Rex Stout

Poison à la Carte

I

I slanted my eyes down to meet her big brown ones, which were slanted up. “No,” I said, “I’m neither a producer nor an agent. My name’s Archie Goodwin, and I’m here because I’m a friend of the cook. My reason for wanting it is purely personal.”

“I know,” she said, “it’s my dimples. Men often swoon.”

I shook my head. “It’s your earrings. They remind me of a girl I once loved in vain. Perhaps if I get to know you well enough — who can tell?”

“Not me,” she declared. “Let me alone. I’m nervous, and I don’t want to spill the soup. The name is Nora Jaret, without an H, and the number is Stanhope five, six-six-two-one. The earrings were a present from Sir Laurence Olivier. I was sitting on his knee.”

I wrote the number down in my notebook, thanked her, and looked around. Most of the collection of attractive young females were gathered in an alcove between two cupboards, but one was over by a table watching Felix stir something in a bowl. Her profile was fine and her hair was the color of corn silk just before it starts to turn. I crossed to her, and when she turned her head I spoke. “Good evening, Miss— Miss?”

“Annis,” she said. “Carol Annis.”

I wrote it down, and told her my name. “I am not blunt by nature,” I said, “but you’re busy, or soon will be, and there isn’t time to talk up to it. I was standing watching you, and all of a sudden I had an impulse to ask you for your phone number, and I’m no good at fighting impulses. Now that you’re close up it’s even stronger, and I guess we’ll have to humor it.”

But I may be giving a wrong impression. Actually I had no special hankering that Tuesday evening for new telephone numbers; I was doing it for Fritz. But that could give a wrong impression too, so I’ll have to explain.

One day in February, Lewis Hewitt, the millionaire and orchid fancier for whom Nero Wolfe had once handled a tough problem, had told Wolfe that the Ten for Aristology wanted Fritz Brenner to cook their annual dinner, to be given as usual on April first, Brillat-Savarin’s birthday. When Wolfe said he had never heard of the Ten for Aristology, Hewitt explained that it was a group of ten men pursuing the ideal of perfection in food and drink, and he was one of them. Wolfe had swiveled to the dictionary on its stand at a corner of his desk, and after consulting it had declared that “aristology” meant the science of dining, and therefore the Ten were witlings, since dining was not a science but an art. After a long argument Hewitt had admitted he was licked and had agreed that the name should be changed, and Wolfe had given him permission to ask Fritz to cook the dinner.

In fact, Wolfe was pleased, though of course he wouldn’t say so. It took a big slice of his income as a private detective to pay Fritz Brenner, chef and house-keeper in the old brownstone on West 35th Street — about the same as the slice that came to me as his assistant detective and man Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday — not to mention what it took to supply the kitchen with the raw materials of Fritz’s productions. Since I am also the bookkeeper, I can certify that for the year 1957 the kitchen and Fritz cost only slightly less than the plant rooms on the roof bulging with orchids. So when Hewitt made it clear that the Ten, though they might be dubs at picking names, were true and trustworthy gourmets, that the dinner would be at the home of Benjamin Schriver, the shipping magnate, who wrote a letter to the Times every year on September first denouncing the use of horseradish on oysters, and that the cook would have a free hand on the menu and the Ten would furnish whatever he desired, Wolfe pushed a button to summon Fritz. There was a little hitch when Fritz refused to commit himself until he had seen the Schriver kitchen, but Hewitt settled that by escorting him out front to his Heron town car and driving him down to Eleventh Street to inspect the kitchen.

That’s where I was that Tuesday evening, April first, collecting phone numbers: in the kitchen of the four-story Schriver house on Eleventh Street west of Fifth Avenue. Wolfe and I had been invited by Schriver, and though Wolfe dislikes eating with strangers and thinks that more than six at table spoils a meal, he knew Fritz’s feelings would be hurt if he didn’t go; and besides, if he stayed home who would cook his dinner? Even so, he would probably have balked if he had learned of one detail which Fritz and I knew about but had carefully kept from him: that the table was to be served by twelve young women, one for each guest.

When Hewitt had told me that, I had protested that I wouldn’t be responsible for Wolfe’s conduct when the orgy got under way, that he would certainly stamp out of the house when the girls started to squeal. Good lord, Hewitt said, nothing like that; that wasn’t the idea at all. It was merely that the Ten had gone to ancient Greece not only for their name but also for other precedents. Hebe, the goddess of youth, had been cupbearer to the gods, so it was the custom of the Ten for Aristology to be waited on by maidens in appropriate dress. When I asked where they got the maidens he said through a theatrical agency, and added that at that time of year there were always hundreds of young actresses out of a job glad to grab at a chance to make fifty bucks, with a good meal thrown in, by spending an evening carrying food, one plate at a time. Originally they had hired experienced waitresses from an agency, but they had tripped on their stolas.

Wolfe and I had arrived at seven on the dot, and after we had met our host and the rest of the Ten, and had sampled oysters and our choice of five white wines, I had made my way to the kitchen to see how Fritz was making out. He was tasting from a pot on the range, with no more sign of fluster than if he had been at home getting dinner for Wolfe and me. Felix and Zoltan, from Rusterman’s, were there to help, so I didn’t ask if I was needed.

And there were the Hebes, cupbearers to the gods, twelve of them, in their stolas, deep rich purple, flowing garments to their ankles. Very nice. It gave me an idea. Fritz likes to pretend that he has reason to believe that no damsel is safe within a mile of me, which doesn’t make sense since you can’t tell much about them a mile off, and I thought it would do him good to see me operate at close quarters. Also it was a challenge and an interesting sociological experiment. The first two had been a cinch: one named Fern Faber, so she said, a tall self-made blonde with a wide lazy mouth, and Nora Jaret with the big brown eyes and dimples. Now I was after this Carol Annis with hair like corn silk.

“I have no sense of humor,” she said, and turned back to watch Felix stir.

I stuck. “That’s a different kind of humor and an impulse like mine isn’t funny. It hurts. Maybe I can guess it. Is it Hebe one, oh-oh-oh-oh?”

No reply.

“Apparently not. Plato two, three-four-five-six?”

She said, without turning her head, “It’s listed Gorham eight, three-two-one-seven.” Her head jerked to me. “Please?” It jerked back again.

It rather sounded as if she meant please go away, not please ring her as soon as possible, but I wrote it down anyway, for the record, and moved off. The rest of them were still grouped in the alcove, and I crossed over. The deep purple of the stolas was a good contrast for their pretty young faces topped by nine different colors and styles of hairdos. As I came up the chatter stopped and the faces turned to me.

“At ease,” I told them. “I have no official standing. I am merely one of the guests, invited because I’m a friend of the cook, and I have a personal problem. I would prefer to discuss it with each of you separately and privately, but since there isn’t time for that I am—”

“I know who you are,” one declared. “You’re a detective and you work for Nero Wolfe. You’re Archie Goodwin.”

She was a redhead with milky skin. “I don’t deny it,” I told her, “but I’m not here professionally. I don’t ask if I’ve met you because if I had I wouldn’t have forgot—”

“You haven’t met me. I’ve seen you and I’ve seen your picture. You like yourself. Don’t you?”

“Certainly. I string along with the majority. We’ll take a vote. How many of you like yourselves? Raise your hands.”

A hand went up with a bare arm shooting out of the purple folds, then two more, then the rest of them, including the redhead.

“Okay,” I said, “that’s settled. Unanimous. My problem is that I decided to look you over and ask the most absolutely irresistibly beautiful and fascinating one of the bunch for her phone number, and I’m stalled. You are all it. In beauty and fascination you are all far beyond the wildest dreams of any poet, and I’m not a poet. So obviously I’m in a fix. How can I possibly pick on one of you, any one, when—”

“Nuts.” It was the redhead. “Me, of course. Peggy Choate. Argyle two, three-three-four-eight. Don’t call before noon.”

“That’s not fair,” a throaty voice objected. It came from one who looked a little too old for Hebe, and just a shade too plump. It went on, “Do I call you Archie?”

“Sure, that’s my name.”

“All right, Archie, have your eyes examined.” She lifted an arm, baring it, to touch the shoulder of one beside her. “We admit we’re all beautiful, but we’re not in the same class as Helen Iacono. Look at her!”

I was doing so, and I must say that the throaty voice had a point. Helen Iacono, with deep dark eyes, dark velvet skin, and wavy silky hair darker than either skin or eyes, was unquestionably rare and special. Her lips were parted enough to show the gleam of white teeth, but she wasn’t laughing. She wasn’t reacting at all, which was remarkable for an actress.

“It may be,” I conceded, “that I am so dazzled by the collective radiance that I am blind to the glory of any single star. Perhaps I’m a poet after all, I sound like one. My feeling that I must have the phone numbers of all of you is certainly no reflection on Helen Iacono. I admit that that will not completely solve the problem, for tomorrow I must face the question which one to call first. If I feel as I do right now I would have to dial all the numbers simultaneously, and that’s impossible. I hope to heaven it doesn’t end in a stalemate. What if I can never decide which one to call first? What if it drives me mad? Or what if I gradually sink—”

I turned to see who was tugging at my sleeve. It was Benjamin Schriver, the host, with a grin on his ruddy round face. He said, “I hate to interrupt your speech, but perhaps you can finish it later. We’re ready to sit. Will you join us?”

II

The dining room, on the same floor as the kitchen, three feet or so below street level, would have been too gloomy for my taste if most of the dark wood paneling hadn’t been covered with pictures of geese, pheasants, fish, fruit, vegetables, and other assorted edible objects; and also it helped that the tablecloth was white as snow, the wineglasses, seven of them at each place, glistened in the soft light from above, and the polished silver shone. In the center was a low gilt bowl, or maybe gold, two feet long, filled with clusters of Phalaenopsis Aphrodite, donated by Wolfe, cut by him that afternoon from some of his most treasured plants.

As he sat he was scowling at them, but the scowl was not for the orchids; it was for the chair, which, though a little fancy, was perfectly okay for you or me but not for his seventh of a ton. His fundament lapped over at both sides. He erased the scowl when Schriver, at the end of the table, complimented him on the flowers, and Hewitt, across from him, said he had never seen Phalaenopsis better grown, and the others joined in the chorus, all but the aristologist who sat between Wolfe and me. He was a Wall Street character and a well-known theatrical angel named Vincent Pyle, and was living up to his reputation as an original by wearing a dinner jacket, with tie to match, which looked black until you had the light at a certain slant and then you saw that it was green. He eyed the orchids with his head cocked and his mouth puckered, and said, “I don’t care for flowers with spots and streaks. They’re messy.”

I thought, but didn’t say, Okay, drop dead. If I had known that that was what he was going to do in about three hours I might not even have thought it. He got a rise, not from Wolfe or me, or Schriver or Hewitt, but from three others who thought flowers with spots and streaks were wonderful: Adrian Dart, the actor who had turned down an offer of a million a week, more or less, from Hollywood; Emil Kreis, Chairman of the Board of Codex Press, book publishers; and Harvey M. Leacraft, corporation lawyer.

Actually, cupbearers was what the Hebes were not. The wines, beginning with the Montrachet with the first course, were poured by Felix; but the girls delivered the food, with different routines for different items. The first course, put on individual plates in the kitchen, with each girl bringing in a plate for her aristologist, was small Minis sprinkled with chopped chives, piled with caviar, and topped with sour cream — the point, as far as Fritz was concerned, being that he had made the blinis, starting on them at eleven that morning, and also the sour cream, starting on that Sunday evening. Fritz’s sour cream is very special, but Vincent Pyle had to get in a crack. After he had downed all of his blinis he remarked, loud enough to carry around the table, “A new idea, putting sand in. Clever. Good for chickens, since they need grit.”

The man on my left, Emil Kreis, the publisher, muttered at my ear, “Ignore him. He backed three flops this season.”

The girls, who had been coached by Fritz and Felix that afternoon, handled the green turtle soup without a splash. When they had brought in the soup plates Felix brought the bowl, and each girl ladled from it as Felix held it by the plate. I asked Pyle cordially, “Any sand?” but he said no, it was delicious, and cleaned it up.

I was relieved when I saw that the girls wouldn’t dish the fish — flounders poached in dry white wine, with a mussel-and-mushroom sauce that was one of Fritz’s specialties. Felix did the dishing at a side table, and the girls merely carried. With the first taste of the sauce there were murmurs of appreciation, and Adrian Dart, the actor, across from Wolfe, sang out, “Superb!” They were making various noises of satisfaction, and Leacraft, the lawyer, was asking Wolfe if Fritz would be willing to give him the recipe, when Pyle, on my right, made a face and dropped his fork on his plate with a clatter. I thought he was putting on an act, and still thought so when his head drooped and I heard him gnash his teeth, but then his shoulders sagged and he clapped a hand to his mouth, and that seemed to be overdoing it. Two or three of them said something, and he pushed his chair back, got to his feet, said, “You must excuse me, I’m sorry,” and headed for the door to the hall. Schriver arose and followed him out. The others exchanged words and glances.

Hewitt said, “A damn shame, but I’m going to finish this,” and used his fork. Someone asked if Pyle had a bad heart, and someone else said no. They all resumed with the flounder, and the conversation, but the spirit wasn’t the same.

When, at a signal from Felix, the maidens started removing the plates, Lewis Hewitt got up and left the room, came back in a couple of minutes, sat, and raised his voice. “Vincent is in considerable pain, and a doctor has come. There is nothing we can do, and Ben wishes us to proceed. He will rejoin us when — when he can.”

“What is it?” someone asked.

Hewitt said the doctor didn’t know. Zoltan entered bearing an enormous covered platter, and the Hebes gathered at the side table, and Felix lifted the cover and began serving the roast pheasant, which had been larded with strips of pork soaked for twenty hours in Tokay, and then — but no. What’s the use? The annual dinner of the Ten for Aristology was a flop. Since for years I have been eating three meals a day cooked by Fritz Brenner I would like to show my appreciation by getting in print some idea of what he can do in the way of victuals, but it won’t do here. Sure, the pheasant was good enough for gods if there had been any around, and so was the suckling pig, and the salad, with a dressing which Fritz calls Devil’s Rain, and the chestnut croquettes, and the cheese — only the one kind, made in New Jersey by a man named Bill Thompson under Fritz’s supervision; and they were all eaten, more or less. But Hewitt left the room three more times and the last time was gone a good ten minutes, and Schriver didn’t rejoin the party at all, and while the salad was being served Emil Kreis went out and didn’t come back.

When, as coffee and brandy were being poured and cigars and cigarettes passed, Hewitt left his chair for the fifth time, Nero Wolfe got up and followed him out. I lit a cigar just to be doing something, and tried to be sociable by giving an ear to a story Adrian Dart was telling, but by the time I finished my coffee I was getting fidgety. By the glower that had been deepening on Wolfe’s face for the past hour I knew he was boiling, and when he’s like that, especially away from home, there’s no telling about him. He might even have had the idea of aiming the glower at Vincent Pyle for ruining Fritz’s meal. So I put what was left of the cigar in a tray, arose, and headed for the door, and was halfway to it when here he came, still glowering.

“Come with me,” he snapped, and kept going.

The way to the kitchen from the dining room was through a pantry, twenty feet long, with counters and shelves and cupboards on both sides. Wolfe marched through with me behind. In the kitchen the twelve maidens were scattered around on chairs and stools at tables and counters, eating. A woman was busy at a sink. Zoltan was busy at a refrigerator. Fritz, who was pouring a glass of wine, presumably for himself, turned as Wolfe entered and put the bottle down.

Wolfe went to him, stood, and spoke. “Fritz. I offer my apologies. I permitted Mr. Hewitt to cajole you. I should have known better. I beg your pardon.”

Fritz gestured with his free hand, the wineglass steady in the other. “But it is not to pardon, only to regret. The man got sick, that’s a pity, only not from my cooking. I assure you.”

“You don’t need to. Not from your cooking as it left you, but as it reached him. I repeat that I am culpable, but I won’t dwell on that now; it can wait. There is an aspect that is exigent.” Wolfe turned. “Archie. Are those women all here?”

I had to cover more than half a circle to count them, scattered as they were. “Yes, sir, all present. Twelve.”

“Collect them. They can stand” — he pointed to the alcove — “over there. And bring Felix.”

It was hard to believe. They were eating; and for him to interrupt a man, or even a woman, at a meal, was unheard of. Not even me. Only in an extreme emergency had he ever asked me to quit food before I was through. Boiling was no name for it. Without even bothering to raise a brow, I turned and called out, “I’m sorry, ladies, but if Mr. Wolfe says it’s urgent that settles it. Over there, please? All of you.” Then I went through the pantry corridor, pushed the two-way door, caught Felix’s eye, and wiggled a beckoning finger at him, and he came. By the time we got to the kitchen the girls had left the chairs and stools and were gathering at the alcove, but not with enthusiasm. There were mutterings, and some dirty looks for me as I approached with Felix. Wolfe came, with Zoltan, and stood, tight-lipped, surveying them.

“I remind you,” he said, “that the first course you brought to the table was caviar on blinis topped with sour cream. The portion served to Mr. Vincent Pyle, and eaten by him, contained arsenic. Mr. Pyle is in bed upstairs, attended by three doctors, and will probably die within an hour. I am speaking—”

He stopped to glare at them. They were reacting, or acting, no matter which. There were gasps and exclamations, and one of them clutched her throat, and another, baring her arms, clapped her palms to her ears. When the glare had restored order Wolfe went on, “You will please keep quiet and listen. I am speaking of conclusions formed by me. My conclusion that Mr. Pyle ate arsenic is based on the symptoms: burning throat, faintness, intense burning pain in the stomach, dry mouth, cool skin, vomiting. My conclusion that the arsenic was in the first course is based, first, on the amount of time it takes arsenic to act; second, on the fact that it is highly unlikely it could have been put in the soup or the fish; and third, that Mr. Pyle complained of sand in the cream or caviar. I admit the possibility that one or both of my conclusions will be proven wrong, but I regard it as remote and I am acting on them.” His head turned. “Fritz. Tell me about the caviar from the moment it was put on the individual plates. Who did that?”

I had once told Fritz that I could imagine no circumstances in which he would look really unhappy, but now I wouldn’t have to try. He was biting his lips, first the lower and then the upper. He began, “I must assure you—”

“I need no assurance from you, Fritz. Who put it on the plates?”

“Zoltan and I did.” He pointed. “At that table.”

“And left them there? They were taken from that table by the women?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Each woman took one plate?”

“Yes, sir. I mean, they were told to. I was at the range.”

Zoltan spoke up. “I watched them, Mr. Wolfe. They each took one plate. And believe me, nobody put any arsenic—”

“Please, Zoltan. I add another conclusion: that no one put arsenic in one of the portions and then left to chance which one of the guests would get it. Surely the poisoner intended it to reach a certain one — either Mr. Pyle, or, as an alternative, some other one and it went to Mr. Pyle by mishap. In any case, it was the portion Pyle ate that was poisoned, and whether he got it by design or by mischance is for the moment irrelevant.” His eyes were at the girls. “Which one of you took that plate to Mr. Pyle?”

No reply. No sound, no movement.

Wolfe grunted. “Pfui. If you didn’t know his name, you do now. The man who left during the fish course and who is now dying. Who served him?”

No reply; and I had to hand it to them that no pair of eyes left Wolfe to fasten on Peggy Choate, the redhead. Mine did. “What the heck,” I said. “Speak up, Miss Choate.”

“I didn’t!” she cried.

“That’s silly. Of course you did. Twenty people can swear to it. I looked right at you while you were dishing his soup. And when you brought the fish—”

“But I didn’t take him that first thing! He already had some! I didn’t!”

Wolfe took over. “Your name is Choate?”

“Yes.” Her chin was up. “Peggy Choate.”

“You deny that you served the plate of caviar, the first course, to Mr. Pyle?”

“I certainly do.”

“But you were supposed to? You were assigned to him?”

“Yes. I took the plate from the table there and went in with it, and started to him, and then I saw that he had some, and I thought I had made a mistake. We hadn’t seen the guests. That man” — she pointed to Felix — “had shown us which chair our guest would sit in, and mine was the second from the right on this side as I went in, but that one had already been served, and I thought someone else had made a mistake or I was mixed up. Anyway, I saw that the man next to him, on his right, hadn’t been served, and I gave it to him. That was you. I gave it to you.”

“Indeed.” Wolfe was frowning at her. “Who was assigned to me?”

That wasn’t put on. He actually didn’t know. He had never looked at her. He had been irritated that females were serving, and besides, he hates to twist his neck. Of course I could have told him, but Helen Iacono said, “I was.”

“Your name, please?”

“Helen Iacono.” She had a rich contralto that went fine with the deep dark eyes and dark velvet skin and wavy silky hair.

“Did you bring me the first course?”

“No. When I went in I saw Peggy serving you, and a man on the left next to the end didn’t have any, so I gave it to him.”

“Do you know his name?”

“I do,” Nora Jaret said. “From the card. He was mine.” Her big brown eyes were straight at Wolfe. “His name is Kreis. He had his when I got there. I was going to take it back to the kitchen, but then I thought, someone had stage fright but I haven’t, and I gave it to the man at the end.”

“Which end?”

“The left end. Mr. Schriver. He came and spoke to us this afternoon.”

She was corroborated by Carol Annis, the one with hair like corn silk who had no sense of humor, “That’s right,” she said. “I saw her. I was going to stop her, but she had already put the plate down, so I went around to the other side of the table with it when I saw that Adrian Dart didn’t have any. I didn’t mind because it was him.”

“You were assigned to Mr. Schriver?”

“Yes. I served him the other courses, until he left.”

It was turning into a ring-around-a-rosy, but the squat was bound to come. All Wolfe had to do was get to one who couldn’t claim a delivery, and that would tag her. I was rather hoping it wouldn’t be the next one, for the girl with the throaty voice had been Adrian Dart’s, and she had called me Archie and had given Helen Iacono a nice tribute. Would she claim she had served Dart herself?

No. She answered without being asked. “My name is Lucy Morgan,” she said, “and I had Adrian Dart, and Carol got to him before I did. There was only one place that didn’t have one, on Dart’s left, the next but one, and I took it there. I don’t know his name.”

I supplied it. “Hewitt. Mr. Lewis Hewitt.” A better name for it than ring-around-a-rosy would have been passing-the-buck. I looked at Fern Faber, the tall self-made blonde with a wide lazy mouth who had been my first stop on my phone-number tour. “It’s your turn, Miss Faber,” I told her. “You had Mr. Hewitt. Yes?”

“I sure did.” Her voice was pitched so high it threatened to squeak.

“But you didn’t take him his caviar?”

“I sure didn’t.”

“Then who did you take it to?”

“Nobody.”

I looked at Wolfe. His eyes were narrowed at her. “What did you do with it, Miss Faber?”

“I didn’t do anything with it. There wasn’t any.”

“Nonsense. There are twelve of you, and there were twelve at the table, and each got a portion. How can you say there wasn’t any?”

“Because there wasn’t. I was in the john fixing my hair, and when I came back in she was taking the last one from the table, and when I asked where mine was he said he didn’t know, and I went to the dining room and they all had some.”

“Who was taking the last one from the table?”

She pointed to Lucy Morgan. “Her.”

“Whom did you ask where yours was?”

She pointed to Zoltan. “Him.”

Wolfe turned. “Zoltan?”

“Yes, sir. I mean, yes, sir, she asked where hers was. I had turned away when the last one was taken. I don’t mean I know where she had been, just that she asked me that. I asked Fritz if I should go in and see if they were one short and he said no, Felix was there and would see to it.”

Wolfe went back to Fern Faber. “Where is that room where you were fixing your hair?”

She pointed toward the pantry. “In there.”

“The door’s around the corner,” Felix said.

“How long were you in there?”

“My God, I don’t know, do you think I timed it? When Archie Goodwin was talking to us, and Mr. Schriver came and said they were going to start, I went pretty soon after that.”

Wolfe’s head jerked to me. “So that’s where you were. I might have known there were young women around. Supposing that Miss Faber went to fix her hair shortly after you left — say three minutes — how long was she at it, if the last plate had been taken from the table when she returned to the kitchen?”

I gave it a thought. “Fifteen to twenty minutes.”

He growled at her, “What was wrong with your hair?”

“I didn’t say anything was wrong with it.” She was getting riled. “Look, Mister, do you want all the details?”

“No.” Wolfe surveyed them for a moment, not amiably, took in enough air to fill all his middle — say two bushels — let it out again, turned his back on them, saw the glass of wine Fritz had left on a table, went and picked it up, smelled it, and stood gazing at it. The girls started to make noises, and, hearing them, he put the glass down and came back.

“You’re in a pickle,” he said. “So am I. You heard me apologize to Mr. Brenner and avow my responsibility for his undertaking to cook that meal. When, upstairs, I saw that Mr. Pyle would die, and reached the conclusions I told you of, I felt myself under compulsion to expose the culprit. I am committed. When I came down here I thought it would be a simple matter to learn who had served poisoned food to Mr. Pyle, but I was wrong. It’s obvious now that I have to deal with one who is not only resourceful and ingenious, but also quick-witted and audacious. While I was closing in on her just now, as I thought, inexorably approaching the point where she would either have to contradict one of you or deny that she had served the first course to anyone, she was fleering at me inwardly, and with reason, for her coup had worked. She had slipped through my fingers, and—”

“But she didn’t!” It came from one of them whose name I didn’t have. “She said she didn’t serve anybody!”

Wolfe shook his head. “No. Not Miss Faber. She is the only one who is eliminated. She says she was absent from this room during the entire period when the plates were being taken from the table, and she wouldn’t dare to say that if she had in fact been here and taken a plate and carried it in to Mr. Pyle. She would certainly have been seen by some of you.”

He shook his head again. “Not her. But it could have been any other one of you. You — I speak now to that one, still to be identified — you must have extraordinary faith in your attendant godling, even allowing for your craft. For you took great risks. You took a plate from the table — not the first probably, but one of the first — and on your way to the dining room you put arsenic in the cream. That wasn’t difficult; you might even have done it without stopping if you had the arsenic in a paper spill. You could get rid of the spill later, perhaps in the room which Miss Faber calls a john. You took the plate to Mr. Pyle, came back here immediately, got another plate, took it to the dining room, and gave it to one who had not been served. I am not guessing; it had to be like that. It was a remarkably adroit stratagem, but you can’t possibly be impregnable.”

He turned to Zoltan. “You say you watched as the plates were taken, and each of them took only one. Did one of them come back and take another?”

Zoltan looked fully as unhappy as Fritz. “I’m thinking, Mr. Wolfe. I can try to think, but I’m afraid it won’t help. I didn’t look at their faces, and they’re all dressed alike. I guess I didn’t watch very close.”

“Fritz?”

“No, sir. I was at the range.”

“Then try this, Zoltan. Who were the first ones to take plates — the first three or four?”

Zoltan slowly shook his head. “I’m afraid it’s no good, Mr. Wolfe. I could try to think, but I couldn’t be sure.” He moved his eyes right to left and back again, at the girls. “I tell you, I wasn’t looking at their faces.” He extended his hands, palms up. “You will consider, Mr. Wolfe, I was not thinking of poison. I was only seeing that the plates were carried properly. Was I thinking which one has got arsenic? No.”

“I took the first plate,” a girl blurted — another whose name I didn’t know. “I took it in and gave it to the man in my chair, the one at the left corner at the other side of the table, and I stayed there. I never left the dining room.”

“Your name, please?”

“Marjorie Quinn.”

“Thank you. Now the second plate. Who took it?”

Apparently nobody. Wolfe gave them ten seconds, his eyes moving to take them all in, his lips tight. “I advise you,” he said, “to jog your memories, in case it becomes necessary to establish the order in which you took the plates by dragging it out of you. I hope it won’t come to that.” His head turned. “Felix, I have neglected you purposely, to give you time to reflect. You were in the dining room. My expectation was that after I had learned who had served the first course to Mr. Pyle you would corroborate it, but now that there is nothing for you to corroborate I must look to you for the fact itself. I must ask you to point her out.”

In a way Wolfe was Felix’s boss. When Wolfe’s oldest and dearest friend, Marko Vukcic, who had owned Rusterman’s restaurant, had died, his will had left the restaurant to members of the staff in trust, with Wolfe as the trustee, and Felix was the maître d’hôtel. With that job at the best restaurant in New York, naturally Felix was both bland and commanding, but now he was neither. If he felt the way he looked, he was miserable.

“I can’t,” he said.

“Pfui! You, trained as you are to see everything?”

“That is true, Mr. Wolfe. I knew you would ask me this, but I can’t. I can only explain. The young woman who just spoke, Marjorie Quinn, was the first one in with a plate, as she said. She did not say that as she served it one of the blinis slid off onto the table, but it did. As I sprang toward her she was actually about to pick it up with her fingers, and I jerked her away and put it back on the plate with a fork, and I gave her a look. Anyway, I was not myself. Having women as waiters was bad enough, and not only that, they were without experience. When I recovered command of myself I saw the red-headed one, Choate, standing back of Mr. Pyle, to whom she had been assigned, with a plate in her hand, and I saw that he had already been served. As I moved forward she stepped to the right and served the plate to you. The operation was completely upset, and I was helpless. The dark-skinned one, Iacono, who was assigned to you, served Mr. Kreis, and the—”

“If you please.” Wolfe was curt. “I have heard them, and so have you. I have always found you worthy of trust, but it’s possible that in your exalted position, maître d’hôtel at Rusterman’s, you would rather dodge than get involved in a poisoning. Are you dodging, Felix?”

“Good God, Mr. Wolfe, I am involved!”

“Very well. I saw that woman spill the blini and start her fingers for it, and I saw you retrieve it. Yes, you’re involved, but not as I am.” He turned to me. “Archie. You are commonly my first resort, but now you are my last. You sat next to Mr. Pyle. Who put that plate before him?”

Of course I knew that was coming, but I hadn’t been beating my brain because there was no use. I said merely but positively, “No.” He glared at me and I added, “That’s all, just no, but like Felix I can explain. First, I would have had to turn around to see her face, and that’s bad table manners. Second, I was watching Felix rescue the blini. Third, there was an argument going on about flowers with spots and streaks, and I was listening to it and so were you. I didn’t even see her arm.”

Wolfe stood and breathed. He shut his eyes and opened them again, and breathed some more. “Incredible,” he muttered. “The wretch has incredible luck.”

“I’m going home,” Fern Faber said. “I’m tired.”

“So am I,” another one said, and was moving, but Wolfe’s eyes pinned her. “I advise you not to,” he said. “It is true that Miss Faber is eliminated as the culprit, and also Miss Quinn, since she was under surveillance by Felix while Mr. Pyle was being served, but I advise even them to stay. When Mr. Pyle dies the doctors will certainly summon the police, and it would be well for all of you to be here when they arrive. I had hoped to be able to present them with an exposed murderer. Confound it! There is still a chance. Archie, come with me. Fritz, Felix, Zoltan, remain with these women. If one or more of them insist on leaving do not detain them by force, but have the names and the times of departure. If they want to eat feed them. I’ll be—”

“I’m going home,” Fern Faber said stubbornly.

“Very well, go. You’ll be got out of bed by a policeman before the night’s out. I’ll be in the dining room, Fritz. Come, Archie.”

He went and I followed, along the pantry corridor and through the two-way door. On the way I glanced at my wrist watch: ten past eleven. I rather expected to find the dining room empty, but it wasn’t. Eight of them were still there, the only ones missing being Schriver and Hewitt, who were probably upstairs. The air was heavy with cigar smoke. All of them but Adrian Dart were at the table with their chairs pushed back at various angles, with brandy glasses and cigars. Dart was standing with his back to a picture of honkers on the wing, holding forth. As we entered he stopped and heads turned.

Emil Kreis spoke. “Oh, there you are. I was coming to the kitchen but didn’t want to butt in. Schriver asked me to apologize to Fritz Brenner. Our custom is to ask the chef to join us with champagne, which is barbarous but gay, but of course in the circumstances...” He let it hang, and added, “Shall I explain to him? Or will you?”

“I will.” Wolfe went to the end of the table and sat. He had been on his feet for nearly two hours — all very well for his twice-a-day sessions in the plant rooms, but not elsewhere. He looked around. “Mr. Pyle is still alive?”

“We hope so,” one said. “We sincerely hope so.”

“I ought to be home in bed,” another one said. “I have a hard day tomorrow. But it doesn’t seem...” He took a puff on his cigar.

Emil Kreis reached for the brandy bottle. “There’s been no word since I came down.” He looked at his wrist watch. “Nearly an hour ago. I suppose I should go up. It’s so damned unpleasant.” He poured brandy.

“Terrible,” one said. “Absolutely terrible. I understand you were asking which one of the girls brought him the caviar. Kreis says you asked him.”

Wolfe nodded. “I also asked Mr. Schriver and Mr. Hewitt. And Mr. Goodwin and Mr. Brenner, and the two men who came to help at my request. And the women themselves. After more than an hour with them I am still at fault. I have discovered the artifice the culprit used, but not her identity.”

“Aren’t you a bit premature?” Leacraft, the lawyer, asked. “There may be no culprit. An acute and severe gastric disturbance may be caused—”

“Nonsense. I am too provoked for civility, Mr. Leacraft. The symptoms are typical of arsenic, and you heard Mr. Pyle complain of sand, but that’s not all. I said I have discovered the artifice. None of them will admit serving him the first course. The one assigned to him found he had already been served and served me instead. There is indeed a culprit. She put arsenic in the cream en passant, served it to Mr. Pyle, returned to the kitchen for another portion, and came and served it to someone else. That is established.”

“But then,” the lawyer objected, “one of them served no one. How could that be?”

“I am not a tyro at inquiry, Mr. Leacraft. I’ll ravel it for you later if you want, but now I want to get on. It is no conjecture that poison was given to Mr. Pyle by the woman who brought him the caviar; it is a fact. By a remarkable combination of cunning and luck she has so far eluded identification, and I am appealing to you. All of you. I ask you to close your eyes and recall the scene. We are here at table, discussing the orchids — the spots and streaks. The woman serving that place” — he pointed — “lets a blini slip from the plate and Felix retrieves it. It helps to close your eyes. Just about then a woman enters with a plate, goes to Mr. Pyle, and puts it before him. I appeal to you: which one?”

Emil Kreis shook his head. “I told you upstairs, I don’t know. I didn’t see her. Or if I did, it didn’t register.”

Adrian Dart, the actor, stood with his eyes closed, his chin up, and his arms folded, a fine pose for concentration. The others, even Leacraft, had their eyes closed too, but of course they couldn’t hold a candle to Dart. After a long moment the eyes began to open and heads to shake.

“It’s gone,” Dart said in his rich musical baritone. “I must have seen it, since I sat across from him, but it’s gone. Utterly.”

“I didn’t see it,” another said. “I simply didn’t see it.”

“I have a vague feeling,” another said, “but it’s too damn vague. No.”

They made it unanimous. No dice.

Wolfe put his palms on the table. “Then I’m in for it,” he said grimly. “I am your guest, gentlemen, and would not be offensive, but I am to blame that Fritz Brenner was enticed to this deplorable fiasco. If Mr. Pyle dies, as he surely will—”

The door opened and Benjamin Schriver entered. Then Lewis Hewitt, and then the familiar burly frame of Sergeant Purley Stebbins of Manhattan Homicide West.

Schriver crossed to the table and spoke. “Vincent is dead. Half an hour ago. Doctor Jameson called the police. He thinks that it is practically certain—”

“Hold it,” Purley growled at his elbow. “I’ll handle it if you don’t mind.”

“My God,” Adrian Dart groaned, and shuddered magnificently.

That was the last I heard of the affair from an aristologist.

III

“I did not!” Inspector Cramer roared. “Quit twisting my words around! I didn’t charge you with complicity! I merely said you’re concealing something, and what the hell is that to scrape your neck? You always do!”

It was a quarter to two Wednesday afternoon. We were in the office on the first floor of the old brownstone on West 35th Street — Wolfe in his oversized chair. The daily schedule was messed beyond repair. When we had finally got home, at five o’clock in the morning, Wolfe had told Fritz to forget about breakfast until further notice, and had sent me up to the plant rooms to leave a note for Theodore saying that he would not appear at nine in the morning and perhaps not at all. It had been not at all. At half past eleven he had buzzed on the house phone to tell Fritz to bring up the breakfast tray with four eggs and ten slices of bacon instead of two and five, and it was past one o’clock when the sounds came of his elevator and then his footsteps in the hall, heading for the office.

If you think a problem child is tough, try handling a problem elephant. He is plenty knotty even when he is himself, and that day he was really special. After looking through the mail, glancing at his desk calendar, and signing three checks I had put on his desk, he had snapped at me, “A fine prospect. Dealing with them singly would be interminable. Will you have them all here at six o’clock?”

I kept calm. I merely asked, “All of whom?”

“You know quite well. Those women.”

I still kept calm. “I should think ten of them would be enough. You said yourself that two of them can be crossed off.”

“I need them all. Those two can help establish the order in which the plates were taken.”

I held on. I too was short on sleep, shorter even than he, and I didn’t feel up to a fracas. “I have a suggestion,” I said. “I suggest that you postpone operations until your wires are connected again. Counting up to five hundred might help. You know damn well that all twelve of them will spend the afternoon either at the District Attorney’s office or receiving official callers at their homes — probably most of them at the DA’s office. And probably they’ll spend the evening there too. Do you want some aspirin?”

“I want them,” he growled.

I could have left him to grope back to normal on his own and gone up to my room for a nap, but after all he pays my salary. So I picked up a sheet of paper I had typed and got up and handed it to him. It read:

“Fern Faber’s out,” I said, “and I realize it doesn’t have to be one of those five, even though Lucy Morgan took the last plate. Possibly one or two others took plates after Peggy Choate did, and served the men they were assigned to. But it seems—”

I stopped because he had crumpled it and dropped it in the wastebasket. “I heard them,” he growled. “My faculties, including my memory, are not impaired. I am merely ruffled beyond the bounds of tolerance.”

For him that was an abject apology, and a sign that he was beginning to regain control. But a few minutes later, when the bell rang, and after a look through the one-way glass panel of the front door I told him it was Cramer, and he said to admit him, and Cramer marched in and planted his fanny on the red leather chair and opened up with an impolite remark about concealing facts connected with a murder, Wolfe had cut loose; and Cramer asked him what the hell was that to scrape his neck, which was a new one to me but sounded somewhat vulgar for an inspector. He had probably picked it up from some hoodlum.

Ruffling Cramer beyond the bounds of tolerance did Wolfe good. He leaned back in his chair. “Everyone conceals something,” he said placidly. “Or at least omits something, if only because to include everything is impossible. During those wearisome hours, nearly six of them, I answered all questions, and so did Mr. Goodwin. Indeed, I thought we were helpful. I thought we had cleared away some rubble.”

“Yeah.” Cramer wasn’t grateful. His big pink face was always a little pinker than normal, not with pleasure, when he was tackling Wolfe. “You had witnessed the commission of a murder, and you didn’t notify—”

“It wasn’t a murder until he died.”

“All right, a felony. You not only failed to report it, you—”

“That a felony had been committed was my conclusion. Others present disagreed with me. Only a few minutes before Mr. Stebbins entered the room Mr. Leacraft, a member of the bar and therefore himself an officer of the law, challenged my conclusion.”

“You should have reported it. You’re a licensed detective. Also you started an investigation, questioning the suspects—”

“Only to test my conclusion. I would have been a ninny to report it before learning—”

“Damn it,” Cramer barked, “will you let me finish a sentence? Just one?”

Wolfe’s shoulders went up an eighth of an inch and down again. “Certainly, if it has import. I am not baiting you, Mr. Cramer. But I have already replied to these imputations, to you and Mr. Stebbins and an assistant district attorney. I did not wrongly delay reporting a crime, and I did not usurp the function of the police. Very well, finish a sentence.”

“You knew Pyle was dying. You said so.”

“Also my own conclusion. The doctors were still trying to save him.”

Cramer took a breath. He looked at me, saw nothing inspiring, and returned to Wolfe. “I’ll tell you why I’m here. Those three men — the cook, the man that helped him, and the man in the dining room — Fritz Brenner, Felix Courbet, and Zoltan Mahany — were all supplied by you. All close to you. I want to know about them, or at least two of them. I might as well leave Fritz out of it. In the first place, it’s hard to believe that Zoltan doesn’t know who took the first two or three plates or whether one of them came back for a second one, and it’s also hard to believe that Felix doesn’t know who served Pyle.”

“It is indeed,” Wolfe agreed. “They are highly trained men. But they have been questioned.”

“They sure have. It’s also hard to believe that Goodwin didn’t see who served Pyle. He sees everything.”

“Mr. Goodwin is present. Discuss it with him.”

“I have. Now I want to ask your opinion of a theory. I know yours, and I don’t reject it, but there are alternatives. First a fact. In a metal trash container in the kitchen — not a garbage pail — we found a roll of paper, ordinary white paper that had been rolled into a tube, held with tape, smaller at one end. The laboratory has found particles of arsenic inside. The only two fingerprints on it that are any good are Zoltan’s. He says he saw it on the kitchen floor under a table some time after the meal had started, he can’t say exactly when, and he picked it up and dropped it in the container, and his prints are on it because he pinched it to see if there was anything in it.”

Wolfe nodded. “As I surmised. A paper spill.”

“Yeah. I don’t say it kills your theory. She could have shaken it into the cream without leaving prints, and she certainly wouldn’t have dropped it on the floor if there was any chance it had her prints. But it has got Zoltan’s. What’s wrong with the theory that Zoltan poisoned one of the portions and saw that it was taken by a certain one? I’ll answer that myself. There are two things wrong with it. First, Zoltan claims he didn’t know which guest any of the girls were assigned to. But Felix knew, and they could have been in collusion. Second, the girls all deny that Zoltan indicated which plate they were to take, but you know how that is. He could have done it without her knowing it. What else is wrong with it?”

“It’s not only untenable, it’s egregious,” Wolfe declared. “Why, in that case, did one of them come back for another plate?”

“She was confused. Nervous. Dumb.”

“Bosh. Why doesn’t she admit it?”

“Scared.”

“I don’t believe it. I questioned them before you did.” Wolfe waved it away. “Tommyrot, and you know it. My theory is not a theory; it is a reasoned conviction. I hope it is being acted on. I suggested to Mr. Stebbins that he examine their garments to see if some kind of pocket had been made in one of them. She had to have it readily available.”

“He did. They all had pockets. The laboratory has found no trace of arsenic.” Cramer uncrossed his legs. “We’re following up your theory all right; we might even have hit on it ourselves in a week or two. But I wanted to ask you about those men. You know them.”

“I do, yes. But I do not answer for them. They may have a dozen murders on their souls, but they had nothing to do with the death of Mr. Pyle. If you are following up my theory — my conviction, rather — I suppose you have learned the order in which the women took the plates.”

Cramer shook his head. “We have not, and I doubt if we will. All we have is a bunch of contradictions. You had them good and scared before we got to them. We do have the last five, starting with Peggy Choate, who found that Pyle had been served and gave it to you, and then — but you know them. You got that yourself.”

“No. I got those five, but not that they were the last. There might have been others in between.”

“There weren’t. It’s pretty well settled that those five were the last. After Peggy Choate the last four plates were taken by Helen Iacono, Nora Jaret, Carol Annis, and Lucy Morgan. Then that Fern Faber, who had been in the can, but there was no plate for her. It’s the order in which they took them before that, the first seven, that we can’t pry out of them — except the first one, that Marjorie Quinn. You couldn’t either.”

Wolfe turned a palm up. “I was interrupted.”

“You were not. You left them there in a huddle, scared stiff, and went to the dining room to start in on the men. Your own private murder investigation, and to hell with the law. I was surprised to see Goodwin here when I rang the bell just now. I supposed you’d have him out running errands like calling at the agency they got the girls from. Or getting a line on Pyle to find a connection between him and one of them. Unless you’re no longer interested?”

“I’m interested willy-nilly,” Wolfe declared. “As I told the assistant district attorney, it is on my score that a man was poisoned in food prepared by Fritz Brenner. But I do not send Mr. Goodwin on fruitless errands. He is one and you have dozens, and if anything is to be learned at the agency or by inquiry into Mr. Pyle’s associations your army will dig it up. They’re already at it, of course, but if they had started a trail you wouldn’t be here. If I send Mr. Goodwin—”

The doorbell rang and I got up and went to the hall. At the rear the door to the kitchen swung open part way and Fritz poked his head through, saw me, and withdrew. Turning to the front for a look through the panel, I saw that I had exaggerated when I told Wolfe that all twelve of them would be otherwise engaged. At least one wasn’t. There on the stoop was Helen Iacono.

IV

It had sounded to me as if Cramer had about said his say and would soon be moving along, and if he bumped into Helen Iacono in the hall she might be too embarrassed to give me her phone number, if that was what she had come for, so as I opened the door I pressed a finger to my lips and sshhed at her, and then crooked the finger to motion her in. Her deep dark eyes looked a little startled, but she stepped across the sill, and I shut the door, turned, opened the first door on the left, to the front room, motioned to her to enter, followed, and closed the door.

“What’s the matter?” she whispered.

“Nothing now,” I told her. “This is soundproofed. There’s a police inspector in the office with Mr. Wolfe and I thought you might have had enough of cops for a while. Of course if you want to meet him—”

“I don’t. I want to see Nero Wolfe.”

“Okay, I’ll tell him as soon as the cop goes. Have a seat. It shouldn’t be long.”

There is a connecting door between the front room and the office, but I went around through the hall, and here came Cramer. He was marching by without even the courtesy of a grunt, but I stepped to the front to let him out, and then went to the office and told Wolfe, “I’ve got one of them in the front room. Helen Iacono, the tawny-skinned Hebe who had you but gave her caviar to Kreis. Shall I keep her while I get the rest of them?”

He made a face. “What does she want?”

“To see you.”

He took a breath. “Confound it. Bring her in.”

I went and opened the connecting door, told her to come, and escorted her across to the red leather chair. She was more ornamental in it than Cramer, but not nearly as impressive as she had been at first sight. She was puffy around the eyes and her skin had lost some glow. She told Wolfe she hadn’t had any sleep. She said she had just left the District Attorney’s office, and if she went home her mother would be at her again, and her brothers and sisters would come home from school and make noise, and anyway she had decided she had to see Wolfe. Her mother was old-fashioned and didn’t want her to be an actress. It was beginning to sound as if what she was after was a place to take a nap, but then Wolfe got a word in.

He said drily, “I don’t suppose, Miss Iacono, you came to consult me about your career.”

“Oh, no. I came because you’re a detective and you’re very clever and I’m afraid. I’m afraid they’ll find out something I did, and if they do I won’t have any career. My parents won’t let me even if I’m still alive. I nearly gave it away already when they were asking me questions. So I decided to tell you about it and then if you’ll help me I’ll help you. If you promise to keep my secret.”

“I can’t promise to keep a secret if it is a guilty one — if it is a confession of a crime or knowledge of one.”

“It isn’t.”

“Then you have my promise, and Mr. Goodwin’s. We have kept many secrets.”

“All right. I stabbed Vincent Pyle with a knife and got blood on me.”

I stared. For half a second I thought she meant that he hadn’t died of poison at all, that she had sneaked upstairs and stuck a knife in him, which seemed unlikely since the doctors would probably have found the hole.

Apparently she wasn’t going on, and Wolfe spoke. “Ordinarily, Miss Iacono, stabbing a man is considered a crime. When and where did this happen?”

“It wasn’t a crime because it was in self-defense.” Her rich contralto was as composed as if she had been telling us the multiplication table. Evidently she saved the inflections for her career. She was continuing. “It happened in January, about three months ago. Of course I knew about him, everybody in show business does. I don’t know if it’s true that he backs shows just so he can get girls, but it might as well be. There’s a lot of talk about the girls he gets, but nobody really knows because he was always very careful about it. Some of the girls have talked but he never did. I don’t mean just taking them out, I mean the last ditch. We say that on Broadway. You know what I mean?”

“I can surmise.”

“Sometimes we say the last stitch, but it means the same thing. Early last winter he began on me. Of course I knew about his reputation, but he was backing Jack in the Pulpit and they were about to start casting, and I didn’t know it was going to be a flop, and if a girl expects to have a career she has to be sociable. I went out with him a few times, dinner and dancing and so forth, and then he asked me to his apartment, and I went. He cooked the dinner himself — I said he was very careful. Didn’t I?”

“Yes.”

“Well, he was. It’s a penthouse on Madison Avenue, but no one else was there. I let him kiss me. I figure it like this, an actress gets kissed all the time on the stage and the screen and TV, and what’s the difference? I went to his apartment three times and there was no real trouble, but the fourth time, that was in January, he turned into a beast right before my eyes, and I had to do something, and I grabbed a knife from the table and stabbed him with it. I got blood on my dress, and when I got home I tried to get it out but it left a stain. It cost forty-six dollars.”

“But Mr. Pyle recovered.”

“Oh, yes. I saw him a few times after that, I mean just by accident, but he barely spoke and so did I. I don’t think he ever told anyone about it, but what if he did? What if the police find out about it?”

Wolfe grunted. “That would be regrettable, certainly. You would be pestered even more than you are now. But if you have been candid with me you are not in mortal jeopardy. The police are not simpletons. You wouldn’t be arrested for murdering Mr. Pyle last night, let alone convicted, merely because you stabbed him in self-defense last January.”

“Of course I wouldn’t,” she agreed. “That’s not it. It’s my mother and father. They’d find out about it because they would ask them questions, and if I’m going to have a career I would have to leave home and my family, and I don’t want to. Don’t you see?” She came forward in the chair. “But if they find out right away who did it, who poisoned him, that would end it and I’d be all right. Only I’m afraid they won’t find out right away, but I think you could if I helped you, and you said last night that you’re committed. I can’t offer to help the police because they’d wonder why.”

“I see.” Wolfe’s eyes were narrowed at her. “How do you propose to help me?”

“Well, I figure it like this.” She was on the edge of the chair. “The way you explained it last night, one of the girls poisoned him. She was one of the first ones to take a plate in, and then she came back and got another one. I don’t quite understand why she did that, but you do, so all right. But if she came back for another plate that took a little time, and she must have been one of the last ones, and the police have got it worked out who were the last five. I know that because of the questions they asked this last time. So it was Peggy Choate or Nora Jaret or Carol Annis or Lucy Morgan.”

“Or you.”

“No, it wasn’t me.” Just matter-of-fact. “So it was one of them. And she didn’t poison him just for nothing, did she? You’d have to have a very good reason to poison a man, I know I would. So all we have to do is find out which one had a good reason, and that’s where I can help. I don’t know Lucy Morgan, but I know Carol a little, and I know Nora and Peggy even better. And now we’re in this together, and I can pretend I want to talk about it. I can talk about him because I had to tell the police I went out with him a few times, because I was seen with him and they’d find out, so I thought I’d better tell them. Dozens of girls went out with him, but he was so careful that nobody knows which ones went to the last ditch except the ones that talked. And I can find out which one of those four girls had a reason, and tell you, and that will end it.”

I was congratulating myself that I hadn’t got her phone number; and if I had got it, I would have crossed it off without a pang. I don’t say that a girl must have true nobility of character before I’ll buy her a lunch, but you have to draw the line somewhere. Thinking that Wolfe might be disgusted enough to put into words the way I felt, I horned in. “I have a suggestion, Miss Iacono. You could bring them here, all four of them, and let Mr. Wolfe talk it over with them. As you say, he’s very clever.”

She looked doubtful. “I don’t believe that’s a good idea. I think they’d be more apt to say things to me, just one at a time. Don’t you think so, Mr. Wolfe?”

“You know them better than I do,” he muttered. He was controlling himself.

“And then,” she said, “when we find out which one had a reason, and we tell the police, I can say that I saw her going back to the kitchen for another plate. Of course just where I saw her, where she was and where I was, that will depend on who she is. I saw you, Mr. Wolfe, when I said you could if I helped you, I saw the look on your face. You didn’t think a twenty-year-old girl could help, did you?”

He had my sympathy. Of course what he would have liked to say was that it might well be that a twenty-year-old hellcat could help, but that wouldn’t have been tactful.

“I may have been a little skeptical,” he conceded. “And it’s possible that you’re over-simplifying the problem. We have to consider all the factors. Take one: her plan must have been not only premeditated but also thoroughly rigged, since she had the poison ready. So she must have known that Mr. Pyle would be one of the guests. Did she?”

“Oh, yes. We all did. Mr. Buchman at the agency showed us a list of them and told us who they were, only of course he didn’t have to tell us who Vincent Pyle was. That was about a month ago, so she had plenty of time to get the poison. Is that arsenic very hard to get?”

“Not at all. It is in common use for many purposes. That is of course one of the police lines of inquiry, but she knew it would be and she is no bungler. Another point: when Mr. Pyle saw her there, serving food, wouldn’t he have been on his guard?”

“But he didn’t see her. They didn’t see any of us before. She came up behind him and gave him that plate. Of course he saw her afterward, but he had already eaten it.”

Wolfe persisted. “But then? He was in agony, but he was conscious and could speak. Why didn’t he denounce her?”

She gestured impatiently. “I guess you’re not as clever as you’re supposed to be. He didn’t know she had done it. When he saw her she was serving another man, and—”

“What other man?”

“I don’t know. How do I know? Only it wasn’t you, because I served you. And anyway, maybe he didn’t know she wanted to kill him. Of course she had a good reason, I know that, but maybe he didn’t know she felt like that. A man doesn’t know how a girl feels — anyhow, some girls. Look at me. He didn’t know I would never dream of going to the last ditch. He thought I would give up my honor and my virtue just to get a part in that play he was backing, and anyhow it was a flop.” She gestured again. “I thought you wanted to get her. All you do is make objections.”

Wolfe rubbed the side of his nose. “I do want to get her, Miss Iacono. I intend to. But like Mr. Pyle, though from a different motive, I am very careful. I can’t afford to botch it. I fully appreciate your offer to help. You didn’t like Mr. Goodwin’s suggestion that you get them here in a body for a discussion with me, and you may be right. But I don’t like your plan, for you to approach them singly and try to pump them. Our quarry is a malign and crafty harpy, and I will not be a party to your peril. I propose an alternative. Arrange for Mr. Goodwin to see them, together with you. Being a trained investigator, he knows how to beguile, and the peril, if any, will be his. If they are not available at the moment, arrange it for this evening — but not here. Perhaps one of them has a suitable apartment, or if not, a private room at some restaurant would do. At my expense, of course. Will you?”

It was her turn to make objections, and she had several. But when Wolfe met them, and made it plain that he would accept her as a colleague only if she accepted his alternative, she finally gave in. She would phone to let me know how she was making out with the arrangements. From her manner, when she got up to go, you might have thought she had been shopping for some little item, say a handbag, and had graciously deferred to the opinion of the clerk. After I graciously escorted her out and saw her descend the seven steps from the stoop to the sidewalk, I returned to the office and found Wolfe sitting with his eyes closed and his fists planted on the chair arms.

“Even money,” I said.

“On what?” he growled.

“On her against the field. She knows damn well who had a good reason and exactly what it was. It was getting too hot for comfort and she decided that the best way to duck was to wish it on some dear friend.”

His eyes opened. “She would, certainly. A woman whose conscience has no sting will stop at nothing. But why come to me? Why didn’t she cook her own stew and serve it to the police?”

“I don’t know, but for a guess she was afraid the cops would get too curious and find out how she had saved her honor and her virtue and tell her mother and father, and father would spank her. Shall I also guess why you proposed your alternative instead of having her bring them here for you?”

“She wouldn’t. She said so.”

“Of course she would, if you had insisted. That’s your guess. Mine is that you’re not desperate enough yet to take on five females in a bunch. When you told me to bring the whole dozen you knew darn well it couldn’t be done, not even by me. Okay, I want instructions.”

“Later,” he muttered, and closed his eyes.

V

It was on the fourth floor of an old walk-up in the West Nineties near Amsterdam Avenue. I don’t know what it had in the way of a kitchen or bedroom — or bedrooms — because the only room I saw was the one we were sitting in. It was medium-sized, and the couch and chairs and rugs had a homey look, the kind of homeyness that furniture gets by being used by a lot of different people for fifty or sixty years. The chair I was on had a wobbly leg, but that’s no problem if you keep it in mind and make no sudden shifts. I was more concerned about the spidery little stand at my elbow on which my glass of milk was perched. I can always drink milk and had preferred it to Bubble-Pagne, registered trademark, a dime a bottle, which they were having. It was ten o’clock Wednesday evening.

The hostesses were the redhead with milky skin, Peggy Choate, and the one with big brown eyes and dimples, Nora Jaret, who shared the apartment. Carol Annis, with the fine profile and the corn-silk hair, had been there when Helen Iacono and I arrived, bringing Lucy Morgan and her throaty voice after detouring our taxi to pick her up at a street corner. They were a very attractive collection, though of course not as decorative as they had been in their ankle-length purple stolas. Girls always look better in uniforms or costumes. Take nurses or elevator girls or Miss Honeydew at a melon festival.

I was now calling her Helen, not that I felt like it, but in the detective business you have to be sociable, of course preserving your honor and virtue. In the taxi, before picking up Lucy Morgan, she told me she had been thinking it over and she doubted if it would be possible to find out which one of them had a good reason to kill Pyle, or thought she had, because Pyle had been so very careful when he had a girl come to his penthouse. The only way would be to get one of them to open up, and Helen doubted if she could get her to, since she would be practically confessing murder, and she was sure I couldn’t. So the best way would be for Helen and me, after spending an evening with them, to talk it over and decide which one was the most likely, and then she would tell Wolfe she had seen her going back to the kitchen and bringing another plate, and Wolfe would tell the police, and that would do it.

No, I didn’t feel like calling her Helen. I would just as soon have been too far away from her to call her at all.

Helen’s declared object in arranging the party — declared to them — was to find out from me what Nero Wolfe and the cops had done and were doing, so they would know where they stood. Helen was sure I would loosen up, she had told them, because she had been to see me and found me very nice and sympathetic. So the hostesses were making it sort of festive and intimate by serving Bubble-Pagne, though I preferred milk. I had a suspicion that at least one of them, Lucy Morgan, would have preferred whisky or gin or rum or vodka, and maybe they all would, but that might have me suspect that they were not just a bunch of wholesome, hard-working artists.

They didn’t look festive. I wouldn’t say they were haggard, but much of the bloom was off. And they hadn’t bought Helen’s plug for me that I was nice and sympathetic. They were absolutely skeptical, sizing me up with sidewise looks, especially Carol Annis, who sat cross-legged on the couch with her head cocked. It was she who asked me, after a few remarks had been made about how awful it had been and still was, how well I knew the chef and the other man in the kitchen. I told her she could forget Fritz. He was completely above suspicion, and anyway he had been at the range while the plates were taken. As for Zoltan, I said that though I had known him a long while we were not intimate, but that was irrelevant because, granting that he had known which guest each girl would serve, if he poisoned one of the portions and saw that a certain girl got it, why did she or some other girl come back for another plate?

“There’s no proof that she did,” Carol declared. “Nobody saw her.”

“Nobody noticed her.” I wasn’t aggressive; I was supposed to be nice and sympathetic. “She wouldn’t have been noticed leaving the dining room because the attention of the girls who were in there was on Felix and Marjorie Quinn, who had spilled a blini, and the men wouldn’t notice her. The only place she would have been noticed was in the corridor through the pantry, and if she met another girl there she could have stopped and been patting her hair or something. Anyhow, one of you must have gone back for a second plate, because when Fern Faber went for hers there wasn’t any.”

“Why do you say one of us?” Nora demanded. “If you mean one of us here. There were twelve.”

“I do mean one of you here, but I’m not saying it, I’m just quoting the police. They think it was one of you here because you were the last five.”

“How do you know what they think?”

“I’m not at liberty to say. But I do.”

“I know what I think,” Carol asserted. She had uncrossed her legs and slid forward on the couch to get her toes on the floor. “I think it was Zoltan. I read in the Gazette that he’s a chef at Rusterman’s, and Nero Wolfe is the trustee and so he’s the boss there, and I think Zoltan hated him for some reason and tried to poison him, but he gave the poisoned plate to the wrong girl. Nero Wolfe sat right next to Pyle.”

There was no point in telling her that she was simply ignoring the fact that one of them had gone back for a second helping, so I just said, “Nobody can stop you thinking. But I doubt very much if the police would buy that.”

“What would they buy?” Peggy asked.

My personal feelings about Peggy were mixed. For, she had recognized me and named me. Against, she had accused me of liking myself. “Anything that would fit,” I told her. “As I said, they think it was one of you five that went back for more, and therefore they have to think that one of you gave the poison to Pyle, because what other possible reason could you have had for serving another portion? They wouldn’t buy anything that didn’t fit into that. That’s what rules out everybody else, including Zoltan.” I looked at Carol. “I’m sorry, Miss Annis, but that’s how it is.”

“They’re a bunch of dopes,” Lucy Morgan stated. “They get an idea and then they haven’t got room for another one.” She was on the floor with her legs stretched out, her back against the couch. “I agree with Carol, there’s no proof that any of us went back for another plate. That Zoltan said he didn’t see anyone come back. Didn’t he?”

“He did. He still does.”

“Then he’s a dope too. And he said no one took two plates. Didn’t he?”

“Right. He still does.”

“Then how do they know which one he’s wrong about? We were all nervous, you know that. Maybe one of us took two plates instead of one, and when she got to the dining room there she was with an extra, and she got rid of it by giving it to some guest that didn’t have any.”

“Then why didn’t she say so?” I asked.

“Because she was scared. The way Nero Wolfe came at us was enough to scare anybody. And now she won’t say so because she has signed a statement and she’s even more scared.”

I shook my head. “I’m sorry, but if you analyze that you’ll see that it won’t do. It’s very tricky. You can do it the way I did this afternoon. Take twenty-four little pieces of paper, on twelve of them write the names of the guests, and arrange them as they sat at the table. On the other twelve pieces write the names of the twelve girls. Then try to manipulate the twelve girl pieces so that one of them either took in two plates at once, and did not give either of them to Pyle, or went back for a second plate, and did not give either the first one or the second one to Pyle. It can’t be done. For if either of those things happened there wouldn’t have been one mix-up, there would have been two. Since there was only one mix-up, Pyle couldn’t possibly have been served by a girl who neither brought in two plates at once nor went back for a second one. So the idea that a girl innocently brought in two plates is out.”

“I don’t believe it,” Nora said flatly.

“It’s not a question of believing.” I was still sympathetic. “You might as well say you don’t believe two plus two is four. I’ll show you. May I have some paper? Any old kind.”

She went to a table and brought some, and I took my pen and wrote the twenty-four names, spacing them, and tore the paper into twenty-four pieces. Then I knelt on a rug and arranged the twelve guest pieces in a rectangle as they had sat at the table — not that that mattered, since they could have been in a straight line or a circle, but it was plainer that way. The girls gathered around. Nora knelt facing me, Lucy rolled over closer and propped on her elbows, Carol came and squatted beside me, Peggy plopped down at the other side, and Helen stood back of Nora.

“Okay,” I said, “show me.” I took “Quinn” and put it back of “Leacraft.” “There’s no argument about that, Marjorie Quinn brought the first plate and gave it to Leacraft. Remember there was just one mix-up, started by Peggy when she saw Pyle had been served and gave hers to Nero Wolfe. Try having any girl bring in a second plate — or bring in two at once if you still think that might have happened — without either serving Pyle or starting a second mix-up.”

My memory has had a long stiff training under the strains and pressures Wolfe has put on it, but I wouldn’t undertake to report all the combinations they tried, huddled around me on the floor, even if I thought you cared. They stuck to it for half an hour or more. The most persistent was Peggy Choate, the redhead. After the others had given up she stayed with it, frowning and biting her lip, propped first on one hand and then the other. Finally she said, “Nuts,” stretched an arm to make a jumble of all the pieces of paper, guests and girls, got up, and returned to her chair. I did likewise.

“It’s just a trick,” said Carol Annis, perched on the couch again.

“I still don’t believe it,” Nora Jaret declared. “I do not believe that one of us deliberately poisoned a man — one of us sitting here.” Her big brown eyes were at me. “Good lord, look at us! Point at her! Point her out! I dare you to!”

That, of course, was what I was there for — not exactly to point her out, but at least to get a hint. I had had a vague idea that one might come from watching them maneuver the pieces of paper, but it hadn’t. Nor from anything any of them had said. I had been expecting Helen Iacono to introduce the subject of Vincent Pyle’s modus operandi with girls, but apparently she had decided it was up to me. She hadn’t spoken more than twenty words since we arrived.

“If I could point her out,” I said, “I wouldn’t be bothering the rest of you. Neither would the cops if they could point her out. Sooner or later, of course, they will, but it begins to look as if they’ll have to get at it from the other end. Motive. They’ll have to find out which one of you had a motive, and they will — sooner or later — and on that maybe I can help. I don’t mean help them, I mean help you — not the one who killed him, the rest of you. That thought occurred to me after I learned that Helen Iacono had admitted that she had gone out with Pyle a few times last winter. What if she had said she hadn’t? When the police found out she had lied, and they would have, she would have been in for it. It wouldn’t have proved she had killed him, but the going would have been mighty rough. I understand that the rest of you have all denied that you ever had anything to do with Pyle. Is that right? Miss Annis?”

“Certainly.” Her chin was up. “Of course I had met him. Everybody in show business has. Once when he came backstage at the Coronet, and once at a party somewhere, and one other time but I don’t remember where.”

“Miss Morgan?”

She was smiling at me, a crooked smile. “Do you call this helping us?” she demanded.

“It might lead to that after I know how you stand. After all, the cops have your statement.”

She shrugged. “I’ve been around longer than Carol, so I had seen him to speak to more than she had. Once I danced with him at the Flamingo, two years ago. That was the closest I had ever been to him.”

“Miss Choate?”

“I never had the honor. I only came to New York last fall. From Montana. He had been pointed out to me from a distance, but he never chased me.”

“Miss Jaret?”

“He was Broadway,” she said. “I’m TV.”

“Don’t the twain ever meet?”

“Oh, sure. All the time at Sardi’s. That’s the only place I ever saw the great Pyle, and I wasn’t with him.”

I started to cross my legs, but the wobbly chair leg reacted, and I thought better of it. “So there you are,” I said, “you’re all committed. If one of you poisoned him, and though I hate to say it I don’t see any way out of that, that one is lying. But if any of the others are lying, if you saw more of him than you admit, you had better get from under quick. If you don’t want to tell the cops tell me, tell me now, and I’ll pass it on and say I wormed it out of you. Believe me, you’ll regret it if you don’t.”

“Archie Goodwin, a girl’s best friend,” Lucy said. “My bosom pal.”

No one else said anything.

“Actually,” I asserted, “I am your friend, all of you but one. I have a friendly feeling for all pretty girls, especially those who work, and I admire and respect you for being willing to make an honest fifty bucks by coming there yesterday to carry plates of grub to a bunch of finickers. I am your friend, Lucy, if you’re not the murderer, and if you are no one is.”

I leaned forward, forgetting the wobbly chair leg, but it didn’t object. It was about time to put a crimp in Helen’s personal project. “Another thing. It’s quite possible that one of you did see her returning to the kitchen for another plate, and you haven’t said so because you don’t want to squeal on her. If so, spill it now. The longer this hangs on, the hotter it will get. When it gets so the pressure is too much for you and you decide you have got to tell it, it will be too late. Tomorrow may be too late. If you go to the cops with it tomorrow they probably won’t believe you; they’ll figure that you did it yourself and you’re trying to squirm out. If you don’t want to tell me here and now, in front of her, come with me down to Nero Wolfe’s office and we’ll talk it over.”

They were exchanging glances, and they were not friendly glances. When I had arrived probably not one of them, excluding the murderer, had believed that a poisoner was present, but now they all did, or at least they thought she might be; and when that feeling takes hold it’s good-bye to friendliness. It would have been convenient if I could have detected fear in one of the glances, but fear and suspicion and uneasiness are too much alike on faces to tell them apart.

“You are a help,” Carol Annis said bitterly. “Now you’ve got us hating each other. Now everybody suspects everybody.”

I had quit being nice and sympathetic. “It’s about time,” I told her. I glanced at my wrist. “It’s not midnight yet. If I’ve made you all realize that this is no Broadway production, or TV either, and the longer the pay-off is postponed the tougher it will be for everybody, I have helped.” I stood up. “Let’s go. I don’t say Mr. Wolfe can do it by just snapping his fingers, but he might surprise you. He has often surprised me.”

“All right,” Nora said. She arose. “Come on. This is getting too damn painful. Come on.”

I don’t pretend that that was what I had been heading for. I admit that I had just been carried along by my tongue. If I arrived with that gang at midnight and Wolfe had gone to bed, he would almost certainly refuse to play. Even if he were still up, he might refuse to work, just to teach me a lesson, since I had not stuck to my instructions. Those thoughts were at me as Peggy Choate bounced up and Carol Annis started to leave the couch.

But they were wasted. That tussle with Wolfe never came off. A door at the end of the room, which had been standing ajar, suddenly swung open, and there in its frame was a two-legged figure with shoulders almost as broad as the doorway, and I was squinting at Sergeant Purley Stebbins of Manhattan Homicide West. He moved forward, croaking, “I’m surprised at you, Goodwin. These ladies ought to get some sleep.”

VI

Of course I was a monkey. If it had been Stebbins who had made a monkey of me I suppose I would have leaped for a window and dived through. Hitting the pavement from a four-story window should be enough to finish a monkey, and life wouldn’t be worth living if I had been bamboozled by Purley Stebbins. But obviously it hadn’t been him; it had been Peggy Choate or Nora Jaret, or both; Purley had merely accepted an invitation to come and listen in.

So I kept my face. To say I was jaunty would be stretching it, but I didn’t scream or tear my hair. “Greetings,” I said heartily. “And welcome. I’ve been wondering why you didn’t join us instead of skulking in there in the dark.”

“I’ll bet you have.” He had come to arm’s length and stopped. He turned. “You can relax, ladies.” Back to me: “You’re under arrest for obstructing justice. Come along.”

“In a minute. You’ve got all night.” I moved my head. “Of course Peggy and Nora knew this hero was in there, but I’d—”

“I said come along!” he barked.

“And I said in a minute. I intend to ask a couple of questions. I wouldn’t dream of resisting arrest, but I’ve got leg cramp from kneeling too long and if you’re in a hurry you’ll have to carry me.” I moved my eyes. “I’d like to know if you all knew. Did you, Miss Iacono?”

“Of course not.”

“Miss Morgan?”

“No.”

“Miss Annis?”

“No, I didn’t, but I think you did.” She tossed her head and the corn silk fluttered. “That was contemptible. Saying you wanted to help us, so we would talk, with a policeman listening.”

“And then he arrests me?”

“That’s just an act.”

“I wish it were. Ask your friends Peggy and Nora if I knew — only I suppose you wouldn’t believe them. They knew, and they didn’t tell you. You’d better all think over everything you said. Okay, Sergeant, the leg cramp’s gone.”

He actually started a hand for my elbow, but I was moving and it wasn’t there. I opened the door to the hall. Of course he had me go first down the three flights; no cop in his senses would descend stairs in front of a dangerous criminal in custody. When we emerged to the sidewalk and he told me to turn left I asked him, “Why not cuffs?”

“Clown if you want to,” he croaked.

He flagged a taxi on Amsterdam Avenue, and when we were in and rolling I spoke. “I’ve been thinking, about laws and liberties and so on. Take false arrest, for instance. And take obstructing justice. If a man is arrested for obstructing justice, and it turns out that he didn’t obstruct any justice, does that make the arrest false? I wish I knew more about law. I guess I’ll have to ask a lawyer. Nathaniel Parker would know.”

It was the mention of Parker, the lawyer Wolfe uses when the occasion calls for one, that got him. He had seen Parker in action.

“They heard you,” he said, “and I heard you, and I took some notes. You interfered in a homicide investigation. You quoted the police to them, you said so. You told them what the police think, and what they’re doing and are going to do. You played a game with those pieces of paper to show them exactly how it figures. You tried to get them to tell you things instead of telling the police, and you were going to take them to Nero Wolfe so he could pry it out of them. And you haven’t even got the excuse that Wolfe is representing a client. He hasn’t got a client.”

“Wrong. He has.”

“Like hell he has. Name her.”

“Not her, him. Fritz Brenner. He is seeing red because food cooked by him was poisoned and killed a man. It’s convenient to have the client living right in the house. You admit that a licensed detective has a right to investigate on behalf of a client.”

“I admit nothing.”

“That’s sensible,” I said approvingly. “You shouldn’t. When you’re on the stand, being sued for false arrest, it would be bad to have it thrown up to you, and it would be two against one because the hackie could testify. Can you hear us, driver?”

“Sure I can hear you,” he sang out. “It’s very interesting.”

“So watch your tongue,” I told Purley. “You could get hooked for a year’s pay. As for quoting the police, I merely said that they think it was one of those five, and when Cramer told Mr. Wolfe that he didn’t say it was confidential. As for telling them what the police think, same comment. As for playing that game with them, why not? As for trying to get them to tell me things, I won’t comment on that at all because I don’t want to be rude. That must have been a slip of the tongue. If you ask me why I didn’t balk there at the apartment and bring up these points then and there, what was the use? You had spoiled the party. They wouldn’t have come downtown with me. Also I am saving a buck of Mr. Wolfe’s money, since you had arrested me and therefore the taxi fare is on the city of New York. Am I still under arrest?”

“You’re damn right you are.”

“That may be ill-advised. You heard him, driver?”

“Sure I heard him.”

“Good. Try to remember it.”

We were on Ninth Avenue, stopped at Forty-second Street for a light. When the light changed and we moved, Purley told the hackie to pull over to the curb, and he obeyed. At that time of night there were plenty of gaps. Purley took something from a pocket and showed it to the hackie, and said, “Go get yourself a Coke and come back in ten minutes,” and he climbed out and went. Purley turned his head to glare at me.

“I’ll pay for the Coke,” I offered.

He ignored it. “Lieutenant Rowcliff,” he said, “is expecting us at Twentieth Street.”

“Fine. Even under arrest, one will get you five that I can make him start stuttering in ten minutes.”

“You’re not under arrest.”

I leaned forward to look at the meter. “Ninety cents. From here on we’ll split it.”

“Goddamn it, quit clowning! If you think I’m crawling you’re wrong. I just don’t see any percentage in it. If I deliver you in custody I know damn well what you’ll do. You’ll clam up. We won’t get a peep out of you, and in the morning you’ll make a phone call and Parker will come. What will that get us?”

I could have said, “A suit for false arrest,” but it wouldn’t have been diplomatic, so I made it, “Only the pleasure of my company.”

There was one point of resemblance between Purley and Carol Annis, just one: no sense of humor. “But,” he said, “Lieutenant Rowcliff is expecting you, and you’re a material witness in a homicide case, and you were up there working on the suspects.”

“You could arrest me as a material witness,” I suggested helpfully.

He uttered a word that I was glad the hackie wasn’t there to hear, and added, “You’d clam up and in the morning you’d be out on bail. I know it’s after midnight, but the lieutenant is expecting you.”

He’s a proud man, Purley is, and I wouldn’t go so far as to say that he has nothing to be proud of. He’s not a bad cop, as cops go. It was a temptation to keep him dangling for a while, to see how long it would take him to bring himself to the point of coming right out and asking for it, but it was late and I needed some sleep.

“You realize,” I said, “that it’s a waste of time and energy. You can tell him everything we said, and if he tried to go into other aspects with me I’ll only start making cracks and he’ll start stuttering. It’s perfectly useless.”

“Yeah, I know, but—”

“But the lieutenant expects me.”

He nodded. “It was him Nora Jaret told about it, and he sent me. The inspector wasn’t around.”

“Okay. In the interest of justice. I’ll give him an hour. That’s understood? Exactly one hour.”

“It’s not understood with me.” He was emphatic. “When we get there you’re his and he’s welcome to you. I don’t know if he can stand you for an hour.”

VII

At noon the next day, Thursday, Fritz stood at the end of Wolfe’s desk, consulting with him on a major point of policy: whether to switch to another source of supply for water cress. The quality had been below par, which for them means perfection, for nearly a week. I was at my desk, yawning. It had been after two o’clock when I got home from my chat with Lieutenant Rowcliff, and with nine hours’ sleep in two nights I was way behind.

The hour since Wolfe had come down at eleven o’clock from his morning session with the orchids had been spent, most of it, by me reporting and Wolfe listening. My visit with Rowcliff needed only a couple of sentences, since the only detail of any importance was that it had taken me eight minutes to get him stuttering, but Wolfe wanted my conversation with the girls verbatim, and also my impressions and conclusions. I told him my basic conclusion was that the only way she could be nailed, barring a stroke of luck, would be by a few dozen men sticking to the routine — her getting the poison and her connection with Pyle.

“And,” I added, “her connection with Pyle may be hopeless. In fact, it probably is. If it’s Helen Iacono, what she told us is no help. If what she told us is true she had no reason to kill him, and if it isn’t true how are you going to prove it? If it’s one of the others she is certainly no halfwit, and there may be absolutely nothing to link her up. Being very careful with visitors to your penthouse is fine as long as you’re alive, but it has its drawbacks if one of them feeds you arsenic. It may save her neck.”

He was regarding me without enthusiasm. “You are saying in effect that it must be left to the police. I don’t have a few dozen men. I can expose her only by a stroke of luck.”

“Right. Or a stroke of genius. That’s your department. I make no conclusions about genius.”

“Then why the devil were you going to bring them to me at midnight? Don’t answer. I know. To badger me.”

“No, sir. I told you. I had got nowhere with them. I had got them looking at each other out of the corners of their eyes, but that was all. I kept on talking, and suddenly I heard myself inviting them to come home with me. I was giving them the excuse that I wanted them to discuss it with you, but that may have been just a cover for certain instincts that a man is entitled to. They are very attractive girls — all but one.”

“Which one?”

“I don’t know. That’s what we’re working on.”

He probably would have harped on it if Fritz hadn’t entered to present the water-cress problem. As they wrestled with it, dealing with it from all angles, I swiveled my back to them so I could do my yawning in private. Finally they got it settled, deciding to give the present source one more week and then switch if the quality didn’t improve; and then I heard Fritz say, “There’s another matter, sir. Felix phoned me this morning. He and Zoltan would like an appointment with you after lunch, and I would like to be present. They suggested half past two, if that will suit your convenience.”

“What is it?” Wolfe demanded. “Something wrong at the restaurant?”

“No, sir. Concerning the misfortune of Tuesday evening.”

“What about it?”

“It would be better for them to tell you. It is their concern.”

I swiveled for a view of Fritz’s face. Had Felix and Zoltan been holding out on us? Fritz’s expression didn’t tell me, but it did tell Wolfe something: that it would be unwise for him to insist on knowing the nature of Felix’s and Zoltan’s concern because Fritz had said all he intended to. There is no one more obliging than Fritz, but also there is no one more immovable when he has taken a stand. So Wolfe merely said that half past two would be convenient. When Fritz had left I offered to go to the kitchen and see if I could pry it out of him, but Wolfe said no, apparently it wasn’t urgent.

As it turned out, it wasn’t. Wolfe and I were still in the dining room, with coffee, when the doorbell rang at 2:25 and Fritz answered it, and when we crossed the hall to the office Felix was in the red leather chair, Zoltan was in one of the yellow ones, and Fritz was standing. Fritz had removed his apron and put on a jacket, which was quite proper. People do not attend business conferences in aprons.

When we had exchanged greetings, and Fritz had been told to sit down and had done so, and Wolfe and I had gone to our desks, Felix spoke. “You won’t mind, Mr. Wolfe, if I ask a question? Before I say why we requested an appointment?”

Wolfe told him no, go ahead.

“Because,” Felix said, “we would like to know this first. We are under the impression that the police are making no progress. They haven’t said so, they tell us nothing, but we have the impression. Is it true?”

“It was true at two o’clock this morning, twelve hours ago. They may have learned something by now, but I doubt it.”

“Do you think they will soon make progress? That they will soon be successful?”

“I don’t know. I can only conjecture. Archie thinks that unless they have a stroke of luck the inquiry will be long and laborious, and even then may fail. I’m inclined to agree with him.”

Felix nodded. “That is what we fear — Zoltan and I and others at the restaurant. It is causing a most regrettable atmosphere. A few of our most desirable patrons make jokes, but most of them do not, and some of them do not come. We do not blame them. For the maître d’hôtel and one of our chefs to assist at a dinner where a guest is served poison — that is not pleasant. If the—”

“Confound it, Felix! I have avowed my responsibility. I have apologized. Are you here for the gloomy satisfaction of reproaching me?”

“No, sir.” He was shocked. “Of course not. We came to say that if the poisoner is not soon discovered, and then the affair will be forgotten, the effect on the restaurant may be serious. And if the police are making no progress that may happen, so we appeal to you. We wish to engage your professional services. We know that with you there would be no question. You would solve it quickly and completely. We know it wouldn’t be proper to pay you from restaurant funds, since you are the trustee, so we’ll pay you with our own money. There was a meeting of the staff last night, and all will contribute, in a proper ratio. We appeal to you.”

Zoltan stretched out a hand, arm’s length. “We appeal to you,” he said.

“Pfui,” Wolfe grunted.

He had my sympathy. Not only was their matter-of-fact confidence in his prowess highly flattering, but also their appealing instead of demanding, since he had got them into it, was extremely touching. But a man with a long-standing reputation for being hard and blunt simply can’t afford the softer feelings, no matter what the provocation. It called for great self-control.

Felix and Zoltan exchanged looks. “He said ‘pfui,’” Zoltan told Felix.

“I heard him,” Felix snapped. “I have ears.”

Fritz spoke. “I wished to be present,” he said, “so I could add my appeal to theirs. I offered to contribute, but they said no.”

Wolfe took them in, his eyes going right to left and back again. “This is preposterous,” he declared. “I said ‘pfui’ not in disgust but in astonishment. I am solely to blame for this mess, but you offer to pay me to clean it up. Preposterous! You should know that I have already bestirred myself. Archie?”

“Yes, sir. At least you have bestirred me.”

He skipped it. “And,” he told them, “your coming is opportune. Before lunch I was sitting here considering the situation, and I concluded that the only way to manage the affair with dispatch is to get the wretch to betray herself; and I conceived a plan. For it I need your cooperation. Yours, Zoltan. Your help is essential. Will you give it? I appeal to you.”

Zoltan upturned his palms and raised his shoulders. “But yes! But how?”

“It is complicated. Also it will require great dexterity and aplomb. How are you on the telephone? Some people are not themselves, not entirely at ease, when they are phoning. A few are even discomfited. Are you?”

“No.” He reflected. “I don’t think so. No.”

“If you are it won’t work. The plan requires that you telephone five of those women this afternoon. You will first call Miss Iacono, tell her who you are, and ask her to meet you somewhere — in some obscure restaurant. You will say that on Tuesday evening, when you told me that you had not seen one of them return for a second plate, you were upset and flustered by what had happened, and later, when the police questioned you, you were afraid to contradict yourself and tell the truth. But now that the notoriety is harming the restaurant you feel that you may have to reveal the fact that you did see her return for a second plate, but that before—”

“But I didn’t!” Zoltan cried. “I told—”

“Tais-toi!” Felix snapped at him.

Wolfe resumed. “—but that before you do so you wish to discuss it with her. You will say that one reason you have kept silent is that you have been unable to believe that anyone as attractive and charming as she is could be guilty of such a crime. A parenthesis. I should have said at the beginning that you must not try to parrot my words. I am giving you only the substance; the words must be your own, those you would naturally use. You understand that?”

“Yes, sir.” Zoltan’s hands were clasped tight.

“So don’t try to memorize my words. Your purpose is to get her to agree to meet you. She will of course assume that you intend to blackmail her, but you will not say so. You will try to give her the impression, in everything you say and in your tone of voice, that you will not demand money from her, but will expect her favors. In short, that you desire her. I can’t tell you how to convey that impression; I must leave that to you. The only requisite is that she must be convinced that if she refuses to meet you, you will go at once to the police and tell them the truth.”

“Then you know,” Zoltan said. “Then she is guilty.”

“Not at all. I haven’t the slightest idea who is guilty. When you have finished with her you will phone the other four and repeat the performance — Miss Choate, Miss Annis, Miss—”

“My God, Mr. Wolfe! That’s impossible!”

“Not impossible, merely difficult. You alone can do it, for they know your voice. I considered having Archie do it, imitating your voice, but it would be too risky. You said you would help, but there’s no use trying it if the bare idea appalls you. Will you undertake it?”

“I don’t... I would...”

“He will,” Felix said. “He is like that. He only needs to swallow it. He will do it well. But I must ask, can he be expected to get them all to agree to meet him? The guilty one, yes, but the others?”

“Certainly not. There is much to discuss and arrange. The innocent ones will react variously according to their tempers. One or more of them will probably inform the police, and I must provide for that contingency with Mr. Cramer.” To Zoltan: “Since it is possible that one of the innocent ones will agree to meet you, for some unimaginable reason, you will have to give them different hours for the appointments. There are many details to settle, but that is mere routine. The key is you. You must of course rehearse, and into a telephone transmitter. There are several stations on the house phone. You will go to Archie’s room and speak from there. We will listen at the other stations: Archie in the plant rooms, I in my room, Fritz in the kitchen, and Felix here. Archie will handle the other end of the conversation; he is much better qualified than I to improvise the responses of young women. Do you want me to repeat the substance of what you are to say before rehearsal?”

Zoltan opened his mouth and closed it again. “Yes,” he said.

VIII

Sergeant Purley Stebbins shifted his fanny for the nth time in two hours. “She’s not coming,” he muttered. “It’s nearly eight o’clock.” His chair was about half big enough for his personal dimensions.

We were squeezed in a corner of the kitchen of John Piotti’s little restaurant on 14th Street between Second and Third Avenues. On the midget table between us were two notebooks, his and mine, and a small metal case. Of the three cords extending from the case, the two in front went to the earphones we had on, and the one at the back ran down the wall, through the floor, along the basement ceiling toward the front, back up through the floor, and on through a table top, where it was connected to a microphone hidden in a bowl of artificial flowers. The installation, a rush order, had cost Wolfe $191.67. Permission to have it made had cost him nothing because he had once got John Piotti out of a difficulty and hadn’t soaked him beyond reason.

“We’ll have to hang on,” I said. “You never can tell with a redhead.”

The exposed page of my notebook was blank, but Purley had written on his. As follows:

It was in my head. If I had had to write it down I would certainly have made one “p.m.” do, but policemen are trained to do things right.

“Anyhow,” Purley said, “we know damn well who it is.”

“Don’t count your poisoners,” I said, “before they’re hatched.” It was pretty feeble, but I was tired and still short on sleep.

I hoped to heaven he was right, since otherwise the operation was a flop. So far everything had been fine. After half an hour of rehearsing Zoltan had been wonderful. He had made the five calls from the extension in my room, and when he was through I told him his name should be in lights on a Broadway marquee. The toughest job had been getting Inspector Cramer to agree to Wolfe’s terms, but he had no good answer to Wolfe’s argument that if he insisted on changing the rules Zoltan wouldn’t play. So Purley was in the kitchen with me, Cramer was with Wolfe in the office, prepared to stay for dinner, Zoltan was at the restaurant table with the hidden mike, and two homicide dicks, one male and one female, were at another table twenty feet away. One of the most elaborate charades Wolfe had ever staged.

Purley was right when he said we knew who it was, but I was right too — she hadn’t been hatched yet. The reactions to Zoltan’s calls had settled it. Helen Iacono had been indignant and after a couple of minutes had hung up on him, and had immediately phoned the District Attorney’s office. Peggy Choate had let him finish his spiel and then called him a liar, but she had not said definitely that she wouldn’t meet him, and the DA or police hadn’t heard from her. Carol Annis, after he had spoken his lines, had used only ten words: “Where can I meet you?” and after he had told her where and when: “All right, I’ll be there.” Lucy Morgan had coaxed him along, trying to get him to fill it all in on the phone, had finally said she would keep the appointment, and then had rushed downtown and rung our doorbell, told me her tale, demanded that I accompany her to the rendezvous, and insisted on seeing Wolfe. I had to promise to go to get rid of her. Nora Jaret had called him assorted names, from liar on up, or on down, and had told him she had a friend listening in on an extension, which was almost certainly a lie. Neither we nor the law had heard a peep from her.

So it was Carol Annis with the corn-silk hair, that was plain enough, but there was no salt on her tail. If she was really smart and really tough she might decide to sit tight and not come, figuring that when they came at her with Zoltan’s story she would say he was either mistaken or lying, and we would be up a stump. If she was dumb and only fairly tough she might scram. Of course they would find her and haul her back, but if she said Zoltan was lying and she had run because she thought she was being framed, again we would be up a stump. But if she was both smart and tough but not quite enough of either, she would turn up at nine o’clock and join Zoltan. From there on it would be up to him, but that had been rehearsed too, and after his performance on the phone I thought he would deliver.

At half past eight Purley said, “She’s not coming,” and removed his earphone.

“I never thought she would,” I said. The “she” was of course Peggy Choate, whose hour had been seven-thirty. “I said you never can tell with a redhead merely to make conversation.”

Purley signaled to Piotti, who had been hovering around most of the time, and he brought us a pot of coffee and two fresh cups. The minutes were snails, barely moving. When we had emptied the cups I poured more. At 8:48 Purley put his earphone back on. At 8:56 I asked, “Shall I do a count down?”

“You’d clown in the hot seat,” he muttered, so hoarse that it was barely words. He always gets hoarser as the tension grows; that’s the only sign.

It was four minutes past nine when the phone brought me the sound of a chair scraping, then faintly Zoltan’s voice saying good evening, and then a female voice, but I couldn’t get the words.

“Not loud enough,” Purley whispered hoarsely.

“Shut up.” I had my pen out. “They’re standing up.”

There came the sound of chairs scraping, and other little sounds, and then:

Zoltan: Will you have a drink?

Carol: No. I don’t want anything.

Zoltan: Won’t you eat something?

Carol: I don’t feel... maybe I will.

Purley and I exchanged glances. That was promising. That sounded as if we might get more than conversation.

Another female voice, belonging to Mrs. Piotti: We have good Osso Buco, madame. Very good. A specialty.

Carol: No, not meat.

Zoltan: A sweet perhaps?

Carol: No.

Zoltan: It is more friendly if we eat. The spaghetti with anchovy sauce is excellent. I had some.

Carol: You had some?

I bit my lip, but he handled it fine.

Zoltan: I’ve been here half an hour, I wanted so much to see you. I thought I should order something, and I tried that. I might even eat another portion.

Carol: You should know good food. All right.

Mrs. Piotti: Two spaghetti anchovy. Wine? A very good Chianti?

Carol: No. Coffee.

Pause.

Zoltan: You are more lovely without a veil, but the veil is good too. It makes me want to see behind it. Of course I—

Carol: You have seen behind it, Mr. Mahany.

Zoltan: Ah! You know my name?

Carol: It was in the paper.

Zoltan: I am not sorry that you know it, I want you to know my name, but it will be nicer if you call me Zoltan.

Carol: I might some day. It will depend. I certainly won’t call you Zoltan if you go on thinking what you said on the phone. You’re mistaken, Mr. Mahany. You didn’t see me go back for another plate, because I didn’t. I can’t believe you would tell a vicious lie about me, so I just think you’re mistaken.

Mrs. Piotti, in the kitchen for the spaghetti, came to the corner to stoop and hiss into my free ear, “She’s wearing a veil.”

Zoltan: I am not mistaken, my dear. That is useless. I know. How could I be mistaken when the first moment I saw you I felt... but I will not try to tell you how I felt. If any of the others had come and taken another plate I would have stopped her, but not you. Before you I was dumb. So it is useless.

Needing only one hand for my pen, I used the free one to blow a kiss to Purley.

Carol: I see. So you’re sure.

Zoltan: I am, my dear. Very sure.

Carol: But you haven’t told the police.

Zoltan: Of course not. As I told you.

Carol: Have you told Nero Wolfe or Archie Goodwin?

Zoltan: I have told no one. How could I tell anyone? Mr. Wolfe is sure that the one who returned for another plate is the one who killed that man, gave him poison, and Mr. Wolfe is always right. So it is terrible for me. Could I tell anyone that I know you killed a man? You? How could I? That is why I had to see you, to talk with you. If you weren’t wearing that veil I could look into your beautiful eyes. I think I know what I would see there. I would see suffering and sorrow. I saw that in your eyes Tuesday evening. I know he made you suffer. I know you wouldn’t kill a man unless you had to. That is why—

The voice stopped. That was understandable, since Mrs. Piotti had gone through the door with the spaghetti and coffee and had had time to reach their table. Assorted sounds came as she served them. Purley muttered, “He’s overdoing it,” and I muttered back, “No. He’s perfect.” Piotti came over and stood looking down at my notebook. It wasn’t until after Mrs. Piotti was back in the kitchen that Carol’s voice came.

Carol: That’s why I am wearing the veil, Zoltan, because I know it’s in my eyes. You’re right. I had to. He did make me suffer. He ruined my life.

Zoltan: No, my dear. Your life is not ruined. No! No matter what he did. Was he... did he...

I was biting my lip again. Why didn’t he give them the signal? The food had been served and presumably they were eating. He had been told that it would be pointless to try to get her to give him any details of her relations with Pyle, since they would almost certainly be lies. Why didn’t he give the signal? Her voice was coming:

Carol: He promised to marry me. I’m only twenty-two years old, Zoltan. I didn’t think I would ever let a man touch me again, but the way you... I don’t know. I’m glad you know I killed him because it will be better now, to know that somebody knows. To know that you know. Yes, I had to kill him, I had to, because if I didn’t I would have had to kill myself. Some day I may tell you what a fool I was, how I— Oh!

Zoltan: What? What’s the matter?

Carol: My bag. I left it in my car. Out front. And I didn’t lock the car. A blue Plymouth hardtop. Would you... I’ll go...

Zoltan: I’ll get it.

The sound came of his chair scraping, then faintly his footsteps, and then silence. But the silence was broken in ten seconds, whereas it would have taken him at least a minute to go for the purse and return. What broke it was a male voice saying, “I’m an officer of the law, Miss Annis,” and a noise from Carol. Purley, shedding his earphone, jumped up and went, and I followed, notebook in hand.

It was quite a tableau. The male dick stood with a hand on Carol’s shoulder. Carol sat stiff, her chin up, staring straight ahead. The female dick, not much older than Carol, stood facing her from across the table, holding with both hands, at breast level, a plate of spaghetti. She spoke to Purley. “She put something in it and then stuck something in her dress. I saw her in my mirror.”

I moved in. After all, I was in charge, under the terms Cramer had agreed to. “Thank you, Miss Annis,” I said. “You were a help. On a signal from Zoltan they were going to start a commotion to give him an excuse to leave the table, but you saved them the trouble. I thought you’d like to know. Come on, Zoltan. All over. According to plan.”

He had entered and stopped three paces off, a blue handbag under his arm. As he moved toward us Purley put out a hand. “I’ll take that.”

IX

Cramer was in the red leather chair. Carol Annis was in a yellow one facing Wolfe’s desk, with Purley on one side of her and his female colleague on the other. The male colleague had been sent to the laboratory with the plate of spaghetti and a roll of paper that had been fished from inside Carol’s dress. Fritz, Felix, and Zoltan were on the couch near the end of my desk.

“I will not pretend, Miss Annis,” Wolfe was saying. “One reason that I persuaded Mr. Cramer to have you brought here first on your way to limbo was that I needed to appease my rancor. You had injured and humiliated not only me but also one of my most valued friends, Fritz Brenner, and two other men whom I esteem, and I had arranged the situation that gave you your opportunity; and I wished them to witness your own humiliation, contrived by me, in my presence.”

“That’s enough of that,” Cramer growled.

Wolfe ignored him. “I admit the puerility of that reason, Miss Annis, but in candor I wanted to acknowledge it. A better reason was that I wished to ask you a few questions. You took such prodigious risks that it is hard to believe in your sanity, and it would give me no satisfaction to work vengeance on a madwoman. What would you have done if Felix’s eyes had been on you when you entered with the plate of poison and went to Mr. Pyle? Or if, when you returned to the kitchen for a second plate, Zoltan had challenged you? What would you have done?”

No answer. Apparently she was holding her gaze straight at Wolfe, but from my angle it was hard to tell because she still had the veil on. Asked by Cramer to remove it, she had refused. When the female dick had extracted the roll of paper from inside Carol’s dress she had asked Cramer if she should pull the veil off and Cramer had said no. No rough stuff.

There was no question about Wolfe’s gaze at her. He was forward in his chair, his palms flat on his desk. He persisted. “Will you answer me, Miss Annis?”

She wouldn’t.

“Are you a lunatic, Miss Annis?”

She wasn’t saying.

Wolfe’s head jerked to me. “Is she deranged, Archie?”

That was unnecessary. When we’re alone I don’t particularly mind his insinuations that I presume to be an authority on women, but there was company present. I gave him a look and snapped, “No comment.”

He returned to her. “Then that must wait. I leave to the police such matters as your procurement of the poison and your relations with Mr. Pyle, mentioning only that you cannot now deny possession of arsenic, since you used it a second time this evening. It will unquestionably be found in the spaghetti and in the roll of paper you concealed in your dress; and so, manifestly, if you are mad you are also ruthless and malevolent. You may have been intolerably provoked by Mr. Pyle, but not by Zoltan. He presented himself not as a nemesis or a leech, but as a bewitched and befuddled champion. He offered his homage and compassion, making no demands, and your counter-offer was death. I would myself—”

“You lie,” Carol said. It was her first word. “And he lied. He was going to lie about me. He didn’t see me go back for a second plate, but he was going to say he did. And you lie. He did make demands. He threatened me.”

Wolfe’s brows went up. “Then you haven’t been told?”

“Told what?”

“That you were overheard. That is the other question I had for you. I have no apology for contriving the trap, but you deserve to know you are in its jaws. All that you and Zoltan said was heard by two men at the other end of a wire in another room, and they recorded it — Mr. Stebbins of the police, now seated at your left, and Mr. Goodwin.”

“You lie,” she said.

“No, Miss Annis. This isn’t the trap; it has already sprung. You have it, Mr. Stebbins?”

Purley nodded. He hates to answer questions from Wolfe.

“Archie?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Did Zoltan threaten her or make demands?”

“No, sir. He followed instructions.”

He returned to Carol. “Now you know. I wanted to make sure of that. To finish, since you may have had a just and weighty grievance against Mr. Pyle, I would myself prefer to see you made to account for your attempt to kill Zoltan, but that is not in my discretion. In any case, my rancor is appeased, and I hold—”

“That’s enough,” Cramer blurted, leaving his chair. “I didn’t agree to let you preach at her all night. Bring her along, Sergeant.”

As Purley arose a voice came. “May I say something?” It was Fritz. Heads turned as he left the couch and moved, detouring around Zoltan’s feet and Purley’s bulk to get to Carol, and turning to stand looking down at her.

“On account of what Mr. Wolfe said,” he told her. “He said you injured me, and that is true. It is also true that I wanted him to find you. I can’t speak for Felix, and you tried to kill Zoltan and I can’t speak for him, but I can speak for myself. I forgive you.”

“You lie,” Carol said.

Content

Rex Stout
Poison à la Carte

I

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IV

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VI

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VIII

IX