The Red Box

Chapter 11

Llewellyn was expostulating. “But, Helen, it’s a police job. Not that he could be any more offensive than the police are, but it’s a police job and let them do it. Anyway, Dad and Aunt Callie will be sore as the devil, you know they will, you know how they went after me when I... Tuesday.”

Helen said, “I don’t care if they’re sore. It’s not their money, it’s mine. I’m doing this. Of course I won’t be of age until next month — does that matter, Mr. Wolfe? Is that all right?”

“Quite all right.”

“Will you do it?”

“Will I accept your commission? In spite of my experience with another Frost as a client, yes.”

She turned to her ortho-cousin. “You do as you please, Lew. Go on home and tell them if you want to. But I... I’d like to have you...”

He was frowning at her. “Are you set on this?”

“Yes. Good and set.”

“Okay.” He settled back in his chair. “I stick here. I’m for the Frosts, but you’re the first one on the list. You’re... Oh, nothing.” He flushed a little. “Go to it.”

“Thank you, Lew.” She turned to Wolfe. “I suppose you want me to sign something?”

Wolfe shook his head. “That won’t be necessary.” He had leaned back and his eyes were half closed. “My charge will be adequate, but not exorbitant. I shan’t attempt to make you pay for your cousin’s volatility. But one thing must be clearly understood. You are engaging me for this job because of your affection and esteem for Mr. McNair and your desire that his murderer should be discovered and punished. You are at present under the spell of powerful emotions. Are you sure that tomorrow or next week you will still want this thing done? Do you want the murderer caught and tried and convicted and executed if it should happen to be, for instance, your cousin, your uncle, your mother — or Mr. Perren Gebert?”

“But that... that’s ridiculous...”

“Maybe, but it remains a question to be answered. Do you want to pay me for catching the murderer, no matter who it is?”

She gazed at him, and said finally, “Yes. Whoever killed Uncle Boyd — yes, I do.”

“You won’t go back on that?”

“No.”

“Good for you. I believe you. I’ll try the job for you. Now I want to ask you some questions, but it is possible that your reply to the first one will make others unnecessary. When did you last see Mr. McNair’s red leather box?”

“His what?” She frowned. “Red leather box?”

“That’s it.”

“Never. I never did see it. I didn’t know he had one.”

“Indeed. — You, sir, are you answering questions?”

Lew Frost said, “I guess I am. Sure. But not about a red leather box. I’ve never seen it.”

Wolfe sighed. “Then I’m afraid we’ll have to go on. I may as well tell you, Miss Frost, that Mr. McNair foresaw — at least, feared — what was waiting for him. While you were here yesterday he was at his lawyer’s executing his will. He left his property to his sister Isabel, who lives in Scotland. He named me executor of his estate, and bequeathed me his red leather box and its contents. He called here to ask me to accept the trust and the legacy.”

“He named you executor?” Llewellyn was gazing at him incredulously. “Why, he didn’t know you. Day before yesterday he didn’t even want to talk to you...”

“Just so. That shows the extent of his desperation. But it is evident that the red box holds the secret of his death. As a matter of fact, Miss Frost, I was glad to see you here today. I hoped for something from you — a description of the box, if nothing more.”

She shook her head. “I never saw it. I didn’t know... but I don’t understand... if he wanted you to have it, why didn’t he tell you yesterday...”

“He intended to. He didn’t get that far. His last words — his last futile struggle against his fate — were an effort to tell me where the red box is. I should inform you: Inspector Cramer has a copy of the will, and at this moment scores of police are searching for the box, so if you or your cousin can give me any hint there is no time to lose. It is desirable for me to get the box first. Not to protect the murderer, but I have my own way of doing things — and the police have no client but the electric chair.”

Llewellyn said, “But you say he left it to you, it’s your property...”

“Murder evidence is no one’s property, once the law touches it. No, if Mr. Cramer finds it, the best we can hope for is the role of privileged spectator. So turn your minds back, both of you. Look back at the days, weeks, months, years. Resurrect, if you can, some remark of Mr. McNair’s, some forgotten gesture, perhaps of irritation or embarrassment at being interrupted, perhaps the hurried closing of a drawer, or the unintentional disclosure of a hiding-place. A remark by someone else who may have had knowledge of it. Some action of Mr. McNair’s, unique or habitual, at the time unexplained...”

Llewellyn was slowly shaking his head. Helen said, “Nothing. I’ll try to think, but I’m sure there’s nothing I can remember like that.”

“That’s too bad. Keep trying. Of course the police are ransacking his apartment and his place of business. Had he preempted any other spot of earth or water? A garage, a boat, a place in the country?”

Llewellyn was looking at his cousin with inquiring brows. She nodded. “Yes. Glennanne. A little cottage with a few acres of land up near Brewster.”

“Glennanne?”

“Yes. His wife’s name was Anne and his daughter’s was Glenna.”

“Did he own it?”

“Yes. He bought it about six years ago.”

“What and where is Brewster?”

“It’s a little village about fifty miles north of New York.”

“Indeed.” Wolfe sat up. “Archie. Get Saul, Orrie, Johnny and Fred here immediately. If they cannot all be prompt, send the first two to search Glennanne, and let the others join them when they come. The cottage, first, swiftly and thoroughly, then the grounds. Is there a garden, Miss Frost? Tools?”

She nodded. “He... he grew some flowers.”

“Good. They can take the sedan. Get extra things for digging if they need them, and they should have lights to continue after dark. The cottage is most likely — a hole in the wall, a loose floor-board. Get them. Wait. First your notebook; take this and type it on a letterhead:

“Leave room for my signature above the designation, ‘Executor of the estate of Boyden McNair.’ I have not yet qualified, but we can tie the red tape later.” He nodded me off. “Now, Miss Frost, perhaps you can tell me—”

I moved to the phone and started dialing. I got Saul and Orrie right off the bat, and they said they would come pronto. Fred Durkin was out, but his wife said she knew where to get hold of him and would have him call in ten minutes. Johnny Keems, when he wasn’t on a job for us, had formed the habit of phoning every day at nine to give me his program, and had told me that morning that he was still on a watchdog assignment for Del Pritchard, so I tried that office. They had Johnny booked for the day, but before I finished typing the authorization for Saul, Fred called, so I had three anyhow.

Saul Panzer arrived first and Wolfe had Fritz show him into the office. He came in with his hat in his hand, shot me a wink, asked Wolfe how he did, got himself an everlasting blueprint of the two Frosts in one quick glance, and pointed his big nose inquiringly at Wolfe.

Wolfe gave him the dope and told him what he was supposed to find. Helen Frost told him how to get to Glennanne from the village of Brewster. I handed him the signed authorization and forty bucks for expenses, and he pulled out his old brown wallet and deposited them in it with care. Wolfe told him to get the car from the garage and wait in front to pick up Fred and Orrie as they arrived.

Saul nodded. “Yes, sir. If I find the box, do I leave Fred or Orrie at the place when I come away?”

“Yes. Until notified. Fred.”

“If any strangers offer to help me look, do I let them?”

Wolfe frowned. “I was about to mention that. Surely there can be no objection if we show a preference for law and order. With all courtesy, you can ask to see a search warrant.”

“Is there something hot in the box?” Saul blushed. “I mean, stolen property?”

“No. It is legally mine. Defend it.”

“Right.” Saul went. I reflected that if he ever got his mitts on the box I wouldn’t like to be the guy to try to take it away from him, small as he was. He didn’t think any more of Nero Wolfe than I do of my patrician nose and big brown intelligent eyes.

Wolfe had pushed the button for Fritz, the long push, not the two shorts for beer. Fritz came, and stood.

Wolfe frowned at him. “Can you stretch lunch for us? Two guests?”

“No,” Llewellyn broke in, “really — we’ll have to get back — I promised Dad and Aunt Callie—”

“You can phone them. I would advise Miss Frost to stay. At any moment we may hear that the box has been found, and that would mean a crisis. And to provide against the possibility that it will not be found, I shall need a great deal of information. Miss Frost?”

She nodded. “I’ll stay. I’m not hungry. I’ll stay. You’ll stay with me, Lew?”

He grumbled something at her, but stayed put. Wolfe told Fritz:

“The fricandeau should be ample. Add lettuce to the salad if the endive is short, and of course increase the oil. Chill a bottle of the ’28 Marcobrunner. As soon as you are ready.” He wiggled Fritz away with a finger, and settled back in his chair. “Now, Miss Frost. We are engaged in a joint enterprise. I need facts. I am going to ask you a lot of foolish questions. If one of them turns out to be wise or clever you will not know it, but let us hope that I will. Please do not waste time in expostulation. If I ask you whether your mother has recently sent you to the corner druggist for potassium cyanide tablets, just say no, and listen to the next one. I once solved a difficult case by learning from a young woman, after questioning her for five hours, that she had been handed a newspaper with a piece cut out. Your inalienable rights of privacy are temporarily suspended. Is that understood?”

“Yes.” She looked straight at him. “I don’t care. Of course I know you’re clever, I want you to be. I know how easily you caught me in a lie Tuesday morning. But you ought to know... you can’t catch me in one now, because I haven’t anything to lie about. I don’t see how anything I know can help you...”

“Possibly it can’t. We can only try. Let us first straighten out the present a little, and work back. I should inform you: Mr. McNair did tell me a few things yesterday before he was interrupted. I have a little background to start with. Now — for instance — what did Mr. Gebert mean yesterday when he said you were almost his fiancée?”

She compressed her lips, but then spoke right to it: “He didn’t mean anything, really. He has — several times he has asked me to marry him.”

“Have you encouraged him?”

“No.”

“Has anyone?”

“Why... who could?”

“Lots of people. Your maid, the pastor of his church, a member of your family — has anyone?”

She said, after a pause, “No.”

“You said you had nothing to lie about.”

“But I—” She stopped, and tried to smile at him. It was then that I began to think she was a pretty good kid, when I saw her try to smile to show that she wasn’t meaning to cheat on him. She went on, “This is so very personal... I don’t see how...”

Wolfe wiggled a finger at her. “We are proceeding on this theory, that in any event whatever, we wish to discover the murderer of Mr. McNair. Even — merely for instance — if it should mean dragging your mother into a courtroom to testify against someone she likes. If that is our aim, you must leave the method of pursuit to me; and I beg you, don’t balk and shy at every little pebble. Who encouraged Mr. Gebert?”

“I won’t do it again,” she promised. “No one really encouraged him. I’ve known him all my life, and mother knew him before I was born. Mother and father knew him. He has always been... attentive, and amusing, and in some ways he is interesting and I like him. In other ways I dislike him extremely. Mother has told me I should control my dislike on account of his good points, and she said that since he was such an old friend I shouldn’t wound his feelings by cutting him off, that it wouldn’t hurt to let him think he was still in the field as long as I hadn’t decided.”

“You agreed to that?”

“Well, I... I didn’t fight it. My mother is very persuasive.”

“What was the attitude of your uncle? Mr. Dudley Frost. The trustee of your property.”

“Oh, I never discussed things like that with him. But I know what it would have been. He didn’t like Perren.”

“And Mr. McNair?”

“He disliked Perren more than I did. Outwardly they were friends, but... anyway, Uncle Boyd wasn’t two-faced. Shall I tell you...”

“By all means.”

“Well, one day about a year ago Uncle Boyd sent for me to go upstairs to his office, and when I went in Perren was there. Uncle Boyd was standing up and looking white and determined. I asked him what was the matter, and he said he only wanted to tell me, in Perrens’s presence, that any influence his friendship and affection might have on me was unalterably opposed to my marriage with Perren. He said it very... formally, and that wasn’t like him. He didn’t ask me to promise or anything. He just said that and then told me to go.”

“And in spite of that, Mr. Gebert has persisted with his courtship.”

“Of course he has. Why wouldn’t he? Lots of men have. I’m so rich it’s worth quite an effort.”

“Dear me.” Wolfe’s eyes flickered open at her and half shut again. “As cynical as that about it? But a brave cynicism which is of course proper. Nothing is more admirable than the fortitude with which millionaires tolerate the disadvantages of their wealth. What is Mr. Gebert’s profession?”

“He hasn’t any. That’s one of the things I don’t like about him. He doesn’t do anything.”

“Has he an income?”

“I don’t know. Really, I don’t know a thing about it. I suppose he has... I’ve heard him make vague remarks. He lives at the Chesebrough, and he drives a car.”

“I know. Mr. Goodwin informed me he drove it here yesterday. At all events, a man of courage. You knew him in Europe; what did he do there?”

“No more than here, as far as I remember — of course I was young then. He was wounded in the war, and afterwards came to visit us in Spain — that is, my mother, I was only two years old — and he went to Egypt with us a little later, but when we went on to the Orient he went back—”

“One moment, please.” Wolfe was frowning. “Let us tidy up the chronology. There seems to have been quite a party in Spain; almost Mr. McNair’s last words were that he had gone to Spain with his baby daughter. We’ll start when your life started. You were born, you told me yesterday, in Paris — on May 7th, 1915. Your father was already in the war, as a member of the British Aviation Corps, and he was killed when you were a few months old. When did your mother take you to Spain?”

“Early in 1916. She was afraid to stay in Paris, on account of the war. We went first to Barcelona and then to Cartagena. A little later Uncle Boyd and Glenna came down and joined us there. He had no money and his health was bad, and mother... helped him. I think Perren came, not long after, partly because Uncle Boyd was there — they had both been friends of my father’s. Then in 1917 Glenna died, and soon after that Uncle Boyd went back to Scotland, and mother took me to Egypt because they were afraid of a revolution or something in Spain, and Perren went with us.”

“Good. I own a house in Egypt which I haven’t seen for twenty years. It has Rhages and Veramine tiles on the doorway. How long were you in Egypt?”

“About two years. In 1919, when I was four years old — of course mother has told me all this — three English people were killed in a riot in Cairo, and mother decided to leave. Perren went back to France. Mother and I went to Bombay, and later to Bali and Japan and Hawaii. My uncle, who was the trustee of my property, kept insisting that I should have an American education, and finally, in 1924 — I was nine years old then — we left Hawaii and came to New York. It was from that time on, really, that I knew Uncle Boyd, because of course I didn’t remember him from Spain, since I had been only two years old.”

“He had his business in New York when you got here?”

“No. He has told me — he started designing for Wilmerding in London and was very successful and became a partner, and then he decided New York was better and came over here in 1925 and went in for himself. Of course he looked mother up first thing, and she was a little help to him on account of the people she knew, but he would have gone to the top anyway because he had great ability. He was very talented. Paris and London were beginning to copy him. You would never have thought, just being with him, talking with him... you would never have thought...”

She faltered, and stopped. Wolfe began to murmur something at her to steady her, but an interruption saved him the trouble. Fritz appeared to announce lunch. Wolfe pushed back his chair:

“Your coat will be all right here, Miss Frost. Your hat? But permit me to insist, as a favor; to eat with a hat on, except in a railroad station, is barbarous. Thank you. Restaurant? I know nothing of restaurants; short of compulsion, I would not eat in one were Vatel himself the chef.”

Then, after we were seated at the table, when Fritz came to pass the relish platter, Wolfe performed the introduction according to his custom with guests who had not tasted that cooking before:

“Miss Frost, Mr. Frost, this is Mr. Brenner.”

Also according to custom, there was no shop talk during the meal. Llewellyn was fidgety, but he ate; and the fact appeared to be that our new client was hungry as the devil. Probably she had had no breakfast. Anyway, she gave the fricandeau a play which made Wolfe regard her with open approval. He carried the burden of the conversation, chiefly about Egypt, tiles, the uses of a camel’s double lip, and the theory that England’s colonizing genius was due to her repulsive climate, on account of which Britons with any sense and willpower invariably decided to go somewhere else to work. It was two-thirty when the salad was finished, so we went back to the office and had Fritz serve coffee there.

Helen Frost telephoned her mother. Apparently there was considerable parental protest from the other end of the wire, for Helen sounded first persuasive, then irritated, and finally fairly sassy. During that performance Llewellyn sat and scowled at her, and I couldn’t tell whether the scowl was for her or the opposition. It had no effect on our client either way, for she was sitting at my desk and didn’t see it.

Wolfe started in on her again, resuming the Perren Gebert tune, but for the first half hour or so it was spotty because the telephone kept interrupting. Johnny Keems called to say that he could leave the Pritchard job if we needed him, and I told him that we’d manage to struggle along somehow. Dudley Frost phoned to give his son hell, and Llewellyn took it calmly and announced that his cousin Helen needed him where he was, whereupon she kept a straight face but I smothered a snicker. Next came a ring from Fred Durkin, to say that they had arrived and taken possession of Glennanne, finding no one there, and had begun operations; the phone at the cottage was out of order, so Saul had sent Fred to the village to make that report. A man named Collinger phoned and insisted on speaking to Wolfe, and I listened in and took it down as usual; he was Boyden McNair’s lawyer, and wanted to know if Wolfe could call at his office right away for a conference regarding the will, and of course the bare idea set Wolfe’s digestion back at least ten minutes. It was arranged that Collinger would come to 35th Street the following morning. Then, a little after three o’clock, Inspector Cramer got us, and reported that his army was making uniform progress on all fronts: namely, none. No red box and no information about it; no hide or hair of motive anywhere; nothing among McNair’s papers that could be stretched to imply murder; no line on a buyer of potassium cyanide; no anything.

Cramer sounded a little weary. “Here’s a funny item, too,” he said in a wounded tone, “we can’t find the young Frosts anywhere. Your client, Lew, isn’t at his home or his office in the Portland Theatre or anywhere else, and Helen, the daughter, isn’t around either. Her mother says she went out around eleven o’clock, but she doesn’t know where, and I’ve learned that Helen was closer to McNair than anyone else, very close friends, so she’s our best chance on the red box. Then what’s she doing running around town, with McNair just croaked? There’s just a chance that something’s got too hot for them and they’ve faded. Lew was up at the Frost apartment on 65th Street and they went out together. We’re trying to trail—”

“Mr. Cramer. Please. I’ve mumbled at you twice. Miss Helen Frost and Mr. Llewellyn Frost are in my office; I’m conversing with them. They had lunch—”

“Huh? They’re there now?”

“Yes. They got here this morning shortly after you left.”

“I’ll be damned.” Cramer shrilled a little. “What are you trying to do, lick off some cream for yourself? I want to see them. Ask them to come down — or wait, let me talk to her. Put her on.”

“Now, Mr. Cramer.” Wolfe cleared his throat. “I do not lick cream; and this man and woman came to see me unannounced and unexpected. I am perfectly willing that you should talk with her, but there is no point—”

“What do you mean, willing? What’s that, humor? Why the devil shouldn’t you be willing?”

“I should. But it is appropriate to mention it, since Miss Frost is my client, and is therefore under my—”

“Your client? Since when?” Cramer was boiling. “What kind of a shenanigan is this? You told me Lew Frost hired you!”

“So he did. But that — er — we have changed that. I have — speaking as a horse — I have changed riders in the middle of the stream. I am working for Miss Frost. I was about to say there is no point in a duplication of effort. She has had a bad shock and is under a strain. You may question her if you wish, but I have done so and am not through with her, and there is little likelihood that her interests will conflict with yours in the end. She is as anxious to find Mr. McNair’s murderer as you are; that is what she hired me for. I may tell you this: neither she nor her cousin has any knowledge of the red box. They have never seen it or heard of it.”

“The devil.” There was a pause on the wire. “I want to see her and have a talk with her.”

Wolfe sighed. “In that infernal den? She is tired, she has nothing to say that can help you, she is worth two million dollars, and she will be old enough to vote before next fall. Why don’t you call at her home after dinner this evening? Or send one of your lieutenants?”

“Because I — Oh, the hell with it. I ought to know better than to argue with you. And she doesn’t know where the red box is?”

“She knows nothing whatever about it. Nor does her cousin. My word for that.”

“Okay. I’ll get her later maybe. Let me know what you find, huh?”

“By all means.”

Wolfe hung up and pushed the instrument away, leaned back and locked his fingers on his belly, and slowly shook his head as he murmured, “That man talks too much. — I’m sure, Miss Frost, that you won’t be offended at missing a visit to police headquarters. It is one of my strongest prejudices, my disinclination to permit a client of mine to appear there. Let us hope that Mr. Cramer’s search for the red box will keep him entertained.”

Llewellyn put in, “In my opinion, that’s the only thing to do anyway, wait till it’s found. All this hash of ancient history — if you were as careful to protect your client from your own annoyance as you are—”

“I remind you, sir, you are here by sufferance. Your cousin has the sense, when she hires an expert, to permit him his hocus-pocus. — What were we saying, Miss Frost? Oh, yes. You were telling me that Mr. Gebert came to New York in 1931. You were then sixteen years old. You said that he is forty-four, so he was then thirty-nine, not an advanced age. I presume he called upon your mother at once, as an old friend?”

She nodded. “Yes. We knew he was coming; he had written. Of course I didn’t remember him; I hadn’t seen him since I was four years old.”

“Of course not. Did he perhaps come on a political mission? I understand that he was a member of the camelots du roi.”

“I don’t think so. I’m sure he didn’t — but that’s silly, certainly I can’t be sure. But I think not.”

“At any rate, as far as you know, he doesn’t work, and you don’t like that.”

“I don’t like that in anyone.”

“Remarkable sentiment for an heiress. However. If Mr. Gebert should marry you, that would be a job for him. Let us abandon him to that slim hope for his redemption. It is getting on for four o’clock, when I must leave you. I need to ask you about a sentence you left unfinished yesterday, shortly after I made my unsuccessful appeal to you. You told me that your father died when you were only a few months old, and that therefore you had never had a father, and then you said, ‘That is,’ and stopped. I prodded you, but you said it was nothing, and we let it go at that. It may in fact be nothing, but I would like to have it — whatever was ready for your tongue. Do you remember?”

She nodded. “It really was nothing. Just something foolish.”

“Let me have it. I’ve told you, we’re combing a meadow for a mustard seed.”

“But this was nothing at all. Just a dream, a childish dream I had once. Then I had it several times after that, always the same. A dream about myself...”

“Tell me.”

“Well... the first time I had it I was about six years old, in Bali. I’ve wondered since if anything had happened that day to make me have such a dream, but I couldn’t remember anything. I dreamed I was a baby, not an infant but big enough to walk and run, around two I imagine, and on a chair, on a napkin, there was an orange that had been peeled and divided into sections. I took a section of the orange and ate it, then took another one and turned to a man sitting there on a bench, and handed it to him, and I said plainly, ‘For daddy.’ It was my voice, only it was a baby talking. Then I ate another section, and then took another one and said ‘For daddy’ again, and kept on that way till it was all gone. I woke up from the dream trembling and began to cry. Mother was sleeping in another bed — it was on a screened veranda — and she came to me and asked what was the matter, and I said, ‘I’m crying because I feel so good.’ I never did tell her what the dream was. I had it quite a few times after that — I think the last time was when I was about eleven years old, here in New York. I always cried when I had it.”

Wolfe asked, “What did the man look like?”

She shook her head. “That’s why it was just foolish. It wasn’t a man, it just looked like a man. There was one photograph of my father which mother had kept, but I couldn’t tell if it looked like him in the dream. It just... I just simply called it daddy.”

“Indeed.” Wolfe’s lips pushed out and in. At length he observed, “Possibly remarkable, on account of the specific picture. Did you eat sections of orange when you were young?”

“I suppose so. I’ve always liked oranges.”

“Well. No telling. Possibly, as you say, nothing at all. You mentioned a photograph of your father. Your mother had kept only one?”

“Yes. She kept that for me.”

“None for herself?”

“No.” A pause, then Helen said quietly. “There’s no secret about it. And it was perfectly natural. Mother was bitterly offended at the terms of father’s will, and I think she had a right to be. They had a serious misunderstanding of some sort, I never knew what, about the time I was born, but no matter how serious it was... anyway, he left her nothing. Nothing whatever, not even a small income.”

Wolfe nodded. “So I understand. It was left in trust for you, with your uncle — your father’s brother Dudley — as trustee. Have you ever read the will?”

“Once, a long while ago. Not long after we came to New York my uncle had me read it.”

“At the age of nine. But you waded through it. Good for you. I also understand that your uncle was invested with sole power and authority, without any right of oversight by you or anyone else. I believe the usual legal phrase is ‘absolute and uncontrolled discretion.’ So that, as a matter of fact, you do not know how much you will be worth on your twenty-first birthday; it may be millions and it may be nothing. You may be in debt. If any—”

Lew Frost got in. “What are you trying to insinuate? If you mean that my father—”

Wolfe snapped, “Don’t do that! I insinuate nothing; I merely state the fact of my client’s ignorance regarding her property. It may be augmented; it may be depleted; she doesn’t know. Do you, Miss Frost?”

“No.” She was frowning. “I don’t know. I know that for over twenty years the income has been paid in full, promptly every quarter. Really, Mr. Wolfe, I think we’re getting—”

“We shall soon be through; I must leave you shortly. As for irrelevance, I warned you that we might wander anywhere. Indulge me in two more questions about your father’s will: do you enter into complete possession and control on May seventh?”

“Yes, I do.”

“And in case of your death before your twenty-first birthday, who inherits?”

“If I were married and had a child, the child. If not, half to my uncle and half to his son, my cousin Lew.”

“Indeed. Nothing to your mother even then?”

“Nothing.”

“So. Your father fancied his side of that controversy.” Wolfe turned to Llewellyn. “Take good care of your cousin for another five weeks. Should harm befall her in that time, you will have a million dollars and the devil will have his horns on your pillow. Wills are noxious things. Frequently. It is astonishing, the amount of mischief a man’s choler may do long after the brain-cells which nourished the choler have rotted away.” He wiggled a finger at our client. “Soon, of course, you yourself must make a will, to dispose of the pile in case you should die on — say — May eighth, or subsequently. I suppose you have a lawyer?”

“No. I’ve never needed one.”

“You will now. That’s what a fortune is for, to support the lawyers who defend it for you against depredation.” Wolfe glanced at the clock. “I must leave you. I trust the afternoon has not been wasted; I suppose you feel that it has. I don’t think so. May I leave it that way for the present? I thank you for your indulgence. And while we continue to mark time, waiting for that confounded box to be found, I have a little favor to ask. Could you take Mr. Goodwin home to tea with you?”

Llewellyn’s scowl, which had been turned on for the past hour, deepened. Helen Frost glanced at me and then back at Wolfe.

“Why,” she said, “I suppose... if you want...”

“I do want. I presume it would be possible to have Mr. Gebert there?”

She nodded. “He’s there now. Or he was when I phoned mother. Of course... you know... mother doesn’t approve...”

“I’m aware of that. She thinks you’re poking a stick in a hornet’s nest. But the fact is the police are the hornets; you’ve avoided them, and she hasn’t. Mr. Goodwin is a discreet and wholesome man and not without acuity. I want him to talk with Mr. Gebert, and with your mother too if she will permit it. You will soon be of age, Miss Frost; you have chosen to attempt a difficult and possibly dangerous project; surely you can prevail on your family and close friends for some consideration. If they are ignorant of any circumstance regarding Mr. McNair’s death, all the more should they be ready to establish that point and help us to stumble on a path that will lead us away from ignorance. So if you would invite Mr. Goodwin for a cup of tea...”

Llewellyn said sourly, “I think Dad’s there, too, he was going to stay till we got back. It’ll just be a big stew — if it’s Gebert you want, why can’t we send him down here? He’ll do anything Helen tells him to.”

“Because for two hours I shall be engaged with my plants.” Wolfe looked at the clock again, and got up from his chair.

Our client was biting her lip. She quit that, and looked at me. “Will you have tea with us, Mr. Goodwin?”

I nodded. “Yeah. Much obliged.”

Wolfe, moving toward the door, said to her, “It is a pleasure to earn a fee from a client like you. You can come to a yes or no without first encircling the globe. I hope and believe that when we are finished you will have nothing to regret.” He moved on, and turned at the threshold. “By the way, Archie, if you will just get that package from your room before you leave. Put it on my bed.”

He went to the elevator. I rose and told my prospective hostess I would be back in a minute, left the office and hopped up the stairs. I didn’t stop at the second floor, where my room was, but kept going to the top, and got there almost as soon as the elevator did with the load it had. At the door to the plant rooms Wolfe stood, awaiting me.

“One idea,” he murmured, “is to observe the reactions of the others upon the cousins’ return from our office before there has been an opportunity for the exchange of information. Another is to get an accurate opinion as to whether any of them has ever seen the red box or has possession of it now. The third is a general assault on reticence.”

“Okay. How candid are we?”

“Reasonably so. Bear in mind that with all three there, the chances are many to one that you will be talking to the murderer, so the candor will be one-sided. You, of course, will be expecting cooperation.”

“Sure, I always do, because I’m wholesome.”

I ran back downstairs and found that our client had on her hat and coat and gloves and her cousin was standing beside her, looking grave but a little doubtful.

I grinned at them. “Come on, children.”