Wolfe grunted, compressed his lips, and glared at me ferociously, as if I had done it myself. John Charles Dunn showed admirable presence of mind. He didn’t faint or scream. His face expressed shock and consternation, naturally, but almost immediately his jaw set and he moved, joined me at the end of the bar and looked in there at it. After a moment he looked at me.
“She’s dead?”
“Yes, sir.”
“You’re sure.”
“Yes, sir.”
He put his hand on the edge of the bar for support. Then he moved again, not very steadily. I moved faster, got a chair from the other side of the draperies, and slid it behind him. He sat on it, gripped his knees with his fingers, and told the space in front of him, “This is the end of everything.”
Wolfe said grimly, “Or the beginning. Archie, I want two minutes. In two minutes go up and notify Lieutenant Bronson.”
I looked approvingly at his broad back as it passed through the curtains. I had no idea what he was going to do with the two minutes, but normal people aren’t supposed to understand what geniuses are up to. I timed it by the second hand of my watch. Dunn sat there making no sound, gripping his knees and gazing at space. When the second hand had completed two revolutions, and was halfway around again for good measure, I told him, “You’d better stay here. You ought to breathe deeper. Take some deep breaths.”
No one was in sight in the main hall, the stairs, or the upper corridor. I opened the door to the library and walked in. From the group around the desk, on which batches of papers were piled, four pairs of eyes turned my way in surprise. I was aware that the proper stunt was to summon the officer of the law, lead him downstairs and show it to him, and let nature take its course, but I was curious to see the expression on a couple of faces, so I announced distinctly:
“We have made a discovery downstairs. In the bar back of the drapes in the living room. Naomi Karn is there on the floor, dead.”
I got nothing very definite, as usual. Stauffer merely gawked at me. Prescott merely jerked his head up and looked startled. Mr. Ritchie appeared to be annoyed. Lieutenant Bronson snapped at me, “Dead? Who’s Naomi Karn?”
“A woman,” I replied. “The one that inherited Hawthorne’s pile. She has a thing fastened around her throat and her tongue is sticking out. Mr. Dunn is down there. You might as well go ahead and use that phone—”
He told the others brusquely, “You men stay here and watch these papers,” and me, “Come along,” as he went by headed for the door. I trotted behind, down the stairs and through the entrance hall and living room, circled around him to pull the drapery aside for him to pass through, and told him, “There behind the bar.” Dunn was still on his chair. Bronson slid into the narrow space and stooped over. Pretty soon he straightened up again and spoke:
“I’m going to the library and use the phone. I’d appreciate it, Mr. Dunn, if you’ll kindly stay here until I get back.” He eyed me. “You’re Goodwin, Nero Wolfe’s man.”
“Right.”
“Where’s Wolfe?”
“He went somewhere upstairs, I guess. He sent me to notify you.”
“Was he with you when you found it?”
“Yes.”
“How long ago was that?”
“Up to now? Oh, three-four minutes.”
“Will you please stay at the front door while I’m upstairs? No one is to leave the house.”
“Sure, glad to.”
I went with him as far as the main hall.
Considering the size of that house and the number of its occupants, and in view of the restrictions and complications that were to begin in about six minutes with the arrival of the first contingent of city employees in a radio car, there is no telling when I would have realized what Nero Wolfe had done with that two minutes he had said he wanted, if it hadn’t been for my habit of looking in all directions. But possibly there was some faint suspicion in the back of my mind, or I wouldn’t have opened the entrance door and stepped out for a look around, and noticed that something was missing. I craned my neck for an inspection of the cars parked in that short block, and verified it. Absolutely, the sedan was gone. It wasn’t where I had parked it, and it wasn’t there at all.
But of course Wolfe hadn’t driven off in it himself, since, although theoretically he knew how to drive, he would have collapsed with terror at the mere idea. But since Naomi Karn hadn’t left the house, and therefore Orrie Cather was still on the job, Wolfe would have known that a chauffeur was available. I sent my gaze in the other direction, toward the areaway across the street where I had found Orrie. He wasn’t there. He wasn’t in sight. That cinched it. If Orrie had still been around he would have had an eye on that entrance, and would have seen me, and would have made himself visible.
I stood and let the conviction seep into my soul. “I can’t say it any better than that,” I muttered bitterly to myself. “Normal people aren’t supposed to understand what geniuses are up to. If only I had sunk my toe in his fundament as he went through those curtains.”
A siren sounded from around the corner, a little green car came curving into 67th, jerked to a stop at the curb, and two men in uniform hopped out and started for me. I had left the door ajar, and swung it open for them to enter.
That was the beginning of as dreary and unprofitable a six-hour stretch as I’ve ever struggled through. By midnight I was ready to bite holes in the windows. On account of the kind of individuals involved, by their being on the premises if by nothing else, the whole damn city and county payroll showed up sooner or later, from the commissioner and the district attorney on down. Wherever you stepped it was on a toe. As far as picking up any items for myself was concerned, I had about as much chance as a poodle in a pack of bloodhounds. Throughout the entire session, about every ten minutes someone came up to me and asked me where Nero Wolfe was. That alone got so obnoxious I had to grit my teeth to keep from slugging some high official.
Soon after the first squad men arrived, Lieutenant Bronson had me in the music room. That interview was brief and unimportant; about all he wanted was the details of our finding the body. I gave it to him complete and straight. I wouldn’t have minded keeping our knowledge of Daisy’s addiction to eavesdropping for the firm’s private use, in case it should come in handy, but I had to give a reason for my looking behind the bar, and it was too risky to invent one, since he had already had a talk with Dunn, and Dunn had probably told him just how it was. So I did too. When it was over he chased me upstairs. I was to remain and so forth. The first thing he asked me, and the last, was “Where’s Wolfe?”
I went in the library and saw there was no one there but Ritchie of the Cosmopolitan Trust, sitting looking glum and offended, and a dick I didn’t know, so I went out again. Prescott came trotting down the hall, saw me, stopped beside me, glanced around, and asked in an undertone, “Where’s Wolfe?”
“I don’t know. Don’t ask me again. I don’t know.”
“He must have—”
“I don’t know!”
“Don’t talk so loud. We’ve got to keep Gene Davis out of this.” He was urgent, pleading. “No one saw him but Wolfe and you and me. I’m sure if Wolfe were here I could convince him. They mustn’t know Gene was here. When they ask you—”
“Not a chance. You’d better compose your faculties. The butler let him in.”
“But I can tell Turner, I can persuade him—”
“No, sir. There are about nine things the cops won’t find out from me, but that isn’t one of them. Take my advice and never conspire with a butler.”
He grabbed my lapel. “But I tell you, if they learn Davis was here, if they once get started after him—”
“I can’t help it, Mr. Prescott. Sorry. No one likes to keep a secret from a cop any more than I do, but that would be just begging for trouble. I’ll do this much, I’ll make them ask for it, I won’t volunteer it—”
Footsteps from above, on the next flight of stairs, interrupted me. It was Andy Dunn coming down. He caught sight of us, and told Prescott his father would like to see him in Mrs. Hawthorne’s room. Prescott looked at me half angrily and half pleadingly, and I shook my head. Andy addressed me:
“Dad would like to see Nero Wolfe too. Where is he?”
I answered that one, and they went off, and I moseyed to the end of the corridor and sat on a bench. After a while I started down to the main floor to look over fresh arrivals, but got shooed back up before I touched bottom, and went to the library and appropriated a comfortable chair. It was while I was there that a maid came around with sandwiches and milk and ginger ale, and I took enough to last a while. The next scene I had any part in was when a squad man appeared and said that Mr. Dunn himself had suggested that everyone in the house submit to having their fingerprints taken, and the others had agreed, and he was prepared to oblige me. Having just wasted a lot of breath trying to persuade the dick on guard in the library that it would be conducive to the interest of law and order to let me use the phone, I was sore. I refused, and said my prints were on file downtown, since I was a licensed detective. He said he knew that, but it would be more convenient to take them with the others. I said it would be more convenient for me to go home and go to bed, since it was after dark, and he could go sit on a trylon. I admit I was churlish, but so were they. All I wanted to do was phone the house and ask Fritz how he was.
I got tired of the library and wandered out to the hall again. The three kids were there, Celia and Sara sitting on a bench and Andy standing in front of them, talking in whispers. They looked at me and stopped whispering, but had nothing to say to me. Not wanting to interfere with any childish secrets, I went on up to the next floor. The third door on the left was standing wide open, and a glance through as I passed by revealed May and June seated side by side on a sofa. I noted that May had exchanged the old faded gown for something fresher, a white dress with pink spots. At the street end of the hall was a window, and I went there and stood a while, looking down at the confusion outdoors. Parked cars were solid at the curb on both sides, and streams of both pedestrian and vehicle traffic were being kept moving by a scattering of cops. The radio certainly is a blessing for people who like their meat fresh. Standing there surveying the bustling scene, I turned from time to time at the sound of footsteps behind me, but it was never anything more exciting than one of the inmates en route to or from the stairs, a dick who was obviously a messenger from the ground floor.
On two occasions, however, the footsteps kept coming until they got me. The first time it was Osric Stauffer. He gazed at me from ten paces off, evidently decided I was the customer he was calling on, and came clear up to me before he spoke.
“I understand Nero Wolfe isn’t around. If you—”
“I don’t know where he is,” I said firmly.
“So Dunn tells me. But if you — the fact is, I was looking for you before — when they sent for me—”
I wouldn’t have said that at that moment he was living up to much of anything. He was close to pitiful. He was trying to keep from trembling but couldn’t, and his voice sounded as if his throat was badly in need of oiling.
I said, “Here I am, but I’m in one hell of a temper. You don’t look very happy yourself.”
“I suppose — I don’t. This ghastly — right here — with all of us here.”
“Yeah, sure. It wouldn’t have been so bad if she’d been all alone in the house.”
I was hoping he’d resent that enough to quit looking pathetic, but his mind was too occupied even to realize it was an ill-timed jest. All he did was move ten inches closer to me and speak in a lower and more urgent tone:
“Do you want to earn a thousand dollars?”
“Certainly. Don’t you?”
“For nothing,” he said. “Really nothing. I’ve just had a talk with Skinner, the district attorney. I didn’t tell him about my being behind those curtains — you know — when you came in and saw me. It would have been — it would have sounded too damned silly.” He pulled one of the poorest imitations of a jolly little laugh in my long experience. “It was silly — the silliest thing I ever did in my life. I’ll give you — I mean, when they question you — if you forget you saw me there — you’ll earn a thousand dollars — just to save me the embarrassment — I haven’t got that much with me, but you can take my word—”
He ran down. I grinned at him. “No spik Eenglis.”
“But I tell you—”
“No, brother. If you didn’t kill her, you’d be overpaying me. If you did, you’re a piker. But if it will relieve your mind any to know it, my rule is never to give a cop anything to hold if it’s something I might want back. There are a few pieces of information I intend to keep at least temporarily for my private use — since Nero Wolfe has retired — and the fact that you sneak into bars in private houses is one of them.”
“But — you say temporarily — I’ve got to know—”
“That’s the best I can do for you, and don’t offer me any more pennies. My mother told me not to accept money from strangers.”
He was by no means satisfied. It appeared that what he wanted was an anti-aggression bloc with unilateral action rigidly excluded, and he was pretty stubborn about it. I don’t know how I would have got rid of him if John Charles Dunn hadn’t come down the hall, caught sight of him, and taken him off into a room. For, I calculated, a report of his session with Skinner.
The second approach to my anchorage by the window was just after I had returned from a trip to the library to get an ash tray. This time I wasn’t being sought for; at least it didn’t look like it. Sara and Celia and Andy came up together from the floor below, and saw me, and Sara said something to the other two which seemed to start an argument. They hissed back and forth for a couple of minutes, and then Andy and Celia entered at the open door through which I had seen May and June seated talking, and Sara trotted up to me. As she approached I observed:
“I see they haven’t arrested you yet.”
“Of course not. Why should they?”
“They’re apt to. If you confess to enough crimes and misdemeanors, you’ll hit on one they can’t prove you didn’t do.”
“Don’t be so darned smart.” She sat down on the bench that was there. “This — all this — has gone to my legs. I can’t stand up. It stimulates me like cocktails on an empty stomach. I suppose when I go to bed, if I go to bed at all, I’ll be crushed and I’ll lie and stare at the dark and be miserable, and I may even throw up, but now it just makes my legs weak and excites my brain. I have got a brain.”
“So has a cricket.” I sat beside her. “You remind me of a cricket.”
“That might interest me some day, but it doesn’t now. Andy was disagreeing with me, and of course Celia was on his side. Heavens, are they hooked! Andy says that the family is in danger, in horrible danger, and that we ought to stick together and trust no one.”
“Whereas you’re in favor of trusting? Who, me?”
“Not trust exactly. Trust doesn’t enter into it that I can see. I was merely going to tell you something that happened this afternoon.”
“I must warn you, Miss Dunn, that after that confession of yours I’ll suspect anything you say. I doubt if I’ll even take the trouble to check up on it.”
She made an unladylike noise. “Nobody’s asking you to check up on it. Only it happened, and I’m going to tell you. I told dad, and I don’t think he even heard me. I told Mr. Prescott, and he said, ‘Yes, yes,’ and patted me on the shoulder. I told Andy and Celia, and I swear to heaven they think I made it up. Why the dickens would I make it up that somebody stole my camera?”
“Oh. Is that what happened?”
“Yes, and whoever it was took two rolls of film too. You see, we came down to New York from the country Wednesday morning. Dad had to go back to Washington, but the famous Hawthorne girls decided the rest of us should camp in this house until after the funeral, and Aunt Daisy said all right.” She shivered. “Doesn’t that veil give you the creeps?”
I said it did.
She went on. “It certainly does me. When we got here Wednesday morning, I went to my room on 19th Street and brought a bag of clothes. I had nothing with me in the country because Mr. Prescott took me right up there from the shop. Then after the funeral he read the will to us and all this mess started. So we all stayed here Thursday night and again last night. I’ve been sleeping in that room with Celia.” She pointed to the second door on the left. “And this afternoon I noticed my camera was gone. Somebody stole it.”
“Or maybe borrowed it.”
“No, I’ve asked everyone, including the servants. Besides, they went through my bag too, messed it all up, and took two rolls of film.”
“Maybe a servant did it. She wouldn’t admit it when you asked, you know. Very few people have a confession complex like you. Or maybe Aunt Daisy is a kleptomaniac as well as an eavesdropper.”
“How do you know she’s an eavesdropper?”
“I’ve seen her at work.”
“Have you? I never have. Andy says if my camera was stolen it must have been by a member of the family and the best thing I can do is keep my mouth shut about it.”
“That sounds sensible. If it ever comes to a vote, my ballot goes to Aunt Daisy. Were the two rolls of film — Ah, company’s coming.”
It was a dick I didn’t know, looking stern and important. He came up to us.
“Archie Goodwin? Inspector Cramer wants you downstairs.”