“No butter today, thank you. All right. There’s lemon-sherry pudding and I want to enjoy it, so I’ll go to the bedroom and get it done.” She pushed her chair back and rose. “Friday, October eighteenth.”
“Right.”
She went. My watch said 2:21. If she got names, I wouldn’t enjoy my lemon-sherry pudding, so it was advisable to get that done, and I pushed the button and Mimi came. Her eyes went down to my plate and up to me. “You ate more than half of it, Mr. Goodwin. What do you think?”
“To be honest, Mimi, I don’t know. When I’ve got a job on my mind I forget to taste. I’ll have to come again.”
She nodded. “I knew you were working on something, I can tell. Shall I do an omelet?”
I said no thanks, just the pudding and coffee, and she took my plate. In four minutes she was back, and I burned my tongue on the coffee because my stomach sent up word that it wanted help. Of course the pudding was no stranger. Mimi is good at puddings and parfaits and pastries. Also at coffee.
I was licking my spoon when Lily came, talking as she entered. “Don’t get up. I got one name.” She sat. “That woman is really low, I don’t know why. He was twice her age, at least that, and I supposed she married him just to get in out of the rain. Didn’t she?”
“I don’t know, I never met her. You got a name?”
“Yes, just one. She said she didn’t know who the others were, but one of them was a man she knew.” She handed me a paper, light green, a sheet from her 5-by-8 memo pad. “She called him Benny. He’s an engineer, with NATELEC, Bassett’s company. More coffee?”
“No, thanks. You show promise. We’ll raise your pay and—”
“I’ll do better as I go along. You skip. You’re not yourself when you’d rather be somewhere else.” She picked up her spoon.
“I would not rather — I don’t need to tell you what I’d rather.” I stood. “I’ll tell you everything someday, and I hope you like it.” I skipped.
In the elevator I looked at the slip. Benjamin Igoe. That was all, and I should have asked her how to pronounce it. On the sidewalk I stood for half a minute, then headed west and turned downtown on Madison. I had to decide how to handle it — using my intelligence guided by experience, as Wolfe put it. By Fifty-fifth Street it was decided, but my legs would get me there as soon as a taxi or a bus, so I kept going. It was five past three when the doorman at Rusterman’s saluted and opened for me, so the lunch rush would be over and Felix could and would listen.
That was all he had to do, listen, except for pronouncing it. I spelled it, and he thought probably Eego, but I preferred Eyego, and since I had been born in Ohio and he had been born in Vienna, I won. When that was settled and he was thoroughly briefed, I went to the bar and ordered an Irish with water on the side. Even after the coffee my stomach still seemed to think something was needed, and I made it Irish to show Lily there was no hard feeling. Then I went and consulted the phone book for the address of National Electronics Industries. Third Avenue, middle Forties, which was a relief. It might have been Queens. I left by the side door.
They had three floors of one of the newer steel-and-glass hives. The directory on the lobby wall said Research and Development on the eighth, Production on the ninth, and Executive on the tenth. He might be anything from stock clerk to Chairman of the Board, but you might as well start at the top, so I went to the tenth but was told that Mr. Eyego was in Production. So I pronounced it right. On the ninth a woman with a double chin used a kind of intercom that was new to me and then told me down the hall to the last door on the right.
It was a corner room with four windows, so he wasn’t a stock clerk, though you might have thought so from his brown overalls with big pockets full of things. He was standing over by a filing cabinet. I had never seen a more worried face. That might have been expected, since the president of his company had died only five days ago, but those brow wrinkles had taken at least five years. So it was a surprise when he said in a good strong baritone, “A message from Nero Wolfe? What the hell. Huh?”
My voice went up a little without being told to. “I said message, but it’s really a question. It’s a little complicated, so if you can spare a few minutes—”
“I can never spare a few minutes, but my mind needs something to take it off of the goddam problems. All right, ten minutes.” He looked at his watch. “Let’s sit down.”
There was a big desk near a window, but that was probably where the goddam problems were, and he crossed to a couch over by the far wall. He sat and crossed his legs in spite of the loaded pockets, and I pulled a chair around to face him.
“I’ll try to keep it brief, but you’ll need a little background. For a couple of years Nero Wolfe was in charge of Rusterman’s restaurant as trustee, and a man named Felix Mauer was under him. Now Felix is in charge, but he often asks Nero Wolfe for advice, and Mr. Wolfe and I often eat there. We ate lunch there yesterday, and Felix—”
“Huh. A waiter from that restaurant was killed in Wolfe’s house, a bomb, and you found the body. Huh?”
“Right. That’s why we were there yesterday, to ask questions. The waiter’s name was Pierre Ducos, and he waited on you at dinner in an upstairs room at Rusterman’s on Friday, October eighteenth. Twelve days ago. Harvey H. Bassett was the host. You remember it?”
“Of course I remember it. It was the last meal I ever ate with him.”
“Do you remember the waiter?”
“I never remember people. I only remember diffractions and emissions.”
“Mr. Wolfe and I knew Pierre well, and he knew us. When he came there late Monday night, he told me a man was going to kill him. He also told me about the dinner on October eighteenth, and he told me he saw one of the guests hand Bassett a slip of paper and Bassett put it in his wallet, and that was all. He said he wanted to tell Nero Wolfe the rest of it because he was the greatest detective in the world. I took him upstairs to a bedroom, and apparently you know what happened then, like a couple of million other people. Well, there you are. That dinner had been eleven days ago, and why did he tell me about that and about the slip of paper one of you handed Bassett? That’s why I’m here, and it brings me to the question I want to ask: did you hand Bassett a slip of paper, and what was on it?”
“No. Huh.”
“Did you see one of the others hand him one?”
“No. Huh.” He seemed to be scowling at me, but it could have been just the wrinkles.
“Then I have to ask a favor, or rather Nero Wolfe does. We asked Felix who the guests were at that dinner, and the only one he could name was you. He said someone had told him who you were, Benjamin Igoe, the well-known scientist. I don’t know if you like to be called a scientist, but that’s what Felix was told.”
“I don’t believe it. Goddam it, I am not well known.”
“Maybe you are and don’t know it. That’s what Felix told me. You can call him and ask him.”
“Who told him that?”
“He didn’t say. He’s there now. Give him a ring.” I thought he probably would, there and then. Nine men out of ten would have, or maybe only seven or eight.
But not him. He just said, “Huh. By god, if I’m famous it’s about time I found out. I’m sixty-four years old. You want a favor?”
“Nero Wolfe does. I’m just the errand boy. He wants—”
“You’re a licensed private investigator. Well known.”
“You can’t believe what you read in the paper. I am not well known.” I wanted to say huh but didn’t. “Mr. Wolfe wants the names of all the men who were at that dinner, but if you never remember people, of course you can’t tell me.”