Carl and Tina didn’t know what from which. I had to push the chairs up behind their knees. Then I went to my own chair and swiveled to face Wolfe.
“I have a question to ask them,” I told him, “But first you need a couple of facts: They’re in this country without papers. They were in a concentration camp in Russia, and they’re not telling how they got here if they can help it. They could be spies, but I doubt it after hearing them talk. Naturally, they jump a mile if they hear someone say boo, and when a man came to the barbershop this morning and showed a police card and asked who they were and where they came from and what they were doing last night, they scooted the first chance they got. But they didn’t know where to go, so they came here to buy fifty bucks’ worth of advice. I got big-hearted and went to the shop, myself.”
“You went?” Tina gasped.
I turned to them. “Sure, I went. It’s a complicated situation, but I think I can handle it if you two can be kept out of the way. It would be dangerous for you to stay here. I know a safe place up in the Bronx for you to lay low for a few days. You shouldn’t take a chance on a taxi or the subway, so we’ll go around the corner to the garage and get Mr. Wolfe’s car, and you can drive it—”
“Excuse me,” Carl said urgently. “You would drive us up there?”
“No, I’ll be busy. Then I’ll—”
“But I can’t drive a car! I don’t know how!”
“Then your wife will drive.”
“She can’t! She don’t know, either!”
I sprang from my chair and stood over them. “Look,” I said savagely; “save that for the cops. Can’t drive a car? Certainly you can! Everybody can!”
They were looking up at me, Carl bewildered, Tina frowning. “In America, yes,” she said. “But we are not Americans, not yet. We have never had a chance to learn.”
“What’s this?” Wolfe demanded.
I returned to my chair. “That,” I said, “was the question I wanted to ask. It has a bearing, as you’ll soon see.” I regarded Carl and Tina. “If you’re lying about this, not knowing how to drive a car, you won’t be sent back home to die, you’ll die right here. It will be a cinch to find out if you’re lying.”
“Why should we?” Carl demanded. “What is so important in it?”
“Once more,” I insisted, “can you drive a car?”
“No.”
“Can you, Tina?”
“No!”
“Okay.” I turned to Wolfe: “The caller at the barbershop this morning was a precinct dick named Wallen. Fickler took him to Tina’s booth and he questioned Tina first. Then the others had a session with him in the booth, in this order: Philip, Carl, Jimmie, Tom, Ed, and Janet. You may not know that the manicure booths are around behind the long partition. After Janet came out there was a period of ten or fifteen minutes when Wallen was in the booth alone. Then Fickler went to see, and what he saw was Wallen’s body with scissors buried in his back. Someone had stabbed him to death. Since Carl and Tina had lammed—”
Tina’s cry was more of a gasp, a last gasp, an awful sound. With one leap she was out of her chair and at Carl, grasping him and begging wildly, “Carl, no! No, no! Oh, Carl—!”
“Make her stop,” Wolfe snapped.
I had to try, because Wolfe would rather be in a room with a hungry tiger than with a woman out of hand. I went and got a grip on her shoulder, but released it at sight of the expression on Carl’s face as he pushed to his feet against the pressure. It looked as if he could and would handle it. He did.
He eased her back to her chair and down onto it, and turned to me: “That man was killed there in Tina’s booth?”
“Yes.”
Carl smiled as he had once before, and I wished he would stop trying it. “Then of course,” he said, as if he were conceding a point in a tight argument, “this is the end for us. But, please, I must ask you not to blame my wife. Because we have been through many things together she is ready to credit me with many deeds that are far beyond me. She has a big idea of me and I have a big idea of her. But I did not kill that man. I did not touch him.” He frowned. “I don’t understand why you suggested riding in a car to the Bronx. Of course you will give us to the police.”
“Forget the Bronx.” I was frowning back. “Every cop in town has his eye peeled for you. Sit down.”
He went to his chair and sat. “About driving a car,” Wolfe muttered. “Was that flummery?”
“No, sir, that comes next. Last night around midnight a hit-and-run driver in a stolen car killed a woman up on Broadway. The car was found parked at Broadway and Ninety-sixth Street. Wallen, from the Twentieth Precinct, was the first dick to look it over. In it he apparently found something that led him to the Golden rod Barbershop — anyhow, he phoned his wife that he was on a hot one that would lead to glory and a raise, and then he showed up at the shop and called the roll, as described. With the result also as described. Cramer has bought it that the hit-and-run driver found himself cornered and used the scissors, and Cramer — don’t quote me — is not a dope. To qualify as a hit-and-run driver you must meet certain specifications, and one of them is knowing how to drive a car. So the best plan would be for Carl and Tina to go back to the shop and report for duty and for the official quiz, if it wasn’t for two things: First, the fact that they lammed will make it very tough, and, second, even though it is settled that they didn’t kill a cop, their lack of documents will fix them anyhow.”
I waved a hand. “So actually what’s the difference? If they’re sent back where they came from they’re doomed, so they said. Between a doom here and a doom there, that’s all they have to pick from. One interesting angle is that you are harboring fugitives from justice, and I am not. I told Purley they’re here.”
“You what?” Wolfe bellowed.
“What I said. That’s the advantage of having a reputation for gags — you handle your face right. I told him they were here in our front room, and he sailed right over it. So I’m clean, but you’re not. You can’t even just show them out. If you don’t want to call Cramer yourself I could get Purley at the shop and tell him they’re still here, and why hasn’t he sent for them?”
“It might be better,” Tina said, not with hope, “just a little better, if you would let us go, ourselves? No?”
She got no answer. Wolfe was glaring at me. It wasn’t that he needed my description of the situation to realize what a pickle he was in; I have never tried to deny that the interior decorator did a snappier job inside his skull than in mine. What had him boiling was my little stunt of getting it down that neither Carl nor Tina could drive a car. But for that it would still have been possible to let them meet the law and take what they got; now that was out of the question.
“There is,” he said, glaring, “another alternative to consider.”
“Let us just go,” Tina said.
“Pfui.” He moved the glare to her: “You would try to skedaddle, and be caught within an hour.” Back to me: “You have told Mr. Stebbins they are here. We can simply keep them here and await developments. Since Mr. Cramer and Mr. Stebbins are still there at work, they may soon disclose the murderer.”
“Sure, they may,” I agreed, “but I doubt it. They’re just being thorough, they’ve really settled for Carl and Tina, and what they’re looking for is evidence, especially what it was that led Wallen to the barbershop — though I suppose they haven’t much hope of that, since Carl and Tina could have taken it along.”
Wolfe’s eyes went to Carclass="underline" “Did you and your wife leave the shop together?”
Carl shook his head. “That might have been noticed, so she went first. When she was gone I waited until they were all busy and Mr. Fickler was walking behind the partition, then I ran upstairs to meet her there.”