He nodded. “I asked for that. Naturally, you could open the Gate of Hell with a hairpin, though I can’t imagine why you’d want to. So you haven’t found what you’re looking for?”
“Nope.”
“I’d be glad to help if I didn’t have an appointment. I doubt — hello, Ray. The bloodhound’s at it again.”
Raymond Dell appeared on the sill and boomed, “Monstrous! A maggot at a carcass.”
“Oh, the carcass is at the morgue. This is only the debris. I’d like to stay and help you keen, but I have to go.” He went. Dell entered, crossed to a chair, and sat. “If my memory serves,” he rumbled, “your name is Goodman.”
“Right. Algernon Goodman. Call me Buster.”
“I call no one Buster. In the name of heaven, can you find no better way to pass the time than pawing over the refuse of a departed soul?”
The question was, what would move him, short of picking him up and tossing him out? I wanted to get the package out of the drawer quick, since Purley Stebbins had certainly gone through the desk. Luckily I hit on it. “Well,” I said, “I could find a worse way — sitting and watching someone else doing the pawing.”
“Touché!” He arose. “An excellent line! Good enough for a curtain! Magnificent!” He turned and marched out, and I went and shut the door.
I glanced around. I had considered the problem on the way, and first I went to the door that might be a closet. It was, and to my surprise it wasn’t a mess — a row of dresses and suits and skirts on hangers, boxes stacked on a shelf, shoes on a rack. No good. Tammy Baxter, if that was her name, had said that Stebbins had been in here more than an hour, and he could have done that closet in five minutes. I shut the door. The desk and the chest of drawers were even worse. I went to the piano and got up on the stool, lifted the hinged top, and looked in. Plenty of room, but no. It would interfere with the hammers, and what if one of them had come in after Stebbins had left and played a funeral march?
It would have to be the bed. There was no key in the door to the hall, but there was a bolt, and I went and slipped it, and then went to the bed and lifted an end of the mattress. There were two of them. The top one was soft, and the bottom one, stiff as a board, rested on wooden slats. No box spring. I got out my pocketknife and made a slit on the underside of the top mattress, near the corner. I had never touched the package with my bare hands and this was no time to break the precedent, so before I took it from the drawer I got a glove from my overcoat pocket and put it on. With the package inside the mattress, the bed tidied, and the glove back in the overcoat pocket, I opened the door, descended to the lower hall, went to the telephone in a niche under the stairs, and dialed the number I knew best. Fritz answered, and I said I wanted to speak to Wolfe.
“But Archie! He and the lady are at lunch!”
“That’s dandy. I’m not. This is one time to break a rule. Tell him I sound depressed.”
In two minutes I had Wolfe’s voice: “Yes?”
“Yes. All set. I’ll be at the door to let her in. Have you got the name?”
“No. She has supplied further details, but I can’t pry the name out of her. She is extremely difficult.”
“That is not news. Okay, I’m waiting.”
“She’ll be there shortly. As you know, a person at my table, man or woman, is a guest, and a guest must be allowed to finish a meal.”
“By all means. Good heavens, yes. I’ll go out and get a sandwich.”
“You will not.” He hung up.
That was at 1:22 P.M. It was 1:57 when she arrived. I know how to wait; I once spent nine rainy hours in a doorway waiting for someone to show at an entrance across the street; but that thirty-five minutes was a little tough. If either Homicide or Secret Service appeared on the scene, no matter for what, and found me there, the program would certainly be disrupted, and it might possibly be ruined. But a guest must be allowed to finish a meal. Of all the crap! There was no glass in the front door, and after the first fifteen minutes I spent most of the time peering through one of the little glass panels at the side, when I wasn’t glancing at my watch. When she finally came I had the door open by the time she had one foot in the vestibule.
“Miss Annis’ room,” I said, and she went to the stairs. I followed her up, and in, and shut the door. You can’t allow a guest to handle her own coat, so I took it and put it on a chair. “Did you stop on the way to make a phone call?” I demanded.
“That’s not fair,” she said. “I’m not a double-dealer either.”
“Good. I’m glad you’re not double something. I suppose we ought to spend a few minutes looking, for the record, but first there’s a little detail. The name of the certain person. Initials will do.”
She shook her head. “No. I settled that with Mr. Wolfe. I won’t.”
“You will if you want the package. You will not be quoted. We just want to know. We’ll take it from there.”
“No.”
“Then no package.”
“That’s silly.” Her brows were up. “Really, Mr. Goodwin. As smart as you are? Knowing that I know it’s here in this room? I never said I would tell you the name. What will you do, grab it and run? Besides, I haven’t seen the package yet. You wouldn’t trick me, of course not, but seeing is believing. When I have it I might possibly... where is it?”
“When you have it you’ll tell me the name.”
“I didn’t say that. I don’t promise. Where is it?”
“I’d like to wring your neck.”
“That makes us even. Where is it?”
There was no point in prolonging it. I quit. “You’d better look around a little,” I said. “Your story is going to be that after Leach drove off you went in the house with me, and Mr. Wolfe and I stuck to it that we knew nothing about any counterfeit money, and you thought it was just possible that Miss Annis had left it here or brought it back here. That I said I had an appointment and went, and you stayed and had lunch with Mr. Wolfe, trying to worm something out of him. That when you left you came here to search Miss Annis’ room, and found that I was already here with the same idea, and you found the package. With a story it helps to have some of it based on fact so you should look around. Say two minutes.”
She shrugged — the kind of shrug that means I might as well humor him, he means well — and went to the desk and opened a drawer. I went and opened the hall door and glanced out, saw no one, and left the door open. “From here on,” I told her, “you might follow the script. It will develop your dramatic talents. You might purr with pleasure if and when you find it. I’m supposed to be looking too, so I will.”
I went and climbed onto the piano stool and lifted the lid, and the stool turned and nearly dumped me. When she had finished with the desk drawers she looked at me, but I said, “Try the closet.” There was some satisfaction, though not much, in making her work for it. And what do you suppose she did? She went straight to the bed, to the head, grabbed a corner of the mattress, and yanked it up. I stood and watched. She moved to the foot and yanked again, saw the slit, stuck her hand in, and came out with the package.
“By gum,” I said, “I’ll bet that’s it! Was it inside the mattress?”
She went to the sofa and sat and started untying the string. I said, “There might be something else,” stepped to the bed, lifted the mattress, and inserted my hand in the slit. You never know what modern science will do next. They might have an electronic smeller that could prove I had handled it, and it was just as well to have an answer. So my hand was in the slit and my back to the hall door when a man’s voice came, not loud but mean: “I want that. Hand it over.”
I jerked my hand out and whirled, and the voice said, “Stay where you are, Goodwin.” It was Paul Hannah. He was standing in front of her with a knife in his hand — a kitchen knife with a shiny blade a foot long. His chubby cheeks were flushed and his eyes were as mean as his voice.