Before I Die

XI

Wolfe never tries to deny he’s vain, but I doubt if he’ll ever admit that it’s an exercise of vanity when he takes someone who is under a strain up to the plant rooms. He acts nonchalant, but I can tell when he’s enjoying himself. Beulah met expectations. In the blaze of the Cattleya room she only looked dazed, but the Dendrobiums and Phalaenopsis really got her. She stopped dead and just looked, with her mouth open.

“Someday,” Wolfe said, not sounding pleased, with his usual self-control, “you must spend an hour up here. Or two hours. Now I’m afraid we haven’t time.”

He nudged her along to the potting room and told Theodore, the orchid nurse, that he had better go and see to the ventilators. When Theodore had gone and Wolfe was in his chair and Beulah and I on stools, he said abruptly, “You’re not an infant, Miss Page. You’re nineteen years old.”

She nodded, “In Georgia I could vote.”

“So you could. Then I won’t have to use a nipple for this. We’ll ignore non-essentials; they can be dealt with later, at more leisure — as, for instance, why Mr. Goodwin chose such a name as Harold Stevens to lure you down here yesterday. Do you know what a hypothetical question is?”

“Certainly.”

“Then I’ll put one to you. Suppose these things: that with me as intermediary, your father has arranged to make available to you a considerable sum of money; that he is not in a position to disclose himself to you and cannot ever be expected to do so; that he has put it wholly within my discretion whether you shall be told his name and your mother’s name; and that the circumstances are such that it will be a deuce of a job to keep you from guessing his name and guessing it right. Supposing all that, here’s something for you to think over.”

Wolfe pointed a finger at her. “Do you want me to tell you the names or not?”

“I don’t need to think it over. I want you to tell me.”

“That’s an impulse.”

“It is not an impulse. Good lord, an impulse? If you only knew what I — for years—” Beulah made a little gesture. “I want to know.”

“What if your father is — say, a convicted pickpocket?”

“I don’t care what he is! I want to know!”

“Then you should. Mr. Perrit, your father, died last night.” Wolfe inclined his head toward a window. “Out there on the sidewalk.”

“I knew it,” Beulah said calmly.

“The devil you did!”

But she wasn’t actually as calm as she sounded. Her hands were clasped tight together and she had started a swallowing marathon. She didn’t even try to resume the conversation, but just sat, and all signs indicated the same outcome. The outcome arrived in something like a minute. It started with her shoulders going up and down in a minor convulsion, and then her head went forward and her hands went up to cover her face, and the regulation sounds began to come.

“Good God,” Wolfe muttered in a tone of horror, and got to his feet and went. In a moment, above the sounds Beulah was making, I heard the bang of his elevator door. I merely sat and waited, thinking it was natural for me to understand better than he did the most desirable and effective course of action when a young woman began to cry. After all, I thought, I see a good deal more of them than he does.

Time passed by. I was deciding the moment had come for a sympathetic hand on her shoulder when her face came up and she blurted, “Why haven’t you got sense enough to go too?”

It didn’t faze me. “I have,” I said politely, “but I was waiting for the noise to die down enough for you to hear me tell you that if you don’t want to go in the room where Morton is in your present condition, the room at the front on that floor is mine, is unlocked, and has a bathroom with a mirror.”

I left her alone with it. On the way out I warned Theodore what was going on in the potting room and advised him to find jobs elsewhere. On my floor I stopped in my room to make sure about clean towels in the bathroom and general appearances. As I returned to the hall the door of the south room opened and Morton was there.

“Where’s Miss Page?” he demanded. “What’s going on?”

“She’s up looking at orchids,” I told him en route. “Relax. Lunch in ten minutes.”

Down in the office Wolfe was sitting at his desk, looking harassed.

I crossed to mine, sat, and told him, “They want a shoulder to cry on, but with her fianće under the same roof I didn’t think it would be fitting. Morton is pacing—”

The phone rang. I answered it, and heard a voice I had been expecting to hear all day. I told Wolfe Inspector Cramer would like to speak to him. He got on and I stayed on.

“Nero Wolfe speaking, Mr. Cramer. How are you?”

“I’m fine. You?”

“The way I always am just before lunch. Hungry.”

“Well, enjoy it. This is just a friendly call. I wanted to let you know you were right as usual when you decided to keep it all to yourself and tell Rowcliff only one thing that was worth a damn, about Perrit’s daughter being wanted in Salt Lake. We got onto her through the Washington fingerprint files, as you knew we would. I don’t think she was his daughter at all. Her name was Angelina Murphy, though of course she used others. She had about ten years coming. I just wanted to tell you that, but I suppose I might as well ask if you have anything to add.”

“No— no, I think not.”

“Nothing at all? About the job you took on for Perrit?”

“Nothing.”

“Okay, I didn’t expect it. Enjoy your lunch.”

I pushed the phone back. I turned to Wolfe and spoke with feeling. “At least I heard that before I died. Cramer knowing you’ve got things he could use and merely telling you to enjoy your lunch! No pressure, no hard words, nothing! Not even bothering to drop in on us! And you know why? He’s religious and he thinks it would be out of place! He thinks the only guy that belongs here now is a priest for the last rites!”

“Quite right,” Wolfe agreed. “It was in effect an obituary. If I were a sentimentalist I would be touched. Mr. Cramer has never before shown the slightest interest in my enjoyment of a meal. He thinks I haven’t long to live.”

“Including me.”

“Yes, you too, of course.”

“And what do you think?”

“I haven’t given it—”

The phone rang again. With a suspicion that it was Cramer, who had decided he had been too sentimental, I got it and spoke. The voice was as familiar as Cramer’s but it wasn’t his. “Saul Panzer,” I told Wolfe, and, since he didn’t give me the sign to keep off, I kept on. But it was brief and didn’t fill in any gaps for me.

“Saul?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Have you had lunch?”

“No, sir.”

“How soon can you get here?”

“Eight to ten minutes.”

“There is a change or two in the program, dictated by circumstances. I’ll need you here earlier than I thought. Come and join us at luncheon — Miss Beulah Page, Mr. Morton Schane, Archie, and me.”

“Yes, sir. Probably eight minutes.”