Wolfe’s scowl had deteriorated to a mild frown. “You say you received a warning. From whom?”
“From Paul Thayer, Huck’s nephew. Huck lets him live there in the house. He’s as useless as I am — he composes music that no one will listen to. He hopes to inherit some of my father’s money from Huck, and he got alarmed and wrote me.”
“What alarmed him?”
“Some little things and one big thing. A man with cases came from Tiffany’s and was with Huck in his study for nearly an hour. That could mean only one thing: Huck was buying something expensive for a woman — one of those three.”
“Why? There are other women.”
Lewent shook his head. “Not for Huck. He can’t walk, and he hasn’t been out of the house more than two or three times since my sister died. No woman ever comes to see him. It’s one of those three. You might think Paul or I could discover which one, but it’s not so simple. He has his meals in his room or his study, and we see very little of him. Paul has tried approaching the women on it, and I have made a few little efforts in that direction myself, but it’s a delicate business.”
“Make friends with all three of them.”
“It couldn’t be done. They’re too jealous of one another.”
“Wait until you see one of them wearing the gift from Tiffany’s. That will settle it.”
“It would settle me too. It would be too damned obvious. None of them is a numskull.”
“But,” Wolfe objected, “it will be equally obvious if she is flushed by Mr. Goodwin — in consultation with me.”
“I don’t expect him to flush her. I don’t want him to.” Lewent slid forward on the smooth leather seat. “My God, can’t you find out things without people knowing it? I couldn’t take Goodwin into that house to cross-examine them about their relations with Huck, even if I wanted to. It is my father’s house, but Huck owns it. We’ll have to use a subterfuge, especially for Goodwin to talk with Huck. I just decided—”
He was stopped by a noise from Wolfe — an explosive noise, half grunt and half snort. It was meant for a stopper. Lewent’s quick little gray eyes widened in startled inquiry. “What’s the matter?”
“You.” Wolfe was mildly disgusted. “I might conceivably engage to pry into the amatory designs of a wealthy widower if I were hard put and the bait was spectacular, but as it is you’re wasting your time. And mine. Good day, sir.”
It sounded positively final. Lewent’s pinched little mouth worked from side to side and up and down. “You mean you won’t do it.”
“That’s right.”
“I didn’t think you would, but I thought I’d try it that way.” He clasped his hands together. “So here goes. Now this is confidential.”
“You said that before.”
“I know I did, but this is different. My sister died here in New York, at my father’s house, of ptomaine poisoning from something she ate. Huck cabled me in Paris, and I flew home for the funeral, as I said. I never had any suspicions about it until two things happened. First, Odelette, my mistress in Toulouse, tried to poison me when she was mad with jealousy, showing me that anyone may commit murder if the motive is good enough; and second, I was warned by Paul Thayer that Huck was being bagged by one of these women. That started me thinking, and I went to a library and read up on ptomaines. Those women were all present when my sister was poisoned. I believe that one of them murdered her.”
“On what evidence?”
“None. I believe that she already had Huck or was sure she could get him. I’ve been here nearly two weeks, and I firmly believe that, but what can I do? I don’t even dare ask any questions of anyone. Of course the police would laugh at me. Naturally I thought of you, but the most I could scrape up was a thousand dollars, and that’s small change for you, so I decided to try to get you started on it by not mentioning murder and just saying what I wanted — well, you heard me.”
He gestured. “I want to head her off, and I think maybe I can if I can find out which one it is.”
“How will you head her off without evidence?”
“That’s up to me. Leave that to me, if once I know her. For an absolutely legitimate purpose, I want to pay in advance for a thousand dollars’ worth of Goodwin’s time and talent and consultation with you as required. Ten hours of Goodwin and ten minutes of you? Whatever it is, I want to buy it.”
Abruptly Wolfe rolled his chair back and arose. “I have an important phone call to make,” he told Lewent, “and will leave you with Mr. Goodwin. Since, as you say, the work will be done by him, I won’t be needed, even for the decision whether to take the job.”
He marched across to the door to the hall and was gone, but not, as I knew, to make a phone call. Not wanting to refuse to take money, but not caring to shoulder the blame for spoiling my weekend for the sake of a measly grand, he was putting it up to me. As for him, he would go to the kitchen, open a bottle of beer, and make suggestions to Fritz about preparations for lunch. As for me, I was stuck. If I shooed Lewent out it would be months before I could again open my trap to ride Wolfe for turning down jobs. So I got the little stack which the little man had put on Wolfe’s desk, counted it, and found that it was twenty fifties.
“Okay,” I told him, “I’ll give you a receipt. First I think our approach to Huck will stand some discussion. Do you agree?”
He did, and I sat, and we discussed.
2
Lewent’s father’s house of granite, on Sixty-ninth Street between Fifth and Madison, had apparently not had its face washed since little Herman had been born there back in the nineteenth century, but inside there had unquestionably been changes. For one thing, the self-service elevator was so modern and so large that I guessed it had been installed since the present owner had been condemned to a wheelchair on account of his bum arteries.
Though Lewent had insisted that we should delay the operation until Theodore Huck’s lunch hour was past, and therefore it was after two o’clock when we arrived and were let in by a female viking who could have carried Herman around in her apron, I was still nursing the hope that I might earn the grand that day and evening and have my weekend. So when the viqueen had taken our hats I wasted no time for a glance at the luxuries of the big entrance hall as Lewent led the way to the elevator. We left it one flight up and turned right down the hall, which was some narrower but longer than the one downstairs. I was surprised at the thickness of the rugs in a mansion whose master did all his moving in a wheelchair.
The surprise left when we entered a large high-ceilinged room at the rear of the house and I saw the wheelchair. He could have parked it in a trailer camp and lived in it if it had had a roof. The seat was roomy enough for Nero Wolfe. At the sides were shelves, trays and compartments. A large metal box at the rear, low, was presumably a motor housing. A fluorescent light was attached to the frame at Huck’s left, shining on a magazine Huck was reading.
Lewent said, “This is Mr. Goodwin, as I phoned you,” and turned and went.
Theodore Huck said nothing. Tossing the magazine on a table nearby, he pressed a button, and the footrest of the chair came up, smoothly, until his legs, which were under a large plaid shawl, were straight and horizontal. He pressed another button, and the chair’s back receded until he was half reclining. He pressed another button, and the part of his legs were on began to move from side to side, not very gently. He closed his eyes. I lowered myself onto a chair and did a sweeping take of the room, which was his study, with the parts of the wall left visible by pictures and rows of books showing old wood panels, and then went back to him. The upper half of him was perfectly presentable for a guy his age, with a discernible waistline, good broad shoulders, a face with all features in proportion and correctly placed, and his full share of hair that had been dark but was now mostly gray. I had plenty of time to take him in, for he stayed put for a good five minutes, with his legs going from side to side on the moving frame. Finally the motion stopped, he pressed buttons, his legs went down and his torso up, and he reached to pull the edge of the plaid shawl above his hips.