At a quarter past four, Wolfe having gone up to the plant rooms for his afternoon session with the orchids, I sat at my desk, glowering at the phone, feeling the way I imagine Jackie Robinson feels when he strikes out with the bases full. I had phoned Clara James to ask her to come for a ride with me in the convertible, and she had pushed my nose in.
If that sounds as if I like myself beyond reason, not so. I am quite aware that I bat close to a thousand on invitations to damsels only because I don’t issue one unless the circumstances strongly indicate that it will be accepted. But that has got me accustomed to hearing yes, and therefore it was a rude shock to listen to her unqualified no. Besides, I had taken the trouble to go upstairs and change to a Pillater shirt and a tropical worsted made by Corley, and there I was, all dressed up.
I concocted three schemes and rejected them, concocted a fourth and bought it, reached for the phone, and dialed the number again. Clara’s voice answered, as it had before. As soon as she learned who it was she got impatient.
“I told you I had a cocktail date! Please don’t—”
“Hold it,” I told her bluntly. “I made a mistake. I was being kind. I wanted to get you out into the nice open air before I told you the bad news. I—”
“What bad news?”
“A woman just told Mr. Wolfe and me that there are five people besides her, and maybe more, who know that you had a key to Alberto Mion’s studio door.”
Silence. Sometimes silences irritate me, but I didn’t mind this one. Finally her voice came, totally different. “It’s a silly lie. Who told you?”
“I forget. And I’m not discussing it on the phone. Two things and two only. First, if this gets around, what about your banging on the door for ten minutes, trying to get in, while he was in there dead? When you had a key? It would make even a cop skeptical. Second, meet me at the Churchill bar at five sharp and we’ll talk it over. Yes or no.”
“But this is so — you’re so—”
“Hold it. No good. Yes or no.”
Another silence, shorter, and then, “Yes,” and she hung up.
I never keep a woman waiting and saw no reason to make an exception of this one, so I got to the Churchill bar eight minutes ahead of time. It was spacious, air-conditioned, well-fitted in all respects, and even in the middle of August well-fitted also in the matter of customers, male and female. I strolled through, glancing around but not expecting her yet, and was surprised when I heard my name and saw her in a booth. Of course she hadn’t had far to come, but even so she had wasted no time. She already had a drink and it was nearly gone. I joined her and immediately a waiter was there.
“You’re having?” I asked her.
“Scotch on the rocks.”
I told the waiter to bring two and he went.
She leaned forward at me and began in a breath, “Listen, this is absolutely silly, you just tell me who told you that, why, it’s absolutely crazy—”
“Wait a minute.” I stopped her more with my eyes than my words. Hers were glistening at me. “That’s not the way to start, because it won’t get us anywhere.” I got a paper from my pocket and unfolded it. It was a neatly typed copy of the document Wolfe had dictated. “The quickest and easiest way will be for you to read this first, then you’ll know what it’s about.”
I handed her the paper. You might as well read it while she does. It was dated that day:
I, Clara James, hereby declare that on Tuesday, April 19, I entered the apartment house at 620 East End Avenue, New York City, at or about 6:15 P.M., and took the elevator to the 13th floor. I rang the bell at the door of the studio of Alberto Mion. No one came to the door and there was no sound from within. The door was not quite closed. It was not open enough to show a crack, but was not latched or locked. After ringing again and getting no response, I opened the door and entered. Alberto Mion’s body was lying on the floor over near the piano. He was dead. There was a hole in the top of his head. There was no question whether he was dead. I got dizzy and had to sit down on the floor and put my head down to keep from fainting. I didn’t touch the body. There was a revolver there on the floor, not far from the body, and I picked it up. I think I sat on the floor about five minutes, but it might have been a little more or less. When I got back on my feet and started for the door I became aware that the revolver was still in my hand. I placed it on the base of the bust of Caruso. Later I realized I shouldn’t have done that, but at the time I was too shocked and dazed to know what I was doing. I left the studio, pulling the door shut behind me, went down the public stairs to the twelfth floor, and rang the bell at the door of the Mion apartment. I intended to tell Mrs. Mion about it, but when she appeared there in the doorway it was impossible to get it out. I couldn’t tell her that her husband was up in the studio, dead. Later I regretted this, but I now see no reason to regret it or apologize for it, and I simply could not get the words out. I said I had wanted to see her husband, and had rung the bell at the studio and no one had answered. Then I rang for the elevator and went down to the street and went home. Having been unable to tell Mrs. Mion, I told no one. I would have told my father, but he wasn’t at home. I decided to wait until he returned and tell him, but before he came a friend telephoned me the news that Mion had killed himself, so I decided not to tell anyone, not even my father, that I had been in the studio, but to say that I had rung the bell and knocked on the door and got no reply. I thought that would make no difference, but it has now been explained to me that it does, and therefore I am stating it exactly as it happened.
As she got to the end the waiter came with the drinks, and she held the document against her chest as if it were a poker hand. Keeping it there with her left, she reached for the glass with her right and took a big swallow of scotch. I took a sip of mine to be sociable.
“It’s a pack of lies,” she said indignantly.
“It sure is,” I agreed. “I have good ears, so keep your voice down. Mr. Wolfe is perfectly willing to give you a break, and anyhow it would be a job to get you to sign it if it told the truth. We are quite aware that the studio door was locked and you opened it with your key. Also that — no, listen to me a minute — also that you purposely picked up the gun and put it on the bust because you thought Mrs. Mion had killed him and left the gun there so it would look like suicide, and you wanted to mess it up for her. You couldn’t—”
“Where were you?” she demanded scornfully. “Hiding behind the couch?”
“Nuts. If you didn’t have a key why did you break a date to see me because of what I said on the phone? As for the gun, you couldn’t have been dumber if you’d worked at it for a year. Who would believe anyone had shot him so it would look like suicide and then been fool enough to put the gun on the bust? Too dumb to believe, honest, but you did it.”
She was too busy with her brain to resent being called dumb. Her frown creased her smooth pale forehead and took the glisten from her eyes. “Anyway,” she protested, “what this says not only isn’t true, it’s impossible! They found the gun on the floor by his body, so this couldn’t possibly be true!”
“Yeah.” I grinned at her. “It must have been a shock when you read that in the paper. Since you had personally moved the gun to the bust, how come they found it on the floor? Obviously someone had moved it back. I suppose you decided that Mrs. Mion had done that too, and it must have been hard to keep your mouth shut, but you had to. Now it’s different. Mr. Wolfe knows who put the gun back on the floor and he can prove it. What’s more, he knows Mion was murdered and he can prove that too. All that stops him is the detail of explaining how the gun got from the floor to the bust.” I got out my fountain pen. “Put your name to that, and I’ll witness it, and we’re all set.”
“You mean sign this thing?” She was contemptuous. “I’m not that dumb.”
I caught the waiter’s eye and signaled for refills, and then, to keep her company, emptied my glass.
I met her gaze, matching her frown. “Lookit, Blue Eyes,” I told her reasonably. “I’m not sticking needles under your nails. I’m not saying we can prove you entered the studio — whether with your key or because the door wasn’t locked doesn’t matter — and moved the gun. We know you did, since no one else could have and you were there at the right time, but I admit we can’t prove it. However, I’m offering you a wonderful bargain.”
I pointed the pen at her. “Just listen. All we want this statement for is to keep it in reserve, in case the person who put the gun back on the floor is fool enough to blab it, which is very unlikely. He would only be—”
“You say he?” she demanded.
“Make it he or she. As Mr. Wolfe says, the language could use another pronoun. He would only be making trouble for himself. If he doesn’t spill it, and he won’t, your statement won’t be used at all, but we’ve got to have it in the safe in case he does. Another thing, if we have this statement we won’t feel obliged to pass it along to the cops about your having had a key to the studio door. We wouldn’t be interested in keys. Still another, you’ll be saving your father a big chunk of dough. If you sign this statement we can clear up the matter of Mion’s death, and if we do that I guarantee Mrs. Mion will be in no frame of mind to push any claim against your father. She will be too busy with a certain matter.”
I proffered the pen. “Go ahead and sign it.”
She shook her head, but not with much energy because her brain was working again. Fully appreciating the fact that her thinking was not on the tournament level, I was patient. Then the refills came and there was a recess, since she couldn’t be expected to think and drink all at once. But finally she fought her way through to the point I had aimed at.
“So you know,” she declared with satisfaction.
“We know enough,” I said darkly.
“You know she killed him. You know she put the gun back on the floor. I knew that too, I knew she must have. And now you can prove it? If I sign this you can prove it?”
Of course I could have covered it with doubletalk, but I thought, What the hell. “We certainly can,” I assured her. “With this statement we’re ready to go. It’s the missing link. Here’s the pen.”
She lifted her glass, drained it, put it down, and damned if she didn’t shake her head again, this time with energy. “No,” she said flatly, “I won’t.” She extended a hand with the document in it. “I admit it’s all true, and when you get her on trial if she says she put the gun back on the floor I’ll come and swear to it that I put it on the bust, but I won’t sign anything because once I signed something about an accident and my father made me promise that I would never sign anything again without showing it to him first. I could take it and show it to him and then sign it, and you could come for it tonight or tomorrow.” She frowned. “Except that he knows I had a key, but I could explain that.”
But she no longer had the document. I had reached and taken it. You are welcome to think I should have changed holds on her and gone on fighting, but you weren’t there seeing and hearing her, and I was. I gave up. I got out my pocket notebook, tore out a page, and began writing on it.
“I could use another drink,” she stated.
“In a minute,” I mumbled, and went on writing, as follows:
To Nero Wolfe: I hereby declare that Archie Goodwin has tried his best to persuade me to sign the statement you wrote, and explained its purpose to me, and I have told him why I must refuse to sign it.
“There,” I said, handing it to her. “That won’t be signing something; it’s just stating that you refuse to sign something. The reason I’ve got to have it, Mr. Wolfe knows how beautiful girls appeal to me, especially sophisticated girls like you, and if I take that thing back to him unsigned he’ll think I didn’t even try. He might even fire me. Just write your name there at the bottom.”
She read it over again and took the pen. She smiled at me, glistening. “You’re not kidding me any,” she said, not unfriendly. “I know when I appeal to a man. You think I’m cold and calculating.”
“Yeah?” I made it a little bitter, but not too bitter. “Anyhow it’s not the point whether you appeal to me, but what Mr. Wolfe will think. It’ll help a lot to have that. Much obliged.” I took the paper from her and blew on her signature to dry it.
“I know when I appeal to a man,” she stated.
There wasn’t another thing there I wanted, but I had practically promised to buy her another drink, so I did so.
It was after six when I got back to West Thirty-fifth Street, so Wolfe had finished in the plant rooms and was down in the office. I marched in and put the unsigned statement on his desk in front of him.
He grunted. “Well?”
I sat down and told him exactly how it had gone, up to the point where she had offered to take the document home and show it to her father.
“I’m sorry,” I said, “but some of her outstanding qualities didn’t show much in that crowd the other evening. I give this not as an excuse but merely a fact. Her mental operations could easily be carried on inside a hollowed-out pea. Knowing what you think of unsupported statements, and wanting to convince you of the truth of that one. I got evidence to back it up. Here’s a paper she did sign.”
I handed him the page I had torn from my notebook. He took a look at it and then cocked an eye at me.
“She signed this?”
“Yes, sir. In my presence.”
“Indeed. Good. Satisfactory.”
I acknowledged the tribute with a careless nod. It does not hurt my feelings when he says, “Satisfactory,” like that.
“A bold, easy hand,” he said. “She used your pen?”
“Yes, sir.”
“May I have it, please?”
I arose and handed it to him, together with a couple of sheets of typewriter paper, and stood and watched with interested approval as he wrote “Clara James” over and over again, comparing each attempt with the sample I had secured. Meanwhile, at intervals, he spoke.
“It’s highly unlikely that anyone will ever see it — except our clients... That’s better... There’s time to phone all of them before dinner — first Mrs. Mion and Mr. Weppler — then the others... Tell them my opinion is ready on Mrs. Mion’s claim against Mr. James... If they can come at nine this evening — If that’s impossible tomorrow morning at eleven will do... Then get Mr. Cramer... Tell him it might be well to bring one of his men along...”
He flattened the typed statement on his desk blotter, forged Clara James’ name at the bottom, and compared it with the true signature which I had provided.
“Faulty, to an expert,” he muttered, “but no expert will ever see it. For our clients, even if they know her writing, it will do nicely.”