XII

Whether Wolfe enjoyed his lunch or not, I didn’t.

It is my habit to make big discounts anyhow, and that day I reached my all-time peak in skepticism. I didn’t think he had any program whatever. I thought his line that he needed Saul, and he knew what for, was unadulterated guff. I was sure that Cramer had laid off because he had all the stuff he wanted, through the flock of stools the police always know where to find, and he regarded Wolfe and me as bad company even for an inspector. I thought the only reason Wolfe asked Saul to lunch was to have someone to talk to about something pleasant.

The last thought proved to be sound. It was not a meal full of sparkle. Morton was aloof and not a bit intimate. Beulah, who showed no traces of the recent irrigation, was trying to pretend she wasn’t somewhere else, without great success. I was so firmly convinced that it was a hell of a time for a man to sit and eat that I had to grit my teeth to stay in my chair, and you can neither chew nor talk very well with your teeth gritted. So the conversation was almost exclusively confined to Wolfe and Saul. Saul, in a suit that didn’t fit, and needing a shave as usual, could do almost anything better than anyone I knew — even talk. They discussed plant germination, the meat shortage, books about Roosevelt, and the World Series.

At one-fifty-five Wolfe pushed his chair back and said he was sorry to end the meal so abruptly but callers were expected. He thought it best for Beulah and Morton to leave the way they had come.

Beulah protested that she wasn’t going to leave, that there were things she wanted to ask about. She would wait until the callers had gone. Then, Wolfe said, she could go back to the plant rooms and do her waiting there, and also Morton if he wished to stay.

“We’ll do that,” Beulah agreed. She was out of her chair and moving to the dining-room door. “Come on, Morton.”

But the law student balked. The way the light was I could see his eyes behind his black-rimmed glasses, and they looked determined. His voice matched them. “I don’t like the way things look here. I don’t know what explanation you have given Miss Page about last night. Then what happened in front of this house afterwards. And asking Miss Page to sneak in the back way. Who are these callers you’re expecting?”

To my surprise, Wolfe obliged him. “One of them,” he said, “is a man named Fabian. The other is named Schwartz. L. A. Schwartz, a lawyer. A member of the bar.”

That was news to me. He must have invited Schwartz after I left the office.

“Are they connected with this — with Miss Page’s affairs?” Morton demanded.

“With Miss Page, no. With her affairs, yes.”

“I want to see them. I intend to be present.”

Beulah didn’t approve and said so. Wolfe said that her name would not appear in the conversation and that there was no reason why Morton shouldn’t be there if he wanted to. That settled it. The fiancée started upstairs for the plant rooms, and the fiancé went with the rest of us to the office. As we were crossing the hall the doorbell rang, and I went to answer it.

Fingering back the edge of the curtain over the glass panel for a look through, and seeing it was Schwartz, I opened up. He had his brief case and was wearing the same suit and nose-pinchers, but in spite of that he was a different man. In the morning his face had been pale and colorless; now it was rosy. Before I hadn’t smelled him at all; now I couldn’t help smelling him. He had been spending some of the fifty grand in advance, at the courage counter. Judging from the smell, he had alternated with gin, rum, rye, vodka, and turpentine. My study of him was cut short because the bell rang again as I was hanging up his coat, and this time it was an object deserving much closer and longer study.

It was Fabian.

I had seen him around, at the ringside at fights and so on, but never met him. I had never had any desire to meet him. The most famous fact about his physical make-up, that he had no nose, wasn’t true. His nose was almost normal in size and shape when you looked at it, but the point was that three other features — the mouth, ears, and eyes — grabbed the scene and the nose might as well not have been there.

Schwartz was still there, standing rigid by the coat rack, clasping his brief case. I began politely, “Do you two gentlemen—”

“You’re Schwartz,” Fabian stated, hoarse as ever.

“Yes, Mr. Fabian,” the lawyer said hastily. He wasn’t too plastered to talk straight. “You may remember—”

“Yeah.” Fabian’s head jerked to me. “Which way?”

I took a step, but checked it because the door between the hall and the front room opened and Wolfe appeared. He said, in his best manner, “Good afternoon, Mr. Schwartz. If you’ll go to the office and make yourself comfortable we’ll join you shortly.” He paused. Schwartz, getting the cue, marched down the hall toward the door to the office. Wolfe turned. “Mr. Fabian? How do you do, sir? I’m Nero Wolfe.” He had a hand out, and Fabian came through for a shake. Wolfe was going on, “Would you step in here for a private word with me?” He moved toward the door to the front room.

Fabian, not budging, looked at me, which struck me as childish under the circumstances, but not caring to make a point of it I followed Wolfe, and Fabian followed me. When he had passed through I closed the door, and saw at a glance that the connecting door to the office was already shut. They were both soundproofed.

Figured by pounds, Wolfe would have made more than two of Fabian. Figured by survival potential, it was anybody’s guess. Wolfe didn’t seem to be concerned with either calculation. He only said, “It is a part of your legend, sir, that you never go anywhere unarmed. Are you armed now?”

As far as I could see there wasn’t the slightest change in the expression of Fabian’s eyes, but a little crease showed between his eyebrows, as if he wasn’t sure he had heard right. Then apparently he decided he had, because the crease disappeared.

“Yeah,” he said. “Any objections?”

“None at all. But — I’m not calling you a liar — but I would be better satisfied if I saw proof. Where is your weapon? Easily available?”

“Yeah.”

“Would you mind showing it to me?”

“Comedy,” Fabian said. The crease had appeared again. “I could have had it out and in again twenty times. I came to get some proof from you. You and this Goodwin—”

“Excuse me.” Wolfe was crisp and cool. “We’ll go in the office and sit down. The people in there are a lawyer, Mr. Schwartz, a law student, Mr. Schane, and a man who works for me, Mr. Panzer.” He had stepped to the connecting door and was opening it. “This way, sir.”

I followed him, preceding Fabian in accordance with the underworld’s Emily Post. Wolfe stood in the middle of the office and pronounced names, but there was no handshaking. Fabian got the scene with a slow take, his head doing the arc from right to left, and then picked a chair backed up against a section of the bookshelves. Schwartz was in the red leather chair, and Morton Schane was off to my right, on the couch in the corner made by the wall of the lavatory that had been built in. Saul Panzer, in a chair with its back to the wall, was six feet the other side of Schwartz.

Wolfe, from behind his desk, looked around at us, then leveled off at Fabian. He spoke casually. “I must apologize, sir, for appropriating a few moments of your time. I realize it is your time, since you made an appointment to come here, and therefore you should have first say. But this will only take me—”

The damn doorbell rang. Wolfe went right on, but darted a glance at me when he saw I was staying put. I met the glance deadpan. Without consulting him about it, I had told Fritz to attend to the door if the bell rang, not intending to do any trotting in and out under the circumstances. I suppose I should have told him to keep the door bolted, which he never did when I was there unless so instructed, but subconsciously I must have figured that with Fabian already inside it wouldn’t matter who else came. The result was that unwelcome noises came from the hall, including voices, one of which was Fritz’s yelling for me.

“Archie! ARCHIE!”

I was up and on my way, but the gate-crasher must have galloped right through Fritz, for I was still ten feet short of the door to the hall when he entered the office. At sight of him I locked my brakes and held my breath. What was flashing through my mind was nothing you could call a thought, but just a pair of facts. One was Fabian. The other was Thumbs Meeker. I backed up so fast I bumped into the corner of Wolfe’s desk, and hung there, looking. Fabian was on his feet and was furnishing the proof Wolfe had asked for. It was in his hand, with his elbow against his hip and his forearm extended. Schwartz had left the red leather chair and was kneeling on the floor behind it.

As far as Meeker and Fabian were concerned, they were the only two there. Their gazes had met and held. Fabian’s gun was steady and pointed, the same as his eyes, but no blast came. Meeker’s hands hung at his sides.

“You’d better lift ’em,” Fabian said, no less hoarse and no more. Besides having his gun out, he also had the best of it in size of target, since Meeker was well over six feet and weighed a good two-twenty.

“Not here and now,” Meeker said in a thin voice.

“Who gave you the steer?”

“Nobody. I came on business.”

“Lift ’em up.”

“Tommyrot!” Wolfe blurted at them, but none of their four eyes moved. He went on, “This is preposterous! Besides you two, there are five people here. If you shoot him, Mr. Fabian, what do you expect to do, shoot all of us? Nonsense. The same consideration holds for the other gentleman.” He addressed the other gentleman. “Who the devil are you, sir? What do you mean, bounding into my house like this?”

That relaxed me. I thought to myself, okay, say it ends — today, tomorrow. Before I die at least I get this. Before I die I get to hear Wolfe bawling hell out of Thumbs Meeker for dashing in to where Fabian is ready with his gun out. I felt I owed them something. So I said, “That’s Mr. Meeker, Mr. Wolfe. Mr. Meeker, this is Nero Wolfe.”

“You heard me,” Meeker said in his thin voice. “Not here and now. He’s right. I came here on business.”

Fabian didn’t say anything. His arm didn’t straighten out, but his hand receded until it was where his elbow had been, and both hand and gun slid into his side coat-pocket and stayed there.

Wolfe demanded, “You came here on business? What business?”

Meeker turned, letting his eyes leave Fabian. They aimed at Wolfe. “Who are these guys?”

“They’re here on business too. What is yours?”

“By God.” Meeker smiled. That smile was famous, and I decided it justified its reputation. “I don’t know if I care to make it public. With Fabian here. He might think I was backing out, and I don’t back out.” He turned again, not fast. “I don’t back out, Fabian.”

Fabian had nothing to say. He was still standing up.

“Confound it,” Wolfe said testily. “What do you want?”

Meeker turned again, and smiled again. “I want to know if it’s true that you told the cops that your punk put a finger on Perrit and his daughter for me.”

“No.”

“They seem to have that idea.”

“That isn’t true.”

Meeker’s smile came again. It came and went. “Oh,” he said, “I’m a liar.”

“I don’t know whether you’re a liar or not. But if the police have made any such statement or intimation, they are. I would have expected you to be sufficiently familiar with police methods not to come running to me with anything as silly as that.”

“You didn’t tell them that?”

“Certainly not.”

Meeker looked at me. I was back at my desk. “You’re Goodwin. Did you?”

“No,” I said. “Am I a half-wit?”

“Mr. Meeker.” Wolfe was curt. “Now that you’re here, I suggest that you stay. Be seated. You’ll be interested in what I have to say. When you entered I was about to tell these people who killed Mr. Perrit and his daughter and how and why. It will be doubly interesting because the man who did it is present.”

You could have heard a cockroach stomping. Schwartz, who was back in the red leather chair, was blinking as if he would never stop again. Morton was sitting on the edge of the couch, his palms on his knees. Saul Panzer hadn’t moved as much as a finger since Wolfe and I had brought Fabian in.

Fabian, still on his feet, rasped, “I don’t want to miss that.”

“I’m present,” Meeker said.

“Yes, sir, but it wasn’t you. Sit down. I don’t like to talk to faces on different levels. You too, Mr. Fabian.”

I then saw Thumbs Meeker being self-conscious. There were three vacant chairs, not counting Fabian’s. He glanced around at them, hesitating, wanting a good tactical position, got conscious that we were all watching, didn’t like that, and dropped himself onto the closest one, which put him with his back to Fabian. With that settled, Fabian sat down too, but his hand didn’t come out of his pocket.

Wolfe leaned back and his fingertips met at the summit of his magnificent middle. “First,” he said, “about Mr. Perrit’s daughter. The police know that the young woman who was killed last night was not his daughter, but they do not know that he actually has a daughter. I do, and I know who and where she is, because Mr. Perrit told me about her in this room yesterday. At this moment she is—”

“Go slow,” Fabian said. I never heard him speak without wishing to God he would clear his throat.

“If you please,” Wolfe snapped. “No power on earth, Mr. Fabian, not even the kind of primitive power you rely on, will keep me from telling this properly. You could shoot me, but you’re not going to, so don’t interrupt. Mr. Perrit’s daughter is at this moment in this house, upstairs looking at my orchids. He—”

“That’s a lie!” Morton Schane declared, with his chin jerked up.

“She doesn’t think so.” Wolfe’s eyes went to him. “Stop interrupting me. Mr. Perrit entrusted her interests to me and I intend to guard them. I’m not going to waste time telling you men things you already know. You know he had a daughter and was keeping her identity concealed, both from his enemies and from his friends. Some eighteen months ago he discovered that Mr. Meeker had learned of her existence and was trying to find her, so he tried a finesse. He went to Salt Lake City and arranged with a young woman named Murphy, a fugitive from justice, to come to New York and live with him as his daughter.”

“Go slow,” Fabian said.

“Don’t be absurd, Mr. Fabian. The police know all that. The arrangement was made, and Miss Murphy came to New York and became Miss Violet Perrit. But before long she violated the agreement. She began demanding sums of money, increasingly larger, with the threat that she would make a disclosure if he didn’t pay. He paid. Then, Sunday evening, night before last, she asked for fifty thousand dollars. Harassed beyond endurance, he came to me for help. He gave me, I think — me and Mr. Goodwin — a correct and accurate account as far as it went, but not a complete one. He did not tell me that Miss Murphy had somehow found out who and what and where his daughter was, though he must have known that she had. In any event, I know it, having deduced it.”

Wolfe stopped for an extra breath and went on, “There was another thing that Mr. Perrit almost certainly knew, since everything connected with his daughter was of special concern to him, but didn’t tell me. Miss Murphy, out West, had been attached to a young man, or he had been attached to her, or both. He came to New York — I don’t know when, but it may be surmised that it was about the time Miss Murphy began demanding money from Mr. Perrit — probably shortly before that — and he and Miss Murphy resumed their — friendship. From Miss Murphy the young man learned the identity of Mr. Perrit’s daughter and decided on a stroke of his own. Unknown to Miss Murphy, he contrived to meet the daughter, to pursue a friendship with her, to ask her to marry him, and to be accepted. He had enough education and temerity to masquerade as a law student, and indeed, his temerity was unlimited. He didn’t bother about an alias. I suppose at the beginning, he regarded the two worlds as too far apart ever to get connected, and if he regretted it later on it was too late to change. Anyhow, he became engaged to marry Mr. Perrit’s daughter under his own, Morton Schane.”

“That’s a lie.” It was Morton again. His tone wasn’t as loud as it had been before, but it packed more weight.

“You’ll have a turn, Mr. Schane,” Wolfe said. His glance went around. “As I said, I can’t believe that Mr. Perrit didn’t know about Mr. Schane, though he didn’t mention him to me. I presume Mr. Schane calculated that the highest expectations, in the long run, would be realized through the real daughter and not the counterfeit one. I assume that although Mr. Perrit knew what Mr. Schane was doing, Miss Murphy didn’t, or something would have popped. I also assume that Mr. Perrit had got onto Mr. Schane quite recently, since Mr. Schane had continued his program without interference. I also assume that the reason Mr. Perrit didn’t mention Mr. Schane to me was because he was confident of being able to handle that himself, by his own methods.”

“You assume,” Morton sneered.

Wolfe nodded. “I agree. These presumptions and assumptions are merely embroidery and really not needed.” He kept his eyes on Morton. “Their only purpose is to answer the question, why? Why did you shoot and kill Miss Murphy and Mr. Perrit? Merely to clear the track, to get them out of the way, since the daughter was betrothed to you? Possibly, but I doubt it. More probably, something had happened; you had become aware of some deadly threat. One more assumption—”

Morton stood up. “You’ll eat all this, you fat, lying, son-of-a-bitch! I’m going!”

Fabian stood up.

Meeker stood up.

Morton Schane didn’t move.

Fabian asked, “You got anything else?”

“Nothing but proof,” Wolfe told him, but his eyes stuck to Schane. “Last evening Mr. Perrit’s daughter and this young man dined with us. One or two remarks he made stirred a faint suspicion in me. It was very faint, the merest breath, but it was simple to test him. He was in his last year at law school. I asked him if he had learned to draft torts, and he said he had. A tort is an act, not a document, as any law student would know. You can’t draft a tort any more than you can draft a burglary. That settled him. I had my chef save his wineglass, and after Mr. Schane had left I got in touch with Mr. Panzer and made various arrangements. One resulted in our learning, through the FBI and their fingerprint files, of Mr. Schane’s background and record. Another arrangement, that Mr. Panzer should pick up Mr. Schane last evening in front of the building where Mr. Perrit’s daughter lives, and keep on his trail—”

Morton still had his temerity. His hand went for his hip like a frog for a fly. He did get his gun out, because Fabian’s first bullet missed, and he even pulled the trigger, but all he hit was plaster. Then he splashed back on the couch, pulling the trigger again. By that time Meeker was shooting too, which I have never understood, but it was something never seen before and surely never will be again — Fabian and Thumbs Meeker blazing away at the same target. Morton slithered off of the couch onto the floor. That was his last move.

XIII

Six days later. Monday again, Wolfe came down from the plant rooms at six o’clock, negotiated himself into his chair behind his desk, and rang for beer.

I turned away from my typewriter and spoke. The evening paper says that the District Attorney has decided not to charge Meeker or Fabian because a man has a right to defend himself, and all witnesses agree that Schane shot first.”

“Perfectly sound,” Wolfe murmured.

“Sure. But that reminds me. So far you have refused to loosen up. I would like to make it clear that I do not believe that Saul was on Schane’s tail that night. He damn well didn’t tail him through Seventy-eighth Street, nor later through our street, either, when Schane was in his hot taxicab. I think you put that in because you knew it was the one thing that was sure to make Schane go for his gun.”

“Not sound at all. Mere conjecture.”

“I like it. Another thing. I now think you did have a program. I think you invited Schwartz to come at two o’clock because you wanted a witness, not me who works for you, to what you said to Fabian. You intended to tell Fabian a good deal, maybe everything, about Schane, but do it in such a way that you couldn’t be charged with incitement to crime. You could be doing it just to put us in the clear. You didn’t have a thing on Schane for the murders. You didn’t know then that he was fool enough to go on carrying the gun he had killed them with. You knew Fabian would get Schane, and so your ward wouldn’t marry him, which you didn’t approve of. You thought Beulah was so hipped on him that she would take him in spite of his past — since the killings couldn’t be pinned on him — whereas the fact was that after she had seen me he was just a vague spot to her.”

“Shut up. I want to read.”

“Yes, sir. In an hour or so. Then Schane came here with her and insisted on joining us in the office, and right away you began to ad lib. You figured that with Fabian and Saul and me all here, one of us was bound to plug him before he plugged you. By the way, in the excitement I didn’t see Saul shoot at all, but it was his bullet that went through the middle of Schane’s pump and lodged in his spine. When Meeker showed up too I suppose you thought there was nothing to it, which speaks louder for your optimism than it does for your mathematics. If I had known how you had it sketched I would have offered twelve for five that he would get you, at least some part of you, before he was stopped. I had seen him in action, shooting out of car windows in dim street light.”

Wolfe sighed. “I suppose you have to get it out of your system.”

“I do, and this is the day for it. With meat controls taken off last night, what is there to fear? But I am willing to be rode too, because on one count I have it coming. I told you that just before Violet quit for good, while I was kneeling there by her, she said, ‘It’s a shame. Shame!’ Of course she didn’t. What she said was, ‘It’s Schane. Schane!’ I fumbled that one, and hereafter I’ll wash my ears better. Now I suppose you’ll tell me that you knew—”

The phone rang. I got it, used the customary formula, and a voice came.

“May I speak to Mr. Harold Stevens?”

“He’s not in,” I said courteously. “Gone to Central Park for his health. Will anyone else do?”

“You might if you weren’t so busy. When I was down there Friday signing those papers you were too busy to offer to drive me home. Harold Stevens always drove me home.”

“Naturally. Harold was on the make. He was after money. I shy off from rich women because I am not a dough-hound. Was there any particular problem?”

“No, nothing, except that I started to decide where to go for dinner, and I’m sick of all the restaurants around here, and—”

“Not another word. I know just how you feel. You were wishing you didn’t have to eat alone, and I was wishing I didn’t have to eat with the person I was going to eat with. Meet me at seven o’clock at Ribeiro’s, Fifty-second Street east of Lexington, downtown side. Got it?”

“Yes, but I didn’t—”

“Certainly you did. So did I. I’ll be at the bar. I don’t suppose you can properly go dancing for two or three years, but we’re resourceful. We can sit somewhere and talk about health — oh, no, that’s Harold. Seven o’clock?”

“Sure.”

I hung up and told Wolfe, “Okay, go on and read. I’m going up and change my shirt. I’m dining with your new ward, but don’t jump to the conclusion that I’m thinking of marrying her. I don’t want you dragging Fabian and Thumbs Meeker down here again on my account.”