No visible reaction. She just said, “The police looked in her room.”
“Of course, naturally they would, but they probably weren’t very thorough. Anyway, they didn’t find it, so I would like to try. Nero Wolfe could have come to ask Mr. Ducos to let me look, but he didn’t want to bother him. You can stay with me to see that I don’t do anything I shouldn’t do.”
She was shaking her head. “No.” She repeated it. “No.”
There are a thousand ways of saying no and I had heard a lot of them. Sometimes it’s more the eyes than the tone of voice that tells you what kind of a no it is. Her little dark eyes, nearly black, were a little too close together, and they blinked a little too often. It was ten to one that I couldn’t sell her, but even money, maybe better, that I could buy her. “Look, Marie,” I said, “you know a man gave Pierre a hundred dollars for that slip of paper.”
“No. A hundred dollars? I don’t know that.”
“Well, he did. But Pierre might have made a copy of it. And Lucile might have found it and made a copy too.” My hand went to my pocket and came out with the little roll I had taken from the cash box. I draped my coat over my arm to have both hands and peeled off five of the ten twenties and returned them to my pocket. “All right,” I said, “I’ll give you a hundred dollars to give me a chance to find Lucile’s copy or to find something else that may be in her room. It may take five minutes or it may take five hours. Here, take it.”
Her eyes said she would, but her hands didn’t move. The white apron had two little pockets, and I folded the bills into a little wad and stuck it in her left pocket, and said, “If you don’t want to stay with me, you can search me before I leave.”
“Only her room,” she said.
“Right,” I said, and she backed up, and I entered. She turned, and I followed her down the hall to Lucile’s room. She entered but went in only a couple of steps, and I crossed to a chair by a window and put my coat on it.
“I’m not going to stay,” she said. “I have things to do, and you’re Archie Goodwin, and I told you, I know about you and Nero Wolfe from him. Do you want a cup of coffee?”
I said no thanks, and she left.
If it was a slip of paper, the most likely place was the books, but after seeing me doing her father’s room she might have put it somewhere else. There was a desk with drawers by the right wall, and I went and opened the top drawer. It was locked, but the key was sticking in the lock, probably left there by a city employee. It held an assortment — several kinds of notepaper and envelopes, stubs of bills, presumably paid bills, pencils and pens, a bunch of snapshots with a rubber band around them. Five minutes was enough for that. The second drawer was full of letters in envelopes addressed to Miss Lucile Ducos, various sizes and shapes and colors. A collection of letters is always a problem. If you don’t read them, the feeling that you may have missed a bus nags you, and if you do read them it’s a hundred to one that there won’t be a damn thing you can use. I was taking one out of the envelope just for a look when a bell rang somewhere, not in that room. Not the telephone, probably the doorbell, and I made a face. It probably wasn’t a Homicide man, since the murder was four days old, but it could be, and I cocked my ear and heard Marie’s voice, so faint I didn’t get the words. The voice stopped, and there were footsteps.
She appeared at the door. “A man down there says his name is Sole Panzaire and Nero Wolfe sent him. He wants to come up.”
“Did you tell him I’m here?”
“Yes.”
“You told him my name?”
“Yes.”
“I guess Nero Wolfe sent him to help me.” I got the rest of the bills from my pocket and crossed over to her. “He does that sometimes without telling me.” Her apron pocket was empty, and I folded one of the twenties and reached to put it in. “Saul Panzer is a good man, Nero Wolfe trusts him. With him to help, it won’t take so long.”
“I don’t like it.”
“We don’t like it either, Marie, but we want to find the man that killed Pierre.”
She turned and went. I started to follow her, decided not to, went back to the desk, listened for the sound of the elevator, and didn’t hear it until it stopped on that floor. I opened the drawer and was taking a letter from an envelope when there were footsteps and then Saul’s voice. “Any luck, Archie?”
He would. Saving his surprise until there were no other ears to hear it. “Don’t push,” I told him. “I just got started.” I walked to the door for a look in the hall. Empty. I shut the door. He was putting his coat on the chair with mine. “So that’s where he was yesterday afternoon,” I said. “He went to see you. I’ll try not to get in your way, but I’m not going to leave.”
We were face to face, eye to eye. “You’re on,” he said.
“You’re damn right I’m on. I’m on my own.”
He laughed. Not with his mouth, no noise; he laughed with his eyes, and by shaking his head. And he didn’t stop. “Laugh your goddam head off,” I said, “but don’t get in my way. I’m busy.” I went to the desk and reached to the drawer for a letter, and my hand was trembling. Saul’s voice came from behind.
“Archie, this is the first time I ever knew you to miss one completely. I supposed you had it figured and was enjoying it. You actually didn’t know that he thought you’d kill him? That he thinks he knows you would?”
The letter dropped from my hand, and I guess my mouth dropped open as I turned. “Balls,” I said.
“But he does. He says you wouldn’t do it with a gun or a club, just with your hands. You’d hit him so hard you’d break his neck, or you’d throw him so hard and so far he’d break his neck when he landed. I didn’t try to argue him out of it, because he knew it.”
“I thought he knew me. And you think it’s funny.”
“I know it’s funny. He does know you. I thought you knew him. It’s just that he wants to kill him himself. So do I. So do you.”
“Were you on?”
“Not till he came yesterday, but I should have been. A lot of things — Pierre not telling you, that room at Rusterman’s, her asking Lily Rowan about you, him and women, him offering to work for nothing, him wanting to take Lucile Ducos — I certainly should have been on.” He tapped his skull with his knuckles. “Empty.”
“Mine too, until last night. Have you got anything?”
“Nothing solid. I only started to look yesterday at half past five. I’ve got an idea how he might have met her. As you know, he often does jobs for Del Bascom, and Bascom took on something for Bassett, for NATELEC, about a year ago. At noon I decided to take a look here, and here you are ahead of me.”
“Not much ahead, I just started. Okay. I came for myself, and you came for him. Who’s in charge?”
He grinned. “It’s a temptation, sure it is, but I’m not like Oscar Wilde, I can resist it. Where do you want me to start?”
I was returning the grin. Saul doesn’t often drag in such facts as that he knows about people like Oscar Wilde and I don’t. “You might try this desk,” I said. “I’ve only done the top drawer. There’s a lot of books, and I’ll start on them.”
Chapter 15
Two hours later, when Marie came, we had covered a lot of ground, at least Saul had, and had found exactly nothing. He had done the desk, chairs, closet, bed, floor, dresser, pictures on the wall, and a stack of magazines, and had really done them. Flipping through the hundred and some books had taken me half an hour, and then I had settled down to it, starting over and turning the pages one by one, making sure not to skip. Saul was having another go at shoes from the closet, examining the insides, when the door opened and Marie was there with a loaded tray. She crossed to the table and put the tray down and said, “I went out for the beer. We only drink mineral water. I hope you like fromage de cochon. Monsieur Ducos makes it himself. His chair won’t go in the kitchen, and I put things in the hall for him.”