I

I was doing two things at once. With my hands I was getting my armpit holster and the Marley .32 from a drawer of my desk, and with my tongue I was giving Nero Wolfe a lecture on economics.

“The most you can hope to soak him,” I stated, “is five hundred bucks. Deduct a C for twenty per cent for overhead and another C for expenses incurred, that leaves three hundred. Eighty-five per cent for income tax will leave you with forty-five bucks clear for the wear and tear on your brain and my legs, not to mention the risk. That wouldn’t buy—”

“Risk of what?” He muttered that only to be courteous, to show that he had heard what I said, though actually he wasn’t listening. Seated behind his desk, he was scowling, not at me but at the crossword puzzle in the London Times.

“Complications,” I said darkly. “You heard him explain it. Playing games with a gun is sappy.” I was contorted, buckling the strap of the holster. That done, I picked up my coat. “Since you’re listed in the red book as a detective, and since I draw pay, such as it is, as your licensed assistant, I’m all for detecting for people on request. But this bozo wants to do it himself, using our firearm as a prop.” I felt my tie to see if it was straight. I didn’t cross to the large mirror on the far wall of the office for a look, because whenever I did so in Wolfe’s presence he snorted. “We might just as well,” I declared, “send it up to him by messenger.”

“Pfui,” Wolfe muttered. “It is a thoroughly conventional proceeding. You are merely out of humor because you don’t like Dazzle Dan. If it were Pleistocene Polly you would be zealous.”

“Nuts. I look at the comics occasionally just to be cultured. It wouldn’t hurt any if you did.”

I went to the hall for my things, let myself out, descended the stoop, and headed toward Tenth Avenue for a taxi. A cold gusty wind came at my back from across the Hudson, and I made it brisk, swinging my arms, to get my blood going.

It was true that I did not care for Dazzle Dan, the hero of the comic strip that was syndicated to two thousand newspapers — or was it two million? — throughout the land. Also I did not care for his creator, Harry Koven, who had called at the office Saturday evening, forty hours ago. He had kept chewing his upper lip with jagged yellow teeth, and it had seemed to me that he might at least have chewed the lower lip instead of the upper, which doesn’t show teeth. Moreover, I had not cared for his job as he outlined it. Not that I was getting snooty about the renown of Nero Wolfe — a guy who has had a gun lifted has got as much right to buy good detective work as a rich duchess accused of murder — but the way this Harry Koven had programmed it he was going to do the detecting himself, so the only difference between me and a messenger boy was that I was taking a taxi instead of the subway.

Anyhow Wolfe had taken the job and there I was. I pulled a slip of paper from my pocket, typed on by me from notes taken of the talk with Harry Koven, and gave it a look.

MARCELLE KOVEN, wife ADRIAN GETZ, friend or camp follower, maybe both PATRICIA LOWELL, agent (manager?), promoter PETE JORDAN, artist, draws Dazzle Dan BYRAM HILDEBRAND, artist, also draws D.D.

One of those five, according to Harry Koven, had stolen his gun, a Marley .32, and he wanted to know which one. As he had told it, that was all there was to it, but it was a cinch that if the missing object had been an electric shaver or a pair of cufflinks it would not have called for all that lip-chewing, not to mention other signs of strain. He had gone out of his way, not once but twice, to declare that he had no reason to suspect any of the five of wanting to do any shooting. The second time he had made it so emphatic that Wolfe had grunted and I had lifted a brow.

Since a Marley .32 is by no means a collector’s item, it was no great coincidence that there was one in our arsenal and that therefore we were equipped to furnish Koven with the prop he wanted for his performance. As for the performance itself, the judicious thing to do was wait and see, but there was no point in being judicious about something I didn’t like, so I had already checked it off as a dud.

I dismissed the taxi at the address on Seventy-sixth Street, east of Lexington Avenue. The house had had its front done over for the current century, unlike Nero Wolfe’s old brownstone on West Thirty-fifth Street, which still sported the same front stoop it had started with. To enter this one you went down four steps instead of up seven, and I did so, after noting the pink shutters at the windows of all four floors and the tubs of evergreens flanking the entrance.

I was let in by a maid in uniform, with a pug nose and lipstick about as thick as Wolfe spreads Camembert on a wafer. I told her I had an appointment with Mr. Koven. She said Mr. Koven was not yet available and seemed to think that settled it, making me no offer for my hat and coat.

I said, “Our old brownstone, run by men only, is run better. When Fritz or I admit someone with an appointment we take his things.”

“What’s your name?” she demanded in a tone indicating that she doubted if I had one.

A loud male voice came from somewhere within. “Is that the man from Furnari’s?”

A loud female voice came from up above. “Cora, is that my dress?”

I called out, “It’s Archie Goodwin, expected by Mr. Koven at noon! It is now two minutes past twelve!”

That got action. The female voice, not quite so loud, told me to come up. The maid, looking frustrated, beat it. I took off my coat and put it on a chair, and my hat. A man came through a doorway at the rear of the hall and approached, speaking.

“More noise. Noisiest goddam place. Up this way.” He started up the stairs. “When you have an appointment with Sir Harry, always add an hour.”

I followed him. At the top of the flight there was a large square hall with wide archways to rooms at right and left. He led me through the one at the left.

There are few rooms I can’t take in at a glance, but that was one of them. Two huge TV cabinets, a monkey in a cage in a corner, chairs of all sizes and colors, rugs overlapping, a fireplace blazing away, the temperature around eighty — I gave it up and focused on the inhabitant. That was not only simpler but pleasanter. She was smaller than I would specify by choice, but otherwise acceptable, especially the wide smooth brow above the serious gray eyes, and the cheekbones. She must have been part salamander, to look so cool and silky in that oven.

“Dearest Pete,” she said, “you are going to stop calling my husband Sir Harry.”

I admired that as a time-saver. Instead of the usual pronouncement of names, she let me know that she was Marcelle, Mrs. Harry Koven, and that the young man was Pete Jordan, and at the same time told him something.

Pete Jordan walked across to her as for a purpose. He might have been going to take her in his arms or slap her or anything in between. But a pace short of her he stopped.

“You’re wrong,” he told her in his aggressive baritone. “It’s according to plan. It’s the only way I can prove I’m not a louse. No one but a louse would stick at this, doing this crap month after month, and here look at me just because I like to eat. I haven’t got the guts to quit and starve a while, so I call him Sir Harry to make you sore, working myself up to calling him something that will make him sore, and eventually I’ll come to a boil and figure out a way to make Getz sore, and then I’ll get bounced and I can start starving and be an artist. It’s a plan.”

He turned and glared at me. “I’m more apt to go through with it if I announce it in front of a witness. You’re the witness. My name’s Jordan, Pete Jordan.”

He shouldn’t have tried glaring because he wasn’t built for it. He wasn’t much bigger than Mrs. Koven, and he had narrow shoulders and broad hips. An aggressive baritone and a defiant glare coming from that make-up just couldn’t have the effect he was after. He needed coaching.

“You have already made me sore,” she told his back in a nice low voice, but not a weak one. “You act like a brat and you’re too old to be a brat. Why not grow up?”

He wheeled and snapped at her, “I look on you as a mother!”

That was a foul. They were both younger than me, and she couldn’t have had more than three or four years on him.

I spoke. “Excuse me,” I said, “but I am not a professional witness. I came to see Mr. Koven at his request. Shall I go hunt for him?”

A thin squeak came from behind me. “Good morning, Mrs. Koven. Am I early?”

As she answered I turned for a look at the owner of the squeak, who was advancing from the archway. He should have traded voices with Pete Jordan. He had both the size and presence for a deep baritone, with a well-made head topped by a healthy mat of gray hair nearly white. Everything about him was impressive and masterful, including the way he carried himself, but the squeak spoiled it completely. It continued as he joined us.

“I heard Mr. Goodwin, and Pete left, so I thought—”

Mrs. Koven and Pete were both talking too, and it didn’t seem worth the effort to sort it out, especially when the monkey decided to join in and started chattering. Also I could feel sweat coming on my forehead and neck, overdressed as I was with a coat and vest, since Pete and the newcomer were in shirt sleeves. I couldn’t follow their example without displaying my holster. They kept it up, including the monkey, ignoring me completely but informing me incidentally that the squeaker was not Adrian Getz as I had first supposed, but Byram Hildebrand, Pete’s co-worker in the grind of drawing Dazzle Dan.

It was all very informal and homey, but I was starting to sizzle and I crossed to the far side of the room and opened a window wide. I expected an immediate reaction but got none. Disappointed at that but relieved by the rush of fresh air, I filled my chest, used my handkerchief on the brow and neck, and, turning, saw that we had company. Coming through the archway was a pink-cheeked creature in a mink coat with a dark green slab of cork or something perched on her brown hair at a cocky slant. With no one bothering to glance at her except me, she moved across toward the fireplace, slid the coat off onto a couch, displaying a tricky plaid suit with an assortment of restrained colors, and said in a throaty voice that carried without being raised, “Rookaloo will be dead in an hour.”

They were all shocked into silence except the monkey. Mrs. Koven looked at her, looked around, saw the open window, and demanded, “Who did that?”

“I did,” I said manfully.

Byram Hildebrand strode to the window like a general in front of troops and pulled it shut. The monkey stopped talking and started to cough.

“Listen to him,” Pete Jordan said. His baritone mellowed when he was pleased. “Pneumonia already! That’s an idea! That’s what I’ll do when I work up to making Getz sore.”

Three of them went to the cage to take a look at Rookaloo, not bothering to greet or thank her who had come just in time to save the monkey’s life. She stepped to me, asking cordially, “You’re Archie Goodwin? I’m Pat Lowell.” She put out a hand, and I took it. She had talent as a handclasper and backed it up with a good straight look out of clear brown eyes. “I was going to phone you this morning to warn you that Mr. Koven is never ready on time for an appointment, but he arranged this himself so I didn’t.”

“Never again,” I told her, “pass up an excuse for phoning me.”

“I won’t.” She took her hand back and glanced at her wrist. “You’re early anyway. He told us the conference would be at twelve-thirty.”

“I was to come at twelve.”

“Oh.” She was taking me in — nothing offensive, but she sure was rating me. “To talk with him first?”

I shrugged. “I guess so.”

She nodded, frowning a little. “This is a new one on me. I’ve been his agent and manager for three years now, handling all his business, everything from endorsements of cough drops to putting Dazzle Dan on scooters, and this is the first time a thing like this has happened, him getting someone in for a conference without consulting me — and Nero Wolfe, no less! I understand it’s about a tie-up of Nero Wolfe and Dazzle Dan, having Dan start a detective agency?”

I put that question mark there, though her inflection left it to me whether to call it a question or merely a statement. I was caught off guard, so it probably showed on my face — my glee at the prospect of telling Wolfe about a tie-up between him and Dazzle Dan, with full details. I tried to erase it.

“We’d better wait,” I said discreetly, “and let Mr. Koven tell it. As I understand it, I’m only here as a technical adviser, representing Mr. Wolfe because he never goes out on business. Of course you would handle the business end, and if that means you and I will have to have a lot of talks—”

I stopped because I had lost her. Her eyes were aimed past my left shoulder toward the archway, and their expression had suddenly and completely changed. They weren’t exactly more alive or alert, but more concentrated. I turned, and there was Harry Koven crossing to us. His mop of black hair hadn’t been combed, and he hadn’t shaved. His big frame was enclosed in a red silk robe embroidered with yellow Dazzle Dans. A little guy in a dark blue suit was with him, at his elbow.

“Good morning, my little dazzlers!” Koven boomed.

“It seems cool in here,” the little guy said in a gentle worried voice.

In some mysterious way the gentle little voice seemed to make more noise than the big boom. Certainly it was the gentle little voice that chopped off the return greetings from the dazzlers, but it could have been the combination of the two, the big man and the small one, that had so abruptly changed the atmosphere of the room. Before they had all been screwy perhaps, but all free and easy; now they were all tightened up. They even seemed to be tongue-tied, so I spoke.

“I opened a window,” I said.

“Good heavens,” the little guy mildly reproached me and trotted over to the monkey’s cage. Mrs. Koven and Pete Jordan were in his path, and they hastily moved out of it, as if afraid of getting trampled, though he didn’t look up to trampling anything bigger than a cricket. Not only was he too little and too old, but also he was vaguely deformed and trotted with a jerk.

Koven boomed at me, “So you got here! Don’t mind the Squirt and his damn monkey. He loves that damn monkey. I call this the steam room.” He let out a laugh. “How is it, Squirt, okay?”

“I think so, Harry. I hope so.” The low gentle voice filled the room again.

“I hope so too, or God help Goodwin.” Koven turned on Byram Hildebrand. “Has seven-twenty-eight come, By?”

“No,” Hildebrand squeaked. “I phoned Furnari, and he said it would be right over.”

“Late again. We may have to change. When it comes, do a revise on the third frame. Where Dan says, ‘Not tonight, my dear,’ make it, ‘Not today, my dear.’ Got it?”

“But we discussed that—”

“I know, but change it. We’ll change seven-twenty-nine to fit. Have you finished seven-thirty-three?”

“No. It’s only—”

“Then what are you dome up here?”

“Why, Goodwin came, and you said you wanted us at twelve-thirty—”

“I’ll let you know when we’re ready — sometime after lunch. Show me the revise on seven-twenty-eight.” Koven glanced around masterfully. “How is everybody? Blooming? See you all later. Come along, Goodwin, sorry you had to wait. Come with me.”

He headed for the archway, and I followed, across the hall and up the next flight of stairs. There the arrangement was different; instead of a big square hall there was a narrow corridor with four doors, all closed. He turned left, to the door at that end, opened it, held it for me to pass-through, and shut it again. This room was an improvement in several ways: it was ten degrees cooler, it had no monkey, and the furniture left more room to move around. The most prominent item was a big old scarred desk over by a window. After inviting me to sit, Koven went and sat at the desk and removed covers from dishes that were there on a tray.

“Breakfast,” he said. “You had yours.”

It wasn’t a question, but I said yes to be sociable. He needed all the sociability he could get, from the looks of the tray. There was one dejected poached egg, one wavy thin piece of toast, three undersized prunes with about a teaspoonful of juice, a split of tonic water, and a glass. It was an awful sight. He waded into the prunes. When they were gone he poured the tonic water into the glass, took a sip, and demanded, “Did you bring it?”

“The gun? Sure.”

“Let me see it.”

“It’s the one we showed you at the office.” I moved to another chair, closer to him. “I’m supposed to check with you before we proceed. Is that the desk you kept your gun in?”

He nodded and swallowed a nibble of toast. “Here in this left-hand drawer, in the back.”

“Loaded.”

“Yes. I told you so.”

“So you did. You also told us that you bought it two years ago in Montana, when you were there at a dude ranch, and brought it home with you and never bothered to get a license for it, and it’s been there in the drawer right along. You saw it there a week or ten days ago, and last Friday you saw it was gone. You didn’t want to call the cops for two reasons, because you have no license for it, and because you think it was taken by one of the five people whose names you gave—”

“I think it may have been.”

“You didn’t put it like that. However, skip it. You gave us the five names. By the way, was that Adrian Getz, the one you called Squirt?”

“Yes.”

“Then they’re all five here, and we can go ahead and get it over with. As I understand it, I am to put my gun there in the drawer where yours was, and you get them up here for a conference, with me present. You were to cook up something to account for me. Have you done that?”

He swallowed another nibble of toast and egg. Wolfe would have had that meal down in five seconds flat — or rather, he would have had it out the window. “I thought this might do,” Koven said. “I can say that I’m considering a new stunt for Dan, have him start a detective agency, and I’ve called Nero Wolfe in for consultation, and he sent you up for a conference. We can discuss it a little, and I ask you to show us how a detective searches a room to give us an idea of the picture potential. You shouldn’t start with the desk; start maybe with the shelves back of me. When you come to do the desk I’ll push my chair back to be out of your way, and I’ll have them right in front of me. When you open the drawer and take the gun out and they see it—”

“I thought you were going to do that.”

“I know, that’s what I said, but this is better because this way they’ll be looking at the gun and you, and I’ll be watching their faces. I’ll have my eye right on them, and the one that took my gun, if one of them did it — when he or she suddenly sees you pull a gun out of the drawer that’s exactly like it, it’s going to show on his face, and I’m going to see it. We’ll do it that way.”

I admit it sounded better there on the spot than it had in Wolfe’s office — and besides, he had revised it. This way he might really get what he wanted. I considered it, watching him finish the tonic water. The toast and egg were gone.

“It sounds all right,” I conceded, “except for one thing. You’ll be expecting a look of surprise, but what if there are five looks of surprise? At seeing me take a gun out of your desk — those who don’t know you had a gun there.”

“But they do know.”

“All of them?”

“Certainly. I thought I told you that. Anyhow, they all know. Everybody knows everything around this place. They thought I ought to get rid of it, and now I wish I had. You understand, Goodwin, all there is to this — I just want to know where the damn thing is, I want to know who took it, and I’ll handle it myself from there. I told Wolfe that.”

“I know you did.” I got up and went to his side of the desk, at his left, and pulled a drawer open. “In here?”

“Yes.”

“The rear compartment?”

“Yes.”

I reached to my holster for the Marley, broke it, removed the cartridges and dropped them into my vest pocket, put the gun in the drawer, shut the drawer, and returned to my chair.

“Okay,” I said, “get them up here. We can ad lib it all right without any rehearsing.”

He looked at me. He opened the drawer for a peek at the gun, not touching it, and pushed the drawer to. He shoved the tray away, leaned back, and began working on his upper lip with the jagged yellow teeth.

“I’m going to have to get my nerve up,” he said, as if appealing to me. “I’m never much good until late afternoon.”

I grunted. “What the hell. You told me to be here at noon and called the conference for twelve-thirty.”

“I know I did. I do things like that.” He chewed the lip some more. “And I’ve got to dress.” Suddenly his voice went high in protest. “Don’t try to rush me, understand?”

I was fed up, but had already invested a lot of time and a dollar for a taxi on the case, so kept calm. “I know,” I told him, “artists are temperamental. But I’ll explain how Mr. Wolfe charges. He sets a fee, depending on the job, and if it takes more of my time than he thinks reasonable he adds an extra hundred dollars an hour. Keeping me here until late afternoon would be expensive. I could go and come back.”

He didn’t like that and said so, explaining why, the idea being that with me there in the house it would be easier for him to get his nerve up and it might only take an hour or so. He got up and walked to the door and opened it, then turned and demanded, “Do you know how much I make an hour? The time I spend on my work? Over a thousand dollars. More than a thousand an hour! I’ll go get some clothes on.”

He went, shutting the door.

My wristwatch said 1:17. My stomach agreed. I sat maybe ten minutes, then went to the phone on the desk, dialed, got Wolfe, and told him how it was. He told me to go out and get some lunch, naturally, and I said I would, but after hanging up I went back to my chair. If I went out, sure as hell Koven would get his nerve up in my absence, and by the time I got back he would have lost it again and have to start over. I explained the situation to my stomach, and it made a polite sound of protest, but I was the boss. I was glancing at my watch again and seeing 1:42 when the door opened and Mrs. Koven was with me.

When I stood, her serious gray eyes beneath the wide smooth brow were level with the knot in my four-in-hand, She said her husband had told her that I was staying for a conference at a later hour. I confirmed it. She said I ought to have something to eat. I agreed that it was not a bad notion.

“Won’t you,” she invited, “come down and have a sandwich with us? We don’t do any cooking, we even have our breakfast sent in, but there are some sandwiches.”

“I don’t want to be rude,” I told her, “but are they in the room with the monkey?”

“Oh, no.” She stayed serious. “Wouldn’t that be awful? Downstairs in the workroom.” She touched my arm. “Come on, do.”

I went downstairs with her.

II

In a large room at the rear on the ground floor the other four suspects were seated around a plain wooden table, dealing with the sandwiches. The room was a mess — drawing tables under fluorescent lights, open shelves crammed with papers, cans of all sizes, and miscellaneous objects, chairs scattered around, other shelves with books and portfolios, and tables with more stacks of papers. Messy as it was to the eye, it was even messier to the ear, for two radios were going full blast.

Marcelle Koven and I joined them at the lunch table, and I perked up at once. There was a basket of French bread and pumpernickel, paper platters piled with slices of ham, smoked turkey, sturgeon, and hot corned beef, a big slab of butter, mustard and other accessories, bottles of milk, a pot of steaming coffee, and a one-pound jar of fresh caviar. Seeing Pete Jordan spooning caviar onto a piece of bread crust, I got what he meant about liking to eat.

“Help yourself!” Pat Lowell yelled into my ear.

I reached for the bread with one hand and the corned beef with the other and yelled back, “Why doesn’t someone turn them down or even off?”

She took a sip of coffee from a paper cup and shook her head. “One’s By Hildebrand’s and one’s Pete Jordan’s! They like different programs when they’re working! They have to go for volume!”

It was a hell of a din, but the corned beef was wonderful and the bread must have been from Rusterman’s, nor was there anything wrong with the turkey and sturgeon. Since the radio duel precluded table talk, I used my eyes for diversion and was impressed by Adrian Getz, whom Koven called the Squirt. He would break off a rectangle of bread crust, place a rectangle of sturgeon on it, arrange a mound of caviar on top, and pop it in. When it was down he would take three sips of coffee and then start over. He was doing that when Mrs. Koven and I arrived and he was still doing it when I was full and reaching for another paper napkin.

Eventually, though, he stopped. He pushed back his chair, left it, went over to a sink at the wall, held his fingers under the faucet, and dried them with his handkerchief. Then he trotted over to a radio and turned it off, and to the other one and turned that off. Then he trotted back to us and spoke apologetically.

“That was uncivil, I know.”

No one contradicted him.

“It was only,” he went on, “that I wanted to ask Mr. Goodwin something before going up for my nap.” His eyes settled on me. “Did you know when you opened that window that sudden cold drafts are dangerous for tropical monkeys?”

His tone was more than mild, it was wistful. But something about him — I didn’t know what and didn’t ask for time out to go into it — got my goat.

“Sure,” I said cheerfully. “I was trying it out.”

“That was thoughtless,” he said, not complaining, just giving his modest opinion, and turned and trotted out of the room.

There was a strained silence. Pat Lowell reached for the pot to pour some coffee.

“Goodwin, God help you,” Pete Jordan muttered.

“Why? Does he sting?”

“Don’t ask me why, but watch your step. I think he’s a kobold.” He tossed his paper napkin onto the table. “Want to see an artist create? Come and look.” He marched to one of the radios and turned it on, then to a drawing table and sat.

“I’ll clean up,” Pat Lowell offered.

Byram Hildebrand, who had not squeaked once that I heard, went and turned on the other radio before he took his place at another drawing table.

Mrs. Koven left us. I helped Pat Lowell clear up the lunch table, but all that did was pass time, since both radios were going and I rely mostly on talk to develop an acquaintance in the early stages. Then she left, and I strolled over to watch the artists. So far nothing had occured to change my opinion of Dazzle Dan, but I had to admire the way they did him. Working from rough sketches which all looked alike to me, they turned out the finished product in three colors so fast I could barely keep up, walking back and forth. The only interruptions for a long stretch were when Hildebrand jumped up to go and turn his radio louder, and a minute later Pete Jordan did likewise. I sat down and concentrated on the experiment of listening to two stations at once, but after a while my brain started to curdle and I got out of there.

A door toward the front of the lower hall was standing open, and I looked in and stepped inside when I saw Pat Lowell at a desk, working with papers. She looked up to nod and went on working.

“Listen a minute,” I said. “We’re here on a desert island, and for months you have been holding me at arm’s length, and I’m desperate. It is not mere propinquity. In rags and tatters as you are, without make-up, I have come to look upon you—”

“I’m busy,” she said emphatically. “Go play with a coconut.”

“You’ll regret this,” I said savagely and went to the hall and looked through the glass of the front door at the outside world. The view was nothing to brag about, and the radios were still at my eardrums, so I went upstairs. Looking through the archway into the room at the left, and seeing no one but the monkey in its cage, I crossed to the other room and entered. It was full of furniture, but there was no sign of life. As I went up the second flight of stairs it seemed that the sound of the radios was getting louder instead of softer, and at the top I knew why. A radio was going the other side of one of the closed doors. I went and opened the door to the room where I had talked with Koven; not there. I tried another door and was faced by shelves stacked with linen. I knocked on another, got no response, opened it, and stepped in. It was a large bedroom, very fancy, with an oversized bed. The furniture and Sittings showed that it was co-ed. A radio on a stand was giving with a soap opera, and stretched out on a couch was Mrs. Koven, sound asleep. She looked softer and not so serious, with her lips parted a little and relaxed fingers curled on the cushion, in spite of the yapping radio on the bedside table. I damn well intended to find Koven, and took a couple of steps with a vague notion of looking under the bed for him, when a glance through an open door at the right into the next room discovered him. He was standing at a window with his back to me. Thinking it might seem a little familiar on short acquaintance for me to enter from the bedroom where his wife was snoozing, I backed out to the hall, pulling the door to, moved to the next door, and knocked. Getting no reaction, I turned the knob and entered.

The radio had drowned out my noise. He remained at the window. I banged the door shut. He jerked around. He said something, but I didn’t get it on account of the radio. I went and closed the door to the bedroom, and that helped some.

“Well?” he demanded, as if he couldn’t imagine who I was or what I wanted.

He had shaved and combed and had on a well-made brown homespun suit, with a tan shirt and red tie.

“It’s going on four o’clock,” I said, “and I’ll be going soon and taking my gun with me.”

He took his hands from his pockets and dropped into a chair. Evidently this was the Koven personal living room, from the way it was furnished, and it looked fairly livable.

He spoke. “I was standing at the window thinking.”

“Yeah. Any luck?”

He sighed and stretched his legs out. “Fame and fortune,” he said, “are not all a man needs for happiness.”

I sat down. Obviously the only alternatives were to wrangle him into it or call it off.

“What else would you suggest?” I asked brightly.

He undertook to tell me. He went on and on, but I won’t report it verbatim because I doubt if it contained any helpful hints for you — I know it didn’t for me. I grunted from time to time to be polite. I listened to him for a while and then got a little relief by listening to the soap opera on the radio, which was muffled some by the closed door but by no means inaudible. Eventually, of course, he got around to his wife, first briefing me by explaining that she was his third and they had been married only two years. To my surprise he didn’t tear her apart. He said she was wonderful. His point was that even when you added to fame and fortune the companionship of a beloved and loving wife who was fourteen years younger than you, that still wasn’t all you needed for happiness.

There was one interruption — a knock on the door and the appearance of Byram Hildebrand. He had come to show the revise on the third frame of Number 728. They discussed art some, and Koven okayed the revise, and Hildebrand departed. I hoped that the intermission had sidetracked Koven, but no; he took up again where he had left off.

I can take a lot when I’m working on a case, even a kindergarten problem like that one, but finally, after the twentieth sidewise glance at my wrist, I called a halt.

“Look,” I said, “this has given me a new slant on life entirely, and don’t think I don’t appreciate it, but it’s a quarter past four and it’s getting dark. I would call it late afternoon. What do you say we go ahead with our act?”

He closed his trap and frowned at me. He started chewing his lip. After some of that he suddenly arose, went to a cabinet, and got out a bottle.

“Will you join me?” He produced two glasses. “I’m not supposed to drink until five o’clock, but I’ll make this an exception.” He came to me. “Bourbon all right? Say when.”

I would have liked to plug him. He had known from the beginning that he would have to drink himself up to it but had sucked me in with a noon appointment. Anything I felt like saying would have been justified, but I held in. I accepted mine and raised it with him, to encourage him, and took a swallow. He took a dainty sip, raised his eyes to the ceiling, and then emptied the glass at a gulp. He picked up the bottle and poured a refill.

“Why don’t we go in there with the refreshment,” I suggested, “and go over it a little?”

“Don’t rush me,” he said gloomily. He took a deep breath, swelling his chest, and suddenly grinned at me, showing the teeth. He lifted the glass and drained it, reached for the bottle and tilted it to pour, and changed his mind.

“Come on,” he said, heading for the door. I stepped around him to open the door, since both his hands were occupied, closed it behind us, and followed him down the hall. At the farther end we entered the room where we were to stage it. He went to the desk and sat, poured himself a drink, and put the bottle down. I went to the desk too, but not to sit. I had taken the precaution of removing the cartridges from my gun, but even so a glance at it wouldn’t hurt any. I pulled the drawer open and was relieved to see that it was still there. I shut the drawer.

“I’ll go get them,” I offered.

“I said don’t rush me,” Koven protested, but no longer gloomy.

“Thinking that two more drinks would surely do it, I moved to a chair. But I didn’t sit. Something wasn’t right, and it came to me what it was: I had placed the gun with the muzzle pointing to the right, and it wasn’t that way now. I returned to the desk, took the gun out, and gave it a look.

It was a Marley .32 all right, but not mine.

III

I put my eye on Koven. The gun was in my left hand, and my right hand was a fist. If I had hit him that first second, which I nearly did, mad as I was, I would have cracked some knuckles.

“What’s the matter?” he demanded.

My eyes were on him and through him. I kept them there for five pulse beats. It wasn’t possible, I decided, that he was that good. Nobody could be.

I backed up a pace. “We’ve found your gun.”

He gawked at me. “What?”

I broke it, saw that the cylinder was empty, and held it out. “Take a look.”

He took it. “It looks the same — no, it doesn’t.”

“Certainly it doesn’t. Mine was clean and bright. Is it yours?”

“I don’t know. It looks like it. But how in the name of God—”

I reached and took it from him. “How do you think?” I was so damn mad I nearly stuttered. “Someone with hands took mine out and put yours in. It could have been you. Was it?”

“No. Me?” Suddenly he got indignant. “How the hell could it have been me when I didn’t know where mine was?”

“You said you didn’t. I ought to stretch you out and tamp you down. Keeping me here the whole goddam day, and now this! If you ever talk straight and to the point, now is the time. Did you touch my gun?”

“No. But you’re—”

“Do you know who did?”

“No. But you’re—”

“Shut up!” I went around the desk to the phone, lifted it, and dialed. At that hour Wolfe would be up in the plant rooms for his afternoon shift with the orchids, where he was not to be disturbed except in emergency, but this was one. When Fritz answered I asked him to buzz the extension, and in a moment I had Wolfe.

“Yes, Archie?” Naturally he was peevish.

“Sorry to bother you, but. I’m at Koven’s. I put my gun in his desk, and we were all set for his stunt, but he kept putting it off until now. His will power sticks and has to be primed with alcohol. I roamed around. We just came in here where his desk is, and I opened the drawer for a look. Someone has taken my gun and substituted his — his that was stolen, you know? It’s back where it belongs, but mine is gone.”

“You shouldn’t have left it there.”

“Okay, you can have that, and you sure will, but I need instructions for now. Three choices: I can call a cop, or I can bring the whole bunch down there to you, don’t think I can’t the way I feel, or I can handle it myself. Which?”

“Confound it, not the police. They would enjoy it too much. And why bring them here? The gun’s there, not here.”

“Then that leaves me. I go ahead?”

“Certainly — with due discretion. It’s a prank.” He chuckled. “I would like to see your face. Try to get home for dinner.” He hung up.

“My God, don’t call a cop!” Koven protested.

“I don’t intend to,” I said grimly. I slipped his gun into my armpit holster. “Not if I can help it. It depends partly on you. You stay put, right here. I’m going down and get them. Your wife’s asleep in the bedroom. If I find when I get back that you’ve gone and started chatting with her I’ll either slap you down with your own gun or phone the police, I don’t know which, maybe both. Stay put.”

“This is my house, Goodwin, and—”

“Goddam it, don’t you know a raving maniac when you see one?” I tapped my chest with a forefinger. “Me. When I’m as sore as I am now the safest thing would be for you to call a cop. I want my gun.”

As I made for the door he was reaching for the bottle. By the time I got down to the ground floor I had myself well enough in hand to speak to them without betraying any special urgency, telling them that Koven was ready for them upstairs, for the conference. I found Pat Lowell still at the desk in the room in front and Hildebrand and Jordan still at their drawing tables in the workroom. I even replied appropriately when Pat Lowell asked how I had made out with the coconut. As Hildebrand and Jordan left their tables and turned off their radios I had a keener eye on them than before; someone here had swiped my gun. As we ascended the first flight of stairs, with me in the rear, I asked their backs where I would find Adrian Getz.

Pat Lowell answered. “He may be in his room on the top floor.” They halted at the landing, the edge of the big square hall, and I joined them. We could hear the radio going upstairs. She indicated the room to the left. “He takes his afternoon nap in there with Rookaloo, but not this late usually.”

I thought I might as well glance in, and moved to the archway. A draft of cold air hit me, and I went on in. A window was wide open! I marched over and closed it, then went to take a look at the monkey. It was huddled on the floor in a corner of the cage, making angry little noises, with something clutched in its fingers against its chest. The light was dim, but I have good eyes, and not only was the something unmistakably a gun, but it was my Marley on a bet. Needing light, and looking for a wall switch, I was passing the large couch which faced the fireplace when suddenly I stopped and froze. Adrian Getz, the Squirt, was lying on the couch but he wasn’t taking a nap.

I bent over him for a close-up and saw a hole in his skull northeast of his right ear, and some red juice. I stuck a hand inside the V of his vest and flattened it against him and held my breath for eight seconds. He was through taking naps.

I straightened up and called, “Come in here, all three of you, and switch on a light as you come!”

They appeared through the archway, and one of them put a hand to the wall. Lights shone. The back of the couch hid Getz from their view as they approached.

“It’s cold in here,” Pat Lowell was saying. “Did you open another—”

Seeing Getz stopped her, and the others too. They goggled.

“Don’t touch him,” I warned them. “He’s dead, so you can’t help him any. Don’t touch anything. You three stay here together, right here in this room, while I—”

“Christ Almighty,” Pete Jordan blurted. Hildebrand squeaked something. Pat Lowell put out a hand, found the couch back, and gripped it. She asked something, but I wasn’t listening. I was at the cage, with my back to them, peering at the monkey. It was my Marley the monkey was clutching. I had to curl my fingers until the nails sank in to keep from opening the cage door and grabbing that gun.

I whirled. “Stick here together. Understand?” I was on my way. “I’m going up and phone.”

Ignoring their noises, I left them. I mounted the stairs in no hurry, because if I had been a raving maniac before, I was now stiff with fury and I needed a few seconds to get under control. In the room upstairs Harry Koven was still seated at the desk, staring at the open drawer. He looked up and fired a question at me but got no answer. I went to the phone, lifted it, and dialed a number. When I got Wolfe he started to sputter at being disturbed again.

“I’m sorry,” I told him, “but I wish to report that I have found my gun. It’s in the cage with the monkey, who is—”

“What monkey?”

“Its name is Rookaloo, but please don’t interrupt. It is holding my gun to its breast, I suspect because it is cold and the gun is warm, having recently been fired. Lying there on a couch is the body of a man, Adrian Getz, with a bullet hole in the head. It is no longer a question whether I call a cop, I merely wanted to report the situation to you before I do so. A thousand to one Getz was shot and killed with my gun. I will not be — hold it—”

I dropped the phone and jumped. Koven had made a dive for the door. I caught him before he reached it, got an arm and his chin, and heaved. There was a lot of feeling in it, and big as he was he sailed to a wall, bounced off, and went to the floor.

“I would love to do it again,” I said, meaning it, and returned to the phone and told Wolfe, “Excuse me, Koven tried to interrupt. I was only going to say I will not be home to dinner.”

“The man is dead.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Have you anything satisfactory for the police?”

“Sure. My apologies for bringing my gun here to oblige a murderer. That’s all.”

“We haven’t answered today’s mail.”

“I know. It’s a damn shame. I’ll get away as soon as I can.”

“Very well.”

The connection went. I held the button down a moment, with an eye on Koven, who was upright again but not asking for an encore, then released it and dialed RE 7–5260.

IV

I haven’t kept anything like an accurate score, but I would say that over the years I haven’t told the cops more than a couple of dozen barefaced lies, maybe not that many. They are seldom practical. On the other hand, I can’t recall any murder case Wolfe and I were in on and I’ve had my story gone into at length where I have simply opened the bag and given them all I had, with no dodging and no withholding, except one, and this is it. On the murder of Adrian Getz I didn’t have a single thing on my mind that I wasn’t willing and eager to shovel out, so I let them have it.

It worked fine. They called me a liar.

Not right away, of course. At first even Inspector Cramer appreciated my cooperation, knowing as he did that there wasn’t a man in his army who could shade me at seeing and hearing, remembering, and reporting. It was generously conceded that upon finding the body I had performed properly and promptly, herding the trio into the room and keeping the Kovens from holding a family council until the law arrived. From there on, of course, everyone had been under surveillance, including me.

At six-thirty, when the scientists were still monopolizing the room where Getz had got it, and city employees were wandering all over the place, and the various inmates were still in various rooms conversing privately with Homicide men, and I had typed and signed my own frank and full statement, I was confidently expecting that I would soon be out on the sidewalk unattended, flagging a taxi. I was in the front room on the ground floor, seated at Pat Lowell’s desk, having used her typewriter, and Sergeant Purley Stebbins was sitting across from me, looking over my statement.

He lifted his head and regarded me, perfectly friendly. A perfectly friendly look from Stebbins would, from almost anyone else, cause you to get your guard up and be ready to either duck or counter, but Purley wasn’t responsible for the design of his big bony face and his pig-bristle eyebrows.

“I guess you got it all in,” he admitted. “As you told it.”

“I suggest,” I said modestly, “that when this case is put away you send that to the school to be used as a model report.”

“Yeah.” He stood up. “You’re a good typist.” He turned to go.

I arose too, saying casually, “I can run along now?”

The door opened, and Inspector Cramer entered. I didn’t like his expression as he darted a glance at me. Knowing him well in all his moods, I didn’t like the way his broad shoulders were hunched, or his clamped jaw, or the glint in his eye.

“Here’s Goodwin’s statement,” Purley said. “Okay.”

“As he told it?”

“Yes.”

“Send him downtown and hold him.”

It caught me completely off balance. “Hold me?” I demanded, squeaking almost like Hildebrand.

“Yes, sir.” Nothing could catch Purley off balance. “On your order?”

“No, charge him. Sullivan Act. He has no license for the gun we found on him.”

“Ha, ha,” I said. “Ha, ha, and ha, ha. There, you got your laugh. A very fine gag. Ha.”

“You’re going down, Goodwin. I’ll be down to see you later.”

As I said, I knew him well. He meant it. I had his eyes. “This,” I said, “is way out of my reach. I’ve told you where and how and why I got that gun.” I pointed to the paper in Purley’s hand. “Read it. It’s all down, punctuated.”

“You had the gun in your holster and you have no license for it.”

“Nuts. But I get it. You’ve been hoping for years to hang something on Nero Wolfe, and to you I’m just a part of him, and you think here’s your chance. Of course it won’t stick. Wouldn’t you rather have something that will? Like resisting arrest and assaulting an officer? Glad to oblige. Watch it—”

Tipping forward, I started a left hook for his jaw, fast and vicious, then jerked it down and went back on my heels. It didn’t create a panic, but I had the satisfaction of seeing Cramer take a quick step back and Stebbins one forward. They bumped.

“There,” I said. “With both of you to swear to it, that ought to be good for at least two years. I’ll throw the typewriter at you if you’ll promise to catch it.”

“Cut the clowning,” Purley growled.

“You lied about that gun,” Cramer snapped. “If you don’t want to get taken down to think it over, think now. Tell me what you came here for and what happened.”

“I’ve told you.”

“A string of lies.”

“No, sir.”

“You can have ’em back. I’m not trying to hang something on Wolfe, or you either. I want to know why you came here and what happened.”

“Oh, for God’s sake.” I moved my eyes. “Okay, Purley, where’s my escort?”

Cramer strode four paces to the door, opened it, and called, “Bring Mr. Koven in here!”

Harry Koven entered with a dick at his elbow. He looked as if he was even farther away from happiness than before.

“We’ll sit down,” Cramer said.

He left me behind the desk. Purley and the dick took chairs in the background. Cramer stationed himself across the desk from me, where Purley had been, with Koven on a chair at his left. He opened up.

“I told you, Mr. Koven, that I would ask you to repeat your story in Goodwin’s presence, and you said you would.”

Koven nodded. “That’s right.” He was hoarse.

“We won’t need all the details. Just answer me briefly. When you called on Nero Wolfe last Saturday evening, what did you ask him to do?”

“I told him I was going to have Dazzle Dan start a detective agency in a new series.” The hoarseness bothered Koven, and he cleared his throat explosively. “I told him I needed technical assistance, and possibly a tie-up, if we could arrange—”

There was a pad of ruled paper on the desk. I reached for it, and a pencil, and started doing shorthand. Cramer leaned over, stretched an arm, grabbed a corner of the pad, and jerked it away. I could feel the blood coming to my head, which was silly of it with an inspector, a sergeant, and a private all in the room.

“We need your full attention,” Cramer growled. He went to Koven. “Did you say anything to Wolfe about your gun being taken from your desk?”

“Certainly not. It hadn’t been taken. I did mention that I had a gun in my desk for which I had no license, but that I never carried it, and I asked if that was risky. I told them what make it was, a Marley thirty-two. I asked how much trouble it would be to get a license, and if—”

“We’ll keep it brief. Just cover the points. What arrangement did you make with Wolfe?”

“He agreed to send Goodwin to my place on Monday for a conference with my staff and me.”

“About what?”

“About the technical problems of having Dazzle Dan do detective work, and possibly a tie-up.”

“And Goodwin came?”

“Yes, today around noon.” Koven’s hoarseness kept interfering with him, and he kept clearing his throat. My eyes were at his face, but he hadn’t met them. Of course he was talking to Cramer and had to be polite. He went on, “The conference was for twelve-thirty, but I had a little talk with Goodwin and asked him to wait. I have to be careful what I do with Dan and I wanted to think it over some more. Anyway I’m like that, I put things off. It was after four o’clock when he—”

“Was your talk with Goodwin about your gun being gone?”

“Certainly not. We might have mentioned the gun, about my not having a license for it, I don’t remember — no, wait a minute, we must have, because I pulled the drawer open and we glanced in at it. Except for that, we only talked—”

“Did you or Goodwin take your gun out of the drawer?”

“No. Absolutely not.”

“Did he put his gun in the drawer?”

“Absolutely not.”

I slid in, “When I took my gun from my holster to show it to you, did you—”

“Nothing doing,” Cramer snapped at me. “You’re listening. Just the high spots for now.” He returned to Koven. “Did you have another talk with Goodwin later?”

Koven nodded. “Yes, around half-past three he came up to my room — the living room. We talked until after four, there and in my office, and then—”

“In your office did Goodwin open the drawer of the desk and take the gun out and say it had been changed?”

“Certainly not!”

“What did he do?”

“Nothing, only we talked, and then he left to go down and get the others to come up for the conference. After a while he came back alone, and without saying anything he came to the desk and took my gun from the drawer and put it under his coat. Then he went to the phone and called Nero Wolfe. When I heard him tell Wolfe that Adrian Getz had been shot, that he was on a couch downstairs dead, I got up to go down there, and Goodwin jumped me from behind and knocked me out. When I came to he was still talking to Wolfe, I don’t know what he was telling him, and then he called the police. He wouldn’t let me—”

“Hold it,” Cramer said curtly. “That covers that. One more point. Do you know of any motive for Goodwin’s wanting to murder Adrian Getz?”

“No, I don’t. I told—”

“Then if Getz was shot with Goodwin’s gun how would you account for it? You’re not obliged to account for it, but if you don’t mind just repeat what you told me.”

“Well—” Koven hesitated. He cleared his throat for the twentieth time. “I told you about the monkey. Goodwin opened a window, and that’s enough to kill that kind of a monkey, and Getz was very fond of it. He didn’t show how upset he was but Getz was very quiet and didn’t show things much. I understand Goodwin likes to kid people. Of course I don’t know what happened, but if Goodwin went in there later when Getz was there, and started to open a window, you can’t tell. When Getz once got aroused he was apt to do anything. He couldn’t have hurt Goodwin any, but Goodwin might have got out his gun just for a gag, and Getz tried to take it away, and it went off accidentally. That wouldn’t be murder, would it?”

“No,” Cramer said, “that would only be a regrettable accident. That’s all for now, Mr. Koven. Take him out, Sol, and bring Hildebrand.”

As Koven arose and the dick came forward I reached for the phone on Pat Lowell’s desk. My hand got there, but so did Cramer’s, hard on top of mine.

“The lines here are busy,” he stated. “There’ll be a phone you can use downtown. Do you want to hear Hildebrand before you comment?”

“I’m crazy to hear Hildebrand,” I assured him. “No doubt he’ll explain that I tossed the gun in the monkey’s cage to frame the monkey. Let’s just wait for Hildebrand.”

It wasn’t much of a wait; the Homicide boys are snappy. Byram Hildebrand, ushered in by Sol, stood and gave me a long straight look before he took the chair Koven had vacated. He still had good presence, with his fine mat of nearly white hair, but his extremities were nervous. When he sat he couldn’t find comfortable spots for either his hands or his feet.

“This will only take a minute,” Cramer told him. “I just want to check on Sunday morning. Yesterday. You were here working?”

Hildebrand nodded, and the squeak came. “I was putting on some touches. I often work Sundays.”

“You were in there in the workroom?”

“Yes. Mr. Getz was there, making some suggestions. I was doubtful about one of his suggestions and went upstairs to consult Mr. Koven, but Mrs. Koven was there in the hall and—”

“You mean the big hall one flight up?”

“Yes. She said Mr. Koven wasn’t up yet and Miss Lowell was in his office waiting to see him. Miss Lowell has extremely good judgment, and I went up to consult her. She disapproved of Mr. Getz’s suggestion, and we discussed various matters, and mention was made of the gun Mr. Koven kept in his desk drawer. I pulled the drawer open just to look at it, with no special purpose, merely to look at it, and closed the drawer again. Shortly afterward I returned downstairs.”

“Was the gun there in the drawer?”

“Yes.”

“Did you take it out?”

“No. Neither did Miss Lowell. We didn’t touch it.”

“But you recognized it as the same gun?”

“I can’t say that I did, no. I had never examined the gun, never had it in my hand. I can only say that it looked the same as before. It was my opinion that our concern about the gun being kept there was quite childish, but I see now that I was wrong. After what happened today—”

“Yeah.” Cramer cut him off. “Concern about a loaded gun is never childish. That’s all I’m after now. Sunday morning, in Miss Lowell’s presence, you opened the drawer of Koven’s desk and saw the gun which you took to be the gun you had seen there before. Is that correct?”

“That’s correct,” Hildebrand squeaked.

“Okay, that’s all.” Cramer nodded at Sol. “Take him back to Rowcliff.”

I treated myself to a good deep breath. Purley was squinting at me, not gloating, just concentrating. Cramer turned his head to see that the door was closed after the dick and the artist and then turned back to me.

“Your turn,” he growled.

I shook my head. “Lost my voice,” I whispered, hissing.

“You’re not funny, Goodwin. You’re never as funny as you think you are. This time you’re not funny at all. You can have five minutes to go over it and realize how complicated it is. When you phoned Wolfe before you phoned us, you couldn’t possibly have arranged all the details. I’ve got you. I’ll be leaving here before long to join you downtown, and on my way I’ll stop in at Wolfe’s place for a talk. He won’t clam up on this one. At the very least I’ve got you good on the Sullivan Act. Want five minutes?”

“No, sir.” I was calm but emphatic. “I want five days and I would advise you to take a full week. Complicated doesn’t begin to describe it. Before I leave for downtown, if you’re actually going to crawl out on that one, I wish to remind you of something, and don’t forget it. When I voluntarily took Koven’s gun from my holster and turned it over — it wasn’t ‘found on me,’ as you put it — I also turned over six nice clean cartridges which I had in my vest pocket, having previously removed them from my gun. I hope none of your heroes gets careless and mixes them up with the cartridges found in my gun, if any, when you retrieved it from the monkey. That would be a mistake. The point is, if I removed the cartridges from my gun in order to insert one or more from Koven’s gun, when and why did I do it? There’s a day’s work for you right there. And if I did do it, then Koven’s friendly effort to fix me up for justifiable manslaughter is wasted, much as I appreciate it, because I must have been premeditating something, and you know what. Why fiddle around with the Sullivan Act? Make it the big one, and I can’t get bail. Now I button up.”

I set my jaw.

Cramer eyed me. “Even a suspended sentence,” he said, “you lose your license.”

I grinned at him.

“You goddam mule,” Purley rumbled.

I included him in the grin.

“Send him down,” Cramer rasped and got up and left.

V

Even when a man is caught smack in the middle of a felony, as I had been, there is a certain amount of red tape to getting him behind bars, and in my case not only red tape but also other activities postponed my attainment of privacy. First I had a long conversation with an assistant district attorney, who was the suave and subtle type and even ate sandwiches with me. When it was over, a little after nine o’clock, both of us were only slightly more confused than when we started. He left me in a room with a specimen in uniform with slick brown hair and a wart on his cheek. I told him how to get rid of the wart, recommending Doc Vollmer.

I was expecting the promised visit by Inspector Cramer any minute. Naturally I was nursing an assorted collection of resentments, but the one on top was at not being there to see and hear the talk between Cramer and Wolfe. Any chat those two had was always worth listening to, and that one must have been outstanding, with Wolfe learning not only that his client was lying five ways from Sunday, which was bad enough, but also that I had been tossed in the can and the day’s mail would have to go unanswered.

When the door finally opened, and a visitor entered it wasn’t Inspector Cramer. It was Lieutenant Rowcliff, whose murder I will not have to premeditate when I get around to it because I have already done the premeditating. There are not many murderers so vicious and inhuman that I would enjoy seeing them caught by Rowcliff. He jerked a chair around to sit facing me and said with oily satisfaction, “At last we’ve got you, by God.”

That set the tone of the interview.

I would enjoy recording in full that two-hour session with Rowcliff, but it would sound like bragging, and therefore I don’t suppose you would enjoy it too. His biggest handicap is that when he gets irritated to a certain point he can’t help stuttering, and I’m onto him enough to tell when he’s just about there, and then I start stuttering before he does. Even with a close watch and careful timing it takes luck to do it right, and that evening I was lucky. He came closer than ever before to plugging me, but didn’t, because he wants to be a captain so bad he can taste it and he’s not absolutely sure that Wolfe hasn’t got a solid in with the Commissioner or the Mayor or possibly Grover Whalen himself.

Cramer never showed up, and that added another resentment to my healthy pile. I knew he had been to see Wolfe, because when they had finally let me make my phone call, around eight o’clock, and I had got Wolfe and started to tell him about it, he had interrupted me in a voice as cold as an Eskimo’s nose.

“I know where you are and how you got there. Mr. Cramer is here. I have phoned Mr. Parker, but it’s too late to do anything tonight. Have you had anything to eat?”

“No, sir. I’m afraid of poison and I’m on a hunger strike.”

“You should eat something. Mr. Cramer is worse than a jackass, he’s demented. I intend to persuade him, if possible, of the desirability of releasing you at once.”

He hung up.

When, shortly after eleven, Rowcliff called it off and I was shown to my room, there had been no sign of Cramer. The room was in no way remarkable, merely what was to be expected in a structure of that type, but it was fairly clean, strongly scented with disinfectant, and was in a favorable location since the nearest corridor light was six paces away and therefore did not glare through the bars of my door. Also it was a single, which I appreciated. Alone at last, away from telephones and other interruptions, I undressed and arranged my gray pinstripe on the chair, draped my shirt over the end of the blankets, got in, stretched, and settled down for a complete survey of the complications. But my brain and nerves had other plans, and in twenty seconds I was asleep.

In the morning there was a certain amount of activity, with the check-off and a trip to the lavatory and breakfast, but after that I had more privacy than I really cared for. My watch had slowed down. I tested the second hand by counting, with no decisive result. By noon I would almost have welcomed a visit from Rowcliff and was beginning to suspect that someone had lost a paper and there was no record of me anywhere and everyone was too busy to stop and think. Lunch, which I will not describe, broke the monotony some, but then, back in my room, I was alone with my wristwatch. For the tenth time I decided to spread all the pieces out, sort them, and have a look at the picture as it had been drawn to date, and for the tenth time it got so damn jumbled that I couldn’t make first base, let alone on around.

At 1:09 my door swung open and the floorwalker, a chunky short guy with only half an ear on the right side, told me to come along. I went willingly, on out of the block to an elevator, and along a ground-floor corridor to an office. There I was pleased to see the tall lanky figure and long pale face of Henry George Parker, the only lawyer Wolfe would admit to the bar if he had the say. He came to shake my hand and said he’d have me out of there in a minute now.

“No rush,” I said stiffly. “Don’t let it interfere with anything important.”

He laughed, haw-haw, and took me inside the gate. All the formalities but one which required my presence had already been attended to, and he made good on his minute. On the way up in the taxi he explained why I had been left to rot until past noon. Getting bail on the Sullivan Act charge had been simple, but I had also been tagged with a material witness warrant, and the DA had asked the judge to put it at fifty grand! He had been stubborn about it, and the best Parker could do was talk it down to twenty, and he had had to report back to Wolfe before closing the deal. I was not to leave the jurisdiction. As the taxi crossed Thirty-fourth Street I looked west across the river. I had never cared much for New Jersey, but now the idea of driving through the tunnel and on among the billboards seemed attractive.

I preceded Parker up the stoop at the old brownstone on West Thirty-fifth, used my key but found that the chain bolt was on, which was normal but not invariable when I was out of the house, and had to push the button. Fritz Brenner, chef and house manager, let us in and stood while we disposed of our coats and hats.

“Are you all right, Archie?” he inquired.

“No,” I said frankly. “Don’t you smell me?”

As we went down the hall Wolfe appeared, coming from the door to the dining room. He stopped and regarded me. I returned his gaze with my chin up.

“I’ll go up and rinse off,” I said, “while you’re finishing lunch.”

“I’ve finished,” he said grimly. “Have you eaten?”

“Enough to hold me.”

“Then we’ll get started.”

He marched into the office, across the hall from the dining room, went to his oversized chair behind his desk, sat, and got himself adjusted for comfort. Parker took the red leather chair. As I crossed to my desk I started talking, to get the jump on him.

“It will help,” I said, not aggressively but pointedly, “if we first get it settled about my leaving that room with my gun there in the drawer. I do not—”

“Shut up!” Wolfe snapped.

“In that case,” I demanded, “why didn’t you leave me in the coop? I’ll go back and—”

“Sit down!”

I sat.

“I deny,” he said, “that you were in the slightest degree imprudent. Even if you were, this has transcended such petty considerations.” He picked up a sheet of paper from his desk. “This is a letter which came yesterday from a Mrs. E. R. Baumgarten. She wants me to investigate the activities of a nephew who is employed by the business she owns. I wish to reply. Your notebook.”

He was using what I call his conclusive tone, leaving no room for questions, let alone argument. I got my notebook and pen.

“Dear Mrs. Baumgarten.” He went at it as if he had already composed it in his mind. “Thank you very much for your letter of the thirteenth, requesting me to undertake an investigation for you. Paragraph. I am sorry that I cannot be of service to you. I am compelled to decline because I have been informed by an official of the New York Police Department that my license to operate a private detective agency is about to be taken away from me. Sincerely yours.”

Parker ejaculated something and got ignored. I stayed deadpan, but among my emotions was renewed regret that I had missed Wolfe’s and Cramer’s talk.

Wolfe was saying, “Type it at once and send Fritz to mail it. If any requests for appointments come by telephone refuse them, giving the reason and keeping a record.”

“The reason given in the letter?”

“Yes.”

I swiveled the typewriter to me, got paper and carbon in, and hit the keys. I had to concentrate. This was Cramer’s farthest north. Parker was asking questions, and Wolfe was grunting at him. I finished the letter and envelope, had Wolfe sign it, went to the kitchen and told Fritz to take it to Eighth Avenue immediately, and returned to the office.

“Now,” Wolfe said, “I want all of it. Go ahead.”

Ordinarily when I start giving Wolfe a full report of an event, no matter how extended and involved, I just glide in and keep going with no effort at all, thanks to my long and hard training. That time, having just got a severe jolt, I wasn’t so hot at the beginning, since I was supposed to include every word and movement, but by the time I had got to where I opened the window it was coming smooth and easy, As usual, Wolfe soaked it all in without making any interruptions.

It took all of an hour and a half, and then came questions, but not many. I rate a report by the number of questions he has when I’m through, and by that test this was up toward the top. Wolfe leaned back and closed his eyes.

Parker spoke. “It could have been any of them, but it must have been Koven. Or why his string of lies, knowing that you and Goodwin would both contradict him?” The lawyer haw-hawed. “That is, if they’re lies — considering your settled policy of telling your counselor only what you think he should know.”

“Pfui.” Wolfe’s eyes came open. “This is extraordinarily intricate, Archie. Have you examined it any?”

“I’ve started. When I pick at it, it gets worse instead of better.”

“Yes. I’m afraid you’ll have to type it out. By eleven tomorrow morning?”

“I guess so, but I need a bath first. Anyway, what for? What can we do with it without a license? I suppose it’s suspended?”

He ignored it. “What the devil is that smell?” he demanded.

“Disinfectant. It’s for the bloodhounds in case you escape.” I arose. “I’ll go scrub.”

“No.” He glanced at the wall clock, which said 3:45 — fifteen minutes to go until he was due to join Theodore and the orchids up on the roof. “An errand first. I believe it’s the Gazette that carries the Dazzle Dan comic strip?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Daily and Sunday?”

“Yes, sir.”

“I want all of them for the past three years. Can you get them?”

“I can try.”

“Do so.”

“Now?”

“Yes. Wait a minute — confound it, don’t be a cyclone! You should hear my instructions for Mr. Parker, but first one for you. Mail Mr. Koven a bill for recovery of his gun, five hundred dollars. It should go today.”

“Any extras, under the circumstances?”

“No. Five hundred flat.” Wolfe turned to the lawyer. “Mr. Parker, how long will it take to enter a suit for damages and serve a summons on the defendant?”

“That depends.” Parker sounded like a lawyer. “If it’s rushed all possible and there are no unforeseen obstacles and the defendant is accessible for service, it could be merely a matter of hours.”

“By noon tomorrow?”

“Quite possibly, yes.”

“Then proceed, please. Mr. Koven has destroyed, by slander, my means of livelihood. I wish to bring an action demanding payment by him of the sum of one million dollars.”

“M-m-m-m,” Parker said. He was frowning.

I addressed Wolfe. “I want to apologize,” I told him, “for jumping to a conclusion. I was supposing you had lost control for once and buried it too deep in Cramer. Whereas you did it purposely, getting set for this. I’ll be damned.”

Wolfe grunted.

“In this sort of thing,” Parker said, “it is usual, and desirable, to first send a written request for recompense, by your attorney if you prefer. It looks better.”

“I don’t care how it looks. I want immediate action.”

“Then we’ll act.” That was one of the reasons Wolfe stuck to Parker; he was no dilly-dallier. “But I must ask, isn’t the sum a little flamboyant? A full million?”

“It is not flamboyant. At a hundred thousand a year, a modest expectation, my income would be a million in ten years. A detective license once lost in this fashion is not easily regained.”

“All right. A million. I’ll need all the facts for drafting a complaint.”

“You have them. You’ve just heard Archie recount them. Must you stickle for more?”

“No. I’ll manage.” Parker got to his feet. “One thing, though, service of process may be a problem. Policemen may still be around, and even if they aren’t I doubt if strangers will be getting into that house tomorrow.”

“Archie will send Saul Panzer to you. Saul can get in anywhere and do anything.” Wolfe wiggled a finger. “I want Mr. Koven to get that. I want to see him in this room. Five times this morning I tried to get him on the phone, without success. If that doesn’t get him I’ll devise something that will.”

“He’ll give it to his attorney.”

“Then the attorney will come, and if he’s not an imbecile I’ll give myself thirty minutes to make him send for his client or go and get him. Well?”

Parker turned and left, not loitering. I got at the typewriter to make out a bill for half a grand, which seemed like a waste of paper after what I had just heard.

VI

At midnight that Tuesday the office was a sight. It has often been a mess, one way and another, including the time the strangled Cynthia Brown was lying on the floor with her tongue protruding, but this was something new. Dazzle Dan, both black-and-white and color, was all over the place. On account of our shortage in manpower, with me tied up on my typing job, Fritz and Theodore had been drafted for the chore of tearing out the pages and stacking them chronologically, ready for Wolfe to study. With Wolfe’s permission, I had bribed Lon Cohen of the Gazette to have three years of Dazzle Dan assembled and delivered to us, by offering him an exclusive. Naturally he demanded specifications.

“Nothing much,” I told him on the phone. “Only that Nero Wolfe is out of the detective business because Inspector Cramer is taking away his license.”

“Quite a gag,” Lon conceded.

“No gag. Straight.”

“You mean it?”

“We’re offering it for publication. Exclusive, unless Cramer’s office spills it, and I don’t think they will.”

“The Getz murder?”

“Yes. Only a couple of paragraphs, because details are not yet available, even to you. I’m out on bail.”

“I know you are. This is pie. We’ll raid the files and get it over there as soon as we can.”

He hung up without pressing for details. Of course that meant he would send Dazzle Dan COD, with a reporter. When the reporter arrived a couple of hours later, shortly after Wolfe had come down from the plant rooms at six o’clock, it wasn’t just a man with a notebook, it was Lon Cohen himself. He came to the office with me, dumped a big heavy carton on the floor by my desk, removed his coat and dropped it on the carton to show that Dazzle Dan was his property until paid for, and demanded, “I want the works. What Wolfe said and what Cramer said. A picture of Wolfe studying Dazzle Dan—”

I pushed him into a chair, courteously, and gave him all we were ready to turn loose of. Naturally that wasn’t enough; it never is. I let him fire questions up to a dozen or so, even answering one or two, and then made it clear that that was all for now and I had work to do. He admitted it was a bargain, stuck his notebook in his pocket, and got up and picked up his coat.

“If you’re not in a hurry, Mr. Cohen,” muttered Wolfe, who had left the interview to me.

Lon dropped the coat and sat down. “I have nineteen years, Mr. Wolfe. Before I retire.”

“I won’t detain you that long.” Wolfe sighed. “I am no longer a detective, but I’m a primate and therefore curious. The function of a newspaperman is to satisfy curiosity. Who killed Mr. Getz?”

Lon’s brows went up. “Archie Goodwin? It was his gun.”

“Nonsense. I’m quite serious. Also I’m discreet. I am excluded from the customary sources of information by the jackassery of Mr. Cramer. I—”

“May I print that?”

“No. None of this. Nor shall I quote you. This is a private conversation. I would like to know what your colleagues are saying but not printing. Who killed Mr. Getz? Miss Lowell? If so, why?”

Lon pulled his lower lip down and let it up again. “You mean we’re just talking.”

“Yes.”

“This might possibly lead to another talk that could be printed.”

“It might. I make no commitment.” Wolfe wasn’t eager.

“You wouldn’t. As for Miss Lowell, she has not been scratched. It is said that Getz learned she was chiseling on royalties from makers of Dazzle Dan products and intended to hang it on her. That could have been big money.”

“Any names or dates?”

“None that are repeatable. By me. Yet.”

“Any evidence?”

“I haven’t seen any.”

Wolfe grunted. “Mr. Hildebrand. If so, why?”

“That’s shorter and sadder. He has told friends about it. He has been with Koven for eight years and was told last week he could leave at the end of the month, and he blamed it on Getz. He might or might not get another job at his age.”

Wolfe nodded. “Mr. Jordan?”

Lon hesitated. “This I don’t like, but others are talking, so why not us? They say Jordan has painted some pictures, modern stuff, and twice he has tried to get a gallery to show them, two different galleries, and both times Getz has somehow kiboshed it. This has names and dates, but whether because Getz was born a louse or whether he wanted to keep Jordan—”

“I’ll do my own speculating, thank you. Mr. Getz may not have liked the pictures. Mr. Koven?”

Lon turned a hand over. “Well? What better could you ask? Getz had him buffaloed, no doubt about it. Getz ruled the roost, plenty of evidence on that, and nobody knows why, so the only question is what he had on Koven. It must have been good, but what was it? You say this is a private conversation?”

“Yes.”

“Then here’s something we got started on just this afternoon. It has to be checked before we print it. That house on Seventy-sixth Street is in Getz’s name.”

“Indeed.” Wolfe shut his eyes and opened them again. “And Mrs. Koven?”

Lon turned his other hand over. “Husband and wife are one, aren’t they?”

“Yes. Man and wife make one fool.”

Lon’s chin jerked up. “I want to print that. Why not?”

“It was printed more than three hundred years ago. Ben Jonson wrote it.” Wolfe sighed. “Confound it, what can I do with only a few scraps?” He pointed at the carton. “You want that stuff back, I suppose?”

Lon said he did. He also said he would be glad to go on with the private conversation in the interest of justice and the public welfare, but apparently Wolfe had all the scraps he could use at the moment. After ushering Lon to the door I went up to my room to spend an hour attending to purely personal matters, a detail that had been too long postponed. I was out of the shower, selecting a shirt, when a call came from Saul Panzer in response to the message I had left. I gave him all the features of the picture that would help and told him to report to Parker’s law office in the morning.

After dinner that evening we were all hard at it in the office. Fritz and Theodore were unfolding Gazettes, finding the right page and tearing it out, and carrying off the leavings. I was banging away at my machine, three pages an hour. Wolfe was at his desk, concentrating on a methodical and exhaustive study of three years of Dazzle Dan. It was well after midnight when he pushed back his chair, arose, stretched, rubbed his eyes, and told us, “It’s bedtime. This morass of fatuity has given me indigestion. Good night.”

Wednesday morning he tried to put one over. His routine was breakfast in his room, with the morning paper, at eight; then shaving and dressing; then, from nine to eleven, his morning shift up in the plant rooms. He never went to the office before eleven, and the detective business was never allowed to mingle with the orchids. But that Wednesday he fudged. While I was in the kitchen with Fritz, enjoying griddle cakes, Darst’s sausage, honey, and plenty of coffee, and going through the morning papers, with two readings for the Gazette’s account of Wolfe’s enforced retirement, Wolfe sneaked downstairs into the office and made off with a stack of Dazzle Dan. The way I knew, before breakfast I had gone in there to straighten up a little, and I am trained to observe. Returning after breakfast, and glancing around before starting at my typewriter, I saw that half of a pile of Dan was gone. I don’t think I had ever seen him quite so hot under the collar. I admit I fully approved. Not only did I not make an excuse for a trip up to the roof to catch him at it, but I even took the trouble to be out of the office when he came down at eleven o’clock, to give him a chance to get Dan back unseen.

My first job after breakfast had been to carry out some instructions Wolfe had given me the evening before. Manhattan office hours being what they are, I got no answer at the number of Levay Recorders, Inc., until 9:35. Then it took some talking to get a promise of immediate action, and if it hadn’t been for the name of Nero Wolfe I wouldn’t have made it. But I got both the promise and the action. A little after ten two men arrived with cartons of equipment and tool kits, and in less than an hour they were through and gone, and it was a neat and nifty job. It would have taken an expert search to reveal anything suspicious in the office, and the wire to the kitchen, running around the baseboard and on through, wouldn’t be suspicious even if seen.

It was hard going at the typewriter on account of the phone ringing, chiefly reporters wanting to talk to Wolfe, or at least me, and finally I had to ask Fritz in to answer the damn thing and give everybody a brush-off. A call he switched to me was one from the DA’s office. They had the nerve to ask me to come down there so they could ask me something. I told them I was busy answering Help Wanted ads and couldn’t spare the time. Half an hour later Fritz switched another one to me. It was Sergeant Purley Stebbins. He was good and sore, beefing about Wolfe having no authority to break the news about losing his license, and it wasn’t official yet, and where did I think it would get me refusing to cooperate with the DA on a murder when I had discovered the body, and I could have my choice of coming down quick or having a PD car come and get me. I let him use up his breath.

“Listen, brother,” I told him, “I hadn’t heard that the name of this city has been changed to Moscow. If Mr. Wolfe wants to publish it that he’s out of business, hoping that someone will pass the hat or offer him a job as doorman, that’s his affair. As for my cooperating, nuts. You have already got me sewed up on two charges, and on advice of counsel and my doctor I am staying home, taking aspirin and gargling with prune juice and gin. If you come here, no matter who, you won’t get in without a search warrant. If you come with another warrant for me, say for cruelty to animals because I opened that window, you can either wait on the stoop until I emerge or shoot the door down, whichever you prefer. I am now hanging up.”

“If you’ll listen a minute, damn it.”

“Good-by, you double-breasted nitwit.”

I cradled the phone, sat thirty seconds to calm down, and resumed at the typewriter. The next interruption came not from the outside but from Wolfe, a little before noon. He was back at his desk, analyzing Dazzle Dan. Suddenly he pronounced my name, and I swiveled.

“Yes, sir.”

“Look at this.”

He slid a sheet of the Gazette across his desk, and I got up and took it. It was a Sunday half-page, in color, from four months back. In the first frame Dazzle Dan was scooting along a country road on a motorcycle, passing a roadside sign that read:

PEACHES RIGHT FROM THE TREE!

AGGIE GHOOL AND HAGGIE KROOL

Frame two, D.D. had stopped his bike alongside a peach tree full of red and yellow fruit. Standing there were two females, presumably Aggie Ghool and Haggie Krool. One was old and bent, dressed in burlap as near as I could tell; the other was young and pink-cheeked, wearing a mink coat. If you say surely not a mink coat, I say I’m telling what I saw. D.D. was saying, in his balloon, “Gimme a dozen.”

Frame three, the young female was handing D.D. the peaches, and the old one was extending her hand for payment. Frame four, the old one was giving D.D. his change from a bill. Frame five, the old one was handing the young one a coin and saying, “Here’s your ten per cent, Haggie,” and the young one was saying, “Thank you very much, Aggie.” Frame six, D.D. was asking Aggie, “Why don’t you split it even?” and Aggie was telling him, “Because it’s my tree.” Frame seven, D.D. was off again on the bike, but I felt I had had enough and looked at Wolfe inquiringly.

“Am I supposed to comment?”

“If it would help, yes.”

“I pass. If it’s a feed from the National Industrialists’ League it’s the wrong angle. If you mean the mink coat, Pat Lowell’s may not be paid for.”

He grunted. “There have been two similar episodes, one each year, with the same characters.”

“Then it may be paid for.”

“Is that all?”

“It’s all for now. I’m not a brain, I’m a typist. I’ve got to finish this damn report.”

I tossed the art back to him and returned to work.

At 12:28 I handed him the finished report, and he dropped D.D. and started on it. I went to the kitchen to tell Fritz I would take on the phone again, and as I re-entered the office it was ringing. I crossed to my desk and got it. My daytime formula was, “Nero Wolfe’s office, Archie Goodwin speaking,” but with our license gone it was presumably illegal to have an office, so I said, “Nero Wolfe’s residence, Archie Goodwin speaking,” and heard Saul Panzer’s husky voice.

“Reporting in, Archie. No trouble at all. Koven is served. Put it in his hand five minutes ago.”

“In the house?”

“Yes. I’ll call Parker—”

“How did you get in?”

“Oh, simple. The man that delivers stuff from that Furnari’s you told me about has got the itch bad, and it only took ten bucks. Of course after I got inside I had to use my head and legs both, but with your sketch of the layout it was a cinch.”

“For you, yes. Mr. Wolfe says satisfactory, which as you know is as far as he ever goes. I say you show promise. You’ll call Parker?”

“Yes. I have to go there to sign a paper.”

“Okay. Be seeing you.”

I hung up and told Wolfe. He lifted his eyes, said, “Ah!” and returned to the report.

After lunch there was an important chore, involving Wolfe, me, our memory of the talk Saturday evening with Koven, and the equipment that had been installed by Levay Recorders, Inc. We spent nearly an hour at it, with three separate tries, before we got it done to Wolfe’s satisfaction.

After that it dragged along, at least for me. The phone calls had fallen off. Wolfe, at his desk, finished with the report, put it in a drawer, leaned back, and closed his eyes. I would just as soon have opened a conversation, but pretty soon his lips started working — pushing out, drawing back, and pushing out again — and I knew his brain was busy so I went to the cabinet for a batch of the germination records and settled down to making entries. He didn’t need a license to go on growing orchids, though the question would soon arise of how to pay the bills. At four o’clock he left to go up to the plant rooms, and I went on with the records. During the next two hours there were a few phone calls, but none from Koven or his lawyer or Parker. At two minutes past six I was telling myself that Koven was probably drinking himself up to something, no telling what, when two things happened at once: the sound came from the hall of Wolfe’s elevator jerking to a stop, and the doorbell rang.

I went to the hall, switched on the stoop light, and took a look through the panel of one-way glass in the front door. It was a mink coat all right, but the hat was different. I went closer, passing Wolfe on his way to the office, got a view of the face, and saw that she was alone. I marched to the office door and announced, “Miss Patricia Lowell. Will she do?”

He made a face. He seldom welcomes a man crossing his threshold; he never welcomes a woman. “Let her in,” he muttered.

I stepped to the front, slid the bolt off, and opened up. “This is the kind of surprise I like,” I said heartily. She entered, and I shut the door and bolted it. “Couldn’t you find a coconut?”

“I want to see Nero Wolfe,” she said in a voice so hard that it was out of character, considering her pink cheeks.

“Sure. This way.” I ushered her down the hall and on in. Once in a while Wolfe rises when a woman enters his office, but this time he kept not only his chair but also his tongue. He inclined his head a quarter of an inch when I pronounced her name, but said nothing. I gave her the red leather chair, helped her throw her coat back, and went to my desk.

“So you’re Nero Wolfe,” she said.

That called for no comment and got none.

“I’m scared to death,” she said.

“You don’t look it,” Wolfe growled.

“I hope I don’t; I’m trying not to.” She started to put her bag on the little table at her elbow, changed her mind, and kept it in her lap. She took off a glove. “I was sent here by Mr. Koven.”

No comment. We were looking at her. She looked at me, then back at Wolfe, and protested, “My God, don’t you ever say anything?”

“Only on occasion.” Wolfe leaned back. “Give me one. You say something.”

She compressed her lips. She was sitting forward and erect in the big roomy chair, with no contact with the upholstered back. “Mr. Koven sent me,” she said, clipping it, “about the ridiculous suit for damages you have brought. He intends to enter a counterclaim for damage to his reputation through actions of your acknowledged agent, Archie Goodwin. Of course he denies that there is any basis for your suit.”

She stopped. Wolfe met her gaze and kept his trap shut.

“That’s the situation,” she said belligerently.

“Thank you for coming to tell me,” Wolfe murmured. “If you’ll show Miss Lowell the way out, please, Archie?”

I stood up. She looked at me as if I had offered her a deadly insult, and looked back at Wolfe. “I don’t think,” she said, “that your attitude is very sensible. I think you and Mr. Koven should come to an agreement on this. Why wouldn’t this be the way to do it — say the claims cancel each other, and you abandon yours and he abandons his?”

“Because,” Wolfe said dryly, “my claim is valid and his isn’t. If you’re a member of the bar, Miss Lowell, you should know that this is a little improper, or anyway unconventional. You should be talking with my attorney, not with me.”

“I’m not a lawyer, Mr. Wolfe. I’m Mr. Koven’s agent and business manager. He thinks lawyers would just make this more of a mess than it is, and I agree with him. He thinks you and he should settle it between you. Isn’t that possible?”

“I don’t know. We can try. There’s a phone. Get him down here.”

She shook her head. “He’s not — he’s too upset. I’m sure you’ll find it more practical to deal with me, and if we come to an understanding he’ll approve, I guarantee that. Why don’t we go into it — the two claims?”

“I doubt if it will get us anywhere.” Wolfe sounded perfectly willing to come halfway. “For one thing, a factor in both claims is the question who killed Adrian Getz and why? If it was Mr. Goodwin, Mr. Koven’s claim has a footing, and I freely concede it; if it was someone else I concede nothing. If I discussed it with you I would have to begin by considering that aspect; I would have to ask you some pointed questions; and I doubt if you would dare to risk answering them.”

“I can always button up. What kind of questions?”

“Well—” Wolfe pursed his lips. “For example, how’s the monkey?”

“I can risk answering that. It’s sick. It’s at the Speyer Hospital. They don’t expect it to live.”

“Exposure from the open window?”

“Yes. They’re very delicate, that kind.”

Wolfe nodded. “That table over there by the globe — that pile of stuff on it is Dazzle Dan for the past three years. I’ve been looking through it. Last August and September a monkey had a prominent role. It was drawn by two different persons, or at least with two different conceptions. In its first seventeen appearances it was depicted maliciously — on a conjecture, by someone with a distaste for monkeys. Thereafter it was drawn sympathetically and humorously. The change was abrupt and noticeable. Why? On instructions from Mr. Koven?”

Pat Lowell was frowning. Her lips parted and went together again.

“You have four choices,” Wolfe said bluntly. “The truth, a lie, evasion, or refusal to answer. Either of the last two would make me curious, and I would get my curiosity satisfied somehow. If you try a lie it may work, but I’m an expert on lies and liars.”

“There’s nothing to lie about. I was thinking back. Mr. Getz objected to the way the monkey was drawn, and Mr. Koven had Mr. Jordan do it instead of Mr. Hildebrand.”

“Mr. Jordan likes monkeys?”

“He likes animals. He said the monkey looked like Napoleon.”

“Mr. Hildebrand does not like monkeys?”

“He didn’t like that one. Rookaloo knew it, of course, and bit him once. Isn’t this pretty silly, Mr. Wolfe? Are you going on with this?”

“Unless you walk out, yes. I’m investigating Mr. Koven’s counterclaim, and this is how I do it. With any question you have your four choices — and a fifth too, of course: get up and go. How did you feel about the monkey?”

“I thought it was an awful nuisance, but it had its points as a diversion. It was my fault it was there, since I gave it to Mr. Getz.”

“Indeed. When?”

“About a year ago. A friend returning from South America gave it to me, and I couldn’t take care of it so I gave it to him.”

“Mr. Getz lives at the Koven house?”

“Yes.”

“Then actually you were dumping it onto Mrs. Koven. Did she appreciate it?”

“She has never said so. I didn’t — I know I should have considered that. I apologized to her, and she was nice about it.”

“Did Mr. Koven like the monkey?”

“He liked to tease it. But he didn’t dislike it; he teased it just to annoy Mr. Getz.”

Wolfe leaned back and clasped his hands behind his head. “You know, Miss Lowell, I did not find the Dazzle Dan saga hopelessly inane. There is a sustained sardonic tone, some fertility of invention, and even an occasional touch of imagination. Monday evening, while Mr. Goodwin was in jail, I telephoned a couple of people who are supposed to know things and was referred by them to others. I was told that it is generally believed, though not published, that the conception of Dazzle Dan was originally supplied to Mr. Koven by Mr. Getz, that Mr. Getz was the continuing source of inspiration for the story and pictures, and that without him Mr. Koven will be up a stump. What about it?”

Pat Lowell had stiffened. “Talk.” She was scornful. “Just cheap talk.”

“You should know.” Wolfe sounded relieved. “If that belief could be validated I admit I would be up a stump myself. To support my claim against Mr. Koven, and to discredit his against me, I need to demonstrate that Mr. Goodwin did not kill Mr. Getz, either accidentally or otherwise. If he didn’t, then who did? One of you five. But all of you had a direct personal interest in the continued success of Dazzle Dan, sharing as you did in the prodigious proceeds; and if Mr. Getz was responsible for the success, why kill him?” Wolfe chuckled. “So you see I’m not silly at all. We’ve been at it only twenty minutes, and already you’ve helped me enormously. Give us another four or five hours, and we’ll see. By the way.”

He leaned forward to press a button at the edge of his desk, and in a moment Fritz appeared.

“There’ll be a guest for dinner, Fritz.”

“Yes, sir.” Fritz went.

“Four or five hours?” Pat Lowell demanded.

“At least that. With a recess for dinner; I banish business from the table. Half for me and half for you. This affair is extremely complicated, and if you came here to get an agreement we’ll have to cover it all. Let’s see, where were we?”

She regarded him. “About Getz, I didn’t say he had nothing to do with the success of Dazzle Dan. After all, so do I. I didn’t say he won’t be a loss. Everyone knows he was Mr. Koven’s oldest and closest friend. We were all quite aware that Mr. Koven relied on him—”

Wolfe showed her a palm. “Please, Miss Lowell, don’t spoil it for me. Don’t give me a point and then try to snatch it back. Next you’ll be saying that Koven called Getz ‘the Squirt’ to show his affection, as a man will call his dearest friend an old bastard, whereas I prefer to regard it as an inferiority complex, deeply resentful, showing its biceps. Or telling me that all of you, without exception, were inordinately fond of Mr. Getz and submissively grateful to him. Don’t forget that Mr. Goodwin spent hours in that house among you and has fully reported to me; also you should know that I had a talk with Inspector Cramer Monday evening and learned from him some of the plain facts, such as the pillow lying on the floor, scorched and pierced, showing that it had been used to muffle the sound of the shot, and the failure of all of you to prove lack of opportunity.”

Wolfe kept going. “But if you insist on minimizing Koven’s dependence as a fact, let me assume it as a hypothesis in order to put a question. Say, just for my question, that Koven felt strongly about his debt to Getz and his reliance on him, that he proposed to do something about it, and that he found it necessary to confide in one of you people, to get help or advice. Which of you would he have come to? We must of course put his wife first, ex officio and to sustain convention — and anyway, out of courtesy I must suppose you incapable of revealing your employer’s conjugal privities. Which of you three would he have come to — Mr. Hildebrand, Mr. Jordan, or you?”

Miss Lowell was wary. “On your hypothesis, you mean.”

“Yes.”

“None of us.”

“But if he felt he had to?”

“Not with anything as intimate as that. He wouldn’t have let himself have to. None of us three has ever got within miles of him on anything really personal.”

“Surely he confides in you, his agent and manager?”

“On business matters, yes. Not on personal things, except superficialities.”

“Why were all of you so concerned about the gun in his desk?”

“We weren’t concerned, not really concerned — at least I wasn’t. I just didn’t like it’s being there, loaded, so easy to get at, and I knew he didn’t have a license for it.”

Wolfe kept on about the gun for a good ten minutes — how often had she seen it, had she ever picked it up, and so forth, with special emphasis on Sunday morning, when she and Hildebrand had opened the drawer and looked at it. On that detail she corroborated Hildebrand as I had heard him tell it to Cramer. Finally she balked. She said they weren’t getting anywhere, and she certainly wasn’t going to stay for dinner if afterward it was only going to be more of the same.

Wolfe nodded in agreement. “You’re quite right,” he told her. “We’ve gone as far as we can, you and I. We need all of them. It’s time for you to call Mr. Koven and tell him so. Tell him to be here at eight-thirty with Mrs. Koven, Mr. Jordan, and Mr. Hildebrand.”

She was staring at him. “Are you trying to be funny?” she demanded.

He skipped it. “I don’t know,” he said, “whether you can handle it properly; if not, I’ll talk to him. The validity of my claim, and of his, depends primarily on who killed Mr. Getz. I now know who killed him. I’ll have to tell the police but first I want to settle the matter of my claim with Mr. Koven. Tell him that. Tell him that if I have to inform the police before I have a talk with him and the others there will be no compromise on my claim, and I’ll collect it.”

“This is a bluff.”

“Then call it.”

“I’m going to.” She left the chair and got the coat around her. Her eyes blazed at him. “I’m not such a sap!” She started for the door.

“Get Inspector Cramer, Archie!” Wolfe snapped. He called, “They’ll be there by the time you are!”

I lifted the phone and dialed. She was out in the hall, but I heard neither footsteps nor the door opening.

“Hello,” I told the transmitter, loud enough. “Manhattan Homicide West? Inspector Cramer, please. This is—”

A hand darted past me, and a finger pressed the button down, and a mink coat dropped to the floor. “Damn you!” she said, hard and cold, but the hand was shaking so that the finger slipped off the button. I cradled the phone.

“Get Mr. Koven’s number for her, Archie,” Wolfe purred.

VII

At twenty minutes to nine Wolfe’s eyes moved slowly from left to right, to take in the faces of our assembled visitors. He was in a nasty humor. He hated to work right after dinner, and from the way he kept his chin down and a slight twitch of a muscle in his cheek I knew it was going to be real work. Whether he had got them there with a bluff or not, and my guess was that he had, it would take more than a bluff to rake in the pot he was after now.

Pat Lowell had not dined with us. Not only had she declined to come along to the dining room; she had also left untouched the tray which Fritz had taken to her in the office. Of course that got Wolfe’s goat and probably got some pointed remarks from him, but I wasn’t there to hear them because I had gone to the kitchen to check with Fritz on the operation of the installation that had been made by Levay Recorders, Inc. That was the one part of the program that I clearly understood. I was still in the kitchen, rehearsing with Fritz, when the doorbell rang and I went to the front and found them there in a body. They got better hall service than I had got at their place, and also better chair service in the office.

When they were seated Wolfe took them in from left to right — Harry Koven in the red leather chair, then his wife, then Pat Lowell, and, after a gap, Pete Jordan and Byram Hildebrand over toward me. I don’t know what impression Wolfe got from his survey, but from where I sat it looked as if he was up against a united front.

“This time,” Koven blurted, “you can’t cook up a fancy lie with Goodwin. There are witnesses.”

He was keyed up. I would have said he had had six drinks, but it might have been more.

“We won’t get anywhere that way, Mr. Koven,” Wolfe objected. “We’re all tangled up, and it will take more than blather to get us loose. You don’t want to pay me a million dollars. I don’t want to lose my license. The police don’t want to add another unsolved murder to the long list. The central and dominant factor is the violent death of Mr. Getz, and I propose to deal with that at length. If we can get that settled—”

“You told Miss Lowell you know who killed him. If so, why don’t you tell the police? That ought to settle it.”

Wolfe’s eyes narrowed. “You don’t mean that, Mr. Koven—”

“You’re damn right I mean it!”

“Then there’s a misunderstanding. I heard Miss Lowell’s talk with you on the phone, both ends of it. I got the impression that my threat to inform the police about Mr. Getz’s death was what brought you down here. Now you seem—”

“It wasn’t any threat that brought me here! It’s that blackmailing suit you started! I want to make you eat it and I’m going to!”

“Indeed. Then I gather that you don’t care who gets my information first, you or the police. But I do. For one thing, when I talk to the police I like to be able—”

The doorbell rang. When visitors were present Fritz usually answered the door, but he had orders to stick to his post in the kitchen, so I got up and went to the hall, circling behind the arc of the chairs. I switched on the stoop light for a look through the one-way glass. One glance was enough. Stepping back into the office, I stood until Wolfe caught my eye.

“The man about the chair,” I told him.

He frowned. “Tell him I’m—” He stopped, and the frown cleared. “No. I’ll see him. If you’ll excuse me a moment?” He pushed his chair back, made it to his feet, and came, detouring around Koven. I let him precede me into the hall and closed that door before joining him. He strode to the front, peered through the glass, and opened the door. The chain bolt stopped it at a crack of two inches.

Wolfe spoke through the crack. “Well, sir?”

Inspector Cramer’s voice was anything but friendly. “I’m coming in.”

“I doubt it. What for?”

“Patricia Lowell entered here at six o’clock and is still here. The other four entered fifteen minutes ago. I told you Monday evening to lay off. I told you your license was suspended, and here you are with your office full. I’m coming in.”

“I still doubt it. I have no client. My job for Mr. Koven, which you know about, has been finished, and I have sent him a bill. These people are here to discuss an action for damages which I have brought against Mr. Koven. I don’t need a license for that. I’m shutting the door.”

He tried to, but it didn’t budge. I could see the tip of Cramer’s toe at the bottom of the crack.

“By God, this does it,” Cramer said savagely. “You’re through.”

“I thought I was already through. But this—”

“I can’t hear you! The wind.”

“This is preposterous, talking through a crack. Descend to the sidewalk, and I’ll come out. Did you hear that?”

“Yes.”

“Very well. To the sidewalk.”

Wolfe marched to the big old walnut rack and reached for his overcoat. After I had held it for him and handed him his hat I got my coat and slipped into it and then took a look through the glass. The stoop was empty. A burly figure was at the bottom of the steps. I unbolted the door and opened it, followed Wolfe over the sill, pulled the door shut, and made sure it was locked. A gust of wind pounced on us, slashing at us with sleet. I wanted to take Wolfe’s elbow as we went down the steps, thinking where it would leave me if he fell and cracked his skull, but knew I hadn’t better.

He made it safely, got his back to the sleety wind, which meant that Cramer had to face it, and raised his voice. “I don’t like fighting a blizzard, so let’s get to the point. You don’t want these people talking with me, but there’s nothing you can do about it. You have blundered and you know it. You arrested Mr. Goodwin on a trumpery charge. You came and blustered me and went too far. Now you’re afraid I’m going to explode Mr. Koven’s lies. More, you’re afraid I’m going to catch a murderer and toss him to the district attorney. So you—”

“I’m not afraid of a goddam thing.” Cramer was squinting to protect his eyes from the cutting sleet. “I told you to lay off, and by God you’re going to. Your suit against Koven is a phony.”

“It isn’t, but let’s stick to the point. I’m uncomfortable. I am not an outdoors man. You want to enter my house. You may, under a condition. The five callers are in my office. There is a hole in the wall, concealed from view in the office by what is apparently a picture. Standing, or on a stool, in a nook at the end of the hall, you can see and hear us in the office. The condition is that you enter quietly — confound it!”

The wind had taken his hat. I made a quick dive and stab but missed, and away it went. He had only had it fourteen years.

“The condition,” he repeated, “is that you enter quietly, take your post in the nook, oversee us from there, and give me half an hour. Thereafter you will be free to join us if you think you should. I warn you not to be impetuous. Up to a certain point your presence would make it harder for me, if not impossible, and I doubt if you’ll know when that point is reached. I’m after a murderer, and there’s one chance in five, I should say, that I’ll get him. I want—”

“I thought you said you were discussing an action for damages.”

“We are. I’ll get either the murderer or the damages. Do you want to harp on that?”

“No.”

“You’ve cooled off, and no wonder, in this hurricane. My hair will go next. I’m going in. If you come along it must be under the condition as stated. Are you coming?”

“Yes.”

“You accept the condition?”

“Yes.”

Wolfe headed for the steps. I passed him to go ahead and unlock the door. When they were inside I closed it and put the bolt back on. They hung up their coats, and Wolfe took Cramer down the hall and around the corner to the nook. I brought a stool from the kitchen, but Cramer shook his head. Wolfe slid the panel aside, making no sound, looked through, and nodded to Cramer. Cramer took a look and nodded back, and we left him. At the door to the office Wolfe muttered about his hair, and I let him use my pocket comb.

From the way they looked at us as we entered you might have thought they suspected we had been in the cellar fusing a bomb, but one more suspicion wouldn’t make it any harder. I circled to my desk and sat. Wolfe got himself back in place, took a deep breath, and passed his eyes over them.

“I’m sorry,” he said politely, “but that was unavoidable. Suppose we start over” — he looked at Koven — “say with your surmise to the police that Getz was shot by Mr. Goodwin accidentally in a scuffle. That’s absurd. Getz was shot with a cartridge that had been taken from your gun and put into Goodwin’s gun. Manifestly Goodwin couldn’t have done that, since when he first saw your gun Getz was already dead. Therefore—”

“That’s not true!” Koven cut in. “He had seen it before, when he came to my office. He could have gone back later and got the cartridges.”

Wolfe glared at him in astonishment. “Do you really dare, sir, in front of me, to my face, to cling to that fantastic tale you told the police? That rigmarole?”

“You’re damn right I do!”

“Pfui.” Wolfe was disgusted. “I had hoped, here together, we were prepared to get down to reality. It would have been better to adopt your suggestion to take my information to the police. Perhaps—”

“I made no such suggestion!”

“In this room, Mr. Koven, some fifteen minutes ago?”

“No!”

Wolfe made a face. “I see,” he said quietly. “It’s impossible to get on solid ground with a man like you, but I still have to try. Archie, bring the tape from the kitchen, please?”

I went. I didn’t like it. I thought he was rushing it. Granting that he had been jostled off his stride by Cramer’s arrival, I felt that it was far from one of his best performances, and this looked like a situation where nothing less than his best would do. So I went to the kitchen, passing Cramer in his nook without a glance, told Fritz to stop the machine and wind, and stood and scowled at it turning. When it stopped I removed the wheel and slipped it into a carton and, carton in hand, returned to the office.

“We’re waiting,” Wolfe said curtly.

That hurried me. There was a stack of similar cartons on my desk, and in my haste I knocked them over as I was putting down the one I had brought. It was embarrassing with all eyes on me, and I gave them a cold look as I crossed to the cabinet to get the player. It needed a whole corner of my desk, and I had to shove the tumbled cartons aside to make room. Finally I had the player in position and connected, and the wheel of tape, taken from the carton, in place.

“All right?” I asked Wolfe.

“Go ahead.”

I flipped the switch. There was a crackle and a little spitting, and then Wolfe’s voice came:

“It’s not that, Mr. Koven, not at all. I only doubt if it’s worth it to you, considering the size of my minimum fee, to hire me for anything so trivial as finding a stolen gun, or even discovering the thief. I should think—”

“No!” Wolfe bellowed.

I switched it off. I was flustered. “Excuse it,” I said. “The wrong one.”

“Must I do it myself?” Wolfe asked sarcastically.

I muttered something, turning the wheel to rewind. I removed it, pawed among the cartons, picked one, took out the wheel, put it on, and turned the switch. This time the voice that came on was not Wolfe’s but Koven’s — loud and clear.

“This time you can’t cook up a fancy lie with Goodwin. There are witnesses.”

Then Wolfe’s: “We won’t get anywhere that way, Mr. Koven. We’re all tangled up, and it will take more than blather to get us loose. You don’t want to pay me a million dollars. I don’t want to lose my license. The police don’t want to add another unsolved murder to the long list. The central and dominant factor is the violent death of Mr. Getz, and I propose to deal with that at length. If we can get that settled—”

Koven’s: “You told Miss Lowell you know who killed him. If so, why don’t you tell the police? That ought to settle it.”

Wolfe: “You don’t mean that, Mr. Koven—”

Koven: “You’re damn right I mean it!”

Wolfe: “Then there’s a misunderstanding. I heard Miss Lowell’s talk with you on the phone, both ends of it. I got the impression that my threat to inform the police—”

“That’s enough!” Wolfe called. I turned it off. Wolfe looked at Koven. “I would call that,” he said dryly, “a suggestion that I take my information to the police. Wouldn’t you?”

Koven wasn’t saying. Wolfe’s eyes moved. “Wouldn’t you, Miss Lowell?”

She shook her head. “I’m not an expert on suggestions.”

Wolfe left her. “We won’t quarrel over terms, Mr. Koven. You heard it. Incidentally, about the other tape you heard the start of through Mr. Goodwin’s clumsiness, you may wonder why I haven’t given it to the police to refute you. Monday evening, when Inspector Cramer came to see me, I still considered you as my client and I didn’t want to discomfit you until I heard what you had to say. Before Mr. Cramer left he had made himself so offensive that I was disinclined to tell him anything whatever. Now you are no longer my client. We’ll discuss this matter realistically or not at all. I don’t care to badger you into an explicit statement that you lied to the police; I’ll leave that to you and them; I merely insist that we proceed on the basis of what we both know to be the truth. With that understood—”

“Wait a minute,” Pat Lowell put in. “The gun was in the drawer Sunday morning. I saw it.”

“I know you did. That’s one of the knots in the tangle, and we’ll come to it.” His eyes swept the arc. “We want to know who killed Adrian Getz. Let’s get at it. What do we know about him or her? We know a lot.

“First, he took Koven’s gun from the drawer sometime previous to last Friday and kept it somewhere. For that gun was put back in the drawer when Goodwin’s was removed shortly before Getz was killed, and cartridges from it were placed in Goodwin’s gun.

“Second, the thought of Getz continuing to live was for some reason so repugnant to him as to be intolerable.

“Third, he knew the purpose of Koven’s visit here Saturday evening, and of Goodwin’s errand at the Koven house on Monday, and he knew the details of the procedure planned by Koven and Goodwin. Only with—”

“I don’t know them even yet,” Hildebrand squeaked.

“Neither do I,” Pete Jordan declared.

“The innocent can afford ignorance,” Wolfe told them. “Enjoy it if you have it. Only with that knowledge could he have devised his intricate scheme and carried it out.

“Fourth, his mental processes are devious but defective. His deliberate and spectacular plan to make it appear that Goodwin had killed Getz, while ingenious in some respects, was in others witless. Going to Koven’s office to get Goodwin’s gun from the drawer and placing Koven’s gun there, transferring the cartridges from Koven’s gun to Goodwin’s, proceeding to the room below to find Getz asleep, shooting him in the head, using a pillow to muffle the sound — all that was well enough, competently conceived and daringly executed, but then what? Wanting to make sure that the gun would be quickly found on the spot, a quite unnecessary precaution, he slipped it into the monkey’s cage. That was probably improvisation and utterly brainless. Mr. Goodwin couldn’t possibly be such a vapid fool.

“Fifth, he hated the monkey deeply and bitterly, either on its own account or because of its association with Getz. Having just killed a man, and needing to leave the spot with all possible speed, he went and opened a window, from only one conceivable motive. That took a peculiar, indeed an unexampled, malevolence. I admit it was effective. Miss Lowell tells me the monkey is dying.

“Sixth, he placed Koven’s gun in the drawer Sunday morning and, after it had been seen there, took it out again. That was the most remarkable stratagem of all. Since there was no point in putting it there unless it was to be seen, he arranged that it should be seen. Why? It could only have been that he already knew what was to happen on Monday when Mr. Goodwin came, he had already conceived his scheme for framing Goodwin for the homicide, and he thought he was arranging in advance to discredit Goodwin’s story. So he not only put the gun in the drawer Sunday morning, he also made sure its presence would be noted — and not, of course, by Mr. Koven.”

Wolfe focused on one of them. “You saw the gun in the drawer Sunday morning, Mr. Hildebrand?”

“Yes.” The squeak was off pitch. “But I didn’t put it there!”

“I didn’t say you did. Your claim to innocence has not yet been challenged. You were in the workroom, went up to consult Mr. Koven, encountered Mrs. Koven one flight up, were told by her that Mr. Koven was still in bed, ascended to the office, found Miss Lowell there, and you pulled the drawer open and both of you saw the gun there. Is that correct?”

“I didn’t go up there to look in that drawer. We just—”

“Stop meeting accusations that haven’t been made. It’s a bad habit. Had you been upstairs earlier that morning?”

“No!”

“Had he, Miss Lowell?”

“Not that I know of.” She spoke slowly, with a drag, as if she had only so many words and had to count them. “Our looking into the drawer was only incidental.”

“Had he, Mrs. Koven?”

The wife jerked her head up. “Had what?” she demanded.

“Had Mr. Hildebrand been upstairs earlier that morning?”

She looked bewildered. “Earlier than what?”

“You met him in the second-floor hall and told him that your husband was still in bed and that Miss Lowell was up in the office. Had he been upstairs before that? That morning?”

“I haven’t the slightest idea.”

“Then you don’t say that he had been?”

“I know nothing about it.”

“There’s nothing as safe as ignorance — or as dangerous.” Wolfe spread his gaze again. “To complete the list of what we know about the murderer. Seventh and last, his repugnance to Getz was so extreme that he even scorned the risk that by killing Getz he might be killing Dazzle Dan. How essential Getz was to Dazzle Dan—”

“I make Dazzle Dan!” Harry Koven roared. “Dazzle Dan is mine!” He was glaring at everybody. “I am Dazzle Dan!”

“For God’s sake shut up, Harry!” Pat Lowell said sharply.

Koven’s chin was quivering. He needed three drinks.

“I was saying,” Wolfe went on, “that I do not know how essential Getz was to Dazzle Dan. The testimony conflicts. In any case the murderer wanted him dead. I’ve identified the murderer for you by now, surely?”

“You have not,” Pat Lowell said aggressively.

“Then I’ll specify.” Wolfe leaned forward at them. “But first let me say a word for the police, particularly Mr. Cramer. He is quite capable of unraveling a tangle like this, with its superficial complexities. What flummoxed him was Mr. Koven’s elaborate lie, apparently corroborated by Miss Lowell and Mr. Hildebrand. If he had had the gumption to proceed on the assumption that Mr. Goodwin and I were telling the truth and all of it, he would have found it simple. This should be a lesson to him.”

Wolfe considered a moment. “It might be better to specify by elimination. If you recall my list of seven facts about the murderer, that is child’s play. Mr. Jordan, for instance, is eliminated by Number Six; he wasn’t there Sunday morning. Mr. Hildebrand is eliminated by three or four of them, especially Number Six again; he had made no earlier trip upstairs. Miss Lowell is eliminated, for me, by Numbers Four and Five; and I am convinced that none of the three I have named can meet the requirements of Number Three. I do not believe that Mr. Koven would have confided in any of them so intimately. Nor do I—”

“Hold it!” The gruff voice came from the doorway.

Heads jerked around. Cramer advanced and stopped at Koven’s left, between him and his wife. There was dead silence. Koven had his neck twisted to stare up at Cramer, then suddenly he fell apart and buried his face in his hands.

Cramer, scowling at Wolfe, boiling with rage, spoke. “Damn you, if you had given it to us! You and your numbers game!”

“I can’t give you what you won’t take,” Wolfe said bitingly. “You can have her now. Do you want more help? Mr. Koven was still in bed Sunday morning when two of them saw the gun in the drawer. More? Spend the night with Mr. Hildebrand. I’ll stake my license against your badge that he’ll remember that when he spoke with Mrs. Koven in the hall she said something that caused him to open the drawer and look at the gun. Still more? Take all the contents of her room to your laboratory. She must have hid the gun among her intimate things, and you should find evidence. You can’t put him on the stand and ask him if and when he told her what he was doing; he can’t testify against his wife; but surely—”

Mrs. Koven stood up. She was pale but under control, perfectly steady. She looked down at the back of her husband’s bent head.

“Take me home, Harry,” she said.

Cramer, in one short step, was at her elbow.

“Harry!” she said, softly insistent. “Take me home.”

His head lifted and turned to look at her. I couldn’t see his face. “Sit down, Marcy,” he said. “I’ll handle this.” He looked at Wolfe. “If you’ve got a record of what I said here Saturday, all right. I lied to the cops. So what? I didn’t want—”

“Be quiet, Harry,” Pat Lowell blurted at him. “Get a lawyer and let him talk. Don’t say anything.”

Wolfe nodded. “That’s good advice. Especially, Mr. Koven, since I hadn’t quite finished. It is a matter of record that Mr. Getz not only owned the house you live in but also that he owned Dazzle Dan and permitted you to take only ten per cent of the proceeds.”

Mrs. Koven dropped back into the chair and froze, staring at him. Wolfe spoke to her. “I suppose, madam, that after you killed him you went to his room to look for documents and possibly found some and destroyed them. That must have been part of your plan last week when you first took the gun from the drawer — to destroy all evidence of his ownership of Dazzle Dan after killing him. That was foolish, since a man like Mr. Getz would surely not leave invaluable papers in so accessible a spot, and they will certainly be found; we can leave that to Mr. Cramer. When I said it is a matter of record I meant a record that I have inspected and have in my possession.”

Wolfe pointed. “That stack of stuff on that table is Dazzle Dan for the past three years. In one episode, repeated annually with variations, he buys peaches from two characters named Aggie Ghool and Haggie Krool, and Aggie Ghool, saying that she owns the tree, gives Haggie Krool ten per cent of the amount received and pockets the rest. A.G. are the initials of Adrian Getz; H.K. are the initials of Harry Koven. It is not credible that that is coincidence or merely a prank, especially since the episode was repeated annually. Mr. Getz must have had a singularly contorted psyche, taking delight as he did in hiding the fact of his ownership and control of that monster, but compelling the nominal owner to publish it each year in a childish allegory. For a meager ten per cent—”

“Not of the net,” Koven objected. “Ten per cent of the gross. Over four hundred a week clear, and I—”

He stopped. His wife had said, “You worm.” Leaving her chair, she stood looking down at him, stiff and towering, overwhelming, small as she was.

“You worm!” she said in bitter contempt. “Not even a worm. Worms have guts, don’t they?”

She whirled to face Wolfe. “All right, you’ve got him. The one time he ever acted like a man, and he didn’t have the guts to see it through. Getz owned Dazzle Dan, that’s right. When he got the idea and sold it, years ago, and took Harry in to draw it and front it, Harry should have insisted on an even split right then and didn’t. He never had it in him to insist on anything, and never would, and Getz knew it. When Dazzle Dan caught on, and the years went by and it kept getting bigger and bigger, Getz didn’t mind Harry having the name and the fame as long as he owned it and got the money. You said he had a contorted psyche, maybe that was it, only that’s not what I’d call it. Getz was a vampire.”

“I’ll accept that,” Wolfe murmured.

“That’s the way it was when I met Harry, but I didn’t know it until we were married, two years ago. I admit Getz might not have got killed if it hadn’t been for me. When I found out how it was I tried to talk sense into Harry. I told him his name had been connected with Dazzle Dan so long that Getz would have to give him a bigger share, at least half, if he demanded it. He claimed he tried, but he just wasn’t man enough. I told him his name was so well known that he could cut loose and start another one on his own, but he wasn’t man enough for that either. He’s not a man, he’s a worm. I didn’t let up. I kept after him, I admit that. I’ll admit it on the witness stand if I have to. And I admit I didn’t know him as well as I thought I did. I didn’t know there was any danger of making him desperate enough to commit murder. I didn’t know he had it in him. Of course he’ll break down, but if he says I knew that he had decided to kill Getz I’ll have to deny it because it’s not true. I didn’t.”

Her husband was staring up at the back of her head, his mouth hanging open.

“I see.” Wolfe’s voice was hard and cold. “First you plan to put it on a stranger, Mr. Goodwin — indeed, two strangers, for I am in it too. That failing, you put it on your husband.” He shook his head. “No, madam. Your silliest mistake was opening the window to kill the monkey, but there were others, Mr. Cramer?”

Cramer had to take only one step to get her arm.

“Good God!” Koven groaned.

Pat Lowell said to Wolfe in a thin sharp voice, “So this is what you worked me for.”

She was a tough baby too, that girl.