Three Men Out

Cramer spoke. "Could you ask for a plainer NW?" "I could," I objected. "Why the extra pencil on the left of the W?" "He put it there deliberately, for camouflage, to make it less obvious, or it rolled there accidentally, I don't care which. It is unmistakably NW." He focused on Wolfe. "I promised to connect you with a crime." Wolfe, back in his chair, interlaced his fingers. "You're not serious." "The hell I'm not." Cramer returned to the red leather chair and sat. "That's why I came here, and came alone. You deny you sent Goodwin there, but I don't believe you. He admits he was in Heller's office ten minutes, because he has to, since the doorman 130 saw him go up and five people saw him tenter the waiting room. In a drawer of Heller's desk is an envelope addressed to you, containing five hundred dollars in cash. But the clincher is that message. Heller, seated at his desk, sure that he is going to be killed in a matter of seconds, uses those seconds to leave a message. Can there be any question what the message was about? Not for me. It was about the person or persons responsible for his death. I am assuming that its purpose was to identify that person or persons. Do you reject that assumption?"

"No. I think it quite likely. Highly probable."

"You admit it?" "I don't admit it, I state it." "Then I ask you to suggest any person or persons other than you whom the initials NW might identify. Unless you can do that here and now I'm going to take you and Goodwin downtown as material witnesses. I've got men in cars outside. If I didn't do it the DA would." Wolfe straightened up and sighed deep, clear down. "You are being uncommonly obnoxious, Mr. Cramer." He got to his feet. | "Excuse me a moment." Detouring around 131 Cramer's feet, he crossed to the other side of the room, to the bookshelves back of the big globe, reached up to a high one, took a book down, and opened it. He was too far away for me to see what it was. He turned first to the back of the book, where the index would be if it had one, and then to a page near the middle of it. He went on to another page, and another, while Cramer, containing his emotions under pressure, got a cigar from a pocket, stuck it in his mouth and sank his teeth in it. He never lit one. Finally Wolfe returned to his desk, opened a drawer and put the book in it, and closed and locked the drawer. Cramer was speaking. "I'm not being fantastic. You didn't kill him; you weren't there. I'm not even assuming Goodwin killed him, though he could have. I'm saying that Heller left a message that would give a lead to the killer, and the message says NW, and that stands for Nero Wolfe, and therefore you know something, and I want to know what. I want a yes or no to this. Do you or do you not know something that indicates, or may indicate, who murdered Leo Heller?" Wolfe, settled in his chair again, nodded. "Yes." "Ah. You do. What?" 132 "The message he left." "The message only says NW. Go on from there." "I need more information. I need to know--are the pencils still there on his desk as you found them?" "Yes. They haven't been disturbed." "You have a man there, of course. Get him on the phone and let me talk to him. You will hear us." Cramer hesitated, not liking it, then decided he might as well string along, came to my desk, dialed a number, got his man, and told him Wolfe would speak to him. Wolfe took it with his phone while Cramer stayed at mine. Wolfe was courteous but crisp. "I understand those pencils are there on the desk as they were found, that all but one of them have erasers in their ends, and that an eraser is there on the desk, between the two groups of pencils. Is that correct?" "Right," The dick sounded bored. I was getting it from the phone on the table over by the globe. "Take the eraser and insert it in the end of the pencil that hasn't one in it. I want to know if the eraser was loose enough to slip out accidentally." 133 "Inspector, are you on? You said not to disturb--" "Go ahead," Cramer growled. "I'm right here." "Yes, sir. Hold it, please." There was a long wait, and then he was back on. "The eraser couldn't have slipped out accidentally. Part of it is still clamped in the end of the pencil. It had to be pulled out, torn apart, and the torn surfaces are bright and fresh. I can pull one out of another pencil and tell you how much force it takes." "No, thank you, that's all I need. But to make certain, and for the record, I suggest that you send the pencil and eraser to the laboratory to check that the torn surfaces fit." "Do I do that. Inspector?" "Yeah, you might as well. Mark them properly." "Yes, sir." Cramer returned to the red leather chair, and I went to mine. He tilted the cigar upward from the corner of his mouth and demanded, "So what?" "You know quite well what," Wolfe declared. "The eraser was yanked out and placed purposely, and was a part of the 134 message. No doubt as a dot after the N to show it was an initial? And he was interrupted permanently before he could put one after the W?" "Sarcasm don't change it any. It's still NW." "No. It isn't. It never was." "For me and the district attorney it is. I guess we'd better get on down to his office." Wolfe upturned a palm. "There you are. You're not hare-brained, but you are pigheaded. I warn you, sir, that if you proceed on the assumption that Mr. Heller's message says NW, you are doomed; the best you can expect is to be tagged a jackass." "I suppose you know what it does say." "Yes." "You do?" "Yes." "I'm waiting." "You'll continue to wait. If I thought I could earn this money"--Wolfe tapped his pocket--"by deciphering that message for you, that would be simple, but in your present state of mind you would only think I was contriving a humbug." "Try me." "No, sir." Wolfe half closed his eyes. "An alternative. You can go on as you have 135 started and see where it lands you, understanding that Mr. Goodwin and I will persistently deny any knowledge of the affair or those concerned in it except what has been given you, and I'll pursue my own course; or you can bring the murderer here and let me at him--with you present." 'Til be glad to. Name him." "When I find him. I need all six of them, to learn which one Heller's message identifies. Since I can translate the message and you can't, you need me more than I need you, but you can save me much time and trouble and expense." Cramer's level gaze had no trace whatever of affection or sympathy. "If you can translate that message and refuse to disclose it, you're withholding evidence." "Nonsense. A conjecture is not evidence. Heaven knows your conjecture that it says NW isn't. Nor is mine, but it should lead to some if I do the leading." Wolfe flung a hand impatiently, and his voice rose. "Confound it, am I suggesting a gambol for my refreshment? Do you think I welcome an invasion of my premises by platoons of policemen herding a drove of scared and suspected citizens?" "No. I know damn well you don't." 136 Cramer took the cigar from his mouth and regarded it as if trying to decide exactly what it was. That accomplished, he glanced at Wolfe and then looked at me, by no means as a bosom friend. "I'll use the phone," he said, and got up and came to my desk. 4 With three of the six scared citizens, it was a good thing that Wolfe didn't have to start from scratch. They had been absolutely determined not to tell why they had gone to see Leo Heller, and, as we learned from the transcripts of interviews and copies of statements they had signed, the cops had had a time dragging it out of them. By the time the first one was brought to us in the office, a little after eight o'clock, Wolfe had sort of resigned himself to personal misery and was bravely facing it. Not only had he had to devour his dinner in one-fourth the usual time; also he had been compelled to break one of his strictest rules and read documents while eating--and all that in the company of Inspector Cramer, who had accepted an invitation to have 137 a bite. Of course Cramer returned to the office with us and called in, from the assemblage in the front room, a police stenographer, who settled himself in a chair at the end of my desk. Sergeant Purley Stebbins, who once in a spasm of generosity admitted that he couldn't prove I was a hoodlum, after bringing the citizen in and seating him facing Wolfe and Cramer, took a chair against the wall. The citizen, whose name as furnished by the documents was John R. Winslow, was the big guy in a dark blue topcoat and homburg who had stuc|< his head out of the elevator for a look at Archie Goodwin. He now looked unhappy and badly wilted, and was one of the three who had tried to refuse to tell what he had gone to Heller for; and considering what it was I couldn't blame him much. He started in complaining. "I think--I think this is unconstitutional. The police have forced me to tell about my private affairs, and maybe that couldn't be helped, but Nero Wolfe is a private detective, and I don't have to submit to questioning by him." "I'm here," Cramer said. 'T can repeat Wolfe's questions if you insist, but it will take more time." 138 "Suppose," Wolfe suggested, "we start and see how it goes. I've read your statement, Mr. Winslow, and I--" "You had no right to! They had no right to let you! They promised me it would be confidential unless it had to be used as evidence!"

"Please, Mr. Winslow, don't bounce up like that. A hysterical woman is bad enough, but a hysterical man is insufferable. I assure you I am as discreet as any policeman. According to your statement, today was your third visit to Mr. Heller's office. You were trying to supply him with enough information for him to devise a formula for determining how much longer your aunt will live. You expect to inherit a considerable fortune from her, and you wanted to make plans intelligently based on reasonable expectations. So you say, but reports are being received which indicate that you are deeply in debt and are hard pressed. Do you deny that?" "No." Winslow's jaw worked. "I don't deny it." "Are your debts, or any part of them, connected with any violation of the law? Any criminal act?" "No!" 139 "Granted that Mr. Heller could furnish a valid calculation on your aunt's life, how would that help you any?" Winslow looked at Cramer and met only a stony stare. He went back to Wolfe. "I was negotiating to borrow a very large sum against my--expectations. There was to be a certain percentage added for each month that passed before repayment was made, and I had to know what my chances were. It was a question of probabilities, and I went to an expert." "What data had you given Heller as a basis for his calculations?" "My God, I couldn't--all kinds of things." "For instance?" Wolfe insisted. Winslow looked at the police stenographer and me, but we couldn't help. He returned to Wolfe. "Hundreds of things. My aunt's age, her habits--eating, sleeping, everything I could--her health as far as I knew about it, the ages of her parents and grandparents when they died, her weight and build--I gave him photographs--her activities and interests, her temperament, her attitude to doctors, her politics--" "Politics?" "Yes. Heller said her pleasure or pain at 140 the election of Eisenhower was a longevity factor." Wolfe grunted. "The claptrap of the charlatan. Did he also consider as a longevity factor the possibility that you might intervene by dispatching your aunt?" That struck Winslow as funny. He did not guffaw, but he Uttered, and it did not suit his build. Wolfe insisted, "Did he?" "I really don't know, really." Winslow tittered again. "From whom did your aunt inherit her fortune?" "Her husband. My Uncle Norton." "When did he die?" "Six years ago. In nineteen forty-seven." "How? Of what?" "He was shot accidentally while hunting. Hunting deer." "Were you present?" "Not present, no. I was more than a mile away at the time." "Did you get a legacy from him?" "No." Some emotion was mobilizing Winslow's blood and turning his face pink. "He sneered at me. He left me six cents in his will. He didn't like me." Wolfe turned to speak to Cramer, but the inspector forestalled him. "Two men are 141 already on it. The shooting accident was up in Maine." "I would like to say how I feel about this," Winslow told them. "I mean the questions that have been asked me about my uncle's death. I regard them as a compliment. They assume that I might have been capable of shooting my uncle, and that is a very high compliment, and you say there are two men on it, so it is being investigated, and that is a compliment too. My aunt would be amused at the idea of my having killed Uncle Norton, and she would be amused at the idea that I might try to kill her. I wouldn't mind a bit having her know about that, but if she finds out what I went to Leo Heller for--God help me." He gestured in appeal. "I was promised, absolutely promised." "We disclose people's private affairs," Cramer rumbled, "only when it is unavoidable."

Wolfe was pouring beer. When the foam was at the rim he put the bottle down and resumed. "I have promised nothing, Mr. Winslow, but I have no time for tattle. Here's a suggestion. You're in this pickle only because of your association with Mr. Heller, and the question is, was there any142 thing in that association to justify this badgering? Suppose you tell us. Start at the beginning, and recall as well as you can levery word that passed between you. Go right through it. I'll interrupt as little as possible." "You've already seen it," Cramer objected. "The transcript, the statement--what the hell, have you got a lead or haven't you?" Wolfe nodded. "We have a night for it," he said, not happily. "Mr. Winslow doesn't know what the lead is, and it's Greek to you." He went to Winslow. "Go ahead, sir. Everything that you said to Mr. Heller, and everything he said to you." It took more than an hour, including interruptions. The interruptions came from various city employees who were scattered around the house--the front room, the dining room, and three upstairs bedrooms-- working on other scared citizens, and from the telephone. Two of the phone calls were from homicide dicks who were trying to locate a citizen who had got mislaid--one named Henrietta Tillotson, Mrs. Albert Tillotson, the overfed matron whom I had seen in Heller's waiting room with the others. There were also calls from the police 143 commissioner and the DA's office and other interested parties. When Purley Stebbins got up to escort Winslow from the room, Wolfe's lead was still apparently Greek to Cramer, as it was to me. As the door closed behind them Cramer spoke emphatically. "I think it's a goddam farce. I think that message was NW, meaning you, and you're stalling for some kind of a play." "And if so?" Wolfe was testy. "Why are you tolerating this? Because if the message did mean me I'm the crux, and your only alternative is to cart me downtown, and that would merely make me mum, and you know it." He drank beer and put the glass down. "However, maybe we can expedite it without too great a risk. Tell your men who are now interviewing these people to be alert for something connected with the figure six. They must give no hint of it, they must themselves not mention it, but if the figure six appears in any segment of the interview they should concentrate on that segment until it is exhausted. They all know, I presume, of Heller's suspicion that one of his clients had committed a serious crime?" "They know that Goodwin says so. What's this about six?" 144 Wolfe shook his head. "That will have to do. Even that may be foolhardy, since they're your men, not mine." "Winslow's uncle died six years ago and left him six cents." "I'm quite aware of it. You say that is being investigated. Do you want Mr. Goodwin to pass this word?" Cramer said no thanks, he would, and left the room. By the time he returned, citizen number two had been brought in by Stebbins, introduced to Wolfe, and seated where Winslow had been. She was Susan Mature. She looked fully as harassed as she had that morning, but I wouldn't say much more so. ^here was now, of course, a new aspect to the matter: did she look harassed or guilty? She was undeniably attractive, but so had Maude Vail been, and she had poisoned two husbands. There was the consideration that if Heller had been killed by the client whom he suspected of having committed a crime, it must have been a client he had seen previously at least once, or how could he have got grounds for a suspicion; and, according to Susan Mature, she had never called on Heller before and had never seen him. But actually that eliminated neither her nor 145 Agatha Abbey, who also claimed that that morning had been her first visit. It was known that Heller had sometimes made engagements by telephone to meet prospective clients elsewhere, and Miss Mature and Miss Abbey might well have been among that number. Opening up on her, Wolfe was not too belligerent, probably because she had accepted an offer of beer and, after drinking some, had licked her lips. It pleases him when people share his joys. "You are aware. Miss Maturo," he told her, "that you are in a class by yourself. The evidence indicates that Mr. Heller was killed by one of the six people who entered that building this morning to call on him, and you are the only one of the six who departed before eleven o'clock, Mr. Heller's appointment hour. Your explanation of your departure as given in your statement is close to incoherent. Can't you improve on it?" She looked at me. I did not throw her a kiss, but neither did I glower. "I've reported what you told me," I assured her, "exactly as you said it." She nodded at me vaguely and turned to Wolfe. "Do I have to go through it again?" "You will probably," Wolfe advised her, 146 "have to go through it again a dozen times. Why did you leave?" She gulped, started to speak, found no sound was coming out, and had to start over again. "You know about the explosion and I fire at the Montrose Hospital a month ago?" "Certainly. I read newspapers." 1 "You know that three hundred and two people died there that night. I was there working, in Ward G on the sixth floor. In addition to those who died, many were injured, but I went all through it and I didn't get a scratch or any burn. My dearest friend was killed, burned to death trying to save the patients, and another dear friend is crippled for life, and a young doctor I was engaged to marry--he was killed in the explosion, and others I knew. I don't know how I came out of it without a mark, because I'm sure I tried to help. I'm positively sure of that, but I did, and that's one trouble, I guess, because I couldn't be glad about it--how could I?" She seemed to expect an answer, so Wolfe muttered, "No. Not to be expected." "I am not," she said, "the kind of person who hates people." She stopped, so Wolfe said, "No?" "No, I'm not. I never have been. But I 147 began to hate the man--or if it was a woman, I don't care which--that put the bomb there and did it. I can't say I went out of my mind because I don't think I did, but that's how I felt. After two weeks I tried to go back to work at another hospital, but I couldn't. I read all there was in the newspapers, hoping they would catch him, and I couldn't think of anything else, and I dreamed about it every night, and I went to the police and wanted to help, but of course they had already questioned me and I had told everything I knew. The days went by, and it looked as if they never would catch him, and I wanted to do something, and I had read about that Leo Heller, and I decided to go to him and get him to do it." Wolfe made a noise and her head jerked up. "I said I hated him!" Wolfe nodded. "So you did. Go on." "And I went, that's all. I had some money saved, and I could borrow some, to pay him. But while I was sitting there in the waiting room, with that man and woman there, I suddenly thought I must be crazy, I must have got so bitter and vindictive I didn't realize what I was doing, and I wanted to think about it, and I got up and went. Going down in the elevator I felt as if a 148 crisis had passed--that's a feeling a nurse often has about other people--and then as I left the elevator I heard the names Archie Goodwin and Nero Wolfe, and the idea came to me, why not get them to find him? So I spoke to Mr. Goodwin, and there I was again, but I couldn't make myself tell him about it, so I just told him I wanted to see Nero Wolfe to ask his advice, and he said he would try to arrange it, and he would phone me or I could phone him." She fluttered a hand. "That's how it was." Wolfe regarded her. "It's not incoherent, but neither is it sapient. Do you consider yourself an intelligent woman?" "Why--yes. Enough to get along. I'm a good nurse, and a good nurse has to be intelligent." "Yet you thought that quack could expose the man who planted the bomb in the hospital by his hocuspocus?" "I thought he did it scientifically. I knew he had a great reputation, just as you have." "Good heavens." Wolfe opened his eyes wide at her. "It is indeed a bubble, as Jacques said. What were you going to ask my advice about?" "Whether you thought there was any 149 chance--whether you thought the police were going to find him." Wolfe's eyes were back to normal, half shut again. "This performance I'm engaged in. Miss Mature--this inquisition of a person involved by circumstance in a murder-- is a hubbub in a jungle, at least in its preliminary stage. Blind, I grope, and proceed by feel. You say you never saw Mr. Heller, but you can't prove it. I am free to assume that you had seen him, not at his office, and talked with him; that you were convinced, no matter how, that he had planted the bomb in the hospital and caused the holocaust; and that, moved by an obsessive rancor, you went to his place and killed him. One ad--" She was gawking. "Why on earth would I think he had planted the bomb?" "I have no idea. As I said, I'm groping. One advantage of that assumption would be that you have confessed to a hatred so overpowering that surely it might have impelled you to kill if and when you identified its object. It is Mr. Cramer, not I, who is deploying the hosts of justice in this enterprise, but no doubt two or three men are calling on your friends and acquaintances to learn if you have ever hinted a suspicion of 150 Leo Heller in connection with the hospital disaster. Also they are probably asking whether you had any grudge against the hospital that might have provoked you to plant the bomb yourself." "My God!" A muscle at the side of her neck was twitching. "Me? Is that what it's like?" "It is indeed. That wouldn't be incongruous. Your proclaimed abhorrence of the perpetrator could be simply the screeching of your remorse." "Well, it isn't." Suddenly she was out of her chair, and a bound took, her to Wolfe's desk, and her palms did a tattoo on the desk as she leaned forward at him. "Don't you dare say a thing like that! The six people I cared for most in the world--they all died that night! How would you feel?" More tattoo. "How would anybody feel?" I was up and at her elbow, but no bodily discipline was required. She straightened and for a moment stood trembling all over, then got her control back and went to her chair and sat. "I'm sorry," she said in a tight little voice. "You should be," Wolfe said grimly. A woman cutting loose is always too much for him. "Pounding the top of my desk settles 151 nothing. What were the names of the six people you cared for most in the world, who died?" She told him, and he wanted to know more about them. I was beginning to suspect that actually he had no more of a lead than I did, that he had given Cramer a runaround to jostle him loose from the NW he had fixed on, and that, having impulsively impounded the five hundred bucks, he had decided to spend the night trying to earn it. The line he now took with Susan Mature bore me out. It was merely the old grab-bag game--keep her talking, about anything and anybody, in the hope that she would spill something that would faintly resemble a straw. I had known Wolfe, when the pickings had been extremely slim, to play that game for hours on end. He was still at it with Susan Mature when an individual entered with a message for Cramer which he delivered in a whisper. Cramer got up and started for the door, then thought better of it and turned. "You might as well be in on this," he told Wolfe. "They've got Mrs. Tillotson, and she's here." That was a break for Susan Mature, since Wolfe might have kept her going another 152 hour or so, though I suppose all it got her was an escort to some lieutenant or sergeant in another room, who started at her all over again. As she arose to go she favored me with a glance. It looked as if she intended it for a smile to show there were no hard feelings, but if so it was the poorest excuse for a smile I had ever seen. If it hadn't been unprofessional I would have gone and given her a pat on the shoulder. The newcomer who was ushered in was not Mrs. Tillotson but an officer of the law, not in uniform. He was one of the newer acquisitions on Homicide, and I had never seen him before, but I admired his manly stride as he approached and his snappy stance when he halted and faced Cramer, waiting to be spoken to. "Who did you leave over there?" Cramer asked him. "Murphy, sir. Timothy Murphy." "Okay. You tell it. Hold it." Cramer turned to Wolfe. "This man's name is Roca. He was on post at Heller's place. It was him you asked about the pencils and the eraser. Go on, Roca." "Yes, sir. The doorman in the lobby phoned up that there was a woman down there that wanted to come up, and I told 153 him to let her come. I thought that was compatible." "You did." "Yes, sir." "Then go ahead." "She came up in the elevator. She wouldn't tell me her name. She asked me questions about how much longer would I be there and did I expect anybody else to come, and so on. We bantered back and forth, my objective being to find out who she was, and then she came right out with it. She took a roll of bills from her bag. She offered me three hundred dollars, and then four hundred, and finally five hundred, if I would unlock the cabinets in Heller's office and let her be in there alone for an hour. That put me in a quandary." "It did." "Yes, sir." "How did you get out?" "If I had had keys to the cabinets I would have accepted her offer. I would have unlocked them and left her in there. When she was ready to go I would have arrested her and taken her to be searched, and we would have known what she had taken from the cabinet. That would have broken the case. But I had no keys to the cabinets." 154 "Uh-huh. If you had had keys and had alocked the cabinets and left her in there, Fand she had taken something from a cabinet and burned it up, you would have collected the ashes and sent them to the laboratory for examination by modern scientific methods."

- Roca swallowed. "I admit I didn't think about burning. But if I had had keys I would have thought harder." "I bet you would. Did you take her money for evidence?" "No, sir. I thought that might be instigation. I took her into custody. I phoned in. When a relief came, I brought her here to you. I am staying here to face her." "You've faced her enough for tonight. Plenty. We'll have a talk later. Go and tell Burger to bring her in." 5 Although my stay in Heller's waiting room that morning had been brief, I have long been trained to see what I look at and to remember what I see, and I would hardly have recognized Mrs. Albert Tillotson. She had lost five pounds and gained twice that 155 many wrinkles, and the contrast between her lipstick and her drained-out skin made her look more like a woman-hater's pinup than an overfed matron. "I wish to speak with you privately," she told Inspector Cramer. She was one of those. Her husband was president of something, and therefore it was absurd to suppose that she was not to expect privileges. It took Cramer a good five minutes to get it into her head that she was just one of the girls, and it was such a shock that she had to take time out to decide how to react to it. She decided on a barefaced lie. She demanded to know if the man who had brought her there was a member of the police force, and Cramer replied that he was. "Well," she declared, "he shouldn't be. You may know that late this afternoon a police officer called at my residence to see me. He told me that Leo Heller had been killed, murdered, and wanted to know for what purpose I had gone to his office this morning. Naturally I didn't want to be involved in an ugly thing like that, so I told him I hadn't gone to see Leo Heller, but he convinced me that that wouldn't do, so I said I had gone to see him, but on an inti- 156 mate personal matter that I wouldn't tell-- Is that man putting down what I'm saying?" "Yes. That's his job." "I wouldn't want it. Nor yours either. The officer insisted that I must tell why I had gone to see that Heller, and I refused, and he insisted, and I refused. When he said he would have to take me to the district attorney's office, under arrest if necessary, and I saw that he meant it, I told him. I told him that my husband and I have been having some difficulty with our son, especially his schooling, and I went to Heller to ask what college would be best for him. I answered the officer's questions, within reason, and finally he left. Perhaps you knew all this." Cramer nodded. "Yes." "Well, after the officer had gone I began to worry, and I went to see a friend and ask her advice. The trouble was that I had given Heller many details about my son, some of them very intimate and confidential, and since he had been murdered the police would probably go through all his papers, and those details were private and I wanted to keep them private. I knew that Heller had made all his notes in a personal shorthand that no one else could read--anyhow he had said 157 so, but I couldn't be sure, and it was very important. After I had discussed it with my friend a long time, for hours, I decided to go to Heller's place and ask whoever was in charge to let me have any papers relating to my family affairs, since they were not connected with the murder." "I see," Cramer assured her. "And that's what I did. And the officer there pretended to listen to me, he pretended to be agreeing with me, and then suddenly he arrested me for trying to bribe an officer; and when I indignantly denied it, as of course I did, and started to leave, he detained me by force, and he actually was going to put handcuffs on me! So I came with him, and here I am, and I hope you realize I have a complaint to make and I am making it!" Cramer was eying her. "Did you try to bribe him?" "No, I didn't!" "You didn't offer him money?" "No!" Purley Stebbins permitted a low sound, half growl and half snort, to escape him. Cramer, ignoring that impertinence from a subordinate, took a deep breath and let it out again. 158 "Shall I take it?" Wolfe inquired. "No, thank you," Cramer said acidly. He was keeping his eyes at Mrs. Tillotson. "You're making a mistake, madam," he told her. "All these lies don't do you any good. They just make it harder for you. Try telling the truth for a change." She drew herself up, but it wasn't very impressive because she was pretty well fagged after her hard day. "You're calling me a liar," she accused Cramer, "and in front of witnesses." She pointed a finger at the police stenographer. "You get that down just the way he said it!" "He will," Cramer assured her. "Look, Mrs. Tillotson. You admit you bed about going to see Heller until you saw it wouldn't work, when you realized that the doorman would swear that you were there not only this morning but also previously. Now about your trying to bribe an officer. That's a felony. If we charge you with it, and you go to trial, I can't say who the jury will believe, you or the officer, but I know who I believe. I believe him, and you're lying about lit." "Get him in here," she challenged. "I Want to face him." "He wants to face you too, but that 159 wouldn't help any. I'm satisfied that you're lying, and also that you're lying about what you wanted to get from Heller's files. He made his notes in a private code that it will take a squad of experts to decipher, and you knew that, and I do not believe that you took the risk of going there and trying to bribe an officer just to get his notes about you and your family. I believe there is something in his files that can easily be recognized as pertaining to you or your family, and that's what you were after. In the morning we'll have men going through the contents of the files, item by item, and if anything like that is there they'll spot it. Meanwhile I'm holding you for further questioning about your attempt to bribe an officer. If you want to telephone a lawyer, you may--one phone call, with an officer present." Cramer's head swiveled. "Stebbins, take her in to Lieutenant Rowcliff, and tell Rowcliff how it stands." Purley arose. Mrs. Tillotson was shrinking, looking less overfed every second, right in front of our eyes. "Will you wait a minute?" she demanded. "Two minutes, madam. But don't try 160 cooking up any more lies. You're no good at it." "That man misunderstood me. I wasn't trying to bribe him." "I said you may phone a lawyer--" "I don't want a lawyer." She was sure about that. "If they go through those files they'll find what I was after, so I might as well tell you. It's some letters in envelopes addressed to me. They're not signed, they're anonymous, and I wanted that Heller to find out who sent them." "Are they about your son?" "No. They're about me. They threaten me with something, and I was sure it was leading up to blackmail." "How many letters?" "Six." "What do they threaten you with?" "They--they don't exactly threaten. They're quotations from things. One of them says, 'He that cannot pay, let him pray.' Another one says, 'He that dies pays all debts.' Another one says, 'So comes a reckoning when the banquet's o'er.' The others are longer, but that's what they're like." "What made you think they were leading up to blackmail?" 161 "Wouldn't you? 'He that cannot pay, let him pray.' " "And you wanted Heller to identify the sender. How many times had you seen him?" "Twice." "Of course you had given him all the information you could. We'll get the letters in the morning, but you can tell us now what you told Heller. As far as possible, everything that was said by both of you." I permitted myself to grin, not discreetly, and glanced at Wolfe to see if he was properly appreciative of Cramer's adopting his approach, but he was just sitting there looking patient. It was hard to tell, for me at least, how much Mrs. Tillotson was giving and how much she was covering. If there was something in her past that someone might have felt she should pay for or give a reckoning of, either she didn't know what it was, or she had kept it from Heller, or she had told him but certainly didn't intend to let us in on it. It went on and on, with her concentrating hard on remembering her conversations with Heller and all the data she had given him for factors of his formulas, and with Cramer playing her back and forth 162 until she was so tied up in contradictions that it would have taken a dozen mathematical wizards to make head or tail of it. Wolfe finally intervened. He glanced up at the wall clock, shifted in his chair to get his seventh of a ton bearing on another spot, and announced, "It's after midnight. Thank heaven you have an army to start sorting this out and checking it. If your Lieutenant Rowcliff is still here, let him have her, and let's have some cheese. I'm hungry." Cramer, as ready for a recess as anybody, had no objection. Purley Stebbins removed Mrs. Tillotson. The stenographer went on a private errand. I went to the kitchen to give Fritz a hand, knowing that he was running himself ragged furnishing trays of sandwiches to flocks of Homicide personnel distributed all over the premises. When I returned to the office with a supply of provender, Cramer was riding Wolfe, pouring it on, and Wolfe was leaning back in his chair with his eyes shut. I passed around plates of Fritz's il pesto and crackers, with beer for Wolfe and the stenographer, coffee for Cramer and Stebbins, and milk for me. In four minutes Cramer inquired, "What is this stuff?" Wolfe told him. "Il pesto" 163 "What's in it?" "Canestrato cheese, anchovies, pig liver, black walnuts, chives, sweet basil, garlic, and olive oil." "Good God." In another four minutes Cramer addressed me in the tone of one doing a gracious favor. "I'll take some more of that, Goodwin." But while I was gathering the empty plates he started in on Wolfe again. Wolfe didn't bother to counter. He waited until Cramer halted for breath and then growled, "It's nearly one o'clock, and we have three more." Cramer sent Purley for another scared citizen. This time it was the thin tall bony specimen who, entering the lobby on Thirtyseventh Street that morning, had stopped to aim a rude stare at Susan Maturo and me seated on the bench by the fireplace. Having read his statement, I now knew that his name was Jack Ennis, that he was an expert diemaker, at present unemployed, that he was unmarried, that he lived in Queens, and that he was a born inventor who had not yet cashed in. His brown suit had not been pressed. When Cramer told him that questions from Wolfe were to be considered a part of 164 the official inquiry into Leo Heller's death, Ennis cocked his head to appraise Wolfe, as if deciding whether or not such a procedure deserved his okay. "You're a self-made man," he told Wolfe. "I've read about you. How old are you?" Wolfe returned his gaze. "Some other time, Mr. Ennis. Tonight you're the target, not me. You're thirty-eight, aren't you?" Ennis smiled. He had a wide mouth with thin colorless lips, and his smile wasn't especially attractive. "Excuse me if you thought I was being fresh, asking how old you are, but I don't really give a damn. I know you're right at the top of your racket, and I wondered how long it took you to get started up. I'm going to the top too, before I'm through, but it's taking me a hell of a time to get a start, and I wondered about you. How old were you when you first got your name in the paper?" "Two days. A notice of my birth. I understand that your call on Leo Heller was connected with your determination to get a start as an inventor?" "That's right." Ennis smiled again. "Look. This is all a lot of crap. The cops have been at me now for seven hours, and where are they? What's the sense in going 165 on with it? Why in the name of God would I want to kill that guy?" "That's what I'd like to know." "Well, search me. I've got patents on six inventions, and none of them is on the market. One of them is not perfect--I know damn well it's not--but it needs only one more trick to make it an absolute whiz. I can't find the trick. I've read about this Heller, and it seemed to me that if I gave him all the dope, all the stuff he needed for one of his formulas, there was a good chance he would come up with the answer. So I went to him. I spent three long sessions with him. He finally thought he had enough to try to work up a formula, and he was taking a crack at it, and I had a date to see him this morning and find out how it was going." Ennis stopped for emphasis. "So I'm hoping. After all the sweating I've done and the dough I've spent, maybe I'm going to get it at last. So I go. I go upstairs to his office and shoot him dead, and then I go to the waiting room and sit down and wait." He smiled. "Listen. If you want to say there are smarter men than me, I won't argue. Maybe you're smarter yourself. But I'm not a lunatic, am I?" 166 Wolfe's lips were pursed. "I won't comimit myself on that, Mr. Emus. But you have by no means demonstrated that it is fatuous to suppose you might have killed Heller. What if he devised a formula from the data you supplied, discovered the trick that would transform your faulty contraption into a whiz, as you expressed it, and refused to divulge it except on intolerable terms? That would be a magnificent motive for murder." "It sure would," Ennis agreed without reservation. "I would have killed him with pleasure." He leaned forward and was suddenly intense and in dead earnest. "Look. I'm headed for the top. I've got what I need in here"--he tapped his forehead--"and nothing and nobody is going to stop me. If Heller had done what you said, I might have killed him, I don't deny it; but he didn't." He jerked to Cramer. "And I'm glad of a chance to tell you what I've told those bozos that have been grilling me. I want to go through Heller's papers to see if I can find the formula he worked up for me. Maybe I can't recognize it, and if I do I doubt if I can figure it out, but I want to look for it, and not next year either." "We're doing the looking," Cramer said 167 dryly. "If we find anything that can be identified as relating to you, you'll see it, and eventually you may get it." "I don't want it eventually, I want it now. Do you know how long I've been working on that thing? Four years! It's mine, you understand that, it's mine!" He was getting upset. "Calm down, bud," Cramer advised him. "We're right with you in seeing to it that you get what's yours." "Meanwhile," Wolfe said, "there's a point or two. When you entered that building this morning, why did you stop and gape at Mr. Goodwin and Miss Mature?" Ennis's chin went up. "Who says I did?" "I do, on information. Archie. Did he?" "Yes," I stated. "Rudely." "Well," Ennis told Wolfe, "he's bigger than I am. Maybe I did, at that." "Why? Any special reason?" "It depends on what you call special. I thought I recognized her, a girl I knew once, and then saw I was wrong. She was much too young." "Very well. I would like to explore my suggestion, which you reject, that Heller was trying to chouse you out of your invention as perfected by his calculations. I want you 168 to describe the invention as you described it to him, particularly the flaw which you had tried so persistently to rectify." I won't attempt to report what followed, and I couldn't anyhow, since I understood less than a tenth of it. I did gather that the invention was a gadget intended to supersede all existing X-ray machines, but beyond that I got lost in a wilderness of cathodes and atomicity and coulombs, and if you ask me, Wolfe and Cramer were no better off. If talking like a character out of space-science fiction proves you're an inventor, that bird was certainly one. He stood |Up to make motions to illustrate, and [grabbed a pad and pencil from Wolfe's desk to explain with drawings, and after a while it began to look as if it would be impossible to stop him. They finally managed it, with Sergeant Stebbins lending a hand by marching over and taking his elbow. On his way out he turned at the door to call back, "I want that formula, and don't you forget it!" 6 I The female of an executive type was still in mink, or rather she had it with her, but she 169 was not so brisk. As I said before, that morning I would have classified her as be tween twenty and sixty, but the day's experiences had worn her down closer to reality, and I would now have put her at fortyseven. However, she was game. With all she had gone through, at that late hour she still let us know, as she deposited the mink on a chair, sat on another, crossed her legs, got out a cigarette and let me light it, and thanked me for an ashtray, that she was cool and composed and in command. My typing her as an executive had been justified by the transcripts. Her name really was Agatha Abbey, and she was executive editor of a magazine. Mode, which I did not read regularly. After Cramer had explained the nature of the session, including Wolfe's status, Wolfe took aim and went for the center of the target. "Miss Abbey. I presume you'd like to get to bed--I know I would--so we won't waste time flouncing around. Three things about you." He held up a finger. "First. You claim that you never saw Leo Heller. It i^ corroborated that you had not visited his place before today, but whether you had seen him elsewhere will be thoroughly investigated by men armed with pictures of 170 him. They will ask people at your place of business, at your residence, and at other likely spots. If it is found that you had in fact met him and conferred with him, you won't like it." He raised two fingers. "Second. You refused to tell why you went to see Heller. That does not brand you as a miscreant, since most people have private matters which they innocently and jealously guard, but you clung to your refusal beyond reason, even after it was explained that that information had to be given by all of the six persons who called on Heller this morning, and you were assured that it would be revealed to no one unless it proved to be an item of evidence in a murder case. You finally did give the information, but only when you perceived that if you didn't there would be a painstaking investigation into your affairs and movements." I He raised three fingers. "Third. When I the information was wormed out of you, it was almost certainly flummery. You said that you wanted to engage Heller to find out who had stolen a ring from a drawer of your desk some three months ago. That was childish nonsense. I grant that even though the ring was insured you may have been 171 intent on disclosing the culprit, and the police had failed you; but if you have enough sense to get and hold a well-paid job in a highly competitive field, as you have, surely you would have known that it was stupid to suppose Heller could help you. Even if he were not a humbug, if he were honestly applying the laws of probability to complex problems with some success, singling out a sneak thief from among a hundred possibilities was plainly an operation utterly unsuited to his technique, and even to his pretensions." Wolfe moved his head an inch to the left and back again. "No, Miss Abbey, it won't do. I want to know whether you saw Leo Heller before today, and in any case what you wanted of him." The Up of her tongue had appeared four times, to flick across her lips. She spoke in a controlled, thin, steely voice. "You make it sound overwhelming, Mr. Wolfe." "Not I. It is overwhelming." Her sharp dark eyes went to Cramer. "You're an inspector, in charge of this business?"

"That's right." "Do the police share Mr. Wolfe's--skepticism?"

172 "You can take what he said as coming from me." "Then no matter what I tell you about why I went to see Heller, you'll investigate it? You'll check it?" "Not necessarily. If it fits all right, and if we can't connect it with the murder, and if it's a private confidential matter, we'll let it go at that. If we do check any, we'll be careful. There are enough innocent citizens sore at us already." Her eyes darted back to Wolfe. "What about you, Mr. Wolfe? Will you have to check?" "I sincerely hope not. Let Mr. Cramer's assurance include me." Her eyes went around. "What about these men?" "They are trained confidential assistants. They hold their tongues or they lose their jobs." The tip of her tongue came out and went in. "I'm not satisfied, but what can I do? If my only choice is between this and the whole New York detective force pawing at me, the Lord knows I take this. I phoned Leo Heller ten days ago, and he came to my office and spent two hours there. It was a business matter, not a personal one. I'm going to tell 173 you exactly what it was, because I'm no good at ad libbing a phony. I was a damn fool to say that about the stolen ring." She was hating it, but she went on. "You said I have sense enough to get and hold a well-paid job in a highly competitive field, but if you only knew. It's not a field, it's a corral of wild beasts. There are six female tigers trying to get their claws on my job right now, and if they all died tonight there would be six others tomorrow. If it came out what I went to Leo Heller for, that would be the finish of me." The tip of her tongue flashed out and in. "So that's what this means to me. A magazine like Mode has two main functions, reporting and predicting. American women want to know what is being made and worn in Paris and New York, but even more they want to know what is going to be made and worn next season. Mode's reporting has been good enough--I've been all right on that-- but for the past year our predictions have been utterly rotten. We've got the contacts, but something has gone haywire, and our biggest rival has made monkeys of us. Another year like that, even another season, and good-by." Wolfe grunted. "To the magazine?" 174 "No, to me. So I decided to try Leo Heller. We had carried a piece about him, and I had met him. The idea was to give him everything we had--and we had plenty--about styles and colors and trends for the past ten years, and have him figure the probabilities six months ahead. He thought it was feasible, and I don't think he j1 was a faker. He had to come to the office to go through our stuff, and of course I had to camouflage it, what he was there for, but that wasn't hard. Do you want to know what I told them he was doing?" "I think not," Wolfe muttered. "So he came. I phoned him the next day, and he said it would take him at least a week to determine whether he had enough information to make up a probability formula. Yesterday I phoned again, and he said he had something to discuss and asked me to call at his place this morning. I went. You know the rest of it." She stopped. Wolfe and Cramer exchanged glances. "I would like," Wolfe said, "to have the name of the six female tigers | who are after your job." She turned white. I have never seen the [color leave a face faster or more completely. 175 "Damn you," she said in bitter fury. "So you're a rat like everybody else!" Wolfe showed her a palm. "Please, madam. Mr. Cramer will speak for himself, but I have no desire to betray you to your enemies. I merely want--" He saved his breath, because his audience was leaving. She got up, retrieved her mink from the other chair, draped it over her arm, turned, and headed for the door. Stebbins looked at Wolfe, Wolfe shook his head, and Stebbins trailed after her. As he left the room at her heels, Cramer called to him, "Bring Busch!" Then he turned on Wolfe to protest. "What the hell, you had her open. Why give her a breath?" Wolfe made a face. "The wretch. The miserable wretch. Her misogyny was already in her bones; now her misandry is too. She was dumb with rage, and it would have been futile to keep at her. But you're keeping her?" "You're right we are. For what?" He was out of his chair, glaring down at Wolfe. "Tell me for what! Except for dragging out of that woman, there's not one >> kJ.U.A^A^ He was off again. I miss no opportunity of resenting Inspector Cramer--I enjoy it, 176 and it's good for my appetite--but I must admit that on that occasion he seemed to me to have a point. I still had seen or heard no indication whatever that Wolfe's statement hhat he had a lead was anything but a stall, md it was half-past two in the morning, and pive of them had been processed, with only one to go. So as Cramer yapped at my | employer I did not cheer him on or offer him an orchid, but I had a private feeling that some of the sentiments he expressed were not positively preposterous. He was still at it when the door opened to admit Stebbins with the sixth customer. The sergeant, after conducting this one to the seat the others had occupied facing Wolfe and Cramer, did not go to the chair against the wall, which he had favored throughout the evening. Instead, he lowered his bulk onto one at Cramer's left, only two arms' lengths from the subject. That was interesting because it meant that he was voting for Karl Busch as his pick of the lot, and while Stebbins had often been wrong I had known him, more than once, to be right. Karl Busch was the slick, sly, swarthy little article with his hair pasted to his scalp. In the specifications on his transcript I had noted the key NVMS, meaning No Visible 177 Means of Support, but that was just a nod to routine. The details of the report on him left no real doubt as to the sources he tapped for jack. He was a Broadway smoothie, third grade. He was not in the theater or sports or the flicks or any of the tough rackets, but he knew everyone who was, and as the engraved lettuce swirled around the midtown corners and got trapped in the nets of the collectors, legitimate and otherwise, he had a hundred little dodges for fastening onto a specimen for himself. To him Cramer's tone was noticeably different. "This is Nero Wolfe," he rasped. "Answer his questions. You hear, Busch?" Busch said he did. Wolfe, who was frowning, studying him, spoke. "Nothing is to be gained, Mr. Busch, by my starting the usual rigmarole with you. I've read your statement, and I doubt if it would be worth while to try to pester you into a contradiction. But you had three conversations with Leo Heller, and in your statement they are not reported, merely summarized. I want the details of those conversations, as completely as your memory will furnish. Start with the first one, two months ago. Exactly what was said?" 178 Busch slowly shook his head. "Impos[sible, mister." "Word by word, no. Do your best." "Huh-uh." "You won't try?" "It's this way. If I took you to the pier and ast you to try to jump across to Brooklyn, what would you do? You'd say it was impossible and why get your feet wet. That's me." "I told you," Cramer snapped, "to answer his questions." Busch extended a dramatic hand in appeal. "What do you want me to do, make it up?" "I want you to do what you were told, to the best of your ability." "Okay. This will be good. I said to him, 'Mr. Heller, my name's Busch, and I'm a broker.' He said broker of what, and I said of anything people want broken, just for a gag, but he had no sense of humor and I saw he didn't, so I dropped that and explained. I told him there was a great demand among all kinds of people to know what horse was going to win a race the day before the race was run or even an hour ijbefore, and I had read about his line of Iwork and was thinking that he could help to 179 meet that demand. He said that he had thought several times about using his method on horse races, but he didn't care himself to use the method for personal bets because he wasn't a betting man, and for him to make up one of his formulas for just one race would take an awful lot of research and it would cost so much it wouldn't be worth it for any one person unless that person made a high-bracket plunge." "You're paraphrasing it," Wolfe objected. "I'd prefer the words that were used." "This is the best of my ability, mister." "Very well. Go on." "I said I wasn't a high-bracket boy myself, but anyway that wasn't here or there or under the rug, because what I had in mind was a wholesale setup. I had figgers to show him. Say he did ten races a week. I could round up at least twenty customers right off the bat. He didn't need to be any God Almighty always right; all he had to do was crack a percentage of forty or better, and it would start a fire you couldn't put out if you ran a river down it. We could have a million customers if we wanted 'em, but we wouldn't want 'em. We would hand-pick a hundred and no more, and each one would |(| ante one C per week, which if I can add at 180 all would make ten grand every sennight. That would--" "What?" Wolfe exploded. "Ten grand every what?" "Sennight." "Meaning a week?" "Sure." "Where the deuce did you pick up that fine old word?" "That's not old. Some big wit started it around last summer." "Incredible. Go on." "Where was-- Oh, yeah. That would make half a million little ones per year, and Heller and me would split it. Out of my half I would expense the operating, and out of his half he would expense the dope. He would have to walk on his nose to cut under a hundred grand all clear, and I wouldn't do so bad. We didn't sign no papers, but he could smell it, and after two more talks he agreed to do a dry run on three races. The first one he worked on, his answer was the favorite, a horse named White Water, and it won, but what the hell, it was just exercise for that rabbit. The next one, there were two sweethearts in a field of nine, and it was heads or tails between those two, and Heller had the winner all right, a horse named 181 Short Order, but on a fifty-fifty call you don't exactly panic. But get this next one." Busch gestured dramatically for emphasis. "Now get it. This animal was forty to one, but it might as well have been foui hundred. It was a musclebound sore-jointed hyena named Zero. That alone, a horse named Zero, was enough to put the curse of six saints on it, but also it was the kind of looking horse which if you looked at it would make you think promptly of canned dog food. When Heller came up with that horse, I thought oh-oh, he's a loon after all, and watch me run. Well, you ast me to tell you the words we used, me and Heller. If I told you some I used when that Zero horse won that race, you would lock me up. Not only was Heller batting a thousand, but he had kicked through with the most-- What are you doing, taking a nap?" We all looked at Wolfe. He was leaning back with his eyes shut tight, and was motionless except for his lips, which were pushing out and in, and out and in, and again out and in. Cramer and Stebbins and I knew what that meant: something had hit his hook, and he had yanked and had a fish on. A tingle ran up my spine. Stebbins arose and took a step to stand at Busch's elbow. 182 ( ramer tried to look cynical but couldn't i iake it; he was as excited as I was. The proof of it was that he didn't open his trap; he just sat with his eyes on Wolfe, along with the rest of us, looking at the lip movements as if they were something really special.

"What the hell!" Busch protested. "Is he having a fit?" Wolfe's eyes opened, and he came forward in his chair. "No, I'm not," he snapped, "but I've been having one all evening. Mr. Cramer. Will you please have Mr. Busch removed? Temporarily." Cramer, with no hesitation, nodded at Purley, and Purley touched Busch's shoulder, and they went. The door closed behind them, but it wasn't more than five seconds before it opened again and Purley was back with us. He wanted as quick a look at the fish as his boss and me. "Have you ever," Wolfe was asking Cramer, "called me, pointblank, a dolt and a dotard?" "Those aren't my words, but I've certainly called you." "You may do so now. Your opinion of me at its lowest was far above my present opinion of myself." He looked up at the 183 clock, which said five past three. "We now need a proper setting. How many of your staff are in my house?" "Fourteen or fifteen." "We want them all in here, for the effect of their presence. Half of them should bring chairs. Also, of course, the six persons we have interviewed. This shouldn't take too long--possibly an hour, though I doubt it. I certainly won't prolong it." Cramer was looking contrary. "You've already prolonged it plenty. You mean you're prepared to name him?" "I am not. I haven't the slightest notion who it is. But I am prepared to make an attack that will expose him--or her--and if it doesn't, I'll have no opinion of myself at all." Wolfe flattened his palms on his desk, for him a violent gesture. "Confound it, don't you know me well enough to realize when I'm ready to strike?" "I know you too damn well." Cramer looked at his sergeant, drew in a deep breath, and let it out. "Oh, nuts. Okay, Purley. Collect the audience." 184 The office is a good-sized room, but there wasn't much unoccupied space left when ithat gathering was fully assembled. There were twenty-seven of us all told. The biggest assortment of Homicide employees I had ever gazed upon extended from wall to wall in the rear of the six subjects, with four of them filling the couch. Cramer was planted in the red leather chair, with Stebbins on his left, and the stenographer was hanging on at the end of my desk. The six citizens were in a row up front, and none of them looked merry. Agatha Abbey was the only person present who rated two chairs, one for herself and one for her mink, but no one was bothering to resent it in spite of the crowding. Their minds were on other matters. Wolfe's eyes went from right to left and back again, taking them in. He spoke. "I'll have to make this somewhat elaborate, so that all of you will clearly understand the 185 situation. I could not at the moment hazard even a venturesome guess as to which of you killed Leo Heller, but I now know how to find out, and I propose to do so." The only reaction visible or audible was John R. Winslow clearing his throat. Wolfe interlaced his fingers in front of his middle mound. "We have from the first had a hint that has not been imparted to you. Yesterday--Tuesday, that is--Heller telephoned here to say that he suspected that one of his clients had committed a serious crime and to hire me to investigate. I declined for reasons we needn't go into, but Mr. Goodwin, who is subordinate only when it suits his temperament and convenience, took it upon himself to call on Heller this morning to discuss the matter." He shot me a glance, and I met it. Merely an incivility. He went on to them, "He entered Heller's office but found it unoccupied. Tarrying there for some minutes, and meanwhile exercising his highly trained talent for observation, he noticed, among other details, that some pencils and an eraser from an overturned jar were arranged on the desk in a sort of pattern. Later that same detail was of course noted by the police, after Heller's body had been found and they had 186 been summoned; and it was a feature of that detail which led Mr. Cramer to come to see me. He assumed that Heller, seated at his desk and threatened with a gun, knowing or thinking he was about to die, had made the pencil pattern to leave a message, and that the purpose of the message was to give a clue to the identity of the murderer. On that point I agreed with Mr. Cramer. Will you all approach, please, and look at this arrangement on my desk? These pencils and the eraser are placed approximately the same as those on Heller's desk, with you, not me, Ion Heller's side of the desk. From your side you are seeing them as Heller intended them to be seen." The six did as requested, and they had company. Not only did most of the homicide subordinates leave their chairs and come forward for a view, but Cramer himself got up and took a glance--maybe just curiosity, but I wouldn't put it past him to suspect Wolfe of a shenanigan. However, the pencils and eraser were properly placed, as I ascertained by arising and stretching to peer over shoulders. When they were all seated again Wolfe resumed. "Mr. Cramer had a notion about ie message which I rejected and will not 187 bother to expound. My own notion of it, conceived almost immediately, came not as a coup d'eclat, but merely a stirring of memory. It reminded me vaguely of something ] had seen somewhere; and the vagueness disappeared when I reflected that Heller had been a mathematician, academically qualified and trained. The memory was old, and I checked it by going to my shelves for a book I had read some ten years ago. Its title is Mathematics for the Million, by Hogben. After verifying my recollection, I locked the book in a drawer because I thought it would be a pity for Mr. Cramer to waste time leafing through it." "Let's get on," Cramer growled. Wolfe did so. "As told in Mr. Hogben's book, more than two thousand years ago what he calls a matchstick number script was being used in India. Three horizontal lines stood for three, two horizontal lines stood for two, and so on. That was indeed primitive, but it had greater possibilities than the clumsy devices of the Hebrews and Greeks and Romans. Around the time of the birth of Christ some brilliant Hindu improved upon it by connecting the horizontal lines with diagonals, making the units unmistakable." He pointed to the arrangement 188 on his desk. "These five pencils on your left form a three exactly as the Hindus formed a three, and the three pencils on your right form a two. These Hindu symbols are one of the great landmarks in the history of number language. You will note, by the way, that our own forms of the figure three and of the figure two are taken directly from these Hindu symbols." A couple of them got up to look, and Wolfe politely waited until they were seated again. "So, since Heller had been a mathematician, and since those were famous patterns in the history of mathematics, I assumed that the message was a three and a two. But evidence indicated that the eraser was also a part of the message and must be included. That was simple. It is the custom of an academic mathematician, if he wants to scribble 'four times six,' or 'seven times kline,' to use for the 'times' not an X, as we laymen do, but a dot. It is so well-known a �custom that Mr. Hogben uses it in his book without thinking it necessary to explain it, and therefore I confidently assumed that the |eraser was meant for a dot, and that the message was three times two, or six." I Wolfe compressed his lips and shook his head. "That was an impetuous imbecility. 189 During the whole seven hours that I sat here poking at you people, I was trying to find some connection with the figure six that would either set one of you clearly apart, or relate you to the commission of some crime, or both. Preferably both, of course, but either would serve. In the interviews the figure six did turn up with persistent monotony, but with no promising application, and I could only ascribe it to the mischief of coincidence. "So at three o'clock in the morning I was precisely where I had been when I started. Without a fortuitous nudge, I can't say how long it would have taken me to become aware of my egregious blunder; but I got the nudge, and I can at least say that I responded promptly and effectively. The nudge came from Mr. Busch when he mentioned the name of a horse. Zero." He upturned a palm. "Of course. Zero! I had been a witless ass. The use of the dot as a symbol for 'times' is a strictly modern device. Since the rest of the message, the figures three and two, were in Hindu number script, surely the dot was too--provided that the Hindus had made any use of the dot. And what made my blunder so unforgivable was that the Hindus had in 190 deed used a dot; they had used it, as is I explained in Hogben's book, for the most ' brilliant and imaginative invention in the whole history of the language of numbers. For when you have once decided how to write three and how to write two, how are you going to distinguish among thirty-two and three hundred and two and three thousand and two and thirty thousand and two? That was the crucial problem in number language, and the Greeks and Romans, for all their intellectual eminence, never succeeded in solving it. Some Hindu genius did, twenty centuries ago. He saw that the secret was position. Today we use our zero exactly as he did, to show position, but instead of a zero he used a dot. That's what the dot was in the early Hindu number language; it was used like our zero. So Heller's message was not three times two, or six; it was three zero two, or three hundred and two." Susan Maturo started, jerking her head up, and made a noise. Wolfe rested his eyes on her. "Yes, Miss Maturo. Three hundred and two people died in the explosion and fire at the Montrose Hospital a month ago. You mentioned that figure when you were talking with me, but even if you hadn't, it is 191 so imbedded in the consciousness of everyone who reads newspapers or listens to radio, it wouldn't have escaped me. The moment I realized that Heller's message was the figure three hundred and two, I would certainly have connected it with that disaster, whether you had mentioned it or not." "But it's--" She was staring. "You mean it is connected?" "I'm proceeding on that obvious assumption. I am assuming that through the information one of you six people furnished Leo Heller as factors for a formula, he formed a suspicion that one of you had commited a serious crime, and that his message, the figure three hundred and two, indicates that the crime was planting in the Montrose Hospital that bomb that caused the deaths of three hundred and two people--or at least involvement in that crime." It seemed as if I could see or feel muscles tightening all over the room. Most of those dicks, maybe all of them, had of course been working on the Montrose thing. Cramer pulled his feet back and his hands were fists. Purley Stebbins took his gun from his holster and rested it on his knee and leaned forward, the better to have his eyes on all six of them. 192 "So," Wolfe continued, "Heller's message identified not the person who was about to kill him, not the criminal, but the crime. That was superbly ingenious, and, considering the situation he was in, he deserves our deepest admiration. He has mine, and I retract any derogation of him. It would seem natural to concentrate on Miss Mature, since she was certainly connected with that disaster, but first let's clarify the matter. I'm going to ask the rest of you if you have at any time visited the Montrose Hospital, or been connected with it in any way, or had dealings with any of its personnel. Take the question just as I have stated it." His eyes went to the end of the row, at the left. "Mrs. Tillotson? Answer, please. Have you?" "No." It was barely audible. "Louder, please." "No!" His eyes moved. "Mr. Ennis?" "I have not. Never." "We'll skip you, Miss Maturo. Mr. Busch?" "I've never been in a hospital." "That answers only a third of the question. Answer all of it." "The answer is no, mister." 193 "Miss Abbey?" "I went there once about two years ago, to visit a patient, a friend. That was all." The tip of her tongue came out and went in. "Except for that one visit I have never been connected with it in any way or dealt with any of its personnel." "That is explicit. Mr. Winslow?" "No to the whole question. An unqualified no." "Well." Wolfe did not look frustrated. "That would seem to isolate Miss Mature, but it is not conclusive." His head turned. "Mr. Cramer. If the person who not only killed Leo Heller but also bombed that hospital is among these six, I'm sure you won't want to take the slightest risk of losing him. I have a suggestion." "I'm listening," Cramer growled. "Take them in as material witnesses, and hold them without bail if possible. Starting immediately, collect as many as you can of the former staff of that hospital. There were scores who survived, and other scores who were not on duty at the time. Get all of them if possible, spare no effort, and have them look at these people and say if they have ever seen any of them. Meanwhile, of course, you will be working on Miss Mature, 194 but you have heard the denials of the other five, and if you get reliable evidence that one of them has lied I'm sure you will need no further suggestion from me. Indeed, if one of them has lied and leaves this room in custody with that lie undeclared, that alone will be half the battle. I'm sorry--" "Wait a minute." All eyes went to one spot. It was Jack Ennis, the inventor. His thin colorless lips were twisted, with one end up, but not in an attempt to smile. The look in his eyes showed that he had no idea of smiling. "I didn't tell an exact lie," he said. Wolfe's eyes were slits. "Then an inexact lie, Mr. Ennis?" "I mean I didn't visit that hospital as a hospital. And I didn't have dealings with them, I was just trying to. I wanted them to give my X-ray machine a trial. One of them was willing to, but the other two talked him down." "When was this?" "I was there three times, twice in December and once in January." "I thought your X-ray machine had a Haw." "It wasn't perfect, but it would work, and it would have been better than anything 195 they had. I was sure I was going to get it in, because he was for it--his name is Halsey-- and I saw him first, and he wanted to try it. But the other two talked him out of it, and one of them was very--he--" He petered out. Wolfe prodded him. "Very what, Mr. Ennis?" "He didn't understand me! He hated me!" "There are people like that. There are all kinds of people. Have you ever invented a bomb?" "A bomb?" Ennis's lips worked, and this time I thought he actually was trying to smile. "Why would I invent a bomb?" "I don't know. Inventors invent many things. If you have never tried your hand at a bomb, of course you have never had occasion to get hold of the necessary materials-- for instance, explosives. It's only fair to tell you what I now regard as a reasonable hypothesis: that you placed the bomb in the hospital in revenge for an injury, real or fancied; that included in the data you gave Leo Heller was an item or items which led him to suspect you of that crime; that something he said led you, in turn, to suspect that he suspected; that when you went to his place this morning you went armed, pre196 pared for action if your suspicion was verified; that when you entered the building you recognized Mr. Goodwin as my assistant; that you went up to Heller's office and asked him if Mr. Goodwin was there for an appointment with him, and his answer heightened or confirmed your suspicion, and you produced the gun; that--" "Hold it," Cramer snapped. "I'll take it from here. Purley, get him out and--" Purley was a little slow. He was up, but Ennis was up faster and off in a flying dive for Wolfe. I dived too, and got an arm and jerked. He tore loose, but by then a whole squad was there, swarming into him, and since I wasn't needed I backed off. As I did so someone dived at me, and Susan Maturo was up against me, gripping my lapels. "Tell me!" she demanded. "Tell me! Was it him?" I told her promptly and positively, to keep her from ripping my lapels off. "Yes," I said, in one word. Two months later a jury of eight men and four women agreed with me. 197 This Won't Kill You At the end of the sixth inning the score was Boston 11, New York 1. I would not have believed that the day would ever come when, seated in a lower box between home and first, at the seventh and deciding game of the World Series between the Giants and Red Sox, I would find myself glomming a girl, no matter who. I am by no means above glomming a girl if she is worthy, but not at the Polo Grounds, where my mind is otherwise occupied. That awful day, though, I did. The situation was complex and will have to be explained. It was a mess even before the game started. Pierre Mondor, owner of the famous Mondor's Restaurant in Paris, was visiting New York and was our house guest. He got the notion, God knows how or why, that Wolfe had to take him to a baseball game, and Wolfe's conception of the obligations of a host wouldn't let him use his power of veto. Tickets were no prob- 201 lem, since Emil Chisholm, oil millionaire and part-owner of the Giants, considered himself deeply in Wolfe's debt on account of a case we had handled for him a few years back. So that October afternoon, a Wednesday, I got the pair of them, the noted private detective and the noted chef, up to the Polo Grounds in a taxi, steered them through the mob into the entrance, along the concrete ramps, and down the aisle to our box. It was twenty past one--only ten minutes to game time--and the stands were jammed. I motioned to Mondor, and he slid in and sat. Wolfe stood and glared down at the wooden slats and metal arms. Then he lifted his head and glared at me. "Are you out of your senses?" he demanded.

"I Warned you," I said coldly. "It was designed for men, not mammoths. Let's go home." He tightened his lips, moved his massivity, lowered it, and tried to squeeze between the arms. No. He grasped the rail in front with both hands, wriggled loose, and got what he could of his fanny hooked on the edge of the seat. Mondor called to me across the great ex202 panse of Wolfe's back, "I depend with confidence on you, Arshee! You must make clear as it develops! What are the little white things?" I love baseball and I love the Giants, and I had fifty bucks up on that game, but I would have got up and gone but for one thing. It was working hours, and Wolfe pays my salary, and there were too many people, some of them alive and loose, who felt strongly that he had already lived too long. He is seldom out in the open, easy to get at, and when he is I like to be nearby. So I gritted my teeth and stuck. The ground crew finished smoothing off and hauled their drags away, the umpires did a huddle, the Giants trotted out on the field to their stations, the throng gave with a lusty excited roar, we all stood up for "The Star-Spangled Banner" and then sat again, with Wolfe perched on two slats and holding grimly to the rail. After southpaw Ed Romeike, 22-4 for the season, had burned a few over for the range. Lew Baker, the catcher, fired it to Tiny Garth at second. The Red Sox lead-off man came to the white line, the plate umpire said go, and Romeike looked around at the field, toed the rubber, went into his tricky windup, and shot a fast 203 one over the outside corner for strike one. The crowd let out a short sharp yell. My personal nightmare was bad enough. Mondor was our guest, and only eighteen hours ago I had taken three helpings of the quenelles bonne femme he had cooked in our kitchen, and would have made it four if I had had room; but trying to tell a foreigner what a base on balls is during a World Series game, with two men on, two down, and Oaky Asmussen at bat, is hard on the nerves. As for Wolfe, it wasn't so much the sight of him there in his concentrated misery; it was the certainty that by tomorrow he would have figured out a way to blame it on me, and that would start a feud. Bad enough, but more was to come, and not for me alone. One fly had plopped into the soup even before the game started, when the line-up was announced and Tiny Garth was named for second base, with no explanation. A buzz of amazement had filled the stands. Why not Nick Ferrone? Ferrone, a lanky big-eared kid just up from the bush five months back, had fielded and batted himself so far to the front that it was taken for granted he would be voted rookie of the year. He had been spectacular in the first 204 six games of the series, batting .427. Where was he today? Why Garth? Then the game. This was no personal nightmare of mine, it was all too public. In the first inning Con Prentiss, the Giants' shortstop, bobbled an easy grounder, and two minutes later Lew Baker, the catcher, trying to nab a runner at second, threw the ball six feet over Garth's head into the outfield. With luck, the Red Sox scored only one run. In the second inning Nat Neill, center fielder, misjudged a fly he could have walked under, tried to run in three directions at once, and had to chase it to the fence; and soon after that Prentiss grabbed a hard-hit ball on the hop and hurled it into the dirt three paces to the left of third base. By the time they got three out, Boston had two more runs. As the Giants came in for their turn at bat in the second, heading for the dugout, loud and bitter sarcasms from the stands greeted them. Then our section was distracted by an incident. A man in a hurry came plunging down the aisle, bumping my elbow as he passed, and pulled up alongside a front box occupied by six men, among them the Mayor of New York and oilman Emil Chisholm, who had provided our tick205 ets. The man spoke into the ear ofChisholm, who looked anything but happy. Chisholm said something to the Mayor and to another of his boxmates, arose and sidled out, and beat it up the aisle double quick, followed by the courier and also by cutting remarks from nearby fans who had recognized him. As my eyes went back to the arena. Con Prentiss, the Giant shonstop, swung at a floater and missed by a mile. There is no point in ray retailing the agony. As I said, at the end of the sixth the score was 11 to 1. Romeike was doing all right, and Boston had collected only three hits, but his support would have been pitiful on a sandlot. Joe Eston and Nat Neill had each made two errors, and Con Prentiss and Lew Baker three apiece. As they came to the dugout in the sixth, one wit yelled, "Say it ain't so, Joe!" at Eston, and the crowd, recognizing that classic moan to Shoeless Joe Jackson, let out a howl. They were getting really rough. As for me, I had had plenty of the tragedy out on the diamond and looked around for something less painful, and caught sight of the girl, in a box off to my right. I glommed her, not offensively. There were two of them. One was a redhead who 206 would start to get plump in a couple of years, almost worthy, but not quite. The other one, the glommee, had light brown hair and dark brown eyes, and was fully qualified. I had the feeling that she was not a complete stranger, that I had seen her somewhere before, but couldn't place her. The pleasure it gave me to look at her was not pure, because it was adulterated with resentment. She looked happy. Her eyes sparkled. Apparently she liked the way things were going. There is no law barring Boston fans from the Polo Grounds, but I resented it. Nevertheless, I continued the glommation. She was the only object I had seen there that day, on or off the field, that didn't make me want to shut my eyes and keep them shut, and I sure needed it. Something came between her and me. A man stopped at my elbow, leaned down, and asked my ear, "Are you Archie Goodwin?" I told him yes. "Is that Nero Wolfe?" I nodded. "Mr. Chisholm wants him in the clubhouse, quick." I reflected for two seconds, decided that this was straight from heaven, and slid for207 ward to tell Wolfe, "Mr. Chisholm invites us to the clubhouse. We'll avoid the crush. There's a chair there. He wan^to see you." He didn't even growl, "What about?" He didn't even growl. Turning to mutter something to Mondor, he pulled himself erect and sidestepped past me to the aisle. Mondor came after him. The courier led the way, and I brought up the rear. As we went up the concrete steps, single file, a shout came from somewhere on the left. "Go get 'em, Nero! Sick 'em!" Such is fame. 2 "This is urgent!" Emil Chisholm squeaked. "It's urgent!" There was no chair in the clubroom of the size Wolfe likes and needs, but there was a big leather couch, and he was on it, breathing hard and scowling. Mondor was seated over against the wall, out of it. Chisholm, a hefty broad-shouldered guy not as tall as me, with a wide thick mouth and a long straight nose, was too upset to stand or sit, so he was boiling around. I was standing near an open window. Through it came a 208 sudden swelling roar from the crowd out in the stands. "Shut that goddam window!" Chisholm barked. I did so. "I'm going home," Wolfe stated in his most conclusive tone. "But not until they have left. Perhaps, if you will tell me briefly--' "We've lost the series!" Chisholm shouted. Wolfe closed his eyes and opened them again. "If you'll keep your voice down?" he suggested. "I've had enough noise today. If losing the series is your problem, I'm afraid I can't help." "No. Nobody can." Chisholm stood facing him. "I blew up, damn it, and I've got to get hold of myself. This is what happened. Out there before the game Art got a suspicion--" "Art?" "Art Kinney, our manager. Naturally he was watching the boys like a hawk, and he got a suspicion something was wrong. That first--" "Why was he watching them like a hawk?" "That's his job! He's manager!" Chisholm 209 realized he was shouting again, stopped, clamped his jaw and clenched his fists, and after a second went on. "Also Nick Ferrone had disappeared. He was here with them in the clubhouse, he had got into uniform, and after they went out and were in the dugout he just wasn't there. Art sent Doc Soffer back here to get him, but he couldn't find him. He was simply gone. Art had to put Garth at second base. Naturally he was on edge, and he noticed things, the way some of the boys looked and acted, that made him suspicious. Then--" A door opened and a guy came running in, yelling, "Fitch hit one and Neill let it get by and Asmussen scored! Fitch went on to third!" I recognized him, chiefly by his crooked nose, which had got in the way of a line drive back in the twenties when he was a Cardinal inflelder. He was Beaky Durkin, now a Giant scout, with a recent new lease on life because he had dug up Nick Ferrone out in Arkansas. Chisholm jerked his arms up and pushed palms at Durkin. "Get out! Get the hell out!" He took a threatening step. "Send Doc--hey. Doc! Come in here!" Durkin, backing out, collided with an210 other in the doorway. The other was Doc Softer, the Giants' veteran medico, bald, wearing black-rimmed glasses, with a long torso and short legs. Entering, he looked as if his ten best-paying patients had just died on him. "I can't sweat it. Doc," Chisholm told him. "I'm nuts. This is Nero Wolfe. You tell him." "Who are you?" Wolfe demanded. Softer stood before him. "I'm Doctor Horton Softer," he said, clipping it. "Four of my men, possible five, have been drugged. They're out there now, trying to play ball, and they can't." He stopped, looking as if he were about to break down and cry, gulped twice, and went on. "They didn't seem right, there in the dugout. I noticed it, and so did Kinney. That first inning there was no doubt about it, something was wrong. The second inning it was even worse--the same four men. Baker, Prentiss, Neill, and Eston--and I got an idea. I told Kinney, and he sent me here to investigate. You see that cooler?" He pointed to a big white-enameled electric refrigerator standing against a wall. Mondor, seated near it, was staring at us. Wolfe nodded. "Well?" 211 "It contains mostly an assortment of drinks in bottles. I know my men's habits-- every little habit they've got, and big one too. I knew that after they get into uniform before a game those four men--the four I named--have the habit of getting a bottle of Beebright out of the cooler and--" "What is Beebright?" "It's a carbonated drink that is supposed to have honey in it instead of sugar. Each of those four drinks a bottle of it, or part of one, before he goes out to the field, practically without exception. And it was those four that were off--terrible; I never saw anything like it. That's why I got my idea. Kinney was desperate and told me to come and see, and I did. Usually the clubhouse boy cleans up here after the men leave for the field, but this being the deciding game of the World Series, today he didn't. Stuff was scattered around--as you see, it still is--and there was a Beebright bottle there on that table with a little left in it. It didn't smell wrong, and I didn't want to waste any tasting it. I had sent for Mr. Chisholm, and when he came we decided what to do. He sent for Beaky Durkin, who had a seat in the grandstand, because he knew Ferrone better than anyone else and might have some 212 idea that would help. I took the Beebright down the street to a drugstore, and made two tests. The first one, Ranwez's, didn't prove anything, but that was probably because it is limited--" ^ "Negatives may be skipped," Wolfe muttered.

"I'm telling you what I did," Softer snapped. He was trying to keep calm. "Ranwez's test took over half an hour. The second, Ekkert's, took less. I did it twice, to check. It was conclusive. The Beebright contained sodium phenobarbital. I couldn't get the quantity, in a hurry like that, but on a guess it was two grains, possibly a little more, in the full bottle. Anyone can get hold if it. Certainly that would be no problem for a bigtime gambler who wanted to clean up on a World Series game. And--" "The sonofabitch," Chisholm said. Doc Softer nodded. "And another sonofabitch put it in the bottles, knowing those four men would drink it just before the game. All he had to do was remove the caps, drop the tablets in, replace the caps, and shake the bottles a little--not much, because it's very soluble. It must have been done today after twelve o'clock, because otherwise someone else might have drunk it, 213 and anyway, if it were done much in advance the drinks would have gone stale, and those men would have noticed it. So it must have been someone-^" Chisholm had marched to the window. He whirled and yelled, "Ferrone did it, damn him! He did it and lammed!" Beaky Durkin appeared. He came through the door and halted, facing Chisholm. He was trembling, and his face was white, all but the crooked nose. "Not Nick," he said hoarsely. "Not that boy. Nick didn't do it, Mr. Chisholm!" "Oh, no?" Chisholm was bitter. "Did I ask you? A fine rookie of the year you brought in from Arkansas! Where is he? Get him and bring him in again and let me get my hands on him! Go find him! Will you go find him?" "Go where?" "How the hell do I know? Have you any idea where he is?" "No." "Will you go find him?" Durkin lifted helpless hands and dropped them. "He's your pet, not mine," Chisholm said savagely. "Get him and bring him in, and 214 I'll offer him a new contract. That will be a contract. Beat it!" Durkin left through the door he had entered by. Wolfe grunted. "Sit down, please," he told Chisholm. "When I address you I look at you, and my neck is not elastic. Thank you, sir. You want to hire me for a job?" "Yes. I want--" "Please. Is this correct? Four of your best players, drugged as described by Doctor Softer, could not perform properly, and as a result a game is lost, and a World Series?" "We're losing it." Chisholm's head swung toward the window and back again. "Of course it's lost." "And you assume a gambler or a group of gamblers is responsible. How much could he or they win on a game?" "On today's game, any amount. Fifty thousand or double that, easy." "I see. Then you need the police. At once." Chisholm shook his head. "Damn it, I don't want to. Baseball is a wonderful game, a clean game, the best and cleanest game on earth. This is the dirtiest thing that's happened in baseball in thirty years, and it's got to be handled right and handled fast. You're 215 the best detective in the business, and you're right here. With a swarm of cops trooping in. God knows what will happen. If we have to have them later, all right, but now here you are. Go to it!" Wolfe was frowning. "You think this Nick Ferrone did it." "I don't know!" Chisholm was yelling again. "How do I know what I think? He's a harebrained kid just out of the sticks, and he's disappeared. Where'd he go and why? What does that look like?" Wolfe nodded. "Very well." He drew a deep sigh. "I can at least make some gestures and see." He aimed a finger at the door Beaky Durkin and Doc Softer had used. "Is that an office?" "It leads to Kinney's office--the manager."

"Then it has a phone. You will call police headquarters and report the disappearance of Nick Ferrone, and ask them to find him. Such a job, when urgent, is beyond my resources. Tell them nothing more for the present if you want it that way. Where do the players change clothing?" "Through there." Chisholm indicated another door. "The locker room. The shower room is beyond." 216 Wolfe's eyes came to me. "Archie. You will look around. All contiguous premises except this room, which you can leave to me." "Anything in particular?" I asked. "No. You have good eyes and a head of sorts. Use them." "I could wait to phone the police," 1 Chisholm suggested, "until you--" "No," Wolfe snapped. "In ten minutes you can have ten thousand men looking for Mr. Ferrone, and it will cost you ten cents. Spend it. I charge more for less." I Chisholm went, through the door at the left, with Doc Soffer at his heels. Since ' Wolfe had said "all contiguous premises," I thought I might as well start in that direction, and followed them across a hall and into another room. It was good-sized, furnished with desks, chairs, and accessories. Beaky Durkin was on a chair in a corner with his ear to a radio turned low, and Doc Softer was beading for him. Chisholm [ barked, "Shut that damn thing off!" and crossed to a desk with a phone. Under other circumstances I would have enjoyed having a look at the office of Art Kinney, the Giants' manager, but I was on a mission and there was too big an audience. I about-faced 217 and back-tracked. As I crossed the clubroom to the door in the far wall, Wolfe was standing by the open door of the refrigerator with a bottle of Beebright in his hand, holding it at arm's length, sneering at it, and Mondor was beside him. I passed through, and was in a room both long and wide, with two rows of lockers, benches and stools, and a couple of chairs. The locker doors were marked with numbers and names too. I tried three, they were locked. After going through a doorway to the left, I was in the shower room. The air in there was a little damp, but not warm. I went to the far end, glancing in at each of the shower stalls, was disappointed to see no pillbox that might have contained sodium phenobarbital, and returned to the locker room. In the middle of the row on the right was the locker marked "Ferrone." Its door was locked. With my portable key collection I could have operated, but I don't take it along to ball games, and nothing on my personal ring was usable. It seemed to me that the inside of that locker was the one place that needed attention, certainly the first on the list, so I returned to the clubroom, made a face at Wolfe as I went by, and entered Kinney's office. Chisholm had finished 218 phoning and was seated at a desk, staring at the floor. Beaky Durkin and Doc Softer had their ears glued to the radio, which was barely audible. I asked Chisholm, "Have you got a key to Ferrone's locker?" His head jerked up, and he said aggressively, "What?" "I want a key to Ferrone's locker." "I haven't got one. I think Kinney has a master key. I don't know where he keeps it." "Fifteen to two," Durkin informed us, or maybe just talking to himself. "Giants batting in the ninth, two down. Garth got a home run, bases empty. It's all--" "Shut up!" Chisholm yelled at him. Since Kinney would soon be with us, and since Ferrone's locker had first call, I thought I might as well wait there for him. However, with our client sitting there glaring at me, it would be well to display some interest and energy, so I moved. I took in the room. I went to filing cabinets and looked them over. I opened a door, saw a hall leading to stairs down, backed up, and shut the door. I took in the room again, crossed to another door in the opposite wall, and opened that. 219 Since I hadn't the faintest expectation of finding anything pertinent beyond that door, let alone a corpse, I must have made some sound or movement in my surprise, but if so it wasn't noticed. I stood for three seconds, then slipped inside and squatted long enough to get an answer to the main question.

I arose, backed out, and addressed Softer. "Take a look here. Doc. I think he's dead. If so, watch it." He made a noise, stared, and moved. I marched out, into the clubroom, crossed to Wolfe, and spoke. "Found something. I opened a door to a closet and found Nick Ferrone, in uniform, on the floor, with a baseball bat alongside him and his head smashed in. He's dead, according to me, but Doc Softer is checking, if you want an expert opinion. Found on contiguous premises." Wolfe grunted. He was seated on the leather couch. "Mr. Ferrone?" he asked peevishly. "Yes sir." "You5 found him?" "Yes, sir." His shoulders went up a quarter of an inch and down again. "Call the police." 220 "Yes, sir. A question. Any minute the ballplayers will be coming in here. The cops won't like it if they mess around. The cops will think we should have prevented it. Do we care? It probably won't be Cramer. Do we�" A bellow? Chisholm's, came through. "Wolfe! Come in here! Come here!" He got up, growling. "We owe the police nothing, certainly not deference. But we have a client�I think we have. I'll see. Meanwhile you stay here. Everyone entering this room remains, under surveillance." He headed for Kinney's office, whence more bellows were coming. Another door opened, the one in the west wall, and Nat Neill, the Giants' center fielder, entered, his jaw set and his eyes blazing. Following him came Lew Baker, the catcher. Behind them, on the stairs, was a clatter of footsteps. The game was over. The Giants had lost. 5 Another thing I don't take along to ball games is a gun, but that day there was a moment when I wished I had. After any 221 ordinary game, even a lost one, I suppose the Giants might have been merely irritated if, on getting to the clubhouse, they found a stranger there, backed up against the door to the locker room, who told them firmly that on account of a state of emergency they could not pass. But that day they were ready to plug one another, so why not a stranger? The first do^en were ganging me, about to start using hands, when Art Kinney, the manager, appeared, strode across, and wanted to know what. I told him to go to his office and ask Chishohn. The gang let up then, to consider�all but Bill Moyse, the second-string catcher, six feet two, and over two hundred pounds. He had come late, after Kinney. He breasted up to me, making fists, and announced that his wife was waiting for him and he was going in to change, and either I would move or he would move me. One of his teammates called from the rear, "Show him her picture. Bill! That'll move him!" Moyse whirled and leaped. Hands grabbed for him, but he kept going. Whether he reached his target and actually landed or not I can't say, because, first, I was staying put and it was quite a mixup, and second, I was seeing something that wasn't present. 222 The mention of Moyse's wife and her picture had done it. What I was seeing was a picture of a girl that had appeared in the Gazette a couple of months back, with a caption tagging her as the showgirl bride of William Moyse, the ballplayer; and it was the girl I had been glomming in a nearby box when the summons had come from Chisholm. No question about it. That was interesting, and possibly even relevant. Meanwhile Moyse was doing me a service by making a diversion. Three or four had hold of him, and others were gathered around his target. Con Prentiss, the shortstop. They were all jabbering. Prentiss, who was wiry and tough, was showing his teeth in a grin--not an attractive one. Moyse suddenly whirled again and was back at me, and this time, obviously, he was coming through. It was useless to start slugging that mountain of muscle, and I was set to try locking him, hoping the others would admire the performance, when a loud voice came from the doorway to the manager's office. "Here! Attention, all of you!" It was Art Kinney. His face was absolutely white, and his neck cords were twitching, as they all turned and were silent. 223 "I'm full up," he said, half hysterical. 'This is Nero Wolfe, the detective. He'll tell you something." Muttering went around as Kinney stepped aside and Wolfe took his place in the doorway. Wolfe's eyes darted from left to right, and he spoke. "You deserve an explanation, gentlemen, but the police are coming and there's not much time. You have just lost a ball game by knavery. Four of you were drugged, in a drink called Beebright, and could not perform properly. You will learn--" They drowned him out. It was an explosion of astonished rage. "Gentlemen!" Wolfe thundered. "Will you listen?" He glowered. "You will learn more of that later, but there is something more urgent. The dead body of one of your colleagues, Mr. Nick Ferrone, has been discovered on these premises. He was murdered. It is supposed, naturally, that the two events, the drugging and the murder, are connected. In any case, if you do not know what a murder investigation means to everyone within reach, innocent or not, you are about to learn. For the moment you will not leave this room. When the police arrive they will tell you--" 224 Heavy feet were clomping in the hall. A door swung open, and a uniformed cop stepped in, followed by three others. The one in front, a sergeant, halted and demanded indignantly, "What is all this? Where is it?" The Giants looked at the cops and hadn't a word to say. 4 Inspector Hennessy of uptown Homicide was tall and straight, silver-haired, with a bony face and quick-moving gray eyes. Some two years ago he had told Nero Wolfe that if he ever again tried poking into a murder in his territory he would be escorted to the Harlem River and dunked. But when, at nine o'clock that evening, Hennessy breezed through the clubroom, passing in front of the leather couch where Wolfe was seated with a ham sandwich in one hand and a bottle of beer in the other, he didn't even toss a glance. He was much too busy. The police commissioner was in Manager Kinney's office with Chisholm and others. The district attorney and an assistant were in the locker room, along with an assort225 ment of Homicide men, giving various athletes their third or fourth quiz. There were still a couple of dozen city employees in the clubhouse, though the scientists--the photographers and fingerprint hounds--had all finished and gone. I had standing as the finder of the corpse, but also I was a part of Wolfe. Technically Wolfe was not poking into a murder; he had been hired by Chisholm, before the corpse had been found, to find out who had doped the ballplayers. However, in gathering facts for relay to Wolfe, I had not discriminated. I saw Nick Fen-one's locker opened and the contents examined, with nothing startling disclosed. While I was in Kinney's office watching a basket squad load the corpse and carry it out, I heard a lieutenant on the phone giving instructions for a roundup of gamblers throughout the metropolitan area. A little later I picked up a bunch of signed statements from a table and sat down and read them through, without anyone's noticing. By that time the commissioner and the DA had arrived, and they had eight or nine quiz posts going in the various rooms, and Hennessy was doing his damnedest to keep it organized. I collected all I could for Wolfe. The bat 226 that had been used to crack Ferrone's skull was no stock item, but a valued trophy. With it, years back, a famous Giant had belted a grand slam home run that had won a pennant, and the bat had been displayed on a wall rack in the manager's office. The murderer could have simply grabbed it from the rack. It had no usable fingerprints. Of eight bottles of Beebright left in the cooler, the two in front had been doped, and the other six had not. No other drinks had been tampered with. Everyone had known of the liking of those four--Baker, Prentiss, Neill, and Eston--for Beebright, and their habit of drinking a bottle of it before a game. No good prints. No sign anywhere of any container of tablets of sodium phenobarbital. And a thousand other negatives--for instance, the clubhouse boy, Jimmie Burr. The custom was that, when he wasn't around, the players would put chits in a little box for what they took, and he hadn't been around. For that game someone had got him a box seat, and he had beat it to the grandstand while most of the players were in the locker room changing. A sergeant jumped on it: who had got him out of the way by providing a ticket for a box seat? 227 But it had been Art Kinney himself, the manager. Around eight o'clock they turned a big batch loose. Twenty Giants, including coaches and the bat boy, were allowed to go to the locker room to change, under surveillance, and then let out, with instructions to keep available. They were not in the picture as it then looked. It was established that Ferrone had arrived at the clubhouse shortly after twelve o'clock and had got into uniform; a dozen of them had been in the locker room when he had. He had been present during a pre-game session with Kinney in the clubroom, and no one remembered seeing him leave afterward. After they had trooped out and down the stairs, emerged onto the field, and crossed it, Ferrone's absence was not noticed until they had been in the dugout some minutes. As the cops figured it, he couldn't have been slammed with a baseball bat in Kinney's office, only a few yards away, while the team was in the clubroom, and therefore all who had unquestionably left for the field with the gang, and had stayed there, were in the clear until further notice. With them went Pierre Mondor, who had wanted to- see a ball game and had picked a beaut. 228 As I said, when Inspector Hennessy breezed through the clubroom at nine o'clock, coming from the locker room and headed for Kinney's office, he didn't even toss a glance at the leather couch where Wolfe and I were seated. He disappeared. But soon he was back again, speaking from the doorway. "Come in here, will you, Wolfe?" "No," Wolfe said flatly. "I'm eating." "The commissioner wants you." "Is he eating?" Waiting for no reply, Wolfe turned his head and bellowed, "Mr. Skinner! I'm dining!" It wasn't very polite, I thought, to be sarcastic about the sandwiches and beer Chisholm had provided. Hennessy started a remark which indicated that he agreed with me, but it was interrupted by the appearance of Commissioner Skinner at his elbow. Hennessy stepped in and aside, and Skinner entered, followed by Chisholm, and approached the couch. He spoke. "Dining?" "Yes, sir." Wolfe reached for another sandwich. "As you see." "Not your accustomed style." Wolfe grunted and bit into the sandwich. Skinner kept it friendly. "I've just learned that four men who were told they could go 229 are still here--Baker, Prentiss, Neill, and Eston. When Inspector Hennessy asked them why, they told him that Mr. Chisholm asked them to stay. Mr. Chisholm says that he did so at your suggestion. He understood that you want to speak with them after our men have all left. Is that correct?" Wolfe nodded. "I made it quite plain, I thought." "M-m-m-m." The commissioner regarded him. "You see, I know you fairly well. You wouldn't dream of hanging on here half the night to speak with those men merely as a routine step in an investigation. And besides, at Mr. Chisholm's request you have already been permitted to speak with them, and with several others. You're cooking something. Those are the four men who were drugged, but they left the clubhouse for the field with the rest of the team, so, the way we figure it, none of them killed Ferrone. How do you figure it?" Wolfe swallowed the last of a well-chewed bite. "I don't." Hennessy growled and set his jaw. Skinner said, "I don't believe it," with his tone friendlier than his words. "You're cooking something," he insisted. "What's the play with those four men?" 230 Wolfe shook his head. "No, sir." Hennessy took a step forward. "Look," he said, "this is my territory. My name's Hennessy. You don't turn this murder into a parlor game." Wolfe raised brows at him. "Murder? I am not concerned with murder. Mr. Chisholm hired me to investigate the drugging of his employees. The two events may of course be connected, but the murder is your job. And they were not necessarily connected. I understand that a man named Moyse is in there now with the district attorney"--Wolfe aimed a thumb at the door to the locker room--"because it has been learned that he has twice within a month assaulted Mr. Ferrone physically, through resentment at Ferrone's interest in his wife, injudiciously displayed. And that Moyse did not leave the clubhouse with the others, and arrived at the dugout three or four minutes later, just before Fen-one's absence was noticed. For your murder, Mr. Hennessy, that should be a help; but it doesn't get me on with my job, disclosure of the culprit who drugged the drinks. Have you charged Mr. Moyse?" "No." Hennessy was curt. "So you're not interested in the murder?" 231 "Not as a job, since it's not mine. But if you want a comment from a specialist, you're closing your lines too soon." "We haven't closed any lines." "You let twenty men walk out of here. You are keeping Moyse for the reasons given. You are keeping Doctor Softer, I suppose, because when Ferrone was missed in the dugout Softer came here to look for him, and he could have found him here alive and killed him. You are keeping Mr. Durkin, I suppose again, because he too could have been here alone with Ferrone. He says he left the clubhouse shortly before the team did and went to his seat in the grandstand, and stayed there. Has he been either contradicted or corroborated?" "No." "Then you regard him as vulnerable on opportunity?" "Yes." "Are you holding Mr. Chisholm for the same reason?" Chisholm made a noise. Skinner and Hennessy stared. Skinner said, "We're not holding Mr. Chisholm." "You should be, for consistency," Wolfe declared. "This afternoon, when I reached my seat in the stands�of which only the 232 front edge was accessible to me--at twenty minutes past one, the Mayor and others were there in a nearby box, but Mr. Chisholm was not. He arrived a few minutes later. He has told me that when he arrived with his party, including the Mayor, about one o'clock, he had the others escorted to the stands and the box, that he started for the clubhouse for a word with his employees, that he was delayed by the crowd and decided it was too late, that he went on a private errand to a men's room and then proceeded to the box. If the others are vulnerable on opportunity, so is he." They made remarks, all three of them, not appreciative. Wolfe put the bottle to his lips, tilted it and his head, and swallowed beer. Paper cups had been supplied, but he hates them. He put the bottle down empty. "I was merely," he said mildly, "commenting on the murder as a specialist. As for my job, learning who drugged the drinks, I haven't even made a start. How could I in this confounded hubbub? Trampled by an army. I have been permitted to sit here and talk to people, yes, with a succession of your subordinates standing behind me, breathing down my neck. One of them was chewing 233 gum! Pfui. Working on a murder and chewing gum!" "We'll bounce him," Hennessy said dryly. "The commissioner has asked you, what's the play with those four men?" Wolfe shook his head. "Not only those four. I included others in my request to Mr. Chisholm--Doctor Softer, Mr. Kinney, Mr. Durkin, and of course Mr. Chisholm himself. I am not arranging a parlor game. I make a living as a professional detective, and I need their help on this job I've undertaken. I think I know why, engrossed as you are with the most sensational case you've had in years, you're spending all this time chatting with me; you suspect I'm contriving a finesse. Don't you?" "You're damn right we do." Wolfe nodded. "So I am." "You are?" "Yes." Wolfe suddenly was peevish. "Haven't I sat here for five hours, submerged in your pandemonium? Haven't you all the facts that I have, and many more besides? Haven't you a thousand men to command--indeed, twenty thousand--and I one? One little fact strikes me as apparently it has not struck you, and in my forlorn desperation I decided to test my 234 interpretation of it. For that test I need help, and I ask Mr. Chisholm to provide it, and--" "We'll be glad to help," Skinner cut in. "Which fact, and how do you interpret it?" "No, sir." Wolfe was positive. "It is my one slender chance to earn a fee. I intend--" "We may not know this fact." "Certainly you do. I have stated it explicitly during this conversation, but I won't point at it for you. If I did you'd spoil it for me, and, slender as it is, I intend to test it. I am not beset with the urgency of murder, as you are, but I'm in a fix. I don't need a motive strong enough to incite a man to murder, merely one to persuade him to drug some bottled drinks--mildly, far from lethally. A thousand dollars? Twenty thousand? That would be only a fraction of the possible winnings on a World Series game-- and no tax to pay. The requisitions of the income tax have added greatly to the attractions of mercenary crime. As for opportunity, anyone at all could have slipped in here late this morning, before others had arrived, with drugged bottles of that drink and put them in the cooler--and earned a fortune. Those twenty men you let go, Mr. Hennessy--of how many of them can you 235 say positively that they did not drug the drinks?" The inspector was scowling at him. "I can say that I don't think any of them killed Ferrone." "Ah, but I'm not after the murderer; that's your job," Wolfe upturned a palm. "You see why I am driven to a forlorn finesse. It is my only hope of avoiding a laborious and possibly fruitless--" What interrupted him was the entry of a man through the door to the locker room. District Attorney Megalech was as masterful as they come, although bald as a doorknob. He strode across and told Skinner and Hennessy he wanted to speak with them, took an elbow of each, and steered them to and through the door to Kinney's office. Chisholm, uninvited, wheeled and followed them. Wolfe reached for a sandwich and took a healthy bite. I arose, brushed off crumbs, shook my pants legs down, and stood looking down at him. I asked, "How good is this fact you're saving up?" "Not very." He chewed and swallowed. "Good enough to try if we got nothing better. Evidently they have nothing at all. If they had--but you heard them." 236 "Yeah. You told them they have all the facts you have, but they haven't. The one I gave you about Mrs. Moyse? That's not the one you're interpreting privately?" "No." "She might be still around, waiting. I might possibly get something better than the one you're saving. Shall I go try?" He grunted. I took it for a yes, and moved. Outside the door to the hall and stairs stood one in uniform with whom I had already had a few little words. I addressed him. "I'm going down to buy Mr. Wolfe a pickle. Do I need to be passed out or in?" "You?" He used only the right half of his mouth for talking. "Shoot your way through. Huh?" "Right. Many thanks." I went. 5 It was dumb to be so surprised, but I was. I might have known that the news that the Giants had been doped out of the game and the series, and that Nick Ferrone, the probable rookie of the year, had been murdered, would draw a record mob. Downstairs in237 side the entrance there were sentries, and outside a regiment was stretched into a cordon. I was explaining to a sergeant who I was and telling him I would be returning, when three desperate men, one of whom I recognized, came springing at me. All they wanted was the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. I had to get really rude. I have been clawed at by newspapermen more than once, but I had never seen them quite as hungry as they were outside the Polo Grounds that October night. Finding they wouldn't shake loose, I dived through the cordon and into the mob. It looked hopeless. The only parked cars in sight on the west side of Eighth Avenue were police cars. I pushed through to the fringe of the throng and made my way two blocks south. Having made inquiries of two Giants hours previously, I knew what I was looking for, a light blue Curtis sedan. Of course there was a thin chance that it was still around, but if it was I wanted it. I crossed the avenue and headed for the parking plaza. Two cops at the end of the cordon gave me a look, but it wasn't the plaza they were guarding, and I marched on through. In the dim light I could see three cars over at the north end. Closer up, one 238 was a Curtis sedan. Still closer, it was light blue. I went up to it. Two females on the front seat were gazing at me through the window, and one of them was my glommee. The radio was on. I opened the door, swung it wide, and said hello. "Who are you?" she demanded. "My name's Archie Goodwin. I'll show credentials if you are Mrs. William Moyse." "What do you want?" "Nothing if you're not Mrs. Moyse." "What if I am?" She was rapidly erasing the pleasant memory I had of her. Not that she had turned homely in a few hours, but her expression was not only unfriendly but sour, and her voice was not agreeable. I got out my wallet and extracted my license card. "If you are," I said, "this will identify me," and proffered it. "Okay, your name's Goodman." She ignored the card. "So what?" "Not Goodman." I pronounced it again. "Archie Goodwin. I work for Nero Wolfe, who is up in the clubhouse. I just came from there. Why not turn off the radio?" "I'd rather turn you off," she said bitterly.

Her companion, the redhead who had 239 been with her in the box, reached for the knob, and the radio died. "Look, Lila," she said earnestly, "you're acting like a sap. Invite him in. He may be human. Maybe Bill sent him." "What did Walt tell us?" Lila snapped at her. "Nero Wolfe is there working with the cops." She came back at me. "Did my husband send you? Prove it." I bent a knee to put a foot on the edge of the frame, not aggressively. "That's one reason,5' I said, "why Mr. Wolfe can't stand women. The way they flop around intellectually. I didn't say your husband sent me. He didn't. He couldn't even if he wanted to, because for the past hour he has been kept in the locker room, conversing with a gathering of Homicide hounds, and still is. Mr. Wolfe sent me, but in a way it's a personal problem I've got, and no one but you can help me." "You've got a personal problem. You have. Take it away." "I will if you say so, but wait till I tell you. Up to now they have only one reason for picking on your husband. The players left the clubhouse for the field in a bunch, all but one of them. One of them left later and got to the dugout five or six minutes 240 after the others, and it was Bill Moyse. They all agreed on that, and Bill admits it. The cops figure that he had seen or heard something that made him suspect Nick Ferrone of doping the drinks--you know about that? That the Beebright was doped?" "Yes. Walt Goidell told me." "And that he stayed behind with Ferrone to put it to him, and Nick got tough and he got tougher, with a baseball bat. That's how the cops figure it, and that's why they're after Bill, as it stands now. But I have a private reason, which I have kept private except for Nero Wolfe, to think that the cops have got it twisted. Mr. Wolfe is inclined to agree with me, but he hasn't told the cops because he has been hired by Chisholm and wants to earn a fat fee. My private slant is that if Bill did kill Ferrone-- please note the ^--it wasn't because he caught Ferrone doping the drinks, but the other way around. Ferrone caught Bill doping the drinks, and was going to spill it, and Bill killed him." She was goggling at me. "You have the nerve--" She didn't have the words. "Why, you dirty--" "Hold it. I'm telling you. This afternoon at the game I was in a box. By the sixth 241 inning I had had plenty of the game and looked around for something to take my mind off it, and I saw an extremely attractive girl. I looked at her some more. I had a feeling that I had seen her before but couldn't place her. The score was eleven to one, and the Giants were flat on their faces, and that lovely specimen was exactly what my eyes needed, except for one flaw. She was having a swell time. Her eyes showed it, her whole face and manner showed it absolutely. She liked what was happening out on the field. There was that against her, but I looked at her anyhow." She was trying to say something, but I raised my voice a little. "Wait till I tell you. Later, after the game, in the clubhouse, Bill Moyse said his wife was waiting for him, and someone made a crack about showing me her picture. Then it clicked. I remembered seeing a picture of his bride in the Gazette, and it was the girl I had seen in the stands. Again later, I had a chance to ask some of the players some questions, and I learned that she usually drove to games in Bill's light blue Curtis sedan and waited for him after the game. It seemed to me interesting that it made the wife of a Giant happy to see the Giants getting walloped in the 242 deciding game of a World Series, and Mr. Wolfe agreed, but he needed me there in the clubhouse. Finally he sent me to see if she was still around, and here I am. You see our problem. Why were you tickled stiff to see them losing?" "I wasn't." "It's perfectly ridiculous," the redhead snorted. I shook my head. "Rejected. That won't do. Mr. Wolfe accepts my judgment on girls. A pretty girl or a homely girl, a smart girl or a dumb girl, a sad girl or a happy girl-- he knows I know. I have told him you were happy. If I go back and report that you flatly deny it, I don't see how he can do anything but tell the cops, and that will be bad. They'll figure that you wanted the Giants to lose because you knew Bill did, and why. Then of course they'll refigure the murder and get a new answer--that Ferrone found out that Bill had doped the drinks, and Bill killed him. They'll start on Bill all over again, and if they--" "Stop it!" She was hoarse. "For God's sake!" "I was only saying, if they--" The redhead put in, leaning to the steer243 ing wheel and sticking out her chin. "How dumb can you get?" she demanded. "It's not a ques--" "Phooey! You say you know girls! Do you ktiow baseball girls? I'm one! I'm Helen Goidell^ Walt's wife. I would have liked to slap Lila this afternoon, sitting there gloating, niuch as I love her, but I'm not a sap like you! She's not married to the Giants, she's inarried to Bill! Lew Baker had batted two-thirty-two in the first six games of the series, and he had made two errors and had three bases stolen on him, and still they wouldn't give Bill a chance! Lila had sat through those six games praying to see Bill walk out, and not once! What did she care about the series or the difference between winner's and loser's take? She wanted to see Bill in it! And look at Baker this afternoon! If he had been doped, all right, but Lila didn't know it then! What you know about girls, you nitwit!" She was blazing. I did not blaze back. "1'Hi still willing to learn," I said, not belligerently- "Is she right, Mrs. Moyse?"

"Yes. ))

"Then I am too, on the main point? You were pleased to see the Giants losing?" "I said she was right." 244 "Yeah. Then I've still got a problem. If I accept your version and go and report to Wolfe accordingly, he'll accept it too. Whether you think I know girls or not, he does. So that's some responsibility for me. What if you're a lot smoother and trickier than I think you are? Your husband is suspected of murder, and they're still working on him. What if he's guilty and they could squeeze out of you what they need to hook him? Of course eventually they'll get to you and either squeeze it out or not, but how will I look if they do? That's my problem. Have you any suggestions?" Lila had none. She wasn't looking at me. She sat with her head lowered, apparently gazing at her hands, which were clasped together. "You sound almost human," Helen Goidell said. 'That's deceptive," I told her. "I turn it on and off. If I thought she had something Mr. Wolfe could use I'd stop at nothing, even hair-pulling. But at the moment I really don't think she has. I think she's pure and innocent and wholesome. Her husband is another matter. For her sake, I hope he wiggles out of it somehow, but I'm not taking any bets. The cops seem to like him, 245 and I know cops as well as I do girls." I removed my foot from the car frame. "So long, and so forth." I turned to go. "Wait a minute." It was Lila, I turned back. Her head was up. "Is this straight?" she asked. "Is what straight?" "You're going to tell Mr. Wolfe you're satisfied about me?" "Well. Satisfied is quite a word. I'm going to tell him I have bought your explanation of your happiness at the game--or rather, Mrs. Goidell's." "You could be a liar." "Not only could be, I often am, but not at the moment." She regarded me. "Shake hands with me." I raised a paw. Her hand was cold, but her grip was firm, and in four seconds our temperatures had equalized. She let go. "Maybe you can tell me about Bill," she said. "They don't really think he killed Nick Ferrone, do they?" "They think maybe he did." "I know he didn't." "Good for you. But you weren't there, so you don't have a vote." She nodded. She was being hard and 246 practical. "Are they going to arrest him? Will they really charge him with murder?" "I can't say. They may have decided while we've been talking. They know the wholetown will be rooting for someone to be locked up, and Bill is the leading candidate." "Then I've got to do something. I wish I knew what he's telling them. Do you know?" "Only that he's denying he knows anything about it. He says he left the clubhouse after the others had gone because he went back to the locker room to change to other shoes." She shook her head. "I don't mean that. I mean whether he told them--" She stopped. "No. I know he didn't. He wouldn't. He knows something, and I know it too, about a man trying to fix that game. Only he wouldn't tell, on account of me. I have to go and see someone. Will you come along?" "To see who?" "I'll tell you on the way. Will you come?" "Where to?" "In the Fifties. Eighth Avenue." Helen Goidell blurted, "For God's sake, Lila, do you know what you're saying?" If Lila replied I missed it, for I was on my way around the car. It had taken me no pan of a second to decide. This sounded 247 like something. It was a little headstrong to dash off with a damsel, leaving Wolfe up there with mass-production sandwiches, warm beer, and his one measly little fact he was saving up, but this might be really hot. By the time I got around to the other door Helen had it open and was getting out. Her feet on the ground, she turned to speak. "I don't want any part of this, Lila. I do not! I wish to God I'd gone with Walt instead of staying with you!" Lila was trying to get a word in, but Helen wasn't interested. She turned and trotted off toward the gate and the street. I climbed in and pulled the door shut. "She'll tell Walt," Lila said. I nodded. "Yeah. But does she know where we're going?" "No." "Then let's go." She started the engine, levered to reverse, and backed the car. "To hell with friends," she said, apparently to herself. 6 Under ordinary circumstances she was probably a pretty good driver, but that night 248 wasn't ordinary for her. As we swung right into 155th Street, there was a little click at my side as we grazed the fender of a stopped car. Rolling up the grade of Coogan's Bluff, we slipped between two taxis, clearing by an inch, and both hackmen yelled at her. Stopping for a light at the crest, she turned her head and spoke. "It's my Uncle Clan. His name is Gale. He came last night and asked me--" She fed gas and we shot forward, but a car heading uptown and squeezing the light was suddenly there smack in our path. With a lightning reflex her foot hit the brake, the other car zipped by with at least a foot to spare, she fed gas again, and the Curds jerked forward. I asked her, 'Taking the West Side Highway?"

"Yes, it's quicker." "It will be if you make it. Just concentrate on that and let the details wait." She got to the highway without any actual contact with other vehicles, darted across to the left lane, and stepped on it,, The speedometer said fifty-five when she spoke again. "If I go ahead and tell you, I can't change my mind. He wanted me to persuade Bill to 249 fix the game. He said he'd give us ten thousand dollars. I didn't even want to tell Bill, but he insisted, so I did. I knew what Bill would say--" She broke off to do some expert weaving, swerving to the middle lane, then on to the right, then a sprint, then swinging to the middle again just ahead of a tan convertible, and so back to the left again in front of a couple of cars that had slowed her down to under fifty. "Look," I told her, "you could gain up to two minutes this way with luck, but getting stopped and getting a ticket would take at least ten. You're driving--okay, but don't try to talk too. You're not that good. Hold it till we're parked." She didn't argue, but she held the pace. I twisted around to keep an eye on the rear through the window, and stayed that way clear to Fifty-seventh Street. We rolled down the cobbled ramp and a block south turned left on Fifty-sixth Street, had a green light at Eleventh Avenue, and went through. A little short of Tenth Avenue we turned in to the curb and stopped. Lila reached for the handbrake and gave it a yank. "Let's hear it," I said. "Enough to go on. Is Uncle Clan a gambler?" 250 "No." Her face turned to me. "I'm trembling. Look, my hand's trembling. I'm afraid of him." "Then what is he?" "He runs a drugstore. He owns it. That's where we're going to see him. I know what Helen thinks--she thinks I should have told, but I couldn't. My father and mother died when I was just a kid, and Uncle Clan has been good to me--as good as he could. If it hadn't been for him I'd have been brought up in an orphans' home. Of course Bill wanted to tell Art Kinney last night, but he didn't on account of me, and that's why he's not telling the cops." "Maybe he is telling them, or soon will." She shook her head. "I know Bill. We decided we wouldn't tell, and that settled it. Uncle Clan made me promise we wouldn't tell before he said what he wanted." I grunted. "Even so he was crowding his luck, telling you two about the program before signing you up. If he explained the idea of doping the Beebright, why--" "But he didn't! He didn't say how it was to be done, he just said there was an easy way of doing it. He didn't tell us what it was; he didn't get that far, because Bill said nothing doing, as I knew he would." 251 I eyed her. "You sure of that? He might have told Bill and not you." "He couldn't. I was there with them all the time. Certainly I'm sure." "This was last night?" "Yes." "What time?" "Around eight o'clock. We had dinner early with Helen and Walt Goidell, and when we got home Uncle Clan was there waiting for us." "Where's home?" "Our apartment on Seventy-ninth Street. He spoke to me alone first, and then insisted I had to ask Bill." "And Bill turned him down flat?" "Of course he did!" "Bill didn't see him alone later?" "Of course not!" "All right, don't bite. I need to know. Now what?" "We're going to see him. We're going to tell him that we have to tell the cops, and we're going to try to get him to come along. That's why I wanted you with me, because I'm afraid of him--I mean I'm afraid he'll talk me out of it. But they've got to know that Bill was asked to fix the game and he wouldn't. If it's hard on Uncle Clan that's 252 too bad, but I can't help it; I'm for Bill. I'm for Bill all the way." I was making myself look at her, for discipline. I was having the normal male impulses at the sight and sound of a goodlooking girl in trouble, and they were worse than normal because I was partly responsible. I had given her the impression that the cops were about set to take her Bill on the big one, which was an exaggeration. I hadn't mentioned that one reason they were keeping him was his recent reactions to the interest Nick Ferrone had shown in her, which of course had no bearing on anyone's attempt to fix a ball game. True, she had been in a mess before I had got to her, but I had shoved her in deeper. What she needed now was understanding and sympathy and comforting, and since her friend Helen had deserted her I was all she had. Which was I, a man or a detective? Looking at her, I spoke. "Okay," I said, "let's go see Uncle Clan." The engine was running. She released the handbrake, fed gas, and we rolled. Three minutes got us to Eighth Avenue, where we turned downtown. The dash clock said five past eleven, and my wristwatch agreed. The traffic was heavy in both directions, 253 and she got in the right lane and crawled along. Two blocks down she pulled in at the curb, where there was plenty of space, set the brake, turned off the lights, killed the engine, and removed the key and put it in her bag. "There it is." She pointed. "Gale's Pharmacy."

It was ten paces down. There were neons in the window, but otherwise it looked drab. "We'll probably get a ticket for parking," I told her. She said she didn't care. I got out and held the door, and she joined me on the sidewalk. She put a hand on my arm. "You're staying right with me," she stated. "Absolutely," I assured her. "I'm good, with uncles." As we crossed to the entrance and went inside I was feeling not fully dressed. I have a routine habit of wearing a gun when I'm on a case involving people who may go to extremes, but, as I said, I do not go armed to ball games. However, at first sight of Daniel Gale I did not put him in that category. His drugstore was so narrow that a fat man would have had to squeeze to make the passage between the soda fountain stools and 254 the central showcases, and that made it look long, but it wasn't. Five or six customers were on the stools, and the jerk was busy. A chorus boy was inspecting himself in the mirror of the weight machine. At the cosmetics counter on the other side, the left, a woman was being waited on by a little guy with a pale tight-skinned face and rimless specs who needed a shave. "That's him," Lila whispered to me. We stood. Uncle Clan, concentrating on the customer, hadn't seen us. Finally she made her choice and, as he tore off paper to wrap the purchase, his eyes lifted and got Lila. Also he got me, beside her. He froze. He held it, rigid, for four seconds, then came to, went on with the little wrapping job, and was handed a bill by the customer. While he was at the cash register Lila and I crossed to the counter. As he handed the woman her change Lila spoke. "Uncle Clan, I've got to tell you--" She stopped because he was gone. Without speaking, he turned and made for the rear and disappeared behind a partition, and a door closed. I didn't like it, but didn't want to start a commotion by hurdling the counter, so I stepped to the end and circled, and on to the door that had closed, and 255 turned the knob. It was locked. There I was, out at first, unless I was prepared to smash the door in. The soda jerk called, "Hey, Mac, come out of that!" "It's all right," Lila told him. "I'm his niece. He's my Uncle Dan--I mean Mr. Gale is." "I never saw you before, lady." "I never saw you either. How long have you been here?" "I been here two months, and long enough. Leave me be your uncle, huh? You, Mac, come out here where you belong! Whose uncle are you?" A couple of the fountain customers gave him his laugh. A man coming in from the street in a hurry approached and called to me, "Gimme some aspirin!" The door I was standing by popped open, and Uncle Clan was there, against me in the close quarters. "Aspirin!" the man demanded. "Henry!" Gale called. "Right here!" the soda jerk called back. "Wait on the gentleman. Take over for a while; I'll be busy. Come here, Lila, will you?" Lila moved, circled the end of the counter into the narrow aisle, and approached us. 256 There wasn't room enough to be gallant and let her pass, and I followed Gale through the door into the back room ahead of her. It was small, and the stacks of shipping cartons and other objects took most of what space there was. The rows of shelves were crammed with packaged merchandise, except those along the right wall, which held labeled bottles. Gale stopped near the door, and I went on by, and so did Lila. "We don't want to be disturbed," Gale said, and bolted the door. "Why not?" I inquired. He faced me, and from a distance of five arms' length, with Lila between us, I had my first good view of the eyes behind the specs. I had never seen a pair like them. They not only had no pupils, they had no irises. For a second I thought they were glassies, but obviously he could see, so evidently he had merely been shortchanged. Whoever had assembled him had forgotten to color his irises. It didn't make him look any handsomer. "Because," he was telling me, "this is a private matter. You see, I recognized you, Mr. Goodwin. Your face is not as well known as your employer's, but it has been in the papers on several occasions, and you 257 were in my mind on account of the news. The radio bulletins have included the detail that Nero Wolfe and his assistant were present and engaged by Mr. Chisholm. So when I saw you with my niece I recognized you and realized we should talk privately. But you're an impulsive young man, and for fear you may not like what I say, I make conditions. I shall stay here near the door. You will move to that packing case back of you and sit on it, with your hands in sight and making no unnecessary movements. My niece will put the chair here in front of me and sit on it, facing you, between you and me. That way I will feel free to talk." I thought he was batty. As a setup against one of my impulses, including a gun if I had had one, it made no sense at all. I backed up to the packing case and lowered myself, resting my hands on my knees to humor him. When Lila saw me complying she moved the chair, the only one there, as directed, and sat with her back to him. He, it appeared, was going to make a phone call. He did touch the phone, which was on a narrow counter at his right under the shelves of bottles, but only to push it aside. Then he picked up a large bottle of colorless liq- 258 uid, removed the glass stopper, held it to his nose, and sniffed. "I do not have fainting spells," he said apologetically, "but at the moment I am a little unstrung. Seeing my niece here with you was a real shock for me. I came back here to consider what it might mean, but reached no conclusion. Perhaps you'll explain?" "Your niece will. Tell him, Lila." She started to twist around in the chair, but he commanded her, "No, my dear, stay as you were. Face Mr. Goodwin." He took another sniff at the bottle, keeping it in his hand. She obeyed. "It's Bill," she said. "They're going to arrest him for murder, and they mustn't. They won't, if we tell them how you offered to pay him for fixing the game and he wouldn't do it. He won't tell them on account of me, so we have to. I know I promised you I wouldn't, but now I've got to. You see how it is. Uncle Clan, I've got to. I told Mr. Goodwin, to get him to come along. The best way--" "You haven't told the police, Lila dear?" "No. I thought the best way was to come and get you to go with me, and I was afraid to come alone, because I know how bad it 259 will be for you--but it will be worse for Bill if we don't. Don't you see. Uncle--" "Keep your back turned, Lila. I insist on it. That's right, stay that way." He had been talking in an even low tone, but now it became thin and strained, as though his throat had tightened. "I'll tell why I want your back to me, so I can't see your face. Remember, Goodwin, don't move. This is a bottle of pure sulphuric acid. I was smelling it just to explain why I had it; of course it has no smell. I suppose you know what it will do. This bottle is nearly full, and I'm holding it carefully, because one drop on your skin will scar you for life. That's why I want your back to me, Lila. I'm very fond of you--sit still! And I don't want to see your face if I have to use this acid. If you move, Lila dear, I'll use it. Or you, Goodwin--especially you. I hope you both understand?" Lila was stiff, white, pop-eyed, gazing at me. I may have been stiff too; anyhow, I didn't move. His hand holding the bottle was raised, hovering six inches above her head. She looked as if she might keel over, and I urged her, "Sit tight, Lila, and for God's sake don't scream." "Yes," Uncle Clan said approvingly, "I 260 should have mentioned that. Screaming would be as bad as moving. I had to tell you about the acid before I discussed matters. I'm not surprised at your fantastic suggestion, Lila, because I know how foolish you can be, but I'm surprised at you, Goodwin. How would you expect me to take a suggestion that I consent to my complete ruin? When I saw her and recognized you I knew she must have told you. Of course you couldn't know what kind of man you had to deal with, but you know now. Did Lila persuade you that I am an utter fool, a jellyfish?" "I guess she must have," I admitted. "What kind of a man are you?" He proceeded to tell me, and I proceeded to pretend I was listening. I also tried to keep my eyes on his pale tight-skinned face, but that wasn't easy because they were fascinated by the damn bottle he was holding. Meanwhile my brain was buzzing. Unless he was plain loony the only practical purpose of the bottle must be to gain time, and for what? "... and I will," he was saying. "This won't kill you, Lila dear, but it will be horrible, and I don't want to do it unless I have to. Only you mustn't think I won't. 261 You don't really know me very well, because to you I'm just Uncle Clan. You didn't know that I once had a million dollars and I was an important man and a dangerous man. There were people who knew me and feared me, but I was unlucky. I have gambled and made fortunes, and lost them. That affects a man's nerves. It changes a man's outlook on life. I borrowed enough money to buy this place, and for years I worked hard and did well--well enough to pay it all back, but that was my ruin. I owed nothing and had a little cash and decided to celebrate by losing a hundred dollars to some old friends--just a hundred dollars--but I didn't lose, I won several thousand. So I went on and lost what I had won, and I lost this place. I don't own this place, my friends do. They are very old friends, and they gave me a chance to get this place back. I'm telling you about this, Lila dear, because I want you to understand. I came to you and Bill with that offer because I had to, and you promised me, you swore you would tell no one. I have been an unlucky man, and sometimes a weak one, but I am never going to be weak again--don't move!" Lila, who had lifted her head a little, stiffened. I sat gazing at Gale. Obviously he 262 was stalling for time, but what could he expect to happen? It could be only one thing: he expected somebody to come. He expected help. Then he had asked for it, and it was no trick to guess when. As soon as he had seen us he had scooted back here to phone somebody. Help was on the way, and it had to be the kind of help that would deal with Lila and me efficiently and finally; and bigtime gamblers who can provide ten grand to fix a game are just the babies to be ready with that kind of help. In helping with Lila and me they would probably also settle Uncle Clan, since they like to do things right, but that was his lookout, not mine. Either he was loony or that was it. Doping that was a cinch, but then what? They might come any second; he couldn't be expected to stand and dangle the damn bottle all night; they might be entering the drugstore right now. At a knock on the door he would reach behind him and push the bolt-- and here they are. Any second . . . He was talking. ". . .1 didn't think you would, Lila, after all I've done for you. You promised me you wouldn't. Now, of course, you've told Goodwin and it can't be helped. If I just tip this bottle a little, not much--" "Nuts," I said emphatically, but not rais- 263 ing my voice. "You haven't got it staged right." I had my eyes straight at his specs. "Maybe you don't want to see her face, but the way you've got her, with her back to you, it's no good. What if she suddenly ducked and dived forward? You might get some on her clothes or her feet, but the chair would be in your way. Have you considered that? Better still, what if she suddenly darted sideways in between those cartons? The instant she moved I would be moving too, and that would take her out of my path, and before you could get at her with that stuff I'd be there. She'd be taking a chance, but what the hell, that would be better than sitting there waiting for the next act. Unquestionably it would be better for her to go sideways, with her head down and her arms out. You see how bum your arrangement is? But if you make her turn around facing you--" She moved. She went sideways, to her left, her head down and her arms out, diving for the cartons. I lost a tenth of a second because I hadn't dared to pull my feet back ready for the spring, but that was all I lost. I didn't leap, I just went, with all the force my leg muscles could give it. My target was the bottom 264 of the left front leg of the chair, and I went in flat, face down, and had the leg before he could get under way. The impact of the chair knocked him back against the door, and I kept going and grabbed his ankle and jerked. Of course the bottle could have landed right on me, but I had to get him off his feet. As I yanked his ankle I kept my face down, and as he tumbled I felt nothing hit me. The next thing I knew I was on top of him, pinning him, with a grip on his throat, looking around for the bottle. It had never reached the floor. It had landed on a carton six feet to my right and was there on its side, the stuff gurgling out. The floor slanted toward the wall, and no flood threatened me. "Okay, Lila," I said. "I need help." She was scrambling to her feet. "Did he-- did it--" She giggled. "No. If you have hysterics I'll tell Bill. Slap yourself, I can't. It's there on a carton, and don't go near it." "But he--my God, he--" "Shut up. Company's coming, and we've got to get out of here. I want some adhesive tape, quick. Find some." She moved and started looking on shelves and in drawers. I kept talking, thinking it would help. "A 265 drugstore is a handy place�sulphuric acid, adhesive tape, everything you might need. Watch your step; it's spreading on the floor. When I said I was good with uncles I didn't mean uncles like him. He's a lulu. He may have been�" "Here it is." "Good girl. Tear off a piece six inches long�that's it. No, you'll have to do it; if I turn loose of his throat he'll squawk. Across his mouth, good and tight�not that way, diagonal. That's right. Now one the other way. That ought to do it, thank you, nurse. Now find some nice sterile bandage ..." She found that too and held his arms while I sat on his knees and tied his ankles. Then I fastened his wrists behind him and anchored the strip of bandage to the handle of a locked drawer. I squatted for a look at the tape on his mouth, gave it a rub, stood up, went to the door and pushed the bolt, and told her, "Come on." "But we ought to make�" "Come on, damn it! If company is on its way, and I think it is, it won't be bottledanglers. If you like this place you can stay, but I'm going. Well?" I opened the door, and she passed through. I followed and pulled the door to. 266 There were customers on the fountain stools, though not the same ones, and Henry was selling a man a pack of cigarettes. I paused on my way to the street door to tell him that Mr. Gale would be out soon, then opened the door for Lila. On the sidewalk I told Lila to go wait in the car while I made a phone call. Then I saw she was trembling all over, so I escorted her and got her safely on the front seat. Up twenty paces was a bar and grill, and I walked to it, entered, found a phone booth^ dialed WA 9-8241, asked for Sergeant Purley Stebbins, and got him. He wanted to know if I was up at the Polo Grounds. I told him no. "Where I am," I said, "is top secret. I'm giving you a hot one. Put this down; Gale's Pharmacy, nine-two-threetwo Eighth Avenue. Get a prowl car there fast, and plenty of reinforcements. Gale, the owner, on information received, was the gobetween for the gamblers who fixed the ball game. He is in the back room of his store, gagged and tied. The reason�" "Is this a gag?" "No. The reas�" "Where are you?" "Quit interrupting or I'll ring off. The reason for the hurry is that I think Gale sent 267 for a rescue squad to deal with certain parties who are no longer there, and it would be nice to get there in time to welcome them. So PD cars should not park in front. Be sure to tell them not to step in the stuff on the floor that looks like water, because its sulphuric acid. That's all. Got the address?" "Yes, and I want--" "Sorry, I've got a date. This could make you a lieutenant. Step on it." I went out and back to the car. Lila was on the driver's side, gripping the steering wheel with both hands. As I opened the door her head turned to me. "Move over," I said. "I'll do the driving this time." She slid across, and I got in and pulled the door to. I sat. Half a minute went by. "Where are we going?" she asked. Her voice was so low and weak I barely got it. "Polo Grounds. Where Bill is." Maybe he was. "Why don't we start?" "I phoned for cops. If others come before the cops do I want to get a look at them. In case I forget it later, I want to mention that that was a beautiful dive you made, and the timing couldn't have been better. I'm for 268 you�only spiritual, of course, since you're happily married." "I want to get away from here. I want to see Bill." "You will. Relax." We sat, but not for long. It couldn't have been more than four minutes before a pair of cops swung around the corner, headed for the entrance to Gale's Pharmacy, and entered. Glancing at Lila and seeing that her eyes were closed, I pushed the starter button. 7 It was only half an hour short of midnight when I stopped the Curtis at the curb across the street from the main entrance to the Polo Grounds. The mob had dwindled to a few small knots, and of the long line of police cars only three were left. Two cops were having a tete-a-tete in front of the entrance, and another one was leaning against a wall. Lila was a quick mover. She had got out and circled the car to my side by the time I hit the pavement and shut the door. I gave her the ignition key, and we were crossing 269 the street when suddenly she let out a squawk and gripped my arm, and then let go and started to run. I took another step and stopped. Bill Moyse was there, emerging from the entrance, with a dick on either side of him and one behind. Lila ended her run in a flying leap and was on him. The startled dicks were on her, or anyway at her. They were vocalizing, and so were Bill and Lila. The two uniformed cops started toward them. I would have liked to deliver Lila to Wolfe, or at least to Hennessy, but there was a fat chance of tearing her loose from her second-string catcher. Also I did not care to get hung up explaining to a bunch of underlings how I happened to be chauffeuring for Mrs. Moyse, so I detoured around the cluster, made it inside the entrance, and headed for the stairs to the clubhouse. Hearing heavy footsteps above, starting down, and voices, one of them Hennessy's, I slipped quietly to the rear and got behind a pillar. Surely Stebbins had informed the uptown contingent of my phone call about the situation at Gale's Pharmacy, and if so, surely Hennessy would be inquisitive enough to want to take me along wherever he was going. I didn't risk peeking around the pil- 270 lar, but, judging from the footsteps, there were four or five of them. As soon as they had faded out I returned to the stairs and mounted. I was not chipper. I did not have Lila. I had been gone more than two hours. Wolfe might have gone home. They might all be gone. But they weren't. Wolfe was in the clubroom, still--or possibly again--on the leather couch, and Chisholm was standing there. As I entered, their heads turned to me. As I crossed to them Wolfe spoke. "The police are looking for you," he said coldly. "Uh-huh." I was indifferent. "I just dodged a squad." "What did you go to that drugstore for?" I raised the brows. "Oh, you've heard about it?" "Yes. Mr. Hennessy did, and he was kind enough to tell me." He was dripping sarcasm. "It is a novel experience, learning of your movements through the courtesy of a policeman." "I was too busy to phone." I glanced at Chisholm. "Maybe I should report privately."

"This is getting to be a goddam farce," Chisholm growled. His tie was crooked, his 271 eyes were bloodshot, and he had a smear of mustard at the side of his mouth. "No," Wolfe said--to me, not to Chisholm. "Go ahead. But be brief." I obeyed. With the training and experience I have had, I can report a day of dialogue practically verbatim, but he had said to be brief, so I condensed it, but included all the essentials. When I finished he was scowling at me. "Then you don't know whether Gale was actually involved or not. When he failed with Mr. and Mrs. Moyse he may have quit trying." "I doubt it." "You could have resolved the doubt. You were sitting on him. Or you could have brought him here." I might have made three or four cutting remarks if an outsider hadn't been present. I stayed calm. "Maybe I didn't make it clear," I conceded generously. "It was ten to one he had phoned for help--the kind of help that would leave no doubts to resolve-- and it might come any second. Not that I was scared, I was too busy, but I wanted to see you once more so I could resign. I resign." "Bosh." Wolfe put his hands on the 272 leather seat for leverage and raised himself to his feet. "Very well. I'll have to try it." He moved. Chisholm put in, "Inspector Hennessy said to notify him immediately if Goodwin showed up." Wolfe wheeled on him, snarling. "Am I working for you? Yes! By heaven, I am! Notify Mr. Hennessy? Hah!" He turned and strode through the door that led to Art Kinney's office. "It's a farce," Chisholm muttered and followed him. I fell in behind. They were all in there. The four who were famous athletes, first-string Giants, didn't look very athletic. Their sap had started draining with the first inning of that awful ball game, and it hadn't stopped for more than ten hours. Lew Baker, catcher, and Con Prentiss, shortstop, were perched on a desk. Joe Eston, third baseman, and Nat Neill, center fielder, were on chairs. Art Kinney, manager, was standing over by a window. Doc Softer was seated at Kinney's desk, bent over, with his elbows on his knees and his face covered by his hands. Beaky Durkin was propped against a table, saggy and bleary-eyed. 273 "It had better be good," someone said--I didn't know who, because I was placing a chair for Wolfe where he could see them all without spraining his neck. When he was in it, with nothing to spare between the arms, I crossed to a vacant seat over by the radio. Chisholm was there, at my right. Wolfe's head moved from side to side and back again. "I hope," he said grumpily, "you're not expecting too much." "I'm through expecting," Kinney muttered.

Wolfe nodded. "I know how you feel, Mr. Kinney. All of you. You are weary and low in spirit. You have been personally and professionally humiliated. You have all been talked at too much. I'm sorry I have to prolong it, but I had to wait until the police were gone. Also, since I have no evidence, I had to let them complete their elaborate and skilled routine in search of some. They got none. Actually they have nothing but a druggist that Mr. Goodwin got for them." "They've got Bill Moyse," Con Prentiss rumbled. "Yes, but on suspicion, not on evidence. Of course I admit, because I must, that I am in the same fix. I too have a suspicion but no evidence, only mine is better 274 grounded. I suspect one of you eight men of drugging the drinks and killing Ferrone. What I--" They made enough noise to stop him. He showed them a palm. "If you please, gentlemen. I have a question to put. I suspect one of you, but I have no evidence and no way of getting any speedily. That is why I asked Mr. Chisholm to keep you here for consultation with me after the departure of the police. I wanted to ask you: do you want to help? I would like to tell you the reason for my suspicion and ask you to help me get evidence to support it. I think you can if you will. Well?" "One of us?" Joe Eston demanded. It was interesting to see them. Naturally they all had an impulse--anyhow, all but one--to look around at faces, but no two of them handled it exactly alike. Chisholm looked straight and full at each in turn. Beaky Durkin sent quick little glances here and there. Doc Softer, frowning and pursing his lips, turned his head slowly left to right. "Go ahead, damn it!" Kinney blurted. "Have you got something or not?" "Yes, I have something," Wolfe assured 275 him, "but I don't know how good it is. Without your help it is no good at all." "We'll help if we can. Let's hear it." "Well. First the background. Were the two events--the drugging of the drinks and the murder--connected? The reasonable supposition is yes, until and unless it is contradicted. If they were connected, how? Did Ferrone drug the drinks, and did one of his teammates discover it and, enraged, go for him with the bat? It seems unlikely." Wolfe focused on Beaky Durkin. "Mr. Durkin, most of what you told me has been corroborated by others, but you knew Ferrone better than anyone else. You discovered him and got him here. You were his roommate and counselor. You told me that because of his brilliant performance this season his salary for next year would be doubled; that his heart was set on winning today's game and the series; that winning or losing meant a difference of some two thousand dollars to him personally; that his series money would pay his debts with some to spare; and that, knowing him intimately, you are positive that he could not have been bribed to drug the drinks. Is that correct?" "It sure is." Durkin was hoarse and cleared his throat. "Nick was a swell kid." 276 He looked around as if ready for an argument, but nobody started one. "I know," Wolfe said, "that the police got no impeachment of that. Do any of you dispute it?" They didn't. "Then, without evidence, it is idiotic to assume that he drugged the drinks. The alternative, supposing that the two events were connected, is the reverse--that someone drugged the drinks and Ferrone knew or suspected it and was going to expose him, and was killed. That is how I see it. Call him X. X could have--" "To hell with X," Kinney blurted. "Name him!" "Presently. X could have put the drugged drinks in the cooler any time during the late morning, as opportunity offered. What led Ferrone to suspect him of skulduggery may not be known, but conjecture offers a wide choice. Fen-one's suspicion may have been only superficial, but to X any suspicion whatever was a mortal menace, knowing as he did what was going to happen on the ball field. When Ferrone questioned him he had to act. The two were of course in this room together, at the time the rest of you were leaving the clubroom for the field or shortly 277 after. X was, as so many have been, the victim of progressive exigency. At first he needed only money, and to get it he stooped to scoundrelism; but it betrayed him into needing the life of a fellow man." "Cut the rhetoric," Chisholm snapped. "Name him." Wolfe nodded. "Naming him is easy. But it is pointless to name him, and may even expose me to an action for slander, unless I so expound it as to enlist your help. As I said, I have no evidence. All I have is a fact about one of you, a fact known to all of you and to the police, which seems to me to point to guilt, but I admit that other interpretations are conceivable. You are better judges of that than I am, and I'm going to present it for your consideration. How can I best do that?" He aimed his gaze at Baker and Prentiss, who were perched on a desk, raised a hand slowly, and scratched the dp of his nose. His eyes moved to pin Doc Softer. His head jerked to the left to focus on Chisholm, and then to the right, to Beaky Durkin. He spoke. "I'll illustrate my meaning. Take you, Mr. Durkin. You have accounted for yourself, but you have been neither contradicted nor corroborated. You say you left 278 the clubhouse shortly before the team did and went to your seat in the grandstand." "That's right." Durkin was still hoarse. "And I didn't kill Nick." "I didn't say you did. I am merely expounding. You say you remained in your seat, watching the game, until the third inning, when you were sent for by Mr. Chisholm to come to the clubhouse. That too is neither contradicted nor corroborated. Certainly you were there when you were sent for, but there is no proof that you had been there continuously since the game started and even before." "I don't know about proof, but I was. 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