole story, and offered him an equal share with the rest of us, for the horse, and the dust to boot. Turtle-back was still half asleep. Finally, when he got the idea, he blinked at us, and then all of a sudden he slapped his knee and began to guffaw. He said that by God he always had wanted to own a part of England, and anyway he would probably lose the horse before he got a chance to ride it much. Rubber got out the PLEDGE OF THE RUBBER BAND, but Turtle-back wouldn’t have his name added to it, saying he didn’t like to have his name written down anywhere. He would trust us to see that he got his share. Rubber scribbled out a bill of sale for the horse, but Turtle-back wouldn’t sign that either; he said 1 was there as a witness, the horse was ours, and that was enough. He put on his boots and took us over to Johnson’s corral, and we saddled the horse, a palomino with a white face, and led it around the long way, back of the shacks and tents and along a gully, to where the gang was.
   “We rescued George Rowley all right. You’ve heard me tell about it, how we loosened a couple of boards and then set fire to the shanty where they had him, and how he busted out of the loose place in the excitement, and how Mike Walsh, who was known to be a dead shot, emptied two guns at him without hitting him. Rowley was in the saddle and away before anyone else realized it, and nobody bothered to chase him because they were too busy putting out the fire.
   “The story came out later about our buying Turtle-back’s horse, but by that time people’s minds were on something else, and anyway our chief offense was that we had started the fire and it couldn’t he proved we had done that. It might have been different if the man we helped to escape had done something really criminal, like cheating at cards or stealing somebody’s dust.
   “So far as I know, none of us ever saw Rowley or heard of him since that night. You’ve heard me mention twenty times, when you and I were having hard going, that I’d like to find him and leam if he owed me anything, but you know I never did and of course I meant it more or less as a joke anyhow. But recently, here in Prance, two things have come up about it. The first one is a thought that’s in my mind all the time, what if I do get mine over here, what kind of a fix am I leaving you and the kid in? My little daughter Clara—God how I’d love to see her. And you. To hell with that stuff when it’s no use, but I’d gladly stand up and let the damn Germans shoot me tomorrow morning if I could see you two right this minute. The answer to my question is, a hell of a fix. M,y life would end more useless than it started, leaving my wife and daughter without a single solitary damn thing.
   “The other thing that’s come up is that I’ve seen George Rowley. It was one day last week. I may have told you that the lobe of his right ear was gone—he said he had it hacked off in Australia —hut I don’t think I really knew him by that. There probably is a mighty good print of his mug in my mind somewhere, and I just simply knew it was him. After twenty-three years! I was out with a survey detail about a mile back of the front trenches, laying out new communication lines, and a big car came along. British. The car stopped. It had four British officers in it, and one of them called to me and I went over and he asked for directions to our division headquarters. I gave them to him, and he looked at my insignia and asked if we Americans let our captains dig ditches. 1 had seen by his insignia that he was a brigade commander. I grinned at him and said that in our army everybody worked hut the privates. He looked at me closer and said, ‘By Gad, it’s Gil Foxl’
   I said. Yes, sir. General Rowley?’ He shook his head and laughed and told the driver to go on, and the car jumped forward, and he turned to wave his hand at me.
   “So he’s alive, or he was last •week, and not in the poorhouse, or whatever they call it in England. I’ve made various efforts to find out who Ize was, but without success. Maybe I will soon. In the meantime, I’m writing this down and disposing of it, because, although it may sound far-fetched and even a little batty, the fact is that this is the only thing resembling a legacy that I can leave to you and Clara. After all, I did risk my life that night in Silver City, on the strength of a bargain understood and recorded, and if that Englishman is rolling in it there’s no reason why he shouldn’t pay up. It is my hope and wish that you will make every effort to see that he does, not only for your sake but for our daughter’s sake. That may sound melodramatic, but the things that are going on over here get you that way. As soon as I find out who he is I’ll get this back and add that to it.
   “Another thing. If you do find him and get a grubstake out of it, you must not use it to pay that $26,0001 owe those people out in California. You must promise me this. You must, dearest Lola. I’m bestowing this legacy on you and Clara, not them! I say this because \ fenow that you know how much that debt has worried me for ten years. Though 1 wasn’t really responsible for that tangle, it’s true that it would give me more pleasure to straighten that out than anything in the world except to see you and Clara, but if I die that business can die with me. Of course, if you should get such a big pile of dough that you’re embarrassed—but miracles like that don’t happen.
   “If something should come out of it, it must be split with the rest of the gang if you can find them. I don’t know a thing about any of them except Harlan Scovil, and I haven’t neard from him for several years. The last address I had for him is in the little red book in the drawer of my desk. One of the difficulties is that you haven’t got the paper that George Rowley signed. Rubber Coleman, by agreement, kept both that and the PLEDGE OF THE RUBBER BAND. Maybe you can find Cole-man. Or maybe Rowley is a decent guy and will pay without any paper. Either sounds highly improbable. Hell, it’s all a daydream. Anyhow, I nave every intention of getting back to you safe and sound, and if I do you’ll never see this unless I bring it along as a souvenir.
   “Here are the names of everybody that was in on it: George Rowley. Rubber Coleman (I don’t know his first name). Victor Lindquist. Harlan Scovil ^you’ve met him, go after him first). Mike Walsh (he was a little older, maybe 32 at the time, not one of the Rubber Band). Turtle-back was a good deal older, probably dead now, and that’s all the name I knew for him. And last but by no means least, yours truly, and how truly it would take a year to tell, Gilbert Fox, the writer of these presents.”
   Clara Fox stopped. She ran her eyes over the last sentence again, then placed that sheet at the back, folded them up, and returned them to her handbag. She put her hand up and brushed back her hair, and sat and looked at Wolfe. No one said anything.
   Finally Wolfe sighed. He opened his eyes at her. “Well, Miss Fox. It appears to be the moon that you want after all.”
   She shook her head. “I know who George Rowley is. He is now in New York.”
   “And this, I presume”—Wolfe nodded—“is Mr. Victor Lindquist’s daughter.” He nodded again. “And this gendeman is the Mr. Walsh who emptied two guns at Mr. Rowley without hitting him.”
   Mike Walsh blurted, “I could have hit him!”
   “Granted, sir. And you. Miss Fox, would very much like to have twentysix thousand dollars, no doubt with accrued interest, to discharge debts of your dead father. In other words, you need something a little less than thirty thousand.”
   She stared at him. She glanced at me, then back at him, and asked coolly, “Am I here as your client, Mr. Wolfe, or as a suspected thief?”
   He wiggled a finger at her. “Neither as yet. Please do not be so foolish as to be offended. If I show you my mind, it is only to save dme and avoid irrelevancies. Haven’t I sat and listened patiently for ten minutes although I dislike being read aloud to?”
   “That’s irrelevant.”
   “Indeed. I believe it is. Let us proceed. Tell me about Mr. George Rowley.”
   But that had to be postponed. I had heard the doorbell, and Fritz going down the hall, and a murmur from outside. Now I shook my head at Clara Fox and showed her my palm to stop her, as the office door opened and Fritz came in and closed it behind him.
   “A man to see you, sir. I told him you were engaged.”
   I bounced up. There were only two kinds of men Fritz didn’t announce as gentlemen; one he suspected of wanting to sell something, and a policeman, uniform or not. He could smell one a mile off. So I bounced up and demanded, “A cop?”
   “Yes, sir.”
   I whirled to Wolfe. “Ever since I saw Muir looking at Miss Fox today I’ve been thinking she ought to have a lightning rod. Would you like to have her pinched in here, or out in the hall?”
   Wolfe nodded and snapped, “Very well, Archie.”
   I crossed quick and got myself against the closed office door, and spoke not too loud to Fritz, pointing to the door that opened into the front room. “Go through that way and lock the door from the front room to the hall.”
   He moved. I turned to the others. “Go in there and sit down, and if you don’t talk any it won’t disturb us.”
   Walsh and Miss Lindquist stared at me.
   Clara Fox said to Wolfe, “I’m not your client yet.”
   He said, “Nor yet a suspect. Here. Please humor Mr. Goodwin.”
   She got up and went and the others followed her. Fritz came back and I told him to shut that door and lock it and give me the key. Then I went back to my desk and sat down, while Fritz, at a nod from Wolfe, went to the hall for the visitor.
   The cop came in, and I was surprised to see that it was a guy I knew. Surprised, because the last time I had heard of Slim Foltz he had been on the Homicide Squad, detailed to the District Attorney’s office.
   “Hello, Slim.”
   “Hi, Goodwin.” He had his own clothes on. He came on across with his hat in his hand. “Hello, Mr. Wolfe. I’m Foltz, Homicide Squad.”
   “Good evening, sir. Be seated.”
   The dick put his hat on the desk and sat down, and reached in his pocket and pulled out a piece of paper. “There was a man shot down the street an hour or so ago. Shot plenty, five bullets in him. Killed. This piece of paper was in his pocket, with your name and address on it. Along with other names. Do you know anything about him?”
   Wolfe shook his head. “Except that he’s dead. Not, that is, at this moment. If I knew his name, perhaps …”
   “Yeah. His name was on a hunting license, also in his pocket. State of Wyoming. Harlan Scovil.”
   “Indeed. It is possible Mr. Goodwin can help you out. Archie’?”
   I was thinking to myself, hell, he didn’t come for her after all. But I was just as well pleased she wasn’t in the room.

Chapter 5

   Slim Foltz was looking at me.
   I said, “Harlan Scovil? Sure. He was here this afternoon.”
   Foltz got in his pocket again and fished out a little black memo book and a pencil stub. “What time?”
   “He got here around four-thirty, a little before maybe, and left at fivetwenty-six.”
   “What did he want?”
   “He wanted to see Nero Wolfe.”
   “What about?”
   I shook my head regretfully. “There you’ve got me, mister. I told him he’d have to wait until six o’clock, so he was waiting.”
   “He must have said something.”
   “Certainly he said something. He said he wanted to see Nero Wolfe.”
   “What else did he say?”
   “He said there seemed to be very little spittin’ done east of the Mississippi River, and he wanted to know if there were any honest men this side of the mountains. He didn’t say specifically what he wanted to see Mr. Wolfe about We’d never seen him or heard of him before. Oh yes, he said he just got to New York this morning, from Wyoming. By the way, just because that license was in his pocket—was he over six feet, around sixty, blue serge suit with sleeves too short and the lapel torn a little on the right side, with a leathery red face and a cowboy hat.”
   That’s him,” the dick grunted. “What did he come to New York for?”
   “To see Nero Wolfe, I guess.” I grinned. “That’s the kind of a rep we’ve got If you mean, did he give any hint as to who might want to bump him off, he didn’t.”
   “Did he see Wolfe?”
   “No. I told you, he left at five-twenty-six, Mr. Wolfe never comes down until six o’clock.”
   “Why didn’t he wait?”
   “Because he got a phone call.”
   “He got a phone call here?”
   “Right here in this room. I wasn’t here. I had gone out, leaving this bird here waiting for six o’clock. The phone was answered by Fritz Brenner, Mr. Wolfe’s chef and household pride. Want to see him?”
   “Yeah. If you don’t mind.”
   Wolfe rang. Fritz came. Wolfe told him he was to answer the gentleman’s questions, and Fritz said “Yes, sir” and stood up straight All Foltz got out of Fritz was the same as I had got. He had put down the time of the phone call, 5:26, in accordance with Wolfe’s standing instructions for exactness in all details of the household and office. It was a roan phoning, and he had not given his name and Fritz had not recognized his voice. Fritz had not overheard any of the conversation. Harlan Scovil had immediately left, without saying anything.
   Fritz went back to the kitchen.
   The dick frowned at the piece of paper. “I wasn’t expecting to draw a blank here. I came here first. There’s other names on this paper—Clara Fox, Michael Walsh, Michael spelled wrong, Hilda Lindquist, that’s what it looks like, and a Marquis of Clivers. I don’t suppose you—”
   I homed in, shaking my head. “As I said, when this Harlan Scovil popped in here at half past four today, I had never seen him before. Nor any of those others. Strangers to me. I’m sure Mr. Wolte hadn’t either. Had you, sir?”
   “Seen them? No. But I believe I had heard of one of them. Wasn’t it the Marquis of Clivers we were discussing yesterday?”
   “Discussing? Yes, sir. When you dropped that javelin. That piece in the paper.” I looked at Foltz helpfully. “There was an article in the Times yesterday, magazine section—”
   He nodded. “I know all about that. The sergeant was telling me. This marquis seems to be something like a duke, he’s immune by reason of a foreign power or something. It don’t even have to be a friendly foreign power. The sergeant says this business might possibly be an international plot. Captain Devore is going to make arrangements to see this marquis and maybe warn him or protect him.”
   “Splendid.” Wolfe nodded approvingly. “The police earn the gratitude or all of us. But for them, Mr. Foltz, we private investigators might sit and wait for clients in vain.”
   “Yeah.” Foltz got up. “Much obliged for the compliment, even if that’s all I get. I mean, I haven’t got much information. Except that telephone call, that may lead to something. Scovil was shot only four blocks from here, on Thirty-first Street, only nine minutes after he got that phone call, at fivethirty-five. He was walking along the sidewalk and somebody going by in a car reached out and plugged him, filled him full. He was dead right then.
   It was pretty dark around there, but a man nearby saw the license, and the car’s already been found, parked on Ninth Avenue. Nobody saw anyone get out of it”
   “Well, that’s something.” I was hopeful. “That ought to get you somewhere.”
   “Probably stolen. They usually are.” The dick had his hat in his hand. “Gang stuff, it looks like. Much obliged to you folks anyhow.”
   “Don’t mention it. Slim.”
   I went to the hall with him, and saw him out the front door, and shut it after him and slid the bolt. Before I returned to the office I stopped at the kitchen and told Fritz that I’d answer any doorbells that might ring for the rest of the evening.
   I crossed to Wolfe’s desk and grinned at him. “Ha-ha. The damn police were here.”
   Wolfe looked at the clock, which said ten minutes past seven. He reached out and pushed the button, and, when Fritz came, leaned back and sighed.
   “Fritz.”
   “Yes, sir.”
   “A calamity. We cannot possibly dine at eight as usual. Not dine, that is. We can eat, and I suppose we shall have to. You have filets of beef with sauce Abano.”
   “Yes, sir.”
   Wolfe sighed again. “You will have to serve it in morsels, for five persons. By adding some of the fresh stock you can have plenty of soup. Open Hungarian petits poissons. You have plenty of fruit? Fill in as you can. It is distressing, but there’s no help for it.”
   “The sauce is a great success, sir. I could give the others canned chicken and mushrooms—”
   “Confound it, no! If there are to be hardships, I must share them. That’s all. Bring me some beer.”
   Fritz went, and Wolfe turned to me. “Bring Clara Fox.”
   I unlocked the door to the front room. Fritz hadn’t turned on all the lights, and it was dim. The two women were side by side on the divan, and Mike Walsh was in a chair, blinking at me as if he had been asleep.
   I said, “Mr. Wolfe would like to speak to Miss Fox.”
   Mike Walsh said, “I’m hungry.”
   Clara Fox said, “To all of us.”
   “First just you. Please. There’ll be some grub pretty soon, Mr. Walsh. If you’ll wait in here.”
   Clara Fox hesitated, then got up and preceded me. I shut the door, and she went back to her chair in front of Wolfe, the one the dick had sat in. Wolfe had emptied a glass and was filling it up again.
   “Will you have some beer. Miss Fox?”
   She shook her head. “Thank you. But I don’t like to discuss this with you alone, Mr. Wolfe. The others are just as much—”
   “To be sure. Permit me.” He wiggled a finger at her. “They shall join us presently. The fact is, I wish to touch on something else for a moment. Did you take that money from Mr. Muir’s desk?”
   She looked at him steadily. “We shouldn’t let things get confused. Are you acting now as the agent of the Seaboard Products Corporation?”
   ‘I’m asking you a question. You came here to consult me because you thought I had abilities. I have; I’m using them. Either answer my question or find abilities elsewhere. Did you take that money?”
   “No.”
   “Do you know who took it?”
   “No.”
   “Do you know anything about it?”
   “No. I have certain suspicions, but nothing specific about the money itself.”
   “Do you mean suspicions on account of the attitude of Mr. Perry and Mr. Muir toward you personally?”
   “Yes. Chiefly Mr. Muir.” “Good. Now this: Did you kill anyone this evening between five and six o’clock?”
   She stared at him. “Don’t be an idiot”
   He drank some beer, wiped his lips, and leaned back in his chair. “Miss Fox. The avoidance of idiocy should be the primary and constant concern ot every intelligent person. It is mine. I am sometimes successful. Take, for instance, your statement that you did not steal that money. Do I believe it? As a philosopher, I believe nothing. As a detective, I believe it enough to leave it behind me, hut am prepared to glance back over my shoulder. As a man, I believe it utterly. I assure you, my reason for the questions I am asking is not idiotic. For one thing, I am observing your face as you reply to them. Bear with me; we shall be getting somewhere, I think. Did you kill anyone this evening between five and six o’clock?”
   “No.”
   “Did Mr. Walsh or Miss Lindquist do so?”
   “Kill anyone?”
   Yes.”
   She smiled at him. “As a philosopher, I don’t know. I’m not a detective. As a woman, they didn’t.”
   “If they did, you have no knowledge of it?”
   “No.”
   “Good. Have you a dollar bill?”
   “I suppose I have.”
   “Give me one.”
   She shook her head, not in refusal, but in resigned perplexity at senseless antics. She looked in her bag and got out a dollar bill and handed it to Wolfe. He took it and unfolded it and handed it across to me.
   “Enter it, please, Archie. Retainer from Miss Clara Fox. And get Mr. Perry on the phone.” He turned to her. “You are now my client.”
   She didn’t smile. “With the understanding, I suppose, that I may—”
   “May sever the connection?” His creases unfolded. “By all means. Without notice.”
   I found Perry’s number and dialed it. After giving my fingerprints by television to some dumb kluck I finally got him on, and nodded to Wolfe to take it.
   Wolfe was suave. “Mr. Perry? This is Nero Wolfe. I have Mr. Goodwin’s report of his preliminary investigation. He was inclined to agree with your own attitude regarding the probable innocence of Clara Fox, and he thought we might therefore be able to render some real service to you. But by a curious chance Miss Fox called at our office this evening—she is here now, in fact—and asked us to represent her interests in the matter…. No, permit me, please…. Well, it seemed to be advisable to accept her retainer… Really, sir, I see nothing unethical …”
   Wolfe hated to argue on the telephone. He cut it as short as he could, and rang off, and washed it down with beer. He turned back to Clara Fox. “Tell me about your personal relations with Mr. Perry and Mr. Muir.”
   She didn’t answer right away. She was sitting there frowning at him. It was the first time I had seen her brow wrinkled, and I liked it better smoothed out. Finally she said, “I supposed you had already taken that case for Mr. Perry. I had gone to a lot of trouble deciding that you were the best man for us—Miss Lindquist and Mr. Walsh and Mr. Scovil and me—and I had already telephoned on Saturday and made the appointment with you, before I heard anything about the stolen money. I didn’t know until two hours ago that Mr. Perry had engaged you, and since we had the appointment I thought we might as well go through with it. Now you tell Mr. Perry you’re acting for me, not the Seaboard, and you say I’ve given you a retainer for that. That’s not straight. If you want to call that a retainer, it’s for the business I came to see you about, not that silly rot about the money. That’s nonsense.”
   Wolfe inquired, “What makes you think it’s nonsense?”
   “Because it is. I don’t know what the truth of it is, but as far as I’m concerned it’s nonsense.”
   Wolfe nodded. “I agree with you. That’s what makes it dangerous.”
   “Dangerous? How? If you mean I’ll lose my job, I don’t think so. Mr. Perry is the real boss there, and he knows I’m more than competent, and be can’t possibly believe I took that money. If this other business is successful, and I believe it will be, I won’t want the job anyhow.”
   “But you will want your freedom.” Wolfe sighed. “Really, Miss Fox, we are wasting time that may be valuable. Tell me, I beg you, about Mr. Perry and Mr. Muir. Mr. Muir hinted this afternoon that Mr. Perry is enjoying the usufructs of gallantry. Is that true?”
   “Of course not.” She frowned, and then smiled. “Calling it that, it doesn’t sound bad at all, does it? But he isn’t. I used to go to dinner and the theater with Mr. Perry fairly frequently, shortly after I started to work for Seaboard. That was during my adventuress phase. I was going to be an adventuress.”
   “Did something interrupt?”
   “Nothing but my disappointment. I have always been determined to get somewhere, not anywhere in particular, just somewhere. My father died when I was nine, and my mother when I was seventeen. She always said I was like my father. She paid for my schooling by sewing fat women’s dresses. I loved my mother passionately, and hated the humdrum she was sunk in and couldn’t get out of.”
   “She couldn’t find George Rowley.” “She didn’t try much. She thought it was fantastic. She wrote once to Harlan Scovil, but the letter was returned. After she died I tried various things, everything from hat-check girl to a stenographic course, and for three years I studied languages in my spare time because I thought I’d want to go all over the world. Finally, by a stroke of luck, I got a good job at the Seaboard three years ago. For the first time I had enough money so I could spend a little trying to find George Rowley and the others mentioned in father’s letter—1 realized I’d have to find some of the others so there would be someone to recognize George Rowley. I guess mother was right when she said I’m like father; I certainly had fantastic ideas, and I’m terribly confident that I’m a very unusual person. My idea at that time was that I wanted to get money from George Rowley as soon as possible, so I could pay that old debt of my father’s in California, and then go to Arabia. The reason I wanted to go to Arabia —”
   She broke off abruptly, looked startled, and demanded, “What in the name of heaven started me on that?”
   “I don’t know.” Wolfe looked patient. “You’re wasting time again. Perry and Muir?”
   “Well.” She brushed her hair back. “Not long after I started to work for Seaboard, Mr. Perry began asking me to go to the theater with him. He said that his wife had been sick in bed for eight years and he merely wanted companionship. I knew he was a multi-millionaire, and I thought it over and decided to become an adventuress. If you think that sounds like a loony kid, don’t fool yourself. For lots of women it has been a very exciting and satisfactory career. I never really expected to do anything much with Mr. Perry, because there was no stimulation in him, but I thought I could practice with him and at the same time keep my job. I even went riding with him, long after it got to be a bore. I thought I could practice with Mr. Muir, too, but I was soon sorry I had ever aroused his interest.”
   She drew her shoulders in a little, a shade toward the center of her, and let them out again, in delicate disgust. “It was Mr. Muir that cured me of the idea of being an adventuress, I mean in the classical sense. Of course I knew that to be a successful adventuress you have to deal with men, and they have to be rich, and seeing what Mr. Muir was like made me look around a little, and I realized it would be next to impossible to find a rich man it would be any fun to be adventurous with. Mr. Muir seemed to go practically crazy after he had had dinner with me once or twice. Once he came to my apartment and almost forced his way in, and he had an enormous pearl necklace in his pocketl Of course it was disgusting in a way, but it was even more funny than it was disgusting, because I have never cared for pearls at all. But the worst thing about Mr. Muir is his stubbornness. He’s a Scotchman, and apparently if he once gets an idea in his head he can’t get it out again—”
   Wolfe put in, “Is Mr. Muir a fool?”
   “Why … yes, I suppose he is.”
   “I mean as a businessman. A man of affairs. Is he a fool?”
   “No. Not that way. In fact, he’s very shrewd.”
   “Well, you are.” Wolfe sighed. “You are quite an amazing fool, Miss Fox. You know that Mr. Muir, who is a shrewd man, is prepared to swear out a warrant against you for grand larceny. Do you think that he would consider himself prepared if preparations had not actually been made? Why does he insist on immediate action? So that the preparations may not be interfered with, by design or by mischance. As soon as a warrant is in force against you, the police may search any property of yours, including that item of it where the thirty thousand dollars will be found. Couldn’t Mr. Muir have taken it himself from his desk and put it anywhere he wanted to, with due circumspection?”
   “Put it …” She stared at him. “Oh, no.” She shook her head. “That would be too low. A man would have to be a dirty scoundrel to do that.”
   “Well? Who should know better than you, an ex-adventuress, that the race of dirty scoundrels has not yet been exterminated? By the eternal, Miss Fox, you should be tied in your cradle! Where do you live?”
   “But, Mr. Wolfe … you could never persuade me …”
   “I wouldn’t waste time trying. Where do you live?”
   “I have a little flat on East Sixty-first Street.”
   “And what other items? We can disregard your desk at the office, that would not be conclusive enough. Do you have a cottage in the country? A trunk in storage? An automobile?”
   “I have a little car. Nothing else whatever.”
   “Did you come here in it?”
   “No. It’s in a garage on Sixtieth Street.”
   Wolfe turned to me. “Archie. What two can you get here at once?”
   I glanced at the clock. “Saul Panzer in ten minutes. If Fred Durkin’s not at the movies, him in twenty minutes. If he is, Orrie Gather in half an hour.”
   “Get them. Miss Fox will give you the key to her apartment and a note of authority, and also a note to the garage. Saul Panzer will search the apartment thoroughly. Tell him what he’s looking for, and if he finds it bring it here. Fred will get the automobile and drive it to our garage, and when he gets it there go through it, and leave it there. This alone will cost us twenty dollars, twenty times the amount of Miss Fox’s retainer. Everything we undertake nowadays seems to be a speculation.”
   I got at the telephone. Wolfe opened his eyes on Clara Fox. “You might learn if Miss Lindquist and Mr. Walsh will care to wash before dinner. It will be ready in five minutes.”
   She shook her head. “We don’t need to eat. Or we can go out for a bite.”
   “Great hounds and Cerberus!” He was about as dose to a tantrum as he ever got. “Don’t need to eat! In heaven’s name, are you camels, or bears in for the winter?”
   She got up and went to the front room to get them.

Chapter 6

   My dinner was interrupted twice. Saul Panzer came before I had finished my soup, and Fred Durkin arrived while we were in the middle of the beet and vegetables. I went to the office both times and gave them their instructions and told them some hurry would do.
   Wolfe made it a rule never to talk business at table, but we got a little forward at that, because he steered Hilda Lindquist and Mike Walsh into the talk and we found out things about them. She was the daughter of Victor Lindquist, now nearly eighty years old and in no shape to travel, and she lived with him on their wheat farm in Nebraska. Apparently it wasn’t coffee cups she snapped in her fingers, it was threshing machines. Clara Fox had finally found her, or rather her father, through Harlan Scovil, and she had come east for the clean-up on the chance that she might get enough to pay off a few dozen mortgages and perhaps get something extra for a new tractor, or at least a mule.
   Walsh had gone through several colors before fading out to his present dim obscurity. He had made three good stakes in Nevada and California and had lost all of them. He had tried his hand as a building contractor in Colorado early in the century, made a pile, and dropped it when a sixtyfoot dam had gone down the canyon three days after he had finished it.
   He had come back east and made a pass at this and that, but apparently had used up all his luck. At present he was night watchman on a constructing job up at 5^th and Madison, and he was inclined to be sore on account of the three dollars he was losing by paying a substitute in order to keep this appointment with Clara Fox. She had found him a year ago through an ad in the paper.
   Wolfe was the gracious host. He saw that Mike Walsh got two rye highballs and the women a bottle of claret, and like a gentleman he gave Walsh two extra slices of the beef, smothered with sauce, which he would have sold his soul for. But he wouldn’t let Walsh light his pipe when the coffee came. He said he had asthma, which was a lie. Pipe smoke didn’t bother him much, either. He was just sore at Walsh because he had had to give up the beef, and he took it out on him that way.
   We hadn’t any more than got back to the office, a little after nine o’clock, and settled into our chairs—the whole company present this time—when the doorbell rang. I went out to the front door and whirled the lock and slid the bolt, and opened it. Fred Durkin stepped in. He looked worried, and I snapped at him, “Didn’t you get it?”
   “Sure I got it.”
   “What’s the matter?”
   “Well, it was funny. Is Wolfe here? Maybe he’d like to hear it too.”
   I glared at him, fixed the door, and led him to the office. He went across and stood in front of Wolfe’s desk.
   “I got the car, Mr. Wolfe. It’s in the garage. But Archie didn’t say anything about bringing a dick along with it, so I pushed him off. He grabbed a taxi and followed me. When I left the car in the garage just now and walked here, he walked too. He’s out on the sidewalk across the street.”
   “Indeed.” Wolfe’s voice was thin; he disliked after-dinner irritations. “Suppose you introduce us to the dick first. Where did you meet him?”
   Fred shifted his hat to his other hand. He never could talk to Wolfe without getting fussed up, but I must admit there was often enough reason for it. Fred Durkin was as honest as sunshine, and as good a tailer as I ever saw, but he wasn’t as brilliant as sunshine. Warm and cloudy today and tomorrow. He said, “Well, I went to the garage and showed the note to the guy, and he said all right, wait there and he’d bring it down. He went off and in a couple of minutes a man with a wide mouth came up and asked me if I was going for a ride. I’d never saw him before, but I’d have known he was a city feller if I’d had my eyes shut and just touched him with my finger. I supposed he was working on something and was just looking under stones, so I just answered something friendly. He said if I was going for a ride I’d better get a horse, because the car I came for was going to remain there for the present.”
   Wolfe murmured, “So you apologized and went to a drug store to telephone here for instructions.”
   Fred looked startled. “No, sir, I didn’t. My instructions was to get that car, and I got it. That dick had no documents or nothing, in fact he didn’t have nothing but a wide mouth. I went upstairs with him after me. When the garage guy saw the kind of an argument it might be he just disappeared.
   I ran the car down on the elevator myself and got into the street and headed east. The dick jumped on the running board, and when I reached around to brush a speck off the windshield I accidentally pushed the dick off. By that time he was at Third Avenue and he hopped a taxi and followed me. When I got to Tenth Avenue, inside your garage, I turned the car inside out, but there was nothing there but tools and an old lead pencil and a busted dog leash and a half a package of Omar cigarettes and—”
   Wolfe put up a palm at him. “And the dick is now across the street?”
   “Yes, sir. He was when I come in.”
   “Excellent. I hope he doesn’t escape in the dark. Go to the kitchen and tell Fritz to give you a cyanide sandwich.”
   Fred shifted his hat. “I’m sorry, sir, if I—”
   “Go! Any kind of a sandwich. Wait in the kitchen. If we find ourselves getting into difficulties here, we shall need you.”
   Fred went. Wolfe leaned back in his chair and got his fingers laced on his belly; his lips were moving, out and in, and out and in. At length he opened his eyes enough for Clara Fox to see that he was looking at her.
   “Well. We were too late. I told you you were wasting time.”
   She lifted her brows. “Too late for what?”
   “To keep you out of jail. Isn’t it obvious? What reason could there be for watching your car except to catch you trying to go somewhere in it? And is it likely they would be laying for you if they had not already found the money?”
   “Found it where?”
   “I couldn’t say. Perhaps in the car itself. I am not a necromancer. Miss Fox. Now, before we—”
   The phone rang, and I took it. It was Saul Panzer. I listened and got his story, and then told him to hold the wire and turned to Wolfe.
   “Saul. From a pay station at Sixty-second and Madison. There was a dick playing tag with himself in front of Miss Fox’s address. Saul went through the apartment and drew a blank. Now he thinks the dick is sticking there, but he’s not sure. It’s possible he’s being followed, and if so should he shake the dick and then come here, or what?”
   “Tell him to come here. By no means shake the dick. He may know the one Fred brought, and in that case they might like to have a talk.”
   I told Saul, and hung up.
   Wolfe was still leaning back, with his eyes half closed. Mike Walsh sat with his closed entirely, his head swaying on one side, and his breathing deep and even in the silence. Hilda Lindquist’s shoulders sagged, but her face was flushed and her eyes bright. Clara Fox had her lips tight enough to make her look determined.
   Wolfe said, “Wake Mr. Walsh. Having attended to urgencies—in vain—
   we may now at our leisure fill in some gaps. Regarding the fantastic business of the Rubber Band. Mr. Walsh, a sharp blow with your hand at the back of your neck will help. A drink of water? Very well. Did I understand you to say, Miss Fox, that you have found George Rowley?”
   She nodded. “Two weeks ago.”
   “Tell me about it.”
   “But Mr. Wolfe … those detectives …”
   “To be sure. You remember I told you you should be tied in your cradle?
   For the present, this house is your cradle. You are safe here. We shall return to that little problem. Tell me about George Rowley.”
   She drew a breath. “Well … we found him. I began a long while ago to do what I could, which wasn’t much. Of course I couldn’t afford to go to England, or send someone, or anything like that. But I gathered some information. For instance, I learned the names of all the generals who had commanded brigades in the British Army during the war, and as well as I could from this distance I began to eliminate them. There were hundreds and hundreds of them still alive, and of course I didn’t know whetner the one I wanted was alive or not. I did lots of things, and some oЈ them were pretty bright if I am a fool. I had found Mike Walsh through an advertisement, and I got photographs of scores of them and showed them to him. Of course, the fact that George Rowley had lost the lobe of his right ear was a help. On several occasions, when I learned in the newspapers that a British general or ex-general was in New York, I managed to get a look at him, and sometimes Mike Walsh did too. Two weeks ago another one came, and in a photograph in the paper it looked as if the bottom of his right ear was off. Mike Walsh stood in front of his hotel all one afternoon when he should have been asleep, and saw him, and it was George Rowley.”
   Wolfe nodded. “That would be the Marquis of Clivers.”
   “How do you know that?”
   “Not by divination. It doesn’t matter. Congratulations, Miss Fox.”
   “Thank you. The Marquis of Clivers was going to Washington the next day, but he was coming back. I tried to see him that very evening, but couldn’t get to him. I cabled a connection I had made in London, and learned that the marquis owned big estates and factories and mines and a yacht. I had been communicating with Hilda Lindquist and Harlan Scovil for some time, and I wired them to come on and sent them money for the trip. Mr. Scovil wouldn’t take the money. He wrote me that he had never – taken any woman-money and wasn’t going to start.” She smiled at Wolfe and me too. “I guess he was afraid of adventuresses. He said he would sell some calves. Saturday morning I got a telegram that he would get here Monday, so I telephoned your office for an appointment. When I saw him this noon I showed him two pictures of the Marquis of Clivers, and be said it was George Rowley. I had a hard time to keep him from going to the hotel after the marquis right then.”
   Wolfe wiggled a finger at her, “But what made you think you needed me? I detect no lack of confidence in your operations to date.” “Oh, I always thought we’d have to have a lawyer at the windup. I had read about you and admired you.”
   “I’m not a lawyer.”
   “I shouldn’t think that would matter. I only know three lawyers, and if you saw them you would know why I chose you.”
   “You sound like a fool again.” Wolfe sighed. “Do you wish me to believe that I was selected for my looks?”
   “No, indeed. That would be … anyhow, I selected you. When I told you what your fee might be, I wasn’t exaggerating. Let’s say his estates and mines and so on are worth fifty million—”
   “Pounds?”
   “Dollars. That’s conservative. He agreed to pay half of it. Twenty-five million. But there are two of the men I can’t find. I haven’t found a trace of Rubber Coleman, the leader, or the man called Turtle-back. I have tried hard to find Rubber Coleman, because be had the papers, but I couldn’t. On the twenty-five million take off their share, one-third, and that leaves roughly sixteen million. Make allowances for all kinds of things, anything you could think of—take off, say, just for good measure, fifteen million. That leaves a million dollars. That’s what I asked him for a week ago.”
   “You asked who for? Lord Clivers?”
   “Yes.”
   “You said you were unable to see him.”
   “That was before he went to Washington. When he came back I tried again. I had made an acquaintance … he has some assistants with him on his mission—diplomats and so on—and I had got acquainted with one two weeks ago, and through him I got to the marquis, thinking I might manage it without any help. He was very unpleasant. When he found out what I was getting at, he ordered me out. He claimed he didn’t know what I was talking about, and when I wanted to show him the letter my father had written in 1918, he wouldn’t look at it. He told the young man whom he called to take me away that I was an adventuress.”
   She wasn’t through. But the doorbell rang, and I went to answer it. I thought it just possible that a pair might rush me, and there was no advantage in a roughhouse, so I left the bolt and chain on until I saw it was Saul Panzer. Then I opened up and let him in, and shut the door and slid the bolt again.
   Saul is about the smallest practicing dick, public or private, that I’ve ever seen, and he has the biggest scope. He can’t push over buildings because he simply hasn’t got the size, but there’s no other kind of a job he wouldn’t earn his money on. It’s hard to tell what he looks like, because you can’t see his face for his nose. He had a big long cardboard box under his arm.
   I took him to the office. As he sidled past a chair to get to Wolfe’s desk he passed one sharp glance around, and I knew that gave him a print of those three sitting there which would fade out only when he did.
   Wolfe greeted him. “Good evening, Saul.”
   “Good evening, Mr. Wolfe. Of course Archie told you my phone call. There’s not much to add. When I arrived the detective was there on the sidewalk. His name is Bill Purvil. I saw him once about four years ago in Brooklyn, when we had that Moschenden case. He didn’t recognize me on the sidewalk. But when I went in at that entrance he followed me. I figured it was better to go ahead. There was a phone in the apartment. If I found the package I could phone Archie to come and get into the court from Sixtieth Street, and throw it to him from a back window. When the detective saw I was going into that apartment with a key, he stopped me to ask questions, and I answered what occurred to me. He stayed out in die hall and I locked the door on the inside. I went through the place.
   The package isn’t there. I came out and the detective foUowed me downstairs to the sidewalk. I phoned from a drug store. I don’t think he tried to follow me, but I made sure it didn’t work if he did.”
   Wolfe nodded. “Satisfactory. And your bundle?”
   Saul got the box from under his arm and put it on the desk. “I guess it’s Bowers. It has a name on it, Drummond, the Park Avenue florist. It was on the floor of the hall right at the door of the apartment, apparently been delivered, addressed Miss Clara Fox. My instructions were to search only the apartment, so I hesitated to open this box, because it wasn’t in the apartment. But I didn’t want to leave it there, because it was barely possible that what you want was in it. So I brought it along.”
   “Good. Satisfactory again. May we open it. Miss Fox?”
   “Certainly.”
   I got up to help. Saul and I pulled off the fancy gray tape and took the lid off. Standing, we were the only ones who could see in. I said, “It’s a thousand roses.”
   Clara Fox jumped up to look. I reached in the box and picked up an envelope and took a card from the envelope. I squinted at it—it was scrawly writing—and read it out, “Francis Horrocks?”
   She nodded. “That’s my acquaintance. The man that ejected me for the Marquis of Clivers. He’s a young diplomat with a special knowledge of the Far East. Aren’t they beautiful? Look, Hilda. Smell. They are very nice.”
   She carried them to Wolfe. “Aren’t they a beautiful color, Mr. Wolfe? Smell.” She looked at Mike Walsh, but he was asleep again, so she put the box back on the desk and sat down.
   Wolfe was rubbing his nose which she had tickled with the roses. “Saul. Take those to the kitchen and have Fritz put them in water. Remain there. You must see my orchids. Miss Fox, but that can wait. Mr. Walsh! Archie, wake him, please.”
   I reached out and gave Walsh a dig, and he jerked up and glared at me. He protested, “Hey! It’s too warm in here. I’m never as warm as this after supper.”
   Wolfe wiggled a finger at him. “If you please, Mr. Walsh. Miss Fox has been giving us some details, such as your recognition of the Marquis of Clivers. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
   “Sure.” Walsh pulled the rips of his fingers across his eyes, and stretched his eyes open. “What about it?”
   “Did you recognize the Marquis of Clivers as George Rowley?”
   “Sure I did. Who says I didn’t?”
   “As yet, no one. Are you positive it was the same man?”
   “Yes. I told you at the table, I’m always positive.”
   “So you did. Among other things. You told me that through ancient habit, and on your post as a night watchman, you carry a gun. You also told me that you suspected Harlan Scovil of being an Englishman, and that all English blood was bad blood. Do you happen to have your gun with you? Could I see it?”
   “I’ve got a license.”
   “Of course. Could I see it? Just as a favor?”
   Walsh growled something to himself, but after a moment’s hesitation he leaned forward and reached to his hip and pulled out a gat. He looked at it, and rubbed his left palm caressingly over the barrel, and then got up and poked the butt at Wolfe. Wolfe took it, glanced at it, and held it out to me. I gave it a mild inspection. It was an old Folwell.44. It was loaded, the cylinder full, and there was no smell of any recent activity around the muzzle. I glanced at Wolfe and caught his little nod, and returned the cannon to Mike Walsh, who caressed it again before he put it back in his pocket.
   Clara Fox said, “Who’s wasting time now, Mr. Wolfe? You haven’t told us yet—”
   Wolfe stopped her. “Don’t begin again. Miss Fox. Please. Give me a chance to earn my share of that million. Though I must confess that my opinion is that you might all of you sell out for a ten-dollar bill and call it a good bargain. What have you to go on? Really nothing. The paper which George Rowley signed was entrusted to Rubber Coleman, whom you have been unable to find. The only other basis for a legal claim would be a suit by the man called Turtle-back to recover the value of his horse, and since Mr. Walsh has told us that Turtle-back was over fifty years old in 189?, he is in all likelihood dead. There are only two methods by which you can get anything out of the Marquis of Clivers; one is to attempt to establish a legal claim by virtue of contract, for which you would need a lawyer, not a detective. You have yourself already done the detective work, quite thoroughly. The other method is to attempt to scare the marquis into paying you, through threat of public exposure of his past. That is an ancient and often effective method, technically known as blackmail. It is not—”
   She interrupted him, cool but positive. “It isn’t blackmail to try to collect something from a man that he promised to pay.”
   Wolfe nodded. ‘It’s a nice point. Morally he owes it. But where’s the paper he signed? Anyway, let me finish. I myself am in a quandary. When you first told me the nature of the commission you were offering me, I was prepared to decline it without much discussion. Then another element entered in, of which you are stall ignorant, which lent the affair fresh interest. Of course, interest is not enough; before that comes the question, who is going to pay me? I shall expect—”
   Mike Walsh squawked, “Ten per cent!”
   Clara Fox said, “I told you, Mr. Wolfe—”
   “Permit me. I shall expect nothing exorbitant. It happens that my bank account is at present in excellent condition, and therefore my cupidity is comparatively dormant. Still, I have a deep aversion to working without getting paid for it. I have accepted you. Miss Fox, as my client. I may depend on you?”
   She nodded impatiently. “Of course you may. What is the other element that entered in of which I am still ignorant?”
   “Oh. That.” Wolfe’s half-closed eyes took in all three faces. “At twentyfive minutes to six this evening, less than five hours ago, on Thirty-first Street near Tenth Avenue, Harlan Scovil was shot and killed.”
   Mike Walsh jerked up straight in his chair. They all gaped at Wolfe.
   Wolfe said, “He was walking along the sidewalk, and someone going by in an automobile shot him five times. He was dead when a passerby reached him. The automobile has been found, empty of course, on Ninth Avenue.”
   Clara Fox gasped incredulously, “Harlan Scovil!” Hilda Lindquist sat with her fists suddenly clenched and her lower lip pushing her upper lip toward her nose. Mike Walsh was glaring at Wolfe. He exploded suddenly, “Ye’re a howling idiot!”
   Wolfe’s being called an idiot twice in one evening was certainly a record. I made a note to grin when I got time. Clara Fox was saying, “But Mr.Wolfe … it can’t … how can …”
   Walsh went on exploding, “So you hear of some shooting, and you want to smell my gun? Ye’re an idiot! Of all the dirty—” He stopped himself suddenly and leaned on his hands on his knees, and his eyes narrowed. He looked pretty alert and competent for a guy seventy years old. “To hell with that. Where’s Harlan? I want to see him.”
   Wolfe wiggled a finger at him. “Compose yourself, Mr. Walsh. All in time. As you see, Miss Fox, this is quite a complication.”
   “It’s terrible. Why … it’s awful. He’s really killed?”
   Hilda Lindquist spoke suddenly. “I didn’t want to come here. I told you that. I thought it was a wild goose chase. My father made me. I mean, he’s old and sick and he wanted me to come because he thought maybe we could get enough to save the farm.”
   Wolfe nodded. “And now, of course …”
   Her square chin stuck out. “Now I’m glad I came, I’ve often heard my father talk about Harlan Scovil. He would have been killed anyway, whether I came or not, and now I’m glad I’m here to help. You folks will have to tell me what to do, because I don’t know. But if that marquis thinks he can refuse to talk to us and then shoot us down on the street … we’ll see.”
   “I haven’t said the marquis shot him. Miss Lindquist.”
   “Who else did?”
   I thought from her tone she was going to tell him not to be an idiot, but she let it go at that and looked at him.
   Wolfe said, “I can’t tell you. But I have other details for you. This afternoon Harlan Scovil came to this office. He told Mr. Goodwin that he came in advance of the time for the interview to see what kind of a man I was. At twenty-six minutes after five, while he was waiting to see me, he received a telephone call from a man. He left at once. You remember that shortly after you arrived this evening a caller came and you were asked to go to the front room. The caller was a city detective. He informed us of the murder, described the corpse, and said that in his pocket had been found a paper bearing my name and address, and also the names of Clara Fox, Hilda Lindquist, Michael Walsh, and the Marquis of Clivers. Scovil had been shot just nine minutes after he received that phone call here and left the house.”
   Clara Fox said, “I saw him write those names on the paper. He did it while he was eating lunch with me.”
   “Just so. Mr. Walsh. Did you telephone Scovil here at five-twenty-six?”
   “Of course not. How could I? That’s a damn fool question. I didn’t know he was here.”
   “I suppose not. But I thought possibly Scovil had arranged to meet you here. When Scovil arrived it happened that there was another man in the office, one of my clients, and Scovil approached him and told him he wasn’t Mike Walsh.”
   ‘“Well, was he? I’m Mike Walsh, look at me. The only arrangement I had to meet him was at six o’clock, through Miss Fox. Shut up about it. I asked you where Harlan is. I want to see him.”
   “In time, sir. Miss Fox. Did you telephone Scovil here?”
   She shook her head. “No. Oh, no. I thought you said it was a man.”
   “So it seemed. Fritz might possibly have been mistaken. Was it you who phoned. Miss Lindquist?”
   “No. I haven’t telephoned anyone in New York except Clara.”
   “Well.” Wolfe sighed. “You see the little difficulty, of course. Whoever telephoned knew that Scovil was in New York and knew he was at this office. Who knew that except you three?”
   Hilda Lindquist said, “The Marquis of Clivers knew it.”
   “How do you know that?”
   “I don’t know it. I see it. Clara had been to see him and he had threatened to have her arrested for annoying him. He had detectives follow her, and they saw her this noon with Harlan Scovil, and they followed Harlan Scovil here and then notified the Marquis of Clivers. Then he telephoned—”
   “Possible, Miss Lindquist. I admit it’s possible. If you substitute for the detective a member of the marquis’s entourage, even more possible. But granted that we rather like that idea, do you think the police will? A British peer, in this country on a government mission of the highest importance, murdering Harlan Scovil on Thirty-first Street? I have known quite a few policemen, and I am almost certain that idea wouldn’t appeal to them.”
   Mike Walsh said, “To hell with the dumb Irish cops.”
   Clara Fox asked, “The detective that was here … the one that told you about… about the shooting. Our names were on that paper. Why didn’t he want to see us?”
   “He did. Badly. But I observed that there were no addresses on the paper except my own, so he is probably having difficulty. I decided not to mention that all of you happened to be here at the moment, because I wanted a talk with you and I knew he would monopolize your evening.”
   “The detective at my apartment… he may have been there … about this …”
   “No. There had hardly been time enough. Besides, there was one at the garage too.”
   Clara Fox looked at him, and took a deep breath. “I seem to be in a fix.”
   “Two fixes. Miss Fox.” Wolfe rang for beer. “But it is possible that before we are through we may be able to effect a merger.”

Chapter 7

   I only half heard that funny remark of Wolfe’s. Parts of my brain were skipping around from this to that and finding no place to settle down. As a matter of fact I had been getting more uncomfortable all evening, ever since Slim Foltz had told us the names on that paper and Wolfe had let him go without telling him that the three people he was looking for were sitting in our front room– He was working on a murder, and the fact that the name of a bird like that marquis was on that paper meant that they weren’t going to let anything slide. They would find those three people sooner or later, and when they learned where they had been at the time Slim Foltz called on us, they would be vexed.
   There were already two or three devoted public servants who thought Wolfe was a little tricky, and it looked as if this was apt to give them entirely too much encouragement. I knew pretty well how Wolfe worked, and when he let Foltz go I had supposed he was going to have a little talk with our trio of visitors and then phone someone like Cramer at Headquarters or Dick Morley of the District Attorney’s office, and arrange for some interviews. But here it was past ten o’clock, and he was just going on with an interesting conversation. I didn’t like it.
   I heard his funny remark though, about two fixes and effecting a merger. I got his idea, and that was one of the points my brain skipped to. I saw how there might possibly be a connection between the Rubber Band business and Clara Fox being framed for lifting the thirty grand. She had gone to this British gent and spilled her hand to him, and he had given her the chilly how now and had her put out. But he had been badly annoyed what. You might even say scared if he hadn’t been a nobleman. And a few days later the frame-up reared its ugly head. It would be interesting to find out if the Marquis of Clivers was acquainted with Mr. Muir, and if so to what extent.
   Clara Fox had said Muir was a Scotchman, so you couldn’t depend on him any more than you could an Englishman, maybe not as much. As usual, Wolfe was ahead of me, but he hadn’t lost me, I was panting along behind.
   Meanwhile I had to listen too, for the conversation hadn’t stopped. At the end of Wolfe’s remark about the merger, Mike Walsh suddenly stood up and announced, “I’ll be going.”
   Wolfe looked at him. “Not just yet, Mr. Walsh. Be seated.”
   But he stayed on his feet. “I’ve got to go. I want to see Harlan.”
   “Mr. Scovil is dead. I beg you, sir. There are one or two points I must still explain.”
   Walsh muttered, “I don’t like this. You see I don’t like it?” He glared at Wolfe, handed me the last half of it, and sat down on the edge of his chair.
   Wolfe said, “It’s getting late. We are confronted by three distinct problems, and each one presents difficulties. First, the matter of the money missing from the office of the Seaboard Products Corporation. So far that appears to be the personal problem of Miss Fox, and I shall discuss it with her later.
   Second, there is your joint project of collecting a sum of money from the Marquis of Clivers. Third, there is your joint peril resulting from the murder of Harlan Scovil.”
   “Joint hell.” Walsh’s eyes were narrowed again. “Say we divide the peril up, mister. Along with the money.”
   “If you prefer. But let us take the second problem first. I see no reason for abandoning the attack on the Marquis of Clivers because Mr. Scovil has met a violent death. In fact, that should persuade us to prosecute it. My advice would be this—Archie, your notebook. Take a letter to the Marquis of Clivers, to be signed by me. Salute him democratically, ‘Dear sir:
   “‘I have been engaged by Mr. Victor Lindquist and his daughter. Miss Hilda Lindquist, as their agent to collect an amount which you have owed them since 1895. In that year, inSilver City,Nevada, with your knowledge and consent, Mr. Lindquist purchased a horse from a man known as Turtleback, and furnished thehorse to you for your use in an urgent private emergency. You signed a paper before your departure acknowledging theobligation, but of course your debt would remain a legal obligation without that.

   M ‘At that time and place good horses were scarce and valuable; fur thermore, for reasons peculiar to your situation, that horse was of extraordinary value to you at that moment. Miss Lindquist, representing her fa ther, states that that extraordinary value can be specified as $100,000. That amount is therefore due from you, with accrued interest at six per cent to date.

   ” ‘I trust that you will pay theamount due without delay and without forcing us to thenecessity of legal action. I am not an attorney. If you prefer to make thepayment through attorneys representing both sides, we shall be glad to make that arrangement.’”
   Wolfe leaned back. “All right. Miss Lindquist?”
   She was frowning at him. “He can’t pay with money for murdering Harlan Scovil.”
   “Certainly not. But one thing at a time. I should explain that this claim has no legal standing, since it has expired by time, but the marquis might not care to proceed to that defense in open legal proceedings. We are on the fringe of blackmail, but our hearts are pure. I should also explain that at sixper-cent compound interest money doubles itself in something like twelve years, and that the present value of that claim as I have stated it in the letter is something over a million dollars. A high price for a horse, but we are only using it to carry us to a point of vantage. This has your approval. Miss Fox?”
   Clara Fox was looking bad. Sitting there with the fingers of one hand curled tight around the fingers of the other, she wasn’t nearly as cool and sweet as she had been that afternoon when Muir had declared right in front of her that she was a sneak thief.
   “No,” she said. “I don’t think we want … no, Mr. Wolfe. I’m just realizing … it’s my fault Mr. Scovil was killed. I started all this. Just for that money … no! Don’t send that letter. Don’t do anything.”
   “Indeed.” Wolfe drank some beer, and put the glass down with his usual deliberation. “It would seem that murder is sometimes profitable, after all.”
   Her fingers tightened. “Profitable?”
   “Obviously. If, as seems likely, Harlan Scovil was killed by someone involved in this Rubber Band business, the murderer probably had two ends in view; to remove Scovil and to frighten the rest of you. To scare you off.
   He appears to have accomplished both purposes. Good for him.”
   “We’re not scared off.”
   “You’re ready to quit.”
   Hilda Lindquist put in, with her chin up, “Not me. Send that letter.”
   “Miss Fox?”
   She pulled her shoulders in, and out again. “All right. Send it.”
   “Mr. Walsh?”
   “Deal me out. You said you wanted to explain something.”
   “So I did.” Wolfe emptied his glass. “We’ll send the letter, then. The third problem remains. I must call your attention to these facts: First, the police are at this moment searching for all three of you—in your case, Miss Fox, two separate assignments of police. Second, the police are capable of concluding that the murderer of Harlan Scovil is someone who knew him or knew of him, and was in this neighborhood this evening. Third, it is probable that there is no one in New York who ever heard of Harlan Scovil except you three and Clivers; or, if there is such a one, it is not likely that the police will discover him—in fact, the idea will not occur to them until they have exhausted all possibilities in connection with you three. Fourth, when they find you and question you, they will suspect you not only of knowledge of Scovil’s murder, but also of some preposterous plot against Lord Clivers, since his name was on that paper.
   “Fifth. When they question you, there will be three courses open to you. You may tell the truth, in which case your wild and extravagant tale will reinforce their suspicions and will be enough to convict you of almost anything, even murder. Or you may try to tone your tale down, tell only a little and improvise to fill in the gaps, whereupon they will catch you in lies and go after you harder than ever. Or you may assert your constitutional rights and refuse to talk at all; if you do that they will incarcerate you as material witnesses and hold you without bail. As you see, it is a dilemma with three horns and none of them attractive. As Miss Fox put it, you’re in a fix. And any of the three courses will render you hors de combat for any further molestation of the Marquis of Clivers.”
   Hilda Lindquist’s chin was way up in the air. Mike Walsh was leaning forward with his eyes on Wolfe narrower than ever. Clara Fox had stopped squeezing her hand and had her lips pressed tight She opened them to say, “All right. We’re game. Which do we do?”
   “None.” Wolfe sighed. “None of those. Confound it, I was bom romantic and 1 shall never recover from it. But, as I have said, I expect to be paid. I hope I have made it clear that it will not do for the police to find you until we are ready for them to. Have I demonstrated that?”
   The two women asked simultaneously, “Well?”
   “Well … Archie, bring Saul.”
   I jumped from habit and not from enthusiasm. I was half sore. I didn’t like it. I found Saul in the kitchen drinking port wine and telling Fred and Fritz stories, and led him to the office. He stood in front of Wolfe’s desk.
   “Yes, sir.”
   Wolfe spoke, not to him. “Miss Lindquist, this is Mr. Saul Panzer. I would trust him further than might be thought credible. He is himself a bachelor, but has acquaintances who are married and possibly even friends, with the usual living quarters—an apartment or a house. Have you anything to say to him?”
   But the Lindquist mind was slow. She didn’t get it. Clara Fox asked Wolfe, “May I?”
   “Please do.”
   She turned to Saul. “Miss Lindquist would like to be in seclusion for a while—a few days—she doesn’t know how long. She thought you might know of a place … one of your friends …”
   Saul nodded. “Certainly, Miss Lindquist.” He turned to Wolfe. “Is there a warrant out?”
   “No. Not yet.”
   “Shall I give the address to Archie?”
   “By no means. If I need to communicate with Miss Lindquist I can do so through General Delivery. She can notify me on the telephone what branch.”
   “Shall we go out the back way onto Thirty-fourth Street?”
   “I was about to suggest it. When you are free again, return here. Tonight.”
   Wolfe moved his eyes. “Is there anything of value in your luggage at the hotel. Miss Lindquist?”
   She was standing up. She shook her head. “Not much. No.”
   “Have you any money?”
   “I have thirty-eight dollars and my ticket home.”
   “Good. Opulence. Good night. Miss Lindquist. Sleep well.”
   Clara Fox was up too. She went to the other woman and put her hands on her shoulders and kissed her on the mouth. “Good night, Hilda. It’s rotten, but … keep your chin up.”
   Hilda Lindquist said in a loud voice, “Good night, everybody,” and turned and followed Saul Panzer out of the room. In a few seconds I could hear their footsteps on the stairs leading down to the basement, where a door opened onto the court in the rear. We were all looking at Wolfe, who was opening a bottle of beer. I was thinking, the old lummox certainly fancies he’s putting on a hot number, I suppose he’ll send Miss Fox to board with his mother in Buda Pesth. It looked to me like he was stepping off over his head.
   He looked at Mike Walsh. “Now, sir, your turn. I note your symptoms of disapproval, but we are doing the best we can. In the kitchen is a man named Fred Durkin, whom you have seen. Within his capacity, he is worthy of your trust and mine. I would suggest—”
   “I don’t want any Durkin.” Walsh was on his feet again. “I don’t want anything from you at all. I’ll just be going.”
   “But Mr. Walsh.” Wolfe wiggled a finger at him. “Believe me, it will not pay to be headstrong. I am not by nature an alarmist, but there are certain features of this affair—”
   “So I notice.” Walsh stepped up to the desk. “The features is what I don’t like about it.” He looked at Clara Fox, then at me, then at Wolfe, letting us know what the features were. “I may be past me prime, but I’m not in a box yet. What kind of a shenanigan would ye like to try on an old man, huh? I’m to go out and hide, am I? Do I get to ask a question or two?”
   “That’s three.” Wolfe sighed. “Go ahead.”
   Walsh whirled on me. “You, Goodwin’s your name? Was it you that answered the phone yesterday, the call that came for Harlan Scovil?”
   “No.” I grinned at him. “I wasn’t here.”
   “Where was you?”
   “At the office of the Seaboard Products Corporation, where Miss Fox works.”
   “Ha! Was you indeed. You wasn’t here. I suppose it couldn’t have been you that phoned here to Harlan.”
   “Sure it could have, but it wasn’t. Listen, Mr. Walsh—”
   “I’ve listened enough. I’ve been listening to this Clara Fox for a year and looking at her pretty face, and I had no reason to doubt her maybe, and this is what’s come out of it, I’ve helped lead my old friend Harlan Scovil into an ambush to his death. My old friend Harlan.” He stopped abrupdy, and shut his lips tight, and looked around at us while a big fat tear suddenly popped out of each of his eyes and rolled on down, leaving a mark across his wrinkles. He went on, “I ate a meal with you. A meal and three drinks. Maybe I’d like to puke it up someday. Or maybe you’re all square shooters, I don’t know, but I know somebody ain’t, and I’m going to find out who it is. What’s this about them being after Miss Fox for stealing money? I can find out about that too. And if I want anything collected from this English Marquis nobleman, I can collect it myself. Good night to ye all.” He turned and headed for the door.
   Wolfe snapped, “Get him, Archie.”
   Remembering the gun on his hip, I went and folded myself around him and locked him. He let out a snarl and tried some twisting and unloosed a couple of kicks at my shins, but in four seconds he had sense enough to see it was no go. He quivered a little and then stood quiet, but I kept him tight.
   He said, “It’s me now, is it?”
   Wolfe spoke across the room at him. “You called me an idiot, Mr. Walsh. I return the compliment. What is worse, you are hot-headed. But you are an old man, so there is humanity’s debt to you. You may go where you please, but I must warn you that every step you take may be a dangerous step.
   Furthermore, when you talk, every word may be dangerous not only to you but to Miss Fox and Miss Lindquist. I strongly advise you to adopt the precautions—”
   “I’ll do me own precautions.”
   “Mike!” Clara Fox came, her hand out. “Mike, you can’t be thinking …what Mr. Wolfe says is right. Don’t desert us now. Turn him loose, Mr. Goodwin. Shake hands, Mike.”
   He shook his head. “Did you see him grab me, and all I was doing was walking out on me own feet? I hate the damn detectives and always have, and what was he doing at your office? And if you’re my enemy, Clara Fox, God help you, and if not then you can be my friend. Not now. When he turns me loose I’ll be going.”
   Wolfe said, “Release him, Archie. Good night, Mr. Walsh.”
   I let my muscles go and stepped back, Mike Walsh put a hand up to feel his ribs, turned to look at me, and then to Wolfe. He said, “But I’m no idiot. Show me that back way.”
   Clara Fox begged him, “Don’t go. Mike.”
   He didn’t answer her. I started for the kitchen, and he followed me after stopping in the hall for his hat and coat. I told Fred to see him through the court and the fence and the passage leading to 34th Street, and switched on the basement light for them. I stood and watched them go down. I hadn’t cared much for Wolfe’s hot number anyhow, and now it looked like worse than a flop, with that wild Irishman in his old age going out to do his own precautions. But I hadn’t argued about letting him go, because I knew that kind as well as Wolfe did and maybe better.
   When I went back to the office Clara Fox was still standing up. She asked, “Did he really go?”
   I nodded. “With bells on.”
   “Do you think he meant what he said?” She turned to Wolfe. “I don’t think he meant it at all. He was just angry and frightened and sony. I know how he felt. He felt that Harlan Scovil was killed because we started this business, and now he doesn’t want to go away and hide. I don’t either. I don’t want to run away.”
   “Then it is lucky you won’t have to.” Wolfe emptied his glass, returned it to the tray, and slid the tray around to the other side of the pen block. That meant that he had decided he had had enough beer for the day, and therefore that he would probably open only one more bottle before going upstairs, provided he went fairly soon. He sighed. “You understand, Miss Fox, this is something unprecedented. It has been many years since any woman has slept under this roof. Not that I disapprove of them, except when they attempt to function as domestic animals. When they stick to the vocations for which they are best adapted, such as chicanery, sophistry, self-adornment, cajolery, mystification and incubation, they are sometimes splendid creatures. Anyhow … you will find our south room, directly above mine, quite comfortable. I may add that I am foolishly fond of good form, good color, and fine texture, and I have good taste in those matters. It is a pleasure to look at you.
   You have unusual beauty. I say that to inform you that while the idea of a woman sleeping in my house is theoretically insupportable, in this case I am willing to put up with it.”
   “Thank you. Then I’m to hide here?”
   “You are. You must keep to your room, with the curtains drawn. Elaborate circumspection will be necessary and will be explained to you. Mr. Goodwin will attend to that. Should your stay be prolonged, it may be that you can join us in the dining room for meals; eating from a tray is an atrocious insult both to the food and the feeder; and in that case, luncheon is punctually at one and dinner at eight. But before we adjourn for the night there are one or two things I need still to know; for instance, where were you and Miss Lindquist and Mr. Walsh from five to six o’clock this evening?”
   Clara Fox nodded. “I know. That’s why you asked me if I had killed anybody, and I thought you were being eccentric. But of course you don’t believe that. I’ve told you we were looking for Harlan Scovil.”
   “Let’s get a schedule. Put it down, Archie. Mr. Goodwin informed me that you left the Seaboard office at a quarter past five.”
   She glanced at me. “Yes, about that. That was the time I was supposed to get Harlan Scovil at his hotel on Forty-fifth Street, and I didn’t get there until nearly half past five. He wasn’t there. I looked around on the street and went a block to another hotel, thinking possibly he had misunderstood me, and then went back again and he still wasn’t there. They said he had been out all afternoon as far as they knew. Hilda was at a hotel on Thirtieth Street, and I had told Mike Walsh to be there in the lobby at a quarter to six, and I was to call there for them. Of course I was late, it was six o’clock when I got there, and we decided to try Harlan Scovil’s hotel once more, but he wasn’t there. We waited a few minutes and then came on without him, and got here at six-thirty.” She stopped, and chewed on her lip. “He was dead … then. While we were there waiting for him. And I was planning … I thought…”
   “Easy, Miss Fox. We can’t resurrect. So you know nothing of Miss Lindquist’s and Mr. Walsh’s whereabouts between five and six. Easy, I beg you.
   Don’t tell me again I’m an idiot or you’ll have me believing it. I am merely filling in a picture. Or rather, a rough sketch. I think perhaps you should leave us here with it and go to bed. Remember, you are to keep to your room, both for your own safety and to preserve me from serious annoyance. Mr. Goodwin—”
   “I know.” She frowned at him and then at me. “I thought of that when you said I was to stay here. You mean what they call accessory after the fact—”
   “Bosh.” Wolfe straightened in his chair and his hand went forward by automatism, but there was no beer there. He sent a sharp glance at me to see if I noticed it, and sat back again. “I can’t be an accessory after a fact that never existed. I am acting on the assumption that you are not criminally involved either in larceny or in murder. If you are, say so and get out. If you are not, go to bed. Fritz will show you your room.” He pushed the button. “Well?”
   “I’ll go to bed.” She brushed her hair back. “I don’t think I’ll sleep.”
   “I hope you will, even without appetite for it. At any rate, you won’t walk the floor, for I shall be directly under you.” The door opened, and Wolfe turned to it “Fritz. Please show Miss Fox to the south room, and arrange towels and so on. In the morning, take her roses to her with breakfast, but have Theodore slice the stems first. And by the way. Miss Fox, you have nothing with you. The niceties of your toilet you will have to forego, but I believe we can furnish a sleeping garment. Mr. Goodwin owns some handsome silk pajamas which his sister sent him on his birthday, from Ohio. They are hideous, but handsome. I’m sure he won’t mind. I presume, Fritz, you’ll find them in the chest of drawers near the window. Unless … would you prefer to get them for Miss Fox yourself, Archie?”
   I could have thrown my desk at him. He knew damn well what I thought of those pajamas. I was so sore I suppose it showed in my cheeks, because I saw Fritz pull in his lower lip with his teeth. I was slower on the come-back than usual, and I never did get to make one, for at that instant the doorbell rang, which was a piece of luck for Nero Wolte. I got up and strode past them to the hall.
   I was careless for two reasons. I was taking it for granted it was Saul Panzer, back from planting Hilda Lindquist in seclusion; and the cause of my taking something for granted when I shouldn’t, since that’s always a bad thing to do in our business, was that my mind was still engaged with Wolfe’s vulgar attempt to be funny. Anyhow, the fact remains that I was careless. I whirled the lock and took off the bolt and pulled the door open.
   They darned near toppled me off my pins with the edge of the door catching my shoulder. I saved myself from falling and the rest was reHex.
   There were two of them, and they were going right on past in a hurry. I sprang back and got in front and gave one of them a knee in the belly and used a stiff-arm on the other. He started to swing, but I didn’t bother about i4 I picked up the one that had stopped my knee and just used him for a whisk broom and depended on speed and my 180 pounds. The combination swept the hall out. We went through the door so fast that the first guy stumbled and fell down the stoop, and I dropped the one I had in my arms and turned and pulled the door shut and heard the lock click. Then I pushed the bell-button three times. The guy that had fallen down the stoop, the one who had tried to plug me, was on his feet again and coming up, with words.
   “We’re officers—”
   “Shut up.” I heard footsteps inside, and I called through the closed door. “Fritz? Tell Mr. Wolfe a couple of gentlemen have called and we’re staying out on the porch for a talk. And hey! Those things are in the bottom drawer.”

Chapter 8

   I said, “What do you mean, officers? Army or navy?”
   He looked down at me. He was an inch taller than me to begin with, and he was stretching it. He made his voice hard enough to scare a schoolgirl right out of her socks. “Listen, bud. I’ve heard about you. How’d you like to take a good nap on some concrete?”
   The other officer was back on his ankles too, but he was a short guy. He was built something like a whisk broom, at that. I undertook to throw oil on the troubled waters. Ordinarily I might have enjoyed a nice rough cussingmatch, but I wanted to find out something and get back inside. I summoned a friendly grin.
   “What the hell, how did I know you bad badges? Okay, thanks, sergeant. All I knew was the door bumping me and a cyclone going by. Is that a way to inspire confidence?”
   “All right, you know we’ve got badges now.” The sergeant humped up a shoulder and let it drop, and then the other one. “Let us in. We want to see Nero Wolfe.”
   “I’m sorry, he’s got a headache.”
   “We’ll cure it for him. Listen. A friend of mine warned me about you once. He said the time would come when you would have to be taken down. Maybe that’s the very thing I came here for. But so far it’s a matter of law. Open that door or I’ll open it myself. I want to see Mr. Wolfe on police business.”
   “There’s no law about that. Unless you’ve got a warrant.’
   “You couldn’t read it anyhow. Let us in.”
   I got impatient. “What’s the use wasting time? You can’t go in. The floor’s just been scrubbed. Wolfe wouldn’t see you anyhow, at this time of night. Tell me what you want like a gentleman and a cop, and I’ll see if I can help you.”
   He glared at me. Then he put his hand inside to his breast pocket and pulled out a document, and I had a feeling in my knees like a steering wheel with a shimmy. If it was a search warrant the jig was up right there. He unfolded it and held it for me to look, and even in the dim light from the street lamp one glance was enough to start my heart off again. It was only a warrant to take into custody. I peered at it and saw among other things the name Ramsey Muir, and nodded.
   The sergeant grunted, “Can you see the name? Clara Fox.”
   “Yeah, it’s a nice name.”
   “We’re going in after her. Open up.”
   I lifted the brows. “In here? You’re crazy.”
   “All right, we’re crazy. Open the door.”
   I shook my head, and got out a cigarette, and lit up. I said, “Listen, sergeant. There’s no use wasting the night in repartee. You know damn well you’ve got no more right to go through that door than a cockroach unless you’ve got a search warrant. Ordinarily Mr. Wolfe is more than willing to cooperate with you guys; if you don’t know that, ask Inspector Cramer. So am I. Hell, some of my best friends are cops. I’m not even sore because you tried to rush me and I got excited and thought you were mugs and pushed you. But it just happens that we don’t want company of any kind at present.”
   He grunted and glared. “Is Clara Fox in there?”
   “Now that’s a swell question.” I grinned at him. “Either she isn’t, in which case I would say no, or she is and I don’t want you to know it, in which case would I say yes? I might at that, if she was somewhere else and I didn’t want you to go there to look for her.”
   “Is she in there?”
   I just shook my head at him.
   “You’re harboring a fugitive from justice.”
   “I wouldn’t dream of such a thing.”
   The short dick, the one I had swept the hall with, piped up in a tenor, “Take him down for resisting an officer.”
   I reproved him. “The sergeant knows better than that. He knows they wouldn’t book me, or if they did I read about a man once that collected enough to retire on for false arrest.”
   The big one stood and stared into my frank eyes for half a minute, then turned and descended the stoop and looked up and down the street. I didn’t know whether he expected to see the Russian Army or a place to buy a drink. He called up to his brother in arms, “Stay here, Steve. Cover that door. I’ll go and phone a report and probably send someone to cover the rear. When that bird turns his back to go in the house give him a kick in the ass.”
   I waved at him, “Good night, sergeant,” pushed the button three shorts, took my key from my pocket, unlocked the door, and went in. If that tenor had tickled me I’d have pulled his nose. I slid the bolt in place. Fritz was standing in the middle of the hall with my automatic in his hand. I said, “Watch out, that thing’s loaded.”
   He was serious. “I know it is, Archie. I thought possibly you might need it.”
   “No, thanks. I bit their jugulars. It’s a trick.”
   Fritz giggled and handed me the gun, and went to the kitchen. I strolled into the office. Clara Fox was gone, and I was reflecting that she might be looking at herself in the mirror with my silk pajamas on. I had tried them on once, but had never worn them. I had no more than got inside the office when the doorbell rang. As I returned to the entrance and opened the door, leaving the bolt and chain on, I wondered if it was the tenor calling me back to get my kick. But this time it was Saul Panzer. He stooc? there and let me see him. I asked him through the crack, “Did you find her?”
   “No. I lost her. Lost the trail.”
   “You’re a swell bird dog.”
   I opened up and let him in, and took him to the office. Wolfe was leaning back in his chair with his eyes closed. The tray had been moved back to its usual position, and there was a glass on it with fresh foam sticking to the sides, and two bottles. He was celebrating the hot number he was putting on.
   I said, “Here’s Saul.”
   “Good.” The eyes stayed shut. “All right, Saul?”
   “Yes, sir.”
   “Of course. Satisfactory. Can you sleep here?”
   “Yes, sir. I stopped by and got a toothbrush.”
   “Indeed. Satisfactory. The north room, Archie, above yours. Tell Fred he is expected at eight in the morning, and send him home. If you are hungry, Saul, go to the kitchen; if not, take a book to the front room. There will be instructions shortly.”
   I went to the kitchen and pried Fred Durkin out of his chair and escorted him to the hall and let him out, having warned him not to stumble over any foreign objects that might be found on the stoop. But the dick had left the stoop and was propped against a fire plug down at the curb. He jerked himself up to take a stare at Fred, and I was hoping he’d be dumb enough to suspect it was Clara Fox with pants on, but that was really too much to expect. I barricaded again and returned to the office.
   Saul had gone to the front room to curl up with a book. Wolfe stayed put behind his desk. I went to the kitchen and negotiated for a glass of milk, and then went back and got into my own swivel and started sipping. When a couple of minutes passed without any sign from Wolfe, I said indifferently, “That commotion in the hall a while ago was the Mayor and the Police Commissioner calling to give you the freedom of the city prison. I cut their throats and put them in the garbage can.”
   “One moment, Archie. Be quiet.”
   “Okay. I’ll gargle my milk. It’ll probably be my last chance for that innocent amusement before they toss us in the hoosegow. I remember you told me once that there is no moment in any man’s life too empty to be dramatized. You seem to think that’s an excuse for filling life up with—”
   “Confound you.” Wolfe sighed, and I saw his eyelids flicker. “Very well. Who was it in the hall?”
   “Two city detectives, one a sergeant no less, with a warrant for the arrest of Clara Fox sworn to by Ramsey Muir. They tried to take us by storm, and I repulsed them single-handed and single-footed. Satisfactory?”
   Wolfe shuddered. “I grant there are times when there is no leisure for finesse. Are they camping?”
   “One’s out there on a fire plug. The sergeant went to telephone. They’re going to cover the back. It’s a good thing Walsh and Hilda Lindquist got away. I don’t suppose—”
   The phone rang. I circled on the swivel and put down my milk and took it. “Hello, this is the office of Nero Wolfe.” Someone asked me to wait. Then someone else: “Hello, Wolfe? Inspector Cramer.”
   I asked him to hold it and turned to Wolfe. “Cramer. Up at all hours of the night.”
   As Wolfe reached for the phone on his desk he tipped me a nod, and I kept my receiver and reached for a pencil and notebook.
   Cramer was snappy and crisp, also he was surprised and his feelings were hurt. He had a sad tale. It seemed that Sergeant Heath, one of the best men in his division, in pursuance of his duty to make a lawful arrest, had attempted to call at the office of Nero Wolfe for a consultation and had been denied admittance. In fact, he had been forcibly ejected. What kind of cooperation was that?
   Wolfe was surprised too, at this protest. At the time that his assistant, Mr. Goodwin, had hurled the intruders into the street single-handed, he had not known they were city employees; and when that fact was disclosed, their actions bad already rendered their friendly intentions open to doubt. Wolfe was sorry if there had been a misunderstanding.
   Cramer grunted. “Okay. There’s no use trying to be slick about it. What’s it going to get you, playing for time? I want that girl, and the sooner the better.”
   “Indeed.” Wolfe was doing slow motion. “You want a girl?”
   “You know I do. Goodwin saw the warrant.”
   “Yes, he told roe he saw a warrant. Larceny, he said it was. But isn’t this unusual, Mr. Cramer? Here it is nearly midnight, and you, an inspector, in a vindictive frenzy over a larceny—”
   “I’m not in a frenzy. But I want that girl, and I know you’ve got her there. It’s no use, Wolfe. Less than half an hour ago I got a phone call that Clara Fox was at that moment in your office.”
   “It costs only a nickel to make a phone call. Who was it?”
   “That’s my business. Anyhow, she’s there. Let’s talk turkey. If Heath goes back there now, can he get her? Yes or no.”
   “Mr. Cramer.” Wolfe cleared his throat. “I shall talk turkey. First, Heath or anyone else coming here now will not be permitted to enter the house without a search warrant.”
   “How the hell can I get a search warrant at midnight?”
   “I couldn’t say. Second, Miss Clara Fox is my client, and, however ardently I may defend her interests, I do not expect to violate the law. Third, I will not for the present answer any question, no matter what its source, regarding her whereabouts.”
   “You won’t. Do you call that cooperation?”
   “By no means. I call it common sense. And there is no point in discussing it.”
   There was a long pause, then Cramer again: “Listen, Wolfe. This is more important than you think it is. Can you come down to my office right away?”
   “Mr. Cramer!” Wolfe was aghast. “You know I cannot.”
   “You mean you won’t. Forget it for once. I shouldn’t leave here. I tell you this is important.”
   “I’m sorry, sir. As you know, I leave my house rarely, and only when impelled by exigent personal considerations. The last time I left it was in the taxicab driven by Dora Chapin, for the purpose of saving the life of my assistant, Mr. Goodwin.”
   Cramer cussed a while. “You won’t come?”
   “No.”
   “Can I come there?”
   “I should think not, under the circumstances. As I said, you cannot enter without a search warrant.”
   “To hell with a search warrant. I’ve got to see you. I mean, come and talk with you.”
   “Just to talk? You are making no reservations?”
   “No. This is straight. I’ll be there in ten minutes.”
   “Very well.” I saw the creases in Wolfe’s cheeks unfolding. “I’ll try to restrain Mr. Goodwin.”
   We hung up. Wolfe pushed the button for Fritz. I shut my notebook and tossed it to the back of the desk, and picked up the glass and took a sip of milk. Then, glancing at the clock and seeing it was midnight, I decided I had better reinforce my endurance and went to the cabinet and poured myself a modicum of bourbon. It felt favorable going down, so I took another modicum. Fritz had brought Wolfe some beer, and it was already flowing to its destiny.
   I said, “Tell me where Mike Walsh is and I’ll go and wring his neck. He must have gone to the first drug store and phoned headquarters. We should have had Fred tail him.”
   Wolfe shook his head. “You always dive into the nearest pool, Archie. Some day you’ll hit a rock and break your neck.”
   “Yeah? What now? Wasn’t it Walsh that phoned him?”
   “I have no idea. I’m not ready to dive. Possibly Mr. Cramer will furnish us a sounding. Tell Saul to go to bed and come to my room for instructions at eight o’clock.”
   I went to the front room and gave Saul the program, and bade him good night, and went back to my desk again. There was a little white card lying there, fallen out of my notebook, where I had slipped it some hours before and forgotten about it. I picked it up and looked at it. Francis Horrocks.
   I said, “I wonder how chummy Clara Fox got with that acquaintance she made. The young diplomat that sent her the roses. It was him that got her in to see his boss. Where do you suppose he fits in?”
   “Fits in to what?”
   So that was the way he felt. I waved a hand comprehensively. “Oh, life. You know, the mystery of the universe. The scheme of things.”
   “I’m sure I don’t know. Ask him.”
   “Egad, I shall. I just thought I’d ask you first. Don’t be so damn snooty. The fact is, I feel rotten. That Harlan Scovil that got killed was a good guy. You’d have liked him; he said no one could ever get to know a woman well enough to leave her around loose. Though I suppose you’ve changed your mind, now that there’s a woman sleeping in your bed—”
   “Nonsense. My bed—”
   “You own all the beds in this house except mine, don’t you? Certainly it’s your bed. Is her door locked?”
   “It is. I instructed her to open it only to Fritz’s voice or yours.”
   “Okay. I’m apt to wander in there any time. Is there anything you want to tell me before Cramer gets here? Such as who shot Harlan Scovil and where that thirty grand is and what will happen when they pick Mike Walsh up and he tells them all about our convention this evening? Do you realize that Walsh was here when Saul took Hilda Lindquist away? Do you realize that Walsh may be in Cramer’s office right now? Do you realize—”
   “That will do, Archie. Definitely.” Wolfe sat up and poured beer. “I realize up to my capacity. As I told Mr. Walsh, I am not an alarmist, but I certainly realize that Miss Fox is in more imminent danger than any previous client I can call to mind; if not danger of losing her life, then of having it irretrievably ruined. That is why I am accepting the hazard of concealing her here.
   As for the murder of Harlan Scovil, a finger of my mind points straight in one direction, but that is scarcely enough for my own satisfaction and totally insufficient for the safety of Miss Fox or the demands of legal retribution.
   We may leam something from Mr. Cramer, though I doubt it. There are certain steps to be taken without delay. Can Orrie Gather and Johnny Keems be here at eight in the morning?”
   “I’ll get them. I may have to pull Johnny off—”
   “Do so. Have them here by eight if possible, and send them to my room.”
   He sighed. “A riot for a levee, but there’s no help for it. You will have to keep to the house. Before we retire certain arrangements regarding Miss Fox will need discussion. And by the way, the letter I dictated on behalf of our other client. Miss Lindquist, should be written and posted with a special-delivery stamp before the early-morning collection. Send Fritz out with it.”
   “Then I’d better type it now, before Cramer gets here.”
   “As you please.”
   I turned and got the typewriter up and opened my notebook, and rattled it off. I grinned as I wrote the “Dear sir,” but the grin was bunk, because if Wolfe hadn’t told me to be democratic I would have been up a stump and probably would have had to try something like “Dearest Marquis.” From the article I had read the day before I knew where he was. Hotel Portland.
   Wolfe signed it, and I got Fritz and let him out the front door and waited there till he came back. The short dick was still out there.
   I was back in the office but not yet on my sitter again, when the doorbell rang. I wasn’t taking any chances, since Fred had gone home and Saul was upstairs asleep. I pulled the curtain away from the glass panel to get a view of the stoop, including corners, and when I saw Cramer was there alone I opened up. He stepped in and I shut the door and bolted it and then extended a paw for his hat and coat. And it wasn’t so silly that I kept a good eye on him either, since I knew he had been enforcing the law for thirty years.
   He mumbled, “Hello, son. Wolfe in the office?”
   “Yeah. Walk in.”

Chapter 9

   Wolfe and the inspector exchanged greetings. Cramer sat down and got out a cigar and bit off the end, and held a match to it. Wolfe got a hand up and pinched his nostrils between a thumb and a forefinger to warn the membranes of the assault that was coming. I was in my chair with my notebook on my knee, not bothering to camouflage.
   Cramer said, “You know, you’re a slick son-of-a-gun. Do you know what I was trying to decide on my way over here?”
   Wolfe shook his head. “I couldn’t guess.”
   “I bet you couldn’t. I decided it was a toss-up. Whether you’ve got that Fox woman here and you’re playing for time or waiting for daylight to spring something, or whether you’ve sent her away for her health and you’re kidding us to make us think she’s here so we won’t start nosing for her trail. For instance, I don’t suppose it could have been this Goodwin here that phoned my office at half past eleven?”
   “I shouldn’t think so. Did you, Archie?”
   “No, sir. On my honor I didn’t.”
   “Okay.” Cramer got smoke in his windpipe and coughed it out. “I know there’s no use trying to play poker with you, Wolfe. I quit that years ago.
   I’ve come to lay some cards on the table and ask you to do the same. In fact, the Commissioner says we’re not asking, we’re demanding. We’re taking no chances—”
   “The Police Commissioner? Mr. Hombert?” Wolfe’s brows were up.
   “Right. He was in my office when I phoned you. I told you, this is more important than you think it is. You’ve stepped into something.”
   “You don’t say so.” Wolfe sighed. “I was sure to, sooner or later.”
   “Oh, I’m not trying to impress you. I’ve quit that too. I’m just telling you. As I told the Commissioner, you’re tricky and you’re bard to get ahead of, but I’ve never known you to slip in the mud. By and large, and of course making allowances, you’ve always been a good citizen.”
   “Thank you. Let us go on from there.”
   “Right.” Cramer took a puff and knocked off ashes. “I said I’d show you some cards. First, there’s the background, I’d better mention that. You know how it is nowadays, everybody’s got it in for somebody else, and half of them have gone cuckoo. When a German ship lands here a bunch of Jews go and tear the flag off it and raise general hell. If a Wop professor that’s been kicked out of Italy tries to give a lecture a gang of Fascists haul him down and beat him up. When you try your best to feed people that haven’t got a job they turn Communist on you and start a riot. It’s even got so that when a couple of bank presidents have lunch at the White House, the servants have to search the Boor for banana peels that they may have put there for the President to slip on. Everyone has gone nuts.”
   Wolfe nodded. “Doubtless you are correct. I don’t get around much. It sounds bewildering.”
   “It is. To get down to particulars, when any prominent foreigners come here, we have to watch our step. We don’t want anything happening. For instance, you’d be surprised at the precautions we have to take when the German Ambassador comes up from Washington for a banquet. You might think there was a war on. As a matter or fact, there isi No one’s ready for a scrap but everyone wants to hit first. Whoever lands at this port nowadays, you can be sure there’s someone around that’s got it in for him.”
   “It might be better if everybody stayed at home.”
   “Huh? Oh. That’s their business. Anyway, that’s the background. A cou pie of weeks ago a man called the Marquis of Clivers came here from England.”
   “I know. I’ve read about him.”
   “Then you know what he came for.”
   Wolfe nodded. “In a general way. A high diplomatic mission. To pass out slices of the Orient.”
   “Maybe, I’m not a politician, I’m a cop. I was when I pounded the pavement thirty years ago, and I sdll am. But the Marquis of Clivers seems to be as important as almost anybody. I understand we get the dope on that from the Department of State. When he landed here a couple of weeks ago we gave him protection, and saw him off to Washington. When he came back, eight days ago, we did the same.”
   “The same? Do you mean you have men with him constantly?”
   Cramer shook his head. “Not constantly. All public appearances, and a sort of general eye out. We have special men. If we notice anything or hear of anything that makes us suspicious, we’re on the job. That’s what I’m coming to. At five-thirty-five tnis afternoon, just four blocks from here, a man was shot and killed. In his pocket he had a paper—”
   Wolfe showed a palm. “I know all about that, Mr. Cramer. I know the man’s name, I know be had left my office only a few minutes before he was killed, and I know that the name of the Marquis of Clivers was on the paper. The detective that was here, Mr. Foltz I believe his name was, showed it to me.”
   “Oh. He did. Well?”
   “Well… I saw the names on the paper. My own was among them. But, as I explained to Mr. Foltz, I had not seen the man. He had arrived at our office, unexpected and unannounced, and Mr. Goodwin had—”
   “Yeah.” Cramer took his cigar from his mouth and hitched forward. “Look here, Wolfe. I don’t want to get into a chinning match with you, you’re better at it than I am, I admit it. I’ve talked with Foltz, I know what you told him. Here’s my position: there’s a man in this town representing a foreign government on important business, and I’m responsible both for his safety and his freedom from annoyance. A man is shot down on the street, and on a paper in his pocket we find the name of the Marquis of Clivers, and other names. Naturally I wouldn’t mind knowing who killed Harlan Scovil, but finding that name there makes it a good deal more than just another homicide. What’s the connection and what does it mean? The Commissioner says we’ve got to find out damned quick or it’s possible we’ll have a first-rate mess on our hands. It’s already been bungled a little. Like a dumb flatfoot rookie, Captain Devore went to see the Marquis of Clivers this evening without first consulting headquarters.”
   “Indeed. Will you have some beer, Mr. Cramer?”
   “No. The marquis just stared at Devore as if he was one of the lower animals, which he was, and said that possibly the dead man was an insurance salesman and the paper was a list of prospects. Later on the Commissioner himself telephoned the marquis, and by that time the marquis had remembered that a week ago today a woman by the name of Clara Fox had called on him with some kind of a wild tale, trying to get money, and he had had her put out. So there’s a tie-up. It’s some kind of a plot, no doubt about it, and since it’s interesting enough so that someone took the trouble to bump off this Harlan Scovil, you couldn’t call it tiddly-winks. Your name was on that paper. I know what you told Foltz. Okay. What I’ve got to do is find those other three, and I should have been in bed two hours ago. First let me ask you a plain straight question: What do you know about the connection between Clara Fox, Hilda Lindquist, Michael Walsh, and the Marquis of Clivers?”
   Wolfe shook his head, slowly. “That won’t do, Mr. Cramer.”
   “It’ll do me. Will you answer it?” Cramer stuck his cigar in his mouth and tilted it up.
   Wolfe shook his head again. “Certainly not. Permit me, please. Let us frame the question differently, like this: What have I been told regarding the relations between those four people which would either solve the problem of the murder of Harlan Scovil, or would threaten the personal safety of the Marquis of Clivers or subject him to undeserved or illegal annoyance? Will you accept that as your question?”
   Cramer scowled at him. “Say it again.’
   Wolte repeated it.
   Cramer said, “Well … answer it.”
   “The answer is, nothing.”
   “Huh? Bellywash. I’m asking you, Wolfe—” Wolfe’s palm stopped him, and Wolfe’s tone was snappy. “No more. I’ve finished with that. I admit your right to call on me, as a citizen enjoying the opportunities and privileges of the City of New York, not to hinder—even to some extent assist—your efforts to defend a distinguished foreign guest against jeopardy and improper molestation. Also your efforts to solve a murder. But here are two facts for you. First, it is possible that your two worthy enterprises will prove to be incompatible. Second, as far as I am concerned, for the present at least, that question and answer are final. You may have other questions that I may be disposed to reply to. Shall we try?”
   Cramer, chewing his cigar, looked at him. “You know something, Wolfe? Someday you’re going to fall off and get hurt.”
   “You said those very words to me, in this room, eight years ago.”
   “I wouldn’t be surprised if I did.” Cramer put his dead half-chewed cigar in the ash tray, took out a fresh one, and sat back. “Here’s a question. What do you mean about incompatible? I suppose it was the Marquis of Clivers that pumped the lead in Harlan Scovil. There’s a thought.”
   “I’ve already had it. It might very well have been. Has he an alibi?”
   “I don’t know. I guess the Commissioner forgot to ask him. You got any evidence?”
   “No. No fragment.” Wolfe wiggled a finger. “But I’ll tell you this. It is important to me, also, that the murder of Harlan Scovil be solved. In the interest of a client. In fact, two.”
   “Oh. You’ve got clients.”
   “I have. I have told you that there are various questions I might answer if you cared to ask them. For instance, do you know who was sitting in your chair three hours ago? Clara Fox. And in that one? Hilda Lindquist. And in that? Michael Walsh. That, I believe, covers the list on that famous paper, except for the Marquis of Clivers. I am sorry to say he was absent.”
   Cramer had jerked himself forward. He leaned back again and observed, “You wouldn’t kid me.”
   “I am perfectly serious.”
   Cramer stared at him. He scraped his teeth around on his upper lip, took a piece of tobacco from his tongue with his fingers, and kept on staring. Finally he said, “All right. What do I ask next?”
   “Well … nothing about the subject of our conference, for that was private business. You might ask where Michael Walsh is now. I would have to reply, I have no idea. No idea whatever. Nor do I know where Miss Lindquist is. She left here about two hours ago. The commission I have undertaken for her is a purely civil affair, with no impingements on the criminal law. My other client is Clara Fox. In her case the criminal law is indeed concerned, but not the crime of murder. As I told you on the telephone, I will not for the present answer any question regarding her wherea bouts.”
   “All right. Next?”
   “Next you might perhaps permit me a question. You say that you want to see these people on account of the murder of Harlan Scovil, and in connection with your desire to protect the Marquis of Clivers. But the detectives you sent, whom Mr. Goodwin welcomed so oddly, had a warrant for her arrest on a charge of larceny. Do you wonder that I was, and am, a little skeptical of your good faith?”
   “Well.” Cramer looked at his cigar. “If you collected all the good faith in this room right now you might fill a teaspoon.”
   “Much more, sir, if you included mine.” Wolfe opened his eyes at him.
   “Miss Fox is accused of stealing. How do you know, justly or unjustly? You thought she was in my house. Had you any reason to suppose that I would aid a person suspected of theft to escape a trial by law? No. If you thought she was here, could you not have telephoned me and arranged to take her into custody tomorrow morning, when I could have got her release on bail? Did you need to assault my privacy and insult my dignity by having your bullies burst in my door in order to carry off a sensitive and lovely young woman to a night in jail? For shame, sir! Pfui!”
   Wolfe poured himself a glass of beer.
   Cramer shook his head slowly back and forth. “By God, you’re a worldbeater. I hand it to you. You know very well, Wolfe, I wasn’t interested in any larceny. I wanted to talk with her about murder and about this damned marquis.”
   “Bah. After your talk, would she or would she not have been incar cerated?”
   “I suppose she would. Hell, millions of innocent people have spent a night in jail, and sometimes much longer.”
   “The people I engage to keep out of it don’t. If what you wanted was a talk, why the warrant? Why the violent and hostile onslaught?”
   Cramer nodded. “That was a mistake. I admit it. I’ll tell you the truth, the Commissioner was there demanding action. And the phone call came. I don’t know who it was. He not only told me that Clara Fox was in your house, he also told me that the same Clara Fox was wanted for stealing money from the Seaboard Products Corporation. I got in touch with another department and learned that a warrant for her arrest had been executed late this afternoon. It was the Commissioner’s idea to get the warrant and use it to send here and get her in a hurry.”
   I went on and got the signs for that down in my notebook, but my mind wasn’t on that, it was on Mike Walsh. It was fairly plain that Wolfe had let one get by when he had permitted Walsh to walk out with no supervision, considering that New York is full not only of telephones, but also of subways and railroad trains and places to hide. And for the first time I put it down as a serious speculation whether Walsh could have had a reason to croak his dear old friend Harlan Scovil. Seeing Wolfe’s lips moving slowly out and in, I suspected that the taste in his mouth was about the same as mine.
   Cramer was saying, “Come on, Wolfe, forget it. You know what most Police Commissioners are like. They’re not cops. They think all you have to do is flash a badge and strong men burst into tears. Be a sport and help me out once. I want to see this Fox woman. I’ll take your word for Walsh and Lindquist and keep after them, but help me out on Clara Fox. If you’ve got her here, trot her out. If you haven’t, tell me where to find her. If you’ve turned her loose too, which isn’t a bad trick, show me her trail. She may be your client, but I’m not kidding when I say that the best thing you can do for her right now, and damn quick, is to let me see her. I don’t care anything about any larceny—”
   Wolfe interrupted. “She does. I do.” He shook his head. “The larceny charge is of course in charge of the District Attorney’s office; you haven’t the power to affect it one way or another. I know that. As for the Marquis of Clivers, he is in no danger from Clara Fox that you need to protect him from. And as regards the murder of Harlan Scovil, she knows as little about that as I do. In fact, even less, since it is barely possible that I know who killed him.”
   Cramer looked at him. He puffed his cigar and kept on looking. At length he said, ‘Well. It’s a case of murder. I’m in charge of the Homicide Squad. I’m listening.”
   “That’s all. I volunteered that.”
   Cramer looked disgusted. “It can’t be all. It’s either too much or not enough. You’ve said enough to make you a material witness. You know what we can do with material witnesses if we want to.”
   “Yes, I know.” Wolfe sighed. “But you can’t very well lock me up, for then I wouldn’t be free to unravel this tangle for my client—and for you. I said, barely possible.”
   He sat up straight, abruptly. “Barely possible, sir! Confound all of you! You marquises that need protection, you hyenas of finance, you upholders of the power to persecute and defame! And don’t mistake this outburst as a display of moral indignation; it is merely the practical protest of a man of business who finds his business interfered with by ignorance and stupidity. I expect to collect a fee from my client. Miss Fox. To do that I need to prosecute a claim for her, for a legal debt, I need to clear her from the false accusation of larceny, and I fear I need to discover who murdered Harlan Scovil. Those are legitimate needs, and I shall pursue them. If you want to protect your precious marquis, for God’s sake do so!
   Surround him with a ring of iron and steel, or immerse him in antiseptic jelly! But don’t annoy me when I’m trying to work! It is past one o’clock, and I must be up shortly after six, and Mr. Goodwin and I have things to do. I have every right to advise Miss Fox to avoid unfriendly molestation.
   If you want her, search for her. I have said that I will answer no question regarding her whereabouts, but I will tell you this much: if you undertake to invade these premises with a search warrant, you won’t find her here.”
   Wolfe’s half a glass of bear was flat, but he didn’t mind that. He reached for it and swallowed it. Then he took the handkerchief from his breast pocket and wiped his lips. “Well, sir?”
   Cramer put his cigar stub in the tray, rubbed the palms of his hands together for a while, pulled at the lobe of his ear, and stood up– He looked down at Wolfe.
   “I like you, you know. You know damn well I do. But this thing is to some extent out of my hands. The Commissioner was talking on the telephone this evening with the Department of Justice. That’s the kind of a layout it is. They might really send and get you. That’s a friendly warning.”
   “Thank you, sir. You’re going? Mr. Goodwin will let you out.”
   I did. I went to the hall and held his coat for him, and when I pulled the curtain aside to survey the stoop before opening the door he chuckled and slapped me on the back. That didn’t make me want to kiss him. Naturally he knew when an apple was too high to reach without a ladder, and naturally there’s no use letting a guy know you’re going to sock him until you’re ready to haul off. I saw his big car with a driver there at the curb and there was a stranger on the sidewalk. Apparently the tenor had been relieved.
   I went back to the office and sat down and yawned. Wolfe was leaning back with his eyes wide open, which meant he was sleepy. We looked at each other. I said, “So if he comes with a search warrant he won’t find her here. That’s encouraging. It’s also encouraging that Mike Walsh is being such a big help. Also that you know who killed Harlan Scovil, like I know who put the salt in the ocean. Also that we’re tied hand and foot with the Commissioner himself sore at us.” I yawned. “I guess I’ll prop myself up in bed tomorrow and read and knit.”
   “Not tomorrow, Archie. The day after, possibly. Your notebook.”
   I got it, and a pencil. Wolfe began.
   “Miss Fox to breakfast with me in my room at seven o’clock. Delay would be dangerous. Do not forget the gong. You are not to leave the house. Saul, Fred, Orrie, and Keems are to be sent to my room immediately upon arrival, but singly. Arrange tonight for a long-distance connection with London at eight-thirty, Hitchcock’s office. From Miss Fox, where does Walsh live and where is he employed as night watchman. As early as possible, call Morley of the District Attorney’s office and I’ll talk to him. Have Fritz bring me a copy of this when he wakes me at six-thirty. From Saul, complete information from Miss Lindquist regarding her father, his state of health, could he travel in an airplane, his address and telephone number in Nebraska. Phone Murger’s—they open at eight-thirty—for copies of Metropolitan Biographies, all years available. Explain to Fritz and Theodore procedure regarding Miss Fox, as follows.. “
   He went on, in the drawling murmur that he habitually used when giving me a set-up. I was yawning, but I got it down. Some of it sounded like he was having hallucinations or else trying to make me think he knew things I didn’t know. I quit yawning for grinning while he was explaining the procedure regarding Miss Fox.
   He went to bed. After I finished the typing and giving a copy to Fritz and a few other chores, I went to the basement to take a look at the back door, and looked out the front to direct a Bronx cheer at the gumshoe on guard. Up the stairs, I continued to the third Boor to take a look at the door of the south room, but I didn’t try it to see if it was locked, thinking it might disturb her. Down again, in my room, I looked in the bottom drawer to see if Fritz had messed it up getting out the pajamas. It was all right. I hit the hay.

Chapter 10

   When I leave my waking up in the morning to the vagaries of nature, it’s a good deal like other acts of God—you can’t tell much about it ahead of time. So Tuesday at six-thirty I staggered out of bed and fought my way across the room to turn off the electric alarm clock on the table. Then I proceeded to cleanse the form and the phiz and get the figure draped for the day. By that time the bright October sun had a band across the top fronts of the houses across the street, and I thought to myself it would be a pity to have to go to jail on such a fine day.
   At seven-thirty I was in my comer in the kitchen, with Canadian bacon, pancakes, and wild-thyme honey which Wolfe got from Syria. And plenty of coffee. The wheels had already started to turn. Clara Fox, who had told Fritz she had slept like a log, was having breakfast with Wolfe in his room.
   Johnny Keems had arrived early, and he and Saul Panzer were in the dining room punishing pancakes. With the telephone I had pulled Dick Morley, of the District Attorney’s office, out of bed at his home, and Wolfe had talked with him. It was Morley who would have lost his job, and maybe something more, but for Wolfe pulling him out of a hole in the BanisterSchurman business about three years before.
   With my pancakes I went over the stories of Scovil’s murder in the morning papers. They didn’t play it up much, but the accounts were fairly complete. The tip-off was that he was a Chicago gangster, which gave me a grin, since he looked about as much like a gangster as a prima donna. The essentials were there, provided they were straight: no gun had been found.
   The car had been stolen from where some innocent perfume salesman had parked it on 29th Street. The closest eyewitness had been a man who had been walking along about thirty feet behind Harlan Scovil, and it was he who had got the license number before he dived for cover when the bullets started flying. In the dim light he hadn’t got a good view of the man in the car, but he was sure it was a man, with his hat pulled down and a dark overcoat collar turned up, and he was sure he had been alone in the car.
   The car had speeded off across 3ist Street and turned at the comer. No one had been found who had noticed it stopping on Ninth Avenue, where it had later been found. No fingerprints … and so forth and so forth.
   I finished my second cup of coffee and got up and stretched and from then on I was as busy as a pickpocket on New Year’s Eve. When Fred and Orrie came I let them in, and after they had got their instructions from Wolfe I distributed expense money to all four oЈ them and let them out again. The siege was still on. There were two dicks out there now, one of them about the size of Charles Laughton before he heard beauty calling, and every time anyone passed in or out he got the kind of scrutiny you read about. I got the long-distance call through to London, and Wolfe talked from his room to Ethelbert Hitchcock, which I consider the all-time low for a name for a snoop, even in England. I phoned Murger’s for the copies of Metropolitan Biographies, and they delivered them within a quarter of an hour and I took them up to the plant rooms, as Wolfe had said he would glance at them after nine o’clock.
   As I was going out I stopped where Theodore Horstmann was turning out some old Cattleyas trianae and growled at him, “You’re going to get shot in the gizzard.”
   I swear to God he looked pale.
   I phoned Henry H. Barber, the lawyer that we could count on for almost anything except fee-splitting, to make sure he would be available on a minute’s notice all day, and to tell him that he was to consider himself retained, through us, by Miss Clara Fox, in two actions: a suit to collect a debt from the Marquis of Clivers, and a suit for damages through false arrest against Ramsey Muir. Likewise, in the first case. Miss Hilda Lindquist.
   It looked as if I had a minute loose, so I mounted the two flights to the south room and knocked on the door, and called out my name. She said come in, and I entered.
   She was in the armchair, with books and magazines on the table, but none of them was opened. Maybe she had slept like a log, but her eyes looked tired. She frowned at me, I said, ‘“You shouldn’t sit so close to the window. If they wanted to bad enough they could see in here from that Thirty-fourth Street roof.”
   She glanced around. “I shouldn’t think so, with those curtains.”
   “They’re pretty thin. Let me move you back a little, anyhow.” She got up, and I shoved the chair and table toward the bed. “I’m not usually nervous, but this is a stunt we’re pulling.”
   She sat down again and looked up at me. “You don’t like it, do you, Mr. Goodwin? I could see last night you didn’t approve of it. Neither do I.”
   I grinned at her. “Bless your dear little heart, what difference does that make? Nero Wolfe is putting on a show and we’re in the cast. Stick to the script, don’t forget that.”
   “I don’t call it a show.” She was frowning again. “A man has been murdered and it was my fault. I don’t like to hide, and I don’t want to. I’d rather—”
   I showed her both palms. “Forget it. You came to get Wolfe to help you, didn’t you? All right, let him. He may be a nut, but you’re lucky that he spotted the gleam of honesty in your eye or you’d be in one sweet mess this minute. You behave yourself. For instance, if that phone there on the stand is in any way a temptation …”
   She shook her head. “If it is, I’ll resist it”
   “Well, there’s no use leaving it here anyhow.” I went and pulled the connection out of the plug and gathered the cord and instrument under my arm. “I learned about feminine impulses in school. There goes the office phone. Don’t open the door and don’t go close to the windows.”
   I beat it and went down two steps at a time. It was Dick Morley on the phone, with a tale. I offered to connect him with Wolfe in the plant rooms, but he said not to disturb him, he could give it to me. He had had a little trouble. The Clara Fox larceny charge was being handled by an Assistant District Attorney named Frisbie whom Morley knew only fairly well, and Frisbie hadn’t seemed especially inclined to open up, hut Morley had got some facts. A warrant for Clara Fox’s arrest, and a search warrant for her apartment, had been issued late Monday afternoon. The apartment had not been searched because detectives under Frisbie’s direction had gone first to the garage where she kept her car, and had found in it, wrapped in a newspaper under the back seat, a package of hundred dollar bills amounting to $30,000. The case was considered airtight. Frisbie’s men no longer had the warrant for arrest because it had been turned over to Inspector Cramer at the request of the Police Commissioner.
   I thanked Morley and hung up and went upstairs to the plant rooms and told Wolfe the sad story. He was in the tropical room trimming wilts. When I finished he said, “We were wrong, Archie. Not hyenas. Hyenas wait for a carcass. Get Mr. Perry on the phone, connect it here, and take it down.”
   I went back to the office. It wasn’t so easy to get Perry. His secretary was reluctant, or he was, or they both were, but I finally managed to get him on and put him through to Wolfe. Then I began a fresh page of the notebook.
   Perry said he was quite busy, he hoped Wolfe could make it brief. Wolfe said he hoped so too, that first he wished to learn if he had misunderstood Perry Monday afternoon. He had gathered that Perry had believed Miss Fox to be innocent, had been opposed to any precipitate action, and had desired a careful and complete investigation. Perry said that was correctWolfe’s tone got sharp. “But you did not know until after seven o’clock last evening that I was not going to investigate for you, and the warrant for Miss Fox’s arrest was issued an hour earlier than that. You would not call that precipitate?”
   Perry sounded flustered. “Well … precipitate … yes, it was. It was, yes. You see … you asked me yesterday if I am not the fount of justice in this organization. To a certain extent, yes. But there is always … well … the human element. I am not a czar, neither in fact nor by temperament. When you phoned me last evening you may have thought me irritable—as a matter of fact, I thought of calling you back to apologize. The truth is I was chagrined and deeply annoyed. I knew then that a warrant had been issued for the arrest at the instance of Mr. Muir. Surely you can appreciate my position. Mr. Muir is a high official of my corporation. When I learned later in the evening that the money had been found in Miss Fox’s car, I was astounded … I couldn’t believe it … but what could I do? I was amazed….”
   “Indeed.” Wolte still snapped. “You’ve got your money back. Do you intend to proceed with the prosecution?”
   “You don’t need to take that tone, Wolfe.” Perry sharpened a little. “I told you there is the human element. I’m noЈ a czar. Muir makes an issue of it. I’m being frank with you. I can’t talk him off. Granted that I could kick the first vice-president out of the company if I wanted to, which is a good deal to grant, do you think I should? After all, he has the law—”
   “Then you’re with him on it?”
   A pause. “No. No, I’m not. I… I have the strongest… sympathy for Clara—Miss Fox. I would like to see her get something … much more human than justice. For instance, if there is any difficulty about bail for her I would be glad to furnish it.”
   “Thank you. We’ll manage bail. You asked me to be brief, Mr. Perry. First, I suggest that you arrange to have the charge against Miss Fox quashed immediately. Second, I wish to inform you of our intentions if that is not done. At ten o’clock tomorrow morning I shall have Miss Fox submit herself to arrest and shall have her at once released on bail. She will then start an action against Ramsey Muir and the Seaboard Products Corporation to recover one million dollars in damages for false arrest. We deal in millions here now. I think there is no question but that we shall have sufficient evidence to uphold our action. If they try her first, so much the better. She’ll be acquitted.”
   “But how can … that’s absurd … if you have evidence …”
   “That’s all, Mr. Perry. That’s my brevity. Good-by.”
   I heard the click of Wolfe banging up. Perry was sputtering, but I hung up too. I tossed the notebook away and got up and stuck my hands in my pockets and walked around. Perhaps I was muttering. I was thinking to myself, if Wolfe takes that pot with nothing but a dirty deuce he’s a better man than he thinks he is, if that was possible. On the face of it, it certainly looked as if his cra2y conceit had invaded the higher centers of his brain and stopped his mental processes completely; but there was one thing that made such a supposition unlikely, namely, that he was spending money.
   He had four expensive men riding around in taxis and he had got London on the phone as if it had been a delicatessen shop. It was a thousand to one he was going to get it back.
   Still another expenditure was imminent, as I learned when the phone rang again. I sat down to get it, half hoping it was Perry calling back to offer a truce. But what I heard was Fred Durkin’s low growl, and he sounded peeved.
   “That you, Archie?”
   “Right. What have you got?”
   “Nothing. Less than that. Look here. I’m talking from the Forty-seventh Street Station.”
   “The … what? What for?”
   “What the hell do you suppose for? I got arrested a little.”
   I made a face and took a breath. “Good for you,” I said grimly. “That’s a big help. Men like you are the backbone of the country. Go on.”
   His growl went plaintive. “Could I help it? They bopped me at the garage when I went there to ask questions. They say I committed something when I took that car last night. I think they’re getting ready to send me somewhere, I suppose Centre Street. What the hell could I do, run and let him tag me? I wouldn’t be phoning now if it hadn’t happened that a friend of mine is on the desk here.”
   “Okay. If they take you to the DA’s office keep your ears open and stick to the little you know. We’ll get after it.”
   Tou’d better. If I—hey! Will you phone the missis?”
   I assured him he would see the missis as soon as she was expecting him, and hung up. I sat and scratched my nose a minute and then made for the stairs. It was looking as if being confined to the house wasn’t going to deprive me of my exercise.
   Wolfe was still in the tropical room. He kept on snipping stems and listened without looking around. I reported the development. He said, “These interruptions are abominable.”
   I said, “All right, let him rot in a dungeon.”
   Wolfe sighed. “Phone Mr. Barber. Can you pick Keems up? No, you can’t. When you hear from him let me talk to him.”
   I went back down and got Barber’s office and asked him to send someone out to make arrangements for Fred to sleep with his missis that night, and gave him the dope.
   I had no idea when I might hear from Johnny Keems. They had all got their instructions direct from Wolfe, and as usual he was keeping my head clear of unnecessary obstructions. As I had let Orrie Gather out he had made some kind of a crack about being the only electrician in New York who understood directors’ rooms, and of course I knew Saul Panzer had a contact on with Hilda Lindquist, but beyond that their programs were outside my circle. I guessed Fred had gone back to the garage to see if he could get a line on a plant, which made it appear that Wolfe didn’t even have a dirty deuce, but of course he had talked with Clara Fox nearly an hour that morning, so that was all vague. But it did seem that Frisbie or someone around the District Attorney’s office was busting with ardor over an ordinary larceny on which they already had the evidence, leaving a dick at the garage; but that was probably part of the net they were holding for Clara Fox. It might even have been one of Cramer’s men.
   I went on being a switchboard girl. A little before ten Saul Panzer called, and from upstairs Wolfe listened to him while I put down the details he had collected from Hilda Lindquist regarding her father in Nebraska. She thought that if riding in an airplane didn’t kill him it would scare him to death. Apparently Saul had further instructions, for Wolfe told him to proceed. A little later Orrie phoned in, and what he reported to Wolfe gave me my first view of a new slant that hadn’t occurred to me at all. Introducing himself to Sourface Vawter as an electrician, he had been admitted to the directors’ room of the Seaboard Products Corporation, and had learned that besides the double door at the end of the corridor it had another door leading into the public hall. It had been locked but could be opened from the inside, and Orrie had himself gone out that way and around the hall to the elevators.
   Wolfe told Orrie to wait and talked to me. “Don’t type a note on that, Archie. Any that you do type, put them in the safe at once. Leave Orrie on with me and be sure the other line is open. A call I am expecting hasn’t come. When Keems calls I’ll talk to him, but I’ll give Orrie Fred’s assignment. Taking the hint that he didn’t want to burden my ears with Orrie’s schedule, I hung up. I filed some notes in the safe and loaded Wolfe’s pen and tested it, a chore that I hadn’t been able to get around to before—absentmindedly, because I was off on a new track. I had no idea what had started Wolfe in that direction. It had beautiful possibilities, no doubt of that, but a hundred-to-one shot in a big handicap is a beautiful possibility too, and how often would you collect on it? After taxing the brain a few minutes, this looked more like a million to one. I would probably have gone on to add more ciphers to that if I hadn’t been interrupted by the doorbell. Of course I was still on that job too. I went to the hall and pulled the curtain to see through the glass panel, and got a surprise. It was the first time Wolfe’s house had ever been taken for a church, but there wasn’t any other explanation, for either that specimen on the stoop was scheduled for best man at a wedding or Emily Post had been fooling me for years.
   The two dicks were down on the sidewalk, looking up at the best man as if it was too much of a problem for them. They had nothing on me. I opened the door and let it come three inches, leaving the chain on, and said in a well-bred tone, “Good morning.”
   He peered through at me. “I say, that crack is scarcely adequate. Really.” He had a well-trained voice but a little squawky.
   “I’m sorry. This is a bad neighborhood and we have to be careful. What can I do for you?”
   He went on peering. “Is this the house of Mr. Nero Wolfe?”
   “It is.”
   He hesitated, and turned to look down at the snoops on the sidewalk, who were staring up at him in the worst possible taste. Then he came closer and pushed his face up against the crack and said in a tone nearly down to a whisper, “From Lord Clivers. I wish to see Mr. Wolfe.”
   I took a second for consideration and then slid the bolt off and opened up. He walked in and I shut the door and shot the bolt again. When I turned he was standing there with his stick hung over his elbow, pulling his gloves off. He was six feet, spare but not skinny, about my age, fair-skinned with chilly blue eyes, and there was no question about his being dressed for it.
   I waved him ahead and followed him into the office, and be took his time getting his paraphernalia deposited on Wolfe’s desk before he lowered himself into a chair. Meantime I let him know that Mr. Wolfe was engaged and would be until eleven o’clock, and that I was the confidential assistant and was at his service. He got seated and looked at me as if he would have to get around to admitting my right to exist before we could hope to make any headway.
   But he spoke. “Mr. Goodwin? I see. Perhaps I got a bit ahead at the door. That is … I really should see Mr. Wolfe without delay.”
   I grinned at him. “You mean because you mentioned the Marquis of Clivers? That’s okay. I wrote that letter. I know all about it. You can’t see Mr. Wolfe before eleven. I can let him know you’re here.”
   “If you will be so good. Do that. My name is Horrocks—Francis Horrocks.”
   I looked at him. So this was the geezer that bought roses with three-foot stems. I turned on the swivel and plugged in the plant room and pressed the button. In a minute Wolfe was on and I told him, “A man here to see you, Mr. Francis Horrocks. From the Marquis of Clivers…. Yeah, in the office…. Haven’t asked him. … I told him, sure…. Okay.”
   I jerked the plugs and swiveled again. “Mr. Wolfe says he can see you at eleven o’clock, unless you’d care to try me. He suggests the latter.”
   “I should have liked to see Mr. Wolfe.” The blue eyes were going over me.
   “Though I merely bring a message. First, though, I should—er—perhaps explain … I am here in a dual capacity. It’s a bit confusing, but really quite all right. I am here, as it were, personally … and also semi-officially. Possibly I should first deliver my message from Lord Clivers.”
   “Okay. Shoot.”
   “I beg your pardon? Oh, quite. Lord Clivers would like to know if Mr. Wolfe could call at his hotel. An hour can be arranged—”
   “I can save you breath on that. Mr. Wolfe never calls on anybody.”
   “No?” His brows went up. “He is not—that is, bedridden?”
   “Nope, only house-ridden. He doesn’t like it outdoors. He never has called on anybody and never will.”
   “You don’t say.” His forehead showed wrinkles. “Well. Lord Clivers wishes very much to see him. You say you wrote that letter?”
   I nodded. “Yeah, I know all about it. I suppose Mr. Wolfe would be glad to talk with the marquis on the telephone—”
   “He prefers not to discuss it on the telephone.”
   “Okay. I was going to add, or the marquis can come here. Of course the legal part of it is being handled by our attorney.”
   The young diplomat sat straight with his arms folded and looked at me.
   “You have engaged a solicitor?”
   “Certainly. If it comes to a lawsuit, which we hope it won’t, we don’t want to waste any time. We understand the marquis will be in New York another week, so we’d have to be ready to serve him at once.”
   He nodded. “Just so. That’s a bit candid.” He bit his lip and cocked his head a little. “We appear to have reached a dead end. Your position seems quite clear. I shall report it, that’s all I can do.” He hitched his feet back and cleared his throat. “Now, if you don’t mind, I assume my private capacity. I remarked that I am here personally. My name is Francis Horrocks.”
   “Yeah. Your personal name.”
   “Just so. And I would like to speak with Miss Fox. Miss Clara Fox.” I felt myself straightening out my face and hoped he didn’t see me. I said, “I can’t say I blame you. I’ve met Miss Fox. Go to it.”
   He frowned. “If you would be so good as to tell her I am here. It’s quite all right. I know she’s having a spot of seclusion, but it’s quite all right. Really. You see, when she telephoned me this morning I insisted on knowing the address of her retreat. In fact, I pressed her on it. I confess she laid it on me not to come here to see her, but I made no commitment. Also, I didn’t come to see her; I came semi-omcially. What? Being here, I ask to see her, which is quite all right. What?”
   My face was under control after the first shock. I said, “Sure it’s quite all right. I mean, to ask. Seeing her is something else. You must have got the address wrong or maybe you were phoning in your sleep.”
   “Oh, no. Really.” He folded his arms again. “See here, Mr. Goodwin, let’s cut across. It’s a fact, I actually must see Miss Fox. As a friend, you understand. For purely personal reasons. I’m quite determined about this.”
   “Okay. Find her. She left no address here.”
   He shook his head patiently. “It won’t do, I assure you it won’t. She telephoned me. Is she in distress? I don’t know. I shall have to see her. If you will tell her—”
   I stood up. “Sorry, Mr. Horrocks. Do you really have to go? I hope you find Miss Fox. Tell the Marquis of Clivers—”
   He sat tight, shook his head again, and frowned. “Damn it all. I dislike this, really. I’ve never set eyes on you before. What? I’ve never seen this Mr. Wolfe. Could Miss Fox have been under duress when she was telephoning? You see the possibility, of course. Setting my mind at rest and all that. If you put me out, it will really be necessary for me to tell those policemen outside that Miss Fox telephoned me from this address at nine o’clock this morning. Also I should have to take the precaution of finding a telephone at once to repeat the information to your police headquarters. What?”
   I stared down at him, and I admit he was too much for me. Whether he was deep and desperate or dumb and determined I didn’t know. I said, “Wait here. Mr. Wolfe will have to know about you. Kindly stay in this room.”
   I left him there and went to the kitchen and told Fritz to stand in the hall, and if an Englishman emerged from the office, yodel. Then I bounced up two Sights to the south room, called not too loud, and, when I heard the key rum, opened the door and entered. Clara Fox stood and brushed her hair back and looked at me half alarmed and half hopeful.
   I said, “What time this morning did you phone that guy Francis Horrocks?”
   She stared. It got her. She swallowed. “But I—he—he promised …”
   “So you did phone him. Swell. You forgot to mention it when I asked you about it a while ago.”
   “But you didn’t ask me if I had phoned.”
   “Oh, didn’t I? Now that was careless.” I threw up my hands. “To hell with it. Suppose you tell me what you phoned him about. I hope it wasn’t a secret.”
   “No, it wasn’t.” She came a step to me. “Must you be so sarcastic? There was nothing … it was just personal.”
   “As for instance?”
   “Why, it was really nothing. Of course, he sent those roses. Then … I had had an engagement to dine with him Monday evening, and when I made the appointment with Mr. Wolfe I had to cancel the one with Mr. Horrocks, and when he insisted I thought that three hours would be enough with Mr. Wolfe, so I told Mr. Horrocks I would go with him at ten o’clock to dance somewhere, and probably he went to the apartment and waited around there I don’t know how long, and this morning I supposed he would keep phoning there and of course there would be no answer, and he couldn’t get me at the office either, and besides, I hadn’t thanked him for the roses—”
   I put up a palm. “Take a breath. I see, romance. It’d be still more romantic if he came to visit you in jail. You’re quite an adventuress, being as you are over ninety per cent nincompoop. I don’t suppose you know that according to an article in yesterday’s Times this Horrocks is the nephew of the Marquis of Clivers and next in line for the title.”
   “Oh, yes. He explained to me … that is … that’s all right. I knew that.And Mr. Goodwin, I don’t like—”
   “We’ll discuss your likes later. Here’s something you don’t know. Horrocks is downstairs in the office saying that he’s got to see you or he’ll run and get the police.”
   “What! He isn’t.”
   “Yep. Somebody is, and from his looks I’m willing to admit it’s Horrocks.”
   “But he shouldn’t … he promised … send him away!”
   “He won’t go away. If I throw him out he’ll yell for a cop. He thinks you’re here under duress and need to be rescued—that’s his story. You’re a swell client, you are. With the chances Nero Wolfe’s taking for you—all right. Anyhow, whether he’s straight or not, there’s no way out of it now. I’m going to bring him up here, and for God’s sake make it snappy and let him go back to his uncle.”
   “But I-good heavens!” She brushed her hair back. “I don’t want to see him. Not now. Tell him … of course I could … yes, that’s it… I’ll go down and just tell him—”
   “You will not. Next you’ll be wanting to go and walk around the block with him. You stay here.”
   Outside in the hall I hesitated, uncertain whether to go up and tell Wolfe of the party we were having, but decided there was no point in riling him– I went back down, tossing Fritz a nod as I passed by, and found the young diplomat sitting in the office with his arms sdll folded. He put his brows up at me. I told him to come on, and let him go first. Behind him on the stairs I noticed he had good springs in his legs, and at the top his air pump hadn’t speeded up any. Keeping fit for dear old England and the bloody empire. I opened the door and bowed him in and followed him.
   Clara Fox came across to him. He looked at her with a kind of sickening grin and put out his hand. She shook her head. “No. I won’t shake hands with you. Aren’t you ashamed of yourself? You promised me you wouldn’t. Causing Mr. Goodwin all this trouble …”
   “Now, really. I say.” His voice was different from what it had been downstairs, sort of sweet and concentrated. Silly as hell. “After all, you know, it was fairly alarming … with you gone and all that … couldn’t find a trace of you … and you look frightful, very bad in the eyes …”
   “Thank you very much.” All of a sudden she began to laugh. I hadn’t heard her laugh before. It showed her teeth and put color in her cheeks. She laughed at him undl if I had been him I’d have thought up some kind of a remark. Then she stuck out her hand. “All right, shake. Mr. Goodwin says you were going to rescue me. I warned you to let American girls alone—you see the sort of thing it leads to!”
   With his big paw he was hanging onto her hand as if he had a lease on it.
   He was staring at her. “You know, they do, though. I mean the eyes. You’re really quite all right? You couldn’t expect me—”
   I butted in because I had to. I had left the door open and the sound of the front doorbell came up plain. I glanced at Francis Horrocks and decided that if he really was a come-on I would at least have the pleasure of seeing how long he looked lying down, before he got out of that house, and I got brusque to Clara Fox. “Hold it. The door bell. I’m going to shut this door and go down to answer it, and it would be a good idea to make no sounds until I get back.” The bell started ringing again. “Okay?”
   Clara Fox nodded.
   “Okay, Mr. Horrocks?”
   “Certainly. Whatever Miss Fox says.”
   I beat it, dosing the door behind me. Some smart guy was leaning on the button, for the bell kept on ringing as I went down the two flights. Fritz was standing in the hall, looking belligerent; he hated people that got impatient with the bell. I went to the door and pulled the curtain and looked out, and felt mercury running up my backbone. It was a quartet. Only four, and I recognized Lieutenant Rowcliff in front. It was him on the button. I hadn’t had such a treat for a long while. I turned the lock and let the door come as Far as the chain.
   Rowcliff called through, “Well1 We’re not ants. Come on, open up.”
   I said, “Take it easy. I’m just the messenger boy.”
   “Yeah? Here’s the message.” He unfolded a paper he had in his hand. Having seen a search warrant before, I didn’t need a magnifying glass– I looked through the crack at it. Rowcliff said, “What are you waiting for? Do you want me to count ten?”

Chapter 11

   I said, “Hold your horses, lieutenant. If what you want is in here it can’t get out, since I suppose you’ve got the rear and the roof covered. This isn’t my house, it belongs to Nero Wolfe and he’s upstairs. Wait a minute, I’ll be right back.”
   I went up three steps at a time, paying no attention to Rowcliff yelling outside. I went in the south room; they were standing there. I said to Clara Fox, “They’re here. Make it snappy. Take Horrocks with you, and if he’s in on this I’ll kill him.”
   Horrocks started, “Really—”
   “Shut up! Go with Miss Fox. For God’s sake—”
   She might have made an adventuress at that; she was okay when it came to action. She darted to the table and grabbed her handbag and handkerchief, dashed back and got Horrocks by the hand, and pulled him through the door with her. I took a quick look around to make sure there were no lipsticks or powder puffs left behind, shoved the table toward the window where it looked more natural, and beat it. In the hall I stopped one second to shake myself. Noises of Rowcliff bellowing on the stoop floated up. Horrocks and Clara Fox had disappeared. I went down to the front door and slid the bolt and flung it open.
   “Welcome,” I grinned. “Mr. Wolfe says he wants the warrant for a souvenir.”
   They trooped in behind Rowcliff. He grunted. “Where’s Wolfe?”
   “Up with the plants. Until eleven o’clock. He told me to tell you this, that of course you have the legal right to search the endre premises, but that the city will pay for every nickel’s worth of damage that’s done if he has to go to City Hall himself to collect it.”
   “No! Don’t scare me to death. Come on, boys. Where does that go to?”
   “Front room.” I pointed. “Office. Kitchen. Basement stairs. The rear door is down there, onto the court.”
   He turned, and then whirled to me again. “Look here, Goodwin. You’ve had your bluff called. Why not save time? Why don’t you bring this Fox woman down here, or up here, and call it a trick? It’d save a lot of messing around.” I said, coldly, “Pish-tush. Which isn’t for you, lieutenant; I know you’ve got orders. It’s for Inspector Cramer, and you can take it to him. The horse laugh he’ll get over this will be heard at Bath Beach. Does he think Nero Wolfe is simp enough to try to hide a woman under his bed? Go on and finish your button-button-who’s-got-the-button and get the hell out of here.”
   He grunted and started off with his army toward the door of the basement stairs. I followed. I wanted to keep an eye on them anyway, on general principles, but, besides that, I had decided to ride him. Wolfe had told me to use my judgment, and I knew that was the best way to put a bird Bke Rowcliff in the frame of mind we wanted him in. So I was right behind them going down, and while they poked around all over the basement, pulling the curtains back from the shelves, opening trunks and looking into empty packing cartons, I exercised the tongue. Rowcliff tried to pass it back once or twice and then pretended not to hear me. I opened the door to the insulated bottle department, and kept jerking my head around at them as if I expected to catch them in a snatch at a quart of rye. They finished up down there by taking a look at the court out of the back door, and after I got the door locked again I followed them back up to the first floor.
   Rowcliff stationed a man at the door to the basement stairs and then began at the kitchen and worked forward. I hung on his tail. I said, “Up here, now, you’ve got to take soundings. The place is lousy with trapdoors,” and when he involuntarily looked down at his feet I turned loose a hawhaw. In the office I asked him, ‘Want me to open the safe? There’s a piece of her in there. That’s the way we worked it, cut her up and scattered her around.” By the time we started for the second floor he was boiling and trying not to show it, and about ninety-seven per cent convinced. He left a man at the head of the stairs and tackled Wolfe’s room. Fritz had come along to see that nothing got hurt, thinking maybe that my mind was on something else, for there was a lot of stuff in there. I’ll admit they didn’t get rough, though they were thorough. Wolfe’s double mattress looked pretty thick under its black silk coverlet, and one of them wiggled under it to have a look. Rowcliff went around the rows of bookshelves taking measurements with his eyes for a concealed closet, and where the pokerdart board was hanging on a screen he pulled the screen around to look behind it. All the time I was making remarks as they occurred to me.
   In my room, as Rowcliff was looking back of the clothes in the closet, I said, “Listen, I’ve got a suggestion. I’ll put on an old mother hubbard I won once at a raffle and you take me to Cramer and tell him I’m Clara Fox. After this performance there’s no question but what he’s too damn dumb to know the difference.”
   He backed out of the closet, straightened up, and glared at me. He bellowed, “You shut your trap, see? Or I will take you somewhere, and it won’t be to Cramer!”
   I grinned at him. “That’s childish, lieutenant. Make saps out of yourselves and then try to take it out on citizens. Oh, wait! Baby, wait till this gets out!”
   He tramped to the hall and started up the next flight with his army behind. I’ll admit I was a little squeamish as they entered the south room; it’s hard for anyone to stay in a room ten hours and not leave a trace; but they weren’t looking for traces, they were looking for a live woman. Anyway, she had followed Wolfe’s instructions to the letter and it looked all right. That only took a couple of minutes, and the same for the north room, where Saul Panzer had slept. When they came out to the hall again I opened the door to the narrow stairs going up, and held it for them.
   “Plant rooms fourth and last stop. And take it from me, if you knock over a bench of orchid pots you’ll find more trouble here than you brought with you.”
   Rowcliff was licked. He wasn’t saying so, and he was trying not to look it, but he was. He growled, “Wolfe up there?”
   “He is.”
   “All right. Come along, Jack. You two wait here.”
   The three of us got to the top in single file and I called to him to push in. We entered and he saw the elevator standing there with the door gaping.
   He opened the door to the stairs and called down, “Hey, Al! Come up and give this elevator a go and look over the shaft!” Then he rejoined us.
   Those plant rooms had been considered impressive by better men than Lieutenant Rowcliff—for example among many others, by Pierre Fracard, President of the Horticultural Society of France. I was in and out of them ten times a day and they impressed me, though I pretended to Theodore Horstmann that they didn’t. Of course they were more startling in February than they were in October, but Wolfe and Horstmann had developed a technique of forcing that made them worth looking at no matter when it was.
   Inside the door of the first room, which had Odontoglossums, Oncidiums, and Miltonia hybrids, Rowcliff and the dick stopped short. The angle-iron staging gleamed in its silver paint, and on the concrete benches and shelves three thousand pots of orchids showed greens and blues and yellows and reds. It looked spotty to me, since I had seen it at the top of its glory, but it was nothing to sniff at.
   I said, “Well, do you think you’re at the flower show? You didn’t pay to get in. Get a move on, huh?”
   Rowcliff led the way. He didn’t leave the center aisle. Once he stopped to stoop for a peek under a bench, and I let a laugh bust out and then choked it and said, “Excuse me, lieutenant, I know you have your duty to perform.” He went on with his shoulders up, but I knew the eager spirit of the chase had oozed down into his shoes.
   In the next room, Cattleyas, Laelias, hybrids, and miscellaneous, Theodore Horstmann was over at one side pouring fertilizer on a row of Cymbidiums, which are terrestrials, and Rowcliff took a look at him but didn’t say anything. The dick in between us stopped to bend down and stick his nose against a big lilac hybrid, and I told him, “Nope. If you smell anything sweet, it’s me.”
   We went on through the tropical room, where it was hot with the sun shining and the lath screens already off, and continued to the potting room. It had enough free space to move around in, and it also had inhabitants.
   Francis Horrocks, still unsoiled, stood leaning with his back against an angle-iron, talking to Nero Wolfe, who was using the pressure spray. A couple of boards had been laid along the top of a long low wooden box which was filled with osmundine, and on the boards had been placed thirtyfive or forty pots of Laeliocatdeya lustre. Wolfe was spraying them with high pressure, and it was pretty wet around there.
   Horrocks was saying, “It really seems a devilish lot of trouble. What? Of course, you know, it’s perfectly proper for every chap …”
   Rowcliff looked around. There were sphagnum, sand, charcoal, crock for drainage, stacks of hundreds of pots. Rowcliff moved forward, and Wolfe shut off the spray and turned to him.
   “Do I know you, sir?”
   I closed in. “Mr. Nero Wolfe, Lieutenant Rowcliff.”
   Wolfe inclined his head one inch. “How do you do.” He looked toward the door, where the dick stood. “And your companion?”
   He was using his aloof tone, and it was good. Rowcliff said, “One of my men. We’re here on business.”
   “So I understand. If you don’t mind, introduce him. I like to know the names of people who enter my house.”
   “Yeah? His name’s Loedenkrantz.”
   “Indeed.” Wolfe looked at him and inclined his head an inch again. “How do you do, sir.”
   The dick said without moving, “Pleased to meetcha.”
   Wolfe returned to Rowcliff. “And you are a lieutenant. Reward of merit? Incredible.” His voice deepened and accelerated. “Will you take a message for me to Mr. Cramer? Tell him that Nero Wolfe pronounces him to be a prince of witlings and an unspeakable ass! Pfui!” He turned on the spray, directed it on the orchids, and addressed Francis Horrocks. “But my dear sir, since all life is trouble, the only thing is to achieve a position where we may select varieties …”
   I said to Rowcliff, “There’s a room there at the side, the gardener’s. You don’t want to miss that.”
   He went with me and looked in, and I hand it to him that he had enough face left to enter and look under the bed and open the closet door. He came out again, and he was done. But as he moved for the door he asked me, “How do you get out to the roof?”
   “You don’t. This covers all of it. Anyhow you’ve got it spotted. Haven’t you? Don’t tell me you overlooked that.”
   We were returning the way we had come, and I was behind them again. He didn’t answer. Mr. Loedenkrantz didn’t stop to smell an orchid. There was a grin inside of me trying to burst into flower, but I was warning it. Not yet, sweetheart, they’re not out yet. We left the plant rooms and descended to the third floor, and Rowcliff said to the pair he had left there, “Fall in.”
   One began, “I thought I heard a noise—”
   “Shut up.”
   I followed them down, on down. After all the diversion I had been furnishing I didn’t think it advisable to go suddenly dumb, so I manufactured a couple of nifties during the descent. In the lower hall, before I unlocked the door, I squared off to Rowcliff and told him, “Listen. I’ve been free with the lip, but it was my day. We all have to take it sometimes, and hey-nonnynonny. I’m aware it wasn’t you that pulled this boner.”
   But, being a lieutenant, he was stem and unbending. “Much obliged for nothing. Open the door.”
   I did that, and they went. On the sidewalk they were joined by their brothers who had been left there. I shut the door, heard the lock snap, and put on the bolt. I turned and went to the office. I seldom took a drink before dark, but the idea of a shot of bourbon seemed pleasing, so I went to the cabinet and helped myself. It felt encouraging going down. In my opinion, there was very little chance that Rowcliff had enough eagerness left in him to try a turn-around, but I returned to the entrance and pulled the curtain and stood looking out for a minute. There was no one in sight that had the faintest resemblance to a city employee. So I mounted the stairs, clear to the plant rooms, and went through to the potting room. Wolfe and Horrocks were standing there, and Wolfe looked at me inquiringly.
   I waved a hand. “Gone. Done.”
   Wolfe hung the spray tube on its hook and called, “Theodore!”
   Horstmann came trotting. He and I together lifted the pots of Laeliocatdeyas, which Wolfe had been spraying, from the boards, and put them on a bench. Then we removed the boards from the long box of osmundine;
   Horrocks took one. Wolfe said, “All right. Miss Fox.”
   The mossy fiber, dripping with water, raised itself up out of the box, fell all around us, and spattered our pants. We began picking off patches of it that were clinging to Clara Fox’s soaked dress, and she brushed back her hair and blurted, “Thank God I wasn’t born a mermaid!”
   Honocks put his fingers on the sleeve of her dress. “Absolutely saturated. Really, you know—”
   He may have been straight, but he had no right to be in on it-1 cut him off. “I know you’ll have to be going. Fritz can attend to Miss Fox. If you don’t mind?”