Rex Stout

Cordially Invited to Meet Death

I don’t know how many guesses there have been in the past year, around bars and dinner tables, as to how Nero Wolfe got hold of the black orchids. I have seen three different ones in print — one in a Sunday newspaper magazine section last summer, one in a syndicated New York gossip column a couple of months ago, and one in a press association dispatch, at the time that a bunch of the orchids unexpectedly appeared at a certain funeral service at the Belford Memorial Chapel.

So here in this book are two separate Nero Wolfe cases, two different sets of people. The first is the low-down on how Wolfe got the orchids. The second tells how he solved another murder, but it leaves a mystery, and that’s what’s biting me. If anyone who knows Wolfe better than I do — but wait till you read it.

Archie Goodwin

Chapter 1

That wasn’t the first time I ever saw Bess Huddleston.

A couple of years previously she had phoned the office one afternoon and asked to speak to Nero Wolfe, and when Wolfe got on the wire she calmly requested him to come at once to her place up at Riverdale to see her. Naturally he cut her off short. In the first place, he never stirred out of the house except in the direction of an old friend or a good cook; and secondly, it hurt his vanity that there was any man or woman alive who didn’t know that.

An hour or so later here she came, to the office — the room he used for an office in his old house on West 35th Street, near the river — and there was a lively fifteen minutes. I never saw him more furious. It struck me as an attractive proposition. She offered him two thousand bucks to come to a party she was arranging for a Mrs. Somebody and be the detective in a murder game. Only four or five hours’ work, sitting down, all the beer he could drink, and two thousand dollars. She even offered an extra five hundred for me to go along and do the leg work. But was he outraged! You might have thought he was Napoleon and she was asking him to come and deploy the tin soldiers in a nursery.

After she had gone I deplored his attitude. I told him that after all she was nearly as famous as he was, being the most successful party-arranger for the upper brackets that New York had ever had, and a combination of the talents of two such artists as him and her would have been something to remember, not to mention what I could do in the way of fun with five hundred smackers, but all he did was sulk.

That had been two years before. Now, this hot August morning with no air conditioning in the house because he distrusted machinery, she phoned around noon and asked him to come up to her place at Riverdale right away. He motioned to me to dispose of her and hung up. But a little later, when he had gone to the kitchen to consult with Fritz about some problem that had arisen in connection with lunch, I looked up her number and called her back. It had been as dull as a blunt instrument around the office for nearly a month, ever since we had finished with the Nauheim case, and I would have welcomed even tailing a laundry boy suspected of stealing a bottle of pop, so I phoned and told her that if she was contemplating a trip to 35th Street I wanted to remind her that Wolfe was incommunicado upstairs with his orchid plants from nine to eleven in the morning, and from four to six in the afternoon, but that any other time he would be delighted to see her.

I must say he didn’t act delighted, when I ushered her in from the hall around three o’clock that afternoon. He didn’t even apologize for not getting up from his chair to greet her, though I admit no reasonable person would have expected any such effort after one glance at his dimensions.

“You,” he muttered pettishly, “are the woman who came here once and tried to bribe me to play the clown.”

She plopped into the red leather chair I placed for her, got a handkerchief out of her large green handbag, and passed it across her forehead, the back of her neck, and her throat. She was one of those people who don’t look much like their pictures in the paper, because her eyes made her face and made you forget the rest of it when you looked at her. They were black and bright and gave you the feeling they were looking at you when they couldn’t have been, and they made her seem a lot younger than the forty-seven or forty-eight she probably was.

“My God,” she said, “as hot as this I should think you would sweat more. I’m in a hurry because I’ve got to see the Mayor about a Defense Pageant he wants me to handle, so I haven’t time to argue, but your saying I tried to bribe you is perfectly silly. Perfectly silly! It would have been a marvelous party with you for the detective, but I had to get a policeman, an inspector, and all he did was grunt. Like this.” She grunted.

“If you have come, madam, to—”

“I haven’t. I don’t want you for a party this time. I wish I did. Someone is trying to ruin me.”

“Ruin you? Physically, financially—”

“Just ruin me. You know what I do. I do parties—”

“I know what you do,” Wolfe said curtly.

“Very well. My clients are rich people and important people, at least they think they’re important. Without going into that, they’re important to me. So what do you suppose the effect would be — wait, I’ll show it to you—”

She opened her handbag and dug into it like a terrier. A small bit of paper fluttered to the floor, and I stepped across to retrieve it for her, but she darted a glance at it and said, “Don’t bother, wastebasket,” and I disposed of it as indicated and returned to my chair.

Bess Huddleston handed an envelope to Wolfe. “Look at that. What do you think of that?”

Wolfe looked at the envelope, front and back, took from it a sheet of paper which he unfolded and looked at, and passed them over to me.

“This is confidential” Bess Huddleston said.

“So is Mr. Goodwin,” Wolfe said dryly.

I examined the exhibits. The envelope, stamped and postmarked and slit open, was addressed on a typewriter:

Mrs. Jervis Horrocks

902 East 74th Street

New York City

The sheet of paper said, also typewritten:

Was it ignorance or something else that caused Dr. Brady to prescribe the wrong medicine for your daughter? Ask Bess Huddleston. She can tell you if she will. She told me.

There was no signature. I handed the sheet and envelope back to Wolfe.

Bess Huddleston used her handkerchief on her forehead and throat again. “There was another one,” she said, looking at Wolfe but her eyes making me feel she was looking at me, “but I haven’t got it. That one, as you see, is postmarked Tuesday, August 12th, six days ago. The other one was mailed a day earlier, Monday, the 11th, a week ago today. Typewritten, just like that. I’ve seen it. It was sent to a very rich and prominent man, and it said — I’ll repeat it. It said: ‘Where and with whom does your wife spend most of her afternoons? If you knew you would be surprised. My authority for this is Bess Huddleston. Ask her.’ The man showed it to me. His wife is one of my best—”

“Please.” Wolfe wiggled a finger at her. “Are you consulting me or hiring me?”

“I’m hiring you. To find out who sent those things.”

“It’s a mean kind of a job. Often next to impossible. Nothing but greed could induce me to tackle it.”

“Certainly.” Bess Huddleston nodded impatiently. “I know how to charge too. I expect to get soaked. But where will I be if this isn’t stopped and stopped quick?”

“Very well. Archie, your notebook.”

I got it out and got busy. She reeled it off to me while Wolfe rang for beer and then leaned back and closed his eyes. But he opened one of them halfway when he heard her telling me about the stationery and the typewriter. The paper and envelopes of both the anonymous letters, she said, were the kind used for personal correspondence by a girl who worked for her as her assistant in party-arranging, named Janet Nichols; and the letters and envelopes had been typed on a typewriter that belonged to Bess Huddleston herself which was used by another girl who worked for her as her secretary, named Maryella Timms. Bess Huddleston had done no comparing with a magnifying glass, but it looked like the work of that typewriter. Both girls lived with her in her house at Riverdale, and there was a large box of that stationery in Janet Nichols’ room.

Then if not one of the girls — one of the girls? Wolfe muttered, “Facts, Archie.” Servants? No use to bother about the servants, Bess Huddleston said; no servant ever stayed with her long enough to develop a grudge. I passed it with a nod having read about the alligators and bears and other disturbing elements in newspaper and magazine pieces. Did anyone else live in the house? Yes, a nephew, Lawrence Huddleston, also on the payroll as an assistant party-arranger, but, according to Aunt Bess, not on any account to be suspected. That all? Yes. Any persons sufficiently intimate with the household to have had access to the typewriter and Janet Nichols’ stationery?

Certainly, as possibilities, many people.

Wolfe grunted impolitely. I asked, for another fact, what about the insinuations in the anonymous letters? The wrong medicine and the questionable afternoons? Bess Huddleston’s black eyes snapped at me. She knew nothing about those things. And anyway, they were irrelevant. The point was that some malicious person was trying to ruin her by spreading hints that she was blabbing guilty secrets about people, and whether the secrets happened to be true or not had nothing to do with it. Okay, I told her, forget about where Mrs. Rich Man spends her afternoons, maybe at the ball game, but as a matter of record did Mrs. Jervis Horrocks have a daughter, and had she been sick, and had Dr. Brady attended her? Yes, Bess Huddleston said impatiently, Mrs. Horrocks’ daughter had died a month ago and Dr. Brady had been her doctor. Died of what? Tetanus. How had she got tetanus? By scratching her arm on a nail in a riding-academy stable.

Wolfe muttered, “There is no wrong medicine—”

“It was terrible,” Bess Huddleston interrupted, “but it has nothing to do with this. I’m going to be late for my appointment with the Mayor. This is perfectly simple. Someone wanted to ruin me and conceived this filthy way of doing it, that’s all. It has to be stopped, and if you’re as smart as you’re supposed to be, you can stop it. Of course, I ought to tell you, I know who did it.”

I cocked my head at her. Wolfe’s eyes opened wide.

“What? You know?”

“Yes, I think I know. No, I do know.”

“Then why, madam, are you annoying me?”

“Because I can’t prove it. And she denies it.”

“Indeed.” Wolfe shot a sharp glance at her. “You seem to be less intelligent than you look. If, having no proof, you charged her with it.”

“Did I say charged her with it? I didn’t. I discussed it with her, and also with Maryella, and my nephew, and Dr. Brady, and my brother. I asked them questions. I saw I couldn’t handle it. So I came to you.”

“By elimination — the culprit is Miss Nichols.”

“Yes.”

Wolfe was frowning. “But you have no proof. What do you have?”

“I have — a feeling.”

“Pfui. Based on what?”

“I know her.”

“You do.” Wolfe continued to frown, and his lips pushed out, once, and in again. “By divination? Phrenology? What specific revelations of her character have you observed? Does she pull chairs from under people?”

“Cut the glitter,” Bess Huddleston snapped, frowning back at him. “You know quite well what I mean. I say I know her, that’s all. Her eyes, her voice, her manner—”

“I see. Flatly, you don’t like her. She must be either remarkably stupid or extremely clever, to have used her own stationery for anonymous letters. Had you thought of that?”

“Certainly. She is clever.”

“But knowing she did this, you keep her in your employ, in your house?”

“Of course I do. If I discharged her, would that stop her?”

“No. But you say you think her guilty because you know her. That means you knew a week ago, a month ago, a year ago that she was the sort of person who would do this sort of thing. Why didn’t you get rid of her?”

“Because I—” Bess Huddleston hesitated. “What difference does that make?” she demanded.

“It makes a big difference to me, madam. You’ve hired me to investigate the source of those letters. I am doing so now. I am considering the possibility that you sent them yourself.”

Her eyes flashed at him. “I? Nonsense.”

“Then answer me.” Wolfe was imperturbable. “Since you knew what Miss Nichols was like, why didn’t you fire her?”

“Because I needed her. She’s the best assistant I’ve ever had. Her ideas are simply... take the Stryker dwarf and giant party... that was her idea... this is confidential... some of my biggest successes...”

“I see. How long has she worked for you?”

“Three years.”

“Do you pay her adequately?”

“Yes. I didn’t, but I do now. Ten thousand a year.”

“Then why does she want to ruin you? Just cussedness? Or has she got it in for you?”

“She has — she thinks she has a grievance.”

“What about?”

“Something...” Bess Huddleston shook her head. “That’s of no importance. A private matter. It wouldn’t help you any. I am willing to pay your bill for finding out who sent those letters and getting proof.”

“You mean you will pay me for fastening the guilt on Miss Nichols.”

“Not at all. On whoever did it.”

“No matter who it is?”

“Certainly.”

“But you’re sure it’s Miss Nichols.”

“I am not sure. I said I have a feeling.” Bess Huddleston stood up and picked up her handbag from Wolfe’s desk. “I have to go. Can you come up to my place tonight?”

“No. Mr.—”

“When can you come?”

“I can’t. Mr. Goodwin can go—” Wolfe stopped himself. “No. Since you have already discussed it with all of those people, I’d like to see them. First the young women. Send them down here. I’ll be free at six o’clock. This is a nasty job and I want to get it over with.”

“My God,” Bess Huddleston said, her eyes snapping at him, “you would have made a wonderful party! If I could sell it to the Crowthers I could make it four thousand — only there won’t be many more parties for me if we don’t get these letters stopped. I’ll phone the girls—”

“Here’s a phone,” I said.

She made the call, gave instructions to one she called Maryella, and departed in a rush.

When I returned to the office after seeing the visitor to the door, Wolfe was out of his chair. There was nothing alarming about that, since it was one minute to four and therefore time for him to go up to the orchids, but what froze me in my tracks was the sight of him stooping over, actually bending nearly double, with his hand in my waste-basket.

He straightened up.

“Did you hurt yourself?” I inquired anxiously.

Ignoring that, he moved nearer the window to inspect an object he held between his thumb and forefinger. I stepped over and he handed it to me and I took a squint at it. It was a snapshot of a girl’s face, nothing special to my taste, trimmed off so it was six-sided in shape and about the size of a half dollar.

“Want it for your album?” I asked him.

He ignored that too. “There is nothing in the world,” he said, glaring at me as if I had sent him an anonymous letter, “as indestructible as human dignity. That woman makes money killing time for fools. With it she pays me for rooting around in mud. Half of my share goes for taxes which are used to make bombs to blow people to pieces. Yet I am not without dignity. Ask Fritz, my cook. Ask Theodore, my gardener. Ask you, my—”

“Right hand.”

“No.”

“Prime minister.”

“No.”

“Pal.”

“No!”

“Accomplice, flunkey, Secretary of War, hireling, comrade...” He was on his way out to the elevator. I tossed the snapshot onto my desk and went to the kitchen for a glass of milk.

Chapter 2

You’re late,” I told the girls reproachfully as I showed them into the office. “Mr. Wolfe supposed you would be here at six o’clock, when he comes down from the plant rooms, and it’s twenty after. Now he’s gone to the kitchen and started operations on some corned beef hash.”

They were sitting down and I was looking them over.

“You mean he’s eating corned beef hash?” Maryella Timms asked.

“No. That comes later. He’s concocting it.”

“It’s my fault,” Janet Nichols said. “I didn’t get back until after five, and I was in riding clothes and had to change. I’m sorry.”

She didn’t look much like a horseback rider. Not that she was built wrong, she had a fairly nice little body, with good hips, but her face was more of a subway face than a bridle-path face. Naturally I had been expecting something out of the ordinary, one way or another, since according to Bess Huddleston she was an anonymous letter writer and had thought up the Stryker dwarf and giant party, and to tell the truth I was disappointed. She looked more like a school teacher — or maybe it would be more accurate to say that she looked like what a school teacher looks like before the time comes that she absolutely looks like a school teacher and nothing else.

Maryella Timms, on the other hand, was in no way disappointing, but she was irritating. Her hair started far back above the slant of her brow, and that made her brow look even higher and broader than it was, and noble and spiritual. But her eyes were very demure, which didn’t fit. If you’re noble and spiritual you don’t have to be demure. There’s no point in being demure unless there’s something on your mind to be demure about. Besides, there was her accent. Cawned beef ha-a-sh. I am not still fighting the Civil War, and anyway my side won, but these Southern belles — if it sounds like a deliberate come-on to me then it does. I was bawn and braht up in the Nawth.

“I’ll see if I can pry him loose,” I said, and went to the hall and through to the kitchen.

The outlook was promising for getting Wolfe to come and attend to business, because he had not yet got his hands in the hash. The mixture, or the start of it, was there in a bowl on the long table, and Fritz, at one side of the table, and Wolfe, at the other, were standing there discussing it. They looked around at me as I would expect to be looked at if I busted into a Cabinet meeting at the White House.

“They’re here,” I announced. “Janet and Maryella.”

From the expression on his face as his mouth opened it was a safe bet that Wolfe was going to instruct me to tell them to come back tomorrow, but he didn’t get it out. I heard a door open behind me and a voice floated past:

“Ah heah yawl makin’ cawned beef ha-a-sh....”

That’s the last time I try to reproduce it.

The owner of the voice floated past me too, right up beside Wolfe. She leaned over to peer into the bowl.

“Excuse me,” she said, which I couldn’t spell the way she said it anyhow, “but corned beef hash is one of my specialties. Nothing in there but meat, is there?”

“As you see,” Wolfe grunted.

“It’s ground too fine,” Maryella asserted.

Wolfe scowled at her. I could see he was torn with conflicting emotions. A female in his kitchen was an outrage. A woman criticizing his or Fritz’s cooking was an insult. But corned beef hash was one of life’s toughest problems, never yet solved by anyone. To tone down the corned flavor and yet preserve its unique quality, to remove the curse of its dryness without making it greasy — the theories and experiments had gone on for years. He scowled at her, but he didn’t order her out.

“This is Miss Timms,” I said. “Mr. Wolfe. Mr. Brenner. Miss Nichols is in—”

“Ground too fine for what?” Wolfe demanded truculently. “This is not a tender fresh meat, with juices to lose—”

“Now you just calm down.” Maryella’s hand was on his arm. “It’s not ruined, only it’s better if it’s coarser. That’s far too much potatoes for that meat. But if you don’t have chitlins you can’t—”

“Chitlins!” Wolfe bellowed.

Maryella nodded. “Fresh pig chitlins. That’s the secret of it. Fried shallow in olive oil with onion juice—”

“Good heavens!” Wolfe was staring at Fritz. “I never heard of it. It has never occurred to me. Fritz? Well?”

Fritz was frowning thoughtfully. “It might go,” he conceded. “We can try it. As an experiment.”

Wolfe turned to me in swift decision. “Archie, call up Kretzmeyer and ask if he has pig chitlins. Two pounds.”

“You’d better let me help,” Maryella said. “It’s sort of tricky....”

That was how I came to get so well acquainted with Janet that first day. I thought I might as well have company driving down to the market for chitlins, and Maryella was glued to Wolfe, and as far as that’s concerned Wolfe was glued to her for the duration of the experiment, so I took Janet along. By the time we got back to the house I had decided she was innocent in more ways than one, though I admit that didn’t mean much, because it’s hard for me to believe that anyone not obviously a hyena could pull a trick like anonymous letters. I also admit there wasn’t much sparkle to her, and she seemed to be a little absent-minded when it came to conversation, but under the circumstances that wasn’t surprising, if she knew why she had been told to go to Nero Wolfe’s office, as she probably did.

I delivered the chitlins to the hash artists in the kitchen and then joined Janet in the office. I had been telling her about orchid hybridizing on the way back uptown, and when I went to my desk to get a stack of breeding cards I was going to show her, I noticed something was missing. So I gave her the cards to look at and excused myself and returned to the kitchen, and asked Wolfe if anyone had been in the office during my absence. He was standing beside Maryella, watching Fritz arrange the chitlins on a cutting board, and all I got was a growl.

“None of you left the kitchen?” I insisted.

“No,” he said shortly. “Why?”

“Someone ate my lollipop,” I told him, and left him with his playmates and returned to the office. Janet was sitting with the cards in her lap, going through them. I stood in front of her and inquired amiably:

“What did you do with it?”

She looked up at me. That way, with her head tilted up, from that angle, she looked kind of pretty.

“What did I — what?”

“That snapshot you took from my desk. It’s the only picture I’ve got of you. Where did you put it?”

“I didn’t—” Her mouth closed. “I didn’t!” she said defiantly.

I sat down and shook my head at her. “Now listen,” I said pleasantly. “Don’t lie to me. We’re comrades. Side by side we have sought the chitlin in its lair. The wild boar chitlin. That picture is my property and I want it. Let’s say it fluttered into your bag. Look in your bag.”

“It isn’t there.” With a new note of spunk in her voice, and a new touch of color on her cheeks, she was more of a person. Her bag was beside her on the chair, and her left hand was clutching it.

“Then I’ll look in your bag.” I started for her.

“No!” she said. “It isn’t there!” She put a palm to her stomach. “It’s here.”

I stopped short, thinking for a second she had swallowed it. Then I returned to my chair and told her, “Okay. You will now return it. You have three alternatives. Either dig it out yourself, or I will, or I’ll call in Maryella and hold you while she does. The first is the most ladylike. I’ll turn my back.”

“Please.” She kept her palm against her stomach. “Please! It’s my picture!”

“It’s a picture of you, but it’s not your picture.”

“Miss Huddleston gave it to you.”

I saw no point in denying the obvious. “Say she did.”

“And she told you... she... she thinks I sent those awful letters! I know she does!”

“That,” I said firmly, “is another matter which the boss is handling. I am handling the picture. It is probably of no importance except as a picture of the girl who thought up the Stryker dwarf and giant party. If you ask Mr. Wolfe for it he’ll probably give it to you. It may even be that Miss Huddleston stole it; I don’t know. She didn’t say where she got it. I do know that you copped it from my desk and I want it back. You can get another one, but I can’t. Shall I call Maryella?” I turned my head and looked like a man about to let out a yell.

“No!” she said, and got out of her chair and turned her back and went through some contortions. When she handed me the snapshot I tucked it under a paperweight on Wolfe’s desk and then went to help her collect the breeding cards from the floor where they had tumbled from her lap.

“Look what you did,” I told her, “mixed them all up. Now you can help me put them in order again....”

It looked for a minute as if tears were going to flow, but they didn’t. We spent an hour together, not exactly jolly, but quite friendly. I avoided the letter question, because I didn’t know what line Wolfe intended to take.

When he finally got at it there was no line to it. That was after nine o’clock, when we assembled in the office after the hash and trimmings had been disposed of. The hash was okay. It was good hash. Wolfe had three helpings, and when he conversed with Maryella, as he did through most of the meal, he was not only sociable but positively respectful. There was an unpleasant moment at the beginning, when Janet didn’t take any hash and Fritz was told to slice some ham for her, and Maryella told her resentfully:

“You won’t eat it because I cooked it.”

Janet protested that that wasn’t so, she just didn’t like corned beef.

In the office, afterwards, it became apparent that there was no love lost between the secretary and the assistant party-arranger. Not that either accused the other of writing the poison-pen letters; there were no open hostilities, but a few glances I observed when I looked up from my notebook, and tones of voice when they addressed each other, sounded as if there might be quite a blaze if somebody touched a match to it. Wolfe didn’t get anything, as far as I could see, except a collection of unimportant facts. Both the girls were being discreet, to put it mildly. Bess Huddleston, according to them, was a very satisfactory employer. They admitted that her celebrated eccentricities made things difficult sometimes, but they had no kick coming. Janet had worked for her three years, and Maryella two, and they hadn’t the slightest idea who could have sent those dreadful letters, and Bess Huddleston had no enemies that they knew of... oh, of course, she had hurt some people’s feelings, but what did that amount to, and there were scores of people who could have got at Janet’s stationery during the past months but they couldn’t imagine who, and so forth and so on. Yes, they had known Mrs. Jervis Horrocks’ daughter, Helen; she had been a close friend of Maryella’s. Her death had been a shock. And yes, they knew Dr. Alan Brady quite well. He was fashionable and successful and had a wonderful reputation for his age. He often went horseback riding with one of them or with Bess Huddleston. Riding academy? No, Bess Huddleston kept horses in her stable at her place at Riverdale, and Dr. Brady would come up from the Medical Center when he got through in the afternoon — it was only a ten-minute drive.

And Bess Huddleston had never been married, and her brother Daniel was some kind of a chemist, not in society, very much not, who showed up at the house for dinner about once a week; and her nephew, Larry, well, there he was, that was all, a young man living there and getting paid for helping his aunt in her business; and there were no other known relatives and no real intimates, except that Bess Huddleston had hundreds of intimates of both sexes and all ages....

It went on for nearly two hours.

After seeing them out to their car — I noticed Maryella was driving — I returned to the office and stood and watched Wolfe down a glass of beer and pour another one.

“That picture of the culprit,” I said, “is there under your paperweight if you want it. She did. I mean she wanted it. In my absence she swiped it and hid it in a spot too intimate to mention in your presence. I got it back — no matter how. I expected her to ask you for it, but she didn’t. And if you think you’re going to solve this case by—”

“Confound the case.” Wolfe sighed clear to the beer he had swallowed. “I might have known better. Tomorrow go up there and look around. The servants, I suppose. Make sure of the typewriter. The nephew. Talk with him and decide if I must see him; if so, bring him. And get Dr. Brady here. After lunch would be best.”

“Sure,” I said sarcastically.

“Around two o’clock. Please get your notebook and take a letter. Get it off tonight, special delivery. To Professor Martingale of Harvard. Dear Joseph. I have made a remarkable discovery, comma, or rather, comma, have had one communicated to me. You may remember our discussion last winter regarding the possibility of using pig chitlins in connection with...”

Chapter 3

Ever since an incident that occurred when Wolfe sent me on an errand in February, 1935, I automatically ask myself, when leaving the office on a business chore, do I take a gun? I seldom do; but if I had done so that Tuesday afternoon I swear I would have found use for it. As sure as my name is Archie and not Archibald, I would have shot that goddamn orangutan dead in his tracks.

Formerly it took a good three-quarters of an hour to drive from 35th Street to Riverdale, but now, with the West Side Highway and the Henry Hudson Bridge, twenty minutes was ample. I had never seen the Huddleston place before, but since I read newspapers and magazines the trick fence was no surprise to me. I parked the roadster at a wide space on the drive which ran parallel with the fence, got a gate open and went through, and started up a path across the lawn towards the house. There were trees and bushes around, and off to the right an egg-shaped pool.

About twenty paces short of the house I suddenly stopped. I don’t know where he had appeared from, but there he was straddling the path, big and black, his teeth flashing in a grin if you want to call it that. I stood and looked at him. He didn’t move. I thought to myself, nuts, and moved forward, but when I got closer he made a certain kind of a noise and I stopped again. Okay, I thought, if this is your private path why didn’t you say so, and I sashayed off to the right, seeing there was another path the other side of the pool. I didn’t actually turn but went sort of sidewise because I was curious to see what he was going to do, and what he did was stalk me, on all fours. So it happened that my head was twisted to keep an eye on him when I backed into a log there on the grass at the edge of the pool and went down flat, nearly tumbling into the water, and when I sprang to my feet again the log was crawling along the ground length-wise towards me. It was one of the alligators. The orangutan was sitting down laughing. I don’t mean he was making a laughing noise, but by his face he was laughing. That’s when I would have shot him. I circled around the pool and got to the other path and headed for the house, but there he was, straddling the path ten yards ahead of me, making the noise again, so I stopped.

A man’s voice said, “He wants to play tag.”

I had been too preoccupied to see the man, and anyway he had just stepped from behind a shrub at the end of a terrace. With a glance I saw that he was clad in a green shirt and brick-colored slacks, was about my age or a little younger, and seemed to be assuming a supercilious attitude.

He said, “He wants to play tag.”

I said, “I don’t.”

He said, “If you offend him he’ll bite you. Start past him on the grass and dodge when he goes to touch you. Dodge three times and then let him tag you, and say ‘Mister’ in an admiring voice. That’s all. His name is Mister.”

“I could turn around and go home.”

“I wouldn’t try that. He would resent it.”

“I could sock him one.”

“You might. I doubt it. If you hurt him and my aunt ever catches you... I suppose you’re Archie Goodwin? I’m Larry Huddleston. I didn’t send those letters and don’t know who did or who might. My aunt will be down later, she’s upstairs arguing with Brother Daniel. I can’t invite you in until you get past Mister.”

“Does everyone who comes here have to play tag with this damn overgrown orangutan?”

“He’s not an orangutan; he’s a chimpanzee. He doesn’t often play with strangers. It means he likes you.”

I had to go through with it. I took to the grass, was intercepted, dodged three times, said ‘Mister’ in as admiring a tone of voice as I could manage, and was by. Mister emitted a little squeal and scampered off to a tree and bounded up to a limb. I looked at the back of my hand and saw blood. The nephew asked, not with great concern:

“Did he bite you?”

“No, I fell down and must have scratched it. It’s just a scratch.”

“Yeah, I saw you trip over Moses. I’ll get you some iodine.”

I said it wasn’t worth bothering about, but he took me across the terrace into the house, into a large living room, twice as long as it was broad, with big windows and a big fireplace, and enough chairs and divans and cushions for a good-sized party right there. When he opened a cupboard door in the wall near the fireplace a shelf was disclosed with a neat array of sterilized gauze, band-aids, adhesive tape, and salve....

As I dabbed iodine on the scratch I said, for something to say, “Handy place for a first-aid outfit.”

He nodded. “On account of Mister. He never bites deep, but he often breaks somebody’s skin. Then Logo and Lulu, sometimes they take a little nip—”

“Logo and Lulu?”

“The bears.”

“Oh, sure. The bears.” I looked around and then put the iodine bottle on the shelf and he closed the door. “Where are they now?”

“Having a nap somewhere. They always nap in the afternoon. They’ll be around later. Shall we go out to the terrace? What’ll you have, scotch, rye, bourbon?”

It was a nice spot, the terrace, on the shady side of the house with large irregular flagstones separated by ribbons of turf. I sat there for an hour with him, but about all I got out of it was three highballs. I didn’t cotton to him much. He talked like an actor; he had a green handkerchief in the breast pocket of his shirt, to match the shirt; he mentioned the Social Register three times in less than an hour; and he wore an hexagonal wrist watch, whereas there’s no excuse for a watch to be anything but round. He struck me as barely bright enough for life’s simplest demands, but I admit he might have been a darb at a party. I must say he didn’t turn loose any secrets. He was pretty indignant about the letters, but about all I learned from him was that he knew how to use a typewriter, that Maryella had gone downtown on some errands, and that Janet was out horseback riding with Dr. Brady. He seemed to be a little cynical about Dr. Brady, but I couldn’t get the slant.

When it got five o’clock and his aunt hadn’t come down, he went to inquire, and in a moment returned and said I was to go up. He led me upstairs and showed me a door and beat it. I entered and found I was in an office, but there was no one there. It was a mess. Phone books were heaped on a chair. The blotters had been used since the Declaration of Independence. The typewriter wasn’t covered. I was frowning around when I heard steps, and Bess Huddleston trotted in, with a skinny specimen behind her. His eyes were as black as hers, but everything else about him was shrunk and faded. As she breezed past me she said:

“Sorry. How are you. My brother. Mr. Goldwyn.”

“Goodwin,” I said firmly, and shook brother’s hand. I was surprised to find he had a good shake. Sister was sitting at a desk, opening a drawer. She got out a checkbook, took a pen from a socket, made out a check, tried to blot it and made a smudge, and handed it to brother Daniel. He took one look at it and said:

“No.”

“Yes,” she snapped.

“I tell you, Bess, it won’t—”

“It will have to, Dan. At least for this week. That’s all there is to it. I’ve told you a thousand times—”

She stopped, looked at me, and looked at him.

“All right,” he said, and stuck the check in his pocket, and sat down on a chair, shaking his head and looking thoughtful.

“Now,” Bess turned to me, “what about it?”

“Nothing to brag about,” I told her. “There’s a slew of fingerprints on that letter and envelope, but since you discussed it with your brother and nephew and the girls and Dr. Brady, I suppose they all handled it. Did they?”

“Yes.”

I shrugged. “So. Maryella showed Mr. Wolfe how to make corned beef hash. The secret is chitlins. Aside from that, nothing to report. Except that Janet knows that you think she’s it. Also she wanted that picture.”

“What picture?”

“The snapshot of her you told me to throw in the wastebasket. It caught her eye and she wanted it. Is there any objection to her having it?”

“Certainly not.”

“Is there anything you want to say about it? That might help?”

“No, that picture has nothing to do with it. I mean that wouldn’t help you any.”

“Dr. Brady was requested to call at our office at two o’clock today but was too busy.”

Bess Huddleston went to a window and looked out and came back. “He wasn’t too busy to come and ride one of my horses,” she said tartly. “They ought to be back soon — I thought I heard them at the stable....”

“Will he come to the house?”

“He will. For cocktails.”

“Good. Mr. Wolfe told me to say that there is a remote chance there might be prints on the other letter. The one the rich man got.”

“It isn’t available.”

“Couldn’t you get it?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Has he turned it over to the police?”

“Good heavens, no!”

“Okay. I’ve played tag with Mister and had a talk with your nephew. Now if I could see where Janet keeps her stationery, and take a sample from that typewriter. Is that the one?”

“Yes. But first come to Janet’s room. I’ll show you.”

I followed her. It was at the other end of the house, on that floor, one flight up, a pleasant little room and nice and neat. But the stationery was a washout. It wasn’t in a box. It was in a drawer of a writing table with no lock on it, and all you had to do was open the drawer with a metal ring for a puller, which couldn’t possibly have had a print, and reach in and take what you wanted, paper and envelopes both. Bess Huddleston left me there, and after a look around where there was nothing to look for, I went back to the office. Daniel was still there on the chair where we had left him. I ran off some sample lines on the typewriter, using a sheet of Janet’s paper, and was putting it in my pocket when Daniel spoke:

“You’re a detective.”

I nodded. “That’s what they tell me.”

“You’re finding out who sent those anonymous letters.”

“Right.” I snapped my fingers. “Just like that.”

“Anyone who sends letters like that deserves to be immersed to the chin in a ten percent solution of hydrofluoric acid.”

“Why, would that be painful?”

Daniel shuddered. “It would. I stayed here because I thought you might want to ask me something.”

“Much obliged. What shall I ask you?”

“That’s the trouble.” He looked dismal. “There’s nothing I can tell you. I wish to God there was. I have no information to offer, even no suspicions. But I would like to offer a comment. Without prejudice. Two comments.”

I sat down and looked interested. “Number one?” I said receptively.

“You can pass them on to Nero Wolfe.”

“I can and will.”

Daniel eyed me, screwing up his lips. “You mentioned five people to my sister just now. Her nephew, Larry — mine too — Miss Nichols and Miss Timms, Dr. Brady, and me. It is worth considering that four of us would be injured by anything that injured my sister. I am her brother and I have a deep and strong affection for her. The young ladies are employed by her and they are well paid. Larry is also well paid. Frankly — I am his uncle — too well. But for his aunt, he might earn four dollars a day as a helper on a coal barge. I know of no other occupation that would not strain his faculties beyond their limit. But the point is, his prosperity depends entirely on hers. So it is conceivable — I offer this merely as a comment — that we four may properly be eliminated from suspicion.”

“Okay,” I said. “That leaves one.”

“One?”

“Sure, Doc Brady. Of the five I mentioned, you rule out four. Pointing straight at him.”

“By no means.” Daniel looked distressed. “You misunderstand me. I know very little about Dr. Brady, though it so happens that my second comment concerns him. I insist it is merely a comment. You have read the letter received by Mrs. Horrocks? Then you have probably realized that while it purports to be an attack on Dr. Brady, it is so manifestly absurd that it couldn’t possibly damage him. Mrs. Horrocks’ daughter died of tetanus. There is no such thing as a wrong medicine for tetanus, nor a right one either, once the toxin has reached the nerve centers. The antitoxin will prevent, but never, or very rarely, will it cure. So the attack on Dr. Brady was no attack at all.”

“That’s interesting,” I admitted. “Are you a doctor?”

“No, sir. I’m a research chemist. But any standard medical treatise—”

“Sure. I’ll look it up. What reason do you suppose Doc Brady might have for putting your sister on the skids?”

“So far as I know, none. None whatever.”

“Then that lets him out. With everyone else out, there’s no one left but your sister.”

“My sister?”

I nodded. “She must have sent the letters herself.”

That made him mad. In fact he rather blew up, chiefly because it was too serious a matter to be facetious about, and I had to turn on the suavity to calm him down. Then he went into a sulk. After fooling around with him for another ten minutes and getting nothing for my trouble, I decided to move on and he accompanied me downstairs and out to the terrace, where we heard voices.

If that was a sample of a merry gathering arranged by Bess Huddleston, I’ll roll my own, though I admit that isn’t fair, since she hadn’t done any special arranging. She was lying on a porch swing with her dress curled above her knees by the breeze, displaying a pair of bare legs that were merely something to walk with, the feet being shod with high-heeled red slippers, and I don’t like shoes without stockings, no matter whose legs they are. Two medium-sized black bears were sitting on the flagstones with their backs propped against the frame of the swing, licking sticks of candy and growling at each other. Maryella Timms was perched on the arm of a chair with her hand happening to rest on the shoulder of Larry Huddleston, who was sitting at careless ease in the chair the way John Barrymore would. Janet Nichols, in riding clothes, was in another chair, her face hot and flushed, which made her look better instead of worse as it does most people, and standing at the other end of the swing, also in riding clothes, was a wiry-looking guy with a muscular face.

When Bess Huddleston introduced us, Dr. Brady and me, I started to meet him halfway for the handshake, but I had taken only two and a half steps when the bears suddenly started for me as if I was the meal of their dreams. I leaped sideways half a mile in one bound and their momentum carried them straight on by, but as I whirled to faced them another big black object shot past me from behind like a bat out of hell and I jumped again, just at random. Laughter came from two directions, and from a third Bess Huddleston’s voice:

“They weren’t after you, Mr. Goldwin, they smelled Mister coming and they’re afraid of him. He teases them.”

The bears were not in sight. The orangutan jumped up on the swing and off again. I said savagely, “My name is Goolenwangel.”

Dr. Brady was shaking my hand. He said with a laugh, “Don’t mind her, Mr. Goodwin. It’s a pose. She pretends she can’t remember the name of anyone not in the Social Register. Since her entire career is founded on snobbery—”

“Snob yourself,” Bess Huddleston snorted. “You were born to it and believe in it. With me it’s business. But for heaven’s sake let’s not — Mister, you devil, don’t you dare tickle my feet!”

Mister went right ahead. He already had the red slippers off, and, depositing them right side up on a flagstone, he proceeded to tickle the sole of her right foot. She screamed and kicked him. He tickled the other foot, and she screamed again and kicked him with that. That appeared to satisfy him, for he started off, but his next performance was unpremeditated. A man in a butler’s jacket, approaching with a tray of glasses and bottles, had just reached the end of the swing when Mister bumped him, and bumped him good. The man yelled and lost control, and down went the works. Dr. Brady caught one bottle on the fly, and I caught another, but everything else was shattered on the stones. Mister went twenty feet through the air and landed in a chair and sat there and giggled, and the man was trembling all over.

“For God’s sake, Haskell,” Bess Huddleston said, “don’t leave now, with guests coming for dinner. Go to your room and have a drink and lie down. We’ll clean this up.”

“My name is Hoskins,” the man said in a hollow tone.

“So it is. Of course it is. Go and have a drink.”

The man went, and the rest of us got busy. When Mister got the idea, which was at once, he waddled over to help, and I’ll say this much for him, he was the fastest picker-up of pieces of broken glass I have ever seen. Janet went and came back with implements, among them a couple of brooms, but the trouble was that you couldn’t make a comprehensive sweep of it on account of the strips of turf between the flagstones. Larry went for another outfit of drinks, and finally Maryella solved the problem of the bits of glass in the grass strips by bringing a vacuum cleaner. Bess Huddleston stayed on the swing. Dr. Brady carried off the debris, and eventually we got back to normal, everybody with a drink, including Mister, only his was non-alcoholic, or I wouldn’t have stayed. What that bird would have done with a couple of Martinis under his fur would have been something to watch from an airplane.

“This seems to be a day for breaking things,” Bess Huddleston said, sipping an old-fashioned. “Someone broke my bottle of bath salts and it splattered all over the bathroom and just left it that way.”

“Mister?” Maryella asked.

“I don’t think so. He never goes in there. I didn’t dare ask the servants.”

But apparently at the Huddleston place there was no such thing as settling down for a social quarter of an hour, whether Mister was drunk or sober, only the next disturbance wasn’t his fault, except indirectly. The social atmosphere was nothing to brag about anyhow, because it struck me that certain primitive feelings were being felt and not concealed with any great success. I’m not so hot at nuances, but it didn’t take a Nero Wolfe to see that Maryella was working on Larry Huddleston, that the sight of the performance was giving Dr. Brady the fidgets in his facial muscles, that Janet was embarrassed and trying to pretend she didn’t notice what was going on, and that Daniel was absentmindedly drinking too much because he was worrying about something. Bess Huddleston had her ear cocked to hear what I was saying to Dr. Brady, but I was merely dating him to call at the office. He couldn’t make it that evening, but tomorrow perhaps... his schedule was very crowded...

The disturbance came when Bess Huddleston said she guessed she had better go and see if there was going to be any dinner or anyone to serve it, and sat up and put on her slippers. That is, she put one on; the second one, she stuck her foot in, let out a squeak, and jerked the foot out again.

“Damn!” she said. “A piece of glass in my slipper! Cut my toe!”

Mister bounced over to her, and the rest of us gathered around. Since Brady was a doctor, he took charge of matters. I didn’t amount to much, a shallow gash half an inch long on the bottom of her big toe, but it bled some, and Mister started whining and wouldn’t stop. Brother Daniel brought first-aid materials from the living room, and after Brady had applied a good dose of iodine, he did a neat job with gauze and tape.

“It’s all right, Mister,” Bess Huddleston said reassuringly. “You don’t — hey!”

Mister had swiped the iodine bottle, uncorked it, and was carefully depositing the contents, drop by drop, onto one of the strips of turf. He wouldn’t surrender it to Brady or Maryella, but he gave it to his mistress on demand, after re-corking it himself, and she handed it to her brother.

It was after six o’clock, and I wasn’t invited to dinner, and anyway I had had enough zoology for one day, so I said good-bye and took myself off. When I got the roadster onto the highway and was among my fellows again, I took a long deep breath of the good old mixture of gasoline and air and the usual odors.

When I got back to the office Wolfe, who was making marks on a big map of Russia he had bought recently, said he would take my report later, so, after comparing the type on my sample with that on the Horrocks letter and finding they were written on the same machine, I went up to my room for a shower and a change. After dinner, back in the office, he told me to make it a complete recital, leaving out nothing, which meant that he had made no start and formed no opinion. I told him I preferred a written report, because when I delivered it verbally he threw me off the track by making faces and irritating me, but he leaned back and shut his eyes and told me to proceed.

It was nearly midnight when I finished, what with the usual interruptions. When he’s doing a complete coverage, he thinks nothing of asking such a question as, “Did the animal pour the iodine on the grass with its right paw or its left?” If he were a movable object and went places himself it would save me a lot of breath, but then that’s what I get paid for. Partly.

He stood up and stretched, and I yawned. “Well,” I asked offensively, “got it sewed up? Including proof?”

“I’m sleepy,” he said, starting off. At the door he turned. “You made the usual quantity of mistakes, naturally, but probably the only one of importance was your failure to investigate the matter of the broken bottle in Miss Huddleston’s bathroom.”

“Pah,” I said. “If that’s the best you can do. It was not a bottle of anonymous letters. Bath salts.”

“All the same it’s preposterous. It’s even improbable. Break a bottle and simply go off, leaving it scattered around? No one would do that.”

“You don’t know that orangutan. I do.”

“Not orangutan. Chimpanzee. It might have done it, yes. That’s why you should have investigated. If the animal did not do it, there’s something fishy about it. Highly unnatural. If Dr. Brady arrives by eight fifty-nine, I’ll see him before I go up to the plant rooms. Good night.”

Chapter 4

That was Tuesday night, August 19th. On Friday the 22nd Bess Huddleston got tetanus. On Monday the 25th she died. To show how everything from war to picnics depends on the weather, as Wolfe remarked when he was discussing the case with a friend the other day, if there had been a heavy rainfall in Riverdale between the 19th and 26th it would have been impossible to prove it was murder, let alone catch the murderer. Not that he showed any great — oh, well.

On Wednesday the 20th Dr. Brady came to the office for an interview with Wolfe, and the next day brother Daniel and nephew Larry came. About all we got out of that was that among the men nobody liked anybody. In the meantime, upon instructions from Wolfe, I was wrapping my tentacles about Janet, coaxing her into my deadly embrace. It really wasn’t an unpleasant job, because Wednesday afternoon I took her to a ball game and was agreeably surprised to find that she knew a bunt from a base on balls, and Friday evening we went to the Flamingo Roof and I learned that she could dance nearly as well as Lily Rowan. She was no cuddler and a little stiff, but she went with the music and always knew what we were going to do. Saturday morning I reported to Wolfe regarding her as follows:

1. If she was toting a grievance against Bess Huddleston, it would take a smarter man than me to find out what it was.

2. There was nothing fundamentally wrong with her except that she would rather live in the country than the city.

3. She had no definite suspicion about who had sent the anonymous letters or anyone’s motive for sending them.

Wolfe said, “Try Miss Timms for a change.”

I didn’t try to date Maryella for Saturday or Sunday, because Janet had told me they were all going to Saratoga for the weekend. Monday morning, I thought, was no time to start a romance, so I waited until afternoon to phone, got Maryella, and got the news. I went up to the plant rooms, where Wolfe was a sight to behold in his undershirt, cutting the tops from a row of vandas for propagation, and told him:

“Bess Huddleston is dead.”

“Let me alone,” he said peevishly. “I’m doing all I can. Someone will probably get another letter before long, and when—”

“No, sir. No more letters. I am stating facts. Friday evening tetanus set in from that cut on her toe, and about an hour ago she died. Maryella’s voice was choked with emotion as she told me.”

Wolfe scowled at me. “Tetanus?”

“Yes, sir.”

“That would have been a five thousand dollar fee.”

“It would have been if you had seen fit to do a little work instead of—”

“It was no good and you know it. I was waiting for another letter. File it away, including the letter to Mrs. Horrocks, to be delivered to her on request. I’m glad to be rid of it.”

I wasn’t. Down in the office, as I checked over the folder, consisting of the Horrocks letter, the snapshot of Janet, a couple of reports I had made and some memos Wolfe had dictated, I felt as if I was leaving a ball game in the fourth inning with the score a tie. But it looked as if nothing could be done about it, and certainly there was no use trying to badger Wolfe. I phoned Janet to ask if there was anything I could do, and she told me in a weak tired voice that as far as she knew there wasn’t.

According to the obit in the Times the next morning, the funeral service was to be Wednesday afternoon, at the Belford Memorial Chapel on 73rd Street, and of course there would be a big crowd, even in August, for Bess Huddleston’s last party. Cordially invited to meet death. I decided to go. Not merely, if I know myself, for curiosity or another look at Janet. It is not my custom to frequent memorial chapels to look at girls even if they’re good dancers. Call it a hunch. Not that I saw anything criminal, only something incredible. I filed past the casket with the throng because from a distance I had seen it and couldn’t believe it. But when I got close there it was. Eight black orchids that could have come from nowhere else in the world, and a card with his initials the way he scribbled them, “N.W.”

When I got home, and Wolfe came down from the plant rooms at six o’clock, I didn’t mention it. I decided it wasn’t advisable. I needed to devote some thought to it.

It was that evening, Wednesday evening after the funeral, that I answered the doorbell, and who should I see on the stoop but my old colleague Inspector Cramer of the Homicide Squad. I hailed him with false enthusiasm and ushered him into the office, where Wolfe was making more marks on the map of Russia. They exchanged greetings, and Cramer sat in the red leather chair, took out a handkerchief and wiped perspiration from his exposed surfaces, put a cigar between his lips and sank his teeth in it.

“Your hair’s turning gray,” I observed. “You look as if you weren’t getting enough exercise. A brain-worker like you—”

“God knows why you keep him,” he said to Wolfe.

Wolfe grunted. “He saved my life once.”

“Once!” I exclaimed indignantly. “Beginning—”

“Shut up, Archie. What can I do for you, Inspector?”

“You can tell me what you were doing for Bess Huddleston.”

“Indeed.” Wolfe’s brows went up a shade. “You? The Homicide Bureau? Why do you want to know?”

“Because a guy is making himself a pest down at Headquarters. Her brother. He says she was murdered.”

“He does?”

“Yes.”

“Offering what evidence?”

“None at all.”

“Then why bother me about it? Or yourself either?”

“Because we can’t shut him up. He’s even been to the Commissioner. And though he has no evidence, he has an argument. I’d like to tell you his argument.”

Wolfe leaned back and sighed. “Go ahead.”

“Well. He started on us last Saturday, four days ago. She got tetanus the day before. I don’t need to tell you about that cut on her toe, since Goodwin was there—”

“I’ve heard about it.”

“I’ll bet you have. The brother, Daniel, said she couldn’t have got tetanus from that cut. He said it was a clean piece of glass that dropped into her slipper when the tray of glasses fell on the terrace. He saw it. And the slipper was a clean house slipper, nearly new and clean. And she hadn’t been walking around barefooted. He claimed there couldn’t possibly have been any tetanus germs in that cut, at least not enough to cause so violent an attack so soon. I sent a man up there Saturday night, but the doctor wouldn’t let him see her, and of course he had no evidence—”

“Dr. Brady?”

“Yes. But the brother kept after us, especially when she died, and yesterday morning I sent a couple of men up to rub it off. I want to ask you, Goodwin, what was the piece of glass like? The piece in her slipper that cut her?”

“I knew you really came to see me,” I told him genially. “It was a piece from one of the thick blue glasses that they had for old-fashioneds. Several of them broke.”

Cramer nodded. “So they all say. We sent the slippers to the laboratory, and they say no tetanus germs. Of course there was another possibility, the iodine and the bandage. We sent all the stuff on that shelf to the laboratory, and the gauze was sterile, and it was good iodine, so naturally there were no germs in it. Under the circum—”

“Subsequent dressings,” Wolfe muttered.

“No. The dressing Brady found on it when he was called up there Friday night was the one he had put on originally.”

“Listen,” I put in, “I know. By God. That orangutan. He tickled her feet. He rubbed germs on her—”

Cramer shook his head. “We went into that too. One of them suggested it — the nephew. That seems to be a possibility. It sounds farfetched to me, but of course it’s possible. Now what the doctor says. Brady.”

“Excuse me,” Wolfe said. “You talked to those people. Had Miss Huddleston nothing to say to them before she died? Any of them?”

“Not much. Do you know what tetanus does?”

“Vaguely.”

“It does plenty. Like strychnine, only worse because there are no periods of relaxation and it lasts longer. When Brady got there Friday night her jaw was already locked tight. He gave her avertin to relieve her, and kept it up till the end. When my man was there Saturday night she was bent double backwards. Sunday she told Brady through her teeth she wanted to tell people good-bye, and he took them in one at a time. I’ve got their statements. Nothing significant, what you’d expect. Of course she only said a few words to each one — she was in bad shape. Her brother tried to tell her that her approaching death wasn’t an accident, it was murder, but Brady and the nurse wouldn’t let him.”

“She herself had no such suspicion?”

“Not in evidence. You realize what she was like.” Cramer shifted the cigar to the other side of his mouth. “What Brady says about the tetanus, one three-hundredth of a grain of the toxin is fatal. The bacilli and spores are more or less around everywhere, but of course especially in the neighborhood of horses. The soil around a barnyard reeks with it. I asked Brady what about his infecting the cut or the bandage with his own fingers when he dressed it, since he had just been riding, but he said he had washed his hands, and so had the Nichols girl, and she corroborated it. He said it was highly unlikely that there should have been tetanus bacilli on the piece of glass or her slipper or the skin of her toe or that animal’s paw, at least enough of them to cause such a quick and virulent attack, but he said it was also unlikely that when a man walks across a street at a corner with a green light he should get run over, but sometimes he does. He says that he deeply regrets he didn’t return Tuesday evening or Wednesday and give her an injection of antitoxin, but he doesn’t blame himself because no doctor alive would have done so. After the poison reached the nerve centers, as it had when Brady arrived Friday night, it was too late for antitoxin, though he tried it. Everything Brady said has been checked with the Examiner and is okay.”

“I don’t like his analogy,” Wolfe declared. “A man crossing a street is extremely likely to get run over. That’s why I never undertake it. However, that doesn’t impeach Dr. Brady. I ask you again, Mr. Cramer, why do you bother me with all this, or yourself either?”

“That’s what I came here to find out.”

“Not the proper place. Try the inside of your head.”

“Oh, that’s all right,” Cramer asserted. “I’m satisfied. It was accidental. But that damn brother won’t let go. And before I get through with him and toss him out on his ear. I thought I’d better have a word with you. If there was anyone around there with murder in his heart, you ought to know. You would know. Since you had just started on a job for her. You’re not interested in petty larceny. So I’d like to know what the job was.”

“No doubt,” Wolfe said. “Didn’t any of those people tell you?”

“No.”

“None of them?”

“No.”

“Then how did you know she had hired me?”

“The brother told me about Goodwin being there, and that led me to question him. But he doesn’t seem to know what your job was about.”

“Neither do I.”

Cramer took the cigar from his mouth and said vehemently, “Now look! How’s it going to hurt you? Loosen up for once! I want to cross this off, that’s all. I’ve got work to do! All I want to know—”

“Please!” Wolfe said curtly. “You say you are satisfied that the death was accidental. You have no shred of evidence of a crime. Miss Huddleston hired me for a confidential job. Her death does not release me, it merely deprives me of the job. If you had an action you could summon me, but you haven’t. Will you have some beer?”

“No.” Cramer glared. “My God, you can be honorable when you want to be! Will you answer a plain question? Do you think she was murdered?”

“No.”

“Then you think it was purely accidental?”

“No.”

“What the hell do you think?”

“Nothing at all. About that. I know nothing about it. I have no interest in it. The woman died, as all women do, may she rest in peace, and I lost a fee. Why don’t you ask me this: if you knew what I know, if I told you all about the job she hired me for, would you feel that her death required further investigation?”

“Okay. I ask it.”

“The answer is no. Since you have discovered no single suspicious circumstance. Will you have some beer?”

“Yes, I will,” Cramer growled.

He consumed a bottle, got no further concessions either in information or in hypothetical questions, and departed.

I saw him to the door, returned to the office and remarked:

“Old Frizzle-top seems to be improving with age. Of course he has had the advantage of studying my methods. He seems to have covered the ground up there nearly as well as I could.”

“Pfui.” Wolfe pushed the tray aside to make room for the map. “Not that I don’t agree with you. Nearly as well as you could, yes. But either he didn’t have sense enough to learn everything that happened that afternoon, or he missed his best chance to expose a crime, if there was one. It hasn’t rained the past week, has it? No.”

I cocked an eye at him. “You don’t say. How many guesses can I have?”

But he left it at that and got busy with the map, ignoring my questions. It was one of the many occasions when it would have been a pleasure to push him off of the Empire State Building, if there had been any way of enticing him there. Of course there was a chance that he was merely pulling my leg, but I doubted it. I know his tones of voice.

It ruined my night for me. Instead of going to sleep in thirty seconds it took me thirty minutes, trying to figure out what the devil he meant, and I woke up twice with nightmares, the first time because it was raining on me through the roof and each raindrop was a tetanus germ, and the second time I was lost in a desert where it hadn’t rained for a hundred years. Next morning, after Wolfe had gone up to the plant rooms at nine o’clock, I got stubborn. I sat at my desk and went over that party at Riverdale in my mind, second by second, as I had reported it to Wolfe. And I got it. I would have hit it sooner if it hadn’t been for various interruptions, phone calls and so on, but anyway finally there it was, as obvious as lipstick.

Provided one thing. To settle that I phoned Doc Vollmer, whose home and office were in a house down the street, and learned that tetanus, which carried death, had a third as many lives as a cat — one as a toxin, one as a bacillus, and one as a spore. The bacillus or the spore got in you and manufactured the toxin, which did the dirty work, traveling not with the blood but with the nerves. The bacillus and spore were both anaerobic, but could live in surface soil or dust for years and usually did, especially the spore.

And now what? Just forget it? Wolfe had, but then he wasn’t human, whereas I was and am. Besides, it would be very neat if it got results, and it would teach Wolfe a lesson. It was nearly eleven o’clock, and I wanted to get out before he came downstairs, so I phoned up to him that I was leaving on an errand, and walked to the garage on Tenth Avenue and got the roadster. Heading uptown, I stopped at a hardware store near 42nd Street and went in and bought a long-bladed kitchen knife, a narrow garden trowel, and four paper bags. Then I went to a phone booth in a drug store at the corner and called the Huddleston number.

Maryella’s voice answered, and I asked to speak to Miss Nichols. In a minute she was on, and I told her I was thinking she might be leaving there soon and I’d like to have her address.

“It’s nice of you to call,” she said. “It’s a — pleasant surprise. Naturally I thought you — last week, I mean — I thought you were just being a detective.”

“Don’t kid me,” I told her. “Anyone that dances the way you do being surprised at a phone call. Not that I suppose you’re doing any dancing at present.”

“Not now. No.”

“Will you be leaving there soon?”

“Not this week. We’re trying to help Mr. Huddleston straighten things up.”

“Will you send me your address when you go?”

“Why — yes. Certainly. If you want it.”

“I do you know. How would it be if I drove up there? Just to say hello?”

“When? Now?”

“Right now. I can be there in twenty minutes. I’d kind of like to see you.”

“Why—” Silence. “That would be all right. If you want to take the trouble.”

I told her it would be no trouble at all, hung up, went out to the roadster, and made for the entrance to the West Side Highway at 46th Street.

I admit my timing was terrible. If I had arrived, say, between twelve thirty and one, they might have been in the house having lunch, and I could have said I had already eaten and waited for Janet on the terrace, which would have been a perfect opportunity. Of course as it turned out that would have made a monkey of me, so it was just as well that I dubbed it. As it was, leaving the car outside the fence, with the knife in one hip pocket and the trowel in the other, and the folded paper bags in the side pocket of my coat, I walked across the lawn to where Larry stood near the pool, glowering at it. When he heard me coming he transferred the glower to me.

“Hello,” I said amiably. “What, no alligators?”

“No. They’re gone.”

“And Mister? And the bears?”

“Yes. What the hell are you doing here?”

I suppose it would have been sensible to appease him, but he was really quite irritating. Tone and look both. So I said, “I came to play tag with Mister,” and started for the house, but Janet appeared, cutting across the lawn. She looked prettier than I remembered her, or maybe not so much prettier as more interesting. Her hair was done differently or something. She said hello to me and let me have a hand to shake, and then told Larry:

“Maryella says you’ll have to help her with those Corliss bills. Some of them go back before she came, and she doesn’t seem to trust my memory.”

Larry nodded at her, and, moving, was in front of me. “What do you want?” he demanded.

“Nothing special,” I said. “Freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom—”

“If you’ve got a bill, mail it. You’ll get about three percent.”

I suppressed impulses and shook my head. “No bill. I came to see Miss Nichols.”

“Yes you did. You came to snoop—”

But Janet had her hand on his arm. “Please, Larry. Mr. Goodwin phoned and asked to see me. Please?”

I would have preferred smacking him, and it was irritating to see her with her hand on his arm looking up at him the way she did, but when he turned and marched off towards the house I restrained myself and let him go.

I asked Janet, “What’s eating him?”

“Well,” she said, “after all, you are a detective. And his aunt has died — terrible, it was terrible—”

“Sure. If you want to call that grief. What was the crack about three per cent?”

“Oh...” She hesitated. “But there’s nothing secret about it, goodness knows. Miss Huddleston’s affairs are tangled up. Everybody thought she was rich, but apparently she spent it as fast as she made it.”

“Faster, if the creditors are going to get three percent.” I got started towards the terrace, and she came beside me. “In that case, the brother and the nephew are out of luck. I apologize to Larry. He’s probably overcome by grief, after all.”

“That’s a mean thing to say,” Janet protested.

“Then I take it back.” I waved it away. “Let’s talk about something else.”

I was thinking the best plan was to sit with her on the terrace, with the idea of getting her to leave me alone there for a few minutes, which was all I needed, but the hot noon sun was coming straight down, and she went on into the house with me behind her. She invited me to sit on a couch with her, but with the tools in my hip pockets I thought it was safer to take a chair facing her. We had a conversation.

Of course the simplest thing would have been to tell her what I wanted to do and then go ahead and do it, and I deny that it was any suspicion of her, either as a letter writer or as a murderess, that kept me from doing that. It was the natural desire I had not to hurt her feelings by letting her know that my real purpose in coming was not just to see her. If things should develop it was good policy to have her friendly. So I played it for a solo. I was thinking it was about time to get on with it, and was figuring out an errand for her, preferably upstairs, that would be sure to keep her five minutes, when suddenly I saw something through the window that made me stare.

It was Daniel Huddleston on the terrace with a newspaper bundle under his arm and a long-bladed knife in one hand and a garden trowel in the other!

I stood up to see better.

“What is it?” Janet asked, and stood up too. I shushed her and whispered in her ear, “First lesson for a detective. Don’t make any noise.”

Brother Daniel stopped near the center of the terrace, in front of the swing, knelt down on a flagstone, deposited the newspaper bundle and some folded newspapers beside him, and the trowel, and plunged the knife into the strip of turf at the edge of the flagstone. There was nothing furtive about it; he didn’t do any glancing over his shoulder, but he worked fast. With the trowel he scooped out a hunk of the turf, the width of the strip, about six inches long and three inches deep, and rolled it in a piece of newspaper. Then a second one, to the right of the first hole, and then a third one, to the left, wrapping each separately.

“What on earth does he think he’s doing?” Janet whispered. I squeezed her arm.

He was about done. Opening the package he had brought with him, he produced three strips of turf the size and shape of those he had just dug out, fitted them into the trench he had made, pressed them with his foot until they were level with the flagstone, remade the package with the three hunks he had removed, and the knife and trowel, and went off as if he were bound somewhere.

I took Janet’s hand and gave her an earnest eye. “Listen, girlie,” I said, “my one fault is curiosity. Otherwise I am perfect. Don’t forget that. It’s time for your lunch anyway.”

She said something to my back as I made for the door. I emerged onto the terrace cautiously, slid across and into the hedge of shrubbery, made a hole and looked through. Daniel was forty paces away, going across the lawn not in the direction of the drive where my car was but the other way, off to the right. I decided to give him another twenty paces before emerging, and it was well that I did, for suddenly a voice sounded above me:

“Hey, Uncle Dan! Where you going?”

Daniel stopped in his tracks and whirled. I twisted my neck, and through the leaves got a glimpse of Larry’s head sticking out of an upper window, and Maryella’s beside it.

Larry shouted, “We need you!”

“See you later!” Daniel yelled.

“But it’s time for lunch!” Maryella called.

“See you later!” Daniel turned and was off.

“Now that’s a performance,” Maryella said to Larry.

“Cuckoo,” Larry declared.

Their heads went in. But they might still have been looking out, so I scooted along the side of the house to the corner, and from there circled wide around evergreens and similar obstructions before swinging into the direction Daniel had taken. He wasn’t in sight. This part of the premises was new to me, and the first thing I knew I ran smack into the fence in the middle of a thicket. I couldn’t fight my way through on account of noise, so I doubled around, dashed along the edge of the thicket, and pretty soon hit a path. No sight of Daniel. The path took me to a series of stone steps up a steep bank, and up I went. Getting to the top, I saw him. A hundred feet ahead was a gate in the fence, and he was shutting the gate and starting down a lane between rows of little trees. The package was under his arm. In a way I was more interested in the package than I was in him. What if he threw it down a sewer? So I closed up more than I would have for an ordinary tailing job, and proceeding through the gate, followed him down the lane. At the end of the lane, not far ahead, he stopped, and I dived into the trees.

He had stopped at a curb, a paved street. The way cars were rolling by, apparently it was a main traffic street; and that point was settled when a double-decker bus jerked to a stop right square in front of Daniel, and he climbed on and off the bus went.

I hotfooted it to the corner. It was Marble Avenue. Riverdale is like that. The bus was too far away to read its number, and no taxi was in sight in either direction. I stepped into the street, into the path of the first car coming, and held up a commanding palm. By bad luck it was occupied by the two women that Helen Hokinson used for models, but there was no time to pick and choose. I hopped into the back seat, gave the driver a fleeting glimpse of my detective license, and said briskly:

“Police business. Step on it and catch up with a bus that’s ahead.”

The one driving emitted a baby scream. The other one said, “You don’t look like a policeman. You get out. If you don’t we’ll drive to a police station.”

“Suit yourself, madam. While we sit and talk the most dangerous gangster in New York is escaping. He’s on the bus.”

“Oh! He’ll shoot at us.”

“No. He isn’t armed.”

“Then why is he dangerous?”

“For God’s sake,” I reached for the door latch, “I’ll take a car with a man in it!”

But the car started forward. “You will not,” the driver said fiercely. “I’m as good a driver as any man. My husband says so.”

She was okay at that. Within a block she had it up to fifty, and she was good at passing, and it wasn’t long before we caught up with the bus. At least, a bus. When it stopped at a corner I told her to get alongside, which she did neatly, and with my hand over my face I looked for him and there he was.

“I’m shadowing him,” I told the ladies. “I think he’s on his way to meet a crooked politician. The first empty taxi we see you can let me out if you want to, but of course he might suspect a taxi, whereas he never would suspect a car like this with two good-looking well-dressed women in it.”

The driver looked grim. “In that case,” she declared, “it is our duty.”

And by gum she crawled along behind that bus for a good three-quarters of an hour, to Riverside Drive, the whole length of the Drive, over to Broadway, and on downtown. I thought the least I could do was furnish diversion, which I did with tales of my experiences with gangsters and kidnappers and so forth. When Daniel was still on the bus after crossing 42nd Street I decided in disgust that he was probably bound for Headquarters, and I was so deeply considering the feasibility of intercepting him before he got there that I nearly missed it when he hopped to the sidewalk at 34th Street. Paying the ladies with thanks and a cordial smile, I jumped out and dodged through the midday shopping mob, and almost lost him. I picked him up going west on 34th.

At Eighth Avenue he turned uptown. I kept twenty yards behind.

At 35th he turned west again.

That was when I got suspicious. Naturally. On he went, straight as a bullet. When he kept on west of Ninth Avenue, there was no question about it. I closed up. He began looking at the numbers on buildings, and came to the stoop and started up. Boy, I’m telling you, they don’t get away from me. I get my man. I had trailed this one the length of New York, hanging on like a bulldog, right to Nero Wolfe’s door.

Chapter 5

I had been thinking fast the last two blocks. I had considered, and rejected, three different maneuvers to keep Wolfe from finding out. They all seemed good, but I knew damn well none of them was good enough. He would find out all right, no matter what I did. So I bounded up the steps past Daniel, greeted him, let us in with my key, and took him to the office.

Wolfe, at his desk, frowned at us. “How do you do, Mr. Huddleston. Archie. Where have you been?”

“I know,” I said, “it’s about lunch time, so I’ll make it brief. First cast a glance at this.” I took the knife, the trowel, and the paper bags from my pockets and put them on his desk.

Daniel stared and muttered something.

“What is this flummery?” Wolfe demanded.

“No flummery,” I asserted. “Tools. It still didn’t rain last night. So I went to Riverdale to get the piece of turf where the orangutan poured the iodine. Brother Daniel had the same idea. He was just ahead of me. He’s got it in that newspaper. I thought he might be going to toss it in the river, so I tailed him and he led me here. So I look foolish but not dumb. Now you can laugh.”

He didn’t. He looked at Daniel. “Is that what you have in that package, Mr. Huddleston?”

“It is,” Daniel said. “I want—”

“Why did you bring it to me? I’m not a chemist. You are.”

“Because I want to authenticate it. I want—”

“Take it to the police.”

“No.” Daniel looked and sounded determined. “They think I’m nothing but a nuisance. Maybe I am. But if I analyze this myself, without someone to—”

“Don’t analyze it yourself. You have colleagues, friends, haven’t you?”

“None I would want to give this to.”

“Are you sure you have the piece where the iodine was poured?”

“I am. A few drops were on the edge of the flagstone. I also have pieces taken from each side of that piece, for comparison.”

“Naturally. Who suggested this step to you?”

“No one. It occurred to me this morning, and I immediately went up there—”

“Indeed. I congratulate you. Take it to the Fisher Laboratories. You know them, don’t you?”

“Certainly.” Daniel flushed. “I happen not to have any cash at the moment. They are expensive.”

“Establish credit. Your sister’s estate. Aren’t you her nearest relative?”

“There is no estate. The liabilities greatly exceed the assets.”

Wolfe looked annoyed. “You are careless not to have cash. Confound it, you should have cash. You understand, sir, my finger is not in this pie. I am not concerned. My lunch is ready. I should bid you good day. But you seem to be capable of using your brains, and that is so rare a phenomenon it is a pity to waste it. Archie, phone Mr. Weinbach at the Fisher Laboratories. Tell him to expect Mr. Huddleston, to rush the analysis he requires, and to charge it to me. You can pay the bill, sir, at your convenience.”

Daniel hesitated. “I have a habit — I am extremely backward about paying bills—”

“You’ll pay this one. I’ll see that you do. What is argyrol?”

“Argyrol? Why — it’s a silver-protein compound. Silver vietllin.”

“It stains like iodine. Could tetanus bacilli live in it?”

Daniel considered. “I believe they could. It’s far weaker—”

Wolfe nodded impatiently. “Tell Mr. Weinbach to try for it.” He got up. “My lunch is waiting.”

After I had finished the phone call and ushered Daniel out, with his package, I joined Wolfe in the dining room. Since no discussion of business was permitted at meals, I waited until we were back in the office again before observing:

“I ought to tell you that Janet saw him lifting that turf, and Maryella and the nephew—”

“There is no reason to tell me. I am not concerned.” He pointed to the knife and trowel, still on his desk. “Where did you get those things?”

“Bought them.”

“Please put them somewhere. They are not to appear on the expense account.”

“Then I’ll keep them in my room.”

“Do so. By all means. Please take a letter to Mr. Hoehn.”

His tone said, and that’s the end of Miss Huddleston and her affairs for this office, for you, and for me.

No doubt it would have been, except for his vanity. Or perhaps it wasn’t vanity; it may be that the reason he permitted his privacy to be invaded again by brother Daniel was that he wanted to impress on him the desirability of getting the bill of the Fisher Laboratories paid as soon as possible. At any rate, when Daniel turned up some hours later, a little before seven that evening, Fritz was told to bring him to the office. At first sight of him I knew he had something, by the look in his eye and the set of his jaw. He tramped over to Wolfe’s desk and announced:

“My sister was murdered.”

He got an envelope from his pocket, took out a paper and unfolded it, and fumbled the job because his hands were trembling. He swayed a little, steadied himself with a hand on the edge of the desk, looked around for a chair, and sat down.

“I guess I’m a little weak from excitement,” he said apologetically. “Then I had only an apple for breakfast, and I haven’t eaten anything since.”

It was probably the one thing in the world he could have said to keep Wolfe from telling him to go to the police and telling me to bounce him out. The one kind of man that never gets the gate at that house is one with an empty stomach. Glaring at him, not sympathetically but indignantly, Wolfe pushed a button and, when Fritz appeared, inquired:

“How far along is the soup?”

“Quite ready, sir, except for the mushrooms.”

“Bring a bowl of it, crackers, cottage cheese, and hot tea.”

Daniel tried to protest, but Wolfe didn’t even listen. He heaved a deep sigh and leaned back and shut his eyes, a man who had eaten nothing but an apple for twenty-four hours being too painful an object to look at. When Fritz came with the tray I had a table ready in front of Daniel, and he wolfed a couple of crackers and blew on a spoonful of soup and swallowed it.

I had acquired the sheet of paper he had taken from the envelope, a report sheet from Fisher Laboratories, and was looking it over. After some more spoonfuls Daniel said:

“I knew it. I was sure of it. There couldn’t—”

“Eat!” Wolfe commanded sternly.

“I’m eating. I’m all right. You were correct about the argyrol. That was a good guess. Argyrol and nothing else.” A fork conveyed a hunk of cottage cheese to Daniel’s mouth, but he went on, “Not a trace of iodine. And millions of tetanus bacilli, hundreds of millions. Weinbach said he never saw anything like it. And they were all concentrated on the one piece of turf, on the grass stems and the soil surface. The other two pieces had no sign either of the silver vietllin or the tetanus. Weinbach said...”

The doorbell rang, but I kept my seat and left it for Fritz because I had no reason to expect any undesirable intrusions. As it turned out, however, it was exactly the kind of invasion Wolfe resents more than anything else. An insurance salesman or a wife wanting her husband tailed is merely a mosquito to be brushed off, with me to do the brushing, but this wasn’t as simple as that. The sound of Fritz’s voice came from the hall, in indignant protest, and then the door flew open and Inspector Cramer strode in. I mean strode. His first glance caught me, and was it withering. Then he saw who Daniel was, emitted a triumphal grunt, spread his feet apart, and rasped out:

“Come along, you!” And to me: “You too, bud! Come on!”

I grinned at him. “If you ever find time to glance over an interesting document called the Constitution of the United—”

“Shut up, Archie,” Wolfe snapped. “Mr. Cramer. What in the name of heaven is the matter with you?”

“Not a thing,” Cramer said sarcastically. “Matter with me? Not a damn thing.” I never saw him sorer or sourer. “Listen!” he said. He stepped to the desk and tapped a heavy finger on it, sounding like a hammer. “Last night, sitting right at this desk, what did you say? What did you tell me?”

Wolfe was grimacing with distaste. “Your tone and manner, Mr. Cramer—”

“You said, in case you’ve forgotten, that you weren’t interested in the death of Bess Huddleston! Knew nothing about it! Weren’t interested!” Cramer went on tapping the desk. “Well, this afternoon somebody in my office got an idea — we do that once in a while! I sent a man up there, and young Huddleston showed him where the monkey poured some of that iodine, and when he went to take some of that turf for analysis, he found it had already been taken! It had been carefully filled up with other turf, but the grass didn’t match. He asked questions, and he learned that Daniel Huddleston had done it, taken the turf away, and Goodwin had been there and gone with him!”

“Not with him,” I corrected emphatically. “After him.”

Cramer ignored me. “We went for Huddleston and couldn’t find him. So I come to see you. You and Goodwin. And what do I find? By God! I find Huddleston! Sitting here eating! This is the rawest one you’ve ever pulled! Removing evidence, destroying evidence—”

“Nonsense,” Wolfe said curtly and coldly. “Stop shouting. If you wish to know the purpose of Mr. Huddleston’s visit—”

“Not from you I don’t! I’ll get it from him! And from Goodwin! And separately! I’m taking them downtown.”

“No,” Wolfe said. “Not from my office.”

That was the central point of the situation. Twenty minutes earlier Daniel’s empty stomach was all that had kept Wolfe from chasing him to the police, and it wouldn’t have hurt his appetite any if I had gone along to keep Daniel company, but this was different. For a cop to remove persons from the house, any person whatever, with or without a charge or a warrant, except at Wolfe’s instigation, was an intolerable insult to his pride, his vanity, and his sense of the fitness of things. So as was to be expected, he acted with a burst of energy amounting to violence. He sat up straight in his chair.

“Mr. Cramer,” he said, “sit down.”

“Not a chance.” Cramer meant it. “You’re not going to take me in with one of your goddamn—”

“Archie, show Mr. Cramer that report from the Fisher Laboratories.”

I stuck it under his nose. His impulse was to push it away, but no cop, not even an Inspector, dares to refuse to look at a paper. So he snatched it and scowled at it. Daniel started to say something, but Wolfe shushed him, and Daniel finished off the cheese and the last cracker, and put sugar in his tea and began to stir it.

“So what?” Cramer growled. “How do I know—”

“I sometimes doubt if you know anything,” Wolfe said shortly. “I was not and am not interested in Miss Huddleston’s death, though you and Mr. Huddleston and Archie keep pestering me about it. I have no client. My client died. You are even affronted to find Mr. Huddleston here eating. If he’s hungry, why the devil shouldn’t he eat? When he appeared here at one o’clock with that turf, I told him to take it to the police. He said they regarded him as a nuisance. Why he returned here with the laboratory report, I do not know; I only know he was hungry. If you are disgruntled because you have no assurance that the piece of turf examined by the laboratory is the piece onto which the chimpanzee poured some of the contents of the bottle of supposed iodine, I can’t help it. Why didn’t you get the turf yourself when Mr. Huddleston first called on you, five days ago? It was an obvious thing to do.”

“I didn’t know then that the chimpanzee had poured—”

“You should have. Proper questioning would have got it. Either it was worth investigating competently, or not at all. Well, sir, there’s your report. Keep it. You’ll get a bill for it from the Fisher Laboratories. Archie, make a note of that. It wasn’t iodine in that bottle; it was argyrol, and it was reeking with tetanus bacilli. An uncommonly ugly thing to do. I have never heard of a more objectionable way of committing murder, nor of an easier or simpler one. I trust, sir, that you’ll make an arrest. You should, since you have only five people to deal with — the five who were there, not counting Archie—”

“Wait a minute,” Daniel protested. “You’re wrong. That bottle could have been put there any time—”

Wolfe shook his head. “No. Only that afternoon. If we had to we could argue that it is not credible that it was left in the cupboard for an extended period, for just anyone to use, but we don’t have to. The bottle in that cupboard contained good iodine at four o’clock that afternoon.”

Cramer growled. Daniel demanded, “How do you know that?”

“Because it was used at that hour. By Archie. He tripped on an alligator and scratched his hand.”

“By God,” Cramer said, and sat down. Daniel looked at me, and I nodded at him.

Daniel looked at Wolfe, his jaw hanging open and his face gray. “Then it c-couldn’t have been—” he stammered.

“Couldn’t have been what?” Cramer demanded.

“It couldn’t have been someone—” Daniel shook his head weakly, as if trying to reject something. Suddenly he exclaimed fiercely, “I can’t believe that! One of them? Those two girls or Larry or Brady?”

“Or you, sir,” Wolfe said dryly. “You were there. As for your trying to get the police started on it, you may be more devious than you look. Save your indignation. Calm yourself. Your digestive processes will make a botch of that soup and cheese if you don’t. So, Mr. Cramer, I give you that. It was an impromptu job. Not that it was unpremeditated; far from it; it was carefully prepared; an iodine bottle had been emptied and washed and replenished with argyrol and an army of tetanus germs.”

Wolfe compressed his lips. “Very ugly. It would take an extremely unattractive person to think of that, let alone do it. It was done. I presume a situation was to be created requiring the use of the iodine; in fact, there is reason to believe that it had been created, or was in process; but the accident on the terrace provided an opportunity too good to be missed. From the standpoint of technique, it was brilliantly conceived and managed. Only two things needed to be done: drop a piece of glass into Miss Huddleston’s slipper, which was quite simple with everyone jostling around picking up the pieces, and substitute the bottle of bogus iodine for the one that was in the cupboard. With no risk whatever. If Miss Huddleston shook the glass out of her slipper before putting it on, if for any reason she didn’t cut herself, the bottle could be switched again and nothing lost. There is a point, of course: if the bottle in the cupboard had a different kind of label—”

“They all had the same label,” Cramer rumbled.

“All?”

“Yes. There were seven bottles of iodine in that house, counting the kitchen, and they were all the same, size and shape and label.”

“They bought it wholesale,” I explained, “on account of Mister and the bears.”

“That,” Wolfe said, “is precisely the sort of thing you would know, Mr. Cramer. Seven. Not eight. Seven. And of course you had it all analyzed and it was all good iodine.”

“It was. And what the hell is there in that to be sarcastic about? It clears up your point, don’t it? And I might mention another point. The murderer had to leave the terrace, go in the house, between the time the glasses got broken and the time Miss Huddleston cut herself, to switch the iodine bottles.”

Wolfe shook his head. “That offers nothing. They all went in the house during that period. Miss Nichols went for brooms and pans. The nephew went for another tray of supplies. Miss Timms went for a vacuum cleaner. Dr. Brady carried off the debris.”

Cramer stared at him in exasperation. “And you know nothing about it! Jesus. You’re not interested!”

“I didn’t,” Daniel put in. “I didn’t leave the terrace during that period.”

“So far as I know,” Wolfe agreed, “that is correct. But if I were you I wouldn’t brag about it. You went for the iodine. It was the bottle you handed to Dr. Brady that he used. Your jaw is loose again. You bounce, Mr. Huddleston, from wrath to indignation, with amazing agility. Frankly, I doubt if it is possible to suspect you of murdering your sister. If you did it, your facial dexterity surpasses anything in my experience. If you’ll stay and dine with me, I’ll reach a decision on that before the meal is finished. Partridges in marinade. En escabeche.” His eyes gleamed. “They are ready for us.” He pushed back his chair and got himself onto his feet. “So, Mr. Cramer, it seems likely that it is limited to four, which simplifies your task. You’ll excuse me, I’m sure—”

“Yeah,” Cramer said, “glad to.” He was up too. “But you’ll enjoy your partridges alone. Huddleston and Goodwin are going with me.” His glance took us in. “Let’s go.”

Wolfe looked displeased. “I have already cleared away the brush for you. If you insist on seeing them this evening, they can call at your office — say at ten o’clock?”

“No. They’re coming now.”

Wolfe’s chin went up. His mouth opened and then closed again. It was an interesting sight, especially for me, knowing as I do how hard he is to flabbergast, next to impossible, but I can’t truthfully say I enjoyed it, because of who was doing it. So I spoke up:

“I’m staying for the partridges. And I may or may not show up at ten o’clock, depending—”

“To hell with you,” Cramer rumbled. “I’ll deal with you later. We’ll go, Mr. Huddleston.”

Wolfe took a step, and his voice was as close to trembling with rage as it ever got. “Mr. Huddleston is my invited guest!”

“I’ve uninvited him. Come, Mr. Huddleston.”

Wolfe turned to Daniel. He was controlling himself under insufferable provocation. “Mr. Huddleston. I have invited you to my table. You are under no compulsion, legal or moral, to accompany this man on demand. He struts and blusters. Later Mr. Goodwin will drive you—”

But Daniel said firmly, “I guess I’ll go along with him, Mr. Wolfe. After the days I’ve spent trying to get them started on this...”

The partridge was swell, and I ate nearly as much as Wolfe did. Otherwise it was one of the dullest meals I had ever had under Wolfe’s roof. He didn’t say a word, clear to the coffee.

Chapter 6

I described that scene in detail, because if it hadn’t been for that I doubt if the murderer of Bess Huddleston would ever have been caught. One of Cramer’s bunch might possibly have doped it out, but they never in the world would have got enough evidence for an arrest. And Wolfe, with no client and no commitment, was through with it, or would have been if Cramer hadn’t kidnapped a dinner guest right under his nose and made him so damn mad he had to take Amphojel twice that evening.

Twice. The first dose was right after dinner, when he sent me up to his room for the bottle. The second was long after midnight, when I got home after my call on Inspector Cramer downtown. I sneaked quietly up the two flights to my room, but was just starting to undress when the house phone on my table buzzed, and, answering it and getting a summons, I descended to Wolfe’s room and entered. The light was on and he wasn’t in his bed, and, proceeding to his bathroom, I found him taking another shot of Amphojel, with a scowl on his face that would have scared Joe Louis right out of the ring. He was a spectacle anyway, draped in the ten yards of yellow silk that it took to make him a suit of pajamas.

“Well?” he demanded.

“Nothing. Routine. Questions and a signed statement.”

“He’ll pay for this.” Wolfe made a face like an infuriated gargoyle and put the Amphojel bottle back in the cabinet. “I haven’t had to take this stuff since that hideous experiment with eels in the spring. He’ll pay for it. Go to Riverdale early in the morning. Consult the stableman and learn—”

“I doubt if there is one. The horses are gone. The creditors get two percent.”

“Find him. Wherever he is. I wish to know whether anyone has recently removed anything, any material, from the vicinity of the stable. A small paper bag filled at the manure pile would have been ideal. Question him. If he’s difficult, bring him here. Also — is there a servant on the place?”

I nodded. “The butler. I think he’s hanging on hoping to get paid.”

“Ask him about that bottle that Miss Huddleston found broken in her bathroom. Whatever he knows about it. Ask any other servant who was there at the time. All details possible—”

“The others too? Maryella, Janet, Larry—”

“No. Mention it to no one but the servants. Phone before returning. Before you go, leave phone numbers on my desk — Riverdale, Mr. Huddleston, Dr. Brady — that’s all. He’ll pay for this. Good night.”

So we had a case. We had no client, no retainer, and no fee in sight, but at least we had a case, which was better than sitting around on my tail listening to the radio.

I made six hours’ sleep do me, and before eight o’clock next morning I was up at Riverdale. I didn’t phone in advance, since I had to go anyway to get my car which I had left on the driveway the day before. Greeted at the door by Hoskins, I was told that the stableman was gone and maybe Maryella had his address. I would have preferred asking Janet or even Larry, but Hoskins said they were both late sleepers and Maryella was already eating breakfast, so I got the address from her, and by good luck it wasn’t Bucyrus, Ohio, but merely Brooklyn. Whatever else you want to say about Brooklyn, and so do I, it does have one big advantage, it’s close.

That errand was one of the simplest I have ever performed, once I found the address and the stableman. His name was Tim Lavery and a scar on his cheek made him look mean until he grinned. I started with him cautiously, pretending that my mind was on something else, but soon saw that it wasn’t necessary to sneak up on him, and put it to him straight.

“Sure,” he said, “one day about a month ago, maybe a little more, Doc Brady filled up a box he brought, an empty candy box. I helped him. He said he wanted it for a test. One of his patients had died of tetanus — I forget her name—”

I pretended there was nothing to be excited about. “Where’d he take it from? The stall?”

“No. The pile. I dug into the middle of the pile for him.”

“Who was with him that day? One of the girls?”

Tim shook his head. “He was alone when he did that. They had been riding — I forget who was with him that day — and they went to the house and then he came back alone with that box and said what he wanted.”

“Do you remember the day? The date?”

The best he could do on that was the last week in July. I got the details all filled in, made sure that he would be available if and when needed, and, leaving, stopped at the first phone booth and called Wolfe. Answering from the plant rooms and therefore with his mind occupied, he displayed no exultation, which he wouldn’t anyway, and informed me that my discovery made no change in the rest of my assignment.

Arriving at the Huddleston place in Riverdale a little after ten o’clock, my luck still held. Instead of stopping by the side gate, I continued along the drive, where another gate opened onto a path leading to the back door, and Hoskins was there in the kitchen having a conversation with a depressed-looking female in a maid’s uniform. They acted reserved but not hostile; in fact, Hoskins invited me to have a cup of coffee, which I accepted. Taking an inventory as a precaution against any unwelcome interruptions, I was told that Larry and Maryella had both gone out, Daniel hadn’t shown up that morning, no city employees were on the premises, and Janet had just had breakfast in bed. The field was clear, but I had a hunch that a delegation from Cramer’s office might be appearing any minute, so I got down to business without wasting any time.

They both remembered all about it. Shortly after lunch that Tuesday afternoon Hoskins had been summoned to Miss Huddleston’s room upstairs and requested to take a look at the bathroom. Broken glass was everywhere, in the tub, on the floor, the remnants of a large bottle of bath salts that had been kept on a high shelf above the bathtub. Miss Huddleston hadn’t done it. Hoskins hadn’t done it. The maid, summoned, said she hadn’t done it, and then she and Hoskins cleaned up the mess. I asked what about the orangutan. Possibly, they said, with that beast anything was possible, but it had not been permitted upstairs and seldom went there, and had not been observed inside the house that day.

I filled in details all I could, even asking to view the remains of the broken bottle, which they said had been thick and heavy and creamy yellow in color, but that had been carted away. Then I asked Hoskins to let me take a look at the bathroom, and when we started for the stairs the maid came along, mumbling something about Miss Nichols’ breakfast tray. Bess Huddleston’s room was more like a museum than a bedroom, the walls covered with framed autographed photographs and letters, and all the available space filled with everything from a lady manikin in an Eskimo suit to a string of Chinese lanterns, but what I was interested in was the bathroom. It was all colors, the World War camouflage type, or Devil’s Rainbow. It made me too dizzy to do a decent job of inspection, but I managed to note such details as the position of the shelf on which the bottle of bath salts had stood. There was a new bottle there, nearly full, and I was reaching for it to take it down to look at it when I suddenly jerked around and cocked an ear and stepped to the door. Hoskins was standing in the middle of the room in a state of suspended animation, his back to me.

“Who screamed?” I demanded.

“Down the hall,” he said without turning. “There’s nobody but Miss Nichols—”

There had been nothing ear-piercing about it, in fact I had barely heard it, and there were no encores, but a scream is a scream. I marched past Hoskins and through the door, which was standing open, to the hall, and kept going.

“Last door on the right,” Hoskins said behind me. I knew that, having been in Janet’s room before. The door was shut. I turned the knob and went in, and saw no one, but another door, standing open, revealed a corner of a bathroom. As I started for it the maid’s voice came out:

“Who is it?”

“Archie Goodwin. What—”

The maid appeared in the doorway, looking flustered. “You can’t come in! Miss Nichols isn’t dressed!”

“Okay.” I halted out of delicacy. “But I heard a scream. Do you need any rescuing, Janet?”

“Oh, no!” the undressed invisible Janet called, in a voice so weak I could just hear it. “No, I’m all right!” The voice was not only weak, it was shaky.

“What happened?” I asked.

“Nothing serious,” the maid said. “A cut on her arm. She cut herself with a piece of glass.”

“She what?” I goggled. But without waiting for an answer, I stepped across and walked through the maid into the bathroom. Janet, undressed in the fullest sense of the word and wet all over, was seated on a stool. Ignoring protests and shaking off the maid, who was as red as a beet having her modesty shocked by proxy, I got a towel from a rack and handed it to Janet.

“Here,” I said, “this will protect civilization. How the dickens did you do that?”

I lifted her left arm for a look. The cut, nearly an inch long, halfway between the wrist and the elbow, looked worse than it probably was on account of the mixture of blood and iodine. It certainly didn’t seem to be worth fainting for, but Janet’s face looked as if she might be going to faint. I took the iodine bottle out of her hand and put the cork in it.

“I never scream,” Janet said, holding the towel up to her chin. “Really, I never do. But it seemed so... cutting myself with glass... so soon after Miss Huddleston...” She swallowed. “I didn’t scream when I cut myself; I’m not quite that silly, really I’m not. I screamed when I saw the piece of glass in the bath brush. It seemed so—”

“Here it is,” the maid said.

I took it. It was a piece of jagged glass, creamy yellow, not much bigger than my thumbnail.

“It’s like a piece of that bottle that was broke in Miss Huddleston’s room that you was asking about,” the maid said.

“I’ll keep it for a souvenir,” I announced, and dropped it into the pocket where I had put the iodine bottle, and picked up the bath brush from the floor. It was soaking wet. “You mean you got in the tub and got soaped, and started to use the brush and cut yourself, and looked at the brush and saw the piece of glass wedged in the bristles, and screamed. Huh?”

Janet nodded. “I know it was silly to scream—”

“I was in the room,” the maid said, “and I ran in and—”

“Okay,” I cut her off. “Get me some gauze and bandages.”

“There in the cabinet,” Janet said.

I did a neat job on her, using plenty of gauze because the cut was still trying to bleed. Where she needed the blood was in her face, which was still white and scared, though she tried to smile at me when she thanked me.

I patted her on a nice round shoulder. “Don’t mention it, girlie. I’ll wait downstairs until you get dressed. I like you in that towel, but I think it would be sensible to go to a doctor and get a shot of antitoxin. I’ll drive you. When you—”

“Anitoxin?” she gasped.

“Sure.” I patted her again. “Just a precaution. Nothing to worry about. I’ll be waiting downstairs.”

Hoskins, hovering around in the hall, was relieved when I told him there was nothing for him to do except to get me a piece of paper to wrap the bath brush in. I waited till I was alone, down in the living room, to take the iodine bottle from my pocket, uncork it, and smell it. Whatever it was, it wasn’t iodine. I put the cork back in good and tight, went to a lavatory across the hall and washed my hands, and then found a telephone and dialed Wolfe’s number.

He answered himself, from the plant rooms since it wasn’t eleven o’clock yet, and I gave it to him, all of it. When I finished he said immediately and urgently:

“Get her away from there!”

“Yes, sir, that is my intention—”

“Confound it, at once! Why phone me? If Mr. Cramer goes—”

“Please,” I said firmly. “She was naked. I have no white horse, and she hasn’t got much hair, at least not that much. As soon as she’s dressed we’re off. I was going to suggest that you phone Doc Vollmer and tell him to have a dose of antitoxin ready. We’ll be there in about half an hour. Or I can phone him from here—”

“No. I will. Leave as soon as possible.”

“Righto.”

I went upstairs to the door of Janet’s room and called to her that I’d be waiting by the side gate, and then went out and turned the car around and took it that far back down the drive. I was debating what course to follow if a police car put in an appearance, when here she came down the path, a little wobbly on her pins and far from pert but her buttons all buttoned. I helped her in and tore out of there with the gravel flying.

She didn’t seem to feel like talking. I explained to her about Doc Vollmer being an old friend of ours, with his home and office on the same block as Nero Wolfe’s house, so I was taking her there, and I tried a few leading questions, such as whether she had any idea how the piece of glass got into the bristles of her bath brush, but she didn’t seem to be having any ideas. What she needed was a strong man to hold her hand, but I was driving. She had simply had the daylights scared out of her.

I had no explaining to do at Doc Vollmer’s, since Wolfe had talked to him on the phone, and we weren’t in there more than twenty minutes altogether. He cleaned the cut thoroughly, applied some of his own iodine, gave her the antitoxin in that arm, and then took me to an inside room and asked me for the iodine bottle I had. When I gave it to him he uncorked it, smelled it, frowned, poured a little of the contents into a glass vial, corked it again even tighter than I had, and handed it back to me.

“She’ll be all right,” he said. “What a devilish trick! Tell Mr. Wolfe I’ll phone him as soon as possible.”

I escorted Janet back out to the car. It was only a couple of hundred feet from there to Wolfe’s door, and I discovered that I couldn’t drive the last thirty of them because two cars were parked in front. Janet hadn’t even asked why I was taking her to Wolfe’s house. Apparently she was leaving it up to me. I gave her a reassuring grin as I opened the door with my key and waved her in.

Not knowing who the callers might be, the owners of the cars in front, instead of taking her straight to the office I ushered her into the front room. But one of them was there, sprawled in a chair, and when Janet saw him she emitted an exclamation. It was Larry Huddleston. I greeted him, invited Janet to sit, and not wanting to use the connecting door to the office, went around by the hall. Wolfe wasn’t in the office, but two more visitors were, and they were Dr. Brady and Daniel Huddleston, evidently, judging from their attitudes, not being chummy.

Oho, I thought, we’re having a party, and went to the kitchen, and there was Wolfe.

He was standing by the long table, watching Fritz rub a spice mixture into slices of calf’s liver, and watching with him, standing beside him, closer to him than I had ever seen any woman or girl of any age tolerated, with her hand slipped between his arm and his bulk, was Maryella.

Wolfe gave me a fleeting glance. “Back, Archie? We’re doing mock terrapin. Miss Timms had a suggestion.” He leaned over to peer at the liver, straightened, and sighed clear to the bottom. He turned to me: “And Miss Nichols?”

“In front. Doc Vollmer took a sample and will phone as soon as possible.”

“Good. On the coldest shelf, Fritz; the time is uncertain; and leave the door to Archie. Archie, we are busy and not available. All of us. Come, Miss Timms.”

She couldn’t cling to him as they went through the door, because there wasn’t room.

Chapter 7

Dr. Brady said sharply, “I’ve been waiting here over half an hour. How long will this take? I’m due at my office at one o’clock.”

I was at my desk and he was nearby, on one of the straight-backed chairs. Next to him was Maryella, in the wing chair that I like to read in, and on the other side of her was Larry. Then Daniel Huddleston; and ending the arc was Janet in the red leather chair, her shoulders sagging, looking as if she were only about half there. As far as that goes, none of them looked very comfortable, not even Maryella; she would glance at one of them and then look back at Wolfe, and set her teeth on her lip and clear her throat again.

Wolfe’s half-open eyes were directed at Brady. “I’m afraid you may be a little late at your office, doctor. I’m sorry—”

“But what kind of a performance is this? You said on the telephone—”

“Please,” Wolfe interrupted sharply. “I said that to get you here.” His glance went around. “The situation is no longer as I represented it on the phone, to any of you. I told you that it was definitely known that Miss Huddleston had been murdered. Now we’re a little further along. I know who murdered her.”

They stared at him. Maryella’s teeth went deeper into her lip. Janet gripped the arms of her chair and stopped breathing. Daniel leaned forward with his chin stuck out like a halfback waiting for a signal. Brady made a noise in his throat. The only one who uttered anything intelligible was Larry. He said harshly:

“The hell you do.”

Wolfe nodded. “I do. That is one change in the situation. The other is that an attempt has been made to murder Miss Nichols. — Please! There is no cause for alarm. The attempt was frustrated—”

“When?” Brady demanded. “What kind of an attempt?”

“To murder Janet!” Maryella exclaimed incredulously.

Wolfe frowned at them. “This will go more quickly and smoothly with no interruptions. I’ll make it as brief as possible; I assure you I have no wish to prolong the unpleasantness. Especially since I find less than enjoyable the presence in this room of an extremely unattractive person. I shall call that person X. As you all know, X began with an effort to injure Miss Huddleston by sending anonymous letters—”

“Nothing of the sort!” Larry blurted indignantly. “We don’t know that one of us sent those letters! Neither do you!”

“Put it this way, Mr. Huddleston.” Wolfe wiggled a finger at him. “I make statements. You suspect belief. In the end there will be a verdict, and you will concur or not. X sent those letters. Then he — I am forced thus to exclude women, at least temporarily, by the pronominal inadequacy of our language — then he became dissatisfied with the results, or something happened, no matter which. In any case, X decided on something more concrete and conclusive. Murder. The technique was unquestionably suggested by the recent death of Miss Horrocks by tetanus. A small amount of material procured at the stable, immersed in water, furnished the required emulsion. It was strained and mixed with argyrol, the mixture was put in a bottle with an iodine label, and the bottle was substituted for the iodine bottle in the cabinet in Miss Huddleston’s bathroom. But—”

“Her bathroom?” Maryella was incredulous again.

“Yes, Miss Timms. But X was not one to wait indefinitely for some accidental disjunction in Miss Huddleston’s skin. He carried the preparations further, by smashing her bottle of bath salts and inserting a sliver of glass among the bristles of her bath brush. Beautifully simple. It would be supposed that the sliver lodged there when the bottle broke. If she saw it and removed it, no harm done, try again. If she didn’t see it, she would cut herself, and there was the iodine bottle—”

“Nuts!” Larry exploded. “You can’t possibly—”

“No?” Wolfe snapped. “Archie, if you please?”

I took it from my pocket and handed it to him, and he displayed it to them between his thumb and forefinger. “Here it is. The identical piece of glass.”

They craned their necks. Brady stretched clear out of his chair, demanding, “How in the name of God—”

“Sit down, Dr. Brady. How did I get it? We’ll come to that. Those were the preparations. But chance intervened, to make better ones. That very afternoon, on the terrace, a tray of glasses was upset and the pieces flew everywhere. X conceived a brilliant improvisation on the spot. Helping to collect the pieces, he deposited one in Miss Huddleston’s slipper, and, entering the house on an errand, as all of you did in connection with that minor catastrophe, he ran upstairs and removed the sliver of glass from the bath brush, and got the bogus bottle of iodine, took it downstairs, and placed it in the cupboard in the living room, removing the genuine one kept there. For an active person half a minute, at most a minute, did for that.”

Wolfe sighed. “As you know, it worked. Miss Huddleston stuck her foot in the slipper and cut her toe, her brother brought the iodine, Dr. Brady applied it, and she got tetanus and died.” His eyes darted to Brady. “By the way, doctor, that suggests a question. Is it worthy of remark that you failed to notice the absence of the characteristic odor of iodine? I merely ask.”

Brady was looking grim. “As far as I am concerned,” he said acidly, “it remains to be proven that the bottle did not contain iodine, and therefore—”

“Nonsense. I told you on the phone. The piece of turf where the chimpanzee poured some of the contents has been analyzed. Argyrol, no iodine, and a surfeit of tetanus germs. The police have it. I tell you, I tell all of you, that however disagreeable you may find this inquiry as I pursue it, it would be vastly more disagreeable if the police were doing it. Your alternative—”

The doorbell called me away, since Fritz had been told to leave it to me. I dashed out, not wanting to miss anything crucial, and naturally took the precaution, under the circumstances, of pulling the curtain aside for a peek through the glass. It was well that I did. I never saw the stoop more officially populated. Inspector Cramer, Lieutenant Rowcliff, and Sergeant Stebbins! I slipped the chain bolt in place, which would let the door come only five inches, turned the lock and the knob and pulled, and spoke through the crack:

“They don’t live here any more.”

“Listen, you goddamn squirt,” Cramer said impolitely. “Open the door!”

“Can’t. The hinge is broke.”

“I say open up! We know they’re here!”

“You do in a pig’s eye. The things you don’t know. If you’ve got one, show it. No? No warrant? And all the judges out to lunch—”

“By God, if you think—”

“I don’t. Mr. Wolfe thinks. All I have is brute force. Like this—”

I banged the door to, made sure the lock had caught, went to the kitchen and stood on a chair and removed a screw, bolted the back door and told Fritz to leave it that way, and returned to the office. Wolfe stopped talking to look at me. I nodded, and told him as I crossed to my chair:

“Three irate men. They’ll probably return with legalities.”

“Who are they?”

“Cramer, Rowcliff, Stebbins.”

“Ha.” Wolfe looked gratified. “Disconnect the bell.”

“Done.”

“Bolt the back door.”

“Done.”

“Good.” He addressed them: “An inspector, a lieutenant, and a sergeant of police have this building under siege. Since they are investigating murder, and since all of the persons involved have been collected here by me and they know it, my bolted doors will irritate them almost beyond endurance. I shall let them enter when I am ready, not before. If any of you wish to leave now, Mr. Goodwin will let you out to the street. Do you?”

Nobody moved or spoke, or breathed.

Wolfe nodded. “During your absence, Archie, Dr. Brady stated that outdoors on that terrace, with a breeze going, it is not likely that the absence of the iodine odor would have been noticed by him, or by anyone. Is that correct, doctor?”

“Yes,” Brady said curtly.

“Very well. I agree with you.” Wolfe surveyed the group. “So X’s improvisation was a success. Later, of course, he replaced the genuine iodine in the cupboard and removed the bogus. From his standpoint, it was next to perfect. It might indeed have been perfect, invulnerable to any inquest, if the chimpanzee hadn’t poured some of that mixture on the grass. I don’t know why X didn’t attend to that; there was plenty of time, whole days and nights; possible he hadn’t seen the chimpanzee doing it, or maybe he didn’t realize the danger. And we know he was foolhardy. He should certainly have disposed of the bogus iodine and the piece of glass he had removed from Miss Huddleston’s bath brush when it was no longer needed, but he didn’t. He—”

“How do you know he didn’t?” Larry demanded.

“Because he kept them. He must have kept them, since he used them. Yesterday he put the bogus iodine in the cabinet in Miss Nichols’ bathroom, and the piece of glass in her bath brush.”

I was watching them all at once, or trying to, but he or she was too good for me. The one who wasn’t surprised and startled put on so good an imitation of it that I was no better off than I was before. Wolfe was taking them in too, his narrowed eyes the only moving part of him, his arms folded, his chin on his necktie.

“And,” he rumbled, “it worked. This morning. Miss Nichols got in the tub, cut her arm, took the bottle from the cabinet, and applied the stuff—”

“Good God!” Brady was out of his chair. “Then she must—”

Wolfe pushed a palm at him. “Calm yourself, doctor. Antitoxin has been administered.”

“By whom?”

“By a qualified person. Please be seated. Thank you. Miss Nichols does not need your professional services, but I would like to use your professional knowledge. First — Archie, have you got that brush?”

It was on my desk, still wrapped in the paper Hoskins had got for me. I removed the paper and offered the brush to Wolfe, but instead of taking it he asked me:

“You use a bath brush, don’t you? Show us how you manipulate it. On your arm.”

Accustomed as I was to loony orders from him, I merely obeyed. I started at the wrist and made vigorous sweeps to the shoulder and back.

“That will do, thank you. — No doubt all of you, if you use bath brushes, wield them in a similar manner. Not, that is, with a circular motion, or around the arm, but lengthwise, up and down. So the cut on Miss Nichols’s arm, as Mr. Goodwin described it to me, runs lengthwise, about halfway between the wrist and the elbow. Is that correct, Miss Nichols?”

Janet nodded, cleared her throat, and said, “Yes,” in a small voice.

“And it’s about an inch long. A little less?”

“Yes.”

Wolfe turned to Brady. “Now for you, sir. Your professional knowledge. To establish a premise invulnerable to assault. Why did Miss Nichols carve a gash nearly an inch long on her arm? Why didn’t she jerk the brush away the moment she felt her skin being ruptured?”

“Why?” Brady was scowling at him. “For the obvious reason that she didn’t feel it.”

“Didn’t feel it?”

“Certainly not. I don’t know what premise you’re trying to establish, but with the bristles rubbing her skin there would be no feeling of the sharp glass cutting her. None whatever. She wouldn’t know she had been cut until she saw the blood.”

“Indeed.” Wolfe looked disappointed. “You’re sure of that? You’d testify to it?”

“I would. Positively.”

“And any other doctor would?”

“Certainly.”

“Then we’ll have to take it that way. Those, then, are the facts. I have finished. Now it’s your turn to talk. All of you. Of course this is highly unorthodox, all of you together like this, but it would take too long to do it properly, singly.”

He leaned back and joined his finger tips at the apex of his central magnificence. “Miss Timms, we’ll start with you. Talk, please.”

Maryella said nothing. She seemed to be meeting his gaze, but she didn’t speak.

“Well, Miss Timms?”

“I don’t know—” she tried to clear the huskiness from her voice— “I don’t know what you want me to say.”

“Nonsense,” Wolf said sharply. “You know quite well. You are an intelligent woman. You’ve been living in that house two years. It is likely that ill feeling or fear, any emotion whatever, was born in one of these people and distended to the enormity of homicide, and you were totally unaware of it? I don’t believe it. I want you to tell me the things that I would drag out of you if I kept you here all afternoon firing questions at you.”

Maryella shook her head. “You couldn’t drag anything out of me that’s not in me.”

“You won’t talk?”

“I can’t talk.” Maryella did not look happy. “When I’ve got nothing to say.”

Wolfe’s eyes left her. “Miss Nichols?”

Janet shook her head.

“I won’t repeat it. I’m saying to you what I said to Miss Timms.”

“I know you are.” Janet swallowed and went on in a thin voice, “I can’t tell you anything, honestly I can’t.”

“Not even who tried to kill you? You have no idea who tried to kill you this morning?”

“No — I haven’t. That’s what frightened me so much. I don’t know who it was.”

Wolfe grunted, and turned to Larry. “Mr. Huddleston?”

“I don’t know a damn thing,” Larry said gruffly.

“You don’t. Dr. Brady?”

“It seems to me,” Brady said coolly, “that you stopped before you were through. You said you know who murdered Miss Huddleston. If—”

“I prefer to do it this way, doctor. Have you anything to tell me?”

“No.”

“Nothing with any bearing on any aspect of this business?”

“No.”

Wolfe’s eyes went to Daniel “Mr. Huddleston, you have already talked, to me and to the police. Have you anything new to say?”

“I don’t think I have,” Daniel said slowly. He looked more miserable than anyone else. “I agree with Dr. Brady that if you—”

“I would expect you to,” Wolfe snapped. His glance swept the arc. “I warn all you, with of course one exception, that the police will worm it out of you and it will be a distressing experience. They will make no distinction between relevancies and irrelevancies. They will, for example, impute significance to the fact that Miss Timms has been trying to captivate Mr. Larry Huddleston with her charms—”

“I have not!” Maryella cried indignantly. “Whatever—”

“Yes, you have. At least you did on Tuesday, August 19th. Mr. Goodwin is a good reporter. Sitting on the arm of his chair. Ogling him—”

“I wasn’t! I wasn’t trying to captivate him—”

“Do you love him? Desire him? Fancy him?”

“I certainly don’t!”

“Then the police will be doubly suspicious. They will suspect that you were after him for his aunt’s money. And speaking of money, some of you must know that Miss Huddleston’s brother was getting money from her and dissatisfied with what he got. Yet you refuse to tell me—”

“I wasn’t dissatisfied,” Daniel broke in. His face flushed and his voice rose. “You have no right to make insinuations—”

“I’m not making insinuations.” Wolfe was crisp. “I am showing you the sort of thing the police will get their teeth into. They are quite capable of supposing you were blackmailing your sister—”

“Blackmail!” Daniel squealed indignantly. “She gave it to me for research—”

“Research!” his nephew blurted with a sneer. “Research! The Elixir of Life! Step right up, gents...”

Daniel sprang to his feet, and for a second I thought his intention was to commit mayhem on Larry, but it seemed he merely was arising to make a speech.

“That,” he said, his jaw quivering with anger, “is a downright lie! My motivation and my methods are both strictly scientific. Elixir of Life is a romantic and inadmissible conception. The proper scientific term is ‘catholicon.’ My sister agreed with me, and being a woman of imagination and insight, for years she generously financed—”

“Catholicon!” Wolfe was staring at him incredulously. “And I said you were capable of using your brains!”

“I assure you, sir—”

“Don’t try. Sit down.” Wolfe was disgusted. “I don’t care if you wasted your sister’s money, but there are some things you people know that I do care about, and you are foolish not to tell me.” He wiggled a finger at Brady. “You, doctor, should be ashamed of yourself. You ought to know better. It is idiotic to withhold facts which are bound to be uncovered sooner or later. You said you had nothing to tell me with any bearing on any aspect of this business. What about the box of stable refuse you procured for the stated purpose of extracting tetanus germs from it?”

Daniel made a noise and turned his head to fix Brady with a stare. Brady was taken aback, but not as much as might have been expected. He regarded Wolfe a moment and then said quietly, “I admit I should have told you that.”

“Is that all you have to say about it? Why didn’t you tell the police when they first started to investigate?”

“Because I thought there was nothing to investigate. I continued to think so until this morning, when you phoned me. It would have served no useful purpose—”

“What did you do with that stuff?”

“I took it to the office and did some experiments with two of my colleagues. We were settling an argument. Then we destroyed it. All of it.”

“Did any of these people know about it?”

“I don’t” Brady frowned. “Yes, I remember — I discussed it. Telling them how dangerous any small cut might be—”

“Not me,” Daniel said grimly. “If I had known you did that—”

They glared at each other. Daniel muttered something and sat down.

The phone rang, and I swiveled and got it. It was Doc Vollmer, and I nodded to Wolfe and he took it. When he hung up he told them:

“The bottle from which Miss Nichols treated her wound this morning contained enough tetanus germs to destroy the population of a city, properly distributed.” He focused on Brady. “You may have some idea, doctor, how the police would regard that episode, especially if you had withheld it. It would give you no end of trouble. In a thing like this evasion or concealment should never be attempted without the guidance of an expert. By the way, how long had you known Miss Huddleston?”

“I had known her casually for some time. Several years.”

“How long intimately?”

“I wouldn’t say I knew her intimately. A couple of months ago I formed the habit of going there rather often.”

“What made you form the habit? Did you fall in love with her?”

“With whom?”

“Miss Huddleston.”

“Certainly not.” Brady looked not only astonished but insulted. “She was old enough to be my mother.”

“Then why did you suddenly start going there?”

“Why — a man goes places, that’s all.”

Wolfe shook his head. “Not in an emotional vacuum. Was it greed or parsimony? Free horseback rides? I doubt it; your income is probably adequate. Mere convenience? No; it was out of your way, quite a bother. My guess, to employ the conventional euphemism, is love. Had you fallen in love with Miss Nichols?”

“No.”

“Then what? I assure you, doctor, I am doing this much more tactfully than the police would. What was it?”

A funny look appeared on Brady’s face. Or a series of looks. First it was denial, then hesitation, then embarrassment, then do or die. All the time his eyes were straight at Wolfe. Suddenly he said, in a voice louder than he had been using, “I had fallen in love with Miss Timms. Violently.”

“Oh!” Maryella exclaimed in amazement. “You certainly never—”

“Don’t interrupt, please,” Wolfe said testily. “Had you notified Miss Timms of your condition?”

“No, I hadn’t.” Brady stuck to his guns. “I was afraid to. She was so — I didn’t suppose — she’s a terrible flirt—”

“That’s not true! You know mighty well—”

“Please!” Wolfe was peremptory. His glance shot from right to left and back again. “So all but one of you knew of Dr. Brady’s procuring that box of material from the stable, and all withheld the information from me. You’re hopeless. Let’s try another one, more specific. The day Miss Huddleston came here, she told me that Miss Nichols had a grievance against her, and she suspected her of sending those anonymous letters. I ask all of you — including you, Miss Nichols — what was that grievance?”

No one said a word.

“I ask you individually. Miss Nichols?”

Janet shook her head. Her voice was barely audible. “Nothing. It was nothing.”

“Mr. Huddleston?”

Daniel said promptly, “I have no idea.”

“Miss Timms?”

“I don’t know,” Maryella said, and by the way Wolfe’s eyes stayed with her an instant, I saw that he knew she was lying.

“Dr. Brady?”

“If I knew I’d tell you,” Brady said, “but I don’t.”

“Mr. Huddleston?”

Larry was waiting for him with a fixed smile that twisted a corner of his mouth. “I told you before,” he said harshly, “that I don’t know a damn thing. That goes right down the line.”

“Indeed. May I have your watch a moment, please?”

Larry goggled at him.

“That hexagonal thing on your wrist,” Wolfe said. “May I see it a moment?”

Larry’s face displayed changes, as Brady’s had shortly before. First it was puzzled, then defiant, then he seemed to be pleased about something. He snarled:

“What do you want with my watch?”

“I want to look at it. It’s a small favor. You haven’t been very helpful so far.”

Larry, his lips twisted with the smile again, unbuckled the strap and arose to pass the watch across the desk to Wolfe, whose fingers closed over it as he said to me:

“The Huddleston folder, Archie.”

I went and unlocked the cabinet and got out the folder and brought it. Wolfe took it and flipped it open and said:

“Stay there, Archie. As a bulwark and a witness. Two witnesses would be better. Dr. Brady, if you will please stand beside Mr. Goodwin and keep your eyes on me? Thank you.”

Wolfe’s eyes went through the gap between Brady and me to focus on Larry. “You are a very silly young man, Mr. Huddleston. Incredibly callow. You were smugly gratified because you thought I was expecting to find a picture of Miss Nichols in your watch case and would be chagrined not to. You were wrong. Now, doctor, and Archie, please observe. Here is the back of the watch. Here is a picture of Miss Nichols, trimmed to six sides, and apparently to fit. The point could be definitely determined by opening the watch case, but I’m not going to, because it will be opened later and microscopically compared with the picture to prove that it did contain it — Archie!”

I bulwarked. I owed Larry a smack anyhow, for bad manners if nothing else, but I didn’t actually deliver it, since all he did was shoot off his mouth and try to shove through Brady and me to make a grab for the watch. So I merely stiff-armed him and propelled him backwards into his chair and stood ready.

“So,” Wolfe went on imperturbably, “I put the watch and picture inside separate envelopes for safekeeping. Thus. If, Mr. Huddleston, you are wondering how I got that picture, your aunt left it here. I suggest that it is time for you to help us a little, and I’ll start with a question that I can make a test of. When did your aunt take that picture from you?”

Larry was trying to sneer, but it wasn’t working very well. His face couldn’t hold it because some of the muscles were making movements of their own.

“Probably,” Wolfe said, “it’s time to let the police in. I suppose they’ll get along faster with you—”

“You fat bastard!” But the snarl in Larry’s voice had become a whine.

Wolfe grimaced. “I’ll try once more, sir. You are going to answer these questions, if not for me then for someone less fat but more importunate. Would you rather have it dug out of the servants and your friends and acquaintances? It’s shabby enough as it is; that would only make it worse. When did your aunt take that picture from you?”

Larry’s jaw worked, but his tongue didn’t. Wolfe waited ten seconds, then said curtly:

“Let them in, Archie.”

I took a step, but before I took another one Larry blurted:

“Goddamn you! You know damn well when she took it! She took it the day she came down here!”

Wolfe nodded. “That’s better. But that wasn’t the first time she objected to your relations with Miss Nichols. Was it?”

“No.”

“Did she object on moral grounds?”

“Hell, no. She objected to our getting married. She ordered me to break off the engagement. The engagement was secret, but she got suspicious and questioned Janet, and Janet told her, and she made me call it off.”

“And naturally you were engaged.” Wolfe’s voice was smooth, silky. “You burned for revenge—”

“I did not!” Larry leaned forward, having trouble to control his jaw. “You can come off that right now! You’re not going to pin anything on me! I never really wanted to marry her, and what’s more, I never intended to! I can prove that by a friend of mine!”

“Indeed.” Wolfe’s eyes were nearly shut. “A man like you has friends? I suppose so. But after your aunt made you break the engagement you still kept the picture in your watch?”

“Yes. I had to. I mean I had Janet to deal with too, and it wasn’t easy, living right there in the house. I was afraid of her. You don’t know her. I opened the watch case purposely in front of my aunt so she’d take that damn picture. Janet seemed to think the picture meant something, and I thought when she knew it was gone—”

“Did you know that Miss Nichols sent the anonymous letters?”

“No, I didn’t. Maybe I suspected, but I didn’t know.”

“Did you also suspect, when your aunt—”

“Stop! Stop it!”

It was Janet.

She didn’t raise her voice. She didn’t have to. The tone alone was enough to stop anything and anybody. It was what you would expect to come out of an old abandoned grave, if you had such expectations. Except her mouth, no part of her moved. Her eyes were concentrated on Wolfe’s face, with an expression in them that made it necessary for me to look somewhere else. Apparently it had the same effect on the others, for they did the same as me. We gazed at Wolfe.

“Ha,” he said quietly. “A little too much for you, is it, Miss Nichols?”

She went on staring at him.

“As I expected,” he said, “you’re all rubble inside. There’s nothing left of you. The simplest way is for me to dictate a confession and you sign it. Then I’ll send a copy of it to a man I know, the editor of the Gazette, and it will be on his front page this evening. He would like an exclusive picture of you to go with it, and Mr. Goodwin will be glad to take it. I know you’ll like that.”

Uh-huh, I thought, he’s not only going to make a monkey of Cramer, he’s going to give him a real black eye. Daniel muttered something, and so did Brady, but Wolfe silenced them with a gesture.

“For your satisfaction,” he went on, “I ought to tell you, Miss Nichols, that your guilt was by no means obvious. I became aware of it only when Mr. Goodwin telephoned me from Riverdale this morning, though I did of course notice Mr. Larry Huddleston’s hexagonal watch when he came here nine days ago, and I surmised your picture had been in it. But your performance today was the act of a nitwit. I presume you were struck with consternation yesterday when you saw that turf being removed, realized what the consequences would be, and attempted to divert suspicion by staging an attack on yourself. Did you know what I was getting at a while ago when I asked Dr. Brady why you didn’t jerk the brush away the instant you felt the glass puncture your skin? And he replied, as of course he would, that you didn’t feel the glass cutting you?”

She didn’t answer.

“That,” Wolfe said, “was precisely the point, that you did jerk the brush away when you had pulled it along your arm less than an inch, because you knew the glass was there and was cutting you, having put it there yourself. Otherwise the cut would have been much longer, probably half the length of your arm. You saw Mr. Goodwin wield the brush as an illustration, sweeping from wrist to shoulder. Everyone does that. At least, no one moves the brush less than an inch and stops. But even without that, your performance today was fantastic, if you meant — as you did — to make it appear as an attempt by some other person to kill you. Such a person would have known that after what had happened, even if you used the bogus iodine, you would certainly have antitoxin administered, which would have made the attempt a fiasco. Whereas you, arranging the affair yourself, knew that a dose of antitoxin would save you from harm. You really—”

“Stop it!” Janet said, in exactly the same tone as before. I couldn’t look at her.

But that was a mistake, not looking at her. For completely without warning she turned into a streak of lightning. It was so sudden and swift that I was still in my chair when she grabbed the sliver of glass from Wolfe’s desk, and by the time I got going she had whirled and gone through the air straight at Larry Huddleston, straight at his face with the piece of glass in her fingers. Everyone else moved too, but no one fast enough, not even Larry. Daniel got his arms around her, her left arm pinned against her, and I got her other arm, including the wrist, but there was a reel streak across Larry’s cheek from beneath his eye nearly to his chin.

Everybody but Janet was making noises, some of which were words.

“Shut up!” Wolfe said gruffly. “Archie, if you’ve finished your nap—”

“Go to hell,” I told him. “I’m not a genius like you.” I gave Janet’s wrist a little pressure. “Drop it, girlie.”

She let the piece of glass fall to the floor and stood rigid, watching. Brady examined Larry’s cheek.

“Only skin deep,” Brady said, unfolding a handkerchief. “Here, hold this against it.”

“By God,” Larry blurted, “if it leaves a scar—”

“That was a lie,” Janet said. “You lied!”

“What?” Larry glared at her.

“She means,” Wolfe put in, “that you lied when you said you neither desired nor intended to marry her. I agree with her that the air was already bad enough in here without that. You fed her passion and her hope. She wanted you, God knows why. When your aunt intervened, she struck. For revenge? Yes. Or saying to your aunt, preparing to say, ‘Let me have him or I’ll ruin you?’ Probably. Or to ruin your aunt and then collect you from the debris? Possibly. Or all three, Miss Nichols?”

Janet, her back to him, still facing Larry, did not speak. I held onto her.

“But,” Wolfe said, “your aunt came to see me, and that frightened her. Also, when she herself came that evening and found that picture here, the picture you had carried in your watch, she was not only frightened but enraged. Being a very sentimental young woman—”

“Good God,” Brady muttered involuntarily. “Sentimental!”

A shudder ran over Janet from top to bottom. I pulled her around by the arm and steered her to the red leather chair and she dropped into it. Wolfe said brusquely:

“Archie, your notebook. No — first the camera—”

“I can’t stand it!” Maryella cried, standing up. She reached for something to hold onto, and as luck would have it, it was Brady’s arm. “I can’t!”

Wolfe frowned at them. “Take her up and show her the orchids, doctor. Three flights. And take that casualty along and patch it up. Fritz will get what you need. I advise you to smell the iodine.”

At six o’clock that evening I was at my desk. The office was quiet and peaceful. Wolfe had done it up brown. Cramer had come like a lion with a squad and a warrant, and had departed like a lamb with a flock of statements, a confession, a murderer, and apoplexy. Despite all of which, loving Cramer as I do, when I heard the elevator bringing Wolfe down from the plant rooms I got too busy with my desk work to turn around. Intending not even to acknowledge his presence. The excuse he had given for keeping Maryella there was that it was impossible for her to return to Riverdale as things stood, and there was no place else for her to go. Phooey.

But I got no chance to freeze them out, for they went right on by the office door, to the kitchen. I stuck to my desk. Time went by, but I was too irritated to get any work done. Towards seven o’clock the bell rang, and I went to the front door and found Doc Brady. He said he had been invited, so I took him to the kitchen.

The kitchen was warm, bright, and full of appetizing smells. Fritz was slicing a ripe pineapple. Wolfe was seated in the chair by the window, tasting out of a steaming saucepan. Maryella was perched on one end of the long table with her legs crossed, sipping a mint julep. She fluttered the fingers of her free hand at Brady for a greeting. He stopped in astonishment, and stood and blinked at her, at Wolfe and Fritz, and back at her.

“Well,” he said. “Really. I’m glad you can be so festive. Under the circumstances—”

“Nonsense!” Wolfe snapped. “There’s nothing festive about it; we’re merely preparing a meal. Miss Timms is much better occupied. Would you prefer hysterics? We had a discussion about spoon bread, and there are two batches in the oven. Two eggs, and three eggs. Milk at a hundred and fifty degrees, and boiling. Take that julep she’s offering you. Archie, a julep?”

Brady took the julep from her, set it down on the table without sampling it, wrapped his arms around her, and made it tighter. She showed no inclination to struggle or scratch. Wolfe pretended not to notice, and placidly took another taste from the saucepan. Fritz started trimming the slices of pineapple.

Maryella gasped, “Ah think, Ah’d bettah breathe.”

Wolfe asked amiably, “A julep, Archie?”

I turned without answering, went to the hall and got my hat, slammed the door from the outside, walked to the corner and into Sam’s place, and climbed onto a stool at the counter. I didn’t know I was muttering to myself, but I must have been, for Sam, behind the counter, demanded:

“Spoon bread? What the hell is spoon bread?”

“Don’t speak till you’re spoken to,” I told him, “and give me a ham sandwich and a glass of toxin. If you have no toxin, make it milk. Good old wholesome orangutan milk. I have been playing tag with an undressed murderess. Do you know how to tell a murderess when you see one? It’s a cinch. Soak her in iodine over night, drain through cheesecloth, add a pound of pig chitlins — what? Oh. Rye and no pickle. Ah think Ah’d bettah breathe.”

~ ~ ~

I have never mentioned it to him, and I don’t intend to. I’ve got a dozen theories about it. Here are a few for samples:

1. He knew I would go to the funeral, and he sent that bunch of orchids purely and simply to pester me.

2. Something from his past. When he was young and handsome, and Bess Huddleston was ditto, they might have been — uh, acquainted. As for her not recognizing him, I doubt if his own mother would, as is. And there’s no doubt he has fifteen or twenty pasts; I know that much about him.

3. He was paying a debt. He knew, or had an idea, that she was going to be murdered, from something someone said that first day, and was too damn lazy, or too interested in corned beef hash with chitlins, to do anything about it. Then when she was ready for burial he felt he owed her something, so he sent her what? Just some orchids, any old orchids? No, sir. Black ones. The first black orchids ever seen on a coffin anywhere on the globe since the dawn of history. Debt canceled. Paid in full. File receipted bills.

4. I’ll settle for number three.

5. But it’s still a mystery, and when he catches me looking at him a certain way he knows darned well what’s on my mind.

A.G.

Content

Rex Stout
Cordially Invited to Meet Death

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

~ ~ ~