He had been doing his best to recover lost ground. He partook, he said, of the nature of the lark; the sunrise stirred and inspired him; that was his time of day. All his brilliant early successes had been conceived before the dew was dry in shady places. In the afternoon and evening he was no better than a clod. But eventually he had got lazy and careless, stayed up late and got up late, and it was then his star had begun to dim. Recently, quite recently, he had determined to light the flame again, and only a month ago he had started getting to his office before seven o’clock, three hours before the staff was due to arrive. To his satisfaction and delight, it was beginning to work. The flashes of inspiration were coming back. That very Tuesday morning, the morning Keyes was killed, he had greeted his staff when they arrived by showing them a revolutionary and irresistible design for an electric egg beater.
Had anyone, Wolfe wanted to know, been with him in his office that morning during the parturition, say from half-past six to eight o’clock? No. No one.
For alibi, Broadyke, of those three, came closest to being naked.
Since I had cottoned to Audrey Rooney and would have married her any second if it wasn’t that I wouldn’t want my wife to be a public figure and there was her picture on the calendar on the wall of Sam’s Diner, it was a setback to learn that her parents in Vermont had actually named her Annie, and she had changed it herself. Okay if she hadn’t cared for Annie with Rooney, but good God, why Audrey? Audrey. It showed a lack in her.
It did not, of course, indict her for murder, but her tale helped out on that. She had worked in the Keyes office as Victor Talbott’s secretary, and a month ago Keyes had fired her because he suspected her of swiping designs and selling them to Broadyke. When she had demanded proof and Keyes hadn’t been able to produce it, she had proceeded to raise hell, which I could well believe. She had forced her way into his private room at the office so often that he had been compelled to hire a husky to keep her out. She had tried to get the rest of the staff, forty of them, to walk out on him until justice had been done her, and had darned near succeeded. She had tried to get at him at his home but failed. Eight days before his death, on a Monday morning, he had found her waiting for him when he arrived at the Stillwell Riding Academy to get his four legs. With the help of the stable hand, by name Wayne Safford, he had managed to mount and clatter off for the park.
But next morning Annie Audrey was there again, and the next one too. What was biting her hardest, as she explained to Wolfe at the outset, was that Keyes had refused to listen to her, had never heard her side, and was so mean and stubborn he didn’t intend to. She thought he should. She didn’t say in so many words that another reason she kept on showing up at the academy was that the stable hand didn’t seem to mind, but that could be gathered. The fourth morning, Thursday, Vic Talbott had arrived too, to accompany Keyes on his ride. Keyes, pestered by Audrey, had poked her in the belly with his crop; Wayne Safford had pushed Keyes hard enough to make him stumble and fall; Talbott had intervened and taken a swing at Wayne; and Wayne had socked Talbott and knocked him into a stall that hadn’t been cleaned.
Evidently, I thought, Wayne held back when he was boxing in a nicely furnished office on a Kerman rug; and I also thought that if I had been Keyes I would have tried designing an electric horse for my personal use. But the next day he was back for more, and did get more comments from Audrey, but that was as far as it went; and three days later, Monday, it was the same. Talbott wasn’t there either of those two days.
Tuesday morning Audrey got there at a quarter to six, the advantage of the early arrival being that she could make the coffee while Wayne curried horses. They ate cinnamon rolls with the coffee. Wolfe frowned at that because he hates cinnamon rolls. A little after six a phone call came from the Hotel Churchill not to saddle Talbott’s horse and to tell Keyes he wouldn’t be there. At six-thirty Keyes arrived, on the dot as usual, responded only with grimly tightened lips to Audrey’s needling, and rode off. Audrey stayed on at the academy, was there continuously for another hour, and was still there at twenty-five minutes to eight, when Keyes’ horse came wandering in under an empty saddle.
Was Wayne Safford also there continuously? Yes, they were together all the time.
So Audrey and Wayne were fixed up swell. When it came Wayne’s turn he didn’t contradict her on a single point, which I thought was very civilized behavior for a stable hand. He too made the mistake of mentioning cinnamon rolls, but otherwise turned in a perfect score.
When they had gone, more than two hours after midnight, I stood, stretched and yawned good, and told Wolfe, “Five mighty fine clients. Huh?”
He grunted in disgust and put his hands on the rim of his desk to push his chair back.
“I could sleep on it more productively,” I stated, “if you would point. Not at Talbott, I don’t need that. I’m a better judge of love looks than you are, and I saw him looking at Dorothy, and he has it bad. But the clients? Pohl?”
“He needs money, perhaps desperately, and now he’ll get it.”
“Broadyke?”
“His vanity was mortally wounded, his business was going downhill, and he was being sued for a large sum.”
“Dorothy?”
“A daughter. A woman. It could have gone back to her infancy, or it could have been a trinket denied her today.”
“Safford?”
“A primitive romantic. Within three days after he met that girl the fool was eating cinnamon rolls with her at six o’clock in the morning. What about his love look?”
I nodded. “Giddy.”
“And he saw Mr. Keyes strike the girl with his riding crop.”
“Not strike her, poke her.”
“Even worse, because more contemptuous. Also the girl had persuaded him that Mr. Keyes was persisting in a serious injustice to her.”
“Okay, that’ll do. How about her?”
“A woman either being wronged or caught wronging another. In either case, unhinged.”
“Also he poked her with his crop.”
“No,” Wolfe disagreed. “Except in immediate and urgent retaliation, no woman ever retorts to physical violence from a man in kind. It would not be womanly. She devises subtleties.” He got to his feet. “I’m sleepy.” He started for the door.
Following, I told his back, “I know one thing, I would collect from every damn one of them in advance. I can’t imagine why Cramer wanted to see them again, even Talbott, after a whole week with them. Why don’t he throw in and draw five new cards? He’s sore as a pup. Shall we phone him?”
“No.” We were in the hall. Wolfe, heading for the elevator to ascend to his room on the second floor, turned. “What did he want?”
“He didn’t say, but I can guess. He’s at a dead stop in pitch-dark in the middle of a six corners, and he came to see if you’ve got a road map.”
I made for the stairs, since the elevator is only four by six, and with all of Wolfe inside, it would already be cramped.
VII
“Forty trump,” Orrie Cather said at 10:55 Wednesday morning.
I had told them the Keyes case had knocked on our door and we had five suspects for clients, and that was all. Wolfe had not seen fit to tell me what their errands would be, so I was entertaining at cards instead of summarizing the notebooks for them. At eleven sharp we ended the game, and Orrie and I shelled out to Saul, as usual, and a few minutes later the door from the hall opened and Wolfe entered. He greeted the two hired hands, got himself installed behind his desk, rang for beer, and asked me, “You’ve explained things to Saul and Orrie, of course?”