“You called the turn,” he said, “when you told Goodwin to phone Miss Devlin. I should have foreseen that. That was dumb.”
The phone rang, and I swiveled and got it. “Nero Wolfe’s office, Archie Goodwin speaking.”
“This is Rattner.”
“Oh, hello. Keep it down, my ears are sensitive.”
“Durkin sent me to phone so he could stay on the subject. The subject came out of the house at seven nineteen East Fifty-first Street at eleven forty-one. He was alone. He walked to Lexington and around the corner to a drugstore and is in there now in a phone booth. I’m across the street in a restaurant. Any instructions?”
“Not a thing, thank you. Give my love to the family.”
“Right.”
It clicked off, and I hung up and swiveled back to rejoin the party, but apparently it was over. They were on their feet, and Wengert was turning to go. Cramer was saying, “… but it’s not all off the record. I just want that understood.”
He turned and followed Wengert out. I saw no point in dashing past them out to the door, since two grown men should be up to turning a knob and pulling, but I stepped to the hall to observe. When they were outside and the door closed I went back in and remarked to Wolfe, “Very neat. But what if they had let me phone her?”
He made a face. “Pfui. If they had got it from her they wouldn’t have called on me. They would have sent for you, possibly with a warrant. That was one of the contingencies.”
“They might have let me phone her anyway.”
“Unlikely, since that would have disclosed their knowledge — to her and therefore to anyone — and betrayed their informant. But if they had, while she was on her way I would have proceeded with them, and they would have left before she arrived.”
I put the yellow chair back in place. “All the same I’m glad they didn’t and so are you. That was Rattner on the phone, reporting for Fred. Heath was with Miss Devlin an hour and four minutes. He left at eleven forty-one and was in a phone booth in a drugstore when Rattner called.”
“Satisfactory.” He picked up his pencil and bent over the crossword puzzle with a little sigh.
VII
June twenty-first is supposed to be the longest day, but this year it was August third. It went on for weeks after Cramer and Wengert left. I spent it all in the office, and it was no fun. There was only one thing that could keep us floating, but there were a dozen that could sink us. They might lose him. Or he might handle it by phone — most unlikely, but not impossible. Or Wolfe might have it figured entirely wrong; he himself gave it one in twenty. Or Heath might meet him or her some place where they couldn’t be nailed. Or a city or federal employee might horn in and ruin it. Or and or and or.
Five bucks an hour had been added to the outgo. If and when the call came that would start me moving, I didn’t want to waste any precious minutes or even seconds finding transportation, so Herb Aronson had his taxi parked at the filling station at the corner of Eleventh Avenue, on us. Also he came to us for lunch and again, at seven in the evening, for dinner.
Every time the phone rang and I grabbed it, I wanted it and I didn’t. It might be the starting gun, but on the other hand it might be the awful news that they had lost him. Keeping a tail on a guy in New York, especially if he has an important reason for wanting privacy, needs not only great skill but also plenty of luck. We were buying the skill, in Saul and Fred and Orrie, but you can’t buy luck.
The luck held, and so did they. There were two more calls from Fred, via Rattner, before two o’clock, when he was relieved by Orrie Cather. One was to report that Heath, after calls at an optician’s and a bookstore, had entered a restaurant on Forty-fifth Street and was lunching with two men, not known to me as described, and the other was to tell where Orrie could find him. There was still no sign of an official tail. During the afternoon and early evening there was a series of reports from Orrie. Heath and his companions left the restaurant at 2:52, taxied to the apartment house on Sixty-ninth Street where Heath lived, and entered. At 5:35 the two men emerged and walked off. At 7:03 Heath came out and took a taxi to Chezar’s restaurant, where he met Delia Devlin and they dined. At 9:14 they left and taxied to the gray brick house on Fifty-first Street and went in. Heath was still in there at ten o’clock, the hour for Orrie to be relieved by Saul Panzer, and it was at the corner of Fifty-first and Lexington that Orrie and Saul connected.
By that time I would have been chewing on a railroad spike if I had had one, and Wolfe was working hard trying to be serene. Between nine-thirty and ten-thirty he made four trips to the bookshelves, trying different ones, setting a record.
I snarled at him, “What’s the matter, restless?”
“Yes,” he said placidly. “Are you?”
“Yes.”
It came a little before eleven. The phone rang, and I got it. It was Bill Doyle.
He seemed to be panting. “I’m out of breath,” he said, wasting some of it. “When he left there he got smart and started tricks. We let him spot Al and ditch him, you know how Saul works it, but even then we damn near lost him. He came to Eighty-sixth and Fifth and went in the park on foot. A woman was sitting on a bench with a collie on a leash, and he stopped and started talking to her. Saul thinks you’d better come.”
“So do I. Describe the woman.”
“I can’t. I was keeping back and didn’t get close enough.”
“Where is Saul?”
“On the ground under a bush.”
“Where are you?”
“Drugstore. Eighty-sixth and Madison.”
“Be at the Eighty-sixth-Street park entrance. I’m coming.”
I whirled and told Wolfe, “In Central Park. He met a woman with a dog. So long.”
“Are you armed?”
“Certainly.” I was at the door.
“They will be desperate.”
“I already am.”
I let myself out, ran down the stoop and to the corner. Herb was in his hack, listening to the radio. At sight of me on the lope he switched it off, and by the time I was in he had the engine started. I told him, “Eighty-sixth and Fifth,” and we rolled.
We went up Eleventh Avenue instead of Tenth because with the staggered lights on Tenth you can’t average better than twenty-five. On Eleventh you can make twelve or more blocks on a light if you sprint, and we sprinted. At Fifty-sixth we turned east, had fair luck crosstown, and turned left on Fifth Avenue. I told Herb to quit crawling, and he told me to get out and walk. When we reached Eighty-sixth Street I had the door open before the wheels stopped, hopped out, and crossed the avenue to the park side.
Bill Doyle was there. He was the pale gaunt type, from reading too much about horses and believing it. I asked him, “Anything new?”
“No. I been here waiting.”
“Can you show me Saul’s bush without rousing the dog?”
“I can if he’s still there. It’s quite a ways.”
“Within a hundred yards of them take to the grass. They mustn’t hear our footsteps stopping. Let’s go.”
He entered the park by the paved path, and I trailed. The first thirty paces it was upgrade, curving right. Under a park light two young couples had stopped to have an argument, and we detoured around them. The path leveled and straightened under overhanging branches of trees. We passed another light. A man swinging a cane came striding from the opposite direction and on by. The path turned left, crossed an open space, and entered shrubbery. A little further on there was a fork, and Doyle stopped.
“They’re down there a couple of hundred feet,” he whispered, pointing to the left branch of the fork. “Or they were. Saul’s over that way.”
“Okay, I’ll lead. Steer me by touch.”