Rex Stout

Too Many Detectives

I

I am against female detectives on principle. It’s not always and everywhere a tough game, but most of the time it is, with no room for the friendly feelings and the nice little impulses. So a she-dick must have a good thick hide, which is not a skin I’d love to touch; if she hasn’t, she is apt to melt just when a cold eye and hard nerves are called for, and in that case she doesn’t belong.

However, there are times when a principle should take a nap, and that was one of them. Of the seven private detectives present in the room, including Nero Wolfe and me, two were women, seated in a corner, side by side. Theodolinda (Dol) Bonner, about my age, with home-grown long black lashes making a curling canopy for her caramel-colored eyes, had had her own agency as a licensed detective for some years and was doing all right. She might have got her well-cut and well-hung brown tweed suit at Bergdorf’s and possibly the mink jacket too. I had seen her before, but I knew the name of the other one, Sally Colt, only because the members of the little gathering had exchanged names and greetings at the suggestion of Jay Kerr.

I left my chair, crossed to the corner, got upturned eyes, and spoke. “Miss Colt? I don’t know if you caught my name. Archie Goodwin.”

“Yes, of course,” she said. Her skin didn’t look thick, and her voice didn’t sound thick. She was the right age to be my younger sister, but I didn’t particularly need a sister. Her woolen dress and camel’s-hair coat hadn’t come from Bergdorf’s, but I didn’t at all need duds from Bergdorf’s.

I looked at my wrist and back at her. “It’s a quarter past eleven,” I told her, “and there’s no telling how much longer they’ll keep us waiting. I saw a counter downstairs, and I’ll go get coffee for the bunch if you’ll come and help carry. Couldn’t you use some coffee, Miss Bonner?”

Miss Colt looked at Miss Bonner, her employer, and Miss Bonner nodded at her and then told me it was a fine idea. I turned and raised my voice to ask if anyone didn’t want coffee, and got no turndowns, and Sally Colt got up and we left.

I was perfectly willing to drink some coffee. Also the physical aspects and carriage of Miss Colt had given me the impression that there might be some flaw in my attitude toward female detectives, and I wanted to check on it. But chiefly I wanted a little recess from the sight of Nero Wolfe’s mug, which I had never seen quite so sour, and the fact that he had had plenty of provocation didn’t make him any prettier. It was a very sad story. The wiretapping scandals had called attention to various details concerning private detectives, to wit, that there were 590 of them licensed by the secretary of state of the state of New York; that 432 of the 590 were in New York City; that applicants for licenses took no written examination and no formal inquiry was made into their backgrounds; that the State Department had no idea how many operatives were employed by the licensed detectives, since the employees weren’t licensed at all; and a lot of so on and so forth.

So the secretary of state decided to inquire, and all of the 590 were summoned to appear for questioning, specifically about wiretapping activities, if any, and generally about the whole setup. Wolfe and I both had licenses and were therefore both summoned, and of course that was a nuisance, but since it was being shared by the other 588 he might have kept his reaction down to a few dozen growls and grumbles if it hadn’t been for two things. First, the inquiry was being held partly in New York and partly in Albany, and we had been summoned to Albany, and his request to get it changed to New York had been ignored; and second, the only wiretapping operation he had ever had a hand in had added nothing to his glory and damn little to his bank account, and he didn’t want to be reminded of it.

So when, in Wolfe’s old brownstone house, at five o’clock that winter morning, Fritz had taken his breakfast up to his room, and I had gone along to tell him the weather was possible for driving and he wouldn’t have to risk the perils of a train, he was too sunk in gloom even to growl. All the way to Albany, 160 miles and four hours, with him in the back seat of the sedan as usual so he wouldn’t go through the windshield when we crashed, he uttered maybe twenty words, none of them affable, and when I called his attention to the attractions of the new Thruway, which he had not seen before, he shut his eyes. We had arrived at the building in Albany to which we had been summoned at 9:55, five minutes earlier than specified, and had been directed to a room on the third floor and told to wait. There had of course been no chair adequate for his massive bulk. He had glanced around, stood a moment, croaked “Good morning” to those already there, gone to a chair at the far wall and got himself lowered, and sat and sulked for an hour and a quarter.

I must admit that the five others weren’t very festive either. When Jay Kerr decided it ought to be more sociable he did get names passed around, but that was about all, though we were fellow members of ALPDNYS, the Association of Licensed Private Detectives of New York State — except, of course, Sally Colt, who was merely an employed operative. Jay Kerr, a half-bald roly-poly with rimless cheaters, was probably trying to even up a little by making an effort to get people together, since he had helped to get so many apart. He and his boys had tailed more husbands for wives and wives for husbands than any other outfit in the metropolitan area. Harland Ide, tall and bony, gray at the temples, with a long hawk’s nose, dressed like a banker, was well known in the trade too, but with a difference. He was an old pro with a reputation for high standards, and it was said that he had more than once been called in for consultation by the FBI, but don’t quote me. I wasn’t up on the third one, Steve Amsel, having heard only a few casual remarks about him here and there when he got the boot from Larry Bascom a couple of years back and got himself a license and rented a midtown room. Bascom, who runs one of the best agencies in town, had told someone that Amsel wasn’t a lone eagle, he was a lone buzzard. He was small and dark and very neat, with quick black eyes that kept darting around looking for a place to light, and he probably wasn’t as young as he looked. When Sally Colt and I went to get coffee he left his chair and was going to offer to come along, but decided not to.

At the counter downstairs, while we were waiting for the coffee, I told Sally not to worry. “If you and your boss get hooked for a tapping job, just give Mr. Wolfe a ring and he’ll refer it to me and I’ll fix it. No charge. Professional courtesy.”

“Now that’s sweet.” She had her head tilted, for me to have the best angle on the line from under her ear to her chin, which was good. Showing that she was not only an attractive girl, but also kind-hearted, thinking of others. “I’ll match you. When you and your boss get hooked, give Miss Bonner a ring. My boss can lick your boss.”

“That’s the spirit,” I approved. “Loyalty or bust. You’ll get pie in the sky when you die. I suppose your personal specialty is getting the subject in a corner in Peacock Alley and charming it out of him. If you ever feel like practicing on me I might consider it, only I don’t charm very easy.”

She straightened her head to meet eye to eye. Hers were dark blue. “You might be a little tough, at that,” she said. “It might take a full hour to break you wide open.”

The coffee came and interrupted. By the time we got to the elevator I had a return ready, a crusher, but there was company and I had to save it, and back in the room with our colleagues was no good either. She served Nero Wolfe first and I served Dol Bonner. After the others had been attended to I joined the ladies in their corner, but I didn’t want to demolish Sally in front of her boss, so we merely discussed how much longer we might have to wait. That was soon decided — for me, anyhow. There was still coffee in my container when a man entered and announced that Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin were wanted. Wolfe heaved a sigh for all to hear, put his container down on a chair, arose, and headed for the door, and I followed, as a murmur went around. The man led us twenty paces down the hall, opened a door and went in, and fingered to us to enter. The staff of the secretary of state needed training in manners.

It was a medium-sized room with three large windows, all weather-dirty. In the center was a big walnut table surrounded by chairs, and against the walls were a desk and a smaller table and more chairs. A man seated at one end of the big table, with a stack of folders at his right, motioned us to chairs at his left. The one who had brought us closed the door and took a nearby chair against the wall.

The man at the table gave us a look, neither cordial nor hostile. “I guess there’s no question of identity with you,” he told Wolfe, meaning either that he was famous or that no one else was so big and fat, take your pick. He glanced at a folder open before him on the table. “I have your statements here, yours and Mr. Goodwin’s. I thought it would expedite matters to have you in together. I am Albert Hyatt, special deputy of the secretary of state for this inquiry. The proceeding is informal and will remain so unless circumstances arise that seem to call for a record.”

I was taking him in. Not far from forty, one way or the other, he was smooth all over — smooth healthy skin, smooth dark hair, smooth pleasant voice, smooth brisk manner, and smooth gray gabardine. I had of course checked on the two deputies who were handling the inquiry and had reported to Wolfe that this Hyatt was a partner in a big law firm with offices in midtown New York, that he had mixed a good deal in politics, that he had some reputation as a trial man, which meant that he liked to ask people questions, and that he was a bachelor.

He glanced at the folder again. “In April of last year, nineteen-fifty-five, you arranged for a tap on the private telephone of Otis Ross, at his apartment on West Eighty-third Street, Manhattan, New York City. Is that correct?”

“I have so stated,” Wolfe conceded grumpily.

“So you have. Under what circumstances did you make that arrangement?”

Wolfe moved a finger to aim it at the folder. “If that’s my statement before you, and Mr. Goodwin’s, you have it there.”

“Yes, I have your statement, but I’d like to hear it. Please answer the question.”

Wolfe started to make a face, realized it wouldn’t help matters any, and suppressed it. “On April fifth, nineteen-fifty-five, a man called on me at my office, gave his name as Otis Ross, and said he wanted to have his home telephone tapped. I told him I never dealt with marital difficulties. He said that his difficulty wasn’t marital, that he was a widower, that he had diversified business and financial interests and handled them from his home, that he had recently begun to suspect his secretary of double dealing, that he was away frequently for a day or two at a time, that he wanted to find out whether his suspicions of his secretary were warranted, and to that end he wanted his phone tapped.”

Wolfe tightened his lips. He hated to be reminded of that affair, let alone retell it. For a second I thought he was going to balk, but he went on. “I knew, of course, that it was legally permissible for a man to have his own wire tapped, but I declined the job on the ground that I had had no experience in that line. Mr. Goodwin, who was present, as he always is at conversations in my office, interposed to say that he knew of a man who could handle the technical problem. He so interposed for two reasons: first, because of the novelty and diversion a wiretapping operation would offer him personally; and second, because he thinks it necessary to badger me into earning fees by taking jobs which I would prefer to reject. I confess that he is sometimes justified. Would you like him to interpose now for corroboration?”

Hyatt shook his head. “When you’re through. Go ahead.”

“Very well. Mr. Ross put a thousand dollars in cash on my desk — ten hundred-dollar bills — as a retainer and advance for expenses. He said he couldn’t pay by check because his secretary must not know he had hired me, and also, for the same reason, no reports or other matter could be mailed to him; he would call for them at my office or make other arrangements to get them. And I was not to phone him at his home because he suspected that his secretary, on occasion, impersonated him on the telephone. Therefore he wanted reports of all conversations on his wire, since when he himself was presumed to be speaking at his end it might actually be his secretary.”

Wolfe tightened his lips again. He was having to squeeze it out. “Naturally not only had my curiosity been aroused, but also my suspicions. It would have been useless to ask him for documentary evidence of his identity, since documents can be forged or stolen, so I told him that I must be satisfied of his bona fides, and I suggested that Mr. Goodwin might call on him at his home. You don’t need to tell me how witless that suggestion was; I have told myself. He acquiesced at once, having, of course, anticipated it, saying only that it should be at an hour when his secretary would not be on the premises, since he — that is, his secretary — might possibly recognize Mr. Goodwin. So it was arranged. At nine o’clock that evening Mr. Goodwin went to the address on West Eighty-third Street and up to Mr. Ross’s apartment. He gave the maid who admitted him a name — an alias that had been agreed upon — and asked to see Mr. Ross, and was taken by her to the living room, where he found my client seated under a lamp, reading a book and smoking a cigar.”

Wolfe tapped the table with a fingertip. “I designate him ‘my client’ deliberately because I earned the ignominy — confound it, he was my client! After Mr. Goodwin conversed with him ten minutes or so he came home and reported, and it was decided to proceed with the operation. Mr. Goodwin got in touch with the man he knew of that evening, and arrangements were made for the morrow. Do you want the details of that?”

“No, you can skip that.” Hyatt passed a palm over his smooth dark hair. “It’s in Goodwin’s statement.”

“I know very little about it anyway. The tap was made, and Mr. Goodwin had a new toy. He couldn’t spend much time with it, since I need him at the office more or less continually, and most of the listening was done by men provided by the technician. I didn’t even look at the reports, for which Mr. Ross called at my office every day — at an hour when I was busy upstairs, so I didn’t see him. On the fifth day Mr. Goodwin asked him for another thousand dollars, and got it, in cash. That left very little for me after paying the cost of the outside tap and maintaining surveillance. You know what an outside tap is?”

“Certainly. Practically all illegal taps are outside jobs.”

“That may be.” Wolfe upturned a palm. “But I didn’t know this was illegal until the eighth day of the operation. On April thirteenth Mr. Goodwin spent two hours at the place where the tap was being monitored, and heard Mr. Ross himself on the wire in a long conversation. Whether it was actually Mr. Ross or was his secretary impersonating him, it sounded sufficiently unlike our client to arouse Mr. Goodwin’s interest. From reports he had read and passed on to our client he had gathered a good deal of information about Mr. Ross’s interests and activities — for example, that he had recently been appointed chairman of the Charity Funds Investigating Committee by the governor. He left and went to a phone booth, called Mr. Ross, got the same voice, told him he was a newspaper reporter, from the Gazette, made an appointment, went to the West Eighty-third Street address, and saw him and talked with him. He also saw the secretary. Neither of them was our client. I had been flummoxed.”

Wolfe swallowed bile. “Utterly flummoxed,” he said bitterly. “Mr. Goodwin came home and reported to me, and we considered the situation. We decided to wait until the client came that afternoon, at five-thirty as usual, for the daily report — though of course we canceled the tap at once. It seemed likely that there would be no alternative to turning him over to the police, with a full account of my fatuity, but I couldn’t do that until I got my hands on him.”

Wolfe swallowed again. “And he didn’t come. I don’t know why. Whether he had learned somehow either that we had canceled the tap, or that Mr. Goodwin had called on Mr. Ross — but speculation is bootless. He didn’t come. He never did come. For a month most of Mr. Goodwin’s time, for which I pay, was spent in trying to find him, without success, and Mr. Goodwin is a highly competent and ingenious man. Nor could he find the maid who had admitted him to the apartment. After a week had passed with no result I made an appointment to call on Mr. Ross at his home, and did so, and told him all about it. He was ruffled, naturally, but after some discussion he agreed that there was no point in informing the authorities until and unless I found the culprit. Mr. Goodwin was with me, and together we gave him an exhaustive description of our client, but he was unable to identify him. As for the maid, she had been with him only a short time, had left without notice, and he knew nothing about her.”

Wolfe stopped, sighed deep, and let it out. “There it is. After a month Mr. Goodwin could no longer spend all his time on it, since he had other duties, but he has by no means forgotten that client and neither have I. We never will.”

“I suppose not.” Hyatt was smiling. “I may as well tell you, Mr. Wolfe, that personally I credit your story.”

“Yes, sir. You may.”

“I hope so. But of course you realize its weakness. No one but you and Mr. Goodwin ever saw this client of yours. No one else has any knowledge of what passed between you, and you can’t find him and can’t identify him. Frankly, if you should be charged with illegal interception of communications, and if the district attorney proceeded against you and you came to trial, it’s quite possible you would be convicted.”

Wolfe’s brows went up a sixteenth of an inch. “If that’s a threat, what do you suggest? If it’s merely a reproach, I have earned it and much more. Lecture me as you will.”

“You deserve it,” Hyatt agreed. He smiled again. “I would enjoy it, too, but I won’t indulge myself. The fact is, I think I have a surprise for you, and I only wanted to get acquainted with you before I confronted you with it.” His eyes went to the man seated against the wall. “Corwin, there’s a man in room thirty-eight across the hall. Bring him in here.”

Corwin got up and opened the door and went, leaving the door open. The sound came of his heavy footsteps in the hall, then of a door opening, then footsteps again, much fainter, then a brief silence, and then his voice calling, “Mr. Hyatt! Come here!”

It was more of a yelp than a call. It sounded as if somebody had him by the throat. So when Hyatt jumped up and headed for the door I moved too and followed him out and across the hall to an open door down a few steps, and into the room. I was at his elbow when he stopped beside Corwin at the far end of a table to look down at a man on the floor. The man was in no condition to return the look. He was on his back, with his legs nearly straight making a V, and was dressed all right, including a necktie, only the necktie wasn’t under his shirt collar. It was knotted tight around the skin of his neck. Although his face was purple, his eyes popping, and his tongue sticking out, I recognized him at once. Corwin and Hyatt, staring down at him, probably didn’t know I was there, and in a second I wasn’t. Stepping out and back to the other room, where Wolfe sat at the table glowering, I told him, “It’s a surprise all right. Our client’s in there on the floor. Someone tied his necktie too tight and he’s dead.”

II

I had known, of course, that that bozo had sunk a blade right in the center of Wolfe’s self-esteem, but I didn’t realize how deep it had gone until that moment. Evidently when he heard me say our client was in there his ears stopped working. He came up out of his chair and took a step toward the door, then stopped, turned, and glared at me.

“Oh,” he said, coming to. “Dead?”

“Right. Strangled.”

“It would be no satisfaction to see him dead.” He looked at the door, at me, sat down, flattened his palms on the table top, and closed his eyes. After a little he opened them. “Confound that wretch,” he muttered. “Alive he gulled me, and now dead he gets me into heaven knows what. Perhaps if we went... but no. I am merely frantic.” He stood up. “Come.” He started for the door.

I got in front of him. “Hold it. I want to go home too, but you know damn well we can’t scoot.”

“I do indeed. But I want a look at our confreres. Come.”

I stood aside and let him lead the way out and down the hall and into the room we had come from. Entering behind him, I shut the door. The two females were still in their corner, but the three men were gathered in a group, apparently having broken the ice. They all looked around at us, and Jay Kerr sang out, “What, still at large? How is he?”

Wolfe stood and took them in. So did I. At that point there was no particular reason to assume that one of them had tied our client’s necktie, but the client had unquestionably been connected with wiretapping, and they had all been summoned to answer questions about wiretapping. So Wolfe and I took them in. None of them trembled or turned pale or licked his lips or had a fit.

Wolfe spoke. “Ladies and gentlemen, we are fellow members of a professional association, and therefore you might expect me to share with you any information I may have of our common concern. But I have just learned of an event in this building this morning that will cause Mr. Goodwin and me to suffer inconvenience and possibly serious harassment. I have no reason to suppose that any of you were involved in it, but you may have been; and if you weren’t, you would gain nothing by hearing it from me, so I’ll let someone else tell you about it. You won’t have long to wait. Meanwhile, please understand that I mean no offense in staring around at you. I am merely interested in the possibility that one of you is involved. If you—”

“What the hell!” Steve Amsel snorted. His quick black eyes had lit at last. “You got a point?”

“It’s a good script and I like it,” Jay Kerr said. “Go right on.” His voice was thin and high, but that was no sign that he had strangled a man. It was just his voice.

Harland Ide, the banker type, cleared his throat. “If we’re not involved,” he said drily, “we are not concerned. You say in this building this morning? What kind of an event?”

Wolfe shook his head, and stood and stared around. Still no one had a fit. Instead, they talked, and the general feeling seemed to be one of relief that they had been given something to talk about. Steve Amsel suggested that Dol Bonner and Sally Colt should get Wolfe between them and worm it out of him, but the ladies politely declined.

Wolfe was still standing, still taking them in, when the door popped open and Albert Hyatt appeared. Seeing Wolfe, he stopped short and said, “Oh, here you are.” A strand of his smooth hair had got loose. He looked at me. “You too. You came in behind me and saw him, didn’t you?”

I told him yes.

“And left in a hurry?”

“Sure. You had told Mr. Wolfe you had a surprise for him, and I wanted to tell him what it was.”

“You recognized him?”

“I did. The client Mr. Wolfe told you about.”

Wolfe put in, “I would have appreciated the favor of seeing him alive.”

“Perhaps. Of course you have told these people?”

“No, sir.”

“You haven’t?”

“No.”

Hyatt’s eyes went around. “Apparently you’re all here. Jay Kerr?”

“That’s me,” Kerr admitted.

“Harland Ide?”

“Here.”

“Steven Amsel?”

Amsel raised a hand.

“Theodolinda Bonner?”

“I’m here, and I’ve been here more than two hours. I am quite willing to—”

“One moment, Miss Bonner. Sally Colt?”

“Here.”

“All right. The hearing I am conducting on behalf of the secretary of state is temporarily suspended, but you will all stay in this room. A dead body has been discovered in a room on this floor. A man presumably murdered. That is of course a matter for the police, and they will want to see you. I can’t say now when the hearing will be resumed, and you will regard your summonses to appear today as in abeyance but not canceled. Don’t leave this room until the police come.” He turned to go. A voice stopped him.

“Who is the murdered man?” It was Harland Ide.

“The police will tell you. That’s not my province, thank God.”

“Mr. Hyatt.” Dol Bonner’s voice was clear and crisp. She was on her feet. “You are Mr. Hyatt?”

“I am.”

“Miss Colt and I had a very early breakfast, and we’re hungry. We are going to get something to eat.”

Damn plucky, I thought. She must have known that a murderer is supposed to feel empty and want a big meal after killing a man. Hyatt told her she’d have to wait until the police came, ignored a protest from Steve Amsel, and left, closing the door.

They looked around at one another. I was disappointed in them. I had on various occasions been cooped up with an assortment of people on account of a murder, but that was the first time they were exclusively private detectives, and you might have thought they would be a little quicker on the ball than most. No. It would have taken an average group maybe a minute to absorb the shock of Hyatt’s announcement and hop on Wolfe and me, and that was about what it took them. Steve Amsel got to it first. He was about half Wolfe’s size, and, facing him close, he had to tilt his head back to give his quick black eyes a straight line.

“So that was the event. Murder.” He didn’t make it “moider” but something in between. “Okay. Who was it?”

Jay Kerr joined in. “Yeah, Goodwin recognized him. Name him.”

Dol Bonner approached, expectantly, with Sally trailing behind her elbow. Harland Ide said, “If I heard correctly, Mr. Wolfe, he was a client of yours?”

They were hemming Wolfe in, and he backed up a step. “I can’t tell you who he was,” he said, “because I don’t know. Neither does Mr. Goodwin. We don’t know his name.”

Sally Colt started to titter and choked it. “Nuts,” Steve Amsel said, disgusted. “But Goodwin recognized him? This a guessing game you thought up?”

“And he was your client?” Jay Kerr squeaked.

“Really, Mr. Wolfe,” Dol Bonner protested, “aren’t you making a farce of it? You, with your reputation? Do you expect us to believe that you took a man as a client without even learning his name?”

“No.” Wolfe compressed his lips. He released them. “Ladies and gentlemen, I am compelled to ask your forbearance. The silliest blunder I have ever made has found me here today, to my deep chagrin and possibly my undoing. What more do you want? What further ignominy? Mr. Goodwin recognized him, he was my client, I don’t know his name, and before and after the period when I worked for him I know nothing whatever about him. That’s all.”

He marched to a chair against the wall, sat, rested his fists on his thighs, and closed his eyes.

I crossed over to him and lowered my voice. “Any instructions?”

“No.” His eyes stayed shut.

“As you know, Gil Tauber is here in Albany. He certainly knows the cops. Shall I go find a phone and alert him in case we could use some information?”

“No.”

Evidently he didn’t feel like chatting. I went over to the confreres, still in a group, and told them, “If you folks want to discuss our ignominy, don’t mind me. You might even say something helpful.”

“Where’s the body?” Steve Amsel asked.

“Room thirty-eight, down the hall.”

“What killed him?”

“His necktie around his throat. I suppose he could have done it himself, but you know how that is. I prefer not, and he might have been calmed down first with a heavy brass ashtray. There was one there on the floor.”

“You and Wolfe came last this morning,” Harland Ide stated. “Did you see him on the way?”

I grinned at him. “Now look,” I objected. “We’ll get enough of that from the cops. Have a heart. We’re fellow members of a professional association. You would grill me?”

“Not at all,” he said stiffly. “I merely thought that if that room is between here and the elevator, and the door was open, you might have seen him, possibly even spoken with him. I certainly did not intend—”

He was interrupted. The door opened and a man entered, a big broad-shouldered ape with not enough features to fill up his big round face. He shut the door, stood, and counted us, with his lips moving, and then pulled a chair over by the door and sat. He had nothing to say.

Again that bunch of pros disappointed me. They knew quite well that the presence of the dick had no bearing on their freedom to converse, and as for being discreet, one glance at his mug should have made it plain that he lacked the mental machinery to register and report anything he heard, granting he could hear. But they clammed up, and stayed clammed for a good half an hour. Just to see, I made a few tries at starting some discourse, but nothing doing. The ladies had gone back to their corner, and I tried them too, and got the impression that Sally would have been willing to relieve the tension with a little give and take, but as for Dol Bonner, definitely not, and she was the boss.

I had just glanced at my wrist watch and seen ten minutes past one when the door opened again. This time there were two of them. The one in front was a six-footer with a long narrow phiz and grizzled hair. He stopped three paces in, sent his eyes around, and told us, “I’m Leon Groom, chief of detectives of the City of Albany.”

He paused, for applause maybe, but didn’t get it. His facial expression was superior, and so was his tone of voice, which was natural under the circumstances. Not often does a chief of detectives get to address an audience composed exclusively of private eyes, a breed they would like to blackball, and not only that, we were all from the big town, which made us mud.

He resumed. “You have been told that there has been a death by violence in a room on this floor, and you’re being detained for questioning. Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin will come with me. Now. The rest of you will shortly be taken, one at a time, to view the body.” He aimed a thumb at his companion “This man will ask you what kind of sandwiches you want and they’ll be brought to you. On the City of Albany. You’re Theodolinda Bonner?”

“Yes.”

“A policewoman will be here before long, in case a search of your persons is required.”

“With consent,” Steve Amsel said offensively.

“Certainly with consent. Nero Wolfe? Come along, you and Archie Goodwin.”

Wolfe got up and headed for the door, saying, as he passed me, “Come, Archie.” I was on his payroll, and he wasn’t going to have other people giving me orders.

III

There were three men in the hall, one in his own clothes, looking important, and two in uniform guarding an empty meat basket near the door of room thirty-eight, looking bored. Inside the room were three more — scientists, two with fingerprint outfits and one with a camera. They took time out to look as Groom, having told us to touch nothing, convoyed Wolfe around the table to the corpse. Except that its legs had been straightened and its necktie removed, it hadn’t changed much. Wolfe frowned down at it.

Groom asked him, “Do you identify him?”

“No,” Wolfe declared. “I don’t know who he is. I do, however, recognize him as a man I saw one day last April when he called on me, gave his name as Otis Ross, and engaged my services. I learned later that he was not Otis Ross — at least not the Otis Ross he had claimed to be. Mr. Goodwin, who saw him not once but nine times, has already stated that he is that man.”

“I know. Is that still your opinion, Goodwin?”

“Not an opinion.” If Wolfe could correct his choice of words so could I. “Conviction. He’s that man — or was.”

“Then we can — oh, by the way.” He turned to the table, pointed to an object on it, and asked one of the scientists, “Are you through with this ashtray, Walsh?”

“All done, Captain. Got it.”

“Then you can help a little, Goodwin, if you don’t mind. Just an experiment. Take it and hold it the way you would to hit a man on the head with it. Just naturally, without thinking.”

“Sure,” I said, and reached to get it. Jiggling it, I would have said at least a pound and probably more. “There would be two ways, both good. Either take it by the rim, like this, that would be best if you had room and time to swing” — I swung to show him — “or, with a big mitt and long fingers like mine, just cup it, like this, and you could either swing or hook or jab.” I performed a healthy jab, then transferred the tray to my left hand, got out my handkerchief with my right, and started wiping the brass with plenty of pressure.

“Not so good,” Groom said. “Your slapstick may go over big down where you belong, but here in the City of Albany we don’t appreciate it. It won’t buy you a thing.”

“What would?” I demanded. “What did you want me to do, refuse to touch it?” I finished the rubbing and put the tray back on the table.

“Come along,” he said, and moved. We followed him out and down the hall nearly to the end, where he opened a door and stood aside for us to pass. This was a corner room with windows on two sides, and it sported a couple of rugs. Seated at a desk with a window behind him was Albert Hyatt, talking on the phone. A man with big ears and a scar on his cheek came toward us and asked Groom how he wanted the chairs. So Wolfe and I would face the window, naturally. By the time Hyatt finished on the phone we were disposed, with Wolfe and me side by side and the man with ears at a little table nearby, with a notebook in front of him and a pen ready.

Hyatt stood up and invited Groom to come and take the desk, and Groom said no thanks and kept his chair on this side of it, facing us. He focused on Wolfe. “Mr. Hyatt has let me read your statement. Your statement to the secretary of state regarding wiretapping. He has also told me what you said to him this morning — merely a repetition of parts of the statement. Do you now want to change it?”

“No, sir.”

“Do you want to add anything to it?”

“That depends. If I am under suspicion of murder, or if Mr. Goodwin is, I wish to add something. Are we under suspicion?”

“Put it this way. You’re not charged. You’re being held for questioning, by police authority, to learn if you have any knowledge of the murder of a man with whom you admit you have been associated, and against whom you had a grievance. You did have a grievance?”

“I did indeed. I wish to make a further statement.”

“Go ahead.”

“I was summoned by the secretary of state to appear at this address in Albany at ten o’clock this morning. At six o’clock this morning I left my house in New York, in my car, with Mr. Goodwin driving. We stopped once en route, to eat something we had with us, and for coffee. We arrived at this address shortly before ten o’clock and entered the building, were directed to room forty-two on the third floor, went straight there, speaking to no one, and I remained there until I was taken to see Mr. Hyatt. Mr. Goodwin was out of the room briefly, with Miss Sally Colt, to go for coffee. I have not at any time seen or spoken to — what am I to call that creature?”

“The murdered man?”

“Yes.”

“Call him your client.”

“I prefer not to, in this context. I’ve had other clients. With regard to the man who called on me last April and told me he was Otis Ross, and hired me to do a job as described in my statement to the secretary of state, I have never seen him or had any communication with him, or known anything of his whereabouts, since April thirteenth, nineteen-fifty-five. My next knowledge of him was when, after leaving the room with Mr. Hyatt this morning, Mr. Goodwin returned almost immediately to tell me that he was lying dead in a nearby room. My next sight of him was a few minutes ago, when I was taken to that room and saw him dead. I had not known that he was on the premises. It is inane to pile up negatives. I have no knowledge whatever of his death or of his movements prior to his death. Beyond the facts given in my statement to the secretary of state, I have no knowledge of any nature that might be of help in the investigation of this murder.”

Wolfe considered a moment. “There, Mr. Groom. I don’t see what good can come of questions, but certainly you can try.”

“Yeah, I can always try.” Groom looked at me, and I thought it was my turn, but he went back to Wolfe. “You say you entered this building this morning shortly before ten o’clock. How much before?”

“Of my own knowledge, I don’t know. I don’t carry a watch. But as we entered Mr. Goodwin remarked that it was five minutes to ten. He claims that he never allows his watch to be more than thirty seconds off.”

“What time was it when you got to room forty-two?”

“I don’t know. I can only estimate. I would say that it took us four minutes, to the elevator, up to the third floor, and down the hall to the room. That would make it one minute to ten.”

“What if one or more of the others say that you arrived in the room about a quarter past ten?”

Wolfe eyed him. “Mr. Groom. That question is pointless and you know it. As a menace it is puerile. As a mere hypothesis it is flippant. And if one of them does say that you know how many issues it will raise, including his candor. Or more than one — even all of them. If you want your question answered as you put it, either his timepiece was wrong or his memory is at fault or he lies.”

“Yeah.” Apparently Groom was hard to rile. He shifted to me. “Naturally you corroborate everything Wolfe has said. Do you?”

“Naturally,” I told him.

“Yes or no. Do you?”

“Yes.”

“Including the time of your arrival at this building?”

“Yes. Nine-fifty-five.”

He got up and stepped to me. “Let’s see your watch.”

I twisted my arm around and pushed the shirt cuff back, and he took a look, then looked at his own, then back at mine. He told the man at the table, “Put it that I found Goodwin’s watch twenty seconds slow,” and returned to his chair.

“You may wonder,” he said, “why I didn’t take you two separately. Because it would have been a waste of time. From what I know of your reputations and records and how you work, I figured that if you had fixed up a story the chance of my getting you to cross was so slim that it wasn’t worth the trouble. Also Mr. Hyatt wanted to go to lunch, and I wanted him with us, and you might as well know why.” He turned. “Will you tell them what you told me, Mr. Hyatt?”

Hyatt’s strand of hair was back in place again. He was leaning forward with his elbows on the desk. “You mean about this morning?” he asked Groom.

“Yes. Just that.”

“Well, I got here early, a little before nine o’clock. One of my staff, Tom Frazer, was already here. We were here at this desk together, going over papers, getting ready for those who were to appear today, when the girl phoned me that a man wanted to see me about something that he said was urgent and confidential, he wouldn’t say what. He gave the name of Donahue, which meant nothing to me. I didn’t want him interrupting in here, so I went out front to get rid of him and found him on a bench in the hall. He wouldn’t talk in the hall, so I took him to the nearest empty room, room thirty-eight. He was a middle-aged man, about my height, brown hair and eyes—”

“They’ve seen him,” Groom put in.

“Oh.” Hyatt was fussed. “So they have. He said his name was William A. Donahue and he wanted to make a deal. He said he knew who was due to appear before me today, and that Nero Wolfe was one of them, and that he had got cold feet and wanted to get from under. His terms. Must I give the whole conversation, Captain? We talked for some twenty minutes.”

“The substance will do. The main points.”

“There was only one main point, actually. He floundered around a good deal, but this was the gist of it. In connection with a venture he was engaged in, he didn’t say what, he had procured some wiretapping operations, one of them through Nero Wolfe, for which he had paid Wolfe two thousand dollars. When the scandal started — he called it the big stink — and Broady was arrested and indicted, he had decided New York was too hot for him and had left the state. When he learned recently that this inquiry was to be held by the secretary of state, and that all private detectives were to be questioned, he had become alarmed, particularly on account of Nero Wolfe. Wolfe had abruptly called off the tap he had handled for him, and they had had a row, and Wolfe had it in for him. He knew how tricky Wolfe was, and now that he had been summoned — am I confusing you with my pronouns?”

He was looking at Wolfe, so Wolfe replied. “Not at all. Go on.”

“—And now that Wolfe had been summoned, he knew he would try to wriggle out of it somehow or other, and that he — Donahue — would get hooked for something worse than procurement of illegal wiretapping. So he wanted to make a deal with me. If I would use my influence with the district attorney to go easy with him on the wiretapping charges, he would give me a full account of the operation, under oath, and would testify in court as required. I asked him if Wolfe had known the tap was illegal, and he said yes. I asked him if Donahue was his real name, and if he had given that name to Wolfe, and he said yes. I asked him for further information about himself, and he wouldn’t give me any until and unless I agreed to his proposal — except one item, that in New York he had lived at the Hotel Marbury. I told him I couldn’t make such a deal offhand, I’d have to think it over a little, and told him to wait there in the room and left him there, and came back to this room and—”

“What time was it then?” Groom asked.

“It was half past nine, a minute or two after. I don’t keep my watch as close to the dot as Goodwin does, but it’s fairly accurate.” He looked at his wrist. “I’ve got one-forty-two.”

“You’re three minutes fast.”

“Then it was about exactly nine-thirty when I returned to this room.” He went back to Wolfe. “I looked, of course, to see how much time I had. The hearing was supposed to begin at ten. I thought it was important enough to consult the secretary of state about it, so I called his office, but was told that he was in New York for a conference and his secretary didn’t know where I could reach him at that hour. I phoned the office of the district attorney of New York County and got Assistant DA Lambert, a friend of mine, and told him I wanted an emergency police report on a William A. Donahue who had lived last spring at the Hotel Marbury, as quickly as possible. At a quarter past ten I had had no word, and I tried to get the executive deputy secretary of state on the wire, but he wasn’t in his office. I told Tom Frazer all about it, and—”

Groom stopped him. “I think that’ll do. You didn’t go back to room thirty-eight to see Donahue.”

“No. I had told him it would take an hour or more, possibly two. When no report had come from New York at eleven o’clock — none has come yet — I decided to get Wolfe and Donahue face to face and see what happened, and I went to the hearing room and sent for Wolfe and Goodwin.” Hyatt looked at his watch. “I’m late for a lunch appointment.”

“Yeah, I know.” Groom looked at Wolfe. “You want to ask Mr. Hyatt anything?”

Wolfe had his legs crossed, as usual when he was on a chair too small for him and without arms. He uncrossed them and put his palms on his knees. “Just a question or two. You will remember, Mr. Hyatt, that you told me that you personally credited my story. Why did you tell me that?”

“Because I meant it.”

“You had already talked with this Donahue.”

“Yes, but I hadn’t believed him. I know something of your record and standing, and I knew nothing whatever of his. On the simple issue of veracity I preferred you, at least tentatively.”

“Do you still credit my story?”

“Well...” Hyatt looked at Groom and back at Wolfe. “Under the present circumstances I’m afraid my personal opinion is neither relevant nor cogent.”

“I suppose not. One other thing. This Donahue said he had procured some wiretapping operations. Plural. Did he mention any names other than mine?”

“Yes, he mentioned others, but he concentrated on you throughout the conversation.”

“What other names did he mention?”

“Just a minute,” Groom cut in. “I don’t think that’s called for. We won’t keep you any longer, Mr. Hyatt.”

“I want to know,” Wolfe insisted, “if that man mentioned the names of any of the others summoned here today.”

He had to keep on wanting. Hyatt looked at Groom, Groom shook his head, and Hyatt got up and went. Wolfe crossed his legs again, and also his arms, but the props weren’t right. He never was as impressive when he was on a chair that allowed portions of his fundament to lap over at the edges of the seat. When the door had closed behind the special deputy of the secretary of state, Groom spoke. “I wanted you to hear that direct from Mr. Hyatt. It’s neater that way. Do you want to change your statement now? Or add to it? Of course Donahue’s dead, but we’ve got his track and we know where to dig. You know how that is.”

“Yes, I know.” Wolfe grunted “I like to talk, Mr. Groom, but not to no purpose. As for changing my statement, I might improve its diction or its punctuation, but materially, no. As for adding to it, I might make a few footnotes, as for instance that that man lied when he told Mr. Hyatt that he had given me his name as Donahue, and that I knew that the tap was illegal, but they are already implicit in the statement. I do have a request to make. I now have his name, at least the name he gave Mr. Hyatt, and the name of the hotel where he lived at the time he called on me. I can be of no use to you here. I have absolutely nothing for you; and if I am permitted to return to New York at once I shall devote all my talents and resources to the exposure of his background, his activities, his connections with—”

He stopped because Groom had turned his head. Groom had turned his head because the door had opened and a man was approaching, a colleague in uniform. The cop came to him, said, “For you, Captain,” and handed him a folded paper. Groom unfolded the paper, gave it a look, taking his time, told the cop to stick around, glanced at the paper again, and lifted his eyes to Wolfe and me.

“This is a warrant,” he said, “for your arrest as material witnesses in a murder case. I hereby serve it. Do you want to see it?”

I turned my head to Wolfe. I can testify that through a full ten-second silence his lids didn’t blink once. Then he spoke, but all he said was, “No.”

“I do,” I said, and put out a hand, and Groom handed it over. It looked kosher, and even had our names spelled right. The signature of the judge looked like Bymnyomr. “I guess it’s real,” I told Wolfe.

He was regarding Groom. “I hardly know,” he said icily, “the word to use. High-handed? Bumptious? Headstrong?”

“You’re not in New York now, Wolfe.” Groom was trying not to show how much he liked himself. “This is the City of Albany. I’ll ask you once more, do you want to change your statement or add to it?”

“You actually mean to serve this thing?”

“I have served it. You’re under arrest.”

Wolfe turned to me. “What’s Mr. Parker’s number?”

“Eastwood six two-six-oh-five.”

He arose, circled around the desk to the chair Hyatt had vacated, sat, and took the phone from the cradle. Groom got to his feet, took a step, stopped, stood, and stuck his hands in his pockets. Wolfe took the phone. “A New York City call, please. Eastwood six two-six-oh-five.”

IV

Four hours later, at six o’clock, we were still in the coop. Of course I had been behind bars before, but never together with Wolfe. For him it was a first, since I had known him.

Actually we weren’t behind bars, or at least none were visible. It was a detention room at police headquarters, and wasn’t bad at all, except that it smelled like a hospital in the middle of the Jersey marshes and the chairs were greasy. There was even a private john in a closet in a corner. A cop was there with us, presumably to see that we didn’t cheat the chair by making a suicide pact and carrying it out. When I told him an evening paper would be worth a buck to us he opened the door and yelled down the hall to someone, sticking to his post. Taking no chances.

Soon after our incarceration we had been told we could send out for grub, and I had ordered two corned-beef sandwiches on white toast and a quart of milk. Wolfe, who had swallowed nothing but coffee since ten o’clock, declined the offer. Whether he was staging a hunger strike or was just too mad to eat, I couldn’t say. When my corned beef on white toast arrived it turned out to be ham on rye, and the ham was only so-so, but the milk was okay.

Not only was Wolfe not eating in captivity, also he wasn’t talking. Keeping his hat on, he sat on his overcoat spread on an old wooden bench against the wall, mostly leaning back with his eyes closed and his fingers interlaced at the summit of his central mound. Looking at him, and I had seen a lot of him, I would say that instead of calming down he kept getting madder. His only real try at communication, after a couple of hours had passed, was when he opened his eyes and told me he wanted my true opinion about something. I said he could have my true opinion about everything, and apparently we’d have plenty of time for it.

He grunted. “I foresee that in the future, if you and I continue to be associated, as we probably shall, this episode will be frequently mentioned, in one context or another. Do you agree?”

“I do. Provided it’s not our last episode. You’re assuming we’ll have a future.”

“Pfui. We’ll see to that. Answer this. If you had not been seduced by your itch to have a hand in a wiretapping operation and to observe the procedure and technique, do you think I would have undertaken that job for that man? I’m merely asking for your opinion.”

“Well, you won’t get it.” I stood looking down at him. “If I say no, the future mentions would be too one-sided. If I say yes, it would pile one more provocation on the load you’re already carrying, and it might be too much for you. You can’t think us out of this if you’re boiling too high to think. So I’ll tell you what I’ll do: I’ll split it.”

“Split what?”

“The blame. Fifty-fifty. We both ought to be larruped. But not fried.”

“We’ll leave it to the future,” he growled, and shut his eyes on me.

At six o’clock I was deep in the second section of the evening paper, reading how to repair nylon brassieres that had got torn somehow, having covered other matters, when the door was flung open. Our guard whirled on his heels, ready to repel an attempt at armed rescue, but it was only a cop conducting a visitor. The visitor, a red-faced guy in a brown cashmere overcoat, stopped for a glance around and then came on and put out a hand.

“Mr. Wolfe? I’m Stanley Rogers. I’m terribly sorry. I suppose you thought I’d fallen in a hole and pulled the hole in, but Nat Parker didn’t get me until nearly three o’clock, and the judge was in the middle of a case and I had to pull some strings. We’re not being very hospitable up here, are we? This is Mr. Goodwin? It’s a pleasure.” He offered a hand, and I took it. “I asked the judge to make the bail figure five thousand, but he wouldn’t settle for less than twenty. Twenty thousand each. Anyhow, you’re free men, as I have no doubt you deserve to be, only you can’t leave the jurisdiction without permission of the court. I’ve reserved a room for you at the Latham Hotel, but of course it can be canceled if you want to make other arrangements.”

He had some papers for us to sign. He said that Parker, phoning from New York, had told him to do everything possible for us, and he would cancel a dinner appointment if we wanted him, but Wolfe said that at the moment all he wanted was to get out of there and find something to eat. One offer we took. He had his car out front, and after telling the guard good-by, no tip, and going to an office to check out and claim some personal articles we had been relieved of, he led us out to it and drove us to the garage where we had left the sedan. With Wolfe in back again, I drove to the hotel, got the bags from the trunk, and turned the car over to a lackey.

About the bags, I could have told Wolfe I had told him so, but decided he was in no shape for it. The evening before, pigheaded as usual, he had refused to admit the possibility of spending a night away from home and insisted that we would need no luggage, but I had packed his bag myself, with some help from Fritz, on the theory that man proposes but some other specimen may dispose. Now, as the bellboy followed us into room 902 and put the bags on the rack, it was a fine opportunity for a casual cutting remark, but I thought it advisable to save it.

His overcoat hung in the closet, along with mine, Wolfe removed his coat, vest, tie, and shirt, and went to the bathroom and washed his hands and face. Emerging, he put on his dressing gown, a yellow wool number with fine black stripes, got his slippers, sat on a chair to take off his shoes, and told me to phone room service to send up a menu. I reminded him that Rogers had told us the Latham grub was only fair and that the best restaurant in town was only two blocks away.

“I’m not interested,” he declared. “I have no appetite, and will have no palate. I eat because I must. You know quite well I can’t work on an empty stomach.”

So he was going to work.

I don’t remember a gloomier meal. The food was perfectly edible — oysters, consommé, roast beef, creamed potatoes, broccoli, salad, apple pie with cheese, coffee — and we cleaned it up, but the atmosphere had no sparkle. Though Wolfe never talks business at the table, he likes to talk while eating, about anything and everything but business, and nearly always does. That time he didn’t utter a single word from beginning to end, and I made no effort to start him. Finishing his second cup of coffee, he pushed his chair back and muttered at me, “What time is it?”

I looked. “Twenty after eight.”

“Well.” He pulled air in through his mouth all the way down to the roast beef, and let it out through his nose. “I don’t know if you realize the pickle I’m in.”

“The pickle is split too. Fifty-fifty.”

“Only to a point. The jeopardy, yes, but I have a special difficulty. We’re going to be held here until this case is solved. I can hurry our release only by solving it, but I don’t want to. Certainly people cannot be permitted to murder with impunity, but I would prefer to have no hand in exposing the man who killed that abominable creature. What am I to do?”

I waved a hand. “That’s easy. Sit it out. This room isn’t so bad. You can go to sessions of the state legislature when it meets, and get books from the library, and I can teach Sally Colt things if she’s hung up here too. If it drags on into months, as it probably will if that Groom is the best they’ve got, we can rent a little apartment and send for Fritz—”

“Shut up.”

“Yes, sir. Or perhaps Sally and I could solve it without you. I don’t feel as grateful to the bird who did it as you seem to. If—”

“Bosh. I am not grateful. I wanted to see him again alive. Very well. As between the intolerable and the merely distasteful, I must choose the latter. I presume the others are also being held in the jurisdiction.”

“If you mean our confreres, sure they are. Maybe not arrested like us, but held, certainly. Groom’s not sold on us enough to let them go, and anyway Hyatt wants them for his hearing.”

He nodded. “I have to see them. Some of them may be in this hotel. Find them and bring them here.”

“Now?”

“Yes.”

“Have you any suggestions?”

“No. My mind’s not in order. I’ll try to get it arranged by the time you get them.”

That had happened before, many times. He knew that my only alternatives were either to protest that he was biting off more than I could chew, or to take it as a compliment that if he wanted a miracle passed all he had to do was snap his fingers at me; and also he knew which I would pick.

“Okay,” I told him. “Then will you please phone room service to come and get the dishes? And you might as well phone Fritz so he won’t start worrying. I’ve got some thinking to do.”

I went to a window, parted the curtains, put the blind up, and stood looking down at the street by night. It wasn’t the first time I had been given the chore of setting up a party, but it had never been with a gang of private dicks, and they would need something special. Brilliant ideas started coming. Tell them Wolfe thought they would be interested to hear what Hyatt had asked him at the hearing. Tell them Wolfe had an idea for getting all of us released from the jurisdiction and wanted to consult with them. Tell them Wolfe had certain information about the murdered man which he had not given to the police and wanted to discuss it. Tell them that Wolfe thought it was important to fix the time of arrival of each of us at room 42 and wanted us to get together on it. And so on, up to a dozen or so. I rattled them around in my skull. The idea was to get one that would work with all of them.

Suddenly I remembered that Wolfe had once told me that the best way to choose among an assortment of ideas was to take the simplest. I pulled the blind down and turned. He had just finished talking to Fritz and was lowering himself into the chair with arms, which was almost wide enough. I asked him, “You want them together, don’t you?”

He said yes.

“How soon?”

“Oh... twenty minutes. Half an hour.”

I went and sat on the edge of one of the beds, lifted the phone, and told the girl I understood Mr. Harland Ide was registered and would she please ring his room. In two moments his bass, a little hoarse, told me hello.

“Mr. Harland Ide?”

“Speaking.”

“This is Archie Goodwin. I’m calling for Mr. Wolfe. We’re in room nine-oh-two. He would like very much to consult you about something, not on the phone. Right now he’s resting. If you’ll do him the favor of dropping in at room nine-oh-two, say in half an hour, he’ll appreciate it very much. Say nine o’clock. We hope you will.”

A brief silence. “Could you give me an idea?”

“Better not, on the phone.”

A slightly longer silence. “All right, I’ll be there.”

The simplest is the best. Of course their being private detectives was a big advantage. Tell any private detective you want to discuss something that is too hot for the phone, and he’ll swim a river to get to you.

They weren’t all quite as simple as Ide. Steve Amsel wasn’t registered at the Latham, but I got him at another hotel and sold him on the trip. Jay Kerr was at the Latham, but his line was busy the first two tries and I got him last. Dol Bonner and Sally Colt were on our floor, room 917, and I wished I had gone down the hall and dined with them instead of putting up with a dummy. At first Dol Bonner didn’t care for the idea, but when I told her the others were coming she said we could expect her. Having got Kerr on the third try, I hung up and turned to Wolfe. “All set. Want anyone else? Groom? Hyatt? The secretary of state?”

“What time is it?”

“Nine minutes to nine.”

“Confound it, I must dress.” He arose and started peeling the dressing gown. He wasn’t going to receive females in negligee, especially in a hotel room.

V

It was a good-sized room and wasn’t too crowded with seven people, or, counting Wolfe as two, eight. I had phoned down a rush order for four more chairs, so no one had to perch on a bed. Dol Bonner and Sally, still sticking close, were over by the wall. Steve Amsel, next to them, had turned his chair around and folded his arms on top of its back, with his chin resting on his wrist. He was still very neat, and his black eyes were still quick. Harland Ide looked tired, but still dignified enough for a banker. Jay Kerr, the half-bald roly-poly, was the last one to show. He brought along two clues that were spotted immediately by my highly trained powers of observation: a flushed face and a breath.

“Well well!” he exclaimed at sight of us. “A party, huh? You didn’t tell me, Archie. Well well!”

“Siddown and listen,” Amsel commanded him. “We waited for you. Wolfe wants to sing a song.”

“That I’d like to hear,” Kerr said cordially, and sat.

Wolfe’s eyes went around. “I think the best way to begin,” he said, “is to read you the statement I submitted to the secretary of state.” He took a document from his pocket and unfolded it. “It’s rather long, but I want you to know my position. If you’ll permit me.”

“Sure,” Kerr told him. “Shoot.”

He started reading. It took a full ten minutes, but he held his audience. I must admit I felt for him. What he would have liked to do with that affair was scrap it and try to forget it, but, having already been compelled to record it in a sworn statement and to recite it to Hyatt, he now had to spill it again to a collection of his fellow members of a professional association. It must have been about the bitterest pill he ever had to take, but he got it down. When he got to the end he refolded it and handed it to me.

He rested his elbows on the chair arms and matched his fingertips. “So this morning I couldn’t tell you the name of the murdered man. I spoke then of my ignominy, and I won’t dwell on it. Do any of you want anything in the statement clarified? Any questions?”

Apparently nobody had any. Wolfe resumed, “Mr. Goodwin told you on the phone that I wanted to consult you about something. It is this. We are all involved in an investigation of a murder and are under restraint. Mr. Goodwin and I have been arrested as material witnesses and released on bail. I don’t know if any of you have been arrested, but certainly your movements have been restricted. I think it will be to our common advantage to pool our information, discuss it, and decide what can be done with it. We are all trained and experienced investigators.”

Amsel started to speak, but Wolfe raised a hand. “If you please. Before you comment, let me say that neither Mr. Goodwin nor I had anything to do with that man’s death, nor have we any knowledge of it. Possibly that is true of all of you. If so, the worth of my suggestion is manifest; we would be nincompoops not to share our information and join our wits. If not, if one of you killed him or had a hand in it, he certainly won’t tell us so, and probably he will be reluctant to give us any information at all; but obviously it would be to the interest of the rest of us to merge our knowledge and our resources. Don’t you agree?”

For the first time they exchanged glances. Jay Kerr said, “Pretty neat. Well well! Last one in is a monkey.”

“You put it good,” Amsel declared. “If I don’t play I’m it.”

“I have a question.” It was Harland Ide. “Why were you and Goodwin arrested and put under bail?”

“Because,” Wolfe told him, “that man — I presume you all know by now that his name was Donahue — because he told Mr. Hyatt a story this morning which conflicted with my statement. He said that he had given me his name as Donahue and that I knew the tap was illegal.”

“Ouch,” Kerr said. “No wonder you want us to open up.”

“I have opened up, Mr. Kerr. I’ll answer any questions you care to ask. And I assure you I’m not impelled by any fear of ultimate disaster, either for Mr. Goodwin or for myself. I merely want to go home.”

Dol Bonner spoke up. “It seems to me,” she said, “that the only question is whether it will do any good or not. It can’t do any harm. We have already given the police all the information we have, at least I have and Miss Colt has, and tomorrow they’ll be at us again.” She directed the caramel-colored eyes at Wolfe. “What good will it do?”

He frowned at her. Sometimes he honestly tries to speak to a woman without frowning at her, but he seldom makes it. “Possibly none, madam. But among us we pretend to a considerable batch of gumption, and we may even have it. If so, we might as well use it, since our only alternative is to sit and brood, hoping that Mr. Groom has either brains or luck. Have you people compared notes at all?”

He got three noes and two headshakes.

“Then it’s about time. You don’t even know whether one or more of you can safely be eliminated. Assuming that one of us killed him, do you know what the time limits are?... You don’t. Evidently you haven’t had the privilege, as I have, of hearing Mr. Hyatt’s story. The murder was committed between nine-thirty, when Mr. Hyatt left Donahue alone in the room, and ten o’clock, when Mr. Goodwin and I arrived. Assuming that one of us killed him — an assumption we must accept unless we find an excuse for discarding it. Therefore if one or more of you can establish that you arrived in room forty-two before nine-thirty, and stayed there, you’re out of it. Can you?”

“Not me,” Dol Bonner said. “Miss Colt and I were there first, at twenty minutes to ten. About five minutes later Mr. Ide came, and in another four or five minutes Mr. Amsel. Next was Mr. Kerr, and you and Mr. Goodwin came last, just before ten o’clock. I resented it when you were called in because we got there first and I thought we should be called first.”

“Then we’re still intact. When I said the limits are nine-thirty and ten o’clock I ignored the possibility that when Mr. Goodwin and Miss Colt went for coffee one of them, or both, stopped in at room thirty-eight and killed him. Does anyone want to explore it?”

Sally Colt started to titter. It was a flaw in her, but I made allowances because it could have been the first time she had been at close quarters with a murder, and naturally she was strung tight. I came to the rescue. “Cross it off. I didn’t, she didn’t, and we didn’t.”

“Miss Colt?”

“Don’t be silly!” Her voice was louder than necessary, and she lowered it. “No. Mr. Goodwin is correct.”

“Good. He often is.” Wolfe shifted in his chair. His rump had taken a lot of punishment since six o’clock that morning. “Presumably the police theory is that one of us, going along the hall on arrival, caught sight of Donahue, who could have opened the door of the room to look out, and proceeded to finish him. Under that theory we’re at the crux. There couldn’t have been time for a prolonged conversation unless the murderer entered the building much earlier than he arrived at room forty-two, and in that case the police will probably get him without any help from us. The point is that in all probability the mere sight of Donahue on those premises was enough to make the murderer resolve on his death forthwith. Do any of you qualify? I have reported to you fully and candidly on my association with that man. Did any of you have dealings with him?”

“I did,” Dol Bonner said.

“Yes, Miss Bonner? Will you elaborate?”

“Certainly. I’ve told the police, so why not you?” There was an edge of scorn on her voice, either for Wolfe or for the others, no telling. “First, though, I left something out, not deliberately. When Miss Colt and I got to the third floor of that building I went to the women’s room and she went on to room forty-two. It was twenty minutes to ten when I joined her there. The police know that too, of course. Also I heard a police detective telling a man — I think it was the district attorney — that all of us had recognized the body.”

“Indeed.” Wolfe’s frown was about gone. “All of you?”

“That’s what he said.” Her eyes went to Ide, to Amsel, to Kerr, and back to Wolfe. “About my dealings with him, they were almost identical with yours. He came to my office last April and gave his name as Alan Samuels, and wanted me to arrange for a wiretap on the telephone at his home — a house in the Bronx — with exactly the same arrangement he made with you. I didn’t have an Archie Goodwin to nudge me on, but I thought it wouldn’t hurt any for me to learn something about wiretapping if I could do it legitimately, and I agreed to handle it if he would establish his identity. He showed me some papers — a driver’s license and some letters — but I told him that wasn’t enough.”

She stopped to swallow. Evidently she wasn’t any prouder of her performance than Wolfe was of his. “He said he had an account in a bank around the corner — my office is at Fiftieth and Madison — and asked me to go there with him. I had an appointment and couldn’t leave the office, so I asked Miss Colt to go.” She turned. “Sally, that’s your part.”

Sally wasn’t looking very gay. “You want me to tell it?”

Dol Bonner said yes, and Sally gave Wolfe her eyes. From my angle, in the electric light, the blue in them didn’t show; they looked almost as black as Amsel’s. “Miss Bonner told me what was required,” she said, “and I went with him around the corner to the Madison Avenue branch of the Continental Trust Company. He took me through the gate in the railing to where there were four men at desks, and went to one of the desks. There was a little stand on the desk with a name on it, Frederick Poggett. The client called the man at the desk Mr. Poggett, and shook hands with him, and told him that in connection with a business transaction he needed to establish his identity, and would Mr. Poggett please identify him. Mr. Poggett said of course, and turned to me and said, ‘This gentleman is Mr. Samuels, a customer of our bank.’ I said, ‘Alan Samuels?’ and he said yes, and then told the client that if it was a matter of credit he would be glad to verify his balance. The client said that wouldn’t be necessary, and we left. We went back to the office and I reported to Miss Bonner.”

She stopped and looked at Dol Bonner, who nodded and took the ball. “In my case, Mr. Wolfe, it wasn’t his secretary he suspected, it was his brother who was living in his house, but that’s just a detail. He paid me in cash, a thousand dollars, and I found out how to arrange for the tap and did so. He was to come to the office at five o’clock every day for the report. The morning after he had got the fifth report he phoned to say that he didn’t need the tap any longer and asked if he owed me anything. I told him yes, another five hundred dollars, and in an hour or so he came in and paid it.”

She made a little gesture. “I never did suspect him. I still say there was no reason to. But when all the publicity about wiretapping started, and then when we were told to report under oath any and all connections we had had with wiretapping, I went to the bank and spoke with Mr. Poggett, taking Miss Colt with me. He remembered the incident, of course. After going to look at the records, he told me that Alan Samuels had opened a checking account at the bank on February eighteenth, giving a business address on Lexington Avenue. He, Poggett, had attended to it. He wouldn’t tell me either the amount or the references Samuels had given, but he did tell me that the balance had been withdrawn, closing the account, on April twentieth, which was the day after Samuels had canceled the tap, and I did get the Lexington Avenue address out of him. Of course I suspected I had been taken in, and I — do you want me to go on? My efforts to trace him?”

“Not unless you found him. Did you?”

“No. I never did. The next time I saw him was in that room today. Dead.”

“You didn’t see him alive first?”

“I did not.”

“Wouldn’t it have been a simple matter to check on your suspicion — either confirm it or allay it?”

“Oh.” She was taken aback. “I left that out. Of course. I went myself to the address in the Bronx. A man named Alan Samuels lived there, but he wasn’t the same man.”

“Did you tell him of your — uh, inadvertent invasion of his privacy?”

“No. I admit I should have, but I didn’t. I was sick about it, and I was sick of it.”

“Did you inform yourself about him — his occupation, his standing, his interests?”

“No. What good would that do?”

“What is his address?”

“I don’t...” She hesitated. “Is that important?”

Wolfe was frowning at her again. “Come, Miss Bonner. When a Bronx phone book will probably supply it?”

She flushed a little. “It merely seems to me that it’s immaterial. Twenty-nine seventy Borchard Avenue, the Bronx.”

Wolfe turned. “Archie. Get Mr. Cohen. Give him that name and address and tell him we would like to have such information as is readily available. Within an hour if possible.”

I got up and went to the phone. The number of the Gazette was one I didn’t have to consult my notebook for. I told them to go right ahead, that I was used to phoning under difficulties, but they politely kept silence. At that evening hour I had New York in twenty seconds, got Lon, and made the request, but it took two minutes to get rid of him. He wanted an exclusive on how we had got arrested and on the kind of knot I had used on Donahue’s necktie, and I had to get rude and hang up on him. As I returned to my chair Wolfe invited the audience, “Do any of you want to ask Miss Bonner any questions?”

Apparently they didn’t.

“I think,” he said, “that we can best show our appreciation of Miss Bonner’s candor by reciprocating it. Mr. Ide? Mr. Amsel? Mr. Kerr?”

Ide sat and pinched the skin over his Adam’s apple. Amsel, his arms still folded on the back of his chair, kept his eyes at Wolfe. Jay Kerr made a noise, but it was only a minor belch.

“I can understand,” Wolfe said, “that by your vocation and training you have developed a high regard for discretion, but I hope you haven’t made a fetish of it. According to Miss Bonner, all of you recognized the dead man. In that case, not only had you met him, but also you had met him under circumstances that made you think it hazardous, or at least imprudent, to pretend to no knowledge of him. As Miss Bonner said, what you have told the police can surely be told here, unless you have reason to fear—”

“What the hell,” Jay Kerr blurted. “Sure, I knew the bastard.”

“There’s ladies here,” Amsel reproached him.

“They’re not ladies, they’re fellow members. Why, wasn’t he a bastard? Look how he played Wolfe and Dol Bonner, two professionals of the highest standards. A skunk. I’ll be glad to ante all I know about him, but I want a drink first.”

“I beg your pardon,” Wolfe apologized, and he meant it. “Away from home I’m not myself, and I even neglect the amenities. Archie? If you please?”

VI

For Dol Bonner it was brandy and coffee, for Sally rum and coke, another flaw, for Ide tea with lemon, for Amsel double bourbon with water, for Kerr double scotch on the rocks, for Wolfe two bottles of beer, and for me double milk. I like a drink occasionally, but not when I’m out on bail. Then I need all my faculties.

Kerr had said he wanted a drink first, so while we waited for the supplies to come up Wolfe went back to some details with Dol Bonner, such as the date Donahue had first called on her, but that was just to pass the time. Or maybe not. I was glad Fritz wasn’t there. He suspects every woman who ever crosses the threshold of wanting to take over his kitchen, not to mention the rest of the house. He would have been squirming. Dol Bonner’s caramel-colored eyes and long dark lashes were by no means her only physical attractions, and she was the right age, she had shown some sense and had done a pretty good job of reporting, and she was a companion in misery, having also been made a monkey of by Donahue. Of course if Wolfe hung a murder on her she would no longer be a danger, but I noticed that he had stopped frowning at her. Oh well, I thought, if she hooks him and Sally hooks me we can all solve cases together and dominate the field.

After the drinks had come and been distributed, and Wolfe had taken a couple of healthy gulps of beer, he focused on Jay Kerr. “Yes, sir? You were going to tell us.”

Kerr was sipping his scotch. “He played me too. Good. Only not the same pattern exactly. What was eating him was his wife. He wanted his home tapped, an apartment in Brooklyn. He wanted full reports on all voices, male and female, because he thought there might be a male around when he was away that shouldn’t be there. I can tell you and Miss Bonner too, you got gypped. He gave me two thousand at the go and another pair later.”

“Thank you. I’ll demand more next time. When was this?”

“It was early April when he contacted me. After two weeks, sixteen days if I remember right, he called the tap off and settled up.”

“What was his name? The name he gave.”

Kerr took a sip, swallowed, and made a face. “This whiskey don’t taste right, but that’s not the whiskey’s fault. I had cabbage for dinner. About his name, well, the name he gave was Leggett. Arthur M. Leggett.”

“That sounds familiar. L-e-g-g-e-double-t?”

“That’s right.”

“I’ve seen it. Archie?”

“Yeah,” I agreed. “He’s the head of something.”

“He’s the president,” Dol Bonner said, “of the Metropolitan Citizens League.”

That woman was getting on my nerves. Now she was giving him information he had asked me for and hadn’t got, and they weren’t even engaged yet. Wolfe thanked her courteously. Courtesy is okay, but I hoped he wasn’t making a fetish of it. He asked Kerr, “How did he establish his identity?”

“He didn’t.”

Kerr took another sip and made another face, and Wolfe turned to me and said sharply, “Taste that whiskey.”

I had had the same idea myself. It was beginning to look as if we might have a murderer with us, and not only that, it hadn’t been long since a guy named Assa, right in our office, had swallowed a drink that had been served to him by me and had dropped dead. Cyanide. Wolfe didn’t want a rerun of that one, and neither did I. I went and asked Kerr to let me taste it, and he said what the hell but handed it over. I took in a dribble, distributed it with my tongue, let it trickle down, repeated the performance with a thimbleful, and handed it back to him.

“Okay,” I told Wolfe. “It must be the cabbage.”

He grunted. “You say he didn’t establish his identity, Mr. Kerr? Why not?”

“Why should he?” Kerr demanded. “Do you know how many husbands in the metropolitan area get suspicious about their wives every week on an average? Hundreds. Thousands! Some of them come to me for help. A man comes and wants to pay me for expert service. Why should I doubt if he knows who he is? If I tried to check on all of them I’d spend all my time on it.”

“You must have heard that name, Arthur M. Leggett. A man of your widespread — uh, activities.”

Kerr jerked his chin up. “Look, are you a cop? Or one of us?”

“I’m one of us.”

“Then be yourself. Let the cops tell me what names I must have heard. Don’t worry, they have and they will. And I reported the tap in my statement to the secretary of state, because it was ethical and because I knew I had to. I knew they had two of the technicians singing, and I would have been sunk if they connected me with a job I hadn’t reported.”

Wolfe nodded. “We have no desire to harass you, Mr. Kerr. We only ask that you contribute your share to our pool of information. You had no suspicion that your client was not Arthur M. Leggett?”

“No.”

“And never have had?”

“No.”

“Then when you were taken to view the corpse today you must have identified it as Arthur M. Leggett.”

“I did.”

“I see.” Wolfe considered a moment. “Why not? And naturally, when you learned that wasn’t his name you were shocked and indignant, and now you have severe epithets for him. You’re not alone in that. So have I; so has Miss Bonner; and so, doubtless, have Mr. Ide and Mr. Amsel.” He emptied his beer glass, refilled it, kept his eye on it long enough to see that the rising foam didn’t break at the edge, then looked up. “Have you, Mr. Ide?”

Ide put his cup and saucer down on my suitcase, there on the rack, which I had invited him to use for a table. He cleared his throat. “I want to say, Mr. Wolfe, that I feel better than I did when I entered this room.”

“Good. Since it’s my room, and Mr. Goodwin’s, I am gratified.”

“Yes, sir. The fact is, my experience with that man was very similar to yours and Miss Bonner’s, and I have deeply regretted it. He imposed on me as he did on you, and in the same pattern. If I gave you all the details it would be mostly a repetition of what you and Miss Bonner have said.”

“Nevertheless, we’d like to hear them.”

“I see no point in it.”

Ide’s voice had sharpened a little, but Wolfe stayed affable. “One or more of the details might be suggestive. Or at least corroborative. When did it happen?”

“In April.”

“How much did he pay you?”

“Two thousand dollars.”

“Did he give his name as Donahue?”

“No. Another name. As I said, the pattern was very similar to the one he used with you.”

“How did he establish his identity?”

“I prefer not to say. I mishandled it badly. I omitted that detail from my statement to the secretary of state. I suppose Mr. Hyatt will insist on it at the hearing, but I don’t think the whole thing will be published, and I’m not going to publish it by telling it here. I was going to say, the reason I feel better is that now I have the consolation of knowing that I’m not the only one he made a fool of.”

“You have indeed. We have all qualified for dunce’s caps.” Wolfe drank some beer and passed his tongue over his lips. “How did it end? Did you get onto him, or did he call it off as he did with Miss Bonner and Mr. Kerr?”

“I prefer not to say.” From the expression on Ide’s bony face, with its long hawk’s nose, he would prefer to switch to some harmless topic like the weather. “I’ll say this much, the tap was discontinued after ten days, and that ended my association with him. Like you and Miss Bonner and Mr. Kerr, I never saw him again until today, and then he was a corpse.”

“And you identified the corpse?”

“Yes. There was no other... it would have been folly not to.”

“You identified it with the name he gave you when he hired you?”

“Of course.”

“What was that name?”

Ide shook his head. “It was the name of a respectable and law-abiding citizen. I saw him and told him about it, and he was good enough to accept my apology. He is a very fine man. I hope his name won’t have to be dragged into a murder case, and it won’t be by me.”

“But you have given it to the police, of course.”

“No, not yet. I admit I may be compelled to. I can’t let my career end by having my license taken away.”

Wolfe’s eyes went around. “I suggest that we leave the question open whether Mr. Ide has contributed his share, at least until we have heard from Mr. Amsel.” They settled on Steve Amsel. “Well, sir?”

“If I don’t play I’m it,” Amsel said. “Huh?”

“It’s not quite as simple as that,” Wolfe told him. “But you’ve heard us, and it’s your turn.”

“Last one in is a monkey,” Kerr declared.

“Nuts. Have I been last?” There was half a finger left of his double bourbon and water, and he finished it, left his chair to put the glass on the dresser, got out a cigarette and lit it, and turned to prop his backside against the dresser. “I’ll tell you how it is,” he said. “My situation’s a little different. One thing, I was a boob to identify that stiff, but there he was, and in a case like that you can’t stall, you’ve got to say yes or no, and I said yes. Now here we are. Miss Bonner said we might as well tell each other what we’ve told the cops, and I’ll buy that, but my problem’s not like yours. You see, I identified him as a guy named Bill Donahue I knew once.”

He had already had six pairs of eyes, and with that he had them good. He grinned around at them.

“I said my situation’s different. So I was stuck with that. So what I’ve told the cops. I’ve told them I’d seen him around a few times last spring, but it was kinda vague, I couldn’t remember much about it except that once he came and wanted me to arrange a tap for him and I turned him down. They wanted to know whose wire he wanted tapped, and I tried to remember but couldn’t. I said just for a fact I wasn’t sure he had told me the name. So that’s what I’ve told the cops, and that’s what I’m telling you.” He went to his chair and sat.

He still had the eyes. Wolfe’s were half closed. He spoke. “I suggest, Mr. Amsel, that since talking with the police you’ve had time to jog your memory. Possibly you can be a little more definite about the occasions when you saw Donahue around last spring.”

“Nothing doing. Just vague.”

“Or the name of the man whose wire he wanted tapped?”

“Nope. Sorry.”

“One thing occurs to me. Mr. Kerr has said he knew — to use his words — that ‘they had two of the technicians singing.’ Supposing that your memory has failed you on another detail, supposing that you did arrange the tap and have forgotten about it — just a supposition — wouldn’t your situation be quite untenable if the technicians do remember it?”

“Just supposing.”

“Certainly.”

“Well, I’ve heard there were a lot of technicians around. I guess they’re pretty scarce now. Supposing the ones doing the singing aren’t the ones I used? Supposing the ones I used aren’t going to sing?”

Wolfe nodded. “Yes, if I can suppose you can too. I understand your disinclination to tell us anything you haven’t told the police, but I think we may reasonably ask this: did you mention this incident in your statement to the secretary of state?”

“What incident?”

“Your refusal to make the tap requested by Donahue.”

“Why should I? We were told to report all taps. We weren’t told to report refusals to make taps.”

“You’re quite right. Did you mention the name of Donahue at all in the statement?”

“No. What for?”

“Just so. You’re right again, of course. I’m sure you’ll agree, Mr. Amsel, that your contribution is even skimpier than Mr. Ide’s. I don’t know—”

The phone rang, and I went and got it. It was Lon Cohen. As I spoke with him, or rather, listened to him, Wolfe uncapped the second bottle of beer and poured. The guests were politely silent, as before. Again, after Lon had reported, he wanted the low-down, and I promised to supply him with an eight-column headline as soon as we got one. I asked him to hold on a minute and told Wolfe, “Alan Samuels is a retired broker, Wall Street. He could live on Park Avenue but prefers the Bronx. His wife died four years ago. He has two sons and two daughters, all married. He gives money to worthy causes, nothing spectacular. Harvard Club. Director of the Ethical Culture Society. A year ago the governor appointed him a member of the Charity Funds Investigating Committee. I’ve got more, but it’s not very exciting. Of course you note the item that might possibly be interesting.”

“Yes. He’s still on? Get the names of the members of that committee.”

“Right.” I went back to Lon. He said he’d have to send to the files, and did so, and then demanded some dope. I couldn’t very well tell him that the other suspects were there in our room and Wolfe was doing his damnedest to find a crack to start a wedge in, so I gave him a human interest story about Nero Wolfe’s behavior in the jug and other little sidelights. The list came, and he read it off while I wrote it down, and I told him not to expect the headline in time for the morning edition. I tore the sheet off of the memo pad and went and handed it to Wolfe, telling him, “That’s it. Just five members, including the chairman.”

He looked it over. He grunted. He looked at the guests. “Well. You may remember, from my statement, that Otis Ross is the chairman of the Charity Funds Investigating Committee. You have just heard that Alan Samuels is a member of that committee. So is Arthur M. Leggett. The names of the other two members are James P. Finch and Philip Maresco. It’s a pity we have only three out of five. If it were unanimous it would be more than suggestive, it would be conclusive. Can you help us, Mr. Ide?”

Ide was looking uncomfortable. He pinched the skin over his Adam’s apple, but that didn’t seem to help, and he tried chewing on his lower lip, but since his teeth were a brownish yellow it didn’t make him any handsomer. He spoke. “I said I wouldn’t drag his name into this, but now it is in. I can’t help it. You have named him.”

“That makes four. Is there any point in leaving it to conjecture whether it was Finch or Maresco?”

“No. Finch.”

Wolfe nodded. “That leaves only Maresco, and I hope he wasn’t slighted. Mr. Amsel. Doesn’t that name, Philip Maresco, strike a chord in your memory? At least a faint echo?”

Amsel grinned at him. “Nothing doing, Wolfe. My memory’s gone very bad. But if you want my advice, just forget my memory. It’s a cinch. If I was you I’d just take it for granted.”

“Very well put. Satisfactory. Do you think it possible, ladies and gentlemen, that it was through coincidence that the five men whose wires Donahue wanted tapped were all members of that committee?”

They didn’t think so.

“Neither do I. Surely it invites inquiry. Miss Bonner, how many competent operatives, not counting Miss Colt, are immediately available to you?”

She was startled. “Why... you mean now? Tonight?”

“Tonight or in the morning. What time is it, Archie?”

“Quarter past eleven.”

“Then the morning will have to do. How many?”

She considered, rubbing her lip with a fingertip. I admit there was nothing wrong with her lips and she had good hands. “On my payroll,” she said, “one woman and two men. Besides them, four women and three men whom I use occasionally.”

“That makes ten. Mr. Ide?”

“What’s this for?” Ide wanted to know.

“I’ll explain. Now just how many.”

“It depends on your definition of ‘competent.’ I have twelve good men on my staff. Eight or ten others might be available.”

“Say twenty. That makes thirty. Mr. Kerr?”

“Call it nine. For an emergency I could scare up maybe five more, maybe six.”

“Fifteen. That makes forty-five. Mr. Amsel?”

“I pass.”

“None at all?”

“Well, I might. I’ve got no payroll and no staff. Wait till I hear the pitch, and I might.”

“Then forty-five.” Abruptly Wolfe got to his feet. “Now, if you’ll permit me, I must arrange my mind. It shouldn’t take long. I beg you to stay, all of you, to hear a suggestion I want to offer. And you must be thirsty. For me, Archie, a bottle of beer.”

He moved his chair over near a window, turned it around, and sat, his back to the room.

They all took refills except Sally, who switched to coffee, and Ide, who declined with thanks. After phoning down the order I told them not to bother to keep their voices lowered, since nothing going on outside his head could disturb Wolfe when he was concentrating on the inside. They got up to stretch their legs, and Harland Ide went to Dol Bonner and asked her what her experience had been with women operatives, and Kerr and Amsel joined them and turned it into a general discussion. The drinks came and were distributed, and they went on exchanging views and opinions. You might have thought it was just a friendly gathering, and that nothing like a murder investigation, not to mention an official inquiry that might cost some of them their licenses, was anywhere near, unless you noticed their frequent glances at the back of Wolfe’s chair. I gathered that with the men the consensus was that women were okay in their place, which I guess was the way cavemen felt about it, and all their male descendants. The question was, and still is, what’s their place? I only hoped Wolfe wasn’t getting any fleabite of a notion that Dol Bonner’s place was in the old brownstone house on West Thirty-fifth Street.

When he finally arose and started turning his chair around I glanced at my wrist. Eight minutes to midnight. It had taken him half an hour to arrange his mind. He moved the chair back to its former position, and sat, and the others followed suit.

“We could hear it tick,” Steve Amsel said.

Wolfe frowned at him. “I beg your pardon?”

“In your pan. The knocker.”

“Oh. No doubt.” Wolfe was brusque. “It’s late, and we have work to do. I have reached a working hypothesis about the murder, and I want to describe it and suggest a collective effort. I intend to ask for full co-operation from all of you, and I expect to get it. I’ll try to supply my share, though I have no organization to compare with Mr. Ide’s and Mr. Kerr’s. Archie, I must talk with Saul Panzer and it must be confidential. Can I do so from this room?”

“Good God no.” I could have kicked him, asking such a dumb question in front of our fellow members. “Ten to one Groom would have it in ten minutes. And not from a booth in the hotel. You’ll have to go out to one.”

“Can you find one at this hour?”

“Sure. This is the City of Albany.”

“Then please do so, and get him. Tell him I’ll call him at eight in the morning at his home. If he has other commitments ask him to cancel them. I need him.”

“Right. As soon as we’re through here.”

“No. Now. If you please.”

I could have kicked him again, but I couldn’t start beefing in front of company. I went and got my hat and coat and beat it.

VII

If you’re no more interested than I was in how I spent the next day, Tuesday, you’ll be bored stiff for the next four minutes.

There were happenings, but no developments that I was aware of. First about Monday night and Saul Panzer. Saul is the best there is and I would match him against all of the forty-five operatives our confreres had, all of them put together, but he ought to get home earlier and get to bed. I found a booth easy enough in a bar-and-grill, called the number, and got no answer. Going back to join the conference, and trying again later, was out. When Wolfe sends me on an errand he wants it done, and for that matter so do I. I waited five minutes and tried again, and then ten minutes and another try. That went on forever, and it was a quarter past one when I finally got him. He said he had been out on a tailing job for Bascom, and he was going to resume it at noon tomorrow. I said he wasn’t, unless he wanted Wolfe and me indicted for murder and probably convicted, and told him to stand by for a call at eight in the morning. I gave him the highlights of the jolly day we had had, told him good night, returned to the hotel and up to room 902, and found Wolfe in bed sound asleep, in the bed nearest the window, with the window wide open and the room as cold as yesterday’s corpse. From the open door to the bathroom I got enough light to undress by.

When I sleep I sleep, but even so I wouldn’t have thought it possible that an animal of his size could turn out, get erect, and move around dressing and so on, without rousing me. In the cold, too. I would have liked to watch him at it. What got to me was the click as he turned the door knob. I opened my eyes, bounced up, and demanded, “Hey, where you going?”

He turned on the threshold. “To phone Saul.”

“What time is it?”

“By the watch on your wrist, twenty past seven.”

“You said eight o’clock!”

“I’ll get something to eat first. Finish your rest. There’s nothing to do, after I speak to Saul.” He pulled the door shut and was gone. I turned over, worried a while about how he would squeeze into a booth, and went back to sleep.

Not as deep as before, though. At the sound of his key in the lock I was wide awake. I looked at my wrist: 8:35. He entered and closed the door, took off his hat and coat, and put them in the closet. I asked if he had got Saul, and he said yes and it was satisfactory. I asked how it had gone last night, had our fellow members agreed to co-operate, and he said yes and it was satisfactory. I asked what the program was for us, and he said there wasn’t any. I asked him if that was satisfactory too, and he said yes. During this conversation he was removing duds. He stripped, with no visible reaction to the deep freeze, put on his pajamas, got into bed and under the blankets, and turned his back on me.

It seemed to be my turn, I was wide awake, it was going on nine o’clock, and I was hungry. I rolled out, went to the bathroom and washed and shaved, got dressed, having a little trouble buttoning my shirt on account of shivering, went down to the lobby and bought a Times and a Gazette, proceeded to the dining room and ordered orange juice, griddle cakes, sausage, scrambled eggs, and coffee. Eventually wearing out my welcome there, I transferred to the lobby and finished with the papers. There was nothing in them about the murder of William A. Donahue that I didn’t already know, except a few dozen useless details such as the medical examiner’s opinion that he had died somewhere between two and five hours before he got to him. It was the first time the Gazette had ever run pictures of Wolfe and me as jailbirds. The one of me was fair, but Wolfe’s was terrible. There was one of Albert Hyatt, very good, and one of Donahue, which had evidently been taken after the scientists smoothed his face out. I went out for some air, turning up my overcoat collar against the wind, which was nearly as cold as room 902, and found that it was more fun to take a walk when you were out on bail. You want to go on and on and just keep going. It was after eleven o’clock when I got back to the hotel, took the elevator up to the ninth floor, and let myself into the deep freeze.

Wolfe was still in bed, and didn’t stir when I entered. I stood and gazed at him, not tenderly. I was still considering the situation when there was a knock on the door behind me, a good loud one. I turned and opened it, and an oversized specimen was coming in, going to walk right over me. I needed something like that. I stiff-armed him good, and he tottered back and nearly went down.

“I’m a police officer,” he barked.

“Then say so. Even if you are, I’m not a rug. What do you want?”

“Are you Archie Goodwin?”

“Yes.”

“You’re wanted at the district attorney’s office. You and Nero Wolfe. I’m here to take you.”

The correct thing to do would have been to tell him we’d consider it and let him know, and shut the door on him, but I was sorer at Wolfe than I was at him. There had been no good reason for sending me out to phone Saul until the conference had ended. It had been absolutely childish, when he returned from talking with Saul, for him to go back to bed without giving me any idea what was cooking. I had offered to split the blame fifty-fifty, but no, I was the goat and he was the lion. So I moved aside for the law to enter, and turned to see Wolfe’s eyes open, glaring at us.

“That’s Mr. Wolfe,” I told the baboon.

“Get up and dress,” he commanded. “I’m taking you to the district attorney’s office for questioning.”

“Nonsense.” Wolfe’s voice was colder than the air. “I have given Mr. Hyatt and Mr. Groom all the information I possess. If the district attorney wishes to come to see me in an hour or so I may admit him. Tell Mr. Groom he’s an ass. He shouldn’t have arrested me. Now he has no threat to coerce me with, short of charging me with murder or getting my bail canceled, and the one would be harebrained and the other quite difficult. Get out of here! No. Ha! No indeed. Archie, how did this man get in here?”

“Walked. He knocked, and I opened the door.”

“I see. You, who can be, and usually are, a veritable Horatius. I see.” His eyes moved. “You, sir. Were you sent for me only or both of us?”

“Both of you.”

“Good. Take Mr. Goodwin. You could take me only by force, and I’m too heavy to lift. The district attorney can phone me later for an appointment, but I doubt if he’ll get it.”

The baboon hesitated, opened his mouth, shut it, and opened it again to tell me to come on. I went. Wolfe probably thought he had landed a kidney punch, but he hadn’t. Since I was being kept off the program, kidding with a DA was as good a way to pass the time as any.

Another way of passing some time that had occurred to me was to offer to buy Sally Colt a lunch, but it was after two o’clock when the DA finally decided I was hopeless. I went to a drugstore and called Wolfe, told him the DA was hopeless, asked if he had any instructions, and was told no. I called Sally Colt and asked if she felt like taking in a movie, and she said she would love to but was busy and couldn’t. She was busy. Fine. I did hope she would find some way of saving me from the electric chair. I started for the fountain counter for a sandwich and milk, remembered that this trip would go on the expense account, went and found the restaurant that Stanley Rogers had recommended, and ordered and consumed six dollars’ worth of food, getting a receipt. The waiter told me where I could find a pool hall, and I walked to it, phoned to tell Wolfe where I was, sat and watched a while, got propositioned by a hustler, took him on at straight pool, and avoided getting cleaned only by refusing to boost the bets to the levels he suggested. He finally decided I was a piker and dropped me. By then it was going on seven o’clock, dinner time coming, but I had no intention of imposing myself on the occupant of room 902, so I mounted a stool to watch a pair of three-cushion sharks. They weren’t Hoppes, but they were good. While one of them was lifting his cue for a massé, the cashier called to me that I was wanted on the phone. I took my time going. Let him wait.

“Hello.”

“Hello, Mr. Goodwin?”

“Speaking.”

“This is Sally Colt. I hated to say no to your invitation, I really did, but I had to. I don’t suppose you feel like making it a dinner instead of a movie?”

I took time out for control. Only one person could have told her where I was. But it wasn’t her fault. “Sure,” I told her. “I eat every day. When?”

“Any time now. At the hotel?”

“No, there’s a better place, just two blocks away. Henninger’s. Shall we meet there in fifteen minutes?”

“It’s a deal. Henninger’s?”

“That’s right.”

“I’ll be there. I’ll tell Mr. Wolfe where we’ll be in case he needs us.”

“I’ll phone him.”

“No, I’ll tell him, he’s right here.”

As I went for my coat and hat my feelings were too mixed to sort out. Cold rage. It was okay to make allowances for a genius, but this was too much. Curiosity. What the hell was he doing with her? Relief. At least he was up and dressed, unless his attitude toward women had done a complete somersault. Cheerfulness. Under almost any circumstances it’s a pleasure to have a date with a good-looking girl. Expectation. Somewhere along the line she might see fit to tell me what my employer was up to.

She didn’t. It was a very enjoyable meal, and before it was over I had decided that I would have to concede an exception to my verdict on she-dicks, but not a word about current affairs, and of course I wouldn’t ask her. Wolfe had told her to lay off. I can’t document that, but we got quite sociable by the time dessert and coffee came, and when a damsel smiles at me a certain way but steers clear of the subject she knows damn well is on top of my mind, she has been corrupted by someone. We were finishing our coffee and considering whether to move to a place down the street where there was a dance floor when the waiter came and told me I was wanted on the phone. I went.

“Hello.”

“Archie?”

“Yeah.”

“Is Miss Colt with you?”

“Yeah.”

“Come to the room, and bring her.”

“Yeah.”

I returned to the table, told her we were wanted, got the check and paid it, and we left. The sidewalk was icy in spots and she took my arm, which seemed a little sissy for a working detective, but at least she didn’t tug. At the hotel, when we got out at the ninth floor she went to her room, 917, to leave her things, and I waited in the hall for her. I had been told to bring her, and since that had been my only assignment for the day I wanted to carry it out properly. She rejoined me, we proceeded to 902, I opened the door with my key, and we entered.

The room was full of people.

“Well!” I said heartily, for I wasn’t going to let my bitterness show in public. “Another party, huh?”

Wolfe was in the armchair toward the far wall. The writing table had been moved and was next to him, with papers on it. Dol Bonner was seated across the table from him. She was smirking. If you think I’m being unfair, that she wasn’t really smirking but was merely showing no signs of misery, you’re absolutely right. Wolfe nodded at me. “You may as well leave the door open, Archie. Mr. Groom and Mr. Hyatt are expected momentarily.”

VIII

My thought, as I put my hat and coat away, was that apparently the son-of-a-gun was going to try to pull one extra fancy and wrap it up in one package — not only put the finger on a murderer for Groom, but also mop up the hearing for Hyatt, as far as that bunch, including us, was concerned. It looked like a big order to fill without my help, but of course he had Dol Bonner. I thought it would be a pity if it turned out that she had knotted Donahue’s necktie and he had to fall back on me.

I was glancing around, noting that Ide and Kerr and Amsel were in the chairs farthest away from Wolfe, with two empty ones up front for the expected company, when footsteps sounded in the hall, and I turned. Groom was in the lead. Evidently they had left their coats and hats downstairs.

Wolfe greeted them. “Good evening, gentlemen.” He gestured. “Chairs for you.”

They stood. Groom said, “I expected something like this. From you. You didn’t say it was a convention.”

“No, sir. I merely said that if you would come, and bring Mr. Hyatt, I was now prepared to add to my statement substantially and cogently. I prefer to have witnesses present.” He gestured again. “If you will be seated?”

Groom looked at Hyatt, swiveled for a glance at me, moved through the gap between Kerr and Sally Colt, picked up one of the empty chairs and placed it against the wall, and sat. That way he had Wolfe and Dol Bonner on his right and the rest of us on his left, and couldn’t be jumped from behind. Hyatt wasn’t so particular. He didn’t bother to move the chair but just sat, although five of us — Ide, Kerr, Amsel, Sally, and I — were in his rear.

“Let’s hear it,” Groom told Wolfe.

“Yes, sir.” Wolfe shifted his chair to face him more directly. “A mass of detail is involved, but I won’t cover it exhaustively now. You’ll get it. First, the situation as it stood yesterday evening. In an ill-considered excess of zeal, you had arrested Mr. Goodwin and me. Therefore—”

“I know what the situation was.”

“Not as I saw it. Therefore I had either to sit here and twiddle my thumbs, trusting to your skill and luck, or bestir myself. To begin with, I needed to learn, if possible, whether any of the other five people — those who had been in room forty-two with Mr. Goodwin and me — had had any association with Donahue. I invited them to this room for consultation, and they came. They—”

“I know they did. And today they wouldn’t say what happened here. Not one of them. And Goodwin wouldn’t. And you wouldn’t.”

“I will now. This will go faster, Mr. Groom, if you don’t interrupt. They were here nearly four hours, and you won’t need all of it. As soon as I learned that all of them had recognized the body, and so had known Donahue, and that their times of arrival at that building yesterday eliminated none of them, the inevitable assumption was that one of them had killed him, and I made it. I made it, and held it for about an hour, proceeding with our discussion, when I had to abandon it.”

Groom started to speak and Wolfe showed him a palm. “If you please. Perhaps I should say ‘suspended’ instead of ‘abandoned.’ I suspended it because my attention was diverted to another quarter. I had noted it as an interesting point that seven people who had been associated with Donahue in connection with wiretapping had all been summoned to appear today. That it had been coincidence was against all probability, but it didn’t have to be coincidence. It might have been so arranged purposely, for a comparison of their stories and even to bring them face to face.

“But no. It developed that that wouldn’t do. None of us had mentioned Donahue’s name in our statements to the secretary of state. Miss Bonner and Mr. Ide and I had all reported being duped by a man who had followed the same pattern with each of us, and our physical descriptions of him agreed, so we three might have been summoned by design to appear on the same day, but not Mr. Kerr and not Mr. Amsel. Mr. Kerr had merely reported tapping the wire of Arthur M. Leggett at Leggett’s request. Mr. Amsel reported nothing — that is, nothing that could have linked him to Miss Bonner and Mr. Ide and me. Yesterday he identified Donahue as a man who had once asked him to make a tap and been refused, but he had made no mention of it in his statement to the secretary of state.”

“You’re getting nowhere fast,” Groom declared. “You had all known him. One of you saw him there and killed him.”

“But why were we all there?” Wolfe demanded. “That Miss Bonner and Mr. Ide and I had been brought together purposely was understandable, but not Mr. Kerr and Mr. Amsel. There was no connection, on the record; and yet they were connected, most significantly, since they too had had dealings with Donahue. By coincidence only? I didn’t believe it. One of them, possibly, but surely not both. So my attention was diverted to the question, who had arranged for us all to be summoned to appear the same day? And simultaneously to another question, was there anything in common among the five men whose wires Donahue had wanted to tap? That suggested still another, why had he gone to five different detectives to arrange for the taps? Might it not have been because the five men did have something in common, and he didn’t want that fact to be noted?”

Wolfe moved his eyes to Hyatt as if inviting an answer, but didn’t get one. He returned to Groom. “My first question had to wait, since I couldn’t very well call Mr. Hyatt and put it to him. The second was soon answered. I learned that four of the men whose wires had been tapped were members of the Charity Funds Investigating Committee, and had reason to suppose that the fifth one was also, embracing the entire committee. With that, I decided to describe the situation as I saw it to these ladies and gentlemen, and to enlist their co-operation. If it turned out that my surmise was wrong and one of them was in fact guilty, no harm would have been done; on the contrary, their reactions to my proposal might be indicative. I learned—”

“What proposal?” Groom demanded.

“I’m telling you. I learned that among them they had forty or more operatives in New York, and I could supply four or five. After describing the situation to them, I proposed that we put as many men as possible — and women — to work immediately. There were three main lines: one, the Hotel Marbury, where Donahue had lived; two, the background and interests and activities of Albert Hyatt, with emphasis on any discoverable connection with the Charity Funds Investigating Committee; and three—”

“You mean you suspected Hyatt of murder?”

“I mean I had formed a surmise I thought worth testing, and my confreres agreed with me. I have already put the question, who had arranged for all seven of us to appear on the same day? Mr. Hyatt was conducting the hearing. Another point, which is usually thought significant, but which you seem to have ignored, was that Mr. Hyatt was the last person, as far as was known, to see Donahue alive. Still another was that Hyatt had said that Donahue had told him that I had been given the name Donahue and that I had known the tap was illegal. I knew that either Donahue had lied or Hyatt was lying, and Donahue was dead.”

Wolfe lifted his shoulders and dropped them. “What I suspected at that point is no longer important. The third line of investigation was to find evidence of former association between Hyatt and Donahue. My confreres made phone calls, and I made one myself. By ten o’clock this morning we had — how many operatives Miss Bonner?”

“By ten o’clock, thirty-four. By two this afternoon, forty-eight. Forty-two men and six women.”

Steve Amsel suddenly exploded. “Too many detectives, Hyatt! Cancel our licenses! Too many!”

“Shut your trap!” Jay Kerr ordered him. “Wolfe’s telling it.”

Wolfe ignored them. “Reports started to reach us before one o’clock and have been arriving all afternoon, up to an hour ago, when we told the people in New York that we had enough for our purpose. Miss Bonner and Miss Colt took most of them, but the others helped. There was no important result from the first line of investigation, the Hotel Marbury. From the second, Hyatt’s background and interests and activities, there was nothing conclusive, but much that is pregnant. Eighteen months ago derogatory information about the activities of fund-raising organizations began to appear in the press, and as the weeks passed it increased in volume and significance. A little more than a year ago Mr. Hyatt was retained as consulting counsel by a large fund-raising organization which had realized large profits, variously estimated at from one to three million dollars annually, from its operation. That was about the time that the governor set up the Charity Funds Investigating Committee, and Mr. Hyatt’s client might reasonably expect to be a major target of that committee. There is some evidence that Mr. Hyatt approached two members of the committee in an effort to learn its plans—”

“What do you mean, ‘some evidence’?” Groom demanded.

Wolfe tapped the papers on the table. “It’s here waiting for you, but as I said, it is not conclusive. The committee members were not loquacious with our private operatives, but no doubt they will be more helpful with officers of the law. I merely give you this from our second line of investigation: that Mr. Hyatt was keenly interested in that committee and its plans. The results from our third line were more than pregnant, they were decisive, or close to it. It was of course the most promising, and thirty of the operatives were assigned to it. They were provided with pictures of Hyatt and Donahue from newspapers, and they found three people who had seen them together on two different occasions last spring — under circumstances that may fairly be described as furtive. I will not oblige Mr. Hyatt by naming the people and occasions and places, but that information is here.” He tapped the papers again.

“And Mr. Hyatt has stated, in my hearing and yours, that he had never seen Donahue before yesterday morning. You asked if I suspect him of murder. I do now, yes. There are of course questions I am not prepared to answer, except with conjectures if you want them — for instance, the most important one, why did he arrange for all of us — he knew, of course, with whom Donahue had arranged for the taps — to appear before him on the same day? As a conjecture, because that was his best alternative, since we all had to be summoned for inquiry sooner or later, either in New York or in Albany, and he wanted us himself, not his colleague in New York. Having us all on the same day insured that we would all be at hand, to be called back in if occasion demanded it; and if things went smoothly he might well have intended to have us together before him and tell us magnanimously that, since our separate statements corroborated the assumption that we had all been imposed upon by a scoundrel, he would recommend no action against us.”

Wolfe turned a hand over. “For he supposed, of course, that Donahue was safely out of the way, out of the state and not to be found. Unquestionably he had so arranged it. The situation held no great hazard for him. The fact that one of his clients was one of the targets of investigation of one of the governor’s committees had no known connection with the investigation he was himself conducting, and he was confident that no such connection would be discovered or even suspected. Possibly he was even cocky, for he may have got, from the tapped wires, the information about the committee’s plans and intentions that he needed. If so, he got a shattering blow when he answered his phone yesterday morning and was told that a man named Donahue wanted to see him about something urgent and confidential.”

Wolfe’s eyes went to Hyatt and back to Groom. “If you want another conjecture, what passed between Hyatt and Donahue in room thirty-eight yesterday, the most obvious one is that Donahue threatened to divulge the whole story — either as a screw for extortion, or because Donahue had learned that we seven had been called to appear together and suspected that he was to be made a scapegoat — and the obvious is often the best. Those questions, and others, are your concern, Mr. Groom, not ours. Our only concern was to show you that you were much too ready with a false assumption. As for Mr. Goodwin and me, I suppose you could successfully defend an action for false arrest, but I trust you have learned that it is infantile to take the word of a man as gospel merely because he is a special deputy of the secretary of state. Can the charge against us be dismissed tonight?”

“No. Not until court opens in the morning.” Groom got up and went to the table and flattened his hand on the papers. He looked at the special deputy. “Mr. Hyatt, do you want to say anything?”

Hyatt was a lawyer. His back was to me, so I couldn’t see his face, but I doubt if it was showing anything much. “Except,” he said, “that I deny all of Wolfe’s allegations and implications regarding me, and that I’ll hold him responsible for them, no. I have nothing to say here and now.” He got up and started for the door. Groom made no move to stop him, and couldn’t be expected to, at least until he had inspected the papers.

Steve Amsel called after him, “Too many detectives, Hyatt!”

IX

Yesterday afternoon I was in the office with Wolfe, discussing a little job we had taken on, when the phone rang and I answered it.

“Nero Wolfe’s office, Archie Goodwin speaking.”

“This is Dol Bonner. How are you?”

“Better than ever.”

“Good. May I speak to Mr. Wolfe?”

“Hold it, I’ll see.” I covered the transmitter and turned and told Wolfe. He made a face, hesitated, and reached for his phone. I kept mine to my ear, since I was supposed to unless he told me otherwise.

“Yes, Miss Bonner? Nero Wolfe.”

“How are you?”

“Well, thank you.”

“I’m glad I got you. Of course you’ve heard the news?”

“I don’t know. What news?”

“The jury reached a verdict at noon. They found Hyatt guilty of first-degree murder.”

“So. I hadn’t heard. To be expected, surely.”

“Of course. Why I called, Harland Ide phoned me an hour ago. He thinks it would be a little barbarous to celebrate a man’s conviction for murder, and I agree, so that’s not the idea, but he suggested that we should show our appreciation to you somehow. Anyway, the secretary of state has reported the results of the hearing and we’re all going to keep our licenses, so we could celebrate that. Mr. Ide thought we might have a little dinner for you, just the seven of us, and wanted to know if I approved, and I said I did. Just now he called again and said that Mr. Kerr and Mr. Amsel liked the idea, and he asked me to propose it to you. Any evening you choose next week — or as for that, any other week. We hope you will, and of course Mr. Goodwin. And of course Miss Colt.”

Silence. I was watching Wolfe’s face. His lips were pressed tight.

“Are you on, Mr. Wolfe?”

“Yes, I’m on. I rarely accept invitations to meals.”

“I know. This isn’t a meal, it’s a tribute.”

“Which it would be churlish to decline. Mr. Goodwin thinks I am churlish, but I don’t. I am merely self-indulgent. I offer a counter-suggestion. I too feel appreciation, for the efficient and effective co-operation I received. I suggest that instead of dining at some restaurant, which I suppose is intended, you people come to my house for dinner. Any evening next week except Thursday.”

“But that would be turning it wrong side up!”

“Not at all. I said I feel appreciation too.”

“Well... shall I ask Mr. Ide? And the others?”

“I wish you would.”

“All right. I’ll let you know.”

And she did. In less than an hour. It’s all set for next Wednesday evening. I’m looking forward to it. It will be a treat to see Fritz’s face when he sees Dol Bonner, seated at Wolfe’s right, aim her caramel-colored eyes at him under her long dark lashes.

As for the fifty-fifty split on the blame for our wiretap, that’s still under discussion off and on. And as for my being left off the program that day in the City of Albany, that needed no discussion. Since all the work had to be done by the 48 operatives in New York and there was nothing I could contribute, why deal me in? Especially since I could be useful as a diversion for Groom and the DA.

Content

Rex Stout
Too Many Detectives

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