I

“That’s just it,” she declared, trying to keep her voice steady. “We’re not actually married.”

My brows went up. Many a time, seated there at my desk in Nero Wolfe’s office, I have put the eye on a female visitor to estimate how many sound reasons she might offer why a wedding ring would be a good buy, but usually I don’t bother with those who are already hitched, so my survey of this specimen had been purely professional, especially since her husband was along. Now, however, I changed focus. She would unquestionably grade high, after allowing for the crease in her forehead, the redness around her eyes, and the tension of her jaw muscles, tightening her lips. Making such allowances was nothing new for me, since most of the callers at that office are in trouble, seldom trivial.

Wolfe, who had just come down from the plant rooms in the roof and got his impressive bulk settled in his oversized chair behind his desk, glared at her. “But you told Mr. Goodwin—” he began, stopped, and turned to me. “Archie?”

I nodded. “Yes, sir. A man on the phone said his name was Paul Aubry, and he and his wife wanted to come to see you as soon as possible, and I told him six o’clock. I didn’t tell him to bring their marriage certificate.”

“We have one,” she said, “but it’s no good.” She twisted her head around and up. “Tell him, Paul.”

She was in the red leather chair near the end of Wolfe’s desk. It is roomy, with big arms, and Paul Aubry was perched on one of them, with an arm extended along the top of the back. I had offered him one of the yellow chairs, which are perfectly adequate, but apparently he preferred to stick closer to his wife, if any.

“It’s one hell of a mess!” he blurted.

He wasn’t red-eyed, but there was evidence that he was sharing the trouble. His hand on top of the chair-back was tightened into a fist, his fairly well-arranged face was grim, and his broad shoulders seemed to be hunched in readiness to meet an attack. He bent his head to meet her upward look.

“Don’t you want to tell him?” he asked.

She shook her head. “No, you.” She put out a hand to touch his knee and then jerked it away.

His eyes went to Wolfe. “We were married six months ago — six months and four days — but now we’re not married, according to the law. We’re not married because my wife, Caroline—” He paused to look down at her, and, his train of thought interrupted, reached to take her hand, but it moved, and he didn’t get it.

He stood up, squared his shoulders, faced Wolfe, and spoke faster and louder. “Four years ago she married a man named Sidney Karnow. A year later he enlisted in the Army and was sent to Korea. A few months later she was officially informed that he was dead — killed in action. A year after that I met her and fell in love with her and asked her to marry me, but she wouldn’t until two years had passed since Karnow died, and then she did. Three weeks ago Karnow turned up alive — he phoned his lawyer here from San Francisco — and last week he got his Army discharge, and Sunday, day before yesterday, he came to New York.”

Aubry hunched his shoulders like Jack Dempsey ready to move in. “I’m not giving her up,” he told the world. “I — will — not — give — her — up!”

Wolfe grunted. “It’s fifteen million to one, Mr. Aubry.”

“What do you mean, fifteen million?”

“The People of the State of New York. They’re lined up against you, officially at least, I’m one of them. Why in heaven’s name did you come to me? You should have cleared out with her days ago — Turkey, Australia, Burma, anywhere — if she was willing. It may not be too late if you hurry. Bon voyage.”

Aubry stood a moment, took a deep breath, turned and went to the yellow chair I had placed, and sat. Becoming aware that his fists were clenched, he opened them, cupped his hands on his knees, and looked at Caroline. He lifted a hand and let it fall back to his knee. “I can’t touch you,” he said.

“No,” she said. “Not while — no.”

“Okay, you tell him. He might think I was bulling it. You tell him.”

She shook her head. “He can ask me. I’m right here. Go ahead.”

He went to Wolfe. “It’s like this. Karnow was an only child, and his parents are both dead, and he inherited a pile, nearly two million dollars. He left a will giving half of it to my — to Caroline, and the other half to some relatives, an aunt and a couple of cousins. His lawyer had the will. After notice of his death came it took several months to get the will probated and the estate distributed, on account of special formalities in a case like that. Caroline’s share was a little over nine hundred thousand dollars, and she had it when I met her, and was living on the income. All I had was a job selling automobiles, making around a hundred and fifty a week, but it was her I fell in love with, not the million, just for your information. When we got married it was her idea that I ought to buy an agency, but I’m not saying I fought it. I shopped around and we bought a good one at a bargain, and—”

“What kind of agency?”

“Automobile.” Aubry’s tone implied that that was the only kind of agency worth mentioning. “Brandon and Hiawatha. It took nearly half of Caroline’s capital to swing it, but in the past three months we’ve cleared over twenty thousand after taxes, and the future was looking rosy — when this happened. I was figuring — but to hell with that, that’s sunk. This proposition we want to offer Karnow, it’s not my idea and it’s not Caroline’s, it’s ours. It just came out of all our talking and talking after we heard Karnow was alive. Last week we went to Karnow’s lawyer, Jim Beebe, to get him to propose it to Karnow, but we couldn’t persuade him. He said he knew Karnow too well — he was in college with him — and he knew Karnow wouldn’t even listen to it. So we decided—”

“What was the proposal?”

“We thought it was a fair offer. We offered to turn it all over to him, the half-million Caroline has left, and the agency, the whole works, if he would consent to a divorce. Also I would continue to run the agency if he wanted to hire me. Also Caroline would ask for no settlement and no alimony.”

“It was my idea,” she said.

“It was ours,” he insisted.

Wolfe was frowning at them. My brows were up again. Evidently he really was in love with her and not the dough, and I’m all for true love up to a point. As for her, my attitude flopped back to the purely professional. Granting that she was set to ditch her lawful husband, if she felt that her Paul was worth a million bucks to her it would have taken too much time and energy to try to talk her out of it. Cocking an eye at his earnest phiz, which was passable, but no pin-up, I would have said that she was overpricing him.

He was going on. “So when Beebe wouldn’t do it and we learned that Karnow had come to New York, we decided I would see him myself and put it up to him. We only decided that last night. I had some business appointments this morning, and this afternoon I went to his hotel — he’s at the Churchill — and went up to his room. I didn’t phone ahead because I’ve never seen him, and I wanted to see him before I spoke with him. I wanted a look at him.”

Aubry stopped to rub a palm across his forehead, pressing hard. When his hand dropped to his thigh it became a fist again. “One trouble,” he said, “was that I wasn’t absolutely sure what I was going to say. The main proposition, that was all right, but there were two other things in my mind. The agency is incorporated, and half of the stock is in Caroline’s name and half in mine. Well, I could tell him that if he didn’t take the offer I would hang on to my half and fight for it, but I hadn’t decided whether to or not. The other thing, I could tell him that Caroline is pregnant. It wouldn’t have been true, and I guess I wouldn’t have said it, but it was in my mind. Anyhow it doesn’t matter because I didn’t see him.”

He clamped his jaw and then relaxed it. “This is where I didn’t shine, I admit that, but it wasn’t just cold feet. I went up to the door of his room, twenty-three-eighteen, without phoning, and I lifted my hand to knock, but I didn’t. Because I realized I was trembling, I was trembling all over. I stood there a while to calm down, but I didn’t calm. I realized that if I went in there and put it to him and he said nothing doing, there was no telling what might happen. The way I was feeling I was a lot more apt to queer it than help it. So I just ducked it. I’m not proud of it, but I’m telling you, I gave it a miss and came away. Caroline was waiting for me in a bar down the street, and I went and told her, and that wasn’t easy either, telling her I had muffed it. Up to then she had thought I could handle about anything that came along. She thought I was good.”

“I still do, Paul,” she told him.

“Yeah? I can’t touch you.”

“Not now. Not until—” Her hand fluttered. “Don’t keep saying that.”

“Okay, we’ll skip it.” He went back to Wolfe. “So I told her the man-to-man approach was a bum idea, and we sat and chewed at it. We decided that none of our friends was up to it. The lawyer I use for the agency wouldn’t be worth a damn. When one of us thought of you — I forget which — it clicked with both of us, and I went to a booth to phone for an appointment. Maybe you can get him down here and you make him the proposition yourself, or if he won’t come you can send Archie Goodwin to see him. Caroline has the idea it might be better to send Goodwin because Karnow’s thin-skinned and you might irritate him. We’ll leave that to you. I wish I could say if you get him to take our offer you can write your own ticket, any amount you want to make it, but in that case we won’t be any too flush so I have to mention it. Five thousand dollars, something like that, we could manage that all right. But for God’s sake go to it — now, today, tonight!”

Wolfe cleared his throat. “I’m not a lawyer, Mr. Aubry, I’m a detective.”

“I know that, but what’s the difference? You have a reputation for getting things out of people. We want you to detect a way of getting Karnow to accept our proposition.”

Wolfe grunted. “I could challenge your diction, but you’re in no mood to debate semantics. And my fees are based on the kind and amount of work done. Your job seems fairly simple. In describing it to me, how candid have you been?”

“Completely. Absolutely.”

“Nonsense. Complete candor is beyond the reach of man or woman. If Mr. Karnow accepts your proposal, can I rely on you to adhere to its terms as you have stated them?”

“Yes. You’re damn right you can.”

Wolfe’s head turned. “Mrs. Karnow, are you—”

“She’s not Mrs. Karnow!” Aubrey barked. “She’s my wife!”

Wolfe’s shoulders went up half an inch and dropped back. “Madam, are you sure you understand the proposal and will faithfully adhere to it?”

“Yes,” she said firmly.

“You know that you will be relinquishing a dower right, a legal right, in a large property?”

“Yes.”

“Then I must ask a few questions about Mr. Karnow — of you, since Mr. Aubry has never met him. You had no child by him?”

“No.”

“You were in love when you married, presumably?”

“We thought — I guess we were. Yes, say we were.”

“Did it cool off?”

“Not exactly.” She hesitated, deciding how to put it. “Sidney was sensitive and high-strung — you see. I still say ‘was’ because for so long I thought he was dead. I was only nineteen when we were married, and I suppose I didn’t know how to take him. He enlisted in the Army because he thought he ought to, because he hadn’t been in the World War and he thought he should do his share of peeling potatoes — that was how he put it — but I didn’t agree with him. I had found out by then that what I thought wasn’t very important, nor what I felt either. If you’re going to try to get him to agree to this of course you want to know what he’s like, but I don’t really know myself, not after all this time. Maybe it would help for you to read the letters I got from him after he enlisted. He only sent me three, one from Camp Givens and two from Korea — he didn’t like writing letters. My husb — Paul said I should bring them along to show you.”

She opened her bag, fished in it, and produced some sheets of paper clipped together. I went to get them and hand them to Wolfe, and, since I would probably be elected to deliver the proposal, I planted myself at his elbow and read along with him. All three letters are still in the archives in our office, but I’ll present only one, the last one, to give you a sample of the tone and style:

Dear Carrie my true and loving mate I hope: Pardon me, but my weakness is showing. I would like to be where you are this minute and tell you why I didn’t like your new dress, and you would go and put on another one, and we would go to Chambord and eat snails and drink Richebourg and then go to the Velvet Yoke and eat lady fingers and drink tomato soup, and then we would go home and take hot baths and go to sleep on fine linen sheets spread over mattresses three feet thick, covered with an electric blanket. After several days of that I would begin to recognize myself and would put my arms around you and we would drown in delight. Now I suppose I should tell you enough about this place to make you understand why I would rather be somewhere else, but that would be too easy to bother with, and anyway, as you well know, I hate to write, and especially I hate to try to write what I feel. Since the time is getting closer and closer when I’ll try to kill somebody and probably succeed, I’ve been going through my memory for things about death. Herodotus said, “Death is a delightful hiding-place for weary men.” Epictetus said, “What is death but a bugbear?” Montaigne said, “The deadest deaths are the best.” I’ll quote those to the man I’m going to kill and then he won’t mind so much. Speaking of death, if he should get me instead of me getting him, something I did before I left New York will give you quite a shock. I wish I could be around to see how you take it. You claim you have never worried about money, that it’s not worth it. Also you’ve told me that I always talk sardonic but haven’t got it in me to act sardonic. This will show you. I’ll admit I have to die to get the last laugh, but that will be sardonic too. I wonder do I love you or hate you? They’re hard to tell apart. Remember me in thy dreams. Your sardonic Kavalier Karnow

As I went to my desk to put the letters under a paperweight Caroline was speaking. “I wrote him two long letters every week. I must have sent him over fifty letters, and he never mentioned them the few times he wrote. I want to try to be fair to him, but he always said he was egocentric, and I guess he was.”

“Not was,” Aubry said grimly. “ Is. He is. ” He asked Wolfe, “Doesn’t that letter prove he’s a nut?”

“He is — uh — picturesque,” Wolfe conceded. He turned to Caroline. “What had he done before he left New York that — upon his death — gave you quite a shock?”

She shook her head. “I don’t know. Naturally I thought he had changed his will and left me out. After word came that he was dead I showed that letter to the lawyer, Jim Beebe, and told him what I thought, and he said it did sound like it, but there had been no change made in the will as far as he knew, and Sidney must have been stringing me.”

“Not too adroitly,” Wolfe objected. “It isn’t so simple to disinherit a wife. However, since he didn’t try — What do you know about the false report of his death?”

“Only a little from an item in the paper,” she said, “but Jim Beebe told me some more. He was left for dead in the field in a retreat, but actually he was only stunned, and he was taken prisoner. He was a prisoner for nearly two years, and then he escaped across the Yalu River, and then he was in Manchuria. By that time he could talk their language — he was wonderful with languages — and he made friends in a village and wore their clothes, and it seems — I’m not sure about this, but apparently he was converted to communism.”

“Then he’s a jackass,” Wolfe asserted.

“Oh, no, he’s not a jackass.” She was positive. “Maybe he was just being picturesque. Anyhow, a few months after the truce was signed and the fighting stopped he finally decided he had had enough of it and went back across the Yalu and made his way to South Korea and reported to an army post, and they sent him home. And now he’s here,” She stretched her hands out, at arm’s length. “Please, Mr. Wolfe? Please?”

Though of course she didn’t know it, that was bad tactics. Wolfe’s reaction to an emotional appeal from a man is rarely favorable, and from a woman, never. He turned away from the painful sight, to me. “Archie. You’re in my hire, and I can dispatch you on errands within the scope of my métier, but this one isn’t. Are you willing to tackle it?”

He was being polite. What he really meant was: Five grand will pay a lot of salaries, including yours, and you will please proceed to earn it for me. So, wishing to be polite too, I suggested a compromise. “I’m willing to go get him and bring him here, and you can tackle it.”

“No,” he said flatly. “Regarding the proposal as quixotic, as I do, I would be a feeble advocate. I abandon it to your decision.”

“I deeply appreciate it,” I assured him. “Nuts. If I say no I won’t hear the last of it for months, so I’ll meet you all the way and say yes. I’ll take a shot at it.”

“Very well. We’ll discuss it after dinner, and in the morning you can—”

They drowned him out, both of them cutting in to protest. They couldn’t wait until tomorrow, they had to know. They protested to him and then appealed to me. Why put it off? Why not now? I do not react to emotional appeals the way Wolfe does, and I calmed them down by agreeing with them.

“Very well,” Wolfe acquiesced, which was noble of him. “But you must have with you the proposal in writing, in duplicate, signed by Mr. Aubry and — uh — you, madam. You must sign it as Caroline Karnow. Archie. At the bottom, on the left, type the word ‘accepted’ and a colon. Under the circumstances he would be a nincompoop not to sign it, but it would probably be imprudent to tell him so. Your notebook, please?”

I swiveled and got it from the drawer.

II

I rapped with my knuckles, smartly but not aggressively, on the door of Room 2318 on the twenty-third floor of the Hotel Churchill.

The clients had wanted to camp in Wolfe’s office to await word from me, but I had insisted they should be as handy as possible in case developments called for their personal appearance, and they were downstairs in the Tulip Bar, not, I hoped, proceeding to get lit. People in serious trouble have a tendency to eat too little or drink too much, or both.

I knocked again, louder and longer.

On the way in the taxi I had collected a little more information about Sidney Karnow, at least as he had been three years back. His attitude toward money had been somewhat superior, but he had shown no inclination to scatter his pile around regardless. So far as Caroline knew, he hadn’t scattered it at all. He had been more than decent about meeting her modest requirements, and even anticipating them. That gave me no lead, but other details did. The key words were “egocentric,” which was bad, and “proud,” which was good. If he really had pride and wasn’t just using it as a cover for something that wouldn’t stand daylight, fine. No proud man would want to eat his breakfasts with a woman who was eager to cough up nearly a million bucks for the privilege of eating them with another guy. That, I had decided, was the line to take, but I would have to go easy on the wording until I had sized him up.

Evidently the sizing up would be delayed, since my knocking got no response. Not wanting to risk a picturesque refusal to make an appointment, I hadn’t phoned ahead. I decided to go down and tell the clients that patience would be required for ten minutes or ten hours, and take on a sandwich and a glass of milk and then come up for another try, but before I turned away my hand went automatically to the knob for a twist and a push, and the door opened. I stood a second, then pushed it a foot farther, stuck my head in, and called, “Mr. Karnow! Karnow!”

No answer. I swung the door open and crossed the sill. Beyond the light I was letting in was darkness, and I would probably have backed out and shut the door and beat it if I hadn’t had such a good nose. When it told me there was a faint odor that I should recognize, and a couple of sniffs confirmed it, I found the wall switch and flipped it, and moved on in. A man was there, spread-eagled on the floor near an open door, flat on his back.

I took a step toward him — that was involuntary — then wheeled and went and closed the door to the hall, and returned. At a glance, from the description Caroline had given me, it was Sidney Karnow. He was dressed, but without a jacket or tie. I squatted and slipped a hand inside his shirt and held my breath; nothing doing. I picked a few fibers from the rug and put them over his nostrils; they didn’t move. I got the lashes of his right eye between finger and thumb and pulled the lid partly down; it came stiffly and didn’t want to go back. I lifted his hand and pressed hard on the fingernail, and then removed the pressure; it stayed white. Actually I was overdoing it, because the temperature of the skin of his chest had been enough.

I stood up and looked down at him. It was unquestionably Karnow. I looked at my wristwatch and saw 7:22. Through the open door beyond him I could see the glitter of bathroom tiles and fittings, and, detouring around his outstretched arm, I went and squatted again for a close-up of two objects on the floor. One was a GI sidearm, a.45. I didn’t touch it. The other was a big wad of bathtowels, and I touched it enough to learn, from a scorched hole and powder black, that it had been used to muffle the gun. I had seen no sign on the body of a bullet’s entrance or exit, and to find it I would have had to turn him over, and what did it matter? I got erect and shut my eyes to think. It is my habit, long established, when I open doors where I haven’t been invited, to avoid touching the knob with my fingertips. Had I followed it this time? I decided yes. Also, had I flipped the light switch with my knuckle? Again yes. Had I made prints anywhere else? No.

I crossed to the switch and used my knuckle again, got out my handkerchief to open the door and pull it shut after me, took an elevator down to the lobby floor, found a phone booth and dialed a number. The voice that answered belonged to Fritz. I told him I wanted Wolfe.

He was shocked. “But Archie, he’s at dinner!”

“Yeah, I know. Tell him I’ve been trapped by cannibals and they’re slicing me, and step on it.”

It was a full two minutes before Wolfe’s outraged voice came. “Well, Archie?”

“No, sir. Not well. I’m calling from a booth in the Churchill lobby. I left the clients in the bar, went up to Karnow’s room, found the door unlocked, and entered. Karnow was on the floor, dead, shot with an army gun. The gun’s there, but it wasn’t suicide, the gun was muffled with a wad of towels. How do I earn that five grand now?”

“Confound it, in the middle of a meal.”

If you think that was put on, you’re wrong. I know that damn fat genius. That was how he felt, and he said it, that’s all.

I ignored it. “I left nothing in the room,” I told him, “and I had no audience, so we’re fancy free. I know it’s hard to talk with your mouth full, but—”

“Shut up.” Silence for four seconds, then: “Did he die within the past ninety minutes?”

“No. The skin on his chest has started to cool off.”

“Did you see anything suggestive?”

“No. I was in there maybe three minutes. I wanted to interrupt your dinner. I can go back and give it a whirl.”

“Don’t.” He was curt. “There’s nothing to be gained by deferring the discovery. I’ll have Fritz notify the police anonymously. Bring Mr. Aubry and Mrs. Karnow — have they eaten?”

“They may be eating now. I told them to.”

“See that they eat, and then bring them here on a pretext. Devise one.”

“Don’t tell them?”

“No. I’ll tell them. Have them here in an hour and ten minutes, not sooner. I’ve barely started my dinner — and now this.”

He hung up.

After crossing the lobby and proceeding along one of the long, wide, and luxurious corridors, near the entrance to the Tulip Bar I was stopped by an old acquaintance, Tim Evarts, the first assistant house dick, only they don’t call him that, of the Churchill. He wanted to chin, but I eased him off. If he had known that I had just found a corpse in one of his rooms and forgot to mention it, he wouldn’t have been so chummy.

The big room was only half filled with customers at that hour. The clients were at a table over in a corner, and as I approached and Aubry got up to move a chair for me I gave them both a mark for good conduct. Presumably they were on the sharpest edge of anxiety to hear what I was bringing, but they didn’t yap or claw at me.

When I was seated I spoke to their waiting faces. “No answer to my knock. I’ll have to try again. Meanwhile let’s eat.”

I couldn’t see that their disappointment was anything but plain, wholesome disappointment.

“I can’t eat now,” Caroline said wearily.

“I strongly advise it,” I told her. “I don’t mean a major meal, but something like a piece of melon and a sturgeon sandwich? We can get that here. Then I’ll try again, and if there’s still no answer we’ll see. You can’t stick around here all night.”

“He might show up any minute,” Aubry suggested. “Or he might come in and leave again. Wouldn’t it be better if you stayed up there?”

“Not on an empty stomach.” I was firm. “And I’ll bet Mrs. — What do I call you?”

“Oh, call me Caroline.”

“I’ll bet you haven’t eaten for a week. You may need some energy, so you’d better refuel.”

That was a tough half-hour. She did eat a little, and Aubry cleaned up a turkey sandwich and a hunk of cheese, but she was having a hard time to keep from showing that she thought I was a cold-blooded pig, and Aubry, as the minutes went by, left no doubt of his attitude. It was pretty gloomy. When my coffee cup was empty I told them to sit tight, got up and went out and down the corridor to the men’s room, locked myself in a cubicle against the chance that Aubry might appear, and stayed there a quarter of an hour. Then I returned to the bar and went to their table and told them, “No answer. I phoned Mr. Wolfe, and he has an idea and wants to see us right away. Let’s go.”

“No,” Caroline said.

“What for? Aubry demanded.

“Look,” I said, “when Mr. Wolfe has an idea and wants me to hear it, I oblige him. So I’m going. You can stay here and soak in the agony, or you can come along. Take your pick.”

From their expressions it was a good guess that they were beginning to think that Wolfe was a phony and I was a slob, but since their only alternative was to call the deal off and start hunting another salesman for their line, they had to string along. After Aubry paid the check we left, and in the corridor I steered them to the left and around to an exit on a side street, to avoid the main lobby, because by that time some city employees had certainly responded to Fritz’s anonymous phone call to headquarters, and from remarks they had made I had learned that the Aubrys were known at the Churchill. The doorman who waved up a taxi for us called them by name.

At the house I let us in with my key, and, closing the door, shot the chain bolt. As I escorted them down the hall to the office a glance at my wrist told me it was 8:35, so I hadn’t quite stretched it to the hour and ten minutes Wolfe had specified, but pretty close. He emerged from the door to the dining room, which is across the hall from the office, stood there while we filed in, and then followed, the look on his face as black as the coffee he had just been sipping. After crossing to his desk and lowering his overwhelming bulk into his chair, he growled at them, “Sit down, please.”

They stayed on their feet. Aubry demanded, “What’s the big idea? Goodwin says you have one.”

“You will please sit down,” Wolfe said coldly. “I look at people I’m talking to, especially when I suspect them of trying to flummox me, and my neck is not elastic.”

His tone made it evident that what was biting him was nothing trivial. Caroline sidled to the red leather chair and sat on its edge. Aubry plopped on the yellow one and met Wolfe’s level gaze.

“You suspect?” he asked quietly. “Who? Of What?”

“I think one of you has seen and talked with Mr. Karnow — today. Perhaps both of you.”

“What makes you think so?”

“I reserve that. Whether and when I disclose it depends on you. While complete candor is too much to expect, it should at least be approximated when you’re briefing a man for a job you want done. When and where did you see Mr. Karnow, and what was said?”

“I didn’t. I have never seen him. I told you that. What’s the idea of this?”

Wolfe’s head moved. “Then it was you, madam?”

Caroline was staring at him, her brow creased. “Are you suggesting that I saw my — that I saw Sidney Karnow today?”

“Precisely.”

“Well, I didn’t! I haven’t seen him at all! And I want to know why you’re suggesting that!”

“You will.” Wolfe rested his elbows on the chair arms, leaned forward, and gave her his straightest and hardest look. She met it. He turned his head to the right and aimed the look at Aubry, and had it met again.

The doorbell rang.

Fritz was in the kitchen doing the dishes, so I got up and went to the hall and flipped the switch of the light out on the stoop and took a look through the one-way glass panel of the front door. What I saw deserved admiration. Sergeant Purley Stebbins of Manhattan Homicide West knew that that panel was one-way glass and he was visible, but he wasn’t striking a pose; he just stood there, his big broad pan a foot away from the glass, to him opaque, a dick doing his duty.

I went and opened the door and spoke through the two-inch crack which was all the chain bolt would allow. “Hello there. It wasn’t me, honest.”

“Okay, comic.” His deep bass was a little hoarse, as usual. “Then I won’t take you. Let me in.”

“For what?”

“I’ll tell you. Do you expect me to talk through this damn crack?”

“Yes. If I let you in you’ll tramp right over me to bust in on Mr. Wolfe, and he’s in a bad humor. So am I. I can spare you ten seconds to loosen up. One, two, three, four—”

He cut me off. “You were just up at the Hotel Churchill. You left there about a half an hour ago with a man named Paul Aubry and his wife, and got into a taxi with them. Where are they? Did you bring them here?”

“May I call you Purley?” I asked.

“You goddam clown.”

“All right, then, I won’t. After all these years you should know better. Eighty-seven and four-tenths percent of the people, including licensed detectives, who are asked impertinent questions by cops, answer quick because they are either scared or ignorant of their rights or anxious to cooperate. That lets me out. Give me one reason why I should tell you anything about my movements or any companions I may have had, and make it good.”

Silence. After a moment I added, “And don’t try to avoid giving me a shock. Since you’re Homicide, someone is dead. Who?”

“Who do you think?”

“Huh-uh. I won’t try to guess because I might guess the right one and I’d be in the soup.”

“I want to be around when you are. Sidney Karnow was killed in his room at the Churchill this afternoon. He had been reported dead in Korea and had just turned up alive, and had learned that his wife had married Paul Aubry. As if I was telling you anything you don’t know.”

He couldn’t see my face through the crack, so I didn’t have to bother about managing it. I asked, “Karnow was murdered?”

“That’s the idea. He was shot in the back of the head.”

“Are you saying I knew about it?”

“Not so far. But you knew about the situation, since you were there with Aubry and the woman. I want ‘em, and I want ‘em now, and are they here? If not, where are they?”

“I see,” I said judiciously. “I admit you have given me a reason. Be seated while I go take a look.” I pushed the door shut, went back to the office and crossed to my desk, took a pencil and my memo pad, and wrote:

Stebbins. Says K. murdered. We were seen leaving hotel. Asks are they here and if not where.

I got up to hand it to Wolfe, and he took it in with a glance and slipped it into the top drawer of his desk. He looked at Caroline and then at Aubry. “You don’t need me,” he told them. “Your problem has been solved for you. Mr. Karnow is dead.”

They gawked at him.

“Of course,” he added, “you now have another problem, which may be even thornier.”

Caroline was stiff, frozen. “I don’t believe it,” Aubry said harshly.

“It seems authentic,” Wolfe declared. “Archie?”

“Yes, sir. Sergeant Stebbins of Homicide is out on the stoop. He says that Karnow was murdered, shot in the back of the head, this afternoon in his room at the Churchill. Mr. Aubry and Mrs. Karnow were seen leaving the hotel with me, and he wants to know if they’re here, and if not, where? He says he wants them.”

“Good God,” Aubry said. Caroline had let out a gasp, but no word. She was still rigid.

Her lips moved, and I thought she asked, “He’s dead?” but it was too low to be sure.

Wolfe spoke. “So you have another problem. The police will give you a night of it, and possibly a week or a month. Mr. Stebbins cannot enter this house without a search warrant, and if you were my clients I wouldn’t mind letting him wait on the stoop while we considered the matter, but since the job you gave me is now not feasible I am no longer in your hire. I have on occasion welcomed an opportunity to plague the police, but never merely for pastime, so I must bid you good evening.”

Caroline had left her chair and gone to Aubry with her hands out, and he had taken them and pulled her to him. Evidently the ban was off.

“However,” Wolfe continued, “I have a deep repugnance to letting the police take from my house people who have been moved to consult me and who have not been formally charged with a crime. There is a back way out, leading to Thirty-fourth Street, and Mr. Goodwin will take you by it if you feel that you would like a little time to discuss matters.”

“No,” Aubry said. “We have nothing to run from. Tell him we’re here. Let him in.”

Wolfe shook his head. “Not in my house, to drag you out. You’re sure you don’t want to delay it?”

“Yes.”

“Then Archie, will you please handle it?”

I arose, told them, “This way, please,” and headed for the door, but stopped and turned when I heard Caroline find her voice behind me.

“Wait a minute,” she said, barely loud enough for me to get it. She was standing facing Aubry, gripping his lapels. “Paul, don’t you think — shouldn’t we ask Mr. Wolfe—”

“There’s nothing to ask him.” Aubry was up, with an arm across her shoulders. “I’ve had enough of Wolfe. Come on, Caro mia. We don’t have to ask anybody anything.”

They came and followed me into the hall. As Aubry was getting his hat from the rack I opened the door, leaving the chain bolt on, and spoke to Purley. “What do you know, they were right here in the office. That’s a break for you. Now if—”

“Open the door!”

“In a moment. Mr. Wolfe is peevish and might irritate you, so if you’ll remove yourself, on down to the sidewalk, I’ll let them out, and they are yours.”

“I’m coming in.”

“No. Don’t even think of it.”

“I want you too.”

“Yeah, I thought so. I’ll be along shortly. Twentieth Street?”

“Now. With me.”

“Again no. I have to ask Mr. Wolfe if there’s anything we wouldn’t want to bother you with, and if so what. Where do I go, Twentieth Street?”

“Yes, and not tomorrow.”

“Right. Glad to oblige. The subjects are here at my elbow, so if you’ll just descend the steps — and be careful, don’t fall.”

He muttered something I didn’t catch, turned, and started down. When he was at the bottom of the seven steps I removed the bolt, swung the door open, and told our former clients, “Okay. In return for the sandwiches and coffee, here’s a suggestion. Don’t answer a single damn question until you have got a lawyer and talked with him. Even if—”

I stopped because my audience was going. Aubry had her arm as they crossed the stoop and started down. Not wishing to give Purley the pleasure of having me watch him take them, I shut the door, replaced the bolt, and returned to the office. Wolfe was leaning back with his eyes closed.

“I’m wanted,” I told him. “Do I go?”

“Of course,” he growled.

“Are we saving anything?”

“No. There’s nothing to save.”

“The letters from Karnow to his wife are in my desk. Do I take them and turn them over?”

“No. They are her property, and doubtless she will claim them.”

“Did I discover the body?”

“Certainly not. To what purpose?”

“None. Don’t worry if I’m late.”

I went to the hall for my hat and beat it.

III

Since I wasn’t itching to oblige Homicide, and it was a pleasant evening for a walk, I decided to hoof it the fifteen blocks to Twentieth Street, and also to do a little chore on the way. If I had done it in the office Wolfe would have pulled his dignity on me and pretended to be outraged, though he knew as well as I did that it’s always desirable to get your name in the paper, provided it’s not in the obituary column. So I went to a phone booth in a drugstore on Tenth Avenue, dialed the Gazette number, asked for Lon Cohen, and got him.

“Scrap the front page,” I told him, “and start over. If you don’t want it I’ll sell it to the Times. Did you happen to know that Paul Aubry and his wife, Mrs. Sidney Karnow to you, called on Nero Wolfe this afternoon, and I went somewhere with them, and brought them back to Mr. Wolfe’s office, and fifteen minutes ago Sergeant Purley Stebbins came and got them? Or maybe you don’t even know that Karnow was murd—”

“Yeah, I know that. What’s the rest of it? Molasses you licked off your fingers?”

“Nope. Guaranteed straight as delivered. I just want to get my employer’s name in the paper. Mine is spelled, A-R-C-H—”

“I know that too. Who else has got this?”

“From me, nobody. Only you, son.”

“What did they want Wolfe to do?”

Of course that was to be expected. Give a newspaperman an inch and he wants a column. I finally convinced him that that was all for now and resumed my way downtown.

At Manhattan Homicide West on Twentieth Street I was hoping to be assigned to Lieutenant Rowcliff so I could try once more to make him mad enough to stutter, but I got a college graduate named Eisenstadt who presented no challenge. All he wanted was facts, and I dished them out, withholding, naturally, that I had entered the room. It took less than an hour, including having my statement typed and signed, and I declined his pressing invitation to stick around until Inspector Cramer got in. I told him another fact, that I was a citizen in good standing, or fair at least, with a known address, and could be found if and when needed.

Back at the office Wolfe was yawning at a book. The yawn was an act. He wanted to make it clear to me that losing a fee of five grand was nothing to get riled about. I had a choice: either proceed to rile him or go up to bed. They were equally attractive, and I flipped a quarter and caught it. He didn’t ask me what I was deciding because he thought I wanted him to. It was heads, and I told him my session at Homicide wasn’t worth reporting, said good night, and mounted the two flights to my room.

In the morning, at breakfast in the kitchen, with Fritz supplying me with hot griddle cakes and the paper propped in front of me, I saw that I had given Lon not one inch but two. He had stretched it because it was exclusive. Aside from that, there was a pile of miscellaneous information, such as that Karnow had an Aunt Margaret named Mrs. Raymond Savage, and she had a son Richard, and a daughter Ann, now married to one Norman Horne. There was a picture of Ann, and also one of Caroline, not very good.

I seldom see Wolfe in the morning until eleven, when he comes down from the plant rooms, and that morning I didn’t see him at all. A little after ten a call came from Sergeant Stebbins to invite me to drop in at the District Attorney’s office at my earliest inconvenience. I don’t apologize for taking only four minutes to put weights on papers on my desk, phone up to Wolfe, and get my hat and go, because there was a chance of running into our former clients, and they might possibly be coming to the conclusion that they hadn’t had enough of Wolfe after all.

I needn’t have been in such a hurry. In a large anteroom on an upper floor at 155 Leonard Street I sat for nearly half an hour on a hard wooden chair, waiting. I was about ready to go over to the window and tell the veteran female that another three minutes was all I could spare when another female appeared, coming from a corridor that led within. That one was not veteran at all, and I postponed my ultimatum. The way she moved was worthy of study, her face invited a full analysis, her clothes deserved a complete inventory, and either her name was Ann Savage Horne or the Gazette had run the wrong picture.

She saw me taking her in, and reciprocated frankly, her head tilted a little to one side, came and sat on a chair near mine, and gave me the kind of straight look that you expect only from a queen or a trollop.

I spoke. “What’s that stole?” I asked her. “Rabbit?”

She smiled to dazzle me and darned near made it. “Where did you get the idea,” she asked back, “that vulgarity is the best policy?”

“It’s not policy; I was born vulgar. When I saw your picture in the paper I wondered what your voice was like, and I wanted to hear it. Talk some more.”

“Oh. You’re one up on me.”

“I don’t mind squaring it. I am called Goodwin, Archie Goodwin.”

“Goodwin?” she frowned a little. She brightened. “Of course! You’re in the paper too — if you’re that one. You work for Nero Wolfe?”

“I practically am Nero Wolfe, when it comes to work. Where were you yesterday afternoon from eleven minutes past two until eighteen minutes to six?”

“Let’s see. I was walking in the park with my pet flamingo. If you think that’s no alibi, you’re wrong. My flamingo can talk. Ask me some more.”

“Can your flamingo tell time?”

“Certainly. It wears a wristwatch on its neck.”

“How can it see it?”

She nodded. “I knew you’d ask that. It has been trained to tie its neck in a knot, just a plain single knot, and when it does that the watch is on a bend so that — well, Mother?” She was suddenly out of her chair and moving. “What, no handcuffs on anybody?”

Mother, Sidney Karnow’s Aunt Margaret, leading a procession emerging from the corridor, would have made two of her daughter Ann and more than half of Nero Wolfe. She was large not only in bulk but also in facial detail, each and all of her features being so big that space above her chin was at a premium. Besides her was a thin young man, runty by comparison, wearing black-rimmed glasses, and behind them were two other males, one, obviously, from his resemblance to Mother, Ann’s brother Richard, and the other a tall loose-jointed specimen who would have been called distinguished-looking by any woman between sixteen and sixty.

As I made my swift survey the flamingo trainer was going on. “Mother, this is Mr. Goodwin — the Archie Goodwin who was at the Churchill yesterday with Caroline and Paul. He’s grilling me. Mr. Goodwin, my mother, my brother Dick, my husband, Norman Horne — no, not the one with the cheaters, that’s Jim Beebe, the lawyer to end all laws. This is my husband.” The distinguished-looking one had pushed by and was beside her. She was flowing on. “You know how disappointed I was at the District Attorney being so godawful polite to us, but Mr. Goodwin is different. He’s going to give me the third degree — physically, I mean; he’s built for it, and I expect I’ll go to pieces and confess—”

Her husband’s palm pressed over her mouth, firm but not rough, stopped her. “You talk too much, darling,” he said tolerantly.

“It’s her sense of humor,” Aunt Margaret explained. “All the same, Ann dear, it is out of place, with poor Sidney just cruelly murdered. Cruelly. ”

“Nuts,” Dick Savage snapped.

“It was cruel,” his mother insisted. “Murder is cruel.”

“Sure it was,” he agreed, “but for us Sid has been dead more than two years, and he’s been alive again only two weeks, and we never even saw him, so what do you expect?”

“I suggest,” Beebe the lawyer put in, in a high thin voice that fitted his stature perfectly, “that this is rather a public spot for a private discussion. Shall we go?”

“I can’t,” Ann declared. “Mr. Goodwin is going to wear me down and finally break me. Look at his hard gray eyes. Look at his jaw.”

“Now, darling,” Norman Horne said affectionately, and took her elbow and started her toward the door. The others filed after them, with Beebe in the rear. Not one mentioned the pleasure it had given them to meet me, though the lawyer did let me have a nod of farewell as he went by.

As I stood and watched the door closing behind them the veteran female’s voice came. “Mr. Mandelbaum will see you, Mr. Goodwin.”

Only two assistant district attorneys rate corner rooms, and Mandelbaum wasn’t one of them. Halfway down the corridor, his door was standing open, and, entering, I had a surprise. Mandelbaum was at his desk, and across from him, on one of the two spare chairs that the little room sported, was a big husky guy with graying hair, a broad red face, and gray eyes that had been found hard to meet by tougher babies than Mrs. Norman Horne. If she called mine hard she should have seen those of Inspector Cramer of Homicide.

“I’m honored,” I said appreciatively and accepted Mandelbaum’s invitation to use the third chair.

“Look at me,” Cramer commanded.

I did so with my brows up, which always annoys him.

“I’m late for an appointment,” he said, “so I’ll cut it short. I’ve just been up to see Wolfe. Of course he corroborates you, and he says he has no client. I’ve read your statement. I tell you frankly that we have no proof that you entered that hotel room.”

“Now I can breathe again,” I said with feeling.

“Yeah. The day you stop I’ll eat as usual. I admit we have no proof, as yet, that you went in that room, but I know damn well you did. Information that the body was there came to us over the phone in a voice that was obviously disguised. You won’t deny that I know pretty well by now how you react to situations.”

“Sure. Boldly, bravely, and brilliantly.”

“I only say I know. Leaving Aubry and Mrs. Karnow down in the bar, you go up and knock on the door of Karnow’s room, and get no answer. In that situation there’s not one chance in a thousand that you would leave without trying the knob.”

“Then I must have.”

“So you did?”

I stayed patient and reasonable. “Either I didn’t try the knob—”

“Can it. Of course you did, and you found the door wasn’t locked. So you opened it and called Karnow’s name and got no answer, and you went in and saw the body. That I know, because I know you, and also because of what followed. You went back down to the bar and sat with them a while, and then took them back to Wolfe. Why? Because you knew Karnow had been murdered. If you had merely gone away when your knock wasn’t answered, you would have stuck there until Karnow showed, if it took all night. And that’s not half of it. When Stebbins went to Wolfe’s place after them, with no warrant and no charge entered, Wolfe meekly handed them over! He says they were no longer his clients, since Stebbins had brought the news that Karnow was dead, but why weren’t they? Because he won’t take a murderer for a client knowingly, and he thought Aubry had killed Karnow. That’s why.”

I shook my head. “Gee, if you already know everything, I don’t see why you bother with me.”

“I want to know exactly what you did in that room, and whether you changed anything or took anything.” Cramer leaned to me. “Look, Goodwin, I advise you to unload. The way it’s going, I fully expect Aubry to break before the day’s out, and when he does we’ll have it all, including what you told them you had seen in Karnow’s room when you rejoined them in the bar, and why the three of you went back to Wolfe’s place. If you let me have it now I won’t hold it against you that — What are you grinning for?”

“I’m thinking of Mr. Wolfe’s face when I tell him this. When Stebbins came with the news that Karnow was dead, and therefore the job was up the flue, Mr. Wolfe hinted as far as his dignity would let him that he would consider another job if they had one, but they sidestepped it. So this will upset him. He keeps telling me we mustn’t get discouraged, that some day you will be right about something, but this will be a blow—”

Cramer got up and tramped from the room.

I let Mandelbaum have the tail end of the grin. “Is he getting more sensitive?”

“Someday,” the Assistant DA declared, “certain people are going to decide that Wolfe and you are doing more harm than good, and you won’t have so much fun without a license. I’m too busy to play games. Please beat it.”

When I got back to Thirty-fifth Street, a little after noon, Wolfe was at his desk, fiddling with stacks of cards from the files, plant germination records. I asked if he wanted a report of my visit with Mandelbaum and Cramer, and he said none was needed because he had talked with Cramer and knew the nature of his current befuddlement. I said I had met Karnow’s relatives and also his lawyer, and would he care for my impressions, and got no reply but a rude grunt, so I passed it and went to my desk to finish some chores that had been interrupted by Stebbins’ phone call. I had just started in when the doorbell rang, and I went to the hall to answer it.

Caroline Karnow was there on the stoop. I went and opened the door, and she stepped in.

“I want to see Mr. Wolfe,” she blurted, and proved it by going right on, to the office door and in. I am supposed to block visitors until I learn if Wolfe will see them, but it would have taken a flying tackle, and I let her go and merely followed. By the time I got there she was in the red leather chair as if she owned it.

Wolfe, a germination card in each hand, was scowling at her.

“They’ve arrested him,” she said. “For murder.”

“Naturally,” Wolfe growled.

“But he didn’t do it!”

“Also naturally. I mean naturally you would say that.”

“But it’s true! I want you to prove it.”

Wolfe shook his head. “Not required. They must prove he did. You’re all tight, madam. Too tight. Have you eaten today?”

“Good lord,” she said, “all you two think about is eating. Last night him, and now—” She started to laugh, at first a sort of gurgle, and then really out with it. I got up and went to her, took her head between my hands to turn her face up, and kissed her on the lips unmistakably. With some customers that is more satisfactory than a slap, and just as effective. I paid no attention to her first convulsive jerks, and released her head only when she quit shaking and got hold of my hair. I pulled loose and backed up a step.

“What on earth—” She gasped.

I decided she had snapped out of it, went to the kitchen and asked Fritz to bring crackers and milk and hot coffee, and returned. As I sat at my desk she demanded, “Did you have to do that?”

“Look,” I said, “evidently you came to get Mr. Wolfe to help you. He can’t stand hysterical women, and in another four seconds he would have been out of the room and would have refused to see you again. That’s one angle of it. I am going on talking to give both you and Mr. Wolfe a chance to calm down. Another angle is that if you think it’s undesirable to be kissed by me I am willing to submit it to a vote by people who ought to know.”

She was passing her hands over her hair. “I suppose I should thank you?”

“You’re welcome.”

“Are you recovered,” Wolfe rasped, “or not?”

“I’m all right.” She swallowed. “I haven’t slept, and it’s quite true I haven’t eaten anything, but I’m all right. They’ve arrested Paul for murder. He wants me to get a lawyer, and of course I have to, but I don’t know who. The one he uses in business is no good for this, and certainly Jim Beebe won’t do, and two other lawyers I know — I don’t think they’re much good. I told Paul I was coming to you, and he said all right.”

“You want me to recommend a lawyer?”

“Yes, but we want you too. We want you to do — well, whatever you do.” Suddenly she was flushing, and the color was good for her face. “Paul says you charge very high, but I suppose I have lots of money again, now that Sidney is dead.” The flush deepened. “I’ve got to tell you something. Last night when you told us about it, that Sidney had been murdered, for just one second I thought Paul had done it — one awful second.”

“I know you did. Only I would say ten seconds. Then you went to him.”

“Yes. I went and touched him and let him touch me, and then it was over, but it was horrible. And that’s partly why I must ask you, do you believe Paul killed him?”

“No,” Wolfe said flatly.

“You’re not just saying that?”

“I never just say anything.” Wolfe suddenly realized that he had swiveled his chair away from her when she started to erupt, and now swung it back. “Mr. Cramer, a policeman, came this morning and twitted me for having let a murderer hoodwink me. When he had gone I considered the matter. It would have to be that Mr. Aubry, having killed Mr. Karnow, and having discussed it with you, decided to come and engage me to deal with Karnow in order to establish the fact that he didn’t know Karnow was dead. That is Mr. Cramer’s position, and I reject it. I sat here for an hour yesterday, listening to Mr. Aubry and looking at him, and if he had just come from killing the man he was asking me to deal with, I am a dolt. Since I am not a dolt, Mr. Aubry is not a murderer. Therefore — Yes, Fritz. Here’s something for you, madam.”

I would like to think it was my kiss that gave her an appetite, but I suppose it was the assurance from Wolfe that he didn’t think her Paul was guilty of murder. She disposed not only of the crackers and milk but also of a healthy portion of toast spread with Fritz’s liver pâté and chives, while Wolfe busied himself with the cards and I found something to do on my desk.

“I do thank you,” she said. “This is wonderful coffee. I feel better.”

It is so agreeable to Wolfe to have someone enjoy food that he had almost forgiven her for losing control. He nearly smiled at her.

“You must understand,” he said gruffly, “that if you hire me to investigate there are no reservations. I think Mr. Aubry is innocent, but if I find he isn’t I am committed to no evasion or concealment. You understand that?”

“Yes. I don’t— All right.”

“For counsel I suggest Nathaniel Parker. Inquire about him if you wish; if you settle on him we’ll arrange an appointment. Now, if Mr. Aubry didn’t kill Karnow, who did?”

No reply.

“Well?” Wolfe demanded.

She put the coffee cup down. “Are you asking me?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t know.”

“Then we’ll return to that. You said Mr. Aubry has been arrested for murder. Has that charge been entered, or is he being held as a material witness?”

“No, murder. They said I couldn’t get bail for him.”

“Then they must have cogent evidence, surely something other than the manifest motive. He has talked, of course?”

“He certainly has.”

“He has told of his going to the door of Karnow’s room yesterday afternoon?”

“Yes.”

“Do you know what time that was?”

“Half-past three. Very close to that.”

“Then opportunity is established, and motive. As for the weapon, the published account says it was Karnow’s. Has that been challenged?”

“Not that I know of.”

“Then the formula is complete; but a man cannot be convicted by a formula and should not be charged by one. Have they got evidence? Do you know?”

“I know one thing.” She was frowning at him, concentrated, intent. “They told Paul that one of his business cards was found in Sidney’s pocket — the agency name and address, with his name in the corner — and asked him to account for it. He said he and his salesmen hand out dozens of cards every day, and Sidney could have got one many different places. Then they told him this card had his fingerprints on it — clear, fresh ones — and asked him to account for that.”

“Could he?”

“He didn’t to them, but he did to me later, when they let me see him.”

“How did he account for it?”

She hesitated. “I don’t like to, but I have to. He had remembered that last Friday afternoon, when he went to a conference at Jim Beebe’s office, he had left one of his cards there on Jim’s desk.”

“Who was at the conference?”

“Besides Paul — and Jim, of course — there were Sidney’s Aunt Margaret — Mrs. Savage — and Dick Savage, and Ann and her husband, Norman Horne.”

“Were you there?”

“No. I–I didn’t want to go. I had had enough of all the talk.”

“You say he left one of his cards on Mr. Beebe’s desk. Do you mean he remembers that the card was on the desk when he left the conference?”

“Yes, he’s pretty sure it was, but anyway, he left first. All the others were still there.”

“Has Mr. Aubry now told the police of this?”

“I don’t think so. He thought he wouldn’t, because he thought it would look as if he were trying to accuse one of Sidney’s relatives, and that would hurt more than it would help. That was why I didn’t like to tell you about it, but I knew I had to.”

Wolfe grunted. “You did indeed, madam. You are in no position to afford the niceties of decent reticence. Since your husband was almost certainly killed by someone who was mortally inconvenienced by his resurrection, and we are excluding you and Mr. Aubry, his other heirs invite scrutiny and will get it. According to what Mr. Aubry told me yesterday, there are three of them: Mrs. Savage, her son, and her daughter. Where is Mr. Savage?”

“He died years ago. Mrs. Savage is Sidney’s mother’s sister.”

“She got, as did her son and her daughter, nearly a third of a million. What did that sum mean to her? What were her circumstances?”

“I guess it meant a great deal. She wasn’t well off.”

“What was she living on?”

“Well — Sidney had been helping her.”

Wolfe tightened his lips and turned a palm up. “My dear madam. Be as delicate as you please about judgments, but I merely want facts. Must I drag them out of you? A plain question: was Mrs. Savage living on Mr. Karnow’s bounty?”

She swallowed. “Yes.”

“What has she done with her legacy? Has she conserved it? The fact as you know it.”

“No, she hasn’t.” Caroline’s chin lifted a little. “You’re quite right, I’m being silly — and anyway, lots of people know all about it. Mrs. Savage bought a house in New York, and last winter she bought a villa in southern France, and she wears expensive clothes and gives big parties. I don’t know how much she has left. Dick had a job with a downtown broker, but he quit when he got the inheritance from Sidney, and he is still looking for something to do. He is — well, he likes to be with women. It’s hard to be fair to Ann because she has wasted herself. She is beautiful and clever, and she’s only twenty-six, but there she is, married to Norman Horne, just throwing herself away.”

“What does Mr. Horne do?”

“He tells people about the time twelve years ago when he scored four touchdowns for Yale against Princeton.”

“Is that lucrative?”

“No. He says he isn’t fitted for a commercial society. I can’t stand him, and I don’t understand how Ann can. They live in an apartment on Park Avenue, and she pays the rent, and as far as I know she pays everything. She must.”

“Well.” Wolfe sighed. “So that’s the job. While Mr. Aubry’s motive was admittedly more powerful than theirs, since he stood to lose not only his fortune but also his wife, they were by no means immune to temptation. How much have you been associating with them the past two years?”

“Not much. With Aunt Margaret and Dick almost not at all. I used to see Ann fairly often, but very little since she married Norman Horne.”

“When was that marriage?”

“Two years ago. Soon after the estate was distributed.” She stopped, and then decided to go on. “That was one of Ann’s unpredictable somersaults. She was engaged to Jim Beebe — announced publicly, and the date set — and then, without even bothering to break it off, she married Norman Horne.”

“Was Mr. Horne a friend of your husband’s?”

“No, they never met. Ann found Norman — I don’t know where. They wouldn’t have been friends even if they had met, because Sidney wouldn’t have liked him. There weren’t many people Sidney did like.”

“Did he like his relatives?”

“No — if you want facts. He didn’t. He saw very little of them.”

“I see.” Wolfe leaned back and closed his eyes, and his lips began to work, pushing out and then pulling in, out and in, out and in. He only does that when he has something substantial to churn around in his skull. But that time I thought he was being a little premature, since he hadn’t even seen them yet, not one. Caroline started to say something, but I shook my head at her, and she subsided.

Finally Wolfe opened his eyes and spoke. “You understand, madam, that the circumstances — particularly the finding of Mr. Aubry’s card, bearing his fingerprints, on the body — warrant an explicit assumption: that your husband was killed by one of the six persons present at the conference in Mr. Beebe’s office Friday afternoon; and, eliminating Mr. Aubry, five are left. You know them all, if not intimately at least familiarly, and I ask you: is one of them more likely than another? For any reason at all?”

She shook her head. “I don’t know. Do we have to — is this the only way?”

“It is. That’s our assumption until it’s discredited. I want your best answer.”

“I don’t know,” she insisted.

I decided to contribute. “I doubt,” I put in, “if this would be a good buy at a nickel, but this morning at the DA’s office I met the whole bunch. I had a little chat with Mrs. Horne, who seems to like gags, and when the others appeared she introduced me to them. She told them I was going to give her the third degree, and she added, I quote, ‘I expect I’ll go to pieces and confess—’ Unquote. At that point Horne put his hand on her mouth and told her she talked too much. Mrs. Savage said it was her sense of humor.”

“That’s like Ann,” Caroline said. “Exactly like her, at her worst.”

Wolfe grunted. “Mr. Goodwin has a knack for putting women at their worst. He’s no help, and neither are you. You seem not to realize that unless I can expose one of those five as the murderer of your husband, Mr. Aubry is almost certainly doomed.”

“I do realize it. It’s awful, but I do.” Her lips tightened. In a moment she spoke. “And I want to help! All night I was trying to think, and one thing I thought of — what Sidney said in his letter about something that would shock me. You said yesterday it’s not simple to disinherit a wife, but couldn’t he have done it some other way? Couldn’t he have signed something that would give someone a claim on the estate, perhaps the whole thing? Isn’t there some way he could have arranged for the — shock?”

“Conceivably,” Wolfe admitted. “But there would have had to be an authentic transfer of ownership and possession, and there wasn’t. Or if he established a trust it would have had to be legally recorded, and the estate would never have been distributed. You’ll have to do better than that.” He cleared his throat explosively and straightened up. “Very well. I must tackle them. Will you please have them here at six o’clock, madam? All of them?”

Her eyes widened at him. “Me? Bring them here?”

“Certainly.”

“But I can’t! How? What could I say? I can’t tell them that you think one of them killed Sidney, and you want — No! I can’t!” She came forward in the chair. “Don’t you see it’s just impossible? Anyhow, they wouldn’t come!”

Wolfe turned. “Archie. You’ll have to get them. I prefer six o’clock, but if that isn’t feasible after dinner will do.” He glanced up at the wall clock. “Phone Mr. Parker and make an appointment for Mrs. Karnow. Phone Saul and tell him I want him here as soon as possible. Then lunch. After lunch, proceed.” He turned to the client. “Will you join us, madam? Fritz’s rice-and-mushroom fritters are, if I may say so, palatable.”

IV

Since this is a democracy, thank God, please prepare to vote. All those in favor of my describing in full detail my efforts to the utmost, lasting a good five hours, to fill Wolfe’s order for three males and two females, say aye. I hear none. Since my eardrums are sensitive I won’t ask for the noes.

Then I’ll sketch it. James M. Beebe, I found, was not one of the machines in one of the huge legal factories that occupy so many floors in so many of New York’s skyscrapers. He was soloing it in a modest space on the tenth floor of a midtown building. The woman in the little anteroom, the only visible or audible employee, with a typewriter on her left and a telephone on her right, said Mr. Beebe would be back soon, and, if you call thirty-five minutes soon, he was.

The inner room he led me to must have been a little cramped with a conference of six people. Its furniture was adequate but by no means ornate. Beebe, who had looked runty alongside Mrs. Savage, could not be called impressive seated at his desk, with a large percentage of the area of his thin face taken up by the black-rimmed glasses. When I showed him my credentials, a note signed by Caroline Karnow saying that Nero Wolfe was acting for her, and told him that Wolfe would like to discuss the situation with those chiefly concerned at his office that afternoon or evening, he said that he understood that the police investigation was making progress, and that he questioned the wisdom of an investigation of a murder by a private detective.

Wise or not, I said, Mrs. Karnow surely had the right to hire Wolfe if she wanted to. He conceded that. Also surely the widow of his former friend and client might reasonably expect him to cooperate in her effort to discover the truth. Wasn’t that so?

He looked uncomfortable. He saw that a pencil on his desk was not in its proper place, and moved it, and studied it a while to decide if that was the best spot after all. At length he came back to me.

“It’s like this, Mr. Goodwin,” he piped. “I sympathize deeply with Mrs. Karnow, of course. But any obligation I am under is not to her, but to my late friend and client, Sidney Karnow. I certainly will do anything I can to help discover the truth, but it is justifiable to suppose that in employing Nero Wolfe Mrs. Karnow’s primary purpose, if not her sole purpose, is to save Paul Aubry. As an officer of the law I cannot conscientiously participate in that. I am not Aubry’s attorney. I beg you to understand.”

I kept after him. He stood pat. Finally, following instructions from Wolfe, I put a question to him.

“I suppose,” I said, “you won’t mind helping to clear up a detail. At a conference in this room last Friday afternoon Aubry left one of his business cards on your desk. It was there when he left. What happened to it?”

He cocked his head and frowned. “Here on my desk?”

“Right.”

The frown deepened. “I’m trying to remember — yes, I do remember. He suggested I might phone him later, and he put it there.”

“What happened to it?”

“I don’t know.”

“Did you phone him?”

“No. As it turned out, there was no occasion to.”

“Would you mind seeing if the card is around? It’s fairly important.”

“Why is it important?”

“That’s a long story. But I would like very much to see that card. Will you take a look?”

He wasn’t enthusiastic about it, but he obliged. He looked among and under things on top of his desk, including the blotter, in the desk drawers, and around the room some — as, for instance, on top of a filing cabinet. I got down on my knees to see under the desk. No card.

I scrambled to my feet. “May I ask your secretary?”

“What’s this all about?” he demanded.

“Nothing you would care to participate in. But the easiest way to get rid of me is to humor me on this one little detail.”

He lifted the phone and spoke to it, and in a moment the door opened and the employee entered. He told her I wanted to ask her something, and I did so. She said she knew nothing about any card of Paul Aubry’s. She had never seen one, on Beebe’s desk or anywhere else, last Friday or any other day. That settled, she backed out, pulling the door with her.

“It’s a little discouraging,” I told Beebe. “I was counting on collecting that card. Are you sure you don’t remember seeing one of the others pick it up?”

“I’ve told you all I remember — that Aubry put a card on my desk.”

“Was there an opportunity for one of them to pick it up without your noticing?”

“There might have been. I don’t know what you’re trying to establish, Mr. Goodwin, but I will not be led by you to a commitment, even here privately. Probably during the meeting here on Friday I had occasion to leave this chair to get something from my files. I won’t say that gave someone an opportunity to remove something from my desk, but I can’t prohibit you from saying so.” He got to his feet. “I’m sorry I can’t be more helpful.”

“So am I,” I said emphatically.

I arose and turned to go, but halfway to the door his voice came. “Mr. Goodwin.”

I turned. He had left his chair and was standing at the end of the desk, stiff and straight. “I’m a lawyer,” he said in a different tone, “but I am also a man. Speaking as a man, I ask you to consider my position. My friend and client has been murdered, and the police are apparently convinced that they have the murderer in custody. Nero Wolfe, acting for Mrs. Karnow, wants to prove them wrong. His only hope of success is to fasten the guilt elsewhere. Isn’t that the situation?”

“Roughly, yes.”

“And you ask me to cooperate. You mentioned a conference in this office last Friday. Besides myself, there were five people here — you know who they were. None of them was, or is, my client. They were all dismayed by the return of Sidney Karnow alive. They were all in dread of personal financial calamity. They all asked me, one way or another, to intercede for them. I have of course given this information to the police, and I see no impropriety in my giving it also to Nero Wolfe. Beyond that I have absolutely no information or evidence that could possibly help him. I tell you frankly, if Paul Aubry is guilty I hope he is convicted and punished; but if one of the others is guilty I hope he — or she — is punished, and if I knew anything operant to that end I certainly would not withhold it.”

He lifted a hand and dropped it. “All I’m trying to say — as a lawyer I’m not supposed to be vindictive, but as a man perhaps I am a little. Whoever killed Sidney Karnow should be punished.” He turned and went back to his chair.

“A damn fine sentiment,” I agreed, and left him.

On the way to the next customer I found a booth and phoned Wolfe a report. All I got in return was a series of grunts.

The house Mrs. Savage had bought was in the Sixties, over east of Lexington Avenue. I am not an expert on Manhattan real estate, but after a look at the narrow gray brick three-layer item my guess was that it had set her back not more than a tenth of her three hundred thousand, not counting the mortgage. When there was no answer to my rings I felt cheated. I hadn’t expected anything as lavish as a dolled-up butler, but not even a maid to receive detectives?

It was only a ten-minute walk to the Park Avenue address of Mr. and Mrs. Norman Horne. My luck stayed stubborn. The hallman said they were both out, phoned up at my request, and got no answer.

I like to walk around Manhattan, catching glimpses of its wild life, the pigeons and cats and girls, but that day I overdid it, back and forth between my two objectives. Finally, from an ambush in a hamburger hell on Sixty-eighth Street, where I was sipping a glass of milk, I saw Aunt Margaret navigate the sidewalk across the street and enter the gray brick. I finished the milk, crossed over, and pushed the button.

She opened the door a few inches, thought she saw a journalist, said, “I have nothing to say,” and would have closed the door if it hadn’t been for my foot.

“Wait a minute,” I objected. “We’ve been introduced — by your daughter, this morning. The name is Archie Goodwin.”

She let the door come another inch for a better view of me, and the pressure of my foot kept it going. I crossed the threshold.

“Of course,” she said. “We were rude to you, weren’t we? The reason I said I have nothing to say, they tell me that’s what I must say to everybody, but it’s quite true that my daughter introduced you, and we were rude. What do you want?”

She sounded to me like a godsend. If I could kidnap her and get her down to the office, and phone the rest of them that we had her and she was being very helpful, it was a good bet that they would come on the run to yank her out of our clutches.

I gave her a friendly eye and a warm smile. “I’ll tell you, Mrs. Savage. As your daughter told you, I work for Nero Wolfe. He thinks there are some aspects of this situation that haven’t been sufficiently considered. To mention only one, there’s the legal principle that a criminal may not profit by his crime. If it should be proved that Aubry killed your nephew, and that Mrs. Karnow was an accessory, what happens to her half of the estate? Does it go to you and your son and daughter, or what? That’s the sort of thing Mr. Wolfe wants to discuss with you. If you’ll come on down to his office with me, he’s waiting there for you. He wants to know how you feel about it, and he wants your advice. It will only take us—”

A roar came from above. “What’s going on, Mumsy?”

Heavy feet were descending stairs behind Mrs. Savage in a hurry. She turned. “Oh, Dickie? I supposed you were asleep.”

He was in a silk dressing gown that must have accounted for at least two Cs of Cousin Sidney’s dough. I could have choked him. He had been there all the time. After ignoring all my bell ringing for the past two hours, here he was horning in just when I was getting a good start on a snatch.

“You remember Mr. Goodwin,” his mother was telling him. “Down at that place this morning? He wants to take me to see Nero Wolfe. Mr. Wolfe wants to ask my advice about a very interesting point. I think I should go, I really do.”

“I don’t,” Dick said bluntly.

“But Dickie,” she appealed, “I’m sure you agree that we should do all we can to get this awful business over and done with!”

“Sure I do,” he conceded. “God knows I do. But how it could help for you to go and discuss it with a private detective — No, I don’t see it.”

They looked at each other. The mutual resemblance was so remarkable that you might say they had the same face, allowing for the difference in age; and also they were built alike. Her bulk was more bone and meat than fat, and so was his.

When she spoke I got a suspicion that I had misjudged her. Her tone was new, dry and cool and meaningful. “I think I ought to go,” she said.

He appealed now. “Please, Mumsy. At least we can talk it over. You can go later, after dinner.” He turned to me. “Could she see Wolfe this evening?”

“She could,” I admitted. “Now would be better.”

“I really am tired,” she told me. Her tone was back to what might have been normal. “All this awful business. After dinner would be better. What is the address?”

I got my wallet, took out a card, and handed it to her. “By the way,” I observed, “that reminds me. At that meeting last Friday at Mr. Beebe’s office, Aubry put one of his cards on Beebe’s desk and left it there. Do you happen to remember what became of it?”

Mrs. Savage said promptly, “I remember he took out a card, but I don’t—”

“Hold it,” Dick barked at her, gripping her arm so hard that she winced. “Go upstairs.”

She tried to twist loose, found it wouldn’t work, and leveled her eyes at him to stare him off. That didn’t work either. His eyes were as level as hers, and harder and meaner. Four seconds of it was enough for her. When he turned her around she didn’t resist, and without a word she walked to the stairs and started up. He faced me and demanded, “What’s this about a card?”

“What I said. Aubry put one on Beebe’s desk—”

“Who says he did?”

“Aubry.”

“Yeah? A guy in for murder? Come again.”

“Glad to. Beebe says so too.”

Dick snorted. “That little louse? That punk?” He lifted a hand to tap my chest with a finger, but a short backward step took me out of range. “Listen, brother. If you and your boss think you can frame an out for Aubry don’t let me stop you, but don’t come trying to work my mother in, or me either. Is that plain?”

“I merely want to know—”

“The way out,” he said rudely, and strode to the door and opened it. Since I stay where I’m not wanted only when there is a chance of gaining something, I took advantage of his courtesy and passed on through to the sidewalk.

I was getting low on prospects. Back at the Park Avenue address, where the hallman and I were by now on intimate terms, he informed me that Mrs. Horne had come in, and he had told her that Mr. Goodwin had called several times and would return, and she had said to send me up.

At Apartment D on the twelfth floor I was admitted by a maid, properly outfitted, who showed me to a living room where a slice of Karnow’s money had been used with no great taste but a keen eye to comfort. I sat down, and almost at once got up again when Ann Horne entered. She met me and let me have a hand.

“We’ll have to hurry,” she said. “My husband may be home any minute. What do you do first, rubber hose?”

She was wearing a nice simple blue dress that either was silk or wanted to be, and had renovated her make-up since coming in from the street.

“Not here,” I told her. “Get the stole. I’m taking you to a dungeon.”

She flowed onto a couch. “Sit down and describe it to me. Rats, I hope?”

“No, we can’t get rats to stay. Bad air.” I sat. “As a matter of fact, I’ve decided the physical approach wouldn’t work with you, and we’re going after you mentally. That’s Mr. Wolfe’s department, and he never leaves the house, so I’ve come to take you down there. You can leave word for your husband, and he can join us.”

“That doesn’t appeal to me at all. Mentally I’m a wreck already. What’s the matter, are you afraid I can’t take it?”

“On the contrary, I’m afraid I can’t give it. Nature went to a lot of trouble with you, and I’d hate to spoil it. You’d enjoy a session with Nero Wolfe. He’s afraid of women anyhow, and you’d scare him stiff.”

She pulled a routine that I approved of. Knowing that if she took a cigarette I’d have to get up to light it, she first picked up a lighter and flicked it on, and then reached to a box for the cigarette. A darned good idea.

“What’s the score?” she asked, after inhaling and letting it out.

I told her. “Paul Aubry is charged with murder. Mr. Wolfe can earn a big fee only by clearing him. Mr. Wolfe has never let a big fee get away. So Aubry will be cleared. We’ll be glad to let you share the glory, though not the fee. Get the stole, and let’s go.”

“You’re irresistible,” she said admiringly. “It’s too bad about Paul.”

“Not at all. When he gets out he can marry his wife.”

“ If he gets out. Do you remember nursery rhymes?”

“I wrote them.”

“Then of course you remember this one:

“Needles and pins,

Needles and pins,

When a man murders

His trouble begins.”

“Sure, that’s one of my favorites. Only Aubry didn’t murder.”

She nodded. “That’s your line, of course, and you’re stuck with it.” She reached to crush her cigarette in a tray, then suddenly turned to me with her eyes flashing. “All this poppycock! All this twaddle about life being sacred! For everybody there’s just one life that’s sacred, and everybody knows it! Mine!” She spread her hand on her breast. “Mine! And Sidney’s was sacred to him, but he’s dead. So it’s too bad about Paul.”

“If you feel that way about it you ought to be ready to give him a lift.”

“I might be if I had anything to lift with.”

“Maybe I can furnish something. Last Friday you were at a conference at Jim Beebe’s office. Aubry put one of his business cards on Beebe’s desk. Why did you pick up that card, and what did you do with it?”

She stared at me a moment. Then she shook her head. “You’ll have to get out the rubber hose, or pliers to pull out my nails. Even then I may hold out.”

“Didn’t you pick up the card?”

“I did not.”

“Then who did?”

“I have no idea — if there was a card.”

“You don’t remember Aubry putting it on the desk? Or seeing it there?”

“No. But this begins to sound like something. You sound as if you’re really detecting. Are you?”

I nodded. “This is called the double sly squeeze. First I get you to deny you touched the card, which I have done. Then I display one of Aubry’s cards in a cellophane envelope, tell you it has fingerprints on it which I suspect are yours, and dare you to let me take your prints so I can check. You’re afraid to refuse—”

“Come and show me how you take my prints. I’ve never had it done.”

I was, I admit it, curious. Was she inviting physical contact because she was like that, or was she expecting to voodoo me, or was she merely passing the time? To find out I got up and went to her, took her offered hand and got it snugly in mine, palm up, and bent over it for a closeup. The hand seemed to be telling me that it didn’t mind the operation at all, and with the fingertips of my other hand I spread her fingers apart, bending lower.

Of course I was concentrated on the job. Whether the door from the outside hall to the foyer was opened so quietly that no sound came, or whether my ears caught a sound but I ignored it, what interrupted my investigation was her sudden tight grip on my hand as she straightened up and cried, “Don’t! You’re hurting me! Norman — thank God!”

My whirl around was checked for a second by her hold on my hand. For her size and sex she had muscle. I suppose to Norman Horne, approaching from behind me, it could have looked as if I were holding her, instead of her me, but even so it must have been obvious that I was turning, and he might have held his fire until I could at least see it coming. As it was, I was off balance when he plugged me on the side of the jaw, and I went clear down, sprawling. Added to the four touchdowns he had scored for Yale against Princeton, that made five.

“He was trying to force me—” Ann was saying with her sense of humor.

Probably I would have scrambled to my feet and departed, since Wolfe wouldn’t have appreciated my letting my personal feelings take charge when I was on a job, if it hadn’t been for Horne’s attitude. He was glaring down at me, with his fists ready, and it was doubtful if he would wait till I got farther up than on my knees. So I did a quick double roll, sprang all the way up, and faced him. He came at me wide open, as if I had been a dummy, and swung. There wouldn’t have been the slightest excuse for my missing the exact spot for a dead kidney punch, and I didn’t. Air exploded out of him, and he crumpled, not sprawling, but in a compact heap. Then he sort of settled to get comfortable.

His attractive wife took a couple of steps toward him, stopped to look at me, and said, “I’ll be damned.”

“You will if they consult me,” I told her emphatically, turned, went to the foyer and got my hat, and let myself out. On the way down in the elevator I felt my jaw and took a look at it in the mirror, and decided I would live.

I got home just at the dinner hour, seven-thirty, and since it takes an earthquake to postpone a meal in that house, and no mention of business is permitted at the table, my full report of the afternoon had to wait. If the main dish had been something like goulash or calves’ brains probably nothing unusual in my technique would have been apparent, but it was squabs, which of course have to be gnawed off the bones, and while I was working on the second one Wolfe demanded, “What the deuce is the matter with you?”

“Nothing. What?”

“You’re not eating, you’re nibbling.”

“Yeah. Broken jaw. With the compliments of Ann Horne.”

He stared. “A woman broke your jaw?”

“Sorry, no shoptalk at meals. I’ll tell you later.”

I did so, in the office, after dinner, and after I had looked into a little matter I was wondering about. I had obeyed the instruction, given me before lunch, to phone Saul Panzer, and Saul had said he would be at the office at two-thirty. By that time I had left. When, on the way from the dining room to the office, I asked Wolfe if Saul had come, he replied in one word, “Yes,” indicating that that was all I needed to know about it. Thinking it wouldn’t hurt me any to know more, I went and opened the safe and got out the little book from the cash drawer. Sometimes, in addition to the name and date and amount, Wolfe scribbles something about the purpose, but that time he hadn’t. The latest entry was merely the date and “SP $1000.” All that did was make me wonder further what Saul was expected to buy that might cost as much as a grand.

As I reported on my afternoon rounds, giving all conversations verbatim, which isn’t so hard when you’ve had plenty of practice and have learned that nothing less will be acceptable, Wolfe leaned back in his chair with his eyes closed. He was too damn placid. Ordinarily, when he sends me out for bacon and I return empty-handed, he makes some pointed cracks, no matter how hopeless he knows my errand was; but that time, not a one. That meant either that he didn’t like the job and to hell with it, or that I was just a sideshow, including my sore jaw, and the main attraction was elsewhere. When I was through he didn’t open his eyes or ask a single question.

I groaned with pain. “Since it’s obvious that I wasted five hours of your time, and since if I stay here I may say something that will rile you, I guess I’ll go see Doc Vollmer and have him set my jaw. He’ll probably have to wire it.”

“No.”

“No what?”

He opened his eyes. “I’m expecting a phone call. Probably not until tomorrow, but it could come this evening. If it does I’ll need you.”

“Okay, I’ll be upstairs.”

I mounted the two flights to my room, turned on the lights, went to the bathroom mirror to see if there was enough swelling for a compress, decided there wasn’t, and settled myself in my easy chair with a collection of magazines.

Nearly two hours had gone by, and I was yawning, when a sound came faintly through the open door — the sound of Wolfe’s voice. I went and lifted the phone on my bedside table and put it to my ear. It was dead. I had neglected to plug it in when I left the office. It would have been undignified to go to the hall, to the stair landing, and listen, so I did; but though Wolfe’s voice came up at intervals I couldn’t get the words. After enough of that I returned to the room and the easy chair, but had barely lowered myself into it when a bellow from below came.

“Archie! Archie!”

I did not descend the stairs three steps at a time, but I admit I didn’t mosey. Wolfe, at his desk, spoke as I entered the office. “Get Mr. Cramer.”

Getting Inspector Cramer of Homicide, day or night, may be very simple or it may be impossible. That time it was in between. He was at his office on Twentieth Street, but in conference and not available, so I had to bear down and make it plain that if he didn’t speak with Nero Wolfe immediately God only knew what tomorrow’s papers would say.

In a couple of minutes his familiar growl was growling at me. “Goodwin? Is Wolfe on?”

I nodded at Wolfe, and he took up his phone. “Mr. Cramer? I don’t know if you know that I’m investigating the Karnow murder. For a client. Mrs. Karnow engaged me at noon today.”

“Go ahead and investigate. What do you want?”

“I understand that Mr. Aubry is being held on a murder charge, without bail. That’s regrettable, because he’s innocent. If you are supporting that charge I advise you to reconsider. On the soundness of that advice I stake my professional reputation.”

I would have paid admission to see Cramer’s face. He knew Wolfe would rather go without eating a whole day than be caught wrong in a flat statement like that.

“That’s all I wanted, your advice.” The growl was still a growl, but not the same. “Is it all right if I wait till morning to turn him loose?”

“Formalities may require it. May I ask a question? How many of the others — Mrs. Savage, her son, Mr. and Mrs. Horne, Mr. Beebe — have been eliminated by alibis?”

“Crossed off, no one. But Aubry not only has no alibi, he admits he was there.”

“Yes, I know. However, it was one of the others. I must now choose between alternatives. Either I proceed independently to disclose and hand over the culprit, or I invite you to partake. Which would you prefer?”

It was nearly silence, but I thought I could hear Cramer breathe. “Are you saying you’ve got it?”

“I’m saying I am prepared to expose the murderer. It would be a little simpler if you can spare the time, for I must have them here at my office, and for you that will be no problem. If you care to take part could you get them here in half an hour?”

Cramer cussed. Since it’s a misdemeanor to use profanity over the phone, and since I don’t want to hang a misdemeanor rap on an inspector, I won’t quote it. He added, “I’m coming up there. I’ll be there in five minutes.”

“You won’t get in.” Wolfe wasn’t nasty, but he was firm. “If you come without those people, or without first assuring me that they will be brought, Mr. Goodwin won’t even open the door to the crack the chain bolt will permit. He’s in a touchy mood because a man hit him on the jaw and knocked him down. Nor am I in any humor to wrangle with you. I gave you your chance. Do you remember that when you were here this morning I told you that I had the last letter Mrs. Karnow received from her husband, and offered to show it to you?”

“Yes.”

“And you said you weren’t interested in a letter Karnow wrote nearly three years ago. You were wrong. I now offer again to show it to you before I send it to the District Attorney, but only on the condition as stated. Well?”

I’ll say one thing for Cramer, he knew when he was out of choices, and he didn’t try to prolong it. He cussed again and then got it out. “They’ll be there, and so will I.”

Wolfe hung up. I asked him, “What about our client? Hadn’t she better be present?”

He made a face. “I suppose so. See if you can get her.”

V

It was half-past eleven when I ushered Norman Horne and his attractive wife to the office and to the two vacant seats in the cluster of chairs that had been placed facing Wolfe’s desk. At their left was Mrs. Savage; behind them were Dick Savage, James M. Beebe, and Sergeant Purley Stebbins — only not in that order, because Purley was in the middle, behind Ann Horne. There had been another chair in the cluster, for Caroline Karnow, but she had moved it away, over to the side of the room where the bookshelves were, while I was in the hall admitting Mrs. Savage and Dick. That had put her where Purley couldn’t see her without turning his head a full quarter-circle, and he hadn’t liked it, but I had let him know that it was none of his damn business where our client sat.

The red leather chair was for Cramer, who was in the dining room with Wolfe. After the Hornes had greeted their relatives, including Caroline, and got seated, I crossed to the dining room and told Wolfe we were ready, and he marched to the office and to his desk, and stood.

“Archie?”

“Yes, sir.” I was there. “Front row, from the left, Mr. Horne, Mrs. Horne, Mrs. Savage. Rear, from the left, Mr. Savage, Mr. Stebbins you know, and Mr. Beebe.”

Wolfe nodded almost perceptibly, sat, and turned his head. “Mr. Cramer?”

Cramer, standing, was surveying them. “I can’t say this is unofficial,” he conceded, “since I asked you to come here, and I’m here. But anything Mr. Wolfe says to you is solely on his own responsibility, and you’re under no obligation to answer any questions he asks if you don’t want to. I want that clearly understood.”

“Even so,” Beebe piped up, “isn’t this rather irregular?”

“If you mean unusual, yes. If you mean improper, I don’t think so. You weren’t ordered to come, you were asked, and you’re here. Do you want to leave?”

Apparently they didn’t, at least not enough to make an issue of it. They exchanged glances, and someone muttered something. Beebe said, “We certainly reserve the right to leave.”

“Nobody will stop you,” Cramer assured him, and sat. He looked at Wolfe. “Go ahead.”

Wolfe adjusted himself in his chair to achieve the maximum of comfort, and then moved his eyes, left and right, to take them in. He spoke. “Mr. Cramer assured you that you are not obliged to answer my questions. I can relieve your minds of that concern. I doubt if I’ll have a single question to put to any of you, though of course an occasion for one may arise. I merely want to describe the situation as it now stands and invite your comment. You may have none.”

He interlaced his fingers at the crest of his central bulge. “The news that Mr. Karnow had been murdered was brought here by Mr. Stebbins early last evening, but my interest in it was only casual until Mrs. Karnow came at noon today and aroused it by hiring me. Then I gave it my attention, and it seemed to me that your obvious motive for murder — Mrs. Savage and her son and daughter, and Mr. Horne as the daughter’s husband — was not very compelling. From what my client told me of Mr. Karnow’s character and temperament, it seemed unlikely that any of you would so fear harsh and exigent demands from him that you would be driven to the dangerous and desperate act of murder. You had received your legacies legally and properly, in good faith, and surely you would at least have first tried an appeal to his reason and his grace. So one of you must have had a stronger motive.”

Wolfe cleared his throat. “That derogation of your obvious motives put me up a stump. There were two people with overpowering motives: Mr. Aubry and Mrs. Karnow. Not only did they stand to forfeit a much larger sum than any of you, but also they faced a deprivation even more intolerable. He would lose her, and she would lose him. It is not surprising that Mr. Cramer and his colleagues were dazzled by the glitter of that powerful motive. I might have been similarly bemused but for two circumstances. The first was that I had concluded that neither Mrs. Karnow nor Mr. Aubry had committed murder. If they had, they had come fresh from that ferocious deed to engage me to negotiate for them with the man one of them had just killed, for the devious purpose of raising the presumption that they didn’t know he was dead, and I had sat here and conversed with them for an hour without feeling any twinge of suspicion that they were diddling me. I was compelled either to reject that notion or abandon certain pretensions that feed my ego. The choice wasn’t difficult.”

“Also Mrs. Karnow was your client,” Cramer said pointedly.

Wolfe ignored it, which was just as well. He went on. “The second circumstance was that the possibility of another motive had been suggested to me. It was suggested in a letter which Mrs. Karnow had shown me yesterday — the last letter she had received from her husband, nearly three years ago.” He opened a drawer and took out sheets of paper. “Here it is. I’ll read only the pertinent excerpt:

“Speaking of death, if he should get me instead of me getting him, something I did before I left New York will give you quite a shock. I wish I could be around to see how you take it. You claim you have never worried about money, that it’s not worth it. Also you’ve told me that I always talk sardonic but haven’t got it in me to act sardonic. This will show you. I’ll admit I have to die to get the last laugh, but that will be sardonic too. I wonder do I love you or hate you? They’re hard to tell apart. Remember me in thy dreams.”

He returned the papers to the drawer and closed it. “Mrs. Karnow had the notion that what her husband had done was to make a new will, leaving her out, but that theory was open to two objections. First, a wife cannot be so brusquely disinherited by a man of means; and second, such an act would have been merely malicious, not sardonic. But the phrase ‘speaking of death’ did imply some connection with his will, and raised the question, how might such a man have so remade his will as to cause such a woman to worry about money? That intention was clearly implied.”

Wolfe turned a hand over. “Under the circumstances as I knew them, a plausible conjecture offered itself: that Karnow had made a new will, leaving everything to his wife. That would certainly give her an inescapable worry about money, the same worry he had had — how much should his relatives be pampered? And since it was his money and they were his relatives, for her the worry would be even more bothersome than for him. I would call that sardonic. Also he might have been moved by another consideration, a reluctance to bestow large amounts on them. I had gathered, though Mrs. Karnow didn’t make it explicit, that in matters of personal finance and economy Karnow did not regard his relatives as paragons — a judgment that has been verified by their management of their bequests.”

Ann Horne’s head jerked around, and she told Caroline, “Thank you so much, Lina darling.” Caroline made no reply. Judging from her intent face and rigid posture, if she replied to anything it would be an explosion.

“Therefore,” Wolfe resumed, “it appeared that the hypothesis that Karnow had made a new will deserved a little exploration. To ask any of you about it would of course have been jackassery. It was reasonable to suppose that for such a chore he would have called upon his friend and attorney, Mr. Beebe, but it seemed impolitic to approach Mr. Beebe on the matter. I don’t know whether any of you has ever heard the name Saul Panzer?”

No reply. No shake of a head. They might all have been in a trance.

“I employ Mr. Panzer,” Wolfe said, “on important missions for which Mr. Goodwin cannot be spared. He has extraordinary qualities and abilities. I told him that if Mr. Beebe had drafted a new will for Mr. Karnow it had probably been typed by his secretary, and Mr. Panzer undertook to see Mr. Beebe’s secretary and try to get on terms with her without arousing her suspicion. I would entrust so ticklish an errand to no other man except Mr. Goodwin. Early this afternoon he called on her in the guise of an invesigator from the Federal Security Agency, wanting to clear up some confusion about her Social Security number.”

“Impersonating an officer of the law,” Beebe protested.

“Possibly,” Wolfe conceded. “If such an investigator is an officer of the law, he is a federal officer, and Mr. Panzer can await his doom. In ten minutes he collected an arsenal of data. Mr. Beebe’s secretary, whose name is Vera O’Brien, has been with him two and one-half years. Her predecessor, whose name was Helen Martin, left Mr. Beebe’s employ in November nineteen-fifty-one to marry a man named Arthur Rabson, and went to live with her husband in Florence, South Carolina, where he owns a garage. So if Karnow made a new will before he left New York, and if Mr. Beebe drafted it, and if Mr. Beebe’s secretary typed it, it was typed by the now Mrs. Arthur Rabson.”

“Three ifs,” Cramer muttered.

“Yes,” Wolfe agreed, “but open for test. I was tempted to get Mrs. Rabson on the phone in South Carolina, but it was too risky, so Mr. Panzer took a plane to Columbia, and I phoned there and chartered a small one to take him on to Florence. An hour ago, or a little more, I got a phone call from him. He has talked with Mrs. Rabson, she has signed a statement, and she is willing to come to New York if necessary. She says that Mr. Beebe dictated to her a new will for Mr. Karnow in the fall of 1951, that she typed it, and that she was one of the witnesses to Karnow’s signature. The other witness was a woman named Nora Wayne, from a nearby office. She supposes that Miss Wayne did not know the contents of the will. By it Karnow left everything to his wife, and it contained a request that she use discretion in making provision for Karnow’s relatives, who were named. Mrs. Rabson didn’t know that—”

“Sidney wouldn’t do that!” Aunt Margaret cried. “I don’t believe it! Jim, are you going to just sit there and blink?”

All eyes were at Beebe except Wolfe’s. His were on the move. “I should explain,” he said, “that meanwhile Mr. Goodwin was making himself useful. He learned, for instance, that the only item of tangible evidence against Mr. Aubry, a card of his that was found in Mr. Karnow’s pocket, had been accessible to all of you last Friday in Mr. Beebe’s office.”

“How’s that?” Cramer demanded.

“You’ll get it,” Wolfe assured him, “and you’ll like it.” He focused on Beebe. “The occasion has arisen, I think, Mr. Beebe, for a question. As Mr. Cramer told you, you’re not obliged to answer it. What happened to Mr. Karnow’s last will?”

Thinking it over later, I decided that Beebe probably took his best bet. Him being a lawyer, you might suppose that he would simply have clammed up, but, knowing as he did that he was absolutely hooked on the will, he undoubtedly figured, in the short time he had for figuring, that the best way was to go ahead and take the little one so as to dodge the big one.

He addressed Cramer. “I would like to speak to you privately, Inspector — you and Mr. Wolfe, if you want him present.”

Cramer glanced at Wolfe. Wolfe said, “No. You may refuse to answer, or you may answer here and now.”

“Very well.” Beebe straightened his shoulders and lifted his chin. At the angle I had on him I couldn’t see his eyes behind the black-rimmed glasses. “This will ruin me professionally, and I bitterly regret the part I have played. It was a month or so before the notice came that Sidney had been killed in action that I told Ann about the new will he had made. That was my first mistake. I did it because I — of the way I felt about her. At that time I would have done just about anything she wanted. When word came that Sidney had been killed she came to my office and insisted on my showing her the will. I was even—”

“Watch it, Jim!” Ann, turned in her chair, called to him. “You dirty little liar! Ad libbing it, you’ll get all twisted—”

“Mrs. Horne!” Wolfe said sharply. “Would you rather hear him or be taken from the room?”

She stayed turned to Beebe. “Go on, Jim, but watch it.”

Beebe resumed, “I was then even more infatuated with her than before. I got the will from the safe and showed it to her, and she took it and stuffed it inside her dress. She insisted on taking it to show to her mother. It’s easy to say I should have gone to any length to prevent that — it’s easy now, but then I was incapable of opposing her. She took the will with her, and I never saw it again. Two weeks later our engagement was publicly announced. I presented Sidney’s former will for probate, and that was completely insane, since I only had Ann’s word for it that the new will had been destroyed — even though the girl who had typed the new will had got married and gone away.”

Beebe lifted a hand to adjust his cheaters. “I won’t say what it was that cured me of my infatuation for Ann Savage. It was — a personal thing, and it was enough to cure me good. I only wish to God it had happened sooner. Of course I couldn’t stop the probate of the will without ruining myself. In May the estate was distributed, and later that month Ann married Norman Horne. That ended that business, I thought. I had had my lesson, and it had been a tough one.”

He pulled his narrow shoulders back. “Then, two years later, this jolt came. Sidney was alive and would soon be in New York. You can imagine how it hit me, or maybe you can’t. I finally got it in focus enough to see that I had only two choices: either fall out of my office window or tell Sidney exactly how it had happened. Meanwhile I had to go through all the motions of talking it over with them and listening to all their crazy suggestions. It wasn’t until Monday, day before yesterday, that I decided, and I phoned Ann the next morning, yesterday, that I was going to see Sidney that evening and tell him the whole story. Then came the news that Sidney had been murdered. I don’t know who killed him. All I know is what I’m telling you, and of course for me that’s enough.” He stopped for his mouth to do little spasms. He tagged it. “As a counselor-at-law, I’m through.”

I was a little disappointed at Norman Horne. Surely he might have been expected to react manfully and promptly to such an indictment of his attractive wife, but he wasn’t even looking at Beebe. He was looking at her, there beside him, and it was not a gaze of loyal and trusting faith. It was just as well that she didn’t see it.

She didn’t see it because her eyes were on Wolfe. “Is he through?” she asked.

“Apparently, madam, yes. At least for the moment. Would you like to comment?”

“I don’t want to make a speech. I don’t think I need to. Just that he’s a liar. Just lies.”

Wolfe shook his head. “I doubt if that’s adequate. It wasn’t all lies, you know. Mr. Karnow did make a new will; you and Mr. Beebe were engaged to marry but didn’t; the estate was distributed under the terms of a previous will, with you as a legatee; and Mr. Karnow did return alive and was murdered. I strongly advise you either to keep silent, even though that would expose you to an adverse presumption, or to tell the truth without reservation. You warned Mr. Beebe of the hazard of an improvised complex lie. I urge you to heed your own warning. Now?”

She glanced aside at her husband, but he had focused on Wolfe. Her head swiveled for a glance to her left, at her mother, but that wasn’t met either. She looked at Wolfe. “You’re quite a performer, aren’t you?”

“Yes,” he said.

“I believe you already know the truth.”

“If so, for you to try to withhold it would be pointless.”

“Well, I’d hate to be pointless. You’re right, some of what Jim said was true. He did tell me about the new will, but after the news came that Sidney had been killed in action, not before. He did take it from his safe and let me read it. It did leave everything to Caroline. He said that no one knew its contents except his former secretary, and she had got married and gone to some little town in the South, so she was out of the way. He said there was no other copy of it, and that he was sure Caroline didn’t know about it because of a letter she had shown him from Sidney. He said he would destroy it, and I and my mother and brother would inherit under the previous will, if I would marry him. Do you want to know everything we said?”

“I think just the essential points.”

“Then I don’t need to tell how I really felt about marrying him. I didn’t tell him. I agreed to it. I suppose you don’t care what I thought, but Sidney was dead, and I thought it was only fair for us to get a share. So I agreed, but I never had any intention of marrying Jim Beebe. He wanted an immediate wedding, before he presented the will for probate, but I talked him out of that, and our engagement was announced. When the will had gone through and the estate had been distributed and we had our share, I married Norman Horne. I didn’t know whether Jim had destroyed the new will or not, but that didn’t matter because he wouldn’t dare to produce it then.” She fluttered a hand. “That’s all.”

“Not quite,” Wolfe objected. “The sequel. Mr. Karnow’s return.”

“Oh, yes.” Her tone implied that it was careless of her to overlook that little detail. “Of course Jim killed him. If you mean how I felt about Sidney’s turning up alive, you may not believe it, but in a way I was glad of it, because I always liked him. I was sorry for Caroline and Paul, because I liked them too, but I knew Sidney wouldn’t try to get our share back from us. There was just one person who didn’t dare to face him. Of course Jim did face him when he went to his hotel room, but he wasn’t facing him when he killed him — he shot him in the back of the head.” She turned to Beebe. “Did you tell him about the will, Jim? I’ll bet you didn’t. I’ll bet he never knew.” She turned back to Wolfe. “Will that do for the truth?”

“It’ll do for a malicious lie,” Beebe squeaked.

Wolfe addressed the law. “I would prefer, Mr. Cramer, to turn the issue of veracity over to you. In my opinion, Mr. Beebe fumbled it, and Mrs. Horne didn’t.”

At a later date, in a courtroom, a jury concurred. Justice is a fine thing, but that night in Wolfe’s office it slipped up on one detail. After Cramer and Stebbins had escorted Beebe out, and the others had gone, Caroline Karnow decided that the occasion called for her returning the kiss she had received in that room twelve hours earlier. But she went right past me, around to Wolfe behind his desk, put her arms around his neck, and gave it to him on both cheeks.

“Wrong address,” I said bitterly.