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
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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
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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 Gather 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
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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?"
"Certainly not. For all I knew it's classified."
He grunted and told me to get Inspector Cramer. I dialed the number and had more trouble getting through than usual, finally had Cramer and signaled to Wolfe, and, since I got no sign to keep off, I stayed on. It wasn't much of a conversation.
"Mr. Cramer? Nero Wolfe."
"Yeah. What do you want?"
"I'm sorry I was busy last evening. It's always a pleasure to see you. I've been engaged in the matter of Mr. Keyes' death, and it will be to our mutual interest for you to let me have a little routine information."
"Like what?"
"To begin with, the name and number of the mounted policeman who saw Mr. Keyes in the park at ten minutes past seven that morning. I want to send Archie--"
"Go to hell." The connection went.
Wolfe hung up, reached for the beer tray which Fritz had brought in, and told me, "Get Mr. Skinner of the District Attorney's office."
I did so, and Wolfe got on again. In the past Skinner had had his share of moments of irritation with Wolfe, but at least he hadn't had the door slammed in his face the preceding evening and therefore was not boorish. When he learned that Wolfe was on the Keyes case he wanted to know plenty, but Wolfe stiff-armed him
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tout being too rude and soon had what he was af r. Upon Wolfe's assurance that he would keep Skin posted on developments at his end, which they th knew was a barefaced lie, the Assistant D.A. even fered to ask headquarters to arrange for me to see cop. And did so. In less than ten minutes after Sfolfe and he were finished, a call came from Centre et to tell me that Officer Hefferan would meet me ; 11:45 at the corner of Sixty-sixth Street and Central rk West.
During the less than ten minutes, Wolfe had drunk er, asked Saul about his family, and told me what I expected to find out from the cop. That made me |gore, but even more it made me curious. When we're fern a case it sometimes happens that Wolfe gets the fnotion that I have got involved on some angle or with I" eome member of the cast, and that therefore it is nec iessary to switch me temporarily onto a siding. I had about given up wasting nervous energy resenting it. |;But what was it this time? I had bought nobody's version and was absolutely fancy free, so why should he send me out to chew the rag with a cop and keep Saul and Orrie for more important errands? It was beyond me, and I was glaring at him and about to open up, when the phone rang again.
It was Ferdinand Pohl, asking for Wolfe. I was going to keep out of it, since the main attack was to be entrusted to others, but Wolfe motioned me to stay on. "I'm at the Keyes office," Pohl said, "Forty-seventh and Madison. Can you come up here right away?"
"Certainly not," Wolfe said in a grieved tone. It always riled him that anybody in the world didn't know that he never left his house on business, and rarely for anything whatever. "I work only at home. What's the matter?"
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"There's someone here I want you to talk to. Two members of the staff. With their testimony I can prove that Talbott took those designs and sold them to Broadyke. This clinches it that it was Talbott who killed Keyes. Of us five, the only ones that could possibly be suspected were Miss Rooney and that stable hand, with that mutual alibi they had, and this clears her-^-and him too, of course."
"Nonsense. It does nothing of the sort. It proves that she was unjustly accused of theft, and an unjust accusation rankles more than a just one. Now you can have Mr. Talbott charged with larceny, at least. I'm extremely busy. Thank you very much for calling. I shall need the cooperation of all of you."