Rex Stout

The Cop Killer

I

There were several reasons why I had no complaints as I walked along West Thirty-fifth Street that morning, approaching the stoop of Nero Wolfe’s old brownstone house. The day was sunny and sparkling, my new shoes felt fine after the two-mile walk, a complicated infringement case had been polished off for a big client, and I had just deposited a check in five figures to Wolfe’s account in the bank.

Five paces short of the stoop I became aware that two people, a man and a woman, were standing on the sidewalk across the street, staring either at the stoop or at me, or maybe both. That lifted me a notch higher, with the thought that while two rubbernecks might not put us in a class with the White House still it was nothing to sneeze at, until a second glance made me realize that I had seen them before. But where? Instead of turning up the steps I faced them, just as they stepped off the curb and started to me.

“Mr. Goodwin,” the woman said in a sort of gasping whisper that barely reached me.

She was fair-skinned and blue-eyed, young enough, kind of nice-looking and neat in a dark blue assembly-line coat. He was as dark as she was fair, not much bigger than her, with his nose slanting slightly to the left and a full wide mouth. My delay in recognizing him was because I had never seen him with a hat on before. He was the hat-and-coat-and-tie custodian at the barber shop I went to.

“Oh, it’s you, Carl—”

“Can we go in with you?” the woman asked in the same gasping whisper, and then I knew her too. She was also from the barber shop, a manicure. I had never hired her, since I do my own nails, but had seen her around and had heard her called Tina.

I looked down at her smooth white little face with its pointed chin and didn’t care for the expression on it. I glanced at Carl, and he looked even worse.

“What’s the matter?” I guess I was gruff. “Trouble?”

“Please not out here,” Tina pleaded. Her eyes darted left and right and back up at me. “We just got enough brave to go to the door when you came. We were thinking which door, the one down below or up the steps. Please let us in?”

It did not suit my plans. I had counted on getting a few little chores done before Wolfe came down from the plant rooms at eleven o’clock. There could be no profit in this.

“You told me once,” Carl practically whined, “that people in danger only have to mention your name.”

“Nuts. A pleasantry. I talk too much.” But I was stuck. “Okay, come in and tell me about it.”

I led the way up the steps and let us in with my key. Inside, the first door on the left of the long wide hall was to what we called the front room, not much used, and I opened it, thinking to get it over with in there, but Fritz was there, dusting, so I took them along to the next door and on into the office. After moving a couple of chairs so they would be facing me I sat at my desk and nodded at them impatiently. Tina had looked around swiftly before she sat.

“Such a nice safe room,” she said, “for you and Mr. Wolfe, two such great men.”

“He’s the great one,” I corrected her. “I just caddy. What’s this about danger?”

“We love this country,” Carl said emphatically. All of a sudden he started trembling, first his hands, then his arms and shoulders, then all over. Tina darted to him and grabbed his elbows and shook him, not gently, and said things to him in some language I wasn’t up on. He mumbled back at her and then got more vocal, and after a little the trembling stopped, and she returned to her chair.

“We do love this country,” she declared.

I nodded. “Wait till you see Chillicothe, Ohio, where I was born. Then you will love it. How far west have you been, Tenth Avenue?”

“I don’t think so.” Tina was doubtful. “I think Eighth Avenue. But that’s what we want to do, go west.” She decided it would help to let me have a smile, but it didn’t work too well. “We can’t go east, can we, into the ocean?” She opened her blue leather handbag and, with no fingering or digging, took something from it. “But you see, we don’t know where to go. This Ohio, maybe? I have fifty dollars here.”

“That would get you there,” I allowed.

She shook her head. “Oh, no. The fifty dollars is for you. You know our name, Vardas? You know we are married? So there is no question of morals, we are very high in morals, only all we want is to do our work and live in private, Carl and me, and we think—”

Having heard the clatter of Wolfe’s elevator descending from the plant rooms on the roof, I had known an interruption was coming but had let her proceed. Now she stopped as Wolfe’s steps sounded and he appeared at the door. Carl and Tina both bounced to their feet. Two paces in, after a quick glance at them, Wolfe stopped short and glowered at me.

“I didn’t tell you we had callers,” I said cheerfully, “because I knew you would be down soon. You know Carl, at the barber shop? And Tina, you’ve seen her there too. It’s all right, they’re married. They just dropped in to buy fifty bucks’ worth of—”

Without a word or even a nod, Wolfe turned all of his seventh of a ton and beat it out and toward the door to the kitchen at the rear. The Vardas family stared at the doorway a moment and then turned to me.

“Sit down,” I invited them. “As you said, he’s a great man. He’s sore because I didn’t notify him we had company, and he was expecting to sit there behind his desk” — I waved a hand — “and ring for beer and enjoy himself. He wouldn’t wiggle a finger for fifty dollars. Maybe I won’t either, but let’s see.” I looked at Tina, who was back on the edge of her chair. “You were saying …”

“We don’t want Mr. Wolfe mad at us,” she said in distress.

“Forget it. He’s only mad at me, which is chronic. What do you want to go to Ohio for?”

“Maybe not Ohio.” She tried to smile again. “It’s what I said, we love this country and we want to go more into it — far in. We would like to be in the middle of it. We want you to tell us where to go, to help us—”

“No, no.” I was brusque. “Start from here. Look at you, you’re both scared stiff. What’s the danger Carl mentioned?”

“I don’t think,” she protested, “it makes any difference—”

“That’s no good,” Carl said harshly. His hands started trembling again, but he gripped the sides of his chair seat, and they stopped. His dark eyes fastened on me. “I met Tina,” he said in a low level voice, trying to keep feeling out of it, “three years ago in a concentration camp in Russia. If you want me to I will tell you why it was that they would never have let us get out of there alive, not in one hundred years, but I would rather not talk so much about it. It makes me start to tremble, and I am trying to learn to act and talk of a manner so I can quit trembling.”

I concurred. “Save it for some day after you stop trembling. But you did get out alive?”

“Plainly. We are here.” There was an edge of triumph to the level voice. “I will not tell you about that either. But they think we are dead. Of course Vardas was not our name then, neither of us. We took that name later, when we got married in Istanbul. Then we so managed—”

“You shouldn’t tell any places,” Tina scolded him. “No places at all and no people at all.”

“You are most right,” Carl admitted. He informed me, “It was not Istanbul.”

I nodded. “Istanbul is out. You would have had to swim. You got married, that’s the point.”

“Yes. Then, later, we nearly got caught again. We did get caught, but—”

“No!” Tina said positively.

“Very well, Tina. You are most right. We went many other places, and at a certain time in a certain way we crossed the ocean. We had tried very hard to come to this country according to your rules, but it was in no way possible. When we did get into New York it was more by an accident — no, I did not say that. I will not say that much. Only I will say we got into New York. For a while it was so difficult, but it has been nearly a year now, since we got the jobs at the barber shop, that life has been so fine and sweet that we are almost healthy again. What we eat! We have even got some money saved! We have got—”

“Fifty dollars,” Tina said hastily.

“Most right,” Carl agreed. “Fifty American dollars. I can say as a fact that we would be healthy and happy beyond our utmost dreams three years ago, except for the danger. The danger is that we did not follow your rules. I will not deny that they are good rules, but for us they were impossible. We cannot expect ourselves to be happy when we don’t know what minute someone may come and ask us how we got here. The minute that just went by, that was all right, no one asked, but here is the next minute. Every day is full of those minutes, so many. We have found a way to learn what would happen, and we know where we would be sent back to. We know exactly what would happen to us. I would not be surprised if you felt a deep contempt when you saw me trembling the way I do, but to understand a situation like this I believe you have to be somewhat close to it. As I am. As Tina is. I am not saying you would tremble like me — after all, Tina never does — but I think you might have your own way of showing that you were not really happy.”

“Yeah, I might,” I agreed. I glanced at Tina, but the expression on her face could have made me uncomfortable, so I looked back at Carl. “But if I tried to figure a way out I doubt if I would pick on spilling it to a guy named Archie Goodwin just because he came to the barber shop where I worked. He might be crazy about the rules you couldn’t follow, and anyhow there are just as many minutes in Ohio as there are in New York.”

“There is that fifty dollars.” Carl extended his hands, not trembling, toward me.

Tina gestured impatiently. “That’s nothing to you,” she said, letting bitterness into it for the first time; “We know that, it’s nothing. But the danger has come, and we had to have someone tell us where to go. This morning a man came to the barber shop and asked us questions. An official! A policeman!”

“Oh.” I glanced from one to the other. “That’s different. A policeman in uniform?”

“No, in regular clothes, but he showed us a card in a case, New York Police Department. His name was on it, Jacob Wallen.”

“What time this morning?”

“A little after nine o’clock, soon after the shop was open. He talked first with Mr. Fickler, the owner, and Mr. Fickler brought him around behind the partition to my booth, where I do customers when they’re through in the chair or when they only want a manicure, and I was there, getting things together, and he sat down and took out a notebook and asked me questions. Then he—”

“What kind of questions?”

“All about me. My name, where I live, where I came from, how long I’ve been working there, all that kind, and then about last night, where I was and what I was doing last night.”

“Did he say why he was curious about last night?”

“No. He just asked questions.”

“What part of last night did he ask about? All of it?”

“Yes, from the time the shop closes, half-past six, from then on.”

“Where did you tell him you came from?”

“I said Carl and I are DPs from Italy. That’s what we had decided to say. We have to say something when people are just curious.”

“I suppose you do. Did he ask to see your papers?”

“No. That will come next.” She set her jaw. “We can’t go back there. We have to leave New York today — now.”

“What else did he ask?”

“That’s all. It was mostly about last night.”

“Then what? Did he question Carl too?”

“Yes, but not right after me. He sent me away, and Mr. Fickler sent Philip to him in the booth, and when Philip came out he sent Carl in, and when Carl came out he sent Jimmie in. Jimmie was still in the booth with him when I went to Carl, up front by the rack, and we knew we had to get out. We waited until Mr. Fickler had gone to the back of the shop for something, and then we just walked out. We went to our room down on the East Side and packed our stuff and started for Grand Central with it, and then we realized we didn’t know anything about where to go and might make some terrible mistake, so there in Grand Central we talked it over. We decided that since the police were after us already it couldn’t be any worse, but we weren’t sure enough about any of the people we have met in New York, so the best thing would be to come to you and pay you to help us. You’re a professional detective, and anyway Carl likes you about the best of all the customers. You only tip him a dime, so it’s not that. I have noticed you myself, the way you look. You look like a man who would break rules too — if you had to.”

I gave her a sharp look, suspicious, but if she was trying to butter me she was very good. All that showed in her blue eyes was the scare that had put them on the run and the hope of me they were hanging on to for dear life. I looked at Carl. The scare was there too, but I couldn’t see the hope. Still he sat solid on the chair, with no sign of trembling, as I thought to myself that it would have been no surprise to him if I had picked up the phone and called the cops. Either he had his full share of guts or he had run out entirely.

I was irritated. “Damn it,” I protested, “you bring it here already broke. What did you beat it for? That alone fixes you. He was questioning the others too and he was concentrating on last night. What about last night? What were you doing, breaking some more rules?”

They both started to answer, but she let him take it. He said no, they weren’t. They had gone straight home from work and eaten in their room as usual. Tina had washed some clothes, and Carl had read a book. Around nine they had gone for a walk, and had been back in their room and in bed before ten-thirty.

I was disgusted. “You sure did it up,” I declared. “If you’re clean for last night, why didn’t you stay put? You must have something in your heads or you wouldn’t have stayed alive and got this far. Why didn’t you use it?”

Carl smiled at me. He really did smile, but it didn’t make me want to smile back. “A policeman asking questions,” he said in the level tone he had used before, “has a different effect on different people. If you have a country like this one and you are innocent of crime, all the people of your country are saying it with you when you answer the questions. That is true even when you are away from home — especially when you are away from home. But Tina and I have no country at all. The country we had once, it is no longer a country, it is just a place to wait to die, only if we are sent back there we will not have to wait. Two people alone cannot answer a policeman’s questions anywhere in the world. It takes a whole country to speak to a policeman, and Tina and I — we do not have one.”

“You see,” Tina said. “Here, take it.” She got up and came to me, extending a hand with the money in it. “Take it, Mr. Goodwin! Just tell us where to go, all the little facts that will help us—”

“Or we thought,” Carl suggested, not hopefully, “that you might give us a letter to some friend, in this Ohio perhaps — not that we should expect too much for fifty dollars.”

I looked at them, with my lips pressed together. The morning was shot now anyway, with Wolfe sore and my chores not done. I swiveled to my desk and picked up the phone. Any one of three or four city employees would probably find out for me what kind of errand had taken a dick named Wallen to the Goldenrod Barber Shop, unless it was something very special. But with my finger in the dial hole I hesitated and then replaced the phone. If it was something hot I would be starting PD cars for our address, and Wolfe and I both have a prejudice against cops yanking people out of his office, no matter who they are, unless we ourselves have got them ready for delivery. So I swiveled again. Carl was frowning at me, his head moving from side to side. Tina was standing tense, the money clutched in her fist.

“This is silly,” I said. “If they’re really after you, you’d be throwing your money away on carfare to Ohio or anywhere else. Save it for a lawyer. I’ll have to go up there and see what it’s all about.” I got up, crossed to the soundproof door to the front room, and opened it. “You can wait here. In here, please.”

“We’ll go,” Tina said, back to her gasping whisper again. “We won’t bother you any more. Come, Carl—”

“Skip it,” I said curtly. “If this amounts to anything more than petty larceny you’d be nabbed sure as hell. This is my day for breaking a rule, and I’ll be back soon. Come on, I’ll put you in here, and I advise you to stay put.”

They looked at each other.

“I like him,” Carl said.

Tina moved. She came and passed through into the front room, and Carl was right behind her.

I told them to sit down and relax and not get restless, shut the door, went to the kitchen, where Wolfe was seated at the far end of the long table, drinking beer, and told him, “The check from Pendexter came and has been deposited. That pair of foreigners have got themselves in a mess. I put them in the front room and told them to stay there until I get back.”

“Where are you going?” he demanded.

“A little detective work, not in your class. I won’t be gone long. You can dock me.”

I left.

II

The Goldenrod Barber Shop was in the basement of an office building on Lexington Avenue in the upper Thirties. I had been patronizing one of the staff, named Ed, for several years. Formerly, from away back, Wolfe had gone to an artist in a shop on Twenty-eighth Street, named Fletcher. When Fletcher had retired a couple of years ago Wolfe had switched to Goldenrod and tried my man, Ed, hadn’t liked him, had experimented with the rest of the Goldenrod staff, and had settled on Jimmie. His position now, after two years, was that Jimmie was no Fletcher, especially with a shampoo, but that he was some better than tolerable.

Goldenrod, with only six chairs and usually only four of them manned, and two manicures, was no Framinelli’s, but it was well equipped and clean, and anyhow it had Ed, who was a little rough at tilting a head maybe but knew exactly how to handle my hair and had a razor so sharp and slick you never knew it was on you.

I hadn’t shaved that morning and as, at noon, I paid the taxi driver, entered the building, and descended the stairs to the basement, my plan of campaign was simple. I would get in Ed’s chair, waiting if necessary, and ask him to give me a once-over, and the rest would be easy.

But it was neither simple nor easy. A medium-sized mob of white-collar workers, buzzing and chattering, was ranged three deep along the wall of the corridor facing the door of the shop. Others, passing by in both directions, were stopping to try to look in, and a flatfoot, posted in the doorway, was telling them to keep moving. That did not look promising, or else it did, if that’s how you like things. I swerved aside and halted for a survey through the open door and the glass. Joel Fickler, the boss, was at the rack where Carl usually presided, taking a man’s coat to put on a hanger. A man with his hat on was backed up to the cashier’s counter, with his elbows on it, facing the whole shop. Two other men with their hats on were seated near the middle of the row of chairs for waiting customers, one of them next to the little table for magazines. They were discussing something without much enthusiasm. Two of the barbers’ chairs, Ed’s and Tom’s, were occupied. The other two barbers, Jimmie and Philip, were on their stools against the wall. Janet, the other manicure, was not in sight.

I stepped to the doorway and was going on in. The flatfoot blocked me.

I lifted my brows at him. “What’s all the excitement?”

“Accident in here. No one allowed in.”

“How did the customers in the chairs get in? I’m a customer.”

“Only customers with appointments. You got one?”

“Certainly.” I stuck my head through the doorway and yelled, “Ed! How soon?”

The man leaning on the counter straightened up and turned for a look. At sight of me he grunted. “I’ll be damned. Who whistled for you?”

The presence of my old friend and enemy Sergeant Purley Stebbins of Manhattan Homicide gave the thing an entirely different flavor. Up to then I had just been mildly curious, floating along. Now all my nerves and muscles snapped to attention. Sergeant Stebbins is not interested in petty larceny. I didn’t care for the possibility of having shown a pair of murderers to chairs in our front room.

“Good God,” Purley grumbled, “is this going to turn into one of them Nero Wolfe babies?”

“Not unless you turn it.” I grinned at him. “Whatever it is, I dropped in for a shave, that’s all, and here you boys are, to my surprise.” The flatfoot had given me leeway, and I had crossed the sill. “I’m a regular customer here.” I turned to Fickler, who had trotted over to us. “How long have I been leaving my hair here, Joel?”

None of Fickler’s bones were anywhere near the surface except on his bald head. He was six inches shorter than me, which may have been one reason why I had never got a straight look into his narrow black eyes. He had never liked me much since the day he had forgotten to list an appointment with Ed I had made on the phone, and I, under provocation, had made a few pointed remarks. Now he looked as if he had been annoyed by something much worse than remarks.

“Over six years, Mr. Goodwin,” he said. “This,” he told Purley, “is the famous detective, Mr. Archie Goodwin. Mr. Nero Wolfe comes here too.”

“The hell he does.” Purley, scowling at me, said in a certain tone, “Famous.”

I shrugged. “Just a burden. A damn nuisance.”

“Yeah. Don’t let it get you down. You just dropped in for a shave?”

“Yes, sir. Write it down, and I’ll sign it.”

“Who’s your barber?”

“Ed.”

“That’s Graboff. He’s busy.”

“So I see. I’m not pressed. I’ll chat with you or read a magazine or get a manicure.”

“I don’t feel like chatting.” Purley had not relaxed the scowl. “You know a guy that works here named Carl Vardas? And his wife, Tina, a manicure?”

“I know Carl well enough to pay him a dime for my hat and coat and tie. I can’t say I know Tina, but of course I’ve seen her here. Why?”

“I’m just asking. There’s no law against your coming here for a shave, since you need one and this is where you come, but the sight of either you or Wolfe makes me want to scratch. No wonder, huh? So to have it on the record in case it’s needed, have you seen Vardas or his wife this morning?”

“Sure I have.” I stretched my neck to get closer to his ear and whispered, “I put them in our front room and told them to wait, and beat it up here to tell you, and if you’ll step on it—”

“I don’t care for gags,” he growled. “Not right now. They killed a cop, or one of them did. You know how much we like that.”

I did indeed and adjusted my face accordingly. “The hell they did. One of yours? Did I know him?”

“No. A dick from the Twentieth Precinct, Jake Wallen.”

“Where and when?”

“This morning, right here. The other side of that partition, in her manicure booth. Stuck a long pair of scissors in his back and got his pump. Apparently he never made a sound, but them massage things are going here off and on. By the time he was found they had gone. It took us an hour to find out where they lived, and when we got there they had been and got their stuff and beat it.”

I grunted sympathetically. “Is it tied up? Prints on the scissors or something?”

“We’ll do all right without prints,” Purley said grimly. “Didn’t I say they lammed?”

“Yes, but,” I objected, not aggressively, “some people can get awful scared at sight of a man with scissors sticking in his back. I wasn’t intimate with Carl, but he didn’t strike me as a man who would stab a cop just on principle. Was Wallen here to take him?”

Purley’s reply was stopped before it got started. Tom had finished with his customer, and the two men with hats on in the row of chairs ranged along the partition were keeping their eyes on the customer as he went to the rack for his tie. Tom, having brushed himself off, had walked to the front and up to us. Usually Tom bounced around like a high-school kid — from his chair to the wall cabinet and back again, or over to the steamer behind the partition for a hot towel — in spite of his white-haired sixty-some years, but today his feet dragged. Nor did he tell me hello, though he gave me a sort of a glance before he spoke to Purley.

“It’s my lunchtime, Sergeant. I just go to the cafeteria at the end of the hall.”

Purley called a name that sounded like Joffe, and one of the dicks on a chair by the partition got up and came.

“Yerkes is going to lunch,” Purley told him. “Go along and stay with him.”

“I want to phone my wife,” Tom said resolutely.

“Why not? Stay with him, Joffe.”

“Yes, sir.”

They went, with Tom in front. Purley and I moved out of the way as the customer approached to pay his check and Fickler sidled around behind the cash register.

“I thought,” I said politely, “you had settled for Carl and Tina. Why does Tom have to have company at lunch?”

“We haven’t got Carl and Tina.”

“But you soon will have, the way the personnel feels about cop-killers. Why pester these innocent barbers? If one of them gets nervous and slices a customer, then what?”

Purley merely snarled.

I stiffened. “Excuse me. I’m not so partial to cop-killers either. It seemed only natural to show some interest. Luckily I can read, so I’ll catch it in the evening paper.”

“Don’t bust a gut.” Purley’s eyes were following the customer as he walked to the door and on out past the flatfoot. “Sure we’ll get Carl and Tina, but if you don’t mind we’ll just watch these guys’ appetites. You asked what Jake Wallen was here for.”

“I asked if he came to take Carl.”

“Yeah. I think he did but I can’t prove it yet. Last night around midnight a couple of pedestrians, two women, were hit by a car at Eighty-first and Broadway. Both killed. The car kept going. It was found later parked at Ninety-sixth and Broadway, just across from the subway entrance. We haven’t found anyone who saw the driver, either at the scene of the accident or where the car was parked. The car was hot. It had been parked by its owner at eight o’clock on Forty-eighth Street between Ninth and Tenth, and was gone when he went for it at eleven-thirty.”

Purley paused to watch a customer enter. The customer got past the flatfoot with Joel Fickler’s help, left things at the rack, and went and got on Jimmie’s chair. Purley returned to me. “When the car was spotted by a squad car at Ninety-sixth and Broadway with a dented fender and blood and other items that tagged it, the Twentieth Precinct sent Jake Wallen to it. He was the first one to give it a look. Later, of course, there was a gang from all over, including the laboratory, before they moved it. Wallen was supposed to go home and to bed at eight in the morning when his trick ended, but he didn’t. He phoned his wife that he had a hot lead on a hit-and-run killer and was going to handle it himself and grab a promotion. Not only that, he phoned the owner of the car at his home in Yonkers, and asked him if he had any connection with the Goldenrod Barber Shop or knew anyone who had, or if he had ever been there. The owner had never heard of it. Of course we’ve collected all this since we were called here at ten-fifteen and found Wallen DOA with scissors in his back.”

I was frowning. “But what gave him the lead to this shop?”

“We’d like to know. It had to be something he found in the car, we don’t know what. The goddam fool kept it to himself and came here and got killed.”

“Didn’t he show it or mention it to anyone here?”

“They say not. All he had with him was a newspaper. We’ve got it — today’s News, the early, out last night. We can’t spot anything in it. There was nothing in his pockets, nothing on him, that helps any.”

I humphed. “Fool is right. Even if he had cleaned it up he wouldn’t have grabbed a promotion. He would have been more apt to grab a uniform and a beat.”

“Yeah, he was that kind. There’s too many of that kind. Not to mention names, but these precinct men—”

A phone rang. Fickler, by the cash register, looked at Purley, who stepped to the counter where the phone was and answered the call. It was for him. When, after a minute, it seemed to be going on, I moved away and had gone a few paces when a voice came.

“Hello, Mr. Goodwin.”

It was Jimmie, Wolfe’s man, using comb and scissors above his customer’s right ear. He was the youngest of the staff, about my age, and by far the handsomest, with curly lips and white teeth and dancing dark eyes. I had never understood why he wasn’t at Framinelli’s. I told him hello.

“Mr. Wolfe ought to be here,” he said.

Under the circumstances I thought that a little tactless, and was even prepared to tell him so when Ed called to me from two chairs down. “Fifteen minutes, Mr. Goodwin? All right?”

I told him okay, I would wait, went to the rack and undressed to my shirt, and crossed to one of the chairs over by the partition, next to the table with magazines. I thought it would be fitting to pick up a magazine, but I had already read the one on top, the latest New Yorker, and the one on top on the shelf below was the Time of two weeks ago. So I leaned back and let my eyes go, slow motion, from left to right and back again. Though I had been coming there for six years I didn’t really know those people, in spite of the reputation barbers have as conversationalists. I knew that Fickler, the boss, had once been attacked bodily there in the shop by his ex-wife; that Philip had had two sons killed in World War II; that Tom had once been accused by Fickler of swiping lotions and other supplies and had slapped Fickler’s face; that Ed played the horses and was always in debt; that Jimmie had to be watched or he would take magazines from the shop while they were still current; and that Janet, who had only been there a year, was suspected of having a sideline, maybe dope peddling. Aside from such items as those, they were strangers.

Suddenly Janet was there in front of me. She had come from around the end of the partition, and not alone. The man with her was a broad-shouldered husky, gray-haired and gray-eyed, with an unlit cigar slanting up from a corner of his mouth. His eyes swept the whole shop, and since he started at the far right he ended up at me.

He stared. “For God’s sake,” he muttered. “You? Now what?”

I was surprised for a second to see Inspector Cramer himself, head of Manhattan Homicide, there on the job. But even an inspector likes to be well thought of by the rank and file, and here it was no mere citizen who had met his end but one of them. The whole force would appreciate it. Besides, I have to admit he’s a good cop.

“Just waiting for a shave,” I told him. “I’m an old customer here. Ask Purley.”

Purley came over and verified me, but Cramer checked with Ed himself. Then he drew Purley aside, and they mumbled back and forth a while, after which Cramer summoned Philip and escorted him around the end of the partition.

Janet seated herself in the chair next to mine. She looked even better in profile than head on, with her nice chin and straight little nose and long home-grown lashes. I felt a little in debt to her for the mild pleasure I had got occasionally as I sat in Ed’s chair and glanced at her while she worked on the customer in the next chair.

“I was wondering where you were,” I remarked.

She turned to me. She wasn’t old enough to have wrinkles or seams but she looked old enough then. She was putting a strain on every muscle in her face, and it certainly showed.

“Did you say something?” she asked.

“Nothing vital. My name’s Goodwin. Call me Archie.”

“I know. You’re a detective. How can I keep them from having my picture in the paper?”

“You can’t if they’ve already got it. Have they?”

“I think so. I wish I was dead.”

“I don’t.” I made it not loud but emphatic.

“Why should you? I do. My folks in Michigan think I’m acting or modeling. I leave it vague. And here — oh, my God.”

Her chin worked, but she controlled it.

“Work is work,” I said. “My parents wanted me to be a college president, and I wanted to be a second baseman, and look at me. Anyhow, if your picture gets printed and it’s a good likeness, who knows what will happen?”

“This is my Gethsemane,” she said.

That made me suspicious, naturally. She had mentioned acting. “Come off it,” I advised her. “Think of someone else. Think of the guy that got stabbed — no, he’s out of it — think of his wife, how do you suppose she feels? Or Inspector Cramer, with the job he’s got. What was he asking you just now?”

She didn’t hear me. She said through clamped teeth, “I only wish I had some guts.”

“Why? What would you do?”

“I’d tell all about it.”

“All about what?”

“About what happened.”

“You mean last night? Why not try it out on me and see how it goes? That doesn’t take guts, just go ahead and let it come, keep your voice down and let it flow.”

She didn’t hear a word. Her ears were disconnected. She kept her brown eyes, under the long lashes, straight at me.

“How it happened this morning. How I was going back to my booth after I finished Mr. Levinson in Philip’s chair, and he called me into Tina’s booth and he seized me, with one hand on my throat so I couldn’t scream, and there was no doubt at all what he intended, so I grabbed the scissors from the shelf and, without realizing what I was doing, plunged them into him with all my strength, and his grip on me loosened, and he collapsed onto the chair. That’s what I would do if I had any guts and if I really want a successful career the way I say I do. I would have to be arrested and have a trial, and then—”

“Hold it. Your pronouns. Mr. Levinson called you into Tina’s booth?”

“Certainly not. That man that got killed.” She tilted her head back. “See the marks on my throat?”

There was no mark whatever on her smooth pretty throat.

“Good Lord,” I said. “That would get you top billing anywhere.”

“That’s what I was saying.”

“Then go ahead and tell it.”

“I can’t! I simply can’t! It would be so darned vulgar.”

Her full face was there, only sixteen inches away, with the muscles no longer under strain, the closest I had ever been to it, and there was no question about how lovely it was. Under different circumstances my reaction would have been merely normal and healthy, but at the moment I could have slapped it with pleasure. I had felt a familiar tingle at the base of my spine when I thought she was going to open up about a midnight ride up Broadway, probably with one of her co-workers, possibly with the boss himself, and then she had danced off into this folderol.

She needed a lesson. “I understand your position,” I said, “a girl as sweet and fine and strong as you, but it’s bound to come out in the end, and I want to help. Incidentally, I am not married. I’ll go to Inspector Cramer right now and tell him about it. He’ll want to take photographs of your throat. I know the warden down at the jail and I’ll see that you get good treatment, no rough stuff. Do you know any lawyers?”

She shook her head, answering, I thought, my question about lawyers, but no. She didn’t believe in answering questions. “About your being married,” she said, “I hadn’t even thought. There was an article in the American magazine last month about career girls getting married. Did you read it?”

“No. I may be able to persuade the district attorney to make it a manslaughter charge instead of murder, which would please your folks in Michigan.” I drew my feet back and slid forward on the chair, ready to rise. “Okay, I’ll go tell Cramer.”

“That article was silly,” she said. “I think a girl must get her career established first. That’s why when I see an attractive man I never wonder if he’s married; by the time I’m ready for one these will be too old. That’s why I wouldn’t ask you if you know anyone in show business, because I wouldn’t take help from a man. I think a girl—”

If Ed hadn’t signaled to me just then, his customer having left the chair, there’s no telling how it would have ended. It would have been vulgar to slap her, and no words would have been any good since she was deaf, but surely I might have thought of something that would have taken effect. As it was, I didn’t want to keep Ed waiting so I got up and crossed to his chair and climbed in.

“Just scrape the face,” I told him.

He got a bib on me and tilted me back. “Did you phone?” he asked. “Did that fathead forget again?”

I told him no, that I had been caught midtown with a stubble and an unforeseen errand for which I should be presentable and added, “You seem to have had some excitement.”

He went to the cabinet for a tube of prefabricated lather, got some on me, and started rubbing. “We sure did,” he said with feeling. “Carl, you know Carl, he killed a man in Tina’s booth. Then they both ran. I’m sorry for Tina, she was all right, but Carl, I don’t know.” He moved to my left cheek.

I couldn’t articulate with him rubbing. He finished, went to wipe his fingers, and came with the razor. I rolled my head into position, to the left, and remarked, “I’d sort of watch it, Ed. It’s a little risky to go blabbing that Carl killed him unless you can prove it.”

“Well, he had fits.” The razor was as sharp and slick as usual. “What did he run for?”

“I couldn’t say. But the cops are still poking around here, even an inspector.”

“Sure they are, they’re after evidence. You gotta have evidence.” Ed pulled the skin tight over the jawbone. “For instance, they ask me did he show me anything or ask me anything about some article from the shop. I say he didn’t. That would be evidence, see?”

“Yes, I get it.” I could only mumble. “What did he ask you?”

“Oh, all about me, name, married or single — you know, insurance men, income tax, they all ask the same things. But when he asked about last night I told him where to get off, but then I thought what the hell and told him. Why not? That’s my philosophy, Mr. Goodwin — why not? It saves trouble.”

He was prying my chin up, doing the throat. That clean, I rolled my head to the right to turn the other cheek.

“Of course,” he said, “the police have to get it straight, but they can’t expect us to remember everything. When he came in first he talked with Fickler, maybe five minutes. Then Fickler took him to Tina’s booth, and he talked with Tina. After that Fickler sent Philip in, and then Carl and then Jimmie and then Tom and then me and then Janet. I think it’s pretty good to remember that.”

I mumbled agreement. He was at the corner of my mouth.

“But I can’t remember everything, and they can’t make me. I don’t know how long it was after Janet came back out before Fickler went to Tina’s booth and found him dead. They ask me was it nearer ten minutes or nearer fifteen, but I say I had a customer at the time, we all did but Philip, and I don’t know. They ask me how many of us went behind the partition after Janet came out, to the steamer or the vat or to get the lamp or something, but I say again I had a customer at the time, and I don’t know, except I know I didn’t go because I was trimming Mr. Howell at the time. I was working the top when Fickler yelled and came running out. They can ask Mr. Howell.”

“They probably have,” I said, but to no one, because Ed had gone for a hot towel.

He returned and used the towel and got the lilac water. Patting it on, he resumed, “They ask me exactly when Carl and Tina went, they ask me that twenty times, but I can’t say and I won’t say. Carl did it all right, but they can’t prove it by me. They’ve gotta have evidence, but I don’t. Cold towel today?”

“No, I’ll keep the smell.”

He patted me dry, levered me upright, and brought a comb and brush. “Can I remember what I don’t know?” he demanded.

“I know I can’t.”

“And I’m no great detective like you.” Ed was a little rough with a brush. “And now I go for lunch but I’ve got to have a cop along. We can’t even go to the can alone. They searched all of us down to the skin, and they even brought a woman to search Janet. They took our fingerprints. I admit they’ve gotta have evidence.” He flipped the bib off. “How was the razor, all right?”

I told him it was fine as usual, stepped down, fished for a quarter, and exchanged it for my check. Purley Stebbins, nearby, was watching both of us. There had been times when I had seen fit to kid Purley at the scene of a murder, but not now. A cop had been killed.

He spoke, not belligerently. “The inspector don’t like your being here.”

“Neither do I,” I declared. “Thank God this didn’t happen to be Mr. Wolfe’s day for a haircut, you would never have believed it. I’m just a minor coincidence. Nice to see you.”

I went and paid my check to Fickler, got my things on, and departed.

III

As I emerged into Lexington Avenue there were several things on my mind. The most immediate was this: if Cramer’s suspicion had been aroused enough to spend a man on me, and if I were seen going directly home from the shop, there might be too much curiosity as to why I had chosen to spend six bits for a shave at that time of day. So instead of taking a taxi, which would have had to crawl crosstown anyhow, I walked, and when I got to Altman’s I used their aisles and exits to make sure I had no tail. That left my mind free for other things the rest of the way home.

One leading question was whether Carl and Tina would still be where I had left them, in the front room. That was what took me up the seven steps of the stoop two at a time, and on in quick. The answer to the question was no. The front room was empty.

I strode down the hall to the office but stopped there because I heard Wolfe’s voice. It was coming through the open door to the dining room, across the hall, and it was saying, “No, Mr. Vardas, I cannot agree that mountain climbing is merely one manifestation of man’s spiritual aspirations. I think instead it is an hysterical paroxysm of his infantile vanity. One of the prime ambitions of a jackass is to bray louder than any other jackass, and man is not …”

I crossed the hall and the dining-room sill. Wolfe was at his end of the table, and Fritz, standing at his elbow, had just removed the lid from a steaming platter. At his left was Tina, and Carl was at his right, my place when there was no company. Wolfe saw me but finished his paragraph on mountain climbing before attending to me.

“In time, Archie. You like veal and mushrooms.”

Talk about infantile. His not being willing to sit to his lunch with unfed people in the house was all well enough, but why not send trays in to them? That was easy — he was sore at me, and I had called them foreigners.

I stepped to the end of the table and said, “I know you have a paroxysm if I try to bring up business during meals, but eighteen thousand cops would give a month’s pay to get their hands on Carl and Tina, your guests.”

“Indeed.” Wolfe was serving the veal and accessories. “Why?”

“Have you talked with them?”

“No. I merely invited them to lunch.”

“Then don’t until I’ve reported. I ran into Cramer and Stebbins at the barber shop.”

“Confound it.” The serving spoon stopped en route.

“Yeah. It’s quite interesting. But first lunch, of course. I’ll go put the chain bolt on. Please dish me some veal?”

Carl and Tina were speechless.

That lunch was one of Wolfe’s best performances; I admit it. He didn’t know a damn thing about Carl and Tina except that they were in a jam, he knew that Cramer and Stebbins dealt only with homicide, and he had a strong prejudice against entertaining murderers at his table. Some years back a female prospective client had dined with us in an emergency, on roast Watertown goose. It turned out that she was a husband-poisoner, and roast goose had been off our menu for a solid year, though Wolfe was very fond of it. His only hope now was his knowledge that I was aware of his prejudice and even shared it, and I took my seat at the end of the table and disposed of a big helping of the veal and mushrooms, followed by pumpkin puffs, without batting an eye. He must have been fairly tight inside, but he stayed the polite host clear to the end, with no sign of hurry even with the coffee. Then, however, the tension began to tell. Ordinarily his return to the office after a meal was leisurely and lazy, but this time he went right along, followed by his guests and me. He marched across to his chair behind the desk, got his bulk deposited, and snapped at me, “What have you got us into now?”

I was pulling chairs around so the Vardas family would be facing him, but stopped to give him an eye.

“Us?” I inquired.

“Yes.”

“Okay,” I said courteously, “if that’s how it is. I did not invite them to come here, let alone to lunch. They came on their own, and I let them in, which is one of my functions. Having started it, I’ll finish it. May I use the front room, please? I’ll have them out of here in ten minutes.”

“Pfui.” He was supercilious. “I am now responsible for their presence, since they were my guests at lunch. Sit down, sir. Sit down, Mrs. Vardas, please.”

Carl and Tina didn’t know what from which. I had to push the chairs up behind their knees. Then I went to my own chair and swiveled to face Wolfe.

“I have a question to ask them,” I told him, “but first you need a couple of facts. They’re in this country without papers. They were in a concentration camp in Russia and they’re not telling how they got here if they can help it. They could be spies, but I doubt it after hearing them talk. Naturally they jump a mile if they hear someone say boo, and when a man came to the barber shop this morning and showed a police card and asked who they were and where they came from and what they were doing last night they scooted the first chance they got. But they didn’t know where to go so they came here to buy fifty bucks’ worth of advice and information. I got bighearted and went to the shop disguised as a Boy Scout.”

“You went?” Tina gasped.

I turned to them. “Sure I went. It’s a complicated situation, and you made it worse by beating it, but you did and here we are. I think I can handle it if you two can be kept out of the way. It would be dangerous for you to stay here. I know a safe place up in the Bronx for you to lay low for a few days. You shouldn’t take a chance on a taxi or the subway, so we’ll go around the corner to the garage and get Mr. Wolfe’s car, and you can drive it up there. Then I’ll—”

“Excuse me,” Carl said urgently. “You would drive us up there?”

“No, I’ll be busy. Then I’ll—”

“But I can’t drive a car! I don’t know how!”

“Then your wife will drive. You can leave—”

“She can’t! She don’t know either!”

I sprang from my chair and stood over them. “Look,” I said savagely, “save that for the cops. Can’t drive a car? Certainly you can! Everybody can!”

They were looking up at me, Carl bewildered, Tina frowning. “In America, yes,” she said. “But we are not Americans, not yet. We have never had a chance to learn.”

“You have never driven a car?”

“No. Never.”

“And Carl?”

“Never.”

“What the devil is this?” Wolfe demanded.

I returned to my chair. “That,” I said, “was the question I wanted to ask. It has a bearing, as you’ll soon see.” I regarded Carl and Tina. “If you’re lying about this, not knowing how to drive a car, you won’t be sent back home to die, you’ll die right here. It will be a cinch to find out if you’re lying.”

“Why should we?” Carl demanded. “What is so important in it?”

“Once more,” I insisted. “Can you drive a car?”

“No.”

“Can you, Tina?”

“No!”

“Okay.” I turned to Wolfe. “The caller at the barber shop this morning was a precinct dick named Wallen. Fickler took him to Tina’s booth, and he questioned Tina first. Then the others had sessions with him in the booth, in this order: Philip, Carl, Jimmie, Tom, Ed, and Janet. You may not know that the manicure booths are around behind the long partition. After Janet came out there was a period of ten or fifteen minutes when Wallen was in the booth alone. Then Fickler went to see, and what he saw was Wallen’s body with scissors buried in his back. Someone had stabbed him to death. Since Carl and Tina had lammed—”

Tina’s cry was more of a gasp, a last gasp, an awful sound. With one leap she was out of her chair and at Carl, grasping him and begging wildly, “Carl, no! No, no! Oh, Carl—”

“Make her stop,” Wolfe snapped.

I had to try, because Wolfe would rather be in a room with a hungry tiger than with a woman out of hand. I went and got a grip on her shoulder but released it at sight of the expression on Carl’s face as he pushed to his feet against her pressure. It looked as if he could and would handle it. He did. He straightened her up, standing against her, his face nearly touching hers, and told her, “No! Do you understand? No!”

He eased her back to her chair and down onto it, and turned to me. “That man was killed there in Tina’s booth?”

“Yes.”

Carl smiled as he had once before, and I wished he would stop trying it. “Then of course,” he said as if he were conceding a point in a tight argument, “this is the end for us. But please I must ask you not to blame my wife. Because we have been through many things together she is ready to credit me with many deeds that are far beyond me. She has a big idea of me, and I have a big idea of her. But I did not kill that man. I did not touch him.” He frowned. “I don’t understand why you suggested riding in a car to the Bronx. Of course you will give us to the police.”

“Forget the Bronx.” I was frowning back. “Every cop in town has his eye peeled for you. Sit down.”

He stood. He looked at Tina, at Wolfe, and back down at me.

“Sit down, damn it!”

He went to his chair and sat.

“About driving a car,” Wolfe muttered. “Was that flummery?”

“No, sir, that comes next. Last night around midnight a hit-and-run driver in a stolen car killed two women up on Broadway. The car was found parked at Broadway and Ninety-sixth Street. Wallen, from the Twentieth Precinct, was the first dick to look it over. In it he apparently found something that led him to the Goldenrod Barber Shop-anyhow he phoned his wife that he was on a hot one that would lead to glory and a raise and then he showed up at the shop and called the roll, as described. With the result also as described. Cramer has bought it that the hit-and-run driver found himself cornered and used the scissors, and Cramer, don’t quote me, is not a dope. To qualify as a hit-and-run driver you must meet certain specifications, and one of them is knowing how to drive a car. So the best plan would be for Carl and Tina to go back to the shop and report for duty and for the official quiz, if it wasn’t for two things. First, the fact that they lammed will make it very tough, and second, even though it is settled that they didn’t kill a cop, their lack of documents will fix them anyhow.”

I waved a hand. “So actually what’s the difference? If they’re sent back where they came from they’re doomed there, that’s all they have to pick from. One interesting angle is that you are harboring fugitives from justice, and I am not. I told Purley they’re here. So you’re—”

“You what?” Wolfe bellowed.

“What I said. That’s the advantage of having a reputation for gags, you can say practically anything if you handle your face right. I told him they were here in our front room, and he sailed right over it. So I’m clean, but you’re not. You can’t even just show them out. If you don’t want to call Cramer yourself, which I admit would be a little thick since they were your luncheon guests, I could get Purley at the shop and tell him they’re still here and why hasn’t he sent for them.”

“It might be better,” Tina said, not with hope, “just a little better, if you would let us go ourselves? No?”

She got no answer. Wolfe was glaring at me. It wasn’t that he needed my description of the situation to realize what a pickle he was in; I have never tried to deny that the interior decorator did a snappier job inside his skull than in mine. What had him boiling was my little stunt of getting it down that neither Carl nor Tina could drive a car. But for that it would still have been possible to let them meet the law and take what they got, and more or less shrug it off; now that was out of the question. Also, naturally, he resented my putting the burden on him. If I had taken a stand as a champion of humanity he could have blamed me for any trouble he was put to — and didn’t I know he would.

“There is,” he said, glaring, “another alternative to consider.”

“Yes, sir. What?”

“Let us just go ourselves,” Tina said.

“Pfui.” He moved the glare to her. “You would try to skedaddle and be caught within an hour.” Back to me. “You have told Mr. Stebbins they are here. We can simply keep them here and await developments. Since Mr. Cramer and Mr. Stebbins are still there at work, they may at any moment disclose the murderer.”

“Sure they may,” I agreed, “but I doubt it. They’re just being thorough; they’ve really settled for Carl and Tina, and what they’re looking for is evidence, especially what it was that led Wallen to the barber shop — though I suppose they haven’t much hope of that, since Carl and Tina could have taken it along. Anyway, you know how it is when they’ve got their minds aimed in one direction.”

Wolfe’s eyes went to Carl. “Did you and your wife leave the shop together?”

Carl shook his head. “That might have been noticed, so she went first. There is no place for ladies to go in the shop, so Tina and the other girl, Janet, go to a place down the hall when they need to, and she could leave with no attention. When she was gone I waited until they were all busy and Mr. Fickler was walking behind the partition, then I went quick out the door and ran upstairs to meet her there.”

“When was that?” I asked. “Who was in Tina’s booth with Wallen?”

“I don’t think anybody was. Janet had come out a while before. She was at Jimmie’s chair with a customer.”

“Good God.” I turned my palms up. “You left that place less than a minute, maybe only a few seconds, before Fickler found Wallen dead!”

“I don’t know.” Carl wasn’t fazed. “I only know I went and I didn’t touch that man.”

“This,” I told Wolfe, “makes it even nicer. There was a slim chance we could get it that they left sooner.”

“Yes.” He regarded me. “It must be assumed that Wallen was alive when Ed left the booth, since that young woman — what’s her name?”

“Janet.”

“I call few men, and no women, by their first names. What’s her name?”

“That’s all I know, Janet. It won’t bite you.”

“Stahl,” Tina said. “Janet Stahl.”

“Thank you. Wallen was presumably alive when Ed left the booth, since Miss Stahl followed him. So Miss Stahl, who saw Wallen last, and Mr. Fickler, who reported him dead — manifestly they had opportunity. What about the others?”

“You must remember,” I told him, “that I had just dropped in for a shave. I had to show the right amount of intellectual curiosity but I had to be damn careful not to carry it too far. From what Ed said, I gathered that opportunity is fairly wide open, except he excludes himself. As you know, they all keep darting behind that partition for one thing or another. Ed can’t remember who did and who didn’t during that ten or fifteen minutes, and it’s a safe bet that the others can’t remember either. The fact that the cops were interested enough to ask shows that Carl and Tina haven’t got a complete monopoly on it. As Ed remarked, they’ve gotta have evidence, and they’re still looking.”

Wolfe grunted in disgust.

“It also shows,” I went on, “that they haven’t got any real stopper to cork it, like prints from the car or localizing the scissors or anything they found on the corpse. They sure want Carl and Tina, and you know what happens when they get them, but they’re still short on exhibits. If you like your suggestion to keep our guests here until Cramer and Stebbins get their paws on the right guy it might work fine as a long-term policy, but you’re against the idea of women living here, or even a woman, and after a few months it might get on your nerves.”

“It is no good,” Tina said, back to her gasping whisper again. “Just let us go! I beg you, do that! We’ll find our way to the country, we know how. You are wonderful detectives, but it is no good!”

Wolfe ignored her. He leaned back, closed his eyes, and heaved a deep sigh, and from the way his nose began to twitch I knew he was coercing himself into facing the hard fact that he would have to go to work — either that or tell me to call Purley, and that was ruled out of bounds by both his self-respect and his professional vanity. The Vardas family sat gazing at him, not in hope, but not in utter despair either. I guess they had run out of despair long ago and had none left to call on. I watched Wolfe too, his twitching nose until it stopped, and then his lips in their familiar movement, pushed out and then pulled in, out and in again, which meant he had accepted the inevitable and was getting the machinery going. I had seen him like that for an hour at a stretch, but this time it was only minutes.

He sighed again, opened his eyes, and rasped at Tina, “Except for Mr. Fickler, that man questioned you first. Is that right?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Tell me what he said. What he asked. I want every word.”

I thought Tina did pretty well under the circumstances. Convinced that her goose was cooked and that therefore what Wallen had asked couldn’t affect her fate one way or the other, she tried to play ball anyway. She wrinkled her brow and concentrated, and it looked as if Wolfe got it all out of her. But she couldn’t give him what she didn’t have.

He kept after it. “You are certain he produced no object, showed you no object whatever?”

“Yes, I’m sure he didn’t.”

“He asked about no object, anything, in the shop?”

“No.”

“He mentioned no object at all?”

“No.”

“He took nothing from his pocket?”

“No.”

“The newspaper he had. Didn’t he take that from his pocket?”

“No, like I said, he had it in his hand when he came in the booth.”

“In his hand or under his arm?”

“In his hand. I think — yes, I’m sure.”

“Was it folded up?”

“Well, of course newspapers are folded.”

“Yes, Mrs. Vardas. Just remember the newspaper as you saw it in his hand. I’m making a point of it because there is nothing else to make a point of, and we must have a point if we can find one. Was the newspaper folded up as if he had had it in his pocket?”

“No, it wasn’t.” She was trying hard. “It wasn’t folded that much. Like I said, it was a News. When he sat down he put it on the table, at the end by his right hand — yes, that’s right, my left hand; I moved some of my things to make room — and it was the way it is on the newsstand, so that’s all it was folded.”

“But he didn’t mention it?”

“No.”

“And you noticed nothing unusual about it? I mean the newspaper?”

She shook her head. “It was just a newspaper.”

Wolfe repeated the performance with Carl and got more of the same. No object produced or mentioned, no hint of any. The only one on exhibit, the newspaper, had been there on the end of the table when Carl, sent by Fickler, had entered and sat, and Wallen had made no reference to it. Carl was more practical than Tina. He didn’t work as hard as she had trying to remember Wallen’s exact words, and I must say I couldn’t blame him.

Wolfe gave up trying to get what they didn’t have. He leaned back, compressed his lips, closed his eyes, and tapped with his forefingers on the ends of his chair arms. Carl and Tina looked at each other a while, then she got up and went to him, started combing his hair with her fingers, saw I was looking, began to blush, God knows why, and went back to her chair.

Finally Wolfe opened his eyes. “Confound it,” he said peevishly, “it’s impossible. Even if I had a move to make I couldn’t make it. If I so much as stir a finger Mr. Cramer will start yelping, and I have no muzzle for him. Any effort to—”

The doorbell rang. During lunch Fritz had been told to leave it to me, so I arose, crossed to the hall, and went front. But not all the way. Four paces short of the door I saw, through the one-way glass panel, the red rugged face and the heavy broad shoulders. I wheeled and returned to the office, not dawdling, and told Wolfe, “The man to fix the chair.”

“Indeed.” His head jerked up. “The front room.”

“I could tell him—”

“No.”

Carl and Tina, warned by our tone and tempo, were on their feet. The bell rang again. I moved fast to the door to the front room and pulled it open, telling them, “In here quick. Step on it.” They obeyed without a word, as if they had known me and trusted me for years, but what choice did they have? When they has passed through I said, “Relax and keep quiet,” shut the door, glanced at Wolfe and got a nod, went to the hall and to the door, opened it, and said morosely, “Hello. What now?”

“It took you long enough,” Inspector Cramer growled, crossing the threshold.

IV

Wolfe can move when he wants to. I have seen him prove it more than once, as he did then. By the time I was back in the office, following Cramer, he had scattered in front of him on his desk pads of paper, pencils, and a dozen folders of plant germination records for which he had had to go to the filing cabinet. One of the folders was spread open, and he was scowling at us above it. He grunted a greeting but not a welcome. Cramer grunted back, moved to the red leather chair, and planted himself in it.

I got myself at my desk. I was wishing I wasn’t involved so I could just enjoy it. If Wolfe succeeded in keeping Cramer’s claws off of the Vardas family and at the same time kept himself out of jail I would show my appreciation by not hitting him for a raise for at least a month.

Fritz entered with a tray, so Wolfe had found time to push a buttom too. It was the fixed allotment, three bottles of beer. Wolfe, getting the opener from his drawer, told Fritz to bring another glass, but Cramer said no thanks.

Suddenly Cramer looked at me and demanded, “Where did you go when you left the barber shop?”

My brows went up. “Just like that?”

“Yes.”

“Well, then. If you really cared you could have put a tail on me. If you didn’t care enough to put a tail on me you’re just being nosy, and I resent it. Next question.”

“Why not answer that one?”

“Because some of the errands I get sent on are confidential, and I don’t want to start a bad habit.”

Cramer turned abruptly to Wolfe. “You know a police officer was killed this morning there in that shop.”

“Yes.” Wolfe halted a foaming glass on its way to his mouth. “Archie told me about it.”

“Maybe he did.”

“Not maybe. He did.”

“Okay.” Cramer cocked his head and watched Wolfe empty the glass and use his handkerchief on his lips. Then he said, “Look. This is what brought me here. I have learned over a stretch of years that when I find you within a mile of a murder, and Goodwin is a part of you, something fancy can be expected. I don’t need to itemize that; your memory is as good as mine. Wait a second, let me finish. I don’t say there’s no such thing as a coincidence. I know you’ve been going to that shop for two years, and Goodwin for six years. It wouldn’t be so remarkable if he happened in there this particular day, two hours after a murder, if it wasn’t for certain features. He told Graboff, his barber, that he needed an emergency shave to go to an appointment. Incidentally, it couldn’t have been much of an emergency, since he waited nearly half an hour while Graboff finished with a customer, but I might concede that. The point is that Graboff and Fickler both say that in the six years Goodwin has been going there he has never gone just for a shave. Not once. He goes only for the works, haircut, scalp massage, shampoo, and shave. That makes it too remarkable. Just one day in six years an emergency sends him there for a shave, and this is the day. I don’t believe it.”

Wolfe shrugged. “Then you don’t. I’m not responsible for your credulity quotient, Mr. Cramer. Neither is Mr. Goodwin. I don’t see how we can help you.”

“Nobody would believe it,” Cramer said stubbornly, refusing to get riled. “That’s why I’m here. I do believe that Goodwin went to that shop because he knew a man had been murdered there.”

“Then you believe wrong,” I told him. “Your credulity quotient needs an overhaul. Until I got there I hadn’t the slightest idea or suspicion that a man had been murdered, there or anywhere else.”

“You have been known to lie, Goodwin.”

“Only within limits, and I know what they are. I will state that in an affidavit. Write it out, and there’s a notary at the corner drugstore. That would be perjury, which I’m allergic to.”

“Your going there had nothing whatever to do with the murder?”

“Put it that way if you prefer it. It did not.”

Wolfe was pouring beer. “How,” he inquired, not belligerently, “was Mr. Goodwin supposed to have learned of the murder? Had you fitted that in?”

“I don’t know.” Cramer gestured impatiently. “I didn’t come here with a diagram. I only know what it means, what it always has meant, when I’m on a homicide, which is what I work at, and suddenly there you are, or Goodwin. And there Goodwin was, two hours after it happened, and I asked some questions and I can take only so much coincidence. Frankly I have no idea where you come in. You work only for big money. That hit-and-run driver could be a man with money, but if so it couldn’t be someone who works in that shop. No one there has the kind of dough that hires Nero Wolfe. So I don’t see how it could be money that pulled you in, and I frankly admit I have no idea what else could. I guess I’ll have a little beer after all, if you don’t mind. I’m tired.”

Wolfe leaned forward to push the button.

“What was on my mind,” Cramer said, “was two things. First, I did not believe that Goodwin just happened to drop in at the scene of a murder. I admit he’s not quite brazen enough to commit perjury.” He looked at me. “I want that affidavit. Today. Word it yourself, but say it right.”

“You’ll get it,” I assured him.

“Today.”

“Yep.”

“Don’t forget it.”

Fritz entered with another tray, put it down on the little table at Cramer’s elbow, and uncapped the bottle. “Shall I pour, sir?”

“Thanks, I will.” Cramer took the glass in his left hand, tilted it, and poured with his right. Unlike Wolfe, he didn’t care for a lot of foam. “Second,” he said, “I thought that what took Goodwin there might be something you would be ready to tell me about, but he wouldn’t because you’re the boss and he’s such a goddam clam unless you say the word. I don’t pretend to have anything to pry it out of you with. You know the law about withholding evidence as well as I do, you ought to by this time, the stunts you’ve pulled—”

The foam was down to where he liked it, and he stopped to take a swig.

“You thought,” Wolfe asked, “that I had sent Archie to the shop on business?”

Cramer ran his tongue over his lips. “Yes. For the reason given. I still think so.”

“You’re wrong. I didn’t. Since you’re to get an affidavit from Archie, you might as well have one from me too and get it settled. In it I will say that I did not send him to the barber shop, that I did not know he was going there, and that I heard and knew nothing of the murder until he returned and told me.”

“You’ll swear to that?”

“As a favor to you, yes. You’ve wasted your time coming here, and you might as well get a little something out of it.” Wolfe reached for his second bottle. “By the way, I still don’t know why you came. According to Archie, the murderer is known and all you have to do is find him — that man at the clothes rack — uh, Carl. And his wife, you said, Archie?”

“Yes, sir. Tina, one of the manicures. Purley told me straight they had done it and scooted.”

Wolfe frowned at Cramer. “Then what could you expect to get from me? How could I help?”

“What I said, that’s all,” Cramer insisted doggedly, pouring the rest of his beer. “When I see Goodwin poking around I want to know why.”

“I don’t believe it,” Wolfe said rudely. He turned to me. “Archie. I think you’re responsible for this. You’re brash and you talk too much. I think it was something you did or said. What was it?”

“Sure, it’s always me.” I was hurt. “What I did, I got a shave, and Ed had a customer and I had to wait, so I talked with Purley and looked at a magazine — no, I started to but didn’t — and with Inspector Cramer and then with Janet, Miss Stahl to you, and with Ed while I was in the chair — that is, he talked—”

“What did you say to Mr. Cramer?”

“Practically nothing. Just answered a civil question.”

“What did you say to Mr. Stebbins?”

I thought I knew now where he was headed and hoped to God I was right. “Oh, just asked what was going on, and he told me. I’ve told you about it.”

“Not verbatim. What did you say?”

“Nothing, damn it! Of course Purley wanted to know what brought me there, and I told him I — say, wait a minute! Maybe you’re right at that! He asked me if I had seen Carl or Tina this morning, and I said sure, I had put them here in the front room and told them to wait, and if he would step on it—”

“Ha!” Wolfe snorted. “I knew it! Your confounded tongue. So that’s it.” He looked at Cramer. “Why have you waited to pounce?” he asked, trying not to sound too contemptuous, for after all Cramer was drinking his beer. “Since Archie has rashly disclosed our little secret, it would be useless for me to try to keep it. That’s what we use the front room for mainly, to keep murderers in. You’re armed, I suppose? Go in and get them. Archie, open the door for him.”

I went to the door to the front room and pulled it open, not too wide. “I’m scared of murderers myself,” I said courteously, “or I’d be glad to help.”

Cramer had a glass half full of beer in his hand, and it may well be that that took the trick. Bullheaded as he was, he might have been capable of getting up and walking over for a look into the room, even though our build-up had convinced him it was empty, not caring how much we would enjoy it or how silly he would look coming out. But the glass of beer complicated it. He would either have to take it with him or reach first to put it down on the little table — or throw it at Wolfe.

“Nuts,” he said and lifted the glass to drink.

I swung the door to carelessly, without bothering to see that it latched, and yawned on the way back to my chair.

“At least,” Wolfe said, rubbing it in, “I can’t be jailed for harboring a fugitive — one of your favorite threats. But I really don’t know what you’re after. If it was those two you’ll get them, of course. What else is there?”

“Nothing but a little more evidence.” Cramer glanced at his wristwatch. “I’ll get down to my office. That’s where I started for, and this was on the way so I thought I’d stop to see what you had to say. We’ll get ’em all right. It don’t pay to kill a cop in this town.” He stood up. “It wouldn’t pay for anyone to hide a cop-killer in their front room, either. Thanks for the beer. I’ll be expecting those affidavits, and in case—”

The phone rang. I swiveled and got it. “Nero Wolfe’s office, Archie Goodwin speaking.”

“Inspector Cramer there?”

I said yes, hold it. “For you,” I told him and moved aside, and he came and took it. He spoke not more than twenty words altogether, between spells of listening. He dropped the phone onto the cradle, growled something about more trouble, and headed for the door.

“Have they found ’em?” I asked his back.

“No.” He didn’t turn. “Someone’s hurt-the Stahl girl.”

I marched after him, thinking the least I could do was cooperate by opening another door for him, but he was there and on out before I caught up, so I about-faced and returned to the office.

Wolfe was standing up, and I wondered why all the exertion, but a glance at the wall clock showed me 3:55, nearly time for his afternoon visit to the plant rooms.

“He said Janet got hurt,” I stated.

Wolfe, finishing the last of his beer, grunted.

“I owe Janet something. Besides, it could mean that Carl and Tina are out of it. We ought to know, and they would like to know. I don’t usually get shaved twice a day, but there’s no law against it. I can be there in ten minutes. Why not?”

“No.” He put the glass down. “We’ll see.”

“I don’t feel like we’ll seeing. I need to do something. I lost ten pounds in ten seconds, standing there holding that doorknob, trying to look as if it would be fun to watch him coming to look in. If it wasn’t for our guests I almost wish he had, just to see what you would do, not to mention me. I’ve got to do something now.”

“There’s nothing to do.” He looked at the clock and moved. “Put those folders back, please?” Halfway to the door he turned. “Disturb me only if it is unavoidable. And admit no more displaced persons to the house. Two at a time is enough.”

“It was you who fed—” I began with feeling, but he was gone. In a moment I heard the sound of his elevator.

I put the folders away and took the beer remains to the kitchen and then went to the front room. Tina, who was lying on the couch, sat up as I entered and saw to her skirt hem. She had nice legs, but my mind was occupied. Carl, on a chair near the foot of the couch, stood up and asked a string of questions with his eyes.

“As you were,” I told them gruffly. I heartily agreed with Wolfe that two was enough. “I hope you didn’t go near the windows?”

“We have learned so long ago to stay away from windows,” Carl said. “But we want to go. We will pay the fifty dollars gladly.”

“You can’t go.” I was irritated and emphatic. “That was Inspector Cramer, a very important policeman. We told him you were in here, and so—”

“You told him—” Tina gasped.

“Yes. It’s the Hitler-Stalin technique in reverse. They tell barefaced lies to have them taken for the truth, and we told the barefaced truth to have it taken for a lie. It worked. You were within a hair’s breadth of getting flushed, and I’ll never be the same again, but it worked. So now we’re stuck, and you are too. You stay here. We’ve told the cops you’re in this room, and you’re not going to leave it, at least not until bedtime. I’m locking you in.” I pointed to a door. “That’s a bathroom, and there’s a glass if you want a drink. It has another door into the office, but I’ll lock it. The windows have bars.”

I crossed to the door to the hall and locked it with my master key. I went through to the office, entered the bathroom in the corner, turned the bolt flange on the door to the front room, opened the door an inch, returned to the office, locked that door with my key, and went back to the front room. Carl and Tina, speaking in low tones, fell silent as I entered.

“All set,” I told them. “Make yourselves comfortable. If you need anything don’t yell, this room is soundproofed; push this button.” I put my finger on it, under the edge of the table. “I’ll give you the news as soon as there is any.” I was going.

“But this is hanging in the air on a thread,” Carl protested.

“You’re damn right it is,” I agreed grimly. “Your only hope is that Mr. Wolfe has now put his foot in it, and it’s up to him to get both you and him loose, not to mention me. He can’t possibly do it, which is an advantage, because the only things he ever really strains himself on are those that can’t be done. The next two hours are time out. He doesn’t let anything interfere with his afternoon session, from four to six, with his orchids up on the roof. By the way, there is a small gleam. Inspector Cramer beat it back to the shop because he got a phone call that Janet had been hurt. If she got hurt with scissors with you not there, it may be a real break.”

“Janet?” Tina was distressed. “Was she hurt much?”

I looked at her suspiciously. Surely that was phony. But she looked as if she really meant it. Maybe with some people who have been hurt plenty and often themselves, that’s the way they react when someone else gets it, someone they know.

“I don’t know,” I said, “and I’m not going to try to find out. Curiosity can be justified only up to a point, and this is no time to stretch it. We’ll have to sit it out, at least until six o’clock.” I glanced at my wrist. “That’s only an hour and twenty minutes. Then we’ll see if Mr. Wolfe has cooked up a charade. If not, he may at least invite you to dinner. See you later.”

As I turned to go Carl sprang and broke my neck.

I have had enough unpleasant surprises over the years so that I am never completely off guard, but I admit I was careless that time because I underestimated him. He was a full three inches and thirty pounds under me, but I should have known that a guy who had managed a getaway from a concentration camp, and also from a continent, must have learned some good tricks. He had. The one he tried on me took him off the floor and through the air at my back, got his knees in my spine and his arm hooked under my chin. I was careless, but not quite careless enough. I heard and felt his rush too late to wheel or step, but in time to arch my back and drop my chin. He fastened onto me piggyback, and his muscles were a real surprise.

If he was that quick on the spring he might be just as quick with his left hand getting out a knife, so I didn’t try to get subtle. I bent my knees, called on my legs for all they had, jumped straight up as high as I could with him on me, jerked backwards in the air to horizontal, and hit the floor — or he did, with me on top. It squashed air out of him and jolted his arm loose. I bounced off to the right, got my feet under me, and came up, facing Tina in case she was prepared to help.

She wasn’t. She was just standing there, frozen, with no blood left in her, anyway not in her face. I moved my head a little from left to right and then slowly in a circle. “I thought he broke my neck,” I told her, “but he didn’t. He only tried to.”

She had no comment. Carl was on the floor, pulling air in for replacement. I stepped to him, reached down for his arm, yanked him upright, and went over him good. The only tool he had was a pocket knife with two little blades.

I backed up a step and remarked, “You act on impulse, don’t you?”

“I couldn’t break your neck,” he said, as if his feelings were hurt. “You’re too strong.”

“You sure could try.”

“No. I only wanted to go. If we stay here there is no hope. It would have made you numb, that was all.”

“Yeah. Napoleon’s been numb for over a century. I hope your ribs hurt. If so, think of me.”

I went to the door to the office, passed through, closed the door, and locked it. There in privacy I took a survey, physical and mental. It was no pleasure to move my head, especially backward, but it did move. My back was sore where his knees had hit it, but some assorted twisting and bending proved that all the joints worked without cracking. I sat at my desk for the mental part. Getting my neck broke, or damn near it, had cleared my brain. Being smart enough to get it in that neither Carl nor Tina could drive a car was all right as far as it went, but it proved nothing at all about the scissors in Jake Wallen’s back; it merely showed that there are motives and motives. The cops thought Wallen had been killed by a cornered hit-and-run driver, but what did I think? And even more important, what did Wolfe think? Was he up ahead of me as usual, or was he being too offhand, since no fee was involved, and maybe letting us in for a bloody nose?

I sat and surveyed and got so dissatisfied that I rang the plant rooms, told Wolfe about Carl’s attempt to numb me, and tried to go on from there, but he brushed me off and said it could wait until six o’clock. I sat some more, practiced moving my head in various directions, and then got up to do back exercises. I was bending to touch the floor with my fingers when the phone rang.

It was Sergeant Purley Stebbins. “Archie? Purley. I’m at the barber shop. We want you here quick.”

Two things told me it was no hostile mandate: his tone and the “Archie.” The nature of my encounters with him usually had him calling me Goodwin, but occasionally it was Archie.

I responded in kind. “I’m busy but I guess so. If you really want me. Do you care to specify?”

“When you get here. You’re needed, that’s all. Grab a cab.”

I buzzed Wolfe on the house phone and reported the development. Then I got a gun from the drawer, went to the kitchen and gave it to Fritz, described the status of the guests, and told him to keep his eyes and ears open. Then I hopped.

V

THE crowd of spectators ganged up in the corridor outside the Goldenrod Barber Shop was twice as big as it had been before, for two reasons. It was just past five o’clock, and home-goers were flocking through for the subway; and inside the shop there was a fine assortment of cops and dicks to look at. The corridor sported not one flatfoot, but three, keeping people away from the entrance and moving. I told one of them my name and errand and was ordered to wait, and in a minute Purley came and escorted me in.

I darted a glance around. The barber chairs were all empty. Fickler and three of the barbers, Jimmie, Ed, and Philip, were seated along the row of waiting chairs, in their white jackets, each with a dick beside him. Tom was not in view. Other city employees were scattered around.

Purley had guided me to the corner by the cash register. “How long have you known that Janet Stahl?” he demanded.

I shook my head reproachfully. “Not that way. You said I was needed, and I came on the run. If you merely want my biography, call at the office any time during hours. If you call me Archie, even after hours.”

“Cut the comedy. How long have you know her?”

“No, sir. I know a lawyer. Lay a foundation.”

Purley’s right shoulder twitched. It was only a reflex of his impulse to sock me, beyond his control and therefore nothing to resent. “Some day,” he said, setting his jaw and then releasing it. “She was found on the floor of her booth, out from a blow on her head. We brought her to, and she can talk but she won’t. She won’t tell us anything. She says she don’t know us. She says she won’t talk to anybody except her friend Archie Goodwin. How long have you known her?”

“I’m touched,” I said with emotion. “Until today I’ve merely leered at her, with no conversation or bodily contact of any kind. The only chat I’ve ever had with her was here today under your eye, but look what it did to her. Is it any wonder my opinion of myself is what it is?”

“Listen, Goodwin, we’re after a murderer.”

“I know you are. I’m all for it.”

“You’ve never seen her outside this shop?”

“No.”

“That can be checked maybe. Right now we want you to get her to talk. Goddam her, she’s stopped us dead. Come on.” He moved.

I caught his elbow. “Hold it. If she sticks to it that she’ll only talk with me I’ll have to think up questions. I ought to know what happened.”

“Yeah.” Purley wanted no more delay, but obviously I had a point. “There were only three of us left, me here at the front, and Joffe and Sullivan there on chairs. The barbers were all working on customers. Fickler was moving around. I was on the phone half the time. We had squeezed out everything we could here, for the present anyhow, and it was a letdown, you know how that is.”

“Where was Janet?”

“I’m telling you. Toracco, that’s Philip, finished with a customer, and a new one got in his chair — we were letting regular customers in. The new one wanted a manicure, and Toracco called Janet, but she didn’t come. Fickler was helping the outgoing customer on with his coat. Toracco went behind the partition to get Janet, and there she was on the floor of her booth, cold. She had gone there fifteen minutes before, possibly twenty. I think all of them had gone behind the partition at least once during that time.”

“You think?”

“Yes, I think.”

“It must have been quite a letdown.”

“I said I was on the phone a lot. Joffe and Sullivan will not be jumped up, and don’t they know it. You know damn well how much we like it, her getting bopped with three of us right here.”

“How bad is she hurt?”

“Not enough for the hospital. Doc let us keep her here. She was hit above the right ear with a bottle taken from the supply shelf against the partition, six feet from the entrance to her booth. The bottle was big and heavy, full of oil. It was there by her on the floor.”

“Prints?”

“For God’s sake, start a school. He had a towel in his hand or something. Come on.”

“One second. What did the doctor say when you asked him if she could have been just testing her skull?”

“He said it was possible but he doubted it. Come and ask her.”

Feeling that I had enough for a basis for conversation, I followed him. As we went toward the partition all the barbers and dicks along the row of chairs gave us looks, none of them cheerful. Fickler was absolutely forlorn.

I had never been behind the partition before. The space ran about half the length of the shop. Against the partition were steamers, vats, lamps, and other paraphernalia, and then a series of cupboards and shelves. Across a wide aisle were the manicure booths, four of them, though I had never seen more than two operators in the shop. As we passed the entrance to the first booth in the line a glance showed me Inspector Cramer seated at a little table across from Tom, the barber with white hair. Cramer saw me and arose. I followed Purley to the third booth, and on in. Then steps came behind me, and Cramer was there.

It was a big booth, eight by eight, but was now crowded. In addition to us three and the furniture, a city employee was standing in a corner, and, on a row of chairs lined up against the right wall, Janet Stahl was lying on her back, her head resting on a stack of towels. She had moved her eyes, but not her head, to take in us visitors. She looked beautiful.

“Here’s your friend Goodwin,” Purley told her, trying to sound sympathetic.

“Hello there,” I said professionally. “What does this mean?”

The long home-grown lashes fluttered at me. “You,” she said.

“Yep. Your friend Archie Goodwin.” There was a chair there, the only one she wasn’t using, and I squeezed past Purley and sat, facing her and close. “How do you feel, terrible?”

“No, I don’t feel at all. I am past feeling.”

I reached for her wrist, got my fingers on the spot, and looked at my watch. In thirty seconds I said, “Your pump isn’t bad. May I inspect your head?”

“If you’re careful.”

“Groan if it hurts.” I used all fingers to part the fine brown hair, and gently but thoroughly investigated the scalp. She closed her eyes and flinched once, but there was no groan. “A lump to write home about,” I announced. “Doing your hair will be a problem. I’d like to give the guy that did it a piece of my mind before plugging him. Who was it?”

“Send them away, and I’ll tell you.”

I turned to the kibitzers. “Get out,” I said sternly. “If I had been here this would never have happened. Leave us.”

They went without a word. I sat listening to the sound of their retreating footsteps outside in the aisle, then thought I had better provide sound to cover in case they were careless tiptoeing back. They had their choice of posts, just outside the open entrance or in the adjoining booths. The partitions were only six feet high. “It was dastardly,” I said. “He might have killed you or disfigured you for life, and either one would have ruined your career. Thank God you’ve got a good strong thick skull.”

“I started to scream,” she said, “but it was too late.”

“What started you to scream? Seeing him, or hearing him?”

“It was both. I wasn’t in my chair, I was in the customer’s chair, with my back to the door — I was just sitting trying to think — and there was a little noise behind me, like a stealthy step, and I looked up and saw him reflected in the glass, right behind me with his arm raised, and I started to scream, but before I could get it out he struck—”

“Wait a minute.” I got up and moved my chair to the outer side of the little table and sat in it. “These details are important. You were like this?”

“That’s it. I was sitting thinking.”

I felt that the opinion I had formed of her previously had not done her justice. The crinkly glass of the partion wall could reflect no object whatever, no matter how the light was. Her contempt for mental processes was absolutely spectacular. I moved my chair back beside her. From that angle, as she lay there flat on her back, not only was her face lovely to see, but the rest of her was good for the eyes too.

I asked, “But you saw his reflection before he struck?”

“Oh, yes.”

“Did you recognize him?”

“Of course I did. That’s why I wouldn’t speak to them. That’s why I had to see you. It was that big one with the big ears and gold tooth, the one they call Stebbins, or they call him Sergeant.”

I wasn’t surprised. I knew her qualify now. “You mean it was him that hit you with the bottle?”

“I can’t say it was him that hit me. I think people should be careful what they accuse other people of. I only know it was him I saw standing behind me with his arm raised, and then something hit me. From that anyone can only draw conclusions, but there are other reasons too. He was rude to me this morning, asking me questions, and all day he has been looking at me in a rude way, not the way a girl is willing for a man to look at her because she has to expect that. And then you can just be logical. Would Ed want to kill me, or Philip or Jimmie or Tom or Mr. Fickler? Why would they? So it must have been him even if I hadn’t seen him.”

“It does sound logical,” I conceded. “But I’ve known Stebbins for years and have never known him to strike a woman without cause. What did he have against you?”

“I don’t know.” She frowned a little. “When they ask me that I’ll just have to say I don’t know. That’s one of the first things you must tell me, how to answer things to the reporters. I shouldn’t think I can keep on saying I don’t know, or why would they print it? What hit you I don’t know, who hit you I don’t know, why did he hit you I don’t know, my Lord, who would want to read that? What shall I say when they ask why he hit me?”

“We’ll come back to that. First we—”

“We ought to settle it now.” She was pouting fit for a Life cover, but determined. “That’s how you’ll earn your ten per cent.”

“My ten per cent of what?”

“Of everything I get. As my manager.” She extended a hand, her eyes straight at mine. “Shake on it.”

To avoid a contractual shake without offending, I grasped the back of her hand with my left, turning her palm up, and ran the fingers of my right from her wrist to her fingertips. “It’s a darned good idea,” I said appreciatively, “but we’ll have to postpone it. I’m going through bankruptcy just now, and it would be illegal for me to make a contract. About—”

“I can tell the reporters to ask you about things I don’t know. It’s called referring them to my manager.”

“I know it is. Later on it will—”

“I don’t need you later on. I need you right now.”

“Here I am, you’ve got me, but not under contract yet.” I released her hand, which I had kept as something to hold onto, and got emphatic. “If you tell reporters I’m your manager I’ll give you a lump that will make that one seem as flat as a pool table. If they ask why he hit you don’t say you don’t know, say it’s a mystery. People love a mystery. Now—”

“That’s it!” She was delighted. “That’s the kind of thing!”

“Sure. Tell ’em that. Now we’ve got to consider the cops. Stebbins is a cop, and they won’t want it hung on him. They’ve had one cop killed here today already. They’ll try to tie this up with that. I know how they work, I know them only too well. They’ll try to make it that somebody here killed Wallen, and he found out that you knew something about it so he tried to kill you. They may even think they have some kind of evidence — for instance, something you were heard to say. So we have to be prepared. We have to go back over it. Are you listening?”

“Certainly. What do I say when the reporters ask me if I’m going to go on working here? Couldn’t I say I don’t want to desert Mr. Fickler in a time of trouble?”

It took control to stay in that chair. I would have given a good deal to be able to get up and walk out, go to Purley and Cramer at their eavesdropping posts, tell them she was all theirs and they were welcome to her, and go on home. But at home there were the guests locked in the front room, and sometime, somehow, we had to get rid of them. I looked at her charming enchanting comely face, with its nice chin and straight little nose and the eyelashes, and realized that the matter would be approached from her angle or not at all.

“That’s the ticket,” I said warmly. “Say you’ve got to be loyal to Mr. Fickler. That’s the main thing to work on, how to handle the reporters. Have you ever been interviewed before?”

“No, this will be the first, and I want to start right.”

“Good for you. What they like best of all is to get the jump on the police. If you can tell them something the cops don’t know they’ll love you forever. For instance, the fact that Stebbins crowned you doesn’t prove that he’s the only one involved. He must have an accomplice here in the shop, or why did Wallen come here in the first place? We’ll call the accomplice X. Now listen. Sometime today, some time or other after Wallen’s body was found, you saw something or heard something, and X knew you did. He knew it, and he knew that if you told about it — if you told me, for example — it would put him and Stebbins on the spot. Naturally both of them would want to kill you. It could have been X that tried to, but since you say you saw Stebbins reflected in the glass we’ll let it go at that for now. Here’s the point: if you can remember what it was you saw or heard that scared X, and if you tell the reporters before the cops get wise to it, they’ll be your friends for life. Now for God’s sake don’t miss this chance. Concentrate. Remember everything you saw and heard here today, and everything you did and said too. Even if it takes us all night we’ve got to work it out.”

She was frowning. “I don’t remember anything that would scare anybody.”

“Don’t go at it like that. It was probably some little thing that didn’t seem important to you at all. We may have to start at the beginning and go over every—”

I stopped on account of her face. The frown had left it, and she was looking past me, not seeing me, with an expression that told me plainly, if I knew her half as well as I thought I did, what was going on inside. I snapped at her, “Do you want the reporters hating you? Off of you for good?”

She was startled. “Of course not! That would be awful!”

“Then watch your step. This has got to be all wool. A girl with a fine mind like you, so much imaginaton, it would be a cinch for you to be creative, but don’t. They’ll double-check everything you say, and if they find it’s not completely straight you’re ruined. They’ll never forgive you. You’ll never need a manager.”

“But I can’t remember anything like that!”

“Not right off the bat, who could? Sometimes a thing like this takes days, let alone hours.” Her hand was right there, and I patted it. “I guess we’d better go over it together, right straight through. That’s the way Nero Wolfe would do it. What time did you get to work this morning?”

“When I always do, a quarter to nine. I’m punctual.”

“Were the others already here?”

“Some were and some weren’t.”

“Who was and who wasn’t?”

“My Lord, I don’t know. I didn’t notice.” She was resentful. “If you’re going to expect me to remember things like that we might as well quit, and you wouldn’t be a good manager. When I came to work I was thinking of something else. A lot of the time I am thinking of something else, so how would I notice?”

I had to be patient. “Okay, we’ll start at another point. You remember when Wallen came in and spoke with Fickler and went to Tina’s booth and talked with her, and when Tina came out Fickler sent Philip in to him. You remember that?”

She nodded. “I guess so.”

“Guesses won’t get us anywhere. Just recall the situation, where you all were when Philip came back after talking with Wallen. Where were you?”

“I didn’t notice.”

“I’m not saying you noticed, but look back. There’s Philip, coming around the end of the partition after talking with Wallen. Did you hear him say anything? Did you say anything to him?”

“I don’t think Philip was this X,” she declared. “He is married, with children. I think it was Jimmie Kirk. He tried to make passes at me when I first came, and he drinks, you can ask Ed about that, and he thinks he’s superior. A barber being superior!” She looked pleased. “That’s a good idea about Jimmie being X, because I don’t have to say he really tried to kill me. I’ll try to remember something he said. Would it matter exactly when he said it?”

I had had enough, but a man can’t hit a woman when she’s down, so I ended it without violence.

“Not at all,” I told her, “but I’ve got an idea. I’ll go and see if I can get something out of Jimmie. Meanwhile I’ll send a reporter in to break the ice with you, from the Gazette probably. I know a lot of them.” I was on my feet. “Just use your common sense and stick to facts. See you later.”

“But Mr. Goodwin! I want—”

I was gone. Three steps got me out of the booth, and I strode down the aisle and around the end of the partition. There I halted, and it wasn’t long before I was joined by Cramer and Purley. Their faces were expressive. I didn’t have to ask if they had got it all.

“If you shoot her,” I suggested, “send her brain to Johns Hopkins, if you can find it.”

“Jesus,” Purley said. That was all he said.

Cramer grunted. “Did she do it herself?”

“I doubt it. It was a pretty solid blow to raise that lump, and you didn’t find her prints on the bottle. Bothering about prints is beneath her. I had to come up for air, but I left you an in. Better pick a strong character to play the role of reporter from the Gazette.”

“Send for Biatti,” Cramer snapped at Purley.

“Yeah,” I agreed, “he can take it. Now I go home?”

“No. She might insist on seeing her manager again.”

“I wouldn’t pass that around,” I warned them. “How would you like a broadcast of her line on Sergeant Stebbins? I’d like to be home for dinner. We’re having fresh pork tenderloin.”

“We would all like to be home for dinner.” Cramer’s look and tone were both sour. They didn’t change when he shifted to Purley. “What about it? Is the Vardas pair still all you want?”

“They’re what I want most,” Purley said doggedly, “in spite of her getting it when they weren’t here, but I guess we’ve got to spread out more. You can finish with them here and go home to dinner, and I suppose we’ve got to take ’em all downtown. I’m not sold that the Stahl girl is unfurnished inside her head, and we know she’s capable of using her hands, since only three months ago she pushed a full-grown man out of his own car into a ditch and drove off. No matter how hard he was playing her, that’s quite a stunt. I still want to be shown she couldn’t have used that bottle on herself and I don’t have to be shown that she could have used the scissors on Wallen if she felt like it. Or if she performed with the bottle to have something to tell reporters about, the Vardases are still what I want most. But I admit the other if is the biggest one. If some one here conked her, finding out who and why comes first until we get the Vardases.”

Cramer stayed sour. “You haven’t even started.”

“Maybe that’s a little too strong, Inspector.”

“I don’t think so.”

“We were on the Vardases, but we didn’t clear out of here, we kept close. Then when we found the Stahl girl and brought her to she shut the valve and had to see Goodwin. Even so, I wouldn’t say we haven’t made a start with the others. Ed Graboff plays the horses and owes a bookie nine hundred dollars, and he had to sell his car. Philip Toracco went off the rails in 1945 and spent a year in a booby hatch. Joel Fickler has been seen in public places with Horny Gallagher, and while that don’t prove—”

Cramer cut in to shoot at me, “Is Fickler a racket boy?”

I shook my head. “Sorry. Blank. I’ve never been anything but a customer.”

“If he is we’ll get it.” Purley was riled and didn’t care who knew it. “Jimmie Kirk apparently only goes back three years, and he has expensive habits for a barber. Tom Yerkes did a turn in nineteen thirty-nine for assault, beat up a guy who took his young granddaughter for a fast weekend, and he is known for having a quick take-off. So I don’t think you can say we haven’t even started. We’ve got to take ’em all downtown and get through, especially about last night, sure we do. But I still want the Vardases.”

“Are all alibis for last night being checked?” Cramer demanded.

“They have been.”

“Do them over, and good. Get it going. Use as many men as you need. And not only alibis, records too. I want the Vardas pair as much as you do, but if the Stahl girl didn’t use that bottle on herself, I also want someone else. Get Biatti here. Let him have a try at her before you take her down.”

“He’s not on duty, Inspector.”

“Tell them to find him. Get him here.”

“Yes, sir.”

Purley moved. He went to the phone at the cashier’s counter. I went to the one in the booth at the end of the clothes rack and dialed the number I knew best. Fritz answered, and I asked him to buzz the extension in the plant rooms, since it was still a few minutes short of six o’clock.

“Where are you?” Wolfe demanded. He was always testy when interrupted up there.

“At the barber shop.” I was none too genial myself. “Janet was sitting in her booth and got hit on the head with a bottle of oil. They have gone through the routine and are still at the starting line. Her condition is no more critical than it was before she got hit. She insisted on seeing me, and I have had a long intimate talk with her. I can’t say I made no progress, because she asked me to be her manager, and I am now giving you notice, quitting at the end of this week. Aside from that I got nowhere. She’s one in a million. I would love to see you take her on. I have been requested to stick around. I’m willing, but I advise you to tell Fritz to increase the grocery orders until further notice.”

Silence. Then, “Who is there?”

“Everybody. Cramer, Purley, squad men, the staff. They quit letting customers in after Janet got rapped. The whole party will be moved downtown in an hour or so, including Janet. Everyone is glum, including me.”

“No progress whatever has been made?”

“Not as far as I know, except what I told you, I am now Janet’s manag—”

“Pfui.” Silence. In a moment, “Stay there.”

The connection went.

I left the booth. Neither Purley nor Cramer was in sight. Only one flatfoot was at the door, and the throng outside in the corridor was no longer a throng, merely a knot, and a small one. I moseyed toward the rear, with the line of empty barber chairs on my left and the row of waiting chairs against the partition on my right. Fickler was there, and three of the barbers — Ed being the missing one now — with dicks in between. They weren’t interested in me at all, and I made no effort to try to change their attitude.

The chair on the left of the magazine table was empty, and I dropped into it. Apparently no one had felt like reading today, since the same New Yorker was on top and the two-weeks-old Time was still on the shelf below. I would have been glad to employ my mind analyzing the situation if there had been anything to analyze, but there was no place to start, and after sitting a few minutes I became aware that I was trying to analyze Janet. Of course that was even more hopeless, and I mention it only to show you the condition I was in. But it did look as if Janet was the key, and in that case the thing to do was to figure some way of handling her. I sat and worked on that problem. There must be some practical method of digging up from her memory the fact or facts that we had to have. Hypnotize her, maybe? That might work. I was considering suggesting it to Cramer when I became aware of movement over at the door and lifted my eyes.

The flatfoot was blocking the entrance to keep a man fully twice his weight from entering, and was explaining the situation.

The man let him finish and then spoke. “I know, I know.” His eyes came at me over the flatfoot’s shoulder, and he bellowed, “Archie! Where’s Mr. Cramer?”

VI

I got up and made for the door in no haste or jubilation. There have been times when the sight and sound of Wolfe have given me a lift, but that wasn’t one of them. I had told him on the phone that I would love to see him take Janet on, but that had been rhetorical. One would get him ten he couldn’t make a dent in her.

“Do you want in?” I asked.

“What the devil,” he roared, “do you suppose I came for?”

“Okay, take it easy. I’ll go see—”

But I didn’t have to go. His first bellow had carried within, and Cramer’s voice came from right behind me. “Well! Dynamite?”

“I’ll be damned,” Purley, there too, growled.

The flatfoot had moved aside, leaving it to the brass, and Wolfe had crossed the sill. “I came to get a haircut,” he stated and marched past the sergeant and inspector to the rack, took off his hat, coat, vest, and tie, hung them up, crossed to Jimmie’s chair, the second in the line, and got his bulk up onto the seat. In the mirrored wall fronting him he had a panorama of the row of barbers and dicks in his rear, and without turning his head he called, “Jimmie! If you please?”

Jimmie’s dancing dark eyes came to Cramer and Purley, there by me. So did others. Cramer stood scowling at Wolfe. We all held our poses while Cramer slowly lifted his right hand and carefully and thoroughly scratched the side of his nose with his forefinger. That attended to, he decided to sit down. He went, not in a hurry, to the first chair in the line, the one Fickler himself used occasionally when there was a rush, turned it to face Wolfe, and mounted. He spoke.

“You want a haircut, huh?”

“Yes, sir. As you can see, I need one.”

“Yeah.” Cramer turned his head. “All right, Kirk. Come and cut his hair.”

Jimmie got up and went past the chair to the cabinet for an apron. Everybody stirred, as if a climax had been reached and passed. Purley strode to the third chair in the line, Philip’s, and got on it. That way he and Cramer had Wolfe surrounded, and it seemed only fair for me to be handy, so I detoured around Cramer, pulled Jimmie’s stool to one side, and perched on it.

Jimmie had Wolfe aproned, and his scissors were singing above the right ear. Wolfe barred clippers.

“You just dropped in,” Cramer rasped. “Like Goodwin this morning.”

“Certainly not.” Wolfe was curt but not pugnacious. There was no meeting of eyes, since Cramer had Wolfe’s profile straight and Wolfe had Cramer’s profile in the mirror. “You summoned Mr. Goodwin. He told me on the phone of his fruitless talk with Miss Stahl, and I thought it well to come.”

Cramer grunted. “Okay, you’re here. You won’t leave your place on business for anybody or any fee, but you’re here. And you’re not going to leave until I know why, without any such crap as murderers in your front room.”

“Not as short behind as last time,” Wolfe commanded.

“Yes, sir.” Jimmie had never had as big or attentive an audience and he was giving a good show. The comb and scissors flitted and sang.

“Naturally,” Wolfe said tolerantly, “I expected that. You can badger me if that’s what you’re after, and get nowhere, but I offer a suggestion. Why not work first? Why don’t we see if we can settle this business, and then, if you still insist, go after me? Of would you rather harass me than catch a murderer?”

“I’m working now. I want the murderer. What about you?”

“Forget me for the moment. You can hound me any time. I would like to propose certain assumptions about what happened here today. Do you care to hear them?”

“I’ll listen, but don’t drag it out.”

“I won’t. Please don’t waste time challenging the assumptions; I don’t intend to defend them, much less validate them. They are merely a basis of exploration, to be tested. The first is this, that Wallen found something in the car, the car that had killed two women — no, I don’t like it this way. I want a direct view, not reflections. Jimmie, turn me around, please.”

Jimmie whirled the chair a half-turn, so that Wolfe’s back was to the mirrored wall, also to me, and he was facing those seated in the chairs against the partition, with Cramer on his right and Purley on his left.

“That right, sir?”

“Yes. Thank you.”

I spoke up. “Ed isn’t here.”

“I left him in the booth,” Purley rumbled.

“Get him,” Wolfe instructed. “And Miss Stahl, where is she?”

“In her booth, lying down. With her head.”

“We want her. She can sit up, can’t she?”

“I don’t know. God only knows.”

“Archie. Bring Miss Stahl.”

He had a nerve picking on me, with an inspector and a sergeant and three dicks there, but I postponed telling him so and went, as Purley went for Ed. In the booth Janet was still on her back on the chairs, her eyes wide open. At sight of me she fired immediately.

“You said you were going to send a reporter, but I’ve been thinking—”

I raised my voice to top her. “Listen to me, girlie. You’re getting a break. Nero Wolfe is here with a suggestion and wants your opinion of it. Can you sit up a while?”

“Certainly I can, but—”

“No buts. He’s waiting for you. Shall I carry you?”

“Certainly not!” She started up.

“Take it easy.” I put an arm behind her shoulders and got her upright and then onto her feet. “Are you dizzy?”

“I’m never dizzy,” she said scornfully and moved. I kept hold of her arm. She was a little unsteady on the way down the aisle to the end of the partition, but when we came in view of the audience she shook me off and went on solo. She wasn’t taking help from a man, and of course I wasn’t her manager yet. She took the chair I had vacated when Wolfe appeared, next to the magazine table. Ed had been brought by Purley, who was back in Philip’s chair, flanking Wolfe. I returned to the stool.

Jimmie had finished above the ears and was doing the back, so Wolfe’s head was tilted forward.

“Your assumptions?” Cramer asked impatiently.

“Yes. I was saying, the first is that Wallen found something in the car that led him to this shop. It couldn’t have been something he was told, for there was no one to tell him anything. It was some object. I asked you not to challenge me, but I didn’t mean to exclude contradictions. If there are facts that repudiate this assumption, or any other, I want them by all means.”

“We made that one without any help.”

“And it still holds?”

“Yes.”

“Good. That’s fortunate, since all of my assumptions concern that object. The second is that Wallen had it with him when he came here. I can support that with sound—”

“You don’t need to. We made it and we hold it.”

“Very well. That saves time. Not too short back there, Jimmie.”

“No, sir.”

“The third is that he had the object inside the newspaper he was carrying. This is slenderer, but it must be tested. He had not bought the paper shortly before coming here, for it was an early edition of the News, on sale last evening, not on sale this morning. It was not merely stuffed in his pocket, not merely not discarded; he had it in his hand, not folded up, as it is stacked on the newsstand. It is—”

“You know a lot about it,” Cramer growled.

“Do me later,” Wolfe snapped. “I know nothing you don’t know. It is difficult to account for his carrying a stale newspaper in that manner except on the assumption that it was a container for some object — at least, the assumption is good enough to work on. The fourth is that, whatever the object was, the murderer got it and disposed of it. More than an assumption, that is. No object that could have led him to this shop was found on Wallen’s person or in the booth, so if he had it the murderer got it. The fifth assumption is that the murderer was neither Carl nor Tina. I shall—”

“What the hell!” Purley blurted.

“Ah,” Cramer said. “Tell us why.”

“No. I shall not support that assumption; I merely make it and submit it to our test. Don’t waste time clawing at me. Since Carl and Tina are not involved and therefore didn’t take the object away with them, it is still here in the shop. That is the sixth assumption, and it is good only if your surveillance of these people here all these hours has been constant and alert. What about it? Could any of them have removed such an object from the shop?”

“I want to know,” Cramer demanded, “why you’re excluding Carl and Tina.”

“No. Not now.” Wolfe and Cramer couldn’t see each other because Jimmie was in between, starting on the top. “First we’ll complete this test. We must know whether the object has been removed, not by Carl or Tina.”

“No,” Purley said.

“How good a no?”

“Good enough for me. No man has stepped outside this shop alone. Something could have been slipped to a customer, but that’s stretching it, and we’ve had them under our eyes.”

“Not, apparently, the one who assaulted Miss Stahl.”

“That was in the shop. Is that a point?”

“I suppose not. Then we assume that the object is still here. The seventh and last assumption is this, that no proper search for such an object has been made. I hasten to add, Mr. Stebbins, that that is not a point either. You and your men are unquestionably capable of making a proper search, but I assume that you haven’t done so here on account of Carl and Tina. Thinking them guilty, naturally you thought they wouldn’t leave an incriminating object behind them. However, I can just ask you. Have you searched thoroughly?”

“We’ve looked.”

“Yes. But granting all my assumptions, which of course you don’t, has there been a proper search?”

“No.”

“Then it’s about time. Mr. Fickler!”

Fickler nearly jumped out of his skin. He, like all the others, had been buried, intent on Wolfe’s buildup, and the sudden pop and crackle of his own name startled him. He jerked his head up, and I had never seen his pudgy face look so bloated.

“Me?” he squeaked.

“You run this place and can help us. However, I address all of you who work here. Put your minds on this. You too, Jimmie. Stop a moment and listen.”

“I can work and listen too.”

“No. I want full attention.”

Jimmie backed off a step and stood.

“This,” Wolfe said, “could take a few minutes or it could take all night. What we’re after is an object with something on it that identifies it as coming from this shop. Ideally it should be the name and address or phone number, but we’ll take less if we have to. Since we’re proceeding on my assumptions, we are supposing that it was inside the newspaper as Wallen was carrying it, so it is not a business card or match folder or bottle or comb or brush. It should be flat and of considerable dimensions. Another point, it should be easily recognizable. All of you went to the booth and were questioned by Wallen, but he showed you no such object and mentioned none. Is that correct?”

They nodded and mumbled affirmatives. Ed said “Yes!” in a loud voice.

“Then only the murderer saw it or was told of it. Wallen must for some reason have shown it to him or asked him about it, and not the rest of you; or its edge may have been protruding from the newspaper, unnoticed by the others; or the murderer may merely have suspected that Wallen had it. In any case, when opportunity offered later for him to dive into the booth and kill Wallen he got the object and disposed of it. If Mr. Stebbins is right about the surveillance that has been maintained, it is still here in the shop. I put it to you, and especially to you, Mr. Fickler: what is it and where is it?”

They looked at one another and back at Wolfe. Philip said in his thin tenor, “Maybe it was the newspaper itself.”

“Possibly. I doubt it. Where is it, Mr. Cramer?”

“At the laboratory. There’s nothing on it or in it that could have brought Wallen here.”

“What else has been taken from here to the laboratory?”

“Nothing but the scissors and the bottle that was used on Miss Stahl.”

“Then it’s here. All right, Jimmie, finish.”

Jimmie moved to the left of him and carried on.

“It looks to me,” Purley objected in his bass rumble, “like a turkey. Even with your assumptions. Say we find something like what you want, how do we know it’s it? Even if we think it’s it, where does that get us?”

“We’ll see when we find it.” Wolfe was curt. “For one thing, fingerprints.”

“Nuts. If it belongs here of course it will have their prints.”

“Not their prints, Mr. Stebbins. Wallen’s prints. If he picked it up in the car he touched it. If he touched it he left prints. As I understand it, he didn’t go around touching things here. He entered, spoke to Mr. Fickler, was taken to the booth, and never left it alive. If we find anything with his prints on it we’ve got it. Have you equipment here? If not, I advise you to send for it at once, and also for Wallen’s prints from your file. Will you do that?”

Purley grunted. He didn’t move.

“Go ahead,” Cramer told him. “Phone. Give him what he wants. Get it over. Then he’ll give us what we want, what he’s here for, or else.”

Purley descended from the chair and headed for the phone at the cashier’s counter.

“The search,” Wolfe said, “must be thorough and will take time. First I ask all of you to search your minds. What object is here, belongs here, that meets the specifications as I have described them? Surely you can tell us. Mr. Fickler?”

“I’ve been thinking.” Fickler shook his head. “I’ve been thinking hard. I don’t know unless it’s a towel, and why would he carry a towel like that?”

“He wouldn’t. Anyway a towel wouldn’t help us any, so I reject it. Philip?”

“No, sir. I don’t know what.”

“Tom?”

Tom just shook his head gloomily.

“Ed?”

“You’ve got me. Pass.”

“Miss Stahl?”

“I think he might have been keeping the paper because there was something in it he wanted to read. I know I often do that, say it’s in an evening paper and I don’t have time—”

“Yes. We’ll consider that. Jimmie?”

“I don’t know a thing like that in the shop, Mr. Wolfe. Not a thing.”

“Pfui.” Wolfe was disgusted. “Either you have no brains at all, or they’re temporarily paralyzed, or you’re all in a conspiracy. I’m looking straight at such an object right now.”

From behind I couldn’t see where his gaze was directed, but I didn’t have to. The others could, and I saw them. Eleven pairs of eyes, including Purley’s — he had finished at the phone and rejoined us — were aimed at the magazine table next to Janet’s chair from eleven different angles. Up to that moment my brain may have been as paralyzed as the others’, but it could still react to a stimulus. I left the stool and stood right behind Wolfe, ready if and when needed.

“You mean the magazines?” Cramer demanded.

“Yes. You subscribe to them, Mr. Fickler? They come through the mail? Then the name and address is on them.”

“Not on this one,” said the dick on the other side of the magazine table, picking up the New Yorker on top.

“Drop it!” Cramer barked. “Don’t touch it!”

“No,” Wolfe conceded, “that comes in a wrapper. But others don’t. For instance that Time, there on the shelf below — the addressee is on the cover. Surely it deserves examination, and others too. What if he took it from here and had it in his pocket when he stole the car and drove up Broadway? And in the excitement of his misadventure he failed to notice that it had dropped from his pocket and was on the seat of the car? And Wallen found it there, took it, and saw the name and address on it? You have sent for the equipment and Wallen’s prints, Mr. Stebbins? Then we—”

“Oh! I remember!” Janet cried. She was pointing a finger. “You remember, Jimmie? This morning I was standing here, and you came by with a hot towel and you had that magazine and you tossed it under there, and I asked if you had been steaming it, and you said—”

Jimmie leaped. I thought his prey was Janet and in spite of everything I was willing to save her life, but Wolfe and the chair were in my way and cost me a fifth of a second. And it wasn’t Janet he was after, it was the magazine. He went for it in a hurtling dive and got his hands on it, but then the three dicks, not to mention Cramer and Purley, were on his neck and various other parts of him. It was a handsome pile-up. Janet, except for pulling her feet back under her chair out of harm’s way, did not move, nor did she make a sound. I suppose she was considering what to say to the reporters.

“Confound it,” Wolfe grumbled savagely behind me. “My barber.”

Anyhow that haircut was practically done.

VII

As stubborn as Cramer was, he never did learn why Wolfe went to get a haircut that day. Eventually he stopped trying.

He learned plenty about Jimmie Kirk. Kirk was wanted as a bail-jumper, under another name, in Wheeling, West Virginia, on an old charge as a car stealer, with various fancy complications such as slugging a respected citizen who had surprised him in the act. Apparently he had gone straight in New York for a couple of years and had then resumed his former avocation. Unquestionably he had been fortified with liquids that Monday evening. Driving a stolen car while drunk is a risky operation, especially with a stolen magazine in your pocket.

As for Carl and Tina, I took a strong position on them Tuesday evening in the office after they had been sent up to the south room to bed.

“You know damn well what will happen,” I told Wolfe. “They won’t go to Ohio or anywhere else, they’ll stay here. Some day, maybe next week, maybe next year, they’ll be confronted and they’ll be in trouble. Being in trouble, they will come to me, because Carl likes me and because I rescued them this time—”

Wolfe snorted. “You did!”

“Yes, sir. I had already noticed that magazine there several times, and it just happened to catch your eye. Anyhow, I am secretly infatuated with Tina so I’ll try to help them and will get my finger caught, and you’ll have to butt in again because you can’t get along without me. It will go on like that year after year. Why not take care of it now and live in peace? There are people in Washington who owe you something, for instance Carpenter. Start him working on it. Do you want them hanging in the air on a thread over your head the rest of your life? I don’t. It will cost a measly buck for a phone call, and I can get that from the fifty they have earmarked for us. I have Carpenter’s home number, and I might as well get him right now.”

No comment.

I put my hand on the phone. “Person to person, huh?”

Wolfe grunted. “I got my naturalization papers twenty-four years ago.”

“I wasn’t discussing you. You’ve caught it from Janet,” I said coldly and lifted the phone and dialed.

Content

Rex Stout
The Cop Killer

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