Rex Stout

The Gun with Wings

I

The young woman took a pink piece of paper from her handbag, got up from the red leather chair, put the paper on Nero Wolfe’s desk, and sat down again. Feeling it my duty to keep myself informed and also to save Wolfe the exertion of leaning forward and reaching so far, I arose and crossed to hand the paper to him after a glance at it. It was a check for five thousand dollars, dated that day, August fourteenth, made out to him, and signed Margaret Mion. He gave a look and dropped it back on the desk.

“I thought,” she said, “perhaps that would be the best way to start the conversation.”

In my chair at my desk, taking her in, I was readjusting my attitude. When early that Sunday afternoon, she had phoned for an appointment, I had dug up a vague recollection of a picture of her in the paper some months back, and had decided it would be no treat to meet her, but now I was hedging. Her appeal wasn’t what she had, which was only so-so, but what she did with it. I don’t mean tricks. Her mouth wasn’t attractive even when she smiled, but the smile was. Her eyes were just a pair of brown eyes, nothing at all sensational, but it was a pleasure to watch them move around, from Wolfe to me to the man who had come with her, seated off to her left. I guessed she had maybe three years to go to reach thirty.

“Don’t you think,” the man asked her, “we should get some questions answered first?”

His tone was strained and a little harsh, and his face matched it. He was worried and didn’t care who knew it. With his deep-set gray eyes and well-fitted jaw he might on a happier day have passed for a leader of men, but not as he now sat. Something was eating him. When Mrs. Mion had introduced him as Mr. Frederick Weppler I had recognized the name of the music critic of the Gazette, but I couldn’t remember whether he had been mentioned in the newspaper accounts of the event that had caused the publication of Mrs. Mion’s picture.

She shook her head at him, not arbitrarily. “It wouldn’t help, Fred, really. We’ll just have to tell it and see what he says.” She smiled at Wolfe — or maybe it wasn’t actually a smile, but just her way of handling her lips. “Mr. Weppler wasn’t quite sure we should come to see you, and I had to persuade him. Men are more cautious than women, aren’t they?”

“Yes,” Wolfe agreed, and added, “Thank heaven.”

She nodded. “I suppose so.” She gestured. “I brought that check with me to show that we really mean it. We’re in trouble and we want you to get us out. We want to get married and we can’t. That is — if I should just speak for myself — I want to marry him.” She looked at Weppler, and this time it was unquestionably a smile. “Do you want to marry me, Fred?”

“Yes,” he muttered. Then he suddenly jerked his chin up and looked defiantly at Wolfe. “You understand this is embarrassing, don’t you? It’s none of your business, but we’ve come to get your help. I’m thirty-four years old, and this is the first time I’ve ever been—” He stopped. In a moment he said stiffly, “I am in love with Mrs. Mion and I want to marry her more than I have ever wanted anything in my life.” His eyes went to his love and he murmured a plea. “Peggy!”

Wolfe grunted. “I accept that as proven. You both want to get married. Why don’t you?”

“Because we can’t,” Peggy said. “We simply can’t. It’s on account — you may remember reading about my husband’s death in April, four months ago? Alberto Mion, the opera singer?”

“Vaguely. You’d better refresh my memory.”

“Well, he died — he killed himself.” There was no sign of a smile now. “Fred — Mr. Weppler and I found him. It was seven o’clock, a Tuesday evening in April, at our apartment on East End Avenue. Just that afternoon Fred and I had found out that we loved each other, and—”

“Peggy!” Weppler called sharply.

Her eyes darted to him and back to Wolfe. “Perhaps I should ask you, Mr. Wolfe. He thinks we should tell you just enough so you understand the problem, and I think you can’t understand it unless we tell you everything. What do you think?”

“I can’t say until I hear it. Go ahead. If I have questions, we’ll see.”

She nodded. “I imagine you’ll have plenty of questions. Have you ever been in love but would have died rather than let anyone see it?”

“Never,” Wolfe said emphatically. I kept my face straight.

“Well, I was, and I admit it. But no one knew it, not even him. Did you, Fred?”

“I did not.” Weppler was emphatic too.

“Until that afternoon,” Peggy told Wolfe. “He was at the apartment for lunch, and it happened right after lunch. The others had left, and all of a sudden we were looking at each other, and then he spoke or I did, I don’t know which.” She looked at Weppler imploringly. “I know you think this is embarrassing, Fred, but if he doesn’t know what it was like he won’t understand why you went upstairs to see Alberto.”

“Does he have to?” Weppler demanded.

“Of course he does.” She returned to Wolfe. “I suppose I can’t make you see what it was like. We were completely — well, we were in love, that’s all, and I guess we had been for quite a while without saying it, and that made it all the more — more overwhelming. Fred wanted to see my husband right away, to tell him about it and decide what we could do, and I said all right, so he went upstairs—”

“Upstairs?”

“Yes, it’s a duplex, and upstairs was my husband’s soundproofed studio, where he practiced. So he went—”

“Please, Peggy,” Weppler interrupted her. His eyes went to Wolfe. “You should have it firsthand. I went up to tell Mion that I loved his wife, and she loved me and not him, and to ask him to be civilized about it. Getting a divorce has come to be regarded as fairly civilized, but he didn’t see it that way. He was anything but civilized. He wasn’t violent, but he was damned mean. After some of that I got afraid I might do to him what Gif James had done, and I left. I didn’t want to go back to Mrs. Mion while I was in that state of mind, so I left the studio by the door to the upper hall and took the elevator there.”

He stopped.

“And?” Wolfe prodded him.

“I walked it off. I walked across to the park, and after a while I had calmed down and I phoned Mrs. Mion, and she met me in the park. I told her what Mion’s attitude was, and I asked her to leave him and come with me. She wouldn’t do that.” Weppler paused, and then went on, “There are two complications you ought to have if you’re to have everything.”

“If they’re relevant, yes.”

“They’re relevant all right. First, Mrs. Mion had and has money of her own. That was an added attraction for Mion. It wasn’t for me. I’m just telling you.”

“Thank you. And the second?”

“The second was Mrs. Mion’s reason for not leaving Mion immediately. I suppose you know he had been the top tenor at the Met for five or six years, and his voice was gone — temporarily. Gifford James, the baritone, had hit him on the neck with his fist and hurt his larynx — that was early in March — and Mion couldn’t finish the season. It had been operated, but his voice hadn’t come back, and naturally he was glum, and Mrs. Mion wouldn’t leave him under those circumstances. I tried to persuade her to, but she wouldn’t. I wasn’t anything like normal that day, on account of what had happened to me for the first time in my life, and on account of what Mion had said to me, so I wasn’t reasonable and I left her in the park and went downtown to a bar and started drinking. A lot of time went by and I had quite a few, but I wasn’t pickled. Along toward seven o’clock I decided I had to see her again and carry her off so she wouldn’t spend another night there. That mood took me back to East End Avenue and up to the twelfth floor, and then I stood there in the hall a while, perhaps ten minutes, before my finger went to the pushbutton. Finally I rang, and the maid let me in and went for Mrs. Mion, but I had lost my nerve or something. All I did was suggest that we should have a talk with Mion together. She agreed, and we went upstairs and—”

“Using the elevator?”

“No, the stairs inside the apartment. We entered the studio. Mion was on the floor. We went over to him. There was a big hole through the top of his head. He was dead. I led Mrs. Mion out, made her come, and on the stairs — they’re too narrow to go two abreast — she fell and rolled halfway down. I carried her to her room and put her on her bed, and I started for the living room, for the phone there, when I thought of something to do first. I went out and took the elevator to the ground floor, got the doorman and elevator man together, and asked them who had been taken up to the Mion apartment, either the twelfth floor or the thirteenth, that afternoon. I said they must be damn sure not to skip anybody. They gave me the names and I wrote them down. Then I went back up to the apartment and phoned the police. After I did that it struck me that a layman isn’t supposed to decide if a man is dead, so I phoned Dr. Lloyd, who has an apartment there in the building. He came at once, and I took him up to the studio. We hadn’t been there more than three or four minutes when the first policeman came, and of course—”

“If you please,” Wolfe put in crossly. “Everything is sometimes too much. You haven’t even hinted at the trouble you’re in.”

“I’ll get to it—”

“But faster, I hope, if I help. My memory has been jogged. The doctor and the police pronounced him dead. The muzzle of the revolver had been thrust into his mouth, and the emerging bullet had torn out a piece of his skull. The revolver, found lying on the floor beside him, belonged to him and was kept there in the studio. There was no sign of any struggle and no mark of any other injury on him. The loss of his voice was an excellent motive for suicide. Therefore, after a routine investigation, giving due weight to the difficulty of sticking the barrel of a loaded revolver into a man’s mouth without arousing him to protest, it was recorded as suicide. Isn’t that correct?”

They both said yes.

“Have the police reopened it? Or is gossip at work?”

They both said no.

“Then let’s get on. Where’s the trouble?”

“It’s us,” Peggy said.

“Why? What’s wrong with you?”

“Everything.” She gestured. “No. I don’t mean that — not everything, just one thing. After my husband’s death and the — the routine investigation, I went away for a while. When I came back — for the past two months Fred and I have been together some, but it wasn’t right — I mean we didn’t feel right. Day before yesterday, Friday, I went to friends in Connecticut for the weekend, and he was there. Neither of us knew the other was coming. We talked it out yesterday and last night and this morning, and we decided to come and ask you to help us — anyway, I did, and he wouldn’t let me come alone.”

Peggy leaned forward and was in deadly earnest. “You must help us, Mr. Wolfe. I love him so much — so much! — and he says he loves me, and I know he does! Yesterday afternoon we decided we would get married in October, and then last night we got started talking — but it isn’t what we say, it’s what is in our eyes when we look at each other. We just can’t get married with that back of our eyes and trying to hide it—”

A little shiver went over her. “For years — forever? We can’t! We know we can’t — it would be horrible! What it is, it’s a question: who killed Alberto? Did he? Did I? I don’t really think he did, and he doesn’t really think I did — I hope he doesn’t — but it’s there back of our eyes, and we know it is!”

She extended both hands. “We want you to find out!”

Wolfe snorted. “Nonsense. You need a spanking or a psychiatrist. The police may have shortcomings, but they’re not nincompoops. If they’re satisfied—”

“But that’s it! They wouldn’t be satisfied if we had told the truth!”

“Oh.” Wolfe’s brows went up. “You lied to them?”

“Yes. Or if we didn’t lie, anyhow we didn’t tell them the truth. We didn’t tell them that when we first went in together and saw him, there was no gun lying there. There was no gun in sight.”

“Indeed. How sure are you?”

“Absolutely positive. I never saw anything clearer than I saw that — that sight — all of it. There was no gun.”

Wolfe snapped at Weppler, “You agree, sir?”

“Yes. She’s right.”

Wolfe sighed. “Well,” he conceded, “I can see that you’re really in trouble. Spanking wouldn’t help.”

I shifted in my chair on account of a tingle at the lower part of my spine. Nero Wolfe’s old brownstone house on West Thirty-fifth Street was an interesting place to live and work — for Fritz Brenner, the chef and housekeeper, for Theodore Horstmann, who fed and nursed the ten thousand orchids in the plant rooms up on the roof, and for me, Archie Goodwin, whose main field of operations was the big office on the ground floor. Naturally I thought my job the most interesting, since a confidential assistant to a famous private detective is constantly getting an earful of all kinds of troubles and problems — everything from a missing necklace to a new blackmail gimmick. Very few clients actually bored me. But only one kind of case gave me that tingle in the spine: murder. And if this pair of lovebirds were talking straight, this was it.

II

I had filled two notebooks when they left, more than two hours later.

If they had thought it through before they phoned for an appointment with Wolfe, they wouldn’t have phoned. All they wanted, as Wolfe pointed out, was the moon. They wanted him, first, to investigate a four-month-old murder without letting on there had been one; second, to prove that neither of them had killed Alberto Mion, which could be done only by finding out who had; and third, in case he concluded that one of them had done it, to file it away and forget it. Not that they put it that way, since their story was that they were both absolutely innocent, but that was what it amounted to.

Wolfe made it good and plain. “If I take the job,” he told them, “and find evidence to convict someone of murder, no matter who, the use I make of it will be solely in my discretion. I am neither an Astraea nor a sadist, but I like my door open. But if you want to drop it now, here’s your check, and Mr. Goodwin’s notebooks will be destroyed. We can forget you have been here, and shall.”

That was one of the moments when they were within an ace of getting up and going, especially Fred Weppler, but they didn’t. They looked at each other, and it was all in their eyes. By that time I had about decided I liked them both pretty well and was even beginning to admire them, they were so damn determined to get loose from the trap they were in. When they looked at each other like that their eyes said, “Let’s go and be together, my darling love, and forget this — come on, come on.” Then they said, “It will be so wonderful!” Then they said, “Yes, oh yes, but— But we don’t want it wonderful for a day or a week; it must be always wonderful — and we know ...”

It took strong muscles to hold onto it like that, not to mention horse sense, and several times I caught myself feeling sentimental about it. Then of course there was the check for five grand on Wolfe’s desk.

The notebooks were full of assorted matters. There were a thousand details which might or might not turn out to be pertinent, such as the mutual dislike between Peggy Mion and Rupert Grove, her husband’s manager, or the occasion of Gifford James socking Alberto Mion in front of witnesses, or the attitudes of various persons toward Mion’s demand for damages; but you couldn’t use it all, and Wolfe himself never needed more than a fraction of it, so I’ll pick and choose. Of course the gun was Exhibit A. It was a new one, having been bought by Mion the day after Gifford James had plugged him and hurt his larynx — not, he had announced, for vengeance on James but for future protection. He had carried it in a pocket whenever he went out, and at home had kept it in the studio, lying on the base of a bust of Caruso. So far as known, it had never fired but one bullet, the one that killed Mion.

When Dr. Lloyd had arrived and Weppler had taken him to the studio the gun was lying on the floor not far from Mion’s knee. Dr. Lloyd’s hand had started for it but had been withdrawn without touching it, so it had been there when the law came. Peggy was positive it had not been there when she and Fred had entered, and he agreed. The cops had made no announcement about fingerprints, which wasn’t surprising since none are hardly ever found on a gun that are any good. Throughout the two hours and a half, Wolfe kept darting back to the gun, but it simply didn’t have wings.

The picture of the day and the day’s people was all filled in. The morning seemed irrelevant, so it started at lunch time with five of them there: Mion, Peggy, Fred, one Adele Bosley, and Dr. Lloyd. It was more professional than social. Fred had been invited because Mion wanted to sell him the idea of writing a piece for the Gazette saying that the rumors that Mion would never be able to sing again were malicious hooey. Adele Bosley, who was in charge of public relations for the Metropolitan Opera, had come to help work on Fred. Dr. Lloyd had been asked so he could assure Weppler that the operation he had performed on Mion’s larynx had been successful and it was a good bet that by the time the opera season opened in November the great tenor would be as good as ever. Nothing special had happened except that Fred had agreed to do the piece. Adele Bosley and Lloyd had left, and Mion had gone up to the soundproofed studio, and Fred and Peggy had looked at each other and suddenly discovered the most important fact of life since the Garden of Eden.

An hour or so later there had been another gathering, this time up in the studio, around half-past three, but neither Fred nor Peggy had been present. By then Fred had walked himself calm and phoned Peggy, and she had gone to meet him in the park, so their information on the meeting in the studio was hearsay. Besides Mion and Dr. Lloyd there had been four people: Adele Bosley for operatic public relations; Mr. Rupert Grove, Mion’s manager; Mr. Gifford James, the baritone who had socked Mion in the neck six weeks previously; and Judge Henry Arnold, James’ lawyer. This affair had been even less social than the lunch, having been arranged to discuss a formal request that Mion had made of Gifford James for the payment of a quarter of a million bucks for the damage to Mion’s larynx.

Fred’s and Peggy’s hearsay had it that the conference had been fairly hot at points, with the temperature boosted right at the beginning by Mion’s getting the gun from Caruso’s bust and placing it on a table at his elbow. On the details of its course they were pretty sketchy, since they hadn’t been there, but anyhow the gun hadn’t been fired. Also there was plenty of evidence that Mion was alive and well — except for his larynx — when the party broke up. He had made two phone calls after the conference had ended, one to his barber and one to a wealthy female opera patron; his manager, Rupert Grove, had phoned him a little later; and around five-thirty he had phoned downstairs to the maid to bring him a bottle of vermouth and some ice, which she had done. She had taken the tray into the studio, and he had been upright and intact.

I was careful to get all the names spelled right in my notebook, since it seemed likely the job would be to get one of them tagged for murder, and I was especially careful with the last one that got in: Clara James, Gifford’s daughter. There were three spotlights on her. First, the reason for James’ assault on Mion had been his knowledge or suspicion — Fred and Peggy weren’t sure which — that Mion had stepped over the line with James’ daughter. Second, her name had ended the list, got by Fred from the doorman and elevator man, of people who had called that afternoon. They said she had come about a quarter past six and had got off at the floor the studio was on, the thirteenth, and had summoned the elevator to the twelfth floor a little later, maybe ten minutes, and had left. The third spotlight was directed by Peggy, who had stayed in the park a while after Fred had marched off, and had then returned home, arriving around five o’clock. She had not gone up to the studio and had not seen her husband. Sometime after six, she thought around half-past, she had answered the doorbell herself because the maid had been in the kitchen with the cook. It was Clara James. She was pale and tense, but she was always pale and tense. She had asked for Alberto, and Peggy had said she thought he was up in the studio, and Clara had said no, he wasn’t there, and never mind. When Clara went for the elevator button, Peggy had shut the door, not wanting company anyway, and particularly not Clara James.

Some half an hour later Fred showed up, and they ascended to the studio together and found that Alberto was there all right, but no longer upright or intact.

That picture left room for a whole night of questions, but Wolfe concentrated on what he regarded as the essentials. Even so, we went into the third hour and the third notebook. He completely ignored some spots that I thought needed filling in; for instance, had Alberto had a habit of stepping over the line with other men’s daughters and/or wives, and if so, names please. From things they said I gathered that Alberto had been broad-minded about other men’s women, but apparently Wolfe wasn’t interested. Along toward the end he was back on the gun again, and when they had nothing new to offer he scowled and got caustic. When they stayed glued he finally snapped at them, “Which one of you is lying?”

They looked hurt. “That won’t get you anywhere,” Fred Weppler said bitterly, “or us either.”

“It would be silly,” Peggy Mion protested, “to come here and give you that check and then lie to you. Wouldn’t it?”

“Then you’re silly,” Wolfe said coldly. He pointed a finger at her. “Look here. All of this might be worked out, none of it is preposterous, except one thing. Who put the gun on the floor beside the body? When you two entered the studio it wasn’t there; you both swear to that, and I accept it. You left and started downstairs; you fell, and he carried you to your room. You weren’t unconscious. Were you?”

“No.” Peggy was meeting his gaze. “I could have walked, but he — he wanted to carry me.”

“No doubt. He did so. You stayed in your room. He went to the ground floor to compile a list of those who had made themselves available as murder suspects — showing admirable foresight, by the way — came back up and phoned the police and then the doctor, who arrived without delay since he lived in the building. Not more than fifteen minutes intervened between the moment you and Mr. Weppler left the studio and the moment he and the doctor entered. The door from the studio to the public hall on the thirteenth floor has a lock that is automatic with the closing of the door, and the door was closed and locked. No one could possibly have entered during the fifteen minutes. You say that you had left your bed and gone to the living room, and that no one could have used that route without being seen by you. The maid and cook were in the kitchen, unaware of what was going on. So no one entered the studio and placed the gun on the floor.”

“Someone did,” Fred said doggedly.

Peggy insisted, “We don’t know who had a key.”

“You said that before.” Wolfe was at them now. “Even if everyone had keys, I don’t believe it and neither would anyone else.” His eyes came to me. “Archie. Would you?”

“I’d have to see a movie of it,” I admitted.

“You see?” he demanded of them. “Mr. Goodwin isn’t prejudiced against you — on the contrary. He’s ready to fight fire for you; see how he gets behind on his notes for the pleasure of watching you look at each other. But he agrees with me that you’re lying. Since no one else could have put the gun on the floor, one of you did. I have to know about it. The circumstances may have made it imperative for you, or you thought they did.”

He looked at Fred. “Suppose you opened a drawer of Mrs. Mion’s dresser to get smelling salts, and the gun was there, with an odor showing it had been recently fired — put there, you would instantly conjecture, by someone to direct suspicion at her. What would you naturally do? Exactly what you did do: take it upstairs and put it beside the body, without letting her know about it. Or—”

“Rot,” Fred said harshly. “Absolute rot.”

Wolfe looked at Peggy. “Or suppose it was you who found it there in your bedroom, after he had gone downstairs. Naturally you would have—”

“This is absurd,” Peggy said with spirit. “How could it have been in my bedroom unless I put it there? My husband was alive at five-thirty, and I got home before that, and was right there, in the living room and my room, until Fred came at seven o’clock. So unless you assume—”

“Very well,” Wolfe conceded. “Not the bedroom. But somewhere. I can’t proceed until I get this from one of you. Confound it, the gun didn’t fly. I expect plenty of lies from the others, at least one of them, but I want the truth from you.”

“You’ve got it,” Fred declared.

“No. I haven’t.”

“Then it’s a stalemate.” Fred stood up. “Well, Peggy?”

They looked at each other, and their eyes went through the performance again. When they got to the place in the script where it said, “It must be wonderful always,” Fred sat down.

But Wolfe, having no part in the script, horned in. “A stalemate,” he said dryly, “ends the game, I believe.”

Plainly it was up to me. If Wolfe openly committed himself to no dice nothing would budge him. I arose, got the pretty pink check from his desk, put it on mine, placed a paperweight on it, sat down, and grinned at him.

“Granted that you’re dead right,” I observed, “which is not what you call apodictical, someday we ought to make up a list of the clients that have sat here and lied to us. There was Mike Walsh, and Calida Frost, and that cafeteria guy, Pratt — oh, dozens. But their money was good, and I didn’t get so far behind with my notes that I couldn’t catch up. All that for nothing?”

“About those notes,” Fred Weppler said firmly. “I want to make something clear.”

Wolfe looked at him.

He looked back. “We came here,” he said, “to tell you in confidence about a problem and get you to investigate. Your accusing us of lying makes me wonder if we ought to go on, but if Mrs. Mion wants to I’m willing. But I want to make it plain that if you divulge what we’ve told you, if you tell the police or anyone else that we said there was no gun there when we went in, we’ll deny it in spite of your damn notes. We’ll deny it and stick to it!” He looked at his girl. “We’ve got to, Peggy! All right?”

“He wouldn’t tell the police,” Peggy declared, with fair conviction.

“Maybe not. But if he does, you’ll stick with me on the denial. Won’t you?”

“Certainly I will,” she promised, as if he had asked her to help kill a rattlesnake.

Wolfe was taking them in, with his lips tightened. Obviously, with the check on my desk on its way to the bank, he had decided to add them to the list of clients who told lies and go on from there. He forced his eyes wide open to rest them, let them half close again, and spoke.

“We’ll settle that along with other things before we’re through,” he asserted. “You realize, of course, that I’m assuming your innocence, but I’ve made a thousand wrong assumptions before now so they’re not worth much. Has either of you a notion of who killed Mr. Mion?”

They both said no.

He grunted. “I have.”

They opened their eyes at him.

He nodded. “It’s only another assumption, but I like it. It will take work to validate it. To begin with, I must see the people you have mentioned — all six of them — and I would prefer not to string it out. Since you don’t want them told that I’m investigating a murder, we must devise a stratagem. Did your husband leave a will, Mrs. Mion?”

She nodded and said yes.

“Are you the heir?”

“Yes, I—” She gestured. “I don’t need it and don’t want it.”

“But it’s yours. That will do nicely. An asset of the estate is the expectation of damages to be paid by Mr. James for his assault on Mr. Mion. You may properly claim that asset. The six people I want to see were all concerned in that affair, one way or another. I’ll write them immediately, mailing the letter tonight special delivery, telling them that I represent you in the matter and would like them to call at my office tomorrow evening.”

“That’s impossible!” Peggy cried, shocked. “I couldn’t! I wouldn’t dream of asking Gif to pay damages—”

Wolfe banged a fist on his desk. “Confound it!” he roared. “Get out of here! Go! Do you think murders are solved by cutting out paper dolls? First you lie to me, and now you refuse to annoy people, including the murderer! Archie, put them out!”

“Good for you,” I muttered at him. I was getting fed up too. I glared at the would-be clients. “Try the Salvation Army,” I suggested. “They’re old hands at helping people in trouble. You can have the notebooks to take along — at cost, six bits. No charge for the contents.”

They were looking at each other.

“I guess he has to see them somehow,” Fred conceded. “He has to have a reason, and I must admit that’s a good one. You don’t owe them anything — not one of them.”

Peggy gave in.

After a few details had been attended to, the most important of which was getting addresses, they left. The manner of their going, and of our speeding them, was so far from cordial that it might have been thought that instead of being the clients they were the prey. But the check was on my desk. When, after letting them out, I returned to the office, Wolfe was leaning back with his eyes shut, frowning in distaste.

I stretched and yawned. “This ought to be fun,” I said encouragingly. “Making it just a grab for damages. If the murderer is among the guests, see how long you can keep it from him. I bet he catches on before the jury comes in with the verdict.”

“Shut up,” he growled. “Blockheads.”

“Oh, have a heart,” I protested. “People in love aren’t supposed to think, that’s why they have to hire trained thinkers. You should be happy and proud they picked you. What’s a good big lie or two when you’re in love? When I saw—”

“Shut up,” he repeated. His eyes came open. “Your notebook. Those letters must go at once.”

III

Monday evening’s party lasted a full three hours, and murder wasn’t mentioned once. Even so, it wasn’t exactly jolly. The letters had put it straight that Wolfe, acting for Mrs. Mion, wanted to find out whether an appropriate sum could be collected from Gifford James without resort to lawyers and a court, and what sum would be thought appropriate. So each of them was naturally in a state of mind: Gifford James himself; his daughter Clara; his lawyer, Judge Henry Arnold; Adele Bosley for Public Relations; Dr. Nicholas Lloyd as the technical expert; and Rupert Grove, who had been Mion’s manager. That made six, which was just comfortable for our big office. Fred and Peggy had not been invited.

The James trio arrived together and were so punctual, right on the dot at nine o’clock, that Wolfe and I hadn’t yet finished our after-dinner coffee in the office. I was so curious to have a look that I went to answer the door instead of leaving it to Fritz, the chef and house overseer who helps to make Wolfe’s days and years a joy forever almost as much as I do. The first thing that impressed me was that the baritone took the lead crossing the threshold, letting his daughter and his lawyer tag along behind. Since I have occasionally let Lily Rowan share her pair of opera seats with me, James’ six feet and broad shoulders and cocky strut were nothing new, but I was surprised that he looked so young, since he must have been close to fifty. He handed me his hat as if taking care of his hat on Monday evening, August 15, was the one and only thing I had been born for. Unfortunately I let it drop.

Clara made up for it by looking at me. That alone showed she was unusually observant, since one never looks at the flunkey who lets one in, but she saw me drop her father’s hat and gave me a glance, and then prolonged the glance until it practically said, “What are you, in disguise? See you later.” That made me feel friendly, but with reserve. Not only was she pale and tense, as Peggy Mion had said, but her blue eyes glistened, and a girl her age shouldn’t glisten like that. Nevertheless, I gave her a grin to show that I appreciated the prolonged glance.

Meanwhile the lawyer, Judge Henry Arnold, had hung up his own hat. During the day I had of course made inquiries on all of them, and had learned that he rated the “Judge” only because he had once been a city magistrate. Even so, that’s what they called him, so the sight of him was a let-down. He was a little sawed-off squirt with a bald head so flat on top you could have kept an ashtray on it, and his nose was pushed in. He must have been better arranged inside than out, since he had quite a list of clients among the higher levels on Broadway.

Taking them to the office and introducing them to Wolfe, I undertook to assign them to some of the yellow chairs, but the baritone spied the red leather one and copped it. I was helping Fritz fill their orders for drinks when the buzzer sounded and I went back to the front.

It was Dr. Nicholas Lloyd. He had no hat, so that point wasn’t raised, and I decided that the searching look he aimed at me was merely professional and automatic, to see if I was anemic or diabetic or what. With his lined handsome face and worried dark eyes he looked every inch a doctor and even surgeon, fully up to the classy reputation my inquiries had disclosed. When I ushered him to the office his eyes lighted up at sight of the refreshment table, and he was the best customer — bourbon and water with mint — all evening.

The last two came together — at least they were on the stoop together when I opened the door. I would probably have given Adele Bosley the red leather chair if James hadn’t already copped it. She shook hands and said she had been wanting to meet Archie Goodwin for years, but that was just public relations and went out the other ear. The point is that from my desk I get most of a party profile or three-quarters, but the one in the red leather chair fullface, and I like a view. Not that Adele Bosley was a pin-up, and she must have been in the fifth or sixth grade when Clara James was born, but her smooth tanned skin and pretty mouth without too much lipstick and nice brown eyes were good scenery.

Rupert Grove didn’t shake hands, which didn’t upset me. He may have been a good manager for Alberto Mion’s affairs, but not for his own physique. A man can be fat and still have integrity, as for instance Falstaff or Nero Wolfe, but that bird had lost all sense of proportion. His legs were short, and it was all in the middle third of him. If you wanted to be polite and look at his face you had to concentrate. I did so, since I needed to size them all up, and saw nothing worthy of recording but a pair of shrewd shifty black eyes.

When these two were seated and provided with liquid, Wolfe fired the starting gun. He said he was sorry it had been necessary to ask them to exert themselves on a hot evening, but that the question at issue could be answered fairly and equitably only if all concerned had a voice in it. The responding murmurs went all the way from acquiescence to extreme irritation. Judge Arnold said belligerently that there was no question at legal issue because Albert Mion was dead.

“Nonsense,” Wolfe said curtly. “If that were true, you, a lawyer, wouldn’t have bothered to come. Anyway, the purpose of this meeting is to keep it from becoming a legal issue. Four of you telephoned Mrs. Mion today to ask if I am acting for her, and were told that I am. On her behalf I want to collect the facts. I may as well tell you, without prejudice to her, that she will accept my recommendation. Should I decide that a large sum is due her you may of course contest; but if I form the opinion that she has no claim she will bow to it. Under that responsibility I need all the facts. Therefore—”

“You’re not a court,” Arnold snapped.

“No, sir, I’m not. If you prefer it in a court you’ll get it.” Wolfe’s eyes moved. “Miss Bosley, would your employers welcome that kind of publicity? Dr. Lloyd, would you rather appear as an expert on the witness-stand or talk it over here? Mr. Grove, how would your client feel about it if he were alive? Mr. James, what do you think? You wouldn’t relish the publicity either, would you? Particularly since your daughter’s name would appear?”

“Why would her name appear?” James demanded in his trained baritone.

Wolfe turned up a palm. “It would be evidence. It would be established that just before you struck Mr. Mion you said to him, ‘You let my daughter alone, you bastard.’”

I put my hand in my pocket. I have a rule, justified by experience, that whenever a killer is among those present, or may be, a gun must be handy. Not regarding the back of the third drawer of my desk, where they are kept, as handy enough, the routine is to transfer one to my pocket before guests gather. That was the pocket I put my hand in, knowing how cocky James was. But he didn’t leave his chair. He merely blurted, “That’s a lie!”

Wolfe grunted. “Ten people heard you say it. That would indeed be publicity, if you denied it under oath and all ten of them, subpoenaed to testify, contradicted you. I honestly think it would be better to discuss it with me.”

“What do you want to know?” Judge Arnold demanded.

“The facts. First, the one already moot. When I lie I like to know it. Mr. Grove, you were present when that famous blow was struck. Have I quoted Mr. James correctly?”

“Yes.” Grove’s voice was a high tenor, which pleased me.

“You heard him say that?”

“Yes.”

“Miss Bosley. Did you?”

She looked uncomfortable. “Wouldn’t it be better to—”

“Please. You’re not under oath, but I’m merely collecting facts, and I was told I lied. Did you hear him say that?”

“Yes, I did.” Adele’s eyes went to James. “I’m sorry, Gif.”

“But it’s not true!” Clara James cried.

Wolfe rasped at her, “We’re all lying?”

I could have warned her, when she gave me that glance in the hall, to look out for him. Not only was she a sophisticated young woman, and not only did she glisten, but her slimness was the kind that comes from not eating enough, and Wolfe absolutely cannot stand people who don’t eat enough. I knew he would be down on her from the go.

But she came back at him. “I don’t mean that,” she said scornfully. “Don’t be so touchy! I mean I had lied to my father. What he thought about Alberto and me wasn’t true. I was just bragging to him because — it doesn’t matter why. Anyway, what I told him wasn’t true, and I told him so that night!”

“Which night?”

“When we got home — from the stage party after Rigoletto. That was where my father knocked Alberto down, you know, right there on the stage. When we got home I told him that what I had said about Alberto and me wasn’t true.”

“When were you lying, the first time or the second?”

“Don’t answer that, my dear,” Judge Arnold broke in, lawyering. He looked sternly at Wolfe. “This is all irrelevant. You’re welcome to the facts, but relevant facts. What Miss James told her father is immaterial.”

Wolfe shook his head. “Oh no.” His eyes went from right to left and back again. “Apparently I haven’t made it plain. Mrs. Mion wants me to decide for her whether she has a just claim, not so much legally as morally. If it appears that Mr. James’ assault on Mr. Mion was morally justified that will be a factor in my decision.” He focused on Clara. “Whether my question was relevant or not, Miss James, I admit it was embarrassing and therefore invited mendacity. I withdraw it. Try this instead. Had you, prior to that stage party, given your father to understand that Mr. Mion had seduced you?”

“Well—” Clara laughed. It was a tinkly soprano laugh, rather attractive. “What a nice old-fashioned way to say it! Yes, I had. But it wasn’t true!”

“But you believed it, Mr. James?”

Gifford James was having trouble holding himself in, and I concede that such leading questions about his daughter’s honor from a stranger must have been hard to take. But after all it wasn’t new to the rest of the audience, and anyway it sure was relevant. He forced himself to speak with quiet dignity. “I believed what my daughter told me, yes.”

Wolfe nodded. “So much for that,” he said in a relieved tone. “I’m glad that part is over with.” His eyes moved. “Now. Mr. Grove, tell me about the conference in Mr. Mion’s studio, a few hours before he died.”

Rupert the Fat had his head tilted to one side, with his shrewd black eyes meeting Wolfe’s. “It was for the purpose,” he said in his high tenor, “of discussing the demand Mion had made for payment of damages.”

“You were there?”

“I was, naturally. I was Mion’s adviser and manager. Also Miss Bosley, Dr. Lloyd, Mr. James, and Judge Arnold.”

“Who arranged the conference, you?”

“In a way, yes. Arnold suggested it, and I told Mion and phoned Dr. Lloyd and Miss Bosley.”

“What was decided?”

“Nothing. That is, nothing definite. There was the question of the extent of the damage — how soon Mion would be able to sing again.”

“What was your position?”

Grove’s eyes tightened. “Didn’t I say I was Mion’s manager?”

“Certainly. I mean, what position did you take regarding the payment of damages?”

“I thought a preliminary payment of fifty thousand dollars should be made at once. Even if Mion’s voice was soon all right he had already lost that and more. His South American tour had been canceled, and he had been unable to make a lot of records on contract, and then radio offers—”

“Nothing like fifty thousand dollars,” Judge Arnold asserted aggressively. There was nothing wrong with his larynx, small as he was. “I showed figures—”

“To hell with your figures! Anybody can—”

“Please!” Wolfe rapped on his desk with a knuckle. “What was Mr. Mion’s position?”

“The same as mine, of course.” Grove was scowling at Arnold as he spoke to Wolfe. “We had discussed it.”

“Naturally.” Wolfe’s eyes went left. “How did you feel about it, Mr. James?”

“I think,” Arnold broke in, “that I should speak for my client. You agree, Gif?”

“Go ahead,” the baritone muttered.

Arnold did, and took most of one of the three hours. I was surprised that Wolfe didn’t stop him, and finally decided that he let him ramble on just to get additional support for his long-standing opinion of lawyers. If so, he got it. Arnold covered everything. He had a lot to say about tort-feasors, going back a couple of centuries, with emphasis on the mental state of a tort-feasor. Another item he covered at length was proximate cause. He got really worked up about proximate cause, but it was so involved that I lost track and passed.

Here and there, though, he made sense. At one point he said, “The idea of a preliminary payment, as they called it, was clearly inadmissible. It is not reasonable to expect a man, even if he stipulates an obligation, to make a payment thereon until either the total amount of the obligation, or an exact method of computing it, has been agreed upon.”

At another point he said, “The demand for so large a sum can in fact be properly characterized as blackmail. They knew that if the action went to trial, and if we showed that my client’s deed sprang from his knowledge that his daughter had been wronged, a jury would not be likely to award damages. But they also knew that we would be averse to making that defense.”

“Not his knowledge,” Wolfe objected. “Merely his belief. His daughter says she had misinformed him.”

“We could have showed knowledge,” Arnold insisted.

I looked at Clara with my brows up. She was being contradicted flatly on the chronology of her lie and her truth, but either she and her father didn’t get the implication of it or they didn’t want to get started on that again.

At another point Arnold said, “Even if my client’s deed was tortious and damages would be collectible, the amount could not be agreed upon until the extent of the injury was known. We offered, without prejudice, twenty thousand dollars in full settlement, for a general release. They refused. They wanted a payment forth with on account. We refused that on principle. In the end there was agreement on only one thing: that an effort should be made to arrive at the total amount of damage. Of course that was what Dr. Lloyd was there for. He was asked for a prognosis, and he stated that — but you don’t need to take hearsay. He’s here, and you can get it direct.”

Wolfe nodded. “If you please, Doctor?”

I thought, My God, here we go again with another expert.

But Lloyd had mercy on us. He kept it down to our level and didn’t take anything like an hour. Before he spoke he took another swallow from his third helping of bourbon and water with mint, which had smoothed out some of the lines on his handsome face and taken some of the worry from his eyes.

“I’ll try to remember,” he said slowly, “exactly what I told them. First I described the damage the blow had done. The thyroid and arytenoid cartilages on the left side had been severely injured, and to a lesser extent the cricoid.” He smiled — a superior smile, but not supercilious. “I waited two weeks, using indicated treatment, thinking an operation might not be required, but it was. When I got inside I confess I was relieved; it wasn’t as bad as I had feared. It was a simple operation, and he healed admirably. I wouldn’t have been risking much that day if I had given assurance that his voice would be as good as ever in two months, three at the most, but the larynx is an extremely delicate instrument, and a tenor like Mion’s is a remarkable phenomenon, so I was cautious enough merely to say that I would be surprised and disappointed if he wasn’t ready, fully ready, for the opening of the next opera season, seven months from then. I added that my hope and expectation were actually more optimistic than that.”

Lloyd pursed his lips. “That was it, I think. Nevertheless, I welcomed the suggestion that my prognosis should be reinforced by Rentner’s. Apparently it would be a major factor in the decision about the amount to be paid in damages, and I didn’t want the sole responsibility.”

“Rentner? Who was he?” Wolfe asked.

“Dr. Abraham Rentner of Mount Sinai,” Lloyd replied, in the tone I would use if someone asked me who Jackie Robinson was. “I phoned him and made an appointment for the following morning.”

“I insisted on it,” Rupert the Fat said importantly. “Mion had a right to collect not sometime in the distant future, but then and there. They wouldn’t pay unless a total was agreed on, and if we had to name a total I wanted to be damn sure it was enough. Don’t forget that that day Mion couldn’t sing a note.”

“He wouldn’t have been able even to let out a pianissimo for at least two months,” Lloyd bore him out. “I gave that as the minimum.”

“There seems,” Judge Arnold interposed, “to be an implication that we opposed the suggestion that a second professional opinion be secured. I must protest—”

“You did!” Grove squeaked.

“We did not!” Gifford James barked. “We merely—”

The three of them went at it, snapping and snarling. It seemed to me that they might have saved their energy for the big issue, was anything coming to Mrs. Mion and if so how much, but not those babies. Their main concern was to avoid the slightest risk of agreeing on anything at all. Wolfe patiently let them get where they were headed for — nowhere — and then invited a new voice in. He turned to Adele and spoke.

“Miss Bosley, we haven’t heard from you. Which side were you on?”

IV

Adele Bosley had been sitting taking it in, sipping occasionally at her rum collins — now her second one — and looking, I thought, pretty damn intelligent. Though it was the middle of August, she was the only one of the six who had a really good tan. Her public relations with the sun were excellent.

She shook her head. “I wasn’t on either side, Mr. Wolfe. My only interest was that of my employer, the Metropolitan Opera Association. Naturally we wanted it settled privately, without any scandal. I had no opinion whatever on whether — on the point at issue.”

“And expressed none?”

“No. I merely urged them to get it settled if possible.”

“Fair enough!” Clara James blurted. It was a sneer. “You might have helped my father a little, since he got your job for you. Or had you—”

“Be quiet, Clara!” James told her with authority.

But she ignored him and finished it. “Or had you already paid in full for that?”

I was shocked. Judge Arnold looked pained. Rupert the Fat giggled. Doc Lloyd took a gulp of bourbon and water.

In view of the mildly friendly attitude I was developing toward Adele I sort of hoped she would throw something at the slim and glistening Miss James, but all she did was appeal to the father. “Can’t you handle the brat, Gif?”

Then, without waiting for an answer, she turned to Wolfe. “Miss James likes to use her imagination. What she implied is not on the record. Not anybody’s record.”

Wolfe nodded. “It wouldn’t belong on this one anyhow.” He made a face. “To go back to relevancies, what time did that conference break up?”

“Why — Mr. James and Judge Arnold left first, around four-thirty. Then Dr. Lloyd, soon after. I stayed a few minutes with Mion and Mr. Grove, and then went.”

“Where did you go?”

“To my office, on Broadway.”

“How long did you stay at your office?”

She looked surprised. “I don’t know — yes, I do too, of course. Until a little after seven. I had things to do, and I typed a confidential report of the conference at Mion’s.”

“Did you see Mion again before he died? Or phone him?”

“See him?” She was more surprised. “How could I? Don’t you know he was found dead at seven o’clock? That was before I left the office.”

“Did you phone him? Between four-thirty and seven?”

“No.” Adele was puzzled and slightly exasperated. It struck me that Wolfe was recklessly getting onto thin ice, mighty close to the forbidden subject of murder. Adele added, “I don’t know what you’re getting at.”

“Neither do I,” Judge Arnold put in with emphasis. He smiled sarcastically. “Unless it’s force of habit with you, asking people where they were at the time a death by violence occurred. Why don’t you go after all of us?”

“That’s what I intend to do,” Wolfe said imperturbably. “I would like to know why Mion decided to kill himself, because that has a bearing on the opinion I shall give his widow. I understand that two or three of you have said that he was wrought up when that conference ended, but not despondent or splenetic. I know he committed suicide; the police can’t be flummoxed on a thing like that; but why?”

“I doubt,” Adele Bosley offered, “if you know how a singer — especially a great artist like Mion — how he feels when he can’t let a sound out, when he can’t even talk except in an undertone or a whisper. It’s horrible.”

“Anyway, you never knew with him,” Rupert Grove contributed. “In rehearsal I’ve heard him do an aria like an angel and then rush out weeping because he thought he had slurred a release. One minute he was up in the sky and the next he was under a rug.”

Wolfe grunted. “Nevertheless, anything said to him by anyone during the two hours preceding his suicide is pertinent to this inquiry, to establish Mrs. Mion’s moral position. I want to know where you people were that day, after the conference up to seven o’clock, and what you did.”

“My God!” Judge Arnold threw up his hands. The hands came down again. “All right, it’s getting late. As Miss Bosley told you, my client and I left Mion’s studio together. We went to the Churchill bar and drank and talked. A little later Miss James joined us, stayed long enough for a drink, I suppose half an hour, and left. Mr. James and I remained together until after seven. During that time neither of us communicated with Mion, nor arranged for anyone else to. I believe that covers it?”

“Thank you,” Wolfe said politely. “You corroborate, of course, Mr. James?”

“I do,” the baritone said gruffly. “This is a lot of goddam nonsense.”

“It does begin to sound like it,” Wolfe conceded. “Dr. Lloyd? If you don’t mind?”

He hadn’t better, since he had been mellowed by four ample helpings of our best bourbon, and he didn’t. “Not at all,” he said cooperatively. “I made calls on five patients, two on upper Fifth Avenue, one in the East Sixties, and two at the hospital. I got home a little after six and had just finished dressing after taking a bath when Fred Weppler phoned me about Mion. Of course I went at once.”

“You hadn’t seen Mion or phoned him?”

“Not since I left after the conference. Perhaps I should have, but I had no idea — I’m not a psychiatrist, but I was his doctor.”

“He was mercurial, was he?”

“Yes, he was.” Lloyd pursed his lips. “Of course, that’s not a medical term.”

“Far from it,” Wolfe agreed. He shifted his gaze. “Mr. Grove, I don’t have to ask you if you phoned Mion, since it is on record that you did. Around five o’clock?”

Rupert the Fat had his head tilted again. Apparently that was his favorite pose for conversing. He corrected Wolfe. “It was after five. More like a quarter past.”

“Where did you phone from?”

“The Harvard Club.”

I thought, I’ll be damned, it takes all kinds to make a Harvard Club.

“What was said?”

“Not much.” Grove’s lips twisted. “It’s none of your damn business, you know, but the others have obliged, and I’ll string along. I had forgotten to ask him if he would endorse a certain product for a thousand dollars, and the agency wanted an answer. We talked less than five minutes. First he said he wouldn’t and then he said he would. That was all.”

“Did he sound like a man getting ready to kill himself?”

“Not the slightest. He was glum, but naturally, since he couldn’t sing and couldn’t expect to for at least two months.”

“After you phoned Mion what did you do?”

“I stayed at the club. I ate dinner there and hadn’t quite finished when the news came that Mion had killed himself. So I’m still behind that ice cream and coffee.”

“That’s too bad. When you phoned Mion, did you again try to persuade him not to press his claim against Mr. James?”

Grove’s head straightened up. “Did I what?” he demanded.

“You heard me,” Wolfe said rudely. “What’s surprising about it? Naturally Mrs. Mion has informed me, since I’m working for her. You were opposed to Mion’s asking for payment in the first place and tried to talk him out of it. You said the publicity would be so harmful that it wasn’t worth it. He demanded that you support the claim and threatened to cancel your contract if you refused. Isn’t that correct?”

“It is not.” Grove’s black eyes were blazing. “It wasn’t like that at all! I merely gave him my opinion. When it was decided to make the claim I went along.” His voice went up a notch higher, though I wouldn’t have thought it possible. “I certainly did!”

“I see.” Wolfe wasn’t arguing. “What is your opinion now, about Mrs. Mion’s claim?”

“I don’t think she has one. I don’t believe she can collect. If I were in James’ place I certainly wouldn’t pay her a cent.”

Wolfe nodded. “You don’t like her, do you?”

“Frankly, I don’t. No. I never have. Do I have to like her?”

“No, indeed. Especially since she doesn’t like you either.” Wolfe shifted in his chair and leaned back. I could tell from the line of his lips, straightened out, that the next item on the agenda was one he didn’t care for, and I understood why when I saw his eyes level at Clara James. I’ll bet that if he had known that he would have to be dealing with that type he wouldn’t have taken the job. He spoke to her testily. “Miss James, you’ve heard what has been said?”

“I was wondering,” she complained, as if she had been holding in a grievance, “if you were going to go on ignoring me. I was around too, you know.”

“I know. I haven’t forgotten you.” His tone implied that he only wished he could. “When you had a drink in the Churchill bar with your father and Judge Arnold, why did they send you up to Mion’s studio to see him? What for?”

Arnold and James protested at once, loudly and simultaneously. Wolfe, paying no attention to them, waited to hear Clara, her voice having been drowned by theirs.

“... nothing to do with it,” she was finishing. “I sent myself.”

“It was your own idea?”

“Entirely. I have one once in a while, all alone.”

“What did you go for?”

“You don’t need to answer, my dear,” Arnold told her.

She ignored him. “They told me what had happened at the conference, and I was mad. I thought it was a holdup — but I wasn’t going to tell Alberto that. I thought I could talk him out of it.”

“You went to appeal to him for old times’ sake?”

She looked pleased. “You have the nicest way of putting things! Imagine a girl my age having old times!”

“I’m glad you like my diction, Miss James.” Wolfe was furious. “Anyhow, you went. Arriving at a quarter past six?”

“Just about, yes.”

“Did you see Mion?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“He wasn’t there. At least—” She stopped. Her eyes weren’t glistening quite so much. She went on, “That’s what I thought then. I went to the thirteenth floor and rang the bell at the door to the studio. It’s a loud bell — he had it loud to be heard above his voice and the piano when he was practicing — but I couldn’t hear it from the hall because the door is soundproofed too, and after I had pushed the button a few times I wasn’t sure the bell was ringing so I knocked on the door. I like to finish anything I start, and I thought he must be there, so I rang the bell some more and took off my shoe and pounded on the door with the heel. Then I went down to the twelfth floor by the public stairs and rang the bell at the apartment door. That was really stupid, because I know how Mrs. Mion hates me, but anyway I did. She came to the door and said she thought Alberto was up in the studio, and I said he wasn’t, and she shut the door in my face. I went home and mixed myself a drink — which reminds me, I must admit this is good scotch, though I never heard of it before.”

She lifted her glass and jiggled it to swirl the ice. “Any questions?”

“No,” Wolfe growled. He glanced at the clock on the wall and then along the line of faces. “I shall certainly report to Mrs. Mion,” he told them, “that you were not grudging with the facts.”

“And what else?” Arnold inquired.

“I don’t know. We’ll see.”

That they didn’t like. I wouldn’t have supposed anyone could name a subject on which those six characters would have been in unanimous accord, but Wolfe turned the trick in five words. They wanted a verdict; failing that, an opinion; failing that, at least a hint. Adele Bosley was stubborn, Rupert the Fat was so indignant he squeaked, and Judge Arnold was next door to nasty. Wolfe was patient up to a point, but finally stood up and told them good night as if he meant it. The note it ended on was such that before going not one of them shelled out a word of appreciation for all the refreshment, not even Adele, the expert on public relations, or Doc Lloyd, who had practically emptied the bourbon bottle.

With the front door locked and bolted for the night, I returned to the office. To my astonishment Wolfe was still on his feet, standing over by the bookshelves, glaring at the backbones.

“Restless?” I asked courteously.

He turned and said aggressively, “I want another bottle of beer.”

“Nuts. You’ve had five since dinner.” I didn’t bother to put much feeling into it, as the routine was familiar. He had himself set the quota of five bottles between dinner and bedtime, and usually stuck to it, but when anything sent his humor far enough down he liked to shift the responsibility so he could be sore at me too.

It was just part of my job. “Nothing doing,” I said firmly. “I counted ’em. Five. What’s the trouble, a whole evening gone and still no murderer?”

“Bah.” He compressed his lips. “That’s not it. If that were all we could close it up before going to bed. It’s that confounded gun with wings.” He gazed at me with his eyes narrowed, as if suspecting that I had wings too. “I could, of course, just ignore it— No. No, in view of the state our clients are in, it would be foolhardy. We’ll have to clear it up. There’s no alternative.”

“That’s a nuisance. Can I help any?”

“Yes. Phone Mr. Cramer first thing in the morning. Ask him to be here at eleven o’clock.”

My brows went up. “But he’s interested only in homicides. Do I tell him we’ve got one to show him?”

“No. Tell him I guarantee that it’s worth the trouble.” Wolfe took a step toward me. “Archie.”

“Yes, sir.”

“I’ve had a bad evening and I’ll have another bottle.”

“You will not. Not a chance.” Fritz had come in and we were starting to clear up. “It’s after midnight and you’re in the way. Go to bed.”

“One wouldn’t hurt him,” Fritz muttered.

“You’re a help,” I said bitterly. “I warn both of you, I’ve got a gun in my pocket. What a household!”

V

For nine months of the year Inspector Cramer of Homicide, big and broad and turning gray, looked the part well enough, but in the summertime the heat kept his face so red that he was a little gaudy. He knew it and didn’t like it, and as a result he was some harder to deal with in August than in January. If an occasion arises for me to commit a murder in Manhattan I hope it will be winter.

Tuesday at noon he sat in the red leather chair and looked at Wolfe with no geniality. Detained by another appointment, he hadn’t been able to make it at eleven, the hour when Wolfe adjourns the morning session with his orchids up in the plant rooms. Wolfe wasn’t exactly beaming either, and I was looking forward to some vaudeville. Also I was curious to see how Wolfe would go about getting dope on a murder from Cramer without spilling it that there had been one, as Cramer was by no means a nitwit.

“I’m on my way uptown,” Cramer grumbled, “and haven’t got much time.”

That was probably a barefaced lie. He merely didn’t want to admit that an inspector of the NYPD would call on a private detective on request, even though it was Nero Wolfe and I had told him we had something hot.

“What is it,” he grumbled on, “the Dickinson thing? Who brought you in?”

Wolfe shook his head. “No one, thank heaven. It’s about the murder of Alberto Mion.”

I goggled at him. This was away beyond me. Right off he had let the dog loose, when I had thought the whole point was that there was no dog on the place.

“Mion?” Cramer wasn’t interested. “Not one of mine.”

“It soon will be. Alberto Mion, the famous opera singer. Four months ago, on April nineteenth. In his studio on East End Avenue. Shot—”

“Oh.” Cramer nodded. “Yeah, I remember. But you’re stretching it a little. It was suicide.”

“No. It was first-degree murder.”

Cramer regarded him for three breaths. Then, in no hurry, he got a cigar from his pocket, inspected it, and stuck it in his mouth. In a moment he took it out again.

“I have never known it to fail,” he remarked, “that you can be counted on for a headache. Who says it was murder?”

“I have reached that conclusion.”

“Then that’s settled.” Cramer’s sarcasm was usually a little heavy. “Have you bothered any about evidence?”

“I have none.”

“Good. Evidence just clutters a murder up.” Cramer stuck the cigar back in his mouth and exploded, “When did you start keeping your sentences so goddam short? Go ahead and talk!”

“Well—” Wolfe considered. “It’s a little difficult. You’re probably not familiar with the details, since it was so long ago and was recorded as suicide.”

“I remember it fairly well. As you say, he was famous. Go right ahead.”

Wolfe leaned back and closed his eyes. “Interrupt me if you need to. I had six people here for a talk last evening.” He pronounced their names and identified them. “Five of them were present at a conference in Mion’s studio which ended two hours before he was found dead. The sixth, Miss James, banged on the studio door at a quarter past six and got no reply, presumably because he was dead then. My conclusion that Mion was murdered is based on things I have heard said. I’m not going to repeat them to you — because it would take too long, because it’s a question of emphasis and interpretation, and because you have already heard them.”

“I wasn’t here last evening,” Cramer said dryly.

“So you weren’t. Instead of ‘you,’ I should have said the Police Department. It must all be in the files. They were questioned at the time it happened, and told their stories as they have now told them to me. You can get it there. Have you ever known me to have to eat my words?”

“I’ve seen times when I would have liked to shove them down your throat.”

“But you never have. Here are three more I shall not eat: Mion was murdered. I won’t tell you, now, how I reached that conclusion; study your files.”

Cramer was keeping himself under restraint. “I don’t have to study them,” he declared, “for one detail — how he was killed. Are you saying he fired the gun himself but was driven to it?”

“No. The murderer fired the gun.”

“It must have been quite a murderer. It’s quite a trick to pry a guy’s mouth open and stick a gun in it without getting bit. Would you mind naming him?”

Wolfe shook his head. “I haven’t got that far yet. But it isn’t the objection you raise that’s bothering me; that can be overcome; it’s something else.” He leaned forward and was earnest. “Look here, Mr. Cramer. It would not have been impossible for me to see this through alone, deliver the murderer and the evidence to you, and flap my wings and crow. But first, I have no ambition to expose you as a zany, since you’re not; and second, I need your help. I am not now prepared to prove to you that Mion was murdered; I can only assure you that he was and repeat that I won’t have to eat it — and neither will you. Isn’t that enough, at least to arouse your interest?”

Cramer stopped chewing the cigar. He never lit one. “Sure,” he said grimly. “Hell, I’m interested. Another first-class headache. I’m flattered you want me to help. How?”

“I want you to arrest two people as material witnesses, question them, and let them out on bail.”

“Which two? Why not all six?” I warned you his sarcasm was hefty.

“But” — Wolfe ignored it — “under clearly defined conditions. They must not know that I am responsible; they must not even know that I have spoken with you. The arrests should be made late this afternoon or early evening, so they’ll be kept in custody all night and until they arrange for bail in the morning. The bail need not be high; that’s not important. The questioning should be fairly prolonged and severe, not merely a gesture, and if they get little or no sleep so much the better. Of course this sort of thing is routine for you.”

“Yeah, we do it constantly.” Cramer’s tone was unchanged. “But when we ask for a warrant we like to have a fairly good excuse. We wouldn’t like to put down that it’s to do Nero Wolfe a favor. I don’t want to be contrary.”

“There’s ample excuse for these two. They are material witnesses. They are indeed.”

“You haven’t named them. Who are they?”

“The man and woman who found the body. Mr. Frederick Weppler, the music critic, and Mrs. Mion, the widow.”

This time I didn’t goggle, but I had to catch myself quick. It was a first if there ever was one. Time and again I have seen Wolfe go far, on a few occasions much too far, to keep a client from being pinched. He regards it as an unbearable personal insult. And here he was, practically begging the law to haul Fred and Peggy in, when I had deposited her check for five grand only the day before!

“Oh,” Cramer said. “Them?”

“Yes, sir,” Wolfe assured him cooperatively. “As you know or can learn from the files, there is plenty to ask them about it. Mr. Weppler was there for lunch that day, with others, and when the others left he remained with Mrs. Mion. What was discussed? What did they do that afternoon; where were they? Why did Mr. Weppler return to the Mion apartment at seven o’clock? Why did he and Mrs. Mion ascend together to the studio? After finding the body, why did Mr. Weppler go downstairs before notifying the police, to get a list of names from the doorman and elevator man? An extraordinary performance. Was it Mion’s habit to take an afternoon nap? Did he sleep with his mouth open?”

“Much obliged,” Cramer said not gratefully. “You’re a wonder at thinking of questions to ask. But even if Mion did take naps with his mouth open, I doubt if he did it standing up. And after the bullet left his head it went up to the ceiling, as I remember it. Now.” Cramer put his palms on the arms of the chair, with the cigar in his mouth tilted up at about the angle the gun in Mion’s mouth had probably been. “Who’s your client?”

“No,” Wolfe said regretfully. “I’m not ready to disclose that.”

“I thought not. In fact, there isn’t one single damn thing you have disclosed. You’ve got no evidence, or if you have any you’re keeping it under your belt. You’ve got a conclusion you like, that will help a client you won’t name, and you want me to test it for you by arresting two reputable citizens and giving them the works. I’ve seen samples of your nerve before, but this is tops. For God’s sake!”

“I’ve told you I won’t eat it, and neither will you. If—”

“You’d eat one of your own orchids if you had to earn a fee!”

That started the fireworks. I have sat many times and listened to that pair in a slugging match and enjoyed every minute of it, but this one got so hot that I wasn’t exactly sure I was enjoying it. At 12:4 °Cramer was on his feet, starting to leave. At 12:45 he was back in the red leather chair, shaking his fist and snarling. At 12:48 Wolfe was leaning back with his eyes shut, pretending he was deaf. At 12:52 he was pounding his desk and bellowing.

At ten past one it was all over. Cramer had taken it and was gone. He had made a condition, that there would first be a check of the record and a staff talk, but that didn’t matter, since the arrests were to be postponed until after judges had gone home. He accepted the proviso that the victims were not to know that Wolfe had a hand in it, so it could have been said that he was knuckling under, but actually he was merely using horse sense. No matter how much he discounted Wolfe’s three words that were not to be eaten — and he knew from experience how risky it was to discount Wolfe just for the hell of it — they made it fairly probable that it wouldn’t hurt to give Mion’s death another look; and in that case a session with the couple who had found the body was as good a way to start as any. As a matter of fact, the only detail that Cramer choked on was Wolfe’s refusal to tell who his client was.

As I followed Wolfe into the dining room for lunch I remarked to his outspread back, “There are already eight hundred and nine people in the metropolitan area who would like to poison you. This will make it eight hundred and eleven. Don’t think they won’t find out sooner or later.”

“Of course they will,” he conceded, pulling his chair back. “But too late.”

The rest of that day and evening nothing happened at all, as far as we knew.

VI

I was at my desk in the office at 10:40 the next morning when the phone rang. I got it and told the transmitter, “Nero Wolfe’s office, Archie Goodwin speaking.”

“I want to talk to Mr. Wolfe.”

“He won’t be available until eleven o’clock. Can I help?”

“This is urgent. This is Weppler, Frederick Weppler. I’m in a booth in a drugstore on Ninth Avenue near Twentieth Street. Mrs. Mion is with me. We’ve been arrested.”

“Good God!” I was horrified. “What for?”

“To ask us about Mion’s death. They had material-witness warrants. They kept us all night, and we just got out on bail. I had a lawyer arrange for the bail, but I don’t want him to know about — that we consulted Wolfe, and he’s not with us. We want to see Wolfe.”

“You sure do,” I agreed emphatically. “It’s a damn outrage. Come on up here. He’ll be down from the plant rooms by the time you arrive. Grab a taxi.”

“We can’t. That’s why I’m phoning. We’re being followed by two detectives and we don’t want them to know we’re seeing Wolfe. How can we shake them?”

It would have saved time and energy to tell him to come ahead, that a couple of official tails needn’t worry him, but I thought I’d better play along.

“For God’s sake,” I said, disgusted. “Cops give me a pain in the neck. Listen. Are you listening?”

“Yes.”

“Go to the Feder Paper Company, Five-thirty-five West Seventeenth Street. In the office ask for Mr. Sol Feder. Tell him your name is Montgomery. He’ll conduct you along a passage that exits on Eighteenth Street. Right there, either at the curb or double-parked, will be a taxi with a handkerchief on the door handle. I’ll be in it. Don’t lose any time climbing in. Have you got it?”

“I think so. You’d better repeat the address.”

I did so, and told him to wait ten minutes before starting, to give me time to get there. Then, after hanging up, I phoned Sol Feder to instruct him, got Wolfe on the house phone to inform him, and beat it.

I should have told him to wait fifteen or twenty minutes instead of ten, because I got to my post on Eighteenth Street barely in time. My taxi had just stopped, and I was reaching out to tie my handkerchief on the door handle, when here they came across the sidewalk like a bat out of hell. I swung the door wide, and Fred practically threw Peggy in and dived in after her.

“Okay, driver,” I said sternly, “you know where,” and we rolled.

As we swung into Tenth Avenue I asked if they had had breakfast and they said yes, not with any enthusiasm. The fact is, they looked as if they were entirely out of enthusiasm. Peggy’s lightweight green jacket, which she had on over a tan cotton dress, was rumpled and not very clean, and her face looked neglected. Fred’s hair might not have been combed for a month, and his brown tropical worsted was anything but natty. They sat holding hands, and about once a minute Fred twisted around to look through the rear window.

“We’re loose all right,” I assured him. “I’ve been saving Sol Feder just for an emergency like this.”

It was only a five-minute ride. When I ushered them into the office Wolfe was there in his big custom-made chair behind his desk. He arose to greet them, invited them to sit, asked if they had breakfasted properly, and said that the news of their arrest had been an unpleasant shock.

“One thing,” Fred blurted, still standing. “We came to see you and consult you in confidence, and forty-eight hours later we were arrested. Was that pure coincidence?”

Wolfe finished getting himself re-established in his chair. “That won’t help us any, Mr. Weppler,” he said without resentment. “If that’s your frame of mind you’d better go somewhere and cool off. You and Mrs. Mion are my clients. An insinuation that I am capable of acting against the interest of a client is too childish for discussion. What did the police ask you about?”

But Fred wasn’t satisfied. “You’re not a double-crosser,” he conceded. “I know that. But what about Goodwin here? He may not be a double-crosser either, but he might have got careless in conversation with someone.”

Wolfe’s eyes moved. “Archie. Did you?”

“No, sir. But he can postpone asking my pardon. They’ve had a hard night.” I looked at Fred. “Sit down and relax. If I had a careless tongue I wouldn’t last at this job a week.”

“It’s damn funny,” Fred persisted. He sat. “Mrs. Mion agrees with me. Don’t you, Peggy?”

Peggy, in the red leather chair, gave him a glance and then looked back at Wolfe. “I did, I guess,” she confessed. “Yes, I did. But now that I’m here, seeing you—” She made a gesture. “Oh, forget it! There’s no one else to go to. We know lawyers, of course, but we don’t want to tell a lawyer what we know — about the gun. We’ve already told you. But now the police suspect something, and we’re out on bail, and you’ve got to do something!”

“What did you find out Monday evening?” Fred demanded. “You stalled when I phoned yesterday. What did they say?”

“They recited facts,” Wolfe replied. “As I told you on the phone, I made some progress. I have nothing to add to that — now. But I want to know, I must know, what line the police took with you. Did they know what you told me about the gun?”

They both said no.

Wolfe grunted. “Then I might reasonably ask that you withdraw your insinuation that I or Mr. Goodwin betrayed you. What did they ask about?”

The answers to that took a good half an hour. The cops hadn’t missed a thing that was included in the picture as they knew it, and, with instructions from Cramer to make it thorough, they hadn’t left a scrap. Far from limiting it to the day of Mion’s death, they had been particularly curious about Peggy’s and Fred’s feelings and actions during the months both prior and subsequent thereto. Several times I had to take the tip of my tongue between my teeth to keep from asking the clients why they hadn’t told the cops to go soak their heads, but I really knew why: they had been scared. A scared man is only half a man. By the time they finished reporting on their ordeal I was feeling sympathetic, and even guilty on behalf of Wolfe, when suddenly he snapped me out of it.

He sat a while tapping the arm of his chair with a fingertip, and then looked at me and said abruptly, “Archie. Draw a check to the order of Mrs. Mion for five thousand dollars.”

They gawked at him. I got up and headed for the safe. They demanded to know what the idea was. I stood at the safe door to listen.

“I’m quitting,” Wolfe said curtly. “I can’t stand you. I told you Sunday that one or both of you were lying, and you stubbornly denied it. I undertook to work around your lie, and I did my best. But now that the police have got curious about Mion’s death, and specifically about you, I refuse longer to risk it. I am willing to be a Quixote, but not a chump. In breaking with you, I should tell you that I shall immediately inform Inspector Cramer of all that you have told me. If, when the police start the next round with you, you are fools enough to contradict me, heaven knows what will happen. Your best course will be to acknowledge the truth and let them pursue the investigation you hired me for; but I would also warn you that they are not simpletons and they too will know that you are lying — at least one of you. Archie, what are you standing there gaping for? Get the checkbook.”

I opened the safe door.

Neither of them had uttered a peep. I suppose they were too tired to react normally. As I returned to my desk they just sat, looking at each other. As I started making the entry on the stub, Fred’s voice came.

“You can’t do this. This isn’t ethical.”

“Pfui.” Wolfe snorted. “You hire me to get you out of a fix, and lie to me about it, and talk of ethics! Incidentally, I did make progress Monday evening. I cleared everything up but two details, but the devil of it is that one of them depends on you. I have got to know who put that gun on the floor beside the body. I am convinced that it was one of you, but you won’t admit it. So I’m helpless and that’s a pity, because I am also convinced that neither of you was involved in Mion’s death. If there were—”

“What’s that?” Fred demanded. There was nothing wrong with his reaction now. “You’re convinced that neither of us was involved?”

“I am.”

Fred was out of his chair. He went to Wolfe’s desk, put his palms on it, leaned forward, and said harshly, “Do you mean that? Look at me. Open your eyes and look at me! Do you mean that?”

“Yes,” Wolfe told him. “Certainly I mean it.”

Fred gazed at him another moment and then straightened up. “All right,” he said, the harshness gone. “I put the gun on the floor.”

A wail came from Peggy. She sailed out of her chair and to him and seized his arm with both hands. “Fred! No! Fred!” she pleaded. I wouldn’t have thought her capable of wailing, but of course she was tired to begin with. He put a hand on top of hers and then decided that was inadequate and took her in his arms. For a minute he concentrated on her. Finally he turned his face to Wolfe and spoke.

“I may regret this, but if I do you will too. By God, you will.” He was quite positive of it. “All right, I lied. I put the gun on the floor. Now it’s up to you.” He held the other client closer. “I did, Peggy. Don’t say I should have told you — maybe I should — but I couldn’t. It’ll be all right, dearest, really it will—”

“Sit down,” Wolfe said crossly. After a moment he made it an order. “Confound it, sit down!”

Peggy freed herself, Fred letting her go, and returned to her chair and dropped into it. Fred perched on its arm, with a hand on her far shoulder, and she put her hand up to his. Their eyes, suspicious, afraid, defiant, and hopeful all at once, were on Wolfe.

He stayed cross. “I assume,” he said, “that you see how it is. You haven’t impressed me. I already knew one of you had put the gun there. How could anyone else have entered the studio during those few minutes? The truth you have told me will be worse than useless, it will be extremely dangerous, unless you follow it with more truth. Try another lie and there’s no telling what will happen; I might not be able to save you. Where did you find it?”

“Don’t worry,” Fred said quietly. “You’ve screwed it out of me and you’ll get it straight. When we went in and found the body I saw the gun where Mion always kept it, on the base of Caruso’s bust. Mrs. Mion didn’t see it; she didn’t look that way. When I left her in her bedroom I went back up. I picked the gun up by the trigger guard and smelled it; it had been fired. I put it on the floor by the body, returned to the apartment, went out, and took the elevator to the ground floor. The rest was just as I told you Sunday.”

Wolfe grunted. “You may have been in love, but you didn’t think much of her intelligence. You assumed that after killing him she hadn’t had the wit to leave the gun where he might have dropped—”

“I did not, damn you!”

“Nonsense. Of course you did. Who else would you have wanted to shield? And afterward it got you in a pickle. When you had to agree with her that the gun hadn’t been there when you and she entered, you were hobbled. You didn’t dare tell her what you had done because of the implication that you suspected her, especially when she seemed to be suspecting you. You couldn’t be sure whether she really did suspect you, or whether she was only—”

“I never did suspect him,” Peggy said firmly. It was a job to make her voice firm, but she managed it. “And he never suspected me, not really. We just weren’t sure — sure all the way down — and when you’re in love and want it to last you’ve got to be sure.”

“That was it,” Fred agreed. They were looking at each other. “That was it exactly.”

“All right, I’ll take this,” Wolfe said curtly. “I think you’ve told the truth, Mr. Weppler.”

“I know damn well I have.”

Wolfe nodded. “You sound like it. I have a good ear for the truth. Now take Mrs. Mion home. I’ve got to work, but first I must think it over. As I said, there were two details, and you’ve disposed of only one. You can’t help with the other. Go home and eat something.”

“Who wants to eat?” Fred demanded fiercely. “We want to know what you’re going to do!”

“I’ve got to brush my teeth,” Peggy stated. I shot her a glance of admiration and affection. Women’s saying things like that at times like that is one of the reasons I enjoy their company. No man alive, under those circumstances, would have felt that he had to brush his teeth and said so.

Besides, it made it easier to get rid of them without being rude. Fred tried to insist that they had a right to know what the program was, and to help consider the prospects, but was finally compelled to accept Wolfe’s mandate that when a man hired an expert the only authority he kept was the right to fire. That, combined with Peggy’s longing for a toothbrush and Wolfe’s assurance that he would keep them informed, got them on their way without a ruckus.

When, after letting them out, I returned to the office, Wolfe was drumming on his desk blotter with a paperknife, scowling at it, though I had told him a hundred times that it ruined the blotter. I went and got the checkbook and replaced it in the safe, having put nothing on the stub but the date, so no harm was done.

“Twenty minutes till lunch,” I announced, swiveling my chair and sitting. “Will that be enough to hogtie the second detail?”

No reply.

I refused to be sensitive. “If you don’t mind,” I inquired pleasantly, “what is the second detail?”

Again no reply, but after a moment he dropped the paperknife, leaned back, and sighed clear down.

“That confounded gun,” he growled. “How did it get from the floor to the bust? Who moved it?”

I stared at him. “My God,” I complained, “you’re hard to satisfy. You’ve just had two clients arrested and worked like a dog, getting the gun from the bust to the floor. Now you want to get it from the floor to the bust again? What the hell!”

“Not again. Prior to.”

“Prior to what?”

“To the discovery of the body.” His eyes slanted at me. “What do you think of this? A man — or a woman, no matter which — entered the studio and killed Mion in a manner that would convey a strong presumption of suicide. He deliberately planned it that way: it’s not as difficult as the traditional police theory assumes. Then he placed the gun on the base of the bust, twenty feet away from the body, and departed. What do you think of it?”

“I don’t think; I know. It didn’t happen that way, unless he suddenly went batty after he pulled the trigger, which seems far-fetched.”

“Precisely. Having planned it to look like suicide, he placed the gun on the floor near the body. That is not discussible. But Mr. Weppler found it on the bust. Who took it from the floor and put it there, and when and why?”

“Yeah.” I scratched my nose. “That’s annoying. I’ll admit the question is relevant and material, but why the hell do you let it in? Why don’t you let it lay? Get him or her pinched, indicted, and tried. The cops will testify that the gun was there on the floor, and that will suit the jury fine, since it was framed for suicide. Verdict, provided you’ve sewed up things like motive and opportunity, guilty.” I waved a hand. “Simple. Why bring it up at all about the gun being so fidgety?”

Wolfe grunted. “The clients. I have to earn my fee. They want their minds cleared, and they know the gun wasn’t on the floor when they discovered the body. For the jury, I can’t leave it that the gun was on the bust, and for the clients I can’t leave it that it stayed on the floor where the murderer put it. Having, through Mr. Weppler, got it from the bust to the floor, I must now go back and get it from the floor to the bust. You see that?”

“Only too plain.” I whistled for help. “I’ll be damned. How’re you coming on?”

“I’ve just started.” He sat up straight. “But I must clear my own mind, for lunch. Please hand me Mr. Shanks’s orchid catalogue.”

That was all for the moment, and during meals Wolfe excludes business not only from the conversation but also from the air. After lunch he returned to the office and got comfortable in his chair. For a while he just sat, and then began pushing his lips out and in, and I knew he was doing hard labor. Having no idea how he proposed to move the gun from the floor to the bust, I was wondering how long it might take, and whether he would have to get Cramer to arrest someone else, and if so who. I have seen him sit there like that, working for hours on end, but this time twenty minutes did it. It wasn’t three o’clock yet when he pronounced my name gruffly and opened his eyes.

“Archie.”

“Yes, sir.”

“I can’t do this. You’ll have to.”

“You mean dope it? I’m sorry, I’m busy.”

“I mean execute it.” He made a face. “I will not undertake to handle that young woman. It would be an ordeal, and I might botch it. It’s just the thing for you. Your notebook. I’ll dictate a document and then we’ll discuss it.”

“Yes, sir. I wouldn’t call Miss Bosley really young.”

“Not Miss Bosley. Miss James.”

“Oh.” I got the notebook.

VII

At a quarter past four, Wolfe having gone up to the plant rooms for his afternoon session with the orchids, I sat at my desk, glowering at the phone, feeling the way I imagine Jackie Robinson feels when he strikes out with the bases full. I had phoned Clara James to ask her to come for a ride with me in the convertible, and she had pushed my nose in.

If that sounds as if I like myself beyond reason, not so. I am quite aware that I bat close to a thousand on invitations to damsels only because I don’t issue one unless the circumstances strongly indicate that it will be accepted. But that has got me accustomed to hearing yes, and therefore it was a rude shock to listen to her unqualified no. Besides, I had taken the trouble to go upstairs and change to a Pillater shirt and a tropical worsted made by Corley, and there I was, all dressed up.

I concocted three schemes and rejected them, concocted a fourth and bought it, reached for the phone, and dialed the number again. Clara’s voice answered, as it had before. As soon as she learned who it was she got impatient.

“I told you I had a cocktail date! Please don’t—”

“Hold it,” I told her bluntly. “I made a mistake. I was being kind. I wanted to get you out into the nice open air before I told you the bad news. I—”

“What bad news?”

“A woman just told Mr. Wolfe and me that there are five people besides her, and maybe more, who know that you had a key to Alberto Mion’s studio door.”

Silence. Sometimes silences irritate me, but I didn’t mind this one. Finally her voice came, totally different. “It’s a silly lie. Who told you?”

“I forget. And I’m not discussing it on the phone. Two things and two only. First, if this gets around, what about your banging on the door for ten minutes, trying to get in, while he was in there dead? When you had a key? It would make even a cop skeptical. Second, meet me at the Churchill bar at five sharp and we’ll talk it over. Yes or no.”

“But this is so — you’re so—”

“Hold it. No good. Yes or no.”

Another silence, shorter, and then, “Yes,” and she hung up.

I never keep a woman waiting and saw no reason to make an exception of this one, so I got to the Churchill bar eight minutes ahead of time. It was spacious, air-conditioned, well-fitted in all respects, and even in the middle of August well-fitted also in the matter of customers, male and female. I strolled through, glancing around but not expecting her yet, and was surprised when I heard my name and saw her in a booth. Of course she hadn’t had far to come, but even so she had wasted no time. She already had a drink and it was nearly gone. I joined her and immediately a waiter was there.

“You’re having?” I asked her.

“Scotch on the rocks.”

I told the waiter to bring two and he went.

She leaned forward at me and began in a breath, “Listen, this is absolutely silly, you just tell me who told you that, why, it’s absolutely crazy—”

“Wait a minute.” I stopped her more with my eyes than my words. Hers were glistening at me. “That’s not the way to start, because it won’t get us anywhere.” I got a paper from my pocket and unfolded it. It was a neatly typed copy of the document Wolfe had dictated. “The quickest and easiest way will be for you to read this first, then you’ll know what it’s about.”

I handed her the paper. You might as well read it while she does. It was dated that day:

I, Clara James, hereby declare that on Tuesday, April 19, I entered the apartment house at 620 East End Avenue, New York City, at or about 6:15 P.M., and took the elevator to the 13th floor. I rang the bell at the door of the studio of Alberto Mion. No one came to the door and there was no sound from within. The door was not quite closed. It was not open enough to show a crack, but was not latched or locked. After ringing again and getting no response, I opened the door and entered.

Alberto Mion’s body was lying on the floor over near the piano. He was dead. There was a hole in the top of his head. There was no question whether he was dead. I got dizzy and had to sit down on the floor and put my head down to keep from fainting. I didn’t touch the body. There was a revolver there on the floor, not far from the body, and I picked it up. I think I sat on the floor about five minutes, but it might have been a little more or less. When I got back on my feet and started for the door I became aware that the revolver was still in my hand. I placed it on the base of the bust of Caruso. Later I realized I shouldn’t have done that, but at the time I was too shocked and dazed to know what I was doing.

I left the studio, pulling the door shut behind me, went down the public stairs to the twelfth floor, and rang the bell at the door of the Mion apartment. I intended to tell Mrs. Mion about it, but when she appeared there in the doorway it was impossible to get it out. I couldn’t tell her that her husband was up in the studio, dead. Later I regretted this, but I now see no reason to regret it or apologize for it, and I simply could not get the words out. I said I had wanted to see her husband, and had rung the bell at the studio and no one had answered. Then I rang for the elevator and went down to the street and went home.

Having been unable to tell Mrs. Mion, I told no one. I would have told my father, but he wasn’t at home. I decided to wait until he returned and tell him, but before he came a friend telephoned me the news that Mion had killed himself, so I decided not to tell anyone, not even my father, that I had been in the studio, but to say that I had rung the bell and knocked on the door and got no reply. I thought that would make no difference, but it has now been explained to me that it does, and therefore I am stating it exactly as it happened.

As she got to the end the waiter came with the drinks, and she held the document against her chest as if it were a poker hand. Keeping it there with her left, she reached for the glass with her right and took a big swallow of scotch. I took a sip of mine to be sociable.

“It’s a pack of lies,” she said indignantly.

“It sure is,” I agreed. “I have good ears, so keep your voice down. Mr. Wolfe is perfectly willing to give you a break, and anyhow it would be a job to get you to sign it if it told the truth. We are quite aware that the studio door was locked and you opened it with your key. Also that — no, listen to me a minute — also that you purposely picked up the gun and put it on the bust because you thought Mrs. Mion had killed him and left the gun there so it would look like suicide, and you wanted to mess it up for her. You couldn’t—”

“Where were you?” she demanded scornfully. “Hiding behind the couch?”

“Nuts. If you didn’t have a key why did you break a date to see me because of what I said on the phone? As for the gun, you couldn’t have been dumber if you’d worked at it for a year. Who would believe anyone had shot him so it would look like suicide and then been fool enough to put the gun on the bust? Too dumb to believe, honest, but you did it.”

She was too busy with her brain to resent being called dumb. Her frown creased her smooth pale forehead and took the glisten from her eyes. “Anyway,” she protested, “what this says not only isn’t true, it’s impossible! They found the gun on the floor by his body, so this couldn’t possibly be true!”

“Yeah.” I grinned at her. “It must have been a shock when you read that in the paper. Since you had personally moved the gun to the bust, how come they found it on the floor? Obviously someone had moved it back. I suppose you decided that Mrs. Mion had done that too, and it must have been hard to keep your mouth shut, but you had to. Now it’s different. Mr. Wolfe knows who put the gun back on the floor and he can prove it. What’s more, he knows Mion was murdered and he can prove that too. All that stops him is the detail of explaining how the gun got from the floor to the bust.” I got out my fountain pen. “Put your name to that, and I’ll witness it, and we’re all set.”

“You mean sign this thing?” She was contemptuous. “I’m not that dumb.”

I caught the waiter’s eye and signaled for refills, and then, to keep her company, emptied my glass.

I met her gaze, matching her frown. “Lookit, Blue Eyes,” I told her reasonably. “I’m not sticking needles under your nails. I’m not saying we can prove you entered the studio — whether with your key or because the door wasn’t locked doesn’t matter — and moved the gun. We know you did, since no one else could have and you were there at the right time, but I admit we can’t prove it. However, I’m offering you a wonderful bargain.”

I pointed the pen at her. “Just listen. All we want this statement for is to keep it in reserve, in case the person who put the gun back on the floor is fool enough to blab it, which is very unlikely. He would only be—”

“You say he?” she demanded.

“Make it he or she. As Mr. Wolfe says, the language could use another pronoun. He would only be making trouble for himself. If he doesn’t spill it, and he won’t, your statement won’t be used at all, but we’ve got to have it in the safe in case he does. Another thing, if we have this statement we won’t feel obliged to pass it along to the cops about your having had a key to the studio door. We wouldn’t be interested in keys. Still another, you’ll be saving your father a big chunk of dough. If you sign this statement we can clear up the matter of Mion’s death, and if we do that I guarantee Mrs. Mion will be in no frame of mind to push any claim against your father. She will be too busy with a certain matter.”

I proffered the pen. “Go ahead and sign it.”

She shook her head, but not with much energy because her brain was working again. Fully appreciating the fact that her thinking was not on the tournament level, I was patient. Then the refills came and there was a recess, since she couldn’t be expected to think and drink all at once. But finally she fought her way through to the point I had aimed at.

“So you know,” she declared with satisfaction.

“We know enough,” I said darkly.

“You know she killed him. You know she put the gun back on the floor. I knew that too, I knew she must have. And now you can prove it? If I sign this you can prove it?”

Of course I could have covered it with doubletalk, but I thought, What the hell. “We certainly can,” I assured her. “With this statement we’re ready to go. It’s the missing link. Here’s the pen.”

She lifted her glass, drained it, put it down, and damned if she didn’t shake her head again, this time with energy. “No,” she said flatly, “I won’t.” She extended a hand with the document in it. “I admit it’s all true, and when you get her on trial if she says she put the gun back on the floor I’ll come and swear to it that I put it on the bust, but I won’t sign anything because once I signed something about an accident and my father made me promise that I would never sign anything again without showing it to him first. I could take it and show it to him and then sign it, and you could come for it tonight or tomorrow.” She frowned. “Except that he knows I had a key, but I could explain that.”

But she no longer had the document. I had reached and taken it. You are welcome to think I should have changed holds on her and gone on fighting, but you weren’t there seeing and hearing her, and I was. I gave up. I got out my pocket notebook, tore out a page, and began writing on it.

“I could use another drink,” she stated.

“In a minute,” I mumbled, and went on writing, as follows:

To Nero Wolfe:

I hereby declare that Archie Goodwin has tried his best to persuade me to sign the statement you wrote, and explained its purpose to me, and I have told him why I must refuse to sign it.

“There,” I said, handing it to her. “That won’t be signing something; it’s just stating that you refuse to sign something. The reason I’ve got to have it, Mr. Wolfe knows how beautiful girls appeal to me, especially sophisticated girls like you, and if I take that thing back to him unsigned he’ll think I didn’t even try. He might even fire me. Just write your name there at the bottom.”

She read it over again and took the pen. She smiled at me, glistening. “You’re not kidding me any,” she said, not unfriendly. “I know when I appeal to a man. You think I’m cold and calculating.”

“Yeah?” I made it a little bitter, but not too bitter. “Anyhow it’s not the point whether you appeal to me, but what Mr. Wolfe will think. It’ll help a lot to have that. Much obliged.” I took the paper from her and blew on her signature to dry it.

“I know when I appeal to a man,” she stated.

There wasn’t another thing there I wanted, but I had practically promised to buy her another drink, so I did so.

It was after six when I got back to West Thirty-fifth Street, so Wolfe had finished in the plant rooms and was down in the office. I marched in and put the unsigned statement on his desk in front of him.

He grunted. “Well?”

I sat down and told him exactly how it had gone, up to the point where she had offered to take the document home and show it to her father.

“I’m sorry,” I said, “but some of her outstanding qualities didn’t show much in that crowd the other evening. I give this not as an excuse but merely a fact. Her mental operations could easily be carried on inside a hollowed-out pea. Knowing what you think of unsupported statements, and wanting to convince you of the truth of that one. I got evidence to back it up. Here’s a paper she did sign.”

I handed him the page I had torn from my notebook. He took a look at it and then cocked an eye at me.

“She signed this?”

“Yes, sir. In my presence.”

“Indeed. Good. Satisfactory.”

I acknowledged the tribute with a careless nod. It does not hurt my feelings when he says, “Satisfactory,” like that.

“A bold, easy hand,” he said. “She used your pen?”

“Yes, sir.”

“May I have it, please?”

I arose and handed it to him, together with a couple of sheets of typewriter paper, and stood and watched with interested approval as he wrote “Clara James” over and over again, comparing each attempt with the sample I had secured. Meanwhile, at intervals, he spoke.

“It’s highly unlikely that anyone will ever see it — except our clients... That’s better... There’s time to phone all of them before dinner — first Mrs. Mion and Mr. Weppler — then the others... Tell them my opinion is ready on Mrs. Mion’s claim against Mr. James... If they can come at nine this evening — If that’s impossible tomorrow morning at eleven will do... Then get Mr. Cramer... Tell him it might be well to bring one of his men along...”

He flattened the typed statement on his desk blotter, forged Clara James’ name at the bottom, and compared it with the true signature which I had provided.

“Faulty, to an expert,” he muttered, “but no expert will ever see it. For our clients, even if they know her writing, it will do nicely.”

VIII

It took a solid hour on the phone to get it fixed for that evening, but I finally managed it. I never did catch up with Gifford James, but his daughter agreed to find him and deliver him, and made good on it. The others I tracked down myself.

The only ones that gave me an argument were the clients, especially Peggy Mion. She balked hard at sitting in at a meeting for the ostensible purpose of collecting from Gifford James, and I had to appeal to Wolfe. Fred and Peggy were invited to come ahead of the others for a private briefing and then decide whether to stay or not. She bought that.

They got there in time to help out with the afterdinner coffee. Peggy had presumably brushed her teeth and had a nap and a bath, and manifestly she had changed her clothes, but even so she did not sparkle. She was wary, weary, removed, and skeptical. She didn’t say in so many words that she wished she had never gone near Nero Wolfe, but she might as well have. I had a notion that Fred Weppler felt the same way about it but was being gallant and loyal. It was Peggy who had insisted on coming to Wolfe, and Fred didn’t want her to feel that he thought she had made things worse instead of better.

They didn’t perk up even when Wolfe showed them the statement with Clara James’ name signed to it. They read it together, with her in the red leather chair and him perched on the arm.

They looked up together, at Wolfe.

“So what?” Fred demanded.

“My dear sir.” Wolfe pushed his cup and saucer back. “My dear madam. Why did you come to me? Because the fact that the gun was not on the floor when you two entered the studio convinced you that Mion had not killed himself but had been murdered. If the circumstances had permitted you to believe that he had killed himself, you would be married by now and never have needed me. Very well. That is now precisely what the circumstances are. What more do you want? You wanted your minds cleared. I have cleared them.”

Fred twisted his lips, tight.

“I don’t believe it,” Peggy said glumly.

“You don’t believe this statement?” Wolfe reached for the document and put it in his desk drawer, which struck me as a wise precaution, since it was getting close to nine o’clock. “Do you think Miss James would sign a thing like that if it weren’t true? Why would—”

“I don’t mean that,” Peggy said. “I mean I don’t believe my husband killed himself, no matter where the gun was. I knew him too well. He would never have killed himself — never.” She twisted her head to look up at her fellow client. “Would he, Fred?”

“It’s hard to believe,” Fred admitted grudgingly.

“I see.” Wolfe was caustic. “Then the job you hired me for was not as you described it. At least, you must concede that I have satisfied you about the gun; you can’t wiggle out of that. So that job’s done, but now you want more. You want a murder disclosed, which means, of necessity, a murderer caught. You want—”

“I only mean,” Peggy insisted forlornly, “that I don’t believe he killed himself, and nothing would make me believe it. I see now what I really—”

The doorbell sounded, and I went to answer it.

IX

So the clients stayed for the party.

There were ten guests altogether: the six who had been there Monday evening, the two clients, Inspector Cramer, and my old friend and enemy, Sergeant Purley Stebbins. What made it unusual was that the dumbest one of the lot, Clara James, was the only one who had a notion of what was up, unless she had told her father, which I doubted. She had the advantage of the lead I had given her at the Churchill bar. Adele Bosley, Dr. Lloyd, Rupert Grove, Judge Arnold, and Gifford James had had no reason to suppose there was anything on the agenda but the damage claim against James, until they got there and were made acquainted with Inspector Cramer and Sergeant Stebbins. God only knew what they thought then; one glance at their faces was enough to show they didn’t know. As for Cramer and Stebbins, they had had enough experience of Nero Wolfe to be aware that almost certainly fur was going to fly, but whose and how and when? And as for Fred and Peggy, even after the arrival of the law, they probably thought that Wolfe was going to get Mion’s suicide pegged down by producing Clara’s statement and disclosing what Fred had told us about moving the gun from the bust to the floor, which accounted for the desperate and cornered look on their faces. But now they were stuck.

Wolfe focused on the inspector, who was seated in the rear over by the big globe, with Purley nearby. “If you don’t mind, Mr. Cramer, first I’ll clear up a little matter that is outside your interest.”

Cramer nodded and shifted the cigar in his mouth to a new angle. He was keeping his watchful eyes on the move.

Wolfe changed his focus. “I’m sure you’ll all be glad to hear this. Not that I formed my opinion so as to please you; I considered only the merits of the case. Without prejudice to her legal position, I feel that morally Mrs. Mion has no claim on Mr. James. As I said she would, she accepts my judgment. She makes no claim and will ask no payment for damages. You verify that before these witnesses, Mrs. Mion?”

“Certainly.” Peggy was going to add something, but stopped it on the way out.

“This is wonderful!” Adele Bosley was out of her chair. “May I use a phone?”

“Later,” Wolfe snapped at her. “Sit down, please.”

“It seems to me,” Judge Arnold observed, “that this could have been told us on the phone. I had to cancel an important engagement.” Lawyers are never satisfied.

“Quite true,” Wolfe agreed mildly, “if that were all. But there’s the matter of Mion’s death. When I—”

“What has that got to do with it?”

“I’m about to tell you. Surely it isn’t extraneous, since his death resulted, though indirectly, from the assault by Mr. James. But my interest goes beyond that. Mrs. Mion hired me not only to decide about the claim of her husband’s estate against Mr. James — that is now closed — but also to investigate her husband’s death. She was convinced he had not killed himself. She could not believe it was in his character to commit suicide. I have investigated and I am prepared to report to her.”

“You don’t need us here for that,” Rupert the Fat said in a high squeak.

“I need one of you. I need the murderer.”

“You still don’t need us,” Arnold said harshly.

“Hang it,” Wolfe snapped, “then go! All but one of you. Go!”

Nobody made a move.

Wolfe gave them five seconds. “Then I’ll go on,” he said dryly. “As I say, I’m prepared to report, but the investigation is not concluded. One vital detail will require official sanction, and that’s why Inspector Cramer is present. It will also need Mrs. Mion’s concurrence; and I think it well to consult Dr. Lloyd too, since he signed the death certificate.” His eyes went to Peggy. “First you, madam. Will you give your consent to the exhumation of your husband’s body?”

She gawked at him. “What for?”

“To get evidence that he was murdered, and by whom. It is a reasonable expectation.”

She stopped gawking. “Yes. I don’t care.” She thought he was just talking to hear himself.

Wolfe’s eyes went left. “You have no objection, Dr. Lloyd?” Lloyd was nonplused. “I have no idea,” he said slowly and distinctly, “what you’re getting at, but in any case I have no voice in the matter. I merely issued the certificate.”

“Then you won’t oppose it. Mr. Cramer. The basis for the request for official sanction will appear in a moment, but you should know that what will be required is an examination and report by Dr. Abraham Rentner of Mount Sinai Hospital.”

“You don’t get an exhumation just because you’re curious,” Cramer growled.

“I know it. I’m more than curious.” Wolfe’s eyes traveled. “You all know, I suppose, that one of the chief reasons, probably the main one, for the police decision that Mion had committed suicide was the manner of his death. Of course other details had to fit — as for instance the presence of the gun there beside the body — and they did. But the determining factor was the assumption that a man cannot be murdered by sticking the barrel of a revolver in his mouth and pulling the trigger unless he is first made unconscious; and there was no evidence that Mion had been either struck or drugged, and besides, when the bullet left his head it went to the ceiling. However, though that assumption is ordinarily sound, surely this case was an exception. It came to my mind at once, when Mrs. Mion first consulted me. For there was present — But I’ll show you with a simple demonstration. Archie. Get a gun.”

I opened my third drawer and got one out.

“Is it loaded?”

I flipped it open to check. “No, sir.”

Wolfe returned to the audience. “You, I think, Mr. James. As an opera singer you should be able to follow stage directions. Stand up, please. This is a serious matter, so do it right. You are a patient with a sore throat, and Mr. Goodwin is your doctor. He will ask you to open your mouth so he can look at your throat. You are to do exactly what you would naturally do under those circumstances. Will you do that?”

“But it’s obvious.” James, standing, was looking grim. “I don’t need to.”

“Nevertheless, please indulge me. There’s a certain detail. Will you do it as naturally as possible?”

“Yes.”

“Good. Will the rest of you all watch Mr. James’ face? Closely. Go ahead, Archie.”

With the gun in my pocket I moved in front of James and told him to open wide. He did so. For a moment his eyes came to mine as I peered into his throat, and then slanted upward. Not in a hurry, I took the gun from my pocket and poked it into his mouth until it touched the roof. He jerked back and dropped into his chair.

“Did you see the gun?” Wolfe demanded.

“No. My eyes were up.”

“Just so.” Wolfe looked at the others. “You saw his eyes go up? They always do. Try it yourselves sometime. I tried it in my bedroom Sunday evening. So it is by no means impossible to kill a man that way, it isn’t even difficult, if you’re a doctor and he has something wrong with his throat. You agree, Dr. Lloyd?”

Lloyd had not joined the general movement to watch James’ face during the demonstration. He hadn’t stirred a muscle. Now his jaw was twitching a little, but that was all.

He did his best to smile. “To show that a thing could happen,” he said in a pretty good voice, “isn’t the same thing as proving it did happen.”

“Indeed it isn’t,” Wolfe conceded. “Though we do have some facts. You have no effective alibi. Mion would have admitted you to his studio at any time without question. You could have managed easily to get the gun from the base of Caruso’s bust, and slipped it into your pocket without being seen. For you, as for no one else, he would upon request have stood with his mouth wide open, inviting his doom. He was killed shortly after you had been compelled to make an appointment for Dr. Rentner to examine him. We do have those facts, don’t we?”

“They prove nothing,” Lloyd insisted. His voice was not quite as good. He came out of his chair to his feet. It did not look as if the movement had any purpose; apparently he simply couldn’t stay put in his chair, and the muscles had acted on their own. And it had been a mistake because, standing upright, he began to tremble.

“They’ll help,” Wolfe told him, “if we can get one more — and I suspect we can, or what are you quivering about? What was it, Doctor? Some unfortunate blunder? Had you botched the operation and ruined his voice forever? I suppose that was it, since the threat to your reputation and career was grave enough to make you resort to murder. Anyhow we’ll soon know, when Dr. Rentner makes his examination and reports. I don’t expect you to furnish—”

“It wasn’t a blunder!” Lloyd squawked. “It could have happened to anyone—”

Whereupon he did blunder. I think what made him lose his head completely was hearing his own voice and realizing it was a hysterical squawk and he couldn’t help it. He made a dash for the door. I knocked Judge Arnold down in my rush across the room, which was unnecessary, for by the time I arrived Purley Stebbins had Lloyd by the collar, and Cramer was there too. Hearing a commotion behind me, I turned around. Clara James had made a dive for Peggy Mion, screeching something I didn’t catch, but her father and Adele Bosley had stopped her and were getting her under control. Judge Arnold and Rupert the Fat were excitedly telling Wolfe how wonderful he was. Peggy was apparently weeping, from the way her shoulders were shaking, but I couldn’t see her face because it was buried on Fred’s shoulder, and his arms had her tight.

Nobody wanted me or needed me, so I went to the kitchen for a glass of milk.

Content

Rex Stout
The Gun with Wings

I

II

III

IV

V

VI

VII

VIII

IX