I

The young woman took a pink piece of paper from her handbag, got up from the red leather chair, put the paper on Nero Wolfe’s desk, and sat down again. Feeling it my duty to keep myself informed and also to save Wolfe the exertion of leaning forward and reaching so far, I arose and crossed to hand the paper to him after a glance at it. It was a check for five thousand dollars, dated that day, August fourteenth, made out to him, and signed Margaret Mion. He gave a look and dropped it back on the desk.

“I thought,” she said, “perhaps that would be the best way to start the conversation.”

In my chair at my desk, taking her in, I was readjusting my attitude. When early that Sunday afternoon, she had phoned for an appointment, I had dug up a vague recollection of a picture of her in the paper some months back, and had decided it would be no treat to meet her, but now I was hedging. Her appeal wasn’t what she had, which was only so-so, but what she did with it. I don’t mean tricks. Her mouth wasn’t attractive even when she smiled, but the smile was. Her eyes were just a pair of brown eyes, nothing at all sensational, but it was a pleasure to watch them move around, from Wolfe to me to the man who had come with her, seated off to her left. I guessed she had maybe three years to go to reach thirty.

“Don’t you think,” the man asked her, “we should get some questions answered first?”

His tone was strained and a little harsh, and his face matched it. He was worried and didn’t care who knew it. With his deep-set gray eyes and well-fitted jaw he might on a happier day have passed for a leader of men, but not as he now sat. Something was eating him. When Mrs. Mion had introduced him as Mr. Frederick Weppler I had recognized the name of the music critic of the Gazette, but I couldn’t remember whether he had been mentioned in the newspaper accounts of the event that had caused the publication of Mrs. Mion’s picture.

She shook her head at him, not arbitrarily. “It wouldn’t help, Fred, really. We’ll just have to tell it and see what he says.” She smiled at Wolfe — or maybe it wasn’t actually a smile, but just her way of handling her lips. “Mr. Weppler wasn’t quite sure we should come to see you, and I had to persuade him. Men are more cautious than women, aren’t they?”

“Yes,” Wolfe agreed, and added, “Thank heaven.”

She nodded. “I suppose so.” She gestured. “I brought that check with me to show that we really mean it. We’re in trouble and we want you to get us out. We want to get married and we can’t. That is — if I should just speak for myself — I want to marry him.” She looked at Weppler, and this time it was unquestionably a smile. “Do you want to marry me, Fred?”

“Yes,” he muttered. Then he suddenly jerked his chin up and looked defiantly at Wolfe. “You understand this is embarrassing, don’t you? It’s none of your business, but we’ve come to get your help. I’m thirty-four years old, and this is the first time I’ve ever been—” He stopped. In a moment he said stiffly, “I am in love with Mrs. Mion and I want to marry her more than I have ever wanted anything in my life.” His eyes went to his love and he murmured a plea. “Peggy!”

Wolfe grunted. “I accept that as proven. You both want to get married. Why don’t you?”

“Because we can’t,” Peggy said. “We simply can’t. It’s on account — you may remember reading about my husband’s death in April, four months ago? Alberto Mion, the opera singer?”

“Vaguely. You’d better refresh my memory.”

“Well, he died — he killed himself.” There was no sign of a smile now. “Fred — Mr. Weppler and I found him. It was seven o’clock, a Tuesday evening in April, at our apartment on East End Avenue. Just that afternoon Fred and I had found out that we loved each other, and—”

“Peggy!” Weppler called sharply.

Her eyes darted to him and back to Wolfe. “Perhaps I should ask you, Mr. Wolfe. He thinks we should tell you just enough so you understand the problem, and I think you can’t understand it unless we tell you everything. What do you think?”

“I can’t say until I hear it. Go ahead. If I have questions, we’ll see.”

She nodded. “I imagine you’ll have plenty of questions. Have you ever been in love but would have died rather than let anyone see it?”

“Never,” Wolfe said emphatically. I kept my face straight.

“Well, I was, and I admit it. But no one knew it, not even him. Did you, Fred?”

“I did not.” Weppler was emphatic too.

“Until that afternoon,” Peggy told Wolfe. “He was at the apartment for lunch, and it happened right after lunch. The others had left, and all of a sudden we were looking at each other, and then he spoke or I did, I don’t know which.” She looked at Weppler imploringly. “I know you think this is embarrassing, Fred, but if he doesn’t know what it was like he won’t understand why you went upstairs to see Alberto.”

“Does he have to?” Weppler demanded.

“Of course he does.” She returned to Wolfe. “I suppose I can’t make you see what it was like. We were completely — well, we were in love, that’s all, and I guess we had been for quite a while without saying it, and that made it all the more — more overwhelming. Fred wanted to see my husband right away, to tell him about it and decide what we could do, and I said all right, so he went upstairs—”

“Upstairs?”

“Yes, it’s a duplex, and upstairs was my husband’s soundproofed studio, where he practiced. So he went—”

“Please, Peggy,” Weppler interrupted her. His eyes went to Wolfe. “You should have it firsthand. I went up to tell Mion that I loved his wife, and she loved me and not him, and to ask him to be civilized about it. Getting a divorce has come to be regarded as fairly civilized, but he didn’t see it that way. He was anything but civilized. He wasn’t violent, but he was damned mean. After some of that I got afraid I might do to him what Gif James had done, and I left. I didn’t want to go back to Mrs. Mion while I was in that state of mind, so I left the studio by the door to the upper hall and took the elevator there.”

He stopped.

“And?” Wolfe prodded him.

“I walked it off. I walked across to the park, and after a while I had calmed down and I phoned Mrs. Mion, and she met me in the park. I told her what Mion’s attitude was, and I asked her to leave him and come with me. She wouldn’t do that.” Weppler paused, and then went on, “There are two complications you ought to have if you’re to have everything.”

“If they’re relevant, yes.”

“They’re relevant all right. First, Mrs. Mion had and has money of her own. That was an added attraction for Mion. It wasn’t for me. I’m just telling you.”

“Thank you. And the second?”

“The second was Mrs. Mion’s reason for not leaving Mion immediately. I suppose you know he had been the top tenor at the Met for five or six years, and his voice was gone — temporarily. Gifford James, the baritone, had hit him on the neck with his fist and hurt his larynx — that was early in March — and Mion couldn’t finish the season. It had been operated, but his voice hadn’t come back, and naturally he was glum, and Mrs. Mion wouldn’t leave him under those circumstances. I tried to persuade her to, but she wouldn’t. I wasn’t anything like normal that day, on account of what had happened to me for the first time in my life, and on account of what Mion had said to me, so I wasn’t reasonable and I left her in the park and went downtown to a bar and started drinking. A lot of time went by and I had quite a few, but I wasn’t pickled. Along toward seven o’clock I decided I had to see her again and carry her off so she wouldn’t spend another night there. That mood took me back to East End Avenue and up to the twelfth floor, and then I stood there in the hall a while, perhaps ten minutes, before my finger went to the pushbutton. Finally I rang, and the maid let me in and went for Mrs. Mion, but I had lost my nerve or something. All I did was suggest that we should have a talk with Mion together. She agreed, and we went upstairs and—”

“Using the elevator?”

“No, the stairs inside the apartment. We entered the studio. Mion was on the floor. We went over to him. There was a big hole through the top of his head. He was dead. I led Mrs. Mion out, made her come, and on the stairs — they’re too narrow to go two abreast — she fell and rolled halfway down. I carried her to her room and put her on her bed, and I started for the living room, for the phone there, when I thought of something to do first. I went out and took the elevator to the ground floor, got the doorman and elevator man together, and asked them who had been taken up to the Mion apartment, either the twelfth floor or the thirteenth, that afternoon. I said they must be damn sure not to skip anybody. They gave me the names and I wrote them down. Then I went back up to the apartment and phoned the police. After I did that it struck me that a layman isn’t supposed to decide if a man is dead, so I phoned Dr. Lloyd, who has an apartment there in the building. He came at once, and I took him up to the studio. We hadn’t been there more than three or four minutes when the first policeman came, and of course—”

“If you please,” Wolfe put in crossly. “Everything is sometimes too much. You haven’t even hinted at the trouble you’re in.”

“I’ll get to it—”

“But faster, I hope, if I help. My memory has been jogged. The doctor and the police pronounced him dead. The muzzle of the revolver had been thrust into his mouth, and the emerging bullet had torn out a piece of his skull. The revolver, found lying on the floor beside him, belonged to him and was kept there in the studio. There was no sign of any struggle and no mark of any other injury on him. The loss of his voice was an excellent motive for suicide. Therefore, after a routine investigation, giving due weight to the difficulty of sticking the barrel of a loaded revolver into a man’s mouth without arousing him to protest, it was recorded as suicide. Isn’t that correct?”

They both said yes.

“Have the police reopened it? Or is gossip at work?”

They both said no.

“Then let’s get on. Where’s the trouble?”

“It’s us,” Peggy said.

“Why? What’s wrong with you?”

“Everything.” She gestured. “No. I don’t mean that — not everything, just one thing. After my husband’s death and the — the routine investigation, I went away for a while. When I came back — for the past two months Fred and I have been together some, but it wasn’t right — I mean we didn’t feel right. Day before yesterday, Friday, I went to friends in Connecticut for the weekend, and he was there. Neither of us knew the other was coming. We talked it out yesterday and last night and this morning, and we decided to come and ask you to help us — anyway, I did, and he wouldn’t let me come alone.”

Peggy leaned forward and was in deadly earnest. “You must help us, Mr. Wolfe. I love him so much — so much! — and he says he loves me, and I know he does! Yesterday afternoon we decided we would get married in October, and then last night we got started talking — but it isn’t what we say, it’s what is in our eyes when we look at each other. We just can’t get married with that back of our eyes and trying to hide it—”

A little shiver went over her. “For years — forever? We can’t! We know we can’t — it would be horrible! What it is, it’s a question: who killed Alberto? Did he? Did I? I don’t really think he did, and he doesn’t really think I did — I hope he doesn’t — but it’s there back of our eyes, and we know it is!”

She extended both hands. “We want you to find out!”

Wolfe snorted. “Nonsense. You need a spanking or a psychiatrist. The police may have shortcomings, but they’re not nincompoops. If they’re satisfied—”

“But that’s it! They wouldn’t be satisfied if we had told the truth!”

“Oh.” Wolfe’s brows went up. “You lied to them?”

“Yes. Or if we didn’t lie, anyhow we didn’t tell them the truth. We didn’t tell them that when we first went in together and saw him, there was no gun lying there. There was no gun in sight.”

“Indeed. How sure are you?”

“Absolutely positive. I never saw anything clearer than I saw that — that sight — all of it. There was no gun.”

Wolfe snapped at Weppler, “You agree, sir?”

“Yes. She’s right.”

Wolfe sighed. “Well,” he conceded, “I can see that you’re really in trouble. Spanking wouldn’t help.”

I shifted in my chair on account of a tingle at the lower part of my spine. Nero Wolfe’s old brownstone house on West Thirty-fifth Street was an interesting place to live and work — for Fritz Brenner, the chef and housekeeper, for Theodore Horstmann, who fed and nursed the ten thousand orchids in the plant rooms up on the roof, and for me, Archie Goodwin, whose main field of operations was the big office on the ground floor. Naturally I thought my job the most interesting, since a confidential assistant to a famous private detective is constantly getting an earful of all kinds of troubles and problems — everything from a missing necklace to a new blackmail gimmick. Very few clients actually bored me. But only one kind of case gave me that tingle in the spine: murder. And if this pair of lovebirds were talking straight, this was it.

II

I had filled two notebooks when they left, more than two hours later.

If they had thought it through before they phoned for an appointment with Wolfe, they wouldn’t have phoned. All they wanted, as Wolfe pointed out, was the moon. They wanted him, first, to investigate a four-month-old murder without letting on there had been one; second, to prove that neither of them had killed Alberto Mion, which could be done only by finding out who had; and third, in case he concluded that one of them had done it, to file it away and forget it. Not that they put it that way, since their story was that they were both absolutely innocent, but that was what it amounted to.

Wolfe made it good and plain. “If I take the job,” he told them, “and find evidence to convict someone of murder, no matter who, the use I make of it will be solely in my discretion. I am neither an Astraea nor a sadist, but I like my door open. But if you want to drop it now, here’s your check, and Mr. Goodwin’s notebooks will be destroyed. We can forget you have been here, and shall.”

That was one of the moments when they were within an ace of getting up and going, especially Fred Weppler, but they didn’t. They looked at each other, and it was all in their eyes. By that time I had about decided I liked them both pretty well and was even beginning to admire them, they were so damn determined to get loose from the trap they were in. When they looked at each other like that their eyes said, “Let’s go and be together, my darling love, and forget this — come on, come on.” Then they said, “It will be so wonderful!” Then they said, “Yes, oh yes, but— But we don’t want it wonderful for a day or a week; it must be always wonderful — and we know ...”

It took strong muscles to hold onto it like that, not to mention horse sense, and several times I caught myself feeling sentimental about it. Then of course there was the check for five grand on Wolfe’s desk.

The notebooks were full of assorted matters. There were a thousand details which might or might not turn out to be pertinent, such as the mutual dislike between Peggy Mion and Rupert Grove, her husband’s manager, or the occasion of Gifford James socking Alberto Mion in front of witnesses, or the attitudes of various persons toward Mion’s demand for damages; but you couldn’t use it all, and Wolfe himself never needed more than a fraction of it, so I’ll pick and choose. Of course the gun was Exhibit A. It was a new one, having been bought by Mion the day after Gifford James had plugged him and hurt his larynx — not, he had announced, for vengeance on James but for future protection. He had carried it in a pocket whenever he went out, and at home had kept it in the studio, lying on the base of a bust of Caruso. So far as known, it had never fired but one bullet, the one that killed Mion.

When Dr. Lloyd had arrived and Weppler had taken him to the studio the gun was lying on the floor not far from Mion’s knee. Dr. Lloyd’s hand had started for it but had been withdrawn without touching it, so it had been there when the law came. Peggy was positive it had not been there when she and Fred had entered, and he agreed. The cops had made no announcement about fingerprints, which wasn’t surprising since none are hardly ever found on a gun that are any good. Throughout the two hours and a half, Wolfe kept darting back to the gun, but it simply didn’t have wings.

The picture of the day and the day’s people was all filled in. The morning seemed irrelevant, so it started at lunch time with five of them there: Mion, Peggy, Fred, one Adele Bosley, and Dr. Lloyd. It was more professional than social. Fred had been invited because Mion wanted to sell him the idea of writing a piece for the Gazette saying that the rumors that Mion would never be able to sing again were malicious hooey. Adele Bosley, who was in charge of public relations for the Metropolitan Opera, had come to help work on Fred. Dr. Lloyd had been asked so he could assure Weppler that the operation he had performed on Mion’s larynx had been successful and it was a good bet that by the time the opera season opened in November the great tenor would be as good as ever. Nothing special had happened except that Fred had agreed to do the piece. Adele Bosley and Lloyd had left, and Mion had gone up to the soundproofed studio, and Fred and Peggy had looked at each other and suddenly discovered the most important fact of life since the Garden of Eden.

An hour or so later there had been another gathering, this time up in the studio, around half-past three, but neither Fred nor Peggy had been present. By then Fred had walked himself calm and phoned Peggy, and she had gone to meet him in the park, so their information on the meeting in the studio was hearsay. Besides Mion and Dr. Lloyd there had been four people: Adele Bosley for operatic public relations; Mr. Rupert Grove, Mion’s manager; Mr. Gifford James, the baritone who had socked Mion in the neck six weeks previously; and Judge Henry Arnold, James’ lawyer. This affair had been even less social than the lunch, having been arranged to discuss a formal request that Mion had made of Gifford James for the payment of a quarter of a million bucks for the damage to Mion’s larynx.

Fred’s and Peggy’s hearsay had it that the conference had been fairly hot at points, with the temperature boosted right at the beginning by Mion’s getting the gun from Caruso’s bust and placing it on a table at his elbow. On the details of its course they were pretty sketchy, since they hadn’t been there, but anyhow the gun hadn’t been fired. Also there was plenty of evidence that Mion was alive and well — except for his larynx — when the party broke up. He had made two phone calls after the conference had ended, one to his barber and one to a wealthy female opera patron; his manager, Rupert Grove, had phoned him a little later; and around five-thirty he had phoned downstairs to the maid to bring him a bottle of vermouth and some ice, which she had done. She had taken the tray into the studio, and he had been upright and intact.

I was careful to get all the names spelled right in my notebook, since it seemed likely the job would be to get one of them tagged for murder, and I was especially careful with the last one that got in: Clara James, Gifford’s daughter. There were three spotlights on her. First, the reason for James’ assault on Mion had been his knowledge or suspicion — Fred and Peggy weren’t sure which — that Mion had stepped over the line with James’ daughter. Second, her name had ended the list, got by Fred from the doorman and elevator man, of people who had called that afternoon. They said she had come about a quarter past six and had got off at the floor the studio was on, the thirteenth, and had summoned the elevator to the twelfth floor a little later, maybe ten minutes, and had left. The third spotlight was directed by Peggy, who had stayed in the park a while after Fred had marched off, and had then returned home, arriving around five o’clock. She had not gone up to the studio and had not seen her husband. Sometime after six, she thought around half-past, she had answered the doorbell herself because the maid had been in the kitchen with the cook. It was Clara James. She was pale and tense, but she was always pale and tense. She had asked for Alberto, and Peggy had said she thought he was up in the studio, and Clara had said no, he wasn’t there, and never mind. When Clara went for the elevator button, Peggy had shut the door, not wanting company anyway, and particularly not Clara James.

Some half an hour later Fred showed up, and they ascended to the studio together and found that Alberto was there all right, but no longer upright or intact.

That picture left room for a whole night of questions, but Wolfe concentrated on what he regarded as the essentials. Even so, we went into the third hour and the third notebook. He completely ignored some spots that I thought needed filling in; for instance, had Alberto had a habit of stepping over the line with other men’s daughters and/or wives, and if so, names please. From things they said I gathered that Alberto had been broad-minded about other men’s women, but apparently Wolfe wasn’t interested. Along toward the end he was back on the gun again, and when they had nothing new to offer he scowled and got caustic. When they stayed glued he finally snapped at them, “Which one of you is lying?”

They looked hurt. “That won’t get you anywhere,” Fred Weppler said bitterly, “or us either.”

“It would be silly,” Peggy Mion protested, “to come here and give you that check and then lie to you. Wouldn’t it?”

“Then you’re silly,” Wolfe said coldly. He pointed a finger at her. “Look here. All of this might be worked out, none of it is preposterous, except one thing. Who put the gun on the floor beside the body? When you two entered the studio it wasn’t there; you both swear to that, and I accept it. You left and started downstairs; you fell, and he carried you to your room. You weren’t unconscious. Were you?”

“No.” Peggy was meeting his gaze. “I could have walked, but he — he wanted to carry me.”

“No doubt. He did so. You stayed in your room. He went to the ground floor to compile a list of those who had made themselves available as murder suspects — showing admirable foresight, by the way — came back up and phoned the police and then the doctor, who arrived without delay since he lived in the building. Not more than fifteen minutes intervened between the moment you and Mr. Weppler left the studio and the moment he and the doctor entered. The door from the studio to the public hall on the thirteenth floor has a lock that is automatic with the closing of the door, and the door was closed and locked. No one could possibly have entered during the fifteen minutes. You say that you had left your bed and gone to the living room, and that no one could have used that route without being seen by you. The maid and cook were in the kitchen, unaware of what was going on. So no one entered the studio and placed the gun on the floor.”

“Someone did,” Fred said doggedly.

Peggy insisted, “We don’t know who had a key.”

“You said that before.” Wolfe was at them now. “Even if everyone had keys, I don’t believe it and neither would anyone else.” His eyes came to me. “Archie. Would you?”

“I’d have to see a movie of it,” I admitted.

“You see?” he demanded of them. “Mr. Goodwin isn’t prejudiced against you — on the contrary. He’s ready to fight fire for you; see how he gets behind on his notes for the pleasure of watching you look at each other. But he agrees with me that you’re lying. Since no one else could have put the gun on the floor, one of you did. I have to know about it. The circumstances may have made it imperative for you, or you thought they did.”

He looked at Fred. “Suppose you opened a drawer of Mrs. Mion’s dresser to get smelling salts, and the gun was there, with an odor showing it had been recently fired — put there, you would instantly conjecture, by someone to direct suspicion at her. What would you naturally do? Exactly what you did do: take it upstairs and put it beside the body, without letting her know about it. Or—”

“Rot,” Fred said harshly. “Absolute rot.”

Wolfe looked at Peggy. “Or suppose it was you who found it there in your bedroom, after he had gone downstairs. Naturally you would have—”

“This is absurd,” Peggy said with spirit. “How could it have been in my bedroom unless I put it there? My husband was alive at five-thirty, and I got home before that, and was right there, in the living room and my room, until Fred came at seven o’clock. So unless you assume—”

“Very well,” Wolfe conceded. “Not the bedroom. But somewhere. I can’t proceed until I get this from one of you. Confound it, the gun didn’t fly. I expect plenty of lies from the others, at least one of them, but I want the truth from you.”

“You’ve got it,” Fred declared.

“No. I haven’t.”

“Then it’s a stalemate.” Fred stood up. “Well, Peggy?”

They looked at each other, and their eyes went through the performance again. When they got to the place in the script where it said, “It must be wonderful always,” Fred sat down.

But Wolfe, having no part in the script, horned in. “A stalemate,” he said dryly, “ends the game, I believe.”

Plainly it was up to me. If Wolfe openly committed himself to no dice nothing would budge him. I arose, got the pretty pink check from his desk, put it on mine, placed a paperweight on it, sat down, and grinned at him.

“Granted that you’re dead right,” I observed, “which is not what you call apodictical, someday we ought to make up a list of the clients that have sat here and lied to us. There was Mike Walsh, and Calida Frost, and that cafeteria guy, Pratt — oh, dozens. But their money was good, and I didn’t get so far behind with my notes that I couldn’t catch up. All that for nothing?”

“About those notes,” Fred Weppler said firmly. “I want to make something clear.”

Wolfe looked at him.

He looked back. “We came here,” he said, “to tell you in confidence about a problem and get you to investigate. Your accusing us of lying makes me wonder if we ought to go on, but if Mrs. Mion wants to I’m willing. But I want to make it plain that if you divulge what we’ve told you, if you tell the police or anyone else that we said there was no gun there when we went in, we’ll deny it in spite of your damn notes. We’ll deny it and stick to it!” He looked at his girl. “We’ve got to, Peggy! All right?”

“He wouldn’t tell the police,” Peggy declared, with fair conviction.

“Maybe not. But if he does, you’ll stick with me on the denial. Won’t you?”

“Certainly I will,” she promised, as if he had asked her to help kill a rattlesnake.

Wolfe was taking them in, with his lips tightened. Obviously, with the check on my desk on its way to the bank, he had decided to add them to the list of clients who told lies and go on from there. He forced his eyes wide open to rest them, let them half close again, and spoke.

“We’ll settle that along with other things before we’re through,” he asserted. “You realize, of course, that I’m assuming your innocence, but I’ve made a thousand wrong assumptions before now so they’re not worth much. Has either of you a notion of who killed Mr. Mion?”

They both said no.

He grunted. “I have.”

They opened their eyes at him.

He nodded. “It’s only another assumption, but I like it. It will take work to validate it. To begin with, I must see the people you have mentioned — all six of them — and I would prefer not to string it out. Since you don’t want them told that I’m investigating a murder, we must devise a stratagem. Did your husband leave a will, Mrs. Mion?”

She nodded and said yes.

“Are you the heir?”

“Yes, I—” She gestured. “I don’t need it and don’t want it.”

“But it’s yours. That will do nicely. An asset of the estate is the expectation of damages to be paid by Mr. James for his assault on Mr. Mion. You may properly claim that asset. The six people I want to see were all concerned in that affair, one way or another. I’ll write them immediately, mailing the letter tonight special delivery, telling them that I represent you in the matter and would like them to call at my office tomorrow evening.”

“That’s impossible!” Peggy cried, shocked. “I couldn’t! I wouldn’t dream of asking Gif to pay damages—”

Wolfe banged a fist on his desk. “Confound it!” he roared. “Get out of here! Go! Do you think murders are solved by cutting out paper dolls? First you lie to me, and now you refuse to annoy people, including the murderer! Archie, put them out!”

“Good for you,” I muttered at him. I was getting fed up too. I glared at the would-be clients. “Try the Salvation Army,” I suggested. “They’re old hands at helping people in trouble. You can have the notebooks to take along — at cost, six bits. No charge for the contents.”

They were looking at each other.

“I guess he has to see them somehow,” Fred conceded. “He has to have a reason, and I must admit that’s a good one. You don’t owe them anything — not one of them.”

Peggy gave in.

After a few details had been attended to, the most important of which was getting addresses, they left. The manner of their going, and of our speeding them, was so far from cordial that it might have been thought that instead of being the clients they were the prey. But the check was on my desk. When, after letting them out, I returned to the office, Wolfe was leaning back with his eyes shut, frowning in distaste.

I stretched and yawned. “This ought to be fun,” I said encouragingly. “Making it just a grab for damages. If the murderer is among the guests, see how long you can keep it from him. I bet he catches on before the jury comes in with the verdict.”

“Shut up,” he growled. “Blockheads.”

“Oh, have a heart,” I protested. “People in love aren’t supposed to think, that’s why they have to hire trained thinkers. You should be happy and proud they picked you. What’s a good big lie or two when you’re in love? When I saw—”

“Shut up,” he repeated. His eyes came open. “Your notebook. Those letters must go at once.”

III

Monday evening’s party lasted a full three hours, and murder wasn’t mentioned once. Even so, it wasn’t exactly jolly. The letters had put it straight that Wolfe, acting for Mrs. Mion, wanted to find out whether an appropriate sum could be collected from Gifford James without resort to lawyers and a court, and what sum would be thought appropriate. So each of them was naturally in a state of mind: Gifford James himself; his daughter Clara; his lawyer, Judge Henry Arnold; Adele Bosley for Public Relations; Dr. Nicholas Lloyd as the technical expert; and Rupert Grove, who had been Mion’s manager. That made six, which was just comfortable for our big office. Fred and Peggy had not been invited.

The James trio arrived together and were so punctual, right on the dot at nine o’clock, that Wolfe and I hadn’t yet finished our after-dinner coffee in the office. I was so curious to have a look that I went to answer the door instead of leaving it to Fritz, the chef and house overseer who helps to make Wolfe’s days and years a joy forever almost as much as I do. The first thing that impressed me was that the baritone took the lead crossing the threshold, letting his daughter and his lawyer tag along behind. Since I have occasionally let Lily Rowan share her pair of opera seats with me, James’ six feet and broad shoulders and cocky strut were nothing new, but I was surprised that he looked so young, since he must have been close to fifty. He handed me his hat as if taking care of his hat on Monday evening, August 15, was the one and only thing I had been born for. Unfortunately I let it drop.

Clara made up for it by looking at me. That alone showed she was unusually observant, since one never looks at the flunkey who lets one in, but she saw me drop her father’s hat and gave me a glance, and then prolonged the glance until it practically said, “What are you, in disguise? See you later.” That made me feel friendly, but with reserve. Not only was she pale and tense, as Peggy Mion had said, but her blue eyes glistened, and a girl her age shouldn’t glisten like that. Nevertheless, I gave her a grin to show that I appreciated the prolonged glance.

Meanwhile the lawyer, Judge Henry Arnold, had hung up his own hat. During the day I had of course made inquiries on all of them, and had learned that he rated the “Judge” only because he had once been a city magistrate. Even so, that’s what they called him, so the sight of him was a let-down. He was a little sawed-off squirt with a bald head so flat on top you could have kept an ashtray on it, and his nose was pushed in. He must have been better arranged inside than out, since he had quite a list of clients among the higher levels on Broadway.

Taking them to the office and introducing them to Wolfe, I undertook to assign them to some of the yellow chairs, but the baritone spied the red leather one and copped it. I was helping Fritz fill their orders for drinks when the buzzer sounded and I went back to the front.

It was Dr. Nicholas Lloyd. He had no hat, so that point wasn’t raised, and I decided that the searching look he aimed at me was merely professional and automatic, to see if I was anemic or diabetic or what. With his lined handsome face and worried dark eyes he looked every inch a doctor and even surgeon, fully up to the classy reputation my inquiries had disclosed. When I ushered him to the office his eyes lighted up at sight of the refreshment table, and he was the best customer — bourbon and water with mint — all evening.

The last two came together — at least they were on the stoop together when I opened the door. I would probably have given Adele Bosley the red leather chair if James hadn’t already copped it. She shook hands and said she had been wanting to meet Archie Goodwin for years, but that was just public relations and went out the other ear. The point is that from my desk I get most of a party profile or three-quarters, but the one in the red leather chair fullface, and I like a view. Not that Adele Bosley was a pin-up, and she must have been in the fifth or sixth grade when Clara James was born, but her smooth tanned skin and pretty mouth without too much lipstick and nice brown eyes were good scenery.

Rupert Grove didn’t shake hands, which didn’t upset me. He may have been a good manager for Alberto Mion’s affairs, but not for his own physique. A man can be fat and still have integrity, as for instance Falstaff or Nero Wolfe, but that bird had lost all sense of proportion. His legs were short, and it was all in the middle third of him. If you wanted to be polite and look at his face you had to concentrate. I did so, since I needed to size them all up, and saw nothing worthy of recording but a pair of shrewd shifty black eyes.

When these two were seated and provided with liquid, Wolfe fired the starting gun. He said he was sorry it had been necessary to ask them to exert themselves on a hot evening, but that the question at issue could be answered fairly and equitably only if all concerned had a voice in it. The responding murmurs went all the way from acquiescence to extreme irritation. Judge Arnold said belligerently that there was no question at legal issue because Albert Mion was dead.

“Nonsense,” Wolfe said curtly. “If that were true, you, a lawyer, wouldn’t have bothered to come. Anyway, the purpose of this meeting is to keep it from becoming a legal issue. Four of you telephoned Mrs. Mion today to ask if I am acting for her, and were told that I am. On her behalf I want to collect the facts. I may as well tell you, without prejudice to her, that she will accept my recommendation. Should I decide that a large sum is due her you may of course contest; but if I form the opinion that she has no claim she will bow to it. Under that responsibility I need all the facts. Therefore—”

“You’re not a court,” Arnold snapped.

“No, sir, I’m not. If you prefer it in a court you’ll get it.” Wolfe’s eyes moved. “Miss Bosley, would your employers welcome that kind of publicity? Dr. Lloyd, would you rather appear as an expert on the witness-stand or talk it over here? Mr. Grove, how would your client feel about it if he were alive? Mr. James, what do you think? You wouldn’t relish the publicity either, would you? Particularly since your daughter’s name would appear?”

“Why would her name appear?” James demanded in his trained baritone.

Wolfe turned up a palm. “It would be evidence. It would be established that just before you struck Mr. Mion you said to him, ‘You let my daughter alone, you bastard.’”

I put my hand in my pocket. I have a rule, justified by experience, that whenever a killer is among those present, or may be, a gun must be handy. Not regarding the back of the third drawer of my desk, where they are kept, as handy enough, the routine is to transfer one to my pocket before guests gather. That was the pocket I put my hand in, knowing how cocky James was. But he didn’t leave his chair. He merely blurted, “That’s a lie!”

Wolfe grunted. “Ten people heard you say it. That would indeed be publicity, if you denied it under oath and all ten of them, subpoenaed to testify, contradicted you. I honestly think it would be better to discuss it with me.”

“What do you want to know?” Judge Arnold demanded.

“The facts. First, the one already moot. When I lie I like to know it. Mr. Grove, you were present when that famous blow was struck. Have I quoted Mr. James correctly?”

“Yes.” Grove’s voice was a high tenor, which pleased me.

“You heard him say that?”

“Yes.”

“Miss Bosley. Did you?”

She looked uncomfortable. “Wouldn’t it be better to—”

“Please. You’re not under oath, but I’m merely collecting facts, and I was told I lied. Did you hear him say that?”

“Yes, I did.” Adele’s eyes went to James. “I’m sorry, Gif.”

“But it’s not true!” Clara James cried.

Wolfe rasped at her, “We’re all lying?”

I could have warned her, when she gave me that glance in the hall, to look out for him. Not only was she a sophisticated young woman, and not only did she glisten, but her slimness was the kind that comes from not eating enough, and Wolfe absolutely cannot stand people who don’t eat enough. I knew he would be down on her from the go.

But she came back at him. “I don’t mean that,” she said scornfully. “Don’t be so touchy! I mean I had lied to my father. What he thought about Alberto and me wasn’t true. I was just bragging to him because — it doesn’t matter why. Anyway, what I told him wasn’t true, and I told him so that night!”

“Which night?”

“When we got home — from the stage party after Rigoletto. That was where my father knocked Alberto down, you know, right there on the stage. When we got home I told him that what I had said about Alberto and me wasn’t true.”

“When were you lying, the first time or the second?”

“Don’t answer that, my dear,” Judge Arnold broke in, lawyering. He looked sternly at Wolfe. “This is all irrelevant. You’re welcome to the facts, but relevant facts. What Miss James told her father is immaterial.”

Wolfe shook his head. “Oh no.” His eyes went from right to left and back again. “Apparently I haven’t made it plain. Mrs. Mion wants me to decide for her whether she has a just claim, not so much legally as morally. If it appears that Mr. James’ assault on Mr. Mion was morally justified that will be a factor in my decision.” He focused on Clara. “Whether my question was relevant or not, Miss James, I admit it was embarrassing and therefore invited mendacity. I withdraw it. Try this instead. Had you, prior to that stage party, given your father to understand that Mr. Mion had seduced you?”

“Well—” Clara laughed. It was a tinkly soprano laugh, rather attractive. “What a nice old-fashioned way to say it! Yes, I had. But it wasn’t true!”

“But you believed it, Mr. James?”

Gifford James was having trouble holding himself in, and I concede that such leading questions about his daughter’s honor from a stranger must have been hard to take. But after all it wasn’t new to the rest of the audience, and anyway it sure was relevant. He forced himself to speak with quiet dignity. “I believed what my daughter told me, yes.”

Wolfe nodded. “So much for that,” he said in a relieved tone. “I’m glad that part is over with.” His eyes moved. “Now. Mr. Grove, tell me about the conference in Mr. Mion’s studio, a few hours before he died.”

Rupert the Fat had his head tilted to one side, with his shrewd black eyes meeting Wolfe’s. “It was for the purpose,” he said in his high tenor, “of discussing the demand Mion had made for payment of damages.”

“You were there?”

“I was, naturally. I was Mion’s adviser and manager. Also Miss Bosley, Dr. Lloyd, Mr. James, and Judge Arnold.”

“Who arranged the conference, you?”

“In a way, yes. Arnold suggested it, and I told Mion and phoned Dr. Lloyd and Miss Bosley.”

“What was decided?”

“Nothing. That is, nothing definite. There was the question of the extent of the damage — how soon Mion would be able to sing again.”

“What was your position?”

Grove’s eyes tightened. “Didn’t I say I was Mion’s manager?”

“Certainly. I mean, what position did you take regarding the payment of damages?”

“I thought a preliminary payment of fifty thousand dollars should be made at once. Even if Mion’s voice was soon all right he had already lost that and more. His South American tour had been canceled, and he had been unable to make a lot of records on contract, and then radio offers—”

“Nothing like fifty thousand dollars,” Judge Arnold asserted aggressively. There was nothing wrong with his larynx, small as he was. “I showed figures—”

“To hell with your figures! Anybody can—”

“Please!” Wolfe rapped on his desk with a knuckle. “What was Mr. Mion’s position?”

“The same as mine, of course.” Grove was scowling at Arnold as he spoke to Wolfe. “We had discussed it.”

“Naturally.” Wolfe’s eyes went left. “How did you feel about it, Mr. James?”

“I think,” Arnold broke in, “that I should speak for my client. You agree, Gif?”

“Go ahead,” the baritone muttered.

Arnold did, and took most of one of the three hours. I was surprised that Wolfe didn’t stop him, and finally decided that he let him ramble on just to get additional support for his long-standing opinion of lawyers. If so, he got it. Arnold covered everything. He had a lot to say about tort-feasors, going back a couple of centuries, with emphasis on the mental state of a tort-feasor. Another item he covered at length was proximate cause. He got really worked up about proximate cause, but it was so involved that I lost track and passed.

Here and there, though, he made sense. At one point he said, “The idea of a preliminary payment, as they called it, was clearly inadmissible. It is not reasonable to expect a man, even if he stipulates an obligation, to make a payment thereon until either the total amount of the obligation, or an exact method of computing it, has been agreed upon.”

At another point he said, “The demand for so large a sum can in fact be properly characterized as blackmail. They knew that if the action went to trial, and if we showed that my client’s deed sprang from his knowledge that his daughter had been wronged, a jury would not be likely to award damages. But they also knew that we would be averse to making that defense.”

“Not his knowledge,” Wolfe objected. “Merely his belief. His daughter says she had misinformed him.”

“We could have showed knowledge,” Arnold insisted.

I looked at Clara with my brows up. She was being contradicted flatly on the chronology of her lie and her truth, but either she and her father didn’t get the implication of it or they didn’t want to get started on that again.

At another point Arnold said, “Even if my client’s deed was tortious and damages would be collectible, the amount could not be agreed upon until the extent of the injury was known. We offered, without prejudice, twenty thousand dollars in full settlement, for a general release. They refused. They wanted a payment forth with on account. We refused that on principle. In the end there was agreement on only one thing: that an effort should be made to arrive at the total amount of damage. Of course that was what Dr. Lloyd was there for. He was asked for a prognosis, and he stated that — but you don’t need to take hearsay. He’s here, and you can get it direct.”

Wolfe nodded. “If you please, Doctor?”

I thought, My God, here we go again with another expert.

But Lloyd had mercy on us. He kept it down to our level and didn’t take anything like an hour. Before he spoke he took another swallow from his third helping of bourbon and water with mint, which had smoothed out some of the lines on his handsome face and taken some of the worry from his eyes.

“I’ll try to remember,” he said slowly, “exactly what I told them. First I described the damage the blow had done. The thyroid and arytenoid cartilages on the left side had been severely injured, and to a lesser extent the cricoid.” He smiled — a superior smile, but not supercilious. “I waited two weeks, using indicated treatment, thinking an operation might not be required, but it was. When I got inside I confess I was relieved; it wasn’t as bad as I had feared. It was a simple operation, and he healed admirably. I wouldn’t have been risking much that day if I had given assurance that his voice would be as good as ever in two months, three at the most, but the larynx is an extremely delicate instrument, and a tenor like Mion’s is a remarkable phenomenon, so I was cautious enough merely to say that I would be surprised and disappointed if he wasn’t ready, fully ready, for the opening of the next opera season, seven months from then. I added that my hope and expectation were actually more optimistic than that.”

Lloyd pursed his lips. “That was it, I think. Nevertheless, I welcomed the suggestion that my prognosis should be reinforced by Rentner’s. Apparently it would be a major factor in the decision about the amount to be paid in damages, and I didn’t want the sole responsibility.”

“Rentner? Who was he?” Wolfe asked.

“Dr. Abraham Rentner of Mount Sinai,” Lloyd replied, in the tone I would use if someone asked me who Jackie Robinson was. “I phoned him and made an appointment for the following morning.”

“I insisted on it,” Rupert the Fat said importantly. “Mion had a right to collect not sometime in the distant future, but then and there. They wouldn’t pay unless a total was agreed on, and if we had to name a total I wanted to be damn sure it was enough. Don’t forget that that day Mion couldn’t sing a note.”

“He wouldn’t have been able even to let out a pianissimo for at least two months,” Lloyd bore him out. “I gave that as the minimum.”

“There seems,” Judge Arnold interposed, “to be an implication that we opposed the suggestion that a second professional opinion be secured. I must protest—”

“You did!” Grove squeaked.

“We did not!” Gifford James barked. “We merely—”

The three of them went at it, snapping and snarling. It seemed to me that they might have saved their energy for the big issue, was anything coming to Mrs. Mion and if so how much, but not those babies. Their main concern was to avoid the slightest risk of agreeing on anything at all. Wolfe patiently let them get where they were headed for — nowhere — and then invited a new voice in. He turned to Adele and spoke.

“Miss Bosley, we haven’t heard from you. Which side were you on?”

IV

Adele Bosley had been sitting taking it in, sipping occasionally at her rum collins — now her second one — and looking, I thought, pretty damn intelligent. Though it was the middle of August, she was the only one of the six who had a really good tan. Her public relations with the sun were excellent.

She shook her head. “I wasn’t on either side, Mr. Wolfe. My only interest was that of my employer, the Metropolitan Opera Association. Naturally we wanted it settled privately, without any scandal. I had no opinion whatever on whether — on the point at issue.”

“And expressed none?”

“No. I merely urged them to get it settled if possible.”

“Fair enough!” Clara James blurted. It was a sneer. “You might have helped my father a little, since he got your job for you. Or had you—”

“Be quiet, Clara!” James told her with authority.

But she ignored him and finished it. “Or had you already paid in full for that?”

I was shocked. Judge Arnold looked pained. Rupert the Fat giggled. Doc Lloyd took a gulp of bourbon and water.

In view of the mildly friendly attitude I was developing toward Adele I sort of hoped she would throw something at the slim and glistening Miss James, but all she did was appeal to the father. “Can’t you handle the brat, Gif?”

Then, without waiting for an answer, she turned to Wolfe. “Miss James likes to use her imagination. What she implied is not on the record. Not anybody’s record.”

Wolfe nodded. “It wouldn’t belong on this one anyhow.” He made a face. “To go back to relevancies, what time did that conference break up?”

“Why — Mr. James and Judge Arnold left first, around four-thirty. Then Dr. Lloyd, soon after. I stayed a few minutes with Mion and Mr. Grove, and then went.”

“Where did you go?”

“To my office, on Broadway.”

“How long did you stay at your office?”

She looked surprised. “I don’t know — yes, I do too, of course. Until a little after seven. I had things to do, and I typed a confidential report of the conference at Mion’s.”

“Did you see Mion again before he died? Or phone him?”

“See him?” She was more surprised. “How could I? Don’t you know he was found dead at seven o’clock? That was before I left the office.”

“Did you phone him? Between four-thirty and seven?”

“No.” Adele was puzzled and slightly exasperated. It struck me that Wolfe was recklessly getting onto thin ice, mighty close to the forbidden subject of murder. Adele added, “I don’t know what you’re getting at.”

“Neither do I,” Judge Arnold put in with emphasis. He smiled sarcastically. “Unless it’s force of habit with you, asking people where they were at the time a death by violence occurred. Why don’t you go after all of us?”

“That’s what I intend to do,” Wolfe said imperturbably. “I would like to know why Mion decided to kill himself, because that has a bearing on the opinion I shall give his widow. I understand that two or three of you have said that he was wrought up when that conference ended, but not despondent or splenetic. I know he committed suicide; the police can’t be flummoxed on a thing like that; but why?”

“I doubt,” Adele Bosley offered, “if you know how a singer — especially a great artist like Mion — how he feels when he can’t let a sound out, when he can’t even talk except in an undertone or a whisper. It’s horrible.”

“Anyway, you never knew with him,” Rupert Grove contributed. “In rehearsal I’ve heard him do an aria like an angel and then rush out weeping because he thought he had slurred a release. One minute he was up in the sky and the next he was under a rug.”

Wolfe grunted. “Nevertheless, anything said to him by anyone during the two hours preceding his suicide is pertinent to this inquiry, to establish Mrs. Mion’s moral position. I want to know where you people were that day, after the conference up to seven o’clock, and what you did.”

“My God!” Judge Arnold threw up his hands. The hands came down again. “All right, it’s getting late. As Miss Bosley told you, my client and I left Mion’s studio together. We went to the Churchill bar and drank and talked. A little later Miss James joined us, stayed long enough for a drink, I suppose half an hour, and left. Mr. James and I remained together until after seven. During that time neither of us communicated with Mion, nor arranged for anyone else to. I believe that covers it?”

“Thank you,” Wolfe said politely. “You corroborate, of course, Mr. James?”

“I do,” the baritone said gruffly. “This is a lot of goddam nonsense.”

“It does begin to sound like it,” Wolfe conceded. “Dr. Lloyd? If you don’t mind?”

He hadn’t better, since he had been mellowed by four ample helpings of our best bourbon, and he didn’t. “Not at all,” he said cooperatively. “I made calls on five patients, two on upper Fifth Avenue, one in the East Sixties, and two at the hospital. I got home a little after six and had just finished dressing after taking a bath when Fred Weppler phoned me about Mion. Of course I went at once.”

“You hadn’t seen Mion or phoned him?”

“Not since I left after the conference. Perhaps I should have, but I had no idea — I’m not a psychiatrist, but I was his doctor.”

“He was mercurial, was he?”

“Yes, he was.” Lloyd pursed his lips. “Of course, that’s not a medical term.”

“Far from it,” Wolfe agreed. He shifted his gaze. “Mr. Grove, I don’t have to ask you if you phoned Mion, since it is on record that you did. Around five o’clock?”

Rupert the Fat had his head tilted again. Apparently that was his favorite pose for conversing. He corrected Wolfe. “It was after five. More like a quarter past.”

“Where did you phone from?”

“The Harvard Club.”

I thought, I’ll be damned, it takes all kinds to make a Harvard Club.

“What was said?”

“Not much.” Grove’s lips twisted. “It’s none of your damn business, you know, but the others have obliged, and I’ll string along. I had forgotten to ask him if he would endorse a certain product for a thousand dollars, and the agency wanted an answer. We talked less than five minutes. First he said he wouldn’t and then he said he would. That was all.”

“Did he sound like a man getting ready to kill himself?”

“Not the slightest. He was glum, but naturally, since he couldn’t sing and couldn’t expect to for at least two months.”

“After you phoned Mion what did you do?”

“I stayed at the club. I ate dinner there and hadn’t quite finished when the news came that Mion had killed himself. So I’m still behind that ice cream and coffee.”

“That’s too bad. When you phoned Mion, did you again try to persuade him not to press his claim against Mr. James?”

Grove’s head straightened up. “Did I what?” he demanded.

“You heard me,” Wolfe said rudely. “What’s surprising about it? Naturally Mrs. Mion has informed me, since I’m working for her. You were opposed to Mion’s asking for payment in the first place and tried to talk him out of it. You said the publicity would be so harmful that it wasn’t worth it. He demanded that you support the claim and threatened to cancel your contract if you refused. Isn’t that correct?”

“It is not.” Grove’s black eyes were blazing. “It wasn’t like that at all! I merely gave him my opinion. When it was decided to make the claim I went along.” His voice went up a notch higher, though I wouldn’t have thought it possible. “I certainly did!”

“I see.” Wolfe wasn’t arguing. “What is your opinion now, about Mrs. Mion’s claim?”

“I don’t think she has one. I don’t believe she can collect. If I were in James’ place I certainly wouldn’t pay her a cent.”

Wolfe nodded. “You don’t like her, do you?”

“Frankly, I don’t. No. I never have. Do I have to like her?”

“No, indeed. Especially since she doesn’t like you either.” Wolfe shifted in his chair and leaned back. I could tell from the line of his lips, straightened out, that the next item on the agenda was one he didn’t care for, and I understood why when I saw his eyes level at Clara James. I’ll bet that if he had known that he would have to be dealing with that type he wouldn’t have taken the job. He spoke to her testily. “Miss James, you’ve heard what has been said?”

“I was wondering,” she complained, as if she had been holding in a grievance, “if you were going to go on ignoring me. I was around too, you know.”

“I know. I haven’t forgotten you.” His tone implied that he only wished he could. “When you had a drink in the Churchill bar with your father and Judge Arnold, why did they send you up to Mion’s studio to see him? What for?”

Arnold and James protested at once, loudly and simultaneously. Wolfe, paying no attention to them, waited to hear Clara, her voice having been drowned by theirs.

“... nothing to do with it,” she was finishing. “I sent myself.”

“It was your own idea?”

“Entirely. I have one once in a while, all alone.”

“What did you go for?”

“You don’t need to answer, my dear,” Arnold told her.

She ignored him. “They told me what had happened at the conference, and I was mad. I thought it was a holdup — but I wasn’t going to tell Alberto that. I thought I could talk him out of it.”

“You went to appeal to him for old times’ sake?”

She looked pleased. “You have the nicest way of putting things! Imagine a girl my age having old times!”

“I’m glad you like my diction, Miss James.” Wolfe was furious. “Anyhow, you went. Arriving at a quarter past six?”

“Just about, yes.”

“Did you see Mion?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“He wasn’t there. At least—” She stopped. Her eyes weren’t glistening quite so much. She went on, “That’s what I thought then. I went to the thirteenth floor and rang the bell at the door to the studio. It’s a loud bell — he had it loud to be heard above his voice and the piano when he was practicing — but I couldn’t hear it from the hall because the door is soundproofed too, and after I had pushed the button a few times I wasn’t sure the bell was ringing so I knocked on the door. I like to finish anything I start, and I thought he must be there, so I rang the bell some more and took off my shoe and pounded on the door with the heel. Then I went down to the twelfth floor by the public stairs and rang the bell at the apartment door. That was really stupid, because I know how Mrs. Mion hates me, but anyway I did. She came to the door and said she thought Alberto was up in the studio, and I said he wasn’t, and she shut the door in my face. I went home and mixed myself a drink — which reminds me, I must admit this is good scotch, though I never heard of it before.”

She lifted her glass and jiggled it to swirl the ice. “Any questions?”

“No,” Wolfe growled. He glanced at the clock on the wall and then along the line of faces. “I shall certainly report to Mrs. Mion,” he told them, “that you were not grudging with the facts.”

“And what else?” Arnold inquired.

“I don’t know. We’ll see.”

That they didn’t like. I wouldn’t have supposed anyone could name a subject on which those six characters would have been in unanimous accord, but Wolfe turned the trick in five words. They wanted a verdict; failing that, an opinion; failing that, at least a hint. Adele Bosley was stubborn, Rupert the Fat was so indignant he squeaked, and Judge Arnold was next door to nasty. Wolfe was patient up to a point, but finally stood up and told them good night as if he meant it. The note it ended on was such that before going not one of them shelled out a word of appreciation for all the refreshment, not even Adele, the expert on public relations, or Doc Lloyd, who had practically emptied the bourbon bottle.

With the front door locked and bolted for the night, I returned to the office. To my astonishment Wolfe was still on his feet, standing over by the bookshelves, glaring at the backbones.

“Restless?” I asked courteously.

He turned and said aggressively, “I want another bottle of beer.”

“Nuts. You’ve had five since dinner.” I didn’t bother to put much feeling into it, as the routine was familiar. He had himself set the quota of five bottles between dinner and bedtime, and usually stuck to it, but when anything sent his humor far enough down he liked to shift the responsibility so he could be sore at me too.

It was just part of my job. “Nothing doing,” I said firmly. “I counted ’em. Five. What’s the trouble, a whole evening gone and still no murderer?”

“Bah.” He compressed his lips. “That’s not it. If that were all we could close it up before going to bed. It’s that confounded gun with wings.” He gazed at me with his eyes narrowed, as if suspecting that I had wings too. “I could, of course, just ignore it— No. No, in view of the state our clients are in, it would be foolhardy. We’ll have to clear it up. There’s no alternative.”

“That’s a nuisance. Can I help any?”

“Yes. Phone Mr. Cramer first thing in the morning. Ask him to be here at eleven o’clock.”

My brows went up. “But he’s interested only in homicides. Do I tell him we’ve got one to show him?”

“No. Tell him I guarantee that it’s worth the trouble.” Wolfe took a step toward me. “Archie.”

“Yes, sir.”

“I’ve had a bad evening and I’ll have another bottle.”

“You will not. Not a chance.” Fritz had come in and we were starting to clear up. “It’s after midnight and you’re in the way. Go to bed.”

“One wouldn’t hurt him,” Fritz muttered.

“You’re a help,” I said bitterly. “I warn both of you, I’ve got a gun in my pocket. What a household!”

V

For nine months of the year Inspector Cramer of Homicide, big and broad and turning gray, looked the part well enough, but in the summertime the heat kept his face so red that he was a little gaudy. He knew it and didn’t like it, and as a result he was some harder to deal with in August than in January. If an occasion arises for me to commit a murder in Manhattan I hope it will be winter.

Tuesday at noon he sat in the red leather chair and looked at Wolfe with no geniality. Detained by another appointment, he hadn’t been able to make it at eleven, the hour when Wolfe adjourns the morning session with his orchids up in the plant rooms. Wolfe wasn’t exactly beaming either, and I was looking forward to some vaudeville. Also I was curious to see how Wolfe would go about getting dope on a murder from Cramer without spilling it that there had been one, as Cramer was by no means a nitwit.

“I’m on my way uptown,” Cramer grumbled, “and haven’t got much time.”

That was probably a barefaced lie. He merely didn’t want to admit that an inspector of the NYPD would call on a private detective on request, even though it was Nero Wolfe and I had told him we had something hot.

“What is it,” he grumbled on, “the Dickinson thing? Who brought you in?”

Wolfe shook his head. “No one, thank heaven. It’s about the murder of Alberto Mion.”

I goggled at him. This was away beyond me. Right off he had let the dog loose, when I had thought the whole point was that there was no dog on the place.