"Yes. He looked straight at me, and his eyes--"
She was stopped by the house phone buzzing. Stepping to my desk, I picked it up and asked it, "Well?"
Nero Wolfe's voice, peevish, came. "Archie!"
"Yes, sir."
Curtains for Three 153
"What the devil are you doing? Come back up
il"
"Pretty soon. I'm talking with a prospective cli
"This is no time for clients! Come at once!" The connection went. He had slammed it down. I ig up and went back to the prospective client. "Mr. ?olfe wants me upstairs. He didn't stop to think in ie that the Manhattan Flower Club has women in it well as men. Do you want to wait here?" "Yes."
"If Mrs. Orwin asks about you?" "I didn't feel well and went home." 'Okay. I shouldn't be long--the invitations said
thirty to five. If you want a drink, help yourself, it name does this murderer use when he goes to & at orchids?"
She looked blank. I got impatient. "Damn it, what's his name? This bird you recoged." "I don't know." "You don't?" "No."
"Describe him."
She thought it over a little, gazing at me, and then liook her head. "I don't think--" she said doubtfully, lie shook her head again, more positive. "Not now. I tit to see what Nero Wolfe says first." She must are seen something in my eyes, or thought she did, suddenly she came up out of her chair and moved to s and put a hand on my arm. "That's all I mean," she aid earnestly. "It's not you--I know you're all right."
fingers tightened on my forearm. "I might as well fell you--you'd never want any part of me anyhow-- Rhis is the first time in years, I don't know how long,
154 Rex Stoat
that I've talked to a man just straight--you know, just human? You know, not figuring on something one way or another. I--" She stopped for a word, and a little color showed in her cheeks. She found the word. "I've enjoyed it very much."
"Good. Me too. Call me Archie. I've got to go, but describe him. Just sketch him."
But she hadn't enjoyed it that much. "Not until Nero Wolfe says he'll do it," she said firmly.
I had to leave it at that, knowing as I did that in three more minutes Wolfe might have a fit. Out in the hall I had the notion of passing the word to Saul and Fritz to give departing guests a good look, but rejected it because (a) they weren't there, both of them presumably being busy in the cloakroom, (b) he might have departed already, and (c) I had by no means swallowed a single word of Cynthia's story, let alone the whole works. So I headed for the stairs and breasted the descending tide of guests leaving.
Up in the plant rooms there were plenty left. When I came into Wolfe's range he darted me a glance of cold fury, and I turned on the grin. Anyway, it was a quarter to five, and if they took the hint on the invitation it wouldn't last much longer.
II
They didn't take the hint on the dot, but it didn't bother me because my mind was occupied. I was now really interested in them--or at least one of them, if he had actually been there and hadn't gone home.
First there was a chore to get done. I found the three Cynthia had been with, a female and two males, over by the odontoglossum bench in the cool room.
Curtains for Three 155
ugh to them, I asked politely, "Mrs.
at me and said, "Yes?" Not quite tall plenty plump enough, with a round full laarrow little eyes that might have been bet- r had been wide open, she struck me as a lead owing. Just the pearls around her neck and stole over her arm would have made a good I doubted if that was the kind of loot specialized in. I Archie Goodwin," I said. "I work here."
have gone on if I had known how, but I [?a lead myself, since I didn't know whether to Brown or Mrs. Brown. Luckily one of the E'horned in.
sister?" he inquired anxiously, was a brother-and-sister act. As far as looks I wasn't a bad brother at all. Older than me b, but not much, he was tall and straight, with a mouth and jaw and keen gray eyes. "My sis i repeated.
I: guess so. You are--" Colonel Brown. Percy Brown." ifeah." I switched back to Mrs. Orwin. "Miss l asked me to tell you that she went home. I gave la little drink and it seemed to help, but she decided ave. She asked me to apologize for her."
i perfectly healthy," the colonel asserted. He ied a little hurt. "There's nothing wrong with
'l^Is she all right?" Mrs. Orwin asked. Tor her," the other male put in, "you should have 3e it three drinks. Three big ones. Or just hand her bottle." His tone was mean and his face was mean, and any 156 Rex Stoat
how that was no way to talk in front of the help in a strange house, meaning me. He was some younger than Colonel Brown, but he already looked enough like Mrs. Orwin, especially the eyes, to make it more than a guess that they were mother and son. That point was settled when she commanded him, "Be quiet, Gene!" She turned to the colonel. "Perhaps you should go and see about her?"
He shook his head, with a fond but manly smile at her. "It's not necessary, Mimi. Really."
"She's all right," I assured them and pushed off, thinking there were a lot of names in this world that could stand a reshuffle. Calling that overweight narrow-eyed pearl-and-mink proprietor Mimi was a paradox.
I moved around among the guests, being gracious. Fully aware that I was not equipped with a Geiger counter that would flash a signal if and when I established a contact with a strangler, the fact remained that I had been known to have hunches, and it would be something for my scrapbook if I picked one as the killer of Doris Hatten and it turned out later to be sunfast.
Cynthia Brown hadn't given me the Hatten, only the Doris, but with the context that was enough. At the time it had happened, some five months ago, early in October, the papers had given it a big play of course. She had been strangled with her own scarf, of white silk with the Declaration of Independence printed on it, in her cozy fifth-floor apartment in the West Seventies, and the scarf had been left around her neck, knotted at the back. The cops had never got within a mile of charging anyone, and Sergeant Purley Stebbins of Homicide had told me that they had never even found
Curtains for Three 157
jfwho was paying the rent, but there was no law st Purley being discreet, kept on the go through the plant rooms, leaving /itches open for a hunch. Some of them were ' preposterous, but with everyone else I made an tunity to exchange some words, fullface and close at took time, and it was no help to my current i chronic campaign for a raise in wages, since it was ||sromen, not the men, that Wolfe wanted off his ,1 stuck at it anyhow. It was true that if Cynthia |en the level, and if she hadn't changed her mind by ne I got Wolfe in to her, we would soon have Bcations, but I had had that tingle at the bottom spine and I was stubborn. I say, it took time, and meanwhile five o'clock and went, and the crowd thinned out. Going on ty the remaining groups seemed to get the I all at once that time was up and made for the to the stairs. I was in the moderate room it happened, and the first thing I knew I was s there, except for a guy at the north bench, study l row of dowianas. He didn't interest me, as I had iy canvassed him and crossed him off as the ; type for a strangler, but as I glanced his way he enly bent forward to pick up a pot with a flower plant, and as he did so I felt my back stiffening. |r stiffening was a reflex, but I knew what had it: the way his fingers closed around the pot, Uy the thumbs. No matter how careful you are er people's property, you don't pick up a five-inch las if you were going to squeeze the life out of it. [made my way around to him. When I got there he ^holding the pot so that the flowers were only a few
from his eyes. -Nice flower," I said brightly.
158 Bex Stout
He nodded. "What color do you caD the sepals?"
"Nankeen yellow."
He leaned to put the pot back, still choking it. I swiveled my head. The only people in sight, beyond the glass partition between us and the cool room, were Nero Wolfe and a small group of guests, among whom were the Orwin trio and Bill McNab, the garden editor of the Gazette. As I turned my head back to my man he straightened up, pivoted on his heel, and marched off without a word. Whatever else he might or might not have been guilty of, he certainly had bad manners.