Rex Stout

Murder Is Corny

1

When the doorbell rang that Tuesday evening in September and I stepped to the hall for a look and through the one-way glass saw Inspector Cramer on the stoop, bearing a fair-sized carton, I proceeded to the door, intending to open it a couple of inches and say through the crack, “Deliveries in the rear.” He was uninvited and unexpected, we had no case and no client, and we owed him nothing, so why pretend he was welcome?

But by the time I had reached the door I had changed my mind. Not because of him. He looked perfectly normal — big and burly, round red face with bushy gray eyebrows, broad heavy shoulders straining the sleeve seams of his coat. It was the carton. It was a used one, the right size, the cord around it was the kind McLeod used, and the NERO WOLFE on it in blue crayon was McLeod’s style of printing. Having switched the stoop light on, I could observe those details as I approached, so I swung the door open and asked politely, “Where did you get the corn?”

I suppose I should explain a little. Usually Wolfe comes closest to being human after dinner, when we leave the dining room to cross the hall to the office, and he gets his bulk deposited in his favorite chair behind his desk, and Fritz brings coffee; and either Wolfe opens his current book or, if I have no date and am staying in, he starts a conversation. The topic may be anything from women’s shoes to the importance of the new moon in Babylonian astrology. But that evening he had taken his cup and crossed to the big globe over by the bookshelves and stood twirling the globe, scowling at it, probably picking a place he would rather be.

For the corn hadn’t come. By an arrangement with a farmer named Duncan McLeod up in Putman County, every Tuesday from July 20 to October 5, sixteen ears of just-picked corn were delivered. They were roasted in the husk, and we did our own shucking as we ate — four ears for me, eight for Wolfe, and four in the kitchen for Fritz. The corn had to arrive no earlier than five-thirty and no later than six-thirty. That day it hadn’t arrived at all, and Fritz had had to do some stuffed eggplant, so Wolfe was standing scowling at the globe when the doorbell rang.

And now here was Inspector Cramer with the carton. Could it possibly be it? It was. Handing me his hat to put on the shelf, he tramped down the hall to the office, and when I entered he had put the carton on Wolfe’s desk and had his knife out to cut the cord, and Wolfe, cup in hand, was crossing to him. Cramer opened the flaps, took out an ear of corn, held it up, and said, “If you were going to have this for dinner, I guess it’s too late.”

Wolfe moved to his elbow, turned the flap to see the inscription, his name, grunted, circled around the desk to his chair, and sat “You have your effect,” he said. “I am impressed. Where did you get it?”

“If you don’t know, maybe Goodwin does.” Cramer shot a glance at me, went to the red leather chair facing the end of Wolfe’s desk, and sat “I’ve got some questions for you and for him, but of course you want grounds. You would. At a quarter past five, four hours ago, the dead body of a man was found in the alley back of Rusterman’s restaurant. He had been hit in the back of the head with a piece of iron pipe which was there on the ground by the body. The station wagon he had come in was alongside the receiving platform of the restaurant, and in the station wagon were nine cartons containing ears of corn.” Cramer pointed. “That’s one of them, your name on it. You get one like it every Tuesday. Right?”

Wolfe nodded. “I do. In season. Has the body been identified?”

“Yes. Driver’s license and other items in his pockets, including cash, eighty-some dollars. Kenneth Faber, twenty-eight years old. Also men at the restaurant identified him. He had been delivering the corn there the past five weeks, and then he had been coming on here with yours. Right?”

“I don’t know.”

“The hell you don’t If you’re going to start that kind—”

I cut in. “Hold it. Stay in the buggy. As you know, Mr. Wolfe is up in the plant rooms from four to six every day except Sunday. The corn usually comes before six, and either Fritz or I receive it. So Mr. Wolfe doesn’t know, but I do. Kenneth Faber has been bringing it the past five weeks. If you want—”

I stopped because Wolfe was moving. Cramer had dropped the ear of corn onto Wolfe’s desk, and Wolfe had picked it up and felt it, gripping it in the middle, and now he was shucking it. From where I sat, at my desk, the rows of kernels looked too big, too yellow, and too crowded. Wolfe frowned at it, muttered, “I thought so,” put it down, stood up, reached for the carton, said, “You will help, Archie,” took an ear, and started shucking it. As I got up Cramer said something but was ignored.

When we finished we had three piles, as assorted by Wolfe. Two ears were too young, six were too old, and eight were just right He returned to his chair, looked at Cramer, and declared, “This is preposterous.”

“So you’re stalling,” Cramer growled.

“No. Shall I expound it?”

“Yeah. Go ahead.”

“Since you have questioned men at the restaurant, you know that the corn comes from a man named Duncan McLeod, who grows it on a farm some sixty miles north of here. He has been supplying it for four years, and he knows precisely what I require. It must be nearly mature, but not quite, and it must be picked not more than three hours before it reaches me. Do you eat sweet corn?”

“Yes. You’re stalling.”

“No. Who cooks it?”

“My wife. I haven’t got a Fritz.”

“Does she cook it in water?”

“Sure. Is yours cooked in beer?”

“No. Millions of American women, and some men, commit that outrage every summer day. They are turning a superb treat into mere provender. Shucked and boiled in water, sweet corn is edible and nutritious; roasted in the husk in the hottest possible oven for forty minutes, shucked at the table, and buttered and salted, nothing else, it is ambrosia. No chef’s ingenuity and imagination have ever created a finer dish. American women should themselves be boiled in water. Ideally the corn—”

“How much longer are you going to stall?”

“I’m not stalling. Ideally the corn should go straight from the stalk to the oven, but of course that’s impractical for city dwellers. If it’s picked at the right stage of development it is still a treat for the palate after twenty-four hours, or even forty-eight; I have tried it. But look at this.” Wolfe pointed to the assorted piles. “This is preposterous. Mr. McLeod knows better. The first year I had him send two dozen ears, and I returned those that were not acceptable. He knows what I require, and he knows how to choose it without opening the husk. He is supposed to be equally meticulous with the supply for the restaurant, but I doubt if he is; they take fifteen to twenty dozen. Are they serving what they got today?”

“Yes. They’ve admitted that they took it from the station wagon even before they reported the body.” Cramer’s chin was down, and his eyes were narrowed under the eyebrow hedge. “You’re the boss at that restaurant.”

Wolfe shook his head. “Not the boss. My trusteeship, under the will of my friend Marko Vukcic when he died, will end next year. You know the arrangement; you investigated the murder; you may remember that I brought the murderer back from Yugoslavia.”

“Yeah. Maybe I never thanked you.” Cramer’s eyes came to me. “You go there fairly often — not to Yugoslavia, to Rusterman’s. How often?”

I raised one brow. That annoys him because he can’t do it. “Oh, once a week, sometimes twice. I have privileges, and it’s the best restaurant in New York.”

“Sure. Were you there today?”

“No.”

“Where were you at five-fifteen this afternoon?”

“In the Heron sedan which Mr. Wolfe owns and I drive. Five-fifteen? Grand Concourse, headed for the East River Drive.”

“Who was with you?”

“Saul Panzer.”

He grunted. “You and Wolfe are the only two men alive Panzer would lie for. Where had you been?”

“Ball game. Yankee Stadium.”

“What happened in the ninth inning?” He flipped a hand. “To hell with it. You’d know all right, you’d see to that. How well do you know Max Maslow?”

I raised the brow again. “Connect it, please.”

“I’m investigating a murder.”

“So I gathered. And apparently I’m a suspect. Connect it.”

“One item in Kenneth Faber’s pockets was a little notebook. One page had the names of four men written in pencil. Three of the names had checkmarks in front of them. The last one, no checkmark, was Archie Goodwin. The first one was Max Maslow. Will that do?”

“I’d rather see the notebook.”

“It’s at the laboratory.” His voice went up a notch. “Look, Goodwin. You’re a licensed private detective.”

I nodded. “But that crack about who Saul Panzer would lie for. Okay, I’ll file it. I don’t know any Max Maslow and have never heard the name before. The other two names with checkmarks?”

“Peter Jay. J-A-Y.”

“Don’t know him and never heard of him.”

“Carl Heydt” He spelled it.

“That’s better. Couturier?”

“He makes clothes for women.”

“Including a friend of mine, Miss Lily Rowan. I have gone with her a few times to his place to help her decide. His suits and dresses come high, but I suppose he’d turn out a little apron for three Cs.”

“How well do you know him?”

“Not well at all. I call him Carl, but you know how that is. We have been fellow weekend guests at Miss Rowan’s place in the country a couple of times. I have seen him only when I have been with Miss Rowan.”

“Do you know why his name would be in Faber’s notebook with a checkmark?”

“I don’t know and I couldn’t guess.”

“Do you want me to connect Susan McLeod before I ask you about her?”

I had supposed that would be coming as soon as I heard the name Carl Heydt, since the cops had had the notebook for four hours and had certainly lost no time making contacts. Saving me for the last, and Cramer himself coming, was of course a compliment, but more for Wolfe than for me.

“No, thanks,” I told him. “I’ll do the connecting. The first time Kenneth Faber came with the corn, six weeks ago today, the first time I ever saw him, he told me Sue McLeod had got her father to give him a job on the farm. He was very chatty. He said he was a freelance cartoonist, and the cartoon business was in a slump, and he wanted some sun and air and his muscles needed exercise, and Sue often spent weekends at the farm and that would be nice. You can’t beat that for a connection. Go ahead and ask me about Susan McLeod.”

Cramer was eying me. “You’re never slow, are you, Goodwin?”

I gave him a grin. “Slow as cold honey. But I try hard to keep up.”

“Don’t overdo. How long have you been intimate with her?”

“Well. There are several definitions for ‘intimate.’ Which one?”

“You know damn well which one.”

My shoulders went up. “If you won’t say, I’ll have to guess.” The shoulders went down. “If you mean the very worst, or the very best, depending on how you look at it, nothing doing. I have known her three years, having met her when she brought the corn one day. Have you seen her?”

“Yes.”

“Then you know how she looks, and much obliged for the compliment. She has points. I think she means well, and she can’t help it if she can’t keep the come-on from showing because she was born with it. She didn’t pick her eyes and voice, they came in the package. Her talk is something special. Not only do you never know what she will say next; she doesn’t know herself. One evening I kissed her, a good healthy kiss, and when we broke she said, ‘I saw a horse kiss a cow once.’ But she’s a lousy dancer, and after a show or prize fight or ball game I want an hour or two with a band and a partner. So I haven’t seen much of her for a year. The last time I saw her was at a party somewhere a couple of weeks ago. I don’t know who her escort was, but it wasn’t me. As for my being intimate with her, meaning what you mean, what do you expect? I haven’t, but even if I had I’m certainly not intimate enough with you to blab it. Anything else?”

“Plenty. You got her a job with that Carl Heydt. You found her a place to live, an apartment that happens to be only six blocks from here.”

I cocked my head at him. “Where did you get that? From Carl Heydt?”

“No. From her.”

“She didn’t mention Miss Rowan?”

“No.”

“Then I give her a mark. You were at her about a murder, and she didn’t want to drag in Miss Rowan. One day, the second summer she was bringing the corn, two years ago, she said she wanted a job in New York and asked if I could get her one. I doubted if she could hold a job any friend of mine might have open or might make room for, so I consulted Miss Rowan, and she took it on. She got two girls she knew to share their apartment with Sue — it’s only five blocks from here, not six — she paid for a course at the Midtown Studio — Sue has paid her back — and she got Carl Heydt to give Sue a tryout at modeling. I understand that Sue is now one of the ten most popular models in New York and her price is a hundred dollars an hour, but that’s hearsay. I haven’t seen her on a magazine cover. I didn’t get her a job or a place to live. I know Miss Rowan better than Sue does; she won’t mind my dragging her in. Anything else?”

“Plenty. When and how did you find out that Kenneth Faber had shoved you out and taken Sue over?”

“Nuts.” I turned to Wolfe. “Your Honor, I object to the question on the ground that it is insulting, impertinent, and disgusticulous. It assumes not only that I am shovable but also that I can be shoved out of a place I have never been.”

“Objection sustained.” A corner of Wolfe’s mouth was up a little. “You will rephrase the question, Mr. Cramer.”

“The hell I will.” Cramer’s eyes kept at me. “You might as well open up, Goodwin. We have a signed statement from her. What passed between you and Faber when he was here a week ago today?”

“The corn. It passed from him to me.”

“So you’re a clown. I already know that. A real wit. What else?”

“Well, let’s see.” I screwed my lips, concentrating. “The bell rang and I went and opened the door and said, quote, ‘Greetings. How’s things on the farm.’ As he handed me the carton he said, ‘Lousy, thank you, hot as hell and I’ve got blisters.’ As I took it I said, ‘What’s a few blisters if you’re the backbone of the country.’ He said, ‘Go soak your head.’ and went, and I shut the door and took the carton to the kitchen.”

“That’s it?”

“That’s it.”

“Okay.” He got up. “You don’t wear a hat. You can have one minute to get a toothbrush.”

“Now listen.” I turned a palm up. “I can throw sliders in a pinch, and do, but this is no pinch. It’s close to bedtime. If I don’t check with something in Sue McLeod’s statement, of course you want to work on me before I can get in touch with her, so go ahead, here I am.”

“The minute’s up. Come on.”

I stayed put “No. I now have a right to be sore, so I am. You’ll have to make it good.”

“You think I won’t?” At least I had him glaring. “You’re under arrest as a material witness. Move!”

I took my time getting up. “You have no warrant, but I don’t want to be fussy.” I turned to Wolfe. “If you want me around tomorrow, you might give Parker a ring.”

“I shall.” He swiveled. “Mr. Cramer. Knowing your considerable talents as I do, I am sometimes dumfounded by your fatuity. You were so bent on baiting Mr. Goodwin that you completely ignored the point I was at pains to make.” He pointed at the piles on his desk. “Who picked that corn? Pfui!”

“That’s your point,” Cramer rasped. “Mine is who killed Kenneth Faber. Move, Goodwin.”

2

At twenty minutes past eleven Wednesday morning, standing at the curb on Leonard Street with Nathaniel Parker, I said, “Of course in a way it’s a compliment. Last time the bail was a measly five hundred. Now twenty grand. That’s progress.”

Parker nodded. “That’s one way of looking at it He argued for fifty thousand, but I got it down to twenty. You know what that means. They actually — Here’s one.”

A taxi headed in to us and stopped. When we were in and I had told the driver Eighth Avenue and 35th Street, and we were rolling, Parker resumed, leaning to me and keeping his voice down. The legal mind. Hackies are even better listeners than they are talkers, and that one could be a spy sicked on us by the district attorney. “They actually,” he said, “think you may have killed that man. This is serious, Archie. I told the judge that bail in the amount that was asked would be justified only if they had enough evidence to charge you with murder, in which case you wouldn’t be bailable, and he agreed. As your counsel, I must advise you to be prepared for such a charge at any moment I didn’t like Mandel’s attitude. By the way, Wolfe told me to send my bill to you, not him. He said this is your affair and he isn’t concerned. I’ll make it moderate.”

I thanked him. I already knew that Assistant District Attorney Mandel, and maybe Cramer too, regarded me as a real candidate for the big one. Cramer had taken me to his place, Homicide South, and after spending half an hour on me had turned me over to lieutenant Rowcliff and gone home. Rowcliff had stood me for nearly an hour — I had him stuttering in fourteen minutes, not a record — and had then sent me under convoy to the DA’s office, where Mandel had taken me on, obviously expecting to make a night of it.

Which he did, with the help of a pair of dicks from the DA’s Homicide Bureau. He had of course been phoned to by both Cramer and Rowcliff, and it was evident from the start that he didn’t merely think I was holding out on details that might be useful, to prevent either bother for myself or trouble for someone else; he had me tagged as a real prospect Naturally I wanted to know why, so I played along. I hadn’t with Cramer because he had got me sore in front of Wolfe, and I hadn’t with Rowcliff because playing along is impossible with a double-breasted baboon, but with Mandel I could. Of course he was asking the questions, him and the dicks, but the trick is to answer them in such a way that the next question, or maybe one later on, tells you something you want to know, or at least gives you a hint That takes practice, but I had had plenty, and it makes it simpler when one guy pecks away at you for an hour or so and then backs off, and another guy starts in and goes all over it again.

For instance, the scene of the crime — the alley and receiving platform at the rear of Rusterman’s. Since Wolfe was the trustee, there was nothing about that restaurant I wasn’t familiar with. From the side street it was only about fifteen yards along the narrow alley to the platform, and the alley ended a few feet farther on at the wall of another building. A car or small truck entering to deliver something had to back out. Knowing, as I had, that Kenneth Faber would come with the corn sometime after five o’clock, I could have walked in and hid under the platform behind a concrete post, with the weapon in my hand, and, when Faber drove in, got out, and came around to open the tailgate, he would never know what hit him. If I could have done that, who couldn’t? I would have had to know one other thing, that I couldn’t be seen from the windows of the restaurant kitchen because the glass had been painted on the inside so boys and girls couldn’t climb onto the platform to watch Leo boning a duck or Felix stirring goose blood into a Sauce Rouennaise.

In helping them get it on the record that I knew all that, I learned only that they had found no one who had seen the murderer in the alley or entering or leaving it, that Faber had probably been dead five to ten minutes when someone came from the kitchen to the platform and found the body, and that the weapon was a piece of two-inch galvanized iron pipe sixteen and five-eighths inches long, threaded male at one end and female at the other, old and battered. Easy to hide under a coat. Where it came from might be discovered by one man in ten hours, or by a thousand men in ten years.

Getting those details was nothing, since they would be in the morning papers, but regarding their slant on me I got some hints that the papers wouldn’t have. Hints were the best I could get, no facts to check, so I’ll just report how it looked when Parker came to spring me in the morning. They hadn’t let me see Sue’s statement, but it must have been something in it, or something she had said, or something someone else, maybe Carl Heydt or Peter Jay or Max Maslow, had said, either to her or to the cops. Or possibly something Duncan McLeod, Sue’s father, had said. That didn’t seem likely, but I included him because I saw him. When Parker and I entered the anteroom on our way out he was there on a chair in the row against the wall, dressed for town, with a necktie, his square deep-tanned face shiny with sweat. I crossed over and told him good morning, and he said it wasn’t, it was a bad morning, a day lost and no one to leave to see to things. It was no place for a talk, with people there on the chairs, but I might at least have asked him who had picked the corn if someone hadn’t come to take him inside.

So when I climbed out of the taxi at the corner and thanked Parker for the lift and told him I’d call him if and when, and walked the block and a half on 35th Street to the old brownstone, I was worse off than when I had left, since I hadn’t learned anything really useful, and no matter how Parker defined “moderate,” the cost of a twenty-grand bond is not peanuts. I couldn’t expect to pass the buck to Wolfe, since he had never seen either Kenneth Faber or Sue McLeod, and as I mounted the seven steps to the stoop and put my key in the lock I decided not to try to.

The key wasn’t enough. The door opened two inches and stopped. The chain bolt was on. I pushed the button, and Fritz came and slipped the bolt; and his face told me something was stirring before he spoke. If you’re not onto the faces you see most of, how can you expect to tell anything from strange ones? As I crossed the sill I said, “Good morning. What’s up?”

He turned from closing the door and stared. “But Archie. You look terrible.”

“I feel worse. Now what?”

“A woman to see you. Miss Susan McLeod. She used to bring—”

“Yeah. Where is she?”

“In the office.”

“Where is he?”

“In the kitchen.”

“Has he talked with her?”

“No.”

“How long has she been here?”

“Half an hour.”

“Excuse my manners. I’ve had a night.” I headed for the end of the hall, the swinging door to the kitchen, pushed it open, and entered. Wolfe was at the center table with a glass of beer in his hand. He grunted. “So. Have you slept?”

“No.”

“Have you eaten?”

I got a glass from the cupboard, went to the refrigerator and got milk, filled the glass, and took a sip. “If you could see the bacon and eggs they had brought in for me and I paid two bucks for, let alone taste it, you’d never be the same. You’d be so afraid you might be hauled in as a material witness you’d lose your nerve. They think maybe I killed Faber. For your information, I didn’t.” I sipped milk. “This will hold me till lunch. I understand I have a caller. As you told Parker, this is my affair and you are not concerned. May I take her to the front room? I’m not intimate enough with her to take her up to my room.” I sipped milk.

“Confound it,” he growled. “How much of what you told Mr. Cramer was flummery?”

“None. All straight. But he’s on me and so is the DA, and I’ve got to find out why.” I sipped milk.

He was eying me. “You will see Miss McLeod in the office.”

“The front room will do. It may be an hour. Two hours.”

“You may need the telephone. The office.”

If I had been myself I would have given that offer a little attention, but I was somewhat pooped. So I went, taking my half a glass of milk. The door to the office was closed and, entering, I closed it again. She wasn’t in the red leather chair. Since she was there for me, not for Wolfe, Fritz had moved up one of the yellow chairs for her, but hearing the door open and seeing me she had sprung up, and by the time I had shut the door and turned she was to me, gripping my arms, her head tilted back to get my eyes. If it hadn’t been for the milk I would have used my arms for one of their basic functions, since that’s a sensible way to start a good frank talk with a girl. That being impractical, I tilted my head forward and kissed her. Not just a peck. She not only took it, she helped, and her grip on my arms tightened, and I had to keep the glass plumb by feel since I couldn’t see it. It wouldn’t have been polite for me to quit, so I left it to her.

She let go, backed up a step, and said, “You haven’t shaved.”

I crossed to my desk, sipped milk, put the glass down, and said, “I spent the night at the district attorney’s office, and I’m tired, dirty, and sour. I could shower and shave and change in half an hour.”

“You’re all right” She plumped onto the chair. “Look at me.”

“I am looking at you.” I sat. “You’d do fine for a before-and-after vitamin ad. The before. Did you get to bed?”

“I guess so, I don’t know.” Her mouth opened to pull air in. Not a yawn, just helping her nose. “It couldn’t have been a jail because the windows didn’t have bars. They kept me until after midnight asking questions, and one of them took me home. Oh yes, I went to bed, but I didn’t sleep, but I must have, because I woke up. Archie, I don’t know what you’re going to do to me.”

“Neither do I.” I drank milk, emptying the glass. “Why, have you done something to me?”

“I didn’t mean to.”

“Of course not.”

“It came out. You remember you explained it for me one night.”

I nodded. “I said you have a bypass in your wiring. With ordinary people like me, when words start on their way out they have to go through a checking station for an okay, except when we’re too mad or scared or something. You may have a perfectly good checking station, but for some reason, maybe a loose connection, it often gets bypassed.”

She was frowning. “But the trouble is, if I haven’t got a checking station I’m just plain dumb. If I do have one, it certainly got bypassed when the words came out about my going to meet you there yesterday.”

“Meet me where?”

“On Forty-eighth Street. There at the entrance to the alley where I used to turn in to deliver the corn to Rusterman’s. I said I was to meet you there at five o’clock and we were going to wait there until Ken came because we wanted to have a talk with him. But I was late, I didn’t get there until a quarter past five, and you weren’t there, so I left.”

I kept my shirt on. “You said that to whom?”

“To several people. I said it to a man who came to the apartment, and in that building he took me to downtown I said it to another man, and then to two more, and it was in a statement they had me sign.”

“When did we make the date to meet there? Of course they asked that.”

“They asked everything. I said I phoned you yesterday morning and we made it then.”

“It’s just possible that you are dumb. Didn’t you realize they would come to me?”

“Why, of course. And you would deny it But I thought they would think you just didn’t want to be involved, and I said you weren’t there, and you could probably prove you were somewhere else, so that wouldn’t matter, and I had to give them some reason why I went there and then came away without even going in the restaurant to ask if Ken had been there.” She leaned forward. “Don’t you see, Archie? I couldn’t say I had gone there to see Ken, could I?”

“No. Okay, you’re not dumb.” I crossed my legs and leaned back. “You had gone there to see Ken?”

“Yes. There was something — about something.”

“You got there at a quarter past five?”

“Yes.”

“And came away without even going in the restaurant to ask if Ken had been there?”

“I didn’t — Yes, I came away.”

I shook my head. “Look, Sue. Maybe you didn’t want to get me involved, but you have, and I want to know. If you went there to see Ken and got there at a quarter past five, you did see him. Didn’t you?”

“I didn’t see him alive.” Her hands on her lap, very nice hands, were curled into fists. “I saw him dead. I went up the alley and he was there on the ground. I thought he was dead, but, if he wasn’t, someone would soon come out and find him, and I was scared. I was scared because I had told him just two days ago that I would like to kill him. I didn’t think it out, I didn’t stop to think, I was just scared. I didn’t realize until I was several blocks away how dumb that was.”

“Why was it dumb?”

“Because Felix and the doorman had seen me. When I came I passed the front of the restaurant, and they were there on the sidewalk, and we spoke. So I couldn’t say I hadn’t been there and it was dumb to go away, but I was scared. When I got to the apartment I thought it over and decided what to say, about going there to meet you, and when a man came and started asking questions I told him about it before he asked.” She opened a fist to gesture. “I did think about it, Ardue. I did think it couldn’t matter to you, not much.”

That didn’t gibe with the bypassing-the-checking-station theory, but there was no point in making an issue of it. “You thought wrong,” I said, not complaining, just stating a fact “Of course they asked you why we were going to meet there to have a talk with Ken, since he would be coming here. Why not here instead of there?”

“Because you didn’t want to. You didn’t want to talk with him here.”

“I see. You really thought it over. Also they asked what we wanted to talk with him about. Had you thought about that?”

“Oh, I didn’t have to. About what he had told you, that I thought I was pregnant and he was responsible.”

That was a little too much. I goggled at her, and my eyes were in no shape for goggling. “He had told me that?” I demanded. “When?”

“You know when. Last week. Last Tuesday when he brought the corn. He told me about it Saturday — no, Sunday. At the farm.”

I uncrossed my legs and straightened up. “I may have heard it wrong. I may be lower than I realized. Ken Faber told you on Sunday that he had told me on Tuesday that you thought you were pregnant and he was responsible? Was that it?”

“Yes. He told Carl too — you know, Carl Heydt He didn’t tell me he had told Carl, but Carl did. I think he told two other men too — Peter Jay and Max Maslow. I don’t think you know them. That was when I told him I would like to kill him, when he told me he had told you.”

“And that’s what you told the cops we wanted to talk with him about?”

“Yes. I don’t see why you say I thought wrong, thinking it wouldn’t matter much to you, because you weren’t there. Can’t you prove you were somewhere else?”

I shut my eyes to look it over. The more I sorted it out, the messier it got. Mandel hadn’t been fooling when he asked the judge to put a fifty-grand tag on me; the wonder was that he hadn’t hit me with the big one.

I opened my itching eyes and had to blink to get her in focus. “For a frame,” I said, “it’s close to perfect, but I’m willing to doubt if you meant it. I doubt if you know the ropes well enough, and why pick on me? I am not a patsy. But whether you meant it or not, what are you here for? Why bother to come and tell me about it?”

“Because... I thought... don’t you understand, Archie?”

“I understand plenty, but not why you’re here.”

“But don’t you see, it’s my word against yours. They told me last night that you denied that we had arranged to meet there. I wanted to ask you... I thought you might change that, you might tell them that you denied it just because you didn’t want to be involved, that you had agreed to meet me there but you decided not to go, and they’ll have to believe you because of course you were somewhere else. Then they won’t have any reason not to believe me.” She put out a hand. “Archie... will you? Then it will be all right.”

“Holy saints. You think so?”

“Of course it will. The way it is now, they think either I’m lying or you’re lying, but if you tell them—”

“Shut up!”

She gawked at me; then all of a sudden she broke. Her head went down, and her hands up to cover her face. Her shoulders started to tremble and then she was shaking all over. If she had sobbed or groaned or something I would have merely waited it out, but there was no sound effect at all, and that was dangerous. She might crack. I went to Wolfe’s desk and got the vase of orchids, Dendrobium nobile that day, removed the flowers and put them on my desk pad, went to her, got fingers under her chin and forced her head up, and sloshed her good. The vase holds two quarts. Her hands came down and I sloshed her again, and she squealed and grabbed for my arm. I dodged, put the vase on my desk, went to the bathroom, which is over in the corner, and came back with a towel. She was on her feet, dabbing at her front. “Here,” I said, “use this.”

She took it and wiped her face. “You didn’t have to do that,” she said.

“The hell I didn’t”. I got another chair and put it at a dry spot, went to my desk, and sat. “It might help if someone did it to me. Now listen. Whether you meant it or not, I am out on an extremely rickety limb. Ken did not tell me last Tuesday that you thought you were pregnant and he was responsible, he told me nothing whatever, but whether he lied to you or you’re lying to the cops and me, they think he did. They also think or suspect that you and I have been what they call intimate. They also expect you to say under oath that I agreed to meet you at the entrance of that alley yesterday at five o’clock, and I can’t prove I wasn’t there. There’s a man who will say he was with me somewhere else, but he’s a friend of mine and he often works with me when Mr. Wolfe needs more help, and the cops don’t have to believe him and neither would a jury. I don’t know what else the cops have or haven’t got, but any time now—”

“I didn’t lie to you, Archie.” She was on the dry chair, gripping the towel. A strand of wet hair dropped over her eye, and she pushed it back. “Everything I told—”

“Skip it. Any time now, any minute, I may be hauled in on a charge of murder, and then where am I? Or suppose I somehow made it stick that I did not agree to meet you there, that you’re lying to them, and I wasn’t there. Then where will you be? The way it stands, the way you’ve staged it, today or tomorrow either you or I will be in the jug with no out. So either I—”

“But Archie, you—”

“Don’t interrupt. Either I wriggle off by selling them on you — and by the way, I haven’t asked you.” I got up and went to her. “Stand up. Look at me.” I extended my hands at waist level, open, palms up. “Put your hands on mine, palms down. No, don’t press, relax, just let them rest there. Damn it, relax! Right Look at me. Did you kill Ken?”

“No.”

“Again. Did you kill him?”

“No, Archie!”

I turned and went back to my chair. She came a step forward, backed up, and sat. “That’s my private lie detector,” I told her. “Not patented. Either I wriggle off by selling them on you, and it would take some wriggling, which is not my style, or I do a job that is my style — I hope. As you know, I work for Nero Wolfe. First I see him and tell him I’m taking a leave of absence — I hope a short one. Then you and I go some place where we’re sure we won’t be interrupted, and you tell me things, a lot of things, and no fudging. Where I go from there depends on what you tell me. I’ll tell you one thing now, if you—”

The door opened and Wolfe was there. He crossed to the corner of his desk, faced her, and spoke. “I’m Nero Wolfe. Will you please move to this chair?” He indicated the red leather chair by a nod, circled around his desk, and sat. He looked at me. “A job that is your style?”

Well. As I remarked when he insisted that I see her in the office, if I hadn’t been pooped I would have given that offer a little attention. If I had been myself I would have known, or at least suspected, what he intended. I suppose he and I came as close to trusting each other as any two men can, on matters of joint concern, but as he had told Parker, this was my affair, and I was discussing it with someone in his office, keeping him away from his favorite chair, and I had just told him that nothing of what I had told Cramer was flummery. So he had gone to the hole in the alcove.

I looked back at him. “I said I hope. What if I heard the panel open and steered clear?”

“Pfui. Clear of what?”

“Okay. Your trick. But I think she has a right to know.”

“I agree.” Sue had moved to the red leather chair, and he swiveled. “Miss McLeod. I eavesdropped, without Mr. Goodwin’s knowledge. I heard all that was said, and I saw. Do you wish to complain?”

She had fingered her hair back, but it was still a sight “Why?” she asked.

“Why did I listen? To learn how much of a pickle Mr. Goodwin was in. And I learned. I have intruded because the situation is intolerable. You are either a cockatrice or a witling. Whether by design or stupidity, you have brought Mr. Goodwin to a desperate pass. That is—”

I broke in. “It’s my affair. You said so.”

He stayed at her. “That is his affair, but now it threatens me. I depend on him. I can’t function properly, let alone comfortably, without him. He just told you he would take a leave of absence. That would be inconvenient for me but bearable, even if it were rather prolonged, but it’s quite possible that I would lose him for good, and that would be a calamity. I won’t have it. Thanks to you, he is in grave jeopardy.” He turned. “Archie. This is now our joint affair. By your leave.”

I raised both eyebrows. “Retroactive? Parker and my bail?”

He made a face. “Very well. Intimate or not, you have known Miss McLeod three years. Did she kill that man?”

“No and yes.”

“That doesn’t help.”

“I know it doesn’t The ‘no’ because of a lot of assorted items, including the lie-detector test I just gave her, which of course you would hoot at it if you hooted. The ‘yes.’ chiefly because she’s here. Why did she come? She says, to ask me to change my story and back hers up, that we had a date to meet there. That’s a good deal to expect, and I wonder. If she killed him, of course she’s scared stiff and she might ask anybody anything, but if she didn’t, why come and tell me she went in the alley and saw him dead and scooted? I wonder. On balance, one will get you two that she didn’t One item for ‘no.’ when a man gets a girl pregnant her normal procedure is to make him marry her, and quick. What she wants most and has got to have is a father for the baby, and not a dead father. She certainly isn’t going to kill him unless—”

“That’s silly,” Sue blurted, “I’m not pregnant.”

I stared. “You said Ken told you he told me...”

She nodded. “Ken would tell anybody anything.”

“But you thought you were?”

“Of course not. How could I? There’s only one way a girl can get pregnant, and it couldn’t have been that with me because it’s never happened.”

3

Like everybody else, I like to kid myself that I know why I think this or do that, but sometimes it just won’t work, and that was once. I don’t mean why I believed her about not being pregnant and how she knew she couldn’t be; I do know that; it was the way she said it and the way she looked. I had known her three years. But since, if I believed her on that, I had to scrap the item I had just given Wolfe for ‘no’ on her killing Faber, why didn’t I change the odds to even money? I pass. I could cook up a case, for instance if she was straight on one thing, about not being pregnant and why not, she was probably straight on other things too, but who would buy it? It’s even possible that every man alive, of whom I am one, has a feeling down below that an unmarried girl who knows she can’t be pregnant is less apt to commit murder than one who can’t be sure. I admit that a good private detective shouldn’t have feelings down below, but have you any suggestions?

Since Wolfe pretends to think I could qualify on the witness stand as an expert on attractive young women, of course he turned to me and said, “Archie?” and I nodded yes. An expert shouldn’t back and fill, and as I just said, I believed her on the pregnancy issue. Wolfe grunted, told me to take my notebook, gave her a hard eye for five seconds, and started in.

An hour and ten minutes later, when Fritz came to announce lunch, I had filled most of a new notebook and Wolfe was leaning back with his eyes shut and his lips tight. It was evident that he was going to have to work. She had answered all his questions with no apparent fumbling, and it still looked very much as if either I was going to ride the bumps or she was. Or possibly both.

As she told it, she had met Ken Faber eight months ago at a party at the apartment of Peter Jay. Ken had been fast on the follow-up and four months later, in May, she had told him she would marry him some day — say in two or three years, when she was ready to give up modeling — if he had shown that he could support a family. From the notebook: “I was making over eight hundred dollars a week, ten times as much as he was, and of course if I got married I couldn’t expect to keep that up. I don’t think a married woman should model anyway because if you’re married you ought to have babies, and there’s no telling what that will do to you, and who looks after the babies?”

In June, at his request, she had got her father to give him a job on the farm, but she had soon regretted it. From the notebook: “Of course he knew I went to the farm weekends in the summer, and the very first weekend it was easy to see what his idea was. He thought it would be different on the farm than in town, it would be easy to get me to do what he wanted, as easy as falling off a log. The second week it was worse, and the third week it was still worse, and I was seeing what he was really like and I wished I hadn’t said I would marry him. He accused me of letting other men do what I wouldn’t let him do, and he tried to make me promise I wouldn’t date any other man, even for dinner or a show. Then the last week in July he seemed to get some sense, and I thought maybe he had just gone through some kind of a phase or something, but last week, Friday evening, he was worse than ever all of a sudden, and Sunday be told me he had told Archie Goodwin that I thought I was pregnant and he was responsible, and of course Archie would pass it on, and if I denied it no one would believe me, and the only thing to do was to get married right away. That was when I told him I’d like to kill him. Then the next day, Monday, Carl — Carl Heydt — told me that Ken had told him the same thing, and I suspected he had told two other men, on account of things they had said, and I decided to go there Tuesday and see him. I was going to tell him he had to tell Archie and Carl it was a lie, and anybody else he had told, and if I had to I’d get a lawyer.”

If that was straight, and the part about Carl Heydt and Peter Jay and Max Maslow could be checked, that made it more like ten to one that she hadn’t killed him. She couldn’t have ad-libbed it; she would have had to go there intending to kill him, or at least bruise him, since she couldn’t have just happened to have with her a piece of two-inch pipe sixteen inches long. Say twenty to one. But if she hadn’t, who had? Better than twenty to one, not some thug. There had been eighty bucks in Ken’s pockets, and why would a thug go up that alley with the piece of pipe, much less hide under the platform with it? No. It had to be someone out for Ken specifically who knew that spot, or at least knew about it, and knew he would come there, and when.

Of course it was possible the murderer was someone Sue had never heard of and the motive had no connection with her, but that would make it really tough, and there she was, and Wolfe got all she had — or at least everything she would turn loose of. She didn’t know how many different men she had had dates with in the twenty months she had been modeling — maybe thirty. More in the first year than recently; she had thought it would help to get jobs if she knew a lot of men, and it had, but now she turned down as many jobs as she accepted. When she said she didn’t know why so many men wanted to date her Wolfe made a face, but I knew she really meant it. It was hard to believe that a girl with so much born come-on actually wasn’t aware of it, but I knew her, and so did my friend Lily Rowan, who is an expert on women.

She didn’t know how many of them had asked her to marry them; maybe ten; she hadn’t kept count. Of course you don’t like her; to like a girl who says things like that, you’d have to see her and hear her, and if you’re a man you wouldn’t stop to ask whether you liked her or not. I frankly admit that the fact that she couldn’t dance had saved me a lot of wear and tear.

From the time she had met Ken Faber she had let up on dates, and in recent months she had let only three other men take her places. Those three had all asked her to marry them, and they had stuck to it in spite of Ken Faber. Carl Heydt, who had given her her first modeling job, was nearly twice her age, but that wouldn’t matter if she wanted to marry him when the time came. Peter Jay, who was something important in a big advertising agency, was younger, and Max Maslow, who was a fashion photographer, was still younger.

She had told Carl Heydt that what Ken had told him wasn’t true, but she wasn’t sure that he had believed her. She couldn’t remember exactly what Peter Jay and Max Maslow had said that made her think that Ken had told them too; she hadn’t had the suspicion until Monday, when Carl had told her what Ken had told him. She had told no one that she was going to Rusterman’s Tuesday to see Ken. All three of them knew about the corn delivery to Rusterman’s and Nero Wolfe; they knew she had made the deliveries for two summers and had kidded her about it; Peter Jay had tried to get her to pose in a cornfield, in an evening gown, for a client of his. They knew Ken was working at the farm and was making the deliveries. From the notebook, Wolfe speaking: “You know those men quite well. You know their temperaments and bents. If one of them, enraged beyond endurance by Mr. Faber’s conduct, went there and killed him, which one? Remembering it was not a sudden fit of passion, it was premeditated, planned. From your knowledge of them, which one?”

She was staring. “They didn’t.”

“Not ‘they.’ One of them. Which?”

She shook her head. “None of them.”

Wolfe wiggled a finger at her. “That’s twaddle, Miss McLeod. You may be shocked at the notion that someone close to you is a murderer; anyone would be; but you may not reject it as inconceivable. By your foolish subterfuge you have made it impossible to satisfy the police that neither you nor Mr. Goodwin killed that man except by one procedure: demonstrate that someone else killed him, and identify him. I must see those three men, and, since I never leave my house on business, they must come to me. Will you get them here? At nine o’clock this evening?”

“No,” she said. “I won’t.”

He glared at her. If she had been merely a client, with nothing but a fee at stake, he would have told her to either do as she was told or clear out, but the stake was an errand boy it would be a calamity to lose, me, as he had admitted in my hearing. So he turned the glare off and turned a palm up. “Miss McLeod. I concede that your refusal to think ill of a friend is commendable. I concede that Mr. Faber may have been killed by someone you have never heard of with a motive you can’t even conjecture — and by the way, I haven’t asked you: do you know of anyone who might have had a ponderable reason for killing him?”

“No.”

“But it’s possible that Mr. Heydt does, or Mr. Jay or Mr. Maslow. Even accepting your conclusion that none of them killed him, I must see them. I must also see your father, but separately — I’ll attend to that My only possible path to the murderer is the motive, and one or more of those four men, who knew Mr. Faber, may start me on it I ask you to have those three here this evening. Not you with them.”

She was frowning. “But you can’t... you said identify him. How can you?”

“I don’t know. Perhaps I can’t, but I must try. Nine o’clock?”

She didn’t want to, even after the concessions he had made, but she had to admit that we had to get some kind of information from somebody, and who else was there to start with? So she finally agreed, definitely, and Wolfe leaned back with his eyes shut and his lips tight, and Fritz came to announce lunch. Sue got up to go, and when I returned after seeing her to the door and out, Wolfe had crossed to the dining room and was at the table. Instead of joining him, I stood and said, “Ordinarily I would think I was well worth it, but right now I’m no bargain at any price. Have we a program for the afternoon?”

“No. Except to telephone Mr. McLeod.”

“I saw him at the DA’s office. Then I’m going up and rinse off before I eat. I think I smell. Tell Fritz to save me a bite in the kitchen.”

I went to the hall and mounted the two flights to my room. During the forty minutes it took to do the job I kept telling my brain to lay off until it caught up, but it wouldn’t. It insisted on trying to analyze the situation, with the emphasis on Sue McLeod. If I had her figured wrong, if she was it, it would almost certainly be a waste of time to try to get anything from three guys who were absolutely hooked, and if there was no program for the afternoon I had damn well better think one up. If it would be a calamity for Wolfe to lose me for good, what would it be for me? By the time I stepped into the shower the brain had it doped that the main point was the piece of pipe. She had not gone into that alley toting that pipe; that was out. But I hadn’t got that point settled conclusively by Cramer or Mandel, and I hadn’t seen a morning paper. I would consult the Times when I went downstairs. But the brain wanted to know now, and when I left the shower I dried in a hurry, went to the phone on the bedtable, dialed the Gazette, got Lon Cohen, and asked him. Of course he knew I had spent the night downtown and he wanted a page or two of facts, but I told him I was naked and would catch cold, and how final was it that whoever had conked Faber had brought the pipe with him? Sewed up, Lon said. Positively. The pipe was at the laboratory, revealing — maybe — its past to the scientists, and three or four dicks with color photos of it were trying to pick up its trail. I thanked him and promised him something for a headline if and when. So that was settled. As I went to a drawer for clean shorts the brain started in on Carl Heydt, but it had darned little to work on, and by the time I tied my tie it was buzzing around trying to find a place to land.

Downstairs, Wolfe was still in the dining room, but I went on by to the kitchen, got at my breakfast table with the Times, and was served by Fritz with what do you think? Corn fritters. There had been eight perfectly good ears, and Fritz hates to throw good food away. With bacon and homemade blackberry jam they were ambrosia, and in the Times report on the Faber murder Wolfe’s name was mentioned twice and mine four times, so it was a fine meal. I had finished the eighth fritter and was deciding whether to take on another one and a third cup of coffee when the doorbell rang, and I got up and went to the hall for a look. Wolfe was back in the office, and I stuck my head in and said, “McLeod.”

He let out a growl. True, he had told Sue he must see her father and was even going to phone to ask him to come in from the country, but he always resents an unexpected visitor, no matter who. Ignoring the growl, I went to the front and opened the door, and when McLeod said he wanted to see Mr. Wolfe, with his burr on the r, I invited him in, took his Sunday hat, a dark gray antique fedora in good condition, put it on the shelf, and took him to the office. Wolfe, who is no hand-shaker, told him good afternoon and motioned to the red leather chair.

McLeod stood. “No need to sit,” he said. “I’ve been told about the corn and I came to apologize. I’m to blame, and I’d like to explain how it happened. I didn’t pick it; that young man did. Kenneth Faber.”

Wolfe grunted. “Wasn’t that heedless? I telephoned the restaurant this morning and was told that theirs was as bad as mine. You know what we require.”

He nodded. “I ought to by now. You pay a good price, and I want to say it’ll never happen again. I’d like to explain it. A man was coming Thursday with a bulldozer to work on a lot I’m clearing, but Monday night he told me he’d have to come Wednesday instead, and I had to dynamite a lot of stumps and rock before he came. I got at it by daylight yesterday and I thought I could finish in time to pick the corn, but I had some trouble and I had to leave the corn to that young man. I had showed him and I thought he knew. So I’ve got to apologize and I’ll see it don’t happen again. Of course I’m not expecting you to pay for it.”

Wolfe grunted. “I’ll pay for the eight ears we used. It was vexatious, Mr. McLeod.”

“I know it was.” He turned and aimed his gray blue eyes, with their farmer’s squint, at me. “Since I’m here I’m going to ask you. What did that young man tell you about my daughter?”

I met his eyes. It was a matter not only of murder, but also of my personal jam that might land me in the jug any minute, and all I really knew of him was that he was Sue’s father and he knew how to pick corn. “Not a lot,” I said. “Where did you get the idea he told me anything about her?”

“From her. This morning. What he told her he told you. So I’m asking you, to get it straight.”

“Mr. McLeod,” Wolfe cut in. He nodded at the red leather chair. “Please sit down.”

“No need to sit I just want to know what that young man said about my daughter.”

“She has told you what he said he said. She has also told Mr. Goodwin and me. We have spoken with her at length. She came shortly after eleven o’clock this morning to see Mr. Goodwin and stayed two hours.”

“My daughter Susan? Came here?”

“Yes.”

McLeod moved. In no hurry, he went to the red leather chair, sat, focused on Wolfe, and demanded, “What did she come for?”

Wolfe shook his head. “You have it wrong side up. That tone is for us, not you. We may or may not oblige you later; that will depend. The young man you permitted to pick my corn has been murdered, and because of false statements made by your daughter to the police Mr. Goodwin may be charged with murder. The danger is great and imminent. You say you spent yesterday dynamiting stumps and rocks. Until what hour?”

McLeod’s set jaw made his deep-tanned seamed face even squarer. “My daughter doesn’t make false statements,” he said. “What were they?”

“They were about Mr. Goodwin. Anyone will lie when the alternative is intolerable. She may have been impelled by a desperate need to save herself, but Mr. Goodwin and I do not believe she killed that man. Archie?”

I nodded. “Right. Now any odds you want to name.”

“And we’re going to learn who did kill him. Did you?”

“No. But I would have, if...” He let it hang.

“If what?”

“If I had known what he was saying about my daughter. I told them that, the police. I heard about it from them, and from my daughter, last night and this morning. He was a bad man, an evil man. You say you’re going to learn who killed him, but I hope you don’t I told them that too. They asked me what you did, about yesterday, and I told them I was there in the lot working with the stumps until nearly dark and it made me late with the milking. I can tell you this, I don’t resent you thinking I might have killed him, because I might.”

“Who was helping you with the stumps?”

“Nobody, not in the afternoon. He was with me all morning after he did the chores, but then he had to pick the corn and then he had to go with it.”

“You have no other help?”

“No.”

“Other children? A wife?”

“My wife died ten years ago. We only had Susan. I told you, I don’t resent this, not a bit. I said I would have killed him if I’d known. I didn’t want her to come to New York, I knew something like this might happen — the kind of people she got to know and all the pictures of her. I’m an old-fashioned man and I’m a righteous man, only that word righteous may not mean for you what it means for me. You said you might oblige me later. What did my daughter come here for?”

“I don’t know.” Wolfe’s eyes were narrowed at him. “Ask her. Her avowed purpose is open to question. This is futile, Mr. McLeod, since you think a righteous man may wink at murder. I wanted—”

“I didn’t say that. I don’t wink at murder. But I don’t have to want whoever killed Kenneth Faber to get caught and suffer for it. Do I?”

“No. I wanted to see you. I wanted to ask you, for instance, if you know a man named Carl Heydt, but since—”

“I don’t know him. I’ve never seen him. I’ve heard his name from my daughter; he was the first one she worked for. What about him?”

“Nothing, since you don’t know him. Do you know Max Maslow?”

“No.”

“Peter Jay?”

“No. I’ve heard their names from my daughter. She tells me about people; she tries to tell me they’re not as bad as I think they are, only their ideas are different from mine. Now this has happened, and I knew it would, something like this. I don’t wink at murder and I don’t wink at anything sinful.”

“But if you knew who killed that man or had reason to suspect anyone you wouldn’t tell me — or the police.”

“I would not.”

“Then I won’t keep you. Good afternoon, sir.”

McLeod stayed put “If you won’t tell me what my daughter came here for I can’t make you. But you can’t tell me she made false statements and not say what they were.”

Wolfe grunted. “I can and do. I will tell you nothing.” He slapped the desk. “Confound it, after sending me inedible corn you presume to come and make demands on me? Go!”

McLeod’s mouth opened and closed again. In no hurry, he got up. “I don’t think it’s fair,” he said. “I don’t think it’s right”. He turned to go and turned back. “Of course you won’t be wanting any more corn.”

Wolfe was scowling at him. “Why not? It’s only the middle of September.”

“I mean not from me.”

“Then from whom? Mr. Goodwin can’t go scouring the countryside with this imbroglio on our hands. I want corn this week. Tomorrow?”

“I don’t see... There’s nobody to bring it.”

“Friday, then?”

“I might. I’ve got a neighbor— Yes, I guess so. The restaurant too?”

Wolfe said yes, he would tell them to expect it, and McLeod turned and went. I stepped to the hall, got to the front ahead of him to hand him his hat, and saw him out. When I returned to the office Wolfe was leaning back, frowning at the ceiling. As I crossed to my desk and sat I felt a yawn coming, and I stopped it. A man expecting to be tagged for murder is in no position to yawn, even if he has had no sleep for thirty hours. I had my nose fill the order for more oxygen, swiveled, and said brightly, “That was a big help. Now we know about the corn.”

Wolfe straightened up. “Pfui. Call Felix and tell him to expect a delivery on Friday.”

“Yes, sir. Good. Then everything’s jake.”

“That’s bad slang. There is good slang and bad slang. How long will it take you to type a full report of our conversation with Miss McLeod, yours and mine, from the beginning?”

“Verbatim?”

“Yes.”

“The last half, more than half, is in the notebook. For the first part I’ll have to dig, and though my memory is as good as you think it is, that will be a little slower. Altogether, say four hours. But what’s the idea? Do you want it to remember me by?”

“No. Two carbons.”

I cocked my head. “Your memory is as good as mine — nearly. Are you actually telling me to type all that crap just to keep me off your neck until nine o’clock?”

“No. It may be useful.”

“Useful how? As your employee I’m supposed to do what I’m told, and I often do, but this is different. This is our joint affair, you said so, trying to save you from the calamity of losing me. Useful how?”

“I don’t know!” he bellowed. “I say it may be useful, if I decide to use it. Can you suggest something that may be more useful?”

“Offhand, no.”

“Then if you type it, two carbons.” I got up and went to the kitchen for a glass of milk. I might or might not start on it before four o’clock, when he would go up to the plant rooms for his afternoon session with the orchids.

4

At five minutes past nine that evening the three men whose names had had checkmarks in front of them in Kenneth Faber’s little notebook were in the office, waiting for Wolfe to show. They hadn’t come together; Carl Heydt had arrived first, ten minutes early, then Peter Jay, on the dot at nine, and then Max Maslow. I had put Heydt in the red leather chair, and Jay and Maslow on two of the yellow ones facing Wolfe’s desk. Nearest me was Maslow.

I had seen Heydt before, of course, but you take a new look at a man when he becomes a homicide candidate. He looked the same as ever — medium height with a slight bulge in the middle, round face with a wide mouth, quick dark eyes that kept on the move. Peter Jay, the something important in the big advertising agency, tall as me but not as broad, with more than his share of chin and a thick dark mane that needed a comb, looked as if he had the regulation ulcer, but it could have been just the current difficulty. Max Maslow, the fashion photographer, was a surprise. With the twisted smile he must have practiced in front of a mirror, the trick haircut, the string tie dangling, and the jacket with four buttons buttoned, he was a screwball if I ever saw one, and I wouldn’t have supposed that Sue McLeod would let such a specimen hang on. I admit it could have been just that his ideas were different from mine, but I like mine.

Wolfe came. When there is to be a gathering he stays in the kitchen until I buzz on the house phone, and then he doesn’t enter, he makes an entrance. Nothing showy, but it’s an entrance. A line from the door to the corner of his desk just misses the red leather chair, so with Heydt in the chair he would have had to circle around his feet and also pass between Heydt and the other two; and he detoured to his right, between the chair and the wall, to his side of the desk, stood, and shot me a glance. I pronounced their names, indicating who was which, and he gave them a nod, sat, moved his eyes from left to right and back again, and spoke.

“This can be fairly brief,” he said, “or it can go on for hours. I think, gentlemen, you would prefer brevity, and so would I. I assume you have all been questioned by the police and by the district attorney or one of his assistants?”

Heydt and Maslow nodded, and Jay said yes. Maslow had his twisted smile on.

“Then you’re on record, but I’m not privy to that record. Since you came here to oblige Miss McLeod, you should know our position, Mr. Goodwin’s and mine, regarding her. She is not our client; we are under no commitment to her; we are acting solely in our own interest. But as it now stands we are satisfied that she didn’t kill Kenneth Faber.”

“That’s damn nice of you,” Maslow said. “So am I.”

“Your own interest?” Jay asked. “What’s your interest?”

“We’re reserving that. We don’t know how candid Miss McLeod has been with you, any or all of you, or how devious. I will say only that, because of statements made to the police by Miss McLeod, Mr. Goodwin is under heavy suspicion, and that because she knew the suspicion was unfounded she agreed to ask you gentlemen to come to see me. To lift the suspicion from Mr. Goodwin we must find out where it belongs, and for that we need your help.”

“My God,” Heydt blurted. “I don’t know where it belongs.”

The other two looked at him, and he looked back. There had been a feel in the atmosphere and the looks made it more than a feel. Evidently each of them had ideas about the other two, but of course it wasn’t as simple as that if one of them had killed Faber, since he would be faking it. Anyhow, they all had ideas and they were itching.

“Quite possibly,” Wolfe conceded, “none of you knows. But it is not mere conjecture that one of you has good reason to know. All of you knew he would be there that day at that hour, and you could have gone there at some previous time to reconnoiter. All of you had an adequate motive — adequate, at least, for the one it moved: Mr. Faber had either debased or grossly slandered the woman you wanted to marry. All of you had some special significance in his private thoughts or plans; your names were in his notebook, with checkmarks. You are not targets chosen at random for want of better ones; you are plainly marked by circumstances. Do you dispute that?”

Maslow said, “All right, that’s our bad luck.” Heydt, biting his lip, said nothing. Jay said, “It’s no news that we’re targets. Go on from there.”

Wolfe nodded. “That’s the rub. The police have questioned you, but I doubt if they have been importunate; they have been set at Mr. Goodwin by Miss McLeod. I don’t know—”

“That’s your interest,” Jay said. “To get Goodwin from under.”

“Certainly. I said so. I—”

“He has known Miss McLeod longer than we have,” Maslow said. “He’s the hero type. He rescued her from the sticks and started her on the path of glory. He’s her hero. I asked her once why she didn’t marry him if he was such a prize, and she said he hadn’t asked her. Now you say she has set the police on him. Permit me to say I don’t believe it. If they’re on him they have a damn good reason. Also permit me to say I hope he does get from under, but not by making me the goat. I’m no hero.”

Wolfe shook his head. “As I said, I’m reserving what Miss McLeod has told the police. She may tell you if you ask her. As for you gentlemen, I don’t know how curious the police have been about you. Have they tried seriously to find someone who saw one of you in that neighborhood Tuesday afternoon? Of course they have asked you where you were that afternoon, that’s mere routine, but have they properly checked your accounts? Are you under surveillance? I doubt it; and I haven’t the resources for those procedures. I invite you to eliminate yourselves from consideration if you can. The man who killed Kenneth Faber was in that alley, concealed under that platform, shortly after five o’clock yesterday afternoon. Mr. Heydt. Can you furnish incontestable evidence that you weren’t there?”

Heydt cleared his throat “If I could, I don’t have to furnish it to you. It seems to me — oh, what the hell. No, I can’t.”

“Mr. Jay?”

“Incontestable, no.” Jay leaned forward, his chin out “I came here because Miss McLeod asked me to, but if I understand what you’re after I might as well go. You intend to find out who killed Faber and pin it on him. To prove it wasn’t Archie Goodwin. Is that it?”

“Yes.”

“Then count me out. I don’t want Goodwin to get it, but neither do I want anyone else to. Not even Max Maslow.”

“That’s damn nice of you, Pete,” Maslow said. “A real pal.”

Wolfe turned to him. “You, sir. Can you eliminate yourself?”

“Not by proving I wasn’t there.” Maslow flipped a hand. “I must say, Wolfe, I’m surprised at you. I thought you were very tough and cagey, but you’ve swallowed something. You said we all wanted to marry Miss McLeod. Who fed you that? I admit I do, and as far as I know Carl Heydt does, but not my pal Pete. He’s the pay-as-you-go type. I wouldn’t exactly call him a Casanova, because Casanova never tried to score by talking up marriage, and that’s Pete’s favorite gambit I could name—”

“Stand up.” It was his pal Pete, on his feet, with fists, glaring down at him.

Maslow tilted his head back. “I wouldn’t, Pete. I was merely—”

“Stand up or I’ll slap you out of the chair.”

Of course I had plenty of time to get there and in between them, but I was curious. It was likely that Jay, not caring about his knuckles, would go for the jaw, and I wanted to see what effect it would have on the twisted smile. My curiosity didn’t get satisfied. As Maslow came up out of the chair he sidestepped, and Jay had to turn, hauling his right back. He started it for Maslow’s jaw by the longest route, and Maslow ducked, came on in, and landed with his right at the very best spot for a bare fist. A beautiful kidney punch. As Jay started to bend Maslow delivered another one to the same spot, harder, and Jay went down. He didn’t tumble, he just wilted. By then I was there. Maslow went to his chair, sat, breathed, and fingered his string tie. The smile was intact, maybe twisted a little more. He spoke to Wolfe. “I hope you didn’t misunderstand me. I wasn’t suggesting that I think he killed Faber. Even if he did I wouldn’t want him to get it. On that point we’re pals. I was only saying I don’t see how you got your reputation if you — You all right, Pete?”

I was helping Jay up. A kidney punch doesn’t daze you, it just makes you sick. I asked him if he wanted a bathroom, and he shook his head, and I steered him to his chair. He turned his face to Maslow, muttered a couple of extremely vulgar words, and belched.

Wolfe spoke. “Will you have brandy, Mr. Jay? Whisky? Coffee?”

Jay shook his head and belched again.

Wolfe turned. “Mr. Heydt. The others have made it clear that if they have information that would help to expose the murderer they won’t divulge it. How about you?”

Heydt cleared his throat. “I’m glad I don’t have to answer that,” he said. “I don’t have to answer it because I have no information that would help. I know Archie Goodwin and I might say we’re friends. If he’s really in a jam I would want to help if I could. You say Miss McLeod has said something to the police that set them on him, but you won’t tell us what she said.”

“Ask her. You can give me no information whatever?”

“No.”

Wolfe’s eyes moved right, to the other two, and back again. “I doubt if it’s worth the trouble,” he said. “Assuming that one of you killed that man, I doubt if I can get at him from the front; I must go around. But I may have given you a false impression, and if so I wish to correct it. I said that to lift the suspicion from Mr. Goodwin we must find out where it belongs, but that isn’t vital, for we have an alternative. We can merely shift the suspicion to Miss McLeod. That will be simple, and it will relieve Mr. Goodwin of further annoyance. We’ll discuss it after you leave, and decide. You gentlemen may view the matter differently when Miss McLeod is in custody, charged with murder, without bail, but that is your—”

“You’re a goddam liar.” Peter Jay.

“Amazing.” Max Maslow. “Where did you get your reputation? What do you expect us to do, kick and scream or go down on our knees?”

“Of course you don’t mean it.” Carl Heydt. “You said you’re satisfied that she didn’t kill him.”

Wolfe nodded. “I doubt if she would be convicted. She might not even go to trial; the police are not blockheads. It will be an ordeal for her, but it will also be a lesson; her implication of Mr. Goodwin may not have been willful, but it was inexcusable.” His eyes went to Maslow. “You have mentioned my reputation. I made it and I don’t risk it rashly. If tomorrow you learn that Miss McLeod has been arrested and is inaccessible, you may—”

“ ‘If’.” That crooked smile.

“Yes. It is contingent not on our power but on our preference. I am inviting you gentlemen to have a voice in our decision. You have told me nothing whatever, and I do not believe that you have nothing whatever to tell. Do you want to talk now, to me, or later, to the police, when that woman is in a pickle?”

“You’re bluffing,” Maslow said. “I call.” He got up and headed for the halt I got up and followed him out, got his hat from the shelf, and opened the front door; and as I closed it behind him and started back down the hall here came the other two. I opened the door again, and Jay, who had no hat, went by and on out, but Heydt stood there. I got his hat and he took it and put it on. “Look, Archie,” he said. “You’ve got to do something.”

“Check,” I said. “What, for instance?”

“I don’t know. But about Sue — my God, he doesn’t mean it, does he?”

“It isn’t just a question of what he means, it’s also what I mean. Damn it, I’m short on sleep, and I may soon be short on life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Get the news every hour on the hour. Pleasant dreams.”

“What did Sue tell the police about you?”

“No comment. My resistance is low and with the door open I might catch cold. If you don’t mind?”

He went. I shut the door, put the chain bolt on, returned to the office, sat at my desk, and said, “So you thought it might be useful.”

He grunted. “Have you finished it?”

“Yes. Twelve pages.”

“May I see it?”

Not an order, a request. At least he was remembering that it was a joint affair. I opened a drawer, got the original, and took it to him. He inspected the heading and the first page, flipped through the sheets, took a look at the end, dropped it on his desk, and said, “Your notebook, please.” I sat and got my notebook and pen.

“There will be two,” he said, “one for you and one for me. First mine. Heading in caps, affidavit by Nero Wolfe. The usual State of New York, County of New York. The text: I hereby depose that the twelve foregoing typewritten pages attached hereto, comma, each page initialed by me, comma, are a full and accurate record of a conversation that took place in my office on October thirteenth, nineteen sixty-one, by Susan McLeod, comma, Archie Goodwin, comma, and myself, semicolon; that nothing of consequence has been omitted or added in this typewritten record, semicolon; and that the conversation was wholly impromptu, comma, with no prior preparation or arrangement A space for my signature, and below, the conventional formula for notarizing. The one for you, on the same sheet if there is room, will be the same with the appropriate changes.”

I looked up. “All right, it wasn’t just to keep me off your neck. Okay on the power. But there’s still the if on the preference. She didn’t kill him. She came to me and opened the bag. I’m her hero. She as good as told Maslow that she’d marry me if I asked her. Maybe she could learn how to dance if she tried hard, though I admit that’s doubtful. She makes a lot more than you pay me, and we could postpone the babies. You said you doubt if she would be convicted, but that’s not good enough. Before I sign that affidavit I would need to know that you won’t chuck the joint affair as soon as the heat is off of me.”

“Rrrhhh,” he said.

“I agree,” I said, “it’s a goddam nuisance. It’s entirely her fault, she dragged me in without even telling me, and if a girl pushes a man in a hole he has a right to wiggle out, but you must remember that I am now a hero. Heroes don’t wiggle. Will you say that it will be our joint affair to make sure that she doesn’t go to trial?”

“I wouldn’t say that I will make sure of anything whatever.”

“Correction. That you will be concerned?”

He took air in, all the way, through his nose, and let it out through his mouth. “Very well. I’ll be concerned.” He glanced at the twelve pages on his desk. “Will you bring Miss Pinelli to my room at five minutes to nine in the morning?”

“No. She doesn’t get to her office until nine-thirty.”

“Then bring her to the plant rooms at nine-forty with the affidavit” He looked at the wall clock. “You can type it in the morning. You’ve had no sleep for forty hours. Go to bed.”

That was quite a compliment, and I was appreciating it as I mounted the stairs to my room. Except for a real emergency he will permit no interruptions from nine to eleven in the morning, when he is in the plant rooms, but he wasn’t going to wait until he came down to the office to get the affidavit notarized. As I got into bed and turned the light off I was considering whether to ask for a raise now or wait till the end of the year, but before I made up my mind I didn’t have a mind. It was gone.

I never did actually make up my mind about passing the buck to Sue. I was still on the fence after breakfast Thursday morning, when I dialed the number of Lila Pinelli, who adds maybe two bucks a week to the take of her secretarial service in a building on Eighth Avenue by doubling as a notary public. Doing the affidavits didn’t commit me to anything; the question was, what then? So I asked her to come, and she came, and I took her up to the plant rooms. She was in a hurry to get back, but she had never seen the orchids, and no one alive could just breeze on by those benches, with everything from the neat little Oncidiums to the big show-offs like the Laeliocattleyas. So it was after ten o’clock when we came back down and I paid her and let her out, and I went to the office and put the document in the safe.

As I say, I never did actually make up my mind; it just happened. At ten minutes past eleven Wolfe, having come down at eleven as usual, was at his desk looking over the morning crop of mail, and I was at mine sorting the germination slips he had brought, when the doorbell rang. I stepped to the hall for a look, turned, and said, “Cramer. I’ll go hide in the cellar.”

“Confound it,” he growled. “I wanted — Very well.”

“There’s no law about answering doorbells.”

“No. We’ll see.”

I went to the front, opened up, said good morning, and gave him room. He crossed the sill, took a folded paper from a pocket, and handed it to me. I unfolded it, and a glance was enough, but I read it through. “At least my name’s spelled right,” I said. I extended my hands, the wrists together. “Okay, do it right. You never know.”

“You’d clown in the chair,” he said. “I want to see Wolfe.” He marched down the hall and into the office. Very careless. I could have scooted on out and away, and for half a second I considered it, but I wouldn’t have been there to see the look on his face when he found I was gone. When I entered the office he was lowering his fanny onto the red leather chair and putting his hat on the stand beside it. Also he was speaking. “I have just handed Goodwin a warrant for his arrest,” he was saying, “and this time he’ll stay.”

I stood. “It’s an honor,” I said. “Anyone can be banged by a bull or a dick. It takes me to be pinched by an inspector, and twice in one week.”

His eyes stayed at Wolfe. “I came myself,” he said, “because I want to tell you how it stands. A police officer with a warrant to serve is not only allowed to use his discretion, he’s supposed to. I know damn well what Goodwin will do, he’ll clam up, and a crowbar wouldn’t pry him open. Give me that warrant, Goodwin.”

“It’s mine. You’ve served it.”

“I have not. I just showed it to you.” He stretched an arm and took it. “When I was here Tuesday night,” he told Wolfe, “you were dumfounded by my fatuity. So you said in your fancy way. All you cared about was who picked that corn. I came myself to see how you feel now. Goodwin will talk if you tell him to. Do you want me to wait in the front room while you discuss it? Not all day, say ten minutes. I’m giving you a—”

He stopped to glare. Wolfe had pushed his chair back and was rising, and of course Cramer thought he was walking out. It wouldn’t have been the first time. But Wolfe headed for the safe, not the hall. As he turned the handle and pulled the door open, there I was. If he had told me to bring it instead of going for it himself, I could have stalled while I made up my mind, even with Cramer there, but as I have said twice before I never did actually make up my mind. I merely went to my desk and sat. I owed Sue McLeod nothing. If either she or I was going to be cooped, there were two good reasons why it should be her: she had made the soup herself, and I wouldn’t be much help in the joint affair if I was salted down. So I sat, and Wolfe got it from the safe, went and handed it to Cramer, and spoke. “I suggest that you look at the affidavits first. The last two sheets.”

Over the years I have made a large assortment of cracks about Inspector Cramer, but I admit he has his points. Having inspected the affidavits, he went through the twelve pages fast, and then he went back and started over and took his time. Altogether, more than half an hour; and not once did he ask a question or even look up. And when he finished, even then no questions. Lieutenant Rowcliff or Sergeant Purley Stebbins would have kept at us for an hour. Cramer merely gave each of us a five-second straight hard look, folded the document and put it in his inside breast pocket, rose and came to my desk, picked up the phone, and dialed. In a moment he spoke.

“Donovan? Inspector Cramer. Give me Sergeant Stebbins.” In another moment: “Purley? Get Susan McLeod. Don’t call her, get her. Go yourself. I’ll be there in ten minutes and I want her there fast. Take a man along. If she balks, wrap her up and carry her.”

He cradled the phone, went to the stand and got his hat, and marched out.

5

Of all the thousand or more times I have felt like putting vinegar in Wolfe’s beer, I believe the closest I ever came to doing it was that Thursday evening when the doorbell rang at a quarter past nine, and after a look at the front I told him that Carl Heydt, Max Maslow, and Peter Jay were on the stoop, and he said they were not to be admitted.

In the nine and a half hours that had passed since Cramer had used my phone to call Purley Stebbins I had let it lie. I couldn’t expect Wolfe to start any fur flying until there was a reaction, or there wasn’t, say by tomorrow noon, to what had happened to Sue. However, I had made a move on my own. When Wolfe had left the office at four o’clock to go up to the plant rooms, I had told him I would be out on an errand for an hour or so, and I had taken a walk, to Rusterman’s, thinking I might pick up some little hint.

I didn’t. First I went out back for a look at the platform and the alley, which might seem screwy, since two days and nights had passed and the city scientists had combed it, but you never know. I once got an idea just running my eye around a hotel room where a woman had spent a night six months earlier. But I got nothing from the platform or alley except a scraped ear from squeezing under the platform and out again, and after talking with Felix and Joe and some of the kitchen staff I crossed it off. No one had seen or heard anyone or anything until Zoltan had stepped out for a cigarette (no smoking is allowed in the kitchen) and had seen the station wagon and the body on the ground.

I would have let it ride that evening, no needling until tomorrow noon. When Lily Rowan phoned around seven o’clock and said Sue had phoned her from the DA’s office that she was under arrest and had to have a lawyer and would Lily send her one, and Lily wanted me to come and tell her what was what, I would have gone if I hadn’t wanted to be on hand if there was a development But when the development came Wolfe told me not to let it in.

I straight-eyed him. “You said you’d be concerned.”

“I am concerned.”

“Then here they are. You tossed her to the wolves to open them up, and here—”

“No. I did that to keep you out of jail. I am considering how to deal with the problem, and until I decide there is no point in seeing them. Tell them they’ll hear from us.”

The doorbell rang again. “Then I’ll see them. In the front room.”

“No. Not in my house.” He went back to his book.

Either put vinegar in his beer or get the Marley .32 from my desk drawer and shoot him dead, but that would have to wait; they were on the stoop. I went and opened the door enough for me to slip through, did so, bumping into Carl Heydt, and pulled the door shut “Good evening,” I said. “Mr. Wolfe is busy on an important matter and can’t be disturbed. Do you want to disturb me instead?”

They all spoke at once. The general idea seemed to be that I would open the door and they would handle the disturbing.

“You don’t seem to realize,” I told them, “that you’re up against a genius. So am I, only I’m used to it. You were damn fools to think he was bluffing. You might have known he would do exactly what he said.”

“Then he did?” Peter Jay. “He did it?”

“We did. I share the glory. We did.”

“Glory hell.” Max Maslow. “You know Sue didn’t kill Ken Faber. He said so.”

“He said we were satisfied that she didn’t. We still are. He also said that we doubt if she’ll be convicted. He also said that our interest was to get me from under, and we had alternatives. We could either find out who killed Faber, for which we needed your help; or, if you refused to help, we could switch it to Sue. You refused, and we switched it, and I am in the clear, and here you are. Why? Why should he waste time on you now? He is busy on an important matter; he’s reading a book entitled My Life in Court, by Louis Nizer. Why should he put it down for you?”

“I can’t believe it, Archie.” Carl Heydt had hold of my arm. “I can’t believe you’d do a thing like this — to Sue — when you say she didn’t—”

“You never can tell, Carl. There was that woman who went to the park every day to feed the pigeons, but she fed her husband arsenic. I have a suggestion. This is Mr. Wolfe’s house and he doesn’t want you in it, but if you guys have changed your minds, at least two of you, about helping to find out who killed Faber, I’m a licensed detective too and I could spare a couple of hours. We can sit here on the steps, or we can go somewhere—”

“And you can tell us,” Maslow said, “what Sue told the cops that got them on you. I may believe that when I hear it.”

“You won’t hear it from me. That’s not the idea. You tell me things. I ask questions and you answer them. If I don’t ask them, who will? I doubt if the cops or the DA will; they’ve got too good a line on Sue. I’ll tell you this much, they know she was there Tuesday at the right time, and they know that she lied to them about what she was there for and what she saw. I can spare an hour or two.”

They exchanged glances, and they were not the glances of buddies with a common interest. They also exchanged words and found they agreed on one point: if one of them took me up they all would. Peter Jay said we could go to his place and they agreed on that too, and we descended to the sidewalk and headed east At Eighth Avenue we flagged a taxi with room for four. It was ten minutes to ten when it rolled to the curb at a marquee on Park Avenue in the Seventies.

Jay’s apartment, on the fifteenth floor, was quite a perch for a bachelor. The living room was high, wide, and handsome, and it would have been an appropriate spot for our talk, since it was there that Sue McLeod and Ken Faber had first met, but Jay took us on through to a room smaller but also handsome, with chairs and carpet of matching green, a desk, bookshelves, and a TV-player cabinet He asked us what we would drink but got no orders, and we sat.

“All right, ask your questions,” Maslow said. The twisted smile.

He was blocking my view of Heydt, and I shifted my chair. “I’ve changed my mind,” I said. “I looked it over on the way, and I decided to take another tack. Sue told the police, and it was in her signed statement, that she and I had arranged to meet there at the alley at five o’clock, and she was late, she didn’t get there until five-fifteen, and I wasn’t there, so she left She had to tell them she was there because she had been seen in front of the restaurant, just around the corner, by two of the staff, who know her.”

Their eyes were glued on me. “So you weren’t there at five-fifteen,” Jay said. “The body was found at five-fifteen. So you had been and gone?”

“No. Sue also told the police that Faber had told her on Sunday that he had told me on Tuesday that she thought she was pregnant and he was responsible, He had told you that, all three of you. She said that was why she and I were going to meet there, to make Faber swallow his lies. So it’s fair to say she set the cops on me, and it’s no wonder they turned on the heat. The trouble—”

“Why not?” Maslow demanded. “Why isn’t it still on?”

“Don’t interrupt. The trouble was, she lied. Not about what Faber had told her on Sunday he had told me on Tuesday; that was probably his lie, he probably had told her that, but it wasn’t true; he had told me nothing on Tuesday. That’s why your names in his notebook had checkmarks but mine didn’t; he was going to feed us that to put the pressure on Sue, and he had fed it to you but not me. So that was his lie, not Sue’s. Hers was about our arranging to meet there Tuesday afternoon to have it out with Faber. We hadn’t. We hadn’t arranged anything. She also—”

“So you say.” Peter Jay.

“Don’t interrupt. She also lied about what she did when she got there at five-fifteen. She said she saw I wasn’t there and left. Actually she went down the alley, saw Faber’s body there on the ground with his skull smashed, panicked, and blew. The time thing—”

“So you say.” Peter Jay.

“Shut up. The time thing is only a matter of seconds. Sue says she got there at five-fifteen, and the record says that a man coming from the kitchen discovered the body at five-fifteen. Sue may be off half a minute, or the man may. Evidently she had just been and gone when the man came from the kitchen.”

“Look, pal.” Maslow had his head cocked and his eyes narrowed. “Shut up? Go soak your head. Who’s lying? Sue or you?”

I nodded. “That’s a fair question. Until noon today, a little before noon, they thought I was. Then they found out I wasn’t. They didn’t just guess again, they found out, and that’s why they took her down and they’re going to keep her. Which—”

“How did they find out?”

“Ask them. You can be sure it was good. They were liking it fine, having me on a hook, and they hated to see me flop off. It had to be good, and it was. Which brings me to the point. I think Sue’s lie was part truth. I think she had arranged with someone to meet her there at five o’clock. She got there fifteen minutes late and he wasn’t there, and she went down the alley and saw Faber dead, and what would she think? That’s obvious. No wonder she panicked. She went home and looked it over. She couldn’t deny she had been there because she had been seen. If she said she had gone there on her own to see Faber, alone, they wouldn’t believe she hadn’t gone in the alley, and they certainly would believe she had killed him. So she decided to tell the truth, part of it, that she had arranged to meet someone and she got there late and he wasn’t there and she had left — leaving out that she had gone in the alley and seen the body. But since she thought that the man she had arranged to meet had killed Faber she couldn’t name him; but they would insist on her naming him. So she decided to name me. It wasn’t so dirty really; she thought I could prove I was somewhere else, having decided not to meet her. I couldn’t, but she didn’t know that.” I turned a palm up. “So the point is, who had agreed to meet her there?”

Heydt said, “That took a lot of cutting and fitting, Archie.”

“You were going to ask questions,” Maslow said. “Ask one we can answer.”

“T’ll settle for that one,” I said. “Say it was one of you, which of course I am saying. I don’t expect him to answer it. If Sue stands pat and doesn’t name him and it gets to where he has to choose between letting her go to trial and unloading, he might come across, but not here and now. But I do expect the other two to consider it. Put it another way: if Sue decided to jump on Faber for the lies he was spreading around and to ask one of you to help, which one would she pick? Or still another: which one of you would be most likely to decide to jump Faber and ask Sue to join in? I like the first one better because it was probably her idea.” I looked at Heydt “What about it, Carl? Just a plain answer to a plain question. Which one would she pick? You?”

“No. Maslow.”

“Why?”

“He’s articulate and he’s tough. I’m not tough, and Sue knows it.”

“How about Jay?”

“My God, no. I hope not. She must know that nobody can depend on him for anything that takes guts.”

Jay left his chair, and his hands were fists as he moved. Guts or not, he certainly believed in making contact. Thinking that Heydt probably wasn’t as well educated as Maslow, I got up and blocked Jay off, and darned if he didn’t swing at me, or start to. I got his arm and whirled him and shoved, and he stumbled but managed to stay on his feet. As he turned, Maslow spoke.

“Hold it, Pete. I have an idea. There’s no love lost among us three, but we all feel the same about this Goodwin. He’s a persona non grata if I ever saw one.” He got up. “Let’s bounce him. Not just a nudge, the bum’s rush. Care to help, Carl?”

Heydt shook his head. “No, thanks. I’ll watch.”

“Okay. It’ll be simpler if you just relax, Goodwin.”

I couldn’t turn and go, leaving my rear open. “I hope you won’t tickle,” I said, backing up a step.

“Come in behind, Pete,” Maslow said, and started, slow, his elbows out a little and his open hands extended and up some. Since he had been so neat with the kidney punch he probably knew a few tricks, maybe the armpit or the apple, and with Jay on my back I would have been a setup, so I doubled up and whirled, came up bumping Jay, and gave him the edge of my hand, as sharp as I could make it, on the side of his neck, the tendon below the ear. It got exactly the right spot and so much for him, but Maslow had my left wrist and was getting his shoulder in for the lock, and in another tenth of a second I would have been meat. The only way to go was down, and I went, sliding off his shoulder and bending my elbow into his belly, and he made a mistake. Having lost the lock, he reached for my other wrist. That opened him up, and I rolled into him, brought my right arm around, and had his neck with a knee in his back.

“Do you want to hear it crack?” I asked him, which was bad manners, since he couldn’t answer. I loosened my arm a little. “I admit I was lucky. If Jay had been sideways you would have had me.” I looked at Jay, who was on a chair, rubbing his neck. “If you want to play games you ought to take lessons. Maslow would be a good teacher.” I unwound my arm and got erect “Don’t bother to see me out,” I said and headed for the front.

I was still breathing a little fast when I emerged to the sidewalk, having straightened my tie and run my comb through my hair in the elevator. My watch said twenty past ten. Also in the elevator I had decided to make a phone call, so I walked to Madison Avenue, found a booth, and dialed one of the numbers I knew best. Miss Lily Rowan was in and would be pleased to have me come and tell her things, and I walked the twelve blocks to the number on 63rd Street where her penthouse occupies the roof.

Since it wasn’t one of Wolfe’s cases with a client involved, but a joint affair, and since it was Lily who had started Sue on her way at my request, I gave her the whole picture. Her chief reactions were a) that she didn’t blame Sue and I had no right to, I should feel flattered; b) that I had to somehow get Sue out of it without involving whoever had removed such a louse as Kenneth Faber from circulation; and c) that if I did have to involve him she hoped to heaven it wasn’t Carl Heydt because there was no one else around who could make clothes that were fit to wear, especially suits. She had sent a lawyer to Sue, Bernard Ross, and he had seen her and had phoned an hour before I came to report that she was being held without bail and he would decide in the morning whether to apply for a writ.

It was after one o’clock when I climbed out of a cab in front of the old brownstone on West 35th Street, mounted the stoop, used my key, went down the hall to the office and switched the light on, and got a surprise. Under a paperweight on my desk was a note in Wolfe’s handwriting. It said:

AG: Saul will take the car in the morning, probably for most of the day. His car is not presently available.

NW

I went to the safe, manipulated the knob, opened the door, got the petty-cash book from the drawer, flipped to the current page, and saw an entry:

10/14 SP exp AG 100

I put it back, shut the door, twirled the knob, and considered Wolfe had summoned Saul, and he had come and had been given an errand for which he needed a car. What errand, for God’s sake? Not to drive to Putnam County to get the corn that had been ordered for Friday; for that he wouldn’t need to start in the morning, he wouldn’t need a hundred bucks for possible expenses, and the entry wouldn’t say “exp AG.” It shouldn’t say that anyway since I wasn’t a paying client; it should say “exp JA” for joint affair. And if we were going to split the outlay I should damn well have been consulted beforehand. But up in my room, as I took off and put on, what was biting me was the errand. In the name of the Almighty Lord or J. Edgar Hoover, whichever you prefer, what and where was the errand?

Wolfe eats breakfast in his room from a tray taken up by Fritz, and ordinarily I don’t see him until he comes down from the plant rooms at eleven o’clock. If he has something important or complicated for me he sends word by Fritz for me to go up to his room; for something trivial he gets me on the house phone. That Friday morning there was neither word by Fritz nor the buzzer, and after a late and leisurely breakfast in the kitchen, having learned nothing new from the report of developments in the morning papers on the Sweet Corn Murder, as the Gazette called it, I went to the office and opened the mail. If Wolfe saw fit to keep Saul’s errand strictly private, he could eat wormy old corn boiled in water before I’d ask him. I decided to go out for a walk and was starting for the kitchen to tell Fritz when the phone rang. I got it, and a woman said she was the secretary of Mr. Bernard Ross, counsel for Miss Susan McLeod, and Mr. Ross would like very much to talk with Mr. Wolfe and Mr. Goodwin at their earliest convenience. He would greatly appreciate it if they would call at his office today, this morning if possible.

I would have enjoyed telling Wolfe that Bernard Ross, the celebrated attorney, didn’t know that Nero Wolfe, the celebrated detective, never left his house to call on anyone whoever, but since I wasn’t on speaking terms with him I had to skip it I told the secretary that Wolfe couldn’t but I could and would, went and told Fritz I would probably be back for lunch, put a carbon copy of the twelve-page conversation with affidavits in my pocket, and departed.

I did get back for lunch, just barely. Including the time he took to study the document I had brought, Ross kept me a solid two hours and a half. When I left he knew nearly everything I did, but not quite; I omitted a few items that were immaterial as far as he was concerned — for instance, that Wolfe had sent Saul Panzer somewhere to do something. Since I couldn’t tell him where, to do what, there was no point in mentioning it.

I would have preferred to buy my lunch somewhere, say at Rusterman’s, rather than sit through a meal with Wolfe, but he would be the one to gripe, not me, if he didn’t know where I was. Entering his house, and hearing him in the dining room speaking to Fritz, I went first to the office, and there on my desk under a paperweight were four sawbucks. Leaving them there, I went to the dining room and said good morning, though it wasn’t.

He nodded and went on dishing shrimps from a steaming casserole. “Good afternoon. That forty dollars on your desk can be returned to the safe. Saul had no expenses and I gave him sixty dollars for his six hours.”

“His daily minimum is eighty.”

“He wouldn’t take eighty. He didn’t want to take anything, since this is our personal affair, but I insisted. This shrimp Bordelaise is without onions but has some garlic. I think an improvement, but Fritz and I invite your opinion.”

“I’ll be glad to give it. It smells good.” I sat That was by no means the first time the question had arisen whether he was more pigheaded than I was strong-minded. I was supposed to explode. I was supposed to demand to know where and how Saul had spent the six hours, and he would then be good enough to explain that he had got an idea last night in my absence, and, not knowing where I was, he had had to call Saul. So I wouldn’t explode. I would eat shrimp Bordelaise without onions but with garlic and like it. Obviously, whatever Saul’s errand had been, it had been a washout, since he had returned and reported and been paid off. So it was Wolfe’s move, since he had refused to see the three candidates when they came and rang the bell, and I would not explode. Nor would I report on last night or this morning unless and until he asked for it. Back in the office after lunch, he got settled in his favorite chair with My Life in Court, and I brought a file of cards from the cabinet and got busy with the germination records. At one minute to four he put his book down and went to keep his date with the orchids. It would have been a pleasure to take the Marley .32 from the drawer and plug him in the back.

I was at my desk, looking through the evening edition of the Gazette that had just been delivered, when I heard a noise I couldn’t believe. The elevator. I looked at my watch: half past five. That was unprecedented. He never did that. Once in the plant rooms he stuck there for the two hours, no matter what. If he had a notion that couldn’t wait he buzzed me on the house phone, or Fritz if I wasn’t there. I dropped the paper and got up and stepped to the hall. The elevator jolted to a stop at the bottom, the door opened, and he emerged.

“The corn,” he said. “Has it come?”

For Pete’s sake. Being finicky about grub is all right up to a point, but there’s a limit “No,” I said. “Unless Saul brought it.”

He grunted. “A possibility occurred to me. When it comes — if it comes — no. I’ll see for myself. The possibility is remote, but it would be—”

“Here it is,” I said. “Good timing.” A man with a carton had appeared on the stoop. As I started to the front the door bell rang, and as I opened the door Wolfe was there beside me. The man, a skinny little guy in pants too big for him and a bright green shirt, spoke. “Nero Wolfe?”

“I’m Nero Wolfe.” He was on the sill. “You have my corn?”

“Right here.” He put the carton down and let go of the cord.

“May I have your name, sir?”

“My name’s Palmer. Delbert Palmer. Why?”

“I like to know the names of men who render me a service. Did you pick the corn?”

“Hell, no. McLeod picked it.”

“Did you pack it in the carton?”

“No, he did. Look here, I know you’re a detective. You just ask questions from habit, huh?”

“No, Mr. Palmer. I merely want to be sure about the corn. I’m obliged to you. Good day, sir.” He bent over to slip his fingers under the cord, lifted the carton, and headed for the office. Palmer told me distinctly, “It takes all kinds,” turned, and started down the steps, and I shut the door. In the office, Wolfe was standing eying the carton, which he had put on the seat of the red leather chair. As I crossed over he said without looking up, “Get Mr. Cramer.”

It’s nice to have a man around who obeys orders no matter how batty they are and saves the questions for later. That time the questions got answered before they were asked. I went to my desk, dialed Homicide South, and got Cramer, and Wolfe, who had gone to his chair, took his phone.

“Mr. Cramer? I must ask a favor, I have here in my office a carton which has just been delivered to me. It is supposed to contain corn, and perhaps it does, but it is conceivable that it contains dynamite and a contraption that will detonate it when the cord is cut and the flaps raised. My suspicion may be groundless, but I have it I know this is not your department, but you will know how to proceed. Will you please notify the proper person without delay?... That can wait until we know what’s in the carton.... Certainly. Even if it contains only corn I’ll give you all relevant information.... No, there is no ticking sound. If it does contain explosive there is almost certainly no danger until the carton is opened. Yes, I’ll make sure.”

He hung up, swiveled, and glared at the carton. “Confound it,” he growled, “again. We’ll get some somewhere before the season ends.”

6

The first city employee to arrive, four or five minutes after Wolfe hung up, was one in uniform. Wolfe was telling me what Saul’s errand had been when the doorbell rang, and since I resented the interruption I trotted to the front, opened the door, saw a prowl car at the curb, and demanded rudely, “Well?”

“Where’s that carton?” he demanded back.

“Where it will stay until someone comes who knows something.” I was shutting the door but his foot was there.

“You’re Archie Goodwin,” he said. “I know about you. I’m coming in. Did you yell for help or didn’t you?”

He had a point. An officer of the law doesn’t have to bring a search warrant to enter a house whose owner has asked the police to come and get a carton of maybe dynamite. I gave him room to enter, shut the door, took him to the office, pointed to the carton, and said, “If you touch it and it goes off we can sue you for damages.”

“You couldn’t pay me to touch it,” he said. “I’m here to see that nobody does.” He glanced around, went over by the big globe, and stood, a good fifteen feet away from the carton. With him there, the rest of the explanation of Saul’s errand had to wait, but I had something to look at to pass the time — a carbon copy, one sheet, which Wolfe had taken from his desk drawer and handed me, of something Saul had typed on my machine during my absence Thursday evening.

The second city employee to arrive, at ten minutes to six, was Inspector Cramer. When the bell rang and I went to let him in the look on his face was one I had seen before. He knew Wolfe had something fancy by the tail, and he would have given a month’s pay before taxes to know what. He tramped to the office, saw the carton, turned to the cop, got a salute but didn’t acknowledge it, and said, “You can go, Schwab.”

“Yes, sir. Stay out front?”

“No. You won’t be needed.”

Fully as rude as I had been, but he was a superior officer. Schwab saluted again and went. Cramer looked at the red leather chair. He always sat there, but the carton was on it I moved up one of the yellow ones, and he sat, took his hat off and dropped it on the floor, and asked Wolfe, “What is this, a gag?”

Wolfe shook his head. “It may be a bugaboo, but I’m not crying wolf. I can tell you nothing until we know what’s in the carton.”

“The hell you can’t When did it come?”

“One minute before I telephoned you.”

“Who brought it?”

“A stranger. A man I had never seen before.”

“Why do you think it’s dynamite?”

“I think it may be. I reserve further information until—”

I missed the rest because the doorbell rang and I went. It was the bomb squad, two of them. They were in uniform, but one look and you knew they weren’t flatties — if nothing else, their eyes. When I opened the door I saw another one down on the sidewalk, and their special bus, with its made-to-order enclosed body, was double-parked in front. I asked, “Bomb squad?” and the shorter one said, “Right,” and I convoyed them to the office. Cramer, on his feet, returned their salute, pointed to the carton, and said, “It may be just corn. I mean the kind of corn you eat. Or it may not Nero Wolfe thinks not. He also thinks it’s safe until the flaps are opened, but you’re the experts. As soon as you know, phone me here. How long will it take?”

“That depends, Inspector. It could be an hour, or ten hours — or it could be never.”

“I hope not never. Will you call me here as soon as you know?”

“Yes, sir.”

The other one, the taller one, had stooped to press his ear against the carton and kept it there. He raised his head, said, “No comment,” eased his fingers under the carton’s bottom, a hand at each side, and came up with it. I said, “The man who brought it carried it by the cord,” and got ignored. They went, the one with the carton in front, and I followed to the stoop, watched them put it in the bus, and returned to the office. Cramer was in the red leather chair, and Wolfe was speaking.

“... But if you insist, very well. My reason for thinking it may contain an explosive is that it was brought by a stranger. My name printed on it was as usual, but naturally such a detail would not be overlooked. There are a number of people in the metropolitan area who have reason to wish me ill, and it would be imprudent—”

“My God, you can lie.”

Wolfe tapped the desk with a fingertip. “Mr. Cramer. If you insist on lies you’ll get them. Until I know what’s in that carton. Then we’ll see.” He picked up his book, opened to his place, and swiveled to get the light right.

Cramer was stuck. He looked at me, started to say something, and vetoed it. He couldn’t get up and go because he had told the Bomb Squad to call him there, but an inspector couldn’t just sit. He took a cigar from a pocket, looked at it, put it back, arose, came to me, and said, “I’ve got some calls to make.” Meaning he wanted my chair, which was a good dodge since it got some action; I had to move. He stayed at the phone nearly half an hour, making four or five calls, none of which sounded important, then got up and went over to the big globe and started studying geography. Ten minutes was enough for that, and he switched to the bookshelves. Back at my desk, leaning back with my legs crossed, my hands clasped behind my head, I noted which books he took out and looked at Now that I knew who had killed Ken Faber, little things like that were interesting. The one he looked at longest was The Coming Fury, by Bruce Catton. He was still at that when the phone rang. I turned to get it, but by the time I had it to my ear he was there. A man asked for Inspector Cramer and I handed it to him and permitted myself a grin as I saw Wolfe put his book down and reach for his phone. He wasn’t going to take hearsay, even from an inspector.

It was a short conversation; Cramer’s end of it wasn’t more than twenty words. He hung up and went to the red leather chair. “Okay,” he growled. “If you had opened that carton they wouldn’t have found all the pieces. You didn’t think it was dynamite, you knew it was. Talk.”

Wolfe, his lips tight, was breathing deep. “Not me,” he said. “It would have been Archie or Fritz, or both of them. And of course my house. The possibility occurred to me, and I came down, barely in time. Three minutes later... Pfui. That man is a blackguard.” He shook his head, as if getting rid of a fly. “Well. Shortly after ten o’clock last evening I decided how to proceed, and I sent for Saul Panzer. When he came—”

“Who put that dynamite in that carton?”

“I’m telling you. When he came I had him type something on a sheet of paper and told him to drive to Duncan McLeod’s farm this morning and give it to Mr. McLeod. Archie. You have the copy.”

I took it from my pocket and went and handed it to Cramer. He kept it, but this is what it said:

MEMORANDUM FROM NERO WOLFE TO DUNCAN MCLEOD

I suggest that you should have in readiness acceptable answers to the following questions if and when they are asked:

1. When did Kenneth Faber tell you that your daughter was pregnant and he was responsible?

2. Where did you go when you drove away from your farm Tuesday afternoon around two o’clock — perhaps a little later — and returned around seven o’clock, late for milking?

3. Where did you get the piece of pipe? Was it on your premises?

4. Do you know that your daughter saw you leaving the alley Tuesday afternoon? Did you see her?

5. Is it true that the man with the bulldozer told you Monday night that he would have to come Wednesday instead of Thursday?

There are many questions you may be asked; these are only samples. If competent investigators are moved to start inquiries of this nature, you will of course be in a difficult position, and it would be well to anticipate it.

Cramer looked up and aimed beady eyes at Wolfe. “You knew last night that McLeod killed Faber.”

“Not certain knowledge. A reasoned conclusion.”

“You knew he left his farm Tuesday afternoon. You knew his daughter saw him at the alley. You knew—”

“No. Those were conclusions.” Wolfe turned a palm up. “Mr. Cramer. You sat there yesterday morning and read a document sworn to by Mr. Goodwin and me. When you finished it you knew everything that I knew, and I have learned nothing since then. From the knowledge we shared I had concluded that McLeod had killed Faber. You haven’t. Shall I detail it?”

“Yes.”

“First, the corn. I presume McLeod told you, as he did me, that he had Faber pick the corn because he had to dynamite some stumps and rocks.”

“Yes.”

“That seemed to me unlikely. He knows how extremely particular I am, and also the restaurant. We pay him well, more than well; it must be a substantial portion of his income. He knew that young man couldn’t possibly do that job. It must have been something more urgent than stumps and rocks that led him to risk losing such desirable customers. Second, the pipe. It was chiefly on account of the pipe that I wanted to see Mr. Heydt, Mr. Maslow, and Mr. Jay. Any man—”

“When did you see them?”

“They came here Wednesday evening, at Miss McLeod’s request. Any man, sufficiently provoked, might plan to kill, but very few men would choose a massive iron bludgeon for a weapon to carry through the streets. Seeing those three I thought it highly improbable that any of them would. But a countryman might, a man who does rough work with rough and heavy tools.”

“You came to a conclusion on stuff like that?”

“No. Those details were merely corroborative. The conclusive item came from Miss McLeod. You read that document. I asked her — I’ll quote it from memory. I said to her, ‘You know those men quite well. You know their temperaments. If one of them, enraged beyond endurance by Mr. Faber’s conduct, went there and killed him, which one? It wasn’t a sudden fit of passion, it was premeditated and planned. From your knowledge of them, which one.’ How did she answer me?”

“She said, ‘They didn’t.’”

“Yes. Didn’t you think that significant? Of course I had the advantage of seeing and hearing her.”

“Sure it was significant. It wasn’t the reaction you always get to the idea that some close friend has committed murder. It wasn’t shock. She just stated a fact. She knew they hadn’t.”

Wolfe nodded. “Precisely. And I saw and heard her. And there was only one way she could know they hadn’t, with such certainty in her words and voice and manner: She knew who had. Did you form that conclusion?”

“Yes.”

“Then why didn’t you go on? If she hadn’t killed him herself but knew who had, and it wasn’t one of those three men — isn’t it obvious?”

“You slipped that in, if she hadn’t killed him herself. Why hadn’t she?”

A corner of Wolfe’s mouth went up. “There it is, your one major flaw: a distorted conception of the impossible. You will reject as inconceivable such a phenomenon as a man being at two different spots simultaneously, though any adroit trickster could easily contrive it; but you consider it credible that that young woman — even after you had studied her conversation with Mr. Goodwin and me — that she concealed that piece of pipe on her person and took it there with the intention of crushing a man’s skull with it. Preposterous. That is inconceivable.” He waved it away. “Of course that’s academic, now that that wretch has betrayed himself by sending me dynamite instead of corn, and the last step to my conclusion was inevitable. Since she knew who had killed Faber but wouldn’t name him, and it wasn’t one of those three, it was her father; and since she was certain — I heard and saw her say, ‘They didn’t’ — she had seen him there. I doubt if he knew it, because — but that’s immaterial. So much for—”

He stopped because Cramer was up, coming to my desk. He picked up the phone, dialed, and in a moment said, “Irwin? Inspector Cramer. I want Sergeant Stebbins.” After another moment: “Purley? Get Carmel, the sheriff’s office. Ask him to get Duncan McLeod and hold him, and no mistake.... Yes, Susan McLeod’s father. Send two men to Carmel and tell them to call in as soon as they arrive. Tell Carmel to watch it, McLeod is down for murder and he may be rough.... No, that can wait. I’ll be there soon — half an hour, maybe less.”

He hung up, about-faced to Wolfe, and growled, “You knew all this Wednesday afternoon, two days ago.”

Wolfe nodded. “And you have known it since yesterday morning. It’s a question of interpretation, not of knowledge. Will you please sit? As you know, I like eyes at my level. Thank you. Yes, as early as Wednesday afternoon, when Miss McLeod left, I was all but certain of the identity of the murderer, but I took the precaution of seeing those three men that evening because it was just possible that one of them would disclose something cogent. They didn’t. When you came yesterday morning with that warrant, I gave you that document for two reasons: to keep Mr. Goodwin out of jail, and to share my knowledge with you. I wasn’t obliged to share also my interpretation of. it Any moment since yesterday noon I have rather expected to hear that Mr. McLeod had been taken into custody, but no.”

“So you decided to share your interpretation with him instead of me.”

“I like that,” Wolfe said approvingly. “That was neat. I prefer to put it that I decided not to decide. Having given you all the facts I had, I had met my obligation as a citizen and a licensed private detective. I was under no compulsion, legal or moral, to assume the role of a nemesis. It was only conjecture that Faber had told Mr. McLeod that he had debauched his daughter, but he had told others, and McLeod must have had a potent motive, so it was highly probable. If so, the question of moral turpitude was moot, and I would not rule on it. Since I had given you the facts, I thought it only fair to inform Mr. McLeod that he was menaced by a logical conclusion from those facts; and I did so. I used Mr. Panzer as my messenger because I chose not to involve Mr. Goodwin. He was unaware of the conclusion I had reached, and if I had told him there might have been disagreement regarding the course to take. He can be — uh — difficult.”

Cramer grunted. “Yeah. He can. So you deliberately warned a murderer. Telling him to have answers ready. Nuts. You expected him to lam.”

“No. I had no specific expectation. It would have been idle to speculate, but if I had, I doubt if I would have expected him to scoot. He couldn’t take his farm along, and he would be leaving his daughter in mortal jeopardy. I didn’t consciously speculate, but my subconscious must have, for suddenly, when I was busy at the potting bench, it struck me. Saul Panzer’s description of McLeod’s stony face as he read the memorandum; the stubborn ego of a self-righteous man; dynamite for stumps and rocks; corn; a closed carton. Most improbable. I resumed the potting. But conceivable. I dropped the trowel and went to the elevator, and within thirty seconds after I emerged in the hall the carton came.”

“Luck,” Cramer said. “Your goddam incredible luck. If it had made mincemeat of Goodwin you might have been willing to admit for once — Okay, it didn’t.” He got up. “Stick around, Goodwin. They’ll want you at the DA’s office, probably in the morning.” To Wolfe: “What if that phone call had said the carton held corn, just corn? You think you could have talked me off, don’t you?”

“I could have tried.”

“By God. Talk about stubborn egos.” Cramer shook his head. “That break you got on the carton. You know, any normal man, if he got a break like that, coming down just in the nick of time, what any normal man would do, he would go down on his knees and thank God. Do you know what you’ll do? You’ll thank you. I admit it would be a job for you to get down on your knees, but—”

The phone rang. I swiveled and got it, and a voice I recognized asked for Inspector Cramer. I turned and told him, “Purley Stebbins,” and he came and took it. The conversation was even shorter than the one about the carton, and Cramer’s part was only a dozen words and a couple of growls. He hung up, went and got his hat, and headed for the hall, but a step short of the door he stopped and turned.

“I might as well tell you,” he said. “It’ll give you a better appetite for dinner, even if it’s not corn. About an hour ago Duncan McLeod sat or stood or lay on a pile of dynamite and it went off. They’ve got his head and some other pieces. They’ll want to decide whether it was an accident or he did it. Maybe you can help them interpret the facts.”

He turned and went.

7

One day last week there was a party at Lily Rowan’s penthouse. She never invites more than six to dinner — eight counting her and me — but that was a dancing party and around coffee time a dozen more came and three musicians got set in the alcove and started up. After rounds with Lily and three or four others. I approached Sue McLeod and offered a hand.

She gave me a look. “You know you don’t want to. Let’s go outside.”

I said it was cold, and she said she knew it and headed for the foyer. We got her wrap, a fur thing which she probably didn’t own, since top-flight models are offered loans of everything from socks to sable, went back in, on through, and out to the terrace. There were evergreens in tubs, and we crossed to them for shelter from the wind.

“You told Lily I hate you,” she said. “I don’t.”

“Not ‘hate.’” I said. “She misquoted me or you’re misquoting her. She said I should dance with you and I said when I tried it a month ago you froze.”

“I know I did.” She put a hand on my arm. “Archie. It was hard, you know it was. If I hadn’t got my father to let him work on the farm... it was my fault, I know it was... but I couldn’t help thinking if you hadn’t sent him that... letting him know you knew...”

“I didn’t send it, Mr. Wolfe did. But I would have. Okay, he was your father, so it was hard. But no matter whose father he was, I’m not wearing an arm band for the guy who packed dynamite in that carton.”

“Of course not. I know. Of course not I tell myself I’ll have to forget it... but it’s not easy...” She shivered. “Anyway I wanted to say I don’t hate you. You don’t have to dance with me, and you know I’m not going to get married until I can stop working and have babies, and I know you never are, and even if you do it will be Lily, but you don’t have to stand there and let me really freeze, do you?”

I didn’t. You don’t have to be rude, even with a girl who can’t dance, and it was cold out there.

Content

Rex Stout
Murder Is Corny

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