I

What I felt like doing was go out for a walk, but I wasn’t quite desperate enough for that, so I merely beat it down to the office, shutting the door from the hall behind me, went and sat at my desk with my feet up, leaned back and closed my eyes, and took some deep breaths.

I had made two mistakes. When Bill McNab, garden editor of the Gazette, had suggested to Nero Wolfe that the members of the Manhattan Flower Club be invited to drop in some afternoon to look at the orchids, I should have fought it. And when the date had been set and the invitations sent, and Wolfe had arranged that Fritz and Saul should do the receiving at the front door and I should stay up in the plant rooms with him and Theodore, mingling with the guests, if I had had an ounce of brains I would have put my foot down. But I hadn’t, and as a result I had been up there a good hour and a half, grinning around and acting pleased and happy. “No, sir, that’s not a brasso, it’s a laelio.” “No, madam, I doubt if you could grow that miltonia in a living room — so sorry.” “Quite all right, madam — your sleeve happened to hook it — it’ll bloom again next year.”

It wouldn’t have been so bad if there had been something for the eyes. It was understood that the Manhattan Flower Club was choosy about who it took in, but obviously its standards were totally different from mine. The men were just men, okay as men go, but the women! It was a darned good thing they had picked on flowers to love, because flowers don’t have to love back. I didn’t object to their being alive and well, since after all I’ve got a mother too, and three aunts, and I fully appreciate them, but it would have been a relief to spot just one who could have made my grin start farther down than the front of my teeth.

There had in fact been one — just one. I had got a glimpse of her at the other end of the crowded aisle as I went through the door from the cool room into the moderate room, after showing a couple of guys what a bale of osmundine looked like in the potting room. From ten paces off she looked absolutely promising, and when I had maneuvered close enough to make her an offer to answer questions if she had any, there was simply no doubt about it, and the first quick slanting glance she gave me said plainly that she could tell the difference between a flower and a man, but she just smiled and shook her head and moved on by with her companions, an older female and two males. Later I had made another try and got another brushoff, and still later, too long later, feeling that the damn grin might freeze on me for good if I didn’t take a recess, I had gone AWOL by worming my way through to the far end of the warm room and sidling on out.

All the way down the three flights of stairs new guests were coming up, though it was then four o’clock. Nero Wolfe’s old brownstone house on West Thirty-fifth Street had seen no such throng as that within my memory, which is long and good. One flight down I stopped off at my bedroom for a pack of cigarettes, and another flight down I detoured to make sure the door of Wolfe’s bedroom was locked. In the main hall downstairs I halted a moment to watch Fritz Brenner, busy at the door with both departures and arrivals, and to see Paul Panzer emerge from the front room, which was being used as a cloakroom, with someone’s hat and top-coat. Then, as aforesaid, I entered the office, shutting the door from the hall behind me, went and sat at my desk with my feet up, leaned back and closed my eyes, and took some deep breaths.

I had been there eight or ten minutes, and getting relaxed and a little less bitter, when the door opened and she came in. Her companions were not along. By the time she had closed the door and turned to me I had got to my feet, with a friendly leer, and had begun, “I was just sitting here thinking—”

The look on her face stopped me. There was nothing wrong with it basically, but something had got it out of kilter. She headed for me, got halfway, jerked to a stop, sank into one of the yellow chairs, and squeaked, “Could I have a drink?”

Upstairs her voice had not squeaked at all. I had liked it.

“Scotch?” I asked her. “Rye, bourbon, gin—”

She just fluttered a hand. I went to the cupboard and got a hooker of Old Woody. Her hand was shaking as she took the glass, but she didn’t spill any, and she got it down in two swallows, as if it had been milk, which wasn’t very ladylike. She shuddered all over and shut her eyes. In a minute she opened them again and said hoarsely, the squeak gone, “Did I need that!”

“More?”

She shook her head. Her bright brown eyes were moist, from the whisky, as she gave me a full straight look with her head tilted up. “You’re Archie Goodwin,” she stated.

I nodded. “And you’re the Queen of Egypt?”

“I’m a baboon,” she declared. “I don’t know how they ever taught me to talk.” She looked around for something to put the glass on, and I moved a step and reached for it. “Look at my hand shake,” she complained. “I’m all to pieces.”

She kept her hand out, looking at it, so I took it in mine and gave it some friendly but gentle pressure. “You do seem a little upset,” I conceded. “I doubt if your hand usually feels clammy. When I saw you upstairs—”

She jerked the hand away and blurted, “I want to see Nero Wolfe. I want to see him right away, before I change my mind.” She was gazing up at me, with the moist brown eyes. “My God, I’m in a fix now all right! I’m one scared baboon! I’ve made up my mind, I’m going to get Nero Wolfe to get me out of this somehow — why shouldn’t he? He did a job for Dazy Perrit, didn’t he? Then I’m through. I’ll get a job at Macy’s or marry a truck driver! I want to see Nero Wolfe!”

I told her it couldn’t be done until the party was over.

She looked around. “Are people coming in here?”

I told her no.

“May I have another drink, please?”

I told her she should give the first one time to settle, and instead of arguing she arose and got the glass from the corner of Wolfe’s desk, went to the cupboard, and helped herself. I sat down and frowned at her. Her line sounded fairly screwy for a member of the Manhattan Flower Club, or even for a daughter of one. She came back to her chair, sat, and met my eyes. Looking at her straight like that could have been a nice way to pass the time if there had been any chance for a meeting of minds, but it was easy to see that what her mind was fighting with was connected with me only accidentally.

“I could tell you,” she said, hoarse again.

“Many people have,” I said modestly.

“I’m going to.”

“Good. Shoot.”

“I’m afraid I’ll change my mind and I don’t want to.”

“Okay. Ready, go.”

“I’m a crook.”

“It doesn’t show,” I objected. “What do you do, cheat at canasta?”

“I didn’t say I’m a cheat.” She cleared her throat for the hoarseness. “I said I’m a crook. Remind me someday to tell you the story of my life, how my husband got killed in the war and I broke through the gate. Don’t I sound interesting?”

“You sure do. What’s your line, orchid-stealing?”

“No. I wouldn’t be small and I wouldn’t be dirty — that’s what I thought, but once you start it’s not so easy. You meet people and you get involved. You can’t go it alone. Two years ago four of us took over a hundred grand from a certain rich woman with a rich husband. I can tell you about that one, even names, because she couldn’t move anyhow.”

I nodded. “Blackmailers’ customers seldom can. What—”

“I’m not a blackmailer!” Her eyes were blazing.

“Excuse me. Mr. Wolfe often says I jump to conclusions.”

“You did that time.” She was still indignant. “A blackmailer’s not a crook, he’s a snake! Not that it really matters. What’s wrong with being a crook is the other crooks — they make it dirty whether you like it or not. I’ve been up to my knees in it. It makes a coward of you too — that’s the worst. I had a friend once — as close as a crook ever comes to having a friend — and a man killed her, strangled her, and if I had told what I knew about it they could have caught him, but I was afraid to go to the cops, so he’s still loose. And she was my friend! That’s getting down toward the bottom. Isn’t it?”

“Fairly low,” I agreed, eyeing her. “Of course I don’t know you any too well. I don’t know how you react to two stiff drinks. Maybe your hobby is stringing private detectives. If so, why don’t you wait for Mr. Wolfe? It would be more fun with two of us.”

She simply ignored it. “I realized long ago,” she went on as if it were a one-way conversation, “that I had made a mistake. I wasn’t what I had thought I was going to be — a romantic reckless outlaw. You can’t do it that way, or anyhow I couldn’t. I was just a crook and I knew it, and about a year ago I decided to break loose. A good way to do it would have been to talk to someone the way I’m talking to you now, but I didn’t have sense enough to see that. And so many people were involved. It was so involved! You know?”

I nodded. “Yeah, I know.”

“So I kept putting it off. We got a good one in December and I went to Florida for a vacation, but down there I met a man with a lead and we followed it up here just a week ago. That’s what I’m working on now. That’s what brought me here today. This man—”

She stopped abruptly.

“Well?” I invited her.

She looked dead serious, not more serious, but a different kind. “I’m not putting anything on him,” she declared. “I don’t owe him anything and I don’t like him, but this is strictly about me and no one else — only I had to explain why I’m here. I wish to God I’d never come!”

There was no question about that coming from her heart, unless she had done a lot of rehearsing in front of a mirror.

“It got you this talk with me,” I reminded her.

She was looking straight through me and beyond. “If only I hadn’t come! If only I hadn’t seen him!” She leaned toward me for emphasis. “I’m either too smart or not smart enough, that’s my trouble. I should have looked away from him, turned away quick, when I realized I knew who he was, before he turned and saw it in my eyes. But I was so shocked I couldn’t help it! For a second I couldn’t move. God, I was dumb! I stood there staring at him, thinking I wouldn’t have recognized him if he hadn’t had a hat on, and then he looked at me and saw what was happening. I knew then all right what an awful fool I was, and I turned away and moved off, but it was too late. I know how to manage my face with nearly anybody, anywhere, but that was too much for me. It showed so plain that Mrs. Orwin asked me what was the matter with me and I had to try to pull myself together — then seeing Nero Wolfe gave me the idea of telling him, only of course I couldn’t right there with the crowd — and then I saw you going out and as soon as I could break away I came down to find you.”

She tried smiling at me, but it didn’t work so good. “Now I feel some better,” she said hopefully.

I nodded. “That’s good bourbon. Is it a secret who you recognized?”

“No. I’m going to tell Nero Wolfe.”

“You decided to tell me.” I flipped a hand. “Suit yourself. Whoever you tell, what good will that do?”

“Why — then he can’t do anything to me.”

“Why not?”

“Because he wouldn’t dare. Nero Wolfe will tell him that I’ve told about him, so that if anything happened to me he would know it was him, and he’d know who he is — I mean Nero Wolfe would know — and so would you.”

“We would if we had his name and address.” I was studying her. “He must be quite a specimen, to scare you that bad. And speaking of names, what’s yours?”

She made a little noise that could have been meant for a laugh. “Do you like Marjorie?”

“So-so.”

“I used Evelyn Carter in Paris once. Do you like that?”

“Not bad. What are you using now?”

She hesitated, frowning.

“Good Lord,” I protested, “you’re not in a vacuum, and I’m a detective. They took the names down at the door.”

“Cynthia Brown,” she said.

“I like that fine. That’s Mrs. Orwin you came with?”

“Yes.”

“She’s the current customer? The lead you picked up in Florida?”

“Yes. But that’s—” She gestured. “That’s finished. That’s settled now, since I’m telling you and Nero Wolfe. I’m through.”

“I know. A job at Macy’s or marry a truck driver. There’s one thing you haven’t told me, though — who was it you recognized?”

She turned her head for a glance at the door and then turned it still farther to look behind her. When her face came back to me it was out of kilter again, with the teeth pinching the lower lip.

“Can anyone hear us?” she asked.

“Nope. That other door goes to the front room — today the cloakroom. Anyhow this room’s soundproofed, including the doors.”

She glanced at the hall door again, returned to me, and lowered her voice. “This has to be done the way I say.”

“Sure, why not?”

“I wasn’t being honest with you.”

“I wouldn’t expect it from a crook. Start over.”

“I mean—” She used the teeth on the lip again. “I mean I’m not just scared about myself. I’m scared all right, but I don’t just want Nero Wolfe for what I said. I want him to get him for murder, but he has to keep me out of it. I don’t want to have anything to do with any cops — not now I don’t especially. I’m through. If he won’t do it that way — do you think he will?”

I was feeling a faint tingle at the base of my spine. I only get that on special occasions, but this was unquestionably something special, if Marjorie Evelyn Carter Cynthia Brown wasn’t taking me for a ride to pay for the drinks.

I gave her a hard look and didn’t let the tingle get into my voice. “He might, for you, if you pay him. What kind of evidence have you got? Any?”

“I saw him.”

“You mean today?”

“I mean I saw him then.” She had her hands clasped tight. “I told you — I had a friend. I stopped in at her apartment that afternoon. I was just leaving — Doris was inside, in the bathroom — and as I got near the entrance door I heard a key turning in the lock, from the outside. I stopped, and the door came open and a man came in. When he saw me he just stood and stared. I had never met Doris’s bank account and I knew she didn’t want me to, and since he had a key I supposed of course it was him, making an unexpected call, so I mumbled something about Doris being in the bathroom and went past him, through the door and on out.”

She paused. Her clasped hands loosened and then tightened again.

“I’m burning my bridges,” she said, “but I can deny all this if I have to. I went and kept a cocktail date, and then phoned Doris’s number to ask if our dinner date was still on, considering the visit of the bank account. There was no answer, so I went back to her apartment and rang the bell, and there was no answer to that either. It was a self-service elevator place, no doorman or hallman, so there was no one to ask anything. Her maid found her body the next morning. The papers said she had been killed the day before. That man killed her. There wasn’t a word about him — no one had seen him enter or leave. And I didn’t open my mouth! I was a lousy coward!”

“And today all of a sudden there he is, looking at orchids?”

“Yes.”

“It’s a pretty good script,” I acknowledged. “Are you sure—”

“It’s no script! I wish to God it was!”

“Okay. Are you sure he knows you recognized him?”

“Yes. He looked straight at me, and his eyes—”

She was stopped by the house phone buzzing. Stepping to my desk, I picked it up and asked it, “Well?”

Nero Wolfe’s voice, peevish, came. “Archie!”

“Yes, sir.”

“What the devil are you doing? Come back up here!”

“Pretty soon. I’m talking with a prospective client—”

“This is no time for clients! Come at once!”

The connection went. He had slammed it down. I hung up and went back to the prospective client. “Mr. Wolfe wants me upstairs. He didn’t stop to think in time that the Manhattan Flower Club has women in it as well as men. Do you want to wait here?”

“Yes.”

“If Mrs. Orwin asks about you?”

“I didn’t feel well and went home.”

“Okay. I shouldn’t be long — the invitations said two-thirty to five. If you want a drink, help yourself. What name does this murderer use when he goes to look at orchids?”

She looked blank. I got impatient.

“Damn it, what’s his name? This bird you recognized.”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t?”

“No.”

“Describe him.”

She thought it over a little, gazing at me, and then shook her head. “I don’t think—” she said doubtfully. She shook her head again, more positive. “Not now. I want to see what Nero Wolfe says first.” She must have seen something in my eyes, or thought she did, for suddenly she came up out of her chair and moved to me and put a hand on my arm. “That’s all I mean,” she said earnestly. “It’s not you — I know you’re all right.” Her fingers tightened on my forearm. “I might as well tell you — you’d never want any part of me anyhow — this is the first time in years, I don’t know how long, that I’ve talked to a man just straight — you know, just human? You know, not figuring on something one way or another. I—” She stopped for a word, and a little color showed in her cheeks. She found the word. “I’ve enjoyed it very much.”

“Good. Me too. Call me Archie. I’ve got to go, but describe him. Just sketch him.”

But she hadn’t enjoyed it that much. “Not until Nero Wolfe says he’ll do it,” she said firmly.

I had to leave it at that, knowing as I did that in three more minutes Wolfe might have a fit. Out in the hall I had the notion of passing the word to Saul and Fritz to give departing guests a good look, but rejected it because (a) they weren’t there, both of them presumably being busy in the cloakroom, (b) he might have departed already, and (c) I had by no means swallowed a single word of Cynthia’s story, let alone the whole works. So I headed for the stairs and breasted the descending tide of guests leaving.

Up in the plant rooms there were plenty left. When I came into Wolfe’s range he darted me a glance of cold fury, and I turned on the grin. Anyway, it was a quarter to five, and if they took the hint on the invitation it wouldn’t last much longer.

II

They didn’t take the hint on the dot, but it didn’t bother me because my mind was occupied. I was now really interested in them — or at least one of them, if he had actually been there and hadn’t gone home.

First there was a chore to get done. I found the three Cynthia had been with, a female and two males, over by the odontoglossum bench in the cool room. Getting through to them, I asked politely, “Mrs. Orwin?”

She nodded at me and said, “Yes?” Not quite tall enough but plenty plump enough, with a round full face and narrow little eyes that might have been better if they had been wide open, she struck me as a lead worth following. Just the pearls around her neck and the mink stole over her arm would have made a good haul, though I doubted if that was the kind of loot Cynthia specialized in.

“I’m Archie Goodwin,” I said. “I work here.”

I would have gone on if I had known how, but I needed a lead myself, since I didn’t know whether to say Miss Brown or Mrs. Brown. Luckily one of the males horned in.

“My sister?” he inquired anxiously.

So it was a brother-and-sister act. As far as looks went he wasn’t a bad brother at all. Older than me maybe, but not much, he was tall and straight, with a strong mouth and jaw and keen gray eyes. “My sister?” he repeated.

“I guess so. You are—”

“Colonel Brown. Percy Brown.”

“Yeah.” I switched back to Mrs. Orwin. “Miss Brown asked me to tell you that she went home. I gave her a little drink and it seemed to help, but she decided to leave. She asked me to apologize for her.”

“She’s perfectly healthy,” the colonel asserted. He sounded a little hurt. “There’s nothing wrong with her.”

“Is she all right?” Mrs. Orwin asked.

“For her,” the other male put in, “you should have made it three drinks. Three big ones. Or just hand her the bottle.”

His tone was mean and his face was mean, and anyhow that was no way to talk in front of the help in a strange house, meaning me. He was some younger than Colonel Brown, but he already looked enough like Mrs. Orwin, especially the eyes, to make it more than a guess that they were mother and son. That point was settled when she commanded him, “Be quiet, Gene!” She turned to the colonel. “Perhaps you should go and see about her?”

He shook his head, with a fond but manly smile at her. “It’s not necessary, Mimi. Really.”

“She’s all right,” I assured them and pushed off, thinking there were a lot of names in this world that could stand a reshuffle. Calling that overweight narrow-eyed pearl-and-mink proprietor Mimi was a paradox.

I moved around among the guests, being gracious. Fully aware that I was not equipped with a Geiger counter that would flash a signal if and when I established a contact with a strangler, the fact remained that I had been known to have hunches, and it would be something for my scrapbook if I picked one as the killer of Doris Hatten and it turned out later to be sunfast.

Cynthia Brown hadn’t given me the Hatten, only the Doris, but with the context that was enough. At the time it had happened, some five months ago, early in October, the papers had given it a big play of course. She had been strangled with her own scarf, of white silk with the Declaration of Independence printed on it, in her cozy fifth-floor apartment in the West Seventies, and the scarf had been left around her neck, knotted at the back. The cops had never got within a mile of charging anyone, and Sergeant Purley Stebbins of Homicide had told me that they had never even found out who was paying the rent, but there was no law against Purley being discreet.

I kept on the go through the plant rooms, leaving all switches open for a hunch. Some of them were plainly preposterous, but with everyone else I made an opportunity to exchange some words, fullface and close up. That took time, and it was no help to my current and chronic campaign for a raise in wages, since it was the women, not the men, that Wolfe wanted off his neck. I stuck at it anyhow. It was true that if Cynthia was on the level, and if she hadn’t changed her mind by the time I got Wolfe in to her, we would soon have specifications, but I had had that tingle at the bottom of my spine and I was stubborn.

As I say, it took time, and meanwhile five o’clock came and went, and the crowd thinned out. Going on five-thirty the remaining groups seemed to get the idea all at once that time was up and made for the entrance to the stairs. I was in the moderate room when it happened, and the first thing I knew I was alone there, except for a guy at the north bench, studying a row of dowianas. He didn’t interest me, as I had already canvassed him and crossed him off as the wrong type for a strangler, but as I glanced his way he suddenly bent forward to pick up a pot with a flowering plant, and as he did so I felt my back stiffening. The stiffening was a reflex, but I knew what had caused it: the way his fingers closed around the pot, especially the thumbs. No matter how careful you are of other people’s property, you don’t pick up a five-inch pot as if you were going to squeeze the life out of it.

I made my way around to him. When I got there he was holding the pot so that the flowers were only a few inches from his eyes.

“Nice flower,” I said brightly.

He nodded. “What color do you call the sepals?”

“Nankeen yellow.”

He leaned to put the pot back, still choking it. I swiveled my head. The only people in sight, beyond the glass partition between us and the cool room, were Nero Wolfe and a small group of guests, among whom were the Orwin trio and Bill McNab, the garden editor of the Gazette. As I turned my head back to my man he straightened up, pivoted on his heel, and marched off without a word. Whatever else he might or might not have been guilty of, he certainly had bad manners.

I followed him, on into the warm room and through, out to the landing, and down the three flights of stairs. Along the main hall I was courteous enough not to step on his heel, but a lengthened stride would have reached it. The hall was next to empty. A woman, ready for the street in a caracul coat, was standing there, and Saul Panzer was posted near the front door with nothing to do. I followed my man on into the front room, the cloakroom, where Fritz Brenner was helping a guest on with his coat. Of course the racks were practically bare, and with one glance my man saw his property and went to get it. His coat was a brown tweed that had been through a lot more than one winter. I stepped forward to help, but he ignored me without even bothering to shake his head. I was beginning to feel hurt. When he emerged to the hall I was beside him, and as he moved to the front door I spoke.

“Excuse me, but we’re checking guests out as well as in. Your name, please?”

“Ridiculous,” he said curtly, and reached for the knob, pulled the door open, and crossed the sill. Saul, knowing I must have had a reason for wanting to check him out, was at my elbow, and we stood watching his back as he descended the seven steps of the stoop.

“Tail?” Saul muttered at me.

I shook my head and was parting my lips to mutter something back, when a sound came from behind us that made us both whirl around — a screech from a woman, not loud but full of feeling. As we whirled, Fritz and the guest he had been serving came out of the front room, and all four of us saw the woman in the caracul coat come running out of the office into the hall. She kept coming, gasping something, and the guest, making a noise like an alarmed male, moved to meet her. I moved faster, needing about eight jumps to the office door and two inside. There I stopped.

Of course I knew the thing on the floor was Cynthia, but only because I had left her in there in those clothes. With the face blue and contorted, the tongue halfway out, and the eyes popping, it could have been almost anybody. I knelt and slipped my hand inside her dress front, kept it there ten seconds, and felt nothing.

Saul’s voice came from behind. “I’m here.”

I got up and went to the phone on my desk and started dialing, telling Saul, “No one leaves. We’ll keep what we’ve got. Have the door open for Doc Vollmer.” After only two whirs the nurse answered, and put Vollmer on, and I snapped it at him. “Doc, Archie Goodwin. Come on the run. Strangled woman. Yeah, strangled.”

I pushed the phone back, reached for the house phone and buzzed the plant rooms, and after a wait had Wolfe’s irritated bark in my ear. “Yes?”

“I’m in the office. You’d better come down. That prospective client I mentioned is here on the floor, strangled. I think she’s gone, but I’ve sent for Vollmer.”

“Is this flummery?” he roared.

“No, sir. Come down and look at her and then ask me.”

The connection went. He had slammed it down. I got a sheet of thin tissue paper from a drawer, tore off a corner, and went and placed it carefully over Cynthia’s mouth and nostrils. In ten seconds it hadn’t stirred.

Voices had been sounding from the hall. Now one of them entered the office. Its owner was the guest who had been in the cloakroom with Fritz when the screech came. He was a chunky broad-shouldered guy with sharp domineering dark eyes and arms like a gorilla’s. His voice was going strong as he started toward me from the door, but it stopped when he had come far enough to get a good look at the object on the floor.

“My God,” he said huskily.

“Yes, sir,” I agreed.

“How did it happen?”

“Don’t know.”

“Who is it?”

“Don’t know.”

He made his eyes come away from it and up until they met mine, and I gave him an A for control. It really was a sight.

“The man at the door won’t let us leave,” he stated.

“No, sir. You can see why.”

“I certainly can.” His eyes stayed with me, however. “But we know nothing about it. My name is Carlisle, Homer N. Carlisle. I am the executive vice-president of the North American Foods Company. My wife was merely acting under impulse; she wanted to see the office of Nero Wolfe, and she opened the door and entered. She’s sorry she did, and so am I. We have an appointment, and there’s no reason why we should be detained.”

“I’m sorry too,” I told him. “But one thing, if nothing else — your wife discovered the body. We’re stuck worse than you are, with a corpse here in our office, and we haven’t even got a wife who had an impulse. We got it for nothing. So I guess— Hello, Doc.”

Vollmer, entering and nodding at me on the fly, was panting a little as he set his black case on the floor and knelt beside it. His house was down the street and he had had only two hundred yards to trot, but he was taking on weight. As he opened the case and got out the stethoscope, Homer Carlisle stood and watched with his lips pressed tight, and I did likewise until I heard the sound of Wolfe’s elevator. Crossing to the door and into the hall, I surveyed the terrain. Toward the front Saul and Fritz were calming down the woman in the caracul coat, now Mrs. Carlisle to me. Nero Wolfe and Mrs. Mimi Orwin were emerging from the elevator. Four guests were coming down the stairs: Gene Orwin, Colonel Percy Brown, Bill McNab, and a middle-aged male with a mop of black hair.

I stayed by the office door to block the quartet on the stairs. As Wolfe headed for me, Mrs. Carlisle darted to him and grabbed his arm. “I only wanted to see your office! I want to go! I’m not—”

As she pulled at him and sputtered, I noted a detail. The caracul coat was unfastened, and the ends of a silk scarf, figured and gaily colored, were flying loose. Since at least half of the female guests had sported scarfs, I mention it only to be honest and admit that I had got touchy on that subject.

Wolfe, who had already been too close to too many women that day to suit him, tried to jerk away, but she hung on. She was the big-boned flat-chested athletic type, and it could have been quite a tussle, with him weighing twice as much as her and four times as big around, if Saul hadn’t rescued him by coming in between and prying her loose. That didn’t stop her tongue, but Wolfe ignored it and came on toward me.

“Has Dr. Vollmer come?”

“Yes, sir.”

The executive vice-president emerged from the office, talking. “Mr. Wolfe, my name is Homer N. Carlisle and I insist—”

“Shut up,” Wolfe growled. On the sill of the door to the office, he faced the audience. “Flower lovers,” he said with bitter scorn. “You told me, Mr. McNab, a distinguished group of sincere and devoted gardeners. Pfui! Saul!”

“Yes, sir.”

“Are you armed?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Put them all in the dining room and keep them there. Let no one touch anything around this door, especially the knob. Archie, come with me.”

He wheeled and entered the office. Following, I used my foot to swing the door nearly shut, leaving no crack but not latching it. When I turned Vollmer was standing, facing Wolfe’s scowl.

“Well?” Wolfe demanded.

“Dead,” Vollmer told him. “With asphyxiation from strangling sometimes you can do something, but it wasn’t even worth trying.”

“How long ago?”

“I don’t know, but not more than an hour or two. Two hours at the outside, probably less.”

Wolfe looked at the thing on the floor, with no change in his scowl, and back at Doc. “You say strangling. Finger marks?”

“No. A constricting band of something with pressure below the hyoid bone. Not a stiff or narrow band; something soft like a strip of cloth — say a scarf.”

Wolfe switched to me. “You didn’t notify the police.”

“No, sir.” I glanced at Vollmer and back. “I need a word.”

“I suppose so.” He spoke to Doc. “If you will leave us for a moment? The front room?”

Vollmer hesitated, uncomfortable. “As a doctor called to a violent death I’d catch hell. Of course I could say—”

“Then go to a corner and cover your ears.”

He did so. He went to the farthest corner, the angle made by the partition of the bathroom, pressed his palms to his ears, and stood facing us.

I addressed Wolfe with a lowered voice. “I was here, and she came in. She was either scared good or putting on a very fine act. Apparently it wasn’t an act, and I now think I should have alerted Saul and Fritz, but it doesn’t matter what I now think. Last October a woman named Doris Hatten was killed — strangled — in her apartment. No one got elected. Remember?”

“Yes.”

“She said she was a friend of Doris Hatten’s and was at her apartment that day and saw the man that did the strangling, and that he was here this afternoon. She said he was aware that she had recognized him, that’s why she was scared, and she wanted to get you to help by telling him that we were wise and he’d better lay off. No wonder I didn’t gulp it down. I realize that you dislike complications and therefore might want to scratch this out, but at the end she touched a soft spot by saying that she had enjoyed my company, so I prefer to open up to the cops.”

“Then do so. Confound it!”

I went to the phone and started dialing Watkins 9-8241. Doc Vollmer came out of his corner and went to get his black case from the floor and put it on a chair. Wolfe was pathetic. He moved around behind his desk and lowered himself into his own oversized custom-made number, the only spot on earth where he was ever completely comfortable, but there smack in front of him was the object on the floor, so after a moment he made a face, got back onto his feet, grunted like an outraged boar, went across to the other side of the room to the shelves, and inspected the backbones of books.

But even that pitiful diversion got interrupted. As I finished with my phone call and hung up, sudden sounds of commotion came from the hall. Dashing across, getting fingernails on the edge of the door and pulling it open, and passing through, I saw trouble. A group was gathered in the open doorway of the dining room, which was across the hall. Saul Panzer went bounding past me toward the front. At the front door Colonel Percy Brown was stiff-arming Fritz Brenner with one hand and reaching for the doorknob with the other. Fritz, who is chef and housekeeper, is not supposed to double in acrobatics, but he did fine. Dropping to the floor, he grabbed the colonel’s ankles and jerked his feet out from under him. Then I was there, and Saul with his gun out; and there with us was the guest with the mop of black hair.

“You damn fool,” I told the colonel as he sat up. “If you’d got outdoors Saul would have winged you.”

“Guilt,” said the black-haired guest emphatically. “The compression got unbearable and he exploded. I was watching him. I’m a psychiatrist.”

“Good for you.” I took his elbow and turned him. “Go back in and watch all of ’em. With that wall mirror you can include yourself.”

“This is illegal,” stated Colonel Brown, who had scrambled to his feet and was short of breath.

Saul herded them to the rear. Fritz got hold of my sleeve. “Archie, I’ve got to ask Mr. Wolfe about dinner.”

“Nuts,” I said savagely. “By dinnertime this place will be more crowded than it was this afternoon. Company is coming, sent by the city. It’s a good thing we have a cloakroom ready.”

“But he has to eat; you know that. I should have the ducks in the oven now. If I have to stay here at the door and attack people as they try to leave, what will he eat?”

“Nuts,” I said. I patted him on the shoulder. “Excuse my manners, Fritz, I’m upset. I’ve just strangled a young woman.”

“Nuts,” he said scornfully.

“I might as well have,” I declared.

The doorbell rang. I reached for the switch and turned on the stoop light and looked through the panel of one-way glass. It was the first consignment of cops.

III

In my opinion Inspector Cramer made a mistake. Opinion, hell, of course he did. It is true that in a room where a murder has occurred the city scientists — measurers, sniffers, print-takers, specialists, photographers — may shoot the works, and they do. But except in rare circumstances the job shouldn’t take all week, and in the case of our office a couple of hours should have been ample. In fact, it was. By eight o’clock the scientists were through. But Cramer, like a sap, gave the order to seal it up until further notice, in Wolfe’s hearing. He knew damn well that Wolfe spent as least three hundred evenings a year in there, in the only chair and under the only light that he really liked, and that was why he did it. It was a mistake. If he hadn’t made it, Wolfe might have called his attention to a certain fact as soon as Wolfe saw it himself, and Cramer would have been saved a lot of trouble.

The two of them got the fact at the same time, from me. We were in the dining room — this was shortly after the scientists had got busy in the office, and the guests, under guard, had been shunted to the front room — and I was relating my conversation with Cynthia Brown. They wanted all of it, or Cramer did rather, and they got it. Whatever else my years as Wolfe’s assistant may have done for me or to me, they have practically turned me into a tape recorder, and Wolfe and Cramer didn’t get a rewrite of that conversation, they got the real thing, word for word. They also got the rest of my afternoon, complete. When I finished, Cramer had a slew of questions, but Wolfe not a one. Maybe he had already focused on the fact above referred to, but neither Cramer nor I had. The shorthand dick seated at one end of the dining table had the fact too, in his notebook along with the rest of it, but he wasn’t supposed to focus.

Cramer called a recess on the questions to take steps. He called men in and gave orders. Colonel Brown was to be photographed and fingerprinted and headquarters records were to be checked for him and Cynthia. The file on the murder of Doris Hatten was to be brought to him at once. The lab reports were to be rushed. Saul Panzer and Fritz Brenner were to be brought in.

They came. Fritz stood like a soldier at attention, grim and grave. Saul, only five feet seven, with the sharpest eyes and one of the biggest noses I have ever seen, in his unpressed brown suit, and his necktie crooked — he stood like Saul, not slouching and not stiff. He would stand like that if he were being awarded the Medal of Honor or if he were in front of a firing squad.

Of course Cramer knew both of them. He picked on Saul. “You and Fritz were in the hall all afternoon?”

Saul nodded. “The hall and the front room, yes.”

“Who did you see enter or leave the office?”

“I saw Archie go in about four o’clock — I was just coming out of the front room with someone’s hat and coat. I saw Mrs. Carlisle come out just after she screamed. In between those two I saw no one either enter or leave. We were busy most of the time, either in the hall or the front room.”

Cramer grunted. “How about you, Fritz?”

“I saw no one.” Fritz spoke louder than usual. “I didn’t even see Archie go in.” He took a step forward, still like a soldier. “I would like to say something.”

“Go ahead.”

“I think a great deal of all this disturbance is unnecessary. My duties here are of the household and not professional, but I cannot help hearing what reaches my ears, and I am aware of the many times that Mr. Wolfe has found the answer to problems that were too much for you. This happened here in his own house, and I think it should be left entirely to him.”

I yooped, “Fritz, I didn’t know you had it in you!”

“All this disturbance,” he insisted firmly.

“I’ll be goddamned.” Cramer was goggling at him. “Wolfe told you to say that, huh?”

“Bah.” Wolfe was contemptuous. “It can’t be helped, Fritz. Have we plenty of ham?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Sturgeon?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Later, probably. For the guests in the front room, but not the police. Are you through with them, Mr. Cramer?”

“No.” Cramer went back to Saul. “You checked the guests in?”

“Yes.”

“How?”

“I had a list of the members of the Manhattan Flower Club. They had to show their membership cards. I checked on the list those who came. If they brought a wife or husband, or any other guest, I took the names.”

“Then you have a record of everybody?”

“Yes.”

“How complete is it?”

“It’s complete and it’s accurate.”

“About how many names?”

“Two hundred and nineteen.”

“This place wouldn’t hold that many.”

Saul nodded. “They came and went. There wasn’t more than a hundred or so at any one time.”

“That’s a help.” Cramer was getting more and more disgusted, and I didn’t blame him. “Goodwin says he was there at the door with you when that woman screamed and came running out of the office, but that you hadn’t seen her enter the office. Why not?”

“We had our backs turned. We were watching a man who had just left go down the steps. Archie had asked him for his name and he had said that was ridiculous. If you want it, his name is Malcolm Vedder.”

“The hell it is. How do you know?”

“I had checked him in along with the rest.”

Cramer stared. “Are you telling me that you could fit that many names to that many faces after seeing them just once?”

Saul’s shoulders went slightly up and down. “There’s more to people than faces. I might go wrong on a few, but not many. I was at that door to do a job and I did it.”

“You should know by this time,” Wolfe rumbled, “that Mr. Panzer is an exceptional man.”

Cramer spoke to a dick standing by the door. “You heard that name, Levy — Malcolm Vedder. Tell Stebbins to check it on that list and send a man to bring him in.”

The dick went. Cramer returned to Saul. “Put it this way. Say I sit you here with that list, and a man or woman is brought in, and I point to a name on the list and ask you if that person came this afternoon under that name. Could you tell me positively?”

“I could tell you positively whether the person had been here or not, especially if he was wearing the same clothes and hadn’t been disguised. On fitting him to his name I might go wrong in a few cases, but I doubt it.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“Mr. Wolfe does,” Saul said complacently. “Archie does. I have developed my faculties.”

“You sure have. All right, that’s all for now. Stick around.”

Saul and Fritz went. Wolfe, in his own chair at the end of the dining table, where ordinarily, at this hour, he sat for a quite different purpose than the one at hand, heaved a deep sigh and closed his eyes. I, seated beside Cramer at the side of the table that put us facing the door to the hall, was beginning to appreciate the kind of problem we were up against. The look on Cramer’s face indicated that he was appreciating it too. The look was crossing my bow, direct at Wolfe.

“Goodwin’s story,” Cramer growled. “I mean her story. What do you think?”

Wolfe’s eyes came open a little. “What followed seems to support it. I doubt if she would have arranged for that” — he flipped a hand in the direction of the office across the hall — “just to corroborate a tale. I accept it. I credit it.”

“Yeah. I don’t need to remind you that I know you well and I know Goodwin well. So I wonder how much chance there is that in a day or so you’ll suddenly remember that she had been here before today, or one or more of the others had, and you’ve got a client, and there was something leading up to this.”

“Bosh,” Wolfe said dryly. “Even if it were like that, and it isn’t, you would be wasting time. Since you know us, you know we wouldn’t remember until we got ready to.”

Cramer glowered. Two scientists came in from across the hall to report. Stebbins came to announce the arrival of an assistant district attorney. A dick came to relay a phone call from a deputy commissioner. Another dick came in to say that Homer Carlisle was raising hell in the front room. Meanwhile Wolfe sat with his eyes shut, but I got an idea of his state of mind from the fact that intermittently his forefinger was making little circles on the polished top of the table.

Cramer looked at him. “What do you know,” he asked abruptly, “about the killing of that Doris Hatten?”

“Newspaper accounts,” Wolfe muttered. “And what Mr. Stebbins has told Mr. Goodwin, casually.”

“Casual is right.” Cramer got out a cigar, conveyed it to his mouth, and sank his teeth in it. He never lit one. “Those damn houses with self-service elevators are worse than walk-ups for a checking job. No one ever sees anyone coming or going. If you’re not interested, I’m talking to hear myself.”

“I am interested.” Wolfe’s eyes stayed shut.

“Good. I appreciate it. Even so, self-service elevator or not, the man who paid the rent for that apartment was lucky. He may have been clever and careful, but also he was lucky. Never to have anybody see him enough to give a description of him — that took luck.”

“Possibly Miss Hatten paid the rent herself.”

“Sure,” Cramer conceded, “she paid it all right, but where did she get it from? No visible means of support — he sure wasn’t visible, and three good men spent a month trying to start a trail, and one of them is still at it. There was no doubt about its being that kind of a setup; we did get that far. She had only been living there two months, and when we found out how well the man who paid for it had kept himself covered, as tight as a drum, we decided that maybe he had installed her there just for the purpose. That was why we gave it all we had. Another reason was that the papers started hinting that we knew who he was and that he was such a big shot we were sitting on the lid.”

Cramer shifted his cigar one tooth over to the left. “That kind of thing used to get me sore, but what the hell, for newspapers that’s just routine. Big shot or not, he didn’t need us to do any covering for him — he had done too good a job himself. Now, if we’re to take it the way this Cynthia Brown gave it to Goodwin, it might have been the man who paid the rent and it might not. That makes it pie. I would hate to tell you what I think of the fact that Goodwin sat there in your office and was told right here on these premises and all he did was go upstairs and watch to see if anybody squeezed a flowerpot!”

“You’re irritated,” I said charitably. “Not that he was on the premises, that he had been. Also I was taking it with salt. Also she was saving specifications for Mr. Wolfe. Also—”

“Also I know you. How many of those two hundred and nineteen people were men?”

“I would say a little over half.”

“Then how do you like it?”

“I hate it.”

Wolfe grunted. “Judging from your attitude, Mr. Cramer, something that has occurred to me has not occurred to you.”

“Naturally. You’re a genius. What is it?”

“Something that Mr. Goodwin told us. I want to consider it a little.”

“We could consider it together.”

“Later. Those people in the front room are my guests. Can’t you dispose of them?”

“One of your guests,” Cramer rasped, “was a beaut, all right.” He spoke to the dick by the door. “Bring in that woman — what’s her name? Carlisle.”

IV

Mrs. Homer N. Carlisle came in with all her belongings: her caracul coat, her gaily colored scarf, and her husband. Perhaps I should say that her husband brought her. As soon as he was through the door he strode across to the dining table and delivered a harangue. I don’t suppose Cramer had heard that speech, with variations, more than a thousand times. This time it was pretty offensive. Solid and broad-shouldered, Mr. Carlisle looked the part. His sharp dark eyes flashed, and his long gorilla-like arms were good for gestures. At the first opening Cramer, controlling himself, said he was sorry and asked them to sit down.

Mrs. Carlisle did. Mr. Carlisle didn’t.

“We’re nearly two hours late now,” he stated. “I know you have your duty to perform, but citizens have a few rights left, thank God. Our presence here is purely adventitious.” I would have been impressed by the adventitious if he hadn’t had so much time to think it up. “I warn you that if my name is published in connection with this miserable affair, a murder in the house of a private detective, I’ll make trouble. I’m in a position to. Why should it be? Why should we be detained? What if we had left five or ten minutes earlier, as others did?”

“That’s not quite logical,” Cramer objected.

“Why not?”

“No matter when you left it would have been the same if your wife had acted the same. She discovered the body.”

“By accident!”

“May I say something, Homer?” the wife put in.

“It depends on what you say.”

“Oh,” Cramer said significantly.

“What do you mean, oh?” Carlisle demanded.

“I mean that I sent for your wife, not you, but you came with her, and that tells me why. You wanted to see to it that she wasn’t indiscreet.”

“What the hell has she got to be indiscreet about?”

“I don’t know. Apparently you do. If she hasn’t, why don’t you sit down and relax while I ask her a few questions?”

“I would, sir,” Wolfe advised him. “You came in here angry, and you blundered. An angry man is a jackass.”

It was a struggle for the executive vice-president, but he made it. He clamped his jaws and sat. Cramer went to the wife.

“You wanted to say something, Mrs. Carlisle?”

“Only that I’m sorry.” Her bony hands, the fingers twined, were on the table before her. “For the trouble I’ve caused.”

“I wouldn’t say you caused it exactly — except for yourself and your husband.” Cramer was mild. “The woman was dead, whether you went in there or not. But, if only as a matter of form, it was essential for me to see you, since you discovered the body. That’s all there is to it as far as I know. There’s no question of your being involved more than that.”

“How the hell could there be?” Carlisle blurted.

Cramer ignored him. “Goodwin here saw you standing in the hall not more than two minutes, probably less, prior to the moment you screamed and ran out of the office. How long had you then been downstairs?”

“We had just come down. I was waiting for my husband to get his things.”

“Had you been downstairs before that?”

“No — only when we came in.”

“What time did you arrive?”