Rex Stout

The Last Witness

I

I had had previous contacts with Assistant District Attorney Irving Mandelbaum, but had never seen him perform in a courtroom. That morning, watching him at the chore of trying to persuade a jury to clamp it on Leonard Ashe for the murder of Marie Willis, I thought he was pretty good and might be better when he had warmed up. A little plump and a little short, bald in front and big-eared, he wasn’t impressive to look at, but he was businesslike and self-assured without being cocky, and he had a neat trick of pausing for a moment to look at the jury as if he half expected one of them to offer a helpful suggestion. When he pulled it, not too often, his back was turned to the judge and the defense counsel, so they couldn’t see his face, but I could, from where I sat in the audience.

It was the third day of the trial, and he had called his fifth witness, a scared-looking little guy with a pushed-in nose who gave his name, Clyde Bagby, took the oath, sat down, and fixed his scared brown eyes on Mandelbaum as if he had abandoned hope.

Mandelbaum’s tone was reassuring. “What is your business, Mr. Bagby?”

The witness swallowed. “I’m the president of Bagby Answers Ink.”

“By ‘Ink’ you mean ‘Incorporated’?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Do you own the business?”

“I own half the stock that’s been issued, and my wife owns the other half.”

“How long have you been operating that business?”

“Five years now — nearly five and a half.”

“And what is the business? Please tell the jury about it.”

Bagby’s eyes went left for a quick, nervous glance at the jury box but came right back to the prosecutor. “It’s a telephone-answering business, that’s all. You know what that is.”

“Yes, but some members of the jury may not be familiar with the operation. Please describe it.”

The witness licked his lips. “Well, you’re a person or a firm or an organization and you have a phone, but you’re not always there and you want to know about calls that come in your absence. So you go to a telephone-answering service. There are several dozen of them in New York, some of them spread all over town with neighborhood offices, big operations. My own operation, Bagby Answers Ink, it’s not so big because I specialize in serving individuals, houses and apartments, instead of firms or organizations. I’ve got offices in four different exchange districts — Gramercy, Plaza, Trafalgar, and Rhinelander. I can’t work it from one central office because—”

“Excuse me, Mr. Bagby, but we won’t go into technical problems. Is one of your offices at six-eighteen East Sixty-ninth Street, Manhattan?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Describe the operation at that address.”

“Well, that’s my newest place, opened only a year ago, and my smallest, so it’s not in an office building, it’s an apartment — on account of the labor law. You can’t have women working in an office building after two a.m. unless it’s a public service, but I have to give my clients all-night service, so there on Sixty-ninth Street I’ve got four operators for the three switchboards, and they all live right there in the apartment. That way I can have one at the boards from eight till two at night, and another one from two o’clock on. After nine in the morning three are on, one for each board, for the daytime load.”

“Are the switchboards installed in one of the rooms of the apartment?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Tell the jury what one of them is like and how it works.”

Bagby darted another nervous glance at the jury box and went back to the prosecutor. “It’s a good deal like any board in a big office, with rows of holes for the plugs. Of course it’s installed by the telephone company, with the special wiring for connections with my clients’ phones. Each board has room for sixty clients. For each client there’s a little light and a hole and a card strip with the client’s name. When someone dials a client’s number his light goes on and a buzz synchronizes with the ringing of the client’s phone. How many buzzes the girl counts before she plugs in depends on what client it is. Some of them want her to plug in after three buzzes, some want her to wait longer. I’ve got one client that has her count fifteen buzzes. That’s the kind of specialized individualized service I give my clients. The big outfits, the ones with tens of thousands of clients, they won’t do that. They’ve commercialized it. With me every client is a special case and a sacred trust.”

“Thank you, Mr. Bagby.” Mandelbaum swiveled his head for a swift sympathetic smile at the jury and swiveled it back again. “But I wasn’t buzzing for a plug for your business. When a client’s light shows on the board, and the girl has heard the prescribed number of buzzes, she plugs in on the line, is that it?”

I thought Mandelbaum’s crack was a little out of place for that setting, where a man was on trial for his life, and turned my head right for a glance at Nero Wolfe to see if he agreed, but one glimpse of his profile told me that he was sticking to his role of a morose martyr and so was in no humor to agree with anyone or anything.

That was to be expected. At that hour of the morning, following his hard-and-fast schedule, he would have been up in the plant rooms on the roof of his old brownstone house on West Thirty-fifth Street, bossing Theodore for the glory of his celebrated collection of orchids, even possibly getting his hands dirty. At eleven o’clock, after washing his hands, he would have taken the elevator down to his office on the ground floor, arranged his oversized corpus in his oversized chair behind his desk, rung for Fritz to bring beer, and started bossing Archie Goodwin, me. He would have given me any instructions he thought timely and desirable, for anything from typing a letter to tailing the mayor, which seemed likely to boost his income and add to his reputation as the best private detective east of San Francisco. And he would have been looking forward to lunch by Fritz.

And all that was “would-have-been” because he had been subpoenaed by the State of New York to appear in court and testify at the trial of Leonard Ashe. He hated to leave his house at all, and particularly he hated to leave it for a trip to a witness-box. Being a private detective, he had to concede that a summons to testify was an occupational hazard he must accept if he hoped to collect fees from clients, but this cloud didn’t even have that silver lining. Leonard Ashe had come to the office one day about two months ago to hire him, but had been turned down. So neither fee nor glory was in prospect. As for me, I had been subpoenaed too, but only for insurance, since I wouldn’t be called unless Mandelbaum decided Wolfe’s testimony needed corroboration, which wasn’t likely.

It was no pleasure to look at Wolfe’s gloomy phiz, so I looked back at the performers. Bagby was answering. “Yes, sir, she plugs in and says, ‘Mrs. Smith’s residence,’ or, ‘Mr. Jones’s apartment,’ or whatever she has been told to say for that client. Then she says Mrs. Smith is out and is there any message, and so on, whatever the situation calls for. Sometimes the client has called and given her a message for some particular caller.” Bagby flipped a hand. “Just anything. We give specialized service.”

Mandelbaum nodded. “I think that gives us a clear picture of the operation. Now, Mr. Bagby, please look at that gentleman in the dark blue suit sitting next to the officer. He is the defendant in this trial. Do you know him?”

“Yes, sir. That’s Mr. Leonard Ashe.”

“When and where did you meet him?”

“In July he came to my office on Forty-seventh Street. First he phoned, and then he came.”

“Can you give the day in July?”

“The twelfth. A Monday.”

“What did he say?”

“He asked how my answering service worked, and I told him, and he said he wanted it for his home telephone at his apartment on East Seventy-third Street. He paid cash for a month in advance. He wanted twenty-four-hour service.”

“Did he want any special service?”

“He didn’t ask me for any, but two days later he contacted Marie Willis and offered her five hundred dollars if she—”

The witness was interrupted from two directions at once. The defense attorney, a champion named Jimmy Donovan whose batting average on big criminal cases had topped the list of the New York bar for ten years, left his chair with his mouth open to object; and Mandelbaum showed the witness a palm to stop him.

“Just a minute, Mr. Bagby. Just answer my questions. Did you accept Leonard Ashe as a client?”

“Sure, there was no reason not to.”

“What was the number of his telephone at his home?”

“Rhinelander two-three-eight-three-eight.”

“Did you give his name and that number a place on one of your switchboards?”

“Yes, sir, one of the three boards at the apartment on East Sixty-ninth Street. That’s the Rhinelander district.”

“What was the name of the employee who attended that board — the one with Leonard Ashe’s number on it?”

“Marie Willis.”

A shadow of stir and murmur rippled across the packed audience, and Judge Corbett on the bench turned his head to give it a frown and then went back to his knitting.

Bagby was going on. “Of course at night there’s only one girl on the three boards — they rotate on that — but for daytime I keep a girl at her own board at least five days a week, and six if I can. That way she gets to know her clients.”

“And Leonard Ashe’s number was on Marie Willis’s board?”

“Yes, sir.”

“After the routine arrangements for serving Leonard Ashe as a client had been completed, did anything happen to bring him or his number to your personal attention?”

“Yes, sir.”

“What and when? First, when?”

Bagby took a second to make sure he had it right before swearing to it. “It was Thursday, three days after Ashe had ordered the service. That was July fifteenth. Marie phoned me at my office and said she wanted to see me privately about something important. I asked if it could wait till she was off the board at six o’clock, and she said yes, and a little after six I went up to Sixty-ninth Street and we went into her room at the apartment. She told me Ashe had phoned her the day before and asked her to meet him somewhere to discuss some details about servicing his number. She told him such a discussion should be with me, but he insisted—”

A pleasant but firm baritone cut in. “If Your Honor pleases.” Jimmy Donovan was on his feet. “I submit that the witness may not testify to what Marie Willis and Mr. Ashe said to each other when he was not present.”

“Certainly not,” Mandelbaum agreed shortly. “He is reporting what Marie Willis told him had been said.”

Judge Corbett nodded. “That should be kept clear. You understand that, Mr. Bagby?”

“Yes, sir.” Bagby bit his lip. “I mean Your Honor.”

“Then go ahead. What Miss Willis said to you and you to her.”

“Well, she said she had agreed to meet Ashe because he was a theatrical producer and she wanted to be an actress. I hadn’t known she was stage-struck but I know it now. So she had gone to his office on Forty-fifth Street as soon as she was off the board, and after he talked some and asked some questions he told her — this is what she told me — he told her he wanted her to listen in on calls to his home number during the daytime. All she would have to do, when his light on her board went on and the buzzes started, if the buzzes stopped and the light went off — that would mean someone had answered the phone at his home — she would plug in and listen to the conversation. Then each evening she would phone him and report. That’s what she said Ashe had asked her to do. She said he counted out five hundred dollars in bills and offered them to her and told her he’d give her another thousand if she went along.”

Bagby stopped for wind. Mandelbaum prodded him. “Did she say anything else?”

“Yes, sir. She said she knew she should have turned him down flat, but she didn’t want to make him sore, so she told him she wanted to think it over for a day or two. Then she said she had slept on it and decided what to do. She said of course she knew that what Ashe was after was phone calls to his wife, and aside from anything else she wouldn’t spy on his wife, because his wife was Robina Keane, who had given up her career as an actress two years ago to marry Ashe, and Marie worshiped Robina Keane as her ideal. That’s what Marie told me. She said she had decided she must do three things. She must tell me about it because Ashe was my client and she was working for me. She must tell Robina Keane about it, to warn her, because Ashe would probably get someone else to do the spying for him. It occurred to me that her real reason for wanting to tell Robina Keane might be that she hoped—”

Mandelbaum stopped him. “What occurred to you isn’t material, Mr. Bagby. Did Marie tell you the third thing she had decided she must do?”

“Yes, sir. That she must tell Ashe that she was going to tell his wife. She said she had to because at the start of her talk with him she had promised Ashe she would keep it confidential, so she had to warn him she was withdrawing her promise.”

“Did she say when she intended to do those three things?”

The witness nodded. “She had already done one of them, telling me. She said she had phoned Ashe and told him she would be at his office at seven o’clock. That was crowding it a little, because she had the evening shift that day and would have to be back at the boards at eight o’clock. It crowded me too because it gave me no time to talk her out of it. I went downtown with her in a taxi, to Forty-fifth Street, where Ashe’s office was, and did my best but couldn’t move her.”

“What did you say to her?”

“I tried to get her to lay off. If she went through with her program it might not do any harm to my business, but again it might. I tried to persuade her to let me handle it by going to Ashe and telling him she had told me of his offer and I didn’t want him for a client, and then drop it and forget it, but she was dead set on warning Robina Keane, and to do that she had to withdraw her promise to Ashe. I hung on until she entered the elevator to go up to Ashe’s office, but I couldn’t budge her.”

“Did you go up with her?”

“No, that wouldn’t have helped any. She was going through with it, and what could I do?”

So, I was thinking to myself, that’s how it is. It looked pretty tough to me, and I glanced at Wolfe, but his eyes were closed, so I turned my head the other way to see how the gentleman in the dark blue suit seated next to the officer was taking it. Apparently it looked pretty tough to Leonard Ashe too. With deep creases slanting along the jowls of his dark bony face from the corners of his wide full mouth, and his sunken dark eyes, he was certainly a prime subject for the artists who sketch candidates for the hot seat for the tabloids, and for three days they had been making the most of it. He was no treat for the eyes, and I took mine away from him, to the left, where his wife sat in the front row of the audience.

I had never worshiped Robina Keane as my ideal, but I had liked her fine in a couple of shows, and she was giving a good performance for her first and only courtroom appearance — either being steadfastly loyal to her husband or putting on an act, but good in either case. She was dressed quietly and she sat quietly, but she wasn’t trying to pretend she wasn’t young and beautiful. Exactly how she and her older and unbeautiful husband stood with each other was anybody’s guess, and everybody was guessing. One extreme said he was her whole world and he had been absolutely batty to suspect her of any hoop-rolling; the other extreme said she had quit the stage only to have more time for certain promiscuous activities, and Ashe had been a sap not to know it sooner; and anywhere in between. I wasn’t ready to vote. Looking at her, she might have been an angel. Looking at him, it must have taken something drastic to get him that miserable, though I granted that being locked up two months on a charge of murder would have some effect.

Mandelbaum was making sure the jury had got it. “Then you didn’t go up to Ashe’s office with Marie Willis?”

“No, sir.”

“Did you go up later, at any time, after she had gone up?”

“No, sir.”

“Did you see Ashe at all that evening?”

“No, sir.”

“Did you speak to him on the telephone that evening?”

“No, sir.”

Looking at Bagby, and I have looked at a lot of specimens under fire, I decided that either he was telling it straight or he was an expert liar, and he didn’t sound like an expert. Mandelbaum went on. “What did you do that evening, after you saw Marie Willis enter the elevator to go up to Ashe’s office?”

“I went to keep a dinner date with a friend at a restaurant — Hornby’s on Fifty-second Street — and after that, around half-past eight, I went up to my Trafalgar office at Eighty-sixth Street and Broadway. I have six boards there, and a new night girl was on, and I stayed there with her a while and then took a taxi home, across the park to my apartment on East Seventieth Street. Not long after I got home a phone call came from the police to tell me Marie Willis had been found murdered in my Rhinelander office, and I went there as fast as I could go, and there was a crowd out in front, and an officer took me upstairs.”

He stopped to swallow, and stuck his chin out a little. “They hadn’t moved her. They had taken the plug cord from around her throat, but they hadn’t moved her, and there she was, slumped over on the ledge in front of the board. They wanted me to identify her, and I had—”

The witness wasn’t interrupted, but I was. There was a tug at my sleeve, and a whisper in my ear — “We’re leaving, come on.” And Nero Wolfe arose, sidled past two pairs of knees to the aisle, and headed for the rear of the courtroom. For his bulk he could move quicker and smoother than you would expect, and as I followed him to the door and on out to the corridor we got no attention at all. I was assuming that some vital need had stirred him, like phoning Theodore to tell him or ask him something about an orchid, but he went on past the phone booths to the elevator and pushed the down button. With people all around I asked no questions. He got out at the main floor and made for Centre Street. Out on the sidewalk he backed up against the granite of the courthouse and spoke.

“We want a taxi, but first a word with you.”

“No, sir,” I said firmly. “First a word from me. Mandelbaum may finish with that witness any minute, and the cross-examination may not take long, or Donovan might even reserve it, and you were told you would follow Bagby. If you want a taxi, of course you’re going home, and that will just—”

“I’m not going home. I can’t.”

“Right. If you do you’ll merely get hauled back here and also a fat fine for contempt of court. Not to mention me. I’m under subpoena too. I’m going back to the courtroom. Where are you going?”

“To six-eighteen East Sixty-ninth Street.”

I goggled at him. “I’ve always been afraid of this. Does it hurt?”

“Yes. I’ll explain on the way.”

“I’m going back to the courtroom.”

“No. I’ll need you.”

Like everyone else, I love to feel needed, so I wheeled, crossed the sidewalk, flagged a taxi to the curb, and opened the door. Wolfe came and climbed in, and I followed. After he had got himself braced against the hazards of a carrier on wheels and I had given the driver the address, and we were rolling, I said, “Shoot. I’ve heard you do a lot of explaining, but this will have to be good.”

“It’s preposterous,” he declared.

“It sure is. Let’s go back.”

“I mean Mr. Mandelbaum’s thesis. I will concede that Mr. Ashe might have murdered that girl. I will concede that his state of mind about his wife might have approached mania, and therefore the motive suggested by that witness might have been adequate provocation. But he’s not an imbecile. Under the circumstances as given, and I doubt if Mr. Bagby can be discredited, I refuse to believe he was ass enough to go to that place at that time and kill her. You were present when he called on me that day to hire me. Do you believe it?”

I shook my head. “I pass. You’re explaining. However, I read the papers too, and also I’ve chatted with Lon Cohen of the Gazette about it. It doesn’t have to be that Ashe went there for the purpose of killing her. His story is that a man phoned him — a voice he didn’t recognize — and said if Ashe would meet him at the Bagby place on Sixty-ninth Street he thought they could talk Marie out of it, and Ashe went on the hop, and the door to the office was standing open, and he went in and there she was with a plug cord tight around her throat, and he opened a window and yelled for the police. Of course if you like it that Bagby was lying just now when he said it wasn’t him that phoned Ashe, and that Bagby is such a good businessman that he would rather kill an employee than lose a customer—”

“Pfui. It isn’t what I like, it’s what I don’t like. Another thing I didn’t like was sitting there on that confounded wooden bench with a smelly woman against me. Soon I was going to be called as a witness, and my testimony would have been effective corroboration of Mr. Bagby’s testimony, as you know. It was intolerable. I believe that if Mr. Ashe is convicted of murder on the thesis Mr. Mandelbaum is presenting it will be a justicial transgression, and I will not be a party to it. It wasn’t easy to get up and go because I can’t go home. If I go home they’ll come and drag me out, and into that witness-box.”

I eyed him. “Let’s see if I get you. You can’t bear to help convict Ashe of murder because you doubt if he’s guilty, so you’re scooting. Right?”

The hackie twisted his head around to inform us through the side of his mouth, “Sure he’s guilty.”

We ignored it. “That’s close enough,” Wolfe said.

“Not close enough for me. If you expect me to scoot with you and invite a stiff fine for running out on a subpoena, which you will pay, don’t try to guff me. Say we doubt if Ashe is guilty, but we think he may get tagged because we know Mandelbaum wouldn’t go to trial without a good case. Say also our bank account needs a shot in the arm, which is true. So we decide to see if we can find something that will push Mandelbaum’s nose in, thinking that if Ashe is properly grateful a measly little fine will be nothing. The way to proceed would be for you to think up a batch of errands for me, and you go on home and read a book and have a good lunch, but that’s out because they’d come and get you. Therefore we must both do errands. If that’s how it stands, it’s a fine day and I admit that woman was smelly, but I have a good nose and I think it was Tissot’s Passion Flower, which is eighty bucks an ounce. What are we going to do at Sixty-ninth Street?”

“I don’t know.”

“Good. Neither do I.”

II

It was a dump, an old five-story walk-up, brick that had been painted yellow about the time I had started working for Nero Wolfe. In the vestibule I pushed the button that was labeled Bagby Answers, Inc., and when the click came I opened the door and led the way across the crummy little hall to the stairs and up one flight. Mr. Bagby wasn’t wasting it on rent. At the front end of the hall a door stood open. As we approached it I stepped aside to let Wolfe go first, since I didn’t know whether we were disguised as brush peddlers or as plumbers.

As Wolfe went to speak to a girl at a desk I sent my eyes on a quick survey. It was the scene of the murder. In the front wall of the room three windows overlooked the street. Against the opposite wall were ranged the three switchboards, with three females with headphones seated at them. They had turned their heads for a look at the company.

The girl at the desk, which was near the end window, had only an ordinary desk phone, in addition to a typewriter and other accessories. Wolfe was telling her, “My name is Wolfe and I’ve just come from the courtroom where Leonard Ashe is being tried.” He indicated me with a jerk of his head. “This is my assistant, Mr. Goodwin. We’re checking on subpoenas that have been served on witnesses, for both the prosecution and the defense. Have you been served?”

With his air and presence and tone, only one woman in a hundred would have called him, and she wasn’t it. Her long, narrow face tilted up to him, she shook her head. “No, I haven’t.”

“Your name, please?”

“Pearl Fleming.”

“Then you weren’t working here on July fifteenth.”

“No, I was at another office. There was no office desk here then. One of the boards took office calls.”

“I see.” His tone implied that it was damned lucky for her that he saw. “Are Miss Hart and Miss Velardi and Miss Weltz here?”

My brows wanted to lift, but I kept them down, and anyway there was nothing startling about it. True, it had been weeks since those names had appeared in the papers, but Wolfe never missed a word of an account of a murder, and his skull’s filing system was even better than Saul Panzer’s.

Pearl Fleming pointed to the switchboards. “That’s Miss Hart at the end. Miss Velardi is next to her. Next to Miss Velardi is Miss Yerkes. She came after — she replaced Miss Willis. Miss Weltz isn’t here; it’s her day off. They’ve had subpoenas, but—”

She stopped and turned her head. The woman at the end board had removed her headphone, left her seat, and was marching over to us. She was about my age, with sharp brown eyes and flat cheeks and a chin she could have used for an icebreaker if she had been a walrus.

“Aren’t you Nero Wolfe, the detective?” she demanded.

“Yes,” he assented. “You are Alice Hart?”

She skipped it. “What do you want?”

Wolfe backed up a step. He doesn’t like anyone so close to him, especially a woman. “I want information, madam. I want you and Bella Velardi and Helen Weltz to answer some questions.”

“We have no information.”

“Then I won’t get any, but I’m going to try.”

“Who sent you here?”

“Autokinesis. There’s a cardinal flaw in the assumption that Leonard Ashe killed Marie Willis, and I don’t like flaws. It has made me curious, and when I’m curious there is only one cure — the whole truth, and I intend to find it. If I am in time to save Mr. Ashe’s life, so much the better; but in any case I have started and will not be stopped. If you and the others refuse to oblige me today there will be other days — and other ways.”

From her face it was a toss-up. Her chin stiffened, and for a second she was going to tell him to go soak his head; then her eyes left him for me, and she was going to take it. She turned to the girl at the desk. “Take my board, will you, Pearl? I won’t be long.” To Wolfe, snapping it: “We’ll go to my room. This way.” She whirled and started.

“One moment, Miss Hart.” Wolfe moved. “A point not covered in the newspaper accounts.” He stopped at the boards, behind Bella Velardi at the middle one. “Marie Willis’s body was found slumped over on the ledge in front of the switchboard. Presumably she was seated at the switchboard when the murderer arrived. But you live here — you and the others?”

“Yes.”

“Then if the murderer was Mr. Ashe, how did he know she was alone on the premises?”

“I don’t know. Perhaps she told him she was. Is that the flaw?”

“Good heavens, no. It’s conceivable that she did, and they talked, and he waited until a light and buzzes had her busy at the board, with her back to him. It’s a minor point, but I prefer someone with surer knowledge that she was alone. Since she was small and slight, even you are not excluded” — he wiggled a finger — “or these others. Not that I am now prepared to charge you with murder.”

“I hope not,” she snorted, turning. She led the way to a door at the end of the room, on through, and down a narrow hall. As I followed, behind Wolfe, I was thinking that the reaction we were getting seemed a little exaggerated. It would have been natural, under the circumstances, for Miss Velardi and Miss Yerkes to turn in their seats for a good look at us, but they hadn’t. They had sat, rigid, staring at their boards. As for Alice Hart, either there had been a pinch of relief in her voice when she asked Wolfe if that was the flaw, or I was in the wrong business.

Her room was a surprise. First, it was big, much bigger than the one in front with the switchboards. Second, I am not Bernard Berenson, but I have noticed things here and there, and the framed splash of red and yellow and blue above the mantel was not only a real van Gogh, it was bigger and better than the one Lily Rowan had. I saw Wolfe spotting it as he lowered himself onto a chair actually big enough for him, and I pulled one around to make a group, facing the couch Miss Hart dropped onto.

As she sat she spoke. “What’s the flaw?”

He shook his head. “I’m the inquisitor, Miss Hart, not you.” He aimed a thumb at the van Gogh. “Where did you get that picture?”

She looked at it, and back at him. “That’s none of your business.”

“It certainly isn’t. But here is the situation. You have of course been questioned by the police and the District Attorney’s office, but they were restrained by their assumption that Leonard Ashe was the culprit. Since I reject that assumption and must find another in its stead, there can be no limit to my impertinence with you and others who may be involved. Take you and that picture. If you refuse to say where you got it, or if your answer doesn’t satisfy me, I’ll put a man on it, a competent man, and he’ll find out. You can’t escape being badgered, madam; the question is whether you suffer it here and now, by me, or face a prolonged inquiry among your friends and associates by meddlesome men. If you prefer the latter don’t waste time with me; I’ll go and tackle one of the others.”

She was tossing up again. From her look at him it seemed just as well that he had his bodyguard along. She tried stalling. “What does it matter where I got that picture?”

“Probably it doesn’t. Possibly nothing about you matters. But the picture is a treasure, and this is an odd address for it. Do you own it?”

“Yes. I bought it.”

“When?”

“About a year ago. From a dealer.”

“The contents of this room are yours?”

“Yes. I like things that — well, this is my extravagance, my only one.”

“How long have you been with this firm?”

“Five years.”

“What is your salary?”

She was on a tight rein. “Eighty dollars a week.”

“Not enough for your extravagance. An inheritance? Alimony? Other income?”

“I have never married. I had some savings, and I wanted — I wanted these things. If you save for fifteen years you have a right to something.”

“You have indeed. Where were you the evening that Marie Willis was killed?”

“I was out in Jersey, in a car with a friend — Bella Velardi. To get cooled off — it was a hot night. We got back after midnight.”

“In your car?”

“No, Helen Weltz had let us take hers. She has a Jaguar.”

My brows went up, and I spoke. “A Jaguar,” I told Wolfe, “is quite a machine. You couldn’t squeeze into one. Counting taxes and extras, four thousand bucks isn’t enough.”

His eyes darted to me and back to her. “Of course the police have asked if you know of anyone who might have had a motive for killing. Marie Willis. Do you?”

“No.” Her rein wasn’t so tight.

“Were you friendly with her?”

“Yes, friendly enough.”

“Has any client ever asked you to listen in on calls to his number?”

“Certainly not!”

“Did you know Miss Willis wanted to be an actress?”

“Yes, we all knew that.”

“Mr. Bagby says he didn’t.”

Her chin had relaxed a little. “He was her employer. I don’t suppose he knew. When did you talk with Mr. Bagby?”

“I didn’t. I heard him on the witness stand. Did you know of Miss Willis’s regard for Robina Keane?”

“Yes, we all knew that too. Marie did imitations of Robina Keane in her parts.”

“When did she tell you of her decision to tell Robina Keane that her husband was going to monitor her telephone?”

Miss Hart frowned. “I didn’t say she told me.”

“Did she?”

“No.”

“Did anyone?”

“Yes, Miss Velardi. Marie had told her. You can ask her.”

“I shall. Do you know Guy Unger?”

“Yes, I know him. Not very well.”

Wolfe was playing a game I had often watched him at, tossing balls at random to see how they bounced. It’s a good way to try to find a lead if you haven’t got one, but it may take all day, and he didn’t have it. If one of the females in the front room took a notion to phone the cops or the DA’s office about us we might have visitors any minute. As for Guy Unger, that was another name from the newspaper accounts. He had been Marie Willis’s boy friend, or had he? There had been a difference of opinion among the journalists.

Miss Hart’s opinion was that Guy Unger and Marie had enjoyed each other’s company, but that was as far as it went — I mean her opinion. She knew nothing of any crisis that might have made Unger want to end the friendship with a plug cord. For another five minutes Wolfe went on with the game, tossing different balls from different angles, and then abruptly arose.

“Very well,” he said. “For now. I’ll try Miss Velardi.”

“I’ll send her in.” Alice Hart was on her feet, eager to cooperate. “Her room is next door.” She moved. “This way.”

Obviously she didn’t want to leave us with her van Gogh. There was a lock on a bureau drawer that I could probably have manipulated in twenty seconds, and I would have liked to try my hand on it, but Wolfe was following her out, so I went along — to the right, down the hall to another door, standing open. Leaving us there, she strode on flat heels toward the front. Wolfe passed through the open door with me behind.

This room was different — somewhat smaller, with no van Gogh and the kind of furniture you might expect. The bed hadn’t been made, and Wolfe stood and scowled at it a moment, lowered himself gingerly onto a chair too small for him with worn upholstery, and told me curtly, “Look around.”

I did so. Bella Velardi was a crack-lover. A closet door and a majority of the drawers in a dressing table and two chests were open to cracks of various widths. One of the reasons I am still shy a wife is the risk of getting a crack-lover. I went and pulled the closet door open, and, having no machete to hack my way into the jungle of duds, swung it back to its crack and stepped across to the library. It was a stack of paperbacks on a little table, the one on top being entitled One Mistake Too Many, with a picture of a double-breasted floozie shrinking in terror from a muscle-bound baboon. There was also a pile of recent editions of Racing Form and Track Dope.

“She’s a philanthropist,” I told Wolfe. “She donates dough to the cause of equine genetics.”

“Meaning?”

“She bets on horse races.”

“Does she lose much?”

“She loses. How much depends on what she bets. Probably tidy sums, since she takes two house journals.”

He grunted. “Open drawers. Have one open when she enters. I want to see how much impudence these creatures will tolerate.”

I obeyed. The six drawers in the bigger chest all held clothes, and I did no pawing. A good job might have uncovered some giveaway under a pile of nylons, but there wasn’t time for it. I closed all the drawers to show her what I thought of cracks. Those in the dressing table were also uninteresting. In the second drawer of the smaller chest, among other items, was a collection of photographs, mostly unmounted snaps, and, running through them, with no expectations, I stopped at one for a second look. It was Bella Velardi and another girl, with a man standing between them, in bathing outfits with the ocean for background. I went and handed it to Wolfe.

“The man?” I asked. “I read newspapers too, and look at the pictures, but it was two months ago, and I could be wrong.”

He slanted it to get the best light from a window. He nodded. “Guy Unger.” He slipped it into a pocket. “Find more of him.”

“If any.” I went back to the collection. “But you may not get a chance at her. It’s been a good four minutes. Either she’s getting a full briefing from Miss Hart, or they’ve phoned for help, and in that case—”

The sound came of high heels clicking on the uncarpeted hall. I closed the second drawer and pulled the third one open, and was inspecting its contents when the clicks got to the door and were in the room. Shutting it in no hurry and turning to Bella Velardi, I was ready to meet a yelp of indignation, but didn’t have to. With her snappy black eyes and sassy little face she must have been perfectly capable of indignation, but her nerves were too busy with something else. She decided to pretend she hadn’t caught me with a drawer open, and that was screwy. Added to other things, it made it a cinch that these phone answerers had something on their minds.

Bella Velardi said in a scratchy little voice, “Miss Hart says you want to ask me something,” and went and sat on the edge of the unmade bed, with her fingers twisted together.

Wolfe regarded her with his eyes half closed. “Do you know what a hypothetical question is, Miss Velardi?”

“Of course I do.”

“I have one for you. If I put three expert investigators on the job of finding out approximately how much you have lost betting on horse races in the past year, how long do you think it would take them?”

“Why, I—” She blinked at him with a fine set of long lashes. “I don’t know.”

“I do. With luck, five hours. Without it, five days. It would be simpler for you to tell me. How much have you lost?”

She blinked again. “How do you know I’ve lost anything?”

“I don’t. But Mr. Goodwin, who is himself an expert investigator, concluded from publications he found on that table that you are a chronic bettor. If so, there’s a fair chance that you keep a record of your gains and losses.” He turned to me. “Archie, your search was interrupted. Resume. See if you can find it.” Back to her. “At his elbow if you like, Miss Velardi. There is no question of pilfering.”

I went to the smaller chest. He was certainly crowding his luck. If she took this without calling a cop she might not be a murderess, but she sure had a tender spot she didn’t want touched.

Actually she didn’t just sit and take it. As I got a drawer handle to pull it open she loosened her tongue. “Look, Mr. Wolfe, I’m perfectly willing to tell you anything you want to know. Perfectly!” She was leaning toward him, her fingers still twisted. “Miss Hart said I mustn’t be surprised at anything you asked, but I was, so I guess I was flustered. There’s no secret about my liking to bet on the races, but the amounts I bet — that’s different. You see, I have friends who — well, they don’t want people to know they bet, so they give me money to bet for them. So it’s about a hundred dollars a week, sometimes more, maybe up to two hundred.”

If she liked to bet on any animals other than horses, one would have got her ten that she was a damn liar. Evidently Wolfe would have split it with me, since he didn’t even bother to ask her the names of the friends.

He merely nodded. “What is your salary?”

“It’s only sixty-five, so of course I can’t bet much myself.”

“Of course. About the windows in that front room. In summer weather, when one of you is on duty there at night, are the windows open?”

She was concentrating. “When it’s hot, yes. Usually the one in the middle. If it’s very hot, maybe all of them.”

“With the shades up?”

“Yes.”

“It was hot July fifteenth. Were the windows open that night?”

“I don’t know. I wasn’t here.”

“Where were you?”

“I was out in Jersey, in a car with a friend — Alice Hart. To get cooled off. We got back after midnight.”

Wonderful, I thought. That settled that. One woman might conceivably lie, but surely not two.

Wolfe was eying her. “If the windows were open and the shades up the evening of July fifteenth, as they almost certainly were, would anyone in her senses have proceeded to kill Marie Willis so exposed to view? What do you think?”

She didn’t call him on the pronoun. “Why, no,” she conceded. “That would have been — no, I don’t think so.”

“Then she — or he — must have closed the windows and drawn the shades before proceeding. How could Leonard Ashe, in the circumstances as given, have managed that without alarming Miss Willis?”

“I don’t know. He might have — no, I don’t know.”

“He might have what?”

“Nothing. I don’t know.”

“How well do you know Guy Unger?”

“I know him fairly well.”

She had been briefed all right. She was expecting that one.

“Have you seen much of him in the past two months?”

“No, very little.”

Wolfe reached in his pocket and got the snapshot and held it out. “When was this taken?”

She left the bed and was going to take it, but he held on to it. After a look she said, “Oh, that,” and sat down again. All of a sudden she exploded, indignation finally breaking through. “You took that from my drawer! What else did you take?” She sprang up, trembling all over. “Get out of here! Get out and stay out!”

Wolfe returned the snap to his pocket, arose, said, “Come, Archie, there seems to be a limit after all,” and started for the door. I followed.

He was at the sill when she darted past me, grabbed his arm, and took it back. “Wait a minute, I didn’t mean that. I flare up like that. I just — I don’t care about the damn picture.”

Wolfe pulled loose and got a yard of space. “When was it taken?”

“About two weeks ago — two weeks ago Sunday.”

“Who is the other woman?”

“Helen Weltz.”

“Who took it?”

“A man that was with us.”

“His name?”

“His name is Ralph Ingalls.”

“Was Guy Unger Miss Weltz’s companion, or yours?”

“Why, we — we were just together.”

“Nonsense. Two men and two women are never just together. How were you paired?”

“Well — Guy and Helen, and Ralph and me.”

Wolfe sent a glance at the chair he had vacated and apparently decided it wasn’t worth the trouble of walking back to it. “Then since Miss Willis died Mr. Unger’s interest has centered on Miss Weltz?”

“I don’t know about ‘centered.’ They seem to like each other, as far as I know.”

“How long have you been working here?”

“At this office, since it opened a year ago. Before that I was at the Trafalgar office for two years.”

“When did Miss Willis tell you she was going to tell Robina Keane of her husband’s proposal?”

She had expected that one too. “That morning. That Thursday, the fifteenth of July.”

“Did you approve?”

“No, I didn’t. I thought she ought to just tell him no and forget it. I told her she was asking for trouble and she might get it. But she was so daddled on Robina Keane—” Bella shrugged. “Do you want to sit down?”

“No, thank you. Where is Miss Weltz?”

“This is her day off.”

“I know. Where can I find her?”

She opened her mouth and closed it. She opened it again. “I’m not sure. Wait a minute,” she said, and went clicking down the hall to the front. It was more like two minutes when she came clicking back and reported, “Miss Hart thinks she’s at a little place she rented for the summer up in Westchester. Do you want me to phone and find out?”

“Yes, if you would.”

Off she went, and we followed. In the front room the other three were at the boards. While Bella Velardi spoke to Miss Hart, and Miss Hart went to the phone at the desk and got a number and talked, Wolfe stood and frowned around, at the windows, the boards, the phone answerers, and me. When Miss Hart told him Helen Weltz was on the wire he went to the desk and took it.

“Miss Weltz? This is Nero Wolfe. As Miss Hart told you, I’m looking into certain matters connected with the murder of Marie Willis, and would like to see you. I have some other appointments but can adjust them. How long will it take you to get to the city?... You can’t?... I’m afraid I can’t wait until tomorrow... No, that’s out of the question... I see. You’ll be there all afternoon?... Very well, I’ll do that.”

He hung up and asked Miss Hart to tell me how to get to the place in Westchester. She obliged, and beyond Katonah it got so complicated that I got out my notebook. Also I jotted down the phone number. Wolfe had marched out with no amenities, so I thanked her politely and caught up with him halfway down the stairs. When we were out on the sidewalk I inquired, “A taxi to Katonah?”

“No.” He was cold with rage. “To the garage for the car.”

We headed west.

III

As we stood inside the garage, on Thirty-sixth Street near Tenth Avenue, waiting for Pete to bring the car down, Wolfe came out with something I had been expecting.

“We could walk home,” he said, “in four minutes.”

I gave him a grin. “Yes, sir. I knew it was coming — while you were on the phone. To go to Katonah we would have to drive. To drive we would have to get the car. To get the car we would have to come to the garage. The garage is so close to home that we might as well go and have lunch first. Once in the house, with the door bolted and not answering the phone, we could reconsider the matter of driving to Westchester. So you told her we would go to Katonah.”

“No. It occurred to me in the cab.”

“I can’t prove it didn’t. But I have a suggestion.” I nodded at the door to the garage office. “There’s a phone in there. Call Fritz first. Or shall I?”

“I suppose so,” he muttered, and went to the office door and entered, sat at the desk, and dialed. In a moment he was telling Fritz who and where he was, asking some questions, and getting answers he didn’t like. After instructing Fritz to tell callers that he hadn’t heard from us and had no idea where we were, and telling him not to expect us home until we got there, he hung up, glared at the phone, and then glared at me.

“There have been four phone calls. One from an officer of the court, one from the District Attorney’s office, and two from Inspector Cramer.”

“Ouch.” I made a face. “The court and the DA, sure, but not Cramer. When you’re within a mile of a homicide of his he itches from head to foot. You can imagine what kind of suspicions your walking out under a subpoena would give him. Let’s go home. It will be interesting to see whether he has one dick posted out in front, or two or three. Of course he’ll collar you and you may get no lunch at all, but what the hell.”

“Shut up.”

“Yes, sir. Here comes the car.”

As we emerged from the office the brown sedan rolled to a stop before us and Pete got out and opened the rear door for Wolfe, who refuses to ride in front because when the crash comes the broken glass will carve him up. I climbed in behind the wheel, released the brake and fingered the lever, and fed gas.

At that time of day the West Side Highway wasn’t too crowded, and north of Henry Hudson Bridge, and then on the Sawmill River Parkway, there was nothing to it. I could have let my mind roam if it had had anywhere to roam, but where? I was all for earning a little token of gratitude by jerking Leonard Ashe out from under, but how? It was so damn childish. In his own comfortable chair in his office, Wolfe could usually manage to keep his genius under control, but on the hard courtroom bench, with a perfumed woman crowded against him, knowing he couldn’t get up and go home, he had dropped the reins, and now he was stuck. He couldn’t call it off and go back to court and apologize because he was too darned pigheaded. He couldn’t go home. There was even a chance he couldn’t go to Katonah for a wild goose. When I saw in the rear-view mirror a parkway police car closing in on us from behind, I tightened my lips, and when he passed on by and shot ahead I relaxed and took a deep breath. It would have been pretty extreme to broadcast a general alarm for a mere witness AWOL, but the way Cramer felt about Wolfe it wouldn’t have been fantastic.

As I slowed down for Hawthorne Circle I told Wolfe it was a quarter to two and I was hungry and what about him, and was instructed to stop somewhere and get cheese and crackers and beer, and a little farther on I obeyed. Parked off a side road, he ate the crackers and drank the beer, but rejected the cheese after one taste. I was too hungry to taste.

The dash clock said 2:38 when, having followed Alice Hart’s directions, I turned off a dirt road into a narrow rutted driveway, crawled between thick bushes on both sides, and, reaching an open space, stepped on the brake to keep from rubbing a bright yellow Jaguar. To the left was a gravel walk across some grass that needed mowing, leading to a door in the side of a little white house with blue trim. As I climbed out two people appeared around the corner of the house. The one in front was the right age, the right size, and the right shape, with blue eyes and hair that matched the Jaguar, held back smooth with a yellow ribbon.

She came on. “You’re Archie Goodwin? I’m Helen Weltz. Mr. Wolfe? It’s a pleasure. This is Guy Unger. Come this way. We’ll sit in the shade of the old apple tree.”

In my dim memory of his picture in the paper two months back, and in the snap I had found in Bella Velardi’s drawer, Guy Unger hadn’t looked particularly like a murderer, and in the flesh he didn’t fill the bill any better. He looked too mean, with mean little eyes in a big round face. His gray suit had been cut by someone who knew how, to fit his bulgy shoulders, one a little lower than the other. His mouth, if he had opened it wide, would have been just about big enough to poke his thumb in.

The apple tree was from colonial times, with windfalls of its produce scattered around. Wolfe glowered at the chairs with wooden slats which had been painted white the year before, but it was either that or squat, so he engineered himself into one. Helen Weltz asked what we would like to drink, naming four choices, and Wolfe said no, thank you, with cold courtesy. It didn’t seem to faze her. She took a chair facing him, gave him a bright, friendly smile, and included me with a glance from her lively blue eyes.

“You didn’t give me a chance on the phone,” she said, not complaining. “I didn’t want you to have a trip for nothing. I can’t tell you anything about that awful business, what happened to Marie. I really can’t, because I don’t know anything. I was out on the Sound on a boat. Didn’t she tell you?”

Wolfe grunted. “That’s not the kind of thing I’m after, Miss Weltz. Such routine matters as checking alibis have certainly been handled competently by the police, to the limit of their interest. My own interest has been engaged late — I hope not too late — and my attack must be eccentric. For instance, when did Mr. Unger get here?”

“Why, he just—”

“Now, wait a minute.” Unger had picked up an unfinished highball from a table next to him and was holding it with the fingertips of both hands. His voice wasn’t squeaky, as you would expect, but a thick baritone. “Just forget me. I’m looking on, that’s all. I can’t say I’m an impartial observer, because I’m partial to Miss Weltz, if that’s all right with her.”

Wolfe didn’t even glance at him. “I’ll explain, Miss Weltz, why I ask when Mr. Unger got here. I’ll explain fully. When I went to that place on Sixty-ninth Street and spoke with Miss Hart and Miss Velardi I was insufferable, both in manner and in matter, and they should have flouted me and ordered me out, but they didn’t. Manifestly they were afraid to, and I intend to learn why. I assume that you know why. I assume that, after I left, Miss Hart phoned you again, described the situation, and discussed with you how best to handle me. I surmise that she also phoned Mr. Unger, or you did, and he was enough concerned about me to hurry to get here before I arrived. Naturally I would consider that significant. It would reinforce my suspicion that—”

“Forget it,” Unger cut in. “I heard about you being on your way about ten minutes ago, when I got here. Miss Weltz invited me yesterday to come out this afternoon. I took a train to Katonah, and a taxi.”

Wolfe looked at him. “I can’t challenge that, Mr. Unger, but it doesn’t smother my surmise. On the contrary. I’ll probably finish sooner with Miss Weltz if you’ll withdraw. For twenty minutes, say?”

“I think I’d better stay.”

“Then please don’t prolong it with interruptions.”

“You behave yourself, Guy,” Helen scolded him. She smiled at Wolfe. “I’ll tell you what I think, I think he just wants to show you how smart he is. When I told him Nero Wolfe was coming you should have heard him! He said maybe you’re famous for brains and he isn’t, but he’d like to hear you prove it, something like that. I don’t pretend to have brains. I was just scared!”

“Scared of what, Miss Weltz?”

“Scared of you! Wouldn’t anybody be scared if they knew you were coming to pump them?” She was appealing to him.

“Not enough to send for help.” Wolfe wouldn’t enter into the spirit of it. “Certainly not if they had the alternative of snubbing me, as you have. Why don’t you choose it? Why do you suffer me?”

“Now that’s a question.” She laughed. “I’ll show you why.” She got up and took a step, and reached to pat him on the shoulder and then on top of the head. “I didn’t want to miss a chance to touch the great Nero Wolfe!” She laughed again, moved to the table and poured herself a healthy dose of bourbon, returned to her chair, and swallowed a good half of it. She shook herself and said, “Brrrrr. That’s why!”

Unger was frowning at her. It didn’t need the brains of a Nero Wolfe, or even a Guy Unger, to see that her nerves were teetering on an edge as sharp as a knife blade.

“But,” Wolfe said dryly, “having touched me, you still suffer me. Of course Miss Hart told you that I reject the thesis that Leonard Ashe killed Marie Willis and propose to discredit it. I’m too late to try any of the conventional lines of inquiry, and anyway they have all been fully and competently explored by the police and the District Attorney on one side and Mr. Ashe’s lawyer on the other. Since I can’t expect to prove Mr. Ashe’s innocence, the best I can hope to establish is a reasonable doubt of his guilt. Can you give it to me?”

“Of course not. How could I?”

“One way would be to suggest someone else with motive and opportunity. Means is no problem, since the plug cord was there at hand. Can you?”

She giggled, and then was shocked, presumably at herself for giggling about murder. “Sorry,” she apologized, “but you’re funny. The way they had us down there at the District Attorney’s office, and the way they kept after us, asking all about Marie and everybody she knew, and of course what they wanted was to find out if there was anybody besides that man Ashe that might have killed her. But now they’re trying Ashe for it, and they wouldn’t be trying him if they didn’t think they could prove it, and here you come and expect to drag it out of me in twenty minutes. Don’t you think that’s funny for a famous detective like you? I do.”

She picked up her glass and drained it, stiffened to control a shudder, and got up and started for the table. Guy Unger reached and beat her to the bottle. “You’ve had enough, Helen,” he told her gruffly. “Take it easy.” She stared down at him a moment, dropped the glass on his lap, and went back to her chair.

Wolfe eyed her. “No, Miss Weltz,” he said. “No, I didn’t expect to drag a disclosure from you in twenty minutes. The most I expected was support for my belief that you people have common knowledge of something that you don’t want revealed, and you have given me that. Now I’ll go to work, and I confess I’m not too sanguine. It’s quite possible that after I’ve squandered my resources on it, time and thought and money and energy, and enlisted the help of half a dozen able investigators, I’ll find that the matter you people are so nervous about has no bearing on the murder of Marie Willis and so is of no use to me, and of no concern. But I can’t know that until I know what it is, so I’m going to know. If you think my process of finding out will cause inconvenience to you and the others, or worse, I suggest that you tell me now. It will—”

“I have nothing to tell you!”

“Nonsense. You’re at the edge of hysteria.”

“I am not!”

“Take it easy, Helen.” Guy Unger focused his mean little eyes on Wolfe. “Look, I don’t get this. As I understand it, what you’re after is an out for Leonard Ashe on the murder. Is that right?”

“Yes.”

“And that’s all?”

“Yes.”

“Would you mind telling me, did Ashe’s lawyer hire you?”

“No.”

“Who did?”

“Nobody. I developed a distaste for my function as a witness for the prosecution, along with a doubt of Mr. Ashe’s guilt.”

“Why doubt his guilt?”

Wolfe’s shoulders went up a fraction of an inch, and down again. “Divination. Contrariety.”

“I see.” Unger pursed his midget mouth, which didn’t need pursing. “You’re shooting at it on spec.” He leaned forward. “Understand me, I don’t say that’s not your privilege. Of course you have no standing at all, since you admit nobody hired you, but if Miss Weltz tells you to go to hell that won’t take you off her neck if you’ve decided to go to town. She’ll answer anything you want to ask her that’s connected with the murder, and so will I. We’ve told the police and the District Attorney, why not you? Do you regard me as a suspect?”

“Yes.”

“Okay.” He leaned back. “I first met Marie Willis about a year ago, a little more. I took her out a few times, maybe once a month, and then later a little oftener, to dinner and a show. We weren’t engaged to be married, nothing like that. The last week in June, just two weeks before her death, she was on vacation, and four of us went for a cruise on my boat, up the Hudson and Lake Champlain. The other two were friends of mine, a man and a woman — do you want their names?”

“No.”

“Well, that was what got me in the murder picture, that week’s cruise she had taken on my boat so recently. There was nothing to it, we had just gone to have a good time, but when she was murdered the cops naturally thought I was a good prospect. There was absolutely nothing in my relations with Marie that could possibly have made me want to kill her. Any questions?”

“No.”

“And if they had dug up a motive they would have been stuck with it, because I certainly didn’t kill her the evening of July fifteenth. That was a Thursday, and at five o’clock that afternoon I was taking my boat through the Harlem River and into the sound, and at ten o’clock that night I was asleep on her at an anchorage near New Haven. My friend Ralph Ingalls was with me, and his wife, and Miss Helen Weltz. Of course the police have checked it, but maybe you don’t like the way they check alibis. You’re welcome to check it yourself if you care to. Any questions?”

“One or two.” Wolfe shifted his fanny on the board slats. “What is your occupation?”

“For God’s sake. You haven’t even read the papers.”

“Yes, I have, but that was weeks ago, and as I remember it they were vague. ‘Broker,’ I believe. Stockbroker?”

“No, I’m a freewheeler. I’ll handle almost anything.”

“Have you an office?”

“I don’t need one.”

“Have you handled any transactions for anyone connected with that business, Bagby Answers, Incorporated? Any kind of transaction?”

Unger cocked his head. “Now that’s a funny question. Why do you ask that?”

“Because I suspect the answer is yes.”

“Why? Just for curiosity.”

“Now, Mr. Unger.” Wolfe turned a palm up. “Since apparently you had heard of me, you may know that I dislike riding in cars, even when Mr. Goodwin is driving. Do you suppose I would have made this excursion completely at random? If you find the question embarrassing, don’t answer it.”

“It’s not embarrassing.” Unger turned to the table, poured an inch of bourbon in his glass, added two inches of water from a pitcher, gave it a couple of swirls, took a sip, and another one, and finally put the glass down and turned back to Wolfe.

“I’ll tell you,” he said in a new tone. “This whole business is pretty damn silly. I think you’ve got hold of some crazy idea somewhere, God knows what, and I want to speak with you privately.” He arose. “Let’s take a little walk.”

Wolfe shook his head. “I don’t like conversing on my feet. If you want to say something without a witness, Miss Weltz and Mr. Goodwin can leave us. Archie?”

I stood up. Helen Weltz looked up at Unger, and at me, and then slowly lifted herself from her chair. “Let’s go and pick flowers,” I suggested. “Mr. Unger will want me in sight and out of hearing.”

She moved. We picked our way through the windfalls of the apple tree, and of two more trees, and went on into a meadow where the grass and other stuff was up to our knees. She was in the lead. “Goldenrod I know,” I told her back, “but what are the blue ones?”

No answer. In another hundred yards I tried again. “This is far enough unless he uses a megaphone.”

She kept going. “Last call!” I told her. “I admit he would be a maniac to jump Mr. Wolfe under the circumstances, but maybe he is one. I learned long ago that with people involved in a murder case nothing is impossible.”

She wheeled on me. “He’s not involved in a murder case!”

“He will be before Mr. Wolfe gets through with him.”

She plumped down in the grass, crossed her legs, buried her face in her hands, and started to shake. I stood and looked down at her, expecting the appropriate sound effect, but it didn’t come. She just went on shaking, which wasn’t wholesome. After half a minute of it I squatted in front of her, made contact by taking a firm grip on her bare ankle, and spoke with authority.

“That’s no way to do it. Open a valve and let it out. Stretch out and kick and scream. If Unger thinks it’s me and flies to the rescue that will give me an excuse to plug him.”

She mumbled something. Her hands muffled it, but it sounded like “God help me.” The shakes turned into shivers and were tapering off. When she spoke again it came through much better. “You’re hurting me,” she said, and I loosened my grip on her ankle and in a moment took my hand away, when her hands dropped and she lifted her head.

Her face was flushed, but her eyes were dry. “My God,” she said, “it would be wonderful if you put your arms around me tight and told me, ‘All right, my darling, I’ll take care of everything, just leave it to me.’ Oh, that would be wonderful!”

“I may try it,” I offered, “if you’ll brief me on what I’d have to take care of. The arms around you tight are no problem. Then what?”

She skipped over it. “God,” she said bitterly, “am I a fool! You saw my car. My Jaguar.”

“Yeah, I saw it. Very fine.”

“I’m going to burn it. How do you set fire to a car?”

“Pour gasoline on it, all over inside, toss a match in, and jump back fast. Be careful what you tell the insurance company or you’ll end up in the can.”

She skipped again. “It wasn’t only the car, it was other things too. I had to have them. Why didn’t I get me a man? I could have had a dozen, but no, not me. I was going to do it all myself. It was going to be my Jaguar. And now here I am, and you, a man I never saw before — it would be heaven if you’d just take me over. I’m telling you, you’d be getting a bargain!”

“I might, at that.” I was sympathetic but not mealy. “Don’t be too sure you’re a bad buy. What are the liabilities?”

She twisted her neck to look across the meadow toward the house. Wolfe and Unger were in their chairs under the apple tree, evidently keeping their voices down, since no sound came, and my ears are good.

She turned back to me. “Is it a bluff? Is he just trying to scare something out of us?”

“No, not just. If he scares something out, fine. If not, he’ll get it the hard way. If there’s anything to get he’ll get it. If you’re sitting on a lid you don’t want opened, my advice is to move, the sooner the better, or you may get hurt.”

“I’m already hurt!”

“Then hurt worse.”

“I guess I can be.” She reached for one of the blue flowers and pulled it off with no stem. “You asked what these are. They’re wild asters, just the color of my eyes.” She crushed it with her fingers and dropped it. “I already know what I’m going to do. I decided walking over here with you. What time is it?”

I looked at my wrist. “Quarter past three.”

“Let’s see, four hours — five. Where can I see Nero Wolfe around nine o’clock in town?”

From long habit I started to say at his office, but remembered it was out of bounds. “His address and number are in the phone book,” I told her, “but he may not be there this evening. Phone and ask for Fritz. Tell him you are the Queen of Hearts, and he’ll tell you where Mr. Wolfe is. If you don’t say you’re the Queen of Hearts he won’t tell you anything because Mr. Wolfe hates to be disturbed when he’s out. But why not save time and trouble? Evidently you’ve decided to tell him something, and there he is. Come on and tell him now.”

She shook her head. “I can’t. I don’t dare.”

“On account of Unger?”

“Yes.”

“If he can ask to speak privately with Mr. Wolfe, why can’t you?”

“I tell you I don’t dare!”

“We’ll go and come back as soon as Unger leaves.”

“He’s not going to leave. He’s going to ride to town with me.”

“Then record it on tape and use me for tape. You can trust my memory. I guarantee to repeat it to Mr. Wolfe word for word. Then when you phone this evening he will have had time—”

“Helen! Helen!” Unger was calling her.

She started to scramble up, and I got upright and gave her a hand. As we headed across the meadow she spoke, barely above a whisper. “If you tell him I’ll deny it. Are you going to tell him?”

“Wolfe, yes. Unger, no.”

“If you do I’ll deny it.”

“Then I won’t.”

As we approached they left their chairs. Their expressions indicated that they had not signed a mutual nonaggression pact, but there were no scars of battle. Wolfe said, “We’re through here, Archie,” and was going. Nobody else said anything, which made it rather stiff. Following Wolfe around the house to the open space, I saw that it would take a lot of maneuvering to turn around without scraping the Jaguar, so I had to back out through the bushes to the dirt road, where I swung the rear around to head the way we had come.

When we had gone half a mile I called back to my rear-seat passenger, “I have a little item for you!”

“Stop somewhere,” he ordered, louder than necessary. “I can’t talk like this.”

A little farther on there was roadside room under a tree, and I pulled over and parked.

I twisted around in the seat to face him. “We got a nibble,” I said, and reported on Helen Weltz. He started frowning, and when I finished he was frowning more.

“Confound it,” he growled, “she was in a panic, and it’ll wear off.”

“It may,” I conceded. “And so? I’ll go back and do it over if you’ll write me a script.”

“Pfui. I don’t say I could better it. You are a connoisseur of comely young women. Is she a murderess in a funk trying to wriggle out? Or what is she?”

I shook my head. “I pass. She’s trying to wriggle all right, but for out of what I would need six guesses. What did Unger want privately? Is he trying to wriggle too?”

“Yes. He offered me money — five thousand dollars, and then ten thousand.”

“For what?”

“Not clearly defined. A retaining fee for investigative services. He was crude about it for a man with brains.”

“I’ll be damned.” I grinned at him. “I’ve often thought you ought to get around more. Only five hours ago you marched out of that courtroom in the interest of justice, and already you’ve scared up an offer of ten grand. Of course it may have nothing to do with the murder. What did you tell him?”

“That I resented and scorned his attempt to suborn me.”

My brows went up. “He was in a panic, and it’ll wear off. Why not string him along?”

“It would take time, and I haven’t any. I told him I intend to appear in court tomorrow morning.”

“Tomorrow?” I stared. “With what, for God’s sake?”

“At the least, with a diversion. If Miss Weltz’s panic endures, possibly with something better, though I didn’t know that when I was talking with Mr. Unger.”

I looked it over. “Uh-huh,” I said finally. “You’ve had a hard day, and soon it will be dark and dinnertime, and then bedtime, and deciding to go back to court tomorrow makes it possible for you to go home. Okay, I’ll get you there by five o’clock.”

I turned and reached for the ignition key, but had barely touched it when his voice stopped me. “We’re not going home. Mr. Cramer will have a man posted there all night, probably with a warrant, and I’m not going to risk it. I had thought of a hotel, but that might be risky too, and now that Miss Weltz may want to see me it’s out of the question. Isn’t Saul’s apartment conveniently located?”

“Yes, but he has only one bed. Lily Rowan has plenty of room in her penthouse, and we’d be welcome, especially you. You remember the time she squirted perfume on you.”

“I do,” he said coldly. “We’ll manage somehow at Saul’s. Besides, we have errands to do and may need him. We must of course phone him first. Go ahead. To the city.”

He gripped the strap. I started the engine.

IV

For more years than I have fingers Inspector Cramer of Homicide had been dreaming of locking Wolfe up, at least overnight, and that day he darned near made it. He probably would have if I hadn’t spent an extra dime. Having phoned Saul Panzer, and also Fritz, from a booth in a drugstore in Washington Heights, I called the Gazette office and got Lon Cohen. When he heard my voice he said, “Well, well. Are you calling from your cell?”

“No. If I told you where I am you’d be an accomplice. Has our absence been noticed?”

“Certainly, the town’s in an uproar. A raging mob has torn the courthouse down. We’re running a fairly good picture of Wolfe, but we need a new one of you. Could you drop in at the studio, say in five minutes?”

“Sure, glad to. But I’m calling to settle a bet. Is there a warrant for us?”

“You’re damn right there is. Judge Corbett signed it first thing after lunch. Look, Archie, let me send a man—”

I told him much obliged and hung up. If I hadn’t spent that dime and learned there was a warrant, we wouldn’t have taken any special precaution as we approached Saul’s address on East Thirty-eighth Street and would have run smack into Sergeant Purley Stebbins, and the question of where to spend the night would have been taken off our hands.

It was nearly eight o’clock. Wolfe and I had each disposed of three orders of chili con carne at a little dump on 170th Street where a guy named Dixie knows how to make it, and I had made at least a dozen phone calls trying to get hold of Jimmy Donovan, Leonard Ashe’s attorney. That might not have been difficult if I could have left word that Nero Wolfe had something urgent for him, and given a number for him to call, but that wouldn’t have been practical, since an attorney is a sworn officer of the law, and he knew there was a warrant out for Wolfe, not to mention me. So I hadn’t got him, and as we crawled with the traffic through East Thirty-eighth Street the sight of Wolfe’s scowl in the rear-view mirror didn’t make the scene any gayer.

My program was to let him out at Saul’s address between Lexington and Third, find a place to park the car, and join him at Saul’s. But just as I swung over and was braking I saw a familiar broad-shouldered figure on the sidewalk, switched from the brake to the gas pedal, and kept going. Luckily a gap had opened, and the light was green at Third Avenue, so I rolled on through, found a place to stop without blocking traffic, and turned in the seat to tell Wolfe, “I came on by because I decided we don’t want to see Saul.”

“You did.” He was grim. “What flummery is this?”

“No flummery. Sergeant Purley Stebbins was just turning in at the entrance. Thank God it’s dark or he would have seen us. Now where?”

“At the entrance of Saul’s address?”

“Yes.”

A short silence. “You’re enjoying this,” he said bitterly.

“I am like hell. I’m a fugitive from justice, and I was going to spend the evening at the Polo Grounds watching a ball game. Where now?”

“Confound it. You told Saul about Miss Weltz.”

“Yes, sir. I told Fritz that if the Queen of Hearts phones she is to call Saul’s number, and I told Saul that you’d rather have an hour alone with her than a blue orchid. You know Saul.”

Another silence. He broke it. “You have Mr. Donovan’s home address.”

“Right. East Seventy-seventh Street.”

“How long will it take to drive there?”

“Ten minutes.”

“Go ahead.”

“Yes, sir. Sit back and relax.” I fed gas.

It took only nine minutes at that time of evening, and I found space to park right in the block, between Madison and Park. As we walked to the number a cop gave us a second glance, but Wolfe’s size and carriage rated that much notice without any special stimulation. It was just my nerves. There were a canopy and a doorman, and rugs in the lobby. I told the doorman casually, “Donovan. We’re expected,” but he hung on.

“Yes, sir, but I have orders — Your name, please?”

“Judge Wolfe,” Wolfe told him.

“One moment, please.”

He disappeared through a door. It was more like five moments before he came back, looking questions but not asking them, and directed us to the elevator. Twelve B, he said.

Getting off at the twelfth floor, we didn’t have to look for B because a door at the end of the foyer was standing open, and on the sill was Jimmy Donovan himself. In his shirt sleeves, with no necktie, he looked more like a janitor than a champion of the bar, and he sounded more like one when he blurted, “It’s you, huh? What kind of a trick is this? Judge Wolfe!”

“No trick.” Wolfe was courteous but curt. “I merely evaded vulgar curiosity. I had to see you.”

“You can’t see me. It’s highly improper. You’re a witness for the prosecution. Also a warrant has been issued for you, and I’ll have to report this.”

He was absolutely right. The only thing for him to do was shut the door on us and go to his phone and call the DA’s office. My one guess why he didn’t, which was all I needed, was that he would have given his shirt, and thrown in a necktie, to know what Wolfe was up to. He didn’t shut the door.

“I’m not here,” Wolfe said, “as a witness for the prosecution. I don’t intend to discuss my testimony with you. As you know, your client, Leonard Ashe, came to me one day in July and wanted to hire me, and I refused. I have become aware of certain facts connected with what he told me that day which I think he should know about, and I want to tell him. I suppose it would be improper for me to tell you more than that, but it wouldn’t be improper to tell him. He is on trial for first-degree murder.”

I had the feeling I could see Donovan’s brain working at it behind his eyes. “It’s preposterous,” he declared. “You know damn well you can’t see him.”

“I can if you’ll arrange it. That’s what I’m here for. You’re his counsel. Early tomorrow morning will do, before the court sits. You may of course be present if you wish, but I suppose you would prefer not to. Twenty minutes with him will be enough.”

Donovan was chewing his lip. “I can’t ask you what you want to tell him.”

“I understand that. I won’t be on the witness stand, where you can cross-examine me, until tomorrow.”

“No.” The lawyer’s eyes narrowed. “No, you won’t. I can’t arrange for you to see him; it’s out of the question. I shouldn’t be talking to you. It will be my duty to report this to Judge Corbett in the morning. Good evening, gentlemen.”

He backed up and swung the door shut, but didn’t bang it, which was gracious of him. We rang for the elevator, were taken down, and went out and back to the car.

“You’ll phone Saul,” Wolfe said.

“Yes, sir. His saying he’ll report to the judge in the morning meant he didn’t intend to phone the DA now, but he might change his mind. I’d rather move a few blocks before phoning.”

“Very well. Do you know the address of Mrs. Leonard Ashe’s apartment?”

“Yes, Seventy-third Street.”

“Go in that direction. I have to see her, and you’d better phone and arrange it.”

“You mean now.”

“Yes.”

“That should be a cinch. She’s probably sitting there hoping a couple of strange detectives will drop in. Do I have to be Judge Goodwin?”

“No. We are ourselves.”

As I drove downtown on Park, and east on Seventy-fourth to Third Avenue, and down a block, and west on Seventy-third, I considered the approach to Robina Keane. By not specifying it Wolfe had left it to me, so it was my problem. I thought of a couple of fancy strategies, but by the time I got the car maneuvered to the curb in the only vacant spot between Lexington and Madison I had decided that the simplest was the best. After asking Wolfe if he had any suggestions and getting a no, I walked to Lexington and found a booth in a drugstore.

First I called Saul Panzer. There had been no word from the Queen of Hearts, but she had said around nine o’clock and it was only eight-forty. Sergeant Stebbins had been and gone. What he had said was that the police were concerned about the disappearance of Nero Wolfe because he was an important witness in a murder case, and they were afraid something might have happened to him, especially since Archie Goodwin was also gone. What he had not said was that Inspector Cramer suspected that Wolfe had tramped out of the courtroom hell-bent on messing the case up, and he wanted to get his hands on him quick. Had Wolfe communicated with Saul, and did Saul know where he was? There was a warrant out for both Wolfe and Goodwin. Saul had said no, naturally, and Purley had made some cutting remarks and left.

I dialed another number, and when a female voice answered I told it I would like to speak to Mrs. Ashe. It said Mrs. Ashe was resting and couldn’t come to the phone. I said I was speaking for Nero Wolfe and it was urgent and vital. It said Mrs. Ashe absolutely would not come to the phone. I asked it if it had ever heard of Nero Wolfe, and it said of course. All right, I said, tell Mrs. Ashe that he must see her immediately and he can be there in five minutes. That’s all I can tell you on the phone, I said, except that if she doesn’t see him she’ll never stop regretting it. The voice told me to hold the wire, and was gone so long I began to wish I had tried a fancy one, but just as I was reaching for the handle of the booth door to let in some air it came back and said Mrs. Ashe would see Mr. Wolfe. I asked it to instruct the lobby guardians to admit us, hung up, went out and back to the car, and told Wolfe, “Okay. You’d better make it good after what I told her. No word from Helen Weltz. Stebbins only asked some foolish questions and got the answers he deserved.”

He climbed out, and we walked to the number. This one was smaller and more elegant, too elegant for rugs. The doorman was practically Laurence Olivier, and the elevator man was his older brother. They were chilly but nothing personal. When we were let out at the sixth floor the elevator man stayed at his open door until we had pushed a button and the apartment door had opened and we had been told to enter.

The woman admitting us wasn’t practically Phyllis Jay, she was Phyllis Jay. Having paid $4.40 or $5.50 several times to see her from an orchestra seat, I would have appreciated this free close-up of her on a better occasion, but my mind was occupied. So was hers. Of course she was acting, since actresses always are, but the glamour was turned off because the part didn’t call for it. She was playing a support for a friend in need, and kept strictly in character as she relieved Wolfe of his hat and cane and then escorted us into a big living room, across it, and through an arch into a smaller room.

Robina Keane was sitting on a couch, patting at her hair. Wolfe stopped three paces off and bowed. She looked up at him, shook her head as if to dislodge a fly, pressed her fingertips to her eyes, and looked at him again. Phyllis Jay said, “I’ll be in the study, Robbie,” waited precisely the right interval for a request to stay, didn’t get it, and turned and went. Mrs. Ashe invited us to sit, and, after moving a chair around for Wolfe, I took one off at the side.

“I’m dead tired,” she said. “I’m so empty, completely empty. I don’t think I ever — But what is it? Of course it’s something about my husband?”

Either the celebrated lilt of her voice was born in, or she had used it so much and so long that it might as well have been. She looked all in, no doubt of that, but the lilt was there.

“I’ll make it as brief as I can,” Wolfe told her. “Do you know that I have met your husband? That he called on me one day in July?”

“Yes, I know. I know all about it — now.”

“It was to testify about our conversation that day that I was summoned to appear at his trial, by the State. In court this morning, waiting to be called, an idea came to me which I thought merited exploration, and if it was to bring any advantage to your husband the exploration could not wait. So I walked out, with Mr. Goodwin, my assistant, and we have spent the day on that idea.”

“What idea?” Her hands were fists, on the couch for props.

“Later for that. We have made some progress, and we may make more tonight. Whether we do or not, I have information that will be of considerable value to your husband. It may not exculpate him, but at least it should raise sufficient doubt in the minds of the jury to get him acquitted. The problem is to get the information to the jury. It would take intricate and prolonged investigation to get it in the form of admissible evidence, and I have in mind a short cut. To take it I must have a talk with your husband.”

“But he — How can you?”

“I must. I have just called on Mr. Donovan, his attorney, and asked him to arrange it, but I knew he wouldn’t; that was merely to anticipate you. I knew that if I came to you, you would insist on consulting him, and I have already demonstrated the futility of that. I am in contempt of the court, and a warrant has been issued for my arrest. Also I am under subpoena as a witness for the prosecution, and it is improper for the defense counsel even to talk with me, let alone arrange an interview for me with his client. You, as the wife of a man on trial for his life, are under no such prescription. You have wide acquaintance and great personal charm. It would not be too difficult, certainly not impossible, for you to get permission to talk with your husband tomorrow morning before the court convenes; and you can take me with you. Twenty minutes would be ample, and even ten would do. Don’t mention me in getting the permission; that’s important; simply take me with you and we’ll see. If it doesn’t work there’s another possible expedient. Will you do it?”

She was frowning. “I don’t see — You just want to talk with him?”

“Yes.”

“What do you want to tell him?”

“You’ll hear it tomorrow morning when he does. It’s complicated and conjectural. To tell you now might compromise my plan to get it to the jury, and I won’t risk it.”

“But tell me what it’s about. Is it about me?”

Wolfe lifted his shoulders to take in a deep breath, and let them sag again. “You say you’re dead tired, madam. So am I. I would be interested in you only if I thought you were implicated in the murder of Marie Willis, and I don’t. At considerable risk to my reputation, my self-esteem, and possibly even my bodily freedom, I am undertaking a step which should be useful to your husband and am asking your help; but I am not asking you to risk anything. You have nothing to lose, but I have. Of course I have made an assumption that may not be valid: that, whether you are sincerely devoted to your husband or not, you don’t want him convicted of murder. I can’t guarantee that I have the key that will free him, but I’m not a novice in these matters.”

Her jaw was working. “You didn’t have to say that.” The lilt was gone. “Whether I’m devoted to my husband. My husband’s not a fool, but he acted like one. I love him very dearly, and I want—” Her jaw worked. “I love him very much. No, I don’t want him convicted of murder. You’re right, I have nothing to lose, nothing more to lose. But if I do this I’ll have to tell Mr. Donovan.”

“No. You must not. Not only would he forbid it, he would prevent it. This is for you alone.”

She abandoned the prop of her fists and straightened her back. “I thought I was too tired to live,” she said, lilting again, “and I am, but it’s going to be a relief to do something.” She left the couch and was on her feet. “I’m going to do it. As you say, I have a wide acquaintance, and I’ll do it all right. You go on and make some more progress and leave this to me. Where can I reach you?”

Wolfe turned. “Saul’s number, Archie.”

I wrote it on a leaf of my notebook and went and handed it to her. Wolfe arose. “I’ll be there all night, Mrs. Ashe, up to nine in the morning, but I hope it will be before that.”

I doubted if she heard him. Her mind was so glad to have a job that it had left us entirely. She did go with us to the foyer to see us out, but she wasn’t there. I was barely across the threshold when she shut the door.

We went back to the car and headed downtown on Park Avenue. It seemed unlikely that Purley Stebbins had taken it into his head to pay Saul a second call, but a couple of blocks away I stopped to phone, and Saul said no, he was alone. It seemed even more unlikely that Stebbins had posted a man out front, but I stopped twenty yards short of the number and took a good long look. There was a curb space a little further down, and I squeezed the car into it and looked some more before opening the door for Wolfe to climb out. We crossed the street and entered the vestibule, and I pushed the button.

When we left the self-service elevator at the fifth floor Saul was there to greet us. I suppose to some people Saul Panzer is just a little guy with a big nose who always seems to need a shave, but to others, including Wolfe and me, he’s the best free-for-all operative that ever tailed a subject. Wolfe had never been at his place before, but I had, many times over the years, mostly on Saturday nights with three or four others for some friendly and ferocious poker. Inside, Wolfe stood and looked around. It was a big room, lighted with two floor lamps and two table lamps. One wall had windows, another was solid with books, and the other two had pictures and shelves that were cluttered with everything from chunks of minerals to walrus tusks. In the far corner was a grand piano.

“A good room,” Wolfe said. “Satisfactory. I congratulate you.” He crossed to a chair, the nearest thing to his idea of a chair he had seen all day, and sat. “What time is it?”

“Twenty minutes to ten.”

“Have you heard from that woman?”

“No, sir. Will you have some beer?”

“I will indeed. If you please.”

In the next three hours he accounted for seven bottles. He also handled his share of liver pâté, herring, sturgeon, pickled mushrooms, Tunisian melon, and three kinds of cheese. Saul was certainly prancing as a host, though he is not a prancer. Naturally, the first time Wolfe ate under his roof, and possibly the last, he wanted to give him good grub, that was okay, but I thought the three kinds of cheese was piling it on a little. He sure would be sick of cheese by Saturday. He wasn’t equipped to be so fancy about sleeping. Since he was the host it was his problem, and his arrangement was Wolfe in the bedroom, me on the couch in the big room, and him on the floor, which seemed reasonable.

However, at a quarter to one in the morning we were still up. Though time hadn’t dragged too heavily, what with talking and eating and drinking and three hot games of checkers between Wolfe and Saul, all draws, we were all yawning. We hadn’t turned in because we hadn’t heard from Helen Weltz, and there was still a dim hope. The other thing was all set. Just after midnight Robina Keane had phoned and told Wolfe she had it fixed. He was to meet her in Room 917 at 10 °Centre Street at half-past eight. He asked me if I knew what Room 917 was, and I didn’t. After that came he leaned back in his chair and sat with his eyes closed for a while, then straightened up and told Saul he was ready for the third game of checkers.

At a quarter to one he left his chair, yawned and stretched, and announced, “Her panic wore off. I’m going to bed.”

“I’m afraid,” Saul apologized, “I have no pajamas you could get into, but I’ve got—”

The phone rang. I was nearest, and turned and got it. “This is Jackson four-three-one-oh-nine.”

“I want— This is the Queen of Hearts.”

“It sure is. I recognize your voice. This is Archie Goodwin. Where are you?”

“In a booth at Grand Central. I couldn’t get rid of him, and then — but that doesn’t matter now. Where are you?”

“In an apartment on Thirty-eighth Street with Mr. Wolfe, waiting for you. It’s a short walk. I’ll meet you at the information booth, upper level, in five minutes. Will you be there?”

“Yes.”

“Sure?”

“Of course I will!”

I hung up, turned, and said loftily, “If it wore off it wore on again. Make some coffee, will you, Saul? She’ll need either that or bourbon. And maybe she likes cheese.”

I departed.

V

At six minutes past ten in the morning Assistant District Attorney Mandelbaum was standing at the end of his table in the courtroom to address Judge Corbett. The room was packed. The jury was in the box. Jimmy Donovan, defense attorney, looking not at all like a janitor, was fingering through some papers his assistant had handed him.

“Your Honor,” Mandelbaum said, “I wish to call a witness whom I called yesterday, but he was not available. I learned only a few minutes ago that he is present. You will remember that on my application you issued a warrant for Mr. Nero Wolfe.”

“Yes, I do.” The judge cleared his throat. “Is he here?”

“He is.” Mandelbaum turned and called, “Nero Wolfe!”

Having arrived at one minute to ten, we wouldn’t have been able to get in if we hadn’t pushed through to the officer at the door and told him who we were and that we were wanted. He had stared at Wolfe and admitted he recognized him, and let us in, and the attendant had managed to make room for us on a bench just as Judge Corbett entered. When Wolfe was called by Mandelbaum and got up to go forward I had enough space.

He walked down the aisle, through the gate, mounted the stand, turned to face the judge, and stood.

“I have some questions for you, Mr. Wolfe,” the judge said, “after you are sworn.”

The attendant extended the Book and administered the oath, and Wolfe sat. A witness-chair is supposed to take any size, but that one just barely made it.

The judge spoke. “You knew you were to be called yesterday. You were present, but you left and could not be found, and a warrant was issued for you. Are you represented by counsel?”

“No, sir.”

“Why did you leave? You are under oath.”

“I was impelled to leave by a motive which I thought imperative. I will of course expound it now if you so order, but I respectfully ask your indulgence. I understand that if my reason for leaving is unsatisfactory I will be in contempt of court and will suffer a penalty. But I ask, Your Honor, does it matter whether I am adjudged in contempt now, or later, after I have testified? Because my reason for leaving is inherent in my testimony, and therefore I would rather plead on the charge of contempt afterwards, if the court will permit. I’ll still be here.”

“Indeed you will. You’re under arrest.”

“No, I’m not.”

“You’re not under arrest?”

“No, sir. I came here voluntarily.”

“Well, you are now.” The judge turned his head. “Officer, this man is under arrest.” He turned back. “Very well. You will answer to the contempt charge later. Proceed, Mr. Mandelbaum.”

Mandelbaum approached the chair. “Please tell the jury your name, occupation, and address.”

Wolfe turned to the jury box. “I am Nero Wolfe, a licensed private detective, with my office in my house at nine-eighteen West Thirty-fifth Street, Manhattan, New York City.”

“Have you ever met the defendant in this case?” Mandelbaum pointed. “That gentleman.”

“Yes, sir. Mr. Leonard Ashe.”

“Where and under what circumstances did you meet him?”

“He called on me at my office, by appointment, at eleven o’clock in the morning of Tuesday, July thirteenth, this year.”

“What did he say to you on that occasion?”

“That he wished to engage my professional services. That he had, the preceding day, arranged for an answering service for the telephone at his residence on Seventy-third Street in New York. That he had learned, upon inquiry, that one of the employees of the answering service would be assigned to his number and would serve it five or six days a week. That he wanted to hire me to learn the identity of that employee, and to propose to her that she eavesdrop on calls made during the daytime to his number, and report on them either to him or to me — I can’t say definitely which, because he wasn’t clear on that point.”

“Did he say why he wanted to make that arrangement?”

“No. He didn’t get that far.”

Donovan was up. “Objection, Your Honor. Conclusion of the witness as to the intention of the defendant.”

“Strike it,” Mandelbaum said amiably. “Strike all of his answer except the word ‘No.’ Your answer is ‘No,’ Mr. Wolfe?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Did the defendant suggest any inducement to be offered to the employee to get her to do the eavesdropping?”

“He didn’t name a sum, but he indicated that—”

“Not what he indicated. What he said.”

I allowed myself a grin. Wolfe, who always insisted on precision, who loved to ride others, especially me, for loose talk, and who certainly knew the rules of evidence, had been caught twice. I promised myself to find occasion later to comment on it.

He was unruffled. “He said that he would make it worth her while, meaning the employee, but stated no amount.”

“What else did he say?”

“That was about all. The entire conversation was only a few minutes. As soon as I understand clearly what he wanted to hire me to do, I refused to do it.”

“Did you tell him why you refused?”

“Yes, sir.”

“What did you say?”

“I said that while it is the function of a detective to pry into people’s affairs, I excluded from my field anything connected with marital difficulties and therefore declined his job.”

“Had he told you that what he wanted was to spy on his wife?”

“No, sir.”

“Then why did you mention marital difficulties to him?”

“Because I had concluded that that was the nature of his concern.”

“What else did you say to him?”

Wolfe shifted in the chair. “I would like to be sure I understand the question. Do you mean what I said to him that day, or on a later occasion?”

“I mean that day. There was no later occasion, was there?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Are you saying that you had another meeting with the defendant, on another day?”

“Yes, sir.”

Mandelbaum held a pose. Since his back was to me I couldn’t see his look of surprise, but I didn’t have to. In his file was Wolfe’s signed statement, saying among other things that he had not seen Leonard Ashe before or since July 13. His voice went up a notch. “When and where did this meeting take place?”

“Shortly after nine o’clock this morning, in this building.”

“You met and spoke with the defendant in this building today?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Under what circumstances?”

“His wife had arranged to see and speak with him, and she allowed me to accompany her.”

“How did she arrange it? With whom?”

“I don’t know.”

“Was Mr. Donovan, the defense counsel, present?”

“No, sir.”

“Who was?”

“Mrs. Ashe, Mr. Ashe, myself, and two armed guards, one at the door and one at the end of the room.”

“What room was it?”

“I don’t know. There was no number on the door. I think I could lead you to it.”

Mandelbaum whirled around and looked at Robina Keane, seated on the front bench. Not being a lawyer, I didn’t know whether he could get her to the stand or not. Of course a wife couldn’t be summoned to testify against her husband, but I didn’t know if this would have come under that ban. Anyway, he either skipped it or postponed it. He asked the judge to allow him a moment and went to the table to speak in an undertone to a colleague. I looked around. I had already spotted Guy Unger, in the middle of the audience on the left. Bella Velardi and Alice Hart were on the other side, next to the aisle. Apparently the Sixty-ninth Street office of Bagby Answers, Inc., was being womaned for the day from other offices. Clyde Bagby, the boss, was a couple of rows in front of Unger. Helen Weltz, the Queen of Hearts, whom I had driven from Saul’s address to a hotel seven hours ago, was in the back, not far from me.

The colleague got up and left, in a hurry, and Mandelbaum went back to Wolfe.

“Don’t you know,” he demanded, “that it is a misdemeanor for a witness for the State to talk with the defendant charged with a felony?”

“No, sir, I don’t. I understand it would depend on what was said. I didn’t discuss my testimony with Mr. Ashe.”

“What did you discuss?”

“Certain matters which I though would be of interest to him.”

“What matters? Exactly what did you say?”

I took a deep breath, spread and stretched my fingers, and relaxed. The fat son-of-a-gun had put it over. Having asked that question, Mandelbaum couldn’t possibly keep it from the jury unless Jimmy Donovan was a sap, and he wasn’t.

Wolfe testified. “I said that yesterday, seated in this room awaiting your convenience, I had formed a surmise that certain questions raised by the murder of Marie Willis had not been sufficiently considered and investigated, and that therefore my role as a witness for the prosecution was an uncomfortable one. I said that I had determined to satisfy myself on certain points; that I knew that in leaving the courtroom I would become liable to a penalty for contempt of court, but that the integrity of justice was more important than my personal ease; that I had been confident that Judge Corbett would—”

“If you please, Mr. Wolfe. You are not now pleading to a charge of contempt.”

“No, sir. You asked what I said to Mr. Ashe. He asked what surmise I had formed, and I told him — that it was a double surmise. First, that as one with long experience in the investigation of crime and culprits, I had an appreciable doubt of his guilt. Second, that the police had been so taken by the circumstances pointing to Mr. Ashe — his obvious motive and his discovery of the body — that their attention in other directions had possibly been somewhat dulled. For example, an experienced investigator always has a special eye and ear for any person occupying a privileged position. Such persons are doctors, lawyers, trusted servants, intimate friends, and, of course, close relatives. If one in those categories is a rogue he has peculiar opportunities for his scoundrelism. It occurred to me that—”

“You said all this to Mr. Ashe?”

“Yes, sir. It occurred to me that a telephone-answering service was in the same kind of category as those I have mentioned, as I sat in this room yesterday and heard Mr. Bagby describe the operation of the switchboards. An unscrupulous operator might, by listening in on conversations, obtain various kinds of information that could be turned to account — for instance, about the stock market, about business or professional plans, about a multitude of things. The possibilities would be limitless. Certainly one, and perhaps the most promising, would be the discovery of personal secrets. Most people are wary about discussing or disclosing vital secrets on the telephone, but many are not, and in emergencies caution is often forgotten. It struck me that for getting the kind of information, or at least hints of it, that is most useful and profitable for a blackmailer, a telephone-answering service has potentialities equal to those of a doctor or lawyer or trusted servant. Any operator at the switchboard could simply—”

“This is mere idle speculation, Mr. Wolfe. Did you say all that to the defendant?”

“Yes, sir.”

“How long were you with him?”

“Nearly half an hour. I can say a great deal in half an hour.”

“No doubt. But the time of the court and jury should not be spent on irrelevancies.” Mandelbaum treated the jury to one of his understanding glances, and went back to Wolfe. “You didn’t discuss your testimony with the defendant?”

“No, sir.”

“Did you make any suggestions to him regarding the conduct of his defense?”

“No, sir. I made no suggestions to him of any kind.”

“Did you offer to make any kind of investigation for him as a contribution to his defense?”

“No, sir.”

“Then why did you seek this interview with him?”

“One moment.” Donovan was on his feet. “I submit, Your Honor, that this is the State’s witness, and this is not proper direct examination. Surely it is cross-examination, and I object to it.”

Judge Corbett nodded. “The objection is sustained. Mr. Mandelbaum, you know the rules of evidence.”

“But I am confronted by an unforeseen contingency.”

“He is still your witness. Examine him upon the merits.”

“Also, Your Honor, he is in contempt.”

“Not yet. That is in abeyance. Proceed.”

Mandelbaum looked at Wolfe, glanced at the jury, went to the table and stood a moment gazing down at it, lifted his head, said, “No more questions,” and sat down.

Jimmy Donovan arose and stepped forward, but addressed the bench instead of the witness-stand. “Your Honor, I wish to state that I knew nothing of the meeting this morning, of the witness with my client, either before or after it took place. I only learned of it here and now. If you think it desirable, I will take the stand to be questioned about it under oath.”

Judge Corbett shook his head. “I don’t think so, Mr. Donovan. Not unless developments suggest it.”

“At any time, of course.” Donovan turned. “Mr. Wolfe, why did you seek an interview this morning with Mr. Ashe?”

Wolfe was relaxed but not smug. “Because I had acquired information which cast a reasonable doubt on his guilt, and I wanted to get it before the court and the jury without delay. As a witness for the prosecution, with a warrant out for my arrest, I was in a difficult situation. It occurred to me that if I saw and talked with Mr. Ashe the fact would probably be disclosed in the course of my examination by Mr. Mandelbaum; and if so, he would almost certainly ask me what had been said. Therefore I wanted to tell Mr. Ashe what I had surmised and what I had discovered. If Mr. Mandelbaum allowed me to tell all I had said to Mr. Ashe, that would do it. If he dismissed me before I finished, I thought it likely that on cross-examination the defense attorney would give me an opportunity to go on.” He turned a palm up. “So I sought an interview with Mr. Ashe.”

The judge was frowning. One of the jurors made a noise, and the others looked at him. The audience stirred, and someone tittered. I was thinking Wolfe had one hell of a nerve, but he hadn’t violated any law I had ever heard of, and Donovan had asked him a plain question and got a plain answer. I would have given a ream of foolscap to see Donovan’s face.

If his face showed any reaction to the suggestion given him, his voice didn’t. “Did you say more to Mr. Ashe than you have already testified to?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Please tell the jury what you said to him.”

“I said that I left this room yesterday morning, deliberately risking a penalty for contempt of court, to explore my surmises. I said that, taking my assistant, Mr. Archie Goodwin, with me, I went to the office of Bagby Answers, Incorporated, on Sixty-ninth Street, where Marie Willis was murdered. I said that from a look at the switchboards I concluded that it would be impossible for any one operator—”

Mandelbaum was up. “Objection, Your Honor. Conclusions of the witness are not admissible.”

“He is merely relating,” Donovan submitted, “what he said to Mr. Ashe. The Assistant District Attorney asked him to.”

“The objection is overruled,” Judge Corbett said dryly.

Wolfe resumed. “I said I had concluded that it would be impossible for any one operator to eavesdrop frequently on her lines without the others becoming aware of it, and therefore it must be done collusively if at all. I said that I had spoken at some length with two of the operators, Alice Hart and Bella Velardi, who had been working and living there along with Marie Willis, and had received two encouragements for my surmise: one, that they were visibly disturbed at my declared intention of investigating them fully and ruthlessly, and tolerated my rudeness beyond reason; and two, that it was evident that their personal expenditures greatly exceeded their salaries. I said — may I ask, sir, is it necessary for me to go on repeating that phrase, ‘I said’?”

“I think not,” Donovan told him. “Not if you confine yourself strictly to what you said to Mr. Ashe this morning.”

“I shall do so. The extravagance in personal expenditures was true also of the third operator who had lived and worked there with Marie Willis, Helen Weltz. It was her day off, and Mr. Goodwin and I drove to her place in the country, near Katonah in Westchester County. She was more disturbed even than the other two; she was almost hysterical. With her was a man named Guy Unger, and he too was disturbed. After I had stated my intention to investigate everyone connected with Bagby Answers, Incorporated, he asked to speak with me privately and offered me ten thousand dollars for services which he did not specify. I gathered that he was trying to bribe me to keep my hands off, and I declined the offer.”

“You said all that to Mr. Ashe?”

“Yes, sir. Meanwhile Helen Weltz had spoken privately with Mr. Goodwin, and had told him she wanted to speak with me, but must first get rid of Mr. Unger. She said she would phone my office later. Back in the city, I dared not go to my home, since I was subject to arrest and detention, so Mr. Goodwin and I went to the home of a friend, and Helen Weltz came to us there sometime after midnight. My attack had broken her completely, and she was in terror. She confessed that for years the operation had been used precisely as I had surmised. All of the switchboard operators had been parties to it, including Marie Willis. Their dean, Alice Hart, collected information—”

There was an interruption. Alice Hart, on the aisle, with Bella Velardi next to her, got up and headed for the door, and Bella followed her. Eyes went to them from all directions, including Judge Corbett’s, but nobody said or did anything, and when they were five steps from the door I sang out to the guard, “That’s Alice Hart in front!”

He blocked them off. Judge Corbett called, “Officer, no one is to leave the room!”

The audience stirred and muttered, and some stood up. The judge banged his gavel and demanded order, but he couldn’t very well threaten to have the room cleared. Miss Hart and Miss Velardi gave it up and went back to their seats.

When the room was still the judge spoke to Wolfe. “Go ahead.”

He did so. “Alice Hart collected information from them and gave them cash from time to time, in addition to their salaries. Guy Unger and Clyde Bagby also gave them cash occasionally. The largest single amount ever received by Helen Weltz was fifteen hundred dollars, given her about a year ago by Guy Unger. In three years she received a total of approximately fifteen thousand dollars, not counting her salary. She didn’t know what use was made of the information she passed on to Alice Hart. She wouldn’t admit that she had knowledge that any of it had been used for blackmailing, but she did admit that some of it could have been so used.”

“Do you know,” Judge Corbett asked him, “where Helen Weltz is now?”

“Yes, sir. She is present. I told her that if she came and faced it the District Attorney might show appreciation for her help.”

“Have you anything to add that you told Mr. Ashe this morning?”

“I have, Your Honor. Do you wish me to differentiate clearly between what Helen Weltz told me and my own exposition?”

“No. Anything whatever that you said to Mr. Ashe.”

“I told him that the fact that he had tried to hire me to learn the identity of the Bagby operator who would service his number, and to bribe her to eavesdrop on his line, was one of the points that had caused me to doubt his guilt; that I had questioned whether a man who was reluctant to undertake such a chore for himself would be likely to strangle the life out of a woman and then open a window and yell for the police. Also I asked him about the man who telephoned him to say that if Ashe would meet him at the Bagby office on Sixty-ninth Street he thought they could talk Miss Willis out of it. I asked if it was possible that the voice was Bagby’s, and Ashe said it was quite possible, but if so he had disguised his voice.”

“Had you any evidence that Mr. Bagby made that phone call?”

“No, Your Honor. All I had, besides my assumptions from known facts and my own observations, was what Miss Weltz had told me. One thing she had told me was that Marie Willis had become an imminent threat to the whole conspiracy. She had been ordered by both Unger and Bagby to accept Ashe’s proposal to eavesdrop on his line, and not to tell Mrs. Ashe, whom Miss Willis idolized; and she had refused and announced that she was going to quit. Of course that made her an intolerable peril to everyone concerned. The success and security of the operation hinged on the fact that no victim ever had any reason to suspect that Bagby Answers, Incorporated, was responsible for his distress. It was Bagby who got the information, but it was Unger who used it, and the tormented under the screw could not know where the tormentor had got the screw. So Miss Willis’s rebellion and decision to quit — combined, according to Miss Weltz, with an implied threat to expose the whole business — were a mortal menace to any and all of them, ample provocation for murder to one willing to risk that extreme. I told Mr. Ashe that all this certainly established a reasonable doubt of his guilt, but I also went beyond that and considered briefly the most likely candidate to replace him. Do you wish that too?”

The judge was intent on him. “Yes. Proceed.”

“I told Mr. Ashe that I greatly preferred Mr. Bagby. The mutual alibi of Miss Hart and Miss Velardi might be successfully impeached, but they have it, and besides I have seen and talked with them and was not impressed. I exclude Miss Weltz because when she came to me last evening she had been jolted by consternation into utter candor, or I am a witless gull; and that excludes Mr. Unger too, because Miss Weltz claims certain knowledge that he was on his boat in the Sound all of that evening. As for Mr. Bagby, he had most at stake. He admits that he went to his apartment around the time of the murder, and his apartment is on Seventieth Street, not far from where the murder occurred. I leave the timetable to the police; they are extremely efficient with timetables. Regarding the telephone call, Mr. Ashe said it could have been his voice.”

Wolfe pursed his lips. “I think that’s all — no, I also told Mr. Ashe that this morning I sent a man, Saul Panzer, to keep an eye on Mr. Bagby’s office in Forty-seventh Street, to see that no records are removed or destroyed. I believe that covers it adequately, Your Honor. I would now like to plead to the charge of contempt, both on behalf of Mr. Goodwin and of myself. If I may—”

“No.” Judge Corbett was curt. “You know quite well you have made that charge frivolous by the situation you have created. The charge is dismissed. Are you through with the witness, Mr. Donovan?”

“Yes, Your Honor. No more questions.”

“Mr. Mandelbaum?”

The Assistant District Attorney got up and approached the bench. “Your Honor will appreciate that I find myself in an extraordinary predicament.” He sounded like a man with a major grievance. “I feel that I am entitled to ask for a recess until the afternoon session, to consider the situation and consult with my colleagues. If my request is granted, I also ask that I be given time, before the recess is called, to arrange for five persons in the room to be taken into custody as material witnesses — Alice Hart, Bella Velardi, Helen Weltz, Guy Unger, and Clyde Bagby.”

“Very well.” The judge raised his eyes and his voice. “The five persons just named will come forward. The rest of you will keep your seats and preserve order.”

All of them obeyed but two. Nero Wolfe left the witness chair and stepped down to the floor, and as he did so Robina Keane sprang up from her place on the front bench, ran to him, threw her arms around his neck, and pressed her cheek against his. As I said before, actresses always act, but I admit that was unrehearsed and may have been artless. In any case, I thoroughly approved, since it indicated that the Ashe family would prove to be properly grateful, which after all was the main point.

VI

The thought may have occurred to you, that’s all very nice, and no doubt Ashe sent a handsome check, but after all one reason Wolfe walked out was because he hated to sit against a perfumed woman on a wooden bench waiting for his turn to testify, and he had to do it all over again when the State was ready with its case, against the real murderer. It did look for a while as if he might have to face up to that, but a week before the trial opened he was informed that he wouldn’t be needed, and he wasn’t. They had plenty without him to persuade a jury to bring in a verdict of guilty against Clyde Bagby.

Content

Rex Stout
The Last Witness

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