Nero Wolfe and the Vanishing Clue

VI

In view of the parking situation, or rather the non-parking situation, I have given up using the car for midtown errands, so I left the highway at 46th Street and drove to the garage. I could have phoned a progress report to Wolfe from there, but the house is just around the corner, and I went in person instead of phoning, and got a surprise. In response to my ring it wasn’t Fritz who unbolted the door for me, but Saul Panzer. Saul, with his big nose taking half the available area of his narrow little face, looks at first glance as if he might need help to add two and two. Actually he needs help for nothing whatever. He is not only the best of the four or five operatives Wolfe calls on as required, he’s the best anywhere.

“So,” I greeted him, “you got my job at last, huh? Please show me to the office.”

“Got an appointment?” he demanded, closing the door. Then he followed me down the hall and in.

Wolfe, behind his desk, grunted at me. “Back so soon?”

“No, sir,” I told him. “This is just a stopover after leaving the car at the garage. Do you want a report on Paul and Mr. and Mrs. Tuttle before I go on?”

“Yes. Verbatim, please.”

With him verbatim means not only all the words but also all the actions and expressions, and I sat down and gave them to him. He is the best listener I know, usually with his elbow on the chair arm, his chin resting on his fist, and his eyes half closed.

When I had finished he sat a moment and then nodded. “Satisfactory. Proceed with the others. Since you won’t need the car may Saul use it?”

That wasn’t as chummy as it sounds. It had long been understood that the car was his one piece of property on which I had the say.

“For how long?” I inquired.

“Today, tonight, and possibly part of tomorrow.”

I looked at my wrist and saw 6:55. “There’s not much left of today. Okay. Do I ask for what?”

“Not at the moment. It may be to chase a wild goose. What about your dinner?”

“I don’t know.” I arose. “If I find the ice cream I can eat that.” I headed for the door, turned there to suggest, “Saul can eat the goose,” and left.

Flagging a taxi at Tenth Avenue and riding uptown, and across 48th Street to the East Side, a part of the thousand-wheeled worm, I admitted that he must have a glimmer of something, since Saul’s daily rate was now fifty bucks, quite a bite out of a measly grand, but I still couldn’t tie up the ice cream and the hot-water bags. Of course he might be sending Saul on a different trail entirely, and as far as keeping it to himself was concerned, I had long ago stopped letting that get on my nerves, so I just tabled it.

The number, on 48th between Lexington and Third, belonged to an old brick four-story that had been painted yellow. In the vestibule two names were squeezed on the little slip by the button next to the top — “Goren” and “Poletti.” I pushed the button, and, when the clicks came, opened the door and entered, and went up two flights of narrow stairs, which were carpeted and clean for a change. Turning to the front on the landing, I got a surprise. A door had opened, and standing on the sill was one named neither Goren nor Poletti. It was Johnny Arrow, squinting at me.

“Oh,” he said. “I thought maybe it was that Paul Fyfe.”

I advanced. “If it’s convenient,” I said, “I’d like to see Miss Goren.”

“What about?”

He needed taking down a peg. “Really,” I said. “Only yesterday you were bragging about taking her to dinner. Don’t tell me you’ve already been promoted to watchdog. I want to ask her a question.”

For a second I thought he was going to demand to know the question, and so did he, but he decided to chuckle instead. He invited me in, ushered me through an arch into a living room that was well cluttered with the feminine touch, disappeared, and in a minute was back.

“She’s changing,” he informed me. He sat. “I guess you called me about bragging.” His drawl was friendly. “We just got back from the ball game a little while ago, and now we’re going out for a feed. I was going to phone you this morning.”

“You mean phone Nero Wolfe?”

“No, you. I was going to ask you where you bought that suit you had on last night. Now I’d like to ask you where you bought the one you’ve got on now, but I guess that’s a little personal.”

I was sympathetic. Realizing that a guy who had spent five years in the bush, and who, in New York, found himself suddenly faced with the problem of togging up for a ladylove, was in a tough spot, especially if he could scrape up only ten million bucks, I gave him the lowdown from socks to shirts. We were on ornamental vests, pro and con, when Anne Goren came floating in, and at sight of her I regretted the steer I had given him. I would have been perfectly willing to feed her myself if I hadn’t been working.

“Sorry I made you wait,” she told me politely. “What is it?” She didn’t sit, and we were up.

“A couple of little points,” I said. “I saw Doctor Buhl this afternoon, and expected he would phone you, but since you were out he couldn’t. First about the morphine he gave you Saturday to be given to Bertram Fyfe. He says he took two quarter-grain tablets from a bottle he had, and gave them to you, with directions. Is that correct?”

“Wait a minute, Anne.” Arrow was squinting at me. “What’s the idea of this?”

“No special idea.” I met the brown eyes through the squint. “Mr. Wolfe needs the information to clear this thing up, that’s all. — Do you object to giving it, Miss Goren? I asked Doctor Buhl where you kept the tablets until the time came to administer them, and he told me to ask you.”

“I put them in a saucer and put the saucer on top of the bureau in the patient’s room. That is standard procedure.”

“Sure. Would you mind going right through it? From the time Doctor Buhl gave you the tablets?”

“He handed them to me just before he left, and after he left I went to the bureau and put them in the saucer. The instructions were to give one as soon as the guests had gone, and one an hour later if it seemed desirable, and that’s what I did.” She was being cool and professional. “At ten minutes past eight I put one of the tablets in my hypo syringe with one c.c. of sterile water, and injected it in the patient’s arm. An hour later he was asleep but a little restless, and I did the same with the other tablet. That quieted him completely.”

“Have you any reason to suspect that the tablets in the saucer had been changed by someone? That the ones you gave the patient were not the ones Doctor Buhl gave you?”

“Certainly not.”

“Look here,” Johnny Arrow drawled, “that’s a kind of a nasty question. I guess that’s enough.”

I grinned at him. “You’re too touchy. If the cops ever got started on this they’d hammer away at her for hours. Five people have admitted they were in the patient’s room after Doctor Buhl left, including you, and the cops would go over that with her forward, backward, sideways, and up and down. I don’t want to spoil her appetite for dinner, so I merely ask her if she saw anything suspicious. Or heard anything. You didn’t, Miss Goren?”

“I did not.”

“Then that’s that. Now the other point. You may or may not know that Paul Fyfe brought some ice cream to the apartment and put it in the refrigerator. It was mentioned at the dinner table, but you weren’t there. Do you know what happened to the ice cream?”

“No.” Her voice sharpened. “This seems pretty silly. Ice cream?”

“I often seem silly. Just ignore it. Mr. Wolfe wants to know about the ice cream. You know nothing at all about it?”

“No. I never heard of it.”

“Okay.” I turned to Arrow. “This one is for you too. What do you know about the ice cream?”

“Nothing.” He chuckled. “You can get as nasty as you want to with me, after that squeeze you put on me last night, but don’t try getting behind me. I’m going to keep you right in front.”

“From the front I use something else. You remember Paul Fyfe mentioned the ice cream at the dinner table?”

“I guess I do. I had forgotten about it.”

“But you never saw it or touched it?”

“No.”

“Or heard anything about what happened to it?”

“No.”

“Then I’m going to ask you to do me a favor. You’ll be doing yourself one too, because it’s the quickest way to get rid of me. Where are you going for dinner?”

“I’ve got a table reserved at Rusterman’s.”

He was certainly learning his way around, possibly with Anne’s help. “That’s fine,” I said, “because it’s only a block out of the way. I want you to take me to the Churchill Towers apartment and let me look in the refrigerator.”

It was a good thing I had taken the trouble to brief him on tailors and haberdashers. But for that he would probably have refused, and I would have had to go and persuade Tim Evarts, the house dick, to oblige, and that would have cost both time and money. He did balk some, but Anne put in, saying it would take less time to humor me than to argue with me, and that settled it. It seemed likely that in the years to come Anne would do a lot of settling, and then and there I decided to let him have her. She permitted him to help her get a yellow embroidered stole across her bare shoulders, and he got a black Homburg from a table. On our way downstairs, and in the taxi we took to the Churchill, I could have coached him on black Homburgs, when and where and with what, but with Anne present I thought it advisable to skip it.

The Churchill Towers apartment, on the thirty-second floor, had a foyer about the size of my bedroom, and the living room would have accommodated three billiard tables with plenty of elbow space. There was an inside hall between the living room and the bedrooms, and at one end of the hall was a serving pantry, with an outside service entrance. Besides a long built-in stainless-steel counter, the pantry had a large warmer cabinet, an even larger refrigerator, and a door to a refuse-disposal chute, but no cooking equipment. Arrow and Anne stood just inside the swinging door, touching elbows, as I went and opened the door of the refrigerator.

The freezing compartment at the top held six trays of ice cubes and nothing else. On the shelves below were a couple of dozen bottles — beer, club soda, tonic — five bottles of champagne lying on their sides, a bowl of oranges, and a plate of grapes. There was no paper bag, big or little, and absolutely no sign of ice cream. I closed the door and opened the door of the warmer cabinet. It contained nothing. I opened the door of the disposal chute and stuck my head in, and got a smell, but not of ice cream.

I turned to the hooker and the hooked. “All right,” I told them, “I give up. Many thanks. As I said, this was the quickest way to get rid of me. Enjoy your dinner.” They made gangway for me, and I pushed through the swinging door and on out.

When Wolfe had asked me what about dinner I had told him I didn’t know, but I knew now. I could be home by 8:30, and that afternoon, preparing for one of Wolfe’s favorite hot-weather meals, Fritz had been collecting eight baby lobsters, eight avocados, and a bushel of young leaf lettuce. When he had introduced to them the proper amounts of chives, onion, parsley, tomato paste, mayonnaise, salt, pepper, paprika, pimientos, and dry white wine, he would have Brazilian lobster salad as edited by Wolfe, and not even Wolfe could have it all stowed away by half past eight.

He hadn’t. I found him in the dining room, at table, starting on deep-dish blueberry pie smothered with whipped cream. There was no lobster salad in sight, but Fritz, who had let me in, soon entered with the big silver platter, and there was plenty left. Wolfe’s ban on business during meals is not only for his own protection but other people’s too, including me, so I could keep my mind where it belonged, on the proper ratio of the ingredients of a mouthful. Only after that had been attended to, and my share of the blueberry pie, and we had crossed the hall to the office, where Fritz brought coffee, did he ask for a report. I gave it to him. When I had described the climax, the empty refrigerator — that is, empty of ice cream — I got up to refill our coffee cups.

“But,” I said, “if you have simply got to know what happened to it, God knows why, there is still one slender hope. David wasn’t on my list. I was going to phone from the Churchill to ask if you wanted me to try him, but I wanted some of that lobster. He was there in the apartment most of Sunday. Shall I see him?”

Wolfe grunted. “I phoned him this afternoon, and he was here at six o’clock. He says he knows nothing about it.”

“Then that’s the crop.” I sat and took a sip of coffee. Fritz’ coffee is the best on earth. I’ve done it exactly as he does, but it’s not the same. I took another sip. “So the gag didn’t work.”

“It is not a gag.”

“Then what is it?”

“It is a window for death. I think it is — or was. I’ll leave it at that for tonight. We’ll see tomorrow, Archie.”

“Yes, sir.”

“I don’t like the slant of your eye. If you’re thinking of badgering me, don’t. Go somewhere.”

“Glad to. I’ll go have another piece of pie.” I took my cup and saucer and headed for the kitchen.

I spent the rest of the evening there, chewing the rag with Fritz, until his bedtime came, eleven o’clock, and then went to the office to lock the safe and tell Wolfe good night, and mounted the two flights to my room. I have been known to feel fairly well satisfied with myself as I got ready for bed after a day’s work, but not that night. I had failed to learn the fate of the ice cream. I hadn’t the faintest notion where the ice cream came in. I didn’t know what a window for death was, though I knew what it had been on a winter night twenty years ago. One of the noblest functions of a man is to keep millionaires from copping pretty girls, and I hadn’t moved a finger to stop Arrow. And the case was no damn good anyhow, with a slim chance of getting any more out of it than the thousand bucks, and with the job limited to deciding whether to call the cops in or not. It was a bad setup all the way. Usually I’m asleep ten seconds after I hit the pillow, but that night I tossed and turned for a full minute before I went off.

The trouble with mornings is that they come when you’re not awake. It’s all a blur until I am washed and dressed and have somehow made my way down to the kitchen, and got orange juice in me, and I’m not really awake until the fourth griddle cake and the second cup of coffee. But that Thursday morning it was accelerated. As I picked up the glass of orange juice I became aware through the blur that Fritz was putting stuff on a tray, and glanced at my wrist.

“My God,” I said, “you’re late. It’s a quarter past eight.”

“Oh,” he said, “Mr. Wolfe already has his. This is for Saul. He’s up with Mr. Wolfe. He said he already had breakfast, but you know how he likes my summer sausage.”

“When did he come?”

“About eight o’clock. Mr. Wolfe wants you to go up when you’re through breakfast.” He picked up the tray and went.

That did it. I was awake. But that was no good either, because it kept me from enjoying my breakfast. I ate the sausage all right, but forgot to taste it, and I also forgot to put honey on the last cake until it was half gone. I had the Times propped on the rack in front of me, and pretended to read it, but didn’t. It was only 8:32 when I took the last gulp of coffee, shoved my chair back, went to the hall and up one flight to Wolfe’s room, found the door open, and entered.

Wolfe, in his yellow pajamas and barefooted, was seated at the table near a window, and Saul, chewing on griddle cake and sausage, was across from him. I approached.

“Good morning,” I said coldly. “Shoe shine?”

“Archie,” Wolfe said.

“Yes, sir. Suit pressed?”

“This is no time of day for you, I know, but I want to get on with this. Get all of them, including Doctor Buhl. Arrange for them to be here at eleven o’clock, or if that’s impossible, at noon. Tell them I have made my decision and wish to communicate it. If Doctor Buhl is obstinate, tell him that the decision, and my reasons for it, will be of considerable professional interest to him, and that I feel strongly he should be present. If you phone him immediately you may get him before he starts his day’s work. Get him first.”

“Is that all?”

“For the present, yes. I need a little more time with Saul.”

I left them.