Three weeks and eight hours later, at eleven in the morning of the second Friday in April, Wolfe descended from the plant rooms in his elevator, entered the office, crossed to the chair at his desk, and sat.
As usual, I had opened the morning mail, gone through it, and put it on his blotter under a paperweight. “That memo on top needs immediate attention,” I told him. “Cartright of Consolidated Products is being gypped again, or thinks he is. Last time he paid our bill for twelve grand without a squeak. You’re to call him.”
He shoved the paperweight off with such enthusiasm that it rolled across the desk and off to the floor. Then he picked up the pile of mail, squeezed it into a ball between his hands, and dropped it into his wastebasket.
Of course it was childish, since he knew darned well I would retrieve it later, but it was a nice gesture, and I fully appreciated it. The humor he was in, it wouldn’t have surprised me any if he had taken the other paperweight, a hunk of carved ebony that had once been used by a man named Mortimer to crack his wife’s skull, and fired it at me. And the humor I was in, I probably wouldn’t have bothered to dodge.
There had been plenty of activity during those 512 hours. Saul Panzer, Fred Durkin, and Orrie Cather had all been summoned the first morning and given errands, and had been paid a total of $3,143.87, including expenses. I had put in a good sixteen hours a day, part in the office and part on the go. Wolfe had worked on thirty-one different people, mostly at his desk, but for five of them who couldn’t be wrangled in he had gone outdoors and traveled, something he had never done for a fee. Among the hours he had spent on the phone had been time for six calls to London, five to Paris, and three to Bari in Italy.
Of course all that had been only a dab compared to the capers of the cops. As the days went by and lead after lead petered out, things would have simmered down if it hadn’t been for the papers. They kept hot on it for two reasons: first, they had a suspicion there were international complications and wanted to smoke them out; and second, they thought it was the joke of the year that Nero Wolfe’s best friend had been croaked, and Wolfe was supposed to be working on it, but apparently no one had even been nominated for a charge, let alone elected. So the papers kept it going, and the law couldn’t relax a little even if it wanted to. Cramer had called on Wolfe five times, and Stebbins more than that, and Wolfe had been downtown twice to conferences at the DA’s office.
We had dined nine times at Rusterman’s, and Wolfe had insisted on paying the check, which probably broke another precedent — for an executor of an estate. Wolfe went early to spend an hour in the kitchen, and twice he raised hell — once about a Mornay sauce and once about a dish which the menu called Suprêmes de Volatile en Papillote. I would have suspected he was merely being peevish if the look on the chefs’ faces hadn’t indicated that he was absolutely right.
Of course Cramer and his army had covered all the routine. The car the shots had been fired from had been hot, stolen an hour earlier from where it had been parked on West Fifty-sixth Street, and abandoned soon after the shooting, on Second Avenue. The scientists, from finger-print-lifters and bullet-gazers on up, had supplied a lot of dope but no answers, and the same goes for the three or four dozen who went after the woman angle, which after a couple of weeks was spread to include several more, going back four years instead of one, in addition to the original seven. One day Cramer told Wolfe he could go over the whole file if he wanted to, some three hundred reports of sessions with eighty-four people, and Wolfe took him up. He spent eleven hours at it, at the DA’s office. The only result was that he made nine suggestions, all of which were followed, and none of which opened a crack.
He left the women and the feelings they had aroused to the cops, and kept Saul and Fred and Orrie, not to mention me, on the international angle. A great deal was accomplished. We learned a lot about the ten organizations listed in the Manhattan phone directory whose names began with “Yugoslav.” Also that Serbs don’t care much for Bosnians, and less for Croats. Also that the overwhelming majority of the Yugoslavs in New York are anti-Tito, and practically all of them are anti-Russian. Also that eight per cent of the doormen on Park Avenue are Yugoslavs. Also that New Yorkers who are, or whose parents were, from Yugoslavia are fairly cagey about opening up to strangers and are inclined to shut the valves tight if they get the notion that you’re being nosy. Also many other things, including a few that seemed to offer a faint hope of starting a trail that could lead to the bird who had put three bullets in Marko Vukcic; but they all blew a fuse.
In the first four days of the three weeks we saw Carla twice more. Saturday noon she came and asked Wolfe if it was true, as announced, that there would be no funeral. He said yes, in accordance with Marko’s wish, in writing, that he be cremated and that there should be no services. She objected that there were hundreds of people who wanted to show their respect and love for him, and Wolfe replied that if a man’s prejudices were to be humored at all after he was no longer around to impose them, surely he should be allowed to dictate the disposal of his own clay. The best she could get was a promise that the ashes would be delivered to her. Then she had asked about progress in the investigation, and he had said he would report when there was anything worth reporting, which hadn’t satisfied her at all.
She came again late Monday afternoon. I had had enough of answering the damn doorbell and left it to Fritz. She came charging in and across to Wolfe’s desk, and blurted at him, “You told the police! They’ve had Leo down there all day, and this afternoon they went to Paul’s place and took him too! I knew I shouldn’t trust you!”
“Please—” Wolfe tried, but she had pulled the cork and it had to come. He leaned back and shut his eyes. She went on ranting until she had to stop for breath. He opened his eyes and inquired, “Are you through?”
“Yes! I’m all through! With you!”
“Then there’s no more to say.” He jerked his head. “There’s the door.”
She went to the red leather chair and sat on the edge. “You said you wouldn’t tell the police about us!”
“I did not.” He was disgusted and tired. “Since you mistrust me you will credit nothing I say, so why should I waste words?”
“I want to hear them!”
“Very well. I have said nothing to the police about you or your associates or your surmise about Marko’s death, but they are not donkeys, and I knew they would get onto it. I’m surprised it took them so long. Have they come to you?”
“No.”
“They will, and it’s just as well. I have only four men, and we are getting nowhere. They have regiments. If you tell them about coming to see me Thursday night they’ll resent my withholding it, but that’s of no consequence. Tell them or not, as you please. As for giving them the information you gave me, do as you please about that too. It might be better to let them dig it up for themselves, since in the process they might uncover something you don’t know about. So much for that. Since you’re here I may as well tell you what progress I have made. None.” He raised his voice. “None!”
“Nothing at all?”
“Nothing.”
“I won’t tell the police what I told you, but that doesn’t matter. If you haven’t, you will.” Suddenly she was on her feet with her arms spread out. “Oh, I need you! I need to ask you — I need to tell you what I must do! But I won’t! I won’t!” She turned and was gone. She moved so fast that when I got to the hall she already had the front door open. By the time I reached it she was out and the door was shut. Through the one-way glass panel I saw her going down the steps, sure and supple, like a fencer or a dancer, which was reasonable, since she had been both.
That was the last we saw of her during the three weeks, but not the last we heard. Word of her came four days later, Friday morning, from an unexpected quarter. Wolfe and I were having a session in the office with Saul and Fred and Orrie, one of a series, trying to think up some more stones to look under, when the doorbell rang and a moment later Fritz entered to announce, “A man to see you, sir. Mr. Stahl of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.”
Wolfe’s brows went up; he glanced at me, I shook my head, and he told Fritz to bring the man in. The hired help, including me, exchanged glances. An FBI man was no rare spectacle for any of us, but Stahl wasn’t just one of the swarm; he had worked up to where he gave more orders than he took, and the word was that by Christmas he would be occupying the big corner room down at 290 Broadway. He didn’t often go out to run errands, so it was quite an event for him to drop in, and we all knew it and appreciated it. When he entered and marched across to Wolfe’s desk and offered a hand, Wolfe even did him the honor of rising to shake, which showed how desperate the situation was.
“It’s been quite a while since I saw you last,” Stahl observed. “Three years?”
Wolfe nodded. “I believe so.” He indicated the red leather chair, which Fred Durkin had vacated. “Be seated.”
“Thank you. May we make this private?”
“If necessary.” Wolfe glanced at the trio, and they got up and filed out and shut the door. Stahl went and sat. Medium-sized and beginning to be a little short on hair, he wasn’t impressive to look at, except his jaw, which came straight down a good two inches and then jutted forward. He was well designed for ramming. He gave me a look, and Wolfe said, “As you know, Mr. Goodwin is privy to all that I hear and see and do.”
Stahl knew no such thing, because it wasn’t true. I’d like to have a nickel — or make it a dime, with the dollar where it is — for every item Wolfe has withheld from me just for the hell of it.
Stahl merely nodded. “In a way,” he said, “you might consider this a personal matter — personal to you. We want to get in touch with your daughter, Mrs. Carla Britton.”
Wolfe’s shoulders went up an eighth of an inch and down again. “Then do so. Her address is nine-eighty-four Park Avenue. Her phone number is Poplar three-three-oh-four-three.”
“I know. She hasn’t been there since Tuesday, three days ago. She left no word with anyone. Nobody knows where she is. Do you?”
“No, sir.”
Stahl passed a fingertip across the prow of his chin. “One thing I like about you, you prefer things put plain and straight. I’ve never seen the room upstairs, right above yours, that you call the South Room, but I’ve heard about it. You’ve been known to use it for guests, clients and otherwise, from time to time. Do you mind if I go up and take a look at it?”
Wolfe shrugged again. “It will be wasted energy, Mr. Stahl.”
“That’s all right, I have some to spare.”
“Then go ahead. Archie?”
“Yes, sir.” I went and opened the door to the hall and, with Stahl at my heels, went to the stairs and mounted the two flights. At the door to the South Room I stepped aside and told him politely, “You go first. She might shoot.” He opened the door and went in, and I crossed the sill. “It’s nice and sunny,” I said, “and the beds are first-rate.” I pointed. “That door’s the bathroom, and that’s a closet. A girl named Priscilla Eads once rented it for fifty bucks a day, but she’s dead. I’m pretty sure Mr. Wolfe would shade that for a prominent public servant like you...”
I saved it because he was moving. He knew he had drawn a blank, but he went and opened the door to the bathroom and looked in, and on his way back detoured to open the door to the closet for a glance. As he retreated to the hall I told his back, “Sorry you don’t like it. Would you care to take a look at my room just down the hall? Or the plant rooms, just one flight up?” I kept trying to sell him on the way downstairs. “You might like Mr. Wolfe’s own room better — the bed has a black silk coverlet. I’ll be glad to show it to you. Or if you want a bargain there’s a couch in the front room.”
He entered the office, returned to his chair, focused on Wolfe, and inquired, “Where is she?”
Wolfe focused back. “I don’t know.”
“When did you see her last?”
Wolfe straightened in his chair. “Aren’t you being crass, sir? If this inquisition isn’t gratuitous, warrant it.”
“I told you she has been away from her home for three days and we can’t find her.”
“That doesn’t justify your tramping in here and branding me a liar.”
“I didn’t.”
“Certainly you did. When I said I didn’t know where she was you proceeded to search my house for her. When you didn’t find her you demanded to know where she is. Pfui.”
Stahl smiled like a diplomat. “Well, Goodwin evened it up by riding me. I guess I’d better start over. You know we are aware of your qualities and abilities. We know you don’t need to have a thing all spelled out for you. I didn’t think I’d have to tell you that my coming here and asking about Mrs. Britton meant that we are interested in some aspects of the investigation into the murder of Marko Vukcic, that we have reason to think he was engaged in activities that are the proper concern of the federal government, that your daughter was associated with him in those activities, and that her disappearance is therefore a matter for inquiry. I might as well add that as yet we have no evidence that you have been connected with those activities in any way, either loyally with Vukcic or subversively.”
Wolfe snorted. “I have not applied for a certificate of virtue.”
“No. You wouldn’t. I might also add that I have discussed this with Inspector Cramer and he knows I’m here. We learned of Mrs. Britton’s involvement only last night. To put it all on the table, her disappearance suggests two possibilities: one, that she has been dealt with as Vukcic was, by the same person or persons; and two, that she was double-crossing Vukcic, working for the Communists, and was in on the plan to kill him and helped with it, and it was getting too hot for her here. Is that enough to warrant the question, when did you see her last?”
“The answer won’t help you much. In this room four days ago, Monday afternoon, about six-thirty. She was here not more than ten minutes. She gave no hint of an intention to disappear or of any reason for such an intention. Of your two possibilities, I advise you to dismiss the second, but that will not necessarily leave only the first; there are others.”
“Why dismiss the second?”
Wolfe cocked his head. “Mr. Stahl. The miasma of distrust that has poisoned the air we breathe is so pervasive that it reduced you to the fatuity of going up to look in my South Room. I would have liked then to tell you to leave, but I couldn’t afford the gesture because I’m up a stump. I’ve been hunting the murderer of Marko Vukcic for eight days now, and am floundering in a bog, and if there is any chance that you can offer a straw I want it. So I’ll tell you all I know about Mrs. Britton’s connection with this affair.”
He did so in full, making no objection to Stahl’s getting out his notebook and taking notes. At the end he observed, “You asked why I advised you to dismiss the second of your two possibilities, and that’s my answer. You will discount it as your caution may dictate. Now I would appreciate a straw. With your prerogatives and resources, you must have one to toss me.”
I had never heard or seen him being abject before, and in spite of the strain he was under I didn’t care for it. Stahl didn’t either. He smiled, and I would have liked to wipe it off with one hand. He glanced at his wristwatch and rose from the chair. He didn’t even bother to say he was late for an appointment. “This is something new,” he stated. “Nero Wolfe asking for a straw. We’ll think it over. If you hear from your daughter, or of her, we’ll appreciate it if you’ll let us know.”
When I returned to the office after letting him out I told Wolfe, “There are times when I wish I hadn’t been taught manners. It would have been a pleasure to kick his ass down the stoop.”
“Get them in here,” he growled. “We must find her.”
But we didn’t. We certainly tried. It is true that Stahl and Cramer had it on us in prerogatives and resources, but Fred Durkin knows how to dig, Orrie Cather is no slouch, Saul Panzer is the best operative north of the equator, and I have a good sense of smell. For the next six days we concentrated on picking up a trace of her, but we might as well have stayed up in my room and played pinochle. Not a glimmer. It was during that period that Wolfe made most of his long-distance calls to London and Paris and Bari. At the time I thought he was just expanding the bog to flounder in, and I still think he was merely making some wild stabs, but I have to admit it was Hitchcock in London and Bodin in Paris who finally put him onto Telesio in Bari; and if he hadn’t found Telesio we might still be looking for Carla and for the murderer of Marko. I also admit that I regard myself as the one for hunches around this joint, and I resent anyone horning in, even Wolfe. His part is supposed to be brainwork. However, what matters is that if he hadn’t got in touch with Telesio and talked with him forty bucks’ worth, in Italian, the Tuesday after Stahl’s visit, he would never have got the calls from Telesio.
There were three of them. The first one came Thursday afternoon while I was out tracking down a lead that Fred thought might get somewhere. When I got back to the office just before dinner Wolfe snapped at me, “Get them here this evening for new instructions.”
“Yes, sir.” I went to my desk, sat, and swiveled to face him. “Any for me?”
“We’ll see.” He was glowering. “I suppose you have to know. I had a call from Bari. It is now past midnight in Italy. Mrs. Britton arrived in Bari at noon and left a few hours later in a small boat to cross the Adriatic.”
I goggled. “How the hell did she get to Italy?”
“I don’t know. My informant may, but he thinks it necessary to use discretion on the phone. I am taking it that she’s there. For the present we shall keep it to ourselves. The new instructions for Saul and Fred and Orrie will be on the ground that it is more urgent to disclose the murderer than to find Mrs. Britton. As for—”
“Saul will smell it. He’ll know.”
“Let him. He won’t know where she is, and even if he did, no matter. Who is more trustworthy, Saul or you?”
“I would say Saul. I have to watch myself pretty close.”
“Yes. As for Mr. Cramer and Mr. Stahl, we owe them nothing. If they’re still looking for her they may find someone else.” He sighed way down, leaned back, and shut his eyes, presumably to try to devise a program for the hired help.
So the first call from Telesio didn’t stop operations, it merely changed the strategy. With the second one it was different. It came four days later, at two-thirty a.m. Monday. Of course it was half-past eight in the morning at Bari, but I was in no shape to manage that calculation as I yanked myself enough awake to realize that I hadn’t dreamed it — the phone was ringing. I rolled over and reached for it. When I heard that it was a call from Bari, Italy, for Mr. Nero Wolfe I told the operator to hold it, turned on the light, went and flipped the switch controlling the gong that splits the air if anyone steps within ten feet of the door of Wolfe’s room at night, and then descended one flight and knocked. His voice came, and I opened the door and entered and pushed the wall switch.
He made a magnificent mound under the electric blanket, lying there blinking at me. “Well?” he demanded.
“Phone call from Italy. Collect.”
He refuses to concede the possibility that he will ever be willing to talk on the phone while in bed, so the only instrument in his room is on a table over by a window. I went and switched it on. He pushed the blanket back, maneuvered his bulk around and up, made it over to the table in his bare feet, and took the phone. Even in those circumstances I was impressed by the expanse of his yellow pajamas.
I stood and listened to a lingo that I didn’t have in stock, but not for long. He didn’t even get his money’s worth, for it had been less than three minutes when he cradled the thing, gave me a dirty look, padded back to the bed, lowered himself onto its edge, and pronounced some word that I wouldn’t know how to spell.
He went on. “That was Signor Telesio. His discretion has been aggravated into obscurity. He said he had news for me, that was clear enough, but he insisted on coding it. His words, translated: ‘The man you seek is within sight of the mountain.’ He would not elucidate, and it would have been imprudent to press him.”
I said, “I’ve never known you to seek a man harder or longer than the guy who killed Marko. Does he know that?”
“Yes.”
“Then the only question is, which mountain?”
“It may safely be presumed that it is Lovchen — the Black Mountain, from which Montenegro got its name.”
“Is this Telesio reliable?”
“Yes.”
“Then there’s no problem. The guy that killed Marko is in Montenegro.”
“Thank you.” He twisted around, got his legs onto the bed and under the blanket, and flattened out, if that term may be used about an object with such a contour. Folding the end of the yellow sheet over the edge of the blanket, he pulled it up to his chin, turned on his side, said, “Put the light out,” and closed his eyes.
He was probably asleep before I got back upstairs.
That leaves four days of the three weeks to account for, and they were by far the worst of the whole stretch. It was nothing new that Wolfe was pigheaded, but that time he left all previous records way behind. He knew damn well the subject had got beyond his reach and he was absolutely licked, and the only intelligent thing to do was to hand it over to Cramer and Stahl, with a fair chance that it would get to the CIA, and, if they happened to have a tourist taking in the scenery in those parts, they might think it worth the trouble to give him an errand. Not only that, there were at least two VIPs in Washington, one of them in the State Department, whose ears were accessible to Wolfe on request.
But no. Not for that mule. When — on Wednesday evening, I think it was — I submitted suggestions as outlined above, he rejected them and gave three reasons. One, Cramer and Stahl would think he had invented it unless he named his informant in Bari, and he couldn’t do that. Two, they would merely nab Mrs. Britton if and when she returned to New York, and charge her with something and make it stick. Three, neither the New York police nor the FBI could reach to Yugoslavia, and the CIA wouldn’t be interested unless it tied in with their own plans and projects, and that was extremely unlikely.
Meanwhile — and this was really pathetic — he kept Saul and Fred and Orrie on the payroll and went through the motions of giving them instructions and reading their reports, and I had to go through with my end of the charade. I don’t think Fred and Orrie suspected they were just stringing beads, but Saul did, and Wolfe knew it. Thursday morning Wolfe told me it wouldn’t be necessary for Saul to report direct to him, that I could take it and relay it.
“No, sir,” I said firmly. “I’ll quit first. I’ll play my own part in the goddam farce if you insist on it, but I’m not going to try to convince Saul Panzer that I’m a halfwit. He knows better.”
I have no idea how long it might have gone on. Sooner or later Wolfe would have had to snap out of it, and I prefer to believe it would have been sooner. There were signs that he was beginning to give under the strain — for instance, the scene in the office the next morning, Friday, which I have described. As for me, I was no longer trying to needle him. I was merely offering him a chance to shake loose when I told him the memo from Cartright of Consolidated Products needed immediate attention and reminded him that Cartright had once paid a bill for twelve grand without a squeak, and it looked hopeful when he shoved the paperweight off the desk and dumped the mail in the wastebasket. I was deciding how to follow through and keep him going when the phone rang, and I would have liked to treat it as Wolfe had treated the mail. I turned and got it. A female voice asked me if I would accept a collect call from Bari, Italy, for Mr. Nero Wolfe, and I said yes and told Wolfe. He lifted his instrument.
It was even briefer than it had been Sunday night. I am not equipped to divide Italian into words, but my guess was that Wolfe didn’t use more than fifty altogether. From his tone I suspected it was some more unwelcome news, and his expression as he hung up verified it. He tightened his lips, glaring at the phone, and then transferred the glare to me.
“She’s dead,” he said glumly.
It always irritated him if I talked like that. He had drilled it into me that when giving information I must be specific, especially in identifying objects or persons. But since the call had been from Bari, and there was only one female in that part of the world that we were interested in, I didn’t raise the point.
“Where?” I asked. “Bari?”
“No. Montenegro. Word came across.”
“What or who killed her?”
“He says he doesn’t know, except that she died violently. He wouldn’t say she was murdered, but certainly she was. Can you doubt it?”
“I can, but I don’t. What else?”
“Nothing. But for the bare fact, nothing. Even if I could have got more out of him, what good would it do me, sitting here?”
He looked down at his thighs, then at the right arm of his chair, then at the left arm, as if to verify the fact that he really was sitting. Abruptly he shoved his chair back, arose, and moved. He went to the television cabinet and stood a while staring at the screen, then turned and crossed to the most conspicuous object in the office, not counting him — the thirty-six-inch globe — twirled it, stopped it, and studied geography a minute or two. He about-faced, went to his desk, picked up a book he was halfway through — But We Were Born Free by Elmer Davis — crossed to the bookshelves, and eased the book in between two others. He turned to face me and inquired, “What’s the bank balance?”
“A little over twenty-six thousand, after drawing the weekly checks. You put the checks in the wastebasket.”
“What’s in the safe?”
“A hundred and ninety-four dollars and twelve cents in petty, and thirty-eight hundred in emergency reserve.”
“How long does it take a train to get to Washington?”
“Three hours and thirty-five minutes to four hours and fifteen minutes, depending on the train.”
He made a face. “How long does it take an airplane?”
“Sixty to a hundred minutes, depending on the wind.”
“How often does a plane go?”
“Every thirty minutes — on the hour and the half.”
He shot a glance at the wall clock. “Can we make the one that leaves at noon?”
I cocked my head. “Did you say ‘we’?”
“Yes. The only way to get passports in a hurry is to go after them in person.”
“Where do we want passports for?”
“England and Italy.”
“When are we leaving?”
“As soon as we get the passports. Tonight if possible. Can we make the noon plane for Washington?”
I stood up. “Look,” I said, “it’s quite a shock to see a statue turn into a dynamo without warning. Is this just an act?”
“No.”
“You’ve told me over and over not to be impetuous. Why don’t you sit down and count up to a thousand?”
“I am not being impetuous. We should have gone days ago, when we learned he was there. Now it is imperative. Confound it, can we make that plane?”
“No. Nothing doing. God knows what you’ll be eating for the next week — or maybe year — and Fritz is working on shad roe mousse Pocahontas for lunch, and if you miss it you’ll take it out on me. While I phone the airline and get your naturalization certificate and my birth certificate from the safe, you might go and give Fritz a hand since you’re all of a sudden in such a hell of a hurry.”
He was going to say something, decided to skip it, and turned and headed for the kitchen.