But I didn’t get the satisfaction. Shortly after eleven o’clock sounds came: a car stopping out in front, the car door slamming, the car moving again, faint footsteps, a door opening and closing, and footsteps in the long hall, receding. We had been visible through the window, but he had gone to the door to the hall and to his room.
“Nero the great,” Wade said. “I’m not jeering, Archie, or if I am it’s not at his talents, only at his manners. If he doesn’t want to tell us about things he might at least take the trouble to say good night to his hostess. And you. Does he even know you’re out of jail?”
I nodded. “Oh, sure. Lily and I stopped at Woody’s and he was there. He was watching Woody cook something the Turks stole from the Armenians. Your deal, Diana.” I was entering the score. “If you’ll deal me a two-hundred meld we’ll collect.”
She did and we did, though I almost spoiled it by making a dumb lead.
My decision to go and tell Wolfe good night was not a wag of my tail. As I told Lily when Diana and Wade had gone to their rooms, it was just possible that he had had a reason for putting on an act with Woody there, and a broad-minded man like me should give him a chance to say so. Therefore I went down the long hall, quietly even on the tile in my soft deerskin slippers, knocked on the door at the end, barely heard the “Come in,” and entered. He was in his yellow pajamas, barefooted, in the chair by the window, which was closed.
“I may sleep until noon,” I said. “Good night.”
“Pfui. Sit down.”
“I need a lot of rest after—”
“Confound it, sit down!”
I went to a chair and sat.
“I assume,” he said, “that Miss Rowan has told you that Mrs. Greve brought that girl.”
“Yes. And she took some pictures and sent them to Saul, who is in St. Louis, and you and Jessup have been working on Peggy Truett practically nonstop. I’m sorry I missed it.”
“So am I. It should be a settled policy that all interviews with women are handled by you. Then you know that she is at the ranch. Mr. Jessup put her under arrest yesterday evening; the current euphemism is ‘protective custody.’ She is being protected from annoyance by Sheriff Haight, with Mrs. Greve and Miss Greve as her warders. She was and is an essential link. It’s worthy of remark that although you were confined you supplied a name that made it possible to arrange for the denouement.”
“I did?”
“Yes.”
“It’s arranged?”
“Yes.”
“You’ve got it?”
“Yes. The last call from Saul, an hour ago, settled it, and I called Mr. Jessup to tell him. A man or men will arrive in Helena at nine tomorrow morning and proceed to Timberburg. I am stretching a point and telling you that. The circumstances do not permit that I tell you more at present.”
My mouth opened and shut again. My eyes took him in, from the high and wide forehead down across the sea of yellow to the bare feet, and back up again. “If this is one of your spectacular razzle-dazzles,” I said, “with a long and tricky fuse, and if you leave me out because I might refuse to play, and if it blows up in your face, you won’t lose a client or a fee, you’ll lose me, and after what you’ve gone through the last five days, that would be a shame.”
“It would indeed.” He shook his head. “It isn’t that, Archie. You’ll have to await the event. But I must consult you now on a detail. I observed that with the other car there was a key which had to be turned to make it start, as with my cars which you drive, and the key was not left in the car overnight. It was brought inside and placed on a shelf. Is there a similar key with the car Miss Rowan has now?”
Naturally I suspected him of changing the subject just to sidetrack me, but I said only, “Yes.”
“And the car can’t be started without it?”
“It can be, but you have to have a couple of tools and you have to know how. I could do it, but you couldn’t.”
“I couldn’t even with the key, and certainly wouldn’t. Is the key for Miss Rowan’s car on the shelf now?”
“It should be. I put it there.”
“Get it in the morning, before breakfast, and put it in your pocket. I could do that myself, but it would be awkward if Miss Rowan wanted to use the car. That’s the detail. It’s late. Good night.”
There was no point, absolutely none, in wasting my breath on either a comment or a question, and I was tired all over. I rose, said good night, and went. By the time I got to my room I had decided that either Wade Worthy or Diana Kadany was it, and by the time I was under the blanket with the light out I had decided it was Wade because I couldn’t see Diana smashing Sam Peacock’s skull with a rock.
Chapter 13
At five minutes past nine Tuesday morning I concluded that it couldn’t be either Wade or Diana. The conclusion was on good and sufficient grounds. As you know, having murder suspects for fellow guests had been hard for Wolfe to take, and if one of them was no longer merely a possible candidate, if the denouement he had arranged for was to put the tag on one of them, he certainly wouldn’t show up for a sociable breakfast, even if it meant going without. But when I entered the kitchen, with the car key in my pocket, there he was, seated across from Wade, drinking orange juice, talking man to man. Mimi was at the range turning French toast, Lily was arranging bacon on a platter, and Diana was pouring coffee. As I exchanged good mornings and joined Wolfe and Wade at the table I was not in a mood to be the life of the party. It was nice to know that I wouldn’t be eating breakfast with a murderer, but in that case why did I have that car key in my pocket?
The answer came with the second batch of French toast. The conversation had been mostly about jails, which apparently had a fascination for Diana. Wolfe was telling about one in Austria he had once escaped from, and he turned to Lily and said, “Speaking of escape, Miss Rowan, it would be ungracious to regard my departure from here as an escape, but I didn’t come for pleasure, and I won’t pretend that I shall be sorry to get back to my proper milieu. Mr. Goodwin and I will be leaving soon, probably tomorrow morning. Your hospitality and your tolerance of my temperament have been the mitigation.”
Lily was gawking at him, and she is not a gawker. She looked at me, saw nothing helpful, and looked at him. “You say...” She returned to me. “You’re going too, Archie?”
I don’t know what I would have said, with the other two guests there, if Wolfe hadn’t fielded it. “It’s barely possible,” he said, “that the event will not meet my expectation, but I don’t think so. I spoke on the telephone yesterday, several times, with a man in St. Louis — a man named Saul Panzer, whom I sent there — and there seems to be no doubt. Mr. Panzer had photographs of people who are now in Montana, and one of them has been identified by several people in St. Louis. Six years ago, in the summer of nineteen sixty-two, a young woman met a violent death. She was strangled, throttled with a man’s belt. The belt and other evidence pointed to a man named Carl Yaeger as the probable culprit, but he wasn’t apprehended because he couldn’t be found. He had decamped. He has never been found — until now. One of the photographs Mr. Panzer had was of Carl Yaeger, and a St. Louis policeman is now on his way to Montana. Indeed — what time is it, Archie?”
“Nine-thirty-seven.”
“Then he arrived at Helena half an hour ago and is now en route to Timberburg.” He focused on Lily. “So it is reasonable to suppose that my expectation will be realized. I don’t give you the man’s name — the name you know him by — because of my semi-official status. My commitment to Mr. Jessup. But I can tell you that certain evidence indicates that Carl Yaeger is remarkably versatile in method. He strangled a woman, shot a man, and crushed another man’s skull with a rock. Not many murderers have so patly fitted the crime to the occasion. So Mr. Greve will soon be released, probably in time for Mr. Goodwin and me to greet him before we leave.”