I nodded. I dont doubt it. Then its an ideal situation. You want something from me, and I want something from you. Perfect. Well swap. I dont broadcast about the phoney cold, and you get me an audience at Grantham House. Whats that womans name? Irving ?
Irwin. Blanche Irwin. He scratched the side of his neck with a forefinger. You want to swap, huh?
I do. What could be fairer?
Its fair enough, he conceded. But I told you on the phone Im not in a position to do that.
Yeah, but then I was asking a favour. Now Im making a deal.
His neck itched again. I might stretch a point. I might, if I knew what you want with her. Whats the idea?
Greed. Desire for dough. Ive been offered five hundred dollars for an eye-witness story on last night, and I want to decorate it with some background. Dont tell Mrs Irwin that, though. Shes probably down on journalists by now. Just tell her Im your friend and a good loyal citizen and have only been in jail five times.
He laughed. Thatll do it all right. Wait till you see her. He sobered. So thats it. Its a funny world, Archie. A girl gets herself in a fix she sees only one way out of, to kill herself, and youre there to see her do it just because I had had all I wanted of those affairs, and here youre going to collect five hundred dollars just because you were there. Its a funny world. So I didnt do you such a bad turn after all.
I had to admit that was one way of looking at it. He said he felt like saluting the funny world with a drink, and wouldnt I join him, and I said Id be glad to. When he had gone and brought the requirements, a scotch and water for me and bourbon on the rocks for him, and we had performed the salute, he got at the phone and made a person-to-person call to Mrs Irwin at Grantham House. Apparently there was nothing at all wrong with his position; he merely told her he would appreciate it if she would see a friend of his, and that was all there was to it. She said morning would be better than afternoon. After he hung up we discussed the funny world while finishing the drinks, and when I left one more step had been taken towards the brotherhood of man.
Back home, the conference was over, the trio had gone, and Wolfe was at his desk with his current book, one he had said I must read, World Peace through World Law , by Grenville Clark and Louis B. Sohn. He finished a paragraph, lowered it, and told me to enter expense advances to Saul and Fred and Orrie, two hundred dollars each. I went to the safe for the book and made the entries, returned the book, locked the safe, and asked him if I needed to know anything about their assignments. He said that could wait, meaning that he wanted to get on with his reading, and asked about mine. I told him it was all set, that he wouldnt see me in the morning because I would be leaving for Grantham House before nine.
I now call Austin Byne Dinky, I told him. I suppose because hes an inch over six feet, but I didnt ask. I should report that he balked and I had to apply a little pressure. When he phoned yesterday he tried to sound as if his tubes were dogged, but he boggled it. He had no cold. He now says that he had been to three of those affairs and had had enough, and he rang me only after he had tried five others and they werent available. So we made a deal. He gets me in at Grantham House, and I wont tell his aunt on him. He seems to feel that his aunt might bite.
Wolfe grunted. Nothing is as pitiable as a man afraid of a woman. Is he guileless?
I would reserve it. He is not a dope. He might be capable of knowing that someone was going to kill Faith Usher so that it would pass for suicide, and he wanted somebody there alert and brainy and observant to spot it, so he got me, and he is now counting on me, with your help, to nail him. Or her. Or he may be on the level and merely pitiable.
You and he have not been familiar?
No, sir. Just acquaintances. I have only seen him at parties.
Then his selecting you is suggestive per se .
Certainly. Thats why I took the trouble to go to see him. To observe. There were other ways of getting to Mrs Irwin of Grantham House.
But you have formed no conclusion.
No, sir. Question mark.
Very well. Pfui. Afraid of a woman. He lifted his book, and I went to the kitchen for a glass of milk.
At eight-twenty the next morning, Thursday, I was steering the 1957 Heron sedan up the Forty-sixth Street ramp to the West Side Highway. Buying the sedan, the year before, had started an argument that wasnt finished yet. Wolfe pays for the cars, but I do the driving, and I wanted one I could U-turn when the occasion arose, and that clashed with Wolfes notion that anyone in a moving vehicle was in constant deadly peril, and that the peril was in inverse ratio to the size of the vehicle. In a forty-ton truck he might actually have been able to relax. So we got the Heron, and I must say that I had nothing against it but its size.
I soon had proof of what I had been hearing and reading, that the forty-eight-hour rain in New York had been snow a little to the north. At Hawthorne Circle it was already there at the roadside, and the farther I rolled on the Taconic State Parkway the more there was of it. The sun was on it now, glancing off the slopes of the drifts and banks, and it was very pleasant, fighting the hardships of an old-fashioned winter by sailing along on the concrete at fifty-eight m.p.h. with ridges of white four and five feet high only a step from the hubcaps. When I finally left the parkway and took a secondary road through the hills, the hardships closed in on me some for a few miles, and when I turned in at an entrance between two stone pillars, with Grantham House on one of them, and headed up a curving driveway climbing a hill, only a single narrow lane had been cleared, and as I rounded a sharp curve the hubcaps scraped the ridge.
Coming out of another curve, I braked and stopped. I was blocked, though not by snow. There were nine or ten of them standing there facing me, pink-faced and bright-eyed in the sunshine, in an assortment of jackets and coats, no hats, some with gloves and some without. They would have been taken anywhere for a bunch of high-school girls except for one thing: they were all too bulky around the middle. They stood and grinned at me, white teeth flashing.
I cranked the window down and stuck my head out. Good morning. What do you suggest?
One in front, with so much brown hair that only the middle of her face showed, called out, What paper are you from?
No paper. Im sorry if I ought to be. Im just an errand boy. Can you get by?
Another one, a blonde, had advanced to the fender. The trouble is, she said, that youre right in the centre. If you edge over we can squeeze past. She turned and commanded, Back up and give him room.
They obeyed. When they were far enough away I eased the car forward and to the right until the fender grazed the snowbank, and stopped. They said that was fine and started down the alley single file. As they passed the front fender they turned sidewise, every darned one, which seemed to me to be faulty tactics, since their spread fore and aft was more than from side to side. Also they should have had their backs to the car so their fronts would be against the soft snow, but no, they all faced me. A couple of them made friendly remarks as they went by, and one with a sharp little chin and dancing dark eyes reached in and pulled my nose. I stuck my head out to see that they were all clear, waved good-bye, and pressed gently on the gas.
Grantham House, which had once been somebodys mansion, sprawled over about an acre, surrounded by evergreen trees loaded with snow and other trees still in their winter skeletons. A space had been cleared with enough room to turn around, barely, and I left the car there, followed a path across a terrace to a door, opened it, entered, crossed the vestibule, and was in a hall about the size of Mrs Robilottis drawing-room. A man who would never see eighty again came hobbling over, squeaking at me, Whats your name?