It was sunny and warm for October, and the drive uptown would have been pleasant if I hadn’t been prejudiced by my feeling that I was being imposed on. Parking on Sixty-fifth Street, I walked around the corner and up a block, and crossed Central Park West to where a man in uniform was monkeying with his horse’s bridle. I have met a pack of guardians of the peace on my rounds, but this rugged manly face with a pushed-in nose and bright big eyes was new to me. I introduced myself and showed credentials and said it was nice of him, busy as he was, to give me his time. Of course that was a blunder, but I’ve admitted I was prejudiced.
“Oh,” he said, “one of our prominent kidders, huh?”
I made for cover. “About as prominent,” I declared, “as a fish egg in a bowl of caviar.”
“Oh, you eat caviar.”
“Goddam it,” I muttered, “let’s start over again.” I walked four paces to a lamp post, wheeled, returned to him, and announced, “My name’s Goodwin and I work for Nero Wolfe. Headquarters said I could ask you a couple of questions and I’d appreciate it.”
“Uh-huh. A friend of mine in the Fifteenth Squad has told me about you. You damn near got him sent to the marshes.”
“Then you were already prejudiced. So was I, but not against you. Not even against your horse. Speaking of horses, that morning you saw Keyes on his horse, not long before he was killed, what time was it?”
“Ten minutes past seven.”
“Within a minute or two?”
“Not within anything. Ten minutes past seven. I was on the early shift then, due to check out at eight. As you say, I’m so busy that I have no time, so I was hanging around expecting to see Keyes go by as per schedule. I liked to see his horse — a light chestnut with a fine spring to him.”
“How did the horse look that morning — same as usual? Happy and healthy?” Seeing the look on his face, I added hastily, “I’ve sworn off kidding until tomorrow. I actually want to know, was it his horse?”
“Certainly it was! Maybe you don’t know horses. I do.”
“Okay. I used to too, when I was a boy on a farm in Ohio, but we haven’t corresponded lately. What about Keyes that morning, did he look sick or well or mad or glad or what?”
“He looked as usual, nothing special.”
“Did you speak to each other?”
“No.”
“Had he shaved that morning?”
“Sure he had.” Officer Hefferan was controlling himself. “He had used two razors, one on the right side and another one on the left, and he wanted to know which one did the best job, so he asked me to rub his cheeks and tell him what I thought.”
“You said you didn’t speak.”
“Nuts.”
“I agree. Let’s keep this frankly hostile. I shouldn’t have asked about shaving, I should have come right out and asked what I want to know, how close were you to him?”
“Two hundred and seventy feet.”
“Oh, you’ve measured it?”
“I’ve paced it. The question came up.”
“Would you mind showing me the spot? Where he was and where you were?”
“Yes, I’d mind, but I’ve got orders.”
The courteous thing would have been for him to lead his horse and walk with me, so he didn’t do that. He mounted his big bay and rode into the park, with me tagging along behind; and not only that, he must have given it a private signal that they mustn’t be late. I never saw a horse walk so fast. He would have loved to lose me and blame it on me, or at least make me break into a trot, but I gave my legs the best stretch they had had in years, bending my elbows and pumping my lungs, and I wasn’t more than thirty paces in the rear when he finally came to a stop at the crest of a little knoll. There were a lot of trees, big and little, off to the right down the slope, and clumps of bushes were on the left, but in between there was a good view of a long stretch of the bridle path. It was almost at a right angle to our line of vision, and at its nearest looked about a hundred yards away.
He did not dismount. There is no easier way in the world to feel superior to a man than to talk to him from on top of a horse.
Speaking, I handled things so as not to seem out of breath. “You were here?”
“Right here.”
“And he was going north.”
“Yep.” He gestured. “That direction.”
“You saw him. Did he see you?”
“Yes. He lifted his crop to me and I waved back. We often did that.”
“But he didn’t stop or gaze straight at you.”
“He didn’t gaze straight or crooked. He was out for a ride. Listen, brother.” The mounted man’s tone indicated that he had decided to humor me and get it over. “I’ve been through all this with the Homicide boys. If you’re asking was it Keyes, it was. It was his horse. It was his bright yellow breeches, the only ones that color around, and his blue jacket and his black derby. It was the way he sat, with his shoulders hunched and his stirrups too long. It was Keyes.”
“Good. May I pat your horse?”
“No.”
“Then I won’t. It would suit me fine if the occasion arose someday for me to pat you. When I’m dining with the inspector this evening I’ll put in a word for you, not saying what kind.”
I hoofed it out of the park and along Sixty-sixth Street to Broadway, found a drugstore and a phone booth, wriggled onto the stool, and dialed my favorite number. It was Orrie Cather’s voice that answered. So, I remarked to myself, he’s still there, probably sitting at my desk; Wolfe’s instructions for him must be awful complicated. I asked for Wolfe and got him.
“Yes, Archie?”
“I am phoning as instructed. Officer Hefferan is a Goodwin-hater, but I swallowed my pride. On the stand he would swear up and down that he saw Keyes at the place and time as given, and I guess he did, but a good lawyer could shoot it full of ifs and buts.”
“Why? Is Mr. Hefferan a shuttlecock?”
“By no means. He knows it all. But it wasn’t a closeup.”
“You’d better let me have it verbatim.”
I did so. By years of practice I had reached the point where I could relay a two-hour conversation, without any notes but practically word for word, and the brief session I had just come from gave me no trouble at all. When I had finished Wolfe said, “Indeed.”
Silence.
I waited a full two minutes and then said politely, “Please tell Orrie not to put his feet on my desk.”
In another minute Wolfe’s voice came. “Mr. Pohl has telephoned again, twice, from the Keyes office. He’s a jackass. Go there and see him. The address—”
“I know the address. What part of him do I look at?”
“Tell him to stop telephoning me. I want it stopped.”
“Right. I’ll cut the wires. Then what do I do?”
“Phone in again and we’ll see.”
It clicked off. I wriggled off the stool and out of the booth and stood muttering to myself until I noticed that the line of girls on stools at the soda fountain, especially one of them with blue eyes and dimples, was rudely staring at me. I told her distinctly, “Meet me at Tiffany’s ring counter at two o’clock,” and strode out. Since I wouldn’t be able to park within a mile of Forty-seventh and Madison, I decided to leave my car where it was and snare a taxi.