Black Orchids

Chapter 5

Of course I had a card up my sleeve. Wolfe had taken my dagger away and done the twisting himself in Hewitt’s ribs instead of his own, but I still had a card.

I had a chance to make arrangements for playing it while Wolfe went around, after we returned to the other room, inviting people to lunch. That was actually what he did. Anyhow he invited W. G. Dill and Fred Updegraff; I heard that much. Apparently he intended to spend the evening thinking it out, and have them all to lunch the next day to announce the result. Hewitt declined my help on the orchid portage from upstairs. It seemed as if he didn’t like me. When Wolfe had finished the inviting he calmly opened, without knocking, the door into the room where Cramer had gone with Anne, and disappeared within.

I approached Purley Stebbins, stationed on a chair near the door to the anteroom, and grinned at him reassuringly. He was always upset in the presence of either Wolfe or me, and the two of us together absolutely gave him the fidgets. He gave me a glancing eye and let out a growl.

“Look, Purley,” I said cordially, “here’s one for the notebook. That lady over there.” She was sitting by the far wall with her coat still on and the blue leather bag under her arm. “She’s a phony. She’s really a Chinese spy. So am I. We were sent to do this job by Hoo Flung Dung. If you don’t believe it watch us talk code.”

“Go to hell,” Purley suggested.

“Yeah? You watch.”

I ambled across the room and stood right in front of her so Purley couldn’t see her face.

“Hello, dear old friend,” I said not too loud.

“You’ve got a nerve,” she said. “Beat it.”

“Nerve? Me?”

“Beat it. ‘Dear old friend!’ I never saw you before.”

“Aha!” I smiled down at her. “Not a chance in the world. If I tell them I saw you in that corridor at half past three waiting for someone, they’ll believe me, don’t think they won’t, and you’ll have to start all over again about opening that door at half past four because you got there by mistake and were looking for a way out. Think fast and don’t tell me to beat it again or we part forever. And control your face and keep your voice down.”

Her fingers were twisting under a fold of the coat. “What do you want?”

“I want to get to know you better. I’ll be leaving here in a minute to drive my boss home, but I’ll be back before long for a little talk with the Inspector. Then I’ll go to the news movie in Grand Central and you’ll be there in the back row. Won’t you?”

“Yes.”

“You’re sure.”

“Yes.”

“You’d better be. If you are, it’s all right that you never saw me before. If you put over your song and dance there may be a tail on you when you leave. Don’t try to shake him. We’ll take care of that when we leave the movie. Understand?”

“Yes.”

“Righto. Stick to me and you’ll wear black orchids.”

I started to go back to Purley to kid him out of any suspicions that might be pecking at the shell, but a door opened and Wolfe emerged, and Cramer stood on the sill and spoke:

“Purley! Goodwin’s taking Wolfe home and will be back in half an hour.”

“Yeah,” Purley said disrespectfully.

“Come, Archie,” Wolfe said.

We waited in the anteroom, and in a few minutes here came Lewis Hewitt, followed by a guard balancing the glass case on his upper limbs. The transfer was made to me without ceremony, after Wolfe peered through the glass for a good gloating look, and off we went. When we got to where I had parked the car Wolfe got in the back, always a major operation, and I deposited the case on the floor at his feet. Ten minutes later we arrived at the old house on West 35th Street near the river, and the sigh he heaved as he deposited his weight and volume in a chair that had been made for them was a record for both depth and duration.

“You’d better get back up there,” he said. “I regret it and I resent it, but I gave Mr. Cramer my word. Theodore will attend to the plants. Get back for dinner if you can. We’re having saucisse minuit.”

He was being sweet. “I didn’t give Cramer my word,” I suggested.

“No.” He wiggled a finger at me. “Archie! No shenanigan.”

“I’ll see. But I need refreshment.”

I went to the kitchen and put two bowls of crackers and milk where they belonged, meanwhile chinning with Fritz and getting sniffs of the sausage he was preparing. Eating crackers and milk and smelling saucisse minuit simultaneously is like sitting with your arm around a country lass while watching Hedy Lamarr raise the temperature. I told Fritz to save some for me if I was late getting back, and departed.

It was 7:15 when I entered the big inside room of the offices on the second floor of Grand Central Palace. There were a dozen or more people in there, most of whom were new to me, but including W. G. Dill and Lewis Hewitt. Updegraff wasn’t in sight, and neither was Anne Tracy, and neither was the girl friend I had a date with. Her absence made it desirable to get troublesome without delay, but it wasn’t necessary because in a couple of minutes the door to the inner room opened and Pete Arango came out, and I got a sign from Purley and went in. Cramer was there with a dick I had never seen and Murphy with a notebook. His unlighted cigar was chewed halfway to the end and he looked unjubilant.

“Now,” I said brightly, taking a seat, “what can I do to help?”

“Join a circus,” Cramer said. “By God, you’ll clown at your own funeral. What have you been hanging around here all week for?”

That was all it amounted to, a bunch of whats and whys and whens and four pages of the notebook filled, and my wit wasted on the homicide squad as usual. As a matter of fact, the wit was below par because I wanted to get out of there for my date, since it appeared that she had had her session and been turned loose. So I kept it fairly succinct and tried to co-operate on details, and we were about running out of material when the door opened and in came an undersized dick with a flat nose. Cramer looked at him and demanded:

“What the hell are you doing back here?”

The dick’s mouth opened and shut again. It didn’t want to say what it had to say. On the second try it got it out:

“I lost her.”

Cramer groaned and looked speechless.

“It wasn’t my fault,” the dick said, “I swear it wasn’t, Inspector. That damn subway. A local rolled in and stopped and she hung back like waiting for an express and then the last second she dived through—”

“Can it,” Cramer said. “Choke on it. My God. The wonder to me is that — what does it matter what the wonder to me is? What’s that name and address?”

Murphy flipped back through the pages of his notebook and stopped at one. “Ruby Lawson. One fourteen Sullivan Street.”

The dick got out his memo book and wrote it down. “I don’t think it was deliberate,” he said. “I think she just changed her mind. I think she just—”

“You think? You say you think?”

“Yes, Inspector, I—”

“Get out. Take another man, take Dorsey, and go to that address and look into her. Don’t pick her up. Keep on her. And for God’s sake don’t think. It’s repulsive, the idea of you thinking.”

The thinker made himself scarce. Naturally I was now itching to be on my way, so I leaned back comfortably and crossed my legs and began, “You know, when I am tailing someone and they go into a subway station, it is my invariable custom—”

“You can go,” Cramer snapped. “On out. If I want you, which God forbid, I know where to get you.”

“But I think—”

“I said go!”

I got up leisurely and went out leisurely, and on my way through the outer room paused for a friendly word with Purley, but when I got to the stairs outside I stepped on it. It was at least a hundred to one that I had been stood up, but nevertheless I hotfooted it to the Lexington Avenue entrance of Grand Central Station and on to the newsreel theater, parted with money, and entered. She wasn’t in the back row, and I didn’t waste time inspecting any other rows. Since she had given a phony name and address to Cramer, and had been smart enough to make it one that matched the RL on her bag, I figured she probably wouldn’t be letting grass come up between her toes. Out in the lighted corridor I took a hasty glance at a page in my memo book, considered patronizing the subway and decided no, and headed for 46th Street where I had parked the car.

My high-hatting the subway nearly lost me a trick, for it was slow work at that hour getting around on to Park Avenue, but once headed downtown I made good time.

Number 326 Morrow Street, down at the southern fringe of Greenwich Village, was one of those painted brick fronts that were painted too long ago. There were supposed to be two lights on black iron brackets at the entrance to the vestibule, but only one was working. I parked across the street and moseyed over. Inside the vestibule was the usual row of mailboxes and bell pushes, and the card below one of them had lasher printed on it. That was okay, but what made it interesting was that on the same card, above LASHER, another name was printed: GOULD. I was leaning over looking at it when the inside door opened and there she was.

It was easy to see that high-hatting the subway had nearly cost me a trick, because she had a traveling bag in her hand and was stooping to pick up a suitcase with the hand she had used to open the door with.

“Allow me,” I said, extending a hand. “That looks heavy.”

She gave me one startled glance and dropped the suitcase and sat down on it and started to cry. She didn’t cover her face with her hands or anything like that, she just burst.

I waited a minute for a lull. “Look,” I said, “you’re blocking the way in case anyone wants to come in or go out. Let’s take these things—”

“You dirty—” The crying interfered with it. “You lousy—”

“No,” I said firmly. “No, sister. You stood me up. You humiliated me.” I picked up the traveling bag which she had also dropped. “Let’s go.”

“He’s dead,” she said. She wasn’t bothering about small things like tears. “He’s dead, ain’t he? Hasn’t anybody got any heart at all? The way I had to sit up there — sit there and pretend—” She stopped and chewed her lip, and all of a sudden she stood up and blazed at me. “Who are you, anyway? How did you know who I was? How did you get here so quick? You’re a detective, that’s what you are, you’re a lousy detective—”

“No.” I gripped her arm. “If you mean a city employee, no. My name is Archie Goodwin and I work for Nero Wolfe. My car’s outside and I’m taking you up to Wolfe’s place for a little conference. He’s got one of the biggest hearts in the world, encased in a ton of blubber.”

Of course she balked. She even defied me to call a cop, but then she started to cry again, and during that deluge I picked up the bag and suitcase and herded her out and across the street to the car. All the way up to 35th Street she cried and I had to lend her a handkerchief.

With my hands full of luggage, I had her precede me up the stoop and ring the bell for Fritz to let us in. He did so, and helped her off with her coat like a head waiter helping the Duchess of Windsor, one of the nicest things about Fritz being that to him anything in a skirt is a lady.

“Mr. Wolfe is at dinner,” he announced.

“I’ll bet he is. Take Miss Lasher to the office.”

I took the luggage with me to the dining room, set it down against the wall, and approached the table. There he was, floating in clouds of bliss. He looked from the luggage tome.

“What’s that? Those aren’t your bags.”

“No, sir,” I agreed. “They are the property of an object I brought with me named Rose Lasher, who may help you hang onto those orchids. She is bereaved and hungry and I’m hungry. Shall I stay with her in the office—”

“Hungry? Bring her in here. There’s plenty.”

I went to the office and returned with her. She had stopped crying but sure was forlorn.

“Miss Lasher,” I said, “this is Nero Wolfe. He never discusses business at the table, so we’ll eat first and go into things later.” I held a chair for her.

“I don’t want to eat,” she said in a thin voice. “I can’t eat.”

She ate seven sausages, which was nothing against her grief. Fritz’s saucisse minuit would make Gandhi a gourmet.