Rex Stout

Before I Die

I

That Monday afternoon in October, life indoors was getting to be more than I cared to take. Meaning, by indoors, the office of Nero Wolfe, where I worked, on the ground floor of the house he owned on West Thirty-fifth Street not far from North River. Relief was due soon, since he spent two hours every afternoon, from four to six, with the orchids up in the plant rooms on the roof, but it was still thirty minutes short of four o’clock and I had had all of him I could stand for a while.

I wasn’t blaming him; I was merely fed up with him. It was smack in the middle of the Great Meat Shortage, when millions of pigs and steers, much to the regret of the growers and slaughterers, had sneaked off and hid in order to sell their lives dear, and to Nero Wolfe a meal without meat was an insult. His temper had got so bad that I had offered to let him eat me, and it would be best to skip his retort. By that Monday afternoon he had got so desperate that he had started taking long walks, as, for instance, back and forth between his chair and the bookshelves, and sometimes even through the door into the front room, which faced on Thirty-fifth Street.

So at three-thirty I told him I was going out for an errand down the street, and he was sunk so far in misery and malice that he didn’t even demand to know what the errand was. Then, just as I was reaching for my hat on the rack in the hall, the doorbell rang. I let the hat wait, stepped to the door and opened it, and what I saw jerked my mind loose from the fastenings where it had got glued onto Wolfe’s huff. Standing there on the stoop was one of the most obvious articles I had ever looked at. Though the sun had been shining all day and still was, he had on a raincoat, belted tight. His hat, a glossy black felt number, was too small for him, and it looked out of place for the lids of his light gray eyes to be open because his face was embalmed — or, at least, after he had breathed his last and had been embalmed, his face would look exactly the way it looked now.

“Your name’s Goodwin,” he told me impolitely, without overexerting any muscles.

“Thanks,” I thanked him. “How much do I weigh?”

But he was serious-minded. “Come on out.” He jerked a thumb backwards. “Guy here in a car wants to see you.”

I pause for character identification, wanting to make it clear that I neither scream with fear nor start pulling the trigger every time I see a stranger with an embalmed face reach in his pocket for a cigarette. But in his long career as a private detective Nero Wolfe has aroused many emotions in many people, some of them tenacious, and since I have been employed by him for over ten years my name is undoubtedly on a few lists along with his. So I told the face to hold it a minute, stepped back inside and swung the door shut, went to the office and across to my desk, opened a drawer and took a gun, and put it in my side coat-pocket, leaving my hand there.

As I was heading back for the hall Wolfe demanded peevishly, “What is it? A mouse?”

“No, sir,” I said coldly. “I was asked to descend to the sidewalk to approach a man in a car. The car is at the curb. I recognized the man in it as Dazy Perrit. Since he is one of our most famous citizens I suppose you have heard of him. His latest title is King of the Black Market. He may have formed an opinion, contrary to yours, that I would be good broiled.”

I went. Outdoors on the stoop, after shutting the door and hearing the lock click, I took my hand from my pocket to show the face what was in it, put it back in the pocket, descended the steps to the sidewalk, and crossed to the car, a big black sedan. The man inside cranked the window down.

From behind my right shoulder a voice was saying, “He’s got his hand on a gun in his pocket.”

“Then he’s damn silly,” the man in the car said through the window, “to let you behind him.”

“Huh-uh.” I looked through at Dazy Perrit. It all depended on the conversation. “Mr. Wolfe knows you’re here. What do you want?”

“I want to see Wolfe.”

I shook my head. “Nope.” I was ignoring the hired man. This was the closest I had ever been to Dazy Perrit. To most people he would have seemed a big fat man, but to me, used as I was to the magnitude of Nero Wolfe, he was merely rounded out. His face, smooth and shaved to the pink, was too big for his nose and mouth, but that was unimportant on account of the eyes. Everything he had done and might do was in his black eyes.

“Nope,” I said. “I told you on the phone this morning that Mr. Wolfe is too busy to see you. He’s got more work than he can handle now.”

“I intend to see him. Go in and tell him.”

“Lookit, mister.” I put an elbow on the window sill and leaned in to him. “Don’t think I’m laughing you off. People who laugh you off are apt to show up soon at a funeral, playing the lead. Okay. But neither am I asking any favors. Whatever you have in mind, and you’re being pretty damn stubborn about it, Mr. Wolfe wants no part of it. That may make you sore, which would be a pity and should be avoided if possible, but not half as sore as you would be if you rolled something out in front of him and let him look and then he didn’t like it. That would be really bad, either for him or for you, and don’t be too sure—”

“Archie!”

It was a bellow from my right rear. I straightened and wheeled, and saw the upper half of Wolfe filling the space left by a window he had opened — the rear window of the front room.

He bellowed again, “What does Mr. Perrit want?”

“Nothing,” I called. “He just stopped by—”

“He wants to see you,” the face put in.

“Then confound it, Archie, bring him in here!”

“But I—”

“Bring him in!”

The window banged shut and Wolfe was gone. The face looked searchingly up and down the street, and across, then reached past me to open the door of the car, and Dazy Perrit climbed out.

II

I decided I didn’t know as much about underworld royalty as I thought I did. Surely the thing would have been for the hired man to come along, watching for treachery in all directions at once, but Dazy Perrit told him to stay by the car and entered the house alone with me. Two paces inside the office he stopped to make a survey, probably merely through force of habit, like a veteran general playing golf on a strange course automatically picking out the best spots to place artillery units or hide his tanks. I walked on past him and sat down at my desk, warning myself not to underestimate his potentialities just because he was six inches shorter than me. I was too sore at Wolfe to speak.

“Be seated, sir,” Wolfe said graciously.

Perrit had finished surveying the premises and was surveying Wolfe. After five seconds he spoke as if he were a little irritated. “I don’t like it in here. I’ve got something private for you. Come out and sit in my car.”

I was really on edge because I was sure Wolfe would make himself obnoxious, and getting obnoxious with Dazy Perrit simply had no percentage. But Wolfe said, “My dear sir,” and chuckled in a friendly manner. “I rarely leave my house. I do like it here. I would be an idiot to leave this chair, made to fit me—”

“I know, I know,” Perrit said impatiently. He aimed the black eyes at me. “You go out and sit in my car.”

“No, sir,” Wolfe said emphatically. “Do be seated. That red leather chair is the best one. I do nothing without Mr. Goodwin. If you confided in me, no matter what, under a pledge of confidence, I would tell it all to him as soon as you left.”

“You might make exceptions. I might be a good exception to start with.”

“No, sir.” Wolfe was courteous but firm. “Sit down, Mr. Perrit. Even if you decide against trusting secrets to Mr. Goodwin and me, there’s a little matter I’d like to discuss with you.”

Perrit was no hemmer and hawer. He took three steps to the red leather chair near the end of Wolfe’s desk, lowered himself into it, and asked, “What do you want to discuss?”

“Well.” Wolfe’s eyes went half shut. “In my own field I am an expert, and I sell expert information, advice, and services. I am not intimately acquainted with your activities, but I understand that you are also an expert — uh, in a different field. Presumably you know where certain things are and how they may be got. I am on the whole a respectable and virtuous citizen, but like everyone else I have my smudges. Where is some meat?”

“Oh.” Perrit sounded chilly. “Maybe I’ve got you lined up wrong. You want a slice of the meat racket?”

“No. I want slices of beef and pork. I want some meat to eat. Lamb. Veal.”

So that was it. I gazed at my boss in bitter disgust. He had lost all sense of proportion. For the sake of making a wild grab for a rib roast, he had left his chair, walked clear to the front room, opened a window, and invited the most deadly specimen between the Battery and Yonkers into his house.

“Oh,” Perrit said, not so cool, “you’re just hungry.”

“Yes, I am.”

“That’s too bad. I’m not a butcher and I’m not a retailer. In fact I’m not in meat at all. But I’ll see—” He broke it off and looked at me as if I was the butler. “Ring Lincoln six-three two three two, between seven and ten in the morning and ask for Tom and use my name.”

“Thank you, sir.” Wolfe was as sweet as stick candy. “I assure you this is appreciated. Now for your own business. Mr. Goodwin told you on the phone this morning that I was too busy to see you. Of course that was flummery. What was in his mind was that while the occupational hazards are relatively high in the detective business, in your business — that is to say, in any activity connected with you — they are substantially higher, and a combination of the two would be inadvisable. I must admit, regretfully, that I agree with him. It would be foolish for you to entrust me with secrets only to be told that I can’t undertake a job for you, so I tell you in advance. I’m sorry.”

“I need help,” Perrit said.

“Doubtless, or you wouldn’t have—”

“I don’t often need help. When I do I get the best there is. I like everything the best. For what I need now, I’ve picked you as the best. I pay for what I get.” Perrit took from his breast pocket a neat little stack of bills, unfolded, held with a rubber band, and tossed it onto Wolfe’s desk. “Fifty C’s. Five grand. That will do for a start. I’m being blackmailed and your job is to stop it.”

I goggled at him. The idea of Dazy Perrit being pestered by a blackmailer was about the same as Billy Sunday being pestered by an evangelist trying to convert him.

“But I’ve told you, Mr. Per—”

“I’m being blackmailed by my daughter. That’s one thing nobody in the world knows except me, and now you and this man of yours. Here’s another thing, and this is even more particular. This is very particular. I wouldn’t tell it to my mother even if I still had one, but I need help. My daughter is—”

“Hold it!”

Dazy Perrit was not easy to stop, but I made it positive enough to stop him. I was out of my chair, standing in front of him. “I want to warn you,” I told his eyes, “that Mr. Wolfe is fully as stubborn as you are. This is damn dangerous for all concerned. He’s told you he doesn’t want to hear it, and neither do I!” I turned savagely to Wolfe. “Good God, what’s wrong with spaghetti and cheese?” I picked up the stack of bills and stuck them out at Perrit.

He ignored it. His eyes hadn’t even shifted to me. He went on to Wolfe, “The particular thing is that my daughter isn’t really my daughter — the one that’s blackmailing me, I mean. Now you know that too, you and this man. I said that nobody else in the world knows it, but she does. I have got a daughter, born in nineteen twenty-five, twenty-one years ago. She’ll be twenty-one next month, November eighth. There’s a job for you to do with her too. What’s up?”

“You’ll have to excuse me, Mr. Perrit.” Wolfe had glanced at the wall clock, pushed his chair back from the desk, and was manipulating his bulk upright. He moved from behind the desk and then stopped, because Perrit, also on his feet, was standing square in his path.

“Where you going?” Perrit asked in a tone which implied that no conceivable answer would be acceptable.

I stood up too, my hand leaving my pocket with the gun in it — that is, in my hand. That may strike some as corny, but it was instinctive and the instinct was sound. I got around town some and was fairly well informed, and so far as I knew no serious argument with Dazy Perrit had ever been settled with any tool but a gun; and up to then Perrit had done all the settling, either personally or by staff work. With what he had already spilled I could see nothing ahead but one fine mess, and I still believe, corn or no corn, that if he had so much as poked a finger at Wolfe’s central bulge I would have dropped him.

But Wolfe said, unperturbed, “I always spend from four to six upstairs with my plants. Always. If you insist on confiding your troubles to me, tell Mr. Goodwin about it. I’ll phone you this evening or in the morning.”

The point was settled, not with words, but with eyes. Wolfe’s eyes won. Perrit moved a step to the right. Wolfe went on by and out, and a moment later the bang of the door on his personal elevator sounded.

Perrit sat down and told me, “You’re crazy. Both of you. What’s that thing in your hand for? Crazy as bedbugs.”

I put the gun on the desk and heaved a sigh. “Okay, tell me about it.”

III

At one point I thought Dazy Perrit was going to break down and cry. That was when he was telling me that his daughter, his real daughter, was up among the top of her class at Columbia. Apparently that made him feel so proud he could hardly bear it.

It wasn’t really very complicated. In his early days in St. Louis Perrit had got married and there was a daughter. Then three things happened in the same week: the daughter had her second birthday, the mother died, and Perrit got three years in the hoosegow for a stick-up. I got only a rough sketch of this and practically nothing of the years that followed, up to 1945; all he gave me was that somewhere along the line, when he had begun to get prosperous, he had got daughter-conscious and had dug her up somewhere in Missouri. He didn’t say where or how he had got her away, but in order to give me the picture he had to explain that she didn’t know she was his daughter. She thought he was merely representing her father, who was very wealthy and couldn’t disclose himself because he was planning to get elected President of the United States or something.

“It was okay,” Dazy Perrit said sourly. “It was working fine. I saw her about every three months and gave her money. Plenty. It was a break for me when she picked a school right here in town. Then Thumbs Meeker bitched it up. He sent a punk to tell me that if there was any little favor he could do for my daughter just to let him know.”

That, of course, from my standpoint, made it even sweeter. Mr. Meeker, called Thumbs on account of his favorite method of getting information from reluctant persons, in which he used both thumbs, was the cave man on the other side of the mountain. If to be associated with Dazy Perrit in anything whatever was a doubtful pleasure, to be yanked in between him and Thumbs Meeker was enough to stall ulcers.

I went on listening to Perrit because there was nothing else to do but shoot him, and I had missed the psychological moment for that. It appeared from developments, he said, that Meeker had not actually tagged his daughter but had merely learned that he had one concealed somewhere. But, he said, the one thing on earth he was afraid of was that someone would find his daughter and tell her the facts. That was what had ruined his life, having a daughter.

“It ruined me,” he said, “because it put water in my guts. Where she’s concerned I can’t think straight and I can’t act straight. You’ve heard I’m tough? You’ve heard that?”

“Yeah, I’ve heard it said.”

“Okay, I’m tough. But there’s plenty of tough ones. The point is I’ve got brains. I’ve got better brains than any man I’ve ever met. If I had got started on another track I could have been anything you care to name. But where she’s concerned my brains don’t work. Look at my coming here and spilling this. Worse yet, look at what I did a year ago April. I rented a penthouse off Fifth Avenue and brought a girl there as my daughter. I knew it was dumb but my brain wouldn’t work and I did it.”

That, he explained, had been for the purpose of drawing Thumbs Meeker off, and also anyone else who might be interested in the Perrit family. With his daughter living there, in the penthouse with him, naturally no one would continue searching for her other places, especially in colleges. It was a very fine arrangement. He had his secret all sewed up.

“Then,” Perrit said, with a sudden change in his tone and a gleam showing in his eyes that I would not have liked at all if he had been talking about me instead of to me, “the little bitch used the pliers on me.”

On that I got details, which he furnished without referring to any notes. The squeeze had started the week before Christmas with a demand for a thousand bucks cash in addition to her weekly allowance of a century. Thereafter she had requested and received:

“Interesting,” I said, “how she went down, then up again, then down, then up again. Interesting psychologically.”

“It strikes you as funny, does it?”

“I didn’t say funny, I said interesting. And by the way, there aren’t many people, I’m not saying I’m not one of them, but there are very few, who would believe a word on it. She has nicked you for nearly twenty-five grand. Why didn’t she happen to have an accident, say about the third nick, like getting in the way of flying pieces of metal or something?”

“That’s all exaggerated,” Perrit said as if he were disappointed in me. “They start rumors and everyone believes them.”

“Nuts.” I grinned at him. “This is off the record, where I hope to God it stays. Why didn’t you handle her or have her handled?”

“My daughter? My own daughter?”

“She wasn’t. She isn’t.”

“As far as anyone knows she is. I would have had to do it myself, and even then it would have been very risky. She has got that all figured. What if she disappears? How would Thumbs Meeker and others dope it? I’d be right back where I started, and they’d be looking for trails again. I’ve looked at it from every angle and it’s no go.”

I shrugged. “Then you’re stuck with an expensive daughter.”

“I’m stuck with a glutton and a damn fool. Last night she hit me for fifty grand. That settles it. I’ve got to have help.”

I whistled. “That takes it beyond psychology. But does she have to disappear? Why don’t you try something short of curtains?”

“I have. Do you think I’ve shelled out with a smile?”

“No. I don’t.”

“Right. I haven’t. But there are limits to that too, since I’ve got her there as my daughter. So I need help. I know lots of people, and I know a lot about lots more. I guess I must know forty or fifty lawyers, and there isn’t one of them I’d spill this to or any part of it. I picked on Nero Wolfe because from what I know of him he’s got brains, and mine won’t work on this. It’s up to Wolfe to dope out a way to handle her.” He pointed at the stack of bills. “That’s just for a start. I’ll pay what it’s worth, and it’s worth plenty.”

“He won’t touch it.”

Perrit ignored that completely. I was beginning to believe that the secret of his success was a gimmick on his eardrums that tuned out all unwanted sounds.

“You’ll need,” he said, “more than you’ve got if you’re going to handle her. You’ll need it all. Her name as my daughter is Violet Perrit. Her real name is Angelina Murphy. How I got onto her doesn’t matter, but she is absolutely covered. She was on the jump in Salt Lake from a rolling and cleaning charge under the name of Sally Smith, and I went out there and got her myself. She’s smooth and no disgrace. When I say my brain wouldn’t work, for instance, I doped it that I’d have her sewed up because Salt Lake would like to have her back if she got tricky, but it didn’t take her long to realize that I couldn’t unload her.”

He told me a lot more that I didn’t want to know, but of course the lions were already loose and more wouldn’t matter. After he finished with Violet Angelina Sally he shifted scenery and the curtain went up on Columbia. His real daughter’s name was Beulah Page, and from the change in his voice when he spoke of her I fully expected him to pull out a wallet and begin showing me snapshots, but he didn’t. To hear him tell it, she had the rest of the students panting along behind in a cloud of dust He gave what seemed to me to be unnecessary details, which I suppose was understandable since there was no one else on earth he could tell about her, except Nero Wolfe, and Wolfe was up with his orchids and paying me to listen — though not near enough. Nothing like enough, if this ended the way I was suspecting it might.

“As I told Wolfe,” Perrit said, “there’s a job for him to do with my daughter too. That’s another danger. There’s a possibility that she might be recognized. She strongly resembles her mother.”

“For God’s sake,” I protested, “whatever Mr. Wolfe may be, he is no plastic surgeon. Try the Red Book.”

“That’s funny, is it?” Perrit asked.

The words weren’t much, but I admit that for the first time his tone hit me in the spine. It put him down on a lower level, and at the same time brought him a lot closer and a lot meaner. Probably members of his staff or the rank and file used it oftener than he did, now that he was at the top. It was the voice of the killer. Apparently cracks about most things might pass without trouble, but no cracks about Beulah.

“Not very,” I said courteously. “Better luck next time. But if you expect Mr. Wolfe to arrange for your daughter to stop resembling her mother—”

“I don’t. You talk too much. She looks like her mother, but what makes it stick out is a trick she has of sitting with her shoulders down, sort of slumped forward, and then straightening up in a certain way, with a little jerk. Her mother did exactly the same thing, and the first time I saw my daughter do it, about a year ago, I saw it was a dead give-away. If anyone who knew her mother happened to see her do that, there’s a good chance they would tumble. I tried to get her to stop it, as well as I could considering who I’m supposed to be, but it didn’t work and I was afraid to emphasize it. I want Wolfe to get her to stop straightening up like that.”

Naturally, five arguments and three or four cracks were on the tip of my tongue, but I set the brake. The only hope was to get him out of there as soon as possible, before he got in an order to tutor Beulah in math, which he had informed me was the only thing she was less than perfect in. But he wasn’t ready to go, though he had spent nearly an hour with me. He had more information about Angelina Violet Sally that he thought might be helpful, suggestions about the best approach to his daughter, remarks regarding the need for immediate and effective action, and various other details. Another secret of his success, I gathered, was that he was good and thorough.

Finally he was on his feet, ready to go. “Violet,” he said, “will still do what I tell her. She thinks she’s going to clean me. You say Wolfe won’t leave the house. If you want her down here, ring me and I’ll see that she comes. You wrote down those phone numbers.”

Answering not his words but his tone, I said, “You saw me put them in the safe.”

“Keep ’em there. Come out and open the door and call Archie.”

I stared at him. “Call who?”

“I said Archie.”

That made the day perfect. The embalmed face’s name was Archie. I took Perrit to the hall, got him his hat and coat, opened the door and stuck my head out for a look, and growled over my shoulder, “All clear. Call him yourself.”

He didn’t have to. My namesake, standing on the alert at the rear corner of the black sedan, had heard the door open and now crossed to the foot of the stoop steps, looked up at his employer, and announced, “Okay.” Dazy Perrit descended the steps and got in the back seat of the car. The face got in front and started the engine, and they rolled off.

I went to the kitchen and poured myself a glass of milk. Fritz Brenner, the chef and groom of the chambers, was there, cutting chives into atoms. He smiled at me.

“Ça va?”

“Boy, does it va,” I told him, and took a gulp of milk. “The only question left is, what color shrouds do we like.”

IV

I made a full and honest report to Wolfe, when he came down to the office from the plant rooms at six o’clock, only because it no longer mattered. Not only did I not want to try to persuade him to lay off, I was even afraid he might. With me crammed to the gills with Dazy Perrit’s closest and fondest secrets, no kind of a brush-off would have been worth a damn. I was, if you want the facts, scared stiff. So nothing was further from my mind than trying to make Wolfe obstinate by riding him.

At seven o’clock I was telling him, “Incidentally, that Lincoln number he gave me is probably the real thing. T-bone. Chateaubriand, as Fritz calls it. Pig’s liver. Fresh pork tenderloin. Of course it will be useless to ring Tom in the morning if we’re not still in good with Dazy — and his five grand in our safe.”

Wolfe muttered at me, “Get Mr. Perrit.”

Then difficulties arose. At the third number on the list I finally got Perrit, and he said we could expect Violet at Wolfe’s office at nine o’clock that evening. It took less than twenty words, discreetly selected at both ends, with no names mentioned, to complete the conversation. Perrit could have been on a party line and no harm done. But in ten minutes he called back to say that previous engagements interfered and the visitor wouldn’t arrive until eleven-thirty. I said that was pretty late and maybe tomorrow would do. No, he said, it would be tonight, between eleven-thirty and midnight.

Wolfe, who had listened in at his desk, grunted and told me, “Get the daughter.”

“Violet? Or Beulah?”

“The daughter. Miss Page.”

“But what the hell. There’s no rush about making her stop straightening up with a jerk. That was just—”

“We don’t even know there is a daughter. All we have is what Mr. Perrit told us. I want to see her. At the very least, I want you to see her.”

“You going to introduce me to her?”

“Pfui. She is twenty-one years old. Flummox her.”

That wasn’t as much of a chore as some he had been known to give me, since Perrit had given me what he thought would be an in. I referred to the list of numbers, dialed one, and after the third buzz there was a voice in my ear.

“Hello, hello, hello?”

It didn’t sound at all like a Phi Beta Kappa, but I reserved judgment and proceeded.

“May I speak to Miss Beulah Page?”

“Sure. Talking. Are you a preacher?”

“No, Miss Page, I’m not. My name is Stevens, Harold Stevens, from Dayton, Ohio. May I have a minute?”

“Sure. Only it’s too bad you’re not a preacher.”

“It certainly is, if you want one. What I want to ask, I would like very much to have a talk with you, this evening, if possible, because I’ll be in the city only a short while. I want to tell you about the Dayton Community Health Center, and, frankly, we thought you might be willing to help us out with a small contribution. You see, the fame of your generosity in matters of community health work has gone pretty far. And I’d like to tell you what we’re doing and planning. I promise not to take much of your time. Perhaps I could run up to see you right now? I could be there in twenty minutes.”

“I don’t—” A pause. “I’m particularly interested in health work.”

“I know you are,” I said warmly.

“The reason I spoke about a preacher, I’m going to be married. We just decided to, just before the phone rang.”

“Well! That’s just fine! I can be there in twenty minutes. Of course I shouldn’t butt in, but I won’t be in the city—”

“That’s all right. Come ahead. Come on and come ahead.”

“Thank you very much.”

I pushed the phone back and told Wolfe, “Lit. Not plastered, but lit.”

He was busy pouring beer, which Fritz had brought, and uttered only a low growl. Nor did he make any comment as he observed me returning the gun, still lying on my desk, to my side coat-pocket, and arranging its little brother, which I got from a drawer, in an armpit holster of my own design.

I did not actually expect ambush and sudden death as I emerged from the house into the early October dark, but I wasn’t kidding myself that any street or any two-legged animal that had become an object of interest to Dazy Perrit was exactly the same street or the same animal it had been before. And though there is absolutely nothing wrong with my nervous system, things looked and felt different as I went to the garage around the corner, got the convertible, and headed uptown.

V

In one way Perrit had given me a false impression of his daughter. I had got the idea that practically all the dough he gave her was dished out for worthy things like textbooks and health work, but it was evident that her apartment on One hundred and twelfth Street had not been furnished with spare change. The big room — and there was nothing like a bed in it, which meant that wasn’t all — was provided with all the articles of comfort and then some. I admit the biggest thing in it was a lacewood desk between two windows, and there was no question about her owning books.

Otherwise Perrit had her right. Her performance on the phone had given me a suspicion that Dazy was just one more male parent with wool over his eyes, but one good look at her was enough. She was no bar heifer. Me not being her father, I could face the reality that she was a little short and overweight, but everything was there that should have been at the age of twenty-one, in its proper place, including a fairly well-arranged face with light-colored eyes totally different from dad’s.

Since she had told me that they had just decided to get married when the phone rang, I was fully expecting to find the lucky man there, and there he was.

“This is Mr. Schane,” Beulah told me, and he came forward for a shake. She went on, “He’s been scolding me. He says I was maudlin on the phone, talking to you about a preacher. Maybe I was, but he shouldn’t have got me drunk.”

“Now wait a minute,” Schane protested with a smile at me and then at her. “Who made the cocktails?”

“I did,” she admitted, and somehow they were next to each other, touching, though neither had deliberately managed it. Evidently they were at the stage where the two organisms naturally float to a junction. She asked me, “Hasn’t a girl got a right to make cocktails when she’s got engaged? By the way, there’s a little left. Won’t you have one?” She went to a table and picked up a shaker. “I’ll get a glass.”

“I’ve got a better idea,” I declared, intercepting her. “I ought to be ashamed of myself for busting in on your celebration, and especially right at dinnertime. Why not let me help you go on celebrating, in a mild sort of way? How about a betrothal dinner?” I was giving them my best grin. “With no rooms in hotels, I’m putting up with a friend down on Thirty-fifth Street, and he happens to be a famous man, and also he’s very hospitable. I’ll call him up and tell him we’re coming. All right?”

They looked at each other. “But after all,” Schane objected. “We’re utter strangers, not only to him but to you too.”

“What’s he famous for?” Beulah asked. “Who is he?”

“Nero Wolfe, the detective. I’ve known him for years. He saved my life once — uh, on a murder charge. I was innocent and he proved it.”

“Oh, Morton, let’s go!” Beulah had both her hands on his arm, holding him and looking up at him. “This is my first request as your bride-to-be, to come and eat dinner with Nero Wolfe! You can’t refuse the first one!” She turned her head to me. “We’ll make him go! He has a strong sense of propriety because he’s in his last year at law school and he thinks lawyers are the guardians of everything from social conventions to moral righteousness.”

“Not righteousness,” Schane said firmly. “Right.”

He looked it. He stood, about my height, like a bulwark against something, with a good strong chin, a face that had bones, and, just to round out the picture, dark straight-aiming eyes behind glasses in thick black frames. He said he had intended to go home and do some studying in preparation for a stiff test that was coming. She said, still holding on to his arm, surely not on their engagement evening, and when it ended the way those things always end I got permission to use the phone and crossed over to it.

Fritz’s voice came. “Mr. Wolfe’s residence.”

“Fritz, this is Harold Stevens... No, no, Mr. Wolfe’s guest, Harold Stevens. May I speak to Mr. Wolfe, please?”

VI

My first chance to check on Beulah’s habit that we were supposed to cure her of, sitting with her shoulders slumped and then straightening up with a jerk, came at the dinner table after Fritz had served the broiled chicken and grilled sweet potatoes. It didn’t look particularly noticeable to me, but of course I didn’t have the same background for it as Dazy Perrit. It would have been a cinch to kid her out of it, I thought, if she hadn’t just got herself engaged. A girl who has just collared her man is not likely to be in a frame of mind to be easily persuaded that anything about her needs correcting.

Her man was, in my opinion, a pain in the neck. He seemed to be under the impression that he was already married, with accumulated burdens. The food may not have been red meat but there was nothing wrong with it, as there never is when it has Fritz’s by-line, and the wines were some of the best in Wolfe’s cellar, but he didn’t loosen up once. Law students may think they have a lot on their minds, but my God, this was a celebration of his contract for happiness. I was doing my best to keep it gay and carefree because I was afraid that if the conversation turned serious Beulah would ask me for a detailed account of the activities and plans of the Dayton Community Health Center, and that might have floored me, with her probably up on the lingo. To my surprise, Wolfe helped out by hopping all over the place, asking Beulah about her courses and other concerns, talking about himself and cases he had handled, and even trying to draw Schane out — he actually called him Morton, in a paternal tone — regarding his philosophies and ambitions.

“I don’t really know anything,” Morton told him while Fritz was passing the salad plates, “except law. That’s the worst of a specialized education, it leaves you comparatively ignorant in all other fields. That is certainly regrettable.”

“It is indeed.” Wolfe reached for the bowl of dressing. “But not as regrettable as their ignorance in their own field. I hope, Morton, that you are prepared to face the fact that very few people like lawyers. I don’t. They are inveterate hedgers. They think everything has two sides, which is nonsense. They are insufferable word-stretchers. I had a lawyer draw up a tort for me once, a simple conveyance, and he made it eleven pages! Two would have done it. Have they taught you to draft torts?”

Morton was too well mannered to take offense at his dinner host. “Naturally, sir, that’s in the course. I try not to put in more words than necessary.”

“Well, for heaven’s sake, keep it brief. A little more dressing, Harold?”

I nearly muffed that one because my mind was on something else. It wouldn’t hurt, I thought, to make a delivery of some kind to Dazy Perrit, and in my opinion we had something to deliver. He certainly didn’t know his daughter was engaged to be married, since it had just happened, and he would probably appreciate being told about it. I decided that as soon as we left the table I would excuse myself, go to my room two flights up, ring Wolfe on the house phone and get his okay, and then call Perrit from the extension in my room.

That worked all right except for the little detail that I couldn’t reach Perrit. I tried all five of the numbers he had given me, following instructions by saying it was Goodyear calling, and got nothing but not in. I left word everywhere for Perrit to call Goodyear and went downstairs to join them in the office, where they were having coffee.

Wolfe and Beulah were singing songs. At least it was as close to singing as I had ever seen him get. She was really pouring it out in words that were strangers to me, apparently songs she had mentioned at dinner that she had learned from a fellow student from Ecuador, and Wolfe was moving a finger to keep time and evidently humming. For him that was drunken revelry, and I would have merely sat and enjoyed it if I had had no worries. But it was past ten o’clock, and the situation called for my driving them home, and I didn’t want to miss Violet, who might beat the gun and arrive before eleven-thirty. So I stayed on my feet.

It wasn’t hard to get them out, because Morton was ready to go anyhow. Wolfe behaved like a gentleman, even getting out of his chair to say good night. I suppose that what was itching Morton was anxiety to get home and study, the wine and song having had no visible effect on him, but I was as wrong as I could be. Out at the curb, as I was opening the door of the convertible, he suddenly put his hand on my shoulder — more intimacy than I had thought him capable of in anything less than a year — and spoke.

“You know, you’re a swell guy, Stevens. That was a swell idea you had. Now I’ve got one, and I don’t think it’s all the wine I drank. Or maybe it is, but so what? Whose car is this?”

“Mr. Wolfe’s. He’s letting me use it.”

“But of course you have a driver’s license?”

The damn lawyer. “Sure,” I said, “I’ve got my license with me.”

“Then, since you wanted to help us celebrate, what do you think of this? You drive us down to Maryland, it will only take four hours, and we’ll get married!” He turned to Beulah, who was there against him. “How’s that for an idea?”

She said promptly and emphatically, “It stinks.”

“What?” He was surprised, “Why?”

“Because it does. I may not have any father or mother, or even aunts or uncles or cousins, but I don’t have to sneak off to Maryland in the dead of night to get a husband. I’m going to have flowers and white things, and sunshine if I get a break. Anyway, I thought you had to study. What about that test?”

“Very well, I do have to study.”

“And in case it might compromise your standing as a future Justice of the Supreme Court to be seen riding through the streets with an orphan, I’ve got an idea myself.” Beulah was on the lope. “You can take the subway, it will get you home to your work just as quick, and Mr. Stevens and I will go somewhere and talk. Or somewhere and dance.” She put a hand on my arm. “I feel guilty, Mr. Stevens, because we haven’t even mentioned your Community Health Center. Couldn’t we discuss that and dance at the same time?”

For a minute it looked as if I would have to crawl from under, but love found a way. The law student filed objections, motions, demurrers, and protestations, and if she had demanded a stipulation that girls with no parents shall be presumed to be descended from Julius Caesar in direct line she would probably have got it. It ended with us all piling in the convertible and heading uptown. Somewhere in the Seventies she mentioned health, and I sidetracked it by saying I’d mail her some literature which would give her the address to send a check to if she felt like it. All was serene and even cordial by the time we stopped at her address, where they both got out, and I declined an invitation to come up for a glass of something, and rolled west toward Broadway.

When I entered the office, Wolfe was seated over by the filing cabinets, with one of the drawers open, looking over plant germination records. I sat down at my desk and asked him, “Did our client call Goodyear?”

“No.”

“He’s missing something. And he narrowly missed already having a son-in-law. Morton wanted me to drive them to Maryland to get tied. Tonight. She pretended that she prefers it another way, but her real reason was that now that she has met me she doesn’t want him at all. She suggested he should take the subway and I should take her places. I’ll have to get out of it somehow. I can’t very well explain to her that I don’t want Dazy Perrit for a father-in-law.”

“Pfui. She’s dumpy.”

“Not so bad. Nothing that couldn’t be adjusted.” Yawning, I glanced at my wristwatch. It said eleven-fourteen. I glanced at the wall clock, a double-take habit I have been trying to get rid of for years, and it said the same.

“I wish Perrit would call,” I remarked. “If we can toss him a few useful items we may get out of this alive. I admit the news that Beulah is engaged is nothing colossal, but at least it’s fresh.”

“We have something for him better than that,” Wolfe declared.

I sent him a sharp glance because his tone had a smirk in it. “Oh? We have?”

“Yes indeed.”

“Something happened while I was out?”

“No. While you were here. In your presence. Evidently you missed it.”

Like that he was unbearable. When he took that attitude I never tried to pry it out of him because (a) I didn’t want to feed his vanity, and (b) I knew he had decided to keep it to himself. So I considered the conversation closed, turned to my desk, elevated the typewriter, and began banging out some routine letters. I was on the fifth one when the doorbell rang.

Wolfe shut the drawer of the cabinet, arose, and started for the only chair he really loved, the one behind his desk.

“Call her Angelina,” I told him as I crossed to the hall. “It’ll upset her.”

VII

Violet Angelina Sally sat in the red leather chair with one knee arranged over the other. Wolfe’s gaze, under half-closed lids, was directed straight at her, and she was meeting it. They had been that way for fully half a minute. Neither of them had spoken a word.

“Like it?” Violet asked with a high-pitched laugh.

“I was trying to decide,” Wolfe muttered, “whether to let you keep the twenty-four thousand, five hundred dollars you have got from Mr. Perrit or get that from you too. At least most of it.”

Violet let out a word. Ordinarily I try to report conversations without editing but we’ll let that one go. Wolfe made a face. He never cares for coarse talk, but he can stand it better from men than from women.

Judging from that word, Violet talked coarser than she looked. Of an entirely different design than Beulah, with a nice long flow to her body and a face whose only objectionable characteristics were acquired, she could easily have been made an attractive number by a couple of months on the farm, with fresh eggs and milk and going to bed early. But it was obvious that she hadn’t been on the farm.

“I do not intend,” Wolfe said testily, no longer muttering, “to prolong this. Here’s the situation. You are getting money — having already got the sum I mentioned — from Mr. Perrit by threatening to disclose the existence of his daughter. That, of course, is blackmail—”

“If you think silence gives consent,” Violet put in, “you’re crazy.” Her voice was softer and better handled than might have been expected from her opening word.

“I’ll get along without the consent for the sake of the silence,” Wolfe said dryly. “As I say, that’s blackmail, but I’m not concerned with the legal or criminal aspects. Your position is a little peculiar, which is often the case with blackmailers. Should Mr. Perrit call your hand and should you make the disclosure, you lose your current job and source of income. Also, since he would surely retaliate, the smallest misfortune you might expect would be a jail term in Utah. So, obviously, you are convinced that he won’t call your hand. I agree that it’s highly unlikely. He came to me today to get help. The job is to make you stop demanding money. I took the job.”

“I came down here.” Violet said, “because my father told me to. I simply can’t believe my ears! You say my father told you those lies? Holy Jesus, Dazy Perrit telling anyone I’m not his daughter! Now you think I believe that?”

“I think you find it difficult to believe it, Miss Murphy. Naturally. Because you calculated that Mr. Perrit, desperately anxious to keep his daughter’s identity secret, would under no circumstances tell anyone that you are a counterfeit. But you misjudged his character. You didn’t know, or didn’t stop to consider, that his strongest feeling, stronger even than his feeling for his daughter, is his vanity. Indeed, his feeling for his daughter may be only one aspect of his vanity, but that’s beside the point. He cannot, and will not, tolerate anyone’s ascendancy over him. He can’t stand it to have you diddle him.”

Wolfe shifted to get more comfortable. “But he made the same mistake you did. He misjudged a man’s character. Mine. You have demanded fifty thousand dollars from him. Henceforth, Miss Murphy, whenever you get money from Mr. Perrit, above the hundred dollars a week he allows you, you will give me ninety per cent of it — that’s nine-tenths, ninety dollars from each hundred — within twenty-four hours from the moment you get it, or the Salt Lake City authorities will come and get you.”

Violet stared at him. She took a breath, stared some more, and gulped. “But you—” She stopped and stared some more. Then she broke out, “You goddam fool, you can’t do that to Dazy! He don’t have to let you alone like he does me! All I have to do is tell him—”

She cut it off and started staring again. Suddenly the stare changed, her whole face changed. “Aw, for the love of Christ,” she said contemptuously. “You think I’m that dumb? Dazy thinks I’m that dumb? I give it to you and you hand it to him and he gets off cheap, wouldn’t that be sweet. And he thought I would fall for that?”

She uncrossed her knees and leaned forward. “Listen,” she said earnestly. “I’ve got what it takes, see? You think it don’t take guts to face up to Dazy Perrit and make him fork it over? Wait till I show you.” She began unfastening her dress. “I was at the theater tonight, but you notice I’m wearing sleeves and I’ll show you why.”

She had the fastenings loose and was wriggling it down from her shoulders. Down it came, revealing pink doings, and revealing also a bare arm which she extended. “What do you think of that?” she demanded.

It was quite an exhibit. The black and purple blotches began a few inches below the elbow and continued up to the shoulder curve. Curious as to what he had done it with, I got up and stepped over for a close-up, and she obligingly kept her arm up for me. I couldn’t tell; it might have been fingers or fists, or he might have used something.

“That’s not all,” Violet said on a mixed note of pride and grievance. “There’s other places, but you’d have to pay to see them. And I took it. I told him, listen, I said, if you hurt me enough, don’t think I’ll just go baby. You can’t lock me up, you can’t lock up your daughter, can you? If you hurt me enough I’ll spill it plenty where it will do the most good and I’ll clear out, and try and find me, you or anyone else. So you can let up, see?”

She had the dress back over her shoulders and was starting to fasten it. “He let up. I’ve got Dazy Perrit right, and I’m the only one that ever did that and lived to tell it. And now he thinks he can get most of it back through you with this lousy runaround!” She pronounced the word with which she had declared her position at the start.

Wolfe made another face. “But Miss Murphy.” His tone was even. “You’ll have to think this through. Though my assurance that Mr. Perrit and I didn’t cook this up is worthless to you, I do give that assurance. The point is that even if you are ninety-nine per cent convinced that Mr. Perrit arranged for me to take this line, dare you risk that one per cent? What if I’m acting on my own hook? You would discover it too late. To me you’re no asset at all unless you get money from Mr. Perrit and give most of it to me. I have no stake in you; your fate is of no concern to me. If you get money from Mr. Perrit and don’t give me my share, you’ll never know what minute or where you’ll feel that hand on your shoulder.”

“I wouldn’t be there,” Violet said harshly.

Wolfe sighed. “You’re not thinking straight. Certainly you’d be there. You’ll have to be, if you go on chousing Mr. Perrit. Incidentally, it will be useless for you to repeat this conversation to him. Naturally I have prepared for that, and he won’t believe a word of it.”

“The hell he won’t. He told you to say it.”

“No. He didn’t.” Wolfe pushed his chair back from the desk. “If you knew me better, Miss Murphy, you would believe me when I say that this is strictly my own idea. This is my own scheme, conceived and executed by me alone, and I expect to profit from it. So will you; I’m not trying to freeze you out. Mr. Perrit makes a lot of money. You can keep ten thousand out of every hundred thousand you get.”

Wolfe arose and walked past her to the door. There he turned. “A word of caution, Miss Murphy. Your natural impulse would be to get all you can and disappear. Mr. Perrit might possibly decide not to find you, for obvious reasons. I wouldn’t. I would find you. I am fully as vain as Mr. Perrit. I will not be diddled.”

He went.

Violet had not turned around to see him out. She now sat with her eyes on his chair as if he were still in it. A corner of her lips was screwed around and up. She didn’t seem to be in anything like a panic, merely trying to think straight. Finally she turned her eyes to me and spoke, not as to an enemy:

“My God, he’s fat.”

I nodded at her approvingly. “You’re a brave little woman and I admire you. Luckily you don’t have to toss in or boost the pot now and here. You’ve got time to sleep on it, which is a good idea. Shall I take you home and tuck you in?”

She smiled at me and I grinned back.

“You don’t look like a grifter,” she said. “You look healthy and handsome.”

“Inside,” I said, “I am clean but mean.” I stood up. “I don’t offer to drive you home because I noticed you’ve got your own car. But I can go along just for the air.”

She left her chair, crossed to me, put four fingers carefully and precisely at the top of my forehead, and ran them back over and down my scalp, giving me a comb.

“Air,” she said. “Baby, do I need air!”

“We’ll share it,” I told her. “Ninety per cent for you and ten for me.”

I got my hat and topcoat from the hall, escorted her out, opened the door of her coupé for her, and went around to the other side and climbed in. What I was actually after was not air, nor yet more hair-combing, but insurance against bodily injury. I wasn’t condemning Wolfe for not informing Dazy Perrit before pulling that on her, since he might have thought it up just before she came, or even after she came, but all the same I didn’t care for the sketch as it now stood. If she bounced into the penthouse and blurted it out to Perrit, which she was certainly capable of, there was no way of telling how he might react. Common sense would have told him what Wolfe was up to, trying to get nine out of ten to hand back to him, but the trouble was that there was nothing common about a bird like Perrit, not even sense. Probably he didn’t think there was an honest man on earth. So there I was in her coupe with her.

She was a first-rate driver, fully half as good as me. As she slowed down for a red light at Fortieth Street I said, “Miss Murphy, you’re sunk.”

“Cut out the Murphy,” she snapped. Then she reached to pat me on the knee. “Just call me Angel Food.”

I didn’t have much time, since the penthouse was on Seventy-eighth Street, not more than a few minutes away at that time of night, and I didn’t really intend to go up with her and tuck her in.

“I don’t like angel food,” I told her. “I’ll call you Maple Delight. But you’re absolutely sunk if you try to bull it through. I speak frankly because I admire you in more ways than one, and also because I enjoy life and don’t care to leave it at this point. If you go on putting the bee on Perrit and don’t give Wolfe his nine-tenths, you’re through. Wolfe is a hyena, a vulture, and a jackal. If you do give Wolfe his nine-tenths, Perrit will find it out sooner or later, and then not only will Wolfe get it, which might or might not be a calamity, but I am liable to get it too. Even if I’m not as healthy and handsome as you thought I was there for a minute. I do have my skin on straight and I like it that way.”

“Go on talking.” She didn’t take her eyes from her driving. “You haven’t said anything yet, but your voice goes through me. I won’t even want a drink.”

We were at Fifty-first Street. I went on, “So to show you how selfish I am, I’ve got a suggestion. You haven’t got a chance of cleaning up, not one in a million. You’re squeezed in between Dazy Perrit and Nero Wolfe, and that’s no set-up for a Sherman tank, let alone a lady. The big haul is out for good, and you might as well face it and show you’ve got brains as well as guts.”

I patted her thigh. “So take it, Maple Delight. First, you can keep the screw on Perrit, handing most of it over to Wolfe, but you’d be a sucker if you did. It wouldn’t be worth your measly percentage. Second, you can slide out and away, and my opinion is no good on that because I don’t know how hard you’d find it to make a living. Of course you’d have to travel, which would be a disadvantage if you like New York. Third, and this is my suggestion, you can tell Perrit — or I’ll do it if you want me to — that the gyp is out, you are merely his loving and obedient daughter, but it would be nice to have the weekly handout stepped up to three centuries instead of one.”

She sent me a sharp glance and back again to her driving. I somehow gathered that I was doing fine.

“Wolfe would get no cut,” I said firmly. “I doubt if he would even expect it, and anyhow you can leave that to me. I have — a way of bringing pressure. Almost certainly Perrit would settle for that and no hard feelings. As for you, you don’t have to be a damn pig. That would be fifteen thousand, six hundred bucks a year, no income tax, and I suppose Perrit pays the household expenses, including such items as this car. Six hundred dollars more than a United States Senator gets! You could stay in New York, with no thought of Utah or any other desert, not to mention confined spaces, enjoy your friends, sleep as late as you want, visit the museums and art galleries — what the hell, what if two hundred is as high as he’ll go? That’s twice what a plumber makes! Usually I hate to be driven by a woman, but you’re good. I thought you would be. You’re very good.”

“I can turn corners and back up,” she admitted. “Yeah, art galleries. Are you comic?”

We had made it crosstown and were going north on Fifth Avenue, in the Sixties. “Someday,” I said, “you must drive me up to that roadhouse Perrit owns in Westchester. I just tossed in the art galleries. Forget it. One thing, if my suggestion strikes you at all and you want to think it over, for God’s sake, don’t mention Wolfe’s double-cross to Perrit. Not till you’re sure what you want. That would start, fireworks that nobody could stop.”

“It would?” She was scornful “Or it wouldn’t.”

“If you still think Perrit and Wolfe framed it you’re batty. You don’t know Wolfe.”

“I know Dazy Perrit.” She turned east on Seventy-eighth Street.

“But not Wolfe,” I insisted. “The first chance I get I’ll explain him to you. It’s not only his fat that keeps you from seeing through him. Perrit has met his match twice, first you and now Wolfe.”

She pulled up at the curb on the right, by an awning, and I hopped out and held the door open for her, but she emerged on her own side and came around.

She put a hand on my arm. “We’ll leave the car here. Later I’ll come down and drive you home.”

For the second time that night I was given the job of crawling from under, and this time there was no Morton to give me an assist. I resisted, politely, the pull on my arm and started arranging words, but the words never got spoken. At that instant the question became not whether those words would get spoken, but whether any more words at all would ever get spoken — by me. A car had turned into the street from Fifth Avenue, tearing along in second gear, and slowed down, nearly to a stop, just behind Violet’s coupé. I was aware of it only from noises because my back was to it When Violet’s hold on my arm tightened and her face went stiff and she jerked to the left and tight against me, I reacted fast by whirling around, and the force of my whirl, with her holding my arm, yanked her to one side. The bullets were coming by then. With his gun poked through the open window, the guy in the car had a range of not more than twenty feet.

I think the first bullet got her. Anyhow, the shots came so fast together that that was a minor point. As she went down I went down with her, both because of her drag on my arm, which she held on to, and because my reflexes decided that standing up was a bad idea under the circumstances. Then other reflexes took a hand, and I rolled to the curb and was kneeling behind Violet’s coupé, with the gun from my coat-pocket in my hand, aiming it at the other car, which was on the move again, thirty yards toward Madison Avenue and going fast. I pulled the trigger until the gun was empty. The car was going faster as it crossed Madison.

I was upright by then and I turned to Violet. She was on her hands and knees, trying to get up. As I moved to her she crumpled. I knelt down for a look and saw that one bullet had torn through her cheek, but obviously there were others.

I told her, “Quit moving, kid. Quiet” Then I said, though you won’t believe it and I find it hard to believe myself, “Angel Food.”

She quit moving soon enough. “Uh— uh—” she said. She was gasping, and in between gasps sucking in breath with a hiss. She was trying to talk. “It’s— uh— uh— shame,” she got out. Her chin came up and she screamed at me, “Shame!” Then she gave up and flopped.

I raised up for a glance around. Windows were opening and voices came, and someone was running my way down the sidewalk from Fifth Avenue. The door of the apartment house at the other end of the awning opened, and a man in uniform came out and toward me, a doorman or elevator man. I saw that the one coming down the sidewalk was a cop, so I got upright, called out, “Doctor!” and dived into the apartment house. The lobby was empty, and so was the elevator, with its door standing open. I found the switchboard, plugged in, pushed a button, and dialed a number, trying to remember if I had left it connected to the extension in Wolfe’s room, which I certainly should have done from force of habit.

I had. Finally his voice came. “Nero Wolfe speaking.”

“Archie. I took her home. We were standing on the sidewalk in front of the apartment house on Seventy-eighth Street. A guy came along in a car and started shooting, and then got away. She is dead. Tell Fritz—”

“Are you hurt?”

“I’ll tell the world I’m hurt, but not with bullets. That bastard Perrit decided to get her and to use us for proof of something, and you can figure out what while I spend the night as a quiz kid. Tell Fritz—”

A voice came at me from behind. “Get offa that phone! Now!”

VIII

Lieutenant Rowcliff of Homicide was one of the reasons why I doubted if the world would ever reach the point of universal brotherhood. It didn’t seem feasible as long as opinions were still loose like mine of Rowcliff.

At ten minutes to three in the morning, in a torture chamber at the 19th Precinct on East Sixty-seventh Street, where he had established emergency headquarters, Rowcliff said to me, “Very well.” He never used vulgar expressions like okay. “Very well, we’ll lock you up.”

I was yawning, and had to wait till it was finished before answering him. Then I remarked, “You’ve said that four times. I don’t like the idea, and neither will Mr. Wolfe or his lawyer, but I prefer it to more of this. Proceed.”

He merely sat and scowled at me, but no vulgar scowl, a Rowcliff scowl.

“Let me summarize it,” I offered. “Dazy Perrit came to see Mr. Wolfe, to consult him. If I had information for you on that, which I haven’t, it would be only secondhand. The place for you to get that is from Mr. Wolfe.”

“I have told you,” Rowcliff said coldly, “that I have sent a man to see Wolfe, twice, two men, and they were not allowed to enter. The door is bolted, as usual. That man Brenner talked through a crack and said that Wolfe was asleep and he wouldn’t disturb him. That is the impudent and arrogant attitude to be expected.”

“Try him after breakfast,” I suggested. “Say, eleven o’clock.” I was pleased to learn that my undelivered message to Fritz had not been necessary. “Of course I won’t be there to let you in if I’m in a cell. Then, at eleven-forty, twenty minutes before midnight, Perrit’s daughter arrived, apparently to consult Mr. Wolfe about the same thing as her father. You can get that from Mr. Wolfe too. When they were through I escorted Miss Perrit home, with her driving her car. We arrived about twelve-thirty. I glanced at both my wristwatch and the dash clock at Columbus Circle, and it was twelve-twenty-six. We were standing—”

“That’s all down.”

“Okay, and so is this. The man in the car had a handkerchief tied—”

“How do you know it was a handkerchief?”

“Oh, my God, we’re off again. Something white then, possibly torn from his shirt tail, which is why I wouldn’t know him from Adam, because most of his face was behind it. I don’t know whether he was after her or me or both, though I admit it was her he hit. There was a license plate on the car but I couldn’t make it out, or didn’t, which is unimportant since I understand it was hot, having been liberated less than a mile away an hour or so earlier. And found less than six blocks away, near the Eighty-sixth Street subway station. I would like to know if any of my bullets—”

“Where’s Dazy Perrit?”

“You mean now?”

“Now.”

“I have no idea.”

“Is he holed up in Wolfe’s house?”

“Good lord, no. It makes my teeth chatter just to think of it.”

“Did your teeth chatter yesterday, when he was there arranging things with Wolfe?”

“Look, Lieutenant,” I said grimly. “It will soon be dawn. I’ve told it over and over, all I know. I am now going to clam up. I knew a man once who insisted on hunting ducks with a shotgun with a recoil that knocked him flat on his prat every time he pulled the trigger. He seemed to love it. In a way you remind me of him. You know damn well the man to tell you what Perrit and his daughter wanted is Mr. Wolfe. You know damn well I can’t tell you. You also know that if you hold me Mr. Wolfe will resent it and you won’t be able to depend on a thing he says. What do you want to do, get in another jab in a private feud or solve a murder? I warn you I’m going to take a nap, either in a chair, on a cot, or home in bed.”

“Get out of here,” Rowcliff commanded. “Go on, get.”

He pushed a button and passed the word, and a minute later I was on the sidewalk. What had restrained Rowcliff, I was well aware, was nothing said by me, but his uncertainty regarding the amount of co-operation his superior officer, Inspector Cramer, would be wanting from Wolfe.

Anyhow, as I voted against trying to flush a taxi and headed for the subway, it wasn’t Rowcliff I was concentrating on, it was Dazy Perrit. I had come within an ace of spilling it to Rowcliff to give the cops a good start, but knew that wouldn’t do before seeing Wolfe. I also, on my way home to Wolfe’s house, did some useless wondering, like wondering if it was the face named Archie who had done the job.

But mostly I was trying to add it up, and couldn’t even begin. The starting point was this, that Perrit had decided to erase Violet without delay. That much was a cinch. But what was the big idea of dragging Wolfe in, not to mention me? How could he use the Wolfe part as a cover, either for the police or for anyone else, without letting it out that Violet was a phony? And wasn’t that supposed to be the one thing he didn’t want? The reason I particularly wanted those and other questions answered was because I had a certain idea. I am no one-man pestilence; the only times I have shot people it has been purely ad lib, to meet an urgent contingency; but I had decided I would have to shoot Dazy Perrit. It wasn’t merely a hangover from my sensation as I had stood with Violet gripping my arm, watching that gun blaze away at us; it was a realization of where Wolfe and I were sitting and would go on sitting. The risks we took in the cases we worked on, that was all right, that was just part of it. But to be tangled up with the inside affairs of the Perrits and Meekers wasn’t taking a risk, it was simply checking out, with the date of departure the only thing still to be settled.

So as I transferred to the shuttle at Grand Central I was going to shoot Perrit the first chance I got. Four minutes later, when I was transferring again at Times Square, shooting Perrit was obviously the very worst thing I could do. In another four minutes, as I emerged into Thirty-fourth Street, anything and everything was the worst thing I could do. As I felt then, the guy I really wanted to shoot was Wolfe, for having opened that window and yelled to me to bring Perrit in, in a frantic snatch at a pork chop. Turning up Ninth Avenue to Thirty-fifth and then west again, I let the brain float. I was getting close to bed and having a letdown, after all the excitement, followed by two hours of tight feelings at the precinct station with the city employees.

As I neared our stoop I changed my mind again about going to Wolfe’s room for a bedside chat. It could wait till morning. I was getting some satisfaction out of that as I lifted my foot for the first step up to our door, and then instantaneously the satisfaction was gone. What chased it was two men. They came out of the dark corner behind the stone wall of the stoop, and there they were, dose enough to touch.

The one on the right was the face named Archie. The one on the left, and a little back, was Dazy Perrit. The face had a gun showing, in his hand. Perrit’s hands were in his coat-pockets. My guns hadn’t been taken from me, since I had tickets for them, but the one in my coat-pocket wasn’t loaded, and my armpit holster might as well have been up in Yonkers, since my topcoat was buttoned.

“I want to ask you about tonight,” Perrit said. “My car’s around the corner on Eleventh Avenue. Go ahead. We’ll come behind.”

“We can talk here,” I told him. “I’ve often talked to people here.” This was certainly my chance to shoot him, a perfect set-up for self-defense, but I postponed it. “What do you want to ask me?”

“Get going,” he said, in a tone a little different.

It was a cockeyed situation. If I refused to budge I didn’t think they would drill me, because that would have been silly. If that was what they had in mind they wouldn’t have started conversing. If I went up the stoop and put the key in the door I still didn’t think they would drill me, but there were two objections to it. First, they might start operations short of drilling and one thing leads to another, and second, the door was bolted on the inside and I would have to rouse Fritz. Not to mention, third, that with Fritz roused and the door open they would probably decide to come in for a visit.

I decided to stand pat. “I like it—” I started, and stopped, hearing the sound of a car coming. I turned my head to look, because the sound of a car coming got on my nerves after my recent experience with it, and also because it might be a police car if Rowcliff had decided not to wait till eleven o’clock for another try at Wolfe. But it was only a taxicab. They often came through there late at night, on their way to the nest, a company garage around the corner.

I turned back to them. “I like it here. Even if I had ideas, which I haven’t, my gun’s empty, so relax. I emptied it—”

I didn’t duck or dive, I just dropped, flat on the sidewalk, and started rolling. I was thinking I mustn’t bang my head against the stone of the stoop. This time I didn’t see the man in the taxicab at all, even enough of a glimpse to see if he had something white over his face, I was moving too fast, rolling to get around the corner. I had, as I remember it, no sign of an impulse to reach for my gun. If I thought at all I suppose I was thinking that if a man in a taxicab wanted to make holes in Perrit and the face it was nothing to me. I had, and have, no notion what they were doing, but later examination showed that some of the noise I heard was made by them, using their own ammunition.

That noise stopped. The noise of the taxi moving from the scene tapered off. I stuck my head around the corner of the stoop, saw a form as flat as mine had been and much quieter, and scrambled to my feet. There were two forms, the other one around the other corner of the stoop, and it was twitching a little. I saw it still had a gun in its hand, so I stepped over and kicked it out and away. I knelt, first to one and then to the other, for a brief inspection, and finding it likely that no one would ever again consider it dangerous to turn his back on them, mounted the stoop to the front door and pushed the button for Fritz, my private rings. But the rings weren’t needed. Before my finger left the button the door opened for the crack of two inches allowed by the chain of the bolt and a voice came through.

“Archie?”

“Me, Fritz. Open—”

“Do you need help?”

“I need help to get in. Open up.”

He slid the bolt and I pushed and entered.

“Did you kill somebody?” he inquired.

Wolfe’s bellow sounded from the hall one flight up. “Archie! What the devil is it now?”

His tone implied that I owed him apologies, past due, for interfering with his sleep.

“Corpses on the sidewalk in front, and it might have been me!” I called to him bitterly, and went to the office and dialed Rhinelander 4-1445, the 19th Precinct Station House.

IX

So Rowcliff didn’t have to wait until eleven o’clock for a go at Wolfe, after all. Very few performances were beyond the range of Wolfe’s special strain of gall, but keeping himself inaccessible with Dazy Perrit and a hired man shot down in front of his house while chatting with me would really have been out of bounds.

At four-five A.M. he received Rowcliff and a sergeant in his bedroom. I missed that interview because I was occupied at the time, in the office with a committee of the squad, by request. I learned later that Wolfe had given them a peep under the lid but by no means removed it. He told them that Perrit had said he was being blackmailed by his daughter and wanted him to invent a way to make her stop, that he, Wolfe, had accepted the job, that the daughter had come to the office at Perrit’s command, and that he, Wolfe, had threatened to inform the police of Salt Lake City, where she was wanted, if she didn’t behave herself. The other items he kept, such as Violet being a phony and the kind of lever she was using to heist her father. He left Beulah out entirely. I learned this later, and didn’t know then how far he was going, so down in the office with the committee I backed away from everything but the outdoor facts, adding nothing to my popularity but not really endangering my health.

The understanding had been that a specified number could enter for conversation with Wolfe and me, but that the house was not to be used for a command post, so the turmoil out front, complete with spotlights, was not allowed to spill over the sill, and Fritz was standing by. I was taken out twice, first to go all over it on the spot, and the second time to try to catch me in contradictions, but no one ever even suggested that I should go for a ride. From the way they acted it wasn’t hard to tell why: they were sorry for me. I hadn’t had time to analyze the situation enough to realize how awful right they were.

That went on long after daylight was showing, until the sun was entering at the window beyond Wolfe’s desk. As soon as they were all gone, including Rowcliff and the sergeant from Wolfe’s room, Fritz went to the kitchen and started breakfast. I mounted one flight, knocked on the door, was told to enter, and did so. Wolfe, in yellow silk pajamas and yellow suppers with turned-up toes, was coming out of the bathroom.

“Well,” I began, “I hope to God—”

The phone rang. Whenever I left the office I plugged in extensions. Wolfe’s instrument, on his bedside table, was bright yellow and I didn’t like it. I crossed over and got it and told the transmitter, “Nero Wolfe’s office.”

“Archie? Saul. I want the boss.”

I told Wolfe, “Saul Panzer.”

He nodded, approaching. “Good. Go up to your room and look at your face. It needs washing.”

“So would yours if you had spent the night rolling around on sidewalks. You mean you have private business with Saul? Have you got him working on something?”

“Certainly. Mr. Perrit’s job.”

“Since when?”

“I phoned him last evening while you were taking Miss Page home. Go and wash your face.”

I went. Usually I resented it when Wolfe froze me out of operations with one of the men he used, but now I was too played out to bother, and besides, Saul was different. It was hard to resent anything about a guy as good as Saul Panzer. At the mirror in my bathroom I saw that there was no question about my face, so I attended to it, deciding to postpone shaving until after breakfast, and then went back down one flight to Wolfe’s room. He had finished his private talk with Saul and was sitting in his underwear, putting on his socks.

“What do you want to discuss?” I asked him.

“Nothing.”

I stared indignantly. “Well, by God.”

He grunted. “At the moment there is nothing to discuss. You’re out of it. I told Mr. Rowcliff that I engaged to make Mr. Perrit’s daughter stop blackmailing him, and that I threatened her with exposure to the police, and that’s all. He’s an imbecile. He intimated that I am liable to prosecution for attempting to blackmail the daughter.” Wolfe straightened up. “By the way, I suppose it would be futile to call that number, Lincoln six-three two three two, now that Mr. Perrit is dead?”

“I’m out of it,” I said through my teeth and went down to the kitchen for breakfast. Out of it! Look who was calling Rowcliff an imbecile! I even forgot to taste the first three pancakes as they went down.

My breakfast was interrupted four times by phone calls. Of course that would go on all day. Only one of the four, the last one, required reporting to Wolfe, which suited me fine, since I wished to keep communication with him at the lowest possible minimum. By that time he had finished breakfast and gone up to the plant room, so I gave him a buzz on the house phone.

“A man called,” I told him, “and said his name is L. A. Schwartz and he’s Dazy Perrit’s lawyer. He wanted to come to see you immediately. I told him eleven o’clock. I have his number. If you regard him as out of it too, I can ring him and tell him not to come.”

“Eleven will do,” Wolfe said. “Did you try that Lincoln number? Mr. Perrit said between seven and ten.”

“No,” I said and hung up.

For the next hour and three-quarters my main job would have been to stay awake if it hadn’t been for the phone. Stalling journalists had got to be routine with me over the years, but it took time to handle it so they wouldn’t get down on us. One of the calls was a sample of what might be expected from life from then on as long as it lasted. A guy with a hoarse voice, so hoarse I wished he would take time out to clear his throat, said he was a friend of Dazy Perrit’s and he would like to ask me a couple of questions, and would I meet him at the Seven-Eleven Club some time that afternoon? I told him I was tied up at the office but if he would give me his name and number I would ring him if I found I could make it. He said he didn’t know where he would be, so skip it and he would try again. Then he said, “It was too bad you wasn’t tied up at the office last night,” and hung up.

Another call came from Saul Panzer just before eleven. I put it through to Wolfe and was instructed to stay off the line, an instruction I didn’t need since I was out of it. Before they were through talking the doorbell rang again, for about the tenth time since the cops had left, and this time it was not a gate-crasher to be shooed off but a customer with a reserved seat. I allowed L. A. Schwartz to enter, told him Wolfe would soon appear, and herded him to the office and to a chair. I wouldn’t have picked him for Dazy Perrit’s lawyer. For one thing, he wore old-fashioned nose-pinchers for glasses, which didn’t seem to be the thing. He was sixty, skinny, and silent. I thought I might keep myself awake another five minutes by striking up a conversation, but I got a total of not more than ten words out of him. He sat with his brief case on his lap and every thirty seconds pulled at the lobe of his right ear. I had abandoned him by the time the sound of Wolfe’s elevator came.

On his way across to his desk Wolfe halted to acknowledge the introduction, made by me in spite of being out of it, purely for the sake of appearances. Then he went to his chair, sat and got himself adjusted, leaned back, and took in the visitor with half-closed eyes.

“Well, sir?” he asked.

Schwartz blinked against the light from the window. “I must apologize,” he said, “for being urgent about this appointment, but I felt there should be no delay.” He sounded formal. “I gathered from Mr. Perrit last evening that you had not explicitly given your assent, and therefore—”

“May I ask, assent to what?”

“To your appointment, in his will, as executor of his estate and in effect the guardian of his daughter. Did you?”

“Utterly” — Wolfe wiggled a finger at him — “preposterous.”

“I was afraid of that,” Schwartz said regretfully. “It will complicate matters. I’m afraid it’s partly my fault, drafting the documents in such haste. There is a question whether the fifty thousand dollars provided for that purpose will go to the executor if the executor is not you but someone appointed by a court.”

Wolfe grunted. His eyes opened and then half closed again. “Tell me about it,” he said.

X

Schwartz opened the flap of his brief case, then let it drop back again, and kept it on his lap.

“In the past,” he said, “I have attended to a few little matters for Mr. Perrit of a purely legal nature. I know law, but on account of my temperament I am not a successful lawyer. Last evening he came to my home — a modest little apartment on Perry Street — he has never been to my office — and asked me to draw up some papers at once, in his presence. Luckily I have a typewriter at home but it isn’t very good and you’ll have to overlook typographical deficiencies. It took a long while because I am not fast on a typewriter, and also because of the special conditions to be covered. It’s a difficult business, extremely difficult, to convey property by testament to a daughter without naming her and indeed without identifying her in any way.”

The lawyer blinked. “I should tell you right off that there will be no problems of administration. The property consists exclusively of government bonds and cash in banks, a little over a million dollars. In that respect there are no intricacies. All other property owned by Mr. Perrit, including his interest in various enterprises, goes to others — his associates — in another document. Your functions are limited strictly to the legacy to his daughter. There are only two other provisions in the document under consideration: fifty thousand dollars to you as executor, and the same amount to me. The witnesses to it were a man who owns a delicatessen and a young woman who runs a rental library, both of whom are known to me. I have the original in my possession. Mr. Perrit took a copy.”

Wolfe lifted a hand. “Let me see it.”

Schwartz blinked again. “In a moment, yes, sir. I should explain that the large sum left to me was not to compensate me for drawing up some papers. It was Mr. Perrit’s way of insuring my performance of an act mentioned nowhere in writing, but only orally. I drafted another document of which no copy was made. It was put into an envelope along with other sheets of paper on which Mr. Perrit had written something, I don’t know what, and the envelope was sealed with wax. I was given the function and the responsibility, in the event of Mr. Perrit’s death, of delivering the envelope to you personally at the earliest possible moment, together with the information, already delivered, regarding the will. I would put it this way: of the fifty thousand dollars left to me, one hundred dollars was for drafting the documents, another hundred was for making the delivery to you — reasonable sums — and the remainder was to pay me for not opening the envelope and examining the contents. He misjudged me entirely. One-tenth that amount, even one-fiftieth, would have been enough.”

He opened his brief case, took out folded papers, and put them on Wolfe’s desk. “That’s the will, which I must take with me for probate.” He produced a bulky envelope with red blotches of wax and put it beside the papers. “That’s the envelope.”

He sat back and pulled at his ear.

Wolfe reached for the envelope and papers. First he went through the will, thoroughly — he is never a fast reader — then handed it to me and slit the envelope with his paper knife. As he finished with a page of the contents of the envelope he slid it across to my reach; apparently I was back in again. I read faster than he does, so I was only a couple of minutes behind him at the end.

The will was certainly involved. It was hard for me to tell whether the cash and bonds were left to Nero Wolfe or to the unnamed and unidentified “my daughter,” but I’m not a lawyer and I suppose it was legally hers, though it seemed to me to leave room for a lot of antics by him if his mind worked that way. The other document drawn up by Schwartz, the one in the envelope, was very technical. It contained a long list of bonds and balances in banks, and its chief purpose seemed to be to make them available to Wolfe if, as, and when he felt like taking them over. In places it sounded like a power of attorney, and in other places like blessings and absolution for Wolfe no matter what he did. If Dazy Perrit had sat around while Schwartz composed all that and typed it out, one of the problems the police were working on — how and where Perrit had spent the hours preceding his death — was certainly solved.

But he hadn’t merely sat. He had done some composing too, namely, the papers he had written on himself and put in the envelope. I read that last and slowest. It began:

391 Perry St,

N.Y. City,

Oct. 7,

1946,

9.42 Pm.

Mr. Nero Wolfe, Esq.

909 W. 35 St, N.Y. City,

Dear sir, If this is a wrong one I’m pulling its the worst mistake I ever made but I think I can count on you after seeing you today and sizing you up. I don’t think I’m going to die but what if I do thats my problem my daughter has got to be protected I mean she has got to get what belongs to her and thats my problem.

There was a line and a half crossed out and then he went on. I have it in front of me now, but it covers seven pages and what the hell. All it amounted to was this, that the fifty thousand bucks was to pay Wolfe for seeing that Beulah got the cash and bonds, for keeping it all under his hat, and for using his best judgment as to how much Beulah should ever be told, and, if so, when. Then there were a lot of facts, about who the mother was and so on, and dates, and the last two pages might have been classed as philosophy. Dazy Perrit’s philosophy. The two other papers in the envelope were a marriage certificate, dated St. Louis, September 4, 1924, and a birth certificate, dated July 26, 1925.

I folded things up again and stuck them in the envelope.

“Put it in the safe,” Wolfe said.

I did so.

Schwartz quit pulling at his ear and began talking. “There might be some reluctance about handling money accumulated by the methods used by Mr. Perrit.

But it would be a great responsibility to deprive a young woman—”

He stopped because Wolfe was waving it away with a finger. “Bah,” Wolfe said. “If an oil marauder or a steel bandit gets respect for his wishes regarding the disposal of his loot, why shouldn’t Mr. Perrit?”

“Then you accept the— ah— office?”

“I do.”

Instead of looking relieved and satisfied, the lawyer frowned. “In that case, I have a question. With the daughter dead, how do you propose to perform the functions of your office?”

“That, sir, is my affair. I don’t—” Wolfe stopped himself, cocking an eye. “No. I’m wrong. Since Mr. Perrit trusted you he would expect me to give you this much satisfaction: the daughter is not dead. Beyond that Mr. Perrit left it to me, and so will you.”

“I see.” Schwartz blinked. “I hope you’ll forgive me if I mention another detail. My personal interest is concerned, because fifty thousand dollars is for me an extremely large sum, and if I don’t get it through you I may not get it at all. I understand that your assistant — this gentleman here — was present when Miss Perrit was killed, and was also present when Mr. Perrit and his companion were killed, and that he, your assistant, was not injured. I do not know whether you fully realize the inferences that will be drawn and the consequences that may reasonably be expected. Those inferences will be greatly strengthened when this will—” he tapped a finger on his brief case, to which the will had been returned — “is probated and becomes public knowledge, as the law requires. With over a million dollars entrusted to your hands and you accountable to no one. Mr. Perrit’s associates will inevitably draw those inferences, which will seem obvious to them, and they—”

The phone rang, and I took it. It was the hoarse man who had previously invited me to meet him at the Seven-Eleven Club, and he still hadn’t found time to clear his throat. This time he wanted Wolfe, and Wolfe, after I had covered the transmitter and told him about the previous call, got on. I stayed on too, as I always do when not told to get off, but I’ll only report one end.

“Nero Wolfe speaking... Your name, please?... I’m sorry, sir, I never speak to people without a name; I must have your name... F-A-B-I-A-N?... Thank you. Hold the line a moment, please.”

Wolfe asked Schwartz, “Have you ever heard of a man named Fabian?”

“Yes.” Schwartz was frowning and all his fingers were gripping the edge of his brief case.

“So have I,” I said emphatically.

“Yes, Mr. Fabian, what is it?... I see. I never make appointments outside my house... No, no indeed, I assure you I’m not frightened at all... Yes, I realize that, but I seldom go out... Well, I have a suggestion. Why don’t you come to my office, say at two o’clock today?... Good... That’s right. You have the address?... Good.”

He hung up. I did likewise, with a vicious bang.

Schwartz said, in a different tone from any he had used, “I was about to say when the phone rang that Mr. Perrit’s associates are men of action. To put it baldly, they will kill both you and your assistant the first chance they get. I was about to suggest certain precautions. Frankly, as I said, my personal interest is concerned. The best way—”

“Mr. Fabian says he wants to ask me something.”

“But great heavens!” Schwartz was looking green. “He’s the most notorious — to invite him — to let him in—”

“If he is really dangerous,” Wolfe said stiffly, “and if he has drawn the sort of inferences you fear, my own office is the only safe place to meet him. This business has to be settled sooner—”

The phone rang again. I reached for it, told it, “Nero Wolfe’s office, Archie Goodwin speaking,” and got a shock in my ear in the shape of an agitated voice declaring loud enough to be heard out in the kitchen, “You said your name was Harold Stevens!”

I said sharply, “Hold it a second. Stay on,” and turned to Wolfe and told him in a bored tone, “It’s the friend of that law student. May go on for an hour. Shall I go upstairs and take it?”

“Yes. We might as well get it over with. She can come any time. Arrange it properly.”

I never bothered with the elevator, and anyhow, up three steps at a time was quicker. Up in my room, with the door shut, I didn’t take time to make myself comfortable in a chair, but grabbed the phone and told it, “Sorry to keep you waiting, but there were people around and I came upstairs. What’s the trouble?”

“You said your name was Stevens!”

“Yeah. Of all the millions of details in the world, one of the most unimportant right now is my name. My name is mud. Stevens or Goodwin, mud.”

“It’s important to me.”

“Thank you very much. Is that what you called to say?”

“No, it isn’t. I want to know about the man that got killed and how you happened—”

“Wait a minute. Collect yourself and start at the beginning. What have you seen, heard, and done?”

“I’ve seen pictures, just now in the Gazette. One is of a man named Dazy Perrit, and I know him — I don’t really know him well, but I know him in a certain way, and he has been killed, and for a certain reason that’s bad news for me. Another picture is of you, it’s a very good likeness, and it says your name is Archie Goodwin and you work for Nero Wolfe — it calls you his legman — and it says you were with Dazy Perrit when he was killed. So I want to know—”

“Excuse me,” I cut her off, “but the kind of things you want to know are not a good kind for a telephone. I would like to come up there for a talk but I have things to do. Why don’t you hop on the subway and come down here? Will you do that?”

“I certainly will! I will be there—”

“Excuse me again. The sidewalk in front of our house is the scene of two murders and therefore temporarily conspicuous. Get this. From Thirty-fourth Street and Eleventh Avenue go east on Thirty-fourth Street. It’s ninety-two paces for me, so it will be about a hundred and twenty for you. At that point there is a narrow passage between two buildings — a loading platform on the left of it and a wholesale paper products place on the right. Go in along the passageway and I’ll meet you at the far end of it and let you in at our back door. Have you got it?”

“Certainly. It ought to take me about half an hour.”

“Okay. I’ll be there, but if I’m not, wait for me.”

“All right. Tell me just one thing, was Dazy Perrit’s daughter—”

I told her nothing doing and ended it. A glance at my wristwatch, on the fly as I headed for the stairs, showed me eleven-fifty-two. At the bottom I slowed to a normal pace, to enter the office with an attitude of indifference, but that proved unnecessary because L. A. Schwartz was gone. Wolfe sat at his desk pouring beer.

“She saw pictures of Perrit and me in the Gazette” I reported. “She’ll come the back way and be here in half an hour.”

“Satisfactory.” He put the bottle down. “Take her straight upstairs to the south room. She must be seen by no one.” He scowled at me. “Confound it, I suppose she must be invited to lunch. Sit down and tell me everything that happened last night.”

“I thought I was out of it. When did I get in again?”

“Pfui. Go ahead.”

Having been reporting uncombed events to Wolfe for over ten years, I had got expert at it, but this called for extra concentration since the time was limited. I tried to get it all in and make a clean job of it, but he had questions to put as usual, and was still asking them when the clock said twelve-twenty and I had to go. I left by way of the kitchen and the back stairs, emerging into our little private yard where Fritz grows chives and tarragon and other vegetation. Leaving the door through the solid board fence unlocked, since it wouldn’t get out of my sight, I skirted piles of rubbish on the premises south of us, and another twenty steps got me to the entrance of the passage. There was no one there. But I didn’t wait long. Within a couple of minutes a figure appeared at the other end of the passage, looked in, and started toward me. Only it wasn’t Beulah. It was the law student. She was right behind him, and as they approached me she darted around to the front and spoke first.

“It’s all right that Morton came along, isn’t it? He wouldn’t let me come alone.”

“Well, he’s here,” I growled. “Hello.” My impulse was to tell him to go home and study, because we already had complications enough, but since we had made him so welcome the night before, and him practically a member of the family, I decided not to make an issue of it.

“Watch where you step,” I told them and led the way back around the rubbish piles, through the door in the fence, which I locked, into the basement, up to the kitchen, and on up two more flights to the south room, which was on the same floor as mine, at the other end of the hall. It wasn’t often used, but was by no means wasted space. On various occasions all kinds had slept in it, from a Secretary of State to a woman who had poisoned three husbands and was making a fourth one very sick.

Wolfe was there, standing by a window. There was no chair in that room that would take him without complaints from both him and the chair. He did his little bow, head forward eleven-sixteenths of an inch.

“How do you do, Miss Page. And Morton. You came along?”

“Yes, sir.” Morton was firm. “I would like to know what this is all about. Goodwin saying his name was Stevens—”

“Of course. Not illegal, no felony, but at least odd. Miss Page deserves an explanation, and she’ll get it. Doubtless you’ll get it too, later, from her. Mr. Goodwin and I are taking Miss Page up to the plant rooms to show her my orchids and have a talk with her,” He waved a hand. “There are books and magazines here, or you may go down to the office if you prefer.”

The muscles of Morton’s jaw had set. “I must insist—”

“No. Don’t try.” Wolfe was curt. “Since this concerns Miss Page, I do not intend to substitute my discretion for hers. We’ll rejoin you in half an hour or so. Archie, tell Fritz that there will be two luncheon guests, at one sharp.”

XI

Wolfe never tries to deny he’s vain, but I doubt if he’ll ever admit that it’s an exercise of vanity when he takes someone who is under a strain up to the plant rooms. He acts nonchalant, but I can tell when he’s enjoying himself. Beulah met expectations. In the blaze of the Cattleya room she only looked dazed, but the Dendrobiums and Phalaenopsis really got her. She stopped dead and just looked, with her mouth open.

“Someday,” Wolfe said, not sounding pleased, with his usual self-control, “you must spend an hour up here. Or two hours. Now I’m afraid we haven’t time.”

He nudged her along to the potting room and told Theodore, the orchid nurse, that he had better go and see to the ventilators. When Theodore had gone and Wolfe was in his chair and Beulah and I on stools, he said abruptly, “You’re not an infant, Miss Page. You’re nineteen years old.”

She nodded, “In Georgia I could vote.”

“So you could. Then I won’t have to use a nipple for this. We’ll ignore non-essentials; they can be dealt with later, at more leisure — as, for instance, why Mr. Goodwin chose such a name as Harold Stevens to lure you down here yesterday. Do you know what a hypothetical question is?”

“Certainly.”

“Then I’ll put one to you. Suppose these things: that with me as intermediary, your father has arranged to make available to you a considerable sum of money; that he is not in a position to disclose himself to you and cannot ever be expected to do so; that he has put it wholly within my discretion whether you shall be told his name and your mother’s name; and that the circumstances are such that it will be a deuce of a job to keep you from guessing his name and guessing it right. Supposing all that, here’s something for you to think over.”

Wolfe pointed a finger at her. “Do you want me to tell you the names or not?”

“I don’t need to think it over. I want you to tell me.”

“That’s an impulse.”

“It is not an impulse. Good lord, an impulse? If you only knew what I — for years—” Beulah made a little gesture. “I want to know.”

“What if your father is — say, a convicted pickpocket?”

“I don’t care what he is! I want to know!”

“Then you should. Mr. Perrit, your father, died last night.” Wolfe inclined his head toward a window. “Out there on the sidewalk.”

“I knew it,” Beulah said calmly.

“The devil you did!”

But she wasn’t actually as calm as she sounded. Her hands were clasped tight together and she had started a swallowing marathon. She didn’t even try to resume the conversation, but just sat, and all signs indicated the same outcome. The outcome arrived in something like a minute. It started with her shoulders going up and down in a minor convulsion, and then her head went forward and her hands went up to cover her face, and the regulation sounds began to come.

“Good God,” Wolfe muttered in a tone of horror, and got to his feet and went. In a moment, above the sounds Beulah was making, I heard the bang of his elevator door. I merely sat and waited, thinking it was natural for me to understand better than he did the most desirable and effective course of action when a young woman began to cry. After all, I thought, I see a good deal more of them than he does.

Time passed by. I was deciding the moment had come for a sympathetic hand on her shoulder when her face came up and she blurted, “Why haven’t you got sense enough to go too?”

It didn’t faze me. “I have,” I said politely, “but I was waiting for the noise to die down enough for you to hear me tell you that if you don’t want to go in the room where Morton is in your present condition, the room at the front on that floor is mine, is unlocked, and has a bathroom with a mirror.”

I left her alone with it. On the way out I warned Theodore what was going on in the potting room and advised him to find jobs elsewhere. On my floor I stopped in my room to make sure about clean towels in the bathroom and general appearances. As I returned to the hall the door of the south room opened and Morton was there.

“Where’s Miss Page?” he demanded. “What’s going on?”

“She’s up looking at orchids,” I told him en route. “Relax. Lunch in ten minutes.”

Down in the office Wolfe was sitting at his desk, looking harassed.

I crossed to mine, sat, and told him, “They want a shoulder to cry on, but with her fianće under the same roof I didn’t think it would be fitting. Morton is pacing—”

The phone rang. I answered it, and heard a voice I had been expecting to hear all day. I told Wolfe Inspector Cramer would like to speak to him. He got on and I stayed on.

“Nero Wolfe speaking, Mr. Cramer. How are you?”

“I’m fine. You?”

“The way I always am just before lunch. Hungry.”

“Well, enjoy it. This is just a friendly call. I wanted to let you know you were right as usual when you decided to keep it all to yourself and tell Rowcliff only one thing that was worth a damn, about Perrit’s daughter being wanted in Salt Lake. We got onto her through the Washington fingerprint files, as you knew we would. I don’t think she was his daughter at all. Her name was Angelina Murphy, though of course she used others. She had about ten years coming. I just wanted to tell you that, but I suppose I might as well ask if you have anything to add.”

“No— no, I think not.”

“Nothing at all? About the job you took on for Perrit?”

“Nothing.”

“Okay, I didn’t expect it. Enjoy your lunch.”

I pushed the phone back. I turned to Wolfe and spoke with feeling. “At least I heard that before I died. Cramer knowing you’ve got things he could use and merely telling you to enjoy your lunch! No pressure, no hard words, nothing! Not even bothering to drop in on us! And you know why? He’s religious and he thinks it would be out of place! He thinks the only guy that belongs here now is a priest for the last rites!”

“Quite right,” Wolfe agreed. “It was in effect an obituary. If I were a sentimentalist I would be touched. Mr. Cramer has never before shown the slightest interest in my enjoyment of a meal. He thinks I haven’t long to live.”

“Including me.”

“Yes, you too, of course.”

“And what do you think?”

“I haven’t given it—”

The phone rang again. With a suspicion that it was Cramer, who had decided he had been too sentimental, I got it and spoke. The voice was as familiar as Cramer’s but it wasn’t his. “Saul Panzer,” I told Wolfe, and, since he didn’t give me the sign to keep off, I kept on. But it was brief and didn’t fill in any gaps for me.

“Saul?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Have you had lunch?”

“No, sir.”

“How soon can you get here?”

“Eight to ten minutes.”

“There is a change or two in the program, dictated by circumstances. I’ll need you here earlier than I thought. Come and join us at luncheon — Miss Beulah Page, Mr. Morton Schane, Archie, and me.”

“Yes, sir. Probably eight minutes.”

XII

Whether Wolfe enjoyed his lunch or not, I didn’t.

It is my habit to make big discounts anyhow, and that day I reached my all-time peak in skepticism. I didn’t think he had any program whatever. I thought his line that he needed Saul, and he knew what for, was unadulterated guff. I was sure that Cramer had laid off because he had all the stuff he wanted, through the flock of stools the police always know where to find, and he regarded Wolfe and me as bad company even for an inspector. I thought the only reason Wolfe asked Saul to lunch was to have someone to talk to about something pleasant.

The last thought proved to be sound. It was not a meal full of sparkle. Morton was aloof and not a bit intimate. Beulah, who showed no traces of the recent irrigation, was trying to pretend she wasn’t somewhere else, without great success. I was so firmly convinced that it was a hell of a time for a man to sit and eat that I had to grit my teeth to stay in my chair, and you can neither chew nor talk very well with your teeth gritted. So the conversation was almost exclusively confined to Wolfe and Saul. Saul, in a suit that didn’t fit, and needing a shave as usual, could do almost anything better than anyone I knew — even talk. They discussed plant germination, the meat shortage, books about Roosevelt, and the World Series.

At one-fifty-five Wolfe pushed his chair back and said he was sorry to end the meal so abruptly but callers were expected. He thought it best for Beulah and Morton to leave the way they had come.

Beulah protested that she wasn’t going to leave, that there were things she wanted to ask about. She would wait until the callers had gone. Then, Wolfe said, she could go back to the plant rooms and do her waiting there, and also Morton if he wished to stay.

“We’ll do that,” Beulah agreed. She was out of her chair and moving to the dining-room door. “Come on, Morton.”

But the law student balked. The way the light was I could see his eyes behind his black-rimmed glasses, and they looked determined. His voice matched them. “I don’t like the way things look here. I don’t know what explanation you have given Miss Page about last night. Then what happened in front of this house afterwards. And asking Miss Page to sneak in the back way. Who are these callers you’re expecting?”

To my surprise, Wolfe obliged him. “One of them,” he said, “is a man named Fabian. The other is named Schwartz. L. A. Schwartz, a lawyer. A member of the bar.”

That was news to me. He must have invited Schwartz after I left the office.

“Are they connected with this — with Miss Page’s affairs?” Morton demanded.

“With Miss Page, no. With her affairs, yes.”

“I want to see them. I intend to be present.”

Beulah didn’t approve and said so. Wolfe said that her name would not appear in the conversation and that there was no reason why Morton shouldn’t be there if he wanted to. That settled it. The fiancée started upstairs for the plant rooms, and the fiancé went with the rest of us to the office. As we were crossing the hall the doorbell rang, and I went to answer it.

Fingering back the edge of the curtain over the glass panel for a look through, and seeing it was Schwartz, I opened up. He had his brief case and was wearing the same suit and nose-pinchers, but in spite of that he was a different man. In the morning his face had been pale and colorless; now it was rosy. Before I hadn’t smelled him at all; now I couldn’t help smelling him. He had been spending some of the fifty grand in advance, at the courage counter. Judging from the smell, he had alternated with gin, rum, rye, vodka, and turpentine. My study of him was cut short because the bell rang again as I was hanging up his coat, and this time it was an object deserving much closer and longer study.

It was Fabian.

I had seen him around, at the ringside at fights and so on, but never met him. I had never had any desire to meet him. The most famous fact about his physical make-up, that he had no nose, wasn’t true. His nose was almost normal in size and shape when you looked at it, but the point was that three other features — the mouth, ears, and eyes — grabbed the scene and the nose might as well not have been there.

Schwartz was still there, standing rigid by the coat rack, clasping his brief case. I began politely, “Do you two gentlemen—”

“You’re Schwartz,” Fabian stated, hoarse as ever.

“Yes, Mr. Fabian,” the lawyer said hastily. He wasn’t too plastered to talk straight. “You may remember—”

“Yeah.” Fabian’s head jerked to me. “Which way?”

I took a step, but checked it because the door between the hall and the front room opened and Wolfe appeared. He said, in his best manner, “Good afternoon, Mr. Schwartz. If you’ll go to the office and make yourself comfortable we’ll join you shortly.” He paused. Schwartz, getting the cue, marched down the hall toward the door to the office. Wolfe turned. “Mr. Fabian? How do you do, sir? I’m Nero Wolfe.” He had a hand out, and Fabian came through for a shake. Wolfe was going on, “Would you step in here for a private word with me?” He moved toward the door to the front room.

Fabian, not budging, looked at me, which struck me as childish under the circumstances, but not caring to make a point of it I followed Wolfe, and Fabian followed me. When he had passed through I closed the door, and saw at a glance that the connecting door to the office was already shut. They were both soundproofed.

Figured by pounds, Wolfe would have made more than two of Fabian. Figured by survival potential, it was anybody’s guess. Wolfe didn’t seem to be concerned with either calculation. He only said, “It is a part of your legend, sir, that you never go anywhere unarmed. Are you armed now?”

As far as I could see there wasn’t the slightest change in the expression of Fabian’s eyes, but a little crease showed between his eyebrows, as if he wasn’t sure he had heard right. Then apparently he decided he had, because the crease disappeared.

“Yeah,” he said. “Any objections?”

“None at all. But — I’m not calling you a liar — but I would be better satisfied if I saw proof. Where is your weapon? Easily available?”

“Yeah.”

“Would you mind showing it to me?”

“Comedy,” Fabian said. The crease had appeared again. “I could have had it out and in again twenty times. I came to get some proof from you. You and this Goodwin—”

“Excuse me.” Wolfe was crisp and cool. “We’ll go in the office and sit down. The people in there are a lawyer, Mr. Schwartz, a law student, Mr. Schane, and a man who works for me, Mr. Panzer.” He had stepped to the connecting door and was opening it. “This way, sir.”

I followed him, preceding Fabian in accordance with the underworld’s Emily Post. Wolfe stood in the middle of the office and pronounced names, but there was no handshaking. Fabian got the scene with a slow take, his head doing the arc from right to left, and then picked a chair backed up against a section of the bookshelves. Schwartz was in the red leather chair, and Morton Schane was off to my right, on the couch in the corner made by the wall of the lavatory that had been built in. Saul Panzer, in a chair with its back to the wall, was six feet the other side of Schwartz.

Wolfe, from behind his desk, looked around at us, then leveled off at Fabian. He spoke casually. “I must apologize, sir, for appropriating a few moments of your time. I realize it is your time, since you made an appointment to come here, and therefore you should have first say. But this will only take me—”

The damn doorbell rang. Wolfe went right on, but darted a glance at me when he saw I was staying put. I met the glance deadpan. Without consulting him about it, I had told Fritz to attend to the door if the bell rang, not intending to do any trotting in and out under the circumstances. I suppose I should have told him to keep the door bolted, which he never did when I was there unless so instructed, but subconsciously I must have figured that with Fabian already inside it wouldn’t matter who else came. The result was that unwelcome noises came from the hall, including voices, one of which was Fritz’s yelling for me.

“Archie! ARCHIE!”

I was up and on my way, but the gate-crasher must have galloped right through Fritz, for I was still ten feet short of the door to the hall when he entered the office. At sight of him I locked my brakes and held my breath. What was flashing through my mind was nothing you could call a thought, but just a pair of facts. One was Fabian. The other was Thumbs Meeker. I backed up so fast I bumped into the corner of Wolfe’s desk, and hung there, looking. Fabian was on his feet and was furnishing the proof Wolfe had asked for. It was in his hand, with his elbow against his hip and his forearm extended. Schwartz had left the red leather chair and was kneeling on the floor behind it.

As far as Meeker and Fabian were concerned, they were the only two there. Their gazes had met and held. Fabian’s gun was steady and pointed, the same as his eyes, but no blast came. Meeker’s hands hung at his sides.

“You’d better lift ’em,” Fabian said, no less hoarse and no more. Besides having his gun out, he also had the best of it in size of target, since Meeker was well over six feet and weighed a good two-twenty.

“Not here and now,” Meeker said in a thin voice.

“Who gave you the steer?”

“Nobody. I came on business.”

“Lift ’em up.”

“Tommyrot!” Wolfe blurted at them, but none of their four eyes moved. He went on, “This is preposterous! Besides you two, there are five people here. If you shoot him, Mr. Fabian, what do you expect to do, shoot all of us? Nonsense. The same consideration holds for the other gentleman.” He addressed the other gentleman. “Who the devil are you, sir? What do you mean, bounding into my house like this?”

That relaxed me. I thought to myself, okay, say it ends — today, tomorrow. Before I die at least I get this. Before I die I get to hear Wolfe bawling hell out of Thumbs Meeker for dashing in to where Fabian is ready with his gun out. I felt I owed them something. So I said, “That’s Mr. Meeker, Mr. Wolfe. Mr. Meeker, this is Nero Wolfe.”

“You heard me,” Meeker said in his thin voice. “Not here and now. He’s right. I came here on business.”

Fabian didn’t say anything. His arm didn’t straighten out, but his hand receded until it was where his elbow had been, and both hand and gun slid into his side coat-pocket and stayed there.

Wolfe demanded, “You came here on business? What business?”

Meeker turned, letting his eyes leave Fabian. They aimed at Wolfe. “Who are these guys?”

“They’re here on business too. What is yours?”

“By God.” Meeker smiled. That smile was famous, and I decided it justified its reputation. “I don’t know if I care to make it public. With Fabian here. He might think I was backing out, and I don’t back out.” He turned again, not fast. “I don’t back out, Fabian.”

Fabian had nothing to say. He was still standing up.

“Confound it,” Wolfe said testily. “What do you want?”

Meeker turned again, and smiled again. “I want to know if it’s true that you told the cops that your punk put a finger on Perrit and his daughter for me.”

“No.”

“They seem to have that idea.”

“That isn’t true.”

Meeker’s smile came again. It came and went. “Oh,” he said, “I’m a liar.”

“I don’t know whether you’re a liar or not. But if the police have made any such statement or intimation, they are. I would have expected you to be sufficiently familiar with police methods not to come running to me with anything as silly as that.”

“You didn’t tell them that?”

“Certainly not.”

Meeker looked at me. I was back at my desk. “You’re Goodwin. Did you?”

“No,” I said. “Am I a half-wit?”

“Mr. Meeker.” Wolfe was curt. “Now that you’re here, I suggest that you stay. Be seated. You’ll be interested in what I have to say. When you entered I was about to tell these people who killed Mr. Perrit and his daughter and how and why. It will be doubly interesting because the man who did it is present.”

You could have heard a cockroach stomping. Schwartz, who was back in the red leather chair, was blinking as if he would never stop again. Morton was sitting on the edge of the couch, his palms on his knees. Saul Panzer hadn’t moved as much as a finger since Wolfe and I had brought Fabian in.

Fabian, still on his feet, rasped, “I don’t want to miss that.”

“I’m present,” Meeker said.

“Yes, sir, but it wasn’t you. Sit down. I don’t like to talk to faces on different levels. You too, Mr. Fabian.”

I then saw Thumbs Meeker being self-conscious. There were three vacant chairs, not counting Fabian’s. He glanced around at them, hesitating, wanting a good tactical position, got conscious that we were all watching, didn’t like that, and dropped himself onto the closest one, which put him with his back to Fabian. With that settled, Fabian sat down too, but his hand didn’t come out of his pocket.

Wolfe leaned back and his fingertips met at the summit of his magnificent middle. “First,” he said, “about Mr. Perrit’s daughter. The police know that the young woman who was killed last night was not his daughter, but they do not know that he actually has a daughter. I do, and I know who and where she is, because Mr. Perrit told me about her in this room yesterday. At this moment she is—”

“Go slow,” Fabian said. I never heard him speak without wishing to God he would clear his throat.

“If you please,” Wolfe snapped. “No power on earth, Mr. Fabian, not even the kind of primitive power you rely on, will keep me from telling this properly. You could shoot me, but you’re not going to, so don’t interrupt. Mr. Perrit’s daughter is at this moment in this house, upstairs looking at my orchids. He—”

“That’s a lie!” Morton Schane declared, with his chin jerked up.

“She doesn’t think so.” Wolfe’s eyes went to him. “Stop interrupting me. Mr. Perrit entrusted her interests to me and I intend to guard them. I’m not going to waste time telling you men things you already know. You know he had a daughter and was keeping her identity concealed, both from his enemies and from his friends. Some eighteen months ago he discovered that Mr. Meeker had learned of her existence and was trying to find her, so he tried a finesse. He went to Salt Lake City and arranged with a young woman named Murphy, a fugitive from justice, to come to New York and live with him as his daughter.”

“Go slow,” Fabian said.

“Don’t be absurd, Mr. Fabian. The police know all that. The arrangement was made, and Miss Murphy came to New York and became Miss Violet Perrit. But before long she violated the agreement. She began demanding sums of money, increasingly larger, with the threat that she would make a disclosure if he didn’t pay. He paid. Then, Sunday evening, night before last, she asked for fifty thousand dollars. Harassed beyond endurance, he came to me for help. He gave me, I think — me and Mr. Goodwin — a correct and accurate account as far as it went, but not a complete one. He did not tell me that Miss Murphy had somehow found out who and what and where his daughter was, though he must have known that she had. In any event, I know it, having deduced it.”

Wolfe stopped for an extra breath and went on, “There was another thing that Mr. Perrit almost certainly knew, since everything connected with his daughter was of special concern to him, but didn’t tell me. Miss Murphy, out West, had been attached to a young man, or he had been attached to her, or both. He came to New York — I don’t know when, but it may be surmised that it was about the time Miss Murphy began demanding money from Mr. Perrit — probably shortly before that — and he and Miss Murphy resumed their — friendship. From Miss Murphy the young man learned the identity of Mr. Perrit’s daughter and decided on a stroke of his own. Unknown to Miss Murphy, he contrived to meet the daughter, to pursue a friendship with her, to ask her to marry him, and to be accepted. He had enough education and temerity to masquerade as a law student, and indeed, his temerity was unlimited. He didn’t bother about an alias. I suppose at the beginning, he regarded the two worlds as too far apart ever to get connected, and if he regretted it later on it was too late to change. Anyhow, he became engaged to marry Mr. Perrit’s daughter under his own, Morton Schane.”

“That’s a lie.” It was Morton again. His tone wasn’t as loud as it had been before, but it packed more weight.

“You’ll have a turn, Mr. Schane,” Wolfe said. His glance went around. “As I said, I can’t believe that Mr. Perrit didn’t know about Mr. Schane, though he didn’t mention him to me. I presume Mr. Schane calculated that the highest expectations, in the long run, would be realized through the real daughter and not the counterfeit one. I assume that although Mr. Perrit knew what Mr. Schane was doing, Miss Murphy didn’t, or something would have popped. I also assume that Mr. Perrit had got onto Mr. Schane quite recently, since Mr. Schane had continued his program without interference. I also assume that the reason Mr. Perrit didn’t mention Mr. Schane to me was because he was confident of being able to handle that himself, by his own methods.”

“You assume,” Morton sneered.

Wolfe nodded. “I agree. These presumptions and assumptions are merely embroidery and really not needed.” He kept his eyes on Morton. “Their only purpose is to answer the question, why? Why did you shoot and kill Miss Murphy and Mr. Perrit? Merely to clear the track, to get them out of the way, since the daughter was betrothed to you? Possibly, but I doubt it. More probably, something had happened; you had become aware of some deadly threat. One more assumption—”

Morton stood up. “You’ll eat all this, you fat, lying, son-of-a-bitch! I’m going!”

Fabian stood up.

Meeker stood up.

Morton Schane didn’t move.

Fabian asked, “You got anything else?”

“Nothing but proof,” Wolfe told him, but his eyes stuck to Schane. “Last evening Mr. Perrit’s daughter and this young man dined with us. One or two remarks he made stirred a faint suspicion in me. It was very faint, the merest breath, but it was simple to test him. He was in his last year at law school. I asked him if he had learned to draft torts, and he said he had. A tort is an act, not a document, as any law student would know. You can’t draft a tort any more than you can draft a burglary. That settled him. I had my chef save his wineglass, and after Mr. Schane had left I got in touch with Mr. Panzer and made various arrangements. One resulted in our learning, through the FBI and their fingerprint files, of Mr. Schane’s background and record. Another arrangement, that Mr. Panzer should pick up Mr. Schane last evening in front of the building where Mr. Perrit’s daughter lives, and keep on his trail—”

Morton still had his temerity. His hand went for his hip like a frog for a fly. He did get his gun out, because Fabian’s first bullet missed, and he even pulled the trigger, but all he hit was plaster. Then he splashed back on the couch, pulling the trigger again. By that time Meeker was shooting too, which I have never understood, but it was something never seen before and surely never will be again — Fabian and Thumbs Meeker blazing away at the same target. Morton slithered off of the couch onto the floor. That was his last move.

XIII

Six days later. Monday again, Wolfe came down from the plant rooms at six o’clock, negotiated himself into his chair behind his desk, and rang for beer.

I turned away from my typewriter and spoke. The evening paper says that the District Attorney has decided not to charge Meeker or Fabian because a man has a right to defend himself, and all witnesses agree that Schane shot first.”

“Perfectly sound,” Wolfe murmured.

“Sure. But that reminds me. So far you have refused to loosen up. I would like to make it clear that I do not believe that Saul was on Schane’s tail that night. He damn well didn’t tail him through Seventy-eighth Street, nor later through our street, either, when Schane was in his hot taxicab. I think you put that in because you knew it was the one thing that was sure to make Schane go for his gun.”

“Not sound at all. Mere conjecture.”

“I like it. Another thing. I now think you did have a program. I think you invited Schwartz to come at two o’clock because you wanted a witness, not me who works for you, to what you said to Fabian. You intended to tell Fabian a good deal, maybe everything, about Schane, but do it in such a way that you couldn’t be charged with incitement to crime. You could be doing it just to put us in the clear. You didn’t have a thing on Schane for the murders. You didn’t know then that he was fool enough to go on carrying the gun he had killed them with. You knew Fabian would get Schane, and so your ward wouldn’t marry him, which you didn’t approve of. You thought Beulah was so hipped on him that she would take him in spite of his past — since the killings couldn’t be pinned on him — whereas the fact was that after she had seen me he was just a vague spot to her.”

“Shut up. I want to read.”

“Yes, sir. In an hour or so. Then Schane came here with her and insisted on joining us in the office, and right away you began to ad lib. You figured that with Fabian and Saul and me all here, one of us was bound to plug him before he plugged you. By the way, in the excitement I didn’t see Saul shoot at all, but it was his bullet that went through the middle of Schane’s pump and lodged in his spine. When Meeker showed up too I suppose you thought there was nothing to it, which speaks louder for your optimism than it does for your mathematics. If I had known how you had it sketched I would have offered twelve for five that he would get you, at least some part of you, before he was stopped. I had seen him in action, shooting out of car windows in dim street light.”

Wolfe sighed. “I suppose you have to get it out of your system.”

“I do, and this is the day for it. With meat controls taken off last night, what is there to fear? But I am willing to be rode too, because on one count I have it coming. I told you that just before Violet quit for good, while I was kneeling there by her, she said, ‘It’s a shame. Shame!’ Of course she didn’t. What she said was, ‘It’s Schane. Schane!’ I fumbled that one, and hereafter I’ll wash my ears better. Now I suppose you’ll tell me that you knew—”

The phone rang. I got it, used the customary formula, and a voice came.

“May I speak to Mr. Harold Stevens?”

“He’s not in,” I said courteously. “Gone to Central Park for his health. Will anyone else do?”

“You might if you weren’t so busy. When I was down there Friday signing those papers you were too busy to offer to drive me home. Harold Stevens always drove me home.”

“Naturally. Harold was on the make. He was after money. I shy off from rich women because I am not a dough-hound. Was there any particular problem?”

“No, nothing, except that I started to decide where to go for dinner, and I’m sick of all the restaurants around here, and—”

“Not another word. I know just how you feel. You were wishing you didn’t have to eat alone, and I was wishing I didn’t have to eat with the person I was going to eat with. Meet me at seven o’clock at Ribeiro’s, Fifty-second Street east of Lexington, downtown side. Got it?”

“Yes, but I didn’t—”

“Certainly you did. So did I. I’ll be at the bar. I don’t suppose you can properly go dancing for two or three years, but we’re resourceful. We can sit somewhere and talk about health — oh, no, that’s Harold. Seven o’clock?”

“Sure.”

I hung up and told Wolfe, “Okay, go on and read. I’m going up and change my shirt. I’m dining with your new ward, but don’t jump to the conclusion that I’m thinking of marrying her. I don’t want you dragging Fabian and Thumbs Meeker down here again on my account.”

Content

Rex Stout
Before I Die

I

II

III

IV

V

VI

VII

VIII

IX

X

XI

XII