I had been scheduled to leave Saturday afternoon for a weekend jaunt to Lily Rowan’s fourteen-room shack in Westchester, but of course that had been knocked in the head — or rather, run over by a car. And my Sunday was no Sunday at all. Items:
Sergeant Purley Stebbins came bright and early, when Wolfe was still up in his room with his breakfast tray, to get filled in on the invasion by the lawyers. I accommodated him. He was suspicious when he arrived, and more suspicious when he left. Though I explained that my employer was a genius and time would show that his stiff-arming them was a brilliant stroke, Purley refused to believe that Wolfe would have those two corralled in his office and not do his damndest to get a needle in. He did accept five or six crescents and two cups of coffee, but that was only because no man who has ever tasted Fritz’s Sunday-morning crescents could possibly turn them down.
Wolfe and I both read every word of the accounts in the morning papers. Not that we hoped to get any hot leads, but at least we knew what the DA and Cramer had seen fit to release, and there were a few morsels to file for reference. Angela Wright, the Executive Secretary of Assadip, had formerly worked for Damon Fromm, and had been put in the Assadip job by him. Mrs. Fromm had supported more than forty charities and worthy causes, but Assadip had been her pet. Vincent Lipscomb, the publisher who had been at the dinner party at Horan’s apartment, had run a series of articles on displaced persons in his magazine, Modern Thought, and was planning another. Mrs. Dennis Horan had formerly been a movie star — well, anyhow, she had acted in movies. Paul Kuffner handled public relations for Assadip as a public service without remuneration, but he had also been professionally engaged in the interest of Mrs. Fromm personally. Dennis Horan was an authority on international law, belonged to five clubs, and had a reputation as an amateur chef.
There still wasn’t a word about the flap from Matthew Birch’s pocket that had been retrieved from the chassis of the car that had killed Pete Drossos. The police were hanging onto that one. But because of the similarity of the manner of the killings, the Birch murder was getting a play too.
Wolfe phoned his lawyer, Henry Parker, to ask about the process of a replevin and to tell him to get set for one in case Maddox kept his promise to make a grab for the ten grand. I had to track Parker down at a country club on Long Island.
Not a peep out of Jean Estey.
During the day three reporters phoned, and two made personal appearances on the stoop, but that was as far as they got. They didn’t like it that the Gazette had had an exclusive on Nero Wolfe’s working on the murder, and I sympathized with them.
My morning phone call to Lon Cohen at the Gazette was too early, and I left word for him to call me back, which he did. When I went there in the afternoon to collect a supply of prints of their best shots of the people we were interested in, I told Lon we could use a few dozen crucial inside facts, and he said he could too. He claimed they had printed everything they knew, though of course they had pecks of hot hearsay, such as that Mrs. Dennis Horan had once thrown a cocktail shaker at Mrs. Fromm, and that a certain importer had induced Vincent Lipscomb to publish an article favoring low tariffs by financing a trip to Europe. None of it seemed to me to be worth toting back to Thirty-fifth Street.
Anyway I had errands. For distribution of the photographs I met Saul Panzer at the Times Building, where he was boning up on displaced persons and Assadip; Orrie Cather at a bar and grill on Lexington Avenue, where he told me that the man who owed him a favor was playing golf at Van Cortlandt Park and could be seen later; and Fred Durkin at a restaurant on Broadway with his family, where Sunday dinner was $1.85 for adults and $1.15 for children. New York on a Sunday late in May is no place to open up a trail.
I made one little try on my own before heading back to Thirty-fifth Street. I don’t remember ever doing a favor for a jewelry salesman, but I did a big one once for a certain member of the NYPD. If I had done my duty as a citizen and a licensed detective, he would have got it good and would still be locked up, but there were circumstances. No one knows about it, not even Wolfe. The man I did the favor for has given me to understand that he would like to hold my coat and hat if I ever get in a brawl, but as far as possible I’ve steered clear of him. That Sunday I thought what the hell, give the guy a chance to work it off, and I rang him and met him somewhere.
I said I would give him five minutes to tell me who had killed Mrs. Fromm. He said the way it was going it would take him five years and no guarantee. I asked him if that was based on the latest dispatches, and he said yes. I said that was all I wanted to know and therefore withdrew my offer of five minutes, but if and when he could make it five hours instead of five years I would appreciate it if he would communicate.
He asked, “Communicate what?”
I said, “That it’s nearly ripe. That’s all. So I can tell Mr. Wolfe to dive for cover.”
“He’s too damn fat to dive.”
“I’m not.”
“Okay, it’s a deal. You sure that’s all?”
“Absolutely.”
“I thought maybe you were going to ask for Rowcliff’s head with an apple in his mouth.”
I went home and told Wolfe, “Relax. The cops are playing eeny, meeny, miney, mo. They know more than we do, but they’re no closer to the answer.”
“How do you know?”
“Gypsies. It’s authentic, fresh, and strictly private. I saw the boys and gave them the photos. Do you want the unimportant details?”
“No.”
“Any instructions?”
“No.”
“No program for me for tomorrow?”
“No.”
That was Sunday night.
Monday morning I got a treat. Wolfe never shows downstairs until eleven o’clock. After breakfast in his room he takes the elevator to the roof for the two hours with the plants before descending to the office. For morning communication with me he uses the house phone unless there is something special. Apparently that morning was special, for when Fritz came to the kitchen after taking breakfast up he announced solemnly, “Audience for you. Levée!” I spell it French because he pronounced it so.
I had finished with the morning paper, in which there was nothing to contradict my gypsies, and when my coffee cup was empty I ascended the one flight, knocked, and entered. On rainy mornings, or even gray ones, Wolfe breakfasts in bed, after tossing the black silk coverlet toward the foot because stains are bad for it, but when it’s bright he has Fritz put the tray on a table near a window. That morning it was bright, and I had my treat. Barefooted, his hair tousled, with his couple of acres of yellow pajamas dazzling in the sun, he was sensational.
We exchanged good mornings, and he told me to sit. There was nothing left on his plate, but he wasn’t through with the coffee.
“I have instructions,” he informed me.
“Okay. I was intending to be at the bank at ten o’clock to deposit Mrs. Fromm’s check.”
“You may. You will proceed from there. You will probably be out all day. Tell Fritz to answer the phone and take the usual precautions with visitors. Report by phone at intervals.”
“The funeral is at two o’clock.”
“I know, and therefore you may come home for lunch. We’ll see. Now the instructions.”
He gave them to me. Four minutes did it. At the end he asked if I had any questions.
I was frowning. “One,” I said. “It’s clear enough as far as it goes, but what am I after?”
“Nothing.”
“Then that’s probably what I’ll get.”
He sipped coffee. “It’s what I’ll expect. You’re stirring them up, that’s all. You’re turning a tiger loose in a crowd — or, if that’s too bombastic, a mouse. How will they take it? Will any of them tell the police, and if so, which one or ones?”
I nodded. “Sure, I see the possibilities, but I wanted to know if there is any specific item I’m supposed to get.”
“No. None.” He reached for the coffee pot.
I went down to the office. In a drawer of my desk there is an assortment of calling cards, nine or ten different kinds, worded differently for different needs and occasions. I took some engraved ones with my name in the center and “Representing Nero Wolfe” in the corner, and on six of them I wrote in ink beneath my name, “To discuss what Mrs. Fromm told Mr. Wolfe on Friday.” With them in my wallet, and the check and bankbook in my pocket, and a gun under my armpit, I was fully loaded, and I got my hat and beat it.
I walked to the bank, a pleasant fifteen-minute stretch on a fine May morning, and from there took a taxi to Sixty-eighth Street. I didn’t know what the home of a deceased millionairess would be like on the day of her funeral, which was to be held in a chapel on Madison Avenue, but outside it was quieter than it had been Saturday. The only evidences of anything uncommon were a cop in uniform on the sidewalk, with nothing to do, and black crepe hanging on the door. It wasn’t the same cop as on Saturday, and this one recognized me. As I made for the door he stopped me.
“You want something?”
“Yes, officer, I do.”
“You’re Archie Goodwin. What do you want?”
“I want to ring that bell, and hand Peckham my card to take to Miss Estey, and enter, and be conducted within, and engage in conversation—”
“Yeah, you’re Goodwin all right.”
That called for no reply, and he merely stood, so I walked past him into the vestibule and pushed the bell. In a moment the door was opened by Peckham. He may have been well trained, but the sight of me was too much for him. Instead of keeping his eyes on my face, as any butler worthy of the name should do, he let his bewilderment show as he took in my brown tropical worsted, light tan striped shirt, brown tie, and tan shoes. In fairness to him, remember it was the day of the funeral.
I handed him a card. “Miss Estey, please?”
He admitted me, but he had an expression on his face. He probably thought I was batty, since from the facts as he knew them that was the simplest explanation. Instead of ushering me down the hall, he told me to wait there, and went to the door to the office and disappeared inside. Voices issued, too low for me to catch the words, and then he came out.
“This way, Mr. Goodwin.”
He moved aside as I approached, and I passed through the door. Jean Estey was there at a desk with my card in her hand. Without bothering with any greeting, she asked me abruptly, “Will you please close the door?”
I did so and turned to her. She spoke. “You know what I told you Saturday, Mr. Goodwin.”
The greenish-brown eyes were straight at me. Below them the skin was puffy, either from too little sleep or too much, and while I still would have called her comely, she looked as if the two days since I had seen her had been two years.
I went to a chair near the end of her desk and sat. “You mean about the police asking you to see Nero Wolfe and pass it on?”
“Yes.”
“What about it?”
“Nothing, only — well — if Mr. Wolfe still wants to see me, I think I might go. I’m not sure — but I certainly wouldn’t tell the police what he said. I think they’re simply awful. It’s been more than two days since Mrs. Fromm was killed, fifty-nine hours, and I don’t think they’re getting anywhere at all.”
I had to make a decision in about one second. With the line she was taking, it was a cinch I could get her down to the office, but would Wolfe want her? Which would he want me to do, get her to the office or follow my instructions? I don’t know what I would have decided if I could have gone into a huddle with myself to think it over, but it had to be a flash vote and it went for instructions.
I spoke. “I’ll tell Mr. Wolfe how you feel, Miss Estey, and I’m sure he’ll be glad to hear it, but I ought to explain that what it says on that card — ‘Representing Nero Wolfe’ — is not exactly true. I’m here on my own.”
She cocked her head. “On your own? Don’t you work for Nero Wolfe?”
“Sure I do, but I work for me too when I get a good chance. I have an offer to make you.”
She glanced at the card. “It says, ‘To discuss what Mrs. Fromm told Mr. Wolfe on Friday.’”
“That’s right, that’s what I want to discuss, but just between you and me.”
“I don’t understand.”
“You soon will.” I leaned toward her and lowered my voice. “You see, I was present during the talk Mrs. Fromm had with Mr. Wolfe. All of it. I have an extremely good memory. I could recite it to you word for word, or mighty close to it.”
“Well?”
“Well, I think you would appreciate hearing it. I have reason to believe you would find it very interesting. You may think I’m sticking my neck out, but I have been Mr. Wolfe’s confidential assistant for a good many years, and I’ve done some good work for him, and I’ve seen to it that he has learned to trust me, and if you call him up when I leave here, or go to see him, and tell him what I said to you, he’ll think you’re trying to pull a fast one. And when he asks me and I tell him you’re a dirty liar, he’ll believe me. So don’t worry about my neck. I’ll tell you about that talk, all of it, for five thousand dollars cash.”
She said, “Oh,” or maybe it was “Uh,” but it was just a noise. Then she just stared.
“Naturally,” I said, “I don’t expect you to have that amount in your purse, so this afternoon will do, but I’ll have to be paid in advance.”
“This is incredible,” she said. “Why on earth should I pay you five cents to tell me about that talk? Let alone five thousand dollars. Why?”
I shook my head. “That would be telling. After you pay and I deliver, you may or may not feel that you got your money’s worth. I’m giving no guarantee of satisfaction, but I’d be a fool to come here with such an offer if all I had was a bag of popcorn.”
Her gaze left me. She opened a drawer to get a pack of cigarettes, removed one, tapped its end several times on a memo pad, and reached for a desk lighter. But the cigarette didn’t get lit. She dropped it and put the lighter down. “I suppose,” she said, her eyes back to me, “I should be insulted and indignant, and I suppose I will, but now I’m too shocked. I didn’t know you were a common skunk. If I had that much money to toss around I’d like to pay you and hear it. I’d like to hear what kind of a lie you’re trying to sell me. You’d better go.” She rose. “Get out of here!”
“Miss Estey, I think—”
“Get out!”
I have seen skunks in motion, both skunks unperturbed and skunks in a hurry, and they are not dignified. I was. Taking my hat from a corner of the desk, I walked out. In the hall Peckham showed his relief at getting rid of a lunatic undertaker without regrettable incident by bowing to me as he held the door open. On the sidewalk the cop thought he would say something and then decided no.
Around the corner I found a phone booth in a drugstore, called Wolfe and gave him a full report as instructed, and flagged a taxi headed downtown.
The address of my second customer, on Gramercy Park, proved to be an old yellow brick apartment house with a uniformed doorman, a spacious lobby with fine old rugs, and an elevator with a bad attack of asthma. It finally got the chauffeur and me to the eighth floor, after the doorman had phoned up and passed me. When I pushed the button at the door of 8B it was opened by a female master sergeant dressed like a maid, who admitted me, took my hat, and directed me to an archway at the end of the hall.
It was a large high-ceilinged living room, more than fully furnished, the dominant colors of its drapes and upholstery and rugs being yellow, violet, light green, and maroon — at least that was the impression gained from a glance around. A touch of black was supplied by the dress of the woman who moved to meet me as I approached. The black was becoming to her, with her ash-blond hair gathered into a bun at the back, her clear blue eyes, and her pale carefully tended skin. She didn’t offer a hand, but her expression was not hostile.
“Mrs. Horan?” I inquired.
She nodded. “My husband will be furious at me for seeing you, but I was simply too curious. Of course I should be sure — you are the Archie Goodwin that works for Nero Wolfe?”
I got a card from my wallet and handed it to her, and she held it at an angle for better light. Then she widened her eyes at me. “But I don’t— ‘To discuss what Mrs. Fromm told Mr. Wolfe’? With me? Why with me?”
“Because you’re Mrs. Dennis Horan.”
“Yes, I am, of course.” Her tone implied that that angle hadn’t occurred to her. “My husband will be furious!”
I glanced over my shoulder. “Perhaps we might sit over by a window? This is rather private.”
“Certainly.” She turned and found a way among pieces of furniture, and I followed. She took a chair at the far end near a window, and I moved one over close enough to make it cozy.
“You know,” she said, “this is the most dreadful thing. The most dreadful. Laura Fromm was such a fine person.” She might have used the same tone and expression to tell me she liked the way I had my hair cut. She added, “Did you know her well?”
“No, I saw her only once, last Friday when she came to consult Mr. Wolfe.”
“He’s a detective, isn’t he?”
“That’s right.”
“Are you a detective too?”
“Yes, I work for Mr. Wolfe.”
“It’s simply fascinating. Of course there have been two men here asking questions — no, three — and Saturday more of them at the District Attorney’s office, but they’re really only policemen. You’re truly a detective. I would never have thought a detective would be so — would dress so well.” She made a pretty little gesture. “But here I am babbling along as usual, and you want to discuss something with me, don’t you?”
“That was the idea. What Mrs. Fromm said to Mr. Wolfe.”
“Then you’ll have to tell me what she said. I can’t discuss it until I know what it was. Can I?”
“No,” I conceded, “but I can’t tell you until I know how much you want to hear it.”
“Oh, I do want to hear it!”
“Good. I thought you would. You see, Mrs. Horan, I was in the room all the time Mrs. Fromm and Mr. Wolfe were talking, and I remember every word they said. That’s why I thought you would be extremely curious about it, so I’m not surprised that you are. The trouble is, I can’t afford to satisfy your curiosity as a gift. I should have explained, I’m not here representing Nero Wolfe, that’s why I said it’s rather private. I’m representing just myself. I’ll satisfy your curiosity if you’ll lend me five thousand dollars to be repaid the day it rains up instead of down.”
The only visible reaction was that the blue eyes widened a little. “That’s an amusing idea,” she said, “raining up instead of down. Would it be raining from the clouds up, or up from the ground to the clouds?”
“Either way would do.”
“I like it better up from the ground.” A pause. “What did you say about lending you some money? I beg your pardon, but my mind got onto the raining up.”
I was ready to admit she was too much for me, but I struggled on. I abandoned the rain. “If you’ll pay me five thousand dollars I’ll tell you what Mrs. Fromm told Mr. Wolfe. Cash in advance.”
Her eyes widened. “Was that what you said? I guess I didn’t understand.”
“I made it fancy by dragging in the rain. Sorry. It’s better that way, plain.”
She shook her pretty head. “It’s not better for me, Mr. Goodwin. It sounds absolutely crazy, unless — oh, I see! You mean she told him something awful about me! That doesn’t surprise me any, but what was it?”
“I didn’t say she said anything about you. I merely—”
“But of course she did! She would! What was it?”
“No.” I was emphatic. “Maybe I didn’t make it plain enough.” I stuck up a finger. “First you give me money.” Another finger. “Second, I give you facts. I’m offering to sell you something, that’s all.”
She nodded regretfully. “That’s the real trouble.”
“What is?”
“Why, you don’t really mean it. If you offered to tell me for twenty dollars that might be different, and of course I’d love to know what she said — but five thousand! Do you know what I think, Mr. Goodwin?”
“I do not.”
“I think you’re much too fine a person to use this kind of tactics to stir up my curiosity just to get me talking. When you walked in I wouldn’t have dreamed you were like that, especially your eyes. I go by eyes.”
I also go by eyes up to a point, and hers didn’t fit her performance. Though not the keenest and smartest I had ever seen, they were not the eyes of a scatterbrain. I would have liked to stay an hour or so to make a stab at tagging her, but my instructions were to put it bluntly, note the reaction, and move on; and besides, I wanted to get in as many as possible before funeral time. So I arose to leave. She was sorry to see me go; she even hinted that she might add ten to her counteroffer of twenty bucks; but I let her know that her remark about my tactics had hurt my feelings and I wanted to be alone.
Down on the street I found a phone booth to report to Wolfe and then took a taxi to Forty-second Street.
I had been informed by Lon Cohen that I shouldn’t mark it against the Association for the Aid of Displaced Persons that they sported an elegant sunny office on the twenty-sixth floor of one of the newer midtown commercial palaces, because Mrs. Fromm owned the building and they paid no rent. Even so, it was a lot of dog for an outfit devoted to the relief of the unfortunate and oppressed. There in the glistening reception room I had an example before my eyes. At one end of a brown leather settee, slumped in weariness and despair, wearing an old gray suit two sizes too large for him, was a typical specimen. As I shot him a glance I wondered how it impressed him, but then I glanced again and quit wondering. It was Saul Panzer. Our eyes met, then his fell, and I went to the woman at the desk, who had a long thin nose and a chin to match.
She said Miss Wright was engaged and was available only for appointments. After producing a card and persuading her to relay not only my name but the message under it, I was told I would be received, but she didn’t like it. She made it clear, with her tight lips and the set of her jaw, that she wanted no part of me.
I was shown into a large corner room with windows on two sides, giving views of Manhattan south and east. There were two desks, but only one of them was occupied, by a brown-haired female executive who looked almost as weary as Saul Panzer but wasn’t giving in to it and didn’t intend to.
She greeted me with a demand. “May I see your card, please?”
It had been read to her on the phone. I crossed and handed it over. She looked at it and then up at me. “I’m very busy. Is this urgent?”
“It won’t take long, Miss Wright.”
“What good will it do to discuss it with me?”
“I don’t know. You’ll have to leave that open, whether it does any good or not. I’m speaking strictly for myself, not for Nero Wolfe, and there’s no—”
“Didn’t Nero Wolfe send you here?”
“No.”
“Did the police?”
“No. This is my idea. I’ve had some bad luck and I need some cash, and I’ve got something to sell. I know this is a bad day for you, with Mrs. Fromm’s funeral this afternoon, but this won’t keep — at least I can’t count on it — and I need five thousand dollars as soon as I can get it.”
She smiled with one side of her mouth. “I’m afraid I haven’t that much with me, if this is a stickup. Aren’t you a reputable licensed detective?”
“I try to be. As I said, I’ve had some bad luck. All I’m doing, I’m offering to sell you something, and you can take it or leave it. It depends on how much you would like to know exactly what Mrs. Fromm told Mr. Wolfe. At five thousand dollars it might be a swell bargain for you, or it might not. You would be a better judge of that than I am, but of course you can’t know until after you hear it.”
She regarded me. “So that’s it,” she said.
“That’s it,” I concurred.
Her brown eyes were harder to meet than Jean Estey’s had been, or Claire Horan’s. My problem was to have the look of a man with a broad streak of rat in him, but also one who could be depended on to deliver as specified. Her straight hard gaze gave me a feeling that I wasn’t dressed right for the part, and I was trying to give orders to my face not to show it. The face felt as if it might help to be doing something, so I used my mouth. “You understand, Miss Wright, this is a bona fide offer. I can and will tell you everything they said.”
“But you would want the money first.” Her voice was as hard as her eyes.
I turned a hand over. “I’m afraid that’s the only way we could do it. You could tell me to go soak my head.”
“So I could.” Her mind was working. “Perhaps we can arrange a compromise.” She got a pad of paper from a drawer and pushed her desk pen across. “Pull up a chair, or use the other desk, and put your offer in writing, briefly. Put it like this: ‘Upon payment to me by Angela Wright of five thousand dollars in cash, I will relate to her, in full and promptly, the conversation that took place between Laura Fromm and Nero Wolfe last Friday afternoon.’ And date it and sign it, that’s all.”
“And give it to you?”
“Yes. I’ll return it as soon as you have kept your side of the bargain. Isn’t that fair?”
I smiled down at her. “Now really, Miss Wright. If I were as big a sap as that how long do you think I would have lasted with Nero Wolfe?”
She smiled back. “Would you like to know what I think?”
“Sure.”
“I think that if you were capable of selling secrets you learned in Wolfe’s office he would have known it long ago and would have thrown you out.”
“I said I had some bad luck.”
“Not that bad. I’m not a sap either. Of course you’re right about one thing — that is, Mr. Wolfe is — I would like very much to know what Mrs. Fromm consulted him about. Naturally. I wonder what would actually happen if I scraped up the money and handed it over?”
“There’s an easy way of finding out.”
“Perhaps there’s an easier one. I could go to Mr. Wolfe and ask him.”
“I’d call you a liar.”
She nodded. “Yes, I suppose you would. He couldn’t very well admit he had sent you with such an offer.”
“Especially if he didn’t.”
The brown eyes flashed for an instant and then were hard again. “Do you know what I resent most, Mr. Goodwin? I resent being taken for a complete fool. That’s my vanity. Tell Mr. Wolfe that. Tell him that I don’t mind his trying this little trick on me, but I do mind his underrating me.”
I grinned at her. “You like that idea, don’t you?”
“Yes, it appeals to me strongly.”
“Okay, hang onto it. For that there’s no charge.”
I turned and went. As I passed through the reception room and saw Saul there on the settee I would have liked to warn him that he was up against a mind-reader, but of course had to skip it.
Down in the lobby I found a phone booth and reported to Wolfe and then went to a fountain for a Coke, partly because I was thirsty and partly because I wanted time out for a post-mortem. Had I bungled it, or was she too damn smart for me, or what? As I finished the Coke I decided that the only way to keep feminine intuition from sneaking through an occasional lucky stab was to stay away from women altogether, which wasn’t practical. Anyhow, Wolfe hadn’t seemed to think it mattered, since I had made her the offer and that was the chief point.
It was a short walk to my next stop, an older and dingier office building on Forty-third Street west of Fifth Avenue. After taking the elevator to the fourth floor and entering a door that was labeled Modern Thoughts, I got a pleasant surprise. Having on Sunday bought a copy of the magazine that Vincent Lipscomb edited, and looked through it before passing it to Wolfe, I had supposed that any female employed by it would have all her points of interest, if any, inside her skull; but a curvy little number with dancing eyes, seated at a switchboard, gave me one bright glance and then welcomed me with a smile which indicated that the only reason she had taken the job was that she thought I would show up someday.
I would have enjoyed cooperating by asking her what kind of orchids she liked, but it would soon be noon, so I merely returned the smile, told her I wanted to see Mr. Lipscomb, and handed her a card.
“A card?” she said appreciatively. “Real style, huh?” Seeing what was on it, she gave me a second look, still friendly but more reserved, inserted a plug with lively fingers, pressed a button, and in a moment spoke into the transmitter.
She pulled out the plug, handed me the card, and said, “Through there and third door on the left.”
I didn’t have to count to three because as I started down the dark narrow hall a door opened and a man appeared and bellowed at me as if I had been across a river, “In here!” Then he went back in. When I entered he was standing with his back to a window with his hands thrust into his pants pockets. The room was small, and the one desk and two chairs could have been picked up on Second Avenue for the price of a pair of Warburton shoes.
“Mr. Lipscomb?”
“Yes.”
“You know who I am.”
“Yes.”
His voice, though below a bellow, was up to five times as many decibels as were needed. It could have been to match his stature, for he was two inches above me, with massive shoulders that much wider; or it could have been in compensation for his nose, which was wide and flat and would have spoiled any map no matter what the rest of it was.
“This is a confidential matter,” I told him. “Personal and private.”
“Yes.”
“And between you and me only. My proposition is just from me and it’s just for you.”
“What is it?”
“An offer to exchange information for cash. Since you’re a magazine editor, that’s an old story to you. For five thousand dollars I’ll tell you about the talk Mrs. Fromm had with Mr. Wolfe last Friday. Authentic and complete.”
He removed a hand from a pocket to scratch a cheek, then put it back. When he spoke his voice was down to a reasonable level. “My dear fellow, I’m not Harry Luce. Anyway, magazines don’t buy like that. The procedure is this: you tell me in confidence what you have, and then, if I can use it, we agree on the amount. If we can’t agree, no one is out anything.” He raised the broad shoulders and let them drop. “I don’t know. I shall certainly run a piece on Laura Fromm, a thoughtful and provocative piece; she was a great woman and a great lady; but at the moment I don’t see how your information would fit in. What’s it like?”
“I don’t mean for your magazine, Mr. Lipscomb, I mean for you personally.”
He frowned. If he wasn’t straight he was good. “I’m afraid I don’t get you.”
“It’s perfectly simple. I heard that talk, all of it. That evening Mrs. Fromm was murdered, and you’re involved, and I have—”
“That’s absurd. I am not involved. Words are my specialty, Mr. Goodwin, and one difficulty with them is that everybody uses them, too often in ignorance of their proper meaning. I’m willing to assume that you used that word in ignorance — otherwise it was slanderous. I am not involved.”
“Okay. Are you concerned?”
“Of course I am. I wasn’t intimate with Mrs. Fromm, but I esteemed her highly and was proud to know her.”
“You were at the party at Horan’s Friday evening. You were one of the last to see her alive. The police, who specialize in words too in a way, have asked you a lot of questions and will ask you more. But say you’re concerned. Everything considered, including what I heard Mrs. Fromm tell Mr. Wolfe, I thought you might be concerned five thousand dollars’ worth.”
“This begins to sound like blackmail. Is it?”
“Search me. You’re the word specialist. I’m ignorant.”
His hands abruptly left his pockets, and for a second I thought he was going to make contact, but he only rubbed his palms together. “If it’s blackmail,” he said, “there must be a threat. If I pay, what then?”
“No threat. You get the information, that’s all.”
“And if I don’t pay?”
“You don’t get it.”
“Who does?”
I shook my head. “I said no threat. I’m just trying to sell you something.”
“Of course. A threat doesn’t have to be explicit. It has been published that Wolfe is investigating the death of Mrs. Fromm.”
“Right.”
“But she didn’t engage him to do that, since surely she wasn’t anticipating her death. This is how it looks. She paid Wolfe to investigate something or somebody, and that evening she was killed. He considered himself under obligation to investigate her death. You can’t be offering to sell me information that Wolfe regards as being connected with her death, because you couldn’t possibly suppress such evidence without Wolfe’s connivance, and you’re not claiming that, are you?”
“No.”
“Then what you’re offering is information, something Mrs. Fromm told Wolfe, that need not be disclosed as related to her death. Isn’t that correct?”
“No comment.”
He shook his head. “That won’t do. Unless you tell me that, I couldn’t possibly deal with you. I don’t say I will deal if you do tell me, but without that I can’t decide.”
He about-faced and was looking out the window, if his eyes were open. All I had was his broad back. He stayed that way long enough to take his temperature, and then some. Finally he turned.
“I don’t see that it would help any, Goodwin, for me to characterize your conduct as it deserves. Good God, what a way to make a living! Here I am, giving all my time and talent and energy in an effort to improve the tone of human conduct — and there you are. But that doesn’t interest you — all you care about is money. Good God! Money! I’ll think it over. I may phone you and I may not. You’re in the book?”
I told him yes, Nero Wolfe’s number, and, not caring to hear any more ugly facts about myself as compared to him, I slunk out. My cheerful little friend at the switchboard might have been willing to buck me up some, but I felt it would be bad for her to have any contact with my kind of character and went right on by.
Down the street I found a phone booth, dialed the number I knew best, and had Wolfe’s voice in my ear.
“Ready with Number Four,” I told him. “Lipscomb. Are you comfortable?”
“Go ahead. No questions.”
His saying “No questions” meant that he was not alone. So I took extra care to give it all to him, including my spot opinion of the improver of the tone of human conduct. That done, I told him it was twenty minutes past twelve, to save him the trouble of looking up at the clock, and asked if I should proceed to Number Five, Paul Kuffner, the public-relations adviser who had operated on me so smoothly when he found me with Jean Estey.
“No,” he said curtly. “Come home at once. Mr. Paul Kuffner is here, and I want to see you.”