Man Alive

XI

Everybody stared at him. If I had had a pin handy I would have tried dropping it.

“What did you say?” Demarest demanded.

“By my mother’s milk,” Polly Zarella cried, springing to her feet, “it was! It was Paul! When they made me look at him I saw he had Paul’s hands, Paul’s wonderful artist hands, only I knew it couldn’t be!” At Wolfe’s desk, glaring at him ferociously, she drummed on the desk with her fists. “How?” she demanded. “Tell me how!”

I had to get up and help out or she might have climbed over the desk and drummed on Wolfe’s belly, which would have stopped the party. The others were reacting too, but not as spectacularly as Polly. My firmness in getting her back in her chair had a quieting effect on them too, and Wolfe’s words could come through.

“You’ll want to know all about it, of course, and eventually you will, but right now I have a job to do. Since, as I say, Mr. Nieder was killed last night, it follows that he didn’t kill himself over a year ago. He only pretended to. A week ago today Miss Nieder saw him in your showroom, disguised with a beard and glasses and slick parted hair. She recognized him, but he departed before she could speak to him. When she entered that office last evening the body was there on the floor, and she confirmed the identification by recognizing scars on his leg. Further particulars must wait. The point is that this time he was killed indeed, and I think I know who killed him.”

His eyes went straight at Bernard.

“Where is he, Mr. Daumery?”

Bernard was not himself. He was trying hard to be but couldn’t make it. He was meeting Wolfe’s hard gaze with a fascinated stare, as if he were entering the last stage of being hypnotized.

“Where is he?” Wolfe insisted.

The best Bernard could do was a “Who?” that didn’t sound like him at all.

Wolfe slowly shook his head. “I’m not putting anything on,” he said dryly. “When Mr. Goodwin told me what happened this afternoon this possibility occurred to me, along with many others, but up to half an hour ago, when I got my head battered in by being told that you four people spent last evening together, I had no idea of where my target was. Then, after a little consideration, I decided to explore, and now I know. Your face tells me. Don’t reproach yourself. The attack was unexpected and swift and everything was against you.”

Wolfe extended a hand with the palm up. “Even if I didn’t know, but still only guessed, that would be enough. I would merely give it to the police as a suspicion deserving inquiry, and with their trained noses and their ten thousand men how long do you think it would take them to find him? Another fact that may weigh with you: he is a murderer. Even so, you are a free agent in every respect but one; you will not be permitted to leave this room until either you have told me where he is or I have given the police time to start on his trail and cover my door.”

Demarest chuckled. “Unlawful restraint with witnesses,” he commented.

Wolfe ignored it and gave the screw another turn on Bernard. “Where is he, Mr. Daumery? You can’t take time to think it over, to consult him on this one. Where is he?”

“This is awful,” Bernard said hoarsely. “This is an awful thing.”

“He can’t do this!” came suddenly from the red leather chair. Cynthia’s concentrated gaze at Bernard was full of a kind and degree of sympathy that I had hoped never to see her spend on a rival. “He can’t threaten you and keep you here! It’s unlawful!” Her head jerked to Wolfe and she snapped at him, “You stop it now!”

“It’s too late, my dear child,” Demarest told her. “You hired him — and I must admit you’re getting your money’s worth.” His head turned. “You’d better tell him, Bernard. It may be hard, but the other way’s harder.”

“Where is he, Mr. Daumery?” Wolfe repeated.

Bernard’s chin lifted a little. “If you’re right,” he said, still hoarse, “and God knows I hope you’re not, it’s up to him. The address is Eight-sixteen East Ninetieth Street. I want to phone him.”

“No,” Wolfe said curtly. “You will be unlawfully restrained if you try. What is it, an apartment building?”

“Yes.”

“Elevator?”

“Yes.”

“What floor?”

“The tenth. Apartment Ten C. I rented it for him.”

“Is he there now?”

“Yes. I was to phone him there when I left here. I said I would go to see him, but he said I might be followed and I had better phone from a booth.”

“What is the name?”

“Dickson. George Dickson.”

“That’s his name?”

“Yes.”

“Thank you. Satisfactory. Archie.”

“Yes, sir?”

“Give Fritz a revolver and send him in. I don’t know how some of these minds might work. Then get Mr. Dickson and bring him here. Eight-one-six East—”

“Yeah, I heard it.”

“Don’t alarm him any more than you have to. Don’t tell him we know who got killed last night. I don’t want you killed, and I don’t want a suicide.”

“Don’t worry,” Demarest volunteered, “about him committing suicide. What I’m wondering is how you expect to prove anything about a murder. You’ve admitted that half an hour ago you didn’t even know he existed. He’s tough and he’s anything but a fool.”

I was at a drawer of my desk, getting out two guns and loading them — one for Fritz and one for me. So I was still there to hear Ward Roper’s contribution.

“That explains it,” Roper said, the bitterness all gone, replaced by a tone of pleased discovery. “If Paul was alive up to last night, he designed those things himself and got them to us through Cynthia! Certainly! That explains it!”

I didn’t stay for the slapping, if any.

“There’s no hurry,” Wolfe told me as I was leaving. “I have things to do before you get back.”