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?”
“Yes, I’m sure he didn’t.”
“He asked about no object, anything, in the shop?”
“No.”
“He mentioned no object at all?”
“No.”
“He took nothing from his pocket?”
“No.”
“The newspaper he had. Didn’t he take that from his pocket?”
“No, like I said, he had it in his hand when he came in the booth.”
“In his hand or under his arm?”
“In his hand. I think — yes, I’m sure.”
“Was it folded up?”
“Well, of course newspapers are folded.”
“Yes, Mrs. Vardas. Just remember the newspaper as you saw it in his hand. I’m making a point of it because there is nothing else to make a point of, and we must have a point if we can find one. Was the newspaper folded up as if he had had it in his pocket?”
“No, it wasn’t.” She was trying hard. “It wasn’t folded that much. Like I said, it was a News. When he sat down he put it on the table, at the end by his right hand — yes, that’s right, my left hand; I moved some of my things to make room — and it was the way it is on the newsstand, so that’s all it was folded.”
“But he didn’t mention it?”
“No.”
“And you noticed nothing unusual about it? I mean the newspaper?”
She shook her head. “It was just a newspaper.”
Wolfe repeated the performance with Carl and got more of the same. No object produced or mentioned, no hint of any. The only one on exhibit, the newspaper, had been there on the end of the table when Carl, sent by Fickler, had entered and sat, and Wallen had made no reference to it. Carl was more practical than Tina. He didn’t work as hard as she had trying to remember Wallen’s exact words, and I must say I couldn’t blame him.
Wolfe gave up trying to get what they didn’t have. He leaned back, compressed his lips, closed his eyes, and tapped with his forefingers on the ends of his chair arms. Carl and Tina looked at each other a while, then she got up and went to him, started combing his hair with her fingers, saw I was looking, began to blush, God knows why, and went back to her chair.
Finally Wolfe opened his eyes. “Confound it,” he said peevishly, “it’s impossible. Even if I had a move to make I couldn’t make it. If I so much as stir a finger Mr. Cramer will start yelping, and I have no muzzle for him. Any effort to—”
The doorbell rang. During lunch Fritz had been told to leave it to me, so I arose, crossed to the hall, and went front. But not all the way. Four paces short of the door I saw, through the one-way glass panel, the red rugged face and the heavy broad shoulders. I wheeled and returned to the office, not dawdling, and told Wolfe, “The man to fix the chair.”
“Indeed.” His head jerked up. “The front room.”
“I could tell him—”
“No.”
Carl and Tina, warned by our tone and tempo, were on their feet. The bell rang again. I moved fast to the door to the front room and pulled it open, telling them, “In here quick. Step on it.” They obeyed without a word, as if they had known me and trusted me for years, but what choice did they have? When they has passed through I said, “Relax and keep quiet,” shut the door, glanced at Wolfe and got a nod, went to the hall and to the door, opened it, and said morosely, “Hello. What now?”
“It took you long enough,” Inspector Cramer growled, crossing the threshold.