Might as Well Be Dead

Chapter 17

We didn’t play pinochle for three nights and two days, but we might as well have. Friday night, Saturday, Saturday night, Sunday, and Sunday night.

It was not a vacuum. Things happened. Albert Freyer spent an hour with Wolfe Saturday morning, got a full report on the situation, and walked out on air. He even approved of letting the cops take it from there, since it was a cinch they couldn’t nail the killer of Johnny Keems and Ella Reyes without unnailing Peter Hays. James R. Herold phoned twice a day, and Sunday afternoon came in person and brought his wife along. She taught me once more that you should never seal your verdict until the facts are in. I was sure she would be a little rooster-pecked specimen, and she was little, but in the first three minutes it became clear that at pecking time she went on the theory that it was more blessed to give than to receive. I won’t say that I reversed the field on him entirely, but I understood him better. If and when he mentioned again that his wife was getting impatient I would know where my sympathy belonged if I had any to spare. Also he brought her after four o’clock, when he knew Wolfe would be up in the plant rooms, which was both intelligent and prudent. I made out fairly well with her, and when they left we still had a client.

Patrick A. Degan phoned Saturday morning and came for a talk at six o’clock. Apparently his main concern was to find out from Selma Molloy what her attitude was toward the $327,640.00, and he tried to persuade her that she would be a sap to pass it up, but he took the opportunity to discuss other developments with Wolfe and me. It had got in the paper, the Gazette, that Nero Wolfe’s assistant, Archie Goodwin, had been at the morgue to look at the body of Ella Reyes, and that therefore there was probably some connection between her and Johnny Keems, though the police refused to say so, and Degan wanted to know. The interview ended on a sour note when Wolfe commented that it was natural for Degan to show an interest in that detail, since Ella Reyes had been Mrs. Irwin’s maid and Degan was on familiar terms with Mrs. Irwin. When that warmed Degan up under the collar, Wolfe tried to explain that the word “familiar” implied undue intimacy only when it was intended to, and that he had given no reason for inferring such an intention, but Degan hadn’t cooled off much when he left.

Since we wanted to keep informed fully and promptly on the progress of Cramer and his army, and therefore had to be on speaking terms, we graciously permitted Sergeant Stebbins an audience with Mrs. Molloy Saturday afternoon, and he was with her three hours, and Fritz served refreshments. We were pleased to hear later, from her, that Purley had spent a good third of the time on various aspects of the death of her husband, such as possible motives for Arkoff or Irwin to want him removed. The Molloy case had definitely been taken off the shelf. From the questions Purley asked it was evident that no one had been eliminated and no one had been treed. When I asked him, as he departed, if they were getting warm, he was so impolite that I knew the temperature had gone down rather than up.

Saturday evening Selma ate with us in the dining room, and Sunday at one she joined us again for chicken fricassee with dumplings, Methodist style. Fritz is not a Methodist, but his dumplings are plenty good enough for angels.

Saul Panzer and Orrie Cather spent the two days visiting with former friends of Molloy’s, spreading out from the list Patrick Degan had supplied, and concentrating on digging up a hint of the source of the third of a million in the safe-deposit box. Saul thought he might have found one Sunday morning, but it petered out. Fred Durkin plugged away at William Lesser and got enough material to fill three magazines, but none of it showed a remote connection with either the Arkoffs or Irwins, and that was essential. However, Fred got results, of a kind. Sunday afternoon, while I was down in the basement with Selma, teaching her how to handle a billiard cue, the doorbell rang, and I went up to find Fritz conversing through the crack permitted by the chain bolt, with Delia’s Bill. It was my first contact with a suspect for many hours, and I felt like greeting him with a cordial handshake, but he wasn’t having any. He was twice as grim as he had been before. In the office he stood with his fists on his hips and read the riot act. He had found out who the guy was going around asking about him, and that he worked for Nero Wolfe, and so did I, and the guff about the magazine article had been a blind, and he damn well wanted to know. It was rather confused the way he put it, and not clear at all exactly what he wanted to know, but I got the general idea. He was sore.

Neither of us got any satisfaction out of it. For him, I wouldn’t apologize or promise to lock Wolfe and myself up for kidding Delia Brandt and damaging his reputation; and for me, he wasn’t answering questions. He wasn’t even hearing questions. He wouldn’t even tell me when they were going to be married. I finally eased him to the hall and along to the door and on out, and went back to the basement to resume the billiard lesson.

Late that evening, Sunday, Inspector Cramer turned up, and when, after he got his big broad behind deposited in the red leather chair, Wolfe invited him to have some beer and he accepted, I knew he didn’t have to be asked how they were making out. They weren’t. He takes Wolfe’s beer only when he wants it understood that he’s only human and should be treated accordingly. He tried to be tactful because he had no club to use, but what it amounted to was that he had got nowhere at all after two nights and two days, and he wanted the fact or facts that Wolfe was reserving for future use.

Wolfe didn’t have any, and said so. But that didn’t satisfy Cramer, and never will, on account of certain past occasions, so it ended with him bouncing up, his glass still half full of beer, and tramping out.

When I returned from closing the door after him I told Wolfe cheerfully, “Forget it, he’s just tired. In the morning he’ll be back on the job, full of whatever he’s full of. In a month or so he’ll pick up a trail, and by August he’ll have it wrapped up. Of course by that time Peter Hays will be electrocuted, but what the hell, they can apologize to his father and mother and two sis—”

“Shut up, Archie.”

“Yes, sir. If I wasn’t afraid to leave Mrs. Molloy alone here with you I’d resign. This job is too dull. In fact, it doesn’t seem to be a job.”

“It will be.” He took in air down to his waist, or where it would have been if he had one. When it was out he muttered, “It will have to be. When you become insufferable something has to be done. Have Saul and Fred and Orrie here at eight in the morning.”

I locked the safe, made my desk neat, and went up to my room to call the boys from there, leaving him sitting behind his desk, an ideal model for an oversized martyr.

In a way he has spoiled me. Some of the spectacular charades he has thought up have led me to expect too much, and it was something of a letdown Monday morning when I learned what the program was. Nothing but another treasure hunt, and not even a safe-deposit box. I admit that it did the trick, but at the time it struck me as a damned small mouse to come out of so big a mountain.

I had made sacrifices, having rolled out early enough to finish my breakfast by the time Saul and Fred and Orrie arrived at eight, only to find that it hadn’t been necessary when Wolfe told me on the house phone to bring them up at a quarter to nine. When the time came I led the way up the two flights and found his door standing open, and we entered. He was seated at the table near a window, his breakfast gone, but still with coffee, with the morning Times propped on the reading rack. He greeted the staff and asked me if there was any news, and I said no, I had phoned Stebbins and he had not bitten my ear off only because you can’t bite over the wire.

He took a sip of coffee and put the cup down. “Then we’ll have to try. You will go, all four, to Mrs. Molloy’s apartment, and search it, covering every inch. Take probes for the upholstery and whatever tools may be required. The devil of it is you won’t know what you’re looking for.”

“Then how will we know when we find it?”

“You won’t, with any certainty. But we know that a situation existed which led to Molloy’s murder; that he had cached a large sum of money in a safe-deposit box under an alias; that he was contemplating departure from the country; and that exhaustive inquiry among his friends and associates has disclosed no hint of where the money came from or when or how he got it. Further, there was no such hint found on his person, or among the papers taken from his office, or in his apartment, or in the safe-deposit box. I don’t believe it. I do not believe that no such hint exists. As I said to Archie on Friday, when a man is involved in a circumstance pressing enough to cause his murder he must leave a relic of it somewhere, and I had hoped it was in that box. When it wasn’t I should have persisted, but other matters intervened — for one thing, a woman got killed.”

He took a sip of coffee. “We want that relic. It could be a portfolio, a notebook, a single slip of paper. It could be some object other than a record on paper, though I have no idea what. There are of course numberless places he could have left it — with some friend, checked at a hotel or other public place — but first we’ll try his apartment, since it is as likely as any and is accessible. Regarding each article you see and touch you must ask yourselves, ‘Could this possibly be it?’ Archie, you will explain the matter to Mrs. Molloy, ask if she wishes to accompany you, and if not get her permission and the key. That’s all, gentlemen. I don’t ask if you have any questions, since I wouldn’t know the answers to them. Archie, leave the phone number on my desk, in case I need to get you.”

We went. I turned off one flight down. I knew she was up, since Fritz had delivered her breakfast tray. By then I was on sufficiently familiar terms with her — the word “familiar” implying no undue intimacy — to have a private knock, 2-1-2, and I used it and was told to enter. She was in a dressing gown or house gown or negligee or dishabille — anyway, it was soft and long and loose and lemon-colored — and without make-up. Without lipstick her mouth was even better than with. A habit of observation of minor details is an absolute must for a detective. We exchanged good mornings and I told her there had been no developments worth mentioning, but there was a program. When I explained it she said she didn’t believe there could be anything in the apartment she didn’t know about, but I reminded her that she hadn’t even bothered to open the cartons that had come from the office, and asked if she had got rid of Molloy’s clothing and other effects. She said no, she hadn’t felt like touching them, and nothing had been taken away. I told her the search would be extremely thorough, and she said she didn’t mind. I asked if she wanted to go along, and she said no.

“You’ll think I’m crazy,” she said, “after my not wanting to come here, but now I never want to enter that door again. I guess that was one thing that was wrong with me — I should have got out of there.”

I told her that the only thing that had been wrong with her was that she thought Peter Hays had killed Molloy, whereas now she didn’t, got the keys from her, went downstairs, where the hired help was waiting for me in the hall, put the phone number on Wolfe’s desk, told Fritz where we were going, and left. Saul and Fred had assembled a kit of tools from the cupboard in the office where we kept an assortment of everything from keys to jimmies.

If I described every detail of our performance in the Molloy apartment that day between 9:35 A.M. and 3:10 P.M. you might get some useful pointers on how to look for a lost diamond or postage stamp, but if you haven’t lost a diamond or a postage stamp it wouldn’t interest you. When we got through we knew a lot of things: that Molloy had hoarded old razor blades in a cardboard box in his dresser; that someone had once upon a time burned a little hole in the under side of a chair cushion, probably with a cigarette, and at a later time someone had stuffed a piece of lemon peel in the hole, God knew why; that there were three loose tiles in the bathroom wall and a loose board in the living room floor; that Mrs. Molloy had three girdles, liked pale yellow underwear and white nighties, used four different shades of nylons, and kept no letters except those from a sister who lived in Arkansas; that apparently there were no unpaid bills other than one for $3.84 from a laundry; that none of the pieces of furniture had hollow legs; that if a jar of granulated sugar slips from your hand and spills you have a problem; and a thousand others. Saul and I together went over every scrap of the contents of the three cartons, already inspected by Orrie.

It would be misleading to say we found nothing whatever. We found two empty drawers. They were the two top drawers, one on each side, of a desk against the wall of what Molloy might have called his den. None of the six keys Selma had given me fitted their locks, which were good ones, Wetherbys, and Saul had to work on them with the assortment in the kit. The drawers were as empty as the day they were built, and had presumably been locked from force of habit.

At 3:10 P.M. I used the phone there in the apartment and told Wolfe the bad news, including the empty drawers. Orrie said to tell him that never had so many searched so long for so little, but it didn’t appeal to me. Wolfe told me to tell Fred and Orrie that was all for the day and to bring Saul in with me. After making a tour to verify that we were leaving things as we had found them, we moved out. Down on the sidewalk we parted, Fred and Orrie heading for the corner to get a drink to drown the disappointment, and Saul and I, with the kit of tools, flagging a taxi. It wasn’t a cheerful ride. If the best the genius could do was start us combing the metropolitan area, including Jersey and Long Island, for a relic that might not exist, the future wasn’t very bright.

But he had something a little more specific. We had barely crossed the sill to the office when he blurted at me, “About that Delia Brandt. About Molloy’s proposal to her of a trip to South America. You said last Wednesday that she told you she had put him off, but you thought she lied. Why did you think she lied?”

I stood. “The way she said it, the way she looked, the way she answered questions about it. And just her. I had formed an opinion of her.”

“Have you changed your opinion? Since she is going to marry William Lesser?”

“Hell no. She couldn’t go to South America with a dead man, and evidently, from Fred’s reports, she was playing Lesser all the time on an option. If Lesser found out what the score was and decided to take—”

“That’s not my target. If Molloy was preparing to decamp and take that girl with him, and if she had agreed to go, he might have entrusted certain objects to her care — for example, some of the objects he removed from the empty drawers you found. Is it fantastic to assume that he left them in her apartment for safekeeping pending departure?”

“No, not fantastic. I wouldn’t trust her with a subway token, but apparently his opinion of her wasn’t the same flavor as mine. It’s quite possible.”

“Then you and Saul will go and search her apartment. Now.”

When Wolfe gets desperate he is absolutely fearless. He will expose me to the risk of a five-year stretch up the river without batting an eye. That’s okay, since I am old enough to vote and can always say no, but that time he was inviting another party too, so I turned to look at Saul. He merely asked, “Will she be there?”

“If she’s working, probably not until around five-thirty, maybe later. If she’s there I might be able to take her out to buy champagne, but then you’d have to do the work. Shall I phone?”

“You might as well.”

I went to my desk and dialed the number, waited through fifteen whirrs, hung up, and swiveled. “No answer. If you like the idea, we won’t want the kit, just some of the keys. The door downstairs has a Manson lock, old style. The one to her apartment is a Wyatt. You know more about them than I do.”

Saul brought the kit to my desk and opened it, selected four strings of keys and dropped them in his pocket, and closed the kit. While he was doing that I went to the cupboard and got two pairs of rubber gloves.

“I must remind you,” Wolfe said as we started out, “that prudence is no shame to valor. I shall not evade my responsibility as accessory.”

“Much obliged,” I thanked him. “If we’re caught we’ll say you begged us not to.”

We went to Ninth Avenue for a taxi, and on the way downtown discussed modus operandi. Not that it needed much discussion. Dismissing the cab on Christopher Street, we walked on to Arbor Street, rounded the corner, and continued to Number 43. Nobody had painted it in the five days since I had seen it. We entered the vestibule, and I pushed the button marked Brandt. Getting no click, I pushed it again, and, after another wait, a third time.

“Okay,” I told Saul, and stepped to the outer door, which was standing open, for an outlook. Arbor Street is not Fifth Avenue, and only two boys and a woman with a dog had passed by when Saul told my back, “Come on in.” It had taken him about a minute and a half. We entered.

He preceded me up the narrow dingy stairs, the idea being that we would do a quick once-over and then I would stand guard outside, at the head of the stairs, while he dug deeper. As we reached the top of the third flight he had a string of keys in his hand, ready to tackle the Wyatt, but I remembered that prudence is no shame to valor and went to the door first and knocked. I waited, knocked louder, got no response, and stepped aside for Saul. The Wyatt took longer than the one downstairs, perhaps three minutes. When he got it he pushed the door open. Since I was supposed to be in command, the proper thing would have been for him to let me go in first, but he crossed the threshold, saying, “Jumping Jesus.”

I was at his elbow, staring with him. At my former visit it had been one of those rooms that call for expert dodging to get anywhere. Now it would have taken more than dodging. The piano bench was still where it belonged, in the center of the main traffic lane, and the other pieces of furniture were more or less in place, but otherwise it was a first-rate mess. Cushions had been ripped open and the stuffing pulled out and scattered around; books and magazines were off their shelves and helter-skelter on the floor; flowerpots had been dumped and dropped; and the general effect was about what you would get if you turned a room over to a dozen orangutans and told them to enjoy themselves.

“He didn’t leave it as neat as we—” I started to comment, and stopped. Saul had spotted it too, and we moved together, on past the piano bench. It was Delia Brandt, on the floor near the couch where I had sat with her. She was on her face, her legs stretched out. I squatted on one side and Saul on the other, but one feel of her bare forearm was enough to show that no tests were necessary. She had been dead at least twelve hours and probably longer. We didn’t look for a wound because that wasn’t necessary either. A cord as thick as a clothesline was tight around her neck.

We got erect and I stepped through the clutter to a doorway, the door standing open, for a look at the bedroom, while Saul went and closed the door to the hall. The bedroom was even worse, with the bed torn apart, the innards of the mattress all over, and clothing and other objects sprayed around. A glance in the bathroom showed that it had not been neglected. Back in the living room, Saul was standing looking down at her.

“He killed her,” he said, “before he started looking. Stuff from cushions on top of her.”

“Yeah, so I noticed. He worked the bedroom and closets too, so there’s nothing left for us except one thing. She’s got her clothes on. Either he found it or something scared him out or what he was after was too bulky to be on her.”

“The clothes women wear nowadays he wouldn’t have to take them off. Why the gloves? Going to rake through the leavings?”

“No. Put them on.” I handed him a pair, and started pulling mine on. “We’ll try the one thing he left. Unless you’ve got a date.”

“You don’t make prints on clothes.”

“You don’t make prints on anything with gloves on.” I got my knife from my pocket, opened it, squatted, slipped two fingers under the neck of the blouse, and slit it down to the waist. Saul, squatting on the other side, unzipped the skirt and moved to the feet to take the hem and pull the skirt off. I told him to look at the shoes, which were house sandals, tied on, and he did so, removing them and tossing them aside. The slip was as simple as the blouse. I cut the straps and slit it down the back from top to bottom and pushed it to either side. The pants were simple too; I got my fingers inside under the hips, and Saul worked them down and off. The girdle was slower, since I didn’t care to scratch the skin. Saul squatted on the other side again and helped me keep it lifted enough to slit it and leave her intact.

“She’s good and cold,” he said.

“Yeah. Stuff the edges under and we’ll roll her over to you.”

He did so, and with one hand under a hip and the other under a shoulder I rolled her, and Saul eased her as she came, and she was on her back. That way, face up, it was something else. The face of a girl who was strangled to death twelve or fourteen hours ago is not a girl’s face. Saul covered it with what was left of a cushion and then helped me finish the operation. There was nothing between the blouse and the slip, and nothing between the slip and the girdle, and nothing between the girdle and the skin, but when I lifted the brassiere and she was naked, there it was, fastened between the breasts with tape. A key. I pulled it loose, pulled the tape off, gave it a look, said, “Grand Central locker, out quick,” went to the bedroom for a blanket, and came back and covered her. Saul was at the door, peeling his gloves off, and I had mine off by the time I joined him. He used one of his to turn the doorknob, and, in the hall, to pull the door shut. The spring lock clicked and we made for the stairs.

We saw no one on the way down, but as we stepped out to the sidewalk a man turned in, evidently a tenant, as he gave us a glance. However, he was two seconds too late to be able to swear that we had been inside the house. When we had turned the corner and were on Christopher Street, Saul asked, “Walking for our health?”

“I could use some health after that,” I told him. “I suppose it doesn’t matter how you do it if you do it, but some ways seem worse than others. At Seventh Avenue we’ll split. One of us will take the subway and shuttle to Grand Central, and the other will phone Centre Street and go and report to Wolfe. Which do you prefer?”

“I’ll take Grand Central.”

“Okay.” I handed him the locker key. “But it’s possible there’s an eye on it, no telling whose. You’d better give me the keys and gloves.”

He transferred them to my pocket as we walked. At Seventh Avenue he went for the subway stairs and I entered the cigar store at the corner, found the phone booth, dialed SP 7-3100, and, when I got a voice, whined into the transmitter, high and thin, “Name and address, Delia Brandt, B-R-A-N-D-T, Forty-three Arbor Street, Manhattan. Got it?”

“Yes. What—”

“I’m telling you. I think she’s dead. In her apartment. You’d better hurry.” I hung up, heard the rattle, felt in the coin-return cup to see if the machine had swallowed the wrong way because you never know, departed, and got a taxi.

When I got out in front of the old brownstone it was a quarter to five, precisely one hour since Wolfe had told us he wouldn’t evade his responsibility as accessory. With the chain bolt on as usual during my absence, Fritz had to come to let me in, and after one glance at my face he said, “Ah.”

“Right,” I told him. “Ah it is. But I don’t want you to be an accessory too, so if they ask you how I looked say just like always, debonair.”

In the office I put the gloves and strings of keys away and then went to my desk and buzzed the plant rooms. He must have been hard at work, for it took him a while to answer.

“Yes?”

“Sorry to disturb you, but I thought you ought to know that it’s more serious than breaking and entering. It’s also disturbing a body in a death by violence. Her apartment looked as if a hurricane had hit it, and she was on the floor, dead and cold. Strangled. We took her clothes off and found a key to a Grand Central checking locker taped to her skin, and took it and left. I phoned the police from a booth, and Saul has gone to Grand Central to see what’s in the locker. He should be here in about twenty minutes.”

“When did she die?”

“More than twelve hours ago. That’s the best I can do.”

“What time was William Lesser here yesterday?”

“Four-thirty.”

Silence. Then: “There is nothing to say or do until we learn what is in the locker. If it is merely another fortune in currency — But speculation is idle. Whatever it is, you and Saul will examine it.”

I choked the temptation to ask if he wanted us to bring it up to the plant rooms. He would have had to say no, and to pile that on top of the news of another corpse would have been hitting him when he was down. But I had no ironclad rules between me and normal conduct, so when he hung up I went out to the stoop to wait for Saul. I even went down the seven steps to the sidewalk. Two neighborhood kids who were playing catch on the pavement stopped, stepped onto the opposite curb, and stood watching me. That house and its occupants had been centers of attraction, either sinister or merely mysterious, I wasn’t sure which, ever since a boy named Pete Drossos had been let in by me for a conference with Wolfe and had got murdered the next day. By the time I looked at my wristwatch the tenth time the situation was a little strained, with them standing there staring at me, and I was about ready to retreat to an inside post behind the glass panel when a taxi came rolling up and stopped at the curb, and Saul climbed out, after paying the driver, with a medium-sized black leather suitcase dangling in his hand. Letting him have the honor of delivering the bacon, I followed him up the steps and on in. He took it to the office and put it on a chair.

At a glance it had been manhandled. The lock had been pried open, not by an expert, and it was held shut only by the catches at the ends. I asked Saul, “Do you want to tell me or shall I tell you?”

“You tell me.”

“Glad to. Wolfe guessed right. Molloy had it stowed in her apartment, and after his death, maybe right after or maybe only yesterday, she busted it open and took a look.” I hefted it. “Another deduction: she didn’t clean it out. Because if she had why should she stash it in a locker and tape the key to her hide, and also because it’s not empty. Wolfe says we’re to examine it, but first, I think, for prints.”

I went to the cupboard and got things and we set to work. We weren’t as expert as the scientist had been with the safe-deposit box, but when we got through we had an assortment of photographs marked with locations that were nothing to be ashamed of. Of course they were only for future reference, since we had no samples of anybody for comparison. After putting them in envelopes and putting things away, we placed the suitcase on my desk and opened it.

It was about two-thirds full of a mixed collection. There were shirts and ties, probably his favorites that he couldn’t bear to leave, a pair of slippers, six tubes of Cremasine for shaving, two suits of pajamas, socks and handkerchiefs, and other miscellaneous personal items. Stacking them on the desk, we came to a bulging leather briefcase. It should have been dusted for prints too, but we were too warm to wait, and I lifted it out, opened it, and extracted the contents.

It wasn’t a relic, it was a whole museum. Saul pulled a chair up beside mine, and we went through it together. I won’t describe the items, or even list them, because it would take too long and also because it was Wolfe who had guessed where they were and he should have the pleasure of showing them. We had just reached the bottom of the pile when six o’clock brought Wolfe down from the plant rooms. He started for his desk, veered to come to mine, and glared down at the haberdashery.

“That’s just packing,” I told him. I tapped the pile of papers. “Here it is. Enough relics to choke a camel.”

He picked it up and circled around his desk to his chair and started in. Saul and I put the rest of the stuff back in the suitcase and closed it, and then sat and watched. For ten minutes the only sounds were rustlings of the papers and Wolfe’s occasional grunts. He had nearly reached the bottom of the stack when the phone rang and I answered it.

“Nero Wolfe’s office, Archie Good—”

“This is Stebbins. About a woman named Brandt, Delia Brandt. When did you see her last?”

“Hold it a second while I sneeze.” I covered the transmitter and turned. “Stebbins asking about Delia Brandt, if you’re interested.” Wolfe frowned, hesitated, took his phone, and put it to his ear. I uncovered the transmitter and sneezed at it and then spoke.

“I hope I’m not going to have a cold. The last one I had—”

“Quit stalling,” he snarled. “I asked you a question.”

“I know you did, and you ought to know better by this time. If there’s any good reason, or even a poor one, why I should answer questions about a woman named Delia Brandt, what is it?”

“Her body has been found in her apartment. Murdered. Your name and address are on the memo page in her phone book, the last entry. When did you see her last?”

“My God. She’s dead?”

“Yeah. When you’re murdered you’re dead. Quit stalling.”

“I’m not stalling. If I didn’t react you might think I killed her myself. The first and last time I saw her was last Wednesday evening around nine-thirty, at her apartment. We were collecting background on Molloy, and she was his secretary for ten months, up to the time he died. I had a brief talk with her on the phone late Thursday afternoon. That’s all.”

“You were just collecting background?”

“Right.”

“We’d like to have you come and tell us what you collected. Now.”

“Where are you?”

“At Homicide West. I just got here with a man named William Lesser. When did you see him last?”

“Give me a reason. I always need a reason.”

“Yeah, I know. He came to Delia Brandt’s apartment twenty minutes ago and found us there. He says he had a date with her. He also says he thinks you killed her. Is that a good enough reason? When did you see him last?”

I never got to answer that. Wolfe’s voice broke in.

“Mr. Stebbins, this is Nero Wolfe. I would like to speak with Mr. Cramer.”

“He’s busy.” I swear Purley got hoarser the instant he heard Wolfe. “We want Goodwin down here.”

“Not until I have spoken with Mr. Cramer.”

Silence; then: “Hold it. I’ll see.”

We waited. I looked at Wolfe, but it was one-way because his eyes were closed. He opened them only when Cramer’s voice came.

“You there, Wolfe? Cramer. What do you want?”

“I want to expose a murderer, and I’m ready to. If you wish to be present, bring Mr. and—”

“I’m coming there right now!”

“No. I have to study some documents. You wouldn’t get in. Come at nine o’clock, and bring Mr. and Mrs. Irwin and Mr. and Mrs. Arkoff — and you may as well bring Mr. Lesser. He deserves to be in the audience. The others must be. Nine o’clock.”

“Goddam it, I want to know—”

“You will, but not now. I have work to do.”

He cradled his phone, and I followed suit. He spoke. “Archie, phone Mr. Freyer, Mr. Degan, and Mr. Herold. If he wishes to bring his wife he may. For this sort of thing the bigger the audience the better. And inform Mrs. Molloy.”

“Mrs. Molloy won’t be here.”

“She is here.”

“I mean she won’t be in the audience, not if Herold is. She doesn’t know Peter Hays is Paul Herold, and let him tell her if and when he wants to. Anyway she doesn’t want to be with people, and you don’t need her.”

“Very well.” He leered at me. He may have thought it was a tender glance of sympathy, but I call it a leer. “It is understood, of course, that you were not there today. If an explanation of how I got this material is required I’ll supply it.”

“Then that’s all for me?” Saul asked.

“No. You’ll be at his elbow. He has degenerated into a maniac. If you’ll dine with us? Now I must digest this stuff.”

He went back to the pile of papers.