1

At the end of the sixth inning the score was Boston 11, New York 1.

I would not have believed that the day would ever come when, seated in a lower box between home and first, at the seventh and deciding game of the World Series between the Giants and Red Sox, I would find myself glomming a girl, no matter who. I am by no means above glomming a girl if she is worthy, but not at the Polo Grounds, where my mind is otherwise occupied. That awful day, though, I did.

The situation was complex and will have to be explained. It was a mess even before the game started. Pierre Mondor, owner of the famous Mondor’s Restaurant in Paris, was visiting New York and was our house guest. He got the notion, God knows how or why, that Wolfe had to take him to a baseball game, and Wolfe’s conception of the obligations of a host wouldn’t let him use his power of veto. Tickets were no problem, since Emil Chisholm, oil millionaire and part-owner of the Giants, considered himself deeply in Wolfe’s debt on account of a case we had handled for him a few years back.

So that October afternoon, a Wednesday, I got the pair of them, the noted private detective and the noted chef, up to the Polo Grounds in a taxi, steered them through the mob into the entrance, along the concrete ramps, and down the aisle to our box. It was twenty past one — only ten minutes to game time — and the stands were jammed. I motioned to Mondor, and he slid in and sat. Wolfe stood and glared down at the wooden slats and metal arms. Then he lifted his head and glared at me.

“Are you out of your senses?” he demanded.

“I warned you,” I said coldly. “It was designed for men, not mammoths. Let’s go home.”

He tightened his lips, moved his massivity, lowered it, and tried to squeeze between the arms. No. He grasped the rail in front with both hands, wriggled loose, and got what he could of his fanny hooked on the edge of the seat.

Mondor called to me across the great expanse of Wolfe’s back, “I depend with confidence on you, Arshee! You must make clear as it develops! What are the little white things?”

I love baseball and I love the Giants, and I had fifty bucks up on that game, but I would have got up and gone but for one thing. It was working hours, and Wolfe pays my salary, and there were too many people, some of them alive and loose, who felt strongly that he had already lived too long. He is seldom out in the open, easy to get at, and when he is I like to be nearby. So I gritted my teeth and stuck.

The ground crew finished smoothing off and hauled their drags away, the umpires did a huddle, the Giants trotted out on the field to their stations, the throng gave with a lusty excited roar, we all stood up for “The Star-Spangled Banner” and then sat again, with Wolfe perched on two slats and holding grimly to the rail. After southpaw Ed Romeike, 22–4 for the season, had burned a few over for the range, Lew Baker, the catcher, fired it to Tiny Garth at second. The Red Sox lead-off man came to the white line, the plate umpire said go, and Romeike looked around at the field, toed the rubber, went into his tricky windup, and shot a fast one over the outside corner for strike one. The crowd let out a short sharp yell.

My personal nightmare was bad enough. Mondor was our guest, and only eighteen hours ago I had taken three helpings of the quenelles bonne femme he had cooked in our kitchen, and would have made it four if I had had room; but trying to tell a foreigner what a base on balls is during a World Series game, with two men on, two down, and Oaky Asmussen at bat, is hard on the nerves. As for Wolfe, it wasn’t so much the sight of him there in his concentrated misery; it was the certainty that by tomorrow he would have figured out a way to blame it on me, and that would start a feud.

Bad enough, but more was to come, and not for me alone. One fly had plopped into the soup even before the game started, when the line-up was announced and Tiny Garth was named for second base, with no explanation. A buzz of amazement had filled the stands. Why not Nick Ferrone? Ferrone, a lanky big-eared kid just up from the bush five months back, had fielded and batted himself so far to the front that it was taken for granted he would be voted rookie of the year. He had been spectacular in the first six games of the series, batting .427. Where was he today? Why Garth?

Then the game. This was no personal nightmare of mine, it was all too public. In the first inning Con Prentiss, the Giants’ shortstop, bobbled an easy grounder, and two minutes later Lew Baker, the catcher, trying to nab a runner at second, threw the ball six feet over Garth’s head into the outfield. With luck, the Red Sox scored only one run. In the second inning Nat Neill, center fielder, misjudged a fly he could have walked under, tried to run in three directions at once, and had to chase it to the fence; and soon after that Prentiss grabbed a hard-hit ball on the hop and hurled it into the dirt three paces to the left of third base. By the time they got three out, Boston had two more runs.

As the Giants came in for their turn at bat in the second, heading for the dugout, loud and bitter sarcasms from the stands greeted them. Then our section was distracted by an incident. A man in a hurry came plunging down the aisle, bumping my elbow as he passed, and pulled up alongside a front box occupied by six men, among them the Mayor of New York and oilman Emil Chisholm, who had provided our tickets. The man spoke into the ear of Chisholm, who looked anything but happy. Chisholm said something to the Mayor and to another of his boxmates, arose and sidled out, and beat it up the aisle double quick, followed by the courier and also by cutting remarks from nearby fans who had recognized him. As my eyes went back to the arena, Con Prentiss, the Giant shortstop, swung at a floater and missed by a mile.

There is no point in my retailing the agony. As I said, at the end of the sixth the score was 11 to 1. Romeike was doing all right, and Boston had collected only three hits, but his support would have been pitiful on a sandlot. Joe Eston and Nat Neill had each made two errors, and Con Prentiss and Lew Baker three apiece. As they came to the dugout in the sixth, one wit yelled, “Say it ain’t so, Joe!” at Eston, and the crowd, recognizing that classic moan to Shoeless Joe Jackson, let out a howl. They were getting really rough. As for me, I had had plenty of the tragedy out on the diamond and looked around for something less painful, and caught sight of the girl, in a box off to my right.

I glommed her, not offensively. There were two of them. One was a redhead who would start to get plump in a couple of years, almost worthy, but not quite. The other one, the glommee, had light brown hair and dark brown eyes, and was fully qualified. I had the feeling that she was not a complete stranger, that I had seen her somewhere before, but couldn’t place her. The pleasure it gave me to look at her was not pure, because it was adulterated with resentment. She looked happy. Her eyes sparkled. Apparently she liked the way things were going. There is no law barring Boston fans from the Polo Grounds, but I resented it. Nevertheless, I continued the glommation. She was the only object I had seen there that day, on or off the field, that didn’t make me want to shut my eyes and keep them shut, and I sure needed it.

Something came between her and me. A man stopped at my elbow, leaned down, and asked my ear, “Are you Archie Goodwin?”

I told him yes.

“Is that Nero Wolfe?”

I nodded.

“Mr. Chisholm wants him in the clubhouse, quick.”

I reflected for two seconds, decided that this was straight from heaven, and slid forward to tell Wolfe, “Mr. Chisholm invites us to the clubhouse. We’ll avoid the crush. There’s a chair there. He want to see you.”

He didn’t even growl, “What about?” He didn’t even growl. Turning to mutter something to Mondor, he pulled himself erect and sidestepped past me to the aisle. Mondor came after him. The courier led the way, and I brought up the rear.

As we went up the concrete steps, single file, a shout came from somewhere on the left. “Go get ’em, Nero! Sick ’em!”

Such is fame.

2

“This is urgent!” Emil Chisholm squeaked. “It’s urgent!”

There was no chair in the clubroom of the size Wolfe likes and needs, but there was a big leather couch, and he was on it, breathing hard and scowling. Mondor was seated over against the wall, out of it. Chisholm, a hefty broad-shouldered guy not as tall as me, with a wide thick mouth and a long straight nose, was too upset to stand or sit, so he was boiling around. I was standing near an open window. Through it came a sudden swelling roar from the crowd out in the stands.

“Shut that goddam window!” Chisholm barked.

I did so.

“I’m going home,” Wolfe stated in his most conclusive tone. “But not until they have left. Perhaps, if you will tell me briefly—”

“We’ve lost the series!” Chisholm shouted.

Wolfe closed his eyes and opened them again. “If you’ll keep your voice down?” he suggested. “I’ve had enough noise today. If losing the series is your problem, I’m afraid I can’t help.”

“No. Nobody can.” Chisholm stood facing him. “I blew up, damn it, and I’ve got to get hold of myself. This is what happened. Out there before the game Art got a suspicion—”

“Art?”

“Art Kinney, our manager. Naturally he was watching the boys like a hawk, and he got a suspicion something was wrong. That first—”

“Why was he watching them like a hawk?”

“That’s his job! He’s manager!” Chisholm realized he was shouting again, stopped, clamped his jaw and clenched his fists, and after a second went on. “Also Nick Ferrone had disappeared. He was here with them in the clubhouse, he had got into uniform, and after they went out and were in the dugout he just wasn’t there. Art sent Doc Soffer back here to get him, but he couldn’t find him. He was simply gone. Art had to put Garth at second base. Naturally he was on edge, and he noticed things, the way some of the boys looked and acted, that made him suspicious. Then—”

A door opened and a guy came running in, yelling, “Fitch hit one and Neill let it get by and Asmussen scored! Fitch went on to third!”

I recognized him, chiefly by his crooked nose, which had got in the way of a line drive back in the twenties when he was a Cardinal infielder. He was Beaky Durkin, now a Giant scout, with a recent new lease on life because he had dug up Nick Ferrone out in Arkansas.

Chisholm jerked his arms up and pushed palms at Durkin. “Get out! Get the hell out!” He took a threatening step. “Send Doc — hey, Doc! Come in here!”

Durkin, backing out, collided with another in the doorway. The other was Doc Soffer, the Giants’ veteran medico, bald, wearing black-rimmed glasses, with a long torso and short legs. Entering, he looked as if his ten best-paying patients had just died on him.

“I can’t sweat it, Doc,” Chisholm told him. “I’m nuts. This is Nero Wolfe. You tell him.”

“Who are you?” Wolfe demanded.

Soffer stood before him. “I’m Doctor Horton Soffer,” he said, clipping it. “Four of my men, possible five, have been drugged. They’re out there now, trying to play ball, and they can’t.” He stopped, looking as if he were about to break down and cry, gulped twice, and went on. “They didn’t seem right, there in the dugout. I noticed it, and so did Kinney. That first inning there was no doubt about it, something was wrong. The second inning it was even worse — the same four men, Baker, Prentiss, Neill, and Eston — and I got an idea. I told Kinney, and he sent me here to investigate. You see that cooler?”

He pointed to a big white-enameled electric refrigerator standing against a wall. Mondor, seated near it, was staring at us.

Wolfe nodded. “Well?”

“It contains mostly an assortment of drinks in bottles. I know my men’s habits — every little habit they’ve got, and big one too. I knew that after they get into uniform before a game those four men — the four I named — have the habit of getting a bottle of Beebright out of the cooler and—”

“What is Beebright?”

“It’s a carbonated drink that is supposed to have honey in it instead of sugar. Each of those four drinks a bottle of it, or part of one, before he goes out to the field, practically without exception. And it was those four that were off — terrible; I never saw anything like it. That’s why I got my idea. Kinney was desperate and told me to come and see, and I did. Usually the clubhouse boy cleans up here after the men leave for the field, but this being the deciding game of the World Series, today he didn’t. Stuff was scattered around — as you see, it still is — and there was a Beebright bottle there on that table with a little left in it. It didn’t smell wrong, and I didn’t want to waste any tasting it. I had sent for Mr. Chisholm, and when he came we decided what to do. He sent for Beaky Durkin, who had a seat in the grandstand, because he knew Ferrone better than anyone else and might have some idea that would help. I took the Beebright down the street to a drugstore, and made two tests. The first one, Ranwez’s, didn’t prove anything, but that was probably because it is limited—”

“Negatives may be skipped,” Wolfe muttered.

“I’m telling you what I did,” Soffer snapped. He was trying to keep calm. “Ranwez’s test took over half an hour. The second, Ekkert’s, took less. I did it twice, to check. It was conclusive. The Beebright contained sodium pheno-barbital. I couldn’t get the quantity, in a hurry like that, but on a guess it was two grains, possibly a little more, in the full bottle. Anyone can get hold if it. Certainly that would be no problem for a bigtime gambler who wanted to clean up on a World Series game. And—”

“The sonofabitch,” Chisholm said.

Doc Soffer nodded. “And another sonofabitch put it in the bottles, knowing those four men would drink it just before the game. All he had to do was remove the caps, drop the tablets in, replace the caps, and shake the bottles a little — not much, because it’s very soluble. It must have been done today after twelve o’clock, because otherwise someone else might have drunk it, and anyway, if it were done much in advance the drinks would have gone stale, and those men would have noticed it. So it must have been someone—”

Chisholm had marched to the window. He whirled and yelled, “Ferrone did it, damn him! He did it and lammed!”

Beaky Durkin appeared. He came through the door and halted, facing Chisholm. He was trembling, and his face was white, all but the crooked nose.

“Not Nick,” he said hoarsely. “Not that boy. Nick didn’t do it, Mr. Chisholm!”

“Oh, no?” Chisholm was bitter. “Did I ask you? A fine rookie of the year you brought in from Arkansas! Where is he? Get him and bring him in again and let me get my hands on him! Go find him! Will you go find him?”

“Go where?”

“How the hell do I know? Have you any idea where he is?”

“No.”

“Will you go find him?”

Durkin lifted helpless hands and dropped them.

“He’s your pet, not mine,” Chisholm said savagely. “Get him and bring him in, and I’ll offer him a new contract. That will be a contract. Beat it!”

Durkin left through the door he had entered by.

Wolfe grunted. “Sit down, please,” he told Chisholm. “When I address you I look at you, and my neck is not elastic. Thank you, sir. You want to hire me for a job?”

“Yes. I want—”

“Please. Is this correct? Four of your best players, drugged as described by Doctor Soffer, could not perform properly, and as a result a game is lost, and a World Series?”

“We’re losing it.” Chisholm’s head swung toward the window and back again. “Of course it’s lost.”

“And you assume a gambler or a group of gamblers is responsible. How much could he or they win on a game?”

“On today’s game, any amount. Fifty thousand or double that, easy.”

“I see. Then you need the police. At once.”

Chisholm shook his head. “Damn it, I don’t want to. Baseball is a wonderful game, a clean game, the best and cleanest game on earth. This is the dirtiest thing that’s happened in baseball in thirty years, and it’s got to be handled right and handled fast. You’re the best detective in the business, and you’re right here. With a swarm of cops trooping in, God knows what will happen. If we have to have them later, all right, but now here you are. Go to it!”

Wolfe was frowning. “You think this Nick Ferrone did it.”

“I don’t know!” Chisholm was yelling again. “How do I know what I think? He’s a harebrained kid just out of the sticks, and he’s disappeared. Where’d he go and why? What does that look like?”

Wolfe nodded. “Very well.” He drew a deep sigh. “I can at least make some gestures and see.” He aimed a finger at the door Beaky Durkin and Doc Soffer had used. “Is that an office?”

“It leads to Kinney’s office — the manager.”

“Then it has a phone. You will call police headquarters and report the disappearance of Nick Ferrone, and ask them to find him. Such a job, when urgent, is beyond my resources. Tell them nothing more for the present if you want it that way. Where do the players change clothing?”

“Through there.” Chisholm indicated another door. “The locker room. The shower room is beyond.”

Wolfe’s eyes came to me. “Archie. You will look around. All contiguous premises except this room, which you can leave to me.”

“Anything in particular?” I asked.

“No. You have good eyes and a head of sorts. Use them.”

“I could wait to phone the police,” Chisholm suggested, “until you—”

“No,” Wolfe snapped. “In ten minutes you can have ten thousand men looking for Mr. Ferrone, and it will cost you ten cents. Spend it. I charge more for less.”

Chisholm went, through the door at the left, with Doc Soffer at his heels. Since Wolfe had said “all contiguous premises,” I thought I might as well start in that direction, and followed them, across a hall and into another room. It was good-sized, furnished with desks, chairs, and accessories. Beaky Durkin was on a chair in a corner with his ear to a radio turned low, and Doc Soffer was heading for him. Chisholm barked, “Shut that damn thing off!” and crossed to a desk with a phone. Under other circumstances I would have enjoyed having a look at the office of Art Kinney, the Giants’ manager, but I was on a mission and there was too big an audience. I about-faced and back-tracked. As I crossed the clubroom to the door in the far wall, Wolfe was standing by the open door of the refrigerator with a bottle of Beebright in his hand, holding it at arm’s length, sneering at it, and Mondor was beside him. I passed through, and was in a room both long and wide, with two rows of lockers, benches and stools, and a couple of chairs. The locker doors were marked with numbers and names too. I tried three; they were locked. After going through a doorway to the left, I was in the shower room. The air in there was a little damp, but not warm. I went to the far end, glancing in at each of the shower stalls, was disappointed to see no pillbox that might have contained sodium phenobarbital, and returned to the locker room.

In the middle of the row on the right was the locker marked “Ferrone.” Its door was locked. With my portable key collection I could have operated, but I don’t take it along to ball games, and nothing on my personal ring was usable. It seemed to me that the inside of that locker was the one place that needed attention, certainly the first on the list, so I returned to the clubroom, made a face at Wolfe as I went by, and entered Kinney’s office. Chisholm had finished phoning and was seated at a desk, staring at the floor. Beaky Durkin and Doc Soffer had their ears glued to the radio, which was barely audible.

I asked Chisholm, “Have you got a key to Ferrone’s locker?”

His head jerked up, and he said aggressively, “What?”

“I want a key to Ferrone’s locker.”

“I haven’t got one. I think Kinney has a master key. I don’t know where he keeps it.”

“Fifteen to two,” Durkin informed us, or maybe just talking to himself. “Giants batting in the ninth, two down. Garth got a home run, bases empty. It’s all—”

“Shut up!” Chisholm yelled at him.

Since Kinney would soon be with us, and since Ferrone’s locker had first call, I thought I might as well wait there for him. However, with our client sitting there glaring at me, it would be well to display some interest and energy, so I moved. I took in the room. I went to filing cabinets and looked them over. I opened a door, saw a hall leading to stairs down, backed up, and shut the door. I took in the room again, crossed to another door in the opposite wall, and opened that.

Since I hadn’t the faintest expectation of finding anything pertinent beyond that door, let alone a corpse, I must have made some sound or movement in my surprise, but if so it wasn’t noticed. I stood for three seconds, then slipped inside and squatted long enough to get an answer to the main question.

I arose, backed out, and addressed Soffer. “Take a look here, Doc. I think he’s dead. If so, watch it.”

He made a noise, stared, and moved. I marched out, into the clubroom, crossed to Wolfe, and spoke. “Found something. I opened a door to a closet and found Nick Ferrone, in uniform, on the floor, with a baseball bat alongside him and his head smashed in. He’s dead, according to me, but Doc Soffer is checking, if you want an expert opinion. Found on contiguous premises.”

Wolfe grunted. He was seated on the leather couch. “Mr. Ferrone?” he asked peevishly.

“Yes, sir.”

“You found him?”

“Yes, sir.”

His shoulders went up a quarter of an inch and down again. “Call the police.”

“Yes, sir. A question. Any minute the ballplayers will be coming in here. The cops won’t like it if they mess around. The cops will think we should have prevented it. Do we care? It probably won’t be Cramer. Do we—”

A bellow, Chisholm’s, came through. “Wolfe! Come in here! Come here!”

He got up, growling. “We owe the police nothing, certainly not deference. But we have a client — I think we have. I’ll see. Meanwhile you stay here. Everyone entering this room remains, under surveillance.” He headed for Kinney’s office, whence more bellows were coming.

Another door opened, the one in the west wall, and Nat Neill, the Giants’ center fielder, entered, his jaw set and his eyes blazing. Following him came Lew Baker, the catcher. Behind them, on the stairs, was a clatter of footsteps.

The game was over. The Giants had lost.

3

Another thing I don’t take along to ball games is a gun, but that day there was a moment when I wished I had. After any ordinary game, even a lost one, I suppose the Giants might have been merely irritated if, on getting to the clubhouse, they found a stranger there, backed up against the door to the locker room, who told them firmly that on account of a state of emergency they could not pass. But that day they were ready to plug one another, so why not a stranger?

The first dozen were ganging me, about to start using hands, when Art Kinney, the manager, appeared, strode across, and wanted to know what. I told him to go to his office and ask Chisholm. The gang let up then, to consider — all but Bill Moyse, the second-string catcher, six feet two, and over two hundred pounds. He had come late, after Kinney. He breasted up to me, making fists, and announced that his wife was waiting for him and he was going in to change, and either I would move or he would move me. One of his teammates called from the rear, “Show him her picture, Bill! That’ll move him!”

Moyse whirled and leaped. Hands grabbed for him, but he kept going. Whether he reached his target and actually landed or not I can’t say, because, first, I was staying put and it was quite a mixup, and second, I was seeing something that wasn’t present. The mention of Moyse’s wife and her picture had done it. What I was seeing was a picture of a girl that had appeared in the Gazette a couple of months back, with a caption tagging her as the showgirl bride of William Moyse, the ballplayer; and it was the girl I had been glomming in a nearby box when the summons had come from Chisholm. No question about it. That was interesting, and possibly even relevant.

Meanwhile Moyse was doing me a service by making a diversion. Three or four had hold of him, and others were gathered around his target, Con Prentiss, the shortstop. They were all jabbering. Prentiss, who was wiry and tough, was showing his teeth in a grin — not an attractive one. Moyse suddenly whirled again and was back at me, and this time, obviously, he was coming through. It was useless to start slugging that mountain of muscle, and I was set to try locking him, hoping the others would admire the performance, when a loud voice came from the doorway to the manager’s office.

“Here! Attention, all of you!”

It was Art Kinney. His face was absolutely white, and his neck cords were twitching, as they all turned and were silent.

“I’m full up,” he said, half hysterical. “This is Nero Wolfe, the detective. He’ll tell you something.”

Muttering went around as Kinney stepped aside and Wolfe took his place in the doorway. Wolfe’s eyes darted from left to right, and he spoke.

“You deserve an explanation, gentlemen, but the police are coming and there’s not much time. You have just lost a ball game by knavery. Four of you were drugged, in a drink called Beebright, and could not perform properly. You will learn—”

They drowned him out. It was an explosion of astonished rage.

“Gentlemen!” Wolfe thundered. “Will you listen?” He glowered. “You will learn more of that later, but there is something more urgent. The dead body of one of your colleagues, Mr. Nick Ferrone, has been discovered on these premises. He was murdered. It is supposed, naturally, that the two events, the drugging and the murder, are connected. In any case, if you do not know what a murder investigation means to everyone within reach, innocent or not, you are about to learn. For the moment you will not leave this room. When the police arrive they will tell you—”

Heavy feet were clomping in the hall. A door swung open, and a uniformed cop stepped in, followed by three others. The one in front, a sergeant, halted and demanded indignantly, “What is all this? Where is it?”

The Giants looked at the cops and hadn’t a word to say.

4

Inspector Hennessy of uptown Homicide was tall and straight, silver-haired, with a bony face and quick-moving gray eyes. Some two years ago he had told Nero Wolfe that if he ever again tried poking into a murder in his territory he would be escorted to the Harlem River and dunked. But when, at nine o’clock that evening, Hennessy breezed through the clubroom, passing in front of the leather couch where Wolfe was seated with a ham sandwich in one hand and a bottle of beer in the other, he didn’t even toss a glance. He was much too busy.

The police commissioner was in Manager Kinney’s office with Chisholm and others. The district attorney and an assistant were in the locker room, along with an assortment of Homicide men, giving various athletes their third or fourth quiz. There were still a couple of dozen city employees in the clubhouse, though the scientists — the photographers and fingerprint hounds — had all finished and gone.

I had standing as the finder of the corpse, but also I was a part of Wolfe. Technically Wolfe was not poking into a murder; he had been hired by Chisholm, before the corpse had been found, to find out who had doped the ballplayers. However, in gathering facts for relay to Wolfe, I had not discriminated. I saw Nick Ferrone’s locker opened and the contents examined, with nothing startling disclosed. While I was in Kinney’s office watching a basket squad load the corpse and carry it out, I heard a lieutenant on the phone giving instructions for a roundup of gamblers throughout the metropolitan area. A little later I picked up a bunch of signed statements from a table and sat down and read them through, without anyone’s noticing. By that time the commissioner and the DA had arrived, and they had eight or nine quiz posts going in the various rooms, and Hennessy was doing his damnedest to keep it organized.

I collected all I could for Wolfe. The bat that had been used to crack Ferrone’s skull was no stock item, but a valued trophy. With it, years back, a famous Giant had belted a grand slam home run that had won a pennant, and the bat had been displayed on a wall rack in the manager’s office. The murderer could have simply grabbed it from the rack. It had no usable fingerprints. Of eight bottles of Beebright left in the cooler, the two in front had been doped, and the other six had not. No other drinks had been tampered with. Everyone had known of the liking of those four — Baker, Prentiss, Neill, and Eston — for Beebright, and their habit of drinking a bottle of it before a game. No good prints. No sign anywhere of any container of tablets of sodium phenobarbital. And a thousand other negatives — for instance, the clubhouse boy, Jimmie Burr. The custom was that, when he wasn’t around, the players would put chits in a little box for what they took, and he hadn’t been around. For that game someone had got him a box seat, and he had beat it to the grandstand while most of the players were in the locker room changing. A sergeant jumped on it: who had got him out of the way by providing a ticket for a box seat? But it had been Art Kinney himself, the manager.

Around eight o’clock they turned a big batch loose. Twenty Giants, including coaches and the bat boy, were allowed to go to the locker room to change, under surveillance, and then let out, with instructions to keep available. They were not in the picture as it then looked. It was established that Ferrone had arrived at the clubhouse shortly after twelve o’clock and had got into uniform; a dozen of them had been in the locker room when he had. He had been present during a pre-game session with Kinney in the clubroom, and no one remembered seeing him leave afterward. After they had trooped out and down the stairs, emerged onto the field, and crossed it, Ferrone’s absence was not noticed until they had been in the dugout some minutes. As the cops figured it, he couldn’t have been slammed with a baseball bat in Kinney’s office, only a few yards away, while the team was in the clubroom, and therefore all who had unquestionably left for the field with the gang, and had stayed there, were in the clear until further notice. With them went Pierre Mondor, who had wanted to see a ball game and had picked a beaut.

As I said, when Inspector Hennessy breezed through the clubroom at nine o’clock, coming from the locker room and headed for Kinney’s office, he didn’t even toss a glance at the leather couch where Wolfe and I were seated. He disappeared. But soon he was back again, speaking from the doorway.

“Come in here, will you, Wolfe?”

“No,” Wolfe said flatly. “I’m eating.”

“The commissioner wants you.”

“Is he eating?” Waiting for no reply, Wolfe turned his head and bellowed, “Mr. Skinner! I’m dining!”

It wasn’t very polite, I thought, to be sarcastic about the sandwiches and beer. Chisholm had provided. Hennessy started a remark which indicated that he agreed with me, but it was interrupted by the appearance of Commissioner Skinner at his elbow. Hennessy stepped in and aside, and Skinner entered, followed by Chisholm, and approached the couch. He spoke. “Dining?”

“Yes, sir.” Wolfe reached for another sandwich. “As you see.”

“Not your accustomed style.”

Wolfe grunted and bit into the sandwich.

Skinner kept it friendly. “I’ve just learned that four men who were told they could go are still here — Baker, Prentiss, Neill, and Eston. When Inspector Hennessy asked them why, they told him that Mr. Chisholm asked them to stay. Mr. Chisholm says that he did so at your suggestion. He understood that you want to speak with them after our men have all left. Is that correct?”

Wolfe nodded. “I made it quite plain, I thought.”

“M-m-m-m.” The commissioner regarded him. “You see, I know you fairly well. You wouldn’t dream of hanging on here half the night to speak with those men merely as a routine step in an investigation. And besides, at Mr. Chisholm’s request you have already been permitted to speak with them, and with several others. You’re cooking something. Those are the four men who were drugged, but they left the clubhouse for the field with the rest of the team, so, the way we figure it, none of them killed Ferrone. How do you figure it?”

Wolfe swallowed the last of a well-chewed bite. “I don’t.”

Hennessy growled and set his jaw. Skinner said, “I don’t believe it,” with his tone friendlier than his words. “You’re cooking something,” he insisted. “What’s the play with those four men?”

Wolfe shook his head. “No, sir.”

Hennessy took a step forward. “Look,” he said, “this is my territory. My name’s Hennessy. You don’t turn this murder into a parlor game.”

Wolfe raised brows at him. “Murder? I am not concerned with murder. Mr. Chisholm hired me to investigate the drugging of his employees. The two events may of course be connected, but the murder is your job. And they were not necessarily connected. I understand that a man named Moyse is in there now with the district attorney” — Wolfe aimed a thumb at the door to the locker room — “because it has been learned that he has twice within a month assaulted Mr. Ferrone physically, through resentment at Ferrone’s interest in his wife, injudiciously displayed. And that Moyse did not leave the clubhouse with the others, and arrived at the dugout three or four minutes later, just before Ferrone’s absence was noticed. For your murder, Mr. Hennessy, that should be a help; but it doesn’t get me on with my job, disclosure of the culprit who drugged the drinks. Have you charged Mr. Moyse?”

“No.” Hennessy was curt. “So you’re not interested in the murder?”

“Not as a job, since it’s not mine. But if you want a comment from a specialist, you’re closing your lines too soon.”

“We haven’t closed any lines.”

“You let twenty men walk out of here. You are keeping Moyse for the reasons given. You are keeping Doctor Soffer, I suppose, because when Ferrone was missed in the dugout Soffer came here to look for him, and he could have found him here alive and killed him. You are keeping Mr. Durkin, I suppose again, because he too could have been here alone with Ferrone. He says he left the clubhouse shortly before the team did and went to his seat in the grandstand, and stayed there. Has he been either contradicted or corroborated?”

“No.”

“Then you regard him as vulnerable on opportunity?”

“Yes.”

“Are you holding Mr. Chisholm for the same reason?”

Chisholm made a noise. Skinner and Hennessy stared. Skinner said, “We’re not holding Mr. Chisholm.”

“You should be, for consistency,” Wolfe declared. “This afternoon, when I reached my seat in the stands — of which only the front edge was accessible to me — at twenty minutes past one, the Mayor and others were there in a nearby box, but Mr. Chisholm was not. He arrived a few minutes later. He has told me that when he arrived with his party, including the Mayor, about one o’clock, he had the others escorted to the stands and the box, that he started for the clubhouse for a word with his employees, that he was delayed by the crowd and decided it was too late, that he went on a private errand to a men’s room and then proceeded to the box. If the others are vulnerable on opportunity, so is he.”

They made remarks, all three of them, not appreciative. Wolfe put the bottle to his lips, tilted it and his head, and swallowed beer. Paper cups had been supplied, but he hates them.

He put the bottle down empty. “I was merely,” he said mildly, “commenting on the murder as a specialist. As for my job, learning who drugged the drinks, I haven’t even made a start. How could I in this confounded hubbub? Trampled by an army. I have been permitted to sit here and talk to people, yes, with a succession of your subordinates standing behind me, breathing down my neck. One of them was chewing gum! Pfui. Working on a murder and chewing gum!”

“We’ll bounce him,” Hennessy said dryly. “The commissioner has asked you, what’s the play with those four men?”

Wolfe shook his head. “Not only those four. I included others in my request to Mr. Chisholm — Doctor Soffer, Mr. Kinney, Mr. Durkin, and of course Mr. Chisholm himself. I am not arranging a parlor game. I make a living as a professional detective, and I need their help on this job I’ve undertaken. I think I know why, engrossed as you are with the most sensational case you’ve had in years, you’re spending all this time chatting with me; you suspect I’m contriving a finesse. Don’t you?”

“You’re damn right we do.”

Wolfe nodded. “So I am.”

“You are?”

“Yes.” Wolfe suddenly was peevish. “Haven’t I sat here for five hours, submerged in your pandemonium? Haven’t you all the facts that I have, and many more besides? Haven’t you a thousand men to command — indeed, twenty thousand — and I one? One little fact strikes me as apparently it has not struck you, and in my forlorn desperation I decided to test my interpretation of it. For that test I need help, and I ask Mr. Chisholm to provide it, and—”

“We’ll be glad to help,” Skinner cut in. “Which fact, and how do you interpret it?”

“No, sir.” Wolfe was positive. “It is my one slender chance to earn a fee. I intend—”

“We may not know this fact.”

“Certainly you do. I have stated it explicitly during this conversation, but I won’t point at it for you. If I did you’d spoil it for me, and, slender as it is, I intend to test it. I am not beset with the urgency of murder, as you are, but I’m in a fix. I don’t need a motive strong enough to incite a man to murder, merely one to persuade him to drug some bottled drinks — mildly, far from lethally. A thousand dollars? Twenty thousand? That would be only a fraction of the possible winnings on a World Series game — and no tax to pay. The requisitions of the income tax have added greatly to the attractions of mercenary crime. As for opportunity, anyone at all could have slipped in here late this morning, before others had arrived, with drugged bottles of that drink and put them in the cooler — and earned a fortune. Those twenty men you let go, Mr. Hennessy — of how many of them can you say positively that they did not drug the drinks?”

The inspector was scowling at him. “I can say that I don’t think any of them killed Ferrone.”

“Ah, but I’m not after the murderer; that’s your job.” Wolfe upturned a palm. “You see why I am driven to a forlorn finesse. It is my only hope of avoiding a laborious and possibly fruitless—”

What interrupted him was the entry of a man through the door to the locker room. District Attorney Megalech was as masterful as they come, although bald as a door-knob. He strode across and told Skinner and Hennessy he wanted to speak with them, took an elbow of each, and steered them to and through the door to Kinney’s office. Chisholm, uninvited, wheeled and followed them.

Wolfe reached for a sandwich and took a healthy bite. I arose, brushed off crumbs, shook my pants legs down, and stood looking down at him. I asked, “How good is this fact you’re saving up?”

“Not very.” He chewed and swallowed. “Good enough to try if we got nothing better. Evidently they have nothing at all. If they had — but you heard them.”

“Yeah. You told them they have all the facts you have, but they haven’t. The one I gave you about Mrs. Moyse? That’s not the one you’re interpreting privately?”

“No.”

“She might be still around, waiting. I might possibly get something better than the one you’re saving. Shall I go try?”

He grunted. I took it for a yes, and moved. Outside the door to the hall and stairs stood one in uniform with whom I had already had a few little words. I addressed him. “I’m going down to buy Mr. Wolfe a pickle. Do I need to be passed out or in?”

“You?” He used only the right half of his mouth for talking. “Shoot your way through. Huh?”

“Right. Many thanks.” I went.

5

It was dumb to be so surprised, but I was. I might have known that the news that the Giants had been doped out of the game and the series, and that Nick Ferrone, the probable rookie of the year, had been murdered, would draw a record mob. Downstairs inside the entrance there were sentries, and outside a regiment was stretched into a cordon. I was explaining to a sergeant who I was and telling him I would be returning, when three desperate men, one of whom I recognized, came springing at me. All they wanted was the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. I had to get really rude. I have been clawed at by newspapermen more than once, but I had never seen them quite as hungry as they were outside the Polo Grounds that October night. Finding they wouldn’t shake loose, I dived through the cordon and into the mob.

It looked hopeless. The only parked cars in sight on the west side of Eighth Avenue were police cars. I pushed through to the fringe of the throng and made my way two blocks south. Having made inquiries of two Giants hours previously, I knew what I was looking for, a light blue Curtis sedan. Of course there was a thin chance that it was still around, but if it was I wanted it. I crossed the avenue and headed for the parking plaza. Two cops at the end of the cordon gave me a look, but it wasn’t the plaza they were guarding, and I marched on through. In the dim light I could see three cars over at the north end. Closer up, one was a Curtis sedan. Still closer, it was light blue. I went up to it. Two females on the front seat were gazing at me through the window, and one of them was my glommee. The radio was on. I opened the door, swung it wide, and said hello.

“Who are you?” she demanded.

“My name’s Archie Goodwin. I’ll show credentials if you are Mrs. William Moyse.”

“What do you want?”

“Nothing if you’re not Mrs. Moyse.”

“What if I am?”

She was rapidly erasing the pleasant memory I had of her. Not that she had turned homely in a few hours, but her expression was not only unfriendly but sour, and her voice was not agreeable. I got out my wallet and extracted my license card. “If you are,” I said, “this will identify me,” and proffered it.

“Okay, your name’s Goodman.” She ignored the card. “So what?”

“Not Goodman.” I pronounced it again. “Archie Goodwin. I work for Nero Wolfe, who is up in the clubhouse. I just came from there. Why not turn off the radio?”

“I’d rather turn you off,” she said bitterly.

Her companion, the redhead who had been with her in the box, reached for the knob, and the radio died. “Look, Lila,” she said earnestly, “you’re acting like a sap. Invite him in. He may be human. Maybe Bill sent him.”

“What did Walt tell us?” Lila snapped at her. “Nero Wolfe is there working with the cops.” She came back at me. “Did my husband send you? Prove it.”

I bent a knee to put a foot on the edge of the frame, not aggressively. “That’s one reason,” I said, “why Mr. Wolfe can’t stand women. The way they flop around intellectually. I didn’t say your husband sent me. He didn’t. He couldn’t even if he wanted to, because for the past hour he has been kept in the locker room, conversing with a gathering of Homicide hounds, and still is. Mr. Wolfe sent me, but in a way it’s a personal problem I’ve got, and no one but you can help me.”

“You’ve got a personal problem. You have. Take it away.”

“I will if you say so, but wait till I tell you. Up to now they have only one reason for picking on your husband. The players left the clubhouse for the field in a bunch, all but one of them. One of them left later and got to the dugout five or six minutes after the others, and it was Bill Moyse. They all agreed on that, and Bill admits it. The cops figure that he had seen or heard something that made him suspect Nick Ferrone of doping the drinks — you know about that? That the Beebright was doped?”

“Yes. Walt Goidell told me.”

“And that he stayed behind with Ferrone to put it to him, and Nick got tough and he got tougher, with a baseball bat. That’s how the cops figure it, and that’s why they’re after Bill, as it stands now. But I have a private reason, which I have kept private except for Nero Wolfe, to think that the cops have got it twisted. Mr. Wolfe is inclined to agree with me, but he hasn’t told the cops because he has been hired by Chisholm and wants to earn a fat fee. My private slant is that if Bill did kill Ferrone — please note the ‘if’ — it wasn’t because he caught Ferrone doping the drinks, but the other way around. Ferrone caught Bill doping the drinks, and was going to spill it, and Bill killed him.”

She was goggling at me. “You have the nerve—” She didn’t have the words. “Why, you dirty—”

“Hold it. I’m telling you. This afternoon at the game I was in a box. By the sixth inning I had had plenty of the game and looked around for something to take my mind off it, and I saw an extremely attractive girl. I looked at her some more. I had a feeling that I had seen her before but couldn’t place her. The score was eleven to one, and the Giants were flat on their faces, and that lovely specimen was exactly what my eyes needed, except for one flaw. She was having a swell time. Her eyes showed it, her whole face and manner showed it absolutely. She liked what was happening out on the field. There was that against her, but I looked at her anyhow.”

She was trying to say something, but I raised my voice a little. “Wait till I tell you. Later, after the game, in the clubhouse, Bill Moyse said his wife was waiting for him, and someone made a crack about showing me her picture. Then it clicked. I remembered seeing a picture of his bride in the Gazette, and it was the girl I had seen in the stands. Again later, I had a chance to ask some of the players some questions, and I learned that she usually drove to games in Bill’s light blue Curtis sedan and waited for him after the game. It seemed to me interesting that it made the wife of a Giant happy to see the Giants getting walloped in the deciding game of a World Series, and Mr. Wolfe agreed, but he needed me there in the clubhouse. Finally he sent me to see if she was still around, and here I am. You see our problem. Why were you tickled stiff to see them losing?”

“I wasn’t.”

“It’s perfectly ridiculous,” the redhead snorted.

I shook my head. “Rejected. That won’t do. Mr. Wolfe accepts my judgment on girls. A pretty girl or a homely girl, a smart girl or a dumb girl, a sad girl or a happy girl — he knows I know. I have told him you were happy. If I go back and report that you flatly deny it, I don’t see how he can do anything but tell the cops, and that will be bad. They’ll figure that you wanted the Giants to lose because you knew Bill did, and why. Then of course they’ll refigure the murder and get a new answer — that Ferrone found out that Bill had doped the drinks, and Bill killed him. They’ll start on Bill all over again, and if they—”

“Stop it!” She was hoarse. “For God’s sake!”

“I was only saying, if they—”

The redhead put in, leaning to the steering wheel and sticking out her chin. “How dumb can you get?” she demanded.

“It’s not a ques—”

“Phooey! You say you know girls! Do you know baseball girls? I’m one! I’m Helen Goidell, Walt’s wife. I would have liked to slap Lila this afternoon, sitting there gloating, much as I love her, but I’m not a sap like you! She’s not married to the Giants, she’s married to Bill! Lew Baker had batted two-thirty-two in the first six games of the series, and he had made two errors and had three bases stolen on him, and still they wouldn’t give Bill a chance! Lila had sat through those six games praying to see Bill walk out, and not once! What did she care about the series or the difference between winner’s and loser’s take? She wanted to see Bill in it! And look at Baker this afternoon! If he had been doped, all right, but Lila didn’t know it then! What you know about girls, you nitwit!”

She was blazing. I did not blaze back.

“I’m still willing to learn,” I said, not belligerently. “Is she right, Mrs. Moyse?”

“Yes.”

“Then I am too, on the main point? You were pleased to see the Giants losing?”

“I said she was right.”

“Yeah. Then I’ve still got a problem. If I accept your version and go and report to Wolfe accordingly, he’ll accept it too. Whether you think I know girls or not, he does. So that’s some responsibility for me. What if you’re a lot smoother and trickier than I think you are? Your husband is suspected of murder, and they’re still working on him. What if he’s guilty and they could squeeze out of you what they need to hook him? Of course eventually they’ll get to you and either squeeze it out or not, but how will I look if they do? That’s my problem. Have you any suggestions?”

Lila had none. She wasn’t looking at me. She sat with her head lowered, apparently gazing at her hands, which were clasped together.

“You sound almost human,” Helen Goidell said.

“That’s deceptive,” I told her. “I turn it on and off. If I thought she had something Mr. Wolfe could use I’d stop at nothing, even hair-pulling. But at the moment I really don’t think she has. I think she’s pure and innocent and wholesome. Her husband is another matter. For her sake, I hope he wiggles out of it somehow, but I’m not taking any bets. The cops seem to like him, and I know cops as well as I do girls.” I removed my foot from the car frame. “So long, and so forth.” I turned to go.

“Wait a minute.” It was Lila. I turned back. Her head was up.

“Is this straight?” she asked.

“Is what straight?”

“You’re going to tell Mr. Wolfe you’re satisfied about me?”

“Well. Satisfied is quite a word. I’m going to tell him I have bought your explanation of your happiness at the game — or rather, Mrs. Goidell’s.”

“You could be a liar.”

“Not only could be, I often am, but not at the moment.”

She regarded me. “Shake hands with me.”

I raised a paw. Her hand was cold, but her grip was firm, and in four seconds our temperatures had equalized. She let go.

“Maybe you can tell me about Bill,” she said. “They don’t really think he killed Nick Ferrone, do they?”

“They think maybe he did.”

“I know he didn’t.”

“Good for you. But you weren’t there, so you don’t have a vote.”

She nodded. She was being hard and practical. “Are they going to arrest him? Will they really charge him with murder?”

“I can’t say. They may have decided while we’ve been talking. They know the whole town will be rooting for someone to be locked up, and Bill is the leading candidate.”

“Then I’ve got to do something. I wish I knew what he’s telling them. Do you know?”

“Only that he’s denying he knows anything about it. He says he left the clubhouse after the others had gone because he went back to the locker room to change to other shoes.”

She shook her head. “I don’t mean that. I mean whether he told them—” She stopped. “No. I know he didn’t. He wouldn’t. He knows something, and I know it too, about a man trying to fix that game. Only he wouldn’t tell, on account of me. I have to go and see someone. Will you come along?”

“To see who?”

“I’ll tell you on the way. Will you come?”

“Where to?”

“In the Fifties. Eighth Avenue.”

Helen Goidell blurted, “For God’s sake, Lila, do you know what you’re saying?”

If Lila replied I missed it, for I was on my way around the car. It had taken me no part of a second to decide. This sounded like something. It was a little headstrong to dash off with a damsel, leaving Wolfe up there with mass-production sandwiches, warm beer, and his one measly little fact he was saving up, but this might be really hot.

By the time I got around to the other door Helen had it open and was getting out. Her feet on the ground, she turned to speak.

“I don’t want any part of this, Lila. I do not! I wish to God I’d gone with Walt instead of staying with you!”

Lila was trying to get a word in, but Helen wasn’t interested. She turned and trotted off toward the gate and the street. I climbed in and pulled the door shut.

“She’ll tell Walt,” Lila said.

I nodded. “Yeah. But does she know where we’re going?”

“No.”

“Then let’s go.”

She started the engine, levered to reverse, and backed the car. “To hell with friends,” she said, apparently to herself.

6

Under ordinary circumstances she was probably a pretty good driver, but that night wasn’t ordinary for her. As we swung right into 155th Street, there was a little click at my side was we grazed the fender of a stopped car. Rolling up the grade of Coogan’s Bluff, we slipped between two taxis, clearing by an inch, and both hackmen yelled at her.

Stopping for a light at the crest, she turned her head and spoke. “It’s my Uncle Dan. His name is Gale. He came last night and asked me—”

She fed gas and we shot forward, but a car heading uptown and squeezing the light was suddenly there smack in our path. With a lightning reflex her foot hit the brake, the other car zipped by with at least a foot to spare, she fed gas again, and the Curtis jerked forward.

I asked her, “Taking the West Side Highway?”

“Yes, it’s quicker.”

“It will be if you make it. Just concentrate on that and let the details wait.”

She got to the highway without any actual contact with other vehicles, darted across to the left lane, and stepped on it. The speedometer said fifty-five when she spoke again.

“If I go ahead and tell you, I can’t change my mind. He wanted me to persuade Bill to fix the game. He said he’d give us ten thousand dollars. I didn’t even want to tell Bill, but he insisted, so I did. I knew what Bill would say—”

She broke off to do some expert weaving, swerving to the middle lane, then on to the right, then a sprint, then swinging to the middle again just ahead of a tan convertible, and so back to the left again in front of a couple of cars that had slowed her down to under fifty.

“Look,” I told her, “you could gain up to two minutes this way with luck, but getting stopped and getting a ticket would take at least ten. You’re driving — okay, but don’t try to talk too. You’re not that good. Hold it till we’re parked.”

She didn’t argue, but she held the pace. I twisted around to keep an eye on the rear through the window, and stayed that way clear to Fifty-seventh Street. We rolled down the cobbled ramp and a block south turned left on Fifty-sixth Street, had a green light at Eleventh Avenue, and went through. A little short of Tenth Avenue we turned in to the curb and stopped. Lila reached for the handbrake and gave it a yank.

“Let’s hear it,” I said. “Enough to go on. Is Uncle Dan a gambler?”

“No.” Her face turned to me. “I’m trembling. Look, my hand’s trembling. I’m afraid of him.”

“Then what is he?”

“He runs a drugstore. He owns it. That’s where we’re going to see him. I know what Helen thinks — she thinks I should have told, but I couldn’t. My father and mother died when I was just a kid, and Uncle Dan has been good to me — as good as he could. If it hadn’t been for him I’d have been brought up in an orphans’ home. Of course Bill wanted to tell Art Kinney last night, but he didn’t on account of me, and that’s why he’s not telling the cops.”

“Maybe he is telling them, or soon will.”

She shook her head. “I know Bill. We decided we wouldn’t tell, and that settled it. Uncle Dan made me promise we wouldn’t tell before he said what he wanted.”

I grunted. “Even so he was crowding his luck, telling you two about the program before signing you up. If he explained the idea of doping the Beebright, why—”

“But he didn’t! He didn’t say how it was to be done, he just said there was an easy way of doing it. He didn’t tell us what it was; he didn’t get that far, because Bill said nothing doing, as I knew he would.”

I eyed her. “You sure of that? He might have told Bill and not you.”

“He couldn’t. I was there with them all the time. Certainly I’m sure.”

“This was last night?”

“Yes.”

“What time?”

“Around eight o’clock. We had dinner early with Helen and Walt Goidell, and when we got home Uncle Dan was there waiting for us.”

“Where’s home?”

“Our apartment on Seventy-ninth Street. He spoke to me alone first, and then insisted I had to ask Bill.”

“And Bill turned him down flat?”

“Of course he did!”

“Bill didn’t see him alone later?”

“Of course not!”

“All right, don’t bite. I need to know. Now what?”

“We’re going to see him. We’re going to tell him that we have to tell the cops, and we’re going to try to get him to come along. That’s why I wanted you with me, because I’m afraid of him — I mean I’m afraid he’ll talk me out of it. But they’ve got to know that Bill was asked to fix the game and he wouldn’t. If it’s hard on Uncle Dan that’s too bad, but I can’t help it; I’m for Bill. I’m for Bill all the way.”

I was making myself look at her, for discipline. I was having the normal male impulses at the sight and sound of a good-looking girl in trouble, and they were worse than normal because I was partly responsible. I had given her the impression that the cops were about set to take her Bill on the big one, which was an exaggeration. I hadn’t mentioned that one reason they were keeping him was his recent reactions to the interest Nick Ferrone had shown in her, which of course had no bearing on anyone’s attempt to fix a ball game. True, she had been in a mess before I had got to her, but I had shoved her in deeper. What she needed now was understanding and sympathy and comforting, and since her friend Helen had deserted her I was all she had. Which was I, a man or a detective?

Looking at her, I spoke. “Okay,” I said, “let’s go see Uncle Dan.”

The engine was running. She released the handbrake, fed gas, and we rolled. Three minutes got us to Eighth Avenue, where we turned downtown. The dash clock said five past eleven, and my wristwatch agreed. The traffic was heavy in both directions, and she got in the right lane and crawled along. Two blocks down she pulled in at the curb, where there was plenty of space, set the brake, turned off the lights, killed the engine, and removed the key and put it in her bag.

“There it is.” She pointed. “Gale’s Pharmacy.”

It was ten paces down. There were neons in the window, but otherwise it looked drab.

“We’ll probably get a ticket for parking,” I told her.

She said she didn’t care. I got out and held the door, and she joined me on the sidewalk. She put a hand on my arm.

“You’re staying right with me,” she stated.

“Absolutely,” I assured her. “I’m good with uncles.”

As we crossed to the entrance and went inside I was feeling not fully dressed. I have a routine habit of wearing a gun when I’m on a case involving people who may go to extremes, but, as I said, I do not go armed to ball games. However, at first sight of Daniel Gale I did not put him in that category. His drugstore was so narrow that a fat man would have had to squeeze to make the passage between the soda fountain stools and the central showcases, and that made it look long, but it wasn’t. Five or six customers were on the stools, and the jerk was busy. A chorus boy was inspecting himself in the mirror of the weight machine. At the cosmetics counter on the other side, the left, a woman was being waited on by a little guy with a pale tight-skinned face and rimless specs who needed a shave.

“That’s him,” Lila whispered to me.

We stood. Uncle Dan, concentrating on the customer, hadn’t seen us. Finally she made her choice and, as he tore off paper to wrap the purchase, his eyes lifted and got Lila. Also he got me, beside her. He froze. He held it, rigid, for four seconds, then came to, went on with the little wrapping job, and was handed a bill by the customer. While he was at the cash register Lila and I crossed to the counter. As he handed the woman her change Lila spoke.

“Uncle Dan, I’ve got to tell you—”

She stopped because he was gone. Without speaking, he turned and made for the rear and disappeared behind a partition, and a door closed. I didn’t like it, but didn’t want to start a commotion by hurdling the counter, so I stepped to the end and circled, and on to the door that had closed, and turned the knob. It was locked. There I was, out at first, unless I was prepared to smash the door in.

The soda jerk called, “Hey, Mac, come out of that!”

“It’s all right,” Lila told him. “I’m his niece. He’s my Uncle Dan — I mean Mr. Gale is.”

“I never saw you before, lady.”

“I never saw you either. How long have you been here?”