Gambit

7

Usually I know exactly what Wolfe is doing while he’s doing it, and why. I always know afterwards exactly what he did, and nearly always I know why. But I’m still not dead sure, months later, that I know why he had Sally phone those guys and get them to come that day. At the time I not only wasn’t sure, I couldn’t even guess. He hates to work. When I return from an errand on a case and sit down to report, and he knows he must listen and listen hard, from the look he gives me you might think I had put ketchup in his beer. When a caller enters the office, even if he expects to pry out of him some essential fact on a tough one, from the welcome he gets you might think he had come to examine the income tax reports for the past ten years.

So why ask Sally to get people to work on both before and after dinner, before he had had a go at the most likely candidate? I didn’t get it. I now believe that though he wasn’t aware of it, he was grabbing at straws. He was pretending, not only to Sally and me but also to himself, that the new situation, resulting from the fact Cramer had brought, was just dandy because it gave him a new approach. But actually what it amounted to was that it was now extremely close to certain that none of the other candidates had had a shadow of a reason to kill Paul Jerin, and therefore it took either a mule or a sap to stick to the basic assumption that Blount hadn’t. You can’t sit and enjoy a book, even a fascinating one about what happened in Africa a hundred thousand years ago, while you’re fighting off a suspicion that you’re acting like a mule or a sap, so you tell your client to get people to come to take your mind off your misery. As I say, I’m not dead sure, but I suspect that was it.

Of course it’s barely possible that even at that stage he had some vague notion in some corner of his skull of what had really happened that night at the Gambit Club, but I don’t think so. In that case he would have — but I’d better save that.

However, there wasn’t much work to the first interview, before dinner, with Morton Farrow. Yerkes, the banker, had told Sally he would come around nine-thirty, but the best she could get out of Avery, the doctor, was that he would try to make it some time during the evening. It had been decided after lunch, after I returned from taking the letter to Kalmus’ office — in a steel-and-glass fifty-story hive in the financial district where his firm had a whole floor — that Sally would not appear, and before six o’clock came she went up to her room. Farrow had said he would arrive at six but was twenty minutes late. I left it to Fritz to admit him, thinking he would consider it improper for a famous detective to answer a doorbell.

When Fritz ushered him to the office he came across to me with his hand out. I took it and let it go, and he turned to Wolfe, but Wolfe, who is always prepared for it, had turned to the Webster’s New International Dictionary, Second Edition, leather-bound, on the stand at his elbow, and was busy turning pages. Farrow stood and watched him for five seconds and then turned back to me and boomed, “Where’s Sally?” I told him she was upstairs and might be down later, and indicated the red leather chair, and, when he was seated and it was safe, Wolfe closed the dictionary and swiveled.

“Good evening,” he said. “I’m Nero Wolfe. You told Miss Blount you couldn’t stay long.”

Farrow nodded. “I’ve got a dinner date.” Twice as loud as necessary. He glanced at his wrist. “I’ll have to trot along in half an hour, but that should be enough. I couldn’t make it by six, couldn’t get away. With the big boss gone I’ve got my hands full. I was glad Sally called me. She said you wanted to see me, and I wanted to see you. I know her, and of course you don’t. She’s a good kid, and I’m all for her, but like everybody else she has kinks. Apparently she has sold you a bill of goods. I’m a salesman myself, a sales manager for a hundred-million-dollar corporation, but it depends on what you’re selling. Sally just doesn’t understand her mother, my aunt, and never will. Of course that’s strictly a family matter, but she’s brought it into this mess herself, she’s sold you on it, and I’ve got to set you straight. She’s got you believing that there’s something between my aunt and Dan Kalmus. That’s plain moonshine. Anybody who knows my Auntyanna — have you ever seen her?”

“No.” Wolfe was regarding him without enthusiasm.

“If she wanted to she could have something not only with Kalmus but with about any man she wanted to pick. I’m her nephew, so you might think I’m prejudiced, but ask anyone. But it’s wasted on her because she’s strictly a one-man woman, and she’s married to the man. Sally knows that, she can’t help but know it, but you know how it is with daughters. Or do you?”

“No.”

“It’s always one way or the other, either the mother is jealous of the daughter or the daughter is jealous of the mother. It never fails. Give me ten minutes with any mother and daughter and I’ll tell you how it stands, and with my Auntyanna and Sally I’ve had years. This idea of Sally’s, the idea that Kalmus will cross up Uncle Matt so he can make a play for her mother, that’s pure crap. She may even think her mother knows it or suspects it but pretends not to. Does she?”

“No.”

“I’ll bet she does. A daughter jealous of a mother can think anything. So to protect her father she comes and hires you, and what good does that do? The fact remains that he arranged it, Jerin being there at the club, and he took the chocolate to him, and he got the cup and pot and washed them out. You may be a great detective, but you can’t change the facts.”

Wolfe grunted. “Then you think Mr. Blount is guilty.”

“Of course I don’t. I’m his nephew. I only say you can’t change the evidence.”

“I can try to interpret it. Are you a chess player, Mr. Farrow?”

“I play at it. I’m all right the first three or four moves, any opening from the Ruy Lopez to the Caro-Kann, but I soon get lost. My uncle got me started at it because he thinks it develops the brain. I’m not so sure. Look at Bobby Fischer, the American champion. Has he got a brain? If I’ve developed enough to handle a hundred-million-dollar corporation, and that’s what I’ve been doing for two weeks now, I don’t think playing chess has helped me any. I’m cut out to be a top executive, not to sit and concentrate for half an hour and then push a pawn.”

“I understand you didn’t play one of the boards that evening, against Mr. Jerin.”

“Hell no. He would have mated me in ten moves. I was one of the messengers. I was there in the library with Jerin, reporting a move from Table Ten, when Uncle Matt came up with the chocolate for him.”

“On a tray. The pot, a cup and saucer, and a napkin.”

“Yes.”

“Did your uncle linger or did he leave at once, to return to the other room and his chessboard?”

“He didn’t linger. He put the tray on the table and left. I’ve been over this several times with the police.”

“Then you may oblige me in my attempt to interpret the evidence. It seems unlikely that Mr. Blount put arsenic in the chocolate while in the kitchen, since the steward and cook were there. He might have done it while mounting the stairs, which are steep and narrow, but it would have been awkward. He didn’t do it after entering the library, for you were there and would have seen him, and after that he remained at his chessboard until word came that Jerin was ill. So his one opportunity was on the stairs, whereas each of the messengers had an opportunity each time he entered the library to report a move. Correct?”

“Not if I understand you.” Farrow reversed his crossed legs. “Do you mean one of the messengers could have put the arsenic in the chocolate?”

“I do.”

“With Jerin sitting right there? Right under his nose?”

“He might have closed his eyes to concentrate. I often do. Or he might have got up to pace the floor and turned his back.”

“He might have, but he didn’t. I went in there to report a move about thirty times, and he never moved from the couch, and his eyes were open. Anyway — of course you know who the messengers were, besides me?”

Wolfe nodded. “Mr. Yerkes, Mr. Kalmus, Mr. Hausman.”

“Then how silly can you get? One of them poisoned the chocolate?”

“I’m examining the evidence. They had opportunity. You don’t think it conceivable?”

“I certainly don’t!”

“Indeed.” Wolfe scratched his chin. “That leaves only the steward, Mr. Nash, and the cook, Mr. Laghi. Which one do you consider most likely?”

“Neither one.” Farrow flipped a hand. “You realize I’ve been over all this, with the police and at the District Attorney’s office. If there’s any possible reason why Nash or Tony would have done it I don’t know what it is, and the police would have dug it up.”

“Then you exclude them?”

“If the cops do, I do.”

“Then you’re up a stump, Mr. Farrow. You’ve excluded everybody. No one put arsenic in the chocolate. Can you explain how it got into Mr. Jerin?”

“I don’t have to. That’s not up to me, it’s up to the police.” He uncrossed his legs. He looked at his watch. “All right, I came here to say something and I’ve said it. Before I leave I want to see my cousin. Where is she?”

Wolfe looked at me, putting it up to the supposed expert on women. It seemed to me that the situation called more for an expert on top executives, but I was for anything that might possibly give a gleam of light or hope, so I said I would ask her and got up and headed for the hall and the stairs. Mounting the two flights, I found that I wouldn’t have to knock; she was there at the landing with her shoes on. Halting on the third step from the top, I asked her, “Could you hear?”

“I wasn’t trying to,” she said. “I was wanting to go down, but Mr. Wolfe said not to. Of course I could hear his voice. What does he say?”

“He’s a psychologist. He says you have kinks. He says it’s always one way or the other, either the mother is jealous of the daughter or the daughter is jealous of the mother, and a daughter jealous of a mother can think anything. He wants to see you before he goes, probably to straighten out a kink or two, and if you would like—”

“What does he say about Dan Kalmus?”

“That’s one of your kinks. Your idea about Kalmus is pure crap. You may even—”

She moved. I had to either sidestep or get bumped, so I made room for her to get by, and had another look at the nice shoulders and the neck curve as I followed her down. As we entered the office Farrow twisted around in his chair and then arose, and apparently he intended to give her a cousinly kiss, but the look on her face stopped him. It certainly would have stopped me. He was starting, “Now look here, Sal, you—”, but she stopped that also.

“You too,” she said, with more scorch than I would have thought she had in her. “You would like it too, wouldn’t you? You think she would have it all, she would own everything, and she would let you run it. You would think that, but you’re wrong. You’re always wrong. She would let him run it; that’s what he’s after, besides her. You’re just a fool, a complete fool, you always have been.”

She turned and went, to the door and on out. Farrow stood and gawked at her back, then wheeled to Wolfe, extended his hands, palms up, and waggled his head. “By God,” he said, “there you are. Calling me a fool. What did I tell you? Calling me a fool!”