Rex Stout

Instead of Evidence

I

Among the kinds of men I have a prejudice against are the ones named Eugene. There’s no use asking me why, because I admit it’s a prejudice. It may be that when I was in kindergarten out in Ohio a man named Eugene stole candy from me, but if so I have forgotten all about it. For all practical purposes, it is merely one facet of my complex character that I do not like men named Eugene.

That and that alone accounted for my offish attitude when Mr. and Mrs. Eugene R. Poor called at Nero Wolfe’s office that Tuesday afternoon in October, because I had never seen or heard of the guy before, and neither had Wolfe. The appointment had been made by phone that morning, so I was prejudiced before I ever got a look at him. The look hadn’t swayed me much one way or the other. He wasn’t too old to remember what his wife had given him on his fortieth birthday, but neither was he young enough to be still looking forward to it. Nothing about him stood out. His face was taken at random out of stock, with no alterations. Gray herringbone suits like his were that afternoon being bought in stores from San Diego to Bangor. Really his only distinction was that they had named him Eugene.

In spite of which I was regarding him with polite curiosity, for he had just told Nero Wolfe that he was going to be murdered by a man named Conroy Blaney.

I was sitting at my desk in the room Nero Wolfe used for an office in his home on West Thirty-fifth Street, and Wolfe was behind his desk, arranged in a chair that had been specially constructed to support up to a quarter of a ton, which was not utterly beyond the limits of possibility. Eugene R. Poor was in the red leather chair a short distance beyond Wolfe’s desk, with a little table smack against its right arm for the convenience of clients in writing checks. Mrs. Poor was on a spare between her husband and me.

I might mention that I was not aware of any prejudice against Mrs. Poor. For one thing, there was no reason to suppose that her name was Eugene. For another, there were several reasons to suppose that her fortieth birthday would not come before mine, though she was good and mature. She had by no means struck me dumb, but there are people who seem to improve a room just by being in it.

Naturally Wolfe was scowling. He shook his head, moving it a full half-inch right and left, which was for him a frenzy of negation.

“No, sir,” he said emphatically. “I suppose two hundred men and women have sat in that chair, Mr. Poor, and tried to hire me to keep someone from killing them.” His eyes twitched to me. “How many, Archie?”

I said, to oblige him, “Two hundred and nine.”

“Have I taken the jobs?”

“No, sir. Never.”

He wiggled a finger at Eugene. “For two million dollars a year you can make it fairly difficult for a man to kill you. That’s about what it costs to protect a president or a king, and even so consider the record. Of course, if you give up all other activity it can be done more cheaply, say forty thousand a year. A cave in a mountainside, never emerging, with six guards you can trust and a staff to suit—”

Eugene was trying to get something in. He finally did. “I don’t expect you to keep him from killing me. That’s not what I came for.”

“Then what the deuce did you come for?”

“To keep him from getting away with it.” Eugene cleared his throat. “I was trying to tell you. I agree that you can’t stop him, I don’t see how anybody can. Sooner or later. He’s a clever man.” His voice took on bitterness. “Too damn clever for me and I wish I’d never met him. Sure, I know a man can kill a man if he once decides to, but Con Blaney is so damn clever that it isn’t a question whether he can kill me or not, the question is whether he can manage it so that he is in the clear. I’m afraid he can. I would bet he can. And I don’t want him to.”

His wife made a little noise and he stopped to look at her. Then he shook his head at her as if she had said something, took a cigar from his vest pocket, removed the band, inspected first one end and then the other to decide which was which, got a gadget from another vest pocket and snipped one of the ends, and lit up. He no sooner had it lit than it slipped out of his mouth, bounced on his thigh, and landed on the rug. He retrieved it and got his teeth sunk in it. So, I thought to myself, you’re not so doggone calm about getting murdered as you were making out to be.

“So I came,” he told Wolfe, “to give you the facts, to get the facts down, and to pay you five thousand dollars to see that he doesn’t manage it that way.” The cigar between his teeth interfered with his talking, and he removed it. “If he kills me I’ll be dead. I want someone to know about it.”

Wolfe’s eyes had gone half shut. “But why pay me five thousand dollars in advance? Wouldn’t someone know about it? Your wife, for instance?”

Eugene nodded. “I’ve thought about that. I’ve thought it all out. What if he kills her too? I have no idea how he’ll try to work it, or when, and who is there besides my wife I can absolutely trust? I’m not taking any chances. Of course I thought of the police, but judging from my own experience, a couple of burglaries down at the shop, and you know, the experiences of a businessman, I’m not sure they’d even remember I’d been there if it happened in a year or maybe two years.” He stuck his cigar in his mouth, puffed twice, and took it out again. “What’s the matter, don’t you want five thousand dollars?”

Wolfe said gruffly, “I wouldn’t get five thousand. This is October. As my nineteen forty-five income now stands, I’ll keep about ten per cent of any additional receipts after paying taxes. Out of five thousand, five hundred would be mine. If Mr. Blaney is as clever as you think he is, I wouldn’t consider trying to uncover him on a murder for five hundred dollars.” He stopped and opened his eyes to glare at the wife. “May I ask, madam, what you are looking so pleased about?”

Wolfe couldn’t stand to see a woman look pleased.

Mrs. Poor was regarding him with a little smile of obvious approval. “Because,” she said, in a voice that was pleased too, and a nice voice, “I need help and I think you’re going to help me. I don’t approve of this. I didn’t want my husband to come here.”

“Indeed. Where did you want him to go, to the Atlantic Detective Agency?”

“Oh, no, if I had been in favor of his going to any detective at all, of course it would have been Nero Wolfe. But— may I explain?”

Wolfe glanced at the clock on the wall. Three-forty. In twenty minutes he would be leaving for the plant rooms on the roof, to monkey with the orchids. He said curtly, “I have eighteen minutes.”

Eugene put in with a determined voice, “Then I’m going to use them—” But his wife smiled him out of it. She went on to Wolfe, “It won’t take that long. My husband and Mr. Blaney have been business partners for ten years. They own the firm of Blaney and Poor, manufacturers of novelties — you know, they make things like matches that won’t strike and chairs with rubber legs and bottled drinks that taste like soap—”

“Good God,” Wolfe muttered in horror.

She ignored it. “It’s the biggest firm in the business. Mr. Blaney gets the ideas and handles the production, he’s a genius at it, and my husband handles the business part, sales and so on. But Mr. Blaney is really just about too conceited to live, and now that the business is a big success he thinks my husband isn’t needed, and he wants him to get out and take twenty thousand dollars for his half. Of course it’s worth a great deal more than that, at least ten times as much, and my husband won’t do it. Mr. Blaney is very conceited, and also he will not let anything stand in his way. The argument has gone on and on, until now my husband is convinced that Mr. Blaney is capable of doing anything to get rid of him.”

“Of killing him. And you don’t agree.”

“Oh, no. I do agree. I think Mr. Blaney would stop at nothing.”

“Has he made threats?”

She shook her head. “He isn’t that kind. He doesn’t make threats, he just goes ahead.”

“Then why didn’t you want your husband to come to me?”

“Because he’s simply too stubborn to live.” She smiled at Eugene to take out any sting, and back at Wolfe. “There’s a clause in the partnership agreement, they signed it when they started the business, that says if either one of them dies the other one owns the whole thing. That’s another reason why my husband thinks Mr. Blaney will kill him, and I think so too. But what my husband wants is to make sure Mr. Blaney gets caught, that’s how stubborn he is, and what I want is for my husband to stay alive.”

“Now, Martha,” Eugene put in, “I came here to—”

So her name was Martha. I had no prejudice against women named Martha.

She kept the floor. “It’s like this,” she appealed to Wolfe. “My husband thinks that Mr. Blaney is determined to kill him if he can’t get what he wants any other way, and I think so too. You yourself think that if a man is determined to kill another man nothing can stop him. So isn’t it perfectly obvious? My husband has over two hundred thousand dollars saved up outside the business, about half of it in war bonds. He can get another twenty thousand from Mr. Blaney for his half of the business—”

“It’s worth twenty times that,” Eugene said savagely, showing real emotion for the first time.

“Not to you if you’re dead,” she snapped back at him and went on to Wolfe. “With the income from that we could live more than comfortably — and happily. I hope my husband loves me — I hope he does — and I know I love him.” She leaned forward in her chair. “That’s why I came along today — I thought maybe you would help me persuade him. It isn’t as if I wouldn’t stand by my husband in a fight if there was any chance of his winning. But is there any sense in being so stubborn if you can’t possibly win? If instead of winning you will probably die? Now does that make sense? I ask you, Mr. Wolfe, you are a wise and clever and able man, what would you do if you were in my husband’s position?”

Wolfe muttered, “You put that as a question?”

“Yes, I do.”

“Well. Granting that you have described the situation correctly, I would kill Mr. Blaney.”

She looked startled. “But that’s silly.” She frowned. “Of course you’re joking, and it’s no joke.”

“I’d kill the bastard in a second,” Eugene told Wolfe, “if I thought I could get away with it. I suppose you could, but I couldn’t.”

“And I’m afraid,” Wolfe said politely, “you couldn’t hire me for that.” He glanced at the clock. “I would advise against your consulting even your wife. An undetected murder is strictly a one-man job. Her advice, sir, is sound. Are you going to take it?”

“No.” Eugene sounded as stubborn as she said he was.

“Are you going to kill Mr. Blaney?”

“No.”

“Do you still want to pay me five thousand dollars?”

“Yes, I do.”

Mrs. Poor, who was rapidly becoming Martha to me, tried to horn in, but bigger and louder people than her had failed at that when orchid time was at hand. Wolfe ignored her and went on to him, “I advise you against that too, under the circumstances. Here are the circumstances — Archie, take your notebook. Make a receipt reading, ‘Received from Eugene R. Poor five thousand dollars, in return for which I agree, in case he dies within one year, to give the police the information he has given me today, and to take any further action that may seem to me advisable.’ Sign my name and initial it as usual. Get all details from Mr. Poor.” Wolfe pushed back his chair and got the levers of his muscles in position to hoist the bulk.

Eugene’s eyes were moist with tears, but they came, not from emotion, but from smoke from his second cigar. In fact, throughout the interview his nervousness seemed to concentrate on his cigar. He had dropped it twice, and the smoke seemed determined to go down the wrong way and make him cough. But he was able to speak all right.

“That’s no good,” he objected. “You don’t even say what kind of action. At least you ought to say—”

“I advised you against it under the circumstances.” Wolfe was on his feet. “Those, sir, are the circumstances. That’s all I’ll undertake. Suit yourself.” He started to move.

But Eugene had another round to fire. His hand went into a pocket and came out full of folded money. “I hadn’t mentioned,” he said, displaying the pretty objects, “that I brought it in cash. Speaking of income tax, if you’re up to the ninety per cent bracket, getting it in cash would make it a lot more—”

Wolfe’s look stopped him. “Pfui,” Wolfe said. He hadn’t had as good a chance to show off for a month. “I am not a common cheat, Mr. Poor. Not that I am a saint. Given adequate provocation, I might conceivably cheat a man — or a woman or even a child. But you are suggesting that I cheat, not a man or woman or child, but a hundred and forty million of my fellow citizens. Bah.”

We stared at his back as he left, as he knew we would, and in a moment we heard the sound of his elevator door opening.

I flipped to a fresh page in my notebook and turned to Eugene and Martha. “To refresh your memory,” I said, “the name is Archie Goodwin, and I’m the one that does the work around here. I am also, Mr. Poor, an admirer of your wife.”

He nearly dropped his cigar again. “You’re what?”

“I admire your wife as an advice-giver. She has learned one of the most important rules, that far as life falls short of perfection it is more fun outside the grave than in it. With over two hundred thousand bucks—”

“I’ve had enough advice,” he said as if he meant it. “My mind is made up.”

“Okay.” I got the notebook in position. “Give me everything you think we’ll need. First, basic facts. Home and business addresses?”

It took close to an hour, so it was nearly five o’clock when they left. I found him irritating and therefore kept my prejudice intact. I wondered later what difference it would have made in my attitude if I had known that in a few hours he would be dead. Even if you take the line that he had it coming to him, which would be easy to justify, at least it would have made the situation more interesting. But during that hour, as far as I knew, they were just a couple of white-livers, scared stiff by a false alarm named Blaney, so it was merely another job.

I was still typing from my notes when at six o’clock, after the regulation two hours in the plant rooms, Wolfe came down to the office. He got fixed in his chair, rang for Fritz to bring beer, and demanded, “Did you take that man’s money?”

I grinned at him. Up to his old tricks. I had been a civilian again for only a week, and here he was already treating me like a hireling just as he had for years, acting as if I had never been a colonel, as in fact I hadn’t, but anyway I had been a major.

I asked him, “What do you think? If I say I took it, you’ll claim that your attitude as you left plainly indicated that he had insulted you and you wouldn’t play. If I say I refused it, you’ll claim I’ve done you out of a fee. Which do you prefer?”

He abandoned it. “Did you word the receipt properly?”

“No, sir. I worded it the way you told me to. The loot is in the safe and I’ll deposit it tomorrow. I told him you’d prefer a check, but he said there it was, he had taken the trouble to get it, why not take it? He still thinks you’ll forget to report it to your hundred and forty million fellow citizens. By the way, if Blaney does perform I’m going to marry the widow. Something unforeseen has happened. I have an ironclad rule that if the ankles are more than half as big around as the calves that settles it, I am absolutely not interested. But you saw her legs, and in spite of them I would rate her—”

“I did not see her legs. Do your typing. I like to hear you typing. If you are typing you can’t talk.”

To humor him I typed, which as it turned out was just as well, since that neat list of facts was going to be needed before bedtime. It was finished when Fritz entered at eight o’clock to announce dinner, the main item of which was a dish called by Wolfe and Fritz “Cassoulettes Castelnaudary,” but by me boiled beans. I admit they were my favorite beans, which is saying something. The only thing that restrained me at all was my advance knowledge of the pumpkin pie to come.

Back in the office, where the clock said nine-forty, I was just announcing my intention of catching a movie by the tail at the Rialto when the phone rang. It was Inspector Cramer, whose voice I hadn’t heard for weeks, asking for Wolfe. Wolfe picked up his receiver, and I stuck to mine so as to get it firsthand.

“Wolfe? Cramer. I’ve got a paper here, taken from the pocket of a dead man, a receipt for five thousand dollars, signed by you, dated today. It says you have information to give the police if he dies. All right, he’s dead. I don’t ask you to come up here, because I know you wouldn’t, and I’m too busy to go down there. What’s the information?”

Wolfe grunted. “What killed him?”

“An explosion. Just give—”

“Did it kill his wife too?”

“Naw, she’s okay, only overcome, you know. Just give—”

“I haven’t got the information. Mr. Goodwin has it. Archie?”

I spoke up. “It would take quite a while, Inspector, and I’ve got it all typed. I can run up there—”

“All right, come ahead. The Poor apartment on Eighty-fourth Street. The number is—”

“I know the number. I know everything. Sit down and rest till I get there.”

II

In the living room of an apartment on the sixth floor, on Eighty-fourth near Amsterdam Avenue, I stood and looked down at what was left of Eugene Poor. All I really recognized was the gray herringbone suit and the shirt and tie, on account of what the explosion had done to his face, and also on that account I didn’t look much, for while I may not be a softy I see no point in prolonged staring at a face that has entirely stopped being a face.

I asked Sergeant Purley Stebbins, who was sticking close by me, apparently to see that I didn’t swipe Eugene’s shoes, “You say a cigar did that to him?”

Purley nodded. “Yeah, so the wife says. He lit a cigar and it blew up.”

“Huh. I don’t believe it. Yes, I guess I do too, if she says so. They make novelties. Now, that’s a novelty.”

I looked around. The room was full of what you would expect, assorted snoops, all doing the chores, from print collectors up to inspectors, or at least one inspector, namely Cramer himself, who sat at a table near a wall reading the script I had brought him. Most of them I knew, at least by sight, but there was one complete stranger. She was in a chair in a far corner, being questioned by a homicide dick named Rowcliff. Being trained to observe details even when under a strain, I had caught at a glance some of her outstanding characteristics, such as youth, shapeliness, and shallow depressions at the temples, which happen to appeal to me.

I aimed a thumb in her direction and asked Purley, “Bystander, wife’s sister, or what?”

He shook his head. “God knows. She came to call just after we got here and we want to know what for.”

“I hope Rowcliff doesn’t abuse her. I would enjoy a murder where Rowcliff was the one that got it, and so would you.”

I strolled over to the corner and stopped against them, and the girl and the dick looked up. “Excuse me,” I told her, “when you get through here will you kindly call on Nero Wolfe at this address?” I handed her a card. The temples were even better close up. “Mr. Wolfe is going to solve this murder.”

Rowcliff snarled. He always snarled. “Get away from here and stay away.”

Actually he was helpless, because the inspector had sent for me and he knew it. I ignored him and told the temples, “If this person takes that card away from you, it’s in the phone book, Nero Wolfe,” left them and crossed over to Cramer at the table, dodging photographers and other scientists on the way.

Cramer didn’t look up, so I asked the top of his head, “Where’s Mrs. Poor?”

He growled, “Bedroom.”

“I want to see her.”

“The hell you do.” He jiggled the sheets I had brought him to even the edges. “Sit down.”

I sat down and said, “I want to see our client.”

“So you’ve got a client?”

“Sure we have, didn’t you see that receipt?”

He grunted. “Give her a chance. I am. Let her get herself together. Don’t touch that!”

I was only moving a hand to point at a box of cigars there on the table, with the lid closed. I grinned at him. “The more the merrier. I mean fingerprints. But if that’s the box the loaded one came from, you ought to satisfy my curiosity. He smoked two cigars this afternoon at the office.”

He shot me a glance, then got out his penknife and opened the lid and lifted the paper flap. It was a box of twenty-five and twenty-four of them were still there. Only one gone. I inspected at close range, sat back, and nodded. “They’re the same. They not only look it, but the bands say Alta Vista. There would be two of those bands still in the ash tray down at the office if Fritz wasn’t so neat.” I squinted again at the array in the box. “They certainly look kosher. Do you suppose they’re all loaded?”

“I don’t know. The laboratory can answer that one.” He closed the box with the tip of his knife. “Damn murders anyhow.” He tapped the papers with his finger. “This is awful pat. The wife let out a hint or two, and I’ve sent for Blaney. I hope to God it’s a wrap-up, and maybe it is. How did Poor seem this afternoon, scared, nervous, what?”

“Mostly stubborn. Mind made up.”

“What about the wife?”

“Stubborn too. She wanted him to get out from under and go on breathing. She thought they could be as happy as larks on the income from a measly quarter of a million.”

The next twenty minutes was a record — Inspector Cramer and me conversing without a single ugly remark. It lasted that long only because of various interruptions from his army. The last one, toward the end, was from Rowcliff walking up to the table to say:

“Do you want to talk to this young woman, Inspector?”

“How do I know? What about her?”

“Her name is Helen Vardis. She’s an employee of Poor’s firm, Blaney and Poor — been with them four years. At first she showed signs of hysteria and then calmed down. First she said she just happened to come here. Then she saw what that was worth and said she came to see Poor by appointment, at his request, on a confidential matter, and wants us to promise not to tell Blaney because she would lose her job.”

“What confidential matter?”

“She won’t say. That’s what I’ve been working on.”

“Work on it some more. She’s got all night.”

“Yes, sir. Goodwin gave her Nero Wolfe’s card and told her to go to see him.”

“Oh, he did. Go and work on her.” Rowcliff left and Cramer glared at me. “You did?”

I looked hurt. “Certainly. Don’t we have to do something to earn that five grand?”

“I don’t know why, since you’ve already got it. How would you like to go somewhere else? Next thing you’ll be liberating this box of cigars or maybe the corpse, and I can’t spare a squad to watch — now what?”

There was a commotion at the outer door, and it came on through the foyer into the living room in the shape of a municipal criminologist gripping the arm of a wild-eyed young man who apparently didn’t want to be gripped. They were both talking, or at least making noises. It was hard to tell whether they were being propelled by the young man pulling or the cop pushing.

Cramer boomed, “Doyle! What the hell? Who is that?”

The young man goggled around, declaiming, “I have a right— oh!”

It might have been supposed that what had stopped him was the sight of Poor’s body, especially the face, but his eyes weren’t aimed that way. They were focused toward the far corner where Rowcliff was working on the girl. She was focusing back at him, rising slowly to her feet, her lips moving without opening. They stared at each other long enough to count ten, with everyone else in the room knocking off to watch the charade.

The young man said, as if he was conveying information, “There you are.”

She said, as if she didn’t need any information from snakes or rats, “You didn’t lose any time, did you? Now you think you can have her, don’t you?”

He held the stare, showing no reaction except clamping his jaw, and their audience sat tight. In a moment he seemed to realize it was rather a public performance, and his head started to pivot, doing a slow circle, taking in the surroundings. It was a good thorough job of looking, without any waver or pause, so far as I could see, even when it hit the most sensational item, namely, the corpse. During the process his eyes lost their wild look entirely, and when he spoke his voice was cool and controlled. It was evident that his mental operations were enough in order for him to pick the most intelligent face in the bunch, since it was to me he put the question.

“Are you in charge here?”

I replied, “No. This one. Inspector Cramer.”

He strode across and looked Cramer in the eye and made a speech. “My name is Joe Groll. I work for Blaney and Poor, factory foreman. I followed that girl, Helen Vardis, when she left home tonight, because I wanted to know where she was going, and came here. The police cars and cops going in and out made me want to ask questions, and finally I got the answer that a man named Poor had been murdered, so I wanted to find out. Where is Blaney? Conroy Blaney, the partner—”

“I know,” Cramer said, looking disgusted. Naturally he was disgusted, since what he had hoped would be a wrap-up was spilling out in various directions. “We’ve sent for Blaney. Why were you following—”

“That isn’t true!”

More diversions. Helen Vardis had busted out of her corner to join the table group, close enough to Joe Groll to touch him, but they weren’t touching. Instead of resuming their staring match, they were both intent on Cramer.

Looking even more disgusted, Cramer asked her, “What isn’t true?”

“That he was following me!” Helen was mad clear to her temples and pretty as a picture. “Why should he follow me? He came here to—”

She bit it off sharp.

“Yeah,” Cramer said encouragingly. “To what?”

“I don’t know! But I do know who killed Mr. Poor! It was Martha Davis!”

“That helps. Who is Martha Davis?”

Joe Groll said, giving information again, “She means Mrs. Poor. That was her name when she worked in the factory, before she got married. She means Mrs. Poor killed her husband. That’s on account of jealousy. She’s crazy.”

A quiet but energetic voice came from a new direction. “She certainly is.”

It was Martha, who emerged from a door at the far end and approached the table. She was pale and didn’t seem any too sure of her leg action, but she made her objective all right. She spoke to the girl, with no sign of violent emotion that I could detect, not even resentment.

“Helen, you ought to be ashamed of yourself. I think you will be when you have calmed down and thought things over. You have no right or reason to talk like that. You accuse me of killing my husband? Why?”

Very likely Helen would have proceeded to tell her why. She was obviously in the mood for it, and it was one of those set-ups when people blurt things that you couldn’t get out of them an hour later with a stomach pump. Any sap knows that, and Cramer was not quite a sap, so when at that moment a cop entered from the foyer escorting a stranger Cramer motioned with his hand for them to back out. But the stranger was not a backer-out. He came on straight to the table and, since the arrangement showed plainly that Cramer was it, addressed the inspector.

“I’m Conroy Blaney. Where’s Gene Poor?”

Not that he was aggressive or in any way overwhelming. His voice was a tenor squeak and it fitted his looks. I could have picked him up and set him down again without grunting; he had an undersized nose and not much chin, and he was going bald. But in spite of all those handicaps his sudden appearance had a remarkable effect. Martha Poor simply turned and left the room. The expressions on the faces of Helen Vardis and Joe Groll changed completely; they went deadpan in one second flat. I saw at once that there would be no more blurting, and so did Cramer.

As for Blaney, he looked around, saw the body of his partner on the floor, stepped toward it and gazed down at it, and squeaked, “Good heavens. Good heavens! Who did it?”

III

Next morning at eleven o’clock, when Wolfe came down to the office after his two-hour morning session up in the plant rooms, I made my report. He took it, as usual, leaning back in his chair with his eyes closed, with no visible sign of consciousness. The final chapter was the details given me by Martha Poor, with whom I had managed to have a talk around midnight by pressing Cramer on the client angle and wearing him down. I gave it to Wolfe.

“They came here yesterday in their own car. When they left here, a little before five, they drove to Madison Square Garden and got a program of the afternoon rodeo performance, the reason for that being he had needed to explain his absence from the office and not wanting Blaney to know that he was coming to see you, he had said he was going to the rodeo and wanted to be able to answer questions if he was asked about it. Then they drove up to Westchester. Conroy Blaney has a place up there, a shack in the hills where he lives and spends his evenings and week ends thinking up novelties, and they had a date to see him there and discuss things. Mrs. Poor had persuaded Poor to go, thinking they might reach an agreement, but Poor hadn’t wanted to, and on the way up he balked, so they stopped at a place near Scarsdale, Monty’s Tavern, to debate. Poor won the debate. He wouldn’t go. She left him at the tavern and went on to Blaney’s place alone. The date was for six-fifteen and she got there right on the dot. Are you awake?”

He grunted.

I went on, “Blaney wasn’t there. He lives alone, and the doors were locked. She waited around and got cold. At ten minutes to seven she beat it back to the tavern. She and Poor ate dinner there, then drove back to town, put the car in the garage, and went home. Poor had had no cigar after dinner because they hadn’t had his brand at the tavern and he wouldn’t smoke anything else. He has been smoking Alta Vistas for years, ten to fifteen a day. So he hung up his hat and opened a fresh box. She didn’t see him do it because she was in the bathroom. She heard the sound of the explosion, not very loud, and ran out and there he was. She phoned downstairs, and the elevator man and hall man came and phoned for a doctor and the police. Still awake?”

He grunted again.

“Okay. That’s it. When I returned to the living room everyone had left, including Poor’s leftovers. Some friend had come to spend the night, and of course there was a cop out in the hall. When I got home you were in bed, snoring.”

He had long ago quit bothering to deny that he snored. Now he didn’t bother about anything, but just sat there. I resumed with the plant records. Noon came and went, and still he was making no visible effort to earn five thousand dollars, or even five hundred.

Finally he heaved a sigh, almost opened his eyes, and told me, “You say the face was unrecognizable.”

“Yes, sir. As I described it.”

“From something concealed in a cigar. Next to incredible. Phone Mr. Cramer. Tell him it is important that the identity of the corpse be established beyond question. Also that I want to see a photograph of Mr. Poor while still intact.”

I goggled at him. “For God’s sake, what do you think? That she doesn’t know her own husband? She came home with him. Now really. The old insurance gag? Your mind’s in a rut. I will not phone Mr. Cramer merely to put myself on the receiving end of a horse laugh.”

“Be quiet. Let me alone. Phone Mr. Cramer.”

And that was all. Apparently he thought he had earned his fee. No instructions to go get Helen Vardis or Joe Groll or Blaney or even Martha Poor. When I phoned Cramer he didn’t laugh, but that was only because he had stopped laughing at Nero Wolfe some time back. I gritted my teeth and went on with the plant records.

At lunch he discussed Yugoslav politics. That was all right, because he never talked business at the table, but when, back in the office, he went through the elaborate operations of getting himself settled with the atlas, I decided to apply spurs and sink them deep.

I arose and confronted him and announced, “I resign.”

He muttered testily without looking up, “Nonsense. Do your work.”

“No, sir. I’m going upstairs to pack. If you’re too lazy to wiggle a finger, very well, that’s not news. But you could at least send me to the public library to look up the genealogy—”

“Confound it!” He glared at me. “I engaged to give that information to the police and have done so. Also to take any further action that might seem to me advisable. I have done that.”

“Do you mean you’re through with the case?”

“Certainly not. I haven’t even started, because there’s nothing to start on. Mr. Cramer may do the job himself, or he may not. I hope he does. If you don’t want to work, go to a movie.”

I went upstairs to my room and tried to read a book, knowing it wouldn’t work because I can never settle down when a murder case is on. So I returned to the office and rattled papers, but even that didn’t faze him. At four o’clock, when he went up to the plant rooms, I went to the corner and got afternoon papers, but there was nothing in them but the usual crap. When he came down again at six it was more of the same, and I went out for a walk to keep from throwing a chair at him, and stayed until dinnertime. After dinner I went to a movie, and when I got home a little after eleven and found him sitting drinking beer and reading a magazine, I went upstairs to bed without saying good night.

Next morning, Thursday, there wasn’t a peep out of him before nine o’clock, the time he went up to the damn orchids. When Fritz came down with the breakfast tray from Wolfe’s room, with nothing left on the dishes to wash off, I asked him, “How’s the pet mammoth?”

“Very difficult,” Fritz said in a satisfied tone. “Refrogné. Always in the morning. Healthy.”

I read the papers and had more coffee.

When Wolfe came down to the office at eleven I greeted him with a friendly suggestion. “Look,” I said, “you’re an expert on murder. But this Poor murder bores you because you’ve already collected your fee. So how about this?” I spread the morning Gazette on his desk and indicated. “Absolutely Grade A. Man’s naked body found in an old orchard off a lonely lane four miles from White Plains, head crushed to a pancake, apparently by a car running square over him. It offers many advantages to a great detective like you. It might be Hitler, since his body has never been found. It is in a convenient neighborhood, easily reached by trains, bus, or auto, electric lights and city gas. The man has been dead at least thirty-six hours, counting from now, so it has the antique quality you like, with the clues all—”

In another minute I would have had him sputtering with fury, but the doorbell rang. “Study it,” I told him, and went to the hall and the front and, following routine, fingered the curtain edge aside for a look through the glass panel.

After one brief glance I went back to the office and told Wolfe casually, “It’s only Cramer. To hell with him. Since he’s working on the Poor case and you’re not interested—”

“Archie. Confound you. Bring him in.”

The bell was ringing again, and that irritates me, so I went and got him. He was wearing his raincoat and his determined look. I relieved him of the former in the hall and let him take the latter on into the office. When I joined them Cramer was lowering himself into the red leather chair and telling Wolfe, “I dropped in on my way uptown because I thought it was only fair since you gave me that information. I think I’m going to arrest your client on a charge of murder.”

I sat down and felt at home.

IV

Wolfe grunted. He leaned back in his chair, got his fingertips touching in the locality of his belly button, and said offensively, “Nonsense. You can’t arrest my client on any charge whatever. My client is dead. By the way, is he? Has the corpse been properly identified?”

Cramer nodded. “Certainly. With a face like that it’s routine. Barber, dentist, and doctor — they’re the experts. Why, what did you think it was, an insurance fake?”

“I didn’t think. Then you can’t arrest my client.”

“Goodwin says Mrs. Poor is your client.”

“Mr. Goodwin is impulsive. You read that receipt. So you’re going to charge Mrs. Poor?”

“I think I am.”

“Indeed.”

Cramer scowled at him. “Don’t indeed me. Goddam it, didn’t I take the trouble to stop and tell you about it?”

“Go ahead and tell me.”

“Very well.” Cramer screwed up his lips, deciding where to start. “First I’d appreciate an answer to a question. What is this identity angle anyhow? There’s not the slightest doubt it was Poor. Not only the corpse itself, other things, like the elevator man that took them up when they came home, and the people up at the tavern where they ate dinner. He was known there. And what did you want a photograph for?”

“Did you bring one?”

“No. Apparently there aren’t any. I wasn’t interested after the dentist and barber verified the corpse, but I understand the papers had to settle for sketches drawn from descriptions. One reason I came here, what’s your idea doubting the identity of the corpse?”

Wolfe shook his head. “Evidently silly, since you’re ready to take Mrs. Poor. You were telling me...”

“Yeah. Of course Goodwin told you about the box of cigars.”

“Something.”

“Well, that was it all right. Poor smoked about a box every two days, boxes of twenty-five. He bought them, ten boxes at a time, from a place on Varick Street near his office and factory. There were four unopened boxes in his apartment and they’re okay. The one he started on when he got home Tuesday night — the twenty-four left in it are all loaded. Any one of them would have killed him two seconds after he lit it.”

Wolfe muttered, “That’s hard to believe — inside a cigar—”

“Right. I thought so too. The firm of Blaney and Poor has been making trick cigars for years, but they’re harmless, all they do is phut and make you jump. What’s in these twenty-four is anything but harmless — a special kind of instantaneous fuse the size of an ordinary thread, and a very special explosive capsule that was invented during the war and is still on the secret list. Even this is confidential, it’s made by the Beck Products Corporation, and their men and the FBI are raising hell trying to find out how this murderer got hold of them. That’s not for publication.”

“I’m not a publisher.”

“Okay.” Cramer got a cigar from his pocket, gazed at it with an attention that was not his habit, bit off an end, and lit it. Wolfe and I watched the operation, which we had both seen Cramer perform at least two hundred times, as if there was something very interesting about it.

“Of course,” Wolfe remarked, “the Alta Vista people deny all knowledge.”

“Sure. We let them analyze five of the twenty-four, after removing the fuses and capsules, and they say the fillers are theirs but the wrappers are not. They say whoever sliced them open and inserted the things and re wrapped them was an expert, and anyhow, anybody could see that.” Cramer sank his teeth deeper in his cigar. “Now then. There are six people connected with Blaney and Poor who are good at making trick cigars. Four of them are mixed up in this. Helen Vardis is one of their most highly skilled workers. Joe Groll is the foreman and can do anything. Blaney is the best of all, he shows them how. And Mrs. Poor worked there for four years when she was Martha Davis, up to two years ago when she married Poor.”

Wolfe shuddered. “Six people good at making trick cigars. Couldn’t the murder have been a joint enterprise? Couldn’t you convict all of them?”

“I don’t appreciate jokes about murder,” Cramer said morosely. “I wish I could. It’s a defect of character. As for getting the loaded cigars into Poor’s apartment, that also is wide open. He always had them delivered to his office, and the package would lie around there, sometimes as long as two or three days, until he took it home. So anybody might have substituted the loaded box. But now about Mrs. Poor. How do you like this? Naturally we gave the cigars and the box everything we had. It was a very neat job. But underneath the cigars we found two human hairs, one five inches long and one six and a half inches. We have compared them with hairs taken from various heads. Those two came from the head of Mrs. Poor. Unquestionably. So I think I’ll charge her.”

Wolfe grunted and shut his eyes.

I asked, perfectly friendly, “Hairs don’t have arches and loops and whorls, do they, Inspector?”

“Nuts.” He glared at me. “Where’s your laboratory?”

Wolfe’s eyes half opened. “I wouldn’t do it if I were you, Mr. Cramer.”

“Oh.” He glared at Wolfe. “You wouldn’t.”

“No, sir. Let me put it this way.” Wolfe maneuvered himself into position for an uplift and got to his feet. “You have her on trial. The hairs have been placed in evidence. I am the defense attorney. I am speaking to the jury.”

Wolfe fixed his eyes on me. “Ladies and gentlemen, I respect your intelligence. The operation of turning those cigars into deadly bombs has been described to you as one requiring the highest degree of skill and the minutest attention. Deft fingers and perfect eyesight were essential. Since the slightest irregularity about the appearance of that box of cigars might have attracted the attention of a veteran smoker, you can imagine the anxious scrutiny with which each cigar was inspected as it was arranged in the box. And you can realize how incredible it is that such a person, so intently engaged on anything and everything the eye could see, could possibly have been guilty of such atrocious carelessness as to leave two of the hairs of her head in that box with those cigars. Ladies and gentlemen, I appeal to your intelligence! I put it to you that those hairs, far from being evidence that Martha Poor killed her husband, are instead evidence that Martha Poor did not kill her husband!”

Wolfe sat down and muttered, “Then they acquit her, and whom do you charge next?”

Cramer growled, “So she is your client after all.”

“No, sir, she is not. It was Mr. Poor who paid me. You said you came here because you wanted to be fair. Pfui. You came here because you had misgivings. You had them because you are not a ninny. A jury would want to know, anyone concerned would want to know, if those hairs did not get in the box through Mrs. Poor’s carelessness, how did they get there? Who has had access to Mrs. Poor’s head or hairbrush? Manifestly that is a forlorn hope. The best chance, I would say, is the explosive capsules. Discover the tiniest link between anyone of the Beck Products Corporation and one of your suspects, and you have it, if not your case, at least your certainty. On that I couldn’t help, since I am no longer connected with the War Department. You can’t convict anybody at all, let alone Mrs. Poor, without an explanation of how he got the capsules. By the way, what about motive? Mrs. Poor was tired of smelling the smoke from her husband’s cigars, perhaps?”

“No. Poor was a tightwad and she wanted money. She gets the whole works plus a hundred thousand insurance. Or according to that girl, Helen Vardis, she wanted Joe Groll and now they’ll get married.”

“Proof?”

“Oh, talk.” Cramer looked frustrated. “It goes away back to when Mrs. Poor was working there. I’ll tell you this, whether she’s your client or not. Naturally we’ve been having conversation with everybody at Blaney and Poor’s, both office and factory. The females all go thumbs down on her, the idea being that she’s a man-eater. The males, just the opposite. According to them, she’s as pure as soap. Old-fashioned stick candy. If you ask me, another good reason for charging her.”

“Specifications? By the females?”

“No. None. But it’s unanimous.”

“It would be.” Wolfe waved it away with a finger. “She married the proprietor, and women never forgive a woman for marrying a proprietor.” He frowned. “Another thing, Mr. Cramer, about a jury. As you know, I am strongly disinclined to leave this house for any purpose whatever. I detest the idea of leaving it to go to a courtroom and sit for hours on those wooden abominations they think are seats, and the thing they provide for witnesses is even worse. I would strain a point to avoid that experience; but if it can’t be avoided Mr. Goodwin and I shall have to testify that Mr. Poor sat in that chair and told us of his conviction that Mr. Blaney was going to kill him. You know juries; you know how that would affect them. Suppose, again, that I am the defense attorney and—”

God help us, I thought, he’s going to address the jury again. But I got a break in the form of an excuse to skip it when the doorbell rang. Winking at Cramer as I passed him on my way to the hall, I proceeded to the front door and took a peek. What I saw seemed to call for finesse, so I opened the door just enough to slip through out to the stoop, shut the door behind me, and said, “Hello, let’s have a little conference.”

Conroy Blaney squeaked at me, “What’s the idea?”

I grinned at him amiably. “A policeman named Cramer is in Mr. Wolfe’s office having a talk, and I thought maybe you had had enough of him for a while. Unless you’re tailing him?”

“Inspector Cramer?”

I don’t know how he did it. Basically and visibly he was a chinless bald-headed runt, and his voice sounded like a hinge that needed oil, but there was something in the way he said Inspector Cramer that gave the double impression that (a) there was a rumor going around that Cramer did not actually exist, and (b) that if he did exist Conroy Blaney could make him stop existing by lifting a finger if he wanted to. I regarded him with admiration.

“Yes,” I said. “Are you tailing him?”

“Good heavens, no. I want to see Nero Wolfe.”

“Okay, then follow me, and after we are inside, don’t talk. Get it?”

“I want to see Nero Wolfe immediately.”

“Will you follow instructions or won’t you? Do you also want to see Cramer?”

“Very well, open the door.”

As I inserted my key I was telling myself, murderer or not, I am going to be wishing this specimen was big enough to plug in the jaw before this is finished. He did, however, obey orders. I conducted him into the front room, the door connecting it with the office being closed, left him there on a chair, and went back by way of the hall.

“It can wait,” I told Wolfe. “The man from Plehn’s with the Dendrobiums.”

But a minute later Cramer was standing up to go. Knowing how suspicious he was, as well as how many good reasons he had had for being suspicious on those premises, and also knowing how cops in general love to open doors that don’t belong to them just to stick a head in, I escorted him to the front and let him out, then returned to the office and told Wolfe who the company was.

Wolfe frowned. “What does he want?”

“I think he wants to confess. I warn you, his squeak will get on your nerves.”

“Bring him in.”

V

I expected to enjoy it and I did, only it didn’t last long. Blaney started off by rejecting the red leather chair and choosing one of the spares, which irritated both of us, since we like our routine.

Perched on it, he began, “I was thinking on my way here, fate has thrown us together, Wolfe. You dominate your field and I dominate mine. We were bound to meet.”

It caught Wolfe so completely off balance that he only muttered sarcastically, “Your field.”

“That’s right.” In profile, from where I sat, Blaney looked like a gopher. “I am supreme. I imagine you and I are alike in more ways than one. Now I like to see things done in an orderly manner. So do you, don’t you?”

Wolfe was speechless. But Blaney, obviously not giving a damn how he was, went on, “So first I’ll give you my four reasons for coming here and then we can take them up one at a time. One: I want a copy of the report you gave the police of what Gene Poor and Martha, his wife, told you about me. Two: discussion of whether your giving that report to the police was publication of a libel, and whether your withdrawal of it will satisfy me. Three: description of several methods by which I could kill a man without the slightest chance of detection. Four, a proposal to make an orchid, guaranteed exclusive to you, an imitation orchid plant in a pot, growing and blooming, that would talk! When the pot was lifted it would say distinctly, ‘Orchids to you!’ or anything of similar length.”

“Good heavens,” Wolfe muttered incredulously.

Blaney nodded with satisfaction. “I knew we would have many things in common. That’s my favorite expression, I use it all the time — good heavens. But you probably want to know where I stand, I would if I were you. I did not come here because of any fear on my own account. There is not the remotest chance of my safety being endangered. But Tuesday evening up at Gene’s apartment I heard a man saying to another man — I presume they were detectives — something about Mrs. Poor being Nero Wolfe’s client and in that case Mrs. Poor was as good as out of it, and Nero Wolfe had decided on Blaney and if so Blaney might as well get his leg shaved for the electrode. I knew that might be just talk, but I really think it would be a shame for you to make yourself ridiculous, and I don’t think you want to. I’m willing to take this trouble. You’re not a man to reach a conclusion without reasons. That wouldn’t be scientific, and you and I are both scientists. Tell me your reasons, one by one, and I’ll prove they’re no good. Go ahead.”

“Archie.” Wolfe looked at me. “Get him out of here.”

There wasn’t the slightest indication from Blaney that anyone had said anything except him, and I was too fascinated to move.

Blaney went on, “The truth is, you have no reasons. The fact that Gene was afraid I would kill him proves nothing. He was a born coward. I did describe to him some of the methods by which I could kill a man without detection, but that was merely to impress upon him the fact that he continued to own half of the business by my sufferance and therefore my offer of twenty thousand dollars for his half was an act of generosity. I wouldn’t condescend to kill a man. No man is worth that much to me, or that little.”

As he went on his squeak showed a tendency to hoarsen.

“So you have no reasons. I suspected you didn’t, but if you did I wanted to answer them. We can go back to my one, two, and three later, but right now about this talking orchid. When I get hold of a creative idea I can’t concentrate on anything else. You will have to give me three or four orchid plants to work from, and they ought to be your favorite plants. And here’s the stroke of genius, I was saving this, the voice that does the talking will be — your voice! Whoever you send it to, preferably a lady, she will lift the pot, suspecting nothing, and your own voice, the voice of Nero Wolfe, will say to her, Orchids to you! Probably she’ll drop the pot. But—”

He had performed a miracle. I saw it with my own eyes, Nero Wolfe fleeing in haste from his own office. He had chased many a fellow being from that room, but that was the first time he had ever himself been chased. It became evident that he wasn’t even going to risk staying on that floor when the sound was heard of the door of his elevator banging open and shut.

I told Blaney, “Overlook it. He’s eccentric.”

Blaney said, “So am I.”

I nodded. “Geniuses are.”

Blaney was frowning. “Does he really think I killed Gene Poor?”

“Yeah. He does now.”

“Why now?”

I waved it away. “Forget it. I’m eccentric too.”

Blaney was still frowning. “There’s another possibility. The idea of the orchid having his voice doesn’t appeal to him. Then how about its having your voice? You have a good baritone voice. I would let you have it at cost, and you could give it to him for Christmas. Let’s see how it would sound. Say it in a medium tone, Orchids to you—”

The house phone buzzed, and I swung my chair around and took it. It was Wolfe, on his room extension.

“Archie. Is that man gone?”

“No, sir. He wants me—”

“Get him out of there at once. Phone Saul and tell him to come here as soon as possible.”

“Yes, sir.”

The line went dead. So he had actually been stirred up enough to blow some dough on the case. Saul Panzer, being merely the best all-around investigator west of Nantucket, not counting me, came to twenty bucks a day plus expenses.

To get Blaney out I nearly had to carry him.

VI

As luck would have it, Saul Panzer was not to be had at the moment. Since he was free-lancing, you never knew. I finally got it that he was out on Long Island on a job for Atlantic and left word for him to call. He did so around three and said he would be able to get to the office soon after six o’clock.

It became obvious that to Wolfe, who had been stirred up, money was no object, since he blew another dollar and eighty cents on a phone call to Washington. I got it through without any trouble to General Carpenter, head of G-2, under whom I had been a major and for whom Wolfe had helped to solve certain problems connected with the war. The favor he asked of Carpenter, and of course got, was a telegram that would open doors at the premises of the Beck Products Corporation.

Not satisfied with that, he opened another valve. At ten minutes to four he said to me, “Archie. Find out whether it seems advisable for me to talk with that man Joe Groll.”

“Yes, sir. Tea leaves? Or there’s a palmist over on Seventh—”

“See him and find out. Why did he ask where Blaney was up there Tuesday evening? Anything else.”

“As, for instance, when does he marry Mrs. Poor and did she ever eat him?”

“Anything.”

So after he went up to the plant rooms I phoned the office of Blaney and Poor and got Joe Groll. No persuasion was required. His tone implied that he would be glad to talk with anybody, any time, anywhere, after business hours. He would be free at five-thirty. I told him I’d be waiting for him at the corner of Varick and Adams in a brown Wethersill sedan.

He was twenty minutes late. “Sorry to keep you waiting,” he apologized as he climbed in front beside me. “I only quit being a GI hero two months ago, and they gave me my old job back, and it keeps me busy catching up.”

His glance at me was a question, but I postponed answering it, because my eye being used to taking in things, I had noticed something on the sidewalk in the twilight. Sure enough, as I let the clutch in and we slid away from the sidewalk, somebody’s desire to find a taxi got practically frantic. To oblige, I took my time. When I saw in the mirror that a taxi had actually been snagged, I fed gas and went ahead. Then I answered the question his glance had asked.

“I don’t sport a ruptured duck because I didn’t get over to kill any Germans. They gave me a majority so I could run errands for Nero Wolfe while he was winning the war. There’s a bar and grill on Nineteenth Street that has good Scotch. All right?”

He didn’t object, so I kept my course, crowding no lights so as not to complicate matters for the taxi behind. Its driver was no bargain, because when I pulled up in front of Pete’s Bar & Grill, instead of going on by the sap swerved toward the curb not more than thirty yards back.

In addition to good Scotch, Pete’s had booths partitioned to the ceiling, which furnished privacy. Seated in one of them, I was surprised to realize that you could make out a case for calling Joe Groll handsome. They had overdone it a little on the ears, but on the whole he was at least up to grade if not fancy. After we got our drinks I remarked casually, “As I told you on the phone, I want to discuss this murder. You may have heard of Nero Wolfe. Poor and his wife came to see him Tuesday afternoon, to tell him Blaney was going to dissolve the partnership by killing Poor.”

He nodded. “Yes, I know.”

“Oh. The cops told you?”

“No, Martha told me yesterday. Mrs. Poor. She asked me to come up and help about things — the funeral.” He made a gesture. “Gosh, one lousy civilian funeral makes more fuss than a thousand dead men over there did.”

I nodded. “Sure, the retail business always has more headaches than the wholesale.” I sipped my highball. “I don’t go for this theory that it was Helen Vardis that killed Poor. Do you?”

“What?” He stared. “What are you talking about? What theory?” His fingers had tightened around his glass.

“Why, this idea that Helen Vardis would do anything for Blaney, God knows why, and she made the cigars for him, and she went there Tuesday night—”

“Well, for Christ’s sake.” He said that calmly, and then suddenly his voice went up high. “Who thought that one up? Was it that cop Rowcliff? That buzzard? Was it Nero Wolfe? Was it you?”

He sounded next door to hysterical. I sure had pushed the wrong button, or maybe the right one, but I didn’t want him sore at me. “It wasn’t me,” I assured him. “Don’t get excited.”

He laughed. It sounded bitter but not hysterical. “That’s right,” he said, “I must remember that, not to get excited. Everybody is very thoughtful. They put you in uniform and teach you what every young man ought to know, and take you across the ocean into the middle of hell, bombs, bullets, shells, flame-throwers, your friends die right against you and bleed down your neck, and after two years of that they bring you home and turn you loose and tell you now remember don’t get excited.”

He drank his highball, clear to the bottom, and put his glass down. “I’m all right,” he said calmly. “So I am loose again and come back to my job. Don’t get excited. Here’s what I find. A girl I had been sort of counting on, named Martha Davis, has married the boss and no one told me. It wasn’t her fault, she never promised me anything, not even to write to me, but I had been looking forward to seeing her. Oh, I saw her, because she was in trouble and asked me to help. She thought her husband was going to get killed, and knowing Blaney as I did I saw no reason to doubt it. I met her places a few times because she wanted to talk it over with me, and she wanted me to watch Blaney. Why am I spilling all this to you? You weren’t in the Army.”

“I was in the Army,” I said, “but I admit nobody bled down my neck. I did what I was told.”

“So did I, brother. Didn’t we all. Anyhow, I wasn’t heartbroken, because she seemed a little older than I had remembered her, and besides there was another girl who had been nothing but a kid in the factory but she had grown up. I’m not telling you anything the cops don’t know. God, the cops are something! That’s Helen Vardis. You saw her the other night.”

“Yeah, she seemed upset.”

“Upset?” He laughed a one-second laugh. “Sure she was upset. I fell for her like a Sherman tank roaring down a cliff. I certainly hit bottom— All right, I guess I will. Thanks.”

That was for the second drink, arriving. He picked it up and swallowed half.

“It is good Scotch. She seemed to reciprocate. I guess I was a little leery of all civilians, even her, but she seemed to reciprocate. I can’t understand what that guy Poor had that attracted girls, and at his age, too. That I will never understand. First Martha, and then her. I saw her with him in a restaurant. Then I saw them together in his car. Then I followed her from the office and watched her meet him on Fourteenth Street, and they took a taxi and I lost them. Naturally I sprung it on her, and she the same as told me to go to hell. She refused to explain.”

He finished the drink. “So they say don’t get excited. The cops told me yesterday, and again today, don’t get excited. Which one is it that thinks Helen Vardis was helping Blaney? Is it you?”

I shook my head. “I am not a cop. It’s just something I heard and I wondered what you thought of it. In a murder case you’re apt to hear anything.”

“Why do you listen?”

“Why not? I’m listening to you.”

He laughed, somewhat better. “You’re a hell of a guy to work on a murder. You don’t try to hammer me and you don’t try to uncle. Do you want to come along and help me do something?”

“I might if you’d describe it. I promised my mother I would always be helpful to people.”

“Wait a minute. I want to make a phone call.”

He slid along the seat and left the booth. I sipped my highball and lit a cigarette, wondering whether the feel of blood going down his neck had really loosened a screw in him or if he was just temporarily rattled. In less than five minutes he was back, sliding along the seat again, and announcing, “Blaney’s up at his place in Westchester. I phoned to ask him about a job we’re doing, but really to find out if he was up there.”

“Good. Now we know. Is that where we’re going?”

“No.” He gazed at his glass. “I thought I drank that— oh. You had it filled again. Thanks.” He took some. “Anyway, that idea about Helen is silly because it was obviously either Martha or Blaney, if the cops have any brains at all. Martha says she went to Blaney’s place in Westchester at six-fifteen Tuesday to keep a date she and Poor had with him, and there was no one there and she waited around until ten minutes to seven. Blaney says he was there all the time, from a quarter to six on, all evening, until he got the phone call from the police that Poor had been killed. So one of them is lying, and the one that’s lying is obviously the one that killed Poor. So it’s Blaney.”

“Why, because Martha wouldn’t lie?”

He frowned at me. “Now don’t smart up. What the hell would she kill him for? She only got him two years ago and he had everything he ever had. Anyway, it was Blaney, and I am fed up with all the gear-grinding, and he is now through with me and I’ll be out of a job, so to hell with him. I’m going to see what I can find. On account of the trick cigars the cops wanted to go through the office and factory, and Blaney told them sure, go ahead, go as far as you like, but he didn’t tell them about the abditories and they didn’t find them.”

“How do you spell it?”

He spelled it “Abditory. Place to hide things. Blaney says it’s a scientific term. The office is full of them. I haven’t had a chance before now since Tuesday night, but with him up in Westchester I’m going to take a look. With a nut like Blaney you never can tell. Want to come along?”

“Have you got keys?”

“Keys? I’m the foreman.”

“Okay, finish your drink.”

He did so, and I got the bill and paid it, and we got our hats and coats and emerged. Meanwhile I was considering a complication and deciding how to handle it. Of course with the sedan I could have lost a dozen taxis if I had wanted to, but it would take time and gas and wear on the tires, and anyhow, the way it was shaping up, it seemed uncalled-for. So when we were on the sidewalk alongside the sedan I asked him to wait a minute, marched back to where the taxi was still parked, jerked the door open and stuck my head in, and said, “There’s no sense in this, Helen. Look at that meter! Come on and ride with us.”

Even in the dim light she recognized me at the first glance, which I took as a compliment. After gasping, she left her mouth hanging open, but in spite of that handicap no one with an eye for essentials would have had any fault to find with the outlook, or perhaps I should say the inlook.

She re-established control of her jaw muscles enough to say briefly, “Get out!”

“Lookit, mister—” the taxi driver began like a menace.

“Everybody relax,” I said pleasantly. “I can’t get out because I’m not in, I’m only looking in.” I told the temples, “This is absolutely childish. You don’t know the first principle of tailing, and this driver you happened to get is, if anything, worse. If you insist on tailing Joe, okay, well put him in the cab and let them go ahead, and you ride with me and I’ll show you how it’s done.”

“Yeah?” the menace croaked. “Show her how what’s done?”

“See that,” I told her. “See the kind of mind he’s got.”

All her muscles were now under control. “You’re smart as they come, aren’t you?”

“That,” I said, “you will learn more about as time goes on. I’m at least smarter than you are if you let that meter continue to tick. Pay him and come on.”

She moved, so I stood aside and held the door while she got out. On the sidewalk she faced me and said, “You seem to be in charge of everything, so you pay him.”

It was an unpleasant surprise, but I didn’t hesitate, first, because I liked the way she was handling herself, and second, because all expenses would come out of the five grand anyway. So I parted with two bucks, took her elbow and steered her to the sedan, opened the front door and told Joe Groll, “Move over a little. There’s room for three.”

It was his turn to let his jaw hang. Apparently it was going to be prolonged, and he didn’t budge, so I took her elbow again and escorted her around to the other side and told her, “Slide in under the wheel. I’d rather have you next to me anyhow.”

She did so, and I got in and slammed the door. By the time I had got the engine started and rolled to the corner and turned downtown, neither of them had said a word.

“If I were you folks,” I told them, “I would incorporate and call it the Greater New York Mutual Tailing League. I don’t see how you keep track of who is following whom on any given day. Of course if one of you gets convicted of murder that will put a stop to it. You have now, however, the one good reason that I know of for getting married, the fact that a wife can’t testify against a husband or vice versa.” I swerved around a pushcart. “One thing you want to watch. Now that Poor is dead, Helen will try to sell you the idea, Joe, that she was meeting him on the sly merely to keep him informed of anything Blaney seemed to be up to, and Joe will try to sell you the idea, Helen, that he was seeing Martha merely for that too. Now, of course, he can’t marry her, at least not for a long time, because it would look suspicious, and he may want you for a stopgap. You should both be realistic—”

“Can it,” Joe croaked. “We’re not going there, where I said. Stop and let me out.”

“Oh, yes we are.” I stepped on it. “Stopgap or not, you are enjoying feeling her sit next to you as much as I am, and I could keep right on going to the foot of the rainbow. If you really wanted out, what was wrong with any of the stops for traffic lights? She can help us, and it won’t hurt to have a witness. The idea is, Helen, we are bound for the Blaney and Poor office to go through the abditories. We think we hid something in them.”

“What?” she demanded.

“We don’t know. Maybe a detailed estimate in triplicate of what it would cost to kill Poor. Maybe a blueprint of the cigar. Even a rough sketch would help.”

“That’s ridiculous. You sound to me like a clown.”

“Good. It is a well-known fact that clowns have the biggest and warmest hearts on record except mothers and three characters in books by Dickens. So if and when you get tired of being a stopgap, just give me a ring and— here we are.”

I pulled over to the curb in front of Blaney and Poor’s on Varick Street.

VII

That office was no place for a stranger to poke around in. It was on the first floor of a dingy old building in the middle of the block, with part of the factory, so Joe said, in the rear, and the rest on the second floor. As soon as we were inside and had the lights turned on, Helen sat in a chair at a desk and looked disdainful, but as the search went on I noticed she kept her eyes open. Joe tossed his hat and coat on a chair, got a screwdriver from a drawer, went to the typewriter on the desk Helen was sitting at, used the screwdriver, lifted out the typewriter roller, unscrewed an end of it and turned it vertical, and about four dozen dice rolled out. He held the open end of the roller so the light would hit it right, peered in, put the dice back in and screwed the end on, and put the roller back on the machine. His fingers were as swift and accurate as any I had ever seen. Even if I had known about it, I would have needed at least ten minutes for the operation; he took about three.

“Trick dice?” I asked him.

“They’re just a stock item,” he said, and went over to a door in the rear wall, opened it, took it off its hinges, leaned it against a desk, knelt on the floor, removed a strip from the bottom edge of the door — and out came about ten dozen lead pencils.

“Trick pencils?”

“When you press, perfume comes out,” he said, and stretched out flat to look into the abditory.

I thought I might as well help with the doors and ambled over to open one in another wall that would probably be to a closet. I grabbed the knob and turned, and something darted out and banged me on the shin so that almost anyone but me would have screamed in pain. I uttered a word or two. The piece of wood that had hit me had gone back into place and was part of the door again.

“That shouldn’t have been left connected,” Helen said, trying not to look as if she wanted to giggle.

I saw no reason to reply. My shin feeling as it did, I thought it wouldn’t hurt to see if the skin was broken and started to lift my foot to a chair, but the light was dim because the ones in that part of the room hadn’t been turned on, so I stepped to the wall and flipped a switch. A stream of water, a thin stream but with plenty of pressure, came out of the wall and hit me just below the right eye. I leaped to one side and used more and better words.

“That’s interesting,” Helen said. “Some customers say that the person won’t be standing in the right place, but you were, exactly. A person not as tall as you would get it right in the eye.”

“You are,” I told her grimly.

“I am what?”

“Not as tall as me.”

“Oh, I have better sense.”

Only a female idiot would have put it on a basis of sense. Joe, who had put the door back up and was lying on the floor again with his head stuck under a desk, called to me, “Maybe you hadn’t better touch things.”

“Thanks for the suggestion.” I went to a chair at the end of the desk he was under and asked, “What happens if I sit on this?”

“Nothing. That one’s okay.”

I sat and became strictly a spectator, after wiping my face and neck and inspecting my shin. Joe continued his tour of the abditories, which were practically everywhere, in desk lamps, chair legs, water cooler, ash trays, even one in the metal base of a desk calendar that was on a big desk in the corner. It was while he had that one open, jiggling things out of it, that I heard him mutter, “This is a new one on me.” He walked over and put something on the desk in front of Helen and asked her, “What is that thing, do you know?”

She picked it up, inspected it, and shook her head. “Haven’t the faintest idea.”

“Let me see.” I got up and went over, and Helen handed it to me. The second I saw it I stopped being casual inside, but I tried to keep the outside as before. It was a thin metal capsule, about three-quarters of an inch long and not over an eighth of an inch in diameter, smooth all over, with no seam or opening, except at one end where a thread came through, a dark brown medium-sized thread as long as my index finger.

I grunted. “Where did you find it?”

“You saw me find it.” Joe sounded either irritated or something else. “In that calendar on Blaney’s desk.”

“Oh, that’s Blaney’s desk. How many, just this one?”

“No, several.” Joe went to Blaney’s desk and then came back to us. “Three more. Four altogether.”

I took them from him and compared. They were all the same. I regarded Helen’s attractive face. She looked interested. I regarded Joe’s handsome face if you didn’t count the ears. He looked more interested.

“I think,” I said, “that it was one of these things that was in the cigar that Poor never smoked. What do you think?”

Joe said, “I think we can damn soon find out. Give me one.” He had a gleam in his eye.

I shook my head. “The idea doesn’t appeal to me.” I looked at my wrist. “Quarter to nine. Mr. Wolfe is in the middle of dinner. The proper thing is for you to take these objects to the police, but they’re likely to feel hurt because you didn’t tell them about the abditories when they were here. We can’t interrupt Mr. Wolfe’s dinner, even with a phone call, so I suggest that I buy you a meal somewhere, modest but nutritious, and then we all three go and deliver these gadgets, calendar included, to him. He may want to ask some questions.”

“You take them to him,” Joe said. “I think I’ll go home.”

“I think I’ll go home too,” Helen said.

“No. Nothing doing. You’ll just follow each other and get all confused again. If I take these things to Wolfe without taking you he’ll fly into a temper and phone the police to go get you. Not to flatter myself, wouldn’t you prefer to come with me?”

Helen said in the nastiest possible tone, “I don’t have to eat at the same table with him.”

Joe said, trying to match her tone but failing because he wasn’t a female, “If you did I wouldn’t eat.”

Which was a lot of organic fertilizer. I took them to Gallagher’s, where they not only ate at the same table but devoured hunks of steak served from the same platter. It was a little after ten when we got to Nero Wolfe’s place on Thirty-fifth Street.

VIII

Wolfe was seated behind his desk, with the evening beer — one empty bottle and two full ones — on a tray in front of him. Joe Groll, in the red leather chair, also had a bottle and glass on the check-writing table beside him. Helen Vardis would have made a good cheesecake shot over by the big globe in an upholstered number that Wolfe himself sometimes used. I was at my own desk, as usual, with my oral report all finished, watching Wolfe inspect the workmanship of the removable bottom of the desk calendar.

He put it down, picked up one of the metal capsules with its dangling thread and gave it another look, put that down too, and turned his half-closed eyes on Joe.

“Mr. Groll.”

“Yes, sir.”

“I don’t know how much sense you have. If you have slightly more than your share, you must realize that if I hand these things to the police with Mr. Goodwin’s story, they will conclude that you are a liar. They will ask, why did you wait until witnesses were present to explore those hiding places? Why did you think they were worth exploring at all? Is it even remotely credible that Mr. Blaney, after preparing that murderous box of cigars, would leave these things there on his desk in a hiding place that a dozen people knew about? They will have other questions, but that’s enough to show that they will end by concluding that you put the capsules in the calendar yourself. Where did you get them?”

“But listen,” Helen Vardis spoke up, “those abditor—”

“Miss Vardis! Please. I don’t want to hear that word again! Mr. Goodwin used it repeatedly because he knew it would annoy me, but I don’t have to stand it from strangers and I won’t. I’m speaking to Mr. Groll. Well, sir?”

Joe said firmly, “I wouldn’t know about how much sense I’ve got, but it happened exactly the way you’ve heard it. As for my waiting for witnesses, I didn’t. I only waited until I was sure Blaney was out of range, up at his Westchester place, and then Goodwin was there and I asked him to come along on the spur of the moment. As for its being remotely credible what you said, there’s nothing Blaney wouldn’t do because he’s crazy. He’s a maniac. You don’t know him, so you don’t know that.”

Wolfe grunted. “The devil I don’t. I do know that. How long have those hiding places been in existence?”

“Some of them for years. Some are more recent.”

Wolfe tapped the desk calendar with a finger. “How long has this been there?”

“Oh—” Joe considered. “Four or five years. It was there before I got in the Army. Look here, Mr. Wolfe, you seem to forget that when I saw those things tonight I had no idea what they were, and I still haven’t. You seem to know they’re the same as the loads in those cigars, and if you do okay, but I don’t.”

“Neither do I.”

“Then what the hell? Maybe they’re full of Chanel Number Five or just fresh air.”

Wolfe nodded. “I was coming to that. If I show them to Mr. Cramer he’ll take them away from me, and also he’ll arrest you as a material witness, and I may possibly need you. We’ll have to find out for ourselves.”

He pushed a button, and in a moment Fritz entered. Wolfe asked him, “Do you remember that metal percolator that someone sent us and we were fools enough to try?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Did you throw it out?”

“No, sir, it’s in the basement.”

“Bring it here, please.”

Fritz went. Wolfe picked up a capsule and frowned at it and then turned to me. “Archie. Get me a piece of newspaper, the can of household oil, and a piece of string.”

Under the circumstances I would have preferred to go out for a walk, but there was a lady present who might need protection, so I did as I was told. When I got back Fritz was there with the percolator, which was two-quart size, made of thick metal. We three men collected at Wolfe’s desk to watch the preparations, but Helen stayed in her chair. With my scissors Wolfe cut a strip of newspaper about two by eight inches, dropped oil on it and rubbed it in with his finger, and rolled it tight into a long, thin, oiled wick. Then he held one end of it against the end of the capsule thread, overlapping a little, and Joe Groll, ready with the piece of string, tied them together. Wolfe opened the lid of the percolator.

“No,” Joe objected. “That might stop it. Anyhow, we don’t want this glass here.”

He finished the job with his swift sure fingers, while Wolfe and Fritz and I watched. Removing the glass cap and the inside contraption from the percolator, he lowered the capsule through the hole, hanging on to the free end of the oiled wick with one hand while with the other he stuffed a scrap of newspaper in the hole just tight enough to keep the wick from slipping on through. Wolfe nodded approvingly and leaned back in his chair. About two inches of the wick was protruding.

“Put it on the floor.” Wolfe pointed. “Over there.”

Joe moved, taking a folder of matches from his pocket, but I intercepted him. “Wait a minute. Gimme.” I took the percolator. “The rest of you go in the hall. I’ll light it.”

Fritz went, and so did Helen, but Joe merely backed to a corner and Wolfe didn’t move from his chair.

I told Wolfe, “I saw Poor’s face and you didn’t. Go in the hall.”

“Nonsense. That little thing?”

“Then I’ll put a blanket over it.”

“No. I want to see it.”

“So do I,” Joe said, “What the hell. I’ll bet it’s a dud.”

I shrugged. “I hope Helen has had a course in first aid.” I put the percolator on the floor over by the couch, about five paces from Wolfe’s desk, lit a match and applied it to the end of the wick, and stood back and watched. An inch of the wick burned in three seconds. “See you at the hospital,” I said cheerily, and beat it to the hall, leaving the door open a crack to see through.

It may have been ten seconds, but it seemed like three times that, before the bang came, and it was a man-size bang, followed immediately by another but different kind of bang. Helen grabbed my arm, but not waiting to enjoy that I swung the door open and stepped through. Joe was still in the corner, looking surprised. Wolfe had twisted around in his chair to gaze at a bruise in the plaster of the wall behind him.

“The percolator lid,” he muttered. “It missed me.”

“Yeah.” I moved across to observe angles and directions. “By about an inch.” I stooped to pick up the percolator lid, bent out of shape. “This would have felt good on your skull.”

Fritz and Helen were back in, and Joe came over with the percolator in his hand. “Feel it,” he said. “Hot. Look how it’s twisted. Some pill, that is. Dynamite or TNT would never do that, not that amount. I wonder what’s in it?” He sighed. “Do you smell anything? I don’t.”

“It’s outrageous,” Wolfe declared. I looked at him in surprise. Instead of being relaxed and thankful for his escape, he was sitting straight in his chair, which meant he was ready to pop with fury. “That thing nearly hit me in the head. This settles it. Against Mr. Poor there may have been a valid grievance. Against me, none.”

“Well, for God’s sake.” I regarded him without approval. “That’s illogical. Nobody aimed it at you. Didn’t I tell you to go in the hall? However, if it made you mad enough to do a little work, fine, here’s Joe and Helen, you can start on them.”

“No.” He got to his feet. “I’m going to bed.” He bowed to Helen. “Good night, Miss Vardis.” He tilted his head a hundredth of an inch at Joe. “Good night, sir. Archie, put these remaining capsules in the safe.” He marched to the door and was gone.

“Quite a guy,” Joe remarked. “He didn’t bat an eye when that thing went off and the lid flew past his ear.”

“Yeah,” I growled. “He has fits. He’s having one now. Instead of taking you two apart and turning you inside out, which is what he should have done, he didn’t even tell you where to head in. Do you tell the police about tonight or not? I would say, for the present, not. Come on. Taxis are hard to find around here, and I’ve got to put the car away anyhow. I’ll drop you somewhere.”

We went. When I got back, some time later, I made a little discovery. Opening the safe to follow my custom of checking the cash last thing at night, I found two hundred bucks gone and an entry in the book for that amount in Wolfe’s handwriting which said, “Saul Panzer, advance on expenses.”

So anyhow Saul was working.

IX

Friday morning, having nothing else to do, I solved the case. I did it with cold logic. Everything fitted perfectly, and all I needed was enough evidence for a jury. Presumably that was what Saul Panzer was getting. I do not intend to put it all down here, the way I worked it out, because first it would take three full pages, and second I was wrong. Anyway I had it solved when, a little before nine o’clock, I was summoned to Wolfe’s room and given an errand to perform with detailed instructions. It sent me to Twentieth Street, so I went to the garage for the car and headed south.

I would just as soon have dealt with one of the underlings, but Cramer himself was in his office and said to bring me in. As I sat down he whirled his chair a quarter turn, folded his arms, and asked conversationally, “What have you two liars got cooked up now?”

I grinned at him. “Why don’t you call Wolfe a liar to his face someday? Do it while I’m there.” I took two of the capsules, with threads attached, from my vest pocket, put them on his desk, and inquired, “Do you need any more of these?”

He picked one of them up and gave it a good look, then the other one, put them in a drawer of his desk, folded his arms again, and looked me in the eye to shrivel me.

“All right,” he said quietly. “Go on. They came in the mail, in a package addressed to Wolfe with letters cut out of a magazine.”

“No, sir, not at all. Where I spent the night last night I was idly running my fingers through her lovely hair and felt something, and there they were.” Cramer was strictly a family man and had stern ideas. Seeing I had him blushing, I went on, “Actually it was like this.”

I told him the whole story, straight and complete.

He had questions, both during the recital and at the end, and I answered what I could. The one I had expected him to put first, he saved till the last.

“Well,” he said, “for the present we’ll assume that I believe you. You know what that amounts to, but we’ll assume it. Even so, how are you on figures? How much are two and one?”

“I’m pretty good. Two plus one plus one equals four.”

“Yes? Where do you get that second plus one?”

“So you can add,” I conceded. “Mr. Wolfe thought maybe you couldn’t. However, so can we. Four capsules were found. Two are there in your drawer. One, as I told you, was used in a scientific experiment in Wolfe’s office and damn near killed him. He’s keeping the other one for the Fourth of July.”

“Like hell he is. I want it.”

“Try and get it.” I stood up. “Search warrant, subpoena, replevin, riot squad, tear gas, shoot the works. Standing in with G-2 as he does, he could get a carload of those things if he wanted them, but apparently he has taken a liking to this one nice bright little capsule. My God, you’re hard to please. Your men search Blaney and Poor’s without finding a single abditory, and I had to go and do it for you, and we’re splitting fifty-fifty on the capsules. And you beef. May I go now?”

“Beat it. I’ll get it.”

I turned with dignity and went.

When I got back to Wolfe’s Fritz met me in the hall to tell me there was a woman in the office, and when I entered I found it was Martha Poor.

I sat down at my desk and told her, “Mr. Wolfe will be engaged until eleven o’clock.” I glanced at my wrist. “He’ll be down in forty minutes.”

She nodded. “I know. I’ll wait.”

She didn’t look exactly bedraggled, nor would I say pathetic, but there was certainly nothing of the man-eater about her. She seemed older than she had on Tuesday. Anyone could have told at a glance that she was having trouble, but whether it was bereavement or bankruptcy was indicated neither by her clothes nor her expression. She merely made you feel like going up to her, maybe putting your hand on her shoulder or patting her on the arm, and asking, “Anything I can do?” It occurred to me that if she had been old enough to be my mother there would have been no question about how I felt, but she positively was not. If I had wanted to pass the time by deciding what I might want her for when she stopped being in trouble, it would not have been for a mother.

Of course, since at that time I still had the case solved, and all I needed was evidence, there were about a dozen things I would have liked to ask her, but it seemed advisable to wait and let Wolfe do it. I reached that conclusion while I was sitting with my back to her, entering plant germination records, and that reminded me of a minor point I hadn’t covered. I went to the kitchen and asked Fritz if he had told Wolfe who had come to see him, and Fritz said he hadn’t, he had left that to me. So I returned to the office, buzzed the plant rooms, got Wolfe, and told him, “Returned from mission. I gave them to Cramer himself, and he says he’ll get the other one. Mrs. Poor is down here waiting to see you.”

“Confound that woman. Send her away.”

“But she—”

“No. I know what she wants. I studied her. She wants to know what I’m doing to earn that money. Tell her to go home and read that receipt.”

The line died. I swung my chair around and told Martha, “Mr. Wolfe says for you to go home and read the receipt.”

She stared. “What?”

“He thinks you came to complain because he isn’t earning the money your husband paid him, and the idea of having to earn money offends him. It always has.”

“But— that’s ridiculous. Isn’t it?”

“Certainly it is.” I fought back the impulse to step over and pat her on the shoulder. “But my advice is to humor him, much as I enjoy having you here. Nobody alive can handle him but me. If he came down and found you here he would turn around and walk out. If you have anything special to say, tell me and I’ll tell him. He’ll listen to me because he has to, or fire me, and he can’t fire me because then he would never do any work at all and would eventually starve to death.”

“I shouldn’t think—” She stopped and stood up. She took a step toward the door, then turned and said, “I shouldn’t think a cold-blooded murder is something to joke about.”

I had to fight back the impulse again. “I’m not joking,” I declared. “Plain facts. What did you want to say to him?”

“I just wanted to talk with him. He hasn’t come to see me. Neither have you.” She tried to smile, but all she accomplished was to start her lip quivering. She stopped it. “You haven’t even phoned me. I don’t know what’s happening. The police asked me about two of my hairs being in that box of cigars, and I suppose they have told Mr. Wolfe about it, and I don’t even know what he thinks or what he told the police...”

I grinned at her. “That’s easy. He made a speech to the jury, demonstrating that those hairs in the box were evidence that you did not kill your husband.” I went to her and put a hand on her arm, like a brother. “Listen, lady. Isn’t the funeral this afternoon?”

“Yes.”

“Okay, go and have the funeral, that’s enough for you for one day. Leave the rest to me. I mean, if anything occurs that it would help you to know about, I’ll see that you know. Right?” She didn’t pull anything corny like grasping my hand with hers firm and warm or gazing at me with moist eyes filled with trust. She did meet my eyes, but only long enough to say, “Thank you, Mr. Goodwin,” and turned to go. I went to the front door and let her out.

After Wolfe came down the relations between us were nothing to brag about. Apparently he had nothing to offer, and I was too sore to start in on him. I had brought him Helen and Joe, and except for having fun with that capsule like a kid with a firecracker, he hadn’t bothered to disturb one cell of his celebrated brain. Martha had come on her own, and he wouldn’t even see her. As for Blaney, I had to admit I couldn’t blame him much on that, but the fact remained that he had walked out without doing a lick of work.

He passed the time until lunch going through catalogues, and at two-thirty P.M., with a veal cutlet and half a bushel of Fritz’s best mixed salad stowed in the hold, he returned to the office and resumed with catalogues. That got interrupted before long, but not by me. The bell rang, and I went to the front and it was Saul Panzer. I took him to the office.

Wolfe greeted him and then told me, “Archie. Go up and help Theodore with the pollen lists.”

There was nothing new about it, but that didn’t make me like it any better. When the day finally comes that I tie Wolfe to a stake and shoot him, one of the fundamental reasons will be his theory that the less I know the more I can help, or to put it another way, that everything inside my head shows on my face. It only makes it worse that he doesn’t really believe it. He merely can’t stand it to have anybody keep up with him at any time on any track. I am being fair about it. I admit that even under ideal circumstances it wouldn’t happen very often, but it would ruin a good meal for him if it ever happened at all.

I did my best with Theodore and the pollen lists, not wanting to take it out on them. The conference with Saul seemed to be comprehensive, since a full hour passed before the house phone in the potting room buzzed. Theodore answered it, and told me that I was wanted downstairs.

When I got there Saul was gone. I had a withering remark prepared, thinking to open up with it, but had to save it for some other time. Wolfe was seated behind his desk, leaning back with his eyes closed, and his lips were moving, pushing out and then in again, out and in...

So I sat down and kept my mouth shut. The brain had actually got on the job, and I knew better than to make remarks, withering or not, during the performance of miracles. The first result, which came in ten or twelve minutes after I entered, did not however seem to be very miraculous. He opened his eyes halfway, grunted, and muttered, “Archie. Yesterday you showed me an article in a paper about a man’s body found in an orchard near White Plains, but I didn’t look at it. Now I want it.”

“Yes, sir. There was more this morning—”

“Have they identified the body?”

“No, sir. The head was smashed—”

“Get it.”

I obeyed. Newspapers were kept in the office for three days. I opened it to the page and handed it to him. He would read a newspaper only one way, holding it out wide open, no folding, with his arms stretched. I had never tried to get him to do it more intelligently because it was the only strenuous exercise he ever got and was therefore good for him. He finished the Thursday piece and asked for Friday’s, and finished that.

Then he told me, “Get the district attorney of Westchester County. What’s his name? Fraser.”

“Right.” I got busy with the phone. I had no trouble getting the office, but then they gave me the usual line about Mr. Fraser being in conference and I had to put on pressure. Finally the elected person said hello.

Wolfe took it. “How do you do, Mr. Fraser. Nero Wolfe. I have something to give you. That body found in an orchard Wednesday evening with the head crushed — has it been identified?”

Fraser was brusque. “No. What—”

“Please. I’m giving you something. Put this down. Arthur Howell, nine one four West Seventy-eighth Street, New York. He worked for the Beck Products Corporation of Basston, New Jersey. They have an office at six two two East Forty-second Street, New York. His dentist was Lewis Marley, six nine nine Park Avenue, New York. That should help. Try that. In return for this, I would appreciate it very much if you will have me notified the moment the identification is made. Did you get it all down?”

“Yes. But what—”

“No, sir. That’s all. That’s all you’ll get from me until I get word of the identification.”

There was some sputtering protest from the White Plains end, but it accomplished nothing. Wolfe hung up with a self-satisfied smirk on his big face, cleared his throat importantly, and picked up a catalogue.

I growled at him, “So it’s in the bag. A complete stranger named Arthur Howell. After snitching the capsules from Beck Products and making the cigars and getting them into Poor’s home God knows how, he was overcome by remorse and went to an orchard and took his clothes off and lay down and ran a car over himself with radio control—”

“Archie. Shut up. We are ready to act in any case, but it will make things a little simpler if that corpse proves to be Mr. Howell, so it is worth waiting for a report on it.” He glanced at the clock, which said seven minutes to four, and put the catalogue down. “We might as well prepare it now. Get that capsule from the safe.”

I thought to myself, this time it may not miss him, but as for me, I’m going outdoors. However, it appeared that he was going to try some new gag instead of repeating with the percolator. By the time I got the capsule from the safe and convoyed it to him, he had taken two articles from a drawer and put them on his desk. One was a roll of Scotch tape. The other was a medium-sized photograph of a man, mounted on gray cardboard. I gave it a glance, then picked it up and did a thorough job of looking. It was unquestionably Eugene R. Poor.

“Goody,” I said enthusiastically. “No wonder you’re pleased. Even if Saul had to pay two hundred bucks for it—”

“Archie. Let me have that. Here, hold this thing.”

I helped. What I was to hold was the capsule, flat on the cardboard near a corner, while he tore off a piece of tape and fastened it there. When he lifted the photo and jiggled it to see if the fastening was firm, the thread dangled over Poor’s right eye.

“Put it in an envelope and in the safe,” he said, glanced at the clock, and made for the hall and the elevator.

That was all for the present. I sat at my desk and went over the case again, testing my logic point by point. The conclusion I reached an hour later was that there were two distinct kinds of logic, Wolfe’s and mine, and that they were destined to clash. I wasn’t dumb enough not to have a general idea of where his was headed for, but where he got the notion that we were ready to act was way beyond me. It looked to me as if we were barely ready to start wondering what to do.

At six o’clock he returned to the office, rang for Fritz to bring beer, and took up where he had left off with the catalogues. At eight o’clock Fritz summoned us to dinner. At nine-thirty we returned to the office. At a quarter to ten a phone call came from District Attorney Fraser. The body had been identified. It was Arthur Howell. An assistant district attorney and a pair of detectives were on their way to Thirty-fifth Street to ask Wolfe, how come and would he please supply all necessary details, including the present address of the murderer.

Wolfe hung up, leaned back and sighed, and muttered at me, “Archie. You’ll have to pay a call on Mrs. Poor.”

I objected, “She’s probably in bed, tired out. The funeral was today.”

“It can’t be helped. Saul will go with you.”

I stared. “Saul?”

“Yes. He’s up in my room asleep. He didn’t get to bed last night. You will take her that photograph of her husband. You should leave as soon as possible, before that confounded Westchester lawyer gets here. I don’t want to see him. Tell Fritz to bolt the door after you go. Ring my room and tell Saul to come down at once. Then I’ll give you your instructions.”

X

The appearance of the living room in the Poor apartment on Eighty-fourth Street was not the same as it had been when I had arrived there three evenings before. Not only was there no army of city employees present and no man of the house with his face gone huddled on the floor, but the furniture had been moved around. The chair Poor had sat in when he lit his last cigar was gone, probably to the cleaners on account of spots, the table Cramer had used for headquarters had been shifted to the other side of the room, and the radio had been moved to the other end of the couch.

Martha Poor was sitting on the couch, and I was on a chair I had pulled around to face her. She was wearing something that wasn’t a bathrobe and wasn’t exactly a dress, modest, with sleeves and only a proper amount of throat showing.

“I’m here under orders,” I told her. “I said this morning that if anything happened that it would help you to know about I’d see that you knew, but this isn’t it. This is different. Nero Wolfe sent me with orders. I just want to make that clear. Item number one is to hand you this envelope and invite you to look at the contents.”

She took it from me. With steady fingers, slow-moving rather than hurried, she opened the flap and pulled out the photograph.

I informed her, “That decoration may look like something by Dali, but it was Nero Wolfe’s idea. I am not authorized to discuss it or the picture from any angle Just there it is, except to remark that it is a very good likeness of your husband. I only saw him that one time, the other afternoon at the office, but of course I had a long and thorough look at him. Wednesday we could have sold that photo to a newspaper for a nice amount, but of course we didn’t have it Wednesday.”

She had put the photo beside her on the couch and was pinching an edge of the cardboard between her index finger and thumbnail, with the nail sinking in. She was looking straight at me. The muscles of her throat had tightened, which no doubt accounted for the change in her voice when she spoke.

“Where did you get it?”

I shook my head. “Out of bounds. As I said, I’m under orders. Item number two is just a piece of information to the effect that a man named Saul Panzer is out in the back hall on this floor, standing by the door of the service elevator. Saul is not big but he just had a nap and is alert. Number three: that naked body found up in Westchester with the head smashed by running a car over it, in an orchard not more than ten minutes’ drive from either Monty’s Tavern or Blaney’s place, has been identified as formerly belonging to a man named Arthur Howell, an employee of the Beck Products Corporation.”

Her eyes hadn’t moved. I hadn’t even seen the lashes blink. She said in a faraway voice, “I don’t know why you tell me about that. Arthur Howell? Did you say Arthur Howell?”

“Yep, that’s right. Howell, Arthur. Head flattened to a pancake, but enough left for the dentist. As for telling you about it, I’m only obeying orders.” I glanced at my wrist. “Number four: it is now twenty past ten. At a quarter to eleven I am supposed either to arrive back at the office or phone. If I do neither, Nero Wolfe will phone Inspector Cramer and then here they’ll come. Not as many as Tuesday evening I suppose, because they won’t need all the scientists, but plenty.”

I stopped, still meeting her eyes, and then went on, “Let’s see. Photo and capsule, Saul out back, Howell, cops at a quarter to eleven... that’s all.”

She got up, with the photo in her hand, and started for a door to the right, the one she had retreated through Tuesday when Blaney had arrived on the scene.

It was up to me to decide. If she wanted to be alone to get her mind arranged, or anything else arranged, that was all right with me, but the one detail which I thought had not been sufficiently considered was fire escapes. So although I would have much preferred to stay where I was, I went along.

That game of follow the leader was one of my experiences that can stay unique and suit me fine. She might have been a deaf-and-dumb renting agent showing me the apartment, and me a deaf-and-dumb prospective tenant. First we did the master bedroom, her in front and me right behind. She went and opened a closet door, looked in a moment, and shut it again. Then she crossed to another door that was standing open. I had never seen a fire escape with an entrance through a bathroom window, but I thought it wouldn’t hurt to look so I did. Seeing it was okay, I backed out and she shut the door, staying inside. I went to a window and frowned out at the dark for maybe three minutes, and apparently I forgot to breathe, for when the door opened and she came out I pulled in enough oxygen to fill a barrel. Observing that she no longer was carrying the photograph, I let her go on being it. Her next destination was the back door, leading from the kitchen to the service hall. With me at her elbow, she pulled the door wide open, and we were both looking at Saul, standing there reading a newspaper.

He turned his head our way, and I said, “Hello, Saul.”

He said, “Hello, Archie.”

She closed the door, not letting it bang, and went by way of the dining room back to the living room and on to the front foyer. If this seems crazy to you reading about it, that’s nothing to what it seemed to me helping do it. Not wanting any scene in the public hall, I slipped ahead of her in the foyer and stood with my back against the entrance door, and she simply turned around and re-entered the living room. I hadn’t the dimmest idea then whether she was merely a rat in a cage and acting like one, or what, and I haven’t now. But I wasn’t going to have to phone Nero Wolfe that she had climbed down a fire escape and would he please tell the police to start looking, so when she kept going until she was in the master bedroom again I was right there.

She hadn’t uttered one word since she had asked me if I had said Arthur Howell, but now she did. When she turned, in the middle of the room, near the foot of the big double bed where she had presumably slept with her husband, I thought she was going to take hold of me, but all she did was stand in front of me, about eight inches away, looking up at me. She came about up to my chin, that was all. She wasn’t tall.

“Archie Goodwin,” she said. “You think I’m terrible, don’t you? You think I’m an awful woman, bad clear through. Don’t you?”

“I’m not thinking, lady. I’m just an errand boy.” The funny thing was that if at any moment up to then I had made a list of the ten most beautiful women she would not have been on it.

“You’ve had lots of experience,” she said, her head back to look up at me. “You know what women are like. I knew you did when you put your hand on my arm yesterday. You know I’m a man’s woman, but it has to be the right man. Just one man’s, forever.” She started to smile, and her lip began to quiver, and she stopped it. “But I didn’t find the man until it was too late. I didn’t find him until you put your hand on my arm yesterday. You could have had me then, forever yours, you could have me now if anything like that was possible. I mean — we could go away together — now you wouldn’t have to promise anything — only you could find out if you want me forever too — the way I want you—”

She lifted her hand and touched me, just a touch, the tips of her fingers barely brushing my sleeve.

I jerked back.

“Listen,” I said, with my voice sounding peculiar, so I tried to correct it. “You are extremely good, no question about it, but as you say, it’s too late. You are trying to go to bat when your side already has three out in the ninth, and that’s against the rules. I’ll hand it to you that you are extremely good. When you turn it on it flows. But in seven minutes now Nero Wolfe will be phoning the police, so you’d better fix your hair. You’ll be having your picture taken.”

She hauled off and smacked me in the face. I barely felt it and didn’t even move my hands.

“I hate men,” she said through her teeth. “God, how I hate men!”

She turned and walked to the bathroom, and entered and closed the door.

I didn’t know whether she had gone to fix her hair or what, and I didn’t care. Instead of crossing to the window and standing there without breathing, as I had done before, I sat down on the edge of the bed and did nothing but breathe. I suppose I did actually know what was going to happen. Anyhow, when it happened, when the noise came, not nearly as loud as it had been in Wolfe’s office because then the capsule had been inside a metal percolator, I don’t think I jumped or even jerked. I did not run, but walked, to the bathroom door, opened it and entered.

Less than a minute later I went to the back door in the kitchen and opened that and told Saul Panzer, “All over. She stuck it in her mouth and lit the fuse. You get out. Go and report to Wolfe. I’ll phone the cops.”

“But you must be — I’ll stay—”

“No, go on. Step on it. I feel fine.”

XI

At noon the next day, Saturday, I was getting fed up with all the jabber because I had a question or two I wanted to ask myself. Cramer had come to Nero Wolfe’s office prepared to attack from all sides at once, bringing not only Sergeant Purley Stebbins but also a gang of civilians consisting of Helen Vardis, Joe Groll, and Conroy Blaney. Blaney had not been let in. On that Wolfe would not budge. Blaney was not to enter his house. The others had all been admitted and were now distributed around the office, with Cramer, of course, in the red leather chair. For over half an hour he and Wolfe had been closer to getting locked in a death grip than I had ever seen them before.

Wolfe was speaking. “Then arrest me,” he said. “Shut up, get a warrant, and arrest me.”

Cramer, having said about all an inspector could say, merely glared.

“Wording the charge would be difficult,” Wolfe murmured. When he was maddest he murmured. “I have not withheld evidence, or obstructed justice, or shielded the guilty. I thought it possible that Mrs. Poor, confronted suddenly with that evidence, would collapse and confess.”

“Nuts,” Cramer said wearily. “How about confronting me with the evidence? Instead of evidence, what you confront me with is another corpse. And I know” — he tapped the chair arm with a stiff finger — “exactly why. The only evidence you had that was worth a damn was that photograph of Arthur Howell. If you had turned it over to me—”

“Nonsense. You already had a photograph of Arthur Howell. Several of them. The Beck Products Corporation people gave them to you on Thursday. So they told Saul Panzer. What good would one more do you?”

“Okay.” Cramer was in a losing fight and knew it. “But I didn’t know that Howell had come to see you on Tuesday with Mrs. Poor, passing himself off as her husband. Dressed in the same kind of suit and shirt and tie that Poor was wearing that day. Only you and Goodwin knew that.”

“I knew it. Mr. Goodwin didn’t. He thought it was a photograph of Mr. Poor.”

“Protecting the help, huh?” Cramer snorted incredulously. “Anyhow, you knew it, and you knew it sewed her up, and you knew if she was arrested and came to trial you would have to go to court and testify, and you don’t like to leave home and you don’t like what there is to sit on in a courtroom, so you arrange it otherwise, and I’ll be damned if anyone has appointed you judge, jury, district attorney, and the police force all in one.”

Wolfe’s shoulders moved an eighth of an inch up and down. “As I said, get a warrant, but watch the wording.”

Cramer glared. A noise like a giggle came from the direction of Helen Vardis, and Joe Groll, being perched on the arm of her chair and therefore close enough, put his hand over hers. Apparently the days when they had taken turns following each other were only a memory.

I put in an entry. “Excuse me, but when you gentlemen finish the shadow-boxing I would like to ask a question.” I was looking at Wolfe. “You say you knew Poor wasn’t Poor. When and how?”

Of course Wolfe faked. He sighed as if he were thinking now this is going to be an awful bore. Actually he was always tickled stiff to show how bright he was.

His eyes came to me. “Wednesday evening you told me that Mr. Poor smoked ten to fifteen cigars a day. Thursday Mr. Cramer said the same thing. But the man that came here Tuesday, calling himself Poor, didn’t even know how to hold a cigar, let alone smoke one.”

“He was nervous.”

“If he was he didn’t show it, except with the cigar. You saw him. It was a ludicrous performance and he should never have tried it. When I learned that Mr. Poor was a veteran cigar smoker, the only question was who had impersonated him in this office? And the complicity of Mrs. Poor was obvious, especially with the added information, also furnished by Mr. Cramer, that no photograph of Mr. Poor was available. There are photographs of everybody nowadays. Mrs. Poor was an ass. She was supremely an ass when she selected me to bamboozle. She wanted to establish the assumption that Mr. Blaney was going to kill Mr. Poor. That was intelligent. She did not want to take her counterfeit Mr. Poor to the police, for fear someone there might be acquainted with the real Mr. Poor. That also was intelligent. But it was idiotic to choose me as the victim.”

“She hated men,” I remarked.

Wolfe nodded. “She must have had a low opinion of men. In order to get what she wanted, which presumably was something like half a million dollars — counting her husband’s fortune, the insurance money, and a half share in the business after Mr. Blaney had been executed for the murder of Mr. Poor — she was willing to kill three men, two by direct action and one indirectly. Incidentally, except for the colossal blunder of picking on me she was not a fool.”

“The hell she wasn’t,” Cramer growled. “With all that trick set-up? She was absolutely batty.”

“No, sir.” Wolfe shook his head. “She was not. Go back over it. She didn’t manufacture the trick set-up out of her head, she simply used what she had. On a certain day she found herself with these ingredients at hand. One, the hostility between the partners in the business, amply corroborated by such details as Mr. Poor having Miss Vardis spy on Mr. Blaney, and Mrs. Poor herself having Mr. Groll do the same. Two, her acquaintance with a man named Arthur Howell, who had access to a supply of explosive capsules capable of concealment in a cigar, and who also sufficiently resembled her husband in build and general appearance except for the face itself, and she intended to take care of the face. Ten of your men, Mr. Cramer, kept at it for a week or so, can probably trace her association with Mr. Howell. They’re good at that. Unquestionably it was those qualifications of Mr. Howell that suggested the details of her plan. She did not of course inform him that she hated men. Quite the contrary. She persuaded him to help her kill her husband, offering, presumably, a strong incentive.”

“She was good at offering incentives,” I declared. “She was good period. The way she pretended here, Tuesday afternoon, that she wanted Poor to skip it and go live in the country and grow roses, with her to cook and darn socks.”

Wolfe nodded. “I admit she was ingenious. By the way, Mr. Groll, did she have an opportunity to conceal those four capsules in that desk calendar?”

“Yes,” Joe said. “Helen and I were discussing that. She came there Tuesday to go with Poor to the rodeo, and she could have done it then. Anyway, she had keys, she could have done it any time.”

“That was well conceived,” Wolfe said approvingly. “That and the hairs in the box of cigars. She was preparing for all contingencies. Neither of those touches was meant for you, Mr. Cramer, but for a jury in case it ever got to that. She had sense enough to know what a good lawyer could do with complications of that sort. Will you gentlemen have some beer?”

“No,” Cramer said bluntly. “I’ll have a question. Poor wasn’t here Tuesday afternoon?”

“No, sir. Arthur Howell was.”

“Then where was he?”

“At the rodeo.” Wolfe pushed a button, two pushes for beer. “Again Mrs. Poor was ingenious. Look at her schedule for Tuesday. She went to the Blaney and Poor office — what time, Mr. Groll?”

Helen answered. “She came around noon. They went to lunch together and then were going to the rodeo.”

“Thank you. So all she had to do was to make some excuse and see that he went to the rodeo alone. It was an ideal selection — Madison Square Garden, that enormous crowd. Then she met Arthur Howell somewhere near, having arranged for him to be dressed as her husband was dressed, and brought him here. She was driving her car — or her husband’s car. They left here a little before five o’clock. Between here and Forty-second Street he got out and went to Grand Central to take a train to White Plains. A woman who could persuade a man to help her kill her husband could surely persuade him to take a train to White Plains.”

Fritz brought beer, and Wolfe opened a bottle and poured.

“Then she continued to Fiftieth Street and met her husband as he left the rodeo, and they drove to Westchester, having an appointment to see Mr. Blaney at his place there. She talked her husband out of that, left him at a place called Monty’s Tavern, drove somewhere, probably the White Plains railroad station, met Arthur Howell there as arranged, drove to an isolated spot probably previously selected, turned off the road into an orchard, killed Mr. Howell or knocked him unconscious with whatever she used for that purpose, removed his clothing, and ran the car over him to obliterate his face.”

A noise came from Helen Vardis. She had obliterated her own face by covering it with her hands. That gave Joe an excuse to touch her again, which he did.

“Granted her basic premise,” Wolfe went on, “she couldn’t very well have been expected to let Arthur Howell continue to live. She would never have had a carefree moment. What if Mr. Goodwin or I had met him on the street? That thought should have occurred to him, but apparently something about Mrs. Poor had made him quit thinking. There are precedents. Since she was good at detail, I presume she spread his coat over his head so as to leave no telltale matter on her tires. What she then did with the clothing is no longer of interest, at least not to me.”

He drank beer. “She proceeded. First to Mr. Blaney’s place to make sure, by looking through windows, that he was alone there, so that she could safely say that she had gone to see him and couldn’t find him. Again she was providing for all contingencies. If Arthur Howell’s body was after all identified, known as that of a man who was with the Beck Products Corporation and had access to those capsules, it would help to have it established that Mr. Blaney had not been at home during the time that Arthur Howell had been killed. It wouldn’t surprise me if a good search around Mr. Blaney’s place discovered Mr. Howell’s clothes concealed — no, that wouldn’t do, since they were the same as Mr. Poor’s. She wouldn’t make that kind of mistake.”

He emptied the glass. “The rest is anticlimax, though of course for her it was the grand consummation. She returned to Monty’s Tavern, told her husband Mr. Blaney had not been at home, dined with him, drove back to New York and went to their apartment, and got him a nice fresh cigar from a new box. Everything worked perfectly. It sounds more complicated than it really was. Such details as making sure that no photographs of her husband would be available for the newspapers had no doubt been already attended to.”

“That receipt you signed,” Cramer growled.

“What? Oh. That gave her no difficulty. Arthur Howell gave the receipt to her, naturally, and she put it in her husband’s pocket. That was important. It was probably the first thing she did after the cigar exploded.”

“Meanwhile you’ve got the five thousand dollars.”

“Yes, sir. I have.”

“But Poor didn’t pay it to you. You never saw Poor. You weren’t hired by him. If you want to say Mrs. Poor paid it, do you take money from murderers?”

It was one of Cramer’s feeblest attempts to be nasty, certainly not up to his standard.

Wolfe merely poured beer and said, “Pfui. Whether Mr. Poor paid me or not, he got his money’s worth.”

Try analyzing the logic of that. I can’t.

Content

Rex Stout
Instead of Evidence

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