Chapter 10

   “How many times,” Wolfe asked, “have you heard me confess that I am a wilting?”
   Fred Durkin grinned. A joke was a joke. Orrie Gather smiled. He was even handsomer when he smiled, but not necessarily braver. Saul Panzer said, “Three times when you meant it, and twice when you didn’t.”
   “You never disappoint me, Saul.” Wolfe was doing his best to be sociable. He had just crossed the hall from the dining-room. With Fred and Orrie he wouldn’t have strained himself, but Saul had his high regard.” This, then,” he said,” makes four times that I have meant it and this time my fault was so egregious that I made myself pay for it. The only civilized way to spend the hour after lunch is with a book, but I have just swallowed my last bite of cheese cake, and here I am working. You must bear with me. I am paying a deserved penalty.”
   “Maybe it’s our fault too/ Saul suggested. “We had an order and we didn’t fill it.”
   “No,” Wolfe said emphatically.” I can’t grab for the straw of your charity. I am an ass. If any share of the fault is yours it lies in this, that when I explained the situation to you Wednesday evening and gave you your assignments none of you reminded me of my maxim that nothing is to be expected of tagging the footsteps of the police. That’s what you’ve been doing, at my direction, and it was folly. There are scores of them, and only three of you. You have been merely looking under stones that they have already turned. I am an ass.”
   “Maybe there’s no other stones to try,” Orrie observed.
   “Of course there are. There always are.” Wolfe took time to breathe. More oxygen was always needed after a meal unless he relaxed with a book.” I have an excuse, naturally, that one approach was closed to my ingenuity. By Mr Cramer’s account, and Archie didn’t challenge it, no one could possibly have poisoned that glass of champagne with any assurance that it would get to Miss Usher. I could have tackled that problem only by a minute examination of everyone who was there, and most of them were not available to me. Sooner or later it must be solved, but only after disclosure of a motive. That was the only feasible approach open to me, to find the motive, and you know what I did. I sent you men to flounder around on ground that the police had already covered, or were covering. Pfui.”
   “I saw four people,” Fred protested, “that the cops hadn’t got to.”
   “And learned?”
   “Well—nothing.”
   Wolfe nodded.” So. The quarry, as I told you Wednesday evening, was evidence of some significant association of one of those people with Miss Usher. That was a legitimate line of inquiry, but it was precisely the one the police were following, and I offer my apologies. We shall now try another line, where you will at least be on fresh ground. I want to see Faith Usher’s mother. You are to find her and bring her.”
   Fred and Orrie pulled out their notebooks. Saul had one but rarely used it. The one inside his skull was usually all he needed.
   “You won’t need notes,” Wolfe said. “There is nothing to note except the bare fact that Miss Usher’s mother is alive and must be somewhere. This may lead nowhere, but it is not a resort to desperation. Whatever circumstance in Miss Usher’s life resulted in her death, she must have been emotionally involved, and I have been apprised of only two phenomena which importantly engaged her emotions. One was her experience with the man who begot her infant. A talk with him might be fruitful, but if he can be found the police will find him; of course they’re trying to. The other was her relationship with her mother. Mrs Irwin, of Grantham House, told Archie that she had formed the conclusion, from talking with Miss Usher, that her mother was alive and that she hated her. And yesterday Miss Helen Yarmis, with whom Miss Usher shared an apartment the last seven months of her life, told me that Miss Usher had come home from work one day with a headache and had said that she had encountered her mother on the street and there had been a scene, and she had had to run to get away from her; and that she wished her mother was dead. Miss Yannis’s choice of words.”
   Fred, writing in his notebook, looked up. “Does she spell Irwin with an E or an I?”
   Wolfe always tried to be patient with Fred, but there was a limit. “As you prefer,” he said. “Why spell it at all? I’ve told you all she said that is relevant, and all that I know. I will add that I doubt if either Mrs Irwin or Miss Yarmis mentioned Miss Usher’s mother to the police, so in looking for her you shouldn’t be jostled.”
   “Is her name Usher?” Orrie asked. Of course Saul wouldn’t have asked it, and neither would Fred.
   “You should learn to listen, Orrie,” Wolfe told him.” I said that’s all I know. And no more is to be expected from either Mrs Irwin or Miss Yarmis. They know no more.” His eyes went to Saul. “You will direct the search, using Fred and Orrie as occasions arise.”
   “Do we keep covered?” Saul asked.
   “Preferably, yes. But don’t preserve your cover at the cost of missing your mark.”
   “I took a look,” I said, “at the Manhattan phone book when I got back from Grantham House yesterday. A dozen Ushers are listed. Of course she doesn’t have to be named Usher, and she doesn’t have to live in Manhattan , and she doesn’t have to have a phone. It wouldn’t take Fred and Orrie long to check the dozen. I can call Lon Cohen at the Gazette . He might have gone after the mother for an exclusive and a picture.”
   “Sure,” Saul agreed.” If it weren’t for cover my first stop would be the morgue. Even if her daughter hated her, the mother may have claimed the body. But they know me there, and Fred and Orrie too, and of course they know Archie.”
   It was decided, by Wolfe naturally, that that risk should be taken only after other tries had failed, and that calling Lon Cohen should obviously come first, and I dialled and got him. It was a little complicated. He had rung me a couple of times to try to talk me into the eye-witness story, and now my calling to ask if he had dug up Faith Usher’s mother aroused all his professional instincts. Was Wolfe working on the case, and if so, on behalf of whom? Had someone made me a better offer for a story, and did I want the mother so I could put her in, and who had offered me how much? I had to spread the salve thick, and assure him that I wouldn’t dream of letting anyone but the Gazette get my by-line, and promise that if and when we had anything fit for publication he would get it, before he would answer my simple question.
   I hung up and swivelled to report. “You can skip the morgue. A woman went there Wednesday afternoon to claim the body. Name, Marjorie Betz. B-E-T-Z. Address, Eight-twelve West Eighty-seventh Street , Manhattan . She had a letter signed by Elaine Usher, mother of Faith Usher, same address. By her instructions the body was delivered this morning to the Metropolitan Crematory on Thirty-ninth Street . A Gazette man has seen Marjorie Betz, but she clammed up and is staying clammed. She says Elaine Usher went somewhere Wednesday night and she doesn’t know where she is. The Gazette hasn’t been able to find her, and Lon thinks nobody else has. End of chapter.”
   “Fine,” Saul said. “Nobody skips for nothing.”
   “Find her,” Wolfe ordered. “Bring her. Use any inducement that seems likely to—”
   The phone rang, and I swivelled and got it.
   “Nero Wolfe’s office, Arch—”
   “Goodwin?”
   “Yes.”
   “This is Laidlaw. I’ve got to see Wolfe. Quick.”
   “He’s here. Come ahead.”
   “I’m afraid to. I just left the District Attorney’s office and got a taxi, and I’m being followed. I was on my way to see Wolfe about what happened at the District Attorney’s office but now I can’t because they mustn’t know I’m running to Wolfe. What do I do?”
   “Any one of a dozen things. Shaking a tail is a cinch, but of course you haven’t had any practice. Where are you?”
   “In a booth in a drugstore on Seventh Avenue near Sixteenth Street .”
   “Have you dismissed your taxi?”
   “Yes. I thought that was better.”
   “It was. How many men are in the taxi tailing you?”
   “Two.”
   “Then they mean it. Okay, so do we. First, have a Coke or something to give me time to get a car—say, six or seven minutes. Then take a taxi to Two-fourteen East Twenty-eighth Street . The Perlman Paper Company is there on the ground floor.” I spelled Perlman.”Got that?”
   “Yes.”
   “Go in and ask for Abe and say to him, ‘Archie wants some more candy.’ What are you going to say to him?”
   “Archie wants some more candy.”
   “Right. He’ll take you on through to Twenty-seventh Street , and when you emerge I’ll be there in front, either at the curb or double-parked, in a grey Heron sedan. Don’t hand Abe anything, he wouldn’t like it. This is part of our personalized service.”
   “What if Abe isn’t there?”
   “He will be, but if he isn’t don’t mention candy to anyone else. Find a booth and ring Mr Wolfe.”
   I hung up, scribbled “Laidlaw“ on my pad, tore the sheet off, and got up and handed it to Wolfe. “He wants to see you quick,” I said, “and needs transportation. I’ll be back with him in half an hour or less.”
   He nodded, crumpled the sheet, and dropped it in his wastebasket; and I wished the trio luck on their mother hunt and went.
   At the garage, at the corner of Tenth Avenue , I used the three minutes while Hank was bringing the car down to go to the phone in the office and ring the Perlman Paper Company, and got Abe. He said he had been wondering when I would want more candy and would be glad to fill the order.
   The de-tailing operation went fine, without a hitch. Going crosstown on Thirty-fourth Street, it was a temptation to swing down Park or Lexington to Twenty-eighth, so as to pass Number 214 and see if I recognized the two in the taxi, but since they might also recognize me I vetoed it and gave them plenty of room by continuing to Second Avenue before turning downtown, then west on Twenty-seventh. It was at the rear entrance on Twenty-seventh that the Perlman Paper Company did its loading and unloading, but no truck was there when I arrived, and I rolled to the curb at 2-49, just nineteen minutes since Laidlaw had phoned, and at 2.52 here he came trotting across the sidewalk. I opened the door and he piled in.
   He looked upset. “Relax,” I told him as I fed gas. “A tail is a trifle. They won’t go in to ask about you for at least half an hour, if at all, and Abe will say he took you to the rear to show you some stock, and you left that way.”
   “It’s not the tail. I want to see Wolfe.” His tone indicated that his plan was to get him down and tramp on him, so I left him to his mood. Crossing town, I considered whether there was enough of a chance that the brownstone was under surveillance to warrant taking him in the back way, trough the passage between buildings on Thirty-fourth Street , decided no, and went up Eighth Avenue to Thirty-fifth. As usual, there was no space open in front of the brownstone, so I went on to the garage and left the car, and walked back with him. When we entered the office I was at his heels. He didn’t have the build to get Wolfe’s bulk down and trample on it without help, but after all, he was the only one of the bunch, as it stood then, who had had dealings with Faith Usher that might have produced a motive for murder, and if a man has once murdered you never know what he’ll do next.
   He didn’t move a finger. In fact, he didn’t even move his tongue. He stood at the corner of Wolfe’s desk looking down at him, and after five seconds I realized that he was too mad, or too scared, or both, to speak, and I took his elbow and eased him to the red leather chair and into it.
   “Well, sir?” Wolfe asked.
   The client pushed his hair back, though he must have known by then that it was a waste of energy.” I may be wrong,” he croaked. “I hope to God I am. Did you send a note to the District Attorney telling him that I am the father of Faith Usher’s child?”
   “No.” Wolfe’s lips tightened.” I did not.”
   Laidlaw’s head jerked to me.” Did you?”
   “No. Of course not.”
   “Have you told anybody? Either of you?”
   “Plainly,” Wolfe said, “you are distressed and so must be indulged. But nothing has happened to release either Mr Goodwin or me from our pledge of confidence. If and when it does you will first be notified. I suggest that you retire and cool off a little.”
   “Cool off, hell.” The client rubbed the chair arms with his palms, eyeing Wolfe. “Then it wasn’t you. All right. When I left here this morning I went to my office, and my secretary said the District Attorney’s office had been trying to reach me, and I phoned and was told they wanted to see me immediately, and I went. I was taken in to Bowen, the District Attorney himself, and he asked if I wished to change my statement that I had never met Faith Usher before Tuesday evening, and I said no. Then he showed me a note that he said had come in the mail. It was typewritten. There wasn’t any signature. It said, ‘Have you found out yet that Edwin Laidlaw is the father of Faith Usher’s baby? Ask him about his trip to Canada in August nineteen fifty-six .’ Bowen didn’t let me take it. He held on to it. I sat and stared at it.”
   Wolfe grunted. “It was worth a stare, even if it had been false. Did you collapse?”
   “No! By God, I didn’t! I don’t think I decided what to do while I sat there staring at it; I think my subconscious mind had already decided what to do. Sitting there staring at it, I was too stunned to decide anything, so I must have already decided that the only thing to do was refuse to answer any questions about anything at all, and that’s what I did. I said just one thing: that whoever sent that note had libelled me and I had a right to find out who it was, and to do that I would have to have the note, but of course they wouldn’t give it to me. They wouldn’t even give me a copy. They kept at me for two hours, and when I left I was followed.”
   “You admitted nothing?”
   “No.”
   “Not even that you had taken a trip to Canada in August of nineteen fifty-six ?”
   “No. I admitted nothing . I didn’t answer a single question.”
   “Satisfactory,” Wolfe said. “Highly satisfactory. This is indeed welcome, Mr Laidlaw. We have—”
   “Welcome!” the client squawked. “Welcome? ”
   “Certainly. We have at last goaded someone to action. I am gratified. If there was any small shadow of doubt that Miss Usher was murdered, this removes it. They have all claimed to have had no knowledge of Miss Usher prior to that party; one of them lied, he has been driven to move. True, it is still possible that you yourself are the culprit, but I now think it extremely improbable. I prefer to take it that the murderer has felt compelled to create a diversion, and that is most gratifying. Now he is doomed.”
   “But good God! They know about—about me!”
   “They know no more than they knew before. They get a dozen accusatory unsigned letters every day, and have learned that the charges in most of them are groundless. As for your refusal to answer questions, a man of your standing might be expected to take that position until he got legal advice. It’s a neat situation, very neat. They will of course make every effort to find confirmation of that note, but it is a reasonable assumption that no one can supply it except the person who sent the note, and if he dares to do so we’ll have him. We’ll challenge him, but we’ll have him.” He glanced up at the wall clock. “However, we shall not merely twiddle our thumbs and wait for that. I have thirty minutes. You told me Wednesday morning that no one on earth knew of your dalliance with Miss Usher; now we know you were wrong. We must review every moment you spent in her company when you might have been seen or heard. When I leave, at four o’clock, Mr Goodwin will continue with you. Start with the day she first attracted your notice, when she waited on you at Cordoni’s. Was anyone you knew present?”
   When Wolfe undertakes that sort of thing, getting someone to recall every detail of a past experience, he is worse than a housewife bent on finding a speck of dust that the maid overlooked. Once I sat for eight straight hours, from nine in the evening until daylight came, while he took a chauffeur over every second of a drive, made six months before, to New Haven and back. This time he wasn’t quite that fussy, but he did no skipping. When four o’clock came, time for him to go up and play with the orchids, he had covered the episode at Cordoni’s, two dinners, one at the Woodbine in Westchester and one at Henke’s on Long Island, and a lunch at Gaydo’s on Sixty-ninth Street.
   I carried on for more than an hour, following Wolfe’s modus operandi more or less, but my pulse wasn’t pounding from the thrill of it. It seemed to me that it could have been handled just as well by putting one question: “Did you at any time, anywhere, when she was with you, including Canada, see or hear anyone who knew you?” and then make sure there were no gaps in his memory. As for chances that they had been seen but he hadn’t known it, there had been plenty. Aside from restaurants, he had had her in his car, in midtown, in daylight, seven times. The morning they left for Canada he had parked his car, with her in it, in front of his club, while he went in to leave a message for somebody.
   But I carried on, and we were working on the third day in Canada , somewhere in Quebec , when the doorbell rang and I went to the hall for a look through the one-way glass and saw Inspector Cramer of Homicide.
   I wasn’t much surprised, since I knew there had been a pointer for them if they were interested enough; and just as Laidlaw’s subconscious had made his decision in advance, mine had made mine. I went to the rack and got Laidlaw’s hat and coat, stepped back into the office, and told the client, “Inspector Cramer is here looking for you. This way out. Come on, move—”
   “But how did—”
   “No matter how.” The doorbell rang.” Damn it, move!”
   He came, and followed me to the kitchen. Fritz was at the big table, doing something to a duck. I told him, “Mr Laidlaw wants to leave the back way in a hurry, and I haven’t time because Cramer wants in. Show him quick, and you haven’t seen him.”
   Fritz headed for the back door, which opens on our private enclosed garden if you want to call it that, whose fence has a gate into the passage between buildings which leads to Thirty-fourth Street . As the door closed behind them and I turned, the doorbell rang. I went to the front, not in a hurry, put the chain bolt on, opened the door to the two-inch crack the chain allowed, and spoke through it politely.
   “I suppose you want me? Since you know Mr Wolfe won’t be available until six o’clock.”
   “Open up, Goodwin.”
   “Under conditions. You know damn well what my orders are: no callers admitted between four and six unless it’s just for me.”
   “I know. Open up.”
   I took that for a commitment, and he knew I did. Also it was conceivable that some character—Sergeant Stebbins, for instance—was on his way with a search warrant, and if so it would take the I edge off to admit Cramer without one. So I said, “Okay, if it’s me you want,” removed the bolt, and swung the door wide; and he stepped in, marched down the hall, and entered the office.
   I shut the door and went to join him, but by the time I arrived he wasn’t there. The connecting door to the front room was open, and in a moment he came through and barked at me, “Where’s Laidlaw?”
   I was hurt.” I thought you wanted me. If I had—”
   “Where’s Laidlaw?”
   “Search me. There’s lots of Laidlaws, but I haven’t got one. If you mean—”
   He made for the door to the hall, passing within arm’s length of me en route.
   The rules for dealing with officers of the law are contradictory. Whether you may restrain them by force or not depends. It was okay to restrain Cramer from entering the house by the force of the chain bolt. It would have been okay to restrain him from going upstairs if there had been a locked door there and I had refused to open it, but I couldn’t restrain him by standing on the first step and not letting him by, no matter how careful I was not to hurt him. That may make sense to lawyers, but not to me.
   But that’s the rule, and it didn’t matter that he had said he knew our rules before I let him in. So when he crossed the hall to the stairs I didn’t waste my breath to yell at him; I saved it for climbing the three flights, which I did, right behind him. Since he was proving that in a pinch he had no honour and no manners, it would have been no surprise if he had turned left at the first landing to invade Wolfe’s room, or right at the second landing to invade mine, but he kept going to the top, and on in to the vestibule.
   I don’t know whether he is off orchids because Wolfe is on them, or is just colour blind, but on the few occasions that I have seen him in the plant rooms he has never shown the slightest sign that he realizes that the benches are occupied. Of course in that house his mind is always occupied or he wouldn’t be there, and that could account for it. That day, in the cool room, long panicles of Odontoglossums, yellow, rose, white with spots, crowded the aisle on both sides; in the tropical room, Miltonia hybrids and Phalaenopsis splashed pinks and greens and browns clear to the glass above; and in the intermediate room the Cattleyas were grandstanding all over the place as always. Cramer might have been edging his way between rows of dried-up cornstalks.
   The door from the intermediate room to the potting room was closed as usual. When Cramer opened it and I followed him in, I didn’t stop to shut it but circled around him and raised my voice to announce, “He said he came to see me. When I let him in he dashed past me to the office and then to the front room and started yapping, ‘Where’s Laidlaw?“ and when I told him I had no Laidlaw he dashed past me again for the stairs. Apparently he has such a craving for someone named Laidlaw that his morals are shot.”
   Theodore Horstmann, at the sink washing pots, had twisted around for a look, but before I finished was twisted back again, washing pots. Wolfe, at the potting bench inspecting seedlings, had turned full around to glare. He had started the glare at me, but by the time I ended had transferred it to Cramer. “Are you demented?” he inquired icily.
   Cramer stood in the middle of the room, returning the glare. “Some day,” he said, and stopped.
   “Some day what? You will recover your senses?”
   Cramer advanced two paces. “So you’re horning in again,” he said. “Goodwin turns a suicide into a murder, and here you are. Yesterday you had those girls here. This morning you had those men here. This afternoon Laidlaw is called downtown to show him something which he refuses to discuss, and when he leaves he heads for you. So I know he has been here. So I come—”
   “If you weren’t an inspector,” I cut in,” I’d say that’s a lie. Since you are, make it a fib. You do not know he has been here.”
   “I know he hopped a taxi and gave the driver this address, and when he saw he was being followed he went to a booth and phoned, and took another taxi to a place that runs through the block, and left by the other street. Where would I suppose he went?”
   “Correction. You suppose he has been here.”
   “All right, I do.” He took another step, towards Wolfe. “Have you seen Edwin Laidlaw in the last three hours?”
   “This is quite beyond belief,” Wolfe declared. “You know how rigidly I maintain my personal schedule. You know that I resent any attempt to interfere with these two hours of relaxation. But you get into my house by duplicity and then come charging up here to ask me a question to which you have no right to an answer. So you don’t get one. Indeed, in these circumstances, I doubt if you could put a question about anything whatever that I would answer.” He turned, giving us the broad expanse of his rear, and picked up a seedling.
   “I guess,” I told Cramer sympathetically, “your best bet would be to get a search warrant and send a gang to look for evidence, like cigarette ashes from the kind he smokes. I know where it hurts. You’ve never forgotten the day you did come with a warrant and a crew to look for a woman named Clara Fox and searched the whole house, including here, and didn’t find her, and later you learned she had been in this room in a packing case, covered with osmundine that Wolfe was spraying water on. So you thought if you rushed up before I could give the alarm you’d find Laidlaw here, and now that he isn’t you’re stuck. You can’t very well demand to know why Laidlaw rushed here to discuss something with Wolfe that he wouldn’t discuss downtown. You ought to take your coat off when you’re in the house or you’ll catch cold when you leave. I’m just talking to be sociable while you collect yourself. Of course Laidlaw was here this morning with the others, but apparently you know that. Whoever told you should—”
   He turned and was going. I followed.

Chapter 11

   At five minutes past six Saul Panzer phoned. That was routine; when one or more of them are out on a chore they call at noon , and again shortly after six, to report progress or lack of it and to learn if there are new instructions. He said he was talking from a booth in a bar and grill on Broadway near Eighty-sixth Street . Wolfe, who had just come down from the plant rooms, did him the honour of reaching for the phone on his desk to listen in.
   “So far,” Saul reported,” we’re only scouting. Marjorie Betz lives with Mrs Elaine Usher at the address on Eighty-seventh Street . Mrs Usher is the tenant. I got in to see Miss Betz by one of the standard lines, and got nowhere. Mrs Usher left Wednesday night, and she doesn’t know where she is or when she’ll be back. We have seen two elevator men, the janitor, five neighbours, fourteen people in local shops and stores, and a hackie Mrs Usher patronizes, and Orrie is now after the maid, who left at five-thirty. Do you want Mrs Usher’s description?”
   Wolfe said no and I said yes simultaneously. “Very well,” Wolfe said, “oblige him.”
   “Around forty. We got as low as thirty-three and as high as forty-five. Five feet six, hundred and twenty pounds, blue eyes set close, oval face, takes good care of good skin, hair was light brown two years ago, now blonde, wears it loose, medium cut. Dresses well but a little flashy. Gets up around noon . Hates to tip. I think that’s fairly accurate, but this is a guess with nothing specific, that she has no job but is never short of money, and she likes men. She has lived in that apartment for eight years. Nobody ever saw a husband. Six of them knew the daughter, Faith, and liked her, but it has been four years since they last saw her and Mrs Usher never mentions her.”
   Wolfe grunted.” Surely that will do.”
   “Yes, sir. Do we proceed?”
   “Yes.”
   “Okay. I’ll wait to see if Orrie gets anywhere with the maid, and if not I have a couple of ideas. Miss Betz may go out this evening, and the lock on the apartment door is only a Wyatt.”
   “The hackie she patronizes,” I said. “She didn’t patronize him Wednesday night?”
   “According to him, no. Fred found him. I haven’t seen him. Fred thinks he got it straight.”
   “You know,” I said, “you say only a Wyatt, but you need more than a paper clip for a Wyatt. I could run up there with an assortment, and we could go into conference—”
   “No,” Wolfe said firmly.” You’re needed here.”
   For what, he didn’t say. After we hung up all he did was ask how I had disposed of Laidlaw and then ask for a report of the hour and a quarter I had spent with him, and I could have covered that in one sentence just by saying it had been a washout. But he kept pecking at it until dinner time. I knew what the idea was, and he knew I knew. It was simply that if I had gone to help Saul with an illegal entry into Elaine Usher’s apartment there was a chance, say one in a million, that I wouldn’t be there to answer the phone in the morning.
   But back in the office after dinner he decided it was about time he exerted himself a little, possibly because he saw my expression when he picked up his book as soon as Fritz had come for the coffee service.
   He lowered the book. “Confound it,” he said, “I wait to see Mrs Usher not merely because her daughter said she hated her. There is also the fact that she has disappeared.”
   “Yes, sir. I didn’t say anything.”
   “You looked something. I suppose you are reflecting that we have had two faint intimations of the possible identity of the person who sent that communication to the District Attorney.”
   “I wasn’t reflecting. That’s your part. What are the two intimations?”
   “You know quite well. One, that Austin Byne told Laidlaw that he had seen Faith Usher at Grantham House. He didn’t name her, and Laidlaw did not regard his tone or manner as suggestive, but it deserves notice. Of course, you couldn’t broach it with Byne, since that would have betrayed our client’s confidence. You still can’t.”
   I nodded.” So we file it. What’s the other one?”
   “Miss Grantham. She gave Laidlaw a bizarre reason for refusing to marry him, that he didn’t dance well enough. It is true that women constantly give fantastic reasons without knowing that they are fantastic, but Miss Grantham must have known that that one was. If her real reason was merely that she didn’t care enough for him, surely she would have made a better choice for her avowed one, unless she despises him. Does she despise him?”
   “No.”
   “Then why insult him? It is an insult to decline a proposal of marriage, a man’s supreme capitulation, with flippancy. She did that six months ago, in September. It is not idle to conjecture that her real reason was that she knew of his experience with Faith Usher. Is she capable of moral revulsion?”
   “Probably, if it struck her fancy.”
   “I think you should see her. Apparently you do dance well enough. You should be able, without disclosing our engagement with Mr Laidlaw—”
   The phone rang, and I turned to get it, hoping it was Saul to say he needed some keys, but no. Saul is not a soprano. However, it was someone who wanted to see me, with no mention of keys. She just wanted me, she said, right away, and I told her to expect me in twenty minutes.
   I hung up and swivelled. “The timing,” I told Wolfe, “couldn’t have been better. Satisfactory. I suppose you arranged it with her while I was out getting Laidlaw. That was Celia Grantham. She wants to see me. Urgently. Presumably to tell me why she insulted Laidlaw when he asked her to marry him, though she didn’t say.” I arose. “Marvellous timing.”
   “Where?” Wolfe growled.
   “At her home.” I was on my way, and turned to correct it. “I mean her mother’s home. You have the number.” I went.
   Since there were at least twenty possible reasons, excluding personal ones, why Celia wanted to see me, and she had given no hint which it was, and since I would soon know anyhow, it would have been pointless to try to guess, so on the way uptown in a taxi that’s what I did. When I pushed the button in the vestibule of the Fifth Avenue mansion I had considered only half of them.
   I was wondering which I would be for Hackett, the hired detective or the guest, but he didn’t have to face the problem. Celia was there with him and took my coat as I shed it and handed it to him, and then fastened on my elbow and steered me to the door of a room on the right that they called the hall room, and on through it. She shut the door and turned to me.
   “Mother wants to see you,” she said.
   “Oh?” I raised a brow.” You said you did.”
   “I do, but it only occurred to me after Mother got me to decoy for her. The Police Commissioner is here, and they wanted to see you but thought you might not come, so she asked me to phone you, and I realized I wanted to see you too. They’re up in the music room, but first I want to ask you something. What is it about Edwin Laidlaw and that girl? Faith Usher.”
   That was turning the tables. Wolfe’s idea had been that I might manage, without showing any cards, to find out if she was on to our client’s secret, and here she was popping it at me and I had to play ignorant.
   “Laidlaw?” I shook my head. “Search me. Why?”
   “You don’t know about it?”
   “No. Am I supposed to?”
   “I thought you would, naturally, since it’s you that’s making all the trouble. You see, I may marry him some day. If he gets into a bad jam I’ll marry him now, since you’ve turned out to be a skunk. That’s based on inside information but is not guaranteed. Are you askunk?”
   “I’ll think it over and let you know. What about Laidlaw and Faith Usher?”
   “That’s what I want to know. They’re asking questions of all of us, whether we have any knowledge that Edwin ever knew her. Of course he didn’t. I think they got an anonymous letter. The reason I think that, they wanted to type something on our typewriters, all four of them—no, five. Hackett has one, and Cece, and I have, and there are two in Mother’s office. Are you thwarting me again? Don’t you really know?”
   “I do now, since you’ve told me.” I patted her shoulder. “Any time you’re hard up and need a job, ring me. You have the makings of a lady detective, figuring out why they wanted samples from the typewriters. Did they get them?”
   “Yes. You can imagine how Mother liked it, but she let them.”
   I patted her shoulder again. “Don’t let it wreck your marriage plans. Undoubtedly they got an anonymous letter, but they’re a dime a dozen. Whatever the letter said about Laidlaw, even if it said he was the father of her baby, that proves nothing. People who send anonymous letters are never—”
   “That’s not it,” she said. “If he was the father of her baby, that would show that if I married him we could have a family, and I want one. What I’m worried about is his getting in a jam, and you’re no help.”
   Mrs Irwin had certainly sized her up. She had her own way of looking at things. She was going on. “So now suit yourself. If you’d rather duck Mother and the Police Commissioner, you know where your hat and coat are. I don’t like being used for a decoy, and I’ll tell them you got mad and went.”
   It was a toss-up. The idea of chatting with Mrs Robilotti had attractions, since she might be stirred up enough by now to say something interesting, but with Police Commissioner Skinner present it would probably be just some more ring-around-a-rosy. However, it might be helpful to know why they had gone to the trouble of using Celia for bait, so I told her I would hate to disappoint her mother, and she escorted me out to the reception hall and on upstairs to the music room, where we had joined the ladies Tuesday evening after going without brandy.
   The whole family was there—Cecil standing over by a window, and Mr and Mrs Robilotti and Commissioner Skinner grouped on chairs at the far end, provided with drinks, not champagne. As Celia and I approached, Robilotti and Skinner arose, but not to offer hands. Mrs Robilotti lifted her bony chin, but not getting the effect she had in mind. You can’t look down your nose at someone when he is standing and you are sitting.
   “Mr Goodwin came up on his own,” Celia said. “I warned him you were laying for him, but here he is. Mr Skinner, Mr Goodwin.”
   “We’ve met,” the Commissioner said. His tone indicated that it was not one of his treasured memories. He had acquired more grey hairs above his ears and a couple of new wrinkles since I had last seen him, a year or so back.
   “I wish to say,” Mrs Robilotti told me, “that I would have preferred never to permit you in my house again.”
   Skinner shook his head at her. “Now, Louise.” He sat down and aimed his eyes at me. “This is unofficial, Goodwin, and off the record. Albert Grantham was my close and valued friend. He would have hated to have a thing like this happen in his house, and I owe it to him—”
   “Also,” Celia cut in, “he would have hated to ask someone to come and see him and then not invite him to sit down.”
   “I agree,” Robilotti said.” Be seated, Goodwin.” I didn’t know he had the spunk.
   “It may not be worth the trouble.” I looked down at Mrs Robilotti. From that slant her angles were even sharper. “Your daughter said you wanted to see me. Just to tell me I’m not welcome?”
   She couldn’t look down her nose, but she could look. “I have just spent,” she said, “the worst three days of my life, and you are responsible. I had had a previous experience with you, you and the man you work for, and I should have known better than to have you here. I think you are quite capable of blackmail, and I think that’s what you have in mind. I want to tell you that I won’t submit to it, and if you try—”
   “Hold it, Mom,” Cecil called over. “That’s libellous.”
   “Also,” Skinner said, “it’s useless. As I said, Goodwin, this is unofficial and off the record. None of my colleagues know I’m here, including the District Attorney. Let’s assume something, just an assumption. Let’s assume that here Tuesday evening, when something happened that you had said you would prevent, you were exasperated—naturally you would be—and in the heat of the moment you blurted out that you thought Faith Usher had been murdered, and then you found that you had committed yourself. It carried along from the precinct men to the squad men, to Inspector Cramer, to the District Attorney, and by that time you were committed.”
   He smiled. I knew that smile, and so did a lot of other people. “Another assumption, merely an assumption. Somewhere along the line, probably fairly early, it occurred to you and Wolfe that some of the people who were involved were persons of wealth and high standing, and that the annoyance of a murder investigation might cause one of them to seek the services of a private detective. If that were a fact, instead of an assumption, it should be apparent to you and Wolfe by now that your expectation is vain. None of the people involved is going to be foolish enough to hire you. There will be no fee.”
   “Do I comment as you go along,” I inquired, “or wait till you’re through?”
   “Please let me finish. I realize your position. I realize that it would be very difficult for you to go now to Inspector Cramer or the District Attorney and say that upon further consideration you have concluded that you were mistaken. So I have a suggestion. I suggest that you wanted to check, to make absolutely sure of your ground, and came here this evening to inspect the scene again, and found me here. And after a careful inspection—the distances, the positions, and so on—you found that, though you had nothing to apologize for, you had probably been unduly positive. You concede that it is possible that Faith Usher did poison her champagne, and that if the official conclusion is suicide you will not challenge it. I will of course be under an obligation to ensure that you will suffer no damage or inconvenience, that you will not be pestered. I will fulfil that obligation. I know you will probably have to consult with Wolfe before you can give me a definite answer, but I would like to have it as soon as possible. You can phone him from here, or go out to a booth if you prefer, or even go to him. I’ll wait here for you. This has gone on long enough. I think my suggestion is reasonable and fair.”
   “Are you through?” I asked.
   “Yes.”
   “Well. I could make some assumptions too, but what’s the use? Besides, I’m at a disadvantage. My mother used to tell me never to stay where I wasn’t wanted, and you heard Mrs Robilotti. I guess I’m too sensitive, but I’ve stood it as long as I can.”
   I turned and went. Voices came—Skinner’s and Celia’s and Robilotti’s—but I marched on.

Chapter 12

   If, to pass the time, you tried to decide what was the most conceited statement you ever heard anybody make, or read or heard of anybody making, what would you pick? The other evening a friend of mine brought it up, and she settled for Louis XIV saying L’йtat, c’est moi , I didn’t have to go so far back. Mine, I told her, was “They know me.” Of course, she wanted to know who said it and when, and since the murderer of Faith Usher had been convicted by a jury just the day before and the matter was closed, I told her.
   Wolfe said it that Friday night when I got home and reported. When I finished I made a comment. “You know,” I said, “it’s pretty damn silly. A police commissioner and a district attorney and an inspector of Homicide all biting nails just because if they say suicide one obscure citizen may let out a squeak.”
   “They know me,” Wolfe said.
   Beat that if you can. I admit it was justified by the record. They did know him. What if they officially called it suicide, and then, in a day or a week or a month, Wolfe phoned WA9-824I to tell them to come and get the murderer and the evidence? Not that they were sure that would happen, but past experience had shown them that it was at least an even-money bet that it might happen. My point is not that it wasn’t justified, but that it would have been more becoming just to describe the situation.
   He saved his breath. He said, “They know me,” and picked up his book.
   The next day, Saturday, we had words. The explosion came right after lunch. Saul had phoned at eight-thirty, as I was on my second cup of breakfast coffee, to report no progress. Marjorie Betz had stayed put in the apartment all evening, so the Wyatt lock had not been tackled. At noon he phoned again; more items of assorted information, but still no progress. But at two-thirty, as we returned to the office after lunch, the phone rang and he had news. They had found her. A man from a messenger service had gone to the apartment, and when he came out he had a suitcase with a tag on it. Of course that was pie. Saul and Orrie had entered a subway car right behind him. The tag read: “Miss Edith Upson, Room 911, Hotel Christie, 523 Lexington Avenue .” The initials “E.U.” were stamped on the suitcase.
   Getting a look at someone who is holed up in a hotel room can be a little tricky, but that situation was made to order. Saul, not encumbered with luggage, had got to the hotel first and gone to the ninth floor, and had been strolling past the door of Room 911 at the moment it opened to admit the messenger with the suitcase; and if descriptions are any good at all, Edith Upson was Elaine Usher. Of course, Saul had been tempted to tackle her then and there, but also of course, since it was Saul, he had retired to think it over and to phone. He wanted to know, were there instructions or was he to roll his own?
   “You need a staff,” I told him. “I’ll be there in twelve minutes. Where—”
   “No,” Wolfe said, at his phone. “Proceed, Saul, as you think best. You have Orrie. For this sort of juncture your talents are as good as mine. Get her here.”
   “Yes, sir.”
   “Preferably in a mood of compliance, but get her here.”
   “Yes, sir.”
   That was when we had words. I cradled the receiver, not gently, and stood up. “This is Saturday,” I said, “and I’ve got my cheque for this week. I want a month’s severance pay.”
   “Pfui.”
   “No phooey. I am severing relations. It has been eighty-eight hours since I saw that girl die, and your one bright idea, granting that it was bright, was to collect her mother, and I refuse to camp here on my fanny while Saul collects her. Saul is not ten times as smart as I am; he’s only twice as smart. A month’s severance pay will be—”
   “Shut up.”
   “Gladly.” I went to the safe for the chequebook and took it to my desk.
   “Archie.”
   “I have shut up.” I opened the chequebook.
   “This is natural. That is, it is in us, and we are alive, and whatever is in life is natural. You are headstrong and I am magisterial. Our tolerance of each other is a constantly recurring miracle. I did not have one idea, bright or not; I had two. We have neglected Austin Byne. It has been two days and nights since you saw him. Since he got you to that party, pretending an ailment he didn’t have, and since he told Laidlaw he had seen Miss Usher at Grantham House, and since he chose Miss Usher as one of the dinner guests, he deserves better of us. I suggest that you attend to him.”
   I turned my head but kept the chequebook open. “How? Tell him we don’t like his explanations and we want new ones?”
   “Nonsense. You are not so ingenuous. Survey him. Explore him.”
   “I already have. You know what Laidlaw said. He has no visible means of support, but he has an apartment and a car and plays table-stakes poker and does not go naked. The apartment, by the way, hits my eye. If you hang this murder on him, and if our tolerance miracle runs out of gas, I’ll probably take it over. Are you working yourself up to saying that you want to see him?”
   “No. I have no lever to use on him. I only feel that he has been neglected. If you approach him again you too will be without a lever. Perhaps the best course would be to put him under surveillance.”
   “If I postpone writing this cheque is that an instruction?”
   “Yes.”
   At least I would get out in the air and away from the miracle for a while. I returned the chequebook to the safe, took twenty tens from the expense drawer, told Wolfe he would see me when he saw me, and went to the hall for my coat and hat.
   When starting to tail a man it is desirable to know where he is, so I was a little handicapped. For all I knew, Byne might be in Jersey City or Brooklyn , or some other province, in a marathon poker game, or he might be at home in bed with a cold, or walking in the park. I got air by walking the two miles to Bowdoin Street , and at the corner of Bowdoin and Arbor I found a phone booth and dialled Byne’s number. No answer. So at least I knew where he wasn’t, and again I had to resist temptation. It is always a temptation to monkey with locks, and one of the best ways to test ears is to enter someone’s castle uninvited and, while you are looking here and there for something interesting, listen for footsteps on the stairs or the sound of an elevator. If you don’t hear them in time your hearing is defective, and you should try some other line of work when you are out and around again.
   Having swallowed the temptation, I moved down the block to a place of business I had noticed Thursday afternoon, with an artistic sign bordered with sweet peas, I think, that said AMY’S NOOK. As I entered, my wristwatch said 4.12. Between then and a quarter past six, slightly over two hours, I ate five pieces of pie, two rhubarb and one each of apple, green tomato, and chocolate, and drank four glasses of milk and two cups of coffee, while seated at a table by the front window, from which I could see the entrance to 87, across the street and up a few doors. To keep from arousing curiosity by either my tenure or my diet, I had my notebook and pencil out and made sketches of a cat sleeping on a chair. In the Village that accounts for anything. The pie, incidentally, was more than satisfactory. I would have liked to take a piece home to Fritz. At six-fifteen the light outside was getting dim, and I asked for my check and was putting my notebook in a pocket when a taxi drew up in front of 87 and Dinky Byne piled out and headed for the entrance. When my change came I added a quarter to the tip, saying,” For the cat,” and vacated.
   It was nothing like as comfortable in the doorway across from 87, the one I had patronized Thursday, but you have to be closer at night than in the daytime, no matter how good your eyes are. I could only hope that Dinky wasn’t set to spend the evening curled up with a book, or even without one, but that didn’t seem likely, since he would have to eat and I doubted if he did his own cooking. A light had shown at the fifth-floor windows, and that gave me something to do, bend my head back every half-minute or so to see if it had gone out. My neck was beginning to feel the strain when it finally did go out, at 7.02. In a couple of minutes the subject stepped out of the vestibule and turned right.
   Tailing a man solo in Manhattan , even if he isn’t wise, is a joke. If he suddenly decides to flag a taxi—There are a hundred ifs, and they are all on his side. But of course any game is more fun if the odds are against you, and if you win it’s good for the ego. Naturally it’s easier at night, especially if the subject knows you. On that occasion I claim no credit for keeping on Byne, for none of the ifs developed. It was merely a ten-minute walk. He turned left on Arbor, crossed Seventh Avenue , went three blocks west and one uptown, and entered a door where there was a sign on the window: TOM’S JOINT.
   That’s the sort of situation where being known to the subject cramps you; I couldn’t go in. All I could do was hunt a post, and I found a perfect one: a narrow passage between two buildings almost directly across the street. I could go in a good ten feet from the building line, where no light came at all, and still see the front of Tom’s Joint. There was even an iron thing to sit on if my feet needed a rest.
   They didn’t. I didn’t last long enough. I hadn’t been there more than five minutes when suddenly company came. I was alone, and then I wasn’t. A man had slid in, caught sight of me, and was peering in the darkness. A question that had arisen on various occasions, which of us had better eyesight, was settled when we spoke simultaneously. He said, “Archie” and I said, “Saul”.
   “What the hell,” I said.
   “Are you on her too?” he asked. “You might have told me.”
   “I’m on a man. I’ll be damned. Where is yours?”
   “Across the street. Tom’s Joint. She just came.”
   “This is fate,” I said.” It is also a break in a thousand. Of course, it could be coincidence. Mr Wolfe says that in a world that operates largely at random, coincidences are to be expected, but not this one. Have you spoken with her? Does she know you?”
   “No.”
   “My man knows me. His name is Austin Byne. He is six-feet one, hundred and seventy pounds, lanky, loose-jointed, early thirties, brown hair and eyes, skin tight on his bones. Go in and take a look. If you want a bet, one will get you ten that they’re together.”
   “I never bet against fate,” he said, and went. The five minutes that he was gone were five hours. I sat down on the iron thing and got up again three times, or maybe four.
   He came, and said. “They’re together in a booth in a rear corner. No one is with them. He’s eating oysters.”
   “He’ll soon be eating crow. What do you want for Christmas?”
   “I have always wanted your autograph.”
   “You’ll get it. I’ll tattoo it on you. Now we have a problem. She’s yours and he’s mine. Now they’re together. Who’s in command?”
   “That’s easy, Archie. Mr Wolfe.”
   “I suppose so, damn it. We could wrap it up by midnight . Take them to a basement, I know one, and peel their hides off. If he’s eating oysters there’s plenty of time to phone. You or me?”
   “You. I’ll stick here.”
   “Where’s Orrie?”
   “Lost. When she came out he was for feet and I was for wheels, and she took a taxi.”
   “I saw it pull up. Okay. Sit down and make yourself at home.”
   At the bar and grill at the corner the phone booth was occupied and I had to wait, and I was tired of waiting, having done too much of it in the last four days. But in a few minutes the customer emerged, and I entered, pulled the door shut, and dialled the number I knew best. When Fritz answered I told him I wanted to speak to Mr Wolfe.
   “But Archie! He’s at dinner!”
   “I know. Tell him it’s urgent.” That was another unexpected pleasure, having a good excuse to call Wolfe from the table. He has too many rules. His voice came, or rather his roar.
   “Well?”
   “I have a report. Saul and I are having an argument. He thought—”
   “What the devil are you doing with Saul?”
   “I’m telling you. He thought I should phone you. We have a problem of protocol. I tailed Byne to a restaurant, a joint, and Saul tailed Mrs Usher to the same restaurant, and our two subjects are in there together in a booth. Byne is eating oysters. So the question is, who is in charge, Saul or me? The only way to settle it without violence was to call you.”
   “At meal time,” he said. I didn’t retort, knowing that his complaint was not that I had presumed to interrupt, but that his two bright ideas had picked that moment to rendezvous.
   I said sympathetically, “They should have known better.”
   “Is anyone with them?” he asked.
   “No.”
   “Do they know they have been seen?”
   “No.”
   “Could you eavesdrop?”
   “Possibly, but I doubt it.”
   “Very well, bring them. There’s no hurry, since I have just started dinner. Give them no opportunity for a private exchange after they see you. Have you eaten?”
   “I’m full of pie and milk. I don’t know about Saul. I’ll ask him.”
   “Do so. He could come and eat– No. You may need him.”
   I hung up, returned to our field headquarters, and told Saul, “He wants them. Naturally. In an hour will do, since he just started dinner. Do you know what a genius is? A genius is a guy who makes things happen without his having any idea that they are going to happen. It’s quite a trick. Our genius wanted to know if you’ve had anything to eat.”
   “He would. Sure. Plenty.”
   “Okay. Now the m.o. Do we take them in there or wait till they come out?”
   Both procedures had pros and cons, and after discussion it was decided that Saul should go in and see how their meal was coming along, and when he thought they had swallowed enough to hold them through the hours ahead, or when they showed signs of adjourning, he would come out and wigwag me, go back in, and be near their booth when I approached.
   They must have been fast eaters, for Saul hadn’t been gone more than ten minutes when he came out, lifted a hand, saw me move, and went back in. I crossed over, entered, took five seconds to adjust to the noise and the smoke screen from the mob, made it to the rear, and there they were. The first Byne knew, someone was crowding him on the narrow seat, and his head jerked around. He started to say something, saw who it was, and goggled at me.
   “Hi, Dinky,” I said. “Excuse me for butting in, but I want to introduce a friend. Mr Panzer. Saul, Mrs Usher. Mr Byne. Sit down. Would you mind giving him room, Mrs Usher?”
   Byne had started to rise, by reflex, but it can’t be done in a tight little booth without toppling the table. He sank back. His mouth opened, and closed. Liquid spilled on the table top from a glass Elaine Usher was holding, and Saul, squeezed in beside her, reached and took it.
   “Let me out,” Byne said. “Let us out or I’ll go out over you. Her name is Upson. Edith Upson.”
   I shook my head. “If you start a row you’ll only make it worse. Mr Panzer knows Mrs Usher, though she doesn’t know him. Let’s be calm and consider the situation. There must be—”
   “What do you want?”
   “I’m trying to tell you. There must be some good reason why you two arranged to meet in this out-of-the-way dump, and Mr Panzer and I are curious to know what it is, and others will be too—the press, the public, the police, the District Attorney, and Nero Wolfe. I wouldn’t expect you to explain it here in this din and smog. Either Mr Panzer can phone inspector Cramer while I sit and chat with you, and he can send a car for you, or we’ll take you to talk it over with Mr Wolfe, whichever you prefer.”
   He had recovered some. He had played a lot of poker. He put a hand on my arm. “Look, Archie, there’s nothing to it. It looks funny, sure it does, us here together, but we didn’t arrange it. I met Mrs Usher about a year ago, I went to see her when her daughter went to Grantham House, and when I came in here this evening and saw her, after what’s happened, naturally I spoke to her and we—”
   “Save it, Dinky. Saul, phone Cramer.”
   Saul started to slide out. Byne reached and grabbed his sleeve. “Now wait a minute. Damn it, can’t you listen? I’m—”
   “No,” I said. “No listening. You can have one minute to decide.” I looked at my watch. “In one minute either you and Mrs Usher come along to Nero Wolfe or we phone Cramer. One minute.” I looked at my watch. “Go.”
   “Not the cops,” Mrs Usher said. “My God, not the cops.”
   Byne began,” If you’d only listen—”
   “No. Forty seconds.”
   If you’re playing stud, and there’s only one card to come, and the man across has two jacks showing and all you have is a mess, it doesn’t matter what his hole card is, or yours either. Byne didn’t use up the forty seconds. Only ten of them had gone when he stretched his neck to look for a waiter and ask for his check.

Chapter 13

   Surveying Elaine Usher from my desk as she sat in the red leather chair, I told myself that Saul’s picture of her, pieced together from a dozen descriptions he had got, had been pretty accurate. Oval face, blue eyes set close, good skin, medium-cut blonde hair, around forty. I would have said a hundred and fifteen pounds instead of a hundred and twenty, but she might have lost a few in the last four days. I had put her in the red leather chair because I had thought it desirable to have Byne closer to me. He was between Saul and me, and Saul was between the two subjects. But my arrangement was soon changed.
   “I prefer,” Wolfe said, “to speak with you separately, but first I must make sure that there is no misunderstanding. I intend to badger you, but you don’t have to submit to it. Before I start, or at any moment, you may get up and leave. If you do, you will be through with me; thenceforth you will deal with the police. I make that clear because I don’t want you bouncing up and down. If you want to go now, go.”
   He took a deep breath. He had just come in from the dining-room, having had his coffee there while I reported on the summit conference at Tom’s Joint.
   “We were forced to come here by a threat,” Byne said.
   “Certainly you were. And I am detaining you by the same threat. When you prefer that to this, leave. Now, madam, I wish to speak privately with Mr Byne. Saul, take Mrs Usher to the front room.”
   “Don’t go,” Byne told her. “Stay here.”
   Wolfe turned to me. “You were right, Archie. He is incorrigible. It isn’t worth it. Get Mr Cramer.”
   “No,” Elaine Usher said. She left the chair. “I’ll go.”
   Saul was up. “This way,” he said, and went and opened the door to the front room and held it for her. When she had passed through he followed and closed the door.
   Wolfe levelled his eyes at Byne. “Now, sir. Don’t bother to raise your voice; that wall and door are sound-proofed. Mr Goodwin has told me how you explained being in that restaurant with Mrs Usher. Do you expect me to accept it?”
   “No,” Dinky said.
   Of course. He had had time to realize that it wouldn’t do. If he had gone to see her because her daughter was at Grantham House, how had he learned that she was Faith’s mother? Not from the records and not from Mrs Irwin. From one of the other girls? It was too tricky.
   “What do you substitute for it?” Wolfe asked.
   “I told Goodwin that because the real explanation would have been embarrassing for Mrs Usher. Now I can’t help it. I met her some time ago, three years ago, and for about a year I was intimate with her. She’ll probably deny it. I’m pretty sure she will Naturally she would.”
   “No doubt. And your meeting her this evening was accidental?”
   “No,” Dinky said. He had also had time to realize that that was too fishy. He went on,” She phoned me this morning and said she was at the Christie Hotel , registered as Edith Upson. She had known that I was Mrs Robilotti’s nephew, and she said she wanted to see me and ask me about her daughter who had died. I told her I hadn’t been there Tuesday evening, and she said she knew that, but she wanted to see me. I agreed to see her because I didn’t want to offend her. I didn’t want it to get out that I had been intimate with Faith Usher’s mother. We arranged to meet at that restaurant.”
   “Had you known previously that she was Faith Usher’s mother?”
   “I had known that she had a daughter, but not that her name was Faith. She had spoken of her daughter when we—when I had known her.”
   “What did she ask you about her daughter this evening?”
   “She just wanted to know if I knew anything that hadn’t been in the papers. Anything about the people there or exactly what had happened. I could tell her about the people, but I didn’t know any more about what had happened than she did.”
   “Do you wish to elaborate on any of this? Or add anything?”
   “There’s nothing to add.”
   “Then I’ll see Mrs Usher. After I speak with her I’ll ask you in again, with her present. Archie, take Mr Byne and bring Mrs Usher.”
   He came like a lamb. He had thrown away his discard and made his draw and his bets, and was ready for the show-down. I opened the door for him, held it for Mrs Usher to enter, closed it, and returned to my desk. She went to the red leather chair, so Wolfe had to swivel to face her. Another item of Saul’s report on her had been that she liked men, and there were indications that men probably liked her—the way she handled her hips when she walked, the tilt of her head, the hint of a suggestion in her eyes, even now, when she was under pressure and when the man she was looking at was not a likely candidate for a frolic. And she was forty. At twenty she must have been a treat.
   Wolfe breathed deep again. Exertion right after a meal was pretty rugged. “Of course, madam,” he said, “my reason for speaking with you and Mr Byne separately is transparent: to see if your account will agree with his. Since you have had no opportunity for collusion, agreement would be, if not conclusive, at least persuasive.”
   She smiled. “You use big words, don’t you?” Something in her tone and her look conveyed the notion that for years she had been wanting to meet a man who used big words.
   Wolfe grunted.” I try to use words that say what I mean.”
   “So do I,” she declared, “but sometimes it’s hard to find the ones I want. I don’t know what Mr Byne told you, but all I can do is tell you the truth. You want to know how I happened to be with him there tonight, isn’t that it?”
   “That’s it.”
   “Well, I phoned him this morning and said I wanted to see him and he said he would meet me there at Tom’s Joint, I had never heard of it before, at a quarter past seven. So I went. That’s not very thrilling, is it?”
   “Only moderately. Have you known him long?”
   “I don’t really know him at all. I met him somewhere about a year ago, and I wish I could tell you where, but I’ve been trying to remember and I simply can’t . It was a party somewhere, but I can’t remember where. Anyhow, it doesn’t matter. But yesterday I was sitting at the window thinking about my daughter. My dear daughter Faith.” She stopped to gulp, but it wasn’t very impressive. “And I remembered meeting a man named Byne, Austin Byne, and someone telling me, maybe he told me himself, that he was the nephew of the rich Mrs Robilotti who used to be Mrs Albert Grantham. And my daughter had died at Mrs Robilotti’s house, so maybe he could tell me about her, and maybe he could get Mrs Robilotti to see me so I could ask her about her. I wanted to learn all I could about my daughter.” She gulped.
   It didn’t look good. In fact, it looked bad. Byne had been smart enough to invent one that she couldn’t be expected to corroborate; he had even warned that she would probably deny it; and what was worse, it was even possible that he hadn’t invented it. He might have been telling the truth, like a gentleman. The meeting of Wolfe’s two bright ideas at Tom’s Joint, which had looked so rosy when Saul told me they were together, might fizzle out entirely. Maybe he wasn’t a genius after all.
   If he was sharing my gloom it didn’t show. He asked, “Since your rendezvous with Mr Byne was innocuous, why were you alarmed by his threat to call the police? What were her words, Archie?”
   “ ‘Not the cops. My God, not the cops.’ ”
   “Yes. Why, Mrs Usher?”
   “I don’t like cops. I never have liked cops.”
   “Why did you leave your home and go to a hotel and register under another name?”
   “Because of how I felt, what my daughter had done. I didn’t want to see people. I knew newspapermen would come. And cops. I wanted to be alone. You would too if—”
   The doorbell rang, and I went. Sometimes I let Fritz answer it when I am engaged, but with her there and Byne in the front room I thought I had better see who it was, and besides, I was having a come-down and felt like moving. It was only Orrie Gather. I opened up and greeted him, and he crossed the sill, and I shut the door. When he removed his coat there was disclosed a leather thing, a zippered case, that he had had under it.
   “What’s that?” I asked. “Your week-end bag?”
   “No,” he said.” It’s Mrs Usher’s sec—”
   My hand darted to clap on his mouth. He was startled, but he can take a hint, and when I headed down the hall and turned right to the dining-room he followed.
   I shut the door, moved away from it, and demanded, “Mrs Usher’s what?”
   “Her secret sin.” There was a gleam in his eye.” I want to give it to Mr Wolfe myself.”
   “You can’t. Mrs Usher is in the office with him. Where did—”
   “She’s here? How come?”
   “That can wait. Where did you get that thing?”
   I may have sounded magisterial, but my nerves were a little raw. It put Orrie on his dignity. His chin went up. “It’s a pleasure to report, Mr Goodwin. Mr Panzer and I were covering the Christie Hotel . When the subject appeared and hopped a taxi he followed in one before I could join him. That left me loose and I phoned in. Mr Wolfe asked me if there had been any indication how long she would be gone, and I said yes, since she took a taxi it certainly wouldn’t be less than half an hour and probably longer, and he said it would be desirable to take a look at her room, and I said fine. It took a while to get in. Do you want the details?”
   “That can wait. What’s in it?”
   “It was in a locked suitcase—not the one the messenger took today, a smaller one. The suitcase was easy, but this thing had a trick lock and I had to bust it.”
   I put out a hand. He hated to give it up, but protocol is protocol. I took it to the table, unzipped it, and pulled out two envelopes, one nine by twelve and the other one smaller. Neither was sealed, and hadn’t been. I slipped out the contents of the big one.
   They were pictures that had been clipped from magazines and newspapers. I would have recognized him even if there had been no captions, since I had been old enough to read for some years, and you often run across a picture of a multi-millionaire philanthropist. The one on top was captioned: “Albert Grantham (left) receiving the annual award of the American Benevolent League.” They were all of Grantham, twenty or more. I started to turn them over, one by one, to see if anything was written on them.
   “To hell with that,” Orrie said impatiently. “It’s the other one.” It, not so big, held another envelope, smaller, of white rag bond. The engraved return in the corner said “Albert Grantham,” with the Fifth Avenue address, and it was addressed in longhand to Mrs Elaine Usher, 812 West 8yth Street, New York, and below was written “By Messenger.” Inside were folded sheets. I unfolded them and read:
   6 June 1952
   My dear Elaine:
   In accordance with my promise, I am confirming in writing what I said to you recently.
   I am not accepting the obligations, legal or moral, of paternity of your daughter, Faith. You have always maintained that I am her father, and for a time I believed you, and I now have no evidence to prove you are wrong but, as I told you, I have taken the trouble to inform myself of your method of life for the past ten years, and it is quite clear that chastity is not one of your virtues. It may have been, during that period fifteen years ago when I took advantage of your youth and enjoyed your favours—you say it was—but your subsequent conduct makes it doubtful. I shall not again express my regret for my own conduct during that period. I have done that and you know how I feel about it, and have always felt since I achieved maturity, and I have not been illiberal in supplying the material needs of your daughter and yourself. For a time that was not easy, but since my father’s death I have given you $2,000 each month, and you have paid no taxes on it.
   But I am getting along in years, and you are quite right, I should make provision against contingencies. As I told you, I must reject your suggestion that I give you a large sum outright—large enough for you and your daughter to live on the income. I distrust your attitude towards money. I fear that in your hands the principal would soon be squandered, and you would again appeal to me. Nor can I provide for you through a trust fund, either now or in my will, for the reasons I gave you. I will not risk disclosure.
   So I have taken steps that should meet the situation. I have given my nephew, Austin Byne, a portfolio of securities the income from which is tax exempt, amounting to slightly more than $2,000,000. The yield will be about $55,000 annually. My nephew is to remit half of it to you and keep the other half for himself.
   This arrangement is recorded in an agreement signed by my nephew and myself. One provision is that if you make additional demands, if you disclose the relationship you and I once had, or if you make any claims on my estate or any member of my family, he is relieved of any obligation to share the income with you. Another provision is that if he fails to make the proper remittances to you with reasonable promptness you may claim the entire principal. In drafting that provision I would have liked to have legal advice, but could not. I am sure it is binding. I do not think my nephew will fail in his performance, but if he does you will know what to do. There is of course the possibility that he will squander the principal, but I have known him all his life and I am sure it is remote.
   I have herewith kept my promise to confirm what I told you. I repeat that this letter is not to be taken as an acknowledgement by me that I am the father of your daughter, Faith. If you ever show it or use it as the basis of any claim, the remittances from my nephew will cease at once.
   I close with all good wishes for die welfare and happiness of your daughter and yourself.
   Yours sincerely,
   Albert Grantham
   As I finished and looked up Orrie said, “I want to give it to Mr Wolfe myself.”
   “I don’t blame you.” I folded the sheets and put them in the envelope. “Quite a letter. Quite a letter. I saw a note in the paper the other day that some bozo is doing a biography of him. He would love to have this. You lucky stiff. I’d give a month’s pay for the kick you got when you found it.”
   “It was nice. I want to give it to him.”
   “You will. Wait here. Help yourself to champagne.”
   I left, crossed to the office, stood until Wolfe finished a sentence, and told him, “Mr Gather wants to show you something. He’s in the dining-room.” He got up and went, and I sat down. Judging by the expression on Mrs Usher’s face, she had been doing fine. I really would rather not have looked at her, to see the cocky little tilt of her head, the light of satisfaction in her eyes, knowing as I did that she was about to be hit by a ton of brick. So I didn’t. I turned to my desk and opened a drawer and got out papers, and did things with them. When she told my back that she was glad I had brought them to Wolfe, she didn’t mind a bit explaining to him, I wasn’t even polite enough to turn around when I answered her. I had taken my notebook from my pocket and was tearing sketches of cats from it when Wolfe’s footsteps came.
   As he sat down he spoke.” Bring Mr Byne, Archie. And Saul.”
   I went and opened the door and said,” Come in, gentlemen.”
   As Byne entered his eyes went to Mrs Usher and saw what I had seen, and then he too was satisfied. They took the seats they had had before. Wolfe looked from one to the other and back again.
   “I don’t want to prolong this beyond necessity,” he said, “but I would like to congratulate you. You were taken in that place by surprise and brought here with no chance to confer, but you have both lied so cleverly that it would have taken a long and costly investigation to impeach you. It was an admirable performance—If you please, Mr Byne. You may soon speak, and you will need to. Unfortunately, for you, the performance was wasted. Fresh ammunition has arrived. I have just finished reading a document that was not intended for me.” He looked at Mrs Usher. “It states, madam, that if you disclose its contents you will suffer a severe penalty, but you have not disclosed them. On the contrary, you have done your best to safeguard them.”
   Mrs Usher had sat up. “What document? What are you talking about?”
   “The best way to identify it is to quote an excerpt—say, the fourth paragraph. It goes: ‘So I have taken steps that should meet the situation. I have given my nephew, Austin Byne, a portfolio of securities the income from which is tax exempt, amounting to slightly more than $2,000,000. The yield will be about $55,000 annually. My nephew is to remit half.’ ”
   Byne was on his feet. The next few seconds were a little confused. I was up, to be between Byne and Wolfe, but the fury in his eyes was for Mrs Usher. Then, as he moved towards her, Saul was there to block him, so everything was under control. But then, with Saul’s back to her and me cut off by Saul and Byne, Mrs Usher shot out of her chair and streaked for Wolfe. I might have beat her to it by diving across Wolfe’s desk, but maybe not, from where I was, and anyway, I was too astonished to move—not by her, but by him. He had been facing her, so his knees weren’t under the desk and he didn’t have to swivel, but even so, he had a lot of pounds to get in motion. Back went his bulk, and up came his legs, and just as she arrived his feet were there, and one of them caught her smack on the chin. She staggered back into Saul’s arms and he eased her on to the chair. And I’ll be damned if she didn’t put both hands to her jaw and squawk at Wolfe, “You hit me!”
   I had hold of Byne’s arm, a good hold, and he didn’t even know it. When he realized it he tried to jerk loose but couldn’t, and for a second I thought he was going to swing with the other fist, and so did he.
   “Take it easy,” I advised him.” You’re going to need all the breath you’ve got.”
   “How did you get it?” Mrs Usher demanded. “Where is it?” She was still clutching her jaw with both hands.
   Wolfe was eyeing her, but not warily. Complacently, I would say. You might think that for a long time he had had a suppressed desire to kick a woman on the chin.
   “It’s in my pocket,” he said. He tapped his chest. “I got it just now from the man who took it from your hotel room. You’ll probably get it back in due course; that will depend; it may—”
   “That’s burglary,” Byne said. “That’s a felony.”
   Wolfe nodded. “By definition, yes. I doubt if Mrs Usher will care to make the charge if the document is eventually returned to her. It may be an exhibit in evidence in a murder trial. If so—”
   “There has been no murder.”
   “You are in error, Mr Byne. Will you please sit down? This will take a while. Thank you. I’ll cover that point decisively with a categorical statement: Faith Usher was murdered.”
   “No!” Mrs Usher said. Her hands left her jaw but remained poised, the fingers curved. “Faith killed herself!”
   “I’m not going to debate the point,” Wolfe told her.” I say merely that I will stake my professional reputation on the statement that she was murdered—indeed, I have done so. That’s why I am applying my resources and risking my credit. That’s why I must explore the possibilities suggested by this letter.” He tapped his chest and focused on Byne. “For instance, I shall insist on seeing the agreement between you and Mr Grantham. Does it provide that if Faith Usher should die your remittances to her mother are to be materially decreased, or even cease altogether?”
   Byne wet his lips.” Since you’ve read the letter to Mrs Usher you know what the agreement provides. It’s a confidential agreement and you’re not going to see it.”
   “Oh, but I am.” Wolfe was assured. “When you came here my threat was only to tell the police of your rendezvous. Now my threat is more imperative and may even be mortal. Observe Mrs Usher. Note her expression as she regards you. Have you seen the agreement, madam?”
   “Yes,” she said, ”I have.”
   “Does it contain such a provision as I suggested?”
   “Yes,” she said, “it does. It says that if Faith dies he can pay me only half as much or even less. Are you telling the truth, that she was murdered?”
   “Nuts,” Byne said. “It’s not the truth he’s after. Anyhow, I wasn’t even there. Don’t look at me, Elaine, look at him .”
   “I thought,” Wolfe said, “that it might save time to see the agreement now, so I sent Mr Gather to your apartment to look for it. It will expedite matters if you phone him and tell him where it is. He is good with locks and should be inside by this time.”
   Byne was staring. “By God,” he said.
   “Do you want to phone him?”
   “Not him. By God. You’ve been threatening to call the police. I’ll call them myself. I’ll tell them a man has broken into my apartment, and he’s there now, and they’ll get him.”
   I left my chair.” Here, Dinky, use my phone.”
   He ignored me. “It’s not the agreement,” he told Wolfe. “It’s your goddamn nerve. He won’t find the agreement because it’s not there. It’s in a safe-deposit box and it’s going to stay there.”
   “Then it must wait until Monday.” Wolfe’s shoulders went up an eighth of an inch and down again. “However, Mr Gather will not have his trouble for nothing. Aside from the chance that he may turn up other interesting items, he will use your typewriter, if you have one. I told him if he found one there to write something with it. I even told him what to write. This: ‘Have you found out yet that Edwin Laidlaw is the father of Faith Usher’s baby? Ask him about his trip to Canada in August 1956.’ He will type that and bring it to me. You smile. You are amused? Because you don’t have a typewriter?”
   “Sure I have a typewriter. Did I smile?” He smiled again, a poker smile. “At you dragging Laidlaw in all of a sudden. I don’t get it, but I suppose you do.”
   “I didn’t drag him in,” Wolfe asserted. “Someone else did. The police received an unsigned typewritten communication which I have just quoted. And you were wrong to smile; that was a mistake. You couldn’t possibly have been amused, so you must have been pleased, and by what? Not that you don’t have a typewriter, because you have. I’ll try a guess. Might it not have been that you were enjoying the idea of Mr Gather bringing me a sample of typing from your machine when you know it is innocent, and that you know it is innocent because you know where the guilty machine is? I think that deserves exploration. Unfortunately tomorrow is Sunday; it will have to wait. Monday morning Mr Goodwin, Mr Panzer, and Mr Gather will call at places where a machine might be easily and naturally available to you—for instance, your club. Another is the bank vault where you have a safe-deposit box. Archie. You go to my box regularly. Would it be remarkable for a vault customer to ask to use a typewriter?”
   “Remarkable?” I shook my head.” No.”
   “Then that is one possibility. Actually,” he told Byne,” I am not sorry that this must wait until Monday, for it does have a drawback. The samples collected from the machines must be compared with the communication received by the police, and it is in their hands. I don’t like that, but there’s no other way. At least, if my guess is good, I will have exposed the sender of the communication, and that will be helpful. On this point, sir, I do not threaten to go to the police; I am forced to.”
   “You goddamn snoop,” Byne said through his teeth.
   Wolfe’s brows went up. “I must have made a lucky guess. It’s the machine at the vault?”
   Byne’s head jerked to Mrs Usher.” Beat it, Elaine. I want to talk to him.”

Chapter 14

   Austin Byne sat straight and stiff. When Saul had escorted Mrs Usher to the front room, staying there with her, I had told Dinky he would be more comfortable in the red leather chair, but from the way he looked at me I suspected that he had forgotten what “comfortable“ meant.
   “You win,” he told Wolfe. “So I spill my guts. Where do you want me to start?”
   Wolfe was leaning back with his elbows on the chair arms and his palms together. “First, let’s clear up a point or two. Why did you send that thing about Laidlaw to the police?”
   “I haven’t said I sent it.”
   “Pfui.” Wolfe was disgusted. “Either you’ve submitted or you haven’t. I don’t intend to squeeze it out drop by drop. Why did you send it?”
   Byne did have to squeeze it out. His lips didn’t want to part. “Because,” he finally managed, “they were going on with the investigation and there was no telling what they might dig up. They might find out that I knew Faith’s mother, and about my—about the arrangement. I still thought Faith had killed herself, and I still do, but if she had been murdered I thought Laidlaw must have done it and I wanted them to know about him and Faith.”
   “Why must he have done it? You invented that, didn’t you? About him and Miss Usher?”
   “I did not. I sort of kept an eye on Faith, naturally. I don’t mean I was with her, I just kept an eye on her. I saw her with Laidlaw twice, and the day he left for Canada I saw her in his car. I knew he went to Canada because a friend got a card from him. I didn’t have to invent it.”
   Wolfe grunted. “You realize, Mr Byne, that everything you say is now suspect. Assuming that you knew that Laidlaw and Miss Usher had in fact been intimate, why did you surmise that he had killed her? Was she menacing him?”
   “Not that I know of. If he had a reason for killing her I didn’t know what it was. But he was the only one of the people there that night who had had anything to do with her.”
   “No. You had.”
   “Damn it, I wasn’t there!”
   “That’s true, but those who were there can also plead lack of opportunity. In the circumstances as I have heard them described, no one could have poisoned Miss Usher’s champagne with any assurance that it would get to her. And you alone, of all those involved, had a motive, and not a puny one. An increase in annual income of 127,000 or more, tax exempt, is an alluring prospect. If I were you I would accept almost any alternative to a disclosure of that agreement to the District Attorney.”
   “I am. I’m sitting here while you pile it on.”
   “So you are.” Wolfe looked at his palms and put them on the chair arms. “Now. Did you know that Miss Usher kept a bottle of poison on her person?”
   No hesitation.” I knew that she said she did. I never saw it. Her mother told me, and Mrs Irwin at Grantham House mentioned it to me once.”
   “Did you know what kind of poison it was?”
   “No.”
   “Was it Mrs Usher’s own idea to seclude herself in a hotel under another name, or did you suggest it?”
   “Neither one. I mean I don’t remember. She phoned me Thursday—no, Wednesday—and we decided she ought to do that. I don’t remember who suggested it.”
   “Who suggested your meeting this evening?”
   “She did. She phoned me this morning. I told you that,”
   “What did she want?”
   “She wanted to know what I was going to do about payments, with Faith dead. She knew that by the agreement it was left to my discretion. I told her that for the present I would continue to send her half.”
   “Had she been using any of the money you sent her to support her daughter?”
   “I don’t think so. Not for the last four or five years, but it wasn’t her fault. Faith wouldn’t take anything from her. Faith wouldn’t live with her. They couldn’t get along. Mrs Usher is very—unconventional. Faith left when she was sixteen, and for over a year we didn’t know where she was. When I found her she was working in a restaurant. A waitress.”
   “But you continued to pay Mrs Usher her full share?”
   “Yes.”
   “Is that fund in your possession and control without supervision?”
   “Certainly.”
   “It has never been audited?”
   “Certainly not. Who would audit it?”
   “I couldn’t say. Would you object to an audit by an accountant of my selection? Now that I know of the agreement?”
   “I certainly would. The fund is my property and 1 am accountable to no one but myself, as long as I pay Mrs Usher her share.”
   “I must see that agreement.” Wolfe pursed his lips and slowly shook his head. “It is extremely difficult,” he said, “to circumvent the finality of death. Mr Grantham made a gallant try, but he was hobbled by his vain desire to guard his secret even after he became food for worms. He protected you and Mrs Usher, each against the frailty or knavery of the other, but what if you joined forces in a threat to his repute? He couldn’t preclude that.” He lifted a hand to brush it aside. “A desire to defeat death makes any man a fool. I must see that agreement. Meanwhile, a few points remain. You told Mr Goodwin that your selection of Miss Usher to be invited to that party was fortuitous, but now that won’t do. Then why?”
   “Of course,” Byne said.” I knew that was coming.”
   “Then you’ve had time to devise an answer.”
   “I don’t have to devise it. I was a damn fool. When I got the list from Mrs Irwin and saw Faith’s name on it—well, there it was. The idea of having Faith as a guest at my aunt’s house—it just appealed to me. Mrs Robilotti is only my aunt by marriage, you know. My mother was Albert Grantham’s sister. You’ve got to admit there was a kick in the idea of having Faith sitting at my aunt’s table. And then…”
   He left it hanging. Wolfe prodded him. “Then?”
   “That suggested another idea, to have Laidlaw there too. I know j was a damn fool, but there it was. Laidlaw seeing Faith there, and Faith seeing him. Of course, my aunt could cross Faith off and tell Mrs Irwin—“He stopped. In a second he went on, “I mean you never knew what Faith would do, she might refuse to go, but Laidlaw wouldn’t know she had been asked, so what the hell. So I suggested that to my aunt, to invite Laidlaw, and she did.”
   “Did Miss Usher know that Albert Grantham had fathered her?”
   “My God, no. She thought her father had been a man named Usher who had died before she was born.”
   “Did she know you were the source of her mother’s income?”
   “No. I think– No, I don’t think, I know. She suspected that her mother’s income came from friends. From men she knew. That was why she left. About my picking Faith to be invited to that party and suggesting Laidlaw, after I had done that I got cold feet. I realized something might happen. At least Faith might walk out when she saw him, and it might be something worse, and I didn’t want to be there, so I decided to get someone to go in my place. The first four or five I tried couldn’t make it, and I thought of Archie Goodwin.”
   Wolfe leaned back and closed his eyes, and his lips started to work. They pushed out and went back in, out and in, out and in… Sooner or later he always does that, and I really should have a sign made, GENIUS AT WORK>, and put it on his desk when he starts it. Usually I have some sort of idea as to what genius is working on, but that time not a glimmer. He had cleared away some underbrush, for instance who had sicked the cops on Laidlaw and how Faith and Laidlaw had both got invited to the party, but he had got only one thing to chew on, that he had at last found somebody who had had a healthy motive to kill Faith Usher, and Byne, as he liked to point out himself, hadn’t even been at the party. Of course, that could have been what genius was at, doping out how Byne could have poisoned the champagne by remote control, but I doubted it.
   Wolfe opened his eyes and aimed them at Dinky.” I’m not going to wait until Monday,” he said.” If I haven’t enough now, I never will have. One thing you have told me, or at least implied, will have to be my peg. If I asked you about it now, you would only wriggle out with lies, so I won’t bother. The time has come to attack the central question: if someone had decided to kill Faith Usher, how did he manage it?” He turned.” Archie, get Mr Cramer.”
   “No!” Byne was on his feet.” Damn you, after I’ve spilled—”
   I had lifted the receiver, but Byne was there, jostling and reaching. Wolfe’s voice, with a snap, turned him. “Mr Byne! Don’t squeal until you’re hurt. I’ve got you and I intend to keep you. Must I call Mr Panzer in?”
   He didn’t have to. Dinky backed away a step, giving me elbow room to dial, but close enough, he thought, to pounce. Getting Inspector Cramer at twenty minutes past ten on a Saturday evening can be anything from quick and simple to practically impossible. That time I had luck. He was at Homicide on Twentieth Street , and after a short wait I had him, and Wolfe got on, and Cramer greeted him with a growl, and Wolfe said he would need three minutes.
   “I’ll take all I can stand,” Cramer said.” What is it?”
   “About Faith Usher. I am being pestered beyond endurance. Take yesterday. In the morning those four men insisted on seeing me. In the afternoon you barged in. In the evening Mr Goodwin and I were interrupted by a phone call summoning him to Mrs Robilotti’s house, and when he goes he finds Mr Skinner there, and he—”
   “Do you mean the Commissioner?”
   “Yes. He said it was unofficial and off the record, and made an offensive proposal which Mr Goodwin was to refer to me. I don’t complain of that to you, since he is your superior and you presumably didn’t know about it.”
   “I didn’t.”
   “But it was another thorn for me, and I have had enough. I would like to put an end to it. All this hullabaloo has been caused by Mr Goodwin’s conviction, as an eye-witness, that Faith Usher did not kill herself, and I intend to satisfy myself on the point independently. If I decide he is wrong I will deal with him. If I decide he is right it will be because I will have uncovered evidence that may have escaped you. I notify you of my intention because in order to proceed I must see all of the people involved, I must invite them to my office, and I thought you should know about it. I thought you might choose to be present, and if so you will be welcome, but in that case you should get them here. I will not ask people to my office for a conference and then confront them with a police inspector. Tomorrow morning at eleven o’clock would be a good time.”
   Cramer made a noise, something like “Wmgzwmzg”. Then he found words.” So you’ve got your teeth in something. What?”
   “It’s other people’s teeth that are in something. In me. And I’m annoyed. The situation is precisely as I have described it and I have nothing to add.”
   “You wouldn’t have. Tomorrow is Sunday.”
   “Yes. Since three of them are girls with jobs that is just as well.”
   “You want all of them?”
   “Yes.”
   “Are any of them with you now?”
   “No.”
   “Is Commissioner Skinner in this?”
   “No.”
   “I’ll call you back in an hour.”
   “That won’t do,” Wolfe objected.” If I am to invite them I must start at once, and it’s late.”
   Not only that, but he knew darned well that if he gave him an hour Cramer would probably ring our bell in about ten minutes and want in. Anyway, it was a cinch that Cramer would buy it, and after a few more foolish questions he did.
   We hung up, and Wolfe turned to Byne, who had returned to his chair. “Now for you,” he said, “and Mrs Usher. I do not intend to let you communicate with anyone, and there is only one way to insure against it. She will spend the night here; there is a spare room with a good bed. It is a male household, but that shouldn’t disconcert her. There is another room you may use, or, if you prefer, Mr Panzer will accompany you home and sleep there, and bring you here in the morning. Mr Cramer will have the others here at eleven o’clock.”
   “You can go to hell,” Byne said. He stood up. “I’m taking Mrs Usher to her hotel.”
   Wolfe shook his head. “I know your mind is in disorder, but surely you must see that that is out of the question. I can’t possibly allow you an opportunity to repair any of the gaps I have made in your fences. If you scoot I shall move at once, and you’ll find you have no fences left at all. Only by my sufferance can you hope to get out of this mess without disfigurement, and you know it. Archie, bring Saul and Mrs Usher—no. First ring Mr Byne’s apartment and tell Orrie to come. Also tell him not to be disappointed at not finding the agreement; it isn’t there. If he has found any items that seem significant he might as well bring them.”
   “You goddamn snoop,” Dinky said, merely repeating himself.
   I turned to the phone.

Chapter 15

   For an hour and a half Sunday morning Fritz and I worked like beavers, setting the stage. The idea was—that is, Wolfe’s idea—to reproduce as nearly as possibly the scene of the crime, and it was a damn silly idea, since you could have put seven or eight of that office into Mrs Robilotti’s drawing-room. Taking the globe and the couch and the television cabinet and a few other items to the dining-room helped a little, but it was still hopeless. I wanted to go up to the plant rooms and tell Wolfe so, and add that if a play-back was essential to his programme he had better break his rule never to leave the house on business and move the whole performance uptown to Mrs Robilotti’s, but Fritz talked me out of it. To get fourteen chairs we had to bring some down from upstairs, and then it developed later that some of them weren’t really necessary. The bar was a table over in the far corner, but it couldn’t be against the wall because there had to be room for Hackett behind it. One small satisfaction I got was that the red leather chair had been taken to the dining-room with the other stuff, and Cramer wouldn’t like that a bit.
   Furniture-moving wasn’t all. Mrs Usher kept buzzing on the house phone from the South Room, for more coffee, for more towels, though she had a full supply, for a section she said was missing from the Sunday paper I had taken her, and for an additional list of items I had to get from the drugstore. Then at ten-fifteen here came Austin Byne, escorted by Saul, demanding a private audience with Wolfe immediately, and to get him off my neck I had Saul take him up the three flights to the vestibule of the plant rooms, where they found the door locked, and then Saul had to get physical with him when he wanted to open doors on the upper floors trying to find Mrs Usher.
   I expected more turmoil when, at ten-forty, the bell rang and Inspector Cramer was on the stoop, but it wasn’t Wolfe he had come early for. He merely asked if Mrs Robilotti had arrived, and, when I told him no, stayed outside. Theoretically, in a democracy, a police inspector should react just the same to a dame with a Fifth Avenue mansion as to an unmarried mother, but a job is a job, and facts are facts and one fact was that the Commissioner himself had taken the trouble to make a trip to the mansion. So I didn’t chalk it up against Cramer that he waited out on the sidewalk for the Robilotti limousine; and anyway, he was there to greet the three unmarried mothers when Sergeant Purley Stebbins arrived with them in a police car. The three chevaliers, Paul Schuster, Beverly Kent, and Edwin Laidlaw, came singly, on their own.
   I had promised myself a certain pleasure, and I didn’t let Cramer’s one-man reception committee interfere with it. When the limousine finally rolled to the curb, a few minutes late, and he convoyed Mrs Robilotti up the stoop steps, followed by her husband, son, daughter, and butler, I held the door for them as they entered and then left them to Fritz. My objective was the last one in, Hackett. When he had crossed the sill I put my hands ready for his coat and hat, in the proper manner exactly.
   “Good morning, sir,” I said. “A pleasant day. Mr Wolfe will be down shortly.”
   It got him. He darted a glance at the others, saw that no eye was on him, handed me his hat, and said, “Quite. Thank you, Goodwin.”
   That made the day for me personally, no matter how it turned out professionally. I took him to the office and then went to the kitchen, buzzed the plant rooms on the house phone, and told Wolfe the cast had arrived.
   “Mrs Usher?” he asked.
   “Okay. In her room. She’ll stay put.”
   “Mr Byne?”
   “Also okay. In the office with the others, with Saul glued to him.”
   “Very well. I’ll be down.”
   I went and joined the mob. They were scattered around, some seated and some standing. I permitted myself a private grin when I saw that Cramer, finding the red leather chair gone, had moved one of the yellow ones to its exact position and put Mrs Robilotti in it, and was on his feet beside it, bending down to her. As I threaded my way through to my desk the sound of the elevator came, and in a moment Wolfe entered.
   No pronouncing of names was required, since he had met the Robilottis and the Grantham twins at the time of the jewellery hunt. He made it to his desk, sent his eyes around, and sat. He looked at Cramer.
   “You have explained the purpose of this gathering, Mr Cramer?”
   “Yes. You’re going to prove that Goodwin is either wrong or right.”
   “I didn’t say ‘prove’. I said I intend to satisfy myself and deal with him accordingly.” He surveyed the audience. “Ladies and gentlemen. I will not keep you long—at least, not most of you. I have no exhortation for you and no questions to ask. To form an opinion of Mr Goodwin’s competence as an eye-witness, I need to see, not what he saw, since these quarters are too cramped for that, but an approximation of it. You cannot take your positions precisely as they were last Tuesday evening, or re-enact the scene with complete fidelity, but we’ll do the best we can. Archie?”
   I left my chair to stage-manage. Thinking that Mrs Robilotti and her Robert were the most likely to baulk, I left them till the last. First I put Hackett behind the table, which was the bar, and Laidlaw and Helen Yarmis at one end of it. Then Rose Tuttle and Beverly Kent, on chairs over where the globe had stood. Then Celia Grantham and Paul Schuster by the wall to the right of Wolfe’s desk, with her sitting and him standing. Then I put Saul Panzer on a chair near the door to the hall, and told the audience, “Mr Panzer here is Faith Usher. The distance is wrong and so are the others, but the relative positions are about right.” Then I put an ashtray on a chair to the right of the safe, and told them, “This is Faith Usher’s bag, containing the bottle of poison.” With all that arranged, I didn’t think Mrs Robilotti would protest when I asked her and her husband to take their places in front of the bar, and she didn’t.
   That was all, except for Ethel Varr and me, and I got her and stood with her at a corner of my desk, and told Wolfe, “All set.”
   “Miss Tuttle and I were much farther away,” Beverly Kent objected.
   “Yes, sir,” Wolfe agreed.” It is not presumed that this is identical. Now.” His eyes went to the group at the bar. “Mr Hackett, I understand that when Mr Grantham went to the bar for champagne for himself and Miss Usher, two glasses were there in readiness. You had poured one of them a few minutes previously, and the other just before he arrived. Is that correct?”
   “Yes, sir.” Hackett had fully recovered from our brush in the hall and was back in character.” I have stated to the police that one of the glasses had been standing there three or four minutes.”
   “Please pour a glass now and put it in place.”
   The bottles in the cooler on the table were champagne, and good champagne 5 Wolfe had insisted on it. Fritz had opened two of them. Pouring champagne is always nice to watch, but I doubt if any pourer ever had as attentive an audience as Hackett had, as he took a bottle from the cooler and filled a glass.
   “Keep the bottle in your hand,” Wolfe directed him.” I’ll explain what I’m after and then you may proceed. I want to see it from various angles. You will pour another glass, and Mr Grantham will come and get the two glasses and go with them to Mr Panzer—that is to say, to Miss Usher. He will hand him one, and Mr Goodwin will be there and take the other one. Meanwhile you will be pouring two more glasses, and Mr Grantham will come and get them and go with them to Miss Tuttle, and hand her one, and again Mr Goodwin will be there and take the other one. You will do the same with Miss Varr and Miss Grantham. Not with Miss Yarmis and Mrs Robilotti, since they are there at the bar. That way I shall see it from all sides. Is that clear, Mr Hackett?”
   “Yes, sir.”
   “It’s not clear to me,” Cecil said. “What’s the idea? I didn’t do that. All I did was get two glasses and take one to Miss Usher.”
   “I’m aware of that,” Wolfe told him. “As I said, I want to get various angles on it. If you prefer, Mr Panzer can move to the different positions, but this is simpler. I only request your cooperation. Do you find my request unreasonable?”
   “I find it pretty damn nutty. But it’s all nutty, in my opinion, so a little more won’t hurt, if I can keep a glass for myself when I’ve performed.” He moved, then turned.” What’s the order again?”
   “The order is unimportant. After Mr Panzer, Misses Tuttle, Varr, and Grantham, in any order you please.”
   “Right. Start pouring, Hackett. Here I come.”
   The show started. It did seem fairly nutty, at that, especially my part. Hackett pouring, and Cecil carrying, and the girls taking—there was nothing odd about that; but me racing around, taking the second glass, deciding what to do with it, doing it, and getting to the next one in time to be there waiting when Cecil arrived—of all the miscellaneous chores I had performed at Wolfe’s direction over the years, that took the prize. At the fourth and last one, for Celia Grantham, by the wall to the right of Wolfe’s desk, Cecil cheated. After he had handed his sister hers he ignored my out-stretched hand, raised his glass, said, “Here’s to crime,” and took a mouthful of the bubbles. He lowered the glass and told Wolfe, “I hope that didn’t spoil it.”
   “It was in bad taste,” Celia said.
   “I meant it to be,” he retorted.” This whole thing has been in bad taste from the beginning.”
   Wolfe, who had straightened up to watch the performance, let his shoulders down. “You didn’t spoil it,” he said. His eyes went around. “I invite comment. Did anyone notice anything worthy of remark?”
   “I don’t know whether it’s worthy of remark or not,” Paul Schuster, the lawyer, said, “but this exhibition can’t possibly be made the basis for any conclusion. The conditions were not the same at all.”
   “I must disagree,” Wolfe disagreed. “I did get a basis for a conclusion, and for the specific conclusion I had hoped for. I need support for it, but would rather not suggest it. I appeal to all of you: did anything about Mr Grantham’s performance strike your eye?”
   A growl came from the door to the hall. Sergeant Purley Stebbins was standing there on the sill, his big frame half filling the rectangle. “I don’t know about a conclusion,” he said, “but I noticed that he carried the glasses the same every time. The one m his right hand, his thumb and two fingers were on the bowl and the one in his left hand, he held that lower down, by the stem. And he kept the one in his right hand and handed them the one in his left hand. Every time.”
   I had never before seen Wolfe look at Purley with unqualified admiration. “Thank you, Mr Stebbins,” he said. “You not only have eyes but know what they’re for. Will anyone corroborate him?”
   “I will,” Saul Panzer said. “I do.” He was still holding the glass Cecil had handed him.
   “Will you, Mr Cramer?”
   “I reserve it.” Cramer’s eyes were narrowed at him. “What’s your conclusion?”
   “Surely that’s obvious.” Wolfe turned a hand over. “What I hoped to get was ground for a conclusion that anyone who was sufficiently familiar with Mr Grantham’s habits, and who saw him pick up the glasses and start off with them, would know which one he would hand to Miss Usher. And I got it, and I have two competent witnesses, Mr Stebbins and Mr Panzer.” His head turned. “That is all, ladies and gentlemen. I wish to continue, but only to Mrs Robilotti, Mr Byne, and Mr Laidlaw—and Mr Robilotti by courtesy, if he chooses to stay. The rest of you may go. I needed your help for this demonstration and I thank you for coming. It would be a pleasure to serve you champagne on some happier occasion.”
   “You mean we have to go?” Rose Tuttle piped. “I want to
   stay.” Judging from the expressions on most of the faces, the others did too, except Helen Yarmis, who was standing by the bar with Laidlaw. She said, “Come on, Ethel,” to Ethel Varr, who was standing by my desk, and they headed for the door. Cecil emptied his glass and put it on Wolfe’s desk and announced that he was staying, and Celia said she was too. Beverly Kent, the diplomat, showed that he had picked the right career by handling Rose Tuttle, who was seated beside him. She let him escort her out. Paul Schuster approached to listen a moment to the twins arguing with Wolfe, and then turned and went. Seeing Cramer cross to Mrs Robilotti, at the bar with her husband, I noted that Hackett wasn’t there and then found that he wasn’t anywhere. He had gone without my knowing it, one more proof that a detective is no match for a butler.
   It was Mrs Robilotti who settled the issue with the twins. She came to Wolfe’s desk, followed by Cramer and her husband, and told them to go, and then turned to her husband and told him to go too. Her pale grey eyes, back under her angled brows, were little circles of tinted ice. It was Celia she looked at.
   “This man needs a lesson,” she said, “and I’ll give it to him. I never have needed you, and I don’t need you now. You’re being absurd. I do things better alone, and I’ll do this alone.”
   Celia opened her mouth, closed it again, turned to look at Laidlaw, and went, and Cecil followed. Robilotti started to speak, met the pale grey eyes, shrugged like a polished and civilized Italian, and quit. When her eyes had seen him to the door, she walked to the chair Cramer had placed for her when she arrived, sat, aimed the eyes at Wolfe, and spoke.
   “You said you wished to continue. Well?”
   He was polite. “In a moment, madam. Another person is expected. If you gentlemen will be seated? Archie?”
   Saul was already seated, still in Faith Usher’s place, sipping champagne. Leaving it to the other four, Laidlaw, Byne, Cramer, and Stebbins to do their own seating, I went to the hall, mounted the two nights to the South Room, knocked on the door, was told to come in, and did so.
   Elaine Usher, in a chair by a window with sections of the Sunday paper scattered on the floor, had a mean look ready for me.
   “Okay,” I said. ”Your cue.”
   “It’s about time.” She kicked the papers away from her feet and got up. ”Who’s there?”
   “As expected. Mr Wolfe. Byne, Laidlaw, Panzer. Inspector Cramer and Sergeant Stebbins. Mrs Robilotti. She sent her husband home. I take you straight to her.”
   “I know. I’ll enjoy that, I really will, no matter what happens. My hair’s a mess. I’ll be with you in a minute.”
   She went to the bathroom and closed the door. I wasn’t impatient, since Wolfe would use the time to get Mrs Robilotti into a proper mood. Mrs Usher used it too. When she emerged her hair was very nice and her lips were the colour that excites a bull. I asked her if she preferred the elevator, and she said no, and I followed her down the two flights. As we entered the office I was at her elbow.
   It came out so perfect that you might have thought it had been rehearsed. I crossed with her, passing between Cramer and Byne, turned so we were facing Mrs Robilotti, right in front of her, and said, “Mrs Robilotti, let me present Mrs Usher, the mother of Faith Usher.” Mrs Usher bent at the waist, put out a hand, and said, “It’s a pleasure, a great pleasure.” Mrs Robilotti stared a second, shot a hand out, and slapped Mrs Usher’s face. Perfect

Chapter 16

   Your guess is as good as mine, whether Wolfe would have been able to crash through anyway if the confrontation stunt hadn’t worked—if Mrs Robilotti had been quick enough and tough enough to take Mrs Usher’s offered hand and respond according to protocol. He maintains that he would have, but that the question is academic, since with Mrs Robilotti’s nerves already on edge the sudden appearance of that woman, without warning, bending to her and offering a hand, was sure to break her.
   I didn’t pull Mrs Usher back in time to dodge the slap, though I might have, but after it landed I acted. After all she was a house guest, and a kick on the chin by the host and a smack in the face by another guest were no credit to our hospitality; and besides, she might try to return the compliment. So I gripped her arm and pulled her back out of range, bumping into Cramer, who had bounced out of his chair. Mrs Robilotti had jerked back and sat stiff, her teeth pinning her lower lip.
   “It might be well,” Wolfe told me, “to seat Mrs Usher near you. Madam, I regret the indignity you have suffered under my roof.” He gestured. “That is Mr Laidlaw. Mr Cramer, of the police. Mr Stebbins, also of the police. You know Mr Byne.”
   As I was convoying her to the chair Saul had brought, putting her between Laidlaw and me, Cramer was saying, “You stage it and then you regret it.” To his right: “I do regret it, Mrs Robilotti. I had no hand in it.” Back to Wolfe: “All right, let’s hear it.”
   “You have seen it,” Wolfe told him. “Certainly I staged it. You heard me deliberately bait Mrs Robilotti, to ensure the desired reaction to Mrs Usher’s appearance. Before commenting on that reaction, I must explain Mr Laidlaw’s presence. I asked him to stay because he has a legitimate concern. As you know, someone sent an anonymous communication making certain statements about him, and that entitles him to hear disclosure of the truth. Why Mr Byne is here will soon be apparent. It was something he said last evening that informed me that Mrs Robilotti had known that her former husband, Albert Grantham3 was the father of Faith Usher. However—”
   “That’s a lie,” Byne said. “That’s a damn lie.”
   Wolfe’s tone sharpened. “I choose my words, Mr Byne. I didn’t say you told me that, but that something you said informed me. Speaking of the people invited to that gathering, you said, ‘Of course, my aunt could cross Faith off and tell Mrs Irwin’—and stopped, realizing that you had slipped. When I let it pass, you thought I had missed it, but I hadn’t. It was merely that if I had tried to pin you down you would have wriggled out by denying the implication. Now that—”
   “There was no implication!”
   “Nonsense. Why should your aunt ‘cross Faith off’? Why should she refuse to have Miss Usher in her house? Granting that there were many possible explanations, there was one suggested by the known facts: that she would not receive as a guest the natural daughter of her former husband. And I had just learned that Faith Usher was Albert Grantham’s natural daughter, and that you were aware of it. So I had the implication, and I arranged to test it. If Mrs Robilotti, suddenly confronted by Faith Usher’s mother extending a friendly hand, took the hand and betrayed no reluctance, the implication would be discredited. I expected her to shrink from it, and I was wrong. I may learn some day that what a woman will do is beyond conjecture. Instead of shrinking, she struck. I repeat, Mrs Usher, I regret it. I did not foresee it.”
   “You can’t have it both ways,” Byne said. “You say my aunt wouldn’t have Faith Usher in her house because she knew she was her former husband’s natural daughter. But she did have her in her house. She knew she had been invited, and she let her come.”
   Wolfe nodded. “I know. That’s the point. That’s my main reason for assuming that your aunt killed her. There are other—”
   “Hold it,” Cramer snapped. His head turned. “Mrs Robilotti, I want you to know that this is as shocking to me as it is to you.”
   Her pale grey eyes were on Wolfe and she didn’t move them. “I doubt it,” she said. “I didn’t know any man could go as low as this . This is incredible.”
   “I agree,” Wolfe told her. “Murder is always incredible. I have now committed myself, madam, before witnesses, and if I am wrong I shall be at your mercy. I wouldn’t like that. Mr Cramer. You are shocked. I can expound, or you can attack. Which do you prefer?”
   “Neither one.” Cramer’s fists were on his knees. “I just want to know. What evidence have you that Faith Usher was Albert Grantham’s daughter?”
   “Well.” Wolfe cocked his head. “That is a ticklish point. My sole concern in this is the murder of Faith Usher, and I have no desire to make unnecessary trouble for people not implicated in it. For example, I know where you can find evidence that the death of Faith Usher meant substantial financial profit for a certain man, but since he wasn’t there and couldn’t have killed her, I’ll tell you about it only if it becomes requisite. To answer your question: I have statements of two people, Mrs Elaine Usher and Mr Austin Byne.” His eyes moved. “And, Mr Byne, you have trimmed long enough. Did your aunt know that Faith Usher was the daughter of Albert Grantham?”
   Dinky’s jaw worked. He looked left, at Mrs Usher, but not right, at his aunt. Wolfe had made it plain: if he came through, Wolfe would not tell Cramer about the agreement and where it was. Probably what decided him was the fact that Mrs Robilotti had already given it away by slapping Mrs Usher.
   “Yes,” he said. ”I told her.”
   “When?”
   “A couple of months ago.”
   “Why?”
   “Because—something she said. She had said it before, that I was a parasite because I was living on money my uncle had given me before he died. When she said it again that day I lost my temper and told her that my uncle had given me the money so I could provide for his illegitimate daughter. She wouldn’t believe me, and I told her the name of the daughter and her mother. Afterwards I was sorry I had told her, and I told her so—”
   A noise, an explosive noise, came from his aunt. “You liar,” she said, a glint of hate in the pale grey eyes. “You sit there and lie. You told me so you could blackmail me, to get more millions out of me. The millions Albert had given you weren’t enough. You weren’t satisfied—”
   “Stop it!” Wolfe’s voice was a whip. He was scowling at her. “You are in mortal peril, madam. I have put you there, so I have a responsibility, and I advise you to hold your tongue. Mr Cramer. Do you want more from Mr Byne, or more from me?”
   “You.” Cramer was so shocked he was hoarse. “You say that Mrs Robilotti deliberately let Faith Usher come to that party so she could kill her. Is that right?”
   “Yes.”
   “And that her motive was that she knew that Faith Usher was the illegitimate child of Albert Grantham?”
   “It could have been. With her character and temperament that could have been sufficient motive. But she has herself just suggested an additional one. Her nephew may have been using Faith Usher as a fulcrum to pry a fortune out of her. You will explore that.”
   “I certainly will. That show you put on. You say that proved that Mrs Robilotti could have done it?”
   “Yes. You saw it. She could have dropped the poison into the glass that had been standing there for three or four minutes. She stayed there at the bar. If someone else had started to take that glass she could have said it was hers. When her son came and picked up the two glasses, if he had taken the poisoned one in his right hand, which would have meant—to her, since she knew his habits—that he would drink it himself, again she could have said it was hers and told him to get another one. Or she could even have handed it to him, have seen to it that he took the poisoned one in his left hand; but you can’t hope to establish that, since neither she nor her son would admit it. The moment he left the bar with the poisoned glass in his left hand Faith Usher was doomed; and the risk was slight, since an ample supply of cyanide was there on a chair in Miss Usher’s bag. It would unquestionably be assumed that she had committed suicide; indeed, it was assumed, and the assumption would have prevailed if Mr Goodwin hadn’t been there and kept his eyes open.”
   “Who told Mrs Robilotti that Miss Usher had the poison? And when?”
   “I don’t know.” Wolfe gestured.” Confound it, must I shine your shoes for you?”
   “No, I’ll manage. You’ve shined enough. You say the risk was slight. It wasn’t slight when she got Miss Usher’s bag and took out the bottle and took some of the poison.”
   “I doubt if she did that. I doubt if she ever went near that bag. If she knew that the poison Miss Usher carried around was cyanide, and several people did, she probably got some somewhere else, which isn’t difficult, and had it at hand. I suggest that that is worth inquiry, whether she recently had access to a supply of cyanide. You might even find that she had actually procured some.” Wolfe gestured again.” I do not pretend that I am showing you a ripened fruit which you need only to pick. I undertook merely to satisfy myself whether Mr Goodwin was right or wrong. I am satisfied. Are you?”
   Cramer never said. Mrs Robilotti was on her feet. I had the idea then that what moved her was Wolfe’s mentioning the possibility that she had got hold of cyanide somewhere else, and learned a few days later that I had been right, when Purley Stebbins told me that they had found out where she got it, and could prove it. Anyhow, she was on her feet, and moving, but had taken only three steps when she had to stop. Cramer and Purley were both there blocking the way, and together they weigh four hundred pounds and are over four feet wide.
   “Let me pass,” she said.” I’m going home.”
   I have seldom felt sorry for that pair, but I did then, especially Cramer.
   “Not right now,” he said gruffly. “I’m afraid you’ll have to answer some questions.”

Chapter 17

   One item. You may remember my mentioning that one day, the day after the murderer of Faith Usher was convicted, I was discussing with a friend what was the most conceited remark we had ever heard? It was that same day that I caught sight of Edwin Laidlaw in the men’s bar at the Churchill and decided to do a good deed. Besides, I had felt that the amount on the bill we had sent him, which he had paid promptly without a murmur, had been pretty stiff, and he had something coming. So I approached him, and after greetings had been exchanged I performed the deed.
   “I didn’t want to mention it,” I said, “while her mother was on trial for murder, but now I can tell you, in case you’re interested. One day during that commotion I was talking with Celia Grantham, and your name came up, and she said, ‘I may marry him some day. If he gets into a bad jam I’ll marry him now.’ I report it only because I thought you might want to take some dancing lessons.”
   “I don’t have to,” he said.” I appreciate it, and many thanks, but we’re getting married next week. On the quiet. We put it off until the trial was over. Let me buy you a drink.”
   There you are. I’m one good deed shy.

The Rubber Band

Rex Stout

The Rubber Band
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20

The Rubber Band
by Rex Stout

Chapter 1

   I threw down the magazine section of the Sunday Times and yawned. I looked at Nero Wolfe and yawned again. “Is this bird, S. J. Woolt, any relation or yours?”
   Wolfe, letting fly with a dart and getting a king of clubs, paid no attention to me.
   I went on. “I suppose not, since he spells it different. The reason I ask, an idea just raced madly into my bean. Why wouldn’t it be good for business if this S. J. Woolf did a picture of you and an article for the Times? God knows you’re full of material.” I took time out to grin, considering Wolfe’s size in the gross or physical aspect, and left the grin on as Wolfe grunted, stooping to pick up a dart he had dropped.
   I resumed. “You couldn’t beat it for publicity, and as for class it’s Mount Everest. This guy Woolf only hits the high spots. I’ve been reading his pieces for years, and there’s been Einstein and the Prince of Wales and Babe Ruth and three Presidents of the United States (ones say, can you see very little in the White House) and the King of Siam and similar grandeur. His idea seems to be, champions only. That seems to let you in, and strange as it may appear, I’m not kidding, I really mean it. Among our extended circle there must be a couple of eminent gazabos that know him and would slip him the notion.”
   Wolfe still paid no attention to me. As a matter of fact, I didn’t expect him to, since he was busy taking exercise. He had recently got the impression that he weighed too much—which was about the same as if the Atlantic Ocean formed the opinion that it was too wet—and so had added a new item to his daily routine. Since he only went outdoors for things like earthquakes and holocausts, he was rarely guilty of movement except when he was up on the roof with Horstmann and the orchids, from nine to eleven in the morning and four to six in the afternoon, and there was no provision there for pole vaulting.
   Hence the new apparatus for a daily workout, which was a beaut. It was scheduled from 3:45 to 4:00 P.M. There was a board about two feet square, faced with cork, with a large circle marked on it, and twenty-six radii and a smaller inner circle, outlined with fine wire, divided the circle’s area into fifty-two sections. Each section had its symbol painted on it, and together they made up a deck of cards; the bull’s-eye, a small disk in the center, was the Joker. There was also a supply of darts, cute little things about four inches long and weighing a couple of ounces, made of wood and feathers with a metal needle-point. The idea was to hang the board up on the wall, stand off ten or fifteen feet, hurl five darts at it and make a poker hand, with the Joker wild. Then you went and pulled the darts out, and hurled them over again. Then you went and pulled …
   Obviously, it was pretty darned exciting. What I mean to convey is, it would have been a swell game for a little girls’ kindergarten class; no self-respecting boy over six months of age would have wasted much time with it. Since my only excuse for writing this is to relate the facts of one of Nero Wolfe’s cases, and since I take that trouble only where murder was involved, it may be supposed that I tell about that poker-dart game because later on one of the darts was dipped in poison and used to pink a guy with. Nothing doing. No one ever suffered any injury from those darts that I know of, except me. Over a period of two months Nero Wolfe nicked me for a little worse than eighty-five bucks, playing draw with the Joker and deuces wild, at two bits a go. There was no chance of getting any real accuracy with it, it was mostly luck.
   Anyhow, when Wolfe decided he weighed too much, that was what he got. He called the darts javelins. When I found my losses were approaching the century point I decided to stop humoring him, and quit the thing cold, telling him that my doctor had warned me against athlete’s heart. Wolfe kept on with his exercise, and by now, this Sunday I’m telling about, he had got so he could stick the Joker twice out of five shots.
   I said, “It would be a good number. You rate it. You admit yourself that you’re a genius. It would get us a lot of new clients. We could take on a permanent staff—”
   One of the darts slipped out of Wolfe’s handful, dropped to the floor, and rolled to my feet. Wolfe stood and looked at me. I knew what he wanted, I knew he hated to stoop, but stooping was the only really violent part of that game and I figured he needed the exercise. I sat tight.
   Wolfe opened his eyes at me. “I have noticed Mr. Woolfs drawings. They are technically excellent.”
   The son of a gun was trying to bribe me to pick up his dart by pretending to be interested in what I had said. I thought to myself, All right, but youll pay for it, let’s just see how long you’ll stand there and stay interested. I picked up the magazine section and opened it to the article, and observed briskly, “This is one of his best. Have you seen it? It’s about some Englishman that’s over here on a government mission—wait—it tells here—”
   I found it and read aloud: “‘It is not known whether the Marquis of Clivers is empowered to discuss military and naval arrangements in the Far East; all that has been disclosed is his intention to make a final disposition or the question of spheres of economic influence. That is why, after a week of conferences in Washington with the Departments of State and Commerce, he has come to New York for an indefinite stay to consult with financial and industrial leaders. More and more clearly it is being realized in government circles that the only satisfactory and permanent basis for peace in the Orient is the removal of the present causes of economic friction.’”
   I nodded at Wolfe. “You get it? Spheres of economic influence. The same thing that bothered Al Capone and Dutch Schultz. Look where economic friction landed them.”
   Wolfe nodded back. “Thank you, Archie. Thank you very much for explaining it to me. Now if you—”
   I hurried on. “Wait, it gets lots more interesting than that.” I glanced down the page. “In the picture he looks like a ruler of men—you know, like a master barber or a head waiter, you know the type. It goes on to tell how much he knows about spheres and influences, and his record in the warhe commanded a brigade and he got decorated four times—a noble lord and all prettied up with decorations like a store front—1 say three cheers and let us drink to the King, gendemen! You understand, sir, I’m just summarizing.”
   “Yes” Archie. Thank you.”
   Wolfe sounded grim.
   I took a breath. “Don’t mention it. But the really interesting part is where it tells about his character and his private life. He’s a great gardener. He prunes his own roses! At least it says so, but it’s almost too much to swallow. Then it goes on, new paragraph. While it would be an exaggeration to call the marquis an eccentric, in many ways he fails to conform to the conventional conception of a British peer, probably due in some measure to the tact that in his younger days—he is now sixtyfour—he spent many years, in various activities, in Australia, South America, and the western part of the United States. He is a nephew of the ninth marquis, and succeeded to the tide in 1905, when his uncle and two cousins perished in the sinking of the Rotania off the African coast But under any circumstances he would be an extraordinary person, and his idiosyncrasies, as he is pleased to call them, are definitely his own.”
   “He never shoots animals or birds, though he owns some of the best shooting in Scotland —yet he is a famous expert with a pistol and always carries one. Owning a fine stable, he has not been on a horse for fifteen years. He never eats anything between luncheon and dinner, which in England barely misses the aspect of treason. He has never seen a cricket match. Possessing more than a dozen automobiles, he does not know how to drive one. He is an excellent poker player and has popularized the game among a circle of his friends. He is passionately fond of croquet, derides golf as a “corrupter of social decency,” and keeps an American cook at the manor of Pokendam for the purpose of making pumpkin pie. On his frequent trips to the Continent he never fails to take with him—”
   There was no point in going on, so I stopped. I had lost my audience. As he stood facing me Wolfe’s eyes had gradually narrowed into slits; and or a sudden he opened his hand and turned it palm down to let the remaining darts fall to the floor, where they rolled in all directions; and Wolfe walked from the room without a word. I heard him in the hall, in the elevator, getting in and banging the door to. Of course he had the excuse that it was four o’clock, his regular time for going to the plant rooms.
   I could have left the darts for Fritz to pick up later, but there was no sense in me getting childish just because Wolfe did. So I tore off the sheet of the magazine section I had been reading from, with the picture of the Marquis of Clivers in the center, fastened it to the corkboard with a couple of thumbtacks, gathered up the darts, stood off fifteen feet, and let fly. One of the darts got the marquis in the nose, another in his left eye, two of them in his neck, and the last one missed him by an inch. He was well pinned. Pretty good shooting, I thought, as I went for my hat to venture out to a movie, not knowing then that before he left our city the marquis would treat us to an exhibition of much better shooting with a quite different weapon, nor that on that sheet of newspaper which I had pinnea to the corkboard was a bit of information that would prove to be fairly useful in Nero Wolfe’s professional consideration of a sudden and violent death.