Where There's a Will

"So you took a nap and then phoned an SOS as if--" ~~^ "I didn't take a nap. I just wanted you to realize--"

"Okay. Save it. I may as well admit that the boss will pay for the drinks. I also admit it's handy your knowing so many Sams in so many bars. I'll be back pretty soon." I hopped out, went to the corner and entered a drugstore, found a phone booth, and dialed a number. A familiar voice said hello. "This is Archie, Fritz. Give the plant rooms a buzz." "Mr. Wolfe isn't up there." I glanced at my wrist watch and saw 10:0?. FR1;WHERE THERE'S A WILL 103 "What are you talking about? Certainly he's up there." "No, really, Archie. Mr. Wolfe has gone out." "You're crazy. If he told you to say that--who does he think he's kidding, anyhow? Ring the plant rooms." "But Archie, I tell you he went. He received a telephone call and went. He gave me messages for you--wait--I wrote them down--First, Saul reported and he arranged to have Orrie relieve him; Second, that owing to your absence he would have to ride in a taxicab. Third, that you are to go in the sedan to the residence of Mr. Hawthorne, deceased, on 67th Street." "Is this straight, Fritz?" "Honest for God, Archie. It took my breath." "I'll bet it did." I hung up and went back out to the car and told Fred: "A new era has begun. The earth has turned around and started the other way. Mr. Wolfe has left home in a taxicab to work on a case." "Huh? Nuts." ' "Nope. As Fritz says, honest for God. He really has. So if you'll--" "But Jesus, Archie. He'll get killed or something."

FR1;104 WHERE THERE'S A WILL "Don't I know it? You beat it. Go on home and finish your nap. Your friend Davis is set for several hours at least. If we need you I'll give you a ring." "But if Mr. Wolfe--" "I'll tend to him." He climbed out and stood there shaking his head and looking worried as I drove off. I wasn't worried, but I was slightly dazed, as I headed the roadster north. Arriving at the garage on Eleventh Avenue, I transferred to the sedan, circled down the ramp to the street, and started north again. I figured that it must be the state of the bank account that was responsible for Wolfe's shattering his inflexible rule never to go calling on business, but though I knew he was concerned about it I hadn't realized that he was in a condition of absolute frenzy. I was feeling pretty sorry for him as I parked the sedan on 67th Street and walked to the entrance of the Hawthorne stone pile. There were no city employees standing around and no reporters or photographers climbing in at the windows, so I concluded that Skinner and Cramer still hadn't blown the horn for the busy intersection. The butler who opened the door had distinguished ancestry oozing from every pore. I said: "Good morning, Jeeves. I'm Lord Goodwin. If WHERE THERE^S A WILL 105 ^ Mr. Nero Wolfe got here alive, he's expecting me. A big fat man. Is he here?" "Yes, sir." He permitted me to slide through. "Your hat, sir? This way if you please, sir." He moved across the large entrance hall to a doorway and stood aside for me. "I shall inform Mr. Dunn and Mr. "Wolfe that you are here." I sauntered by him with a nod and he went off. So that was why Wolfe was zooming around like a wren building a nest. It would have been more pat to our purpose if it had been the secretary of the treasury instead of the secretary of state, but you can't have a silver lining without a cloud. I shrugged it off and glanced around. With all its size and elegant and successful effort to live up to � the butler, the room was not what I would live in if my rich uncle died. There were too many chairs that looked as if they had been made to have their pictures taken instead of to sit on. The only thing I saw that I liked was a marble statue over in a ft corner of a woman reaching for a bath towel�at least she had an arm stretched as if she was reaching for something, and she was ready for a towel. I strolled across to appreciate it, and, as I stood doing so, got a certain feeling in the back of my neck, though I hadn't heard a sound. I whirled on my heel, and saw what had caused it. Mrs. Noel Hawthorne was there at the other end of the room, FR1;106 WHERE THERE'S A WILL facing me. That is, she would have been facing me if she had had a face. She had on a long gray dress that reached to her ankles, and the veil was the same gray. She just stood there. I was certainly allergic to that damn veil. There was something about it that was bad for my nerves. I wanted to say, "Good morning, Mrs. Hawthorne," with my customary suavity, but had the feeling it would come out a yell, so I said nothing. Neither did she. After she had stood there an hour, which I suppose was actually nine seconds, she turned and, noiselessly on the thick carpet, disappeared the other side of some draperies. I strode across the room as if I was going to do something; I suppose if I had had my sword handy I would have lunged through the drapery with it like Hamlet in the third act. Before I got there a voice from the rear stopped me: "Hullo!" I jerked around like Gary Cooper surrounded by cutthroats, saw who it was and felt like a fool, and blurted savagely, "Hullo yourself!" Sara Dunn, the professional fiend, approached. "I forget your name. I suppose you're going to sit in with Nero Wolfe and my dad?" "I guess I am if I live long enough." She was in front of me, looking up at me with her mother's fighting bird eyes. "Will you do someWHERE THERE^S A WILL 107 thing for me? Tell Nero Wolfe I want to see him before he leaves here. As soon as possible. Tell him so my dad can't hear." "I'll try. You might save time by telling me what you want to see him about." "I don't know." Her brow wrinkled. "Maybe I should. It's something I'd like him to know�" She turned at a noise. The butler was coming through the doorway. "Yes, Turner?" "I beg your pardon. Miss Dunn. Your father is expecting Mr. Goodwin upstairs." "They can wait a minute," I said, "if you want�" She shook her head. "No, it would be�tell him what I said. Will you?" I said I would, and followed the butler. From the entrance hall he mounted a wide curving stairway, and in the upper corridor passed one door on the right and opened the second one. I went in. A glance showed me that this room was closer to my idea of what to do to keep in out of the rain if you have money. There were shelves with books on three sides, pictures of horses and dogs, a big roomy flat-top desk, plenty of comfortable chairs, and a radio. No one was at the desk. Nero "Wolfe was holding down a brown leather chair with his back to a window. Mrs. John Charles Dunn was on the 108 WHERE THERE'S A WILL edge of another one. Standing between them was a tall stoop-shouldered guy in shirt sleeves, with harassed deep-set eyes and a wavy mane of hair turning gray. I would have recognized him immediately from pictures I had seen, and of course he was noted for shedding his coat and vest whenever circumstances permitted. Wolfe grunted a greeting. June murmured at me and introduced me to her husband. Wolfe said: "Sit down, Archie. I have explained your function to Mr. and Mrs. Dunn. Did Fred get into trouble again?" "No, sir, I wouldn't say trouble. Following the instructions I gave him, he walked around and sat in a bar having refreshments until five o'clock. Then one of the bar's customers needed to be conveyed home and Fred obliged. I joined him in the customer's apartment at the address I told Fritz to give you, arriving at nine o'clock. The customer was on the bed in a coma sequential to acute inebriation. After looking around to make sure that everything was all right, I departed, phoned the house, and received your message from Fritz. Fred has gone home to sleep.'* "The customer's identity?" "Yes, sir." "Well?" I shrugged. If the lid was off for the cabinet FR1;FR2;WHERE THERE^S A WILL 109 member and wife, okay. "Eugene Davis, of the law firm of Dunwoodie, Prescott & Davis." "Ah." Mrs. Dunn asked in a tone of surprise, "Gene Davis?" "Do you know him, madam?" inquired Wolfe. "Not well. I haven't seen him for a long time." She turned to her husband. "You remember him, John. Eugene Davis, Glenn's partner. I don't think either of us has seen him since we went to Washington." Dunn nodded uncertainly. "I believe I do. A fellow with a narrow nose and too much blood in his lips. But he has no connection with this--has he? Eugene Davis?" "I don't know," Wolfe said. "Anyway, he is at present in a drunken stupor, so he'll keep. You were saying, sir? . . ." "Yes." Dunn scowled at me and then transferred it to Wolfe. "I don't like this man's being here, but what I like is no longer of much significance." He sounded bitter. "I wouldn't say that," Wolfe remonstrated. "I've - i-'^--.-^-.____---------- ._ explained about Mr. Goodwin. Without him I'm an ear without a tympanum. Go ahead. You made a fine dramatic statement, which pleased me very much because I'm an incurable romantic. You said you are going to put your fate in my hands." FR1;110 WHERE THERE'S A WILL "There was nothing dramatic about it. It was merely a statement of fact." "I like facts too." "I don't," Dunn muttered. "Not these facts." He turned and looked at his wife, then abruptly went over to her and bent down to kiss her on the lips. "June dear," he said. "I've hardly even said hello to you. June dear." She pulled him back down and had him kiss her again and muttered at him. Wolfe told me: "Mr. Dunn just arrived from Washington. He phoned me from the airport." Dunn straightened up and came back to Wblfe. "You've heard the report that is being spread about Noel Hawthorne and me." Wolfe nodded. "Something, yes, sir. The editor of the Gazette dines with me once a month. That the decision to make the loan to Argentina was arrived at in the State Department. That shortly after the loan was announced, it was learned that valuable industrial concessions in Argentina had already been secured by companies controlled by Daniel Cullen and Company. That Noel Hawthorne had, through you, his brother-in-law, received prior secret information of the loan and its terms. That you, the secretary of state, are as good as convicted of skulduggery." "Do you believe it?" WHERE THERE^S A WILL 111 "I know nothing whatever about it." "It's a damned lie. If you believe it, you are disqualified for what I want you to do." "I have no basis for belief or disbelief. I don't try to abolish reality by shutting my eyes, nor do I gobble garbage. As a citizen, I like your methods and approve your policies. I am a professional detective, and if I take a job I work at it. What do you want me to do?" "You did a brilliant piece of work on the Wetzler case." "Thank you, sir. What do you want me to do?" "I want you to find out who murdered Noel Hawthorne." "Indeed." Wolfe heaved a sigh. I looked across at June and saw that her fingers were twisted tight in her lap as she gazed across at her husband. Dunn, standing in front of Wolfe, scowled down at him. "My career is ruined anyhow," he declared. "My wife's too, for it has been as much hers as mine. I'll probably have to resign within a month. I'll clear it up some day, the question of how the Cullen office got that advance information. My brother-in-law claimed he didn't know. I'll do that before I die, in spite of the intrigue and obscurities and obstacles. But the first thing to clear up is this murder." Dunn clenched his fists. "By God, I won't leave Washington with this on my shoulders too." FR1;112 WHERE THERE'S A WILL Wolfe grunted. "Miss May Hawthorne seems to think that your political opponents are deliberately using Hawthorne's death as a lever to pry you out. Do you?" "I don't know. I make no such charge. But I do know that if the murder is not solved I'll never crawl out of the mire, either before my death or after, and I don't think they'll solve it. I don't believe they will." Dunn's fists closed again. "I suppose this Argentina thing has worn my nerves thin and they're ready to snap, but I don't trust anybody. Not anybody. People who sit at the same table with me at a cabinet meeting will help tear my scalp off. Am I going to trust my life--more than my life--to a Rockland County district attorney or a slick rabble-rouser like Bill Skinner? I am not! There's not a soul in "Washington that I can trust who is in a position to help me in a thing like this. And people don't like to help a man who is supposed to be going down for the third time, not even when--especially when--he occupies a position like mine. I need'you, Mr. Wolfe. I want you to find out who killed Hawthorne." "Well." Wolfe stirred in his chair. "I have already accepted a commission--" "I know you have. But first another thing. My salary is $U,000 a year and I have a hard time living on it. If I resign and resume private practice--" WHERE THERE^S A WILL 115 Wolfe waved it away. "If you can trust me with your fate I can trust you for a fee. But I can't undertake to look two ways at once. Your wife and her sisters and Mrs. Hawthorne have engaged me in the matter of the will. They are my clients. If I take on your job too I run the risk of finding myself confronted by the painful necessity .. ." Wolfe let it hang. Dunn glowered down at him. The tableau was interrupted by a knock at the door, followed by its opening for the entrance of the butler. "What is it?" Dunn demanded. "Three gentlemen to see you, sir. Mr. Skinner, Mr. Cramer and Mr. ,Hombert." "Ask them to wait. Tell them�put them in that room with the piano. I'll see them there." The butler bowed and went. June, looking across at Wolfe, said quietly, "You mean, what if one of us killed my brother." ,9. ./-�;// "Bosh!" Dunn blurted. ^7 "' June shook her head at him. "Bosh to us, John, not to Mr. Wolfe." Her eyes went to Wolfe. "If we ask you to expose a murderer, we'll expect you to do so if you can. Do you really�do you think one of us did it?" "I haven't started thinking," said Wolfe testily. "I just want things understood. I don't like it. If Miss May Hawthorne, for instance, is going to be FR1;114 WHERE THERE'S A WILL convicted for murder, I'd rather have nothing to do with it. I work as a detective to make money, and I expect to make some on that will business. I'd prefer to let it go at that, but my confounded vanity won't let me. John Charles Dunn stands here and puts his fate in my hands. What the devil is a conceited man like me going to do?" He frowned at Dunn. "I warn you, sir, that if I start after this murderer I'm apt to catch him. Or her." "I hope you do." "So do I," said June. "We all do." "Except one of you," said Wolfe grimly. "At present I know nothing at all about it, but if Mr. Skinner is proceeding on the theory that Hawthorne was killed by someone in that gathering at your house, I don't blame him. At any rate, I'll have to start with them. Separately. Who is on the premises?" "My sisters are," said June, "and the children, and I think Miss Fleet. . ." I chimed in, "I saw Mrs. Hawthorne downstairs, or at least someone in a veil." "That will do to begin with," said Wolfe. "You, Mr. Dunn? It won't hurt Mr. Skinner to wait a few minutes longer. I understand you were chopping wood. Miss May Hawthorne says she was asked whether she heard your axe going continuously from 4:30 to 5:30." I WHERE THERE^S A WILL II? "She didn't," Dunn said curtly. "I'm not a robot. I sat on a log. I was in a stew. I didn't like Noel Hawthorne being there, even for our anniversary." "It wasn't exactly a gay carefree party." "It was not." "Around four o'clock you and Hawthorne had discussed shooting a hawk?" "The hawk was there, flying around, over towards the woods. Ames had told me it had got a chicken the day before, and I told Noel. He wanted to shoot it. He liked to shoot things. I don't. I found Ames and told him to give Noel his shotgun, and Noel went off with it. I went the other way, around back of the sheds, to let off steam splitting wood." / "Did Hawthorne himself suggest shooting the hawk? Or did you suggest it to get rid of him?" "He suggested it." Dunn was frowning. "See here. You'd better put me at the end of the list. I'm aware what you're capable of, and I don't swagger. It wouldn't be in me to put you on this as a finesse if my own heel was exposed." ''' ^ "But it's my job now, Mr. Dunn. Were others present when the hawk was discussed?" "Yes, we were having tea on the lawn. Most of us." "Then I can ask them. Even if there were something to fish out of you, I doubt if I could do it; you've had long training. Do you know of anything 116 WHERE THERE'S A WILL that happened that afternoon that you think might help me? Anything at all?" "No. Nothing is in my mind now." "Do you suspect anyone of murdering Hawthorne?" "Yes, I suspect his wife. His widow." "Indeed." Wolfe's brows went up. "Any special reason?" "That's just leaping in the dark, John," June '" remonstrated. "Poor Daisy is a spiteful wretch, but--" "I answered his question, June dear. He asked if I suspect anyone--No special reason, Mr. Wolfe. She's malevolent and she hated him. That's all." "You didn't smell burnt powder on her hands or anything like that." "No no. Nothing." "Well." Wolfe turned. "What about you, Mrs. Dunn? You went to pick raspberries, didn't you?" "Yes." "About what time?" "Shortly after Noel went with the gun and my husband went to chop wood. We finished tea and scattered. Who told you I went to pick raspberries?"

"Your sister May. Wild raspberries?" "No, we have a patch in a corner of the vegetable garden." FR1;WHERE THERE^S A WILL 117 "Did you hear the shots that killed crows?" "Yes, I did. And I heard the third shot, the--the last one. Faintly, but I heard it. Of course I thought it was only my brother still trying to get the hawk, but I'm nervous about guns and I don't like the sound no matter what is being shot. The third shot was a little before five o'clock. I quit picking raspberries and went to the arbor for some grape leaves, and when I got to the house it was ten after five." "I understand that Titus Ames corroborates that --the time of the third shot." June nodded. "He was in the barn milking." "Yes. There seems to have been a great variety of activity around there. Now, Mrs. Dunn, if I asked you a lot of questions would it do me any good?" "I don't know. I'm certainly willing to answer them." "Do you know of anything that would help me?" "No. I know a great many things about my brother, his character and personality, and his relations with us and other people, but nothing that I think would help you find his murderer." "We'll have to talk it over. Not now; I'll see the others first--By the way, Mr. Dunn, I want to send a man up to your place in the country. May I have a note to Titus Ames, telling him to let my man look around, and to answer questions if he asks any? The name is Fred Durkin." FR1;118 WHERE THERE'S A WILL "I'll write it," June offered. "And I'll send-- whom shall I send first, Mr. Wolfe?" ,1 put in an oar. ".Your daughter, Mrs. Dunn, if you please." "My daughter?" She looked at me in surprise. "She wasn't there. She didn't arrive until afterwards."

"We'll take her first," I said firmly. She accepted it and crossed to her husband, and they left the room together, with his arm around her shoulders and her hand patting him on the back. When the door had closed Wolfe asked, "Why the daughter?" Rummaging through the desk drawers for something to take notes on, I told him, "By request. She's trying to win a prize and wants to take your picture." CHAPTER EIGHT sara dunn came in on a lope, but she had to sit and wait a while until some chores were disposed of. A phone call to Saul Panzer to tell him to report to us there as soon as possible, one to Fred Durkin ditto, and one to Johnny Keen-is also ditto. One to Fritz to tell him we wouldn't be home for lunch. A demand, relayed by a maid to the butler, for beer. And time out for my report to Wolfe, more in detail, on the episode of Mr. Eugene Davis. After that, Wolfe sat with his lips pushing in and out for some moments, and then leaned back, sighed, and addressed the first victim. "You told Mr. Goodwin you wanted to see me, Miss Dunn?" "Yes," she said. It was astonishing how much her eyes were like her mother's, while her mouth and chin weren't Hawthorne at all. "I want to tell you something." "Go ahead." "Well ... I suppose you know that in my parents' opinion I'm no good for anything." "We didn't get around to discussing that point. Do you agree with them?" "I haven't made up my mind. The trouble with 119 FR1;120 WHERE THERE'S A WILL me is that I'm the daughter of one of the Hawthorne girls. If they had had a lot of daughters, I suppose it would have been different, but there's only one, and I'm it. I was sick of it by the time I was ten years old, and I had an inferiority complex about the size of the perisphere. It was awful. At college they kept looking at me as if they expected suns and stars to begin shooting out of my ears. So I revolted. I ran away from college and from home too, and got a job and made enough to live on. But because I was a daughter of a Hawthorne girl I had to figure out an inexpensive way of being eccentric and audacious, and the best I could do was get a secondhand camera and take pictures of people when I wasn't supposed to. I still do it. Isn't it pathetic? You see, I have no imagination. I think up plenty of dashing things to do, but they're all either dumb or impossible or plain silly. I have no confidence in myself, not really. The glib way I'm talking to you now, that's just bluff. Inside of myself I'm trembling like a coward." "There's nothing to tremble about." Wolfe put down his beer glass and wiped his lips with his handkerchief. "You say you ran away from home?" She nodded. "Over a year ago. I told my mother --oh, that doesn't matter. Anyway, I severed connections, you know? I was going to carve out a canyon that would make the Hawthorne girls look FR1;WHERE THERE^S A WILL 121 like turtles in a ditch. So I got a job at twenty dollars a week selling antique glassware in a Madison Avenue shop, and bought a camera. Pretty good, no? On going home, even for a weekend visit, I was adamant. The first time I came close to weakening on that was last Monday, when mother came into the shop to ask me to come to her silver wedding anniversary. I had already refused, in a letter. Next morning, Tuesday, Mr. Prescott came to the shop and tried to persuade me. I still refused, but when I quit work at six o'clock he was in front waiting for me, with his car. I tried to carry it on", but he carried me off instead. And then, when we got there, we found--Uncle Noel was dead." Wolfe said patiently, "That was too bad. A sad greeting for your first visit home in a year. I'm afraid there's nothing I can do about it. "Was that what you wanted?" "No." She was keeping her eyes aimed straight at his. There was nothing disconcerting about them, as there was about Naomi Karn's, but their fierce steadiness gave the impression of a thrust rather l ' than a stare. "No," she said, "I told you that only /?"' because you need to know it if you're going to help me. I was going to see District Attorney Skinner this morning, but I thought it over and realized I couldn't do it without help. It has to be done in a way to convince him, and everybody else, that it FR1;122 WHERE THERE'S A WILL was I who told Uncle Noel about that Argentina loan, and I who shot Uncle Noel Tuesday afternoon." My penpoint caught and spattered ink on the paper. Wolfe demanded, "What? Say that again." "You heard it," said Sara composedly. "One evening--I think it was in April--I heard my father talking about the loan with the Argentine ambassador, and I told Uncle Noel about it to get money from him. Recently Uncle Noel threatened to expose me--to tell my father how he learned about the loan--and that was why I killed him." "I see. And since you did in fact kill him, since his lips are sealed forever, why do you now confess these crimes? Because your conscience bothers you?" "No. My conscience doesn't bother me at all. I do it to save my father from disgrace. And my mother too, since she will share it. At the time of committing the crimes I didn't stop to realize what the consequences would be." "You should have," said Wolfe gravely. "And you should stop now to realize the consequences oi your confession. They'd trip you up in two minutes. One thing alone; will your arm reach from Madison Avenue to Rockland County to pull the trigger of a shotgun? What was the phrase you used FR1;WHERE THERE^S A WILL 123 a while ago? Dumb or impossible or plain silly.* You've run the gamut this time. Think up something else. Great hounds and Cerberus!" "But if you'll only help me, we can do it, really we can! I can say I left the shop--" "Pfui! Miss Dunn, please! I'm doing a job for your father. If you will kindly ask Miss April Hawthorne to come here?" It took him ten minutes to persuade her out of the room, and at one point I was about to pick her up and carry her. But finally she went. Wolfe poured beer and muttered, "If they're all like that . . ." "You're not through with her," I told him cheerfully. "Don't forget Skinner and Cramer are downstairs. Five gets you ten she's in jail before the day's out, and you'll have to spring her. She's our client. We sure picked a bunch of pips this time." Before the day was out I wouldn't have minded a nice quiet cell myself, to give me a chance to think about things. When April came in, it seemed she had a headache. She also had a retinue, sticking alongside like outriders for a royal coach, consisting of Celia Fleet, who looked as if she hadn't slept much, and Osric Stauffer, Ossie to Naomi Karn, who had been home at least long enough to change his clothes. FR1;124 WHERE THERE'S A WILL They took chairs flanking royalty without any invitation from us. April said, with the ripple in her voice much more subdued than it had been the day before, "J can't talk about it, I simply can't. I came because my sister said I must, but I can't talk because my throat fills up. Why should I be like that? Other people can talk no matter what happens. Something has happened to my throat." Celia Fleet smiled at her. Stauffer gazed at her with a sickening smirk. Maybe I did the same. When she came in and pressed her hands to her temples like the heroine at the end of the second act, I had decided that the wedding was off, but it wasn't as easy as that. Something that went out from her . made you forget she was a professional who knew how to get a million people to pay four-forty at the box office to watch her work. I would have died for her on the spot if I hadn't been busy taking notes. "I doubt if you'll need to do a lot of talking," said Wolfe. "As a matter of fact, this is probably quite useless, but I have to poke around somewhere. It isn't about the will, you know. Did your sister tell you that Mr. Dunn has engaged me to find out who killed Noel Hawthorne?'1 Stauffer answered for her. "Yes," he said shortly. "And I hope to heaven you succeed. But it won't r" WHERE THERE^S A WILL 12? do any good to torment Miss Hawthorne about it. Last night that damned police inspector--" "I know," Wolfe agreed. "Mr. Cramer is so forthright. I certainly don't want to torment anybody. I may not have to ask Miss Hawthorne to say anything at all. You, Miss Fleet, you were writing letters Tuesday afternoon?" Celia nodded. "Miss Hawthorne has thousands of letters. I answer all I can. When we finished tea, about a quarter past four, I went to an alcove of the living room and was there alone, writing, for about an hour, until Andy--Mr. Dunn came." "Let's say Andy. There was another Mr. Dunn around. What did you do then?" "Andy suggested a walk. We walked--we went to the woods--" Celia appeared to have struck a snag. April said, "They're in love. It's a family row. Celia and I want Andy to go on the stage, he was born for it. June and her husband want him to be a lawyer and politician and get elected president. My brother wanted him in the Cullen office--my brother always wanted a son and didn't have one. We fought about it at tea. They're idiots. Andy is a rotten lawyer." "We were in the woods a while," said Celia, "and then we went on through and came out at the other side. We didn't see anything until we stumbled on it. I nearly fell and Andy caught me--" FR1;126 WHERE THERE'S A WILL "I don't need all that," Wolfe interrupted. "The chief thing is, you were writing letters at five o'clock." He looked at April. "And you were upstairs faking a nap." "Yes. Mr. Stauffer asked me to go for a swim, but I didn't feel like it. The pond's dirty." "So you went for a swim alone," Wolfe told Stauffer. "Yes. The pond is in the opposite direction from the woods, down at the foot of the hill." Wolfe chuckled. "The police wanted to know about that, I'll wager. Don't resent it. They're probably making discreet inquiries right now about the opening in Daniel Cullen and Company that Hawthorne's death makes for you. Will you be made head of the foreign department? Will you be made a partner? Quite a plum--Oh, I'm not asking, but they probably are." Stauffer had stiffened. "This is really--" "Don^t, Mr. Stauffer. What do you expect them to do when they're after a murderer? You people are lucky. On account of your position and standing. Even if you killed Hawthorne yourself, you probably won't hear a single impolite word until the district attorney gets you on the witness stand. You might as well escort Miss Hawthorne back to her room. I'm through with you too. Miss Fleet. If I need--Come in!" WHERE THERE^S A WILL 127 The door opened to admit the butler. He was beginning to look as if he wouldn't mind going back to his ancestral halls for a little vacation. "Two men to see you, sir, a Mr. Panzer and a Mr. Keems." Wolfe told him to show them up. CHAPTER NINE I laid my pen down and looked at Wolfe in extreme disgust. "By jiminy," I said, with the whine that I knew set his teeth on edge, "you sure are grilling them. Talk about ruthless. It gives me nervous prostration just to see them suffer. And squirm under your merciless thrusts. Lovin* babe! I don't think I ever saw you in better form--" "Archie! Shut up!" "But who the hell do you think you are, the inquiring reporter?" "I do not, and I don't need that. I'm trying to think. I'm trying to think about these people, and in the meantime having another look at them. There's too many of them. If one of them sneaked through those woods and borrowed the shotgun from Noel Hawthorne and blew his head off, who is going to prove it and how? --Good afternoon, Saul. Good afternoon, Johnny. Come in. Sit down. --Am I a confounded Indian, to go up there and crawl around on my hands and knees, smelling footprints? And do you suppose any of this tribe is going to tell us anything?" He snorted. "Trying to get me interested in a family row about Andy being 128 FR1;WHERE THERE^S A WILL 129 an actor! Bah!" He shook a finger at me menacingly. "You let me alone! One more whine out of you and--how the devil can I think if there's nothing to think about?" I elevated my shoulders and turned my palms up. "Then we might as well go home and look at the atlas." "I agree with you." He abandoned me. "Did Orrie find you, Saul?" "Yes, sir." Saul always pretended he didn't hear Wolfe and me jawing. "Miss Karn hadn't appeared when Orrie relieved me at 9:20. At 9:25 I tested her phone and she was in her apartment." "You told Orrie to report here?" "Yes, sir." "You need sleep." "I'll manage till tonight." � "You're free, are you, Johnny?" "Yes, sir, I'm always free when you need me." His bright eager tones, like little Willie offering ^ to clean the blackboard, always gave me a pain. ^ Johnny Keems was the kind of guy who does exer� cises every morning and buys gum at every slot vendor he sees for an excuse to look in the mirror. Dozens of times I would have resigned my job if I hadn't known his tongue was hanging out for it. k "Put this down," said-WoIfe. "Both of you. Dun^ woodie, Prescott & Davis, law firm on lower Broad130 WHERE THERE'S A WILL way. Mr. Glenn Prescott. Mr. Eugene Davis. Naomi Karn got a job there as a stenographer in 1934, and after two years became the secretary of Mr. Davis. A year or so later she left to associate herself with Mr. Noel Hawthorne in a private capacity. This is a fishing trip; I want anything you can get. Saul will direct; Johnny, you will consult with him as usual. One detail: the name of the person who did confidential stenographic work for Mr. Prescott on March 7th, 1938. If any approach is made to that person it must with great circumspection. Johnny will of course canvass the young women with that beauty treatment outfit--what is it, Archie?" "Nothing." I had only made a noise. The rhinoceros had the idiotic idea that when Johnny looked at a girl and smiled she melted like ice cream in the summer sun. The fact is--oh, what's the difference. He'll marry a pickpocket's daughter for her money. They asked some questions, especially Saul, and got answers. After they had gone Wolfe went into a trance. I overlooked it and didn't try any prodding, because it was one o'clock and I knew what he was expecting. Pretty soon it arrived. The butler himself brought one tray and a maid in uniform with a split in the nail of her right index finger followed him with the other one. I saw the split when she nearly stuck the finger in my milk. Her FR1;WHERE THERE^S A WILL 131 intention was to stay and arrange things for us, but Wolfe sent her away. He lifted the covers from the servers with a sanguine hope and a stern misgiving fighting for the mastery in his expression. When no steam came out he looked so disconcerted I could have wept. He bent over the server and glared into it incredulously.

"This is dandy," I asserted, rubbing my hands with pleasure. "Jellied consomme and a good big "waldorf salad and iced tea and these cute little wafer things--" "Good God," he muttered, stupefied. e It was from purely selfish motives that I went downstairs myself and found somebody and requisitioned a pair of lamb chops and a pot of coffee. The trays were empty, and Volte was sipping the last of the coffee, which I admit wasn't hot enough, in gloomy dissatisfaction, when the door opened and Inspector Cramer entered. "How-do-you-do, sir," Wolfe snapped. "I'm busy." "So I hear." Cramer crossed to a chair and sat down, got out a cigar and stuck it in his mouth, and took it out again. His big phiz was redder even than usual, from the heat. He observed, as if passing the time of day, "I understand you're working for Mr. Dunn." 132 WHERE THERE'S A WILL Wolfe grunted offensively. "He had a rotten lunch," I explained. Cramer nodded. "So did I. At a drugstore counter." He surveyed Wolfe. ^You look about the way I feel. I hate these damn high-life mix-ups. The lousy politicians. Every time you turn around you see a stop sign. I've got a message for you from the commissioner." Wolfe just grunted again. Cramer jut his cigar between his teeth and said, "Maybe you've heard of him, Police Commissioner Hombert. He wants you to understand that there's to be no publicity on this thing until he says so. He also says that you're so intelligent it will be easy for you to appreciate the necessity for a lot of discretion in a case like this, involving the people it does, and that naturally you'll co-operate with me. For instance, if you were to tell me what that mob was doing in your office yesterday, we'd call that cooperation." "Ask them," Wolfe suggested. "I have. They're pretty remarkable. Most of them seem to be nearly as eccentric as you are. Except Mrs. Dunn, she's fairly levelheaded, and Prescott the lawyer. Prescott told me about the will. They say they went to ask you to take it up with Miss Karn and come to an understanding with her. Since when have you been a board of arbitration?" WHERE THERE^S A WILL 133 "Wolfe muttered, "Go ahead. Come to the point." "I will. Is that what they went to your office for? To get you to make a deal with Miss Karn?" "Yes." "But you had Miss Karn right there, didn't you? By the way, you might have told me who she was when I asked you, but I suppose that would be too much to expect. Anyway, these people have all got tongues in their heads, and they had their lawyer along. What was it they wanted you to do that they couldn't do themselves?" Wolfe shrugged. "They had been informed that I am able, astute, discreet and unscrupulous." "Hell, I could have told them that." Cramer removed his cigar from his mouth and studied the tip of it. "I've been trying to figure out what they needed you for when they already had a good lawyer. I like things to be plausible. What if they suspected Miss Karn had murdered Hawthorne, and they wanted you to sort of collect evidence and put it in shape? That would be a good job for a detective. Then Miss Karn could sign an agreement to let them have the dough, or most of it, and you could decide the evidence wasn't good enough to Justify accusing her of murder. So everybody would be satisfied, except maybe Hawthorne, but he was dead. How do you like that way of figuring it?" FR1;134 WHERE THERE'S A WILL "I think it's clumsy," said "Wolfe judiciously. "If they regarded me as capable of compromising with a murderer, they would also have thought it likely that I would retain the evidence and blackmail them the rest of their lives. Not to mention the detail that they weren't aware Hawthorne had been murdered. You saw their shock and surprise when you told them he had." "Yeah, I saw that. They certainly were shocked." "Indeed they were." Wolfe frowned. "Then aren't you supporting the theory that Hawthorne was killed because he had ruined Mr. Dunn's career with that Argentina loan business? I thought you fellows had that all cooked and ready to serve." "I'm not a cook, I'm a cop. If anybody uses this murder to grease someone's pants, it won't be me. I'm supposed to be looking for a murderer. From what Dunn tells me, so are you." "I am." "Okay. Let's find him or her. I'm going to be frank with you. I like the idea of Miss Karn. Personally. You don't need to tell Skinner that. She inherits seven million dollars, and there have been plenty of murders for a hell of a lot less than that. Since she was intimate with Hawthorne, of course she knew where he was going that day and who would be there. She drives a car. She went there to get him, probably with a gun. She went there to FR1;WHERE THERE^S A WILL 135 do it because she knew there were a dozen people there who would be good suspects for one reason or another. She had a piece of luck and saw him from the road, there by the edge of the woods, with a shotgun. She walked across the field and chinned with him, maneuvered him around to the corner of the woods that can't be seen from the road, made some excuse to get hold of the shotgun, and killed him. She didn't even have to use her own weapon. Then she wiped the shotgun with a bunch of grass, put his prints on it, and beat it." Wolfe grumbled, "Anyone of a million people could have done all t]^at." "Uh-huh. But it only took one to do it. I'm enthusiastic about the idea of Miss Karn, especially after the talk I had with her this morning. Of course I'm not subtle like you, but I know a twolegged female tiger when I see one. She's a dangerous baby, that Karn woman is. It's in her eyes. Incidentally, you can have this for nothing, she has no alibi for Tuesday afternoon. She thinks she has, but that kind is two for a nickel." The inspector lowered his chin and elevated his cigar. "Now just suppose. Andy Dunn and the Fleet girl, and Dunn himself and that Stauffer, Were the first ones at the scene when the body was found. Suppose they looked around out of curiosity and one of them found something. A lady's comFR1;136 WHERE THERE'S A WILL pact or a pack of cigarettes or a handkerchief-- anything. Maybe they knew it belonged to Miss Karn and maybe not. Maybe Stauffer did--he knows her. Maybe they just decided to ditch it on general principles, thinking no lady should be involved. Then they got a sock in the eye when the will was read. The whole pile, except a measly half million, to Miss Karn! So they put their heads together, and if you ask me, Prescott was in it too. But it was too ticklish for him to handle it himself. They went to you and showed you the compact or whatever it was. Maybe they already knew it belonged to Miss Karn, or maybe it was part of your job to prove that. Anyhow you were to put the screws on her. "And now that the murder's out, where are they and where are you? They can't open the bag even if they wanted to, without admitting that they concealed knowledge of a crime and evidence of it. And they wouldn't want to even if they could, because if she was tried and convicted the estate would be divided by the court, and if she was tried and acquitted it would all be hers and they could whistle. Don't you think that's logical?'* Wolfe nodded. "Perfect," he declared. "I congratulate you. I don't see a loophole in it anywhere. Did you suppose all that without any help?'* "I did. For help I'm coming to you. Here I am FR1;WHERE THERE^S A WILL 137 and there it is. I'm making you a proposition. Cough it up, and get them to do the same, and I guarantee no trouble and no publicity on that angle of it for anybody concerned. I guarantee to handle Skinner. I realize you'll have to consult them first, and I'll give you until nine o'clock tomorrow morning." Wolfe said in a silky voice, "It's regrettable. Nearly every order you place with me is for something I haven't in stock. Good day, sir. Archie--" "Wait a minute." Cramer's eyes had narrowed. "This time you're going to lose. This time, thank God, I've got more than you to work on. I can crack one or more of that outfit wide open, and I'm going to. Then you know where you'll be. I've come to you with an absolutely fair offer--" "You've charged me," Wolfe snapped, "with being a knave and a nincompoop. Good day, sir.'* "I'll give you until--" "Don't give me anything. I don't want it." "You're a damn bullheaded boob." Inspector Cramer got up and walked out of the room. Wolfe winced when the door slammed. "It's a funny thing and a sad thing," I observed, "that the purer our motives are, the worse insults we get. Do you remember the time--" "That will do, Archie. Get Mrs. Hawthorne." I groaned. "I don't want her." FR1;138 WHERE THERE'S A WILL "I do. Get her." I departed. In the hall I met the maid coming to get our trays, and she informed me that Mrs. Hawthorne's apartments were on the floor above, so I sought the stairs and mounted another flight. I knocked on the right door if the maid knew what she was talking about, the third time good and loud, but with no result. Ordinarily I would have opened the door for a look, but I didn't like the errand I was on anyway, so I moved on to the next one and tried that. No go. I ventured across the hall and tapped on another one, beyond which there seemed to be a faint hum of voices, received an invitation to come in, pushed it open and entered.

I had interrupted a conference. They stopped it to look at me. Andy Dunn and Celia Fleet were side by side on a sofa, holding hands, and seated next to them was May Hawthorne, in a faded old blue house gown, with her hair making for her right eye. I'd hate to say what she looked like. Standing in front of them was Glenn Prescott, spruce and cool-looking in a white linen suit with a yellow flower in his buttonhole that was no dianthus superbus, but beyond that I wouldn't say. On a chair at his right was Daisy Hawthorne, in the same gray outfit, including veil, she had worn for her nowFR1;WHERE THERE'S A WILL 139 you-see-me-now-you-don't in the living room that morning. I bowed gracefully. "Excuse me, Mrs. Hawthorne. Mr. Wolfe asks if you will kindly come to the library." Prescott frowned. "I would like to have a talk with Mr. Wolfe myself. Mr. Dunn tells me he has engaged him--" "Yes, sir. I'll tell him you're here. Right now he wants to see Mrs. Hawthorne --If you please?" She got up and moved. "Very well," Prescott conceded. "I'll be here or below in the music room with Mr. Dunn." I opened the door for Daisy to precede me, and followed her downstairs and let her into the library. Wolfe, greeting her, made his customary excuse for failing to arise as she crossed to the chair Cramer had vacated. She said, in her high-pitched voice with a distortion too faint to be called an impediment of speech: "I don't know what you expect to learn from me. Do you think I can tell you anything?" "No, Mrs. Hawthorne, I don't," Wolfe told her politely. "I doubt if anyone here is going to tell me anything. I'm just shuffling around in the dark with my hand in front of my face. If you will tell me briefly--" He frowned, turning. "Come in!" 140 WHERE THERE'S A WILL It was the butler. "A man to see you, sir. Durkin." "Please send him up at once." I expected this to be diverting enough to take my mind off the veil, for more than three hours had passed since I had phoned Fred to come to 67th Street at once. But as it turned out, the diversion came from another quarter. Fred started talking loud and fast as he came through the door: "The reason I'm late, Mr. Wolfe, after Archie phoned I thought I'd just lie there a minute and get things straight in my mind, and after the night I've had I wouldn't have been much good anyway, and now I'm--" "You went to sleep again," said Wolfe ominously.

"Yes, sir, and the missus should of woke me but she didn't. Anyhow, now my head's on my shoulders and I'm strung like a lyre. As I just told Orrie, I can do more--" "You told who?" "Orrie Gather. I told him I can--" "Where did you see Orrie?" "Down at the corner just now. I--" "What corner?" "Out front. Across the street. I told him--" "Be. quiet." Wolfe looked at me and snapped, ^Go and find out." FR1;? WHERE THERE^S A WILL 141 I hopped for the hall, trotted downstairs and on out to the street, crossed to the other side, and turned left. He was there at the exit of an areaway. As I passed I gave him a sign, and then went on and turned the corner. I waited, and he joined me. "What do you mean," I demanded, "chinning with Fred when you're solo?" "Chin yourself," he retorted. "I wasn't chinning, he was. I chased him." "And what are you doing here? Got a date with a governess?" "No, Colonel, I'm working. You baboon, what do you think I'm doing? She's in there." "Where?" "The house you came out of." "I'll be damned. How long ago?" "We arrived at 2:28. Twenty-seven minutes ago." "I am damned. Okay, sit on it." I trotted back the way I had come, pushed the button and was admitted by the butler. I stopped in the entrance hall to consider things, and he stood and looked at me until I waved him away. The point was that knowing Wolfe as I did, I was aware that if I went up to him and reported that Naomi Karn was somewhere in the house, he would immediately ask, "Where?" So I called the butler 142 WHERE THERE'S A WILL back and inquired, "Could you tell me where Miss Karn is? The lady who arrived about half an hour ago." "Yes, sir. She is in the living room with Mrs. Hawthorne." It sounded goofy to me. I decided that eyesight was better than hearsay, made for the wide doorway to the living room, and went on through; and saw at a glance that sight was as goofy as sound. On one of the chairs toward the far end was Naomi Karn, in the same blue linen thing she had worn to White's the day before, and on another one, directly facing her, was Daisy Hawthorne. They both looked at me, at least Naomi did, and the veil turned my way. I said, "Excuse me," and beat it for the hall and the stairs. There would be nothing to tell Wolfe, since of course it was in his presence that Daisy had been informed of the caller who had arrived. But, opening the library door and entering, I saw that was wrong. There certainly was something to tell him. He was talking to Fred, who stood twisting his hat and looking uncomfortable, and Daisy Hawthorne was sitting there in her chair. CHAPTER TEN evidently I lost my aplomb. I may even have stared with my jaw hanging open. Anyhow, I came to when Wolfe fired at me: "What's the matter with you? Palsy?" Fred Durkin says I tittered. I did not. I merely said in a composed tone, "Mr. Brenner would like to speak to you a moment privately. In the hall." He glared at me suspiciously, then lifted his bulk with a grunt, crossed, and passed through the door which I opened. I pulled the door shut. "Well?" he demanded. ^ -^ . " / ( I said in an undertone, "We're being stalked. Engage in earnest whispered conversation, mumble umble diddie riggie . .." The footsteps I had heard became Mr. John Charles Dunn and his wife June. Coming up the stairs, they reached our level, and, turning for the corridor, saw us. Dunn called: "Have you seen Prescott, Mr. Wolfe? He's here and wants to talk with you.'* Wolfe replied that he hadn't seen the lawyer but would do so presently. Dunn nodded and, his wife beside him, dragged his feet along the corridor to the next flight of stairs. As soon as they were out of sight I switched to English again: 143 FR1;144 WHERE THERE'S A WILL "Naomi Karn is down in the living room, but that's not what gave me palsy. Daisy Hawthorne is there with her, talking to her." He growled, "What the devil did you drag me out here for? If you think this is a time for childish flummery--" "No, sir, I don't. Far from it. I'm telling you, the veiled widow is there in the library. She is also downstairs chatting with Naomi Karn. I just this second saw her. Someone's playing a funny joke. But who's the joke on, us up here, or Naomi down there?" "Do you mean to tell me someone is masquerading--"

"Yeah, that's the idea. These Hawthorne girls certainly are cards. But which is which?" "In the living room talking with Miss Karn?" "Yep." "You just saw them?" "Yep." "Did you see Orrie?" "Yep. She led him here at 2:28 and was admitted by the butler." He frowned at me a moment, pursing his lips, and then said, "Ask Fred to come here." I did so. Wolfe told him: "Go on up there and do your utmost to keep awake. Don't lose the letter FR1;WHERE THERE'S A WILL 14? to Mr. Ames. Don't get in a fight. I'll be either here or at home." "Mr. Wolfe, I'm sorry I--" "So am I. Go on." Fred went. Wolfe eyed me. "Now. We don't need to flounder around with this. I'll sit where I was. You sit beyond her. I'll ask you to hand me something, and as you pass her you will lift that confounded veil." "I don't want to." "I don't blame you. Please open the door." That was one of the times I would have resigned on the spot but for the practical certainty that he would have given the job to Johnny Keems out of pure cussedness. I am not a softy. I once smacked a dainty little Cuban lassie out of her senses when she came to the office with a dagger in her sock, with the intention of presenting it to Nero Wolfe point first because he had draped a smuggling job around the neck of her black-eyed boy friend. But as I followed Wolfe back into the library and obeyed his instructions by taking a chair the other side of our version of Daisy Hawthorne, I was gulping down repugnance till I could feel it sticking in my throat. ^ ^ -^ - ^ However, I did it. I mean I tried to. First Wolfe asked a few questions and got her to talk a little. 146 WHERE THERE'S A WILL As near as I could tell, her voice, high-pitched, with a strain in it that gave you the feeling that it wasn't coming from a mouth, was exactly the same as it had been in the office the day before. I decided it was either Daisy herself or the best mimic I had ever heard; and it was in my mind, naturally, that while a great actress isn't necessarily a fine mimic, by public repute April Hawthorne was. Wolfe tried another trick, asking her what time it was, but when she looked at her wrist watch she did so with exactly the same slant to her head, using the left eye apparently, as the previous day when she had read the paper he gave her. Wolfe asked me to hand him the notes I had taken of the interview with the others. I got up and started for him. When I was even with her chair I stumbled and lurched against her and grabbed to keep from falling, and what I got hold of was the lower edge of the veil. I knew it was anchored and would take a good jerk, and since it had to be done I was going to do it right, but I simply wasn't prepared for what happened. A hurricane hit me. An awful screech split the air, and thirty wild cats flew at my face, which wasn't protected by any veil, with all their claws working. Being stubborn, I was going on through and die fighting, but Wolfe called my name sharply and I jammed on the brake. She was ten feet away, and I never have been able FR1;WHERE THERE'S A WILL 147 to figure out how she got there and performed mayhem simultaneously. "You clumsy fool," said Wolfe. "Apologize." "Yes, sir." I looked at the veil, as intact as if I'd never touched it. "I stumbled. I'm very sorry, Mrs. Hawthorne." "The door," said Wolfe. "That scream must have alarmed people." As I reached it I heard hurried footsteps outside, and, opening it, saw Andy Dunn and his father, looking white and startled, trotting toward me, and in the background Celia Fleet's white skirt and blouse and the faded blue gown May Hawthorne was sporting. I sang out, "Okay! Sorry! I slipped and fell and scared Mrs. Hawthorne! Excuse it please!" They said something which I shut off by closing the door almost in their faces. Apparently my explanation satisfied them that we hadn't bumped Daisy off and the scream wasn't her expiring cry, for they didn't enter to investigate. I looked around for a mirror and didn't see one. My face felt as if someone had scattered gunpowder on it and touched a match. "You'd better find a bathroom and wash that blood off," said Wolfe curtly. "Then please go down to the living room and get the notes you left FR1;148 WHERE THERE'S A WILL there. Look them over and see if they're what I want." I was too irate to speak, so I departed without a word. In the bathroom down the hall I surveyed the devastation in the mirror. My lovely smooth skin was a sight. "Occupational hazard," I said bitterly. "To hell with it. I'm going to get a job as an executive." I wet a towel and dabbed at it and did it smart. And what Wolfe had meant, of course, was that I was to proceed to the living room, to the other Daisy, and turn the other cheek. If he thought I was going to represent the firm at any more unveiling ceremonies, he was deficient above the neck, but in my judgment that would prove unnecessary. I did not believe that anyone, even April Hawthorne, could act the part of thirty wildcats with that amount of fervor; that one in the library actually was thirty wildcats. I had not observed the other one with any particularity, and hadn't heard her speak; probably a few sharp glances and a little conversation would do the trick. So when I had done all I could with the dabbing I moseyed on downstairs to the living room. I was too late. Naomi Karn was still there, seated in the same chair as before, but she was alone. I walked over to her. Her eyes slanted up at me, and I met them. My mind was sufficiently on someFR1;WHERE THERE'S A WILL 149 thing else so that as far as I was concerned she was about as dangerous as a snake charmer in a circus. I said, "I wanted to ask Mrs. Hawthorne something. Do you know where she went?" Miss Karn shook her head. "She said she'd be back shortly." "How long ago did she leave?" "How long? Oh, ten minutes." "I just wondered, because Mr. Wolfe is expecting her upstairs, when she gets through with you." I gazed down at her. "I told Mr. Wolfe you're here, and he said it would be a shame if you closed a deal with these people yourself, since in that case we'd be out a fee." "I'm not interested in your fee." "No, I suppose not. Did Mrs. Hawthorne phone and ask you to come, or did you just come?" She let that one go by. A corner of her lip curled. "You may tell Mr. Wolfe that his bluff didn't work. I have learned that his ridiculous offer of a hundred thousand dollars was not authorized by his clients. I'll do a great deal better than that." "Good. We don't deserve a fee anyhow. I am strongly opposed to the detective tariff. "Why should you contribute to our sensual ease? I agree with whoever it was, millions for defemmes but not one cent for tribute. Excuse me a minute." A sudden bright idea had occurred to me. The 150 WHERE THERE'S A WILL draperies, heavy red folds from the ceiling to the floor, behind which Daisy had disappeared that morning, were there in the middle of the wall only three paces away. My idea was vague; there was no sense in supposing that she had chosen that exir again and was there eavesdropping; but I was curious about what was behind them anyhow. I stepped over and parted them enough to look in. Then, seeing what I saw, I passed through and let them fall behind me. Osric Stauffer stood there, his back to the wall, with his finger pressed against his lips to shush me. I met his eyes, and met an appeal for silence there too, in spite of the dim light. I glanced around. It was a small room, with a small window in the left rear corner. At one side was a bar, about ten feet long, with an array of glasses and bottles on shelves behind it, and a big picture of barefooted girls picking grapes. A rug on the floor completed the furnishings. In the right rear corner was a door, shut. Stauffer hadn't moved. He didn't look very menacing, so I saw no reason to interfere with his method of passing the time. I turned around and pawed my way out and was standing in front of Miss Karn again. "When Mrs. Hawthorne comes back," I said, "I'd appreciate it if you'd finish with her as soon FR1;I I WHERE THERE'S A WILL 151 as possible, because Mr. Wolfe wants her. Why don't you come up and see Wolfe while you're waiting? He'd love to have a chat with you." She just looked through me. I shrugged. "Okay, suit yourself. I understand you had a good talk with an old friend of mine this morning. Inspector Cramer. He was warning Wolfe about you and telling about your alibi for Tuesday afternoon." She stirred on her chair. "I doubt," she said, "if at any time in my life I would have regarded you as funny." "Pooh." I looked her in the eye. "Let me tell you something. Miss Karn. Up to now I am reserving judgment as to whether it was you who blew Hawthorne's head off. If it was, you'd better be making your own will instead of fussing around about his. But if it wasn't, the best thing you can do is trot upstairs without delay and lay your pretty head confidingly on Nero White's shoulder. I'm telling you. The popping noises around here do not come from firecrackers, which might singe your eyelashes but that's all. Someone's going to get a bad burn out of this before it's over." Leaving that for her to consider at leisure, I marched off. Reflecting that if the downstairs Daisy was the counterfeit she had had plenty of time to discard her masquerade, and that therefore peeking through keyholes would have been wasted FR1;152 WHERE THERE'S A WILL effort, I decided on a swift gallop around the field before returning to G.H.Q. The result was negative. I dispensed with such niceties as knocking on doors. The other three rooms on the ground floor, including the music room, were uninhabited. In a sitting room one flight up, two doors from the library, I flushed Dunn and his wife, and Prescott, apparently discussing their troubles. Mrs. Hawthorne's apartment on the floor above was empty. Andy Dunn and Celia Fleet saw me enter it and leave it, from a bench they were occupying in the hall. They didn't look interrupted; evidently they weren't discussing anything, just sitting close enough to touch. In the room across the hall where I had found the library edition of Daisy when Wolfe sent me after her. May Hawthorne was lying on a bed with her bare feet protruding beyond the hem of the veteran gown, and her eyes closed. She asked, "Who is it?" without moving or opening her eyes, and I said, "Nobody much," and went out again. That left two to go. I found them together, in a room at the street end of the corridor. April was stretched out on a chaise longue, with her arms flung above her head, dressed in a green thing of thin silk which smoothed itself out on her high spots like soft skin, and wearing no veil. Sara was on a chair near her, with a book open. Sara stared WHERE THERE^S A WILL 153 at me. April's head didn't move, but she got me from the corner of her eyes. She said, "You might knock, you know. Does that man want me again?" "No, I'm just looking." "Thank heaven." She sighed with relief. "My niece is reading 'The Cherry Orchard' to me. Of course I know it by heart. Would you care to listen?" I said no, much obliged, and departed. Having observed a writing desk in Daisy Hawthorne's suite, I returned there, found some paper in a drawer, got out my pen and sat down and wrote: Downstairs Daisy disappeared. Told Naomi would return shortly but hasn't. 'Naomi, waiting for her return, scorns you and says Pm not funny. Sfauffer is lurking behind a curtain ten feet from- her. God knows why. Made a survey and everyone accounted for. Sara is reading "The Cherry Orchard" (Chekhov) to April. Either one could have done it. I resign. 1 blotted it, went out and descended to the library, and handed it to Wolfe, saying: "I doubt if that's it. It's the only one I left in the living room." As he read it I got myself into a chair, this time 154 WHERE THERE'S A WILL one at the end of the desk, as far as practical from our own Daisy. I glanced at her sitting there behind her screen, and then looked somewhere else. Wolfe grunted and passed the paper back to me. "It can wait. Mrs. Hawthorne and I have been discussing the matter of the will. It is her opinion that it expresses the wishes of her husband and his deliberate intention to deprive her of her rightful share of his fortune. She is not surprised at her husband's duplicity, but strongly resents the fact that Mr. Prescott did not inform her of the will's contents at the time it was drawn, though I have told her that had he done so it would have been a flagrant breach of ethics. Please make a note of these remarks. I asked Mrs. Hawthorne if she has dealt, or attempted to deal, directly with Miss Karn in the matter, and she says she has not and would not. I believe that covers the points we've discussed, madam?" "Yes." The veil inclined slightly forward and straightened up again. Wolfe regarded it with half-closed eyes. "Well. Has Mr. Dunn told you that he has asked me to investigate your husband's death?" "No, but his wife has. My sister-in-law June." "Have you talked with the police?" The veil was inclined again. "Last night. The district attorney. Mr. Skinner." FR1;I WHERE THERE^S A WILL 155 "Are you willing to discuss it with me? I want to say, Mrs. Hawthorne, that I realize I am in your home, this is the library of your home, and I thank you for allowing me to work here. I assure you I shall clear out at the earliest possible moment. The luncheon--I shall not impose upon you for another meal if I can help it. But I do have a few questions to ask." "I am perfectly willing to answer them. I don't believs--I doubt if I can help your investigation any, although I know quite well who killed my husband." "Oh. You do?" "Yes. April." She had a special way of saying "April." Anyone hearing her and not knowing who was meant would have guessed that April was a cross between a cockroach and a rattlesnake. �I should think," said Wolfe, "that will help my investigation a good deal. Provided you can give any reasons." "I can. April is sunk in debt and expected a legacy. She intends to marry Osric Stauffer. She pretends she's playing with him, but she isn't, she intends to marry him. She knows her beauty is going and she'll need him. She thinks he'll succeed to my husband's partnership in Daniel Cullen and Company. She hated Noel's influence over Andy. She 156 WHERE THERE'S A WILL wants Andy to marry that little blond fool Celia and be an actor. She knew Noel was leaving me next to nothing in his will, and she wanted me 10 have that blow too." She stopped. Wolfe asked, "Is that all?" "Yes." "But you can't have both ends, Mrs. Hawthorne. If she knew your husband was leaving you next to nothing, she must also have known what she was to get. A peach." "Not at all. Noel fooled them too. He told her what he was doing to me, but not what he was doing to her." "Do you have any evidence of that?" "I don't need any." The strain in her voice was more intense. "I know what my husband was like." "Do you possess any evidence that April Hawthorne did shoot her brother?" "I don't possess any, no. But she did." "You know, I suppose, that she says she was upstairs sleeping at the time it happened." "I know," said the veil contemptuously. "But she wasn't." "Did you see her leave the house or sneak into the woods?'* "No." Wolfe sighed. "I was hoping perhaps you had. FR1;WHERE THERE*S A WILL 157 I understand you were out in a field picking blackeyed susans." "I was picking daisies." "All right, daisies. I haven't seen a map of the grounds, so I wouldn't know whether you could see the house or the border of the woods from where you were. Could you?" "Not the house actually, on account of trees around it. Besides the woods skirting the hill, there are clumps of trees all around there. They shielded me--that is, they shielded the house from my view, and the woods too. The reason I made that slip of the tongue--I am accustomed to regard myself as being in need of shielding." A long thin finger touched the edge of the veil. "Of course. I wouldn't call that a slip. From where you were could you hear all three of the gunshots?" "I don't know whether I could or not, but I didn't. The first shot was when we were finishing tea on the lawn; we spoke about it. Soon after that I went to the field for daisies. I heard no more shots. Often when I am alone like that my mind is on-- on myself. That may be comprehensible to you. Perhaps I could have heard the shots, but I didn't." "I see." Wolfe closed his eyes. After a moment he opened them again and directed them at the veil. "If I were you," he suggested, "I'd be a little cirFR1;158 WHERE THERE'S A WILL cumspect about stating what you know, when you possess no evidence. After this thing gets in the papers it will be pretty nasty." "Nasty?" That awful little laugh fluttered the veil. "You mean what I said about April." "Yes. If she committed murder she'll probably pay for it. In the meantime--" "But she did! I know she did! I possess no evidence, but someone else does!" "Indeed. Who?" "I don't know." "Where is it?" "I don't know." "What is it?" "I know that, but it wouldn't do any good to tell you." "I'll decide that," Wolfe snapped. "Did you tell Mr. Skinner about it?" "No. It wouldn't do any good to tell him either." The high-pitched voice went higher yet. "They would just deny it! How could I prove it? But I heard them, and I saw it!" "Maybe I can prove it, Mrs. Hawthorne. I'd like to try. What was it?" "It was a cornflower. Andy found a cornflower there near Noel's body! And April had a bunch of them stuck in her belt when we were there having tea on the lawn!" CHAPTER ELEVEN wolfe let out a little growl and made himself more comfortable in his chair. He said nothing. Daisy spoke again. Her voice had been shrill with excitement, but now it went flat. She muttered, "I didn't intend to tell you that." "Why not?" Wolfe demanded. "Because it won't do any good. I can't prove it and they'll deny it. But if I had kept it to myself . . ." "You might have found an occasion to use it. Was that the idea?" "Yes. Why shouldn't I?" Her voice went up the scale again, in defiance. "Even though they knew I couldn't prove it--and like a fool I blurt it out to you." "It can't be helped now." Wblfe's tone was smooth, even sympathetic. "I doubt if you could have used it effectively, anyway. They're a pretty tough crowd. You say April had a bunch of cornflowers in her belt while you were having tea on the lawn Tuesday afternoon?" "Yes." "You might as well tell me about it. Maybe we can figure out a way of proving it." 159 FR1;160 WHERE THERE'S A WILL "You can't. How can you? Osric Stauffer picked them in the garden and brought them and gave them to her and she stuck them in at her waist. She had on a green blouse and yellow slacks. We commented on the blue of the cornflowers with the other colors." "Did Mr. Stauffer keep one for himself?" "Why, I--" She considered. "No, he didn't." "Or give some to anyone else?" "No. He gave them all to April." "Did she leave the gathering on the lawn before you? Or was she still there when you left?" "She was still there. They all were except Noel and John." Scribbling along with my pen, I allowed myself a satisfied grin. Wolfe was working at last, picking up all the pieces he could find, methodically and patiently. He spent twenty minutes with her getting the complete picture of the tea party, and another ten with her in the field, collecting blackeyed susans, daisies to her and nothing at all to me. She had returned to the house with her arms full of them, more than an hour later, and was making arrangements in vases, when Celia Fleet burst in asking for Dunn in an agitated voice. She had followed Celia, unobtrusively, and had been within earshot when Dunn received the news of what Andy had found in the briar patch beyond the woods. FR1;WHERE THERE'S A WILL 161 "I wasn't eavesdropping," she declared, not defensively, merely imparting information. "I was later, when I heard Andy telling them about the cornflower. I actually saw it." Wolfe inquired, "What time was that?" "It was late that evening, about eleven o'clock. Even then I--well, I won't say I suspected that Noel had been murdered, but I knew of the feeling between him and John on account of that Argentina loan business, and other feelings there were around there, and I was curious and vaguely suspicious. So after the sheriff and doctor had gone away, I went to my room but I didn't go to bed. I noticed some of them hadn't come upstairs, and I went down without making any noise and out the back way. It was a hot night and windows were open everywhere, and there was a light from the dining room. I could hear low voices as I got closer, and then I could see them, John and June and Andy. Andy was telling them about finding the cornflower, and took it from his pocket and showed it to them. He said it had been there about fifteen feet from Noel's body, caught on a branch of a rose briar, and he had taken it and put it in his pocket. He said it hadn't occurred tOghim at the moment, but it had since, the idea that April had been there for a private talk with Noel and had lost it from the bunch she was wearing. But of FR1;162 WHERE THERE'S A WILL course, he said, that wasn't how it got there, because April had stated that she had been in her room taking a nap. John said calmly that it was true the cornflower couldn't have been dropped by April, since she hadn't been there, but that Andy had been quite right to bring it away and thereby avoid the possibility of a lot of unpleasant and irrelevant questions just because a cornflower had been found hanging on a briar. They were very casual about it, but they knew better. Their tone and the way they looked--they knew. And so did T. I knew then, as I went back up the dark stairs, Sat April had killed Noel." Wolfe wiggled a finger at her. "You knew nothing of the sort, madam." "But I tell you--it's no wonder you--you're on their side--" "Rubbish. I'm not on anybody's side; I'm hunting a murderer. I admit the cornflower is evidence, probably extremely important evidence, but of what? Of April's guilt? Perhaps. Or of an attempt by the murderer to incriminate April by getting a cornflower from the garden and leaving it near the body? Perhaps. Rather inconclusive, but fairly ingenious at Aat. Do you by any chance know what happened to^che cornflower?" "No. I suppose John destroyed it. I said I couldn't prove it. But you must believe--you must--you FR1;WHERE THERE^S A WILL 163 signed that paper promising to safeguard my interests--"

"Oh, I believe you all right. But my commitment in that paper was limited to the negotiations regarding the will. Please understand that. There is, after all, a remote possibility that you killed your husband yourself. I should think you might measure up to that cornflower trick." "Now you're talking rubbish." "Perhaps. You ought to know. How long were the stems of the bouquet Stauffer presented to April?" He got patient and methodical again. As I lis tened to them chewing away, putting down their syllables automatically on the unruled paper which had been the best I could find, I reflected that this appeared to be shaping up for a honey. The only nugget in the pouch so far was this cornflower on a briar, and that was certainly nothing to write home about, with a garden right there full of cornflower bushes, provided they grew on bushes. Not to mention the chance that Daisy had made it all up just to keep her brain occupied. I was idly considering alternatives when the phone buzzed, and I went and got it. It was Saul Panzer. By the time I got through taking his concise but ^I^Hed report, Wolfe had finished with Daisy and she was arising to leave. 164 WHERE THERE'S A WILL I opened the door to let her out, and returned to the desk. "If you ask me," I remarked, "we would have been a hell of a sight better off if we had stuck to the last will and testament and let the murder go. Of all the--" "That was Saul?" "Yes, sir." "Well?" "He has been conferring with elevator operators and bootblacks et al. Johnny got orders for five beauty outfits before he was tossed out on his ear, and he has a date to buy a lady a dinner at the Polish Pavilion this evening. That will cost you dear. Davis is married and lives with his wife, at least nominally. He and Naomi had a romance when she was his secretary. The sort of thing May Hawthorne comprehends intellectually. L'amour. He has gone moody and taken to drink. So far information very sketchy; nothing particular on Prescott yet except that he gives people expensive cigars, pays good salaries, and is not a knee-toucher. Saul has lines out that are promising. No start on Prescott's confidential stenographer in March, 1938." Wolfe had his lips compressed. "I hate to waste Saul--" Heifcrugged. "It can't be helped. What ^�* time is it? FR1;WHERE THERE^S A WILL 165 "Five after five. Would you care to go into the matter of the duplicate Daisy?" "Not now. Mr. Prescott wants to see me. First some beer. Then see if Miss Karn is still down there, and who is with her. Then Mr. Prescott.*' I trotted out and descended to the main floor. There was no one around the entrance hall, so I opened a door leading to the rear of the house and yelled, "Turner!" In a moment a maid appeared and said he was upstairs, and I said all I wanted was to order three bottles of beer for Mr. Wolfe in the library. Then I proceeded to the living room for a glimpse of Naomi Karn. But I didn't get it. She was absent. The only person in the room was a man of about my build, pacing up and down with his fists making his pockets bulge. I stopped short and regarded him with surprise. He had put his pants on, but I recognized him anyway. I said, "Hello." He quit pacing and scowled at me. Before he said a word I knew exactly the condition he was in, more from observation than from personal experience. You drink all night, and pass out, and someone takes you home and drops you on a bed. When you come to, there is no telling what day it is or when they started running the subway inside your FR1;166 WHERE THERE S A WILL head or how many people came to your funeral. But something drastic must be done immediately. You get your pants and shoes on and fight your way to the street and along to and into a place, order a double Scotch and gulp it down, spilling maybe a quarter of it. You spill much less of the second one, and by the time the third one comes along you have nearly stopped trembling and you don't waste a drop. Then, while you still are not quite ready to tell the date on a calendar, you have a strong impression that you are prepared to cope with whatever it is that requires coping, and off you go. "Who are you?" he demanded, in a voice that made me afraid he would strip his gears. "I want Glenn Prescott." "Yes, sir," I said ingratiatingly. "I know you do. If you will come this way, please." "I'm not coming that way or any other way." He planted himself. His fists were still bulging in his pockets. "He can come here. You can go and tell him--" "Yes, sir, I will. But this is a sort of a public room. People come in here all the time. These chairs are no good to sit on, either. I'll be glad to bring Mr. Prescott wherever you say, but I do honestly think the library would be much better." I backed FR1;WHERE THERE'S A WILL 167 toward the doorway. "Come and see for yourself. If you don't like it you can return here." "I'll like it all right, but he won't." He stayed planted. Then abruptly he rumbled, "You don't need to show me the library, I know where it is,'* and moved so fast he nearly toppled me over as he went by. I was at his heels going up the stairs, and stayed there, thinking to steer him in case he was too optimistic about knowing where the library was, but he went straight to the door and flung it open. I followed him in, closed the door, and announced to Wolfe: "Mr. Eugene Davis." Davis glared around. "Where's Prescott?" He glared at Wolfe. "Who are you?" He glared at me. "What kind of a run-around is this? You're not Turner! I sent Turner to get Prescott!" "That's all right," I said soothingly, "we'll get him. I'm not a butler, I'm a detective. Detectives are better than butlers for getting people. This is Mr. Nero Wolfe." "Who the hell--" He stopped abruptly. You might have thought I had reached inside his skull and flipped a switch. A sort of spasm went over his face, and his shoulders stiffened and then relaxed again, and when he focused his eyes on Wolfe they were no longer merely FR1;168 WHERE THERE'S A WILL bleary and foolishly truculent. They were alert and intelligent and on guard. "Oh," he said. His tone had changed even more than his eyes. "You're Nero Wolfe." Wolfe nodded. "Yes, sir." "You're here helping to prove Hawthorne was murdered. Or that he wasn't. I see." He turned to survey me. "So Turner announced me to you instead of to Prescott. And told you I was drunk, I suppose. It's Prescott I came here to see. I'll find him." He started off, but Wolfe snapped, "One minute, Mr. Dawson!" Halfway to the door, he halted, stood there for four seconds with his back to us, and then slowly turned around. "My name's Davis," he said with careful precision. "Eugene Davis." "Not on llth Street. There it's Earl Dawson. And how did you know Hawthorne was murdered? Did Mr. Prescott tell you? Or did you learn it from Miss Karn when you were dining with her last evening?" He had things under control all right. Knowing the feeling he must have been experiencing in his stomach under the circumstances, I admired him. All he did was stand and gaze at Wolfe and chew his lower lip. Finally he crossed to a chair, steadily and without haste, sat down, and asked: FR1;WHERE THERE'S A WILL 169 "What do you want?" "I want to talk with you, Mr. Davis." "What about?" "This mess. This murder. This will business." "I know nothing about either one. How did you know I am Earl Dawson on llth Street?" "You drank to excess last night. A man who works for me took you home and removed your trousers. Another man who works for me--Mr. Goodwin here, Mr. Archie Goodwin--went there this morning and identified you from articles in your pockets. As for your dining with Miss Karn, she was being followed." "Of course. I should have thought of that. I was stupid. It still surprises me to realize I was stupid, because originally I wasn't meant to be. About my being Dawson, I would like to know who has been informed. The police?" "No. No one. Mr. and Mrs. Dunn know that you were found somewhere in a drunken stupor, but not where, and not that you were incognito." "Is that straight?" "Yes, sir. I would have no compunction about lying to you, but that's straight." "I'll take it that way." I could see that the fingernails of his right hand were digging into his palm. He saw that I saw it, and stuck the hand into his coat pocket. He went on, "In view of the way FR1;170 WHERE THERE'S A WILL things are, I suppose it's an affectation for me to try to keep the Dawson thing--that place--secret, but as I say, I can't be counted on any more not to act stupidly. I don't want that known, Mr. Wolfe. I'll talk about anything you want me to, within reason." Wolfe was frowning. "Not with any pledge of secrecy from me, sir. Neither tacit nor explicit. But I expose no man's privy affairs unnecessarily." "If that's all I can get, I'll take that. What do you want to ask me?" "Several things. First, where were you Tuesday afternoon from 4 to 6?" There was no immediate reply. I could see there was movement inside the pocket where his fist was. To make things easier I horned in: "Which do you want, Scotch or rye?" He looked at me and said sarcastically, "All the comforts of hell. If you mean it, Scotch. Don't spoon it out, you know." I told him I wouldn't and trotted out and downstairs. In the ambush behind the draperies in the living room, on the shelves back of the bar, there were four brands to choose from. I long-armed across the bar and got one, with a glass, poured out a generous triple, and returned to the library with it. It simply wasn't possible for Davis to keep his fingers from shaking as he took it. He only had to WHERE THERE^S A WILL 171 swallow twice. After a moment he put the glass down on the desk, and his fingers were steady. He met Wolfe's eyes. "Tuesday afternoon," he said, "I was with Miss Karn from 3 o'clock until around 7." "Where?" "Driving. We went up to Connecticut and back. If the police have questioned her, that isn't what she told them, but I'm not telling the police, I'm telling you. If they question me, I'll tell them where I was, but I'll say I was alone." "Did you stop to eat or drink?" "No. We have no corroboration." "That's too bad. Will you have some beer?" Davis shuddered. "No!" "I'm thirsty." Wolfe poured and put the bottle down. "You see, Mr. Davis, you may get into trouble. I doubt if the police have smelled you yet, but they certainly will if they keep on. They'll learn that you formed an attachment for Miss Karn a long while ago, and that when--" "That's an old story. Back in 1935. How did you know about it?" "I have men working for me. But the attachment still exists, doesn't it?" "Certainly not." "You were with Miss Karn Tuesday. You were with her last evening." 172 WHERE THERE'S A WILL "We are friends. I'm a lawyer. She was consulting me." Wolfe shook his head. "Please don't waste time like that. There are two pictures of her in your wallet, and Mr. Dawson has eight more scattered around his apartment." Davis flushed in sudden anger, and his jaw stiffened. He shot me a glance that he should have been ashamed of, considering the fact that I had just saved his life with a triple Scotch. "By God," he declared, "if I wasn't tied hand and foot--" "You'd assault Mr. Goodwin. I know. I know too, I think, how reluctant you are to admit your attachment for Miss Karn as an item in a discussion like this. It is a vital necessity for you right now to keep your head clear and working efficiently, and that's difficult when a subject arises which causes your heart to pump an excess of blood. I'll go as easy as I can. But here's the material we have to deal with: You were passionately attached to Miss Karn. Noel Hawthorne saw her and liked her, and wanted her, and took her. Naturally you resented that. How much I don't know, but surely you resented it. However, either you continued some sort of association with her, or after a time you resumed association. "Which?" FR1;WHERE THERE^S A WILL 173 Da vis didn't reply. Wolfe went on: "I'm not thinking about murder now, I'm thinking about that will. Where was it drawn? In the office of Dunwoodie, Prescott & Davis. Where was it kept? In a vault in that office. Who benefited by '\f it? Chiefly Miss Karn. Did she know that? Yes; Mr; Prescott let her read it shortly after it was drawn, having been instructed to do so by Mr. Hawthorne. Did you know that? I don't know. Did you?" "No," said Davis curtly. "It was none of my business. Prescott drew it." "But you have access to the vault?" �; , \i-' "I'm a lawyer, not a snoop, Mr. Wolfe." "But isn't it plausible that Miss Karn told you about it? Couldn't you have learned it that way?" "It may be plausible, but she didn't. I knew nothing, absolutely nothing, about the terms of that will until Miss Karn told me last night. Has Prescott told you I did?" "Oh, no. No one has told me anything, really. They're all like you. I've sat in this confounded room over seven hours, and I know very little more than when I entered it. I don't resent it that each of you people has something to conceal--everybody in the world has--but it has never taken me so long to find a loose end. Let's start somewhere else. You 174 WHERE THERE'S A WILL say you are Miss Karri's friend and lawyer and she consults you. Did you advise her to come here this afternoon to negotiate with Mrs. Hawthorne?" "No. Why?" "Because she came." "She came here?" "Yes." "How do you know? Did you see her?" "No. Mr. Goodwin did. He had a little talk with her. Down in the living room. I thought perhaps�" He chopped it off because the door suddenly opened. There was no knock, but it swung wide and Glenn Prescott marched in. CHAPTER TWELVE the two counselors-at-law looked at each other. Prescott, having halted in his stride, advanced and said, "Hello, Gene." Davis nodded but didn't speak. I could see both their faces. Davis's exhibited vigilance and contempt; Prescott's, vigilance and a sort of exasperated solicitude. s-- >^ ( "Relax!" Davis commanded. "Quit looking like the damned Salvation Army! I'm sober. These fel� lows jolted me sober. They know I was with Miss Karn last evening, and they know my name's Dawson on llth Street. So I've been answering questions. Nothing indiscreet. Just where I was Tuesday afternoon and things like that." Prescott said, "You're a fool. You were a fool to come here. You could have been kept out of this. It can't possibly be kept quiet longer than another c day. When the papers start on it, and on you as a part of it--where are Dunwoodie, Prescott & Davis going to be?" "The dear old firm," Davis sneered. ^ "Yes, Gene, the dear old firm. We've made it, but it made us, too. You were headed for the top, you had it in you. You still have. I'm a pretty good lawyer and a hard worker, but you're a lot more 175 FR1;176 WHERE THERE'S A WILL than that. You're one of the rare ones, the kind that makes history. I don't need to tell you that. And now you don't even--you come here and step into this--oh, my God." He turned abruptly to Wolfe. "You've got us at your mercy. What are you going to do? Hand it over to the police?" Wolfe shook his head. "No, sir. I might for a quid pro quo, but the police have nothing I want. Sit down; let's talk it over. I was just asking Mr. Davis if he advised Miss Karn to come here to negotiate with Mrs. Hawthorne." "If he advised--" Prescott gawked. "Why did you ask him that?" Davis forestalled White's answer. "Because she came! She was here!" He was on his feet, confronting his partner. "And now I'm asking you! Did you bring her here?" "You're crazy. Gene. For God's sake, have a little sense. I tell you, this is no time--" "You brought her here!" "You're crazy! Why would I--" "I'm going to find out," Davis declared, and tramped from the room. We all stared at the open door which he had disdained to close. Then Prescott said abruptly, "The damned idiot," and out he went too. I was out of my chair, asking hopefully: FR1;WHERE THERE*S A WILL 177 "Do you want 'em?" "No, Archie." Wolfe leaned back and sighed. "No, thank you." He closed his eyes. "No, thank �, you. "You're quite welcome," I said politely, and sat down again without bothering to close the door. That was merely one more example of my selfcontrol. Inwardly I was in a turmoil. I knew the ,." signs. I knew that tone of his. It was the first symp- ,' ) torn of the approach of a relaose. Unless I could i bully him out of it, or unless the murderer came ^ in and confessed within an hour, he would have ^ a relapse as sure as ham loves eggs. What made it //' so ticklish was the fact that we weren't at home. 3 If we had been at the office I would have stood an even chance of jolting him loose, but there on alien territory I wasn't so sure of myself .So I don't know how long I might have sat there trying to decide the best line to take, beyond the ten minutes or so I did sit, if I hadn't heard footsteps stopping at the doorway. I turned my head and saw it was the butler.

"Speak," I said listlessly. "Yes, sir. Mr. Dunn would like to see Mr. Wolfe in the living room." "Bring me a derrick." I waved him away. "You've done your share. I'll get him there if I can." 178 WHERE THERE'S A WILL He went. I waited a full minute and then demanded, "Did you hear that?" "Yes." "Well?" No answer. I waited another minute. "Look here. You are not in your own home. You came here of your own volition. It's not Dunn's fault that this thing is turning into a plate of sour hash, unless he killed Hawthorne himself. He invited you here and you came. Either go down and see what | he wants, or let's go home and starve." , He stirred, slowly opened his eyes, and pronounced a word in some foreign tongue which I , have never bothered to ask him to translate, because it sounds as if it couldn't be printed anyway. | He got out of his chair, and moved toward the ( door. I followed. We found they were having a convention in the living room. The delegates consisted of John Charles Dunn, Glenn Prescott, Osric Stauffer, a wiry little squirt whom I recognized as DetectiveLieutenant Bronson of the police, and a six-footer in a hot and dignified three-piece suit who looked concentrated and uncomfortable. By the introduction, made by Dunn, he was identified as Mr. Ritchie of the Cosmopolitan Trust Company, executor of Noel Hawthorne's estate. Dunn also explained why we had been ousted FR1;WHERE THERE^S A WILL 179 from the library. The police had asked for permed" sion to inspect the private papers of Hawthorne,' most of which were in a safe built into the library wall, and the trust company had granted it, on condition that they should have a representative present. That was Mr. Ritchie. It was also thought desirable that Hawthorne's personal attorney should ^ there. That was Mr. Prescott. And to protect, necessary, the confidential affairs of Daniel Cullen and Company, they wanted a man there too. That was Mr. Stauffer. Bronson, Stauffer, Prescott and Ritchie marched off upstairs to open the safe. I thought to myself, they'll find another will as sure as water's wet, and then we'll have to solve the damn murder to get any fee at all. John Charles Dunn was asking Wolfe if he had made any progress, and Wolfe was replying grumpily that he hadn't. I knew better than to try any badgering in the presence of Dunn, but I thought I might as well try something, so I crossed the room to where the draperies were and pulled them open, thinking to show Wolfe where I had found Stauffer in ambush. But there was more than that there to show him, if he had been beside me, though I nearly missed it. She must have heard me, or seen me through a slit, approaching. All I saw was the back of the gray gown, and the back of her head, FR1;180 WHERE THERE'S A WILL as she went out through the door in the right rear corner. I called to Wolfe and Dunn, "Come here a minute!"

"What is it?" "Come here and I'll show you." They crossed to me. I held the curtain open. "I admit it's her house, but it's a bad habit to get into anyhow. When I was in here alone this morning, Mrs. Hawthorne suddenly appeared from behind these drapes and then vanished. This is also the ambush I mentioned in that note I gave you while she was in the library. And she was in here just now. When I lifted the curtain she was beating it through that door. Not that it seems to be the answer to anything, but I thought you'd like t|p know." "You saw her leaving just now?" "Yes, sir. Practicing, do you suppose?" "I have no idea. As you say, it's her house. Since she would have been quite welcome--what's the matter, Mr. Dunn?" Dunn was looking queer. His jaw was working and his eyes were bulging, though his stare seemed to be directed nowhere in particular, certainly not at us. He muttered something unintelligible and stared around as if he expected to see something. Wolfe asked him again what was the matter. "It was there!" he said, pointing to the chair the WHERE THERE^S A WILL 181 jpcounterfeit Daisy had been sitting on when I found her with Naomi Karn. "We were right there!" "Who were? When?" "I was! With two men. To settle that Argentina loan. I came up from Washington to meet them, and wanted to keep the meeting secret. Noel was in Europe. I telephoned Daisy, and she said she wouldn't be at home that evening--she would instruct Turner to let us in. It's incredible! She didn't know who I was meeting or what it was about! Good God!" � , - / - '-,-. ^ ' r "A chronic eavesdropper" doesn't require any special inducement," said Wolfe dryly. "She hid here and listened! She must have! And she told Noel--and he--" Dunn choked it off abruptly. In a moment he went on. "No, I'm wrong. I remember now. Daria--one of the men mentioned these curtains, and I got up and parted them and looked in here. It was empty. There wasn't much light, only what came from the opening in the curtains, but it was empty." "Wait a minute," I told him. "I like this idea, let's hang onto it. She could have entered by that door after you looked behind the curtains. Better yet, she could have simply ducked behind the bar when she heard one of you mention the curtains." Wolfe objected, "There's not enough room." "Sure there's enough room." I was all for it. 182 WHERE THERE'S A WILL "Don't judge other people by yourself. Hell, I could hide there easily. Look, I'll give you a demonstration." I stepped to the open end of the bar. But the demonstration was never made. Sliding behind the bar, I stumbled on something and nearly fell. I looked to see what it was, and a mouse ran up my spine. I stooped to see better, but the light was too dim, and I said, "There's a light switch on the wall. Turn it on." Dunn did so. Wolfe, hearing my tone, inquired sharply, "What's the matter with you?" I had to brace my knee against the edge of the bottom shelf so as not to kneel on her in that cramped space. After looking and feeling for a few seconds, I scrambled upright and told them, "It's Naomi Karn. Dead. Strangled with that blue linen wrap she was wearing tied around her throat." CHAPTER THIRTEEN wolfe grunted, compressed his lips, and glared at me ferociously, as if I had done it myself. John Charles Dunn showed admirable presence of mind. He didn't faint or scream. His face expressed shock and consternation, naturally, but almost immediately his jaw set and he moved, joined me at the end of the bar and looked in there at it. After a moment he looked at me. "She's dead?" "Yes, sir." "You're sure." "Yes, sir." He put his hand on the edge of the bar for support. Then he moved again, not very steadily. I moved faster, got a chair from the other side of the draperies, and slid it behind him. He sat on it, gripped his knees with his fingers, and told the space in front of him, "This is the end of everything."

Wolfe said grimly, "Or the beginning. Archie, I want two minutes. In two minutes go up and notify Lieutenant Bronson." I looked approvingly at his broad back as it passed through the curtains. I had no idea what 183 FR1;184 WHERE THERE'S A WILL he was going to do with the two minutes, but normal people aren't supposed to understand what geniuses are up to. I timed it by the second hand of my watch. Dunn sat there making no sound, gripping his knees and gazing at space. When the second hand had completed two revolutions, and was halfway around again for good measure, I told him, "You'd better stay here. You ought to breathe deeper. Take some deep breaths.'* No one was in sight in the main hall, the stairs, or the upper corridor. I opened the door to the library and walked in. From the group around the desk, on which batches of papers were piled, four pairs of eyes turned my way in surprise. I was aware that the proper stunt was to summon the officer of the law, lead him downstairs and show it to him, and let nature take its course, but I was curious to see the expression on a couple of faces, so I announced distinctly: "We have made a discovery downstairs. In the bar back of the drapes in the living room. Naomi Karn is there on the floor, dead." I got nothing very definite, as usual. Stauffer merely gawked at me. Prescott merely jerked his head up and looked startled. Mr. Ritchie appeared to be annoyed. Lieutenant Bronson snapped at me, "Dead? Who's Naomi Karn?" "A woman," I replied. "The one that inherited WHERE THERE^S A WILL 18? Hawthorne's pile. She has a thing fastened around her throat and her tongue is sticking out. Mr. Dunn is down there. You might as well go ahead and use that phone�" He told the others brusquely, "You men stay here and watch these papers," and me, "Come along," as he went by headed for the door. I trotted behind, down the stairs and through the entrance hall and living room, circled around him to pull the drapery aside for him to pass through, and told him, "There behind the bar." Dunn was still on his chair. Bronson slid into the narrow space and stooped over. Pretty soon he straightened up again and spoke: "I'm going to the library and use the phone. I'd appreciate it, Mr. Dunn, if you'll kindly stay here until I get back." He eyed me. "You're Goodwin, Nero White's man." "Right." "Where's Wolfe?" "He went somewhere upstairs, J guess. He sent me to notify you." "Was he with you when you found it?" "Yes." "How long ago was that?" "Up to now? Oh, three-four minutes." "Will you please stay at the front door while I'm upstairs? No one is to leave the house." FR1;186 WHERE THERE'S A WILL "Sure, glad to." I went with him as far as the main hall. Considering the size of that house and the number of its occupants, and in view of the restrictions and complications that were to begin in about six minutes with the arrival of the first contingent of city employees in a radio car, there is no telling when I would have realized what Nero Wolfe had done with that two minutes he had said he wanted, if it hadn't been for my habit of looking in all directions. But possibly there was some faint suspicion in the back of my mind, or I wouldn't have opened the entrance door and stepped out for a look around, and noticed that something was missing. I craned my neck for an inspection of the cars parked in that short block, and verified it. Absolutely, the sedan was gone. It wasn't where I had parked it, and it wasn't there at all. But of course Wolfe hadn't driven off in it himself, since, although theoretically he knew how to drive, he would have collapsed with terror at the mere idea. But since Naomi Karn hadn't left the house, and therefore Orrie Gather was still on the job, Wolfe would have known that a chauffeur was available. I sent my gaze in the other direction, toward the areaway across the street where I had found Orrie. He wasn't there. He wasn't in sight. That cinched it. If Orrie had still been around he FR1;WHERE THERE*S A WILL 187 would have had an eye on that entrance, and would have seen me, and would have made himself visible. I stood and let the conviction seep into my soul. "I can't say it any better than that," I muttered bitterly to myself. "Normal people aren*t supposed to understand what geniuses are up to. If only I had sunk my toe in his fundament as he went through those curtains." A siren sounded from around the corner, a little green car came curving into 67th, jerked to a stop at the curb, and two men in uniform hopped out and started for me. I had left the door ajar, and swung it open for them to enter. That was the beginning of as dreary and unprofitable a six-hour stretch as I've ever struggled through. By midnight I was ready to bite holes in the windows. On account of the kind of individuals involved, by their being on the premises if by nothing else, the whole damn city and county payroll showed up sooner or later, from the commissioner and the district attorney on down. Wherever you stepped it was on a toe. As far as picking up any items for myself was concerned, I had about as much chance as a poodle in a pack of bloodhounds. Throughout the entire session, about every ten minutes someone came up to me and asked me where Nero Wolfe was. That alone got so obnoxious I FR1;188 WHERE THERE'S A WILL had to grit my teeth to keep from slugging some high official. Soon after the first squad men arrived, Lieutenant Bronson had me in the music room. That interview was brief and unimportant; about all he wanted was the details of our finding the body. I gave it to him complete and straight. I wouldn't have minded keeping our knowledge of Daisy's addiction to eavesdropping for the firm's private use, in case it should come in handy, but I had to give a reason for my looking behind the bar, and it was too risky to invent one, since he had already had a talk with Dunn, and Dunn had probably told him just how it was. So I did too. When it was over he chased me upstairs. I was to remain and so forth. The first thing he asked me, and the last, was "Where's Wolfe?" I went in the library and saw there was no one there but Ritchie of the Cosmopolitan Trust, sitting looking glum and offended, and a dick I didn't know, so I went out again. Prescott came trotting down the hall, saw me, stopped beside me, glanced around, and asked in an undertone, "Where's Wolfe?" "I don't know. Don't ask me again. I don't know.** "He must have--" "I don't know!" FR1;WHERE THERE'S A WILL 189 "Don't talk so loud. We've got to keep Gene Davis out of this." He was urgent, pleading. "No one saw him but Wolfe and you and me. I'm sure if Wolfe were here I could convince him. They mustn't know Gene was here. When they ask you--" "Not a chance. You'd better compose your faculties. The butler let him in." "But I can tell Turner, I can persuade him--" "No, sir. There are about nine things the cops won't find out from me, but that isn't one of them. Take my advice and never conspire with a butler." He grabbed my lapel. "But I tell you, if they learn Davis was here, if they once get started after him--" "I can't help it, Mr. Prescott. Sorry. No one likes to keep a secret from a cop any more than I do, but that would be just begging for trouble. I'll do this much, I'll make them ask for it, I won't volunteer it--" Footsteps from above, on the next flight of stairs, interrupted me. It was Andy Dunn coming down. He caught sight of us, and told Prescott his father would like to see him in Mrs. Hawthorne's room. Prescott looked at me half angrily and half pleadingly, and I shook my head. Andy addressed me: "Dad would like to see Nero Wolfe too. Where is he?" 190 WHERE THERE'S A WILL I answered that one, and they went off, and I moseyed to the end of the corridor and sat on a bench. After a while I started down to the main floor to look over fresh arrivals, but got shooed back up before I touched bottom, and went to the library and appropriated a comfortable chair. It was while I was there that a maid came around with sandwiches and milk and ginger ale, and I took enough to last a while. The next scene I had any part in was when a squad man appeared and said that Mr. Dunn himself had suggested that everyone in the house submit to having their finger-- prints taken, and the others had agreed, and he was prepared to oblige me. Having just wasted a lot of breath trying to persuade the dick on guard in the library that it would be conducive to the interest of law and order to let me use the phone, I was sore. I refused, and said my prints were on file downtown, since I was a licensed detective. He said he knew that, but it would be more convenient to take them with the others. I said it would be more convenient for me to go home and go to bed, since it was after dark, and he could go sit on a trylon. I admit I was churlish, but so were they. All I wanted to do was phone the house and ask Fritz how he was. I got tired of the library and wandered out to the hall again. The three kids were there, Celia and Sara sitting on a bench and Andy standing in front FR1;I' WHERE THERE*S A WILL 191 of them, talking in whispers. They looked at me and stopped whispering, but had nothing to say to me. Not wanting to interfere with any childish secrets, I went on up to the next floor. The third door on the left was standing wide open, and a glance through as I passed by revealed May and June seated side by side on a sofa. I noted that May had exchanged the old faded gown for something fresher, a white dress with pink spots. At the street end of the hall was a window, and I went there and stood a while, looking down at the confusion outdoors. Parked cars were solid at the curb on both sides, and streams of both pedestrian and vehicle traffic were being kept moving by a scattering of cops. The radio certainly is a blessing for people who like their meat fresh. Standing there surveying the bustling scene, I turned from time to time at the sound of footsteps behind me, but it was never anything more exciting than one of the inmates en route to or from the stairs, or a dick who was obviously a messenger from the ground floor. On two occasions, however, the footsteps kept coming until they got to me. The first time it was Osric Stauffer. He gazed at me from ten paces off, evidently decided I was the customer he was calling on, and came clear up to me before be spoke. "I understand Nero Wolfe isn't around. If you--" 192 WHERE THERE'S A WILL "I don't know where he is," I said firmly. "So Dunn tells me. But if you--the fact is, I was looking for you before--when they sent for me--" I wouldn't have said that at that moment he was living up to much of anything. He was close to pitiful. He was trying to keep from trembling but couldn't, and his voice sounded as if his throat was badly in need of oiling. I said, "Here I am, but I'm in one hell of a temper. You don't look very happy yourself." "I suppose--I don't. This ghastly--right herewith all of us here." "Yeah, sure. It wouldn't have been so bad if she'd been all alone in the house." I was hoping he'd resent that enough to quit looking pathetic, but his mind was too occupied even to realize it was an ill-timed jest. All he did was move ten inches closer to me and speak in a lower and more urgent tone: "Do you want to earn a thousand dollars?" "Certainly. Don't you?" "For nothing," he said. "Really nothing. I've just had a talk with Skinner, the district attorney. I didn't tell him about my being behind those curtains--you know--when you came in and saw me. It would have been--it would have sounded too damned silly." He pulled one of the poorest imitations of a jolly little laugh in my long experience. FR1;WHERE THERE'S A WILL 193 "It was silly--the silliest thing I ever did in my life. I'll give you--I mean, when they question you .--if you forget you saw me there--you'll earn a thousand dollars--just to save me the embarrassment--I haven't got that much with me, but you can take my word--" He ran down. I grinned at him. "No spik Eeng- Us." "But I tell you--" "No, brother. If you didn't kill her, you'd be overpaying me. If you did, you're a piker. But if it will relieve your mind any to know it, my rule is never to give a cop anything to hold if it's something I might want back. There are a few pieces of information I intend to keep at least temporarily for my private use--since Nero Wolfe has retired --and the fact that you sneak into bars in private houses is one of them." "But--you say temporarily--I've got to know--" "That's the best I can do for you, and don't offer me any more pennies. My mother told me not to accept money from strangers." He was by no means satisfied. It appeared that what he wanted was an anti-aggression bloc with unilateral action rigidly excluded, and he was pretty stubborn about it. I don't know how I would have got rid of him if John Charles Dunn FR1;194 WHERE THERE'S A WILL hadn't come down the hall, caught sight of him, and taken him off into a room. For, I calculated, a report of his session with Skinner. The second approach to my anchorage by the window was just after I had returned from a trip to the library to get an ash tray. This time I wasn't being sought for; at least it didn't look like it. Sara and Celia and Andy came up together from the floor below, and saw me, and Sara said something to the other two which seemed to start an argument. They hissed back and forth for a couple of minutes, and then Andy and Celia entered at the open door through which I had seen May and June seated talking, and Sara trotted up to me. As she approached I observed: "I see they haven't arrested you yet." "Of course not. Why should they?" "They're apt to. If you confess to enough crimes and misdemeanors, you'll hit on one they can't prove you didn't do." "Don't be so darned smart." She sat down on the bench that was there. "This--all this--has gone to my legs. I can't stand up. It stimulates me like cocktails on an empty stomach. I suppose when I go to bed, if I go to bed at all, I'll be crushed and I'll lie and stare at the dark and be miserable, and I may even throw up, but now it just makes my legs weak and excites my brain. I have got a brain." FR1;WHERE THERE'S A WILL 195 has a cricket." I sat beside her. "You remind me of a cricket." "That might interest me some day, but it doesn't now. Andy was disagreeing with me, and of course Celia was on his side. Heavens, are they hooked! Andy says that the family is in danger, in horrible danger, and that we ought to stick together and trust no one." "Whereas you're in favor of trusting? Who, me?" "Not trust exactly. Trust doesn't enter into it that I can see. I was merely going to tell you something that happened this afternoon." "I must warn you, Miss Dunn, that after that confession of yours I'll suspect anything you say. I doubt if I'll even take the trouble to check up on it." She made an unladylike noise. "Nobody's asking you to check up on it. Only it happened, and I'm going to tell you. I told dad, and I don't think he even heard me. I told Mr. Prescott, and he said, 'Yes, yes,' and patted me on the shoulder. I told Andy and Celia, and I swear to heaven they think I made it up. Why the dickens would I make it up that somebody stole my camera?" "Oh. Is that what happened?" "Yes, and whoever it was took two rolls of film too. You see, we came down to New York from the FR1;196 WHERE THERE'S A WILL country Wednesday morning. Dad had to go back to Washington, but the famous Hawthorne girls decided the rest of us should camp in this house until after the funeral, and Aunt Daisy said all right." She shivered. "Doesn't that veil give you the creeps?" I said it did. She went on. "It certainly does me. When we got here Wednesday morning, I went to my room on 19th Street and brought a bag of clothes. I had nothing with me in the country because Mr. Prescott took me right up there from the shop. Then after the funeral he read the will to us and all this mess started. So we all stayed here Thursday night and again last night. I've been sleeping in that room with Celia." She pointed to the second door on the left. "And this afternoon I noticed my camera was gone. Somebody stole it." "Or maybe borrowed it." "No, I've asked everyone, including the servants. Besides, they went through my bag too, messed it all up, and took two rolls of film." ""Maybe a servant did it. She wouldn't admit it when you asked, you know. Very few people have a confession complex like you. Or maybe Aunt Daisy is a kleptomaniac as well as an eavesdropper." "How do you know she's an eavesdropper?" "I've seen her at work." WHERE THERE'S A WILL 197 "Have you? I never have. Andy says if my camera was stolen it must have been by a member of the family and the best thing I can do is keep my mouth shut about it." "That sounds sensible. If it ever comes to a vote, my ballot goes to Aunt Daisy. Were the two rolls of film�Ah, company's coming." It was a dick I didn't know, looking stern and important. He came up to us. "Archie Goodwin? Inspector Cramer wants you downstairs." CHAPTER FOURTEEN the stage selected for my personal appearance was the music room. Some magazines and books had been cleared off of a large table, and at the far side of it sat Elistrict Attorney Skinner, in his shirt sleeves with his hair rumpled up. Inspector Cramer, with his coat and vest, which I had never seen him without, was on the piano bench. At one end of the table was Police Commissioner Hombert, looking tired an-d frustrated, and at the other end was a detective with a notebook. The chair ready for me was placed properly, so they could all see my face, with che light shining in my eyes. I sat dowl and said, "This is quite a compliment, all three of you like this." Cramer fc�lurted at me, "That'll do! This is one time we wait no gags! And no hedging! We want answers and- that's all!" "Sure, I understand that," I said in a hurt voice, "but I come in here expecting to be questioned by a sergeant oa" maybe a lieutenant, and when I actually find that the three most brilliant--" "All righ-t, Goodwin," Skinner snapped. "You can speak a piece for us some other time. Where's Nero Wolfes?" 198 FR1;I WHERE THERE^S A WILL 199 "I don't know. I've told at least a million--" "I know you have. We're told at his house that he's not there. He left here immediately after you found the body. Where did he go?" "Search me." "Where did he say he was going?" "He didn't say. If you want facts, I'm out. If you want an opinion, you can have mine." "Let's have it." "I think he went home to dinner." "Nonsense. He was here on an important case, with important clients, and a murder was committed right under his nose. Do you expect me to believe--not even Nero Wolfe would be eccentric enough--" "I don't know about eccentric enough, but he was hungry enough. He had a bum lunch." I made a gesture. "You say you were told he isn't home. Naturally. He doesn't want to be disturbed. You might pry the door open with a search warrant, but what would you write on it? If you've asked questions around here, you must have discovered by now that he was upstairs in the library from 10:30 this morning until just before we discovered the body. He didn't leave it once. So what do you want him for anyway?" Commissioner Hombert barked, "One thing we FR1;200 WHERE THERE'S A WILL want is to ask him where and when he saw Naomi Karn today and what was said." "He didn't see her today." "We want to know the terms of the agreement he made with her on behalf of his clients. We want to see the agreement." "There isn't any. He didn't make any." "I choke on that," Cramer declared bluntly. "If she made no agreement, signed nothing, Hawthorne's fortune belonged to her when she died, and Wolfe's clients are out of luck." "And," I suggested, "whoever inherits from her is in luck. Had you thought of that?" Hombert growled. Cramer looked startled. Skinner demanded, "And who is that? Who inherits from her?" "I haven't the slightest idea. Not me." "You're pretty fresh, aren't you, Goodwin?" "Yes, sir. I resent being corraled up there with the herd for four hours. You could have taken me first as well as last. I know why you did it." I nodded at the pile of notes on the table. "You wanted to toss my lies right back at me. Go ahead and try." But they wasted an hour peering into empty holes before they got to that part. When and where had I first seen Naomi Karn. Ditto Wolfe. Exactly what had happened, and what had been said, when I WHERE THERE^S A WILL 201 I went to her apartment to get her the day before. Then the previous visitation of the Hawthornes and auxiliaries. What had April said. What had May said. What had June said. Had anyone threatened anyone. Then the talk with Naomi after the others had left. I tried to be obliging, but of course there were certain details that I regarded as inappropriate for the detective to have in his notebook, such as Naomi's calling Stauffer Ossie and Daisy Hawthorne's attack on the integrity of our clients, and I excluded those. Another thing I neglected to mention was the Davis-Dawson episode that morning. I merely said that Wolfe got a phone call from Dunn around 9:30 and came to 67th Street, and that I joined him there about an hour later. Then I pulled a sheet of paper from my pocket and handed it across to Skinner. "I thought a timetable might simplify it," I told him, "so I typed one on a machine up in the library while I was awaiting your pleasure." Hombert and Cramer got up and went to have a look at it, one over each shoulder of the district attorney. While they were digesting it I glanced over the carbon copy I had kept for myself: 10:4? Joined Wolfe, Dunn & wife in li| brary. FR1;202 WHERE THERE'S A WILL 11:10 Butler announced Skinner, Cra- mer & Hombert calling on Dunn. 11:30 Phoned Durkin, Panzer & Keems. Sara Dunn came. 12:10 April, Celia & Stauffer. 12:30 Those three left. Panzer & Keems came, got instructions, and left. 1:10 Lunch. 2:15 Cramer came. 2:35 He left. Daisy H. came. 2:40 Durkin came. 2:42 I went outdoors and spoke to Or- rie. Re-entered house and saw Naomi Karn in living room. 2:50 Durkin left. 3:10 I went downstairs and had short talk with Naomi Karn and returned to library. 4:55 Phone call from Panzer. 5:00 Daisy H. left. 5:05 I went to living room. Naomi Karn not there. Eugene Davis was. Took him to library. 5:40 Prescott came. 5:45 Davis & Prescott left. 5:55 Butler came. Dunn wanted Wolfe in living room. Wolfe & I went. WHERE THERE^S A WILL 203 6:0^ Bronson, Stauffer, Prescott & Ritchie went upstairs, leaving Dunn, "Wolfe & me in living room. 6:11 Found body. It looked all right. The few little items I had left out, such as Daisy's first draperies act, Sara's asking to see Wolfe, the counterfeit Daisy and her disappearance, and Stauffer's ambush, were all things they couldn't be expected to get from other sources. "It's nice to have this," said Skinner. "Thank you very much." So he was going to try being oily. "Now just tell us what Wolfe was discussing with Mr. and Mrs. Dunn." That started the second hour. I had had plenty of time to get my mind in order, so it went along without much friction. Having ruled out Sara's confession and Daisy's story of the cornflower and a few other things I gave them enough to account for the afternoon. Naturally there were a few little clashes, the most serious one arising from Skinner's suggestion that it would be a good plan for me to turn over my notes of the various interviews. I told him they were Nero Wolfe's property and if he got them at all it would have to be from Wolfe himself. They 204 WHERE THERE'S A WILL yapped some about that and Hombert got prettv unpleasant, but the notes stayed in my pockc . After that they calmed down again, and later even did me the honor to ask my opinion on a technical point. The police, they said, had seen the bar only when it was lit by electricity, whereas I had been there when the only light came from the little window in one corner, and only a moment after Daisy Hawthorne had left by the rear door. Mrs. Hawthorne had admitted to them that she had been there and that I had seen her leave. She had stated that, being reluctant to appear before people wearing that veil, she often entered the bar from the rear to observe callers from the shelter of the curtains; that she had done so today when she had been told that Ritchie and Bronson had come to inspect Hawthorne's private papers; that she had been there only a few minutes when my approach caused her to retreat; and that she had seen nothing on the floor behind the bar. With the light as it was in there at that time, did I think she could have entered by the door and failed to see the body? I said yes, the light had been so dim that even when I stooped right over the body I had barely been able to tell who it was. They skated around a while longer, and then Skinner sprung one on me that I had been expect" WHERE THERE'S A WILL 205^ ing ever since I entered. It had in fact been on my tongue a couple of times to anticipate it, but I had decided there was no sense in depriving them of a little pleasure along with their work. So I concealed my grin when Skinner began a build-up for it. He said casually, "One point that bothers us is that no one heard any outcry, not even the servants at the rear of this floor, and there wasn't the slightest sign of a struggle. Miss Karn seems to have been healthy and fairly sturdy. But apparently she didn't call for help and she offered no resistance to speak of." "That's surprising," I agreed. "We didn't hear anything up in the library.'* "I was just going to ask if you did." "Nope. Of course, in cases of strangulation you'll often find that the victim was first rendered helpless by a blow or a drug or something. Your M.E. could tell you. And by the way, that reminds me of something I forgot to mention, while Davis was up there with us I offered to get him a drink because he looked like he could use one, and I went to the bar and poured about half a pint from a bottle of MacNeal's Diamond Label." Cramer glared at me and snorted, "The hell you did." Hombert only snorted. Skinner said dryly, . < FR1;206 WHERE THERE'S A WILL "Some day. Goodwill, you're going to pull one of those cute ones and it'll fly right back in your face." "Gosh, that wasn't cute," I protested. "To be honest, I was worried. I saw that bruise on her head which must have come from a good hard blow. The handiest thing around there to strike a blow with, enough to put her out at one crack, was one of those bottles, especially if the murderer approached through the bar and the draperies, whicli seemed likely. If he did that, of course he would wipe his prints from the bottle before he put it back. But my prints were there, nice fresh ones, on that bottle of MacNeal's. Would you fellows find them? That's what had me worried stiff. You might possibly miss them. But probably you wouldn't. So I finally decided the only thing to do was to come clean and tell you exactly--" "Shut up and beat it!" Cramer growled. "Why in the name of God 40,000 people get killed in automobile accidents every year and not one of them is you--take him out, Grier." That to the dick who had brought me in and who was on a chair by the door. "Go home and if Nero "white's there tell him--don't tell him anything. I'll see him. I'll see you too. Stay where I can find you." "Right." I got up. "Good night, gentlemen, and good luck. You can imagine how I felt when I realFR1;WHERE THERE^S A WILL 207 ized that when I reached across the bar for that bottle of MacNeal's the body was right there--already there on the floor, dead--must have been-- okay, I'm going, sorry if I irritated you--" Grier followed me out and told the cop at the entrance door to let me through to freedom. Outside another pair of cops looked me over as I went by. There was still a row of P.D. cars parked at the curb. I walked to the corner and flagged a taxi. On the way downtown the driver wanted to chat about the murder, but the best I had to offer was illnatured grunts. I inserted my key and turned it and the knob, but the door opened two inches and stopped. The chain was on. So I leaned on the bell. In a second there were steps in the hall, and Fritz's eye was at the crack, peering at me. "Ah, Archie?" He sounded relieved. "Are you alone?" "No, I've got a machine-gun squad. Open up!" He did so. I left the closing to him and proceeded. The office was dark. I entered the kitchen. It was illuminated and smelled good as usual, and the French newspaper Fritz had been reading was on a chair. He trotted in and I confronted him. "What time did Wolfe get home?" "At 6:40. There's some duckling left, and some cheese cake, if you--" 208 WHERE THERE'S A WILL "No, thanks. I had some lovely sandwiches." got the jug from the refrigerator and poured a g,la< of milk. "What time did he go to bed?" "Soon after eleven. He said he was tired. He ate with me in the kitchen, not to have a light in the dining room, because he said the police were after him. Is he in danger, Archie? Is it perhaps that we�" "Sure he's in danger. Gulosity. Forget it. What the dickens is that thing?" I went closer to inspect it: a branch of something a foot long, with a dozen twigs on it, a lot of little dark green leaves, and many tiny thorns that looked sharp, there on top of the low cabinet in a vase of water. Fritz said he didn't know what it was; that Fred Durkin had brought it and Wolfe had put it in the vase, with some remark about ripening the seeds. "Oh," I said, "then it must be a clue. Fred's a wonder for collecting clues. I'll bet a nickel those little stickers are Haw thorns. So it's a haw. Haw haw. What time did Fred report?" "About half past ten. He had quite a few clues in a bag. And Saul came a little earlier and talked with Mr. Wolfe. Also Johnny telephoned." Fritz glanced at the pad which he kept beside his phone. "At 10:46�Oh, here, something for you�" He WHERE THERE'S A WILL 209 took a piece of paper from under the pad and handed it to me. I looked at it. Archie: |1| I am not at home. IR N. W. I tossed it in the trash basket. "Haw haw haw haw," I observed, and went up to bed. In the morning I half expected a summons to the bedroom when Fritz returned from delivering the breakfast tray, but there was none. I thought, all right, if the big buffalo wants to pretend it's just another Sunday morning I can too, and settled down in the kitchen to enjoy my anchovy omelet with half a dozen pictures and three full pages of text regarding the DunnHawthorneStaufferKarn affair in the morning paper. Someone in Rockland County had talked, and the suspicion of foul play in Hawthorne's death was also loose, so it was a regular picnic. Any fear that Wolfe had actually dived into a relapse was removed a little after nine o'clock, when Orrie Gather and Fred Durkin arrived simultaneously and told me they had been instructed to report and await orders. I was plenty relieved, but FR1;210 WHER-E THERE'S A WILL I was still determined that if communication was going to be re-established it wouldn't be through any advances by me. I knew he was up in the plant rooms because I had heard his elevator. Then I took a step. A phone call came from Inspector Cramer. I talked with him, and hung up, and buzzed the plant rooms on the inside wire. Wolfe answered. I addressed him formally. "Good morning, sir. Inspector Cramer of the homicide squad just phoned that he was up all night, he wants to see you, and he will be here probably a little after twelve. He is working on a murder case. There are two kinds of detectives that work on homicides. One kind hastens to the scene of a murder. The other kind hastens away from it. Inspector Cramer is the first kind." "I said in that note that I'm not at home." "You can't continue being not at home indefinitely. Are there any orders for Fred and Orrie?" "No. Have them wait." The receiver went dead. An hour later, at the customary time, eleven o'clock, his elevator descended and he entered the office. I waited until he was holding his chair down and then stated to him: , "I see you intend to brazen it out. I admit nothing is to be gained by a prolonged controversy. All WHERE THERE*S A WILL - 211 i.,.-^ .. i/^ I say is, that was the most preposterous goddam performance in the entire history of the investigation of crime. That's all. Now for my report--" "There was nothing preposterous about it. It was the only jgnsible---" ^^3y/-'^*/^ "You couldn't sell me that in a thousand years. Do you want my report?" He sighed, leaned back, and half closed his eyes. He looked as fresh as a daisy, and about as shamefaced as a fan dancer. "Go ahead." I gave it to him, complete, from memory, for I had made no notes. It took quite a while. He asked no questions and let me go on to the end without any interruption. When I was through he sighed again, sat up, and rang for beer. "It's hopeless," he declared. "You say they sent for you last? They had interviewed all the others?" "I think so. Certainly most of them. I think all of them." "It's hopeless. I mean for us. With tenacity and perseverance the police may break that circle, but I doubt it. It's welded too tight. They were all there in the country when Hawthorne was killed. They were all in that house when Miss Karn died. Too many of them. I might get the truth if I worked hard enough for it, but what would I do with it? Could I establish it? How? They don't want it, not 212 WHERE THERE'S A WILL even Dunn himself, though he thinks he does. And I don't want it myself if I can't use it. Especially at the price it would cost. Do I?" "No, sir. But you could use a little deposit at the bank." "I'm aware of that. But the death of Miss Karn makes it impossible to proceed even with the matter of the will. If she left a will herself--pfui! It's hopeless." "Then what are Fred and Orrie sitting around for, at eight bucks a day? Local color?" "No. I'm hanging on until I see Mr. Cramer. And others who'll be coming before the day's out. Two or three of them, I fancy, will want to see me." "They sure will," I agreed. "Stauffer will want to bribe you. Daisy will want to sell you another cornflower. And of course Sara will want you to recover her camera. Oh, I forget to mention that. She told me somebody stole her camera." "Miss Dunn? When?" "Last night just before they sent for me. I mean she told me then. It was yesterday afternoon she missed the camera from her room there in the house. Also two rolls of film she had in her bag or suitcase. She said she asked everybody, including the servants, but no soap." "Had the rolls of film been exposed?" "I don't know. I didn't get a chance to.ask her, FR1;WHERE THERE'S A WILL 213 J because we were interrupted by Cramer sending for me." "Get Miss Dunn. At once." I stared. "She didn't offer any reward for its recovery."

"Get her, please! This is our first chance to pick up something that was dropped. It may be only a thieving servant, but I doubt it, with the films gone too. Do the others know she told you about it?" "Andy and Celia do. I can't phone her, because the cops--" "I didn't say phone her! I said get her! Bring her here!" CHAPTER FIFTEEN < �;,- .'-�-� � on the way uptown in the roadster I devised two or three nifty ruses for getting the professional fiend off the premises without annoying either cops or family, but by the time I arrived at 67th Street I had decided that direct action was the quickest and most feasible. A flatfoot out front who was keeping sightseers on the move seemed to think I wasn't needed there, but I talked my way through him, pushed the button, and was admitted by the butler. I asked for Mr. Dunn. In a few minutes Dunn joined me in the living room. He looked as if he hadn't slept for a week and never expected to again. I told him Nero Wolfe had beat it the day before in order to pursue certain activities without restriction from the police, that he was at home and was on the job. The poor guy was so punch drunk that he couldn't even ask an intelligent question. He sort of sputtered that he didn't see what "wolfe could do, he hoped he could do something but what, it was beyond remedy, did Wolfe have any idea . . . I had never expected to find myself patting John Charles Dunn on the shoulder to buck him up. But I did, and spent twenty minutes with him trying to 214 WHERE THERE'S A WILL 215 persuade him that Nero Wolfe would roll the clouds away and the sun would shine. That was partly in preparation for telling him his daughter Sara was wanted in White's office, but when I finally did so he wasn't even curious as to why we wanted her. He had been under a strain for months, and now this had about finished him. He sent the butler for her, and in no time I had her out of the house and in the roadster. But when I got to "white's house I drove on past without slowing down, eighty yards or so, and then rolled to the curb and stopped. Sara Dunn looked at me. "What's the matter? That's it back there, isn't it?" "Yeah, but that car in front is Inspector Cramer's, and what he don't know won't hurt him. We'll wait here till he goes." "Oh. Darn it anyway. It would be simply marvelous, doings like this, if it wasn't so--if it wasn't my own f-family--" "All right, sister. I'll teach you to be a detective some day." I patted her hand because her lip was trembling and I didn't want her crying, but it only made it tremble more, so I quit. I twisted around on the seat to get a good view of the rear through the window, and after a while, ten minutes or so, saw Cramer emerge and start down the stoop. I FR1;216 WHERE THERE'S A WILL started the car, went around the block and into 35th again, and parked in front of the house. I was about half-bored as I sat and listened to Wolfe starting in on her. Not that I was too dumb to be able to figure that if her camera and films had been stolen it might have been done by somebody to conceal something connected either with the will or with the murder. Of course that was a possibility, but I was cold on it for two reasons. First, on account of Sara's intimate disclosures when she confessed she had betrayed her father and slaughtered her uncle, I wanted proof that anything had been stolen at all. Second, although she was loony she wasn't stupid, and she must have realized that if anybody was going to be exposed by investigating the theft of the camera it could only be someone in her family or close to it. I never knew until the following winter, when I took her to a show one evening, that she thought all the time she knew who had killed Hawthorne and Naomi Karn both, and it was someone she didn't like. ^ Apparently Wolfe was taking the larceny seriously. He went into all the details, making sure she had actually left the camera in the bedroom, and the films in the suitcase; also, he wanted to know exactly how and when she had informed each of the others of her loss, and what they had said and how they had acted. She gave him all that without FR1;WHERE THERE^S A WILL 217 any visible reluctance or hesitation, except when he asked about Osric Stauffer. At that she balked for a moment, and then said she hadn't mentioned it to Stauffer. "wolfe asked her why, and she said because she wouldn't have believed anything Stauffer told her, so there was no use asking him. Why, did she know Stauffer to be a liar? No, but she didn't like his mouth, or his eyes either, and she wouldn't trust him. Wolfe's brows went up a little. "Am I to assume, Miss Dunn, that you think Mr. Stauffer stole your camera?" She shook her head. "I wouldn't expect you to assume anything. I thought detectives didn't assume, I thought they deduced." White grunted. "They do if they can. They try. Anyhow, I doubt if your dislike for Mr. Stauffer's mouth and eyes will convict him of anything." He glanced up at the clock, which said a quarter past one. "Let's try another path briefly before we have lunch. You say the two rolls of film in the suitcase had not been exposed. Then if what the thief was after was exposed film, he presumably took those two cartons on a chance, being in too much of a hurry to investigate there in your bedroom. And the only exposed film he got was the one that was still in the camera." 218 WHERE THERE'S A WILL Sara shook her head again. "He didn't get any at all. There was none in the camera." Wolfe frowned. "You said that the picture you took in this office Friday afternoon finished a roll, and that that roll was in the camera when you put it in the bedroom." "I know I did. But you didn't let me go on. I removed the film from the camera Friday evening and took it to a drugstore to be developed. That was when I bought the two rolls�" "Confound it," Wolfe snapped, "where are they?" "Where are what?" "The pictures!" "I suppose at the drugstore." She fished in her handbag and got out a piece of cardboard. "Here's the check. He said they'd be ready the next evening �that was yesterday�" "May I have that, please?" Wolfe extended a hand. "Thank you. Archie, call Fred and Orrie." I went to the kitchen, where they were picking their teeth after a repast, and brought them in. Wolfe handed the check to Orrie and told him: "That's for some snapshots. The address is on it. Miss Dunn left the film Friday evening. Take the roadster; I want the pictures and the film as soon as possible. I think I do. I'll know when I look at them." WHERE THERE'S A WILL 219 "Yes. sir." They went. Wolfe got up and stood scowling at Sara. "Would you mind removing your hat. Miss Dunn? I deduce the thing is a hat, because it's on your head. Thank you. I don't like restaurant conventions in my dining room." The occasions have been rare when I have known the pressure of business to cause Wolfe to accelerate the tempo of a meal, but it did that Sunday. For the first half hour, while the melon and cutlets and broccoli were being disposed of, he maintained the usual easy balance of consumption and conversation; but during the service of the salad Fred and Orrie returned, were admitted by Fritz, and left to wait in the office. I got two grins in a row, the first wlxen "wolfe broke his rule excluding any reference to business from the dining room by asking Fritz to ask Orrie if he had got what he went for, and the second when the salad dressing was ready in six minutes instead of the usual eight. The peeling andl slicing of peaches would have hung up a record, -too, if I had clocked it; and while I couldn't have called his step nimble as he led the way back into the office, it certainly didn*t drag any. He took the envelope from Orrie and told him and Fre

Sara's information was-that Number One had been taken about nine o'clock Wednesday morning. May Hawthorne was exhibiting one of the crows which had been shot the day beipre byJSToel Hawthorne and which Titus Ames had Just found in a meadow; Mrs. Dunn wasJooking at it curiously while April Hawthorne regarded it with revulsion. Sara had snapped them before they knew It, and a moment later, hearing a noise behind her on the terrace, had turned, seen Daisy with her veil standing there, and snapped her too. That was Number Two. Number Three had been taken shortly after six o'clock Tuesday afternoon, when Sara had emerged from the shop where she worked and found Glenn Prescott there with his car waiting to take her to the country. Number Four had been taken some three hours earlier the same afternoon, Tuesday. Sara had gone up Park Avenue to deliver a vase to a customer in a hurry, and had taken her camera along as usual. She had seen, crossing the sidewalk, the woman whom she had seen before, months previously, entering Hartlespoon's in the company of her Uncle Noel; and the door of the car which the woman headed for was being opened by a man whom she recognized, though she had not seen him for years, as Eugene Davis, the law partner of FR1;222 WHERE THERE'S A WILL Glenn Prescott. She took a shot as the woman was approaching the car. Number Five had been taken Wednesday morning, not long before Number One. She had gone through the woods for a look at the spot where her Uncle Noel had met his death, and, finding her father, her brother, and Osric Stauffer there, had earned remonstrances from all three of them by snapping a picture of the scene. Number Six, of course, needed no explanation. It was the one she had taken with a flash there in "White's office Friday afternoon. My glass was as good as Wolfe's, and so I had no handicap with regard to details, but after completing my third inspection of everything I could find, I passed. As far as I was concerned, the only thing those snaps proved was that Sara was handy with a Leitax. I went to my desk and sat down. Wolfe was through, too. He was leaning back in his chair with his eyes closed. I watched him. His lips were moving, pushing out and thickening, and then closing in again to make a thin line. I watched him, and wondered whether he really had something or was only bluffing. If he was bluffing it could have been only for my benefit, for Sara Dunn didn't know what that movement of his lips meant. Suddenly she demanded, "Well? Are you deducing something?" FR1;WHERE THERE^S A WILL 223 His lips stopped moving. His eyelids raised to make slits, enough to see her through, and after a moment he slowly shook his head. "No," he murmured at her, "the deducing is finished. That was simple. The hard part of it--" "But you--" She stiffened, staring at him. "You don't mean--those pictures--not really--" "Not the pictures. The picture. Just one of them. From it I deduce, among other things, that if you go back to that house you're apt to get killed. And you're certainly going to be needed, so-- Yes, Fritz?" Fritz, having closed the door behind him, advanced halfway to the desk and spoke: "A caller, sir, Mr. John Charles Dunn. A gentleman and three ladies are with him." CHAPTER SIXTEEN there was an instant's silence and then Sara Dunn popped out of her chair and pretended she was a cyclone. At that, she was young and active, and might have presented difficulties if her hands had been free to continue with my face where Daisy had left off the day before, but she was using them to collect snapshots. She had the envelope containing the film and the discards in one hand, and was reachLig for the remaining six with the other, when I gathered her in. I did it promptly and neatly, with my left arm clamping both her arms and her body above the waist, and my right hand smothering her mouth and nose and pushing the back of her head into my ribs. She couldn't even kick, because my knees had her legs pinned against the desk. Wolfe asked, "Are you hurting her?" "Not to speak of." He grunted, got up and came around the desk, and retrieved the envelope from her left hand. There wasn't much grip in her fingers on account of the pressure on her arm. Then he collected the six pictures she hadn't got hold of, dropped them 224 FR1;WHERE THERE'S A WILL 225 I into the envelope, crossed to the safe, put the en| velope in a drawer, and closed the safe door. He ambled back to his chair and deposited himself, and told me with a frown, "I don't like the look on your face when you're doing things like that.. Turn her loose. "She may scream.'* "Then hold on a minute." He directed his eyes at hers. "You have done everything you can, and it cannot be undone. I'm going to finish this business as soon as possible. None of your family--your father and mother and brother--will suffer by it, nor will you. But I don't want any talk about those pictures. Furthermore, you are not to leave this house. The attempt to steal that film shows that the murderer is aware of the blunder he made. He doesn't know where the pictures are and I don't want him to know just yet, but he knows that anything seen by your camera was seen by you too. He's a bungler and an ass, but that merely increases your danger. Unless you promise not to leave this house, I'll have to feed the police a lot of stuff they're not prepared to digest, to let them take the responsibility for your death instead of me-- Let her go, Archie." She was half Hawthorne and there was no telling about her reactions, so I unwrapped my arms and retreated two paces simultaneously. But she ignored FR1;226 WHERE THERE'S A WILL me completely. She straightened up there against the desk, inhaled with a couple of gasps to catch up on her oxygen, and sputtered at Wolfe: "You said he:' Wolfe shook his head. "You'll have to wait. Miss Dunn. It will be ticklish going. I'm paying you a compliment by not having Mr. Goodwin tape your mouth shut and lock you in upstairs. I'm going by your eyes. You're not to leave this house, and you're to tell no one about those pictures--" The door burst open and John Charles Dunn stumbled in, with May and June, Celia Fleet, and Osric Stauffer at his heels. He didn't literally stumble, but he did run into a chair, and then stopped and grabbed the back of it and stood there and said: "I got tired waiting. We got tired waiting." Sara looked at him, at his sagging face and bloodshot eyes, and then made a dive for him, crying out, "Daddy! Daddy dear!" She put her arms around his neck and kissed him. Apparently the professional fiend acting that way served to release tension all around. Dunn put his arm around his daughter's shoulders and made noises in his throat. Celia Fleet stared at them and chewed on her lower lip. Stauffer glared around with eyes as bloodshot as Dunn's. June sat down and got out her handkerchief and wiped off two FR1;WHERE THERE'S A WILL 227 tears that had started down her cheeks. May marched up to the desk and said to Wolfe in a biting and contemptuous tone: "./ r/ "' "I didn't want to come here. My sister and brother-in-law insisted on it. Which was it, funk or treachery?" "Now, Miss Hawthorne--" Stauffer approached, remonstrating. "That won't help the situation--" "April's arrested," June blurted. "They've arrested her!" I was trying to help out by pushing chairs behind knees here and there. They certainly were a woebegone outfit. "She's not arrested," Dunn said as he sank into a chair without looking at it. Still a lawyer, in misfortune up to his chin. "She was asked to go to the district attorney's office and she went. But the way it stands now--" "I tell you, John," May snapped at him, "before we tell this man anything, we should demand a satisfactory explanation--" "Nonsense," Stauffer sputtered irritably. "Damn it all, you talk as if we could choose--" "Please, all of you!" Wolfe pushed air with his palm. "Stop jabbering. Your minds aren't working." He looked at May. "Apparently, Miss Haw-^ thorne, you are resentful because when we found Miss Karn's dead body I came home to think it over 228 WHERE THERE'S A WILL instead of sitting there all night starving and twiddling my thumbs. I thought you had more sense. To answer your question, it was neither funk nor treachery; it was wit. Anyhow, I'm not answerable to you. You, with others, engaged me to negotiate with Miss Karn, but Miss Karn is dead. Mr. Dunn engaged me to investigate the murder of Noel Hawthorne." He looked at Dunn. "Am I still so engaged?" "Yes. Of course." Dunn didn't sound very enthusiastic. "But I don't know what you can do-- Prescott's down there with April--" "Let's clear the air a little," Wolfe suggested. "April is in no danger whatever, except of being annoyed." They all stared at him. May demanded, "How do you know that?" "I know more than that," Wolfe assured her. "But that's what I give you now. Accept it; it's good-- Next, Mr. Dunn, I offer you a suggestion. Yesterday Mr. Goodwin found Miss Karn seated in the living room, talking with April Hawthorne who was disguised with a veil to pass as Mrs. Noel Hawthorne." Dunn nodded. "That was one thing--" "One thing you came here now to see me about. Of course. But my suggestion: Mr. Goodwin, on an impulse, parted the draperies that conceal the bar, WHERE THERE^S A WILL 229 and saw Mr. Stauffer standing there. Last evening Stauffer offered Goodwin a thousand dollars not to tell the police about it. Goodwin refused the bribe, but he didn't tell the police, and I didn't tell Inspector Cramer when he called on me this morning. But we might strike a bargain with Stauffer. Since he was Hawthorne's deputy in the foreign department of Daniel Cullen and Company, he must know the truth about that leakage on the Argentine loan. If it happened as you suspected yesterday, when Mrs. Hawthorne was found--" "You're way behind," Stauffer interrupted gruffly. Wolfe's brows lifted. "Behind?" "Yes. You're going to suggest that Dunn forces me to tell the truth about that loan business by threatening to inform the police that I was hiding . behind that curtain when Naomi Karn was there. Aren't you?" "I thought we might try that." "Well, you're late. As long as Hawthorne was alive it was impossible for me to tell Dunn about it, I simply couldn't, but I told him this morning, and we confronted Mrs. Hawthorne with it and made her sign a statement. That was what made her vindictive enough to go to the police with a bunch of lies--" "We don't know that she lied," May objected. FR1;230 WHERE THERE'S A WILL "Even if she stuck to the truth, it's enough to challenge Wolfe's statement that April's in no danger--"

"Let's clean up as we go along," Wolfe put in. "Then you're clear on the affair of the loan, Mr. Dunn?" "I'm clear of perfidy," Dunn said gloomily, "but I let that damned woman make a fool of me. And anyway, with all this--it's all over--" "Not quite," Wolfe declared. "It won't be all over until I'm through with it. With luck even, you should be able to sleep tonight, or tomorrow at the latest. But you can help me remove a few obstructions--excuse me--" The phone was ringing. I got my receiver at my ear, but he must have been on edge, for he reached for his extension without waiting for me. I said, "Office of Nero Wolfe--" "Saul Panzer, Archie. Three-eighteen. I'm reporting from--" Wolfe's voice cut him off: "Hold the wire." Wolfe dropped his instrument on its cradle, arose from his chair, said curtly, "No record, Archie," and made for the door. Fritz, who had been hovering, left the room with him. I plugged in the kitchen extension, kept the receiver to my ear until I heard Wolfe's voice and Saul's answering him, and hung up. FR1;WHERE THERE^S A WILL 231 May Hawthorne said incisively, "He's a mountebank. Talk of our sleeping tonight! I tell you, someone must do something! Prescott down there with April! He may be a good lawyer, but he's not up to this. And Andy's a child. And this windbag of a Wolf e--bah! We're sunk, damn it!" Dunn muttered at her, without conviction, "He says April is in no danger--" "Bluff!" May snorted. "My God, if the best we can do in the face of calamity is sit here and listen--"

"Be quiet, May," June put in with quiet authority. "Quit ragging. You know very well it's Nero Wolfe or nothing. What has anyone else been able to offer except well-meaning condolence? If we're sunk, we're sunk. You stop digging at John. He was on the verge of a collapse before this happened." Her eyes left her sister, to look at her daughter, and her voice changed. "Sara dear. I don't like to ask you what you came here for, but I'd like to know. Mr. Wolfe sent for you. Didn't he?" "Yes." Sara was on a chair next to her father. "He wanted to ask me something. About my camera being stolen. You remember I spoke about it yesterday, and last evening I told Mr. Goodwin. Of course that was all I could tell Mr. Wolfe, that it was gone and I had no idea who took it." So they discussed the camera. There had been 252 WHERE THERE'S A WILL two murders, an estate of millions had apparently gone up the flue as far as they were concerned, Dunn was tumbling headlong off of a national eminence, their April was being questioned by the police as a suspect, and they discussed the camera. That would have been all right if they had had any idea of its relation to the cataclysm, but as far as I could tell nobody had. They were still discussing it when Wolfe came back in. He got into his chair and looked around at the faces. "Now," he said brusquely, "let's tidy up a little. First, Mrs. Hawthorne's vindictiveness after you cornered her on that loan business. I suppose one of the things she told the police was about the cornflower Andy found hanging on a briar, and April's wearing a bunch of cornflowers Tuesday afternoon which had been presented to her by Mr. Stauffer." There were stares and two or three exclamations. Stauffer started, "How the devil--" Wolfe wiggled a finger. "Let me go on. I'm not trying to stagger you with effects. I got that story firsthand, from Mrs. Hawthorne herself yesterday, Did she give it to the police?" "Yes, she did," June replied. "Describing, of course, the scene she saw through a window Tuesday evening, when Andy exhibited the cornflower to you and your husband and told WHERE THERE'S A WILL 233 i where he had found it. I suppose the police quesJtioned you about that?" "Yes." "Did you admit it?" "Of course not. It wasn't true. We denied it." "All three of you?" "Yes." Wolfe grunted. "That's bad. You're going to regret that." "Why should we regret it, since we merely---" "Merely told the truth, Mrs. Dunn? Oh, no. You lied. Don't take me for a fool. You shouldn't even take Mr. Cramer for a fool. Mrs. Hawthorne didn't invent that story. The fact is, you should have told me about it yourself, since you were hiring me for this job. And you'll tell me the truth now, or you'll get out of my office and take the job with you. I'm not being highhanded just for the devil of it. It's important, it may even be vital, that I have a statement from you, your husband and your son, that that cornflower was found there and all three of you saw it. Well?" "It's a trick," May snapped. "Pfui!" Wolfe made a face at her. "This thing is turning you into a dunce. I don't play tricks on clients." He looked at~June7"Well?" Dunn demanded, "Do you have any basis for your assertion that April is not in danger?" mmms 234 WHERE THERE'S A WILL "I do. I'm not disclosing it, but I have it. You'd better either acquire some confidence in me, sir, or fire me." "All right. Andy found a cornflower there and showed it to my wife and me." "Tuesday evening, as Mrs. Hawthorne said?" "Yes." "What did you do with it?" "I threw it in the fireplace." "Do you confirm that, Mrs. Dunn?" June hesitated a second and then said firmly, "Yes." "Good." Wolfe frowned at her. "You'll have to eat your denial to the police, but that's your fault. You had hired me and you should have consulted me. Next. Your sister's masquerade as Mrs. Hawthorne. Mr. Goodwin saw her there with Miss Karn, came straight to the library, and saw Mrs. Hawthorne with me. He ascertained that the one in the library was the real Mrs. Hawthorne by trying to lift her veil. You heard her scream. We concluded that the counterfeit downstairs must be April, the accomplished actress. Did Mrs. Hawthorne give that to the police too?" "Yes," June replied. "How did she know about it?" "Turner told her. The butler. I happened to be in the entrance hall when Miss Karn arrived and WHERE THERE^S A WILL 235 said she wanted to see Mrs. Hawthorne. I told Turner to put Miss Karn in the living room and I would attend to it. On my way upstairs I had an idea. Daisy was in the library with you. The idea was for April to get a dress and veil from Daisy's room and see Miss Karn and find out what she had to say. I found her in May's room and suggested it, and they approved. Mr. Stauffer was there too, and he--" "I didn't," Stauffer put in curtly. "I mean I didn't approve. I strongly disapproved. I went down and entered the bar from the rear and stayed there behind the curtain as a protection for April. Goodwin saw me there." ^ | "And Turner?" Wolfe asked June. t' "I don't think he suspected anything when he saw April come downstairs. She was perfect. She always is. But he knew Daisy was in the library at a moment when she was also in the living room, for he saw her there when he went to tell you that one of your men had arrived. He couldn't tell his mistress about it at once, for he didn't know which one was her, but he told her later." "And now she has told the police." "Yes." "And you have all been questioned. "Yes." "And you have, I hope--except Mr. Stauffer-- told it just as it happened." 236 WHERE THERE'S A WILL "Of course not. 'We denied it." "Good heavens." Wolfe sighed, and compressed his lips. "You have denied the whole thing?" "Yes." "April too?" "Yes." "And Turner presumably is a mealymouthed liar?" "No. He must--we merely said--he must be mistaken." "God bless you." Wolfe was disgusted. "He'd better. You merely said! It's a wonder you're not all locked up! Was Prescott in on this?" "No. No one knew of it except April and May and me--and Mr. Stauffer. Not even my husband, until this morning." June fluttered a hand at him. "And I appeal to you, Mr. Wolfe, to--to understand. Ordinarily I'm not a fool, none of us is. But we've been so shocked and bewildered and helpless --all the sense we had was knocked out of us. For my husband and me this came at the end of months of frightful strain--you must understand--" She faltered to a stop. Wolfe said gruffly, "My understanding wouldn't help you any. You can get that anywhere. Tell me what Miss Karn said to your sister disguised as Mrs. Hawthorne." ' "She wanted a million dollars." ( WHERE THERE'S A WILL 237 "You mean she offered to sign over all but a million?"

"Yes. She said the offer you had made her was ridiculous, but she would be satisfied with a million. April left soon after Mr. Goodwin saw her there, because she knew he would see Daisy in the library. She told Miss Karn she was going upstairs to consult with us about her offer, but she went straight to Daisy's room and got rid of the dress and veil." "And you, Mr. Stauffer? How long did you stay behind the curtain?" "I stayed a while because I thought April might come back. Then when Goodwin looked in and saw me, I realized that she wouldn't. I left a few seconds after that, by the rear." "Miss Karn was there sitting on a chair when you left?" "I suppose she was. I didn't see her." Wolfe's gaze swept the faces. "Here's a question for all of you. When Mr. Goodwin left the living room after a brief conversation with Miss Karn, it was ten minutes past three. Has anyone admitted seeing her there, alive, after that?" They all shook their heads. Dunn said, "Prescott tells me that Davis said Miss Karn was not in the living room when he entered it a little before five o'clock." 238 WHERE THERE'S A WILL "Did Turner take Davis to the living room?" "No. They let me read Turner's statement. Davis entered the living room alone and Turner went upstairs to find Prescott." "Does Davis admit that?" "He hasn't admitted anything. They can't find him. At least they hadn't found him at noon today."

"Indeed." Wolfe's eyes half closed. "Do you know where he is?" "Of course not. How could I?" "I don't know, I'm asking. I should think Prescott might know. Davis bolted out of the library yesterday at a quarter to six, and Prescott went after him a moment later. What about that?" "Prescott says he reached the entrance hall just as Davis was opening the front door to leave. He called to him, but Davis went on out without answering. Turner was there and his statement verifies that. Stauffer and I were in the living room with that police lieutenant and Ritchie of the Cosmopolitan Trust. I myself heard Prescott's voice calling Davis's name, and went to the hall and asked him to join us in the living room. A few minutes later we sent Turner upstairs to ask you to come down." Dunn's voice was better, and a gleam of life, even intelligence, was showing itself in his , <"': FR1;WHERE THERE'S A WILL 239 (eyes. He fixed them on Wolfe, calculating, and suddenly demanded, "What about Davis?" Wolfe shook his head. "Nothing much. Curiosity. The fact that he can't be found--" "I don't believe it." Dunn's voice was getting obstreperous. "Your man was telling you something |_|| about Davis yesterday--about finding him somewhere drunk. If you expect me to have confidence in you, at least you can give me an idea of what--" "No, I can't!" Wolfe cut him off. "What good will an idea do you? I'll give you something much better than an idea, as soon as I can, and I'll let you know when it's ready. You ought to eat something." He looked around. "All of you. Eat something and take off your shoes and lie down a while." "My Lord," May Hawthorne said. "If you're a humbug you're a good one. It's four o'clock and you're going upstairs to your orchids." "I am," Wolfe agreed. "And arrange a few things, including my mind." He arose, and looked at Sara. "If you'll come with me, Miss Dunn? You said you'd like to." CHAPTER SEVENTEEN when inspector cramer arrived, a little before six o'clock, I was in the kitchen squeezing lemons. Various things had happened during the hundred minutes since Wolfe had gone off upstairs with Sara Dunn, approximately in this order: The visitors had departed, not much less downhearted than when they arrived, after informing us that they had checked out of the Hawthorne mansion on 67th Street and moved to a hotel. Daisy's chumminess with the police accounted for that. Wolfe had phoned some orders down from the roof. To send Orrie Cather up to him for instructions was the first one. I had done so, and a little later Orrie had come down and left the house. Second, to send Fred Durkin to the address on llth Street where Eugene Davis was Earl Dawson, with instructions to get him and bring him to the office. I instructed Fred and dispatched him. Third, to get Raymond Plehn on the phone if possible. That one was entirely beyond me. Plehn was the horticultural expert of Ditson and Company, the big wholesale florists. It was still beyond me after I got him, and listened in, and heard Wolfe ask him to come down to the house as soon as possible. 240 FR1;WHERE THERE^S A WILL 241 Saul Panzer and Johnny Keems both phoned in, and in both cases Wolfe told me to connect them upstairs and no record was needed, which meant that my powers of dissimulation were not to be subjected to an undue strain, and it didn't help my temper any that I didn't even know for whose benefit the dissembling would have been necessary. -/ T Another thing that failed to soothe my temper was the fact that I indulged in a private session of "What's Wrong with this Picture?" and it didn't get me anywhere. I got the six snapshots from the safe and took them to a window and studied them with the big glass in the strong light, and as far as solving a murder was concerned I might as well have been studying picture post cards from the Grand Canyon. If it was there, it wasn't there for me; but I was going on with it when Raymond Plehn arrived. I announced him, and Wolfe told me to have Fritz take him up in the elevator, together with the envelope of snapshots, the magnifying glass, and the thing in the vase in the kitchen which Fred had brought back from Rockland County with his bag of clues. That put me in a first-class mood. I knew it was on the level, for he wouldn't have got Plehn down there just to make me itch, but I paced the office floor and concentrated on it and couldn't even get within a mile of a wild guess. I was still stabbing around at it when FR1;242 WHERE THERE'S A WILL I heard the elevator descending and Fritz letting Plehn out at the front door. He came to the office to give me the envelope, which I returned to the drawer in the safe without any further attempt at homework. Meanwhile there had been two more phone calls. John Charles Dunn first, from his hotel room, to say that April had got back from the district attorney's office safe and sound, with nothing worse than a bad headache, and that Andy Dunn had returned with her but not Prescott. Prescott had remained with them throughout the interview, but then had left them, sending a message to Dunn that he would communicate with him later. The second call was from Fred Durkin. He reported that he had rung the bell marked "Dawson" and got no response, had got admitted by the janitor and gone up to the apartment, and had found the door locked and got no reply to knocks or kicks. He was phoning from a drugstore around the corner. I told him to hold the wire, rang Wolfe on the house line, and relayed instructions to Fred to camp. Shortly after that, while I was in the kitchen squeezing lemons, Cramer arrived. Fritz put him in the office, and pretty soon I joined him there and offered him a glass of good cold lemonade. He wouldn't even say no, he merely growled. From the WHERE THERE'S A WILL 245 dirty look he gave me, you might have thought I had written to the mayor about him. I put both glasses on my desk, sat down and told him, "This weather is simply frightful," and stirred with a spoon. "To hell with you," he observed. "I want to see Wolfe." "Okay, brother." I sipped lemonade. "He'll be down in a few minutes. Nothing you say to him will hurt my feelings any. I intend to resign. He's being crafty and mysterious again, and I'm fed up with it. You know? People phoning in by the dozen, and I mustn't listen because I can't keep my face straight. Phooey. What I am, I'm a helot. A damn flunky. How's chances for a job on the force?" "Shut up." "All right, I'll surprise you. I'll shut up." I did so, and drank lemonade. I had finished the first glass and was starting on the second when Wolfe entered. Apparently he had left Sara up with Theodore Horstmann, for he was alone. He greeted Cramer, got seated behind his desk, rang for beer, and heaved a sigh. He regarded the inspector with his eyes nearly shut. "Something new?" "No." Cramer's voice wasn't pleasant. "SomeFR1;244 WHERE THERE'S A WILL thing old." He pulled a piece of paper from his pocket, unfolded it and glanced at it, and slid it across the desk. "Take a look at that." Wolfe picked it up, glanced over it, let it fall to the desk, and leaned back again. A little noise came from him, something between a gurgle and a chuckle. "That thing's dated today," he declared. "I wouldn't call that old." "No," Cramer agreed, "that part of it's fresh enough. But what made it necessary--your same old tricks. You've got no kick coming. I offered you an open road this morning, and you wouldn't take it. Okay. I'm doing you a favor by coming after you myself. You've done it once too often. Even if I was inclined to play tag_with you, I couldn't. Everybody from the President of the United States down to the president of the senior class at Varney College is trying to horn in. I swear to God. But I'm not apologizing." He turned a thumb to point it at the paper on the desk. "Skinner suggested that, but I didn't oppose it. I've warned you fifty times you'd fall in some day, and this is it. What the hell did you think, because your clients are people of position and power and influence you could depend on them to pull you out, no matter--" "I don't depend on my clients. They depend on me." WHERE THERE*S A WILL 24$ ""Well, they're out of luck this time. I gave you plenty of chance this morning. A chance to spill what Mrs. Hawthorne told you about young Dunn finding that cornflower. A chance to come clean about April Hawthorne's being there with Naomi Karn disguised with a veil. Just to show you there's no out on that, we know that Goodwin saw her there and three seconds later saw Mrs. Hawthorne in the library with you. It's things like those we're going to discuss downtown, those and a few others. Come on, get your hat. I've got a car outside that don't jolt much." "Wolfe looked mildly incredulous, and spoke mildly. "Nonsense. Tell me what you want." "I told you this morning, and what good did it do me?" Cramer arose. "Come on, they're waiting for us down at Skinner's office." "Today is Sunday, Mr. Cramer." "Correct. I doubt if you can get baU before tomorrow. We'll find a cot big enough for you." ' "You haven't got one^This is grotesque." "Sure it is. Come on. I may get tired of being polite."

"You mean this. Do you?" "I do, you know.'* "Then I request a courtesy. I want three or four minutes to dictate a letter. In your presence." Cramer scowled at him suspiciously. "Who to?" FR1;246 WHERE THERE'S A WILL "You'll hear it." Cramer hesitated a moment, sat down, and growled, "Go ahead." Wolfe said, "Your notebook, Archie." I opened the drawer and got it out. He leaned back and closed his eyes and started off in his usual smooth monotone: "To W. B. Oliver, Editor of the Gazette. Dear Mr. Oliver. Inspector Fergus Cramer has arrested me as a material witness in the Hawthorne-Ram murder case, and I may be unable to get out on bail before morning. I therefore wish to expose him and his superiors to ridicule and derision, and luckily am in a position to do so. You know whether my word may be relied upon. I suggest that you publish these facts in your Monday city edition: That my arrest was motivated by professional pique. That by my own brilliant and ingenious interpretation of evidence, I have discovered the identity of the murderer. That I am not prepared as yet to disclose the murderer's identity to the police, for fear their bungling--hint at worse if you care to--will prematurely spring a trap I have set for the criminal. That when the time comes--you may say soon--the arrest will be made by representatives of the Gazette, and the murderer will be delivered by them to the police, together with conclusive evidence of guilt. I shall certainly be out on bail by Monday WHERE THERE^S A WILL 247 noon at the latest, and if you will kindly come to my house at 1:30 for lunch, we can discuss details, including the sum your paper will be willing to pay for this coup. With best wishes and regards, cordially yours. Sign my name and make sure it reaches Mr. Oliver before ten o'clock tonight." Wolfe got to his feet, grunting as usual. "Well, I sir. I'm ready." Cramer, not stirring, growled, "Oliver won't get that. I take Goodwin too." Wolfe shrugged. "That would delay it twentyfour hours. He would publish Tuesday instead of Monday." "He wouldn't dare. Neither would you. You know the law. Oliver wouldn't dare touch it. This case--" "Bah. No matter what the law is, if we deliver I the murderer and the evidence we'll be heroes. I'm ready to go." "You'll lose your license." "I'll collect enough from the Gazette to retire on." "How much of that is bluff?" "None of it. I'm giving Mr. Oliver my word." Cramer glared at me. I grinned at him sympathetically. He cocked his head at Wolfe, and suddenly acquired an excess of blood above the neck and made an exhibition of himself. He jerked up, 248 WHERE THERE'S A WILL slammed the desk with his fist, and yelled at "wolfe, "Sit down! You goddam rhinoceros! Sit down!" The phone rang. I swiveled and got it, spoke to it, and heard Fred Durkin's voice, low, husky and urgent: "Archie? Come up here as quick as you can! I'm in that place again, and I've got a corpse or he soon will be!" "Pm sorry," I said politely, "but I haven't had a chance to speak to Mr. Wolfe about it. I'm sure he can't come now--he's engaged here with a visitor from the police--hold the wire, please." I addressed Wolfe, with the receiver close enough so Fred would get it too: "This is that fellow Dawson. He phoned this afternoon. He's got a crate of Cattleya Mossiae from Venezuela, and he wants a hundred bucks for a dozen. He's had an offer--" "I can't go now." "I know you can't--" "But you can. Tell him you'll be there right away." I spoke to the phone: "Mr. Wolfe says he wants them if they're in good condition, Mr. Dawson. I'll come and take a look at them. You can expect me in fifteen minutes." I hung up and marched out. One of the things I didn't like about it was that if Cramer decided to get suspicious it would be a cinch for him to step to WHERE THERE'S A WILL 249 the phone and have the call traced, but by the look j on his face I judged that his mind was occupied �with other affairs. % 1 At the curb in front, Cramer's car was nosing the roadster's tail. I nodded a cheerful greeting to the two dicks on the driver's seat, hopped in the roadster, and rolled. It wasn't likely that they had any instructions that would cause them to follow me, but I made sure by circling into 34th Street and halting for a couple of minutes, and then headed downtown. At that time of a July Sunday afternoon the streets were nearly deserted, and I ad only a little more than a mile to go. I parked here I had the day before, a little distance east of ie address, trotted to the vestibule and pushed the mtton under Dawson, opened the door when I ieard the click, and mounted the two flights. At the door at the end of the hall, which was lalfway open, I was confronted by two evidences of violence. A panel of the door and part of its frame was in splinters. That was one. The other was Fred Durkin's face. The left side of his jaw was swollen, and there was a bruise on his right temple with the skin raw. "Oh," I said. "You're the corpse, huh?" "Huh yourself," he retorted with Irish wit. "Look at this." I followed him inside, and saw more evidences of FR1;250 WHERE THERE'S A WILL violence. A table and a chair had been overturned and a couple of rugs were messed up, and lying there on the floor was Glenn Prescott. His eyes were open, staring up at us. His "face was in much worse shape than Fred's, and there was blood here and there, mostly on his collar and tie and the front of his shirt. "He came to," Fred said, "but he won't talk. I wiped some blood off his face, but it dribbles out of his nose." Prescott let out a moan. "I'll--talk," he mumbled thickly. "I'll talk if--1 can. I'm afraid I'm hurt--internally." His hand groped around his belly. "He hit me there." I knelt beside him and felt his pulse. Then I started feeling and poking all around. He winced and said ouch and moaned, but I couldn't find any indication of agony. Fred brought me a wet towel and I cleaned his face off some. I stood up. "I don't think you're hurt much, but of course I'm not sure. He didn't hit you with anything but his fists, did he?" "I don't know. He knocked me down--and I got up--and he knocked me down again--" "Who was it, Davis?" "I'm not going--" He moaned. "Sure it was Davis," Fred put in. "He must have come while I was around the corner phoning you. WHERE THERE'S A WILL 251 I came back and watched the entrance, and pretty soon this guy walked up and pushed the button and went in. After a while I heard noises. The janitor came out from below and said he heard them too. U-le let me in, but he said he wasn't looking for trouble and didn't come up with me. Just as I got to the top of the second flight I got it. I caught a glimpse of him, but not quick enough. My head musta hit on the corner. When I come to I was wedged in there at the turn of the stairs, and he was gone. I came up and busted in the door and here was this guy on the floor." I looked around, saw the phone, went to it, and dialed a number. In a minute White's voice answered.

"Archie," I told him. "Is Cramer still there?" "Yes." "Do I report?'* "Yes." "I'm talking from Dawson's apartment. Prescott is here on the floor bruised up a little. Davis played tunes on him and knocked Fred downstairs and rent out for a walk. Fred's here." "Is Prescott badly hurt?" "I don't think so." "Bring him here." "What about Cramer? His car's out front with two dicks." 252 WHERE THERE'S A WILL "That's all right. We are co-operating with the police." "Oh. Goody." I hung up and turned to Prescott. "Inspector Cramen is in Nero White's office and wants to see you. We're going to put you on your feet and help you downstairs." He moaned. "But I may be injured�it may be dangerous�" "I don't think so. We'll see if you can stand up. Here, Fred." We got him erect without anything breaking. From the way he groaned you might have thought he wasn't worth bothering with, but after we stood him up I tried his pulse and it was as good as mine. So we walked him and let him groan. When we got him down to the ground floor we sat him on a step and I went out and moved the roadster to the curb in front. Then we took him out and hoisted him in, and I climbed in behind the wheel and told Fred to hop in the rumble seat. Fred, standing on the sidewalk, shook his head. "You don't need me. I got an errand." "They'll want to ask you. Get in." "They can ask me later. I got a certain matter." I looked at him. There was an edge to his voice, and a glint in his eye, that showed me there was no use arguing. FR1;WHERE THERE^S A WILL 253 "All right," I said, "there's one chance in a million you might find him there. If you do, don't be a sap. Remember that any citizen who sees a crime committed, like for instance assault and battery, can legally make an arrest. You may not have seen It much, but you sure felt it." "Go float on a rock," he said, and tramped off. I saw that Prescott was propped in his corner, and started the car. On the way up to 3 ^th Street, Prescott put his hand on my arm and said he had decided he had better go to a hospital. I didn't bother to persuade him out of it, but just kept going. In front of White's house, the two city employees in Cramer's car were obviously expecting us. They helped me ease my cargo out to the sidewalk, paying no more attention to his protests than I did as we took him up the stoop and on inside. In the hall we were met not only by Wolfe and Cramer, but also by Doc Vollmer, whose office was up the street. Wolfe took command and gave the instructions. The doctor and one of the dicks walked upstairs while I ascended with Prescott in the elevator. I left him there with them in the south bedroom, the spare on the same floor as mine, and went back down to the office. Wolfe and Cramer were sitting there. I made my report, though there wasn't a lot to add to what I 254 WHERE THERE'S A WILL had told Wolfe on the phone. Wolfe held himself in, but I could tell by the look of his eyes that it was only the presence of company that restrained him from making pointed remarks about Fred Durkin. I gathered that the person who was really wanted to make it a good party was Mr. Eugene Davis. Cramer got his office on the phone, and from the orders he barked to some underling it was evident that "wolfe had told him all about the DavisDawson angle and that every cop on the force was already searching for the junior partner of the dear old firm. Just as Cramer hung up the doorbell started buzzing and didn't stop. I beat it for the hall, bumped into Fritz, and told him I would tend to it. I swung the door wide, and after one glance stepped aside with a welcoming grin. The extra dick was standing on the second step, looking alert but uncertain, staring up. Confronting me was Eugene-Earl-Davis-Dawson, haggard, untidy, without a hat, and at his elbow, with a gun stuck against his ribs, was Fred Durkin. "Well, well," I observed approvingly. Fred, intent on his errand, disregarded me. "March, you big ape/* he commanded, prodding with the gun, and Davis marched. I shut the door and followed them into the office. Fred kept him FR1;WHERE THERE^S A WILL 255 going right up to "white's desk, and then dropped the gun in his pocket and faced his captive. "Take a run," he said grimly. "Or make a pass at me or something. All I ask--" I "That will do, Fred," said Wolfe curtly. "Where I did you find him?" "At Wellman's. A joint on 8th Street. The place where--" "Very well. Satisfactory. Is he armed?" I "No, sir." "Good. Sit down, Mr. Davis. It looks as if--" The door opened and Doc Vollmer entered. He saw the tableau, halted, and then approached. "Excuse me, but I have to run. Patients waiting. That man upstairs will be all right. He's got some bruises, but that's all, except that his nerves are in extremely bad condition. I advise a sedative." i "Thank you, doctor. We'll attend to the sedative. Run along." Wolfe looked at Davis. "It's Mr. Prescott. We brought him here. It's amazing that you didn't kill him, really amazing." He looked at the inspector. "I believe we can go ahead now, Mr. Cramer, only it would be best to have Mr. Dunn here. All of them, I suppose. If you will please phone his hotel?" CHAPTER EIGHTEEN in the south bedroom, a hot south wind fluttered the curtains at the windows. The dick put on his coat, wiped his face and neck with his handkerchief, and smoothed his hair back with his hands. Glenn Prescott sat on a chair and groaned. "I'm perfectly willing to talk to Wolfe," he said in a hurt tone. "But why can't he come up here? I can't even bend over to put my shoes on." Having got him off of the bed and his clothes more or less arranged on him, I was tired of fooling with him. I got a shoe horn from the dresser, went over and kneeled down by him, got him shod and the strings tied, stood up and told him: "One, two, three, go. For God's sake, do you want us to carry you?" The dicL said irritably, "There's an elevator ain^t they? What more do you want?" Prescott gritted his teeth, pushed himself upright with his hands, groaned, and took a step. Downstairs, just inside the door of the office, he stopped short, evidently surprised at the size of the party. The room was full, extra chairs having been brought from the front. Sara Dunn had come down from the roof and was in the corner of the book256

FR1;WHERE THERE^S A WILL 257 shelves with Andy and Celia. Wolfe was at his desk and Cramer and District Attorney Skinner were at the far end of it, with Eugene Davis between them. April, May and June, between us and the desk, had their backs to us as we entered. Stauffer was on a chair next to April's, still protecting her. John Charles Dunn got up and approached, staring at Prescott's face. "Glenn! What happened to you? Good heavens, what--" Prescott vaguely shook his head. I doubt if he heard Dunn or even saw him. His eyes, one of them puffed half shut, were aimed straight past him, in the direction of Eugene Davis. He stood there, with me behind him. The dick had posted himself at the door. Skinner barked, "Well?" "wolfe said, "There's a chair for Mr. Prescott there by yours, Archie." I nudged Prescott's elbow and he moved across to it and lowered himself. Johnny Keems got out of my chair and moved to one in the rear alongside Saul Panzer. He knew damn well I didn't like anyone sitting in my chair. May Hawthorne said sarcastically, "This is impressive, Mr. Wolfe." "White's eyes moved to her. "You don't like me, do you. Miss Hawthorne? I understand that. FR1;25S WHERE THERE'S A WILL You're a realist and I'm a romantic. But all this isn't for effect. I shall need some of you and I may need all of you. It's a job. I'm out after a murderer and he's here." He looked at the district attorney. "It may be slippery going, Mr. Skinner. I expect you to stick to our bargain." "As stated," said Skinner sharply. "I'm not gagged and I won't be." "Yes, sir, as stated." Wolfe's eyes circled around the faces and settled on the one least presentable of all. "Mr. Prescott, I know you can't talk without discomfort, so I'll try to do most of it myself. Being a lawyer, you understand of course that you are under no compulsion to answer questions, but I warn you I'm going to be pretty stubborn and disagreeable. First I'll ask you to verify a few facts I've collected. In March, 1938, your private secretary was a young woman named--what's that name, Saul?" Saul spoke up from the rear: "Lucille Adams." "And when did she die?" "Two months ago, in May, of tuberculosis, at her home at 2419--" "Thanks. Is that correct, Mr. Prescott?" "Why--yes," Prescott mumbled. "It was Miss Adams to whom you dictated Noel Hawthorne's will, following instructions he gave you?" WHERE THERE*S A WILL 259 "I don't remember." The mumble cleared up a little. "I suppose it was." "She was your private secretary at that time, and took all your confidential dictation?" "Yes." A voice said gruffly, "If this is a joke it's a bad one." It was Eugene Davis. "Is this an official investigation? The district attorney is here. Are you on his staff, Mr. Wolfe?" "No, sir. I'm a private detective-- Are you represented by counsel, Mr. Prescott? Or do you want to be?" "Certainly not.'* "Do you want Mr. Davis, as your counsel, interfering in our conversation?" "No." "Then to go on. Regarding the routine in your office. The notebooks used by the confidential secretaries are numbered. As soon as one is filled and the contents transcribed, the notebooks are turned in and destroyed. Is that correct?" Prescott carefully shifted in his chair, but he didn't groan. "Yes," he said. "I'm answering the question, yes. Now I'd like to ask one. I'd like to know who has been investigating the affairs of my office, and why." "I have." "White's tone got a little crisper. "My agents have. Mr. Panzer and Mr. Keems, there be260 WHERE THERE'S A WILL hind you. I assure you they have done nothing actionable, and if you start pumping up indignation it will only rush blood to your head and make you more uncomfortable than you already are. You'd better keep your brain as cool as possible." "Get on with it," the district attorney snapped. "We're not here for a lecture." Wolfe didn't even glance at him. He continued at Prescott: "Now, sir, if Mr. Skinner will stop interrupting me, I can make it pretty brief. I have been given, one after the other, three problems to solve: the will of Noel Hawthorne, the murder of Noel Hawthorne, and the murder of Naomi Karn. Whether my belief that I have solved them is sound, or whether it is merely my conceit bubbling over, rests on the validity of a series of hypotheses I have made--based, of course, on information received. If any one of them is wrong, I am wrong. I'm going to ask you--all of you--to listen closely to them. "One. Eugene Davis was madly, desperately, in love with Naomi Karn, and was so filled with despair and jealousy when she abandoned him for Noel Hawthorne that he began drinking too much and, I suppose, did other foolish things. That went on for nearly three years. During that time, possibly, she let him have some crumbs--did she, Mr. Davis? It would help to understand her character." All eyes went to Davis. He made no answer. With FR1;WHERE THERE^S A WILL 261 his lips tight and his jaw locked, he gazed at Wolfe. A spasm contorted the muscles of his throat as he swallowed. Wolfe shrugged. "Two. Davis understood Miss Karn's character himself. He knew she was ambitious, greedy, and unscrupulous, and that he would never find relief from the agony he suffered through her intimacy with Noel Hawthorne as long as Hawthorne was alive and a millionaire. Also he knew the terms of Hawthorne's will. It was in the vault of his firm, to which he had access. "Three. Probably the death of Lucille Adams, two months ago, led to the formation of his scheme. A shrewd brain sees an opportunity where an ordinary one would miss it. Anyway, he made his scheme, and awaited an occasion to execute it. He knew of Hawthorne's intended trip to Rockland County for Tuesday afternoon, and arranged to be with Miss Karn at that time. He says they drove to Connecticut; wherever they went, he absented himself long enough to go to Rockland County and back. Probably he had a detailed plan of action, and a weapon; but seeing, from the highway, Noel Hawthorne there at the edge of the woods carrying a shotgun, was a heaven-sent opportunity. He took advantage of it. I'm pretty sure Miss Karn didn't know where he was or what he was doing. She didn't need to, and he didn't want her to. FR1;262 WHERE THERE'S A WILL "Four. Tuesday evening--" "Wait a minute." Eugene Davis had decided it was time to say something. He was regarding Wolfe with narrowed eyes. "Are you saying I killed Hawthorne?" "I seem to be hinting at that as a possibility, Mr. Davis." "Then you're a damned idiot. And it's certainly actionable to accuse--" "It may be. Or it may not. You're a lawyer; why don't you let me go on till I sink? Four. It is reasonable to assume that it was on Tuesday evening that Davis went to the office of his firm and, getting Hawthorne's will from the vault, typed a new first page for it--the same paper, even the same machine--and of course wording it and ending it so it would fit the continuance on the second page, where the attestations and signatures were. He would hardly have proceeded with that until Hawthorne was actually dead, though he may have done the typing previously, since it was a delicate and difficult job. "Five. It is probable that there was no bequest to Miss Karn in Hawthorne's will. What gifts he may have made her we can only conjecture, but I doubt if her name was in his will. It isn't commonly done that way. Even if it was, the legacy was certainly FR1;WHERE THERE^S A WILL 263 a comparatively modest one. So Davis, wanting to bind Miss Karn to him with a tie that would render unlikely further adventures with millionaires, made her a tempting offer. If she would pledge constancy to him, the will found in the vault would have the first page he had typed, and she would inherit seven million dollars." "Glenn Prescott drew the will," May Hawthorne said acidly. "wolfe nodded. "Yes. But six. Davis had calculated the risk. If there was a duplicate of the will anywhere, he knew where it was, and either destroyed it or gave it a new first page also. There were only three other sources of evidence of the contents of the will as originally drawn. The stenographer's notebook. That, following routine, had been destroyed. The stenographer herself. She also had been destroyed, by death. Glenn Prescott, his partner, who had drawn the will. There was his risk, and he took it. He was shrewd, audacious, and desperate, and he took it. He knew Prescott; he knew that the dearest thing to his heart was the reputation and prosperity of that law firm. So he calculated: Prescott, getting the will from the vault and discovering the substitution that had taken place, would be shocked, horrified, stunned. He would FR1;264 WHERE THERE'S A WILL suspect at once that Davis had done it. But would he expose him?" Davis blurted in a rasping sarcastic tone, "Good God, you were sunk long ago." "I'm going deeper yet," said Wolfe imperturbably. "Davis answered that question, would Prescott expose him, with a no. Prescott regarded Davis as a rarely gifted lawyer, the kind that makes history. He knew he was being ruined by his infatuation for Miss Karn. With Hawthorne dead, and Miss Karn's greediness so adequately satisfied, thanks to Davis, Davis might have her and be himself again, to the greater glory of the firm. On the other hand, if Prescott exposed the crime, if he disclosed the facts, whether Davis's guilt was legally established or not, the thing would be a staggering blow to the prestige and standing of the firm. Dunwoodie is an old man, hardly more than a name. Prescott has ability but no brilliance, and knows it. With Davis out, and such a stink pervading that office, the firm would be ruined. "Davis figured that was the way Prescott would react, and he was right. I don't know how long Prescott struggled with himself about it, but finally he took the will up to the Hawthorne residence on Thursday evening and read it to the family gathered there. Then, of course, he was irrevocably comFR1;WHERE THERE^S A WILL 265 mitted. Davis was safe as far as Prescott was concerned. But he found himself confronted by another danger. Where and how and when it first showed itself, I don't know, nor have I any proof that Naomi Karn became convinced that Davis had killed Hawthorne, and either threatened to expose him--which seems unlikely--or announced an invincible repugnance to intimate association with a murderer--which seems much more probable. At any rate, the result was that when Davis entered the Hawthorne living room yesterday afternoon and saw Miss Karn there, he knocked her on the head and strangled her and shoved her behind-- Archie!" I was out of my chair, but I wasn't needed. Davis had jerked himself up, halfway to his feet, and Cramer had thrust out an arm to block him, but even that hadn't been necessary. He had made an inarticulate noise of pain, no words, and dropped back again as if it was too much for him. He flopped there limp, staring at Wblfe. Wolfe looked not at Davis, but at his partner, and went on: "Now, Mr. Prescott, it's up to you. I have a couple of items of evidence, but before I present them I want an understanding with you. Your attempt to save your firm from ruin has failed. The murderer of Hawthorne and Miss Karn FR1;266 WHERE THERE'S A WILL is going to pay for it. If you want to help us in that, this is your chance and your last one." Wolfe's eyes went to the right. "Mr. Skinner, I said I have evidence, and I have. But Mr. Prescott can help us if he feels like it. I suggest that if he gives valuable testimony for the state against a murderer, it would be appropriate not to prosecute him as an accomplice in a forgery." Skinner growled, "That's in my discretion." "I know it is." "Well." Skinner looked wary. "It depends on the testimony." He eyed Prescott. "I'll say this. If you help me, I'm likely to help you. If you don't, and you concealed a forgery, God can help you." Everybody was looking at Prescott. His face was certainly a sight. Added to the fact that it was swollen and puffed and bruised, it was now a sickly purplish tinge all over, as if the traffic in the blood vessels had got into a jam that couldn't be untangled. He wouldn't look at Da vis; he wouldn't even look at Skinner because he was in Davis's direction. With one fairly decent eye and one only a slit, he regarded Wolfe and stammered: "What--what do you want me to say?" "The truth, sir. About the will, what--" Davis put in sharply, "Don't be a fool, Glenn. Keep your mouth shut." FR1;WHERE THERE'S A WILL 267 "About the will," Wolfe repeated. "Davis is done for anyway. What sum did Hawthorne will to Miss Kara?" "He--1 can't--" "Spill it!" Skinner barked. Prescott squeezed it out. "He left her nothing. She wasn't mentioned." "I see. And to his wife?" "The residue. There was--a million to each of his sisters. Bequests to servants and employees, and his niece and nephew--they weren't changed. A million to the science fund of Varney College. The residue would have been something over two million."

"Good-- Archie, make a note of that and take the rest-- I could badger you with a string of questions, but I'd rather not. You tell me. You're a lawyer, and you know what I want, if you've got it. What can you tell me?" The purple tinge on Prescott's face was coming and going. He was an object. But his voice was suddenly stronger: "I can tell you--when I saw Miss Karn on Thursday--she admitted that Davis had done it and she had conspired with him. She told me all--" "You sniveling liar!" It was Eugene Davis, suddenly on his feet. 268 WHERE THERE'S A WILL Cramer was up too, grabbing his arm. So was I, but again I wasn't needed. Davis, making no effort at further movement, his eyes on Prescott blazing with contempt and hate, was saying it with words: "You throw me in! You skunk! I'm sorry I beat you up! I'm sorry I touched you! You killed her! You killed her, and for old Dunwoodie's sake, for the sake of all of them down there, I smashed your face for you and that was all I was going to do! I wanted to kill you, I admit that, but I haven't got it in me to kill. I just smashed your face. And you fall into the trap this man sets for you, and you offer to throw me in! You cowardly treacherous fool!" Davis faced Wolfe. "You're clever," he said in a cold and bitter tone. "Damned clever. And of course you're right. Prescott did it. You wanted to open me up, and you have. He wanted Naomi six years ago, but she preferred me. He has always wanted her. He's sly and he's secretive and it has gone on festering inside of him. I knew he never stopped wanting her, but I didn't know how it had rotted his insides until she told me Friday evening what he had done about the will and the proposal he had made to her. And she had accepted it. She was going to marry him. You're right about her too �she was ambitious, greedy and unscrupulous, but FR1;WHERE THERE'S A WILL 269 she--well, she's dead. When she learned Friday that Hawthorne had been murdered, she knew Prescott had killed him. To get her. And she decided to ditch him. That's why he killed her--that, and the fear that if it got hot she would squeal." Cramer rumbled, "Sit down." Skinner said, "Wait a minute." He was scowling at Wolfe. "You said you had evidence that Davis did it." "No, sir. I said I had evidence. Archie, get that envelope from the safe." I threaded my way between customers, got it and returned with it, and handed it to him. He shook the contents onto the desk, selected a snapshot, and told me to give it to Prescott. I did so. I practically had to close his nst on it, and he made no effort to look at it. His one good eye was glassy. "That," said Wolfe, "is a picture of you, Mr. Prescott, taken at six o'clock Tuesday by Sara Dunn as you awaited her with your car in front of the shop where she works. The flower in your buttonhole is a rosa setigera. A wild rose. You remembered that yesterday and stole her camera, but you were too late. Where in the heart of New York City, where did you get that wild rose?" He paused, but Prescott didn't reply, and oh270 WHERE THERE'S A WILL viously wasn't able to. All he could do was stare like an imbecile. "You didn't get it in New York," Wolfe continued inexorably. "No New York florist ever has a wild rose. And when you left your office around one o'clock Tuesday, according to the observant young woman at the reception desk--what's her name, Johnny?" "Mabel Shanks," said Johnny, louder than necessary. "But she isn't young." "At any rate, a woman. What was Mr. Prescott wearing in his buttonhole when he left for lunch Tuesday?" "A cornflower." "Just so-- And, Mr. Prescott, a wilted cornflower was found by Andy Dunn not far from Hawthorne's body, hanging on a rose briar. I have two proofs that that was a patch of rose briars, a picture of the scene taken by Sara Dunn Wednesday morning, and a plant in a vase upstairs, brought me by one of my men. I assume it was before you shot Hawthorne, while you were talking with him there, that, being as casual as possible until you got hold of the gun by some ruse, you discarded your cornflower and replaced it with a wild rose. Or possibly Hawthorne did that for you, seeing that your cornflower was wilted. That appears more FR1;WHERE THERE^S A WILL 271 likely. He laid the gun down to do that, and that was your chance to pick it up. Then, with him dead, in your frenzy to get away and return to New York as fast as possible so as to establish an alibi by calling for Miss Dunn, you forgot all about the rose, and you were still wearing it when you arrived and Miss Dunn took a picture of you. It was that picture that betrayed--" "Hey!" Cramer jumped a good eight feet, right over Skinner's legs and seized Prescott's throat with both hands. I never saw anything more pitiful, and don't want to. The poor sap had suddenly stuffed the snapshot in his mouth and began chewing as fast as he could with his sore and swollen jaw, and was trying to gulp it down. ay-^'- "Let him alone," Wolfe said curtly. "I have the film. You can have him, Mr. Skinner. Please get him out of here." I felt the same way about it. Having looked at Prescott all I cared to, I surveyed the famous Hawthorne gals and their entourage. You might have thought we were running a matrimonial bureau, or even something not so genteel. Andy and Celia were wrapped around each other over by the bookshelves. April was letting Ossie enfold her in his protecting arms. John Charles Dunn was lean272 WHERE THERE'S A WILL ing over June, kissing her, and she had her hands up clinging to him. May leveled her eyes at Wolfe and demanded, "About the will. If he destroyed that first page, how are we going to establish--" "wolfe merely glared at her. The warrant for Wolfe's arrest as a material witness is in a drawer of my desk where I keep souvenirs.