I

There were several reasons why I had no complaints as I walked along West Thirty-fifth Street that morning, approaching the stoop of Nero Wolfe’s old brownstone house. The day was sunny and sparkling, my new shoes felt fine after the two-mile walk, a complicated infringement case had been polished off for a big client, and I had just deposited a check in five figures to Wolfe’s account in the bank.

Five paces short of the stoop I became aware that two people, a man and a woman, were standing on the sidewalk across the street, staring either at the stoop or at me, or maybe both. That lifted me a notch higher, with the thought that while two rubbernecks might not put us in a class with the White House still it was nothing to sneeze at, until a second glance made me realize that I had seen them before. But where? Instead of turning up the steps I faced them, just as they stepped off the curb and started to me.

“Mr. Goodwin,” the woman said in a sort of gasping whisper that barely reached me.

She was fair-skinned and blue-eyed, young enough, kind of nice-looking and neat in a dark blue assembly-line coat. He was as dark as she was fair, not much bigger than her, with his nose slanting slightly to the left and a full wide mouth. My delay in recognizing him was because I had never seen him with a hat on before. He was the hat-and-coat-and-tie custodian at the barber shop I went to.

“Oh, it’s you, Carl—”

“Can we go in with you?” the woman asked in the same gasping whisper, and then I knew her too. She was also from the barber shop, a manicure. I had never hired her, since I do my own nails, but had seen her around and had heard her called Tina.

I looked down at her smooth white little face with its pointed chin and didn’t care for the expression on it. I glanced at Carl, and he looked even worse.

“What’s the matter?” I guess I was gruff. “Trouble?”

“Please not out here,” Tina pleaded. Her eyes darted left and right and back up at me. “We just got enough brave to go to the door when you came. We were thinking which door, the one down below or up the steps. Please let us in?”

It did not suit my plans. I had counted on getting a few little chores done before Wolfe came down from the plant rooms at eleven o’clock. There could be no profit in this.

“You told me once,” Carl practically whined, “that people in danger only have to mention your name.”

“Nuts. A pleasantry. I talk too much.” But I was stuck. “Okay, come in and tell me about it.”

I led the way up the steps and let us in with my key. Inside, the first door on the left of the long wide hall was to what we called the front room, not much used, and I opened it, thinking to get it over with in there, but Fritz was there, dusting, so I took them along to the next door and on into the office. After moving a couple of chairs so they would be facing me I sat at my desk and nodded at them impatiently. Tina had looked around swiftly before she sat.

“Such a nice safe room,” she said, “for you and Mr. Wolfe, two such great men.”

“He’s the great one,” I corrected her. “I just caddy. What’s this about danger?”

“We love this country,” Carl said emphatically. All of a sudden he started trembling, first his hands, then his arms and shoulders, then all over. Tina darted to him and grabbed his elbows and shook him, not gently, and said things to him in some language I wasn’t up on. He mumbled back at her and then got more vocal, and after a little the trembling stopped, and she returned to her chair.

“We do love this country,” she declared.

I nodded. “Wait till you see Chillicothe, Ohio, where I was born. Then you will love it. How far west have you been, Tenth Avenue?”

“I don’t think so.” Tina was doubtful. “I think Eighth Avenue. But that’s what we want to do, go west.” She decided it would help to let me have a smile, but it didn’t work too well. “We can’t go east, can we, into the ocean?” She opened her blue leather handbag and, with no fingering or digging, took something from it. “But you see, we don’t know where to go. This Ohio, maybe? I have fifty dollars here.”

“That would get you there,” I allowed.

She shook her head. “Oh, no. The fifty dollars is for you. You know our name, Vardas? You know we are married? So there is no question of morals, we are very high in morals, only all we want is to do our work and live in private, Carl and me, and we think—”

Having heard the clatter of Wolfe’s elevator descending from the plant rooms on the roof, I had known an interruption was coming but had let her proceed. Now she stopped as Wolfe’s steps sounded and he appeared at the door. Carl and Tina both bounced to their feet. Two paces in, after a quick glance at them, Wolfe stopped short and glowered at me.

“I didn’t tell you we had callers,” I said cheerfully, “because I knew you would be down soon. You know Carl, at the barber shop? And Tina, you’ve seen her there too. It’s all right, they’re married. They just dropped in to buy fifty bucks’ worth of—”

Without a word or even a nod, Wolfe turned all of his seventh of a ton and beat it out and toward the door to the kitchen at the rear. The Vardas family stared at the doorway a moment and then turned to me.

“Sit down,” I invited them. “As you said, he’s a great man. He’s sore because I didn’t notify him we had company, and he was expecting to sit there behind his desk” — I waved a hand — “and ring for beer and enjoy himself. He wouldn’t wiggle a finger for fifty dollars. Maybe I won’t either, but let’s see.” I looked at Tina, who was back on the edge of her chair. “You were saying …”

“We don’t want Mr. Wolfe mad at us,” she said in distress.

“Forget it. He’s only mad at me, which is chronic. What do you want to go to Ohio for?”

“Maybe not Ohio.” She tried to smile again. “It’s what I said, we love this country and we want to go more into it — far in. We would like to be in the middle of it. We want you to tell us where to go, to help us—”

“No, no.” I was brusque. “Start from here. Look at you, you’re both scared stiff. What’s the danger Carl mentioned?”

“I don’t think,” she protested, “it makes any difference—”

“That’s no good,” Carl said harshly. His hands started trembling again, but he gripped the sides of his chair seat, and they stopped. His dark eyes fastened on me. “I met Tina,” he said in a low level voice, trying to keep feeling out of it, “three years ago in a concentration camp in Russia. If you want me to I will tell you why it was that they would never have let us get out of there alive, not in one hundred years, but I would rather not talk so much about it. It makes me start to tremble, and I am trying to learn to act and talk of a manner so I can quit trembling.”

I concurred. “Save it for some day after you stop trembling. But you did get out alive?”

“Plainly. We are here.” There was an edge of triumph to the level voice. “I will not tell you about that either. But they think we are dead. Of course Vardas was not our name then, neither of us. We took that name later, when we got married in Istanbul. Then we so managed—”

“You shouldn’t tell any places,” Tina scolded him. “No places at all and no people at all.”

“You are most right,” Carl admitted. He informed me, “It was not Istanbul.”

I nodded. “Istanbul is out. You would have had to swim. You got married, that’s the point.”

“Yes. Then, later, we nearly got caught again. We did get caught, but—”

“No!” Tina said positively.

“Very well, Tina. You are most right. We went many other places, and at a certain time in a certain way we crossed the ocean. We had tried very hard to come to this country according to your rules, but it was in no way possible. When we did get into New York it was more by an accident — no, I did not say that. I will not say that much. Only I will say we got into New York. For a while it was so difficult, but it has been nearly a year now, since we got the jobs at the barber shop, that life has been so fine and sweet that we are almost healthy again. What we eat! We have even got some money saved! We have got—”

“Fifty dollars,” Tina said hastily.

“Most right,” Carl agreed. “Fifty American dollars. I can say as a fact that we would be healthy and happy beyond our utmost dreams three years ago, except for the danger. The danger is that we did not follow your rules. I will not deny that they are good rules, but for us they were impossible. We cannot expect ourselves to be happy when we don’t know what minute someone may come and ask us how we got here. The minute that just went by, that was all right, no one asked, but here is the next minute. Every day is full of those minutes, so many. We have found a way to learn what would happen, and we know where we would be sent back to. We know exactly what would happen to us. I would not be surprised if you felt a deep contempt when you saw me trembling the way I do, but to understand a situation like this I believe you have to be somewhat close to it. As I am. As Tina is. I am not saying you would tremble like me — after all, Tina never does — but I think you might have your own way of showing that you were not really happy.”

“Yeah, I might,” I agreed. I glanced at Tina, but the expression on her face could have made me uncomfortable, so I looked back at Carl. “But if I tried to figure a way out I doubt if I would pick on spilling it to a guy named Archie Goodwin just because he came to the barber shop where I worked. He might be crazy about the rules you couldn’t follow, and anyhow there are just as many minutes in Ohio as there are in New York.”

“There is that fifty dollars.” Carl extended his hands, not trembling, toward me.

Tina gestured impatiently. “That’s nothing to you,” she said, letting bitterness into it for the first time; “We know that, it’s nothing. But the danger has come, and we had to have someone tell us where to go. This morning a man came to the barber shop and asked us questions. An official! A policeman!”

“Oh.” I glanced from one to the other. “That’s different. A policeman in uniform?”

“No, in regular clothes, but he showed us a card in a case, New York Police Department. His name was on it, Jacob Wallen.”

“What time this morning?”

“A little after nine o’clock, soon after the shop was open. He talked first with Mr. Fickler, the owner, and Mr. Fickler brought him around behind the partition to my booth, where I do customers when they’re through in the chair or when they only want a manicure, and I was there, getting things together, and he sat down and took out a notebook and asked me questions. Then he—”

“What kind of questions?”

“All about me. My name, where I live, where I came from, how long I’ve been working there, all that kind, and then about last night, where I was and what I was doing last night.”

“Did he say why he was curious about last night?”

“No. He just asked questions.”

“What part of last night did he ask about? All of it?”

“Yes, from the time the shop closes, half-past six, from then on.”

“Where did you tell him you came from?”

“I said Carl and I are DPs from Italy. That’s what we had decided to say. We have to say something when people are just curious.”

“I suppose you do. Did he ask to see your papers?”

“No. That will come next.” She set her jaw. “We can’t go back there. We have to leave New York today — now.”

“What else did he ask?”

“That’s all. It was mostly about last night.”

“Then what? Did he question Carl too?”

“Yes, but not right after me. He sent me away, and Mr. Fickler sent Philip to him in the booth, and when Philip came out he sent Carl in, and when Carl came out he sent Jimmie in. Jimmie was still in the booth with him when I went to Carl, up front by the rack, and we knew we had to get out. We waited until Mr. Fickler had gone to the back of the shop for something, and then we just walked out. We went to our room down on the East Side and packed our stuff and started for Grand Central with it, and then we realized we didn’t know anything about where to go and might make some terrible mistake, so there in Grand Central we talked it over. We decided that since the police were after us already it couldn’t be any worse, but we weren’t sure enough about any of the people we have met in New York, so the best thing would be to come to you and pay you to help us. You’re a professional detective, and anyway Carl likes you about the best of all the customers. You only tip him a dime, so it’s not that. I have noticed you myself, the way you look. You look like a man who would break rules too — if you had to.”

I gave her a sharp look, suspicious, but if she was trying to butter me she was very good. All that showed in her blue eyes was the scare that had put them on the run and the hope of me they were hanging on to for dear life. I looked at Carl. The scare was there too, but I couldn’t see the hope. Still he sat solid on the chair, with no sign of trembling, as I thought to myself that it would have been no surprise to him if I had picked up the phone and called the cops. Either he had his full share of guts or he had run out entirely.

I was irritated. “Damn it,” I protested, “you bring it here already broke. What did you beat it for? That alone fixes you. He was questioning the others too and he was concentrating on last night. What about last night? What were you doing, breaking some more rules?”

They both started to answer, but she let him take it. He said no, they weren’t. They had gone straight home from work and eaten in their room as usual. Tina had washed some clothes, and Carl had read a book. Around nine they had gone for a walk, and had been back in their room and in bed before ten-thirty.

I was disgusted. “You sure did it up,” I declared. “If you’re clean for last night, why didn’t you stay put? You must have something in your heads or you wouldn’t have stayed alive and got this far. Why didn’t you use it?”

Carl smiled at me. He really did smile, but it didn’t make me want to smile back. “A policeman asking questions,” he said in the level tone he had used before, “has a different effect on different people. If you have a country like this one and you are innocent of crime, all the people of your country are saying it with you when you answer the questions. That is true even when you are away from home — especially when you are away from home. But Tina and I have no country at all. The country we had once, it is no longer a country, it is just a place to wait to die, only if we are sent back there we will not have to wait. Two people alone cannot answer a policeman’s questions anywhere in the world. It takes a whole country to speak to a policeman, and Tina and I — we do not have one.”

“You see,” Tina said. “Here, take it.” She got up and came to me, extending a hand with the money in it. “Take it, Mr. Goodwin! Just tell us where to go, all the little facts that will help us—”

“Or we thought,” Carl suggested, not hopefully, “that you might give us a letter to some friend, in this Ohio perhaps — not that we should expect too much for fifty dollars.”

I looked at them, with my lips pressed together. The morning was shot now anyway, with Wolfe sore and my chores not done. I swiveled to my desk and picked up the phone. Any one of three or four city employees would probably find out for me what kind of errand had taken a dick named Wallen to the Goldenrod Barber Shop, unless it was something very special. But with my finger in the dial hole I hesitated and then replaced the phone. If it was something hot I would be starting PD cars for our address, and Wolfe and I both have a prejudice against cops yanking people out of his office, no matter who they are, unless we ourselves have got them ready for delivery. So I swiveled again. Carl was frowning at me, his head moving from side to side. Tina was standing tense, the money clutched in her fist.

“This is silly,” I said. “If they’re really after you, you’d be throwing your money away on carfare to Ohio or anywhere else. Save it for a lawyer. I’ll have to go up there and see what it’s all about.” I got up, crossed to the soundproof door to the front room, and opened it. “You can wait here. In here, please.”

“We’ll go,” Tina said, back to her gasping whisper again. “We won’t bother you any more. Come, Carl—”

“Skip it,” I said curtly. “If this amounts to anything more than petty larceny you’d be nabbed sure as hell. This is my day for breaking a rule, and I’ll be back soon. Come on, I’ll put you in here, and I advise you to stay put.”

They looked at each other.

“I like him,” Carl said.

Tina moved. She came and passed through into the front room, and Carl was right behind her.

I told them to sit down and relax and not get restless, shut the door, went to the kitchen, where Wolfe was seated at the far end of the long table, drinking beer, and told him, “The check from Pendexter came and has been deposited. That pair of foreigners have got themselves in a mess. I put them in the front room and told them to stay there until I get back.”

“Where are you going?” he demanded.

“A little detective work, not in your class. I won’t be gone long. You can dock me.”

I left.

II

The Goldenrod Barber Shop was in the basement of an office building on Lexington Avenue in the upper Thirties. I had been patronizing one of the staff, named Ed, for several years. Formerly, from away back, Wolfe had gone to an artist in a shop on Twenty-eighth Street, named Fletcher. When Fletcher had retired a couple of years ago Wolfe had switched to Goldenrod and tried my man, Ed, hadn’t liked him, had experimented with the rest of the Goldenrod staff, and had settled on Jimmie. His position now, after two years, was that Jimmie was no Fletcher, especially with a shampoo, but that he was some better than tolerable.

Goldenrod, with only six chairs and usually only four of them manned, and two manicures, was no Framinelli’s, but it was well equipped and clean, and anyhow it had Ed, who was a little rough at tilting a head maybe but knew exactly how to handle my hair and had a razor so sharp and slick you never knew it was on you.

I hadn’t shaved that morning and as, at noon, I paid the taxi driver, entered the building, and descended the stairs to the basement, my plan of campaign was simple. I would get in Ed’s chair, waiting if necessary, and ask him to give me a once-over, and the rest would be easy.

But it was neither simple nor easy. A medium-sized mob of white-collar workers, buzzing and chattering, was ranged three deep along the wall of the corridor facing the door of the shop. Others, passing by in both directions, were stopping to try to look in, and a flatfoot, posted in the doorway, was telling them to keep moving. That did not look promising, or else it did, if that’s how you like things. I swerved aside and halted for a survey through the open door and the glass. Joel Fickler, the boss, was at the rack where Carl usually presided, taking a man’s coat to put on a hanger. A man with his hat on was backed up to the cashier’s counter, with his elbows on it, facing the whole shop. Two other men with their hats on were seated near the middle of the row of chairs for waiting customers, one of them next to the little table for magazines. They were discussing something without much enthusiasm. Two of the barbers’ chairs, Ed’s and Tom’s, were occupied. The other two barbers, Jimmie and Philip, were on their stools against the wall. Janet, the other manicure, was not in sight.

I stepped to the doorway and was going on in. The flatfoot blocked me.

I lifted my brows at him. “What’s all the excitement?”

“Accident in here. No one allowed in.”

“How did the customers in the chairs get in? I’m a customer.”

“Only customers with appointments. You got one?”

“Certainly.” I stuck my head through the doorway and yelled, “Ed! How soon?”

The man leaning on the counter straightened up and turned for a look. At sight of me he grunted. “I’ll be damned. Who whistled for you?”

The presence of my old friend and enemy Sergeant Purley Stebbins of Manhattan Homicide gave the thing an entirely different flavor. Up to then I had just been mildly curious, floating along. Now all my nerves and muscles snapped to attention. Sergeant Stebbins is not interested in petty larceny. I didn’t care for the possibility of having shown a pair of murderers to chairs in our front room.

“Good God,” Purley grumbled, “is this going to turn into one of them Nero Wolfe babies?”

“Not unless you turn it.” I grinned at him. “Whatever it is, I dropped in for a shave, that’s all, and here you boys are, to my surprise.” The flatfoot had given me leeway, and I had crossed the sill. “I’m a regular customer here.” I turned to Fickler, who had trotted over to us. “How long have I been leaving my hair here, Joel?”

None of Fickler’s bones were anywhere near the surface except on his bald head. He was six inches shorter than me, which may have been one reason why I had never got a straight look into his narrow black eyes. He had never liked me much since the day he had forgotten to list an appointment with Ed I had made on the phone, and I, under provocation, had made a few pointed remarks. Now he looked as if he had been annoyed by something much worse than remarks.

“Over six years, Mr. Goodwin,” he said. “This,” he told Purley, “is the famous detective, Mr. Archie Goodwin. Mr. Nero Wolfe comes here too.”

“The hell he does.” Purley, scowling at me, said in a certain tone, “Famous.”

I shrugged. “Just a burden. A damn nuisance.”

“Yeah. Don’t let it get you down. You just dropped in for a shave?”

“Yes, sir. Write it down, and I’ll sign it.”

“Who’s your barber?”

“Ed.”

“That’s Graboff. He’s busy.”

“So I see. I’m not pressed. I’ll chat with you or read a magazine or get a manicure.”

“I don’t feel like chatting.” Purley had not relaxed the scowl. “You know a guy that works here named Carl Vardas? And his wife, Tina, a manicure?”

“I know Carl well enough to pay him a dime for my hat and coat and tie. I can’t say I know Tina, but of course I’ve seen her here. Why?”

“I’m just asking. There’s no law against your coming here for a shave, since you need one and this is where you come, but the sight of either you or Wolfe makes me want to scratch. No wonder, huh? So to have it on the record in case it’s needed, have you seen Vardas or his wife this morning?”

“Sure I have.” I stretched my neck to get closer to his ear and whispered, “I put them in our front room and told them to wait, and beat it up here to tell you, and if you’ll step on it—”

“I don’t care for gags,” he growled. “Not right now. They killed a cop, or one of them did. You know how much we like that.”

I did indeed and adjusted my face accordingly. “The hell they did. One of yours? Did I know him?”

“No. A dick from the Twentieth Precinct, Jake Wallen.”

“Where and when?”

“This morning, right here. The other side of that partition, in her manicure booth. Stuck a long pair of scissors in his back and got his pump. Apparently he never made a sound, but them massage things are going here off and on. By the time he was found they had gone. It took us an hour to find out where they lived, and when we got there they had been and got their stuff and beat it.”

I grunted sympathetically. “Is it tied up? Prints on the scissors or something?”

“We’ll do all right without prints,” Purley said grimly. “Didn’t I say they lammed?”

“Yes, but,” I objected, not aggressively, “some people can get awful scared at sight of a man with scissors sticking in his back. I wasn’t intimate with Carl, but he didn’t strike me as a man who would stab a cop just on principle. Was Wallen here to take him?”

Purley’s reply was stopped before it got started. Tom had finished with his customer, and the two men with hats on in the row of chairs ranged along the partition were keeping their eyes on the customer as he went to the rack for his tie. Tom, having brushed himself off, had walked to the front and up to us. Usually Tom bounced around like a high-school kid — from his chair to the wall cabinet and back again, or over to the steamer behind the partition for a hot towel — in spite of his white-haired sixty-some years, but today his feet dragged. Nor did he tell me hello, though he gave me a sort of a glance before he spoke to Purley.

“It’s my lunchtime, Sergeant. I just go to the cafeteria at the end of the hall.”

Purley called a name that sounded like Joffe, and one of the dicks on a chair by the partition got up and came.

“Yerkes is going to lunch,” Purley told him. “Go along and stay with him.”

“I want to phone my wife,” Tom said resolutely.

“Why not? Stay with him, Joffe.”

“Yes, sir.”

They went, with Tom in front. Purley and I moved out of the way as the customer approached to pay his check and Fickler sidled around behind the cash register.

“I thought,” I said politely, “you had settled for Carl and Tina. Why does Tom have to have company at lunch?”

“We haven’t got Carl and Tina.”

“But you soon will have, the way the personnel feels about cop-killers. Why pester these innocent barbers? If one of them gets nervous and slices a customer, then what?”

Purley merely snarled.

I stiffened. “Excuse me. I’m not so partial to cop-killers either. It seemed only natural to show some interest. Luckily I can read, so I’ll catch it in the evening paper.”

“Don’t bust a gut.” Purley’s eyes were following the customer as he walked to the door and on out past the flatfoot. “Sure we’ll get Carl and Tina, but if you don’t mind we’ll just watch these guys’ appetites. You asked what Jake Wallen was here for.”

“I asked if he came to take Carl.”

“Yeah. I think he did but I can’t prove it yet. Last night around midnight a couple of pedestrians, two women, were hit by a car at Eighty-first and Broadway. Both killed. The car kept going. It was found later parked at Ninety-sixth and Broadway, just across from the subway entrance. We haven’t found anyone who saw the driver, either at the scene of the accident or where the car was parked. The car was hot. It had been parked by its owner at eight o’clock on Forty-eighth Street between Ninth and Tenth, and was gone when he went for it at eleven-thirty.”

Purley paused to watch a customer enter. The customer got past the flatfoot with Joel Fickler’s help, left things at the rack, and went and got on Jimmie’s chair. Purley returned to me. “When the car was spotted by a squad car at Ninety-sixth and Broadway with a dented fender and blood and other items that tagged it, the Twentieth Precinct sent Jake Wallen to it. He was the first one to give it a look. Later, of course, there was a gang from all over, including the laboratory, before they moved it. Wallen was supposed to go home and to bed at eight in the morning when his trick ended, but he didn’t. He phoned his wife that he had a hot lead on a hit-and-run killer and was going to handle it himself and grab a promotion. Not only that, he phoned the owner of the car at his home in Yonkers, and asked him if he had any connection with the Goldenrod Barber Shop or knew anyone who had, or if he had ever been there. The owner had never heard of it. Of course we’ve collected all this since we were called here at ten-fifteen and found Wallen DOA with scissors in his back.”

I was frowning. “But what gave him the lead to this shop?”

“We’d like to know. It had to be something he found in the car, we don’t know what. The goddam fool kept it to himself and came here and got killed.”

“Didn’t he show it or mention it to anyone here?”

“They say not. All he had with him was a newspaper. We’ve got it — today’s News, the early, out last night. We can’t spot anything in it. There was nothing in his pockets, nothing on him, that helps any.”

I humphed. “Fool is right. Even if he had cleaned it up he wouldn’t have grabbed a promotion. He would have been more apt to grab a uniform and a beat.”

“Yeah, he was that kind. There’s too many of that kind. Not to mention names, but these precinct men—”

A phone rang. Fickler, by the cash register, looked at Purley, who stepped to the counter where the phone was and answered the call. It was for him. When, after a minute, it seemed to be going on, I moved away and had gone a few paces when a voice came.

“Hello, Mr. Goodwin.”

It was Jimmie, Wolfe’s man, using comb and scissors above his customer’s right ear. He was the youngest of the staff, about my age, and by far the handsomest, with curly lips and white teeth and dancing dark eyes. I had never understood why he wasn’t at Framinelli’s. I told him hello.

“Mr. Wolfe ought to be here,” he said.

Under the circumstances I thought that a little tactless, and was even prepared to tell him so when Ed called to me from two chairs down. “Fifteen minutes, Mr. Goodwin? All right?”

I told him okay, I would wait, went to the rack and undressed to my shirt, and crossed to one of the chairs over by the partition, next to the table with magazines. I thought it would be fitting to pick up a magazine, but I had already read the one on top, the latest New Yorker, and the one on top on the shelf below was the Time of two weeks ago. So I leaned back and let my eyes go, slow motion, from left to right and back again. Though I had been coming there for six years I didn’t really know those people, in spite of the reputation barbers have as conversationalists. I knew that Fickler, the boss, had once been attacked bodily there in the shop by his ex-wife; that Philip had had two sons killed in World War II; that Tom had once been accused by Fickler of swiping lotions and other supplies and had slapped Fickler’s face; that Ed played the horses and was always in debt; that Jimmie had to be watched or he would take magazines from the shop while they were still current; and that Janet, who had only been there a year, was suspected of having a sideline, maybe dope peddling. Aside from such items as those, they were strangers.

Suddenly Janet was there in front of me. She had come from around the end of the partition, and not alone. The man with her was a broad-shouldered husky, gray-haired and gray-eyed, with an unlit cigar slanting up from a corner of his mouth. His eyes swept the whole shop, and since he started at the far right he ended up at me.

He stared. “For God’s sake,” he muttered. “You? Now what?”

I was surprised for a second to see Inspector Cramer himself, head of Manhattan Homicide, there on the job. But even an inspector likes to be well thought of by the rank and file, and here it was no mere citizen who had met his end but one of them. The whole force would appreciate it. Besides, I have to admit he’s a good cop.

“Just waiting for a shave,” I told him. “I’m an old customer here. Ask Purley.”

Purley came over and verified me, but Cramer checked with Ed himself. Then he drew Purley aside, and they mumbled back and forth a while, after which Cramer summoned Philip and escorted him around the end of the partition.

Janet seated herself in the chair next to mine. She looked even better in profile than head on, with her nice chin and straight little nose and long home-grown lashes. I felt a little in debt to her for the mild pleasure I had got occasionally as I sat in Ed’s chair and glanced at her while she worked on the customer in the next chair.

“I was wondering where you were,” I remarked.

She turned to me. She wasn’t old enough to have wrinkles or seams but she looked old enough then. She was putting a strain on every muscle in her face, and it certainly showed.

“Did you say something?” she asked.

“Nothing vital. My name’s Goodwin. Call me Archie.”

“I know. You’re a detective. How can I keep them from having my picture in the paper?”

“You can’t if they’ve already got it. Have they?”

“I think so. I wish I was dead.”

“I don’t.” I made it not loud but emphatic.

“Why should you? I do. My folks in Michigan think I’m acting or modeling. I leave it vague. And here — oh, my God.”

Her chin worked, but she controlled it.

“Work is work,” I said. “My parents wanted me to be a college president, and I wanted to be a second baseman, and look at me. Anyhow, if your picture gets printed and it’s a good likeness, who knows what will happen?”

“This is my Gethsemane,” she said.

That made me suspicious, naturally. She had mentioned acting. “Come off it,” I advised her. “Think of someone else. Think of the guy that got stabbed — no, he’s out of it — think of his wife, how do you suppose she feels? Or Inspector Cramer, with the job he’s got. What was he asking you just now?”

She didn’t hear me. She said through clamped teeth, “I only wish I had some guts.”

“Why? What would you do?”

“I’d tell all about it.”

“All about what?”

“About what happened.”

“You mean last night? Why not try it out on me and see how it goes? That doesn’t take guts, just go ahead and let it come, keep your voice down and let it flow.”

She didn’t hear a word. Her ears were disconnected. She kept her brown eyes, under the long lashes, straight at me.

“How it happened this morning. How I was going back to my booth after I finished Mr. Levinson in Philip’s chair, and he called me into Tina’s booth and he seized me, with one hand on my throat so I couldn’t scream, and there was no doubt at all what he intended, so I grabbed the scissors from the shelf and, without realizing what I was doing, plunged them into him with all my strength, and his grip on me loosened, and he collapsed onto the chair. That’s what I would do if I had any guts and if I really want a successful career the way I say I do. I would have to be arrested and have a trial, and then—”

“Hold it. Your pronouns. Mr. Levinson called you into Tina’s booth?”

“Certainly not. That man that got killed.” She tilted her head back. “See the marks on my throat?”

There was no mark whatever on her smooth pretty throat.

“Good Lord,” I said. “That would get you top billing anywhere.”

“That’s what I was saying.”

“Then go ahead and tell it.”

“I can’t! I simply can’t! It would be so darned vulgar.”

Her full face was there, only sixteen inches away, with the muscles no longer under strain, the closest I had ever been to it, and there was no question about how lovely it was. Under different circumstances my reaction would have been merely normal and healthy, but at the moment I could have slapped it with pleasure. I had felt a familiar tingle at the base of my spine when I thought she was going to open up about a midnight ride up Broadway, probably with one of her co-workers, possibly with the boss himself, and then she had danced off into this folderol.

She needed a lesson. “I understand your position,” I said, “a girl as sweet and fine and strong as you, but it’s bound to come out in the end, and I want to help. Incidentally, I am not married. I’ll go to Inspector Cramer right now and tell him about it. He’ll want to take photographs of your throat. I know the warden down at the jail and I’ll see that you get good treatment, no rough stuff. Do you know any lawyers?”

She shook her head, answering, I thought, my question about lawyers, but no. She didn’t believe in answering questions. “About your being married,” she said, “I hadn’t even thought. There was an article in the American magazine last month about career girls getting married. Did you read it?”

“No. I may be able to persuade the district attorney to make it a manslaughter charge instead of murder, which would please your folks in Michigan.” I drew my feet back and slid forward on the chair, ready to rise. “Okay, I’ll go tell Cramer.”

“That article was silly,” she said. “I think a girl must get her career established first. That’s why when I see an attractive man I never wonder if he’s married; by the time I’m ready for one these will be too old. That’s why I wouldn’t ask you if you know anyone in show business, because I wouldn’t take help from a man. I think a girl—”

If Ed hadn’t signaled to me just then, his customer having left the chair, there’s no telling how it would have ended. It would have been vulgar to slap her, and no words would have been any good since she was deaf, but surely I might have thought of something that would have taken effect. As it was, I didn’t want to keep Ed waiting so I got up and crossed to his chair and climbed in.

“Just scrape the face,” I told him.

He got a bib on me and tilted me back. “Did you phone?” he asked. “Did that fathead forget again?”

I told him no, that I had been caught midtown with a stubble and an unforeseen errand for which I should be presentable and added, “You seem to have had some excitement.”

He went to the cabinet for a tube of prefabricated lather, got some on me, and started rubbing. “We sure did,” he said with feeling. “Carl, you know Carl, he killed a man in Tina’s booth. Then they both ran. I’m sorry for Tina, she was all right, but Carl, I don’t know.” He moved to my left cheek.

I couldn’t articulate with him rubbing. He finished, went to wipe his fingers, and came with the razor. I rolled my head into position, to the left, and remarked, “I’d sort of watch it, Ed. It’s a little risky to go blabbing that Carl killed him unless you can prove it.”

“Well, he had fits.” The razor was as sharp and slick as usual. “What did he run for?”

“I couldn’t say. But the cops are still poking around here, even an inspector.”

“Sure they are, they’re after evidence. You gotta have evidence.” Ed pulled the skin tight over the jawbone. “For instance, they ask me did he show me anything or ask me anything about some article from the shop. I say he didn’t. That would be evidence, see?”

“Yes, I get it.” I could only mumble. “What did he ask you?”

“Oh, all about me, name, married or single — you know, insurance men, income tax, they all ask the same things. But when he asked about last night I told him where to get off, but then I thought what the hell and told him. Why not? That’s my philosophy, Mr. Goodwin — why not? It saves trouble.”

He was prying my chin up, doing the throat. That clean, I rolled my head to the right to turn the other cheek.

“Of course,” he said, “the police have to get it straight, but they can’t expect us to remember everything. When he came in first he talked with Fickler, maybe five minutes. Then Fickler took him to Tina’s booth, and he talked with Tina. After that Fickler sent Philip in, and then Carl and then Jimmie and then Tom and then me and then Janet. I think it’s pretty good to remember that.”

I mumbled agreement. He was at the corner of my mouth.

“But I can’t remember everything, and they can’t make me. I don’t know how long it was after Janet came back out before Fickler went to Tina’s booth and found him dead. They ask me was it nearer ten minutes or nearer fifteen, but I say I had a customer at the time, we all did but Philip, and I don’t know. They ask me how many of us went behind the partition after Janet came out, to the steamer or the vat or to get the lamp or something, but I say again I had a customer at the time, and I don’t know, except I know I didn’t go because I was trimming Mr. Howell at the time. I was working the top when Fickler yelled and came running out. They can ask Mr. Howell.”

“They probably have,” I said, but to no one, because Ed had gone for a hot towel.

He returned and used the towel and got the lilac water. Patting it on, he resumed, “They ask me exactly when Carl and Tina went, they ask me that twenty times, but I can’t say and I won’t say. Carl did it all right, but they can’t prove it by me. They’ve gotta have evidence, but I don’t. Cold towel today?”

“No, I’ll keep the smell.”

He patted me dry, levered me upright, and brought a comb and brush. “Can I remember what I don’t know?” he demanded.

“I know I can’t.”

“And I’m no great detective like you.” Ed was a little rough with a brush. “And now I go for lunch but I’ve got to have a cop along. We can’t even go to the can alone. They searched all of us down to the skin, and they even brought a woman to search Janet. They took our fingerprints. I admit they’ve gotta have evidence.” He flipped the bib off. “How was the razor, all right?”

I told him it was fine as usual, stepped down, fished for a quarter, and exchanged it for my check. Purley Stebbins, nearby, was watching both of us. There had been times when I had seen fit to kid Purley at the scene of a murder, but not now. A cop had been killed.

He spoke, not belligerently. “The inspector don’t like your being here.”

“Neither do I,” I declared. “Thank God this didn’t happen to be Mr. Wolfe’s day for a haircut, you would never have believed it. I’m just a minor coincidence. Nice to see you.”

I went and paid my check to Fickler, got my things on, and departed.

III

As I emerged into Lexington Avenue there were several things on my mind. The most immediate was this: if Cramer’s suspicion had been aroused enough to spend a man on me, and if I were seen going directly home from the shop, there might be too much curiosity as to why I had chosen to spend six bits for a shave at that time of day. So instead of taking a taxi, which would have had to crawl crosstown anyhow, I walked, and when I got to Altman’s I used their aisles and exits to make sure I had no tail. That left my mind free for other things the rest of the way home.

One leading question was whether Carl and Tina would still be where I had left them, in the front room. That was what took me up the seven steps of the stoop two at a time, and on in quick. The answer to the question was no. The front room was empty.

I strode down the hall to the office but stopped there because I heard Wolfe’s voice. It was coming through the open door to the dining room, across the hall, and it was saying, “No, Mr. Vardas, I cannot agree that mountain climbing is merely one manifestation of man’s spiritual aspirations. I think instead it is an hysterical paroxysm of his infantile vanity. One of the prime ambitions of a jackass is to bray louder than any other jackass, and man is not …”

I crossed the hall and the dining-room sill. Wolfe was at his end of the table, and Fritz, standing at his elbow, had just removed the lid from a steaming platter. At his left was Tina, and Carl was at his right, my place when there was no company. Wolfe saw me but finished his paragraph on mountain climbing before attending to me.

“In time, Archie. You like veal and mushrooms.”

Talk about infantile. His not being willing to sit to his lunch with unfed people in the house was all well enough, but why not send trays in to them? That was easy — he was sore at me, and I had called them foreigners.

I stepped to the end of the table and said, “I know you have a paroxysm if I try to bring up business during meals, but eighteen thousand cops would give a month’s pay to get their hands on Carl and Tina, your guests.”

“Indeed.” Wolfe was serving the veal and accessories. “Why?”

“Have you talked with them?”

“No. I merely invited them to lunch.”

“Then don’t until I’ve reported. I ran into Cramer and Stebbins at the barber shop.”

“Confound it.” The serving spoon stopped en route.

“Yeah. It’s quite interesting. But first lunch, of course. I’ll go put the chain bolt on. Please dish me some veal?”

Carl and Tina were speechless.

That lunch was one of Wolfe’s best performances; I admit it. He didn’t know a damn thing about Carl and Tina except that they were in a jam, he knew that Cramer and Stebbins dealt only with homicide, and he had a strong prejudice against entertaining murderers at his table. Some years back a female prospective client had dined with us in an emergency, on roast Watertown goose. It turned out that she was a husband-poisoner, and roast goose had been off our menu for a solid year, though Wolfe was very fond of it. His only hope now was his knowledge that I was aware of his prejudice and even shared it, and I took my seat at the end of the table and disposed of a big helping of the veal and mushrooms, followed by pumpkin puffs, without batting an eye. He must have been fairly tight inside, but he stayed the polite host clear to the end, with no sign of hurry even with the coffee. Then, however, the tension began to tell. Ordinarily his return to the office after a meal was leisurely and lazy, but this time he went right along, followed by his guests and me. He marched across to his chair behind the desk, got his bulk deposited, and snapped at me, “What have you got us into now?”

I was pulling chairs around so the Vardas family would be facing him, but stopped to give him an eye.

“Us?” I inquired.

“Yes.”

“Okay,” I said courteously, “if that’s how it is. I did not invite them to come here, let alone to lunch. They came on their own, and I let them in, which is one of my functions. Having started it, I’ll finish it. May I use the front room, please? I’ll have them out of here in ten minutes.”

“Pfui.” He was supercilious. “I am now responsible for their presence, since they were my guests at lunch. Sit down, sir. Sit down, Mrs. Vardas, please.”

Carl and Tina didn’t know what from which. I had to push the chairs up behind their knees. Then I went to my own chair and swiveled to face Wolfe.

“I have a question to ask them,” I told him, “but first you need a couple of facts. They’re in this country without papers. They were in a concentration camp in Russia and they’re not telling how they got here if they can help it. They could be spies, but I doubt it after hearing them talk. Naturally they jump a mile if they hear someone say boo, and when a man came to the barber shop this morning and showed a police card and asked who they were and where they came from and what they were doing last night they scooted the first chance they got. But they didn’t know where to go so they came here to buy fifty bucks’ worth of advice and information. I got bighearted and went to the shop disguised as a Boy Scout.”

“You went?” Tina gasped.

I turned to them. “Sure I went. It’s a complicated situation, and you made it worse by beating it, but you did and here we are. I think I can handle it if you two can be kept out of the way. It would be dangerous for you to stay here. I know a safe place up in the Bronx for you to lay low for a few days. You shouldn’t take a chance on a taxi or the subway, so we’ll go around the corner to the garage and get Mr. Wolfe’s car, and you can drive it up there. Then I’ll—”

“Excuse me,” Carl said urgently. “You would drive us up there?”

“No, I’ll be busy. Then I’ll—”

“But I can’t drive a car! I don’t know how!”

“Then your wife will drive. You can leave—”

“She can’t! She don’t know either!”

I sprang from my chair and stood over them. “Look,” I said savagely, “save that for the cops. Can’t drive a car? Certainly you can! Everybody can!”

They were looking up at me, Carl bewildered, Tina frowning. “In America, yes,” she said. “But we are not Americans, not yet. We have never had a chance to learn.”

“You have never driven a car?”

“No. Never.”

“And Carl?”

“Never.”

“What the devil is this?” Wolfe demanded.

I returned to my chair. “That,” I said, “was the question I wanted to ask. It has a bearing, as you’ll soon see.” I regarded Carl and Tina. “If you’re lying about this, not knowing how to drive a car, you won’t be sent back home to die, you’ll die right here. It will be a cinch to find out if you’re lying.”

“Why should we?” Carl demanded. “What is so important in it?”

“Once more,” I insisted. “Can you drive a car?”

“No.”

“Can you, Tina?”

“No!”

“Okay.” I turned to Wolfe. “The caller at the barber shop this morning was a precinct dick named Wallen. Fickler took him to Tina’s booth, and he questioned Tina first. Then the others had sessions with him in the booth, in this order: Philip, Carl, Jimmie, Tom, Ed, and Janet. You may not know that the manicure booths are around behind the long partition. After Janet came out there was a period of ten or fifteen minutes when Wallen was in the booth alone. Then Fickler went to see, and what he saw was Wallen’s body with scissors buried in his back. Someone had stabbed him to death. Since Carl and Tina had lammed—”

Tina’s cry was more of a gasp, a last gasp, an awful sound. With one leap she was out of her chair and at Carl, grasping him and begging wildly, “Carl, no! No, no! Oh, Carl—”

“Make her stop,” Wolfe snapped.

I had to try, because Wolfe would rather be in a room with a hungry tiger than with a woman out of hand. I went and got a grip on her shoulder but released it at sight of the expression on Carl’s face as he pushed to his feet against her pressure. It looked as if he could and would handle it. He did. He straightened her up, standing against her, his face nearly touching hers, and told her, “No! Do you understand? No!”

He eased her back to her chair and down onto it, and turned to me. “That man was killed there in Tina’s booth?”

“Yes.”

Carl smiled as he had once before, and I wished he would stop trying it. “Then of course,” he said as if he were conceding a point in a tight argument, “this is the end for us. But please I must ask you not to blame my wife. Because we have been through many things together she is ready to credit me with many deeds that are far beyond me. She has a big idea of me, and I have a big idea of her. But I did not kill that man. I did not touch him.” He frowned. “I don’t understand why you suggested riding in a car to the Bronx. Of course you will give us to the police.”

“Forget the Bronx.” I was frowning back. “Every cop in town has his eye peeled for you. Sit down.”

He stood. He looked at Tina, at Wolfe, and back down at me.

“Sit down, damn it!”

He went to his chair and sat.

“About driving a car,” Wolfe muttered. “Was that flummery?”

“No, sir, that comes next. Last night around midnight a hit-and-run driver in a stolen car killed two women up on Broadway. The car was found parked at Broadway and Ninety-sixth Street. Wallen, from the Twentieth Precinct, was the first dick to look it over. In it he apparently found something that led him to the Goldenrod Barber Shop-anyhow he phoned his wife that he was on a hot one that would lead to glory and a raise and then he showed up at the shop and called the roll, as described. With the result also as described. Cramer has bought it that the hit-and-run driver found himself cornered and used the scissors, and Cramer, don’t quote me, is not a dope. To qualify as a hit-and-run driver you must meet certain specifications, and one of them is knowing how to drive a car. So the best plan would be for Carl and Tina to go back to the shop and report for duty and for the official quiz, if it wasn’t for two things. First, the fact that they lammed will make it very tough, and second, even though it is settled that they didn’t kill a cop, their lack of documents will fix them anyhow.”

I waved a hand. “So actually what’s the difference? If they’re sent back where they came from they’re doomed there, that’s all they have to pick from. One interesting angle is that you are harboring fugitives from justice, and I am not. I told Purley they’re here. So you’re—”

“You what?” Wolfe bellowed.

“What I said. That’s the advantage of having a reputation for gags, you can say practically anything if you handle your face right. I told him they were here in our front room, and he sailed right over it. So I’m clean, but you’re not. You can’t even just show them out. If you don’t want to call Cramer yourself, which I admit would be a little thick since they were your luncheon guests, I could get Purley at the shop and tell him they’re still here and why hasn’t he sent for them.”

“It might be better,” Tina said, not with hope, “just a little better, if you would let us go ourselves? No?”

She got no answer. Wolfe was glaring at me. It wasn’t that he needed my description of the situation to realize what a pickle he was in; I have never tried to deny that the interior decorator did a snappier job inside his skull than in mine. What had him boiling was my little stunt of getting it down that neither Carl nor Tina could drive a car. But for that it would still have been possible to let them meet the law and take what they got, and more or less shrug it off; now that was out of the question. Also, naturally, he resented my putting the burden on him. If I had taken a stand as a champion of humanity he could have blamed me for any trouble he was put to — and didn’t I know he would.

“There is,” he said, glaring, “another alternative to consider.”

“Yes, sir. What?”

“Let us just go ourselves,” Tina said.

“Pfui.” He moved the glare to her. “You would try to skedaddle and be caught within an hour.” Back to me. “You have told Mr. Stebbins they are here. We can simply keep them here and await developments. Since Mr. Cramer and Mr. Stebbins are still there at work, they may at any moment disclose the murderer.”

“Sure they may,” I agreed, “but I doubt it. They’re just being thorough; they’ve really settled for Carl and Tina, and what they’re looking for is evidence, especially what it was that led Wallen to the barber shop — though I suppose they haven’t much hope of that, since Carl and Tina could have taken it along. Anyway, you know how it is when they’ve got their minds aimed in one direction.”

Wolfe’s eyes went to Carl. “Did you and your wife leave the shop together?”

Carl shook his head. “That might have been noticed, so she went first. There is no place for ladies to go in the shop, so Tina and the other girl, Janet, go to a place down the hall when they need to, and she could leave with no attention. When she was gone I waited until they were all busy and Mr. Fickler was walking behind the partition, then I went quick out the door and ran upstairs to meet her there.”

“When was that?” I asked. “Who was in Tina’s booth with Wallen?”

“I don’t think anybody was. Janet had come out a while before. She was at Jimmie’s chair with a customer.”

“Good God.” I turned my palms up. “You left that place less than a minute, maybe only a few seconds, before Fickler found Wallen dead!”

“I don’t know.” Carl wasn’t fazed. “I only know I went and I didn’t touch that man.”

“This,” I told Wolfe, “makes it even nicer. There was a slim chance we could get it that they left sooner.”

“Yes.” He regarded me. “It must be assumed that Wallen was alive when Ed left the booth, since that young woman — what’s her name?”

“Janet.”

“I call few men, and no women, by their first names. What’s her name?”

“That’s all I know, Janet. It won’t bite you.”

“Stahl,” Tina said. “Janet Stahl.”

“Thank you. Wallen was presumably alive when Ed left the booth, since Miss Stahl followed him. So Miss Stahl, who saw Wallen last, and Mr. Fickler, who reported him dead — manifestly they had opportunity. What about the others?”

“You must remember,” I told him, “that I had just dropped in for a shave. I had to show the right amount of intellectual curiosity but I had to be damn careful not to carry it too far. From what Ed said, I gathered that opportunity is fairly wide open, except he excludes himself. As you know, they all keep darting behind that partition for one thing or another. Ed can’t remember who did and who didn’t during that ten or fifteen minutes, and it’s a safe bet that the others can’t remember either. The fact that the cops were interested enough to ask shows that Carl and Tina haven’t got a complete monopoly on it. As Ed remarked, they’ve gotta have evidence, and they’re still looking.”

Wolfe grunted in disgust.

“It also shows,” I went on, “that they haven’t got any real stopper to cork it, like prints from the car or localizing the scissors or anything they found on the corpse. They sure want Carl and Tina, and you know what happens when they get them, but they’re still short on exhibits. If you like your suggestion to keep our guests here until Cramer and Stebbins get their paws on the right guy it might work fine as a long-term policy, but you’re against the idea of women living here, or even a woman, and after a few months it might get on your nerves.”

“It is no good,” Tina said, back to her gasping whisper again. “Just let us go! I beg you, do that! We’ll find our way to the country, we know how. You are wonderful detectives, but it is no good!”

Wolfe ignored her. He leaned back, closed his eyes, and heaved a deep sigh, and from the way his nose began to twitch I knew he was coercing himself into facing the hard fact that he would have to go to work — either that or tell me to call Purley, and that was ruled out of bounds by both his self-respect and his professional vanity. The Vardas family sat gazing at him, not in hope, but not in utter despair either. I guess they had run out of despair long ago and had none left to call on. I watched Wolfe too, his twitching nose until it stopped, and then his lips in their familiar movement, pushed out and then pulled in, out and in again, which meant he had accepted the inevitable and was getting the machinery going. I had seen him like that for an hour at a stretch, but this time it was only minutes.

He sighed again, opened his eyes, and rasped at Tina, “Except for Mr. Fickler, that man questioned you first. Is that right?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Tell me what he said. What he asked. I want every word.”

I thought Tina did pretty well under the circumstances. Convinced that her goose was cooked and that therefore what Wallen had asked couldn’t affect her fate one way or the other, she tried to play ball anyway. She wrinkled her brow and concentrated, and it looked as if Wolfe got it all out of her. But she couldn’t give him what she didn’t have.

He kept after it. “You are certain he produced no object, showed you no object whatever?”