I slept because I always sleep, but my nerves must have been in bad shape, because when my eyes opened and read the clock at 6:50 I was immediately wide awake. I would have given my next two promotions for the satisfaction of planting myself in the downstairs hall and glaring at Wolfe and Fritz as they left on their way to the training field, but knowing that would be a bad blunder in strategy I restrained myself. All I did was open my door so I could hear noises, and when, promptly at 7:00 I heard the street door open and close, I went to a window and leaned out for a look. And there they went, off toward the river, Wolfe in the blue serge pants and my maroon sweater and heavy shoes, no hat, at a gait he probably thought was a stride, swinging his arms. It was simply too damn pathetic.
On that heavy gray March morning my Ann Amory operation looked pretty hopeless, but it was all I had, so I prepared to give it the works. After orange juice and ham and eggs and pancakes and two cups of coffee at Sam’s Place, I went back to the house and spent an hour at the typewriter and telephone cleaning up a few personal matters that had collected in my absence, and was just finishing up when, a little after 9:00, here came the Commandos back. My plan was to ignore them entirely, so I didn’t turn around when footsteps in the hall stopped at the open office door, but Wolfe’s voice sounded:
“Good morning, Archie. I spend the day upstairs. Did you sleep well?”
It was his regular morning question that he had asked me 4,000 times, and it made me homesick. I admit it. It softened me up. I swiveled my chair to face him, but that hardened me again, just one look at him.
“Fine, thanks,” I said coldly. “You messed my drawers up, I suppose looking for that sweater. I have something to say to you. I am speaking for the United States Army. There is one thing you are better qualified to do than anyone else, in connection with undercover enemy activities in this country. It is a situation requiring brains, which you used to have and sometimes used. The Commander in Chief, the Secretary of War, and the General Staff, also Sergeant York, respectfully request you to cut the comedy and begin using them. You are wrong if you think your sudden appearance in the front lines will make the Germans laugh themselves to death. They have no sense of humor.”
I thought that might make him mad enough to forget himself and enter the office, and if I once got him in there it would be a point gained, but he merely stood and scowled at me.
“You said,” he growled, “that you’re on furlough.”
“I did not. You ought to be ashamed of yourself. That shows the condition you’re in. A thousand times, right in this room, I’ve heard you give people hell for inexact statements. What I said was that my furlough is two weeks. I did not say that I’m on it now. Nor did I mention—”
“Pfui!” he sputtered scornfully, and turned and started up the stairs. Which was another phenomenon I had never seen before, him mounting those stairs. It had cost him $7,000 to install the elevator.
I got my cap and left the house and started to work.
I tried to inject some enthusiasm into the day’s operations, and I did do my best, but at no point did any probability appear that I was going to turn up anything that could be used for a lever to pry Wolfe loose. It was a different problem from any that had ever confronted me before, because, since he was hell-bent for heroism, no appeal to his cupidity would work. In the condition he had got himself into, the only weak spot where I might break through was his vanity.
I learned from friends at Centre Street that the investigation of Mrs. Leeds’s death had never gone beyond the precinct, so I went there and made inquiries. The sergeant didn’t bother to look up the record. Nothing to it. The doctor had certified coronary thrombosis at the age of 87, and the neighborhood gossip about Mrs. Chack pinch-hitting for the vengeance of God because she got impatient with Him for waiting so long was the bunk.
Around noon I dropped in at 316 Barnum Street, and found Leon Furey still in bed, or anyhow still in pajamas. He said he had to sleep late because he did his hawk hunting mostly at night. I learned that killing hawks was his only visible means of support, that the Army had turned him down on account of a leaky valve, that Roy Douglas lived on the floor above him, the one next to the roof, and a few other items, but nothing that seemed likely to help me any. I found Roy up on the roof, in his loft. He wouldn’t let me in and wasn’t inclined for conversation. He said he was busy working on the widower system, and all I got out of him was that the widower system was a method of keeping a male pigeon away from his mate for a certain period, and letting him in with her for a couple of minutes just before shipping him to the liberation point for a race, the result being that he flew to get back as he had never flown before. I disapproved of it on moral grounds, but that didn’t seem to interest Roy either, so I left him to his widower system, descended again to the street, and began exploring the community.
For over three hours I collected neighborhood gossip, and it wasn’t worth a dime a bushel. I didn’t even get any significant dirt, let alone useful information. On the question of the death of old Mrs. Leeds, fourteen of them divided as follows:
4 Mrs. Chack killed her. 1 Miss Leeds killed her. 6 She died of old age. 3 She died of meanness.
No majority for anybody or anything. No nothing. I went home, arriving a little before 5:00, to think it over and decide whether it was worth while springing Ann on Wolfe at all and as I stood in the office frowning at the dust on Wolfe’s desk, the doorbell rang. I went and pulled the curtain aside for a look through the glass panel, and there was Roy Douglas on the stoop. My heart skipped a beat. Was something going to break? I pulled the door open and invited him in.
He acted embarrassed, as if he had something he wanted to say but wasn’t quite sure what it was. I took him to the office and dusted off a chair for him, and he sat down and opened his mouth for air a couple of times and then said:
“I guess I wasn’t very courteous down there at the loft today. I never am very polite when I’m working with the birds. You see, it makes them nervous to have strangers around.”
I nodded sympathetically. “Me too. By the way, I forgot to ask, how’s Dusky Diana coming along?”
“Oh, she’s much better. She’ll be all right.” He squinted at me. “I suppose Miss Amory told you about her?”
“Yeah, she told me a lot of interesting things.”
He shifted in his chair. Then he cleared his throat. “You were with her all evening, weren’t you?”
“Sure, I stuck around.”
“I saw you when you came back. When you brought her home. From my window.”
“Did you? It was pretty late.”
“I know it was. But I — You see, I was worried about her. I am worried about her. I think she’s in some kind of trouble or something, and I wondered if that was why she went to see that Lily Rowan.”
“You might ask her.”
He shook his head. “She won’t tell me. But I’m sure she’s in some kind of trouble, the way she acts. I don’t know Miss Rowan, so I can’t go and ask her, but I know you, that is I’ve met you, and if you were with them last evening — and then your coming to see me today — I thought you might tell me. You see, I’ve got a right to know about it, a kind of a right, because we’re engaged to be married.”
My brows went up. “You are? You and Miss Amory?”
“Yes.”
“Congratulations.”
“Thank you.” He squinted at me. “So I wondered why you came to see me, and I thought maybe it was to tell me something about her, or ask me something, and that made me wonder — Anyhow, if you know whether she’s in trouble I wish you’d tell me.”
Except for the fact that I had solved the mystery of Ann’s fiancé, or rather it had solved itself, that certainly didn’t sound as if Roy’s visit was going to break anything. However, since I had him there, I thought I might as well see what he had concealed on his person, so I proceeded to treat him as a friend. I told him I was sorry I couldn’t help him out any on the nature of Ann’s difficulty, if any, and casually guided the conversation in the direction of the inhabitants of 316 Barnum Street. That proved to be a boomerang. The minute we arrived at that address he got started on pigeons, and then did he talk!
I learned things. He had been in the fancy, as he put it, since boyhood. Mrs. Leeds had built the loft for him and kept him going, and now Miss Leeds was carrying on. His birds had won a total of 116 diplomas in young bird races and 63 diplomas in old bird races. One year his Village Susie, a Blue Check Grooter, had returned first in the Dayton Great National, with 3,864 birds, 512 lofts competing. He had lost fourteen birds in the big smash in the Trenton 300-mile special last year. The best racing pigeons in the world, in his opinion, were the Dickinson strain of Sion-Stassarts — Dusky Diana was one.
I couldn’t get him off it. As the clock on the wall crept along toward 6:00 I began to think I’d have to pick him up and carry him outdoors, since Wolfe would come in from training soon after 6:00 and I didn’t want him there. But that problem was solved for me. At 5:55 the doorbell rang, and Roy got up and said he would be going, and followed me out to the front. I pulled the curtain aside for a look, and what did I see on the stoop but Lily Rowan, and she had seen me.
I slipped the chain in the socket so the door would only open four inches, let it come that far, and announced through the crack:
“Air raid alarm. Go home and get under the bed. I’m on—”
Her hand came in through the crack, her arm nearly up to the elbow.
“Shut it on that,” she said savagely. “Let me in.”
“No, girlie, I—”
“Let me in! Do you want me to yell it for the whole neighborhood—”
“Yell what?”
“There’s been a murder!”
“You mean there will be a murder. Some day—”
“Archie! You damned idiot! I tell you Ann Amory has been murdered! If you don’t—”
There was a noise from Roy at my elbow. I pushed him aside, slipped the chain off, let Lily through, shut the door, and got her by the shoulders, gripping her good.
“Spill it,” I told her. “If you think you’re putting on a charade—”
“Quit hurting me!” she spat. Then she was quiet. “All right, keep on hurting me. Go on. Harder.”
“Spill it, my love.”
“I am spilling it. I went there to see Ann. When I rang the bell the latch didn’t click, so I rang another bell and got in. The door of her apartment was standing a little open, so I knocked once and then went in. I thought she must be there because I had phoned her office and she said she would get home before five-thirty, and it was a quarter to six. She was there all right. She was there on the floor propped up against a chair with a scarf tied around her throat and her tongue hanging out and her eyes popping. She was dead. I saw she was dead and I—”
Roy Douglas went. He did it so quick, pulled the door open and scooted, that I didn’t even get a chance to make a grab for him.
“Goddamn it,” I said. I turned Lily loose and glanced at my wrist — 6:02. If I beat it with her it would be just my luck for Wolfe to be approaching and see me. Lily was sputtering:
“I tell you, Archie, it was the most awful—”
“Shut up.” I opened the door to the front room, steered her inside, and closed the door. “You do what I tell you, girlie, or I swear to God I’ll scalp you. Sit down and don’t breathe. Nero Wolfe will be coming in and I don’t want him to know you’re here. No, sit there, away from the window. I want to know one thing. Did you kill her?”
“No.”
“Look at me. You didn’t?”
“No.”
“Okay.”
“Archie—”
“Shut up.”
I sat on the edge of a chair and put my fists on my knees and stared at the wall. I can’t think with my eyes closed the way Wolfe does. In maybe three minutes I thought I had it, at least a sketch of it, if only it hadn’t been for that damn Douglas kid. It all depended on him.
I looked at Lily. “Keep your voice low so we can hear the door open. You’d better whisper. How often have you been to the apartment?”
“Only once. A long time ago. I love you like this, Arch—”
“Save it for Christmas. Whose bell did you ring?”
“I don’t know. One of the upper—”
“Did anybody see you going in or coming out?”
“I don’t know about going in. I think not. I’m sure they didn’t coming out because I looked around and glanced up the stairs.”
“Does anybody there know you? Besides Ann?”
“Mrs. Chack does, that’s all. Ann’s grandmother.”
“Was anybody — hold it.”
The street door was opening. It closed again, and I heard Wolfe’s voice, and a murmur of Fritz’s. Footsteps went down the hall and the door to the kitchen opened and closed.
I went noiselessly to the door to the hall and eased it open. The one to the kitchen was shut, and sounds came from beyond it. I beckoned to Lily and when she joined me whispered in her ear, “Fast and silent. Understand?” and tiptoed to the front door and got it open without a sound. Lily slipped through and me after her, I shut the door with only a faint click, and we went down the steps to the sidewalk and turned east. She had to trot to keep up. When we reached the avenue and turned the corner I got her into a doorway.
“Now. Was anyone standing around the entrance when you went in?”
“Standing around? No. But what—”
“Don’t talk. I’m busy. You’re noticeable. Did anyone notice you going in or coming out?”
“I don’t think so. If they did I didn’t notice them.”
“Okay. I’m leaving you. Here’s your program. Go some place out of town, not far, Long Island or Westchester. Leave a note for me at the Ritz telling me where, but don’t tell anyone else. I—”
“You mean go now?”
“Right now. Pack a bag and go. Within an hour.”
“You go to hell.” She had my arm in both hands. “You darned nut, didn’t I run to you in my hour of need? I’m going to have a drink, several drinks, and you’re going to have some with me. What do you think I—”
I tried to bull it through, but nothing doing. She balked good, and time was precious. So I said, “Listen, angel. I’ve got a job to do and you’ve got to help. I haven’t time to explain it. Do as I say, and I’ll get a week-end leave Saturday and you can write your ticket, anything short of rowing on the lake in Central Park.”
“This coming Saturday?”
“Yes.”
“An absolutely unqualified promise?”
“Yes, damn it.”
“Gentlemen prefer blondes. Kiss me good-by.”
I made it a quick one, dashed across the sidewalk to a taxi, and told the driver corner of Barnum and Christopher, and step on it. My watch said 6:15. Roy had 13 minutes start on me.