Rex Stout

Door to Death

I

Nero Wolfe took a long stretching step to clear a puddle of water at the edge of the graveled driveway, barely reached the grass of the lawn with his left foot, slipped, teetered, pawed wildly at the air, and got his sixth of a ton of flesh and bone balanced again without having actually sprawled.

“Just like Ray Böiger,” I said admiringly.

He scowled at me savagely, which made me feel at home though we were far from home. More than an hour of that raw and wet December morning had been spent by me driving up to northern Westchester, with him in the rear seat on account of his silly theory that when the inevitable crash comes he’ll lose less blood and have fewer bones broken, and there we were at our destination in the environs of the village of Katonah, trespassers on the estate of one Joseph G. Pitcairn. I say trespassers because, instead of wheeling up to the front of the big old stone mansion and crossing the terrace to the door like gentlemen, I had, under orders, branched off onto the service drive, circled to the rear of the house, and stopped the car at the gravel’s edge in the neighborhood of the garage. The reason for that maneuver was that, far from being there to see Mr. Pitcairn, we were there to steal something from him.

“That was a fine recovery,” I told Wolfe approvingly. “You’re not used to this rough cross-country going.”

Before he could thank me for the compliment a man in greasy coveralls emerged from the garage and came for us. It didn’t seem likely, in view of the greasy coveralls, that he was what we had come to steal, but Wolfe’s need was desperate and he was taking no chances, so he wiped the scowl off and spoke to the man in hearty friendliness.

“Good morning, sir.”

The man nodded. “Looking for someone?”

“Yes, Mr. Andrew Krasicki. Are you him?”

“I am not. My name’s Imbrie, Neil Imbrie, butler and chauffeur and handyman. You look like some kind of a salesman. Insurance?”

Butlers were entirely different, I decided, when you came at them by the back way. When Wolfe, showing no resentment at the accusation, whatever he felt, told him it wasn’t insurance but something personal and agreeable, he took us to the far end of the garage, which had doors for five cars, and pointed out a path which wound off into shrubbery.

“That goes to his cottage, way the other side of the tennis court. In the summer you can’t see it from here on account of the leaves, but now you can a little. He’s down there taking a nap because he was up last night fumigating. Often I’m up late driving, but it don’t mean I get a nap. The next time around I’m going to be a gardener.”

Wolfe thanked him and made for the path, with me for rearguard. It had just about made up its mind to stop raining, but everything was soaking wet, and after we got into the shrubbery we had to duck whenever a bare twig stretched out low to avoid making our own private rain. For me, young and Umber and in good trim, that was nothing, but for Wolfe, with his three hundred pounds, which is an understatement, especially with his heavy tweed overcoat and hat and cane, it was asking a lot. The shrubbery quit at the other side of the tennis court, and we entered a grove of evergreens, then an open space, and there was the cottage.

Wolfe knocked on the door, and it opened, and facing us was a blond athlete not much older than me, with big bright blue eyes and his whole face ready to laugh. I never completely understand why a girl looks in any other direction when I am present, but I wouldn’t have given it a moment’s thought if this specimen had been in sight. Wolfe told him good morning and asked if he was Mr. Andrew Krasicki.

“That’s my name.” He made a little bow. “And may I — by God, it’s Nero Wolfe! Aren’t you Nero Wolfe?”

“Yes,” Wolfe confessed modestly. “May I come in for a little talk, Mr. Krasicki? I wrote you a letter but got no reply, and yesterday on the telephone you—”

The blond prince interrupted. “It’s all right,” he declared. “All settled!”

“Indeed. What is?”

“I’ve decided to accept. I’ve just written you a letter.”

“When can you come?”

“Any time you say. Tomorrow. I’ve got a good assistant and he can take over here.”

Wolfe did not whoop with glee. Instead, he compressed his lips and breathed deep through his nose. In a moment he spoke. “Confound it, may I come in? I want to sit down.”

II

Wolfe’s reaction was perfectly natural. True, he had just got wonderful news, but also he had just learned that if he had stayed home he would have got it just the same in tomorrow morning’s mail, and that was hard to take standing up. He hates going outdoors and rarely does, and he would rather trust himself in a room alone with three or four mortal enemies than in a piece of machinery on wheels.

But he had been driven to the wall. Four people live in the old brownstone house on West 35th Street. First, him. Second, me, assistant everything from detective to doorbell answerer. Third, Fritz Brenner, cook and house manager. And fourth, Theodore Horstmann, tender and defender of the ten thousand orchids in the plant rooms on the roof. But that was the trouble: there was no longer a fourth. A telegram had come from Illinois that Theodore’s mother was critically ill and he must come at once, and he had taken the first train. Wolfe, instead of spending a pleasant four hours a day in the plant rooms pretending he was hard at it, had had to dig in and work like a dog. Fritz and I could help some, but we weren’t experts. Appeals were broadcast in every direction, especially after word came from Theodore that he couldn’t tell whether he would be back in six days or six months, and there were candidates for the job, but no one that Wolfe would trust with his rare and precious hybrids. He had already heard of this Andrew Krasicki, who had successfully crossed an Odontoglossum cirrhosum with an O. nobile veitchianum, and when he learned from Lewis Hewitt that Krasicki had worked for him for three years and was as good as they come, that settled it. He had to have Krasicki. He had written him; no answer. He had phoned, and had been brushed off. He had phoned again, and got no further. So, that wet December morning, tired and peevish and desperate, he had sent me to the garage for the car, and when I rolled up in front of the house there he was on the sidewalk, in his hat and overcoat and cane, grim and resolute, ready to do or die. Stanley making for Livingstone in the African jungle was nothing compared to Wolfe making for Krasicki in Westchester.

And here was Krasicki saying he had already written he would come! It was an awful anticlimax.

“I want to sit down,” Wolfe repeated firmly.

But he didn’t get to, not yet. Krasicki said sure, go on in and make himself at home, but he had just been starting for the greenhouse when we arrived and he would have to go. I put in to remark that maybe we’d better get back to town, to our own greenhouse, and start the day’s work. That reminded Wolfe that I was there, and he gave Krasicki and me each other’s names, and we shook hands. Then Krasicki said he had a Phalaenopsis Aphrodite in flower we might like to see.

Wolfe grunted. “Species? I have eight.”

“Oh, no.” It was easy to tell from Krasicki’s tone of horticultural snobbery, by no means new to me, that he really belonged. “Not species and not dayana. Sanderiana. Nineteen sprays.”

“Good heavens,” Wolfe said enviously. “I must see it.”

So we neither went in and sat down nor went back to our car, which was just as well, since in either case we would have been minus a replacement for Theodore. Krasicki led the way along the path by which we had come, but as we approached the house and outbuildings he took a fork to the left which skirted shrubs and perennial borders, now mostly bare but all neat. As we passed a young man in a rainbow shirt who was scattering peat moss on a border, he said, “You owe me a dime, Andy. No snow,” and Krasicki grinned and told him, “See my lawyer, Gus.”

The greenhouse, on the south side of the house, had been hidden from our view as we had driven in. Approaching it even on this surly December day, it stole the show from the mansion. With stone base walls to match the house, and curving glass, it was certainly high, wide, and handsome. At its outer extremity it ended in a one-story stone building with a slate roof, and the path Krasicki took led to that, and around to its door. The whole end wall was covered with ivy, and the door was fancy, stained oak slabs decorated with black iron, and on it was hanging a big framed placard, with red lettering so big you could read it from twenty paces:

DANGER

DO NOT ENTER

DOOR TO DEATH

I muttered something about a cheerful welcome. Wolfe cocked an eye at the sign and asked, “Cyanogas G?”

Krasicki, lifting the sign from its hook and putting a key in the hole, shook his head. “Ciphogene. That’s all right; the vents have been open for several hours. This sign’s a little poetic, but it was here when I came. I understand Mrs. Pitcairn painted it herself.”

Inside with them, I took a good sniff of the air. Ciphogene is the fumigant Wolfe uses in his plant rooms, and I knew how deadly it was, but there was only a faint trace to my nose, so I went on breathing. The inside of the stone building was the storage and workroom, and right away Wolfe started looking things over.

Andy Krasicki said politely but briskly, “If you’ll excuse me, I’m always behind a morning after fumigating...”

Wolfe, on his good behavior, followed him through the door into the greenhouse, and I went along.

“This is the cool room,” Krasicki told us. “Next is the warm room, and then, the one adjoining the house, the medium. I have to get some vents closed and put the automatic on.”

It was quite a show, no question about that, but I was so used to Wolfe’s arrangement, practically all orchids, that it seemed pretty messy. When we proceeded to the warm room there was a sight I really enjoyed: Wolfe’s face as he gazed at the P. Aphrodite sanderiana with its nineteen sprays. The admiration and the envy together made his eyes gleam as I had seldom seen them. As for the flower, it was new to me, and it was something special — rose, brown, purple, and yellow. The rose suffused the petals, and the brown, purple, and yellow were on the labellum.

“Is it yours?” Wolfe demanded.

Andy shrugged. “Mr. Pitcairn owns it.”

“I don’t care a hang who owns it. Who grew it?”

“I did. From a seed.”

Wolfe grunted. “Mr. Krasicki, I’d like to shake your hand.”

Andy permitted him to do so and then moved along to proceed through the door into the medium room, presumably to close more vents. After Wolfe had spent a few more minutes coveting the Phalaenopsis, we followed. This was another mess, everything from violet geraniums to a thing in a tub with eight million little white flowers, labeled Serissa foetida. I smelled it, got nothing, crushed one of the flowers with my fingers and smelled that, and then had no trouble understanding the foetida. My fingers had it good, so I went out to the sink in the workroom and washed with soap.

I got back to the medium room in time to hear Andy telling Wolfe that he had a curiosity he might like to see. “Of course,” Andy said, “you know Tïbouchina semidecandra, sometimes listed as Pleroma mecanthrum or Pleroma grandiflora.”

“Certainly,” Wolfe assented.

I bet he had never heard of it before. Andy went on. “Well, I’ve got a two-year plant here that I raised from a cutting, less than two feet high, and a branch has sported. The leaves are nearly round, not ovate, foveolate, and the petioles — wait till I show you — it’s resting now out of light—”

He had stepped to where a strip of green canvas hung from the whole length of a bench section, covering the space from the waist-high bench to the ground, and, squatting, he lifted the canvas by its free bottom edge and stuck his head and shoulders under the bench. Then he didn’t move. For too many seconds he didn’t move at all. Then he came back out, bumping his head on the concrete bench, straightened up to his full height, and stood as rigid as if he had been made of concrete himself, facing us, all his color gone and his eyes shut.

When he heard me move his eyes opened, and when he saw me reaching for the canvas he whispered to me, “Don’t look. No. Yes, you’d better look.”

I lifted the canvas and looked. After I had kept my head and shoulders under the bench about as long as Andy had, I backed out, not bumping my head, and told Wolfe, “It’s a dead woman.”

“She looks dead,” Andy whispered.

“Yeah,” I agreed, “she is dead. Dead and cooled off.”

“Confound it,” Wolfe growled.

III

I will make an admission. A private detective is not a sworn officer of the law, like a lawyer, but he operates under a license which imposes a code on him. And in my pocket was the card which put Archie Goodwin under the code. But as I stood there, glancing from Wolfe to Andy Krasicki, what was in the front of my mind was not the next and proper step according to the code, but merely the thought that it was one hell of a note if Nero Wolfe couldn’t even take a little drive to Westchester to try to lasso an orchid tender without a corpse butting in to gum the works. I didn’t know then that Wolfe’s need for an orchid tender was responsible for the corpse being there that day, and that what I took for coincidence was cause and effect.

Andy stayed rigid. Wolfe moved toward the canvas, and I said, “You can’t bend over that far.”

But he tried to, and, finding I was right, got down on his knees and lifted the canvas. I squatted beside him. There wasn’t much light, but enough, considering what met the eye. Whatever had killed her had done things to her face, but it had probably been all right for looks. She had fine light brown hair, and nice hands, and was wearing a blue patterned rayon dress. She lay stretched out on her back, with her eyes open and also her mouth open. There was nothing visible under there with her except an overturned eight-inch flower pot with a plant in it which had a branch broken nearly off. Wolfe withdrew and got erect, and I followed suit. Evidently Andy hadn’t moved.

“She’s dead,” he said, this time out loud.

Wolfe nodded. “And your plant is mutilated. The branch that sported is broken.”

“What? Plant?”

“Your Tibouchina.”

Andy frowned, shook his head as if to see if it rattled, squatted by the canvas again, and lifted it. His head and shoulders disappeared. I violated the code, and so did Wolfe, by not warning him not to touch things. When he reappeared he had not only touched, he had snitched evidence. In his hand was the broken branch of the Tibouchina. With his middle finger he raked a furrow in the bench soil, put the lower stem of the branch in it, replaced the soil over the stem, and pressed the soil down.

“Did you kill her?” Wolfe snapped at him.

In one way it was a good question and in another way a bad one. It jolted Andy out of his trance, which was okay, but it also made him want to plug Wolfe. He came fast and determined, but the space between the benches was narrow and I was in between. As for plugging me, I had arms too. He stopped close against me, chest to chest, with pressure.

“That won’t help you any,” Wolfe said bitterly. “You were going to start to work for me tomorrow. Now what? Can I leave you here with this? No. You’d be in jail before I got home. That question you didn’t like, you’ll be answering it many times before the day ends.”

“Good God.” Andy fell back.

“Certainly. You might as well start with me. Did you kill her?”

“No. Good God, no!”

“Who is she?”

“She’s — it’s Dini. Dini Lauer. Mrs. Pitcairn’s nurse. We were going to be married. Yesterday, just yesterday, she said she would marry me. And I’m standing here.” Andy raised his hands, with all the fingers spread, and shook them. “I stand here! What am I going to do?”

“Hold it, brother,” I told him.

“You’re going to come with me,” Wolfe said, squeezing past me. “I saw a telephone in the workroom, but we’ll talk a little before we use it. Archie, stay here.”

“I’ll stay here,” Andy said. The trance look was gone from his eyes and he was fully conscious again, but his color hadn’t returned and there were drops of sweat on his forehead. He repeated it. “I’ll stay here.”

It took two good minutes to get him to let me have the honor. Finally he shoved off, with Wolfe behind, and after they had left that room I could see them, through the glass partitions, crossing the warm and cool rooms and opening the door to the workroom. They closed it behind them, and I was alone, but of course you’re never really alone in a greenhouse. Not only do you have the plants and flowers for company, but also the glass walls give you the whole outdoors. Anyone within seeing distance, in three directions, was really with me, and that led me to my first conclusion: that Dini Lauer, alive or dead, had not been rolled behind that canvas between the hours of seven in the morning and five in the afternoon. The question, alive or dead, made me want a second conclusion, and again I squatted to lift the canvas in search of it. When, some four years previously, the ciphogene tank had been installed in Wolfe’s plant rooms to replace cyanogas and Nico-Fume, I had read the literature, which had included a description of what you would look like if you got careless, and a second thorough inspection of Dini’s face and throat brought me my second conclusion: she had been alive when she was rolled or pushed under the bench. It was the ciphogene that did it. Since it seemed improbable that she had consciously and obligingly crawled under the bench and lain still, I went on to look and feel for a bump or broken skin, but found neither.

As I got upright again a noise came, knuckles on wood, and then a man’s voice, raised to carry through the wood.

“Andy!” It raised some more. “Andy!”

The wood belonged to a large door at the end of the room, the end where the greenhouse was attached to the mansion. The benches stopped some twenty feet short of that end, leaving room for an open space where there was a floor mat flanked by tubs and jars of oversized plants. The pounding came again, louder, and the voice, also louder. I stepped to the door and observed three details: that it opened away from me, presumably into the house, that it was fastened with a heavy brass bolt on my side, and that all its edges, where it met the frame and sill, were sealed with wide bands of tape.

The voice and knuckles were authoritative. No good could come of an attempt to converse through the bolted door, me with the voice of a stranger. If I merely kept still, the result would probably be an invasion at the other end of the greenhouse, via the workroom, and I knew how Wolfe hated to be interrupted when he was having a talk. And I preferred not to let company enter, under the circumstances.

So I slid the bolt back, pushed the door open enough to let myself through, shut it by backing against it, and kept my back there.

The voice demanded, “Who the hell are you?”

It was Joseph G. Pitcairn, and I was in, not a hall or vestibule, but the enormous living room of his house. He was not famous enough to be automatically known, but when we had started, by mail, to try to steal a gardener from him, I had made a few inquiries and, in addition to learning that he was an amateur golfer, a third-generation coupon clipper, and a loafer, I had got a description. The nose alone was enough, with its list to starboard, the result, I had been told, of an accidental back stroke from someone’s Number Four iron.

“Where’s Andy?” he demanded, without giving me time to tell him who the hell I was.

“My name—” I began.

“Is Miss Lauer in there?” he demanded.

My function, of course, was to gain time for Wolfe. I let him have a refined third-generation grin in exchange for his vulgar glare, and said quietly, “Make it an even dozen and I’ll start answering.”

“A dozen what?”

“Questions. Or I’ll trade you. Have you ever heard of Nero Wolfe?”

“Certainly. What about him? He grows orchids.”

“That’s one way of putting it. As he says, the point is not who owns them but who grows them. In his case, Theodore Horstmann was in the plant rooms twelve hours a day, sometimes more, but he had to leave because his mother took sick. That was a week ago yesterday. After floundering around, Mr. Wolfe decided to take Andy Krasicki away from you. You must remember that he—”

It wasn’t Joseph G. who made me break off. He and I were not alone. Standing back of him were a young man and young woman; off to one side was a woman not so young but still not beyond any reasonable deadline, in a maid’s uniform; and at my right was Neil Imbrie, still in his coveralls. It was the young woman who stopped my flow by suddenly advancing and chopping at me.

“Quit stalling and get away from that door. Something’s happened and I’m going in there!” She grabbed my sleeve to use force.

The young man called to her without moving, “Watch it, Sibby! It must be Archie Goodwin and he’d just as soon hit a woman as—”

“Be quiet, Donald!” Joseph G. ordered him. “Sybil, may I suggest a little decent restraint?” His cold gray eyes came back to me. “Your name is Archie Goodwin and you work for Nero Wolfe?”

“That’s right.”

“You say you came to see Krasicki?”

I nodded. “To get him away from you.” I rubbed that in hoping to get a nice long argument started, but he didn’t bite.

“Does that excuse your bursting into my house and barricading a door?”

“No,” I conceded. “Andy invited me into the greenhouse, and I was standing there when I heard you knocking and calling him. He was busy with Mr. Wolfe, and I saw the door was bolted, and I thought it must be you and you certainly had a right to have the door of your own greenhouse opened, so I opened it. As for the barricading, that’s where we get to the point. I admit I’m not acting normal. Assuming that the reason is somehow connected with this Miss Lauer, whom I have never met, naturally I would like to know why you asked me if Miss Lauer is in there. Why did you?”

Joseph G. took one long stride, which was all he needed to reach me. “Get away,” he said, meaning it.

I shook my head, keeping my grin refined, and opened my mouth to speak just as he reached for me. I had already decided that it wouldn’t be tactful to let the cold war get hot, especially since he had Donald and Neil Imbrie in reserve, and that as a last resort I would release some facts, but it didn’t get that far. As my muscles tightened in reflex to the touch of his hand, the sound of a car’s engine came from outdoors. From where Imbrie stood he had to move only two steps to get a view through a window, and he did so, staring out. Then he turned to his employer.

“State police, Mr. Pitcairn,” he said. “Two cars.”

Evidently Wolfe’s talk with Andy had been short and sour, since he hadn’t waited long to do something that he never resorts to if he can help it: calling the cops.

IV

Five hours later, at three o’clock in the afternoon, seated in the one decent chair in the workroom of the greenhouse, Nero Wolfe was making a last frantic despairing try.

“The charge,” he urged, “can be anything you choose to make it, short of first degree murder. The bail can be any amount and it will be furnished. The risk will be minimal, and in the end you’ll thank me for it, when I’ve got the facts and you’ve got to take them.”

Three men shook their heads with finality.

One said, “Better give up and get yourself a gardener that’s not a killer.” That was Ben Dykes, head of the county detectives.

Another said nastily, “If it was me you’d be wanting bail yourself as a material witness.” That was Lieutenant Con Noonan of the State Police. He had been a stinker from the start, and it was only after the arrival of the DA, who had good reason to remember the Fashalt case, that Wolfe and I had been accepted as human.

The third said, “No use, Wolfe. Of course any facts you get will be welcome.” That was Cleveland Archer, District Attorney of Westchester County. Any common murder he would have left to the help, but not one that a Joseph G. Pitcairn was connected with, no matter how. He went on, “What can the charge be but first degree murder? That doesn’t mean the file is closed and I’m ready for trial. Tomorrow’s another day, and there are a couple of points that need some attention and they’ll get it, but it looks as if he’s guilty.”

The five of us were alone at last. Wolfe was in the best chair available, I was perched on a corner of a potting bench, and the other three were standing. The corpse had left long ago in a basket, the army of official scientists had finished and gone, ten thousand questions had been asked and answered by everyone on the premises, the statements had been signed, and Andy Krasicki had departed for White Plains in a back seat, handcuffed to a dick. The law had made a quick clean job of it.

And Wolfe, having had nothing to eat since breakfast but four sandwiches and three cups of coffee, was even more desperate than when he had sent me for the car that dark December morning. Andy had been his, and he had lost him.

The case against him was fair to middling. There was general agreement that he had been jelly for Dini Lauer since he had first sighted her, two months back, when she had arrived to take care of Mrs. Pitcairn, who had tumbled down some steps and hurt her back. That had been testified to even by Gus Treble, the young man in the rainbow shirt, Andy’s assistant, who was obviously all for Andy. Gus said that Dini had given Andy the fanciest runaround he had ever seen, which wasn’t too bright of Gus if he had his sympathy on straight.

To the question why should Andy want to get rid of Dini the very day she consented to marry him, the answer was, who says she consented? Only Andy. No one else had heard tell of it, and he himself had announced the good news only to Wolfe and me. Then had he fumigated her to death merely because he couldn’t have her? That was probably one of the points which the DA thought needed attention. For a judge and jury some Grade A jealousy would have helped. That was a little ticklish, and naturally the DA wanted a night to sleep on it. Who had been the third point of the jealous triangle? Of those present. Neil Imbrie didn’t look the part, Gus Treble didn’t act it, and Pitcairn and son were not the sort of people a DA will take a poke at if he can help it. So he couldn’t be blamed for wanting to take a look around. Besides, he had asked them all questions, plenty, and to the point, without getting a lead.

Noonan and Dykes had got all their personal timetables early in the game, but when the quickie report on the p.m. had come from White Plains, telling about the morphine, the DA had had another try at them. The laboratory reported that there was morphine present but not enough to kill, and that it could safely be assumed that Dini had died of ciphogene poisoning. The morphine answered one question — how had she been made unconscious enough to stay put under the bench until the ciphogene would take over? — but it raised another one. Was the law going to have to prove that Andy had bought morphine? But that had been a cinch. They had it covered in a matter of minutes. Vera Imbrie, the cook, Neil’s wife, whom I had seen in the background in uniform when I invaded the living room, was troubled with facial neuralgia and kept a box of morphine pellets in a cupboard in the kitchen. She hadn’t had to use them for nearly a month, and now the box was gone. Andy, along with everyone else, had known about them and where she kept them. It gave the law a good excuse to search the whole house, and a dozen or so spent an hour at it, but found no morphine and no box. Andy’s cottage had of course already been frisked, but they had another go at that too.

So the DA checked over their personal timetables with them, but found nothing new. Of course Andy was featured. According to him, at a tête-à-tête in the greenhouse late in the afternoon Dini had at last surrendered and had agreed not only to marry him sometime soon, but also, since he wanted to accept the offer from Nero Wolfe, to quit the Pitcairn job and get one in New York. She had asked him to keep it quiet until she had broken the news to Mrs. Pitcairn. That had been around five o’clock, and he had next seen her some four hours later, a little after nine, when he had been in the greenhouse on his evening round and she had entered through the door that connected with the living room. They had looked at flowers and talked, and then had gone to sit in the workroom and talk some more, and to drink beer, which Dini had brought from the kitchen. At eleven o’clock she had said good night and left via the door to the living room, and that was the last he had seen of her. That’s how he told it.

He too had left, by the outside door, and gone to his cottage and written the letter to Wolfe, deciding not to go to bed because, first, he was so excited with so much happiness, and second, he would have to be up at three anyway. He had worked at propagation records and got his things in order ready to pack. At three o’clock he had gone to the greenhouse and had been joined there by Gus Treble, who was to get his last lesson in the routine of preparation for fumigation. After an hour’s work, including bolting and taping the door to the living room, and opening the ciphogene master valve in the workroom for eight minutes and closing it again, and locking the outside door and putting up the DOOR TO DEATH sign, Gus had gone home and Andy had returned to the cottage. Again he admitted he had not gone to bed. At seven o’clock he had gone to the greenhouse and opened the vents with outside controls, returned to the cottage, finally felt tired, and slept. At eight-thirty he awoke, ate a quick breakfast and drank coffee, and was ready to leave for the day’s work when there was a knock on the door and he opened it to find Nero Wolfe and me.

The timetables of the others, as furnished by them, were less complicated. Gus Treble had spent the evening with a girl at Bedford Hills and stayed late, until it was time to leave for his three o’clock date with Andy at the greenhouse. Neil and Vera Imbrie had gone up to their room a little before ten, listened to the radio for half an hour, and gone to bed and to sleep. Joseph G. Pitcairn had left immediately after dinner for a meeting of the Executive Committee of the Northern Westchester Taxpayers’ Association, at somebody’s house in North Salem, and had returned shortly before midnight and gone to bed. Donald, after dining with his father and Dini Lauer, had gone to his room to write. Asked what he had written, he said fiction. He hadn’t been asked to produce it. Sybil had eaten upstairs with her mother, who was by now able to stand up and even walk around a little but wasn’t venturing downstairs for meals. After eating, she had read aloud to her mother for a couple of hours and helped her with going to bed, and had then gone to her own room for the night.

None of them had seen Dini since shortly after dinner. Asked if it wasn’t unusual for Dini not to make an evening visit to the patient she was caring for, they all said no, and Sybil explained that she was quite capable of turning down her mother’s bed for her. Asked if they knew about Mrs. Imbrie’s morphine pellets and where the box was kept, they all said certainly. They all admitted that no known fact excluded the possibility that one of them, sometime between eleven and three, had got Dini to drink a glass of beer with enough morphine in it to put her out, and, after the morphine took, had carried her to the greenhouse and rolled her under the bench, but the implication didn’t seem to quicken anyone’s pulse except Vera Imbrie’s. She was silly enough to assert that she hadn’t known Andy was going to fumigate that night, but took it back when reminded that everyone else admitted that the word of warning had been given to all as usual. The cops didn’t hold it against her, and I concede that I didn’t either.

Nor were there any contradictions about the morning. The house stirred late and breakfast was free-lance. Sybil had had hers upstairs with her mother. They hadn’t missed Dini and started looking for her until after nine o’clock, and their inquiries had resulted in the gathering in the living room and Pitcairn’s knocking on the door to the greenhouse and yelling for Andy.

It was all perfectly neat. No visible finger pointed anywhere except at Andy.

“Someone’s lying,” Wolfe insisted doggedly.

The law wanted to know, “Who? What about?”

“How do I know?” He was plenty exasperated. “That’s your job! Find out!”

“Find out yourself,” Lieutenant Noonan sneered.

Wolfe had put questions, such as, if Andy wanted to kill, why did he pick the one spot and method that would point inevitably to him? Of course their answer was that he had picked that spot and method because he figured that no jury would believe that he had been fool enough to do so, but that was probably another point which the DA thought needed attention. I had to admit, strictly to myself, that none of Wolfe’s questions was unanswerable. His main point, the real basis of his argument, was a little special. Other points, he contended, made Andy’s guilt doubtful; this one proved his innocence. The law assumed, and so did he, Wolfe, that the flower pot under the bench was overturned when Dini Lauer, drugged but alive, was rolled under. It was inconceivable that Andy Krasicki, not pressed for time, had done that. Firstly, he would have moved the pot out of harm’s way; secondly, if in his excitement he had failed to do that and had overturned the pot he would certainly have righted it, and, seeing that the precious branch, the one that had sported, was broken, he would have retrieved it. For such a plant man as Andy Krasicki righting the pot and saving the branch would have been automatic actions, and nothing could have prevented them. He had in fact performed them under even more trying circumstances than those the law assumed, when still stunned from the shock of the discovery of the body.

“Shock hell,” Noonan snorted. “When he put it there himself? I’ve heard tell of your fancies, Wolfe. If this is a sample, I’ll take strawberry.”

By that time I was no longer in a frame of mind to judge Wolfe’s points objectively. What I wanted was to get my thumbs in a proper position behind Noonan’s ears and bear down, and, since that wasn’t practical, I was ready to break my back helping to spring Andy as a substitute. Incidentally, I had cottoned to Andy, who had handled himself throughout like a two-handed man. He had used one of them, the one not fastened to the dick, to shake hands again with Wolfe just before they led him out to the vehicle.

“All right,” he had said, “I’ll leave it to you. I don’t give a damn about me, not now, but the bastard that did it...”

Wolfe had nodded. “Only hours, I hope. You may sleep at my house tonight.”

But that was too optimistic. As aforesaid, at three o’clock they were done and ready to go, and Noonan took a parting crack at Wolfe.

“If it was me you’d be wanting bail yourself as a material witness.”

I may get a chance to put thumbs on him yet some day.

V

After they had left I remarked to Wolfe, “In addition to everything else, here’s a pleasant thought. Not only do you have no Andy, not only do you have to get back home and start watering ten thousand plants, but at a given moment, maybe in a month or maybe sooner, you’ll get a subpoena to go to White Plains and sit on the witness stand.” I shrugged. “Well, if it’s snowy and sleety and icy, we can put on chains and stand a fair chance of getting through.”

“Shut up,” he growled. “I’m trying to think.” His eyes were closed.

I perched on the bench. After some minutes he growled again. “I can’t. Confound this chair.”

“Yeah. The only one I know of that meets the requirements is fifty miles away. By the way, whose guests are we, now that he who invited us in here has been stuck in the coop?”

I got an answer of a kind, though not from Wolfe. The door to the warm room opened, and Joseph G. was with us. His daughter Sybil was with him. By that time I was well acquainted with his listed nose, and with her darting green eyes and pointed chin.

He stopped in the middle of the room and inquired frostily, “Were you waiting for someone?”

Wolfe opened his eyes halfway and regarded him glumly. “Yes,” he said.

“Yes? Who?”

“Anyone. You. Anyone.”

“He’s eccentric,” Sybil explained. “He’s being eccentric.”

“Be quiet, Sybil,” Father ordered her, without removing his eyes from Wolfe. “Before Lieutenant Noonan left he told me he would leave a man at the entrance to my grounds to keep people from entering. He thought we might be annoyed by newspapermen or curious and morbid strangers. But there will be no trouble about leaving. The man has orders not to prevent anyone’s departure.”

“That’s, sensible,” Wolfe approved. “Mr. Noonan is to be commended.” He heaved a deep sigh. “So you’re ordering me off the place. That’s sensible too, from your standpoint.” He didn’t move.

Pitcairn was frowning. “It’s neither sensible nor not sensible. It’s merely appropriate. You had to stay, of course, as long as you were needed — but now you’re not needed. Now that this miserable and sordid episode is finished, I must request—”

“No,” Wolfe snapped. “No indeed.”

“No what?”

“The episode is not finished. I didn’t mean Mr. Noonan is to be commended by me, only by you. He was, in fact, an ass to leave the people on your premises free to go as they please, since one of them is a murderer. None of you should be allowed to take a single step unobserved and unrecorded. As for—”

Sybil burst out laughing. The sound was a little startling, and it seemed to startle her as much as it did her audience, for she suddenly clapped her hand to her mouth to choke it off.

“There you are,” Wolfe told her, “you’re hysterical.” His eyes darted back to Pitcairn. “Why is your daughter hysterical?”

“I am not hysterical,” she denied scornfully. “Anyone would laugh. It wasn’t only melodramatic, it was corny.” She shook her head, held high. “I’m disappointed in you, Nero. I thought you were better than that.”

I think what finally made him take the plunge was her calling him Nero. Up to then he had been torn. It’s true that his telling Andy he hoped it would be only a matter of hours had been a commitment of a sort, and God knows he needed Andy, and the law trampling over him had made bruises, especially Lieutenant Noonan, but up to that point his desire to get back home had kept him from actually making the dive. I knew him well, and I had seen the signs. But this disdainful female stranger calling him Nero was too much, and he took off.

He came up out of the chair and was erect. “I am not comfortable,” he told Joseph G. stiffly, “sitting here in your house with you standing. Mr. Krasicki has engaged me to get him cleared and I intend to do it. It would be foolhardy to assume that you would welcome a thorn for the sake of such abstractions as justice or truth, since that would make you a rarity almost unknown, but you have a right to be asked. May I stay here, with Mr. Goodwin, and talk with you and your family and servants, until I am either satisfied that Mr. Krasicki is guilty or am equipped to satisfy others that he isn’t?”

Sybil, though still scornful, nodded approvingly. “That’s more like it,” she declared. “That rolled.”

“You may not,” Pitcairn said, controlling himself. “If the officers of the law are satisfied, it is no concern of mine that you are not.” He put his hand in his side coat pocket. “I’ve been patient and I’m not going to put up with any more of this. You know where your car is.”

His hand left the pocket, and damned if there wasn’t a gun in it. It was a Colt.38, old but in good condition.

“Let me see your license,” I said sternly.

“Pfui.” Wolfe lifted his shoulders a millimeter and let them down. “Very well, sir, then I’ll have to manage.” He put his hand into his own side pocket, and I thought my God, he’s going to shoot it out with him, but when the hand reappeared all it held was a key. “This,” he said, “is the key to Mr. Krasicki’s cottage, which he gave me so I could enter to collect his belongings — whatever is left of them after the illegal visitations of the police. Mr. Goodwin and I are going there, unaccompanied. When we return to our car we shall await you or your agent to inspect our baggage. Have you any comment?”

“I—” Pitcairn hesitated, frowning, then he said, “No.”

“Good.” Wolfe turned and went to a table for his coat, hat, and cane. “Come, Archie.” He marched.

As we reached the door Sybil’s voice came at our backs. “If you find the box of morphine don’t tell anybody.”

Outdoors I held Wolfe’s coat for him and got mine on. The whole day had been dark, but now it was getting darker, though a cold wind was herding the clouds down to the horizon and on over. When we reached the rear of the house I swung left for a detour to the car to get a flashlight, and caught up with Wolfe on the path. No ducking was necessary now, as the twigs had dried. We passed the tennis court and entered the grove of evergreens, where it was already night.

I glanced at my wrist. “Four o’clock,” I announced cheerily to Wolfe, who was ahead. “If we were home, and Theodore was still there, or Andy had come, you would be just going up to the plant rooms to poke around.”

He didn’t even tell me to shut up. He was way beyond that.

It was dark enough in the cottage to need lights, and I turned them on. Wolfe glanced around, spotted a chair nearly big enough, took off his hat and coat, and sat, while I started a tour. The dicks had left it neat. This medium-sized room wasn’t bad, though the rugs and furniture had seen better days. To the right was a bedroom and to the left another one, and in the rear was a bathroom and a kitchen.

I took only a superficial look and then returned to Wolfe and told him, “Nothing sticks out. Shall I pack?”

“What for?” he asked forlorn.

“Shall I see if they missed something important?”

He only grunted. Not feeling like sitting and looking at him, I began a retake. A desk and a filing cabinet yielded nothing but horticultural details and some uninteresting personal items, and the rest of the room nothing at all. The bedroom at the left was even blanker. The one at the right was the one Andy had used, and I went over it good, but if it contained anything that could be used to flatten Lieutenant Noonan’s nose I failed to find it. The same for the bathroom. And ditto for the kitchen, except that at the rear of a shelf, behind some packages of prunes and cereals, I dug up a little cardboard box. There was no morphine in it, and there was no reason to suppose there ever had been, and I reported its contents to Wolfe merely to get conversation started.

“Keys,” I said, jiggling the box, “and one of them is tagged d-u-p period g-r-n-h-s period, which probably means duplicate to the greenhouse. It would come in handy if we want to sneak in some night and swipe that Phalaenopsis.”

No comment. I put the keys in my pocket and sat down.

Pretty soon I spoke. “I’d like to make it plain,” I said distinctly, “that I don’t like the way you’re acting. Many times, sitting in the office, you have said to me, ‘Archie, go get Whosis and Whosat and bring them here.’ Usually, I have delivered. But if you now tell me to drive you home, and, upon arriving, tell me to go get the Pitcairns and Imbries and Gus Treble, which is what I suspect you of, save it. I wouldn’t even bother to answer, not after the way you’ve bitched it up just because a pretty girl called you by your first name.”

“She isn’t pretty,” he growled.

“Nuts. Certainly she’s pretty, though I don’t like her any better than you do. I just wanted to make sure that you understand what the situation will be if we go home.”

He studied me. After a while he nodded, with his lips compressed, as if in final acceptance of an ugly fact.

“There’s a phone,” he said. “Get Fritz.”

“Yeah, I saw it, but what if it’s connected with the house?”

“Try it.”

I went to the desk and did so, dialing the operator, and, with no audible interference, got her, gave the number, and heard Fritz’s voice in my ear. Wolfe got up and came across and took it away from me.

“Fritz? We have been delayed. No, I’m all right. I don’t know. The delay is indefinite. No, confound it, he’s in jail. I can’t tell now but you’ll hear from me again well before dinnertime. How are the plants? I see. No, that’s all right, that won’t hurt them. I see. No no no, not those on the north! Not a one! Certainly I did, but...”

I quit listening, not that I was callous, but because my attention was drawn elsewhere. Turning away, for no special reason, a window was in my line of vision, and through it, outdoors near the pane, I saw a branch of a shrub bob up and down and then wiggle to a stop. I am no woodsman, but it didn’t seem reasonable that wind could make a leafless branch perform like that, so I turned to face Wolfe again, listened for another minute, and then sauntered across the room and into the kitchen. I switched off the light there, carefully and silently eased the back door open, slipped outside, and pulled the door to.

It was all black, but after I had stood half a minute I could see a little. I slipped my hand inside my vest to my shoulder holster, but brought it out again empty; it was just an automatic check. I saw now that I was standing on a concrete slab only a shallow step above the ground. Stepping off it to the left, I started, slow motion, for the corner of the house. The damn wind was so noisy that my ears weren’t much help. Just as I reached the corner a moving object came from nowhere and bumped me. I grabbed for it, but it, instead of grabbing, swung a fist. The fist was hard when it met the side of my neck, and that got me sore. I sidestepped, whirled, and aimed one for the object’s kidney, but there wasn’t enough light for precision and I missed by a mile, nearly cracking a knuckle on his hip. He came at me with a looping swing that left him as open as a house with a wall gone, I ducked, and he went on by and then turned to try again. When he turned I saw who it was: Andy’s assistant, Gus Treble.

I stepped back, keeping a guard up for defense only.

“Lookit,” I said, “I’d just as soon go on if you really want to, but why do you want to? It’s more fun when I know what it’s for.”

“You double-crossing sonofabitch,” he said, not panting.

“Okay, but it’s still vague. Who did I cross? Pitcairn? The daughter? Who?”

“You made him think you were with him and then you helped get him framed.”

“Oh. You think we crossed Andy?”

“I know damn well you did.”

“Listen, brother.” I let my guard down. “You know what you are? You’re the answer to a prayer. You’re what I wanted for Christmas. You’re dead wrong, but you’re wonderful. Come in and have a talk with Nero Wolfe.”

“I wouldn’t talk with that crook.”

“You were looking at him through a window. What for?”

“I wanted to see what you were up to.”

“That’s easy. You should have asked. We were up to absolutely nothing. We were sunk up to our ears. We were phut. We were and are crazy for Andy. We wanted to take him home with us and pamper him, and they wouldn’t let us.”

“That’s a goddam lie.”

“Very well. Then you ought to come in and tell Mr. Wolfe to his face that he’s a double-crosser, a crook, and a liar. You don’t often get such a chance. Unless you’re afraid. What are you afraid of?”

“Nothing,” he said, and wheeled and marched to the kitchen door, opened it, and went in. I was right behind.

Wolfe’s voice boomed from the other room. “Archie! Where the devil—”

We were with him. He had finished with the phone. He shot a glance at Gus and then at me.

“Where did you get him?”

I waved a hand. “Oh, out there. I’ve started deliveries.”

VI

It took a good ten minutes to convince Gus Treble that we were playing it straight, and though Wolfe used a lot of his very best words and tones, it wasn’t words that put it over, it was logic The major premise was that Wolfe wanted Andy in his plant rooms, quick. The minor was that Andy couldn’t be simultaneously in Wolfe’s plant rooms and in the coop at White Plains, or in the death house at Sing Sing. Gus didn’t have to have the conclusion written out for him, but even so it took ten minutes. The last two were consumed by my recital, verbatim, of the conversation with Joseph G. and Sybil just before leaving the greenhouse.

Gus was seated at the desk, turned to face Wolfe, and I was straddling a straight-backed chair.

“Last July,” Gus said, “that Noonan beat up a friend of mine, for nothing.”

Wolfe nodded. “There you are. A typical uniformed blackguard. I take it, Mr. Treble, that you share my opinion that Mr. Krasicki didn’t kill that woman. And I heard you tell those men that you didn’t, so I won’t pester you about it. But though you answered freely and fully all questions concerning yourself, you were manifestly more circumspect regarding others. I understand that. You have a job here and your words were being recorded. But it won’t do for me. I want to get Mr. Krasicki out of jail, and I can do so only by furnishing a replacement for him. If you want to help you can, but not unless you forget your job, discard prudence, and tell me all you know about these people. Well, sir?”

Gus was scowling, which made him look old enough to vote. In the artificial light he looked paler than he had outdoors in the morning, and his rainbow shirt looked brighter.

“It’s a good job,” he muttered, “and I love it.”

“Yes,” Wolfe agreed sympathetically, “Mr. Krasicki told me you were competent, intelligent, and exceptionally talented.”

“He did?”

“Yes, sir. He did.”

“Goddam it.” Gus’s scowl got blacker. “What do you want to know?”

“About these people. First, Miss Lauer. I gathered that you were not yourself attracted by her.”

“Me? Not that baby. You heard what I told them. She was out for a sucker.”

“You mean out for money?”

“No, not money. I don’t think so. Hell, you know the kind. She liked to see males react, she got a kick out of it. She liked to see females react too. Even Neil Imbrie, old enough to be her father, you should have seen her giving him the idea when his wife was there. Not that she was raw; she could put it in a flash and then cover. And what she could do with her voice! Sometimes I myself had to walk off. Anyhow I’ve got a girl at Bedford Hills.”

“Wasn’t Mr. Krasicki aware of all this?”

“Andy?” Gus leaned forward. “Listen. That was one of those things. From the first day he glimpsed her and heard her speak, he got drowned. He didn’t even float, he just laid there on the bottom. And him no fool, anything but, but it hit him so quick and hard he never got a chance to analyze. Once I undertook to try a couple of words, very careful, and the look he gave me! It was pathetic.” Gus shook his head. “I don’t know. If I had known he had talked her into marrying him I might have fumigated her myself, just as a favor to him.”

“Yes,” Wolfe agreed, “that would have been an adequate motive. So much for you. You mentioned Mr. Imbrie. What about him? Assume that Miss Lauer also gave him the idea when his wife was not there, that he reacted like a male, as you put it, that developments convinced him that he was in heaven, that she told him last evening of her intention to go away and marry Mr. Krasicki, and that he decided she must die. Are those assumptions permissible?”

“I wouldn’t know. They’re not mine, they’re yours.”

“Come come,” Wolfe snapped. “I’m not Mr. Noonan, thank God. Prudence will get us nowhere. Has Mr. Imbrie got that in him?”

“He might, sure, if she hooked him deep enough.”

“Have you any facts that contradict the assumptions?”

“No.”

“Then we’ll keep them. You understand, of course, that there are no alibis. There were four hours for it: from eleven o’clock, when Miss Lauer said good night to Mr. Krasicki and left him, to three o’clock, when you and Mr. Krasicki entered the greenhouse to fumigate. Everyone was in bed, and in separate rooms except for Mr. and Mrs. Imbrie. Their alibi is mutual, but also marital and therefore worthless. His motive we have assumed. Hers is of course implicit in the situation as you describe it, and besides, women do not require motives that are comprehensible by any intellectual process.”

“You said it,” Gus acquiesced feelingly. “They roll their own.”

I wondered what the girl at Bedford Hills had done now. Wolfe went on.

“Let’s finish with the women. What about Miss Pitcairn?”

“Well—” Gus opened his mouth wide to give his lips a stretch, touched the upper one with the tip of his tongue, and closed up again. “I guess I don’t understand her. I feel as if I hate her, but I don’t really know why, so maybe I don’t understand her.”

“Perhaps I can help?”

“I doubt it. She puts up a hell of a front, but one day last summer I came on her in the grove crying her eyes out. I think it’s a complex, only she must have more than one. She had a big row with her father one day on the terrace, when I was working there in the shrubs and they knew it — it was a couple of weeks after Mrs. Pitcairn’s accident and he was letting the registered nurse go and sending for a practical nurse which turned out later to be this Dini Lauer — and Miss Pitcairn was raising the roof because she thought she ought to look after her mother herself. She screamed fit to be tied, until the nurse called down from an upstairs window to please be quiet. Another thing, she not only seems to hate men, she says right out that she does. Maybe that’s why I feel I hate her, just to balance it up.”

Wolfe made a face. “Does she often have hysterics?”

“I wouldn’t say often, but of course I’m hardly ever in the house.” Gus shook his head. “I guess I don’t understand her.”

“I doubt if it’s worth an effort. Don’t try. What I’d like to get from you, if you have it, is not understanding but a fact. I need a scandalous fact about Miss Pitcairn. Have you got one?”

Gus looked bewildered. “You mean about her and Dini?”

“Her and anyone or anything. The worse the better. Is she a kleptomaniac or a drug addict? Does she gamble or seduce other women’s husbands or cheat at cards?”

“Not that I know of.” Gus took a minute to concentrate. “She fights a lot. Will that help?”

“I doubt it. With what weapons?”

“I don’t mean weapons; she just fights — with family, friends, anyone. She always knows best. She fights a lot with her brother. As far as he’s concerned, it’s a good thing somebody knows best, because God knows he don’t.”

“Why, does he have complexes too?”

Gus snorted. “He sure has got something. The family says he’s sensitive — that’s what they tell each other, and their friends, and him. Hell, so am I sensitive, but I don’t go around talking it up. He has a mood every hour on the hour, daily including Sundays and holidays. He never does a damn thing, even pick flowers. He’s a four-college man — he got booted out of Yale, then Wilhams, then Cornell, and then something out in Ohio.”

“What for?” Wolfe demanded. “That might help.”

“No idea.”

“Confound it,” Wolfe complained, “have you no curiosity? A good damning fact about the son might be even more useful than one about the daughter. Haven’t you got one?”

Gus concentrated again, and when a minute passed without any sign of contact on his face, Wolfe insisted, “Could his expulsion from those colleges have been on account of trouble with women?”

“Him?” Gus snorted again. “If he went to a nudist camp and they lined the men up on one side and the women on the other, he wouldn’t know which was which. With clothes on I suppose he can tell. Not that he’s dumb, I doubt if he’s a bit dumb, but his mind is somewhere else. You asked if he has complexes—”

There was a knock at the door. I went and opened it and took a look, and said, “Come in.”

Donald Pitcairn entered.

I had surveyed him before, but now I had more to go on and I checked. He didn’t look particularly sensitive, though of course I didn’t know which mood he had on. He had about the same weight and volume as me, but it’s no flattery to say that he didn’t carry them the same. He needed tuning. He had dark deep-set eyes, and his face wouldn’t have been bad at all if he had felt better about it.

“Oh, you here, Gus?” he asked, which wasn’t too bright.

“Yeah, I’m here,” Gus replied, getting that settled.

Donald, blinking in the light, turned to Wolfe. His idea was to make it curt. “We wondered why it took so long to pack Andy’s things. That’s what you said you wanted to do, but it doesn’t look as if you’re doing it.”

“We were interrupted,” Wolfe told him.

“I see you were. Don’t you think it would be a good idea to go ahead and pack and get started?”

“I do, yes. We’ll get at it shortly. I’m glad you came, Mr. Pitcairn, because it provides an opportunity for a little chat. Of course you are under—”

“I don’t feel like chatting,” Donald said apologetically, and turned and left.

The door closed behind him and we heard his steps across the porch.

“See?” Gus demanded. “That’s him to a T. Papa told him to come and chase you out, and did you hear him?”

“Yes, I heard him. With sensitive people you never know.” Wolfe sighed. “We’d better get on, since I want to get back to the house before Mr. Pitcairn decides to come at us himself. What about him? Not what he’s like, I’ve seen him and spoken with him, but the record — what you know of it. I got the impression this afternoon that he does not share his son’s confusion about the sexes. He can tell a woman from a man?”

“I’ll say he can.” Gus laughed shortly. “With his eyes shut. From a mile off.”

“You say that as if you could prove it.”

Gus had his mouth open to go on, but he shut it. He cocked an eye at Wolfe, tossed me a glance, and regarded Wolfe again.

“Oh,” he said. “Now you want me to prove things.”

“Not at all. I don’t even insist on facts. I’ll take surmises — anything you have.”

Gus was considering, rubbing the tips of his thumbs with his forefingers and scowling again. Finally he made a brusque gesture. “To hell with it,” he decided. “I was sore at you for crossing Andy, and you don’t owe him anything, and here look at me. There’s other jobs. He choked a girl once.”

“Mr. Pitcairn did?”

“Yes.”

“Choked her to death?”

“Oh, no, just choked her. Her name’s Florence Hefferan. Her folks used to live in a shack over on Greasy Hill, but now they’ve got a nice house and thirty acres down in the valley. I don’t think it was Florence that used the pliers on him, or if she did her old man made her. I know for a fact it took twenty-one thousand dollars to get that thirty acres, and also Florence was by no means broke when she beat it to New York. If it didn’t come from Pitcairn, then where? There are two versions about the choking. One is that he was nuts about her and he was jealous because he thought the baby she was going to have wasn’t his — that’s what Florence told her best friend, who is a friend of mine. The other is that he was sore because he was being forced to deliver some real dough — that came from Florence too, later, after she had gone to New York, I guess because she thought it sounded better. Anyhow I know he choked her enough to leave marks because I saw them.”

“Well.” Wolfe was looking as pleased as if someone had just presented him with thirty acres of orchids. “When did this happen?”

“About two years ago.”

“Do you know where Miss Hefferan is now?”

“Sure, I can get her address in New York.”

“Good.” Wolfe wiggled a finger. “I said I wouldn’t insist on proof, and I won’t, but how much of this is fact and how much gossip?”

“No gossip at all. It’s straight fact.”

“Has any of it ever been published? For instance, in a newspaper reporting a proceeding in a court?”

Gus shook his head. “It wasn’t in a court. How would it get in a court when he paid forty or fifty thousand to keep it out?”

“Just so, but I wanted to be sure. Were these facts generally known and discussed in the neighborhood?”

“Well — not known, no.” Gus gestured. “Of course there was some talk, but only two or three really knew what happened, and I happened to be one of them because of my friend being Florence’s best friend. And I didn’t help start any talking. I’ve never opened my trap about it until now, and I told you only to help Andy, but damned if I see how it’s going to.”

“I do,” Wolfe said emphatically. “Has Mr. Pitcairn been helpful in any other real estate deals?”

“Not that I know of. He must have lost his head that time. But it’s more a question of a guy’s general approach, and I’ve seen him performing with house guests here. What I can say for sure is that his son didn’t catch it from him. I don’t know why — when a man starts turning gray why don’t he realize the whistle has blowed and concentrate on something else? Take you, you show some gray. I’ll bet you don’t dash around crowing and flapping your arms.”

I tittered without meaning to. Wolfe gave me a withering glance and then returned to Gus.

“No, Mr. Treble, I don’t. But while your general observations are interesting and sound, they won’t help me any. I can use only specific items. I need scandal, all I can get. More about Mr. Pitcairn, I hope?”

But apparently Gus had shot his main wad. He had a further collection of details pertaining to Joseph G., and he was now more than willing to turn the bag up and shake it, but it didn’t seem to me to advance Pitcairn’s promotion to the grade of murder suspect. For one thing, there wasn’t even a morsel about him and Dini Lauer, though, as Gus pointed out, he was an outside man and therefore knew little of what went on in the house.

Finally Wolfe waved Pitcairn aside and asked, “What about his wife? I haven’t heard her mentioned more than twice all day. What’s she like?”

“She’s all right,” Gus said shortly. “Forget her.”

“Why, is she above reproach?”

“She’s a nice woman. She’s all right.”

“Was her accident really an accident?”

“Certainly it was. She was alone, going down the stone steps into the rose garden, and she took a tumble, that was all.”

“How much is she hurt?”

“I guess it was pretty bad, but it’s getting better now, so she can sit in a chair and walk a little. Andy’s been going up to her room every day for orders — only she don’t give orders. She discusses things.”

Wolfe nodded. “I can see you like her, but even so there’s a question. What valid evidence have you that she is incapable of carrying an object weighing a hundred and ten pounds down a flight of stairs and into the greenhouse?”

“Oh, skip it,” Gus said scornfully. “Hell, she broke her back!”

“Very well,” Wolfe conceded. “But you should consider that whoever drugged Miss Lauer and carried her through the house was under a pressure that demanded superhuman effort. I advise you never to try your hand at detective work. At least you can tell me where Mrs. Pitcairn’s room — no.” He wiggled a finger. “Is there paper in that desk? And a pencil?”

“Sure.”

“Please sketch me a plan of the house — ground plans of both floors. I heard it described this afternoon, but I want to be sure I have it right. Just roughly, but identify all the rooms.”

Gus obliged. He got a pad and pencil from a drawer and set to work. The pencil moved fast. In no time he had two sheets torn from the pad and crossed over to hand them to Wolfe, and told him, “I didn’t show the back stairs leading up to the room where Mr. and Mrs. Imbrie sleep, but the little passage upstairs goes there too.”

Wolfe glanced at the sheets, folded them, and stuck them in his pocket. “Thank you, sir,” he said graciously. “You have been—”

What stopped him was the sound of heavy steps on the porch. I got up to go and open the door, not waiting for a knock, but there was no knock. Instead, there was the noise of a key inserted and turned, the door swung open and a pair entered.

It was Lieutenant Noonan and one of the rank and file.

“Who the hell,” he demanded, “do you think you are?”

VII

Gus was on his feet. I whirled and stood. Wolfe spoke from his chair.

“Of course, Mr. Noonan, if that was a rhetorical—”

“Can it. I know damn well who you are. You’re a Broadway slickie that thinks you can come up to Westchester and tell us the rules. Get going! Come on. Move out.”

“I have Mr. Pitcairn’s permission—”

“You have like hell. He just phoned me. And you’re taking nothing from this cottage. You may have them buffaloed down in New York, and even the DA and the county boys, but I’m different. Do you want to go without help?”

Wolfe put his hands on the arms of his chair, got his bulk lifted, said, “Come, Archie,” got his hat and coat and cane, and made for the door. There he turned, said grimly, “I hope to see you again, Mr. Treble,” and was saved the awkwardness of reaching for the knob by my being there to open for him. Outside I got the flashlight from my hip pocket, switched it on, and led the way.

As we navigated the path for the fourth time there were seven or eight things I would have liked to say, but I swallowed them. Noonan and his bud were at our heels and, since Wolfe had evidently decided that we were outmatched, there was nothing for me to do but take it. When, after we were beyond the grove of evergreens, I swung the light up for a glance at the tennis court, there was a deep growl from Wolfe behind, so from there on I kept the light on the path.

We crunched across the gravel to where we had left the car. As I opened the rear door for Wolfe to get in, Noonan, right at my elbow, spoke.

“I’m being generous. I could phone the DA and get an okay to take you in as material witnesses, but you see I’m not. Our car’s in front. Stop at the entrance until we’re behind. We’re going to follow until you’re out of the county, and we won’t need you back here again tonight or any other time. Got it?”

No reply. I banged the door, opened the front one, slid in beside the wheel, and pushed the starter.

“Got it?” he barked.

“Yes,” Wolfe said.

They strode off and we rolled forward. When we reached the entrance to the Pitcairn grounds and stopped, the accomplice Noonan had stationed there flashed a light at us but said nothing.

I told Wolfe over my shoulder, “I’ll turn right and go north. It’s only ten miles to Brewster, and that’s in Putnam County. He only said to leave the county, he didn’t say which way.”

“Turn left and go to New York.”

“But—”

“Don’t argue.”

So when their lights showed behind I rolled on into the highway and turned left. When we had covered a couple of miles Wolfe spoke again.

“Don’t try to be witty. No side roads, no sudden changes of pace, and no speeding. It would be foolhardy. That man is an irresponsible maniac and capable of anything.”

I had no comment because I had to agree. We were flat on our faces. So I took the best route to Hawthorne Circle and there, with the enemy right behind, swung into the Sawmill River Parkway. The dashboard clock said a quarter to seven. My biggest trouble was that I couldn’t see Wolfe’s face. If he was holding on and working, fine. If he was merely nervous and tense against the terrific extra hazards of driving after dark, maybe okay. But if he had settled for getting back home and that was all, I should be talking fast and I wanted to. I couldn’t tell. I had never realized how much I depended on the sight of his big creased face.

We made the first traffic light in eleven minutes from Hawthorne Circle, which was par. It was green and we sailed through. Four minutes farther on, at the second light, we were stopped by red, and Noonan’s car practically bumped our behind. Off again, we climbed the hills over Yonkers, wound down into the valley and the stretch approaching the toll gates, parted with a dime, and in another mile were passing the sign that announces New York City.

I kept to the right and slowed down a little. If he once got inside his house I knew of no tool that could pry him loose again, but we were now only twenty-five minutes away and from where I sat it looked hopeless.

However, I slowed to thirty and spoke. “We’ve left Westchester, and Noonan is gone. They turned off back there. That’s as far as my orders go. Next?”

“Where are we?”

“Riverdale.”

“How soon will we get home?”

But there I fooled you. That’s what I was sure he would say, but he didn’t. What he said was, “How can we get off of this race course?”

“Easy. That’s what the steering wheel’s for.”

“Then leave it and find a telephone.”

I never heard anything like it. At the next opening I left the highway, followed the side drive a couple of blocks and turned right, and rolled up a hill and then down. I was a stranger in the Riverdale section, but anybody can find a drugstore anywhere, and soon I pulled up at the curb in front of one.

I asked if he was going in to phone and he said no, I was. I turned in the seat to get a look at him.

“I don’t know, Archie,” he said, “whether you have ever seen me when my mind was completely dominated by a single purpose.”

“Sure I have. I’ve rarely seen you any other way. The purpose has always been to keep comfortable.”

“It isn’t now. It is — never mind. A purpose is something to achieve, not talk about. Get Saul if possible. Fred or Orrie would do, but I’d rather have Saul. Tell him to come at once and meet us — where can we meet?”

“Around here?”

“Yes. Between here and White Plains.”

“He’s to have a car?”

“Yes.”

“The Covered Porch near Scarsdale would do.”

“Tell him that. Phone Fritz that we are still delayed and ask him how things are. That’s all.”

I got out, but even at a risk I wanted to have it understood, so I poked my head in and asked, “What about dinner? Fritz will want to know.”

“Tell him we won’t be there. I’ve already faced that. My purpose is enough to keep me from going home, but I wouldn’t trust it to get me out again if I once got in.”

Evidently he knew himself nearly as well as I knew him. I entered the drugstore and found the booth.

I got Fritz first. He thought I was kidding him, and then, when I made it plain that I was serious, he suspected me of concealing a calamity. He simply couldn’t believe that Wolfe was a free man and sound of mind and body, and yet wasn’t coming home to dinner. It looked for a while as if I would have to go and bring Wolfe to the phone, but I finally convinced him, and then went after Saul.

As Wolfe had said, Fred or Orrie would do, but Saul Panzer was worth ten of them or nearly anyone else, and I had a feeling that we were going to need the best we could get for whatever act Wolfe was preparing to put on to achieve his dominant purpose. So when I learned that Saul wasn’t home but was expected sometime, I gave his wife the number and told her I would wait for a call. It was so long before it came that when I went back out to the car I expected Wolfe to make some pointed remarks, but all he did was grunt. The purpose sure was dominant. I told him that from Saul’s home in Brooklyn it would take him a good hour and a quarter to drive to the rendezvous, whereas we could make it easy in thirty minutes. Did he have any use for the extra time? No, he said, we would go and wait, so I got the car moving and headed for the parkway.

When, a little before nine o’clock, Saul Panzer joined us at the Covered Porch, we were at a table in a rear corner, as far as we could get from the band. Wolfe had cleaned up two dozen large oysters, tried a plate of clam chowder and swallowed five spoonfuls of it, disposed of a slice of rare roast beef with no vegetables, and was starting to work on a pile of zwieback and a dish of grape jelly. He hadn’t made a single crack about the grub.

By the time Wolfe had finished the zwieback and jelly and had coffee Saul had made a good start on a veal cutlet. Wolfe said he would wait until Saul was through, but Saul said no, go ahead, he liked to hear things while he ate. Wolfe proceeded. First he described the past, enough of it to give Saul the picture, and then gave us a detailed outline of the future as he saw it. It took quite a while, for he had to brief us on all foreseeable contingencies. One of them was the possibility that the key tagged “Dup Grnhs” which was in my pocket wouldn’t fit. Another prop was the sketch made by Gus Treble of the ground plans of the mansion. Still another prop was a sheet of plain white paper, donated on request by the management of the Covered Porch, on which Wolfe wrote a couple of paragraphs with my fountain pen. That too was for Saul, and he put it in his pocket.

It sounded to me as if the whole conception was absolutely full of fleas, but I let it pass. If Wolfe was man enough to stay away from dinner at his own table, damned if I was going to heckle just because it looked as if we stood a very fine chance of joining Andy in jail before midnight. The only item I pressed him on was the gun play.

“On that,” I told him, “I want it A, B, C. When you’re in the cell next to mine, on a five-year ticket, I won’t have you keep booming at me that I bollixed it up with the gun. Do I shoot at all and if so when?”

“I don’t know,” he said patiently. “There are too many eventualities. Use your judgment.”

“What if someone makes a dash for a phone?”

“Head him off. Stop him. Hit him.”

“What if someone starts to scream?”

“Make her stop.”

I gave up. I like to have him depend on me, but I only have two hands and I can’t be two places at once.

The arrangement was that Saul was to follow us in his car because it would be useful for a preliminary approach. It was after ten when we rolled out of the parking lot of the Covered Porch and turned north. When I pulled off the road at a wide place, in the enemy country, the dashboard clock said twelve minutes to eleven, and it had started to snow a little. Saul’s car had stopped behind us.

I turned off the lights, got out and went back, and told him, “Half a mile on, maybe a little more, at the left. You can’t miss the big stone pillars.”

He swung his car back into the road and was off. I returned to our car and climbed in, and turned to face the rear because I thought a little cheerful conversation was called for, but Wolfe wouldn’t cooperate, and I well knew why. He was holding his breath until he learned whether Saul would bring good news or bad. Would we be able to drive right in and make ourselves at home? Or...?

The news wasn’t long in coming, and it was bad. Saul’s car came back, turned around, and parked close behind us, and Saul came to us with snowflakes whirling around him and announced, “He’s still there.”

“What happened?” Wolfe demanded peevishly.

“I turned in at the entrance, snappy, and he flashed a light at me and yelled. I told him I was a newspaperman from New York, and he said then I’d better get back where I belonged quick because it was snowing. I tried a little persuasion to stay in character, but he was in a bad humor. So I backed out.”

“Confound it.” Wolfe was grim. “I have no rubbers.”

VIII

Before we got to the Pitcairn greenhouse Wolfe fell down twice, I fell four times, and Saul once. My better score, a clear majority, was because I was in the lead.

Naturally we couldn’t show a light, and while the snow was a help in one way, in another it made it harder, since enough of it had fallen to cover the ground and therefore you couldn’t see ups and downs. For walking in the dark without making much noise levelness is a big advantage, and there was none of it around there at all, at least not on the route we took.

It had to be all by guess. We left the road and took to the jungle a good three hundred yards short of the entrance, to give the guy in bad humor a wide miss. Almost right away we were mountain climbing, and I slipped on a stone someone had waxed and went down, grabbing for a tree and missing.

“Look out, a stone,” I whispered.

“Shut up,” Wolfe hissed.

Just when I had got used to the slope up, the terrain suddenly went haywire and began to wiggle, bobbing up and down. After a stretch of that it went level, but just as it did so the big trees quit and I was stopped by a thicket which I might possibly have pushed through but Wolfe never could, so I had to detour. The thicket forced me around to the rim of a steep decline, though I didn’t know it until my feet told me three times. It was at the foot of that decline that we struck the brook. I realized what the dark streak was only when I was on its sloping edge, sliding in, and I leaped like a tiger, barely reaching the far bank and going to my knees as I landed, which I didn’t count as a fall. As I got upright I was wondering how in God’s name we would get Wolfe across, but then I saw he was already coming, wading it, trying to hold the skirt of his coat up with one hand and poking his cane ahead of him with the other.

I have admitted I’m no woodsman, and I sure proved it that dark night. I suppose I didn’t subtract enough for the curves of the driveway. I had it figured that we would emerge into the open about even with the house, on the side where the greenhouse was. But after we had negotiated a few more mountains, and a dozen more twigs had stuck me in the eye, and I had had all my tumbles, and Wolfe had rolled down a cliff to a stop at Said’s feet, and I was wishing the evergreens weren’t so damn thick so I could see the lights of the house, I suddenly realized we had hit a path, and after I had turned left on it and gone thirty steps its course seemed familiar. When we reached the edge of the evergreens and saw the house lights there was no question about it: it was the path we knew.

From there on the going was easy and, since the snow was coming thicker, no belly crawling seemed called for as we neared the house. When we reached the spot where the path branched to the left, toward the south of the house, I turned and asked Wolfe, “Okay?”

“Shut up and go on,” he growled.

I did so. We reached the greenhouse at its outer end. I took the key from my pocket and inserted it, and it worked like an angel. I carefully pushed the door open, and we entered, and I got the door shut with no noise. So far so good. We were in the workroom. But was it dark!

According to plan, we took off our snow-covered coats and dropped them on the floor, and our hats. I didn’t know until later that Wolfe hung onto his cane, probably to use on people who screamed or dashed for a phone. I led the way again, with Wolfe against my back and Saul against his, through into the cool room, but it wasn’t cool, it was hot. It was ticklish going down the alley between the benches, and I learned something new: that with all lights out in a glass house on a snowy night the glass is absolutely black.

We made it without displacing any horticulture, and on through the warm room, which was even hotter, into the medium room. When I judged that we were about in the middle of it I went even slower, stopping every couple of feet to feel at the bottom of the bench on my left. Soon I felt the beginning of the canvas, and got hold of Wolfe’s hand and guided him to it. He followed me on a little, and then together we pulled the canvas up and Saul crawled under and stretched out where the body of Dini Lauer had been. Unable to see him, I felt him to make sure he was under before I let the canvas fall. Then Wolfe and I moved on to the open space beyond the end of the benches.

By now it was sure enough that there was no one in the dark greenhouse, and whispers would have been perfectly safe, but there was nothing to say. I took my gun from the holster and dropped it in my side pocket, and moved to the door that opened into the living room, with Wolfe beside me. It was a well-fitted door, but there was a tiny thread of light along the bottom. Now our meanest question would be answered: was the door locked on the inside? I heard the sound of voices beyond the thick door, and that helped. With a firm grasp on the knob, I turned it at about the speed of the minute hand on a clock, and when it came to a stop I pushed slow and easy. It wasn’t locked.

“Here we go,” I muttered to Wolfe, and flung the door open and stepped in.

The first swift glance showed me we were lucky. All three of them were there in the living room — Joseph G., daughter, and son — and that was a real break. Another break was the way their reflexes took the sight of the gun in my hand. One or more might easily have let out a yell, but no, all three were stunned into silence. Sybil was propped against cushions on a divan with a highball glass in her hand. Donald was on a nearby chair, also with a drink. Papa was on his feet, and he was the only one who had moved, whirling to face us as he heard the door open.

“Everybody hold it,” I told them quick, “and no one gets hurt.”

The noise from Joseph G. sounded like the beginning of an outraged giggle. Sybil put hers in words.

“Don’t you dare shoot! You wouldn’t dare shoot!”

Wolfe was moving past me, approaching them, but I extended my left arm to stop him. Shooting was the last thing I wanted, by me or anyone else, since a yell might or might not have been heard by the law out at the entrance but a shot almost certainly would. I stepped across to Joseph G., poked the gun against him, rubbed his pockets, and went to Donald and repeated. I would just as soon have given Sybil’s blue dinner dress a rub, but it would have been hard to justify it.

“Okay,” I told Wolfe.

“This is a criminal act,” Pitcairn stated. The words were virile enough, but his voice squeaked.

Wolfe, who had approached him, shook his head. “I don’t think so,” he said conversationally. “We had a key. I admit that Mr. Goodwin’s flourishing a gun complicates matters, but anyway, all I want is a talk with you people. I asked for it this afternoon and was refused. Now I intend to have it.”

“You won’t get it.” Pitcairn’s eyes went to his son. “Donald, go to the front door and call the officer.”

“I’m still flourishing the gun,” I said, doing so. “I can use it either to slap with or shoot with, and if I didn’t intend to when necessary I wouldn’t have it.”

“More corn,” Sybil said scornfully. She hadn’t moved from her comfortable position against the cushions. “Do you actually expect us to sit here and converse with you at the point of a gun?”

“No,” Wolfe told her. “The gun is childish, of course. That was merely a formality. I expect you to converse with me for reasons which it will take a few minutes to explain. May I sit down?”

Father, daughter, and son said “No” simultaneously.

Wolfe went to a wide upholstered number and sat. “I must overrule you,” he said, “because this is an emergency. I had to wade your confounded brook.” He bent over and unlaced a shoe and pulled it off, did likewise with the other one, took off his socks, pulled his wet trousers up nearly to his knees, and then leaned to the right to get hold of the corner of a small rug.

“I’m afraid I’ve dripped a little,” he apologized, wrapping the rug around his feet and calves.

“Wonderful,” Sybil said appreciatively. “You think we won’t drive you out into the snow barefooted.”

“Then he’s wrong,” Pitcairn said furiously. His squeak was all gone.

“I’ll get him a drink,” Donald offered, moving.

“No,” I said firmly, also moving. “You’ll stay right here.” I still had the formality in my right hand.

“I think, Archie,” Wolfe told me, “you can put that thing in your pocket. We’ll soon know whether we stay or go.” He glanced around at them, ending with Joseph G. “Here are your alternatives. Either we remain here until we are ready to leave, and are allowed a free hand for our inquiry into the murder of Miss Lauer on these premises, or I go, return to my office in New York—”

“No, you don’t,” Pitcairn contradicted. He remained standing even after his guest was seated. “You go to jail.”

Wolfe nodded. “If you insist, certainly. But that will merely postpone my return to my office until I get bail, which won’t take long. Once there, I act. I announce that I am convinced of Mr. Krasicki’s innocence and that I intend to get him freed by finding and exposing the culprit. There are at least three papers that will consider that newsworthy and will want to help. All the inmates of this house will become legitimate objects of inquiry and public report. Anything in their past that could conceivably have a bearing on their guilt or innocence will be of interest and printable.”

“Aha,” Sybil said disdainfully, still reclining.

“The devil of it,” Wolfe went on, ignoring her, “is that everyone has a past. Take this case. Take the question of Mr. Hefferan’s purchase of a home and acres surrounding it, only a few miles from here. I’m sure you remember the name — Hefferan. Where did he get the money? Where did a certain member of his family go to, and why? The newspapers will want all the facts they can get, all the more since their employees are not permitted to enter these grounds. I shall be glad to cooperate, and I have had some experience at investigation.”

Joseph G. had advanced a step and then stiffened. Sybil had left the cushions to sit up straight.

“Such facts,” Wolfe went on, “would of course never properly get to a jury trying a man for the murder of Miss Lauer, but they would be of valid concern to the unofficial explorers of probabilities, and the public would like to know about them. They would like to know whether Miss Florence Hefferan still feels any discomfort from the severe choking she got, and whether the marks have entirely disappeared from her throat. They would want to see pictures of her in newspapers, the more the better. They would—”

“You filthy fat louse!” Sybil cried.

Wolfe shook his head at her. “Not I, Miss Pitcairn. This is the inexorable miasma of murder.”

“By God,” Pitcairn said harshly. He was shaking with fury and trying not to. “I wish I had shot you there today. I wish I had.”

“But you didn’t,” Wolfe said curtly, “and here I am. You will have no secrets left, none of you. If Miss Hefferan has run through the money you paid her and needs more, there will be generous bidders for the story of her life in installments. You see the possibilities. There will even be interest in such details as your daughter’s incorrigible talent for picking quarrels, and your son’s nomadic collegiate career. Did he leave Yale and Williams and Cornell because the curriculum didn’t suit him, or because—”

Without the slightest warning Donald abruptly changed moods. After bouncing up to offer to get Wolfe a drink he had returned to his chair and seemed to be put, but now he came out of it fast and made for Wolfe. I had to step some to head him off. He came against me, recoiled, and started a right for the neighborhood of my jaw. The quicker it was settled the better, so instead of trying anything fancy I knocked his fist down with my left, and with my right slammed the gun fiat against his kidney good and hard. He wobbled, then bent, and doubled up to sit on the floor. I disregarded him to face the others, not at all sure of their limitations.

“Stop!” a voice came from somewhere. “Stop it!”

Their eyes left the casualty to turn to the voice. A woman had come from behind some drapes at the side of a wide arch at the far end of the room, and was approaching with slow careful steps. Sybil let out a cry and rushed to her. Joseph G. went too. They got to the newcomer and each took an arm, both talking at once, one scolding and the other remonstrating. They wanted to know how she got downstairs. They wanted to turn her around, but nothing doing. She kept coming, them with her, until she was only a step away from her son, who was still sitting on the floor. She looked down at him and then turned to me.

“How much did you hurt him?”

“Not much,” I told her. “He’ll be a little sore for a day or two.”

Donald lifted his face to speak. “I’m all right, Mom. But did you hear what—”

“Yes, I heard everything.”

“You come back upstairs,” Joseph G. commanded her.

She paid no attention to him. She was no great treat to look at — short and fairly plump, with a plain round face, standing with her shoulders pulled back, probably on account of her injured back — but there was something to her, especially to her voice, which seemed to come from deeper than her throat.

“I’ve been standing too long,” she said.

Sybil started to guide her to the divan, but she said no, she preferred a chair, and let herself be helped to one and to sit, after it had been moved so that she would be facing Wolfe.

Donald, who had managed to get himself back on his feet, went and patted her on the shoulder and told her, I’m all right, Mom.”

She paid no attention to him either. She was gazing straight at Wolfe.

“You’re Nero Wolfe,” she told him.

“Yes,” he acknowledged. “And you’re Mrs. Pitcairn?”

“Yes. Of course I’ve heard of you, Mr. Wolfe, since you are extremely famous. Under different circumstances I would be quite excited about meeting you. I was behind those curtains, listening, and heard all that you said. I quite agree with you, though certainly you know a great deal more about murder investigations than I do. I can see what we have ahead of us, all of us, if a ruthless and thorough inquiry is started, and naturally I’d like to prevent it if I possibly can. I have money of my own, aside from my husband’s fortune, and I think we should have someone to protect us from the sort of thing you described, and certainly no one is better qualified than you. I would like to pay you fifty thousand dollars to do that for us. Half would be paid—”

“Belle, I warn you—” Joseph G. blurted, and stopped.

“Well?” she asked him calmly, and when she had waited for him a moment and he was silent, she went on to Wolfe.

“Certainly it would be foolish to pretend that it wouldn’t be well worth it to us. As you say, everyone has a past, and it is our misfortune that this terrible crime in our house has made us, again as you say, legitimate objects of inquiry. Half of the fifty thousand will be paid immediately, and the other half when — well, that can be agreed upon.”

This, I thought, is more like it. We now have our pick of going to jail or taking fifty grand.

Wolfe was frowning at her. “But,” he objected, “I thought you said that you heard all I said.”

“I did.”

“Then you missed the point. The only reason I’m here is that I’m convinced that Mr. Krasicki did not kill Miss Lauer, and how the devil can I protect him and you people too? No; I’m sorry, madam; it’s true that I came here to blackmail you, but not for money. I’ve stated my price: permission to remain here, with Mr. Goodwin, and so make my inquiry privately instead of returning to my office and starting the hullabaloo you heard me describe. For as brief a period as possible; I don’t want to stay away from home longer than I have to. I shall expect nothing unreasonable of any of you, but I can’t very well inquire unless I am to get answers — as I say, within reason.”

“A dirty incorruptible blackmailer,” Sybil said bitterly.

“You said a brief period,” Donald told Wolfe. “Until tomorrow noon.”

“No.” Wolfe was firm. “I can’t set an hour. But I don’t want to prolong it any more than you do.”

“If necessary,” Mrs. Pitcairn persisted, “I think I could make it more than I said. Much more. I can say definitely that it will be double that.” She was as stubborn as a woman, and she sure was willing to dig into her capital.

“No, madam. I told Mr. Goodwin this evening that my mind was dominated by a single purpose, and it is. I did not go home to dinner. I fought my way through a snowstorm, at night, over strange and difficult terrain. I entered by force, supported by Mr. Goodwin’s gun. Now I’m going to stay until I’m through, or — you know the alternative.”

Mrs. Pitcairn looked at her husband and son and daughter. “I tried,” she said quietly.

Joseph G. sat down for the first time and fastened his eyes on Wolfe’s face.

“Inquire,” he said harshly.

“Good.” Wolfe heaved a deep sigh. “Please get Mr. and Mrs. Imbrie. I’ll need all of you.”

IX

For the last several minutes, since it had become evident that we were going to be invited to spend the night, I had had a new worry. The plan was that as soon as possible after we had got the halter on them Wolfe would get them all into the kitchen, to show him where Mrs. Imbrie had kept her box of morphine pills, and it seemed to me that the appearance of Mrs. Pitcairn had turned that from a chore into a real problem. How could he expect a woman with a bum back to get up from a chair and go to the kitchen with him just to point to a spot on a shelf, when three other people were available, all perfectly capable of pointing?

Or rather, five other people, when Mr. and Mrs. Imbrie had come. She was in a kind of dressing gown instead of her uniform, but he had got into his butler’s outfit, and I decided I liked him better in his greasy coveralls. They both looked scared and sleepy, and not a bit enthusiastic. As soon as they were with us Wolfe said he wanted to see where Mrs. Imbrie had kept the box of morphine, and that he would like all of them to come along. His tone indicated that he fully expected to be able to tell from the expressions on their faces which one had snitched the morphine to dope Dini Lauer.

The way they responded showed that my psychology needed overhauling and I shouldn’t have worried. Guilty or innocent, granted that the guilty one was present, obviously they thought this was a cinch and what a relief it wasn’t starting any tougher. There wasn’t even any protest about Mrs. Pitcairn exerting herself, except a question from Sybil.

As they started off, Wolfe in his bare feet, he paused to speak to me.

“Archie, will you put my socks near a radiator to dry? You can wring them out in the greenhouse.”

So I was left behind. I picked up the socks, and as soon as they were out of the room I darted into the greenhouse leaving the door open, wrung out the socks with one quick twist over the soil of the bench, stooped to lift the canvas, and muttered, “You awake, Saul?”

“Nuts,” he hissed.

“Okay, come on. Mrs. Pitcairn is with us. Don’t stop to shut the door after you.”

I returned to the living room, crossed to the open door by which the others had left, stood with my back to the voices I could hear in the distance, and watched Saul enter, cross to another door at the far end, which led to the reception hall, and disappear. Then I went and hung the socks on the frame of a magazine rack near a radiator grille, and beat it to the kitchen.

They were gathered around an open cupboard door. After exchanging glances with me Wolfe brought that phase of the investigation to a speedy end and suggested a return to the living room. On the way there Sybil insisted that her mother should go back upstairs, but didn’t get far. Mrs. Pitcairn was sticking, and I privately approved. Not only did it leave Saul an open field, but it guaranteed him what he needed most — time. Even if they had wanted to adjourn until morning Wolfe could probably have held them, but it was better this way.

“Now,” Wolfe said, when he had got settled in the chair of his choice again with the rug around his feet, “look at it like this. If the police were not completely satisfied with Mr. Krasicki they would be here asking you questions, and you wouldn’t like it but you couldn’t help it. You are compelled to suffer my inquisition for quite a different reason from the one that would operate in the case of the police, but the result is the same. I ask you questions you don’t like, and you answer them as you think best. The police always expect a large percentage of the answers to be lies and evasions, and so do I, but that’s my lookout. Any fool could solve the most difficult of cases if everyone told the truth. Mr. Imbrie, did you ever hold Miss Lauer in your arms?”

Imbrie, with no hesitation and in a voice unnecessarily loud, said, “Yes!”

“You did? When?”

“Once in this room, because I thought she wanted me to, and she knew my wife was watching us and I didn’t. So I thought I would try it.”

“That’s a lie!” Vera Imbrie said indignantly.

So the first crack out of the box he had one of them calling another a liar.

Neil spoke sternly to his wife. “I’m telling you, Vera, the only thing to do is tell it straight. When the cops left I thought it was all over, but I know about this man and he’s tough. We’re not going to do any monkeying about murder. How do I know who else saw me? I’m not going to tell him no, I never went near that girl, and then have someone else say they saw me.”

“That’s the spirit,” Sybil said sarcastically. “We’ll all confess everything. You lead the way, Neil.”

But within three minutes Neil was lying, saying that his wife hadn’t minded a bit catching him trying to make a pass at Dini Lauer. He maintained that she had just passed it off as a good joke.

It went on for over two hours, until my wrist-watch said five minutes to three, and I’m not saying it was dull because it was interesting to watch Wolfe bouncing the ball, first against one and then another, and it was equally interesting to see them handling the returns. But though it wasn’t dull it certainly didn’t seem to me that it was getting us anywhere, particularly when Wolfe was specializing in horticulture. He spent about a third of the time finding out how they felt about plants and flowers, and actually got into an argument with Joseph G. about hairy begonias. It was obvious what he had in mind, but no matter what they said it wasn’t worth a damn as evidence, and I suspected him of merely passing the time waiting for Saul, and hoping against hope as the minutes dragged by.

Aside from horticulture he concentrated mainly on the character and characteristics of Dini Lauer. He tried over and over again to get them started on a free-for-all discussion of her, but they refused to oblige, even Neil Imbrie. He couldn’t even get a plain unqualified statement that Sybil would have preferred to take care of her mother herself, their position apparently being that if they gave him an inch he’d want a mile. He certainly didn’t get the inch.

As I glanced at my watch at five to three Wolfe pronounced my name.

“Archie. Are my socks dry?”

I went and felt them and told him just about, and he asked me to bring them to him. As he was pulling the first one on Mrs. Pitcairn spoke.

“Don’t bother with the wet shoes, since you’re going to sleep here. Vera, there’s a pair of slippers—”

“No, thank you,” Wolfe said energetically. He got the other sock on and picked up a shoe. “Thank heaven I get them big enough.” He got his toes in, tugged and pushed, finally got the shoe on and tied the lace, and straightened up to rest. In a moment he tackled the second shoe. By the time he got it on the silence was as heavy as if the ceiling had come down to rest on our heads.

Pitcairn undertook to lift it. “It’s nearly morning,” he rasped. “We’re going to bed. This has become a ridiculous farce.”

Wolfe sighed from all the exertion. “It has been a farce from the beginning,” he declared. He looked around at them. “But I didn’t make it a farce, you did. My position is clear, logical, and invulnerable. The circumstances of Miss Lauer’s death — the use of Mrs. Imbrie’s morphine, the preknowledge of the fumigation, and others — made it unarguable that she was killed by a familiar of these premises. Convinced with good reason, as I was and am, that Mr. Krasicki didn’t do it, it followed that one of you did. There we were and there we are. I had no notion who it was; I forced my way in here to find out; and I’m going to stay until I do — or until you expel me and face the alternative I have described. I am your dangerous and implacable enemy. I have had you together; now I’ll take you one by one; and I’ll start with Mrs. Pitcairn. It will soon be dawn. Do you want to take a nap first, madam?”

Mrs. Pitcairn was actually trying to smile. “I’m afraid,” she said in a firm full voice, “that I made a mistake when I offered to pay you to protect us from publicity. I’m afraid it made a bad impression on you. If you misunderstood — who is that?”

It was Saul Panzer, entering from behind the drapes where she had previously concealed herself for eavesdropping. He was right on the dot, since the arrangement had been for him to walk on at three o’clock unless he got a signal.

Most of us could get our eyes on him without turning, but Wolfe, in his chair with a high wide back, had to lean over and screw his head around. While he was doing that Donald was rising to his feet, and Joseph G. and Imbrie were both moving. I moved faster. When I had passed them I whirled and snapped, “Take it easy. He came with us and he don’t bite.”

They started ejaculating and demanding. Wolfe ignored them and asked Saul, “Did you find anything?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Useful?”

“I think so, yes, sir.” Saul extended a hand with a piece of folded paper in it.

Wolfe took it and commanded me, “Archie, your gun.”

I already had it out. It wasn’t desirable to have them anywhere near Wolfe while he examined Saul’s find. I poked the barrel against Joseph G. and told him, “More formality. Back up.”

He was still ejaculating but he went back, and the others with him, and I turned sideways enough to have all in view. Wolfe had unfolded the sheet of paper and was reading it. Saul was at his right hand, and he too was displaying a gun.

Wolfe looked up. “I should explain,” he said, “how this happened. This is Mr. Saul Panzer, who works for me. When you went to the kitchen with me he entered from the greenhouse, went upstairs, and began to search. I was not satisfied that the police had been sufficiently thorough.” He fluttered the paper. “This proves me right. Where did you find it, Saul?”

“I found it,” Saul said distinctly, “under the mattress on the bed in the room of Mr. and Mrs. Imbrie.”

Vera and Neil both made noises, and Neil came forward to where my arm stopped him.

“Take it easy,” I advised him. “He didn’t say who put it there, he just said where he found it.”

“What is it?” Mrs. Pitcairn inquired, her voice not quite as firm.

I’ll read it,” Wolfe told her. “As you see, it’s a sheet of paper. The writing is in ink, and I would judge the hand to be feminine. It is dated December sixth, yesterday — no, since it’s past midnight, the day before yesterday. It says:

“Dear Mr. Pitcairn:

“I suppose now I will never call you Joe, as you wanted me to. I am quite willing to put my request in writing, and I only hope you will put your answer in writing too. As I told you, I think your gift to me should be twenty thousand dollars. You have been so very sweet, but I have been sweet too, and I really think I deserve that much.

“Since I have decided to leave here and get married I don’t think you should expect me to wait more than a day or two for the gift. I’ll expect you in my room tonight at the usual time, and I hope you’ll agree how reasonable I am.”

Wolfe looked up. “It’s signed ‘Dini,’” he stated. “Of course it can be authenti—”

“I never saw it!” Vera Imbrie cried. “I never—”

But her lines got stolen. For my part, I didn’t even give her a glance. Their faces had all been something to see while Wolfe had read, as might have been expected, but by the time he had reached the third sentence it was plain that Donald was in for something special in the way of moods. First his face froze, then it came loose and his mouth opened, and then the blood rushed up and it was purple. He was a quick-change artist if I ever saw one, and, as I say, I had no glance to spare for Vera Imbrie when she cried out. Then Donald took over.

“So that’s why you wouldn’t let me marry her!” he screamed, and jumped at his father.

I had the gun, sure, but that was for us, not for them if and when their ranks broke. The women were helpless, and Neil Imbrie would have had to be bigger and faster than he was to stop that cyclone.

Donald toppled his father to his knees more by bodily impact than by his swinging fists, kicked him down the rest of the way, and bent over him screaming, “You thought I was no man! But I was with her! I loved her! For the first time — I loved her! And you wouldn’t let me and she was going away and now I know! By God, if I could kill her I can kill you too! I can! I can!”

It looked as if he might try to prove it, so I went and grabbed him, and Saul came to help.

“Oh, my son,” Mrs. Pitcairn moaned.

Wolfe looked at her and growled, “Mr. Krasicki is a woman’s son too, madam.” I didn’t think he had it in him.

X

At six o’clock the next afternoon but one I was at my desk in the office, catching up on neglected details, when I heard the sound of Wolfe’s elevator descending from the plant rooms, and a moment later he entered, got himself comfortable in his chair back of his desk, rang for beer, leaned back, and sighed with deep satisfaction.

“How’s Andy making out?” I asked.

“Considering the blow he got, marvelously.”

I put papers in a drawer and swiveled to face him.

“I was just thinking,” I said, not offensively, “that if it hadn’t been for you Dini Lauer might still be alive and giving males ideas. Ben Dykes told me an hour ago on the phone that Donald has admitted, along with other things, that her telling him she was leaving and going to get married was what put him into a mood to murder. If you hadn’t offered Andy a job he wanted to take he might not have got keyed up enough to talk her into marrying him — or anyhow saying she would. So in a way you might say you killed her.”

“You might,” Wolfe conceded, taking the cap from one of the bottles of beer Fritz had brought.

“By the way,” I went on, “Dykes said that ape Noonan is still trying to get the DA to charge you for destroying evidence. Burning that letter you wrote to Pitcairn, signing Dini’s name.”

“Bah.” He was pouring and watching the foam. “It wasn’t evidence. No one ever saw what was on it. It could have been blank. I merely read it to them — ostensibly.”

“Yeah, I know. Anyhow the DA is in no position to charge you with anything, let alone destroying evidence. Not only has Donald told it and signed it, how she was his first and only romance, how his parents threatened to cross him off the list if he married her, how he begged her not to marry Andy and she laughed at him, how he got her to split a bottle of midnight beer with him and put morphine in hers, and even how he lugged her into the greenhouse to make it nice for Andy — not only that, but Vera Imbrie has contributed details of some contacts between Donald and Dini which she saw.”

Wolfe put down the empty glass and got out his handkerchief to wipe his lips. “That of course will help,” he said complacently.

I grunted. “Help is no word for it. Would it do any good to ask you exactly what the hell you would have done if they had all simply sneered when you read that letter?”

“Not much.” He poured more beer. “I knew one of them was toeing a thin and precarious line, and probably more than one. I thought a good hard jolt would totter him or her, no matter who it was, and possibly others. That was why I had Saul find it in the Imbries’ room; they had to be jolted too. If all of them had simply sneered, it would at least have eliminated Mr. Pitcairn and his son, and I would have proceeded from there. That would have been a measurable advance, since up to that point a finger pointed nowhere and I had eliminated no one but Andy, who—”

He stopped abruptly, pushed his chair back, arose, muttered, “Good heavens, I forgot to tell Andy about those Miltonia seedlings,” and marched out.

I got up and went to the kitchen to chin with Fritz.

Content

Rex Stout
Door to Death

I

II

III

IV

V

VI

VII

VIII

IX

X