Curtains for Three

THE REX STOUT LIBRARY

Ferde-Lance

The League of

Frightened Men

The Rubber Band

Where There's aWill

The Final Deduction

The Hand in the Glove

Black Orchids

The Doorbell Rang

If Death Ever Slept

Murder by the Book

Not Quite Dead Enough

Prisoner's Base

And Four to Go

Might as Well Be Dead

A Family Affair

Please Pass the Guilt

Triple jeopardy

The Mother Hunt

The Father Hunt

Trouble in Triplicate

Homicide Trinity

The Black Mountain

Too Many Cooks

Before Midnight

Over My Dead Body

The Mountain Cat Murders

The Silent Speaker

And Be aVillain Too Many Clients

Three Men Out

A Right to Die

Curtains for Three

Available from Bantam Books

Rex Stout

Al/ff f\P

, the creator of Nero Wolfe, was born in Noblesville, in 1886, the sixth of nine children of John and Todhunter Stout, both Quakers. Shortly after his the family moved to Wakarusa, Kansas. He was edu I bi a country school, but, by the age of nine, he was throughout the state as a prodigy in arithmetic. t briefly attended the University of Kansas, but left to I in the Navy and spent the next two years as a warrant g&n board President Theodore Roosevelt's yacht. When I Navy in 1908, Rex Stout began to write freelance ; worked as a sightseeing guide and as an itinerant r. Later he devised and implemented a school system which was installed in four hundred cities \ throughout the country. In 1927 Mr. Stout retired s world of finance and, with the proceeds of his bank left for Paris to write serious fiction. He wrote els that received favorable reviews before turning to fiction. His first Nero Wolfe novel, Ferde-Lance, ift 1934. It was followed by many others, among Jlfbo Many Cooks, The Silent Speaker, If Death Ever Ifffce Doorbell Rang, and Please Pass the Guilt, which i Nero Wolfe as a leading character on a par with Gardner's famous protagonist, Perry Mason, ^world War n, Rex Stout waged a personal campaign t Nazism as chairman of the War Writers' Board, roaster of the radio program "Speaking of Liberty," , member of several national committees. After the turned his attention to mobilizing public opinion t the wartime use of thermonuclear devices, was an te leader in the Authors' Guild and resumed writing his iffjpjtfe novels. Rex Stout died in 1975 at the age of e. A month before his death, he published his sev I Nero Wolfe mystery, A Family Affair. Ten years S�e*enty-third Nero Wolfe mystery was discovered and t in Death Times Three.

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The Rex Stout Library

Fer-de-Lance

The League of Frightened Men

The Rubber Band

The Red Box

Too Many Cooks

Some Buried Caesar

Ov.er My Dead Body

Where There's a VW11

Black Orchids

Not Quite Dead Enough

The Silent Speaker

Too Many Women

And Be a Villain

The Second Confession

Trouble in Triplicate

In the Best Families

Three Doors to Death

Murder by the Book

Curtains for Three

Prisoner's Base

Triple Jeopardy

The Golden Spiders

The Black Mountain

Three Men Out

Before Midnight

Might As Well Be Dead

Three Witnesses**-^'-�

.

Homicide Trinity The Mother Hunt A Right to Die Trio for Blunt Instruments The Doorbell Rang Death of a Doxy The Father Hunt Death of a Dude Please Pass the Guilt A Family Affair Death Times Three The Hand in the Glove Double for Death Bad for Business The Broken Vase The Sound of Murder Red Threads rfne Mountain Cat Murders

IS* "U fciWiH?

EX STOUT

Curtains or Three

Introduction by Judith Kelman

H

BANTAM BOOKS ifflBW YORK TORONTO LONDON SYDNEY AUCKLAND

A NERO W O L F E ** M Y S T E R Y

CURTAINS FOR THREE

A Bantam Crime Line Book / published by arrangement with Viking Penguin, Inc.

PUBLISHING HISTORY

Viking edition published December 1950

Bantam edition / June 1955 Bantam reissue edition / December 1994

Acknowledgment is made to the american magazine in which these three short

novels originally appeared: Bullet for One, July 1948; The Gun with Wings,

December 1949; and Disguise for Murder, under the title The Twisted Scarf,

'September 1950.

crime une and the portrayal of a boxed "cl" are trademarks of Bantam Books, a division of Bantam Doubleday Den Publishing Group, Inc.

An rights reserved.

Copyright � 1948, 1949, 1950 by Rex Stout Introduction copyright � 1994 by Judith Kelman.

Cover art copyright � 1994 by Tom HaBman.

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by

any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or

by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in

writing from the publisher.

For information address: Viking Press, Penguin USA, 375 Hudson Street, New York, NY 10014.

If you purchased this book without a cover you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as "unsold and destroyed" to the publisher and neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this "stripped book."

ISBN 0-55a-24498l Published simultaneously in the United States and Canada

Bantam Books are published by Bantam Books, a division of Bantam Double day Dell Publishing Group, Inc. Its trademark, consisting of the words "Bantam Books" and the portrayal of a rooster, is Registered in U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and in other countries. Marca Registrada. Bantam Books, 1540 Broadway, New York, New York 10036.

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

OPM 14 13 12 11 10 9 8

Introduction

Mysteries are a mind game. Lovers of the form are drawn to the puzzle. Who done it and why? Will good triumph over evil and how? In the pulse-pounding race to the solution, will the writer or the reader cross the finish line first?

In this particular sport, the most important muscles are the theoretical ones between the participants' ears. Intellect is everything. A canny detective armed with gobs of gray matter will beat out the Uzi-wielding bad guy every time.

Which partly explains the enduring appeal of Nero Wolfe.

Wolfe is the large lump of calm at the center of the storm's eye in Rex Stout's eponymous mystery series. Evil doesn't move Nero Wolfe. Nothing, short of a good meal or a serious beer shortage, could. This supersleuth is a supersloth, so unfit and lazy he lacks the steam to lean over and retrieve a weighty retainer check from his desk.

For that and other onerous physical chores, he has Archie Goodwin, his fleet-footed, lighthearted, adventurous assistant. While Archie does all necessary legwork and Fritz, Wolfe's household retainer, attends to the master's ravenous appetites, Wolfe's sole responsi

vi Introduction

bility is to sit back and revel in the whirring of his keen, insightful mind.

At the critical moment, the cylinders are guaranteed to dick into perfect alignment, allowing Wolfe to finger the suspect from the comfort of his favorite chair in his office in his elegant brownstone on West Thirty-fifth Street.

Of course, the moment must conform to the detective's unyielding schedule. During set mealtimes and the four hours each day Wolfe spends tending his ten thousand orchids, murder and mayhem simply have to wait.

And they do.

In this respect Nero Wolfe is sort of a porky two legged Club Med: an antidote for the strident intrusiveness and chaos of civilization.

Reality for most of us is ringing phones, boisterous kids, mountains of bills, and demanding bosses. Most of our existences are liberally sprinkled with dark dreams and rude awakenings. Our paths are marred by potholes and sudden detours. Even when things feel settled, we face constant reminders that cataclysmic change can occur at any moment. Much of today's news is a litany of tragic accidents, natural disasters, and unthinkable violence. Life, I tell my sons, is what happens when you're busy making other plans.

That uncertainty invades most contemporary novels of mystery and suspense, often driving the narrative (sometimes off the road). Evil explodes on the fictional scene with all the subtlety of Howard Stern or Madonna. The hapless protagonist is derailed tike a sabotaged train. Amateur sleuths spring into frantic action. Law-enforcement professionals haul out their fuB bags of high- and low-tech forensic tricks and pursue the bad guys like a stampede of crazed buffalo.

. Introduction vii

Pyrotechnics can dazzle. Car chases and literal cliffhangers do raise the blood pressure and squeeze out the gasps. But the reader manipulated by such shameless Hollywood devices is being distracted from the heart and soul of the mystery form: the puzzle.

Wolfe's world, on the other hand, is refined, prescribed, predictable. Even when crime presses its noisome finger at his doorbell, Nero Wolfe remains in perfect, unflinching control.

Rex Stout recognized that the smallest detail can speak volumes. He relied solely on intricate plot twists and dazzlingly quiet feats of detection. He had no need or desire to distract his readers from the story's central strand.

Nowhere is this more evident than in Curtains for Three, a trio of novelettes first published in 1950. Unsolved crimes are delivered handily to the detective's door. Witnesses and likely perpetrators present themselves and compliantly await Wolfe's audience. In one case the murder conveniently occurs in his office.

If you think that sounds dull, think again. The seventy-three Nero Wolfe mysteries have intrigued and entertained millions of readers and inspired countless writers to tackle the form. Rex Stout has become a virtual synonym for the term classic mystery. Mention West Thirty-fifth Street to a mystery fan and the response is sure to be a look of instant recognition and a smile.

If Rex Stout and his stout detective have become a reading addiction, you have plenty of company. If this is your first experience in puzzle solving with the great Nero Wolfe, prepare to settle in and savor. You have plenty of tasty treats yet to enjoy.

--Judith Kelman

isi�Contents

The Gun with Mugs

page 1

Bullet for One

page 73

Disguise for Murder

page 143

1.

Curtains for Three

The Gun with Wings

The young woman took a pink piece of paper from her handbag, got up from the red leather chair, put the paper on Nero Wolfe's desk, and sat down again. Feeling it my duty to keep myself informed and also to save Wolfe the exertion of leaning forward and reaching so far, I arose and crossed to hand the paper to him after a glance at it. It was a check for five thousand dollars, dated that day, August fourteenth, made out to him, and signed Margaret Mion. He gave a look and dropped it back on the desk.

"I thought," she said, "perhaps that would be the best way to start the conversation."

In my chair at my desk, taking her in, I was readjusting my attitude. When early that Sunday afternoon, she had phoned for an appointment, I had dug I up a vague recollection of a picture of her in the paper some months back, and had decided it would be no treat to meet her, but now I was hedging. Her appeal wasn't what she had, which was only so-so, but what r&he did with it. I don't mean tricks. Her mouth wasn't ^attractive even when she smiled, but the smile was.

2 Sex Stout

Her eyes were just a pair of brown eyes, nothing at all sensational, but it was a pleasure to watch them move around, from Wolfe to me to the man who had come with her, seated off to her left. I guessed she had maybe three years to go to reach thirty.

"Don't you think," the man asked her, "we should get some questions answered first?"

His tone was strained and a little harsh, and his face matched it. He was worried and didn't care who knew it. With his deep-set gray eyes and well-fitted jaw he might on a happier day have passed for a leader of men, but not as he now sat. Something was eating him. When Mrs. Mion had introduced him as Mr. Frederick Weppler I had recognized the name of the music critic of the Gazette, but I couldn't remember whether he had been mentioned in the newspaper accounts of the event that had caused the publication of Mrs. Mion's picture.

She shook her head at him, not arbitrarily. "It wouldn't help, Fred, really. We'll just have to tell it and see what he says." She smiled at Wolfe--or maybe it wasn't actually a smile, but just her way of handling her lips. "Mr. Weppler wasn't quite sure we should come to see you, and I had to persuade him. Men are more cautious than women, aren't they?"

"Yes," Wolfe agreed, and added, "Thank heaven."

She nodded. "I suppose so." She gestured. "I brought that check with me to show that we really mean it. We're in trouble and we want you to get us out. We want to get married and we can't. That is--if I should just speak for myself--I want to marry him." She looked at Weppler, and this time it was unquestionably a smile. "Do you want to marry me, Fred?"

"Yes," he muttered. Then he suddenly jerked his chin up and looked defiantly at Wolfe. "You understand

Curtains for Three 3

this is embarrassing, don't you? It's none of your business, but we've come to get your help. I'm thirty-four years old, and this is the first time I've ever been--" He stopped. In a moment he said stiffly, "I am in love with Mrs. Mion and I want to marry her more than I have ever wanted anything in my life." His eyes went to his love and he murmured a plea. "Peggy!"

Wolfe grunted. "I accept that as proven. You both want to get married. Why don't you?"

"Because we can't," Peggy said. "We simply can't. It's on account--you may remember reading about my husband's death in April, four months ago? Alberto Mion, the opera singer?"

"Vaguely. You'd better refresh my memory."

"Well, he died--he killed himself." There was no sign of a smile now. "Fred--Mr. Weppler and I found him. It was seven o'clock, a Tuesday evening in April, at our apartment on East End Avenue. Just that afternoon Fred and I had found out that we loved each other, and--"

"Peggy!" Weppler called sharply.

Her eyes darted to him and back to Wolfe. "Perhaps I should ask you, Mr. Wolfe. He thinks we should tell you just enough so you understand the problem, and I think you can't understand it unless we tell you everything. What do you think?"

"I can't say until I hear it. Go ahead. If I have questions, we'll see."

She nodded. "I imagine you'll have plenty of questions. Have you ever been in love but would have died rather than let anyone see it?"

"Never," Wolfe said emphatically. I kept my face straight.

"Well, I was, and I admit it. But no one knew it, not even him. Did you, Fred?"

4 Rex Stout

"I did not." Weppler was emphatic too.

"Until that afternoon," Peggy told Wolfe. "He was at the apartment for lunch, and it happened right after lunch. The others had left, and all of a sudden we were looking at each other, and then he spoke or I did, I don't know which." She looked at Weppler imploringly. "I know you think this is embarrassing, Fred, but if he doesn't know what it was like he won't understand why you went upstairs to see Alberto."

"Does he have to?" Weppler demanded.

"Of course he does." She returned to Wolfe. "I suppose I can't make you see what it was like. We were completely--well, we were in love, that's all, and I guess we had been for quite a while without saying it, and that made it all the more--more overwhelming. Fred wanted to see my husband right away, to tell him about it and decide what we could do, and I said all right, so he went upstairs--"

"Upstairs?"

"Yes, it's a duplex, and upstairs was my husband's soundproofed studio, where he practiced. So he went--"

"Please, Peggy," Weppler interrupted her. His eyes went to Wolfe. "You should have it firsthand. I went up to tell Mion that I loved his wife, and she loved me and not him, and to ask him to be civilized about it. Getting a divorce has come to be regarded as fairly civilized, but he didn't see it that way. He was anything but civilized. He wasn't violent, but he was damned mean. After some of that I got afraid I might do to him what Gif James had done, and I left. I didn't want to go back to Mrs. Mion while I was in that state of mind, so I left the studio by the door to the upper hall and took the elevator there."

He stopped.

Curtains for Three 5

"And?" Wolfe prodded him. "I walked it off. I walked across to the park, and after a while I had calmed down and I phoned Mrs. Mion, and she met me in the park. I told her what I Mion's attitude was, and I asked her to leave him and come with me. She wouldn't do that." Weppler paused, | and then went on, "There are two complications you Jjought to have if you're to have everything." "If they're relevant, yes."

"They're relevant all right. First, Mrs. Mion had Hand has money of her own. That was an added attraction for Mion. It wasn't for me. I'm just telling you." "Thank you. And the second?" "The second was Mrs. Mion's reason for not leaving fion immediately. I suppose you know he had been i top tenor at the Met for five or six years, and his piroice was gone--temporarily. Gifford James, the bari|ft0ne, had hit him on the neck with his fist and hurt his sc--that was early in March--and Mion couldn't the season. It had been operated, but his voice in't come back, and naturally he was glum, and Mrs. ilBon wouldn't leave him under those circumstances. I ied to persuade her to, but she wouldn't. I wasn't ; like normal that day, on account of what had ened to me for the first time in my life, and on nt of what Mion had said to me, so I wasn't rea Iflpnable and I left her in the park and went downtown > a bar and started drinking. A lot of time went by I had quite a few, but I wasn't pickled. Along seven o'clock I decided I had to see her again 1 carry her off so she wouldn't spend another night That mood took me back to East End Avenue up to the twelfth floor, and then I stood there in t hall a while, perhaps ten minutes, before my finger ent to the pushbutton. Finally I rang, and the maid

6 Rex Stout

let me in and went for Mrs. Mion, but I had lost my nerve or something. All I did was suggest that we should have a talk with Mion together. She agreed, and we went upstairs and--"

"Using the elevator?"

"No, the stairs inside the apartment. We entered the studio. Mion was on the floor. We went over to him. There was a big hole through the top of his head. He was dead. I led Mrs. Mion out, made her come, and on the stairs--they're too narrow to go two abreast--she fell and rolled halfway down. I carried her to her room and put her on her bed, and I started for the living room, for the phone there, when I thought of something to do first. I went out and took the elevator to the ground floor, got the doorman and elevator man together, and asked them who had been taken up to the Mion apartment, either the twelfth floor or the thirteenth, that afternoon. I said they must be damn sure not to skip anybody. They gave me the names and I wrote them down. Then I went back up to the apartment and phoned the police. After I did that it struck me that a layman isn't supposed to decide if a man is dead, so I phoned Dr. Lloyd, who has an apartment there in the building. He came at once, and I took him up to the studio. We hadn't been there more than three or four minutes when the first policeman came, and of course--"

"If you please," Wolfe put in crossly. "Everything is sometimes too much. You haven't even hinted at the trouble you're in."

"I'll get to it--"

"But faster, I hope, if I help. My memory has been jogged. The doctor and the police pronounced him dead. The muzzle of the revolver had been thrust into his mouth, and the emerging bullet had torn out a

Curtains for Three 7

i of his skull. The revolver, found lying on the floor | beside him, belonged to him and was kept there in the No . There was no sign of any struggle and no mark f any other injury on him. The loss of his voice was an scellent motive for suicide. Therefore, after a routine vestigation, giving due weight to the difficulty of the barrel of a loaded revolver into a man's pnouth without arousing him to protest, it was retried as suicide. Isn't that correct?" R* They both said yes.

"Have the police reopened it? Or is gossip at kf

They both said no.

"Then let's get on. Where's the trouble?" "It's us," Peggy said. "Why? What's wrong with you?" "Everything." She gestured. "No. I don't mean that not everything, just one thing. After my husband's ath and the--the routine investigation, I went away a while. When I came back--for the past two onths Fred and I have been together some, but it sn't right--I mean we didn't feel right. Day before ay, Friday, I went to friends in Connecticut for s weekend, and he was there. Neither of us knew the was coming. We talked it out yesterday and last and this morning, and we decided to come and ; you to help us--anyway, I did, and he wouldn't let i come alone."

Peggy leaned forward and was in deadly earnest. STou must help us, Mr. Wolfe. I love him so much--so i!--and he says he loves me, and I know he does! ay afternoon we decided we would get married October, and then last night we got started talking at it isn't what we say, it's what is in our eyes when

8 Sex Stout

we look at each other. We just can't get married with that back of our eyes and trying to hide it--"

A little shiver went over her. "For years--forever? We can't! We know we can't--it would be horrible! What it is, it's a question: who killed Alberto? Did he? Did I? I don't really think he did, and he doesn't really think I did--I hope he doesn't--but it's there back of our eyes, and we know it is!"

She extended both hands. "We want you to find out!"

Wolfe snorted. "Nonsense. You need a spanking or a psychiatrist. The police may have shortcomings, but they're not nincompoops. If they're satisfied--"

"But that's it! They wouldn't be satisfied if we had told the truth!"

"Oh." Wolfe's browsVent up. "You lied to them?"

"Yes. Or if we didn't lie, anyhow we didn't tell them the truth. We didn't tell them that when we first went in together and saw him, there was no gun lying there. There was no gun in sight."

"Indeed. How sure are you?"

"Absolutely positive. I never saw anything clearer than I saw that--that sight--all of it. There was no gun."

Wolfe snapped at Weppler, "You agree, sir?"

"Yes. She's right."

Wolfe sighed. "Well," he conceded, "I can see that you're really in trouble. Spanking wouldn't help."

I shifted in my chair on account of a tingle at the lower part of my spine. Nero Wolfe's old brownstone house on West Thirty-fifth Street was an interesting place to live and work--for Fritz Brenner, the chef and housekeeper, for Theodore Horstmann, who fed and nursed the ten thousand orchids in the plant rooms up on the roof, and for me, Archie Goodwin, whose main

Curtains for Three 9

operations was the big office on the ground faturally I thought my job the most interesting, confidential assistant to a famous private de is constantly getting an earful of all kinds of and problems--everything from a missing to a new blackmail gimmick. Very few clients bored me. But only one kind of case gave me le in the spine: murder. And if this pair of were talking straight, this was it.

II

filled two notebooks when they left, more than hours later.

they had thought it through before they phoned appointment with Wolfe, they wouldn't, have All they wanted, as Wolfe pointed out, was the They wanted him, first, to investigate a four i-old murder without letting on there had been second, to prove that neither of them had killed Mion, which could be done only by finding out had; and third, in case he concluded that one of had done it, to file it away and forget it. Not that put it that way, since their story was that they both absolutely innocent, but that was what it itedto.

fe Wolfe made it good and plain. "If I take the job," he them, "and find evidence to convict someone of no matter who, the use I make of it will be ly in my discretion. I am neither an Astraea nor a but I like my door open. But if you want to drop now, here's your check, and Mr. Goodwin's note will be destroyed. We can forget you have been and shall."

10 Rex Stout

That was one of the moments when they were within an ace of getting up and going, especially Fred Weppler, but they didn't. They looked at each other, and it was all in their eyes. By that time I had about decided I liked them both pretty well and was even beginning to admire them, they were so damn determined to get loose from the trap they were in. When they looked at each other like that their eyes said, "Let's go and be together, my darting love, and forget this--come on, come on." Then they said, "It will be so wonderful!" Then they said, "Yes, oh yes, but-- But we don't want it wonderful for a day or a week; it must be always wonderful--and we know . . ."

It took strong muscles to hold onto it like that, not to mention horse sense, and several times I caught myself feeling sentimental about it. Then of course there was the check for five grand on Wolfe's desk.

The notebooks were full of assorted matters. There Were a thousand details which might or might not turn out to be pertinent, such as the mutual dislike between **e&gy Mion and Rupert Grove, her husband's manager, or the occasion of Gifford James socking Alberto Mion in front of witnesses, or the attitudes of various persons toward Mion's demand for damages; but you couldn't use it all, and Wolfe himself never needed more than a fraction of it, so I'll pick and choose. Of course the gun was Exhibit A. It was a new one, having been bought by Mion the day after Gifford James had plugged him and hurt his larynx--not, he had announced, for vengeance on James but for future protection. He had carried it in a pocket whenever he went out, and at home had kept it in the studio, lying on the base of a bust of Caruso. So far as known, it had never fired but one bullet, the one that killed Mion.

When Dr. Lloyd had arrived and Weppler had

Curtains for Three 11

en him to the studio the gun was lying on the floor ; far from Mion's knee. Dr. Lloyd's hand had started it but had been withdrawn without touching it, so it I been there when the law came. Peggy was positive ; had not been there when she and Fred had entered, he agreed. The cops had made no announcement it fingerprints, which wasn't surprising since none hardly ever found on a gun that are any good, jhout the two hours and a half, Wolfe kept dart; back to the gun, but it simply didn't have wings. The picture of the day and the day's people was all in. The morning seemed irrelevant, so it started lunch time with five of them there: Mion, Peggy, I, one Adele Bosley, and Dr. Lloyd. It was more sional than social. Fred had been invited because on wanted to sell him the idea of writing a piece for Gazette saying that the rumors that Mion would ?er be able to sing again were malicious hooey, ele Bosley, who was in charge of public relations for i Metropolitan Opera, had come to help work on Dr. Lloyd had been asked so he could assure ppler that the operation he had performed on I's larynx had been successful and it was a good ; that by the time the opera season opened in No mber the great tenor would be as good as ever, ng special had happened except that Fred had to do the piece. Adele Bosley and Lloyd had , and Mion had gone up to the soundproofed studio, id Fred and Peggy had looked at each other and slid discovered the most important fact of life since 'Garden of Eden.

I An hour or so later there had been another gather, this time up in the studio, around half-past three, ; neither Fred nor Peggy had been present By then 1 had walked himself calm and phoned Peggy, and

12 Sex Stout

she had gone to meet him in the park, so their informa! tion on the meeting in the studio was hearsay. Besides Mion and Dr. Lloyd there had been four people: Adele Bosley for operatic public relations; Mr. Rupert Grove, Mion's manager; Mr. Gifford James, the baritone who had socked Mion in the neck six weeks previously; and Judge Henry Arnold, James' lawyer. This affair had been even less social than the lunch, having been arranged to discuss a formal request that Mion had made of Gifford James for the payment of a quarter of a million bucks for the damage to Mion's larynx.

Fred's and Peggy's hearsay had it that the conference had been fairly hot at points, with the temperature boosted right at the beginning by Mion's getting the gun from Caruso's bust and placing it on a table at his elbow. On the details of its course they were pretty sketchy, since they hadn't been there, but anyhow the gun hadn't been fired. Also there was plenty of evidence that Mion was alive and well--except for his larynx--when the party broke up. He had made two phone calls after the conference had ended, one to his barber and one to a wealthy female opera patron; his manager, Rupert Grove, had phoned him a little later; and around five-thirty he had phoned downstairs to the maid to bring him a bottle of vermouth and some ice, which she had done. She had taken the tray into the studio, and he had been upright and intact.

I was careful to get all the names spelled right in my notebook, since it seemed likely the job would be to get one of them tagged for murder, and I was especially careful with the last one that got in: Clara James, Gifford's daughter. There were three spotlights on her. First, the reason for James' assault on Mion had been his knowledge or suspicion--Fred and Peggy weren't sure which--that Mion had stepped over the line with

Curtains for Three 13

ties' daughter. Second, her name had ended the list, t>t by Fred from the doorman and elevator man, of ople who had called that afternoon. They said she come about a quarter past six and had got off at be floor the studio was on, the thirteenth, and had oned the elevator to the twelfth floor a little er, maybe ten minutes, and had left. The third spot jht was directed by Peggy, who had stayed in the rk a while after Fred had marched off, and had then eturned home, arriving around five o'clock. She had gone up to the studio and had net seen her hus nd. Sometime after six, she thought around half she had answered the doorbell herself because s maid had been in the kitchen with the cook. It was . James. She was pale and tense, but she was al ays pale and tense. She had asked for Alberto, and ?eggy had said she thought he was up in the studio, ad Clara had said no, he wasn't there, and never nd. When Clara went for the elevator button, Peggy shut the door, not wanting company anyway, and ticularly not Clara James.

Some half an hour later Fred showed up, and they ?iascended to the studio together and found that Alberto ?;lra8 there all right, but no longer upright or intact. That picture left room for a whole night of quess, but Wolfe concentrated on what he regarded as |3ttie essentials. Even so, we went into the third hour the third notebook. He completely ignored some ots that I thought needed filling in; for instance, had I^Jberto had a habit of stepping over the line with lather men's daughters and/or wives, and if so, names Spplease. From things they said I gathered that Alberto |%ad been broad-minded about other men's women, but ^apparently Wolfe wasn't interested. Along toward the tSend he was back on the gun again, and when they had

14 Sex Stoat

,

nothing new to offer he scowled and got caustic. When they stayed glued he finally snapped at them, "Which one of you is lying?."

They looked hurt. "That won't get you anywhere," Fred Weppler said bitterly, "or us either."

"It would be silly," Peggy Mion protested, "to come here and give you that check and then lie to you. Wouldn't it?"

"Then you're silly," Wolfe said coldly. He pointed a finger at her. "Look here. All of this might be worked out, none of it is preposterous, except one thing. Who put the gun on the floor beside the body? When you two entered the studio it wasn't there; you both swear to that, and I accept it. You left and started downstairs; you fell, and he carried you to your room. You weren't unconscious. Were you?"

"No." Peggy was meeting his gaze. "I could have walked, but he--he wanted to carry me."

"No doubt. He did so. You stayed in your room. He went to the ground floor to compile a list of those who had made themselves available as murder suspects-- showing admirable foresight, by the way--came back up and phoned the police and then the doctor, who arrived without delay since he lived in the building. Not more than fifteen minutes intervened between the moment you and Mr. Weppler left the studio and the moment he and the doctor entered. The door from the studio to the public hall on the thirteenth floor has a lock that is automatic with the closing of the door, and the door was closed and locked. No one could possibly have entered during the fifteen minutes. You say that you had left your bed and gone to the living room, and that no one could have used that route without being seen by you. The maid and cook were in the

Curtains for Three 15

itchen, unaware of what was going on. So no one en|tered the studio and placed the gun on the floor." "Someone did," Fred said doggedly. Peggy insisted, "We don't know who had a key." "You said that before." Wolfe was at them now. f^Even if everyone had keys, I don't believe it and nei er would anyone else." His eyes came to me. "Ar |ehie. Would you?"

"I'd have to see a movie of it," I admitted. "You see?" he demanded of them. "Mr. Goodwin fIsn't prejudiced against you--on the contrary. He's llready to fight fire for you; see how he gets behind on i notes for the pleasure of watching you look at each father. But he agrees with me that you're lying. Since i one else could have put the gun on the floor, one of y'o.n did. I have to know about it. The circumstances ay have made it imperative for you, or you thought gheydid."

He looked at Fred. "Suppose you opened a drawer Ijaf Mrs. Mion's dresser to get smelling salts, ~and the fjjpm was there, with an odor showing it had been re fseently fired--put there, you would instantly conjec l�ure, by someone to direct suspicion at her. What fpprould you naturally do? Exactly what you did do: take |it upstairs and put it beside the body, without letting know about it. Or--" "Rot," Fred said harshly. "Absolute rot." Wolfe looked at Peggy. "Or suppose it was you who pound it there in your bedroom, after he had gone |tiownstairs. Naturally you would have--"

"This is absurd," Peggy said with spirit. "How fcould it have been in my bedroom unless I put it there? My husband was alive at five-thirty, and I got home efore that, and was right there, in the living room and

16 Rex Stout

my room, until Fred came at seven o'clock. So unless you assume--"

"Very well," Wolfe conceded. "Not the bedroom. But somewhere. I can't proceed until I get this from one of you. Confound it, the gun didn't fly. I expect plenty of lies from the others, at least one of them, but I want the truth from you."

"You've got it," Fred declared.

"No. I haven't."

"Then it's a stalemate." Fred stood up. "Well, Peggy?"

They looked at each other, and their eyes went through the performance again. When they got to the place in the script where it said, "It must be wonderful always," Fred sat down.

But Wolfe, having no part in the script, horned in. "A stalemate," he said dryly, "ends the game, I believe."

Plainly it was up to me. If Wolfe openly committed himself to no dice nothing would budge him. I arose, got the pretty pink check from his desk, put it on mine, placed a paperweight on it, sat down, and grinned at him.

"Granted that you're dead right," I observed, "which is not what you call apodictical, someday we ought to make up a list of the clients that have sat here and lied to us. There was Mike Walsh, and Calida Frost, and that cafeteria guy, Pratt--oh, dozens. But their money was good, and I didn't get so far behind with my notes that I couldn't catch up. All that for nothing?"

"About those notes," Fred Weppler said firmly. "I want to make something clear."

Wolfe looked at him.

He looked back. "We came here," he said, "to tell

Curtains for Three 17

in confidence about a problem and get you to in jpestigate. Your accusing us of lying makes me wonder ' we ought to go on, but if Mrs. Mion wants to I'm ng. But I want to make it plain that if you divulge at we've told you, if you tell the police or anyone that we said there was no gun there when we ent in, we'll deny it in spite of your damn notes. We'll eny it and stick to it!" He looked at his girl. "We've of to, Peggy! All right?"

"He wouldn't tell the police," Peggy declared, with conviction.

"Maybe not. But if he does, you'll stick with me on >ie denial. Won't you?" f& -"Certainly I will," she promised, as if he had asked er to help kill a rattlesnake.

Wolfe was taking them in, with his lips tightened. t>viously, with the check on my desk on its way to the he had decided to add them to the list of clients irho told lies and go on from there. He forced his eyes ride open to rest them, let them half close again, and oke.

"We'll settle that along with other things before jfve're through," he asserted. "You realize, of course, at I'm assuming your innocence, but I've made a Dusand wrong assumptions before now so they're not orth much. Has either of you a notion of who killed Mion?"

They both said no. He grunted. "I have." They opened their eyes at him. He nodded. "It's only another assumption, but I Ie it. It will take work to validate it. To begin with, I oust see the people you have mentioned--all six of |them--and I would prefer not to string it out. Since jyou don't want them told that I'm investigating a mur

18 Rex Stout

der, we must devise a stratagem. Did your husband leave a will, Mrs. Mion?"

She nodded and said yes.

"Are you the heir?"

"Yes, I--" She gestured. "I don't need it and don't want it."

"But it's yours. That will do nicely. An asset of the estate is the expectation of damages to be paid by Mr. James for his assault on Mr. Mion. You may properly claim that asset. The six people I want to see were all concerned in that affair, one way or another. I'll write them immediately, mailing the letter tonight special delivery, telling them that I represent you in the matter and would like them to call at my office tomorrow evening."

"That's impossible!" Peggy cried, shocked. "I couldn't! I wouldn't dream of asking Gif to pay damages --"

Wolfe banged a fist on his desk. "Confound it!" he roared. "Get out of here! Go! Do you think murders are solved by cutting out paper dolls? First you lie to me, and now you refuse to annoy people, including the murderer! Archie, put them out!"

"Good for you," I muttered at him. I was getting fed up too. I glared at the would-be clients. "Try the Salvation Army," I suggested. "They're old hands at helping people in trouble. You can have the notebooks to take along--at cost, six bits. No charge for the contents."

They were looking at each other.

"I guess he has to see them somehow," Fred conceded. "He has to have a reason, and I must admit that's a good one. You don't owe them anything--not one of them."

Peggy gave in.

Curtains for Three 19

After a few details had been attended to, the most aportant of which was getting addresses, they left, ic manner of their going, and of our speeding them,

i so far from cordial that it might have been thought at instead of being the clients they were the prey. it the check was on my desk. When, after letting sin out, I returned to the office, Wolfe was leaning with his eyes shut, frowning in distaste.

I stretched and yawned. "This ought to be fun," I encouragingly. "Making it just a grab for dam3S. If the murderer is among the guests, see how you can keep it from him. I bet he catches on efore the jury comes in with the verdict."

"Shut up," he growled. "Blockheads."

"Oh, have a heart," I protested. "People in love sn't supposed to think, that's why they have to hire lined thinkers. You should be happy and proud they

ked you. What's a good big lie or two when you're in re? When I saw--"

"Shut up," he repeated. His eyes came open. "Your

ebook. Those letters must go at once."

Ill

pounds nday evening's party lasted a full three hours, and ler wasn't mentioned once. Even so, it wasn't ex ;ly jolly. The letters had put it straight that Wolfe, for Mrs. Mion, wanted to find out whether an propriate sum could be collected from Gifford James "ithout resort to lawyers and a court, and what sum ould be thought appropriate. So each of them was turally in a state of mind: Gifford James himself; his lighter Clara; his lawyer, Judge Henry Arnold; lele Bosley for Public Relations; Dr. Nicholas Lloyd

20 Rex Stout

&. $as the technical expert; and Rupert Grove, who had been Mioa's manager. That made six, which was just comfortable for our big office. Fred and Peggy had not been invited.

The James trio arrived together and were so punctual, right on the dot at nine o'clock, that Wolfe and I hadn't yet finished our after-dinner coffee in the office. I was so curious to have a look that I went to answer the door instead of leaving it to Fritz, the chef and house overseer who helps to make Wolfe's days and years a joy forever almost as much as I do. The first thing that impressed me was that the baritone took the lead crossing the threshold, letting his daughter and his lawyer tag along behind. Since I have occasionally let Lily Rowan share her pair of opera seats with me, James' six feet and broad shoulders and cocky strut were nothing new, but I was surprised that he looked so young, since he must have been close to fifty. He handed me his hat as if taking care of his hat on Monday evening, August 15, was the one and only thing I had been born for. Unfortunately I let it drop.

Clara made up for it by looking at me. That alone showed she was unusually observant, since one never looks at the flunkey who lets one in, but she saw me drop her father's hat and gave me a glance, and then prolonged the glance until it practically said, "What are you, in disguise? See you later." That made me feel friendly, but with reserve. Not only was she pale and tense, as Peggy Mion had said, but her blue eyes glistened, and a girl her age shouldn't glisten hike that. Nevertheless^ I gave her a grin to show that I appreciated the prolonged glance.

Meanwhile the lawyer, Judge Henry Arnold, had hung up his own hat. During the day I had of course made inquiries on all of them, and had learned that he

Curtains for Three 21

I the "Judge" only because he had once been a city ate. Even so, that's what they called him, so i sight of him was a let-down. He was a little sawed f squirt with a bald head so flat on top you could have an ashtray on it, and his nose was pushed in. He st have been better arranged inside than out, since s had quite a list of clients among the higher levels on

iway.

Taking them to the office and introducing them to felfe, I undertook to assign them to some of the yelbw chairs, but the baritone spied the red leather one copped it. I was helping Fritz fill their orders for when the buzzer sounded and I went back to front.

It was Dr. Nicholas Lloyd. He had no hat, so that at wasn't raised, and I decided that the searching ok he aimed at me was merely professional and auto tic, to see if I was anemic or diabetic or what. With lined handsome face and worried dark eyes he oked every inch a doctor and even surgeon, fully up the classy reputation my inquiries had disclosed, lien I ushered him to the office his eyes lighted up at ght of the refreshment table, and he was the best stomer--bourbon and water with mint--all evening. The last two came together--at least they were on stoop together when I opened the door. I would t)ly have given Adele Bosley the red leather if James hadn't already copped it. She shook and said she had been wanting to meet Archie l^poodwin for years, but that was just public relations 1 went out the other ear. The point is that from my I get most of a party profile or three-quarters, at the one in the red leather chair fullface, and I like a pview. Not that Adele Bosley was a pin-up, and she i must have been in the fifth or sixth grade when Clara

22 Sex Stout

James was born, but her smooth tanned skin and pretty mouth without too much lipstick and nice brown eyes were good scenery.

Rupert Grove didn't shake hands, which didn't upset me. He may have been a good manager for Alberto Mion's affairs, but not for his own physique. A man can l)e fat and still have integrity, as for instance Falstaff or Nero Wolfe, but that bird had lost all sense of proportion. His legs were short, and it was all in the middle third of him. If you wanted to be polite and look at his face you had to concentrate. I did so, since I needed to size them all up, and saw nothing worthy of recording but a pair of shrewd shifty black eyes.

When these two were seated and provided with liquid, Wolfe fired the starting gun. He said he was sorry it had been necessary to ask them to exert themselves on a hot evening, but that the question at issue could be answered fairly and equitably only if all concerned had a voice in it. The responding murmurs went all the way from acquiescence to extreme irritation. Judge Arnold said belligerently that there was no question at legal issue because Albert Mion was dead.

"Nonsense," Wolfe said curtly. "If that were true, you, a lawyer, wouldn't have bothered to come. Anyway, the purpose of this meeting is to keep it from becoming a legal issue. Four of you telephoned Mrs. Mion today to ask if I am acting for her, and were told that I am. On her behalf I want to collect the facts. I may as well tell you, without prejudice to her, that she will accept my recommendation. Should I decide that a large sum is due her you may of course contest; but if I form the opinion that she has no claim she will bow to it. Under that responsibility I need all the facts. Therefore --"

"You're not a court," Arnold snapped.

Curtains for Three 23

"No, sir, I'm not. If you prefer it in a court you'll , it." Wolfe's eyes moved. "Miss Bosley, would your ttployers welcome that kind of publicity? Dr. Lloyd, I you rather appear as an expert on the witness[ or talk it over here? Mr. Grove, how would your at feel about it if he were alive? Mr. James, what do think? You wouldn't relish the publicity either, you? Particularly since your daughter's name ild appear?"

"Why would her name appear?" James demanded Iliis trained baritone.

Wolfe turned up a palm. "It would be evidence. It be established that just before you struck Mr. i you said to him, 'You let my daughter alone, you

�vl ' n

I put my hand in my pocket. I have a rule, justified experience, that whenever a killer is among those ent, or may be, a gun must be handy. Not regard the back of the third drawer of my desk, where r are kept, as handy enough, the routine is to trans one to my pocket before guests gather. That was spocket I put my hand in, knowing how cocky James But he didn't leave his chair. He merely blurted, ;'s a lie!"

IWblfe grunted. "Ten people heard you say it. That I indeed be publicity, if you denied it under oath (all ten of them, subpoenaed to testify, contradicted I honestly think it would be better to discuss it i me." H*What do you want to know?" Judge Arnold de

|fThe facts. First, the one already moot. When I lie to know it. Mr. Grove, you were present when famous blow was struck. Have I quoted Mr. i correctly?"

22 Rex Stout

James was born, but her smooth tanned skin and pretty mouth without too much lipstick and nice brown eyes were good scenery.

Rupert Grove didn't shake hands, which didn't upset me. He may have been a good manager for Alberto Mion's affairs, but not for his own physique. A man can be fat and still have integrity, as for instance Falstaff or Nero Wolfe, but that bird had lost all sense of proportion. His legs were short, and it was all in the middle third of him. If you wanted to be polite and look at his face you had to concentrate. I did so, since I needed to size them all up, and saw nothing worthy of recording but a pair of shrewd shifty black eyes.

When these two were seated and provided with liquid, Wolfe fired the starting gun. He said he was sorry it had been necessary to ask them to exert themselves on a hot evening, but that the question at issue could be answered fairly and equitably only if all concerned had a voice in it. The responding murmurs went all the way from acquiescence to extreme irritation. Judge Arnold said belligerently that there was no question at legal issue because Albert Mion was dead.

"Nonsense," Wolfe said curtly. "If that were true, you, a lawyer, wouldn't have bothered to come. Anyway, the purpose of this meeting is to keep it from becoming a legal issue. Four of you telephoned Mrs. Mion today to ask if I am acting for her, and were told that I am. On her behalf I want to collect the facts. I may as well tell you, without prejudice to her, that she will accept my recommendation. Should I decide that a large sum is due her you may of course contest; but if I form the opinion that she has no claim she will bow to it. Under that responsibility I need all the facts. Therefore --"

"You're not a court," Arnold snapped.

Curtains^ Three

23

"No, sir, I'm not. If you prefej. m a court you,u et it." Wolfe's eyes moved. "Mislosiey, would your uployers welcome that kind of Pl^ty? dj. Lioyd mild you rather appear as an ex^ on the ^tness

id or talk it over here? Mr. Gi^ how would your Bent feel about it if he were alive! ^ j^es, what do ">u think? You wouldn't relish t, pubiicity either> uuld you? Particularly since yo� daughter's name ould appear?"

"Why would her name appeal?' Jameg demanded

his trained baritone.

Wolfe turned up a palm. "It vniy be evidence. It ould be established that just befo^ yOU struck Mr Son you said to him, Tou let my^ghter aime^ you

-.tard.'"

I put my hand in my pocket. I ^ a ^ justified experience, that whenever a % jg f^^g those sent, or may be, a gun must be^y Not rggaj^j. the back of the third drawer fmy ^^ where y are kept, as handy enough, t.h^]Liine ^ ^ trans. one to my pocket before guestej.^^ That wag s pocket I put my hand in, knowi^ cocky Jameg

- But he didn't leave his chair. \ mereiy blurted it's a lie!"

Wolfe grunted. "Ten people heq you ^y it rj^ old indeed be publicity, if you 4^ it ^^ oath I all ten of them, subpoenaed to ^ contradicted I honestly think it would bel^ to discuss it me."

"What do you want to knowf y^ A^y de inded.

'The facts. First, the one alreadjllnoot ^^^ j Ue like to know it. Mr. Grove, yous^ present when famous blow was struck. \ j nuoted Mr. lames correctly?"

24 Rex Stout

"Yes." Grove's voice was a high tenor, which pleased me.

"You heard him say that?"

"Yes."

"Miss Bosley. Did you?"

She looked uncomfortable. "Wouldn't it be better to--"

"Please. You're not under oath, but I'm merely collecting facts, and I was told I lied. Did you hear him say that?"

"Yes, I did." Adele's eyes went to James. "I'm sorry, Gif."

"But it's not true!" Clara James cried.

Wolfe rasped at her, "We're all lying?"

I could have warned her, when she gave me that glance in the hall, to look out for him. Not only was she a sophisticated young woman, and not only did she glisten, but her slimness was the kind that comes from not eating enough, and Wolfe absolutely cannot stand people who don't eat enough. I knew he would be down on her from the go.

But she came back at him. "I don't mean that," she said scornfully. "Don't be so touchy! I mean I had lied to my father. What he thought about Alberto and me wasn't true. I was just bragging to him because--it doesn't matter why. Anyway, what I told him wasn't true, and I told him so that night!" "Which night?"

"When we got home--from the stage party after Rigoletto. That was where my father knocked Alberto down, you know, right there on the stage. When we got home I told him that what I had said about Alberto and me wasn't true."

"When were you lying, the first time or the second?"

Curtains for Three 25

"Don't answer that, my dear," Judge Arnold broke , lawyering. He looked sternly at Wolfe. "This is all elevant. You're welcome to the facts, but relevant s. What Miss James told her father is immaterial." Wolfe shook his head. "Oh no." His eyes went from lit to left and back again. "Apparently I haven't ie it plain. Mrs. Mion wants me to decide for her tier she has a just claim, not so much legally as orally. If it appears that Mr. James' assault on Mr. i was morally justified that will be a factor in my sion." He focused on Clara. "Whether my question i relevant or not, Miss James, I admit it was embar- \ and therefore invited mendacity. I withdraw it. this instead. Had you, prior to that stage party, given your father to understand that Mr. Mion had iuced you?"

"Well--" Clara laughed. It was a tinkly soprano rather attractive. "What a nice old-fashioned ay to say it! Yes, I had. But it wasn't true!'1 "But you believed it, Mr. James?" Gifford James was having trouble holding himself , and I concede that such leading questions about his ghter*s honor from a stranger must have been hard take. But after all it wasn't new to the rest of the audience, and anyway it sure was relevant. He forced IWmself to speak with quiet dignity. "I believed what tmy daughter told me, yes."

Wolfe nodded. "So much for that," he said in a re jBeved tone. "I'm glad that part is over with." His eyes Irtaoved. "Now. Mr. Grove, tell me about the conference |!ia Mr. Mion's studio, a few hours before he died."

Rupert the Fat had his head tilted to one side, with hbs shrewd black eyes meeting Wolfe's. "It was for the ^purpose," he said in his high tenor, "of discussing the demand Mion had made for payment of damages."

26 Bex Stout

"You were there?"

"I was, naturally. I was Mion's adviser and manager. Also Miss Bosley, Dr. Lloyd, Mr. James, and Judge Arnold."

"Who arranged the conference, you?"

"In a way, yes. Arnold suggested it, and I told Mion and phoned Dr. Lloyd and Miss Bosley."

"What was decided?"

"Nothing. That is, nothing definite. There was the question of the extent of the damage--how soon Mion would be able to sing again."

"What was your position?"

Grove's eyes tightened. "Didn't I say I was Mion's manager?"

"Certainly. I mean, what position did you take regarding the payment of damages?"

"I thought a preliminary payment of fifty thousand dollars should be made at once. Even if Mion's voice was soon all right he had already lost that and more. His South American tour had been canceled, and he had been unable to make a lot of records on contract, and then radio offers--"

"Nothing like fifty thousand dollars," Judge Arnold asserted aggressively. There was nothing wrong with his larynx, small as he was. "I showed figures--"

"To hell with your figures! Anybody can--"

"Please!" Wblfe rapped on his desk with a knuckle. "What was Mr. Mion's position?"

"The same as mine, of course." Grove was scowling -at Arnold as he spoke to Wolfe. "We had discussed it."

"Naturally." Wolfe's eyes went left. "How did you feel about it, Mr. James?"

"I think," Arnold broke in, "that I should speak for my client. You agree, Gif?"

"Go ahead," the baritone muttered.

^Bfc Curtains for Three 27

^Hprnold did, and took most of one of the three hours. ^Bps surprised that Wolfe didn't stop him, and finally ^Hped that he let him ramble on just to get additional Hnxnt for his long-standing opinion of lawyers. If ^Bphe got it. Arnold covered everything. He had a lot HR'say about tort-feasors, going back a couple of ^Hiparies, with emphasis on the mental state of a tort

ppOF. Another item he covered at length was proxi

Ipe cause. He got really worked up about proximate

Hose, but it was so involved that I lost track and

MfcHere and there, though, he made sense. At one

pant he said, "The idea of a preliminary payment, as Bpey called it, was clearly inadmissible. It is not rea

lenable to expect a man, even if he stipulates an obligation, to make a payment thereon until either the

petal amount of the obligation, or an exact method of poomputing it, has been agreed upon." II At another point he said, "The demand for so large la sum can in fact be properly characterized.as blaekffiinail. They knew that if the action went to trial, and if |we showed that my client's deed sprang from his poiowledge that his daughter had been wronged, a jury ffejspould not be likely to award damages. But they also | knew that we would be averse to making that defense."

, "Not his knowledge," Wolfe objected. "Merely his belief. His daughter says she had misinformed him."

"We could have showed knowledge," Arnold insisted.

I looked at Clara with my brows up. She was being contradicted flatly on the chronology of her lie and her truth, but either she and her father didn't get the implication of it or they didn't want to get started on that again.

28 Rex Stont

At another point Arnold said, "Even if my client's deed was tortious and damages would be collectible, the amount could not be agreed upon until the extent of the injury was known. We offered, without prejudice, twenty thousand dollars in full settlement, for a general release. They refused. They wanted a payment forthwith on account. We refused that on principle. In the end there was agreement on only one thing: that an effort should be made to arrive at the total amount of damage. Of course that was what Dr. Lloyd was there for. He was asked for a prognosis, and he stated that--but you don't need to take hearsay. He's here, and you can get it direct."

Wolfe nodded. "If you please, Doctor?"

I thought, My God, here we go again with another expert.

But Lloyd had mercy on us. He kept it down to our level and didn't take anything like an hour. Before he spoke he took another swallow from his third helping of bourbon and water with mint, which had smoothed out some of the lines on his handsome face and taken some of the worry from his eyes.

"I'll try to remember," he said slowly, "exactly what I told them. First I described the damage the blow had done. The thyroid and arytenoid cartilages on the left side had been severely injured, and to a lesser extent the cricoid." He smiled--a superior smile, but not supercilious. "I waited two weeks, using indicated treatment* thinking an operation might not be required, but it was. When I got inside I confess I was relieved; it wasnt as bad as I had feared. It was a simple operation, and he healed admirably. I wouldn't have been risking much that day if I had given assurance that his voice would be as good as ever in two months, three at the most, but the larynx is an ex Curtains for Three 29

ely delicate instrument, and a tenor like Mion's is rkable phenomenon, so I was cautious enough sly to say that I would be surprised and disap 1 if he wasn't ready, fully ready, for the opening tie next opera season, seven months from then. I that my hope and expectation were actually optimistic than that."

Lloyd pursed his lips. "That was it, I think. Never s, I welcomed the suggestion that my prognosis aid be reinforced by Rentner's. Apparently it ild be a major factor in the decision about the it to be paid in damages, and I didn't want the responsibility."

"Rentner? Who was he?" Wolfe asked. "Dr. Abraham Rentner of Mount Sinai," Lloyd rei, in the tone I would use if someone asked me who Robinson was. "I phoned him and made an ap Dintment for the following morning."

"linsisted on it," Rupert the Fat said importantly. l**Mion had a right to collect not sometime in the distant piiture, but then and there. They wouldn't pay unless a total was agreed on, and if we had to name a total I wanted to be damn sure it was enough. Don't forget that that day Mion couldn't sing a note."

"He wouldn't have been able even to let out a pianissimo for at least two months," Lloyd bore him out. "I gave that as the minimum."

"There seems," Judge Arnold interposed, "to be an implication that we opposed the suggestion that a second professional opinion be secured. I must protest--" "You did!" Grove squeaked. "We did not!" Gifford James barked. "We merely--"

The three of them went at it, snapping and snarling. It seemed to me that they might have saved

30 Rex Stout

their energy for the big issue, was anything coming to Mrs. Mipn and if so how much, but not those babies. Their main concern was to avoid the slightest risk of agreeing on anything at all. Wolfe patiently let them get where they were headed for--nowhere--and then invited a new voice in. He turned to Adele and spoke. "Miss Bosley, we haven't heard from you. Which side were you on?"

IV

Adele Bosley had been sitting taking it in, sipping occasionally at her rum collins--now her second one-- and looking, I thought, pretty damn intelligent. Though it was the middle of August, she was the only one of the six who had a really good tan. Her public relations with the sun were excellent.

She shook her head. "I wasn't on either side, Mr. Wolfe. My only interest was that of my employer, the Metropolitan Opera Association. Naturally we wanted it settled privately, without any scandal. I had no opinion whatever on whether--on the point at issue."

"And expressed none?"

"No. I merely urged them to get it settled if possible."

"Fair enough!" Clara James blurted. It was a sneer. "You might have helped my father a little, since he got your job for you. Or had you--"

"Be quiet, Clara!" James told her with authority.

But she ignored him and finished it. "Or had you already paid in full for that?"

I was shocked. Judge Arnold looked pained. Rupert the Fat giggled. Doc Lloyd took a gulp of bourbon and water.

Curtains for Three 31

In view of the mildly friendly attitude I was developing toward Adele I sort of hoped she would throw something at the slim and glistening Miss James, but all she did was appeal to the father. "Can't you handle the brat, Gif?"

Then, without waiting for an answer, she turned to Wolfe. "Miss James likes to use her imagination. What she implied is not on the record. Not anybody's record."

Wolfe nodded. "It wouldn't belong on this one anyhow." He made a face. 'To go back to relevancies, what time did that conference break up?"

"Why--Mr. James and Judge Arnold left first, around four-thirty. Then Dr. Lloyd, soon after. I stayed a few minutes with Mion and Mr. Grove, and then went."

"Where did you go?"

"To my office, on Broadway."

"How long did you stay at your office?"

She looked surprised. "I don't know--yes, I do too, of course. Until a little after seven. I had things to do, and I typed a confidential report of the conference at Mion's."

"Did you see Mion again before he died? Or phone him?"

"See him?" She was more surprised. "How could I? Don't you know he was found dead at seven o'clock? That was before I left the office."

"Did you phone him? Between four-thirty and seven?"

"No." Adele was puzzled and slightly exasperated. It struck me that Wolfe was recklessly getting onto thin ice, mighty close to the forbidden subject of murder. Adele added, "I don't know what you're getting at."

32 Rex Stout

"Neither do I," Judge Arnold put in with emphasis. He smiled sarcastically. "Unless it's force of habit with you, asking people where they were at the time a death by violence occurred. Why don't you go after all of us?"

"That's what I intend to do," Wblfe said imperturbably. "I would like to know why Mion decided to Mil himself, because that has a bearing on the opinion I shall give his widow. I understand that two or three of you have said that he was wrought up when that conference ended, but not despondent or splenetic. I know he committed suicide; the police can't be flummoxed on a thing like that; but why?"

"I doubt," Adele Bosley offered, "if you know how a singer--especially a great artist like Mion--how he feels when he can't let a sound out, when he can't even talk except "in an undertone or a whisper. It's horrible."

"Anyway, you never knew with him," Rupert Grove contributed. "In rehearsal I've heard him do an aria like an angel and then rush out weeping because he thought he had slurred a release. One minute he was up in the sky and the next he was under a rug."

Wotfe grunted. "Nevertheless, anything said to him by anyone during the two hours preceding his suicide is pertinent to this inquiry, to establish Mrs. Mion's moral position. I want to know where you people were that day, after the conference up to seven o'clock, and what you did."

"My God!" Judge Arnold threw up his hands. The hands came down again. "All right, it's getting late. As Miss Bosley told you, my client and I left Mion's studio together. We went to the Churchill bar and drank and talked. A little later Miss James joined us, stayed long enough for a drink, I suppose half an hour, and left. Mr. James and I remained together until after seven. Dur

Curtains for Three 33

ing that time neither of us communicated with Mion, nor arranged for anyone else to, I believe that covers it?"

"Thank you," Wolfe said politely. "You corroborate, of course, Mr. James?"

"I do," the baritone said gruffly. "This is a lot of goddam nonsense."

"It does begin to sound like it," Wolfe conceded. "Dr. Lloyd? If you don't mind?"

He hadn't better, since he had been mellowed by four ample helpings of our best bourbon, and he didn't. "Not at all," he said cooperatively. "I made calls on five patients, two on upper Fifth Avenue, one in the East Sixties, and two at the hospital. I got home a little after six and had just finished dressing after taking a bath when Fred Weppler phoned me about Mion. Of course I went at once."

"You hadn't seen Mion or phoned him?"

"Not since I left after the conference. Perhaps I should have, but I had no idea--I'm not a psychiatrist, but I was his doctor."

"He was mercurial, was he?"

"Yes, he was." Lloyd pursed his lips. "Of course, that's not a medical term."

"Far from it," Wolfe agreed. He shifted his gaze. "Mr. Grove, I don't have to ask you if you phoned Mion, since it is on record that you did. Around five o'clock?"

Rupert the Fat had his head tilted again. Apparently that was his favorite pose for conversing. He corrected Wolfe. "It was after five. More like a quarter past."

"Where did you phone from?"

"The Harvard Club." 34 Rex Stout

I thought, 111 be damned, it takes all kinds to make a Harvard Club.

"What was said?"

"Not much." Grove's lips twisted. "It's none of your damn business, you know, but the others have obliged, and I'll string along. I had forgotten to ask him if he would endorse a certain product for a thousand dollars, and the agency wanted an answer. We talked less than five minutes. First he said he wouldn't and then he said he would. That was all."

"Did he sound like a man getting ready to kill himself?"

"Not the slightest. He was glum, but naturally, since he couldn't sing and couldn't expect to for at least two months."

"After you phoned Mion what did you do?"

"I stayed at the club. I ate dinner there and hadn't quite finished when the news came that Mion had killed himself. So I'm still behind that ice cream and coffee."

"That's too bad. When you phoned Mion, did you again try to persuade him not to press his claim against Mr. James?"

Grove's head straightened up. "Did I what?" he demanded.

"You heard me," Wolfe said rudely. "What's surprising about it? Naturally Mrs. Mion has informed me, since I'm working for her. You were opposed to Mion's asking for payment in the first place and tried to talk him out of it. You said the publicity would be so harmful that it wasn't worth it. He demanded that you support the claim and threatened to cancel your contract if you refused. Isn't that correct?"

"It is not." Grove's black eyes were blazing. "It wasn't like that at all! I merely gave him my opinion.

Curtains for Three 35

When it was decided to make the claim I went along." His voice went up a notch higher, though I wouldn't have thought it possible. "I certainly did!"

"I see." Wolfe wasn't arguing. "What is your opinion now, about Mrs. Mion's claim?"

"I don't think she has one. I don't believe she can collect. If I were in James' place I certainly wouldn't pay her a cent."

Wolfe nodded. "You don't like her, do you?"

"Frankly, I don't. No. I never have. Do I have to like her?"

"No, indeed. Especially since she doesn't like you either." Wolfe shifted in his chair and leaned back. I could tell from the line of his lips, straightened out, that the next item on the agenda was one he didn't care for, and I understood why when I saw his eyes level at Clara James. I'll bet that if he had known that he would have to be dealing with that type he wouldn't have taken the job. He spoke to her testily. "Miss James, you've heard what has been said?"

"I was wondering," she complained, as if she had been holding in a grievance, "if you were going to go on ignoring me. I was around too, you know."

"I know. I haven't forgotten you." His tone implied that he only wished he could. "When you had a drink in the Churchill bar with your father and Judge Arnold, why did they send you up to Mion's studio to see him? What for?*

Arnold and James protested at once, loudly and simultaneously. Wolfe, paying no attention to them, waited to hear Clara, her voice having been drowned by theirs.

". . . nothing to do with it," she was finishing. "I sent myself."

"It was your own idea?"

36 Rex Stout

"Entirely. I have one once in a while, all alone."

"What did you go for?"

"You don't need to answer, my dear," Arnold told her.

She ignored him. "They told me what had happened at the conference, and I was mad. I thought it was a holdup--but I wasn't going to tell Alberto that. I thought I could talk him out of it."

"You went to appeal to him for old times' sake?"

She looked pleased. "You have the nicest way of putting things! Imagine a girl my age having old times!"

"I'm glad you like my diction, Miss James." Wolfe was furious. "Anyhow, you went. Arriving at a quarter past six?"

"Just about, yes."

"Did you see Mion?"

"No."

"Why not?"

"He wasn't there. At least--" She stopped. Her eyes weren't glistening quite so much. She went on, "That's what I thought then. I went to the thirteenth floor and rang the bell at the door to the studio. It's a loud bell--he had it loud to be heard above his voice and the piano when he was practicing--but I couldn't hear it from the hall because the door is soundproofed too, and after I had pushed the button a few times I wasn't sure the bell was ringing so I knocked on the door. I like to finish anything I start, and I thought he must be there, so I rang the bell some more and took off my shoe and pounded on the door with the heel. Then I went down to the twelfth floor by the public stairs and rang the bell at the apartment door. That was really stupid, because I know how Mrs. Mion hates me, but anyway I did. She came to the door and said

Curtains for Three 37

she thought Alberto was up in the studio, and I said he wasn't, and she shut the door in my face. I went home | and mixed myself a drink--which reminds me, I must admit this is good scotch, though I never heard of it ^before."

She lifted her glass and jiggled it to swirl the ice. 14

"No," Wolfe growled. He glanced at the clock on the wall and then along the line of faces. "I shall cer| tainly report to Mrs. Mion," he told them, "that you were not grudging with the facts."

"And what else?" Arnold inquired.

"I don't know. We'll see."

That they didn't like. I wouldn't have supposed | anyone could name a subject on which those six characters would have been in unanimous accord, but Wolfe turned the trick in five words. They wanted a verdict; failing that, an opinion; failing that, at least a hint. Adele Bosley was stubborn, Rupert the Fat was |: so indignant he squeaked, andJudge Arnold was next door to nasty. Wolfe was patient up to a point, but finally stood up and told them good night as if he meant it. The note it ended on was such that before going not one of them shelled out a word of appreciation for all the refreshment, not even Adele, the expert on public relations, or Doc Lloyd, who had practically emptied the bourbon bottle.

With the front door locked and bolted for the night, I returned to the office. To my astonishment Wolfe was still on his feet, standing over by the bookshelves, glaring at the backbones.

"Restless?" I asked courteously.

He turned and said aggressively, "I want another bottle of beer."

"Nuts. You've had five since dinner." I didn't

38 Rex Stout

bother to put much feeling into it, as the routine was familiar. He had himself set the quota of five bottles between dinner and bedtime, and usually stuck to it, but when anything sent his humor far enough down he hiked to shift the responsibility so he could be sore at me too.

It was just part of my job. "Nothing doing," I said firmly. "I counted 'em. Five. What's the trouble, a whole evening gone and still no murderer?"

"Bah." He compressed his lips. "That's not it. If that were all we could close it up before going to bed. It's that confounded gun with wings." He gazed at me with his eyes narrowed, as if suspecting that I had wings too. "I could, of course, just ignore it-- No. No, in view of the state our clients are in, it would be foolhardy. We'll have to clear it up. There's no alternative."

"That's a nuisance. Can I help any?"

"Yes. Phone Mr. Cramer first thing in the morning. Ask him to be here at eleven o'clock."

My brows went up. "But he's interested only in homicides. Do I tell him we've got one to show him?"

"No. Tell him I guarantee that it's worth the trouble." Wolfe took a step toward me. "Archie."

"Yes/sir."

"I've had a bad evening and 111 have another bottle."

"You will not. Not a chance." Fritz had come in and we were starting to clear up. "It's after midnight and you're in the way. Go to bed."

"One wouldn't hurt him," Fritz muttered.

"You're a help," I said bitterly. "I warn both of you, I've got a gun in my pocket. What a household!"

Curtains for Three

[.'For nine months of the year Inspector Cramer of fHomicide, big and broad and turning gray, looked the , well enough, but in the summertime the heat kept pris face so red that he was a little gaudy. He knew it Piaid didn't like it, and as a result he was some harder to deal with in August than in January. If an occasion

* arises for me to commit a murder in Manhattan I hope fit will be winter.

Tuesday at noon he sat in the red leather chair and f looked at Wblfe with no geniality. Detained by another f appointment, he hadn't been able to make it at eleven, fithe hour when Wolfe adjourns the morning session | with his orchids up in the plant rooms. Wblfe wasn't ^exactly beaming either, and I was looking forward to j some vaudeville. Also I was curious to see how Wolfe I would go about getting dope on a murder from Cramer

without spilling it that there had been one, as Cramer

was by no means a nitwit.

"I'm on my way uptown," Cramer grumbled, "and

haven't got much time."

That was probably a barefaced lie. He merely didn't want to admit that an inspector of the NYPD would call on a private detective on request, even though it was Nero Wolfe and I had told him we had something hot.

"What is it," he grumbled on, "the Dickinson thing? Who brought you in?"

Wolfe shook his head. "No one, thank heaven. It's about the mu*der of Alberto Mion."

I goggled at him. This was away beyond me. Right off he had let the dog loose, when I had thought the whole point was that there was no dog on the place.

40 Rex Stout

"Mion?" mine."

Cramer wasn't interested. "Not one of

"It soon will be. Alberto Mion, the famous opera singer. Four months ago, on April nineteenth. In his studio on East End Avenue. Shot--"

"Oh." Cramer nodded. "Yeah, I remember. But you're stretching it a little. It was suicide."

"No. It was first-degree murder."

Cramer regarded him for three breaths. Then, in no hurry, he got a cigar from his pocket, inspected it, and stuck it in his mouth. In a moment he took it out again.

"I have never known it to fail," he remarked, "that you can be counted on for a headache. Who says it was murder?"

"I have reached that conclusion."

"Then that's settled." Cramer's sarcasm was usually a little heavy. "Have you bothered any about evidence?"

"I have none."

"Good. Evidence just clutters a murder up." Cramer stuck the cigar back in his mouth and exploded, "When did you start keeping your sentences so goddam short? Go ahead and talk!"

"Well--" Wolfe considered. "It's a little difficult. You're probably not familiar with the details, since it was so long ago and was recorded as suicide."

"I remember it fairly well. As you say, he was famous. Go right ahead."

Wolfe leaned back and closed his eyes. "Interrupt me if you need to. I had six people here for a talk last evening." He pronounced their names and identified them. "Five of them were present at a conference in Mion's studio which ended two hours before he was found dead. The sixth, Miss James, banged on the stu

Curtains for Three 41

> door at a quarter past six and got no reply, presum My because he was dead then. My conclusion that was murdered is based on things I have heard 1. I'm not going to repeat them to you--because it take too long, because it's a question of empha and interpretation, and because you have already

them."

"I wasn't here last evening," Cramer said dryly. "So you weren't. Instead of *y�u/1 should have said i Police Department. It must all be in the files. They s questioned at the time it happened, and told their i as they have now told them to me. You can get Have you ever known me to have to eat my

B?"

i've seen times when I would have liked to shove t down your throat."

it you never have. Here are three more I shall : Mion was murdered. I won't tell you, now, how that conclusion; study your files."

was keeping himself under restraint. "I i-have to study them," he declared, "for one detail he was killed. Are you saying he fired the gun ' but was driven to it?"

The murderer fired the gun." must have been quite a murderer. It's quite a i pry a guy's mouth open and stick a gun in it .getting bit. Would you mind naming him?"

shook his head. "I haven't got that far yet. t isn't the objection you raise that's bothering me; |�an be overcome; it's something else." He leaned Sand was earnest. "Lookhere, Mr. Cramer. It ijtot have been impossible for me to see this i alone, deliver the murderer and the evidence ^ and flap my wings and crow. But first, I have no i to expose you as a zany, since you're not; and

40 Rex Stout

"Mion?" Cramer wasn't interested. "Not one of mine."

"It soon will be. Alberto Mion, the famous opera singer. Four months ago, on April nineteenth. In his studio on East End Avenue. Shot--"

"Oh." Cramer nodded. "Yeah, I remember. But you're stretching it a little. It was suicide."

"No. It was first-degree murder."

Cramer regarded him for three breaths. Then, in no hurry, he got a cigar from his pocket, inspected it, and stuck it in his mouth. In a moment he took it out again.

"I have never known it to fail," he remarked, "that you can be counted on for a headache. Who says it was murder?"

"I have reached that conclusion."

"Then that's settled." Cramer's sarcasm was usually a little heavy. "Have you bothered any about evidence?"

"I have none."

"Good. Evidence just clutters a murder up." Cramer stuck the cigar back in his mouth and exploded, "When did you start keeping your sentences so goddam short? Go ahead and talk!"

"Well--" Wolfe considered. "It's a little difficult. You're probably not familiar with the details, since it was so long ago and was recorded as suicide."

"I remember it fairly well. As you say, he was famous. Go right ahead."

Wolfe leaned back and closed his eyes. "Interrupt me if you need to. I had six people here for a talk last evening," He pronounced their names and identified them. "Five of them were present at a conference in Mion's studio which ended two hours before he was found dead. The sixth, Miss James, banged on the stu

Curtains for Three 41

|dio door at a quarter past six and got no reply, presum

; ably because he was dead then. My conclusion that

itMion was murdered is based on things I have heard

'said. I'm not going to repeat them to you--because it

would take too long, because it's a question of emphaKsis and interpretation, and because you have already

heard them."

"I wasn't here last evening," Cramer said dryly.

"So you weren't. Instead of 'you,' I should have said the Police Department. It must all be in the files. They were questioned at the time it happened, and told their stories as they have now told them to me. You can get it there. Have you ever known me to have to eat my words?"

"I've seen times when I would have liked to shove them down your throat."

"But you never have. Here are three more I shall not eat: Mion was murdered. I won't tell you, now, how I reached that conclusion; study your files."

Cramer was keeping himself under restraint. "I don't have to study them," he declared, "for one detail --how he was killed. Are you saying he fired the gun himself but was driven to it?"

"No. The murderer fired the gun."

"It must have been quite a murderer. It's quite a trick to pry a guy's mouth open and stick a gun in it without getting bit. Would you mind naming him?"

Wolfe shook his head. "I haven't got that far yet. But it isn't the objection you raise that's bothering me; that can be overcome; it's something else." He leaned forward and was earnest. "Look here, Mr. Cramer. It would not have been impossible for me to see this through alone, deliver the murderer and the evidence to you, and flap my wings and crow. But first, I have no ambition to expose you as a zany, since you're not; and

42 Rex Stout

second, I need your help. I am not now prepared to prove to you that Mion was murdered; I can only assure you that he was and repeat that I won't have to eat it--and neither will you. Isn't that enough, at least to arouse your interest?"

Cramer stopped chewing the cigar. He never lit one. "Sure," he said grimly. "Hell, I'm interested. Another first-class headache. I'm flattered you want me to help. How?"

"I want you to arrest two people as material witnesses, question them, and let them out on bail."

"Which two? Why not all six?" I warned you his sarcasm was hefty.

"But"--Wolfe ignored it--"under clearly defined conditions. They must not know that I am responsible; they must not even know that I have spoken with you. The arrests should be made late this afternoon or early evening, so they'll be kept in custody all night and until they arrange for bail in the morning. The bail need not be high; that's not important. The questioning should be fairly prolonged and severe, not merely a gesture, and if they get little or no sleep so much the better. Of course this sort of thing is routine for you."

"Yeah, we do it constantly." CramePs tone was unchanged. "But when we ask for a warrant we like to have a fairly good excuse. We wouldn't like to put down that it's to do Nero Wolfe a favor. I don't want to be contrary."

"There's ample excuse for these two. They are material witnesses. They are indeed."

"You haven't named them. Who are they?"

"The man and woman who found the body. Mr. Frederick Weppler, the music critic, and Mrs. Mion, the widow."

This time I didn't goggle, but I had to catch myself

Curtains for Three 43

quick. It was a first if there ever was one. Time and again I have seen Wolfe go far, on a few occasions much too far, to keep a client from being pinched. He regards it as an unbearable personal insult. And here he was, practically begging the law to haul Fred and Peggy in, when I had deposited her check for five grand only the day before! "Oh," Cramer said. "Them?" "Yes, sir," Wolfe assured him cooperatively. "As you know or can learn from the files, there is plenty to ask them about it. Mr. Weppler was there for lunch pthat day, with others, and when the others left he re fmained with Mrs. Mion. What was discussed? What they do that afternoon; where were they? Why did p. Weppler return to the Mion apartment at seven ?clock? Why did he and Mrs. Mion ascend together to studio? After finding the body, why did Mr. Weeper go downstairs before notifying the police, to get a . of names from the doorman and elevator man? An ordinary performance. Was it Mion's habit to an afternoon nap? Did he sleep with his mouth i?"

"Much obliged," Cramer said not gratefully. Sfou're a wonder at thinking of questions to ask. But if Mion did take naps with his mouth open, I ; if he did it standing up. And after the bullet left head it went up to the ceiling, as I remember it. 1 Cramer put his palms on the arms of the chair, i the cigar in his mouth tilted up at about the angle f gun in Mion's mouth had probably been. "Who's client?"

Jo," Wolfe said regretfully. "I'm not ready to dis that."

'. thought not. In fact, there isn't one single damn ; you have disclosed. You've got no evidence, or if

44 Rex Stoat

you have any you're keeping it under your belt. You've got a conclusion you like, that will help a client you won't name, and you want me to test it for you by arresting two reputable citizens and giving them the works. I've seen samples of your nerve before, but this is tops. For God's sake!"

"I've told you I won't eat it, and neither will you. If--"

"You'd eat one of your own orchids if you had to earn a fee!"

That started the fireworks. I have sat many times and listened to that pair in a slugging match and enjoyed every minute of it, but this one got so hot that I wasn't exactly sure I was enjoying it. At 12:40 Cramer was on his feet, starting to leave. At 12:45 he was back in the red leather chair, shaking his fist and snarling. At 12:48 Wolfe was leaning back with his eyes shut, pretending he was deaf. At 12:52 he was pounding his desk and bellowing.

At ten past one it was all over. Cramer had taken it and was gone. He had made a condition, that there would first be a check of the record and a staff talk, but that didn't matter, since the arrests were to be postponed until after judges had gone home. He accepted the proviso that the victims were not to know that Wolfe had a hand in it, so it could have been said that he was knuckling under, but actually he was merely using horse sense. No matter how much he discounted Wolfe's three words that were not to be eaten--and he knew from experience how risky it was to discount Wolfe just for the hell of it--they made it fairly probable that it wouldn't hurt to give Mion's death another look; and in that case a session with the couple who had found the body was as good a way to start as any. As a

Curtains for Three 45

alter of fact, the only detail that Cramer choked on Swas Wolfe's refusal to tell who his client was.

As I followed Wolfe into the dining room for lunch I Remarked to his outspread back, "There are already hi hundred and nine people in the metropolitan area |who would like to poison you. This will make it eight and eleven. Don't think they won't find out oner or later." "Of course they will," he conceded, pulling his chair

"But too late."

The rest of that day and evening nothing happened II, as far as we knew.

VI

s at my desk in the office at 10:40 the next morning i the phone rang. I got it and told the transmitter, lero Wolfe's office, Archie Goodwin speaking." "I want to talk to Mr. Wolfe." "He won't be available until eleven o'clock. Can I p?"

pThis is urgent. This is Weppler, Frederick Wepfc I'm in a booth in a drugstore on Ninth Avenue Twentieth Street. Mrs. Mion is with me. We've i arrested." imood God!" I was horrified. "What for?"

i ask us about Mion's death. They had material! warrants. They kept us all night, and we just at on bail. I had a lawyer arrange for the bail, but want him to know about--that we consulted , and he's not with us. We want to see Wolfe."

sure do," I agreed emphatically. "It's a damn e. Come on up here. He'll be down from the Mffooms by the time you arrive. Grab a taxi."

46 R

Stoat

"** ^-^^y^Phoaag. We're being followed b*J; *WO Octaves and we faft want them to know *r-^ � f6"1* Wo5e. How op, we shake ^^

Ifc w^t? S? saved time and energy to tell him to come alXrt, i^ff �f �ffidaltaas needn't worry ^W St^�***"*****.

"F^ ^ "ft.lMid'**��. "Cops give me

"For ., T*; ." --' "*�8u�ea. "uops < a pain ir*,the neck" Llsten- A^ yoa listening?" "Yes*

ug� ^ntl^/T t C�mpany' Five-thirty-five _^-enteenth Street. Tn tho ��*. , * "SI

con

Uov^ , rr~ -"*'~ ^��'pany i-ive-thirty West S^,n^nth Street- ^ the <, pounds ^ for ^ Feder. f^11,1111" your name � Montgomery. He'U conduct yotf .^.,a P388^ that 6^ on Eighteenth Street, ^f' thfre! ^ at the curb or double parked,

TT__ _�* KOC It!

thfi r�pr�lr T.iotar, A_ ... .. r 6

handle.

Have yo* �" " pounds ,

"I thi^* "^ Jfd better repeat the address." I did *�' and told mm to wait ten minutes before starting, *� fve, ^^f J� &et there. Then, after hanging *# \*honed So1 Feder to instruct hhn, got Wolfe on ^ehh�USef Pjone to ^rm him, and beat it. 1 shotJ^J%! ^" to Wait ^^ � twenty minutes i^l5 ?"', ^^ I ** to "V Post on Eighteen^,f^ ^ � time. My taxi had just stopped, ^i ""?"� out to �e my handkerchief on the dff^f^ T " hf6 they ^e *�>� the sidewalk ^.ba. �J of WL I swung the door wide, and Fred I**4*"^ threw Peggy in ^d (fi?Bd m ^

.

viai*

her.

^'�ied and we ro�^

i we ro^ ** we^rS ^ Aw"� I asked if they had

11811 brea*22 nS6y,^ J68'D0t ^*-"V enthusiasm. The ** B' ^y lo<*�d � if they were entirely

"Okay ^Ver'" J Sajd 8ternly� "you know where," 1 *� rtjU^0-

Curtains for Three 47

tout of enthusiasm. Peggy's lightweight green jacket,

I which she had on over a tan cotton dress, was rumpled

{.and not very clean, and her face looked neglected.

* Fred's hair might not have been combed for a month,

|and his brown tropical worsted was anything but

fiiatty. They sat holding hands, and about once a minute

I Fred twisted around to look through the rear window.

"We're loose all right," I assured him. "I've been

saving Sol Feder just for an emergency like this."

It was only a five-minute ride. When I ushered them into the office Wolfe was there in his big custom made chair behind his desk. He arose to greet them, invited them to sit, asked if they had breakfasted properly, and said that the news of their arrest had been an f unpleasant shock.

"One thing," Fred blurted, still standing. "We came to see you and consult you in confidence, and forty eight hours later we were arrested. Was that pure coincidence?"

Wolfe finished getting himself re-established in his chair. "That won't help us any, Mr. Weppler," he said without resentment. "If that's your frame of mind you'd better go somewhere and cool off. You and Mrs. Mion are my clients. An insinuation that I am capable of acting against the interest of a client is too childish for discussion. What did the police ask you about?"

But Fred wasn't satisfied. "You're not a double crosser," he conceded. "I know that. But what about Goodwin here? He may not be a double-crosser either, but he might have got careless in conversation with someone."

Wolfe's eyes moved. "Archie. Did you?" "No, sir. But he can postpone asking my pardon. They've had a hard night." I looked at Fred. "Sit down

48 Rex Stout

and relax. If I had a careless tongue I wouldn't last at this job a week."

"It's damn funny," Fred persisted. He sat. "Mrs. Mion agrees with me. Don't you, Peggy?"

Peggy. m the red leather chair, gave him a glance and then looked back at Wolfe. "I did, I guess," she confessed. "Yes, I did. But now that I'm here, seeing you--" She made a gesture. "Oh, forget it! There's no one else to go to. We know lawyers, of course, but we don't want to tell a lawyer what we know--about the gun. We've already told you. But now the police suspect something, and we're out on bail, and you've got to do something!"

"What did you find out Monday evening?" Fred demanded. "You stalled when I phoned yesterday. What did they say?"

"They recited facts," Wolfe replied. "As I told you on the phone, I made some progress. I have nothing to add to that--now. But I want to know, I must know, what line the police took with you. Did they know what you told me about the gun?"

They both said no.

Wolfe grunted. "Then I might reasonably ask that you withdraw your insinuation that I or Mr. Goodwin betrayed you. What did they ask about?"

The answers to that took a good half an hour. The cops hadn't missed a thing that was included in the picture as they knew it, and, with instructions from Cramer to make it thorough, they hadn't left a scrap. Far from limiting it to the day of Mion's death, they had been particularly curious about Peggy's and Fred's feelings and actions during the months both prior and subsequent thereto. Several times I had to take the tip of my tongue between my teeth to keep from asking the clients why they hadn't told the cops

Curtains for Three 49

to go soak their heads, but I really knew why: they had been scared. A scared man is only half a man. By the time they finished reporting on their ordeal I was feeling sympathetic, and even guilty on behalf of Wolfe, when suddenly he snapped me out of it.

He sat a while tapping the arm of his chair with a fingertip, and then looked at me and said abruptly, "Archie. Draw a check to the order of Mrs. Mion for five thousand dollars."

They gawked at him. I got up and headed for the safe. They demanded to know what the idea was. I stood at the safe door to listen.

"I'm quitting," Wolfe said curtly. "I can't stand you. I told you Sunday that one or both of you were lying, and you stubbornly denied it. I undertook to work around your lie, and I did my best. But now that the police have got curious about Mion's death, and specifically about you, I refuse longer to risk it. I am willing to be a Quixote, but not a chump. In breaking with you, I should tell you that I shall immediately inform Inspector Cramer of all that you have told me. If, when the police start the next round with you, you are fools enough to contradict me, heaven knows what will happen. Your best course will be to acknowledge the truth and let them pursue the investigation you hired me for; but I would also warn you that they are not simpletons and they too will know that you are lying--at least one of you. Archie, what are you standing there gaping for? Get the checkbook."

I opened the safe door.

Neither of them had uttered a peep. I suppose they were too tired to react normally. As I returned to my desk they just sat, looking at each other. As I started making the entry on the stub, Fred's voice came.

"You can't do this. This isn't ethical."

50 Rex Stout

"PfuL" Wolfe snorted. "You hire me to get you out of a fix, and lie to me about it, and talk of ethics! Incidentally, I did make progress Monday evening. I cleared everything up but two details, but the devil of it is that one of them depends on you. I have got to know who put that gun on the floor beside the body. I am convinced that it was one of you, but you won't admit it. So I'm helpless and that's a pity, because I am also convinced that neither of you was involved in Mion's death. If there were--"

"What's that?" Fred demanded. There was nothing wrong with his reaction now. "You're convinced that neither of us was involved?"

"I am."

Fred was out of his chair. He went to Wolfe's desk, put his palms on it, leaned forward, and said harshly, "Do you mean that? Look at me. Open your eyes and look at me! Do you mean that?"

"Yes," Wolfe told him. "Certainly I mean it."

Fred gazed at him another moment and then straightened up. "All right," he said, the harshness gone. "I put the gun on the floor."

A wail came from Peggy. She sailed out of her chair and to him and seized his arm with both hands. "Fred! No! Fred!" she pleaded. I wouldn't have thought her capable of wailing, but of course she was tired to begin with. He put a hand on top of hers and then decided that was inadequate and took her in his arms. For a minute he concentrated on her. Finally he turned his face to Wolfe and spoke.

"I may regret this, but if I do you will too. By God, you will." He was quite positive of it. "All right, I lied. I put the gun on the floor. Now it's up to you." He held the other client closer. "I did, Peggy. Don't say I

Curtains for Three 51

should have told you--maybe I should--but I couldn't. It'll be all right, dearest, really it will--"

"Sit down," Wolfe said crossly. After a moment he made it an order. "Confound it, sit down!"

Peggy freed herself, Fred letting her go, and returned to her chair and dropped into it. Fred perched on its arm, with a hand on her far shoulder, and she put her hand up to his. Their eyes, suspicious, afraid, defiant, and hopeful all at once, were on Wolfe. ~

He stayed cross. "I assume," he said, "that you see how it is. You haven't impressed me. I already knew one of you had put the gun there. How could anyone else have entered the studio during those few minutes? The truth you have told me will be worse than useless, it will be extremely dangerous, unless you follow it with more truth. Try another lie and there's no telling what win happen; I might not be able to save you. Where did you find it?"

"Don't worry," Fred said quietly. "You've screwed it out of me and you'll get it straight. When we went in and found the body I saw the gun where Mion always kept it, on the base of Caruso's bust. Mrs. Mion didn't see it; she didn't look that way. When I left her in her bedroom I went back up. I picked the gun up by the trigger guard and smelled it; it had been fired. I put it on the floor by the body, returned to the apartment, went out, and took the elevator to the ground floor. The rest was just as I told you Sunday."

Wolfe grunted. "You may have been in love, but you didn't think much of her intelligence. You assumed that after killing him she hadn't had the wit to leave the gun where he might have dropped--"

"I did not, damn you!"

"Nonsense. Of course you did. Who else would you have wanted to shield? And afterward it got you in a

52 Rex Stout

pickle. When you had to agree with her that the gun hadn't been there when you and she entered, you were hobbled. You didn't dare tell her what you had done because of the implication that you suspected her, especially when she seemed to be suspecting you. You couldn't be sure whether she really did-suspect you, or whether she was only--"

"I never did suspect him," Peggy said firmly. It was a job to make her voice firm, but she managed it. "And he never suspected me, not really. We just weren't sure--sure all the way down--and when you're in love and want it to last you've got to be sure."

"That was it," Fred agreed. They were looking at each other. "That was it exactly."

"M right, I'll take this," Wolfe said curtly. "I think you've told the truth, Mr. Weppler."

"I know damn well I have."

Wolfe nodded. "You sound like it. I have a good ear for the truth. Now take Mrs. Mion home. I've got to work, but first I must think it over. As I said, there were two details, and you've disposed of only one. You can't help with the other. Go home and eat something."

"Who wants to eat?" Fred demanded fiercely. "We want to know what you're going to do!"

"I've got to brush my teeth," Peggy stated. I shot her a glance of admiration and affection. Women's saying things like that at times like that is one of the reasons I enjoy their company. No man alive, under those circumstances, would have felt that he had to brush his teeth and said so.

Besides, it made it easier to get rid of them without being rude, Fred tried to insist that they had a right to know what the program was, and to help consider the prospects, but was finally compelled to accept Wolfe's mandate that when a man hired an expert the only

Curtains for Three 53

authority he kept was the right to fire. That, combined with Peggy's longing for a toothbrush and Wolfe's assurance that he would keep them informed, got them on their way without a ruckus.

When, after letting them out, I returned to the office, Wolfe was drumming on his desk blotter with a paperknife, scowling at it, though I had told him a hundred times that it ruined the blotter. I went and got the checkbook and replaced it in the safe, having put nothing on the stub but the date, so no harm was done.

"Twenty minutes till lunch," I announced, swiveling my chair and sitting. "Will that be enough to hogtie the second detail?"

No reply.

I refused to be sensitive. "If you don't mind," I inquired pleasantly, "what is the second detail?"

Again no reply, but after a moment he dropped the paperknife, leaned back, and sighed clear down.

"That confounded gun," he growled. "How did it get from the floor to the bust? Who moved it?" I stared at him. "My God," I complained, "you're hard to satisfy. You've just had two clients arrested and worked like a dog, getting the gun from the bust to the floor. Now you want to get it from the floor to the bust again? What the hell!"

"Not again. Prior to."

"Prior to what?"

"To the discovery of the body." His eyes slanted at me. "What do you think of this? A man--or a woman, no matter which--entered the studio and killed Mion in a manner that would convey a strong presumption of suicide. He deliberately planned it that way: it's not as difficult as the traditional police theory assumes. Then he placed the gun on the base of the bust, twenty

54 Rex Stout

feet away from the body, and departed. What do you think of it?"

"I don't think; I know. It didn't happen that way, unless he suddenly went batty after he pulled the trigger, which seems farfetched."

"Precisely. Having planned it to look like suicide, he placed the gun on the floor near the body. That is not discussible. But Mr. Weppler found it on the bust. Who took it from the floor and put it there, and when and why?"

"Yeah." I scratched my nose. "That's annoying. I'll admit the question is relevant and material, but why the hell do you let it in? Why don't you let it lay? Get him or her pinched, indicted, and tried. The cops will testify that the gun was there on the floor, and that will suit the jury fine, since it was framed for suicide. Verdict, provided you've sewed up things like motive and opportunity, guilty." I waved a hand. "Simple. Why bring it up at all about the gun being so fidgety?"

Wolfe grunted. "The clients. I have to earn my fee. They want their minds cleared, and they know the gun wasn't on theJJoor when they discovered the body. For the jury, I can't leave it that the gun was on the bust, and for the clients I can't leave it that it stayed on the floor where the murderer put it. Having, through Mr. Weppler, got it from the bust to the floor, I must now go back and get it from the floor to the bust. You see that?"

"Only too plain." I whistled for help. "I'll be damned. How"re you coming on?"

"I've just started." He sat up straight. "But I must clear my own mind, for lunch. Please hand me Mr. Shanks's orchid catalogue."

That was all for the moment, and during meals Wolfe excludes business riot only from the conversa

Curtains for Three 55

tion but also from the air. After lunch he returned to the office and got comfortable in his chair. For a while he just sat, and then began pushing his lips out and in, and I knew he was doing hard labor. Having no idea how he proposed to move the gun from the floor to the bust, I was wondering how long it might take, and whether he would have to get Cramer to arrest someone else, and if so who. I have seen him sit there like that, working for hours on end, but this time twenty minutes did it. It wasn't three o'clock yet when he pronounced my name gruffly and opened his eyes.

"Archie."

'Tes, sir."

"I can't do this. You'll have to."

"You mean dope it? I'm sorry, I'm busy."

"I mean execute it." He made a face. "I will not undertake to handle that young woman. It would be an ordeal, and I might botch it. It's just the thing for you. Your notebook. I'll dictate a document and then we'll discuss it."

"Yes, sir. I wouldn't call Miss Bosley really young."

"Not Miss Bosley. Miss James."

"Oh." I got the notebook.

VII

At a quarter past four, Wolfe having gone up to the plant rooms for his afternoon session with the orchids, I sat at my desk, glowering at the phone, feeling the way I imagine Jackie Robinson feels when he strikes out with the bases full. I had phoned Clara James to ask her to come for a ride with me in the convertible, and she had pushed my nose in.

If that sounds as if I like myself beyond reason, not

56 Rex Stout

so. I am quite aware that I bat close to a thousand on invitations to damsels only because I don't issue one unless the circumstances strongly indicate that it will be accepted. But that has got me accustomed to hearing yes, and therefore it was a rude shock to listen to her unqualified no. Besides, I had taken the trouble to go upstairs and change to a Pillater shirt and a tropical worsted made by Corley, and there I was, all dressed up.

I concocted three schemes and rejected them, concocted a fourth and bought it, reached for the phone, and dialed the number again. Clara's voice answered, as it had before. As soon as she learned who it was she got impatient.

"I told you I had a cocktail date! Please don't--"

"Hold it," I told her bluntly. "I made a mistake. I was being kind. I wanted to get you out into the nice open air before I told you the bad news. I--"

"What bad news?"

"A woman just told Mr. Wolfe and me that there are five people besides her, and maybe more, who know that you had a key to Alberto Mion's studio door."

Silence. Sometimes silences irritate me, but I didn't mind this one. Finally her voice came, totally different. "It's a silly lie. Who told you?"

"I forget. And I'm not discussing it on the phone. Two things and two only. First, if this gets around, what about your banging on the door for ten minutes, trying to get in, while he was in there dead? When you had a key? It would make even a cop skeptical. Second, meet me at the Churchill bar at five sharp and we'll talk it over. Yes or no."

"But this is so--you're so--"

"Hold it. No good. Yes or no."

Curtains for Three 57

Another silence, shorter, and then, "Yes," and she hung up.

I never keep a woman waiting and saw no reason to make an exception of this one, so I got to the Churchill bar eight minutes ahead of time. It was spacious, air conditioned, well-fitted in all respects, and even in the middle of August well-fitted also in the matter of customers, male and female. I strolled through, glancing around but not expecting her yet, and was surprised when I heard my name and saw her in a booth. Of course she hadn't had far to come, but even so she had wasted no time. She already had a drink and it was nearly gone. I joined her and immediately a waiter was there.

"You're having?" I asked her.

"Scotch on the rocks."

I told the waiter to bring two and he went.

She leaned forward at me and began in a breath, "Listen, this is absolutely silly, you just tell me who told you that, why, it's absolutely crazy--"

"Wait a minute." I stopped her more with my eyes than my words. Hers were glistening at me. "That's not the way to start, because it won't get us anywhere." I got a paper from my pocket and unfolded it. It was a neatly typed copy of the document Wolfe had dictated. "The quickest and easiest way will be for you to read this first, then you'll know what it's about."

I handed her the paper. You might as well read it while she does. It was dated that day:

I, Clara James, hereby declare that on Tuesday, April 19,1 entered the apartment house at 7 62/0 East End Avenue, New York City, at or about 6:15 p.m., and took the elevator to the 13th floor. I rang the bell at the door of the studio of

58 Rex Stout

Alberto Mion. No one came to the door and there was no sound from within. The door was not quite closed. It was not open enough to show a crack, but was not latched or locked. After ringing again and getting no response, I opened the door and entered.

Alberto Mion's body was lying on the floor over near the piano. He was dead. There was a hole in the top of his head. There was no question whether he was dead. I got dizzy and had to sit down on the floor and put my head down to keep from fainting. I didn't touch the body. There was a revolver there on the floor, not far from the body, and I picked it up. I think I sat on the floor about five minutes, but it might have been a little more or less. When I got back on my feet and started for the door I became aware that the revolver was still in my hand. I placed it on the base of the bust of Caruso. Later I realized I shouldn't have done that, but at the time I was too shocked and dazed to know what I was doing.

I left the studio, pulling the door shut behind me, went down the public stairs to the twelfth^ floor, and rang the bell at the door of the Mion apartment. I intended to tell Mrs. Mion about it, but when she appeared there in the doorway it was impossible to get it out. I couldn't tell her that her husband was up in the studio, dead. Later I regretted this, but I now see no reason to regret it or apologize for it, and I simply could not get the words out. I said I had wanted to see her husband, and had rung the bell at the studio and no one had answered. Then I rang

Curtains for Three 59

for the elevator and went down to the street and went home.

Having been unable to tell Mrs. Mion, I told no one. I would have told my father, but he wasn't at home. I decided to wait until he returned and tell him, but before he came a friend telephoned me the news that Mion had killed himself, so I decided not to tell anyone, not even my father, that I had been in the studio, but to say that I had rung the bell and knocked on the door and got no reply. I thought that would make no difference, but it has now been explained to me that it does, and therefore I am stating it exactly as it happened.

As she got to the end the waiter came with the drinks, and she held the document against her chest as if it were a poker hand. Keeping it there with her left, she reached for the glass with her right and took a big swallow of scotch. I took a sip of mine to be sociable.

"It's a pack of lies," she said indignantly.

"It sure is," I agreed. "I have good ears, so keep your voice down. Mr. Wolfe is perfectly willing to give you a break, and anyhow it would be a job to get you to sign it if it told the truth. We are quite aware that the studio door was locked and you opened it with your key. Also that--no, listen to me a minute--also that you purposely picked up the gun and put it on the bust because you thought Mrs. Mion had killed him and left the gun there so it would look like suicide, and you wanted to mess it up for her. You couldn't--"

"Where were you?" she demanded scornfully. "Hiding behind the couch?"

"Nuts. If you didn't have a key why did you break a date to see me because of what I said on the phone? As

60 Rex Stout

for the gun, you couldn't have been dumber if you'd worked at it for a year. Who would believe anyone had shot him so it would look like suicide and then been fool enough to put the gun on the bust? Too dumb to believe, honest, but you did it."

She was too busy with her brain to resent being called dumb. Her frown creased her smooth pale forehead and took the glisten from her eyes. "Anyway," she protested, "what this says not only isn't true, it's impossible! They found the gun on the floor by his body, so this couldn't possibly be true!"

"Yeah." I grinned at her. "It must have been a shock when you read that in the paper. Since you had personally moved the gun to the bust, how come they found it on the floor? Obviously someone had moved it back. I suppose you decided that Mrs. Mion had done that too, and it must have been hard to keep your mouth shut, but you had to. Now it's different. Mr. Wolfe knows who put the gun back on the floor and he can prove it. What's more, he knows Mion was murdered and he can prove that too. All that stops him is the detail of explaining how the gun got from the floor to the bust." I got out my fountain pen. "Put your name to that, and I'll witness it, and we're all set."

"You mean sign this thing?" She was contemptuous. "I'm not that dumb."

I caught the waiter's eye and signaled for refills, and then, to keep her company, emptied my glass.

I met her gaze, matching her frown. "LooWt, Blue Eyes," I told her reasonably. "I'm not sticking needles under your nails. I'm not saying we can prove you entered the studio--whether with your key or because the door wasn't locked doesn't matter--and moved the gun. We know you did, since no one else could have and you were there at the right time, but I admit we can't

Curtains for Three 61

prove it. However, I'm offering you a wonderful bargain."

I pointed the pen at her. "Just listen. All we want this statement for is to keep it in reserve, in case the person who put the gun back on the floor is fool enough to blab it, which is very unlikely. He would only be--"

"You say he?" she demanded.

"Make it he or she. As Mr. Wolfe says, the language could use another pronoun. He would only be making trouble for himself. If he doesn't spill it, and he won't, your statement won't be used at all, but we've got to have it in the safe in case he does. Another thing, if we have this statement we won't feel obliged to pass it along to the cops about your having had a key to the studio door. We wouldn't be interested in keys. Still another, you'll be saving your father a big chunk of dough. If you sign this statement we can clear up the matter of Mion's death, and if we do that I guarantee Mrs. Mion will be in no frame of mind to push any claim against your father. She will be too busy with a certain matter."

I proffered the pen. "Go ahead and sign it."

She shook her head, but not with much energy because her brain was working again. Fully appreciating the fact that her thinking was not on the tournament level, I was patient. Then the refills came and there was a recess, since she couldn't be expected to think and drink all at once. But finally she fought her way through to the point I had aimed at.

"So you know," she declared with satisfaction.

"We know enough," I said darkly.

"You know she killed him. You know she put the gun back on the floor. I knew that too, I knew she must have. And now you can prove it? If I sign this you can prove it?"

62 Rex Stout

Of course I could have covered it with doubletalk, but I thought, What the hell. "We certainly can," I assured her. "With this statement we're ready to go. It's the missing link. Here's the pen."

She lifted her glass, drained it, put it down, and damned if she didn't shake her head again, this time with energy. "No," she said flatly, "I won't." She extended a hand with the document in it. "I admit it's all true, and when you get her on trial if she says she put the gun back on the floor I'll come and swear to it that I put it on the bust, but I won't sign anything because once I signed something about an accident and my father made me promise that I would never sign anything again without showing it to him first. I could take it and show it to him and then sign it, and you could come for it tonight or tomorrow." She frowned. "Except that he knows I had a key, but I could explain that."

But she no longer had the document. I had reached and taken it. You are welcome to think I should have changed holds on her and gone on fighting, but you weren't there seeing and hearing her, and I was. I gave up. I got out my pocket notebook, tore out a page, and began writing on it.

"I could use another drink," she stated.

"In a minute," I mumbled, and went on writing, as follows:

To Nero Wolfe:

I hereby declare that Archie Goodwin has tried his best to persuade me to sign the statement you wrote, and explained its purpose to me, and I have toM him why I must refuse to sign it.

Curtains for Three 63

"There," I said, handing it to her. "That won't be signing something; it's just stating that you refuse to sign something. The reason I've got to have it, Mr. Wolfe knows how beautiful girls appeal to me, especially sophisticated girls like you, and if I take that thing back to him unsigned he'll think I didn't even try. He might even fire me. Just write your name there at the bottom."

She read it over again and took the pen. She smiled at me, glistening. "You're not kidding me any," she said, not unfriendly. "I know when I appeal to a man. You think I'm cold and calculating."

"Yeah?" I made it a little bitter, *ut not too bitter. "Anyhow it's not the point whether you appeal to me, but what Mr. Wolfe will think. It'll help a lot to have that. Much obliged." I took the paper from her and blew on her signature to dry it.

"I know when I appeal to a man," she stated. There wasn't another thing there I wanted, but I had practically promised to buy her another drink, so I Jdid so.

It was after six when I got back to West Thirty f|Mth Street, so Wolfe had finished in the plant rooms was down in the office. I marched in and put the

tied statement on his desk in front of him. He grunted. "Well?"

|? I sat down and told him exactly how it had gone, up |ittie point where she had offered to take the docu at home and show it to her father. Wl'm sorry," I said, "but some of her outstanding i didn't show much in that crowd the other eve I give this not as an excuse but merely a fact, r mental operations could easily be carried on inside TOd-out pea. Knowing what you think of unsupl statements, and wanting to convince you of the

64 Rex Stout

truth of that one. I got evidence to back it up. Here's a paper she did sign."

I handed him the page I had torn from my notebook. He took a look at it and then cocked an eye at me.

"She signed this?"

"Yes, sir. In my presence."

"Indeed. Good. Satisfactory."

I acknowledged the tribute with a careless nod. It does not hurt my feelings when he says, "Satisfactory," like that

"A bold, easy hand," he said. "She used your pen?"

"Yes, sir."

"May I have it, please?"

I arose and handed it to him, together with a couple of sheets of typewriter paper, and stood and watched with interested approval as he wrote "Clara James" over and over again, comparing each attempt with the sample I had secured. Meanwhile, at intervals, he spoke.

"It's highly unlikely that anyone will ever see it-- except our clients. . . . That's better. . . . There's time to phone all of them before dinner--first Mrs. Mion and Mr. Weppler--then the others. . . . Tell them my opinion is ready on Mrs. Mion's claim against Mr. James. . . . If they can cpme at nine this evening --If that's impossible tomorrow morning at eleven will do. ... Then get Mr. Cramer. . . . Tell him it might be well to bring one of his men along. . . ."

He flattened the typed statement on his desk blotter, forged Clara James' name at the bottom, and compared it with the true signature which I had provided.

"Faulty, to ah expert," he muttered, "but no expert will ever see it. For our clients, even if they know her writing, it will do nicely."

Curtains for Three 65

VIII

It took a solid hour on the phone to get it fixed for that evening, but I finally managed it. I never did catch up with Gifford James, but his daughter agreed to find him and deliver him, and made good on it. The others I tracked down myself.

The only ones that gave me an argument were the clients, especially Peggy Mion. She balked hard at sitting in at a meeting for the ostensible purpose of collecting from Gifford James, and I had to appeal to Wolfe. Fred and Peggy were invited to come ahead of the others for a private briefing and then decide whether to stay or not. She bought that.

They got there in time to help out with the after dinner coffee. Peggy had presumably brushed her teeth and had a nap and a bath, and manifestly she had changed her clothes, but even so she did not sparkle. She was wary, weary, removed, and skeptical. She didn't say in so many words that she wished she had never gone near Nero Wolfe, but she might as well have. I had a notion that Fred Weppler felt the same way about it but was being gallant and loyal. It was Peggy who had insisted on coming to Wolfe, and Fred didn't want her to feel that he thought she had made things worse instead of better.

They didn't perk up even when Wolfe showed them the statement with Clara James' name signed to it. They read it together, with her in the red leather chair and him perched on the arm.

They looked up together, at Wolfe.

"So what?" Fred demanded.

"My dear sir." Wolfe pushed his cup and saucer back. "My dear madam. Why did you come to me? Because the fact that the gun was not on, the floor when

66 Rex Stout

you two entered the studio convinced you that Mion had not killed himself but had been murdered. If the circumstances had permitted you to believe that he had killed himself, you would be married by now and never have needed me. Very well. That is now precisely what the circumstances are. What more do you want? You wanted your minds cleared. I have cleared them."

Fred twisted his lips, tight.

"I don't believe it," Peggy said glumly.

"You don't believe this statement?" Wolfe reached for the document and put it in his desk drawer, which struck me as a wise precaution, since it was getting close to nine o'clock. "Do you think Miss James would sign a thing like that if it weren't true? Why would--"

"I don't mean that," Peggy said. "I mean I don't believe my husband killed himself, no matter where the gun was. I knew him too well. He would never have killed himself--never." She twisted her head to look up at her fellow client. "Would he, Fred?"

"It's hard to believe," Fred admitted grudgingly.

"I see." Wolfe was caustic. "Then the job you hired me for was not as you described it. At least, you must concede that I have satisfied you about the gun; you can't wiggle out of that. So that job's done, but now you want more. You want a murder disclosed, which means, of necessity, a. murderer caught. You want--"

"I only mean," Peggy insisted forlornly, "that I don't believe he killed himself, and nothing would make me believe it. I see now what I really--"

The doorbell sounded, and I went to answer it.

Curtains for Three 67

IX

So the clients stayed for the party.

There were ten guests altogether: the six who had been there Monday evening, the two clients, Inspector Cramer, and my old friend and enemy, Sergeant Purley Stebbins. What made it unusual was that the dumbest one of the lot, Clara James, was the only one who had a notion of what was up, unless she had told her father, which I doubted. She had the advantage of the lead I had given her at the Churchill bar. Adele Bosley, Dr. Lloyd, Rupert Grove, Judge Arnold, and Gifford James had had no reason to suppose there was anything on the agenda but the damage claim against James, until they got there and were made acquainted with Inspector Cramer and Sergeant Stebbins. God only knew what they thought then; one glance at their faces was enough to show they didn't know. As for Cramer and Stebbins, they had had enough experience of Nero Wolfe to be aware that almost certainly fur was going to fly, but whose and how and when? And as for Fred and Peggy, even after the arrival of the law, they probably thought that Wolfe was going to get Mion's suicide pegged down by producing Clara's statement and disclosing what Fred had told us about moving the gun from the bust to the floor, which accounted for the desperate and cornered look on then faces. But now they were stuck.

Wolfe focused on the inspector, who was seated in the rear over by the big globe, with Purley nearby. "If you don't mind, Mr. Cramer, first 111 clear up a little matter that is outside your interest."

Cramer nodded and shifted the cigar in his mouth to a new angle. He was keeping his watchful eyes on the move.

68 Rex Stout

Wolfe changed his focus. "I'm sure you'll all be glad to hear this. Not that I formed my opinion so as to please you; I considered only the merits Of the case. Without prejudice to her legal position, I feel that morally Mrs. Mion has no claim on Mr. James. As I said she would, she accepts my judgment. She makes no claim and will ask no payment for damages. You verify that before these witnesses, Mrs. Mion?"

"Certainly." Peggy was going to add something, but stopped it on the way out.

"This is wonderful!" Adele Bosley was out of her chair. "May I use a phone?"

"Later," Wolfe snapped at her. "Sit down, please."

"It seems to me," Judge Arnold observed, "that this could have, been told us on the. phone. I had to cancel an important engagement." Lawyers are never satisfied.

"Quite true," Wolfe agreed mildly, "if that were all. But there's the matter of Mion's death. When I--"

"What has that got to do with it?"

"I'm about to tell you. Surely it isn't extraneous, since his death resulted, though indirectly, from the assault by Mr. James. But my interest goes beyond that. Mrs. Mion hired me not only to decide about the claim of her husband's estate against Mr. James--that is now closed--but also to investigate her husband's death. She was convinced he had not killed himself. She could not believe it was in his character to commit suicide. I have investigated and I am prepared to report to her."

"You don't need us here for that," Rupert the Fat said in a high squeak.

"I need one of you. I need the murderer."

"You still don't need us," Arnold said harshly.

Curtains for Three 69

"Hang it," Wolfe snapped, "then go! All but one of you. Go!"

Nobody made a move.

Wolfe gave them five seconds. "Then I'll go on," he said dryly. "As I say, I'm prepared to report, but the investigation is not concluded. One vital detail will require official sanction, and that's why Inspector Cramer is present. It will also need Mrs. Mion's concurrence; and I think it well to consult Dr. Lloyd too, since he signed the death certificate." His eyes went to Peggy. "First you, madam. Will you give your consent to the exhumation of your husband's body?"

She gawked at him. "What for?"

"To get evidence that he was murdered, and by whom. It is a reasonable expectation."

She stopped gawking. "Yes. I don't care." She thought he was just talking to hear himself.

Wolfe's eyes went left. "You have no objection, Dr. Lloyd?" Lloyd was nonplused. "I have no idea," he said slowly and distinctly, "what you're getting at, but in any case I have no voice in the matter. I merely issued the certificate."

"Then you won't oppose it. Mr. Cramer. The basis for the request for official sanction will appear in a moment, but you should know that what will be required is an examination and report by Dr. Abraham Rentner of Mount Sinai Hospital."

"You don't get an exhumation just because you're curious," Cramer growled.

"I know it. I'm more than curious." Wolfe's eyes traveled. "You all know, I suppose, that one of the chief reasons, probably the main one, for the police decision that Mion had committed suicide was the manner of his death. Of course other details had to fit--as for instance the presence of the gun there beside the body--

70 Rex Stout

and they did. But the determining factor was the assumption that a man cannot be murdered by sticking the barrel of a revolver in his mouth and pulling the trigger unless he is first made unconscious; and there was no evidence that Mion had been either struck or drugged, and besides, when the bullet left his head it went to the ceiling. However, though that assumption is ordinarily sound, surely this case was an exception. It came to my mind at once, when Mrs. Mion first consulted me. For there was present-- But I'll show you with a simple demonstration. Archie. Get a gun."

I opened my third drawer and got one out.

"Is it loaded?"

I flipped it open to check. "No, sir."

Wolfe returned to the audience. "You, I think, Mr. James. As an opera singer you should be able to follow stage directions. Stand up, please. This is a serious matter, so do it right. You are a patient with a sore throat, and Mr. Goodwin is your doctor. He will ask you to open your mouth so he can look at your throat. You are to do exactly what you would naturally do under those circumstances. Will you do that?"

"But it's obvious." James, standing, was looking grim. "I don't need to."

"Nevertheless, please indulge me. There's a certain detail. Will you do it as naturally as possible?"

"Yes."

"Good. Will the rest of you all watch Mr. James' face? Closely. Go ahead, Archie."

With the gun in my pocket I moved in front of James and told him to open wide. He did so. For a moment his eyes came to mine as I peered into his throat, and then slanted upward. Not in a hurry, I took the gun from my pocket and poked it into his mouth

Curtains for Three 71

until it touched the roof. He jerked back and dropped into his chair.

"Did you see the gun?" Wolfe demanded.

"No. My eyes were up."

"Just so." Wolfe looked at the others. "You saw his I .eyes go up? They always do. Try it yourselves sometime. I tried it in my bedroom Sunday evening. So it is by no means impossible to kill a man that way, it isn't even difficult, if you're a doctor and he has something wrong with his throat. You agree, Dr. Lloyd?"

Lloyd had not joined the general movement to watch James' face during the demonstration. He hadn't stirred a muscle. Now his jaw was twitching a little, but that was all.

He did his best to smile. "To show that a thing could happen," he said in a pretty good voice, "isn't the same thing as proving it did happen."

"Indeed it isn't," Wolfe conceded. "Though we do have some facts. You have no effective alibi. Mion would have admitted you to his studio at any time without question. You could have managed easily to get the gun from the base of Caruso's bust, and slipped it into your pocket without being seen. For you, as for no one else, he would upon request have stood with his mouth wide open, inviting his doom. He was killed shortly after you had been compelled to make an appointment for Dr. Rentner to examine him. We do have those facts, don't we?"

"They prove nothing," Lloyd insisted. His voice was not quite as good. He came out of his chair to his feet. It did not look as if the movement had any purpose; apparently he simply couldn't stay put in his chair, and the muscles had acted on their own. And it had been a mistake because, standing upright, he began to tremble.

72 Bex Stout

"They'll help," Wolfe told him, "if we can get one more-^and I suspect we can, or what are you quivering about? What was it, Doctor? Some unfortunate blunder? Had you botched the operation and ruined his voice forever? I suppose that was it, since the threat to your reputation and career was grave enough to make you resort to murder. Anyhow we'll soon know, when Dr. Rentner makes his examination and reports. I don't expect you to furnish--"

"It wasn't a blunder!" Lloyd squawked. "It could have happened to anyone--"

Whereupon he did blunder. I think what made him lose his head completely was hearing his own voice and realizing it was a hysterical squawk and he couldn't help it. He made a dash for the door. I knocked Judge Arnold down in my rush across the room, which was unnecessary, for by the time I arrived Purley Stebbins had Lloyd by the collar, and Cramer was there too. Hearing a commotion behind me, I turned around. Clara James had made a dive for Peggy Mion, screeching something I didn't catch, but her father and Adele Bosley had stopped her and were getting her under control. Judge Arnold and Rupert the Fat were excitedly telling Wolfe how wonderful he was. Peggy was apparently weeping, from the way her shoulders were shaking, but I couldn't see her face because it was buried on Fred's shoulder, and his arms had her tight.

Nobody wanted me or needed me, so I went to the kitchen for a glass of milk.

Bullet for One

It was her complexion that made it hard to believe she was as scared as she said she was.

"Maybe I haven't made it clear," she persisted, twisting her fingers some more though I had asked her to stop. "I'm not making anything up, really I'm not. If they framed me once, isn't that a good enough-reason to think they are doing it again?"

If her cheek color had been from a drugstore, with the patches showing because the fear in her heart was using extra blood for internal needs, I would probably have been affected more. But at first sight of her I had been reminded of a picture on a calendar hanging on the wall of Sam's Diner on Eleventh Avenue, a picture of a round-faced girl with one hand holding a pail and the other hand resting on the flank of a cow she had just milked or was going to milk. It was her to a T, in skin tint, build, and innocence.

She quit the finger-twisting to make tight little fists and perch them on her thigh fronts. "Is he really such a puffed-up baboon?" she demanded. "They'll be here in twenty minutes, and I've got to see him first!"

74 Rex Stout

Suddenly she was out of the chair, on her feet. "Where is he, upstairs?"

Having suspected she was subject to impulses, I had, instead of crossing to my desk, held a position between her and the door to the hall.

"Give it up," I advised her. "When you stand up you tremble, I noticed that when you came in, so sit down. I've tried to explain, Miss Rooney, that while this room is Mr. Wolfe's office, the rest of this building is his home. From nine to eleven in the morning, and from four to six in the afternoon, he is absolutely at home, up in the plant rooms with his orchids, and bigger men than you have had to like it. But, what I've seen of you, I think possibly you're nice, and I'll do you a favor."

"What?"

"Sit down and quit trembling."

She sat down.

"I'll go up and tell him about you."

"What will you tell him?"

"I'll remind him that a man named Ferdinand Pohl phoned this morning and made a date for himself and four others, to come here to see Mr. Wolfe at six o'clock, which is sixteen minutes from now. I'll tell him your name is Audrey Rooney and you're one of the four others, and you're fairly good-looking and may be nice, and you're scared stiff because, as you tell it, they're pretending they think it was Talbott but actually they're getting set to frame you, and--"

"Not all of them."

"Anyhow some. I'll tell him that you came ahead of time to see him alone and inform him that you have not murdered anyone, specifically not Sigmund Keyes, and to warn him that he must watch these stinkers like a hawk."

Curtains for Three 75

"It sounds crazy--like that!"

"I'll put feeling in it."

She left her chair again, came to me in three swift ff steps, flattened her palms on my coat front, and tilted fipher head back to get my eyes.

"You may be nice too," she said hopefully.

"That would be too much to expect," I told her as I Hfcurned and made for the stairs in the hall.

II

pounds Ferdinand Pohl was speaking.

k: Sitting there in the office with my chair swiveled so that my back was to my desk, with Wolfe himself bell hind his desk to my left, I took Pohl in. He was close to sitwice my age. Seated in the red leather chair beyond |sthe end of Wblfe's desk, with his leg-crossing histing ghis pants so that five inches of bare shin showed above I his garterless sock, there was nothing about him to command attention except an unusual assortment of glacial creases, and nothing at all to love.

"What brought us together," he was saying in a |. thin peevish tone, "and what brought us here together,

76 Rex Stout

"You said," Pohl told her, even more peevish, "that you were in sympathy with our purpose and wanted to join us and come here with us."

Seeing them and hearing them, I made a note that they hated each other. She had known him longer than I had, since she called him Ferdy, and evidently she agreed that there was nothing about him to love. I was about to start feeling that I had been too harsh with her when I saw she was lifting her brows at him.

"That," she declared, "is quite different from having the opinion that Vie murdered my father. I have no opinion, because I don't know."

"Then what are you in sympathy with?"

"I want to find out. So do you. And I certainly agree that the police are being extremely stupid."

"Who do you think killed him if Vk didn't?"

"I don't know." The brows went up again. "But since I have inherited my father's business, and since I am engaged to marry Vie, and since a few other things, I want very much to know. That's why I'm here with you."

"You don't belong here!"

"I'm here, Ferdy."

"I say you don't belong!" Pohl's creases were wriggling. "I said so and I still say so! We came, the four of us, for a definite purpose, to get Nero Wolfe to find proof that Vie killed your father!" Pohl suddenly uncrossed his legs, leaned forward to peer at Dorothy Keyes' face, and asked in a mean little voice, "And what if you helped him?"

Three other voices spoke at once. One said, "They're off again."

Another, "Let Mr. Broadyke tell it."

Another, "Get one of them out of here."

Wolfe said, "If the job is limited to those terms, Mr.

Curtains for Three 77

1, to prove that a man named by you committed ier, you've wasted your trip. What if he didn't?"

Ill

ny things had happened in that office on the ground or of the old brownstone house owned by Nero Sfolfe during the years I had worked for him as his Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, pMednesday, and Thursday.

This gathering in the office, on this Tuesday eve in October, had its own special angle of interest, tiund Keyes, top-drawer industrial designer, had en murdered the preceding Tuesday, just a week I had read about it in the papers and had also and an opportunity to hear it privately discussed by ay friend and enemy Sergeant Purley Stebbins of lomicide, and from the professional-detectivejslant it ack me as a lulu.

It had been Keyes' custom, five days a week at sixty in the morning, to take a walk in the park, and to it the hard and silly way by walking on four legs i instead of two. He kept the four legs, which he owned 1 which were named Casanova, at the Stillwell Rid; Academy on Ninety-eighth Street just west of the Ijiark. That morning he mounted Casanova as usual, omptly at six-thirty, and rode into the park. Forty nutes later, at seven-ten, he had been seen by a nted cop, in the park on patrol, down around ty-sixth Street. His customary schedule would fgj&ye had him about there at that time. Twenty-five nutes later, at seven-thirty-five, Casanova, with his I saddle uninhabited, had emerged from the park uptown and strolled down the street to the academy. Cu 78 Rex Stout

riosity had naturally been aroused, and in three quarters of an hour had been satisfied, when a park cop had found Keyes' body behind a thicket some twenty yards from the bridle path in the park, in the latitude of Ninety-fifth Street. Later a .38-caliber revolver bullet had been dug out of his chest. The police had concluded, from marks on the path and beyond its edge, that he had been shot out of his saddle and had crawled, with difficulty, up a little slope toward a paved walk for pedestrians, and hadn't had enough life left to make it.

A horseman shot from his saddle within sight of the Empire State Building was of course a natural for the tabloids, and the other papers thought well of it too. No weapon had been found, and no eyewitnesses. No citizen had even come forward to report seeing a masked man lurking behind a tree, probably because very few New Yorkers could possibly explain being up and dressed and strolling in the park at that hour of the morning.

So the city employees had had to start at the other end and look for motives and opportunities. During the week that had passed a lot of names had been mentioned and a lot of people had received official callers, and as a result the glare had pretty well concentrated on six spots. So the papers had it, and so I gathered from Purley Stebbins. What gave the scene in our office that Tuesday afternoon its special angle of interest was the fact that five of the six spots were there seated on chairs, and apparently what they wanted Wolfe to do was to take the glare out of their eyes and get it aimed exclusively at the sixth spot, not present.

Curtains for Three 79

l IV

"Permit me to say," Frank Broadyke offered in a cultivated baritone, "that Mr. Pohl has put it badly. The situation is this, Mr. Wolfe, that Mr. Pohl got us tori gether and we found that each of us feels that he is being harassed unreasonably. Not only that he is unjustly suspected of a crime he did not commit, but that in a full week the police have accomplished nothing and aren't likely to, and we will be left with this unjust suspicion permanently upon us."

Broadyke gestured with a hand. More than his bar

ritone was cultivated; he was cultivated all over. He

was somewhat younger than Pohl, and ten times as

elegant. His manner gave the impression that he was

finding it difficult just to be himself because (a) he was

in the office of a private detective, which was vulgar,

i (b) he had come there with persons with whom one

I. doesn't ordinarily associate, which was embarrassing,

; and (c) the subject for discussion was his connection

/with a murder, which was preposterous.

; He was going on. "Mr. Pohl suggested that we con

j^sult you and engage your services. As one who will

gladly pay my share of the bill, permit me to say that

what I want is the removal of that unjust suspicion. If

you can achieve that only by finding the criminal and

evidence against him, very well. If the guilty man

proves to be Victor Talbott, again very well."

"There's no if about it!" Pohl blurted. "Talbott did it, and the job is to pin it on him!"

"With me helping, Ferdy, don't forget," Dorothy Keyes told him softly. "Aw, can it!"

Eyes turned to the speaker, whose only contribution up to that point had been the remark, "They're off

80 Rex Stoat

again." Heads had to turn too because he was seated to the rear of the swing of the arc. The high pitch of his voice was a good match for his name, Wayne Safford, but not for his broad husky build and the strong big bones of his face. According to the papers he was twenty-eight, but he looked a little older, about my age.

Wolfe nodded at him. "I quite agree, Mr. Safford." Wolfe's eyes swept the arc. "Mr. Pohl wants too much for his money. You can hire me to catch a fish, ladies and gentlemen, but you can't tell me which fish. You can tell me what it is I'm after--a murderer--but you can't tell me who it is unless you have evidence, and in that case why pay me? Have you got evidence?"

No one said anything.

"Have you got evidence, Mr. Pohl?"

"No."

"How do you know it was Mr. Talbott?"

"I know it, that's all. We all know it! Even Miss Keyes here knows it, but she's too damn contrary to admit it."

Wolfe swept the arc again. "Is that true? Do you all know it?"

No word. No "yes" and no "no." No nods and no shakes.

'Then the identity of the fish is left to me. Is that understood? Mr. Broadyke?"

"Yes."

"Mr. Safford?"

"Yes."

"Miss Rooney?"

"Yes. Only I think it was Vie Talbott."

"Nothing can stop you. Miss Keyes?"

"Yes."

Curtains for Three 81

"Mr. Pohl?"

No answer.

"I must have a commitment on this, Mr. Pohl. If it proves to be Mr. Talbott you can pay extra. But in any case, I am hired to get facts?"

"Sure, the real facts."

"There is no other kind. I guarantee not to deliver any unreal facts." Wolfe leaned forward to press a button on his desk. "That is, indeed, the only guaranty I can give you. I should make it plain that you are responsible both collectively and individually for this engagement with me. Now if--"

The door to the hall had opened, and Fritz Brenner entered and approached.

"Fritz," Wolfe told him, "there will be five guests at dinner."

"Yes, sir," Fritz told him without a blink and turned to go. That's how good Fritz is, and he is not the kind to ring in omelets or canned soup. As he was opening the door a protest came from Frank Broadyke.

"Better make it four. I'll have to leave soon and I have a dinner engagement."

"Cancel it," Wolfe snapped.

"I'm afraid I can't, really."

"Then I can't take this job." Wolfe was curt. "What do you expect, with this thing already a week old?" He glanced at the clock on the wall. "I'll need you, all of you, certainly all evening, and probably most of the night. I must know all that you know about Mr. Keyes and Mr. Talbott. Also, if I am to remove this unjust suspicion of you from the minds of the police and the public, I must begin by removing it from my own mind. That will take many hours of hard work."

"Oh," Dorothy Keyes put in, her brows going up, "you suspect us, do you?"

82 Rex Stout

Wolfe, ignoring her, asked Broadyke, "Well, sir?"

"I'll have to phone," Broadyke muttered.

"You may," Wolfe conceded, as if he were yielding a point. His eyes moved, left and right and left again, and settled on Audrey Rooney, whose chair was a little in the rear, to one side of Wayne Safford's. "Miss Rooney," he shot at her, "you seem to be the most vulnerable, since you were on the scene. When did Mr. Keyes dismiss you from his employ, and what for?"

Audrey had been sitting straight and still, with her lips tight. "Well, it was--" she began, but stopped to clear her throat and then didn't continue because of an interruption.

The doorbell had rung, and I had left it to Fritz to answer it, which was the custom when I was engaged with Wolfe and visitors, unless superseding orders had been given. Now the door to the hall opened, and Fritz entered, closed the door behind him, and announced. "A gentleman to see you, sir. Mr. Victor Talbott."

The name plopped in the middle of us like a paratrooper at a picnic.

"By God!" Wayne Safford exclaimed.

"How the devil--" Frank Broadyke started, and stopped.

"So you told him!" Pohl spat at Dorothy Keyes.

Dorothy merely raised her brows. I was getting fed up with that routine and wished she would try something else.

Audrey Rooney's mouth was hanging open.

"Show him in," Wolfe told Fritz.

Curtains for Three 83

Like millions of my fellow citizens, I had done some sizing up of Victor Talbott from pictures of him in the papers, and within ten seconds after he had joined us in the office I had decided the label I had tied on him .could stay. He was the guy who, at a cocktail party or before dinner, grabs the tray of appetizers and passes it around, looking into eyes and making cracks.

Not counting me, he was easily the best-looking male in the room.

Entering, he shot a glance and a smile at Dorothy Keyes, ignored the others, came to a stop in front of Wolfe's desk, and said pleasantly, "You're Nero Wolfe, of course. I'm Vie Talbott. I suppose you'd rather not shake hands with me under the circumstances--that is, if you're accepting the job these people eame to offer you. Are you?"

; "How do you do, sir," Wolfe rumbled. "Good heavens, I've shaken hands with--how many murderers, Archie?"

"Oh--forty," I estimated.

"At least that. That's Mr. Goodwin, Mr. Talbott."

Evidently Vie figured I might be squeamish too, for he gave me a nod but extended no hand. Then he turned to face the guests. "What about it, folks? Have you hired the great detective?"

"Nuts," Wayne Safford squeaked at him. "You come prancing in, huh?"

Ferdinand Pohl had left his chair and was advancing on the gate-crasher. I was on my feet, ready to move. There was plenty of feeling loose in the room, and I didn't want any of our clients hurt. But all Pohl did was to tap Talbott on the chest with a thick forefinger and growl at him, "Listen, my boy. You're not go 84 Rex Stoat

ing to sell anything here. You've made one sale too many as it is." Pohl whirled to Wolfe. "What did you let him in for?"

"Permit me to say," Broadyke put in, "that it does seem an excess of hospitality."

"By the way, Vie"--it was Dorothy's soft voice-- "Ferdy says I was your accomplice."

The remarks from the others had made no visible impression on him, but it was different with Dorothy. He turned to her, and the look on his face was good for a whole chapter in his biography. He was absolutely all hers unless I needed an oculist. She could lift her lovely brows a thousand times a day without feeding him up. He let his eyes speak to her and then wheeled to use his tongue for Pohl. "Do you know what I think of you, Ferdy? I guess you do!"

"If you please," Wolfe said sharply. "You don't need my office for exchanging your opinions of one another; you can do that anywhere. We have work to do. Mr. Talbott, you asked if I've accepted a job that has been offered me. I have. I have engaged to investigate the murder of Sigmund Keyes. But I have received no confidences and can still decline it. Have you a better offer? What did you come here for?"

Talbott smiled at him. "That's the way to talk," he said admiringly. "No, I have nothing to offer in the way of a job, but I felt I ought to be in on this. I figured it this way: they were going to hire you to get me arrested for murder, so naturally you would like to have a look at me and ask me some questions--and here I am."

"Pleading not guilty, of course. Archie. A chair for Mr. Talbott."

"Of course," he agreed, thanking me with a smile for the chair I brought, and sitting down. "Otherwise

Curtains for Three 85

lyou'd have no job. Shoot." Suddenly he flushed. "Un Ider the circumstances, I guess I shouldn't have said 'shoot.'"

"You could have said 'Fire away,'" Wayne Safford Epiped up from the rear.

"Be quiet, Wayne," Audrey Rooney scolded him. "Permit me--" Broadyke began, but Wolfe cut him off.

"No. Mr. Talbott has invited questions." He focused I on the inviter. "These other people think the police are H handling this matter stupidly and ineffectively. Do you I agree, Mr. Talbott?"

Vie considered a moment, then nodded. "On the whole, yes," he assented. "Why?"

"Well--you see, they're up against it. They're used to working with clues, and while they found plenty of H dues to show what happened, like the marks -on the bridle path and leading to the thicket, there aren't any that help to identify the murderer. Absolutely none whatever. So they had to fall back on motive, and right away they found a man with the best motive in the world."

Talbott tapped himself on the necktie. "Me. But then they found that his man--me--that I couldn't possibly have done it because I was somewhere else. They found I had an alibi that was--" "Phony!" From Wayne Safford. "Made to order." From Broadyke. "The dumbheads!" From Pohl. "If they had brains enough to give that switchboard girl--"

"Please!" Wolfe shut them up. "Go ahead, Mr. Talbott. Your alibi--but first the motive. What is the best motive in the world?"

86 Rex Stout

Vie looked surprised. "It's been printed over and over again."

"I know. But I don't want journalistic conjectures when I've got you--unless you're sensitive about it."

Talbott's smile had some bitterness in it. "If I was," he declared, "I've sure been cured this past week. I guess ten million people have read that I'm deeply in love with Dorothy Keyes or some variation of that. All right, I am! Want a shot--want a picture of me saying it?" He turned to face his fiancee. "I love you, Dorothy, better than all the world, deeply, madly, with all my heart." He returned to Wolfe. "There's your motive."

"Vie, darling," Dorothy told his profile, "you're a perfect fool, and you're perfectly fascinating. I really am glad you've got a good alibi."

"You demonstrate love," Wolfe said dryly, "by killing your beloved's surviving parent. Is that it?"

"Yes," Talbott asserted. "Under certain conditions. Here was the situation. Sigmund Keyes was the most celebrated and successful industrial designer in America, and--"

"Nonsense!" Broadyke exploded, without asking permission to say.

Talbott smiled. "Sometimes," he said, as if offering it for consideration, "a jealous man is worse than any jealous woman. You know, of course, that Mr. Broadyke is himself an industrial designer--in fact, he practically invented the profession. Not many manufacturers would dream of tooling for a new model --steamship, railroad train, airplane, refrigerator, vacuum cleaner, alarm clock, no matter what--without consulting Broadyke, until I came along and took over the selling end for Sigmund Keyes. Incidentally, that's why I doubt if Broadyke killed Keyes. If he had got

Curtains for Three 87

that desperate about it he wouldn't have killed Keyes, he would have killed me."

"You were speaking," Wolfe reminded him, "of love as a motive for murder under certain conditions."

"Yes, and Broadyke threw me off." Talbott cocked his head. "Let's see--oh, yes, and I was doing the selling for Keyes, and he couldn't stand the talk going around that I was mostly responsible for the big success we were having, but he was afraid to get rid of me. And I loved his daughter and wanted her to marry me, and will always love her. But he had great influence with her, which I did not and do not understand-- anyway, if she loved me as I do her that wouldn't have mattered, but she doesn't--"

"My God, Vie," Dorothy protested, "haven't I said a dozen times I'd marry you like that"--she snapped her fingers--"if it weren't for Dad? Really, I'm crazy about you!"

"All right," Talbott told Wolfe, "there's your motive. It's certainly old-fashioned, no modern industrial design to it, but it's absolutely dependable. Naturally that's what the police thought until they ran up against the fact that I was somewhere else. That got them bewildered and made them sore, and they haven't recovered their wits, so I guess my good friends here are right that they're being stupid and ineffective. Not that they've crossed me off entirely. I understand they've got an army of detectives and stool pigeons hunting for the gunman I hired to do the job. They'll have to hunt hard. You heard Miss Keyes call me a fool, but I'm not quite fool enough to hire someone to commit a murder for me."

"I should hope not." Wolfe sighed. "There's nothing better than a good motive. What about the alibi? Have the police given up on that?"

88 Rex Stout

"Yes, the damn idiots!" Pohl blurted. "That switchboard girl--"

"I asked Mr. Talbott," Wolfe snapped.

"I don't know," Talbott admitted, "but I suppose they had to. I'm still trembling at how lucky I was that I got to bed late that Monday night--I mean a week ago, the night before Keyes was killed. If I had been riding with him I'd be in jail now, and done for. It's a question of timing."

Talbott compressed his lips and loosened them. "Oh, boy! The mounted cop saw Keyes riding in the park near Sixty-sixth Street at ten minutes past seven. Keyes was killed near Ninety-sixth Street. Even if he had galloped all the way he couldn't have got there, the way that bridle path winds, before seven-twenty. And he didn't gallop, because if he had the horse would have shown it, and he didn't." Talbott twisted around. "You're the authority on that, Wayne. Casanova hadn't been in a sweat, had he?"

"You're telling it," was all he got from Wayne Saf ford.

"Well, he hadn't," Talbott told Wolfe. "Wayne is on record on that. So Keyes couldn't have reached the spot where he was killed before seven-twenty-five. There's the time for that, twenty-five minutes past seven."

"And you?" Wolfe inquired.

"Me, I was lucky. I often rode in the park with Keyes at that ungodly hour--two or three times a week. He wanted me to make it every day, but I got out of it about half the time. There was nothing social or sociable about it. We would walk our horses side by side, talking business, except when he felt like trotting. I live at the Hotel Churchill. I got in late Monday night, but I left a call for six o'clock anyway, because I

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hadn't ridden with Keyes for several days and didn't want to get him sore. But when the girl rang- my phone in the morning I was just too damn sleepy, and I told her to call the riding academy and say I wouldn't be there, and to call me again at seven-thirty. She did so, and I still didn't feel like turning out bat I had to because I had a breakfast date with an out-of-town customer, so I told her to send up a double orange juice. A few minutes later a waiter brought it up. So was I lucky? Keyes was killed uptown at twenty-five past seven at the earliest, and probably a little later. I was in my room at the Churchill, nearly three miles away, at half-past seven. You can have three guesses how glad I was I left that seven-thirty call!"

Wolfe nodded. "You should give the out-of-town customer a discount. In that armor, why did you take the trouble to join this gathering?"

"A switchboard girl and a waiter, for God's sake!" .Pohl snorted sarcastically.

"Nice honest people, Ferdy," Talbott told him, and answered Wolfe, "I didn't."

"No? You're not here?"

"Sure I'm here, but not to join any gathering. I came to join Miss Keyes. I don't regard it as trouble to join Miss Keyes. As for the rest of them, except maybe Broadyke--"

The doorbell rang again, and since additional gatecrashers might or might not be desirable, I upped myself in a hurry, stepped across and into the hall, intercepted Fritz just in time, and went to the front door to take a look through the panel of one-way glass.

Seeing who it was out on the stoop, I fastened the chain bolt, pulled the door open the two inches the rchain would permit, and spoke through the crack. "I lon't want to catch cold." 90 Rex Stout

"Neither do I," a gruff voice told me. "Take that damn bolt off."

"Mr. Wolfe is engaged," I said politely. "Will I do?"

"You will not. You never have and you never will."

"Then hold it a minute. I'll see."

I shut the door, went to the office, and told Wolfe, "The man about the chair," which was my favorite alias for Inspector Cramer of Homicide.

Wolfe grunted and shook his head. "I'll be busy for hours and can't be interrupted."

I returned to the front, opened to the crack again, and said regretfully, "Sorry, but he's doing his homework."

"Yeah," Cramer said sarcastically, "he certainly is. Now that Talbott's here too you've got a full house. All six of 'em. Open the door."

"Bah. Who are you trying to impress? You have tails on one or more, possibly all, and I do hope you haven't abandoned Talbott because we like him. By the way, the phone girl and the waiter at the Churchill-- what're their names?"

"I'm coming in, Goodwin."

"Come ahead. This chain has never had a real test, and I've wondered about it."

"In the name of the law, open this door!"

I was so astonished that I nearly did open it in order to get a good look at him. Through the crack I could use only one eye. "Well, listen to you," I said incredulously. "On me you try that? As you know, it's the law that keeps you out. If you're ready to make an arrest, tell me who, and I'll see that he or she doesn't pull a scoot. After all, you're not a monopoly. You've had them for a full week, day or night, and Wolfe has had them only an hour or so, and you can't bear it! Incidentally, they're not refusing to see you, they don't

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know you're here, so don't chalk that against them. It's Mr. Wolfe who can't be disturbed. I'll give you this much satisfaction: he hasn't solved it yet, and it may take till midnight. It will save time if you'll give me the names--"

"Shut up," Cramer rasped. "I came here perfectly friendly. There's no law against Wolfe having people in his office. And there's no law against my being there with them, either."

"There sure isn't," I agreed heartily, "once you're in, but what about this door? Here's a legal door, with a man on one side who can't open it, and a man on the other side who won't, and according to the statutes--"

"Archie!" It was a bellow from the office, Wolfe's loudest bellow, seldom heard, and there were other sounds. It came again. "Archie!"

I said hastily, "Excuse me," slammed the d6or shut, ran down the hall and turned the knob, and popped in.

It was nothing seriously alarming. Wolfe was still in his chair behind his desk. The chair Talbott had occupied was overturned. Dorothy was on her feet, her back to Wolfe's desk, with her brows elevated to a record high. Audrey Rooney was standing in the corner by the big globe, with her clenched fists pressed against her cheeks, staring. Pohl and Broadyke were also out of their chairs, also gazing at the center of the room. From the spectators' frozen attitudes you might have expected to see something really startling, but it was only a couple of guys slinging punches. As I entered Talbott landed a right hook on the side of Saf ford's neck, and as I closed the door to the hall behind me Safford countered with a solid stiff left to Talbott's kidney sector. The only noise besides their fists and feet was a tense mutter from Audrey Rooney in her corner. "Hit him, Wayne; hit him, Wayne."

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"How much did I miss?" I demanded.

"Stop them!" Wolfe ordered me.

Talbott's right glanced off of Safford's cheek, and Safford got in another one over the kidney. They were operating properly and in an orderly manner, but Wolfe was the boss and he hated commotion in the office, so I stepped across, grabbed Talbott's coat collar and yanked him back so hard he fell over a chair, and faced Safford to block him. For a second I thought Safford was going to paste me with one he had waiting, but he let it drop.

"What started it so quick?" I wanted to know.

Audrey was there, clutching my sleeve, protesting fiercely, "You shouldn't have stopped him! Wayne could have knocked him down! He did before!" She sounded more bloodthirsty than milkthirsty.

"He made a remark about Miss Rooney," Broadyke permitted himself to say.

"Get him out of here!" Wolfe spluttered.

"Which one?" I asked, watching Safford with one eye and Talbott with the other.

"Mr. Talbott!"

"You did very well, Vie," Dorothy was saying. "You were fantastically handsome with the gleam of battle in your eye." She put her palms against Talbott's cheeks, pulled his head forward, and stretched her neck to kiss him on the lips--a quick one. "There!"

"Vie is going now," I told her. "Come on, Talbott, I'll let you out."

Before he came he enfolded Dorothy in his arms. I glanced at Safford, expecting him to counter by enfolding Audrey, but he was standing by with his fists still doubled up. So I herded Talbott out of the room ahead of me. In the hall, while he was getting his hat and coat, I took a look through the one-way panel, saw

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that the stoop was clear, and opened the door. As he crossed the sill I told him, "You go for the head too much. You'll break a hand that way someday."

Back in the office someone had righted the overturned chair, and they were all seated again. Apparently, though her knight had been given the boot, Dorothy was going to stick. As I crossed to resume my place at my desk Wolfe was saying, "We got interrupted, Miss Rooney. As I said, you seem to be the most vulnerable, since you were on the scene. Will you please move a little closer--that chair there? Archie, your notebook."

VI

At 10:55 the next morning I was sitting in the office-- not still, but again--waiting for Wolfe to come down from the plant rooms on the roof, where he keeps ten thousand orchids and an assortment of other specimens of vegetation. I was playing three-handed pinochle with Saul Panzer and Orrie Gather, who had been phoned to come in for a job. Saul always wore an old brown cap, was undersized and homely, with a big nose, and was the best field man in the world for everything that could be done without a dinner jacket. Orrie, who would be able to get along without a hairbrush in a few years, was by no means up to Saul but was a good all-round man.

At 10:55 I was three bucks down.

In a drawer of my desk were two notebookfuls. Wolfe hadn't kept the clients all night, but there hadn't been much left of it when he let them go, and we now knew a good deal more about all of them than any of the papers had printed. In some respects they were all

94 Rex Stout

alike, as they told it. For instance, none of them had killed Sigmund Keyes; none was heartbroken over his death, not even his daughter; none had ever owned a revolver or knew much about shooting one; none could produce any evidence that would help to convict Talbott or even get him arrested; none had an airtight alibi; and each had a motive of his own which might not have been the best in the world, like Talbott's, but was nothing to sneeze at.

So they said.

Ferdinand Pohl had been indignant. He couldn't see why time should be wasted on them and theirs, since the proper and sole objective was to bust Talbott's alibi and nab him. But he came through with his facts. Ten years previously he had furnished the hundred thousand dollars that had been needed to get Sigmund Keyes started with the style of setup suitable for a big-time industrial designer. In the past couple of years the Keyes profits had been up above the clouds, and Pohl had wanted an even split and hadn't got it. Keyes had ladled out a measly annual five per cent on Pohl's ante, five thousand a year, whereas half the profits would have been ten times that, and Pohl couldn't confront him with the classic alternative, buy my share or sell me yours, because Pohl had been making bad guesses on other matters and was deep in debt. The law wouldn't have helped, since the partnership agreement had guaranteed Pohl only the five per cent and Keyes had given the profits an alias by taking the gravy as salary, claiming it was his designing ability that made the money. It had been, Pohl said, a case of misjudging a man's character. Now that Keyes was dead it would be a different story, with the contracts on hand and royalties to come for periods up to twenty years. If Pohl and Dorothy, who inherited, couldn't

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come to an understanding, it would be up to a judge to make the divvy, and Pohl would get, he thought, at least two hundred thousand, and probably a lot more.

He denied that that was a good motive for murder --not for him, and anyway it was silly to discuss it, because that Tuesday morning at 7:28 he had taken a train to Larchmont to sail his boat. Had he boarded the train at Grand Central or One Hundred and Twenty fifth Street? Grand Central, he said. Had he been alone? Yes. He had left his apartment on East Eighty fourth Street at seven o'clock and taken the subway. Did he often ride the subway? Yes, fairly frequently, when it wasn't a rush hour. And so on, for fourteen pages of a notebook. I gave him a D minus, even granting that he could cinch it that he reached Larchmont on that train, since it would have stopped at One Hundred and Twenty-fifth Street at 7:38, ten minutes after it left Grand Central.

With Dorothy Keyes the big question was how much of the Keyes profits had been coming her way. Part of the time she seemed to have the idea that her father had been fairly liberal with the dough, and then she would toss in a comment which indicated that he had been as tight-fisted as a baby hanging onto another baby's toy. It was confusing because she had no head for figures. The conclusion I reached was that her take had averaged somewhere between five hundred and twenty thousand a year, which was a wide gap. The point was, which way was she sitting prettier, with her father alive and making plenty of dough and shelling it out, or with him dead and everything hers after Pohl had been attended to? She saw the point all right, and I must say it didn't seem to shock her much, since she didn't even bother to lift her brows.

If it was an act it was good. Instead of standing on

96 Rex Stout

the broad moral principle that daughters do not kill fathers, her fundamental position was that at the unspeakable hour in question, half-past seven in the morning, she couldn't even have been killing a fly, let alone her father. She was never out of bed before eleven, except in emergencies, as for instance the Tuesday morning under discussion, when word had come sometime between nine and ten that her father was dead. That had roused her. She had lived with her father in an apartment on Central Park South. Servants? Two maids. Wolfe put it to her: would it have been possible, before seven in the morning, for her to leave the apartment and the building, and later get back in again, without being seen? Not, she declared, unless someone had turned a hose on her to wake her up; that accomplished, possibly the rest could be managed, but she really couldn't say because he had never tried.

I gave her no mark at all because by that time I was prejudiced and couldn't trust my judgment.

Frank Broadyke was a wow. He had enthusiastically adopted Talbott's suggestion that if he, Broadyke, had undertaken to kill anyone it would have been Talbott and not Keyes, since it implied that Keyes' eminence in his profession had been on account of Talbott's salesmanship instead of Keyes' ability as a designer. Broadyke liked that very much and kept going back to it and plugging it. He admitted that the steady decrease in his own volume of business had been coincident with the rise of Keyes', and he further admitted, when the matter was mentioned by Dorothy, that only three days before the murder Keyes had started an action at law against him for damages to the tune of a hundred thousand dollars, complaining that Broadyke had stolen designs from Keyes' office which had got

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him contracts for a concrete mixer and an electric washing machine. But what the hell, he maintained, the man he would naturally have it in for was Vie Talbott, who had stampeded the market with his high pressure sales methods--and his personality. Ask any reputable industrial designer; ask all of them. Keyes had been a mediocre gadget contriver, with no real understanding of the intricate and intimate relationship between function and design. I see from my notebook that he permitted himself to say that four times altogether.

He had been doing his best to recover lost ground. He partook, he said, of the nature of the lark; the sunrise stirred and inspired him; that was his time of day. All his brilliant early successes had been conceived before the dew was dry in shady places. In the afternoon and evening he was no better than a clod. But eventually he had got lazy and careless, stayed up late and got up late, and it was then his star had begun to dim. Recently, quite recently, he had determined to light the flame again, and only a month ago he had started getting to his office before seven o'clock, three hours before the staff was due to arrive. To his satisfaction and delight, it was beginning to work. The flashes of inspiration were coming back. That very Tuesday morning, the morning Keyes was killed, he had greeted his staff when they arrived by showing them a revolutionary and irresistible design for an electric egg beater.

Had anyone, Wolfe wanted to know, been with him in his office that morning during the parturition, say from half-past six to eight o'clock? No. No one.

For alibi, Broadyke, of those three, came closest to being naked.

Since I had cottoned to Audrey Rooney and would

98 Rex Stout

have married her any second if it wasn't that I wouldn't want my wife to be a public figure and there was her picture on the calendar on the wall of Sam's Diner, it was a setback to learn that her parents in Vermont had actually named her Annie, and she had changed it herself. Okay if she hadn't cared for Annie with Rooney, but good God, why Audrey? Audrey. It showed a lack in her.

It did not, of course, indict her for murder, but her tale helped out on that. She had worked in the Keyes office as Victor Talbott's secretary, and a month ago Keyes had fired her because he suspected her of swiping designs and selling them to Broadyke. When she had demanded proof and Keyes hadn't been able to produce it, she had proceeded to raise hell, which I could well believe. She had forced her way into his private room at the office so often that he had been compelled to hire a husky to keep her out. She had tried to get the rest of the staff, forty of them, to walk out on him until justice had been done her, and had darned near succeeded. She had tried to get at him at his home but failed. Eight days before his death, on a Monday morning, he had found her waiting for him when he arrived at the Stillwell Riding Academy to get his four legs. With the help of the stable hand, by name Wayne Safford, he had managed to mount and clatter off for the park.

But next morning Annie Audrey was there again, and the next one too. What was biting her hardest, as she explained to Wolfe at the outset, was that Keyes had refused to listen to her, had never heard her side, and was so mean and stubborn he didn't intend to. She thought he should. She didn't say in so many words that another reason she kept on showing up at the academy was that the stable hand didn't seem to mind,

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but that could be gathered. The fourth morning, Thursday, Vie Talbott had arrived too, to accompany Keyes on his ride. Keyes, pestered by Audrey, had poked her in the belly with his crop; Wayne Safford had pushed Keyes hard enough to make him stumble and fall; Talbott had intervened and taken a swing at Wayne; and Wayne had socked Talbott and knocked him into a stall that hadn't been cleaned.

Evidently, I thought, Wayne held back when he was boxing in a nicely furnished office on a Kerman rug; and I also thought that if I had been Keyes I would have tried designing an electric horse for my personal use. But the next day he was back for more, and did get more comments from Audrey, but that was as far as it went; and three days later, Monday, it was the same. Talbott wasn't there either of those two days.

Tuesday morning Audrey got there at a quarter to six, the advantage of the early arrival being that she could make the coffee while Wayne curried horses. They ate cinnamon rolls with the coffee. Wolfe frowned at that because he hates cinnamon rolls. A little after six a phone call came from the Hotel Churchill not to saddle Talbott's horse and to tell Keyes he wouldn't be there. At six-thirty Keyes arrived, on the dot as usual, responded only with grimly tightened lips to Audrey's needling, and rode off. Audrey stayed on at the academy, was there continuously for another hour, and was still there at twenty-five minutes to eight, when Keyes' horse came wandering in under an empty saddle.

Was Wayne Safford also there continuously? Yes, they were together all the time.

So Audrey and Wayne were fixed up swell. When it came Wayne's turn he didn't contradict her on a single

100 Rex Stout

point, which I thought was very civilized behavior for a stable hand. He too made the mistake of mentioning cinnamon rolls, but otherwise turned in a perfect score.

When they had gone, more than two hours after midnight, I stood, stretched and yawned good, and told Wolfe, "Five mighty fine clients. Huh?''

He grunted in disgust and put his hands on the rim of his desk to push his chair back.

"I could sleep on it more productively," I stated, "if you would point. Not at Talbott, I don't need that. I'm a better judge of love looks than you are, and I saw him looking at Dorothy, and he has it bad. But the clients? Pohl?"

"He needs money, perhaps desperately, and now he'll get it."

"Broadyke?"

"His vanity was mortally wounded, his business was going downhill, and he was being sued for a large sum."

"Dorothy?"

"A daughter. A woman. It could have gone back to her infancy, or it could have been a trinket denied her today."

"Safford?"

"A primitive romantic. Within three days after he met that girl the fool was eating cinnamon rolls with her at six o'clock in the morning. What about his love look?"

I nodded. "Giddy."

"And he saw Mr. Keyes strike the girl with his riding crop."

"Not strike her, poke her."

"Even worse, because more contemptuous. Also

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the girl had persuaded him that Mr. Keyes was persisting in a serious injustice to her."

"Okay, that'll do. How about her?"

"A woman either being wronged or caught wronging another. In either case, unhinged."

"Also he poked her with his crop."

"No," Wolfe disagreed. "Except in immediate and urgent retaliation, no woman ever retorts to physical violence from a man in kind. It would not be womanly. She devises subtleties." He got to his feet. "I'm sleepy." He started for the door.

Following, I told his back, "I know one thing, I would collect from every damn one of them in advance. I can't imagine why Cramer wanted to see them again, even Talbott, after a whole week with them. Why don't he throw in and draw five new cards? He's sore as a pup. Shall we phone him?"

"No." We were in the hall. Wolfe, heading for the elevator to ascend to his room on the second floor, turned. "What did he want?"

"He didn't say, but I can guess. He's at a dead stop in pitch-dark in the middle of a six corners, and he came to see if you've got a road map."

I made for the stairs, since the elevator is only four by six, and with all of Wolfe inside, it would already be cramped.

VII

"Forty trump," Orrie Gather said at 10:55 Wednesday morning.

I had told them the Keyes case had knocked on our door and we had five suspects for clients, and that was all. Wolfe had not seen fit to tell me what their errands

102 Rex Stout

would be, so I was entertaining at cards instead of summarizing the notebooks for them. At eleven sharp we ended the game, and Orrie and I shelled out to Saul, as usual, and a few minutes later the door from the hall opened and Wolfe entered. He greeted the two hired hands, got himself installed behind his desk, rang for beer, and asked me, "You've explained things to Saul and Orrie, of course?"

"Certainly not. For all I knew it's classified."

He grunted and told me to get Inspector Cramer. I dialed the number and had more trouble getting through than usual, finally had Cramer and signaled to Wolfe, and, since I got no sign to keep off, I stayed on. It wasn't much of a conversation.

"Mr. Cramer? Nero Wolfe."

"Yeah. What do you want?"

"I'm sorry I was busy last evening. It's always a pleasure to see you. I've been engaged in the matter of Mr. Keyes' death, and it will be to our mutual interest for you to let me have a little routine information."

"Like what?"

"To begin with, the name and number of the mounted policeman who saw Mr. Keyes in the park at ten minutes past seven that morning. I want to send Archie--"

"Go to hell." The connection went.

Wolfe hung up, reached for the beer tray which Fritz had brought in, and told me, "Get Mr. Skinner of the District Attorney's office."

I did so, and Wolfe got on again. In the past Skinner had had his share of moments of irritation with Wolfe, but at least he hadn't had the door slammed in his face the preceding evening and therefore was not boorish. When he learned that Wolfe was on the Keyes case he wanted to know plenty, but Wolfe stiff-armed him

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tout being too rude and soon had what he was af r. Upon Wolfe's assurance that he would keep Skin posted on developments at his end, which they th knew was a barefaced lie, the Assistant D.A. even fered to ask headquarters to arrange for me to see cop. And did so. In less than ten minutes after Sfolfe and he were finished, a call came from Centre et to tell me that Officer Hefferan would meet me ; 11:45 at the corner of Sixty-sixth Street and Central rk West.

During the less than ten minutes, Wolfe had drunk er, asked Saul about his family, and told me what I expected to find out from the cop. That made me |gore, but even more it made me curious. When we're fern a case it sometimes happens that Wolfe gets the fnotion that I have got involved on some angle or with I" eome member of the cast, and that therefore it is nec iessary to switch me temporarily onto a siding. I had about given up wasting nervous energy resenting it. |;But what was it this time? I had bought nobody's version and was absolutely fancy free, so why should he send me out to chew the rag with a cop and keep Saul and Orrie for more important errands? It was beyond me, and I was glaring at him and about to open up, when the phone rang again.

It was Ferdinand Pohl, asking for Wolfe. I was going to keep out of it, since the main attack was to be entrusted to others, but Wolfe motioned me to stay on. "I'm at the Keyes office," Pohl said, "Forty-seventh and Madison. Can you come up here right away?"

"Certainly not," Wolfe said in a grieved tone. It always riled him that anybody in the world didn't know that he never left his house on business, and rarely for anything whatever. "I work only at home. What's the matter?"

104 Rex Stout

"There's someone here I want you to talk to. Two members of the staff. With their testimony I can prove that Talbott took those designs and sold them to Broadyke. This clinches it that it was Talbott who killed Keyes. Of us five, the only ones that could possibly be suspected were Miss Rooney and that stable hand, with that mutual alibi they had, and this clears her-^-and him too, of course."

"Nonsense. It does nothing of the sort. It proves that she was unjustly accused of theft, and an unjust accusation rankles more than a just one. Now you can have Mr. Talbott charged with larceny, at least. I'm extremely busy. Thank you very much for calling. I shall need the cooperation of all of you."

Pohl wanted to prolong it, but Wolfe got rid of him, drank more beer, and turned to me. "You're expected there in twenty minutes, Archie, and considering your tendency to get arrested for speeding--"

I had had one ticket for speeding in eight years. I walked to the door but turned to remark bitterly, "If you think you're just sending me out to play, try again. Who was the last to see Keyes alive? The cop. He did it. And who will I deliver him to--you? No. Inspector Cramer!"

VIII

It was sunny and warm for October, and the drive uptown would have been pleasant if I hadn't been prejudiced by my feeling that I was being imposed on. Parking on Sixty-fifth Street, I walked around the corner and up a block, and crossed Central Park West to where a man in uniform was monkeying with his horse's bridle. I have met a pack of guardians of the

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: on my rounds, but this rugged manly face with a ished-in nose and bright big eyes was new to me. I ntroduced myself and showed credentials and said it i nice of him, busy as he was, to give me his time. Of ourse that was a blunder, but I've admitted I was ejudiced.

"Oh," he said, "one of our prominent kidders, huh?" I made for cover. "About as prominent," I declared, "as a fish egg in a bowl of caviar." "Oh, you eat caviar."

"Goddam it," I muttered, "let's start over again." I ked four paces to a lamp post, wheeled, returned to i, and announced, "My name's Goodwin and I work or Nero Wolfe. Headquarters said I could ask you a ouple of questions and I'd appreciate it." "Uh-huh. A friend of mine in the Fifteenth Squad i told me about you. You damn near got him sent to tie marshes."

"Then you were already prejudiced. So was I, but jjiiot against you. Not even against your horse. Speak|ing of horses, that morning you saw Keyes on his |horse, not long before he was killed, what time was it?"

"Ten minutes past seven." _ "Within a minute or two?" %: "Not within anything. Ten minutes past seven. I f|was on the early shift then, due to check out at eight. iRAs you say, I'm so busy that I have no time, so I was f|hanging around expecting to see Keyes go by as per liedule. I liked to see his horse--a light chestnut piwith a fine spring to him."

"How did the horse look that morning--same as I? Happy and healthy?" Seeing the look on his I added hastily, "I've sworn off kidding until to norrow. I actually want to know, was it his horse?"

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"Certainly it was! Maybe you don't know horses. I do."

"Okay. I used to too, when I was a boy on a farm in Ohio, but we haven't corresponded lately. What about Keyes that morning, did- he look sick or well or mad or glad or what?"

"He looked as usual, nothing special."

"Did you speak to each other?"

"No."

"Had he shaved that morning?"

"Sure he had." Officer Hefferan was controlling himself. "He had used two razors, one on the right side and another one on the left, and he wanted to know which one did the best job, so he asked me to rub his cheeks and tell him what I thought."

"You said you didn't speak."

"Nuts."

"I agree. Let's keep this frankly hostile. I shouldn't have asked about shaving, I should have come right out and asked what I want to know, how close were you to him?"

"Two hundred and seventy feet."

"Oh, you've measured it?"

"I've paced it. The question came up."

"Would you mind showing me the spot? Where he was and where you were?"

"Yes, I'd mind, but I've got orders."

The courteous thing would have been for him to lead his horse and walk with me, so he didn't do that. He mounted his big bay and rode into the park, with me tagging along behind; and not only that, he must have given it a private signal that they mustn't be late. I never saw a horse walk so fast. He would have loved to lose me and blame it on me, or at least make me break into a trot, but I gave my legs the best stretch

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sthey had had in years, bending my elbows and pumping my lungs, and I wasn't more than thirty paces in pounds the rear when he finally came to a stop at the crest of a Ilittle knoll. There were a lot of trees, big and little, off I to the right down the slope, and clumps of bushes were | on the left, but in between there was a good view of a I long stretch of the bridle path. It was almost at a right 'angle to our line of vision, and at its nearest looked | about a hundred yards away.

He did not dismount. There is no easier way in the Pworld to feel superior to a man than to talk to him from f on top of a horse.

Speaking, I handled things so as not to seem out of *breath. "You were here?" f "Right here."

"And he was going north." f "Yep." He gestured. "That direction." I "You saw him. Did he see you?" ; "Yes. He lifted his crop to me and I waved back. We 'often did that."

"But he didn't stop or gaze straight at you."

"He didn't gaze straight or crooked. He was out for

a ride. Listen, brother." The mounted man's tone indi|!^cated that he had decided to humor me and get it over.

; "I've been through all this with the Homicide boys. If

\ you're asking was it Keyes, it was. It was his horse. It

'was his bright yellow breeches, the only ones that

'color around, and his blue jacket and his black derby.

: It was the way he sat, with his shoulders hunched and

j"his stirrups too long. It was Keyes."

"Good. May I pat your horse?"