I like to walk. I liked to walk in woods and pastures when I was a kid in Ohio, and now I like to walk even more on Manhattan sidewalks. If you don't walk much you wouldn't know, but the angle you get on people and things when you're walking is absolutely different from the one you get when you're in a car or in anything else that does the moving for you. So after washing and shaving and dressing and eating breakfast and reading about Dinah Utley in the Times, nothing I didn't already know, I buzzed the plant rooms on the house phone to tell Wolfe I was going out on a personal errand and would be back by noon, and went.
Of course you don't learn anything about people in general by walking around taking them in; you only learn things about this one or that one. I learned something that morning about a girl in a gray checked suit who caught her heel in a grating on Second Avenue in the Eighties. No girl I had ever known would have done what she did. Maybe no other girl in the world would. But I shouldn't have got started about walking. I mentioned walking only to explain how it happened that at a quarter past eleven I entered a drugstore at the corner of 54th Street and Eighth Avenue, sat at the counter, and requested a glass of milk. As it was brought and I took a sip, a Broadway type came in and got on the stool next to me and said to the soda jerk, "Cuppa coffee, Sam. You heard about Jimmy Vail?"
"Where would I hear about Jimmy Vail?" Sam demanded, getting a cup. "All I hear here is step on it. What about Jimmy Vail?"
"He died. It was on the radio just now. Found him dead on the floor with a statue on top of him. You know I used to know Jimmy before he married a billion. Knew him well."
"I didn't know." Sam brought the coffee. "Too bad." A customer came to a stool down the line, and Sam moved.
I finished the glass of milk before I went to the phone booth. I may have gulped it some, but by God I finished it. I wasn't arranging my mind; there was nothing in it to arrange; I was just drinking milk. When I went to the phone booth I got out a dime and started my hand to the slot but pulled it back. Not good enough. A voice on a phone is all right up to a point, but I might decide to go beyond that point, and a little more walking might help. I returned the dime to my pocket, departed, walked seven blocks crosstown and ten blocks downtown, entered the marble lobby of a building, and took an elevator.
I gave the receptionist on the twentieth floor a nod and went on by. Lon Cohen's room, with his name on the door but no title, was two doors this side of the Gazette's publisher's. I don't remember a time that I have ever entered it and he wasn't on the phone, and that time was no exception. He darted a glance at me and went on talking, and I took the chair at the end of his desk and noted that he showed no sign of being short on sleep, though he had left Saul's place the same time I had, a little after two. His little dark face was neat and smooth, and his dark brown, deep-set eyes were clear and keen. When he had finished on the phone he turned to me and shook his head.
"Sorry, I've banked it. I guess I could spare a ducat."
He had been the only winner last night besides Saul. "I wouldn't want to strap you," I said. "A dime would see me through the week. But first, what about Jimmy Vail?"
"Oh." He cocked his head. "Is Wolfe looking for a job, or has he got one?"
"Neither one. I'm interested personally. I was taking a walk and heard something. I could wait and buy a paper, but I'm curious. What about him?"
"He's dead."
"So I heard. How?"
"He was found-you know about the Harold F. Tedder library."
"Yeah. Statues."
"He was found there a little after nine o'clock this morning by his stepdaughter, Margot Tedder. On the floor, with Benjamin Franklin on him. Benjamin Franklin in bronze, a copy of the one in Philadelphia by John Thomas Macklin. That would be a beautiful picture, but I don't know if we got one. I can phone downstairs."
"No, thanks. How did Benjamin Franklin get on him?"
"If we only knew that and knew it first. You got any ideas?"
"No. What do you know?"
"Damn little. Nothing. I can phone downstairs and see if anything more is in, but I doubt it. We've got five men on it, but you know how the cops are, and the DA, when it's people in that bracket. They don't even snarl, they just button their lips."
"You must know something. Like how long he'd been dead."
"We don't. We will in time for the three-o'clock." The phone buzzed. He got it, said "Yes" twice and "No" four times, and returned to me. "Your turn, Archie. Your fee's showing, or Wolfe's fee is. Yesterday morning the body of Mrs Vail's secretary is found in a ditch in Westchester. This morning the body of her husband is found in her library, and here you come-not on the phone, in person. So of course Wolfe has been hired by someone. When? Yesterday? About the secretary?"
I eyed him. "I could give you a whole front page."
"I'll settle for half. Don't pin me to the wall with your steely eyes. I'm sensitive. You know who killed the secretary."
"No. I thought I did, but not now. What I've got may break any minute-or it may not. If I give it to you now you'll have to save it until I give the word-unless it breaks, of course. This is personal. Mr Wolfe doesn't even know I'm here."
"Okay. I'll save it."
"You don't mean maybe."
"No. I'll save it unless it breaks."
"Then get pencil and paper. Jimmy Vail was expected home from the country Sunday night but didn't come. Monday morning Mrs Vail got a note in the mail saying she could have him back for five hundred grand and she would get a phone call from Mr Knapp. I have a photograph of the note, taken by me, and I may let you have a print if you'll help me mark a deck of cards so I can win my money back from Saul. How would you like to run a good picture of that note, exclusive?"
"I'd help you mark ten decks of cards. A hundred. Is this straight, Archie?"
"Yes."
"My God. That `Knapp' is beautiful. How did he spell it?"
I spelled it. "He phoned Monday afternoon and told her to get the money, put it in a suitcase, put the suitcase in the trunk of her blue sedan, and Tuesday evening drive to Fowler's Inn on Route Thirty-three, arriving at ten o'clock. She did so. At Fowler's Inn she was called to the phone and was told, probably the same voice, to look in the phone book where Z begins. There was a note there giving instructions. I haven't-"
"Beautiful," Lon said. His pencil was moving fast.
"Not bad. Don't interrupt, I'm in a hurry. I haven't got a picture of that note, but I have the text, taken from the original by me. The notes were typewritten. Following the instructions, she drove around a while and got to The Fatted Calf around eleven o'clock. There she got another phone call and was told to look in the phone book where U begins. Another note, same typewriting-I have the text. More instructions. Following them, she took Route Seven to Route Thirty-five, Route Thirty-five to Route One Twenty-three, and Route One Twenty-three to Iron Mine Road, which is all rock and a yard wide. She turned into it. When a car-"
"Dinah Utley," Lon said. "The secretary. Her body was found on Iron Mine Road."
"Don't interrupt. When a car behind her blinked its lights she stopped and got out and got the suitcase from the trunk. A man with only his eyes uncovered came from the other car, took the suitcase, and told her to go straight home, stop nowhere, and say nothing, which she did. Around seven-thirty yesterday morning her husband phoned her from their place in the country and said the kidnapers had let him go in one piece and he would come to town as soon as he cleaned up and ate. He also said they had told him to keep the lid on for forty-eight hours or he would regret it, and he was going to and expected her to. I don't know exactly when he arrived at the house on Fifth Avenue, but it must have been around ten o'clock."
I stood up. "Okay, that's it. I've got to go. If your sheet prints even a hint of it before I give the word, I'll write a letter to the editor and feed your eyes to the cat. If and when I give the word, there is to be no mention of Nero Wolfe or me. If it breaks, about the kidnaping, before I give the word, you'll still be out in front with a lot of facts the others won't have. I'll be seeing you."