And Be a Villain

Chapter Eleven

There was one little incident I shouldn't skip, on the train when I had found their seats for them and was turning to go. I had made no effort to be sociable, since their manner, especially Nancylee's, had made it plain that if I had stepped into a man-hole they wouldn't even have halted to glance down in. But as I turned to go Mom suddenly reached up to pat me on the shoulder. Apparently the pat I had given her at one of her darkest moments had been noticed after all, or maybe it was because I had got them Pullman seats. I grinned at her, but didn't risk offering to shake hands in farewell. I ride my luck only so far.

Naturally another party was indicated, but I didn't realize how urgent it was until I got back to the office and found a note, on a sheet from Wolfe's memo pad, waiting for me under a paperweight on my desk-he being, as per schedule, up in the plant rooms. The note said:

Have all seven of them here at six o'clock.NW Just like snapping your fingers. I scowled at the note. Why couldn't it be after dinner, allowing more time both to get them and to work on them? Not to mention that I already had a fairly good production record for the day, with the 11 a.m. delivery I had made. My watch said ten to five. I swallowed an impulse to mount to the plant rooms and give him an argument, and reached for the phone.

I ran into various difficulties, including resistance to a summons on such short notice, with which I was in complete sympathy. Bill Meadows balked good, saying he had already told Wolfe everything he knew, including the time he had thrown a baseball through a windowpane, and I had to put pressure on him with menacing hints. Madeline Fraser and Deborah Koppel were reluctant but had to admit that Wolfe should either be fired or given all possible help. They agreed to bring Elinor Vance. Nathan Traub, whom I got first, at his office, was the only one who offered no objection, though he commented that he would have to call off an important appointment. The only two I fell down on were Savarese and Strong. The professor had left town for the weekend, I supposed to hunt formulas, and Tully Strong just couldn't be found, though I tried everywhere, including all the sponsors.

Shortly before six I phoned up to Wolfe to report. The best he had for me was a grunt. I remarked that five out of seven, at that hour on a Friday, was nothing to be sneezed at. He replied that seven would have been better.

“Yeah,” I agreed. “I've sent Savarese and Strong telegrams signed A, but what if they don't get them on time?”

So there were five. Wolfe doesn't like to be seen, by anyone but Fritz or me, sitting around waiting for people, I imagine on the theory that it's bad for his prestige, and therefore he didn't come down to the office until I passed him the word that all five were there. Then he favoured us by appearing. He entered, bowed to them, crossed to his chair, and got himself comfortable. It was cosier and more intimate than it had been three days earlier, with the gate-crashers absent.

There was a little conversation. Traub offered some pointed remarks about Wolfe's refusal to admit reporters for an interview. Ordinarily, with an opening like that, Wolfe counters with a nasty crusher, but now he couldn't be bothered.

He merely waved it away.

“I got you people down here,” he said perfectly friendly, “for a single purpose, and if you're not to be late for your dinners we'd better get at it. Tuesday evening I told you that you were all lying to me, but I didn't know then how barefaced you were about it. Why the devil didn't you tell me about the piece of tape on Miss Fraser's bottle?”

They all muffed it badly, even Miss Fraser, with the sole exception of Traub. He alone looked just bewildered.

“Tape?” he asked. “What tape?”

It took the other four an average of three seconds even to begin deciding what to do about their faces.

“Who is going to tell me about it?” Wolfe inquired. “Not all of you at once.

Which one?”

“But,” Bill Meadows stammered, “we don't know what you're talking about.”

“Nonsense.” Wolfe was less friendly. “Don't waste time on that. Miss Shepherd spent most of the day here and I know all about it.” His eyes stopped on Miss Fraser. “She couldn't help it, madam. She did quite well for a child, and she surrendered only under the threat of imminent peril to you.”

What's this all about?” Traub demanded.

“It's nothing, Nat,” Miss Fraser assured him. “Nothing of any importance. Just a little…a sort of joke…among us…that you don't know about…”

“Nothing to it!” Bill Meadows said, a little too loud. There's a perfectly simple-”

“Wait, Bill.” Deborah Koppel's voice held quiet authority. Her gaze was on Wolfe. “Will you tell us exactly what Nancylee said?”

“Certainly,” Wolfe assented. “The bottle served to Miss Fraser on the broadcast is always identified with a strip of Scotch tape. That has been going on for months, nearly a year. The tape is either brown, the colour of the bottle, or transparent, is half an inch wide, and encircles the neck of the bottle near the shoulder.”

“Is that all she told you?”

“That's the main thing. Let's get that explained. What's the tape for?”

“Didn't Nancylee tell you?”

“She said she didn't know.”

Deborah was frowning. “Why, she must know! It's quite simple. As we told you, when we get to the studio the day of a broadcast Miss Vance takes the bottles from the cabinet and puts them in the refrigerator. But that gives them only half an hour or a little longer to get cold, and Miss Fraser likes hers as cold as possible, so a bottle for her is put in earlier and the tape put on to tell it from the others.”

“Who puts it there and when?”

Well-that depends. Sometimes one of us puts it there the day before…sometimes, it's one left over from the preceding broadcast…”

“Good heavens,” Wolfe murmured. “I didn't know you were an imbecile, Miss Koppel.”

“I am not an imbecile, Mr Wolfe.”

“I'll have to have more than your word for it. I presume the explanation you have given me was concocted to satisfy the casual curiosity of anyone who might notice the tape on the bottle-and, incidentally, I wouldn't be surprised if it was offered to Miss Shepherd and after further observation she rejected it.

That's one thing she didn't tell me. For that purpose the explanation would be adequate-except with Miss Shepherd-but to try it on me! I'll withdraw the 'imbecile', since I blurted it at you without warning, but I do think you might have managed something a little less flimsy.”

“It may be flimsy,” Bill Meadows put in aggressively, “but it happens to be true.”

“My dear sir.” Wolfe was disgusted. “You too? Then why didn't it satisfy Miss Shepherd, if it was tried on her, and why was she sworn to secrecy? Why weren't all the bottles put in the refrigerator in advance, to get them all cold, instead of just the one for Miss Fraser? There are-”

“Because someone-” Bill stopped short.

“Precisely,” Wolfe agreed with what he had cut off. “Because hundreds of people use that studio between Miss Fraser's broadcasts, and someone would have taken them from the refrigerator, which isn't locked. That's what you were about to say, but didn't, because you realized there would be the same hazard for one bottle as for eight.” Wolfe shook his head. “No, it's no good. I'm tired of your lies; I want the truth; and I'll get it because nothing else can meet the tests I am now equipped to apply. Why is the tape put on the bottle?”

They looked at one another.

“No,” Deborah Koppel said to anybody and everybody.

“What is all this?” Traub demanded peevishly.

No one paid any attention to him.

“Why not?” Wolfe inquired, “try me with the same answer you have given the police?”

No reply.

Elinor Vance spoke, not to Wolfe. “It's up to you, Miss Fraser. I think we have to tell him.”

“No,” Miss Koppel insisted.

“I don't see any other way out of it, Debby,” Madeline Fraser declared. “You shouldn't have told him that silly lie. It wasn't good enough for him and you know it.” Her grey-green eyes went to Wolfe. “It would be fatal for me, for all of us, if this became known. I don't suppose you would give me your word to keep it secret?”

“How could I, madam?” Wolfe turned a palm up. “Under the circumstances? But I'll share it as reluctantly, and as narrowly, as the circumstances will permit.”

“All right. Damn that Cyril Orchard, for making this necessary. The tape on the bottle shows that it is for me. My bottle doesn't contain Starlite. I can't drink Starlite.”

“Why not?”

“It gives me indigestion.”

“Good God!” Nathan Traub cried, his smooth low-pitched voice transformed into a squeak.

“I can't help it, Nat,” Miss Fraser told him firmly, “but it does.”

“And that,” Wolfe demanded, “is your desperate and fatal secret?”

She nodded. “My Lord, could anything be worse? If that got around? If Leonard Lyons got it, for instance? I stuck to it the first few times, but it was no use. I wanted to cut that from the programme, serving it, but by that time the Starlite people were crazy about it, especially Anderson and Owen, and of course I couldn't tell them the truth. I tried faking it, not drinking much, but even a few sips made me sick. It must be an allergy.”

“I congratulate you,” Wolfe said emphatically.

“Good God,” Traub muttered. He pointed a finger at Wolfe. “It is absolutely essential that this gets to no one. No one whatever!”

“It's out now,” Miss Koppel said quietly but tensely. “It's gone now.”

“So,” Wolfe asked, “you used a substitute?”

“Yes.” Miss Fraser went on: “It was the only way out. We used black coffee. I drank gallons of it anyhow, and I like it either hot or cold. With sugar in it.

It looks enough like Starlite, which is dark brown, and of course in the bottle it can't be seen anyway, and we changed to dark blue glasses so it couldn't be seen that it didn't fizz.”

“Who makes the coffee?”

“My cook, in my apartment.”

“Who bottles it?”

“She does-my cook-she puts it in a Starlite bottle, and puts the cap on.”

“When, the day of the broadcast?”

“No, because it would still be hot, or at least warm, so she does it the day before and puts it in the refrigerator.”

“Not at the broadcasting studio?”

“Oh, no, in my kitchen.”

“Does she put the tape on it?”

“No, Miss Vance does that. In the morning she gets it-she always comes to my apartment to go downtown with me-and she puts the tape on it, and takes it to the studio in her bag, and puts it in the refrigerator there. She has to be careful not to let anyone see her do that.”

“I feel better,” Bill Meadows announced abruptly. He had his handkerchief out and was wiping his forehead.

“Why?”Wolfe asked him.

“Because I knew this had to come sooner or later and I'm glad it was you that got it instead of the.cops. It's been a cock-eyed farce, all this digging to find out who had it in for this guy Orchard. Nobody wanted to poison Orchard.

The poison was in the coffee and Orchard got it by mistake.”

That finished Traub. A groan came from him, his chin went down, and he sat shaking his head in despair.

Wolfe was frowning. “Are you trying to tell me that the police don't know that the poisoned bottle held coffee?”

“Oh, sure they know that.” Bill wanted to help now. “But they've kept it under their hats. You notice it hasn't been in the papers. And none of us has spilled it, you can see why we wouldn't. They know it was coffee all right, but they think it was meant for Orchard, and it wasn't, it was meant for Miss Fraser.”

Bill leaned forward and was very earnest. “Damn it, don't you see what we're up against? If we tell it and it gets known, God help the programme! We'd get hooted off the air. But as long as we don't tell it, everybody thinks the poison was meant for Orchard, and that's why I said it was a farce. Well, we didn't tell, and as far as I'm concerned we never would.”

“How have you explained the coffee to the police?”

“We haven't explained it. We didn't know how the poison got in the bottle, did we? Well, we didn't know how the coffee got there either. What else could we say?”

“Nothing, I suppose, since you blackballed the truth. How have you explained the tape?”

“We haven't explained it.”

“Why not?”

“We haven't been asked to.”

“Nonsense. Certainly you have.”

“I haven't.”

“Thanks, Bill.” It was Madeline Fraser, smiling at him. “But there's no use trying to save any pieces.” She turned to Wolfe. “He's trying to protect me from-don't they call it tampering with evidence? You remember that after the doctor came Mr Strong took the four bottles from the table and started off with them, just a foolish impulse he had, and Mr Traub and I took them from him and put them back on the table.”

Wolfe nodded.

“Well, that was when I removed the tape from the bottle.”

“I see. Good heavens! It's a wonder all of you didn't collectively gather them up, and the glasses, and march to the nearest sink to wash up.” Wolfe went back to Bill. “You said Mr Orchard got the poisoned coffee by mistake. How did that happen?”

“Traub gave it to him. Traub didn't-”

Protests came at him from both directions, all of them joining in. Traub even left his chair to make it emphatic.

Bill got a little flushed, but he was stubborn and heedless. “Since we're telling it,” he insisted, “we'd better tell it all.”

“You're not sure it was Nat,” Miss Koppel said firmly.

“Certainly I'm sure! You know damn' well it was! You know damn' well we all saw-all except Lina-that Orchard had her bottle, and of course it was Traub that gave it to him, because Traub was the only one that didn't know about the tape.

Anyhow I saw him!-that's the way it was, Mr Wolfe. But when the cops started on us apparently we all had the same idea-I forget who started it-that it would be best not to remember who put the bottle in front of Orchard. So we didn't. Now that you know about the tape, I do remember, and if the others don't they ought to.”

“Quit trying to protect me, Bill,” Miss Fraser scolded him. “It was my idea, about not remembering. I started it.”

Again several of them spoke at once. Wolfe showed them a palm: “Please! Mr Traub. Manifestly it doesn't matter whether you give me a yes or a no, since you alone were not aware that one of the bottles had a distinction; but I ask you pro forma, did you place that bottle before Mr Orchard?”

“I don't know,” Traub said belligerently, “and I don't care. Meadows doesn't know either.”

“But you did help pass the glasses and bottles around?”

“I've told you I did. I thought it was fun.” He threw up both hands. “Fun!”

“There's one thing,” Madeline Fraser put in, for Wolfe. “Mr Meadows said that they all saw that Mr Orchard had my bottle, except me. That's only partly true.

I didn't notice it at first, but when I lifted the glass to drink and smelled the Starlite I knew someone else had my glass. I went ahead and faked the drinking, and as I went on with the script I saw that the bottle with the tape on it was a little nearer to him than to me-as you know, he sat across from me.

I had to decide quickly what to do-not me with the Starlite but him with the coffee. I was afraid he would blurt out that it tasted like coffee, especially since he had taken two big gulps. I was feeling relieved that apparently he wasn't going to, when he sprang up with that terrible cry…so what Mr Meadows said was only partly true. I suppose he was protecting me some more, but I'm tired of being protected by everybody.”

“He isn't listening, Lina,” Miss Koppel remarked.

It was a permissible conclusion, but not necessarily sound. Wolfe had leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes, and even to me it might have seemed that he was settling for a snooze but for two details: first, dinner time was getting close, and second, the tip of his right forefinger was doing a little circle on the arm of his chair, around and around. The silence held for seconds, made a minute, and started on another one.

Someone said something.

Wolfe's eyes came half-open and he straightened up.

“I could,” he said, either to himself or to them, “ask you to stay to dinner. Or to return after dinner. But if Miss Fraser is tired of being protected, I am tired of being humbugged. There are things I need to know, but I don't intend to try to pry them out of you without a lever. If you are ready to let me have them, I'm ready to take them. You know what they are as well as I do. It now seems obvious that this was an attempt to kill Miss Fraser. What further evidence is there to support that assump- tion, and what evidence is there, if any, to contradict it? Who wants Miss Fraser to die, and why? Particularly, who of those who had access to the bottle of coffee, at any time from the moment it was bottled at her apartment to the moment when it was served at the broadcast?

And so on. I won't put all the questions; you know what I want. Will any of you give it to me-any of it?”

His gaze passed along the line. No one said a word.

“One or more of you,” he said, “might prefer not to speak in the presence of the others. If so, do you want to come back later? This evening?”

“If I had anything to tell you,” Bill Meadows asserted, “I'd tell you now.”

“You sure would,” Traub agreed.

“I thought not,” Wolfe said grimly. “To get anything out of you another Miss Shepherd would be necessary. One other chance: if you prefer not even to make an appointment in the presence of the others, we are always here to answer the phone. But I would advise you not to delay.” He pushed his chair back and got erect. “That's all I have for you now, and you have nothing for me.”

They didn't like that much. They wanted to know what he was going to do.

Especially and unanimously, they wanted to know what about their secret. Was the world going to hear of what a sip of Starlite did to Madeline Fraser? On that Wolfe refused to commit himself. The stubbornest of the bunch was Traub. When the others finally left he stayed behind, refusing to give up the fight, even trying to follow Wolfe into the kitchen. I had to get rude to get rid of him.

When Wolfe emerged from the kitchen, instead of bearing left toward the dining-room he returned to the office, although dinner was ready.

I followed. “What's the idea? Not hungry?”

“Get Mr Cramer.”

I went to my desk and obeyed.

Wolfe got on.

“How do you do, sir.“ He was polite but far from servile. “Yes. No. No, indeed.

If you will come to my office after dinner, say at jiine o'clock, I'll tell you why you haven't got anywhere on that Orchard case. No, not only that, I think you'll find it helpful. No, nine o'clock would be better!

He hung up, scowled at me, and headed for the dining-room. By the time he had seated himself, rucked his napkin in the V of his vest, and removed the lid from the onion soup, letting the beautiful strong steam sail out, his face had completely cleared and he was ready to purr.

Chapter Tweleve Inspector Cramer, adjusted to ease in the red leather chair, with beer on the little table at his elbow, manipulated his jaw so that the unlighted cigar made a cocky upward angle from the left side of his mouth.

“Yes,” he admitted. “You can have it all for a nickel. That's where I am. Either I'm getting older or murderers are getting smarter.”

He was in fact getting fairly grey and his middle, though it would never get into Wolfe's class, was beginning to make pretensions, but his eyes were as sharp as ever and his heavy broad shoulders showed no inclination to sink under the load.

“But,” he went on, sounding more truculent than he actually was because keeping the cigar where he wanted it made him talk through his teeth, “I'm not expecting any nickel from you. You don't look as if you needed anything. You look as pleased as if someone had just given you a geranium.”

“I don't like geraniums.”

“Then what's all the happiness about? Have you got to the point where you're ready to tell Archie to mail out the bills?”

He not only wasn't truculent; he was positively mushy. Usually he called me Goodwin. He called me Archie only when he wanted to peddle the impression that he regarded himself as one of the family, which he wasn't.

Wolfe shook his head. “No, I'm far short of that. But I am indeed pleased. I like the position I'm in. It seems likely that you and your trained men-up to a thousand of them, I assume, on a case as blazoned as this one-are about to work like the devil to help me earn a fee. Isn't that enough to give me a smirk?”

“The hell you say.” Cramer wasn't so sugary. “According to the papers your fee is contingent.”

“So it is.”

“On what you do. Not on what we do.”

“Of course,” Wolfe agreed. He leaned back and sighed comfortably. “You're much too clearsighted not to appraise the situation, which is a little peculiar, as I do. Would you like me to describe it?”

“I'd love it. You're a good describer.”

“Yes, I think I am. You have made no progress, and after ten days you are sunk in a morass, because there is a cardinal fact which you have not discovered. I have. I have discovered it by talking with the very persons who have been questioned by you and your men many times, and it was not given to me willingly.

Only by intense and sustained effort did I dig it out. Then why should I pass it on to you? Why don't I use it myself, and go on to triumph?”

Cramer put his beer glass down. “You're telling me.”

That was rhetoric. The trouble is that, while without this fact you can't even get started, with it there is still a job to be done; that job will require further extended dealing with these same people, their histories and relationships; and I have gone as far as I can with them unless I hire an army.

You already have an army. The job will probably need an enormous amount of the sort of work for which your men are passably equipped, some of them even adequately, so why shouldn't they do it? Isn't it the responsibility of the police to catch a murderer?”

Cramer was now wary and watchful. “From you,” he said, “that's one hell of a question. More rhetoric?”

“Oh, no. That one deserves an answer. Yours, I feel sure, is yes, and the newspapers agree. So I submit a proposal: I'll give you the fact, and you'll proceed to catch the murderer. When that has been done, you and I will discuss whether the fact was essential to your success, whether you could possibly have got the truth and the evidence without it. If we agree that you couldn't, you will so inform my clients, and I shall collect my fee. No document will be required; an oral statement will do; and of course only to my clients, I don't care what you say to journalists or to your superior officers.”

Cramer grunted. He removed the cigar from his mouth, gazed at the mangled end suspiciously as if he expected to see a bug crawling, and put it back where it belonged. Then he squinted at Wolfe: “Would you repeat that?”

Wolfe did so, as if he were reading it off, without changing a word.

Cramer grunted again. “You say if we agree. You mean if you agree with me, or if I agree with you?”

“Bah. It couldn't be plainer.”

“Yeah. When you're plainest you need looking at closest. What if I've already got this wonderful fact?”

“You didn't have it two hours ago. If you have it now, I have nothing to give and shall get nothing. If when I divulge it you claim to have had it, you'll tell me when and from whom you got it.” Wolfe stirred impatiently. “It is, of course, connected with facts in your possession-for instance, that the bottle contained sugared coffee instead of Starlite.”

“Sure, they've told you that.”

“Or that your laboratory has found traces of a certain substance, in a band half an inch wide, encircling the neck of the bottle.”

“They haven't told you that' Cramer's eyes got narrower. “There are only six or seven people who could have told you that, and they all get paid by the City of New York, and by God you can name him before we go any farther.”

“Pfui.” Wolfe was disgusted. “I have better use for my clients' money than buying information from policemen. Why don't you like my proposal? What's wrong with it? Frankly, I hope to heaven you accept it, and immediately. If you don't I'll have to hire two dozen men and begin all over again on those people, and I'd rather eat baker's bread-almost.”

“All right.” Cramer did not relax. “Hell, I'd do anything to save you from that.

I'm on. Your proposal, as you have twice stated it, provided I get the fact, and all of it, here and now.”

“You do. Here it is, and Mr Goodwin will have a typed copy for you. But first-a little detail-I owe it to one of my clients to request that one item of it be kept confidential, if it can possibly be managed.”

“I can't keep murder evidence confidential.”

“I know you can't. I said if it can possibly be managed.

“I'll see, but I'm not promising, and if I did promise I probably wouldn't keep it. What's the item? Give it to me first.”

“Certainly. Miss Fraser can't drink Starlite because it gives her indigestion.”

“What the hell.” Cramer goggled at him. “Orchard didn't drink Starlite, he drank coffee, and it didn't give him indigestion, it killed him.”

Wolfe nodded. “I know. But that's the item, and on behalf of my clients I ask that it be kept undisclosed if possible. This is going to take some time, perhaps an hour, and your glass and bottle are empty. Archie!”

I got up and bartended without any boyish enthusiasm because I wasn't very crazy about the shape things were taking. I was keeping my fingers crossed. If Wolfe was starting some tricky manoeuvre and only fed him a couple of crumbs, with the idea of getting a full-sized loaf, not baker's bread, in exchange, that would be one thing, and I was ready to applaud if he got away with it. If he really opened the bag and dumped it out, letting Cramer help himself, that would be something quite different. In that case he was playing it straight, and that could only mean that he had got fed up with them, and really intended to sit and read poetry or draw horses and let the cops earn his fee for him. That did not appeal to me. Money may be everything, but it makes a difference how you get it.

He opened the bag and dumped it. He gave Cramer all we had. He even quoted, from memory, the telegram that had been sent to Mom Shepherd, and as he did so I had to clamp my jaw to keep from making one of four or five remarks that would have fitted the occasion. I had composed that telegram, not him. But I kept my trap shut. I do sometimes ride him in the presence of outsiders, but rarely for Cramer to hear, and not when my feelings are as strong as they were then.

Also, Cramer had a lot of questions to ask, and Wolfe answered them like a lamb.

And I had to leave my chair so Cramer could rest his broad bottom on it while he phoned his office.

“Rowcliff? Take this down, but don't broadcast it.” He was very crisp and executive, every inch an inspector. “I'm at Wolfe's office, and he did have something, and for once I think he's dealing off the top of the deck. We've got to start all over. It's one of those goddam babies where the wrong person got killed. It was intended for the Fraser woman. I'll tell you when I get there, in half an hour, maybe a little more. Call in everybody that's on the case. Find out where the Commissioner is, and the DA. Get that Elinor Vance and that Nathan Traub, and get the cook at the Fraser apartment. Have those three there by the time I come. We'll take the others in the morning. Who was it went to Michigan-oh, I remember, Darst. Be sure you don't miss him, I want to see him…”

And so forth. After another dozen or so executive orders Cramer hung up and returned to the red leather chair.

“What else?” he demanded.

That's all,” Wolfe declared. “I wish you luck.”

Having dropped his chewed-up cigar in my waste-basket when he usurped my chair, Cramer got out another one and stuck it in his mouth'without looking at it.

“I'll tell you,” he said. “You gave me a fact, no doubt about that, but this is the first time I ever saw you turn out all your pockets, so I sit down again.

Before I leave I'd like to sit here a couple of minutes and ask myself, what for?”

Wolfe chuckled. “Didn't I just hear you telling your men to start work for me?”

“Yeah, I guess so.” The cigar slanted up. “It seems plausible, but I've known you to seem plausible before. And I swear to God if there's a gag in this it's buried too deep for me. You don't even make any suggestions.”

“I have none.”

And he didn't. I saw that. And there wasn't any gag. I didn't wonder that Cramer suspected him, considering what his experiences with him had been in the past years, but to me it was only too evident that Wolfe had really done a strip act, to avoid overworking his brain. I have sat in that office with him too many hours, and watched him put on his acts for too many audiences, not to know when he is getting up a charade. I certainly don't always know what he is up to, but I do know when he is up to nothing at all. He was simply utterly going to let the city employees do it.

“Would you suggest, for instance,” Cramer inquired, “to haul Miss Fraser in on a charge of tampering with evidence? Or the others for obstructing justice?”

Wolfe shook his head. “My dear sir, you are after a murderer, not tamperers or obstructors. Anyway you can't get convictions on charges like that, except in very special cases, and you know it. You are hinting that it isn't like me to expose a client to such a charge, but will you arrest her? No. What you will do, I hope, is find out who it is that wants to kill her. How could I have suggestions for you? You know vastly more about it than I do. There are a thousand lines of investigation, in a case like this, on which I haven't moved a finger; and doubtless you have explored all of them. I won't insult you by offering a list of them. I'll be here, though, I'm always here, should you want a word with me.” Cramer got up and went.

Chapter Thirteen I can't deny that from a purely practical point of view the deal that Wolfe made with Cramer that Friday evening was slick, even fancy, and well designed to save wear and tear on Wolfe's energy and the contents of his skull. No matter how it added up at the end it didn't need one of Professor Savarese's formulas to show how probable it was that the fact Wolfe had furnished Cramer would turn out to be an essential item. That was a good bet at almost any odds.

But.

There was one fatal flaw in the deal. The city scientists, in order to earn Wolfe's fee for him while he played around with his toys, had to crack the case.

That was the joker. I have never seen a more completely uncracked case than that one was, a full week after Wolfe made his cute little arrangement to have his detective work done by proxy. I kept up to date on it both by reading the newspapers and by making jaunts down to Homicide headquarters on Twentieth Street, for chats with Sergeant Purley Stebbins or other acquaintances, and twice with Cramer himself. That was humiliating, but I did want to keep myself informed somehow about the case Wolfe and I were working on. For the first time in history I was perfectly welcome at Homicide, especially after three or four days had passed. It got to be pathetic, the way they would greet me like a treasured pal, no doubt thinking it was just possible I had come to contribute another fact. God knows they needed one. For of course they were reading the papers too, and the Press was living up to one of its oldest traditions by bawling hell out of the cops for bungling a case which, by prompt and competent-you know how it goes.

So far the public had not been informed that Starlite gave Miss Fraser indigestion. If the papers had known that!

Wolfe wasn't lifting a finger. It was not, properly speaking, a relapse. Relapse is my word for it when he gets so offended or disgusted by something about a case, or so appalled by the kind or amount of work it is going to take to solve it, that he decides to pretend he has never heard of it, and rejects it as a topic of conversation. This wasn't like that. He just didn't intend to work unless he had to. He was perfectly willing to read the pieces in the papers, or to put down his book and listen when I returned from one of my visits to Homicide. But if I tried to badger him into some mild exertion like hiring Saul and Fred and Orrie to look under some stones, or even thinking up a little errand for me, he merely picked up his book again.

If any of the developments, such as they were, meant anything to him, he gave no sign of it. Elinor Vance was arrested, held as a material witness, and after two days released on bail. The word I brought from Homicide was that there was nothing to it except that she had by far the best opportunity to put something in the coffee, with the exception of the cook. Not that there weren't plenty of others; the list had been considerably lengthened by the discovery that the coffee had been made, bottled, and kept overnight in Miss Eraser's apartment, with all the coming and going there.

Then there was the motive-collecting operation. In a murder case you can always get some motives together, but the trouble is you can never be sure which ones are sunfast for the people concerned. It all depends. There was the guy in Brooklyn a few years ago who stabbed a dentist in and around the heart eleven times because he had pulled the wrong tooth. In this case the motive assortment was about average, nothing outstanding but fairly good specimens. Six months ago Miss Fraser and Bill Meadows had had a first-class row, and she had fired him and he had been off the programme for three weeks. They both claimed that they now dearly loved each other.

Not long ago Nat Traub had tried to persuade a soup manufacturer, one of the Fraser sponsors, to leave her and sign up for an evening comedy show, and Miss Fraser had retaliated by talking the sponsor into switching to another agency.

Not only that, there were vague hints that Miss Fraser had started a campaign for a similar switch by other sponsors, including Starlite, but they couldn't be nailed down. Again, she and Traub insisted that they were awful good friends.

The Radio Writers' Guild should have been delighted to poison Miss Fraser on account of her tough attitude toward demands of the Guild for changes in contracts, and Elinor Vance was a member of the Guild in good standing. As for Tully Strong, Miss Fraser had opposed the formation of a Sponsors' Council, and still didn't like it, and of course if there were no Council there would be no secretary.

And so on. As motives go, worth tacking up but not spectacular. The one that would probably have got the popular vote was Deborah Koppel's. Somebody in the DAs office had induced Miss Fraser to reveal the contents of her will. It left ten grand each to a niece and nephew, children of her sister who lived in Michigan, and all the rest to Deborah. It would be a very decent chunk, somewhere in six figures, with the first figure either a 2 or a 3, certainly worth a little investment in poison for anyone whose mind ran in that direction.

There was, however, not the slightest indication that Deborah's mind did. She and Miss Fraser, then Miss Oxhall, had been girlhood friends in Michigan, had taught at the same school, and had become sisters-in-law when Madeline had married Deborah's brother Lawrence.

Speaking of Lawrence, his death had of course been looked into again, chiefly on account of the coincidence of the cyanide. He had been a photographer and therefore, when needing cyanide, all he had to do was reach to a shelf for it.

What if he hadn't killed himself after all? Or what if, even if he had, someone thought he hadn't, believed it was his wife who had needed the cyanide in order to collect five thousand dollars in insurance money, and had now arranged, after six years, to even up by giving Miss Fraser a dose of it herself?

Naturally the best candidate for that was Deborah Koppel. But they couldn't find one measly scrap to start a foundation with. There wasn't the slightest evidence, ancient or recent, that Deborah and Madeline had ever been anything but devoted friends, bound together by mutual interest, respect and affection.

Not only that, the Michigan people refused to bat an eye at the suggestion that Lawrence Koppel's death had not been suicide. He had been a neurotic hypochondriac, and the letter he had sent to his best friend, a local lawyer, had clinched it. Michigan had been perfectly willing to answer New York's questions, but for themselves they weren't interested.

Another of the thousand lines that petered out into nothing was the effort to link up one of the staff, especially Elinor Vance, with Michigan. They had tried it before with Cyril Orchard, and now they tried it with the others. No soap.

None of them had ever been there.

Wolfe, as I say, read some of this in the papers, and courteously listened to the rest of it, and much more, from me. He was not, however, permitted to limit himself strictly to the role of spectator. Cramer came to our office twice during that week, and Anderson, the Starlite president, once; and there were others.

There was Tully Strong, who arrived Saturday afternoon, after a six-hour session with Cramer and an assortment of his trained men. He had probably been pecked at a good deal, as all of them had, since they had told the cops a string of barefaced lies, and he was not in good humour. He was so sore that when he put his hands on Wolfe's desk and leaned over at him to make some remarks about treachery, and his spectacles slipped forward nearly to the tip of his nose, he didn't bother to push them back in place.

His theory was that the agreement with Wolfe was null and void because Wolfe had violated it. Whatever happened, Wolfe not only would not collect his fee, he would not even be reimbursed for expenses. Moreover, he would be sued for damages. His disclosure of a fact which, if made public, would inflict great injury on Miss Fraser and her programme, the network, and Starlite, was irresponsible and inexcusable, and certainly actionable.

Wolfe told him bosh, he had not violated the agreement.

No?” Strong straightened up. His necktie was to one side and his hair needed a comb and brush. His hand went up to his spectacles, which were barely hanging on, but instead of pushing them back he removed them. “You think not? You'll see. And, besides, you have put Miss Eraser's life in danger! I was trying to protect her! We all were!”

“All?” Wolfe objected. “Not all. All but one.”

“Yes, all!” Strong had come there to be mad and would have no interference. “No one knew, no one but us, that it was meant for her! Now everybody knows it! Who can protect her now? I'll try, we all will, but what chance have we got?”

It seemed to me he was getting illogical. The only threat to Miss Fraser, as far as we knew, came from the guy who had performed on the coffee, and surely we hadn't told him anything he didn't already know.

I had to usher Tully Strong to the door and out. If he had been capable of calming down enough to be seated for a talk I would have been all for it, but he was really upset. When Wolfe told me to put him out I couldn't conscientiously object. At that he had spunk. Anybody could have told from one glance at us that if I was forced to deal with him physically I would have had to decide what to do with my other hand, in case I wanted to be fully occupied, but when I took hold of his arm he jerked loose and then turned on me as if stretching me out would be pie. He had his specs in one hand, too. I succeeded in herding him out without either of us getting hurt.

As was to be expected, Tully Strong wasn't the only one who had the notion that Wolfe had committed treason by giving their fatal secret to the cops. They all let us know it, too, either by phone or in person. Nat Traub's attitude was specially bitter, probably because of the item that had been volunteered by Bill Meadows, that Traub had served the bottle and glass to Orchard, drainer's crew must have really liked that one, and I could imagine the different keys they used playing it for Traub to hear. One thing I preferred not to imagine was what we would have got from Mr Walter B. Anderson, the Starlite president, and Fred Owen, the director of public relations, if anyone had told them the full extent of Wolfe's treachery. Apparently they were still ignorant about the true and horrible reason why one of the bottles had contained coffee instead of The Drink You Dream Of.

Another caller, this one Monday afternoon, was the formula hound, Professor Savarese. He too came to the office straight from a long conference with the cops, and he too was good and mad, but for a different reason. The cops had no longer been interested in his association with Cyril Orchard, or in anything about Orchard at all, and he wanted to know why. They had refused to tell him.

They had reviewed his whole life, from birth to date, all over again, but with an entirely different approach. It was plain that what they were after now was a link between him and Miss Fraser. Why? What new factor had entered? The intrusion of a hitherto unknown and unsuspected factor would raise hell with his calculation of probabilities, but if there was one he had to have it, and quick.

This was the first good chance he had ever had to test his formulas on the most dramatic of all problems, a murder case, from the inside, and he wasn't going to tolerate any blank spaces without a fight.

What was the new factor? Why was it now a vital question whether he had had any previous association, direct or indirects with Miss Fraser?

Up to a point Wolfe listened to him without coming to a boil, but he finally got annoyed enough to call on me again to do some more ushering. I obeyed in a half-hearted way. For one thing, Wolfe was passing up another chance to do a dime's worth of work himself, with Savarese right here and more than ready to talk, and for another, I was resisting a temptation. The question had popped into my head, how would this figure wizard go about getting Miss Eraser's indigestion into a mathematical equation? It might not be instructive to get him to answer it, but at least it would pass the time, and it would help as much in solving the case as anything Wolfe was doing. But, not wanting to get us any more deeply involved in treachery than we already were, I skipped it.

I ushered him out.

Anyhow, that was only Monday. By the time four more days had passed and another Friday arrived, finishing a full week since we had supplied Cramer with a fact, I was a promising prospect for a strait jacket. That evening, as I returned to the office with Wolfe after an unusually good dinner which I had not enjoyed, the outlook for the next three or four hours revolted me. As he got himself adjusted comfortably in his chair and reached for his book, I announced: “I'm going to my club.”

He nodded, and got his book open.

“You do not even,” I said cuttingly, “ask me which club, though you know damn' well I don't belong to any. I am thoroughly fed up with sitting here day after day and night after night, waiting for the moment when the idea will somehow seep into you that a detective is supposed to detect. You are simply too goddam lazy to live. You think you're a genius. Say you are. If in order to be a genius myself I had to be as self-satisfied, as overweight, and as inert as you are, I like me better this way.”

Apparently he was reading.

“This,” I said, “is the climax I've been leading up to for a week-or rather, that you've been leading me up to. Sure, I know your alibi, and I'm good and sick of it-that there is nothing we can do that the cops aren't already doing.

Of all the sausage.” I kept my voice dry, factual, and cultured. “If this case is too much for you why don't you try another one? The papers are full of them.

How about the gang that stole a truckload of cheese yesterday right here on Eleventh Avenue? How about the fifth-grade boy that hit his teacher in the eye with a jelly bean? Page fifty-eight in the Times. Or, if everything but murder is beneath you, what's wrong with the political and economic fortune-teller, a lady named Beula Poole, who got shot in the back of her head last evening? Page one of any paper. You could probably sew that one up before bedtime.” He turned over a page.

“Tomorrow,” I said, “is Saturday. I shall draw my pay as usual. I'm going to a fight at the Garden. Talk about contrasts-you in that chair and a couple of good middle-weights in a ring.”

I blew.

But I didn't go to the Garden. My first stop was the corner drugstore, where I went to a phone booth and called Lon Cohen of the Gazette. He was in, and about through, and saw no reason why I shouldn't buy him eight or ten drinks, provided he could have a two-inch steak for a chaser.

So an hour later Lon and I were at a corner table at Pietro's. He had done well with the drinks and had made a good start on the steak. I was having highballs, to be sociable, and was on my third, along with my second pound of peanuts. I hadn't realized how much I had short-changed myself on dinner, sitting opposite Wolfe, until I got into the spirit of it with the peanuts.

We had discussed the state of things from politics to prize-fights, by no means excluding murder. Lon had had his glass filled often enough, and had enough of the steak in him, to have reached a state of mind where he might reasonably be expected to be open to suggestion. So I made an approach by telling him, deadpan, that in my opinion the papers were riding the cops too hard on the Orchard case.

He leered at me. “For God's sake, has Cramer threatened to take your licence or something?”

“No, honest,” I insisted, reaching for peanuts, “this one is really tough and you know it. They're doing as well as they can with what they've got. Besides that, it's so damn' commonplace. Every paper always does it-after a week start crabbing and after two weeks start screaming. It's got so everybody always expects it and nobody ever reads it. You know what I'd do if T ran a newspaper?

I'd start running stuff that people would read.”

“Jesus!” Lon gawked at me. “What an idea! Give me a column on it. Who would teach 'em to read?”

“A column,” I said, “would only get me started. I need at least a page. But in this particular case, where it's at now, it's a question of an editorial. This is Friday night. For Sunday you ought to have an editorial on the Orchard case.

It's still hot and the public still loves it. But-”

“I'm no editor, I'm a news man? “I know, I'm just talking. Five will get you ten that your sheet will have an editorial on the Orchard case Sunday, and what will it say? It will be called OUR PUBLIC GUARDIANS, and it will be the same old crap, and not one in a thousand will read it beyond the first line. Phooey. If it was me I would call it TOO OLD OR TOO FAT, and I wouldn't mention the cops once. Nor would I mention Nero Wolfe, not by name. I would refer to the blaze of publicity with which a certain celebrated private investigator entered the Orchard case, and to the expectations it aroused. That his record seemed to justify it. That we see now how goofy it was, because in ten days he hasn't taken a trick. That the reason may be that he is getting too old, or too fat, or merely that he hasn't got what it takes when a case is really tough, but no matter what the reason is, this shows us that for our protection from vicious criminals we must rely on our efficient and well-trained police force, and not on any so-called brilliant geniuses. I said I wouldn't mention the cops, but I think I'd better, right at the last. I could add a sentence that while they may have got stuck in the mud on the Orchard case, they are the brave men who keep the structure of our society from you know.”

Lon, having swallowed a hunk of steak, would have spoken, but I stopped him: “They would read that, don't think they wouldn't. I know you're not an editor, but you're the best man they've got and you're allowed to talk to editors, aren't you? I would love to see an editorial like that tried, just as an experiment. So much so that if a paper ran it I would want to show my appreciation the first opportunity I get, by stretching a point a hell of a ways to give it first crack at some interesting little items.”

Lon had his eyebrows up. “If you don't want to bore me, turn it the other side up so the interesting little item will be on top.”

“Nuts. Do you want to talk about it or not?”

“Sure. I'll talk about anything.”

I signalled the waiter for refills.

Chapter Fourteen I would give anything in the world, anyway up to four bits, to know whether Wolfe saw or read that editorial before I showed it to him late Sunday afternoon. I think he did. He always glances over the editorials in three papers, of which the Gazette is one, and if his eye caught it at all he must have read it. It was entitled THE FALSE ALARM, and it carried out the idea I had given Lon to a T.

I knew of course that Wolfe wouldn't do any spluttering, and I should have realized that he probably wouldn't make any sign or offer any comment. But I didn't, and therefore by late afternoon I was in a hole. If he hadn't read it I had to see that he did, and that was risky. It had to be done right or he would smell an elephant. So I thought it over: what would be the natural thing? How would I naturally do it if I suddenly ran across it?

What I did do was turn in my chair to grin at him and ask casually: “Did you see this editorial in the Gazette called THE FALSE ALARM?”

He grunted. “What's it about?”

“You'd better read it.” I got up, crossed over, and put it on his desk. “A funny thing, it gave me the feeling I had written it myself. It's the only editorial I've seen in weeks that I completely agree with.”

He picked it up. I sat down facing him, but he held the paper so that it cut off my view. He isn't a fast reader, and he held the pose long enough to read it through twice, but that's exactly what he would have done if he already knew it by heart and wanted me to think otherwise.

“Bah!” The paper was lowered. “Some little scrivener who doubtless has ulcers and is on a diet.”

“Yeah, I guess so. The rat. The contemptible louse. If only he knew how you've been sweating and stewing, going without sleep-”

“Archie. Shut up.”

“Yes, sir.”

I hoped to God I was being natural.

That was all for then, but I was not licked. I had never supposed that he would tear his hair or pace up and down. A little later an old friend of his, Marko Vukcic, dropped in for a Sunday evening snack-five kinds of cheese, guava jelly, freshly roasted chestnuts, and almond tarts. I was anxious to see if he would show the editorial to Marko, which would have been a bad sign. He didn't. After Marko had left, to return to Rusterman's Restaurant, which was the best in New York because he managed it, Wolfe settled down with his book again, but hadn't turned more than ten pages before he dogeared and closed it and tossed it to a far corner of his desk. He then got up, crossed the room to the big globe, and stood and studied geography. That didn't seem to satisfy him any better than the book, so he went and turned on the radio. After dialling to eight different stations, he muttered to himself, stalked back to his chair behind his desk, and sat and scowled. I took all this in only from a corner of one eye, since I was buried so deep in a magazine that I didn't even know he was in the room.

He spoke. “Archie.”

“Yes, sir?”

“It has been nine days.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Since that tour de force of yours. Getting that Miss Shepherd here.”

“Yes, sir.”

He was being tactful. What he meant was that it had been nine days since he had passed a miracle by uncovering the tape on the bottle and Miss Eraser's indigestion, but he figured that if he tossed me a bone I would be less likely either to snarl or to gloat. He went on: “It was not then flighty to assume that a good routine job was all that was needed. But the events of those nine days have not supported that assumption.”

“No, sir.”

“Get Mr Cramer.”

“As soon as I finish this paragraph.”

I allowed a reasonable number of seconds to go by, but I admit I wasn't seeing a word. Then, getting on the phone, I was prepared to settle for less than the inspector himself, since it was Sunday evening, and hoped that Wolfe was too, but it wasn't necessary. Cramer was there, and Wolfe got on and invited him to pay us a call.

“I'm busy.” Cramer sounded harassed. “Why, have you got something?”

“Yes.”

“What?”

“I don't know. I won't know until I've talked with you. After we've talked your business may be more productive than it has been.”

“The hell you say. I'll be there in half an hour.”

That didn't elate me at all. I hadn't cooked up a neat little scheme, and devoted a whole evening to it, and bought Lon Cohen twenty bucks worth of liquids and solids, just to prod Wolfe into getting Cramer in to talk things over. As for his saying he had something, that was a plain lie. All he had was a mule-headed determination not to let his ease and comfort be interfered with.

So when Cramer arrived I didn't bubble over. Neither did he, for that matter. He marched into the office, nodded a greeting, dropped into the red leather chair, and growled: “I wish to God you'd forget you're eccentric and start moving around more. Busy as I am, here I am. What is it?”

“My remark on the phone,” Wolfe said placidly, “may have been blunt, but it was justified.”

“What remark?”

“That your business could be more productive. Have you made any progress?”

“No.”

“You're no further along than you were a week ago?”

“Further along to the day I retire, yes. Otherwise, no.”

“Then I'd like to ask some questions about that woman, Beula Poole, who was found dead in her office Friday morning. The Papers say that you say it was murder. Was it?”

I gawked at him. This was clear away from me. When he jumped completely off the track like that I never knew whether he was stalling, being subtle, or trying to show me how much of a clod I was. Then I saw a gleam in Cramer's eye which indicated that even he had left me far behind, and all I could do was gawk some more.

Cramer nodded. “Yeah, it was murder. Why, looking for another client so I can earn another fee for you?”

“Do you know who did it?”

“No.”

“No glimmer? No good start?”

“No start at all, good or bad.”

“Tell me about it.”

Cramer grunted. “Most of it has been in the papers, all but a detail or two we've saved up.” He moved further back in the chair, as if he might stay longer than he had thought. “First you might tell me what got you interested, don't you think?”

“Certainly. Mr Cyril Orchard, who got killed, was the publisher of a horse-race tip sheet for which subscribers paid ten dollars a week, an unheard-of price.

Miss Beula Poole, who also got killed, was the publisher of a sheet which purported to give inside advance information on political and economic affairs, for which subscribers paid the same unheard-of price of ten dollars a week.”

“Is that all?”

“I think it's enough to warrant a question or two. It is true that Mr Orchard was poisoned and Miss Poole was shot, a big variation in method. Also, that it is now assumed that Mr Orchard was killed by misadventure, the poison having been intended for another, whereas the bullet that killed Miss Poole must have been intended for her. But even so, it's a remarkable coincidence-sufficiently so to justify some curiosity, at least. For example, it might be worth the trouble to compare the lists of subscribers of the two publications.”

“Yeah. I thought so too.”

“You did?” Wolfe was a little annoyed, as he always was at any implication that someone else could be as smart as him. “Then you've compared them. And?”

Cramer shook his head. “I didn't say I'd compared them, I said I'd thought of it. What made me think of it was the fact that it couldn't be done, because there weren't any lists to compare.”

“Nonsense. There must have been. Did you look for them?”

“Sure we did, but too late. In Orchard's case there was a little bad management.

His office, a little one-room hole in a building on Forty-second Street, was locked, and there was some fiddling around looking for an employee or a relative to let us in. When we finally entered by having the superintendent admit us, the next day, the place had been cleaned out-not a piece of paper or an address plate or anything else. It was different with the woman, Poole, because it was in her office that she was shot-another one-room hole, on the third floor of an old building on Nineteenth Street, only four blocks from my place. But her body wasn't found until nearly noon the next day, and by the time we got there that had been cleaned out too. The same way. Nothing.”

Wolfe was no longer annoyed. Cramer had had two coincidences and he had had only one. “Well.” He was purring. “That settles it. In spite of variations, it is now more than curiosity. Of course you have inquired?”

“Plenty. The sheets were printed at different shops, and neither of them had a list of subscribers or anything else that helps. Neither Orchard nor the woman employed any help. Orchard left a widow and two children, but they don't seem to know a damn' thing about his business, let alone who his subscribers were. Beula Poole's nearest relatives live out West, in Colorado, and they don't know anything, apparently not even how she was earning a living. And so on. As for the routine, all covered and all useless. No one seen entering or leaving-it's only two flights up-no weapon, no fingerprints that help any, nobody heard the shot-”

Wolfe nodded impatiently. “You said you hadn't made any start, and naturally routine has been followed. Any discoverable association of Miss Poole with Mr Orchard?”

“If there was we can't discover it.”

“Where were Miss Fraser and the others at the time Miss Poole was shot?”

Cramer squinted at him. “You think it might even develop that way?”

“I would like to put the question. Wouldn't you?”

“Yeah. I have. You see, the two offices being cleaned out is a detail we've saved up.” Cramer looked at me. “And you'll kindly not peddle it to your pal Cohen of the Gazette.” He went on to Wolfe: “It's not so easy because there's a leeway of four or five hours on when she was shot. We've asked all that bunch about it, and no one can be checked off.”

“Mr Savarese? Miss Shepherd? Mr Shepherd?”

“What?” Cramer's eyes widened. “Where the hell does Shepherd come in?”

“I don't know. Archie doesn't like him, and I have learned that it is always quite possible that anyone he doesn't like may be a murderer.”

“Oh, comic relief. The Shepherd girl was in Atlantic City with her mother, and still is. On Savarese I'd have to look at the reports, but I know he's not checked off because nobody is. By the way, we've dug up two subscribers to Orchard's tip sheet, besides Savarese and the Fraser woman. With no result. They bet on the races and they subscribed, that's all, according to them.”

“I'd like to talk with them,” Wolfe declared.

“You can. At my office any time.”

“Pfui. As you know, I never leave this house on business. If you'll give Archie their names and addresses he'll attend to it.”

Cramer said he'd have Stebbins phone and give them to me. I never saw him more co-operative, which meant that he had never been more frustrated.

They kept at it a while longer, but Cramer had nothing more of any importance to give Wolfe, and Wolfe hadn't had anything to give Cramer to begin with. I listened with part of my brain, and with the other part tried to do a little offhand sorting and arranging. I had to admit that it would take quite a formula to have room for the two coincidences as such, and therefore they would probably have to be joined together somehow, but it was no part-brain job for me.

Whenever dough passes without visible value received the first thing you think of is blackmail, so I thought of it, but that didn't get me anywhere because there were too many other things in the way. It was obvious that the various aspects were not yet in a condition that called for the application of my particular kind of talent.

After Cramer had gone Wolfe sat and gazed at a distant corner of the ceiling with his eyes open about a thirty-second of an inch. I sat and waited, not wanting to disturb him, for when I saw his lips pushing out, and in again, and out and in, I knew he was exerting himself to the limit, and I was perfectly satisfied. There had been a good chance that he would figure that he had helped all he could for a while, and go back to his reading until Cramer made a progress report or somebody else got killed. But the editorial had stung him good. Finally he transferred the gaze to me and pronounced my name.

“Yes, sir,” I said brightly.

“Your notebook. Take this.”

I got ready.

“Former subscribers to the publication of Cyril Orchard, or to that of Beula Poole, should communicate with me immediately. Put it in three papers, the Gazette, the News, and the Herald-Tribune. A modest display, say two inches.

Reply to a box number. A good page if possible.”

“And I'll call for the replies. It saves time.”

“Then do so.”

I put paper in the typewriter. The phone rang. It was Sergeant Purley Stebbins, to give me the names and addresses of the two Orchard subscribers they had dug up.

Chapter Fifteen So beginning Monday morning we were again a going concern, instead of a sitting-and-waiting one, but I was not in my element, I like a case you can make a diagram of. I don't object to complications, that's all right, but if you're out for bear it seems silly to concentrate on hunting for moose tracks. Our fee depended on our finding out how and why Orchard got cyanided by drinking Madeline Fraser's sugared coffee, and here we were spending our time and energy on the shooting of a female named Beula Poole. Even granting it was one and the same guy who pinched the lead pencils and spilled ink on the rug, if you've been hired to nail him for pencil-stealing that's what you should work at.

I admit that isn't exactly fair, because most of our Monday activities had to do with Orchard. Wolfe seemed to think it was important for him to have a talk with those two subscribers, so instead of usin? the phone I went out after them. I had one of them in the office waiting for him at 11 a.m.-an assistant office manager for a big tile company. Wolfe spent less than a quarter of an hour on him, knowing, of course, that the cops had spent more and had checked him. He had bet on the races for years. In February a year ago he had learned that a Hialeah daily double featured in a sheet called Track Almanac had come through for a killing, and he had subscribed, though the ten bucks a week was a sixth of his salary. He had stayed with it for nine weeks and then quit. So much for him.

The other one was a little different. Her name was Marie Leconne, and she owned a snooty beauty parlour on Madison Avenue. She wouldn't have accepted my invitation if she hadn't been under the illusion that Wolfe was connected with the police, though I didn't precisely tell her so. That Monday evening she was with us a good two hours, but left nothing of any value behind. She had subscribed to Track Almanac in August, seven months ago, and had remained a subscriber up to the time of Orchard's death. Prior to subscribing she had done little or no betting on the races; she was hazy about whether it was little, or no. Since subscribing she had bet frequently, but she firmly refused to tell where, through whom, or in what amounts. Wolfe, knowing that I occasionally risk a five, passed me a hint to have some conversation with her about pertinent matters like horses and jockeys, but she declined to co-operate. All in all she kept herself nicely under control, and flew off the handle only once, when Wolfe pressed her hard for a plausible reason why she had subscribed to a tip sheet at such a price. That aggravated her terribly, and since the one thing that scares Wolfe out of his senses is a woman in a tantrum, he backed away fast.

He did keep on trying, from other angles, but when she finally left, all we knew for sure was that she had not subscribed to Track Almanac in order to get guesses on the ponies. She was slippery, and nobody's fool, and Wolfe had got no further than the cops in opening her up.

I suggested to Wolfe: “We might start Saul asking around in her circle.”

He snorted. “Mr Cramer is presumably attending to that, and, anyway, it would have to be dragged out of her inch by inch. The advertisement should be quicker.”

It was quicker, all right, in getting results, but not the results we were after. There had not been time to make the Monday papers, so the ad.’s first appearance was Tuesday morning. Appraising it, I thought it caught the eye effectively for so small a space. After breakfast, which I always eat in the kitchen with Fritz while Wolfe has his in his room on a tray, and after dealing with the morning mail and other chores in the office, I went out to. stretch my legs and thought I might as well head in the direction of the Herald-Tribune Building. Expecting nothing so soon but thinking it wouldn't hurt to drop in, I did so. There was a telegram. I tore it open and read:

I went to a phone booth and put a nickel in the slot, with the idea of calling Cramer's office to ask who Midland 5-3784 belonged to, but changed my mind. If it happened that this led to a hot trail we didn't want to be hampered by city interference, at least I didn't. However, I thought I might as well get something for my nickel and dialled another number. Fritz answered, and I asked him to switch it to the plant rooms.

“Yes, Archie?” Wolfe's voice came, peevish. He was at the bench, reporting, as I knew from his schedule, and he hates to be interrupted at that job. I told him about the telegram.

“Very well, call the number. Make an appointment for eleven o'clock or later.”

I walked back home, went to my desk, dialled the Midland number, and asked for Mr Duncan. Of course it could have been Mrs or Miss, but I preferred to deal with a man after our experience with Marie Leconne. A gruff voice with an accent said that Mr Duncan wasn't there and was there a message.

“Will he be back soon?”

“I don't know. All I know is that I can take a message.”

I thereupon delivered one, that Mr Duncan would be expected at Nero Wolfe's office at eleven o'clock, or as soon thereafter as possible.

He didn't come. Wolfe descended in his elevator sharp at eleven as usual, got himself enthroned, rang for beer, and began sorting plant cards he had brought down with him. I had him sign a couple of checks and then started to help with the cards. At half-past eleven I asked if I should ring the Midland number to see if Duncan had got the message, and he said no, we would wait until noon.

The phone rang. I went to my desk and told it: “Nero Wolfe's office, Goodwin speaking.”

“I got your message for Duncan. Let me speak to Mr Wolfe, please.”

I covered the transmitter and told Wolfe: “He says Duncan, but it's a voice I've heard. It's not a familiar voice, but by God I've heard it. See if you have.”

Wolfe lifted his instrument.

“Yes, Mr Duncan? This is Nero Wolfe.”

“How are you?” the voice asked.

“I’m well, thank you. Do I know you, sir?”

“I really don't know. I mean I don't know if you would recognize me, seeing me, because I don't know how foolishly inquisitive you may have been. But we have talked before, on the phone.”

“We have?”

“Yes. Twice. On June ninth, nineteen forty-three, I called to give you some advice regarding a job you were doing for General Carpenter. On January sixteenth, nineteen forty-six, I called to speak about the advisability of limiting your efforts on behalf of a Mrs Tremont.”

“Yes. I remember.”

I remembered too. I chalked it against me that I hadn't recognized the voice with the first six words, though it had been over two years since I had heard it-hard, slow, precise and cold as last week's corpse. It was continuing: “I was pleased to see that you did limit your efforts as I suggested. That showed-”

“I limited them because no extension of them was required to finish the job I was hired for. I did not limit them because you suggested it, Mr Zeck.” Wolfe was being fairly icy himself.

“So you know my name.” The voice never changed.

“Certainly. I went to some trouble and expense to ascertain it. I don't pay much attention to threats, I get too many of them, but at least I like to know who the threatener is. Yes, I know your name, sir. Is that temerarious? Many people know Mr Arnold Zeck.”

“You have had no occasion to. This, Mr Wolfe, does not please me.”

“I didn't expect it to.”

“No. But I am much easier to get along with when I am pleased. That's why I sent you that telegram and am talking with you now. I have strong admiration for you, as I've said before. I wouldn't want to lose it. It would please me better to keep it. Your advertisement in the papers has given me some concern. I realize that you didn't know that, you couldn't have known it, so I'm telling you. The advertisement disturbs me. It can't be recalled; it has appeared. But it is extremely important that you should not permit it to lead you into difficulties that will be too much for you. The wisest course for you will be to drop the matter. You understand me, don't you, Mr Wolfe?”

“Oh, yes, I understand you. You put things quite clearly, Mr Zeck, and so do I.

I have engaged to do something, and I intend to do it. I haven't the slightest desire either to please you or to displease you, and unless one or the other is inherent in my job you have no reason to be concerned. You understand me, don't you?”

“Yes. I do. But now you know.”

The line went dead.

Wolfe cradled the phone and leaned back in his chair, with his eyes closed to a slit. I pushed my phone away, swivelled, and gazed at him through a minute's silence.

“So,” I said. “That sonof abitch. Shall I find out about the Mid- land number?”

Wolfe shook his head. “Useless. It would be some little store that merely took a message. Anyway, he has a number of his own.”

“Yeah. He didn't know you knew his name. Neither did I. How did that happen?”

“Two years ago I engaged some of Mr Bascom's men without telling you. He had sounded as if he were a man of resource and resolution, and I didn't want to get you involved.”

“It's the Zeck with the place in Westchester, of course?”

“Yes. I should have signalled you off as soon as I recognized his voice. I tell you nothing because it is better for you to know nothing. You are to forget that you know his name.”

“Like that.” I snapped my fingers, and grinned at him. “What the hell? Does he eat human flesh, preferably handsome young men?”

“No. He does worse.” Wolfe's eyes came half-open. “I'll tell you this. If ever, in the course of my business, I find that I am committed against him and must destroy him, I shall leave this house, find a place where I can work-and sleep and eat if there is time for it-and stay there until I have finished. I don't want to do that, and therefore I hope I'll never have to.”

“I see. I'd like to meet this bozo. I think I'll make his acquaintance.”

“You will not. You'll stay away from him.” He made a face. “If this job leads me to that extremity-well, it will or it won't.” He glanced at the clock. “It's nearly noon. You'd better go and see if any more answers have arrived. Can't you telephone?”

Chapter Sixteen There were no more answers. That goes not only for Tuesday noon, but for the rest of the day and evening, and Wednesday morning, and Wednesday after lunch.

Nothing doing.

It didn't surprise me. The nature of the phone call from the man whose name I had been ordered to forget made it seem likely that there was something peculiar about the subscribers to Track Almanac and What to Expect, which was the name of the political and economic dope sheet published by the late Beula Poole. But even granting that there wasn't, that as far as they were concerned it was all clean and straight, the two publishers had just been murdered, and who would be good enough to answer such an ad. just to get asked a lot of impertinent questions? In the office after lunch Wednesday I made a remark to that effect to Wolfe, and got only a growl for reply.

“We might at least,” I insisted, “have hinted that they would get their money back or something.”

No reply.

“We could insert it again and add that. Or we could offer a reward for anyone who would give us the name of an Orchard or Poole subscriber.”

No reply.

“Or I could go up to the Fraser apartment and get into conversation with the bunch, and who knows?”

“Yes. Do so.”

I looked at him suspiciously. He meant it.

“Now?”

“Yes.”

“You sure are hard up when you start taking suggestions from me.”

I pulled the phone to me and dialled the number. It was Bill Meadows who answered, and he sounded anything but gay, even when he learned it was me. After a brief talk, however, I was willing to forgive him. I hung up and informed Wolfe: “I guess I'll have to postpone it. Miss Fraser and Miss Koppel are both out.

Bill was a little vague, but I gather that the latter has been tagged by the city authorities for some reason or other, and the former is engaged in trying to remove the tag. Maybe she needs help. Why don't I find out?”

“I don't know. You might try.”

I turned and dialled Watkins 9-8241. Inspector Cramer wasn't available, but I got someone just as good, or sometimes I think even better, Sergeant Stebbins.

“I need some information,” I told him, “in connection with this fee you folks are earning for Mr Wolfe.”

“So do we,” he said frankly. “Got any?”

“Not right now. Mr Wolfe and I are in conference. How did Miss Koppel hurt your feelings, and where is she, and if you see Miss Fraser give her my love.”

He let out a roar of delight. Purley doesn't laugh often, at least when he's on duty, and I resented it. I waited until I thought he might hear me and then demanded: “What the hell is so funny?”

“I never expected the day to come,” he declared. “You calling me to ask where your client is. What's the matter, is Wolfe off his feed?”

“I know another one even better. Call me back when you're through laughing.”

“I'm through. Haven't you heard what the Koppel dame did?”

“No. I only know what you tell me.”

“Well, this isn't loose yet. We may want to keep it a while if we can. I don't know.”

“I'll help to keep it. So will Mr Wolfe.”

“That's understood?”

“Yes.”

“Okay. Of course they've all been told not to leave the jurisdiction. This morning Miss Koppel took a cab to La Guardia. She was nabbed as she was boarding the nine o'clock plane for Detroit. She says she wanted to visit her sick mother in Fleetville, which is eighty miles from Detroit. But she didn't ask permission to go, and the word we get is that her mother is no sicker than she has been for a year. So we charged her as a material witness. Does that strike you as high-handed? Do you think it calls for a shakeup?”

“Get set for another laugh. Where's Miss Fraser?”

“With her lawyer at the D A's office discussing bail.”

“What kind of reasons have you got for Miss Koppel taking a trip that are any better than hers?”

“I wouldn't know. Now you're out of my class. If you want to go into details like that, Wolfe had better ask the Inspector.”

I tried another approach or two, but either Purley had given me all there was or the rest was in another drawer which he didn't feel like opening. I hung up and relayed the news to Wolfe.

He nodded as if it were no concern of his. I glared at him: “It wouldn't interest you to have one or both of them stop in for a chat on their way home? To ask why Miss Koppel simply had to go to Michigan would be vulgar curiosity?”

“Bah. The police are asking, aren't they?” Wolfe was bitter. “I've spent countless hours with those people, and got something for it only when I had a whip to snap. Why compound futility? I need another whip. Call those newspapers again.”

“Am I still to go up there? After the ladies get home?”

“You might as well.”

“Yeah.” I was savage. “At least I can compound some futility.”

I phoned all three papers. Nothing. Being in no mood to sit and concentrate on germination records, I announced that I was going out for a walk, and Wolfe nodded absently. When I got back it was after four o'clock and he had gone up to the plant rooms. I fiddled around, finally decided that I might as well concentrate on something and the germination records were all I had, and got Theodore's reports from the drawer, but then I thought why not throw away three more nickels. So I started dialling again.

Herald-Tribune, nothing. News, nothing. But the Gazette girl said yes, they had one. The way I went for my hat and headed for Tenth Avenue to grab a taxi, you might have thought I was on my way to a murder.

The driver was a philosopher. “You don't see many eager happy faces like yours nowadays,3 he told me.

“I'm on my way to my wedding.”

He opened his mouth to speak again, then clamped it shut. He shook his head resolutely. “No. Why should I spoil it?”

I paid him off outside the Gazette building and went in and got my prize. It was a square pale-blue envelope, and the printed return on the flap said:

Mrs W. T. Michaels 890 East End Avenue

New York City 28 Inside was a single sheet matching the envelope, with small neat handwriting on it:

BOX P304:

Regarding your advertisement, I am not a former subscriber to either of the publications, but I may be able to tell you something. You may write me, or call Lincoln 3-4808, but do not phone before ten in the morning or after five-thirty in the afternoon. That is important.

Hilda Michaels.

It was still forty minutes this side of her deadline, so I went straight to a booth and dialled the number. A female voice answered. I asked to speak to Mrs Michaels.

“This is Mrs Michaels.”

“This is the Gazette advertiser you wrote to, BOX P304. I've just read- “What's your name?” She had a tendency to snap.

“My name is Goodwin, Archie Goodwin. I can be up there in fifteen minutes or less-”

“No, you can't. Anyway, you'd better not. Are you connected with the Police Department?”

“No. I work for Nero Wolfe. You may have heard of Nero Wolfe, the detective?”

“Of course. This isn't a convent. Was that his advertisement?”

“Yes.He-”

“Then why didn't he phone me?”

“Because I just got your note. I'm phoning from a booth in the Gazette building.

You said not-”

“Well, Mr Goodman, I doubt if I can tell Mr Wolfe anything he would be interested in. I really doubt it.”

“Maybe not,” I conceded. “But he would be the best judge of that. If you don't want me to come up there, how would it be if you called on Mr Wolfe at his office? West Thirty-fifth Street-it's in the phone book. Or I could run up now in a taxi and-”

“Oh, not now. Not today. I might be able to make it tomorrow-or Friday-”

I was annoyed. For one thing, I would just as soon be permitted to finish a sentence once in a while, and for another, apparently she had read the piece about Wolfe being hired to work on the Orchard case, and my name had been in it, and it had been spelled correctly. So I took on weight: “You don't seem to realize what you've done, Mrs Michaels. You-”

“Why, what have I done?”

“You have landed smack in the middle of a murder case. Mr Wolfe and the police are more or less collaborating on it. He would like to see you about the matter mentioned in his advertisement, not tomorrow or next week, but quick. I think you ought to see him. If you try to put it off because you've begun to regret sending this note he'll be compelled to consult the police, and then what? Then you'll-”

“I didn't say I regret sending the note.”

“No, but the way you-”

“I'll be at Mr Wolf e's office by six o'clock.”

“Good! Shall I come-”

I might have known better than to give her another chance to chop me off. She said that she was quite capable of getting herself transported, and I could well believe it.

Chapter Seventeen There was nothing snappy about her appearance. The mink coat, and the dark red woollen dress made visible when the coat had been spread over the back of the red leather chair, unquestionably meant well, but she was not built to co-operate with clothes. There was too much of her and the distribution was all wrong. Her face was so well padded that there was no telling whether there were any bones underneath, and the creases were considerably more than skin deep. I didn't like her. From Wolfe's expression it was plain, to me, that he didn't like her. As for her, it was a safe bet that she didn't like anybody.

Wolfe rustled the sheet of pale-blue paper, glanced at it again, and looked at her. “You say here, madam, that you may be able to tell me something. Your caution is understandable and even commendable. You wanted to find out who had placed the advertisement before committing yourself. Now you know. There is no need-”

“That man threatened me,” she snapped. That's not the way to get me to tell something-if I have something to tell.”

“I agree…Mr Goodwin is headstrong-Archie, withdraw the threat.”

I did my best to grin at her as man to woman. 1 take it back, Mrs Michaels. I was so anxious - “If I tell you anything,” she said to Wolfe, ignoring me, “it will be because I want to, and it will be completely confidential. Whatever you do about it, of course I have nothing to say about that, but you will give me your solemn word of honour that my name will not be mentioned to anyone. No one is to know I wrote you or came to see you or had anything to do with it.”

Wolfe shook his head. “Impossible. Manifestly impossible. You are not a fool, madam, and I won't try to treat you as if you were. It is even conceivable that you might have to take the witness stand in a murder trial. I know nothing about it, because I don't know what you have to tell. Then how could I-”

“All right,” she said, surrendering. “I see I made a mistake. I must be home by seven o'clock. Here's what I have to tell you: somebody I know was a subscriber to that What to Expect that was published by that woman, Beula Poole. I distinctly remember, one day two or three months ago, I saw a little stack of them somewhere-in some house or apartment or office. I've been trying to remember where it was, and I simply can't I wrote you because I thought you might tell me something that would make me remember, and I'm quite willing to try, but I doubt if it will do any good.”

“Indeed.” Wolfe's expression was fully as sour as hers. “I said you're not a fool. I suppose you're prepared to stick to that under any circum-”

“Yes, I am.”

“Even if Mr Goodwin gets headstrong again and renews his threat?”

“That!” She was contemptuous.

“It's very thin, Mrs Michaels. Even ridiculous. That you would go to the bother of answering that advertisement, and coming down here-”

“I don't mind being ridiculous.”

Then I have no alternative.” Wolfe's lips tightened. He released them. “I accept your conditions. I agree, for myself and for Mr Goodwin, who is my agent, that we will not disclose the source of our information, and that we will do our utmost to keep anyone from learning it. Should anyone ascertain it, it will be against our will and in spite of our precautions in good faith. We cannot guarantee, we can only promise, and we do so.”

Her eyes had narrowed. “On your solemn word of honour.”

“Good heavens. That ragged old patch? Very well. My solemn word of honour.

Archie?”

“My solemn word of honour,” I said gravely.

Her head made an odd ducking movement, reminding me of a fat-cheeked owl I had seen at the Zoo getting ready to swoop on a mouse.

“My husband,” she said, lias been a subscriber to that publication, What to Expect, for eight months.”

But the Owl had swooped because it was hungry, whereas she was swooping just to hurt. It was in her voice, which was still hers but quite different when she said the word husband.

“And that's ridiculous,” she went on, “if you want something ridiculous. He hasn't the slightest interest in politics or industry or the stock market or anything like that. He is a successful doctor and all he ever thinks about is his work and his patients, especially his women patients. What would he want with a thing like that What to Expect? Why should he pay that Beula Poole money every week, month after month? I have my own money, and for the first few years after we married we lived on my income, but then he began to be successful, and now he doesn't need my money any more. And he doesn't-”

Abruptly she stood up. Apparently the habit had got so strong that sometimes she even interrupted herself. She was turning to pick up her coat.

“If you please,” Wolfe said brusquely. “You have my word of honour and I want some details. What has your husband-”

“That's all,” she snapped. “I don't intend to answer any silly questions. If I did you'd be sure to give me away, you wouldn't be smart enough not to, and the details don't matter. I've told you the one thing you need to know, and I only hope-”

She was proceeding with the coat, and I had gone to her to help.

“Yes, madam, what do you hope?”

She looked straight at him. “I hope you've got some brains. You don't look it.”

She turned and made for the hall, and I followed. Over the years I have opened that front door to let many people out of that house, among them thieves, swindlers, murderers, and assorted crooks, but it has never been a greater pleasure than on that occasion. Added to everything else, I had noticed when helping her with her coat that her neck needed washing.

It had not been news to us that her husband was a successful doctor. Between my return to the office and her arrival there had been time for a look at the phone book, which had him as an MD with an office address in the Sixties just off Park Avenue, and for a call to Doc. Vollmer. Vollmer had never met him, but knew his standing and reputation, which were up around the top. He had a good high-bracketed practice, with the emphasis on gynaecology.

Back in the office I remarked to Wolfe: “There goes my pendulum again. Lately I've been swinging toward the notion of getting myself a little woman, but good Godalmighty. Brother!”

He nodded, and shivered a little. “Yes. However, we can't reject it merely because it's soiled. Unquestionably her fact is a fact; otherwise she would have contrived an elaborate support for it.” He glanced at the clock. “She said she had to be home by seven, so he may still be in his office. Try it.”

I found the number and dialled it. The woman who answered firmly intended to protect her employer from harassment by a stranger, but I finally sold her.

Wolfe took it. “Dr Michaels? This is Nero Wolfe, a detective. Yes, sir, so far as I know there is only one of that name. I'm in a little difficulty and would appreciate some help from you.”

“I'm just leaving for the day, Mr Wolfe. I'm afraid I couldn't undertake to give you medical advice on the phone.” His voice was low, pleasant, and tired.

“It isn't medical advice I need, doctor. I want to have a talk with you about a publication called What to Expect, to which you subscribed. The difficulty is that I find it impractical to leave my house. I could send my assistant or a policeman to see you, or both, but I would prefer to discuss it with you myself, confidentially. I wonder if you could call on me this evening after dinner?”

Evidently the interrupting mania in the Michaels family was confined to the wife. Not only did he not interrupt, he didn't even take a cue. Wolfe tried again: “Would that be convenient, sir?”

“If I could have another moment, Mr Wolfe. I've had a hard day and am trying to think.”

“By all means.”

He took ten seconds. His voice came, even tireder: “I suppose it would be useless to tell you to go to hell. I would prefer not to discuss it on the phone. I'll be at your office around nine o'clock.”

“Good. Have you a dinner engagement, doctor?”

“An engagement? No. I'm dining at home. Why?”

“It just occurred to me-could I prevail on you to dine with me? You said you were just leaving for the day. I have a good cook. We are having fresh pork tenderloin, with all fibre removed, done in a casserole, with a sharp brown sauce moderately spiced. There will not be time to chambrer a claret properly, but we can have the chill off. We shall, of course, not approach our little matter until afterward, with the coffee-or even after that. Do you happen to know the brandy labelled Remisier? It is not common. I hope this won't shock you, but the way to do it is to sip it with bites of Fritz's apple pie. Fritz is my cook.”

“I'll be damned. I'll be there-what's the address?”

Wolfe gave it to him, and hung up.

“I'll be damned too,” I declared. “A perfect stranger? He may put horse-radish on oysters.”

Wolfe grunted. “If he had gone home to eat with that creature tilings might have been said. Even to the point of repudiation by her and defiance by him. I thought it prudent to avoid that risk.”

“Nuts. There's no such risk and you know it. What you're trying to avoid is to give anyone an excuse to think you're human. You were being kind to your fellow-man and you'd rather be caught dead. The idea of the poor devil going home to dine with that female hyena was simply too much for your great big warm heart, and you were so damn' impetuous you even committed yourself to letting him have some of that brandy of which there are only nineteen bottles in the United States and they're all in your cellar.”

“Bosh.” He arose. “You would sentimentalize the multiplication table.” He started for the kitchen, to tell Fritz about the guest, and to smell around.

Chapter Eighteen After dinner Fritz brought us a second pot of coffee in the office, and also the brandy bottle and big-bellied glasses. Most of the two hours had been spent, not on West Thirty-fifth Street in New York, but in Egypt. Wolfe and the guest had both spent some time there in days gone by, and they had settled on that for discussion and a few arguments.

Dr Michaels, informally comfortable in the red leather chair, put down his coffee cup, ditched a cigarette, and gently patted his midriff. He looked exactly like a successful Park Avenue doctor, middle-aged, well-built and well-dressed, worried but self-assured. After the first hour at the table the tired and worried look had gone, but now, as he cocked an eye at Wolfe after disposing of the cigarette, his forehead was wrinkled again.

“This has been a delightful recess,” he declared. “It has done me a world of good. I have dozens of patients for whom I would like to prescribe a dinner with you, but I'm afraid I'd have to advise you not to fill the prescription.” He belched, and was well-mannered enough not to try to cheat on it. “Well. Now I'll stop masquerading as a guest and take my proper role. The human sacrifice.”

Wolfe disallowed it “I have no desire or intention to gut you, sir.”

Michaels smiled. “A surgeon might say that too, as he slits the skin. No, let's get it done. Did my wife phone you, or write you, or come to see you?”

“Your wife?” Wolfe's eyes opened innocently. “Has there been any mention of your wife?”

“Only by me, this moment. Let it pass. I suppose your solemn word of honour has been invoked-a fine old phrase, really, solemn word of honour-” He shrugged. “I wasn't actually surprised when you asked me about that blackmail business on the phone, merely momentarily confused. I had been expecting something of the sort, because it didn't seem likely that such an opportunity to cause me embarrassment-or perhaps worse-would be missed. Only I would have guessed it would be the police. This is much better, much.”

Wolfe's head dipped forward, visibly, to acknowledge the compliment. “It may eventually reach the police, doctor. There may be no help for it.”

“Of course, I realize that. I can only hope not. Did she give you the anonymous letters, or just show them to you?”

“Neither. But that ‘she’ is your pronoun, not mine. With that understood-I have no documentary evidence, and have seen none. If there is some, no doubt I could get it.” Wolfe sighed, leaned back, and half closed his eyes. “Wouldn't it be simpler if you assume that I know nothing at all, and tell me about it?”

“I suppose so, damn it.” Michaels sipped some brandy, used his tongue to give all the membranes a chance at it, swallowed, and put the glass down. “From the beginning?”

“If you please.”

“Well…it was last summer, nine months ago, that I first learned about the anonymous letters. One of my colleagues showed me one that he had received by mail. It strongly hinted that I was chronically guilty of-uh, unethical conduct-with women patients. Not long after that I became aware of a decided change in the attitude of one of my oldest and most valued patients. I appealed.to her to tell me frankly what had caused it. She had received two similar letters. It was the next day-naturally my memory is quite vivid on this-that my wife showed me two letters, again similar, that had come to her.”

The wrinkles on his forehead had taken command again. “I don't have to explain what that sort of thing could do to a doctor if it kept up. Of course I thought of the police, but the risk of possible publicity, or even spreading of rumour, through a police inquiry, was too great. There was the same objection, or at least I thought there was, to hiring a private investigator. Then, the day after my wife showed me the letters-no, two days after-I had a phone call at my home in the evening. I presume my wife listened to it on the extension in her room-but you're not interested in that. I wish to God you were-” Michaels abruptly jerked his head up as if he had heard a noise somewhere. “Now what did I mean by that?”

“I have no idea,” Wolfe murmured. “The phone call?”

“It was a woman's voice. She didn't waste any words. She said she understood that people had been getting letters about me, and if it annoyed me and I wanted to stop it I could easily do so. If I would subscribe for one year to a publication called What to Expect-she gave me the address-there would be no more letters. The cost would be ten dollars a week, and I could pay as I pleased, weekly, monthly, or the year in advance. She assured me emphatically that there would be no request for renewal, that nothing beyond the one year's subscription would be required, that the letters would stop as soon as I subscribed, and that there would be no more.”

Michaels turned a hand to show a palm. “That's all. I subscribed. I sent ten dollars a week for a while-eight weeks-and then I sent a cheque for four hundred and forty dollars. So far as I know there have been no more letters-and I think I would know.”

“Interesting,” Wolfe murmured. “Extremely.”

“Yes,” Michaels agreed. “I can understand your saying that. It's what a doctor says when he runs across something rare like a lung grown to a rib. But if he's tactful he doesn't say it in the hearing of the patient.”

“You're quite right, sir. I apologize. But this is indeed a rarity-truly remarkable! If the execution graded as high as the conception…what were the letters like, typed?”

“Yes. Plain envelopes and plain cheap paper, but the typing was perfect.”

“You said you sent a cheque. That was acceptable?”

Michaels nodded. “She made that clear. Either cheque or money order. Cash would be accepted, but was thought inadvisable on account of the risk in the mails.”

“You see? Admirable. What about her voice?”

“It was medium in pitch, clear and precise, educated-I mean good diction and grammar-and matter-of-fact. One day I called the number of the publication-as you probably know it's listed-and asked for Miss Poole. It was Miss Poole talking, she said. I discussed a paragraph in the latest issue, and she was intelligent and informed about it. But her voice was soprano, jerky and nervous, nothing like the voice that had told me how to get the letters stopped.”

“It wouldn't be. That was what you phoned for?”

“Yes. I thought I'd have that much satisfaction at least, since there was no risk in it.”

“You might have saved your nickel,” Wolfe: grimaced. “Dr Michaels, I'm going to ask you a question.”

“Go ahead.”

“I don't want to, but though the question is intrusive it is also important. And it will do no good to ask it unless I can be assured of a completely candid reply or refusal to answer at all. You would be capable of a fairly good job of evasion if you were moved to try, and I don't want that. Will you give me either candour or silence?”

Michaels smiled. “Silence is so awkward. I'll give you a straight answer or I'll say ‘no comment’.”

“Good. How much substance was there in the hints in those letters about your conduct?”

The doctor looked at him, considered, and finally nodded his head. “It's intrusive, all right, but I'll take your word for it that it's important. You want a full answer?”

“As full as possible.”

“Then it must be confidential.”

“It will be.”

“I accept that. I don't ask for your solemn word of honour. There was not even a shadow of substance. I have never, with any patient, even approached the boundaries of professional decorum. But I'm not like you; I have a deep aind intense need for the companionship of a woman. I suppose that's why I married so early-and so disastrously. Possibly her money attracted me too, though I would vigorously deny it; there are bad streaks in me. Anyway, I do have the companionship of a woman, but not the one I married. She has never been my patient. When she needs medical advice she goes to some other doctor. No doctor should assume responsibility for the health of one he loves or one he hates.”

“This companionship you enjoy-it could not have been the stimulus for the hints in the letters?”

“I don't see how. All the letters spoke of women patients-in the plural, and patients.”

“Giving their names?”

“No, no names.”

Wolfe nodded with satisfaction. “That would have taken too much research for a wholesale operation, and it wasn't necessary.” He came forward in his chair to reach for the push-button. “I am greatly obliged to you, Dr Michaels. This has been highly distasteful for you, and you have been most indulgent. I don't need to prolong it, and I won't. I foresee no necessity to give the police your name, and I'll even engage not to do so, though heaven only knows what my informant will do. Now we'll have some beer. We didn't get it settled about the pointed arches in the Tulun mosque.”

“If you don't mind,” the guest said, “I’e been wondering if it would be seemly to tip this brandy bottle again.”

So he stayed with the brandy while Wolfe had beer. I excused myself and went out for a breath of air, for while they were perfectly welcome to do some more settling about the pointed arches in the Tulun mosque, as far as I was concerned it had been attended to long ago.

It was past eleven when I returned, and soon afterward Michaels arose to go. He was far from being pickled, but he was much more relaxed and rosy than he had been when I let him in. Wolfe was so mellow that he even stood up to say good-bye, and I didn't see his usual flicker of hesitation when Michaels extended a hand. He doesn't care about shaking hands indiscriminately.

Michaels said impulsively, “I want to ask you something.”

“Then do so.”

“I want to consult you professionally-your profession. I need help. I want to pay for it.”

“You will, sir, if it's worth anything.”

“It will be, I'm sure. I want to know, if you are being shadowed, if a man is following you, how many ways are there of eluding him, and what are they, and how are they executed?”

“Good heavens.” Wolfe shuddered. “How long has this been going on?”

“For months.”

“Well-Archie?”

“Sure,” I said. “Glad to.”

“I don't want to impose on you,” Michaels lied. He did. It's late.”

“That's okay. Sit down.”

I really didn't mind, having met his wife.

Chapter Nineteen That, I thought to myself as I was brushing my hair Thursday morning, covered some ground. That was a real step forward.

Then, as I dropped the brush into the drawer, I asked aloud: “Yeah? Toward what?”

In a murder case you expect to spend at least half your time barking up wrong trees. Sometimes that gets you irritated, but what the hell, if you belong in the detective business at all you just skip it and take another look. That wasn't the trouble with this one. We hadn't gone dashing around investigating a funny sound only to learn it was just a cat on a fence. Far from it. We had left all that to the cops. Every move we had made had been strictly pertinent. Our two chief discoveries-the tape on the bottle of coffee and the way the circulation department of What to Expect operated-were unquestionably essential parts of the picture of the death of Cyril Orchard, which was what we were working on.

So it was a step forward. Fine. When you have taken a step forward, the next thing on the programme is another step in the same direction. And that was the pebble in the griddle cake I broke a tooth on that morning. Bathing and dressing and eating breakfast, I went over the situation from every angle and viewpoint, and I had to admit this: if Wolfe had called me up to his room and asked me for a suggestion of how I should spend the day, I would have been tongue-tied.

What I'm doing, if you're following me, is to justify what I did do. When he did call me up to his room, and wished me a good morning, and asked how I had slept, and told me to phone Inspector Cramer and invite him to pay us a visit at eleven o'clock, all I said was: “Yes, sir.”

There was another phone call which I had decided to make on my own. Since it involved a violation of a law Wolfe had passed I didn't want to make it from the office, so when I went out for a stroll to the bank to deposit a cheque from a former client who was paying in instalments, I patronized a booth. When I got Lon Cohen I told him I wanted to ask him something that had no connection with the detective business, but was strictly private. I said I had been offered a job at a figure ten times what he was worth, and fully half what I was, and while I had no intention of leaving Wolfe, I was curious. Had he ever heard of a guy named Arnold Zeck, and what about him? “Nothing for you,” Lon said.

“What do you mean, nothing for me?”

“I mean you don't want a Sunday feature, you want the low-down, and I haven't got it. Zeck is a question mark. I've heard that he owns twenty Assemblymen and six district leaders, and I've also heard that he is merely a dried fish.

There's a rumour that if you.print something about him that he resents your body is washed ashore at Montauk Point, mangled by sharks, but you know how the boys talk. One little detail-this is between us?”

“Forever.”

“There's not a word on him in our morgue. I had occasion to look once, several years ago-when he gave his yacht to the Navy. Not a thing, which is peculiar for a guy that gives away yachts and owns the highest hill in Westchester. What's the job?”

“Skip it. I wouldn't consider it. I thought he still had his yacht.”

I decided to let it lay. If the time should come when Wolfe had to sneak outdoors and look for a place to hide, I didn't want it blamed on me.

Cramer arrived shortly after eleven. He wasn't jovial, and neither was I. When he came, as I had known him to, to tear Wolfe to pieces, or at least to threaten to haul him downtown or send a squad with a paper signed by a judge, he had fire in his eye and springs in his calves. This time he was so forlorn he even let me hang up his hat and coat for him. But as he entered the office, I saw him squaring his shoulders. He was so used to going into that room to be belligerent that it was automatic. He growled a greeting, sat, and demanded: “What have you got this time?”

Wolfe, lips compressed, regarded him a moment and then pointed a finger at him.

“You know, Mr Cramer, I begin to suspect I'm a jackass. Three weeks ago yesterday, when I read in the paper of Mr Orchard's death, I should have guessed immediately why people paid him ten dollars a week. I don't mean merely the general idea of blackmail; that was an obvious possibility; I mean the whole operation, the way it was done,”

“Why, have you guessed it now?”

“No. I've had it described to me.”

“By whom?”

“It doesn't matter. An innocent victim. Would you like to have me describe it to you?”

“Sure. Or the other way around.”

Wolfe nodded. “What? You know about it?”

“Yeah, I know about it. I do now.” Cramer wasn't doing any bragging. He stayed glum. TJnderstand I'm saying nothing against the New York Police Department.

It's the best on earth. But it's a large organization, and you can't expect everyone to know what everybody else did or is doing. My part of it is Homicide.

Well. In September nineteen forty-six, nineteen months ago, a citizen lodged a complaint with a precinct detective sergeant. People had received anonymous letters about him, and he had got a phone call from a man that if he subscribed to a thing called Track Almanac for one year there would be no more letters. He said the stuff in the letters was lies, and he wasn't going to be swindled, and he wanted justice. Because it looked as if it might be a real job the sergeant consulted his captain. They went together to the Track Almanac office, found Orchard there, and jumped him. He denied it, said it must have been someone trying to queer him. The citizen listened to Orchard's voice, both direct and on the phone, and said it hadn't been his voice on the phone, it must have been a confederate. But no lead to a confederate could be found. Nothing could be found. Orchard stood pat. He refused to let them see his subscription list, on the ground that he didn't want his customers pestered, which was within his rights in the absence of a charge. The citizen's lawyer wouldn't let him swear a warrant. There were no more anonymous letters.”

“Beautiful,” Wolfe murmured.

“What the hell is so beautiful?”

“Excuse me. And?”

“And nothing. The captain is now retired, living on a farm in Rhode Island. The sergeant is still a sergeant, as he should be, since apparently he doesn't read the papers. He's up in a Bronx precinct, specializing on kids that throw stones at trains. Just day before yesterday the name Orchard reminded him of something!

So I've got that. I've put men on to the other Orchard subscribers that we know about, except the one that was just a sucker-plenty of men to cover anybody at all close to them, to ask about anonymous letters. There have been no results on Savarese or Madeline Fraser, but we've uncovered it on the Leconne woman, the one that runs a beauty parlour. It was the same routine-the letters and the phone call, and she fell for it. She says the letters were lies, and it looks like they were, but she paid up to get them stopped, and she pushed us off, and you too, because she didn't want a stink.”

Cramer made a gesture. “Does that describe it?”

“Perfectly,”Wolfe granted.

“Okay. You called me, and I came because I swear to God I don't see what it gets me. It was you who got brilliant and made it that the poison was for the Fraser woman, not Orchard. Now that looks crazy, but what don't? If it was for Orchard after all, who and why in that bunch? And what about Beula Poole? Were she and Orchard teaming it? Or was she horning in on his list? By God, I never saw anything like it! Have you been giving me a runaround? I want to know!”

Cramer pulled a cigar from his pocket and got his teeth closed on it.

Wolfe shook his head. “Not I,” he declared. “I’m a little dizzy myself. Your description was sketchy, and it might help to fill it in. Are you in a hurry?”

“Hell, no.”

“Then look at this. It is important, if we are to see clearly the connection of the two events, to know exactly what the roles of Mr Orchard and Miss Poole were. Let us say that I am an ingenious and ruthless man, and I decide to make some money by blackmailing wholesale, with little or no risk to myself.”

“Orchard got poisoned,” Cramer growled, “and she got shot.”

“Yes,” Wolfe agreed, “but I didn't. I either know people I can use or I know how to find them. I am a patient and resourceful man. I supply Orchard with funds to begin publication of Track Almanac. I have lists prepared, with the greatest care, of persons with ample incomes from a business or profession or job that would make them sensitive to my attack. Then I start operating. The phone calls are made neither by Orchard nor by me. Of course Orchard, who is in an exposed position, has never met me, doesn't know who I am, and probably isn't even aware that I exist. Indeed, of those engaged in the operation, very few know that I exist, possibly only one.”

Wolfe rubbed his palms together. “All this is passably clever. I am taking from my victims only a small fraction of their income, and I am not threatening them with exposure of a fearful secret. Even if I knew their secrets, which I don't, I would prefer not to use them in the anonymous letters; that would not merely harass them, it would fill them with terror, and I don't want terror, I only want money. Therefore, while my lists are carefully compiled, no great amount of research is required, just enough to get only the kind of people who would be least likely to put up a fight, either by going to the police or by any other method. Even should one resort to the police, what will happen? You have already answered that, Mr Cramer, by telling what did happen.”

“That sergeant was dumb as hell,” Cramer grumbled.

“Oh, no. There was the captain too. Take an hour sometime to consider what you would have done and see where you come out. What if one or two more citizens had made the same complaint? Mr Orchard would have insisted that he was being persecuted by an enemy. In the extreme case of an avalanche of complaints, most improbable, or of an exposure by an exceptionally capable policeman, what then?

Mr Orchard would be done for, but I wouldn't. Even if he wanted to squeal, he couldn't, not on me, for he doesn't know me.”

“He has been getting money to you,” Cramer Objected.

“Not to me. He never gets within ten miles of me. The handling of the money is an important detail and you may be sure it has been well organized. Only one man ever gets close enough to me to bring me money. It shouldn't take me long to build up a fine list of subscribers to Track Almanac-certainly a hundred, possibly five hundred. Let us be moderate and say two hundred. That's two thousand dollars a week. If Mr Orchard keeps half, he can pay all expenses and have well over thirty thousand a year for his net. If he has any sense, and he has been carefully chosen and is under surveillance, that will satisfy him. For me, it's a question of my total volume. How many units do I have? New York is big enough for four or five, Chicago for two or three, Detroit, Philadelphia, and Los Angeles for two each, at least a dozen cities for one. If I wanted to stretch it I could easily get twenty units working. But we'll be moderate again and stop at twelve. That would bring me in six hundred thousand dollars a year for my share. My operating costs shouldn't be more than half that; and when you consider that my net is really net, with no income tax to pay, I am doing very well indeed.”

Cramer started to say something, but Wolfe put up a hand: “Please. As I said, all that is fairly clever, especially the avoidance of real threats about real secrets, but what makes it a masterpiece is the limitation of the tribute. All blackmailers will promise that this time is the last, but I not only make the promise, I keep it. I have an inviolable rule never to ask for a subscription renewal.”

“You can't prove it.”

“No, I can't. But I confidently assume it, because it is the essence, the great beauty, of the plan. A man can put up with a pain-and this was not really a pain, merely a discomfort, for people with good incomes-if he thinks he knows when it will stop, and if it stops when the time comes. But if I make them pay year after year, with no end in sight, I invite sure disaster. I'm too good a businessman for that. It is much cheaper and safer to get four new subscribers a week for each unit; that's all that is needed to keep it at a constant two hundred subscribers.”

Wolfe nodded emphatically. “By all means, then, if I am to stay in business indefinitely, and I intend to, I must make that rule and rigidly adhere to it; and I do so. There will, of course, be many little difficulties, as there are in any enterprise, and I must also be prepared for an unforeseen contingency. For example, Mr Orchard may get killed. If so I must know of it at once, and I must have a man in readiness to remove all papers from his office, even though there is nothing there that could possibly lead to me. I would prefer to have no inkling of the nature and extent of my operations reach unfriendly parties. But I am not panicky; why should I be? Within two weeks one of my associates-the one who makes the phone calls for my units that are managed by females-begins phoning the Track Almanac subscribers to tell them that their remaining payments should be made to another publication called What to Expect. It would have been better to discard my Track Almanac list and take my loss, but I don't know that.

I only find it out when Miss Poole also gets killed. Luckily my surveillance is excellent. Again an office must be cleaned out, and this time under hazardous conditions and with dispatch. Quite likely my man has seen the murderer, and can even name him; but I'm not interested in catching a murderer; what I want is to save my business from these confounded interruptions. I discard both those cursed lists, destroy them, burn them, and start plans for two entirely new units. How about a weekly sheet giving the latest shopping information? Or a course in languages, any language? There are numberless possibilities.”

Wolfe leaned back. “There's your connection, Mr Cramer.”

“The hell it is,” Cramer mumbled. He was rubbing the side of his nose with his forefinger. He was sorting things out. After a moment he went on: “I thought maybe you were going to end up by killing both of them yourself. That would be a connection too, wouldn't it?”

“Not a very plausible one. Why would I choose that time and place and method for killing Mr Orchard? Or even Miss Poole-why there in her office? It wouldn't be like me. If they had to be disposed of surely I would have made better arrangements than that.”

“Then you're saying it was a subscriber.”

“I make the suggestion. Not necessarily a subscriber, but one who looked at things from the subscriber's viewpoint.”

“Then the poison was intended for Orchard after all.”

“I suppose so, confound it. I admit that's hard to swallow. It's sticking in my throat.”

“Mine too.” Cramer was sceptical. “One thing you overlooked. You were so interested in pretending it was you, you didn't mention who it really is. This patient ruthless bird that's pulling down over half a million a year. Could I have his name and address?”

“Not from me,” Wolfe said positively. “I strongly doubt if you could finish him, and if you tried he would know who had named him. Then I would have to undertake it, and I don't want to tackle him. I work for money, to make a living, not just to keep myself alive. I don't want to be reduced to that primitive extremity.”

“Nuts. You've been telling me a dream you had. You can't stand it for anyone to think you don't know anything, so you even have the brass to tell me to my face that you know his name. You don't even know he exists, any more than Orchard did.”

“Oh yes I.do. I'm much more intelligent than Mr Orchard.”

“Have it your way,” Cramer conceded generously. “You trade orchids with him. So what? He's not in my department. If he wasn't behind these murders I don't want him. My job is homicide. Say you didn't dream it, say it's just as you said, what comes next? How have I gained an inch or you either? Is that what you got me here for, to tell me about your goddam units in twelve different cities?”

“Partly. I didn't know your precinct servant had been reminded of something. But that wasn't all. Do you feel like telling me why Miss Koppel tried to get on an airplane?”

“Sure I feel like it, but I can't because I don't know. She says to see her sick mother. We've tried to find another reason that we like better, but no luck.

She's under bond not to leave the state.”

Wolfe nodded. “Nothing seems to fructify, does it? What I really wanted was to offer a suggestion. Would you like one?”

“Let me hear it.”

“I hope it will appeal to you. You said that you have had men working in the circles of the Orchard subscribers you know about, and that there have been no results on Professor Savarese or Miss Fraser. You might have expected that, and probably did, since those two have given credible reasons for having subscribed.

Why not shift your aim to another target? How many men are available for that sort of work?”

“As many as I want.”

“Then put a dozen or more on to Miss Vance-or, rather, on to her associates.

Make it thorough. Tell the men that the object is not to learn whether anonymous letters regarding Miss Vance have been received. Tell them that that much has been confidently assumed, and that their job is to find out what the letters said, and who got them and when. It will require pertinacity to the farthest limit of permissible police conduct. The man good enough actually to secure one of the letters will be immediately promoted.”

Cramer sat scowling. Probably he was doing the same as me, straining for a quick but comprehensive flashback of all the things that Elinor Vance had seen or done, either in our presence or to our knowledge. Finally he inquired: “Why her?”

Wolfe shook his head. “If I explained you would say I was telling you another dream. I assure you that in my opinion the reason is good.”

“How many letters to how many people?”

Wolfe's brows went up. “My dear sir! If I knew that would I let you get a finger in it? I would have her here ready for delivery, with evidence. What the deuce is wrong with it? I am merely suggesting a specific line of inquiry on a specific person whom you have already been tormenting for over three weeks.”

“You're letting my finger in now. If it's any good why don't you hire men with your clients' money and sail on through?”

Wolfe snorted. He was disgusted. “Very well,” he said. “I'll do that. Don't bother about it. Doubtless your own contrivances are far superior. Another sergeant may be reminded of something that happened at the turn of the century.”

Cramer stood up. I thought he was going to leave without a word, but he spoke.

“That's pretty damn' cheap, Wolfe. You would never have heard of that sergeant if I hadn't told you about him. Freely.”

He turned and marched out. I made allowances for both of them because their nerves were on edge. After three weeks for Cramer, and more than two for Wolfe, they were no closer to the killer of Cyril Orchard than when they started.