Wolfe answered. I reported. “No progress. No nothing, except that if you get sick I’ve got a line on a nurse that can coo it out of you. I will not be home to dinner, God help me. I am calling to tell you that and to consult you.”
“What about?”
“My brain. It must be leaking or I would never have let myself in for this.”
He grunted and hung up. I dialed another number, got Lily Rowan, and told her I had decided I’d rather stay home and do crossword puzzles than keep my weekend date with her. She finally wormed it out of me that I was stuck on a case, if you could call it that, and said she would hold her breath until I rang her again.
Back at the house, admitted by the viqueen, I asked her where Miss Riff was. She didn’t know. Miss Marcy? She didn’t know. Mr. Lewent? She didn’t know. I thanked her warmly and made for the stairs, wondering where the hell the client had got to. Probably sound asleep, and I resented it. On the third floor I knocked good and loud on his door, waited five seconds, turned the knob, and entered. I darned near walked on him. He was lying just inside, barely clear of the swing of the door, flat on his back, with one leg bent a little and the other one straight. I closed the door, squatted, unbuttoned his vest, and got a hand inside his shirt. Nothing. His head was at a queer angle. I slipped my fingertips under it, and at the base of the skull, or rather where there should have been a base, there was no resistence to pressure at all. The smashed edge of the skull was halfway up. But I couldn’t feel any break in the skin, and there was no blood on my fingers.
I stood up and looked down at him, with my hands shoved in my pants pockets and my jaw set. After enough of that I stepped to where the little hall ended and the room proper began, and sent my eyes around slowly and thoroughly. Then I went and knelt by Lewent’s head, with my knees spread, gripped his shoulders, and raised his torso till it was erect. There was nothing under him. I had a good look at the back of his head, then let him back down as before, got up and went and took his ankles and lifted his legs, and made sure there was nothing under that half of him. I moved to the door, held my ear to the crack for ten seconds, heard nothing, opened it and slipped through and pulled it shut, headed for the stairs, descended to the ground floor, and, no one appearing, let myself out.
At the drugstore on Madison Avenue I got dimes for a half-dollar before I went to the phone booth.
4
When Wolfe heard my voice on the phone he was peevish on principle, since I’m not supposed to disturb him when he is up in the plant rooms, and this was the second time in twenty minutes. I was peevish too, but not on principle.
“Hold it,” I told him. “I am about to ask a favor. Twenty minutes ago I reported no progress, but I was wrong. We can’t possibly disappoint our client, because he’s dead. Murdered.”
“Pfui.”
“No phooey. I’m telling you — from a booth in a drugstore. I found the body, and I want to ask a favor.”
“Mr. Lewent is dead?”
“Yes. In order to ask the favor I’ll have to lead up to it — not a full report, but the high spots.”
“Go ahead.”
I did. I gave him no conversations verbatim, but described the cast of characters and the setting, and covered movements and events up to opening the door of Lewent’s room. At that point I got particular.
“It would stand some questions,” I told him. “The first ten feet inside the door it’s not a room at all, merely a passage less than four feet wide. Beyond that is the room proper. The body is in that passage, diagonal, with the feet toward the door. When the door is opened wide its edge comes within ten inches of Lewent’s right foot. There’s a runner the length of the passage, an Oriental, not fastened down, and it’s in place. The body’s on it, of course. There is nothing disarranged in either the room or the passage. Everything is just as it was when I was there an hour earlier.”
“Except Mr. Lewent.” Wolfe’s tone was dry and disgusted.
“Yeah. He was hit in the back of the head at the base of the skull with something heavy and hard enough to smash the whole bottom of the skull. The thing was comparatively smooth, because the skin is not broken, only bruised. No blood. I am not a laboratory, but on a bet there was only one blow and it came from beneath, traveling upward. The weapon is not in the passage—”
“Under him.”
“No. I lifted him and put him back. Nor is it open to view in the room. Won’t that stand some questions?”
“It will indeed. No doubt the police will ask them.”
“I’m coming to that. I was not seen entering that room or leaving it. I might as well come on home, or, better still, go and keep my weekend date, if it weren’t for one thing — the grand Lewent paid us. I’ve only been here three hours, and I doubt if I’ve been earning three hundred and and thirty-three dollars and thirty-three cents an hour, considering what’s happened. Our client may not have been one of nature’s top products, but to come here to do a job for him and just fiddle around while someone croaked him and then find his corpse is not my idea of a masterpiece. I don’t like it. I won’t like the remarks that will occur to Cramer and Stebbins if I phone the cops to say that Mr. Wolfe has had a client murdered while my back was turned and will they please come and take over. Nor will you.”
“I won’t hear them. Is there an alternative?”
“Yes. That’s the favor I’m asking. My feelings are hurt.”
“Naturally.”
“I resent the assumption that it is perfectly okay to kill a client of yours practically in my presence. I want to ram that assumption down somebody’s throat. I had already told Mrs. O’Shea that I am staying for dinner, and I ask your permission to do so. One of those people is stretched good and tight, waiting for the body to be found, and if I’m half as good as I think I am I’ll see it or hear it or feel it. Anyhow I want to try.”
“How sure are you that you’re clear?”
“Completely. For a hair of my head on a rug, or a fingerprint, I was in there before. As for being seen, not a chance. I will mention that if you feel you owe Lewent some return for what he paid us, for which I could cite a couple of precedents, we’re more likely to deliver this way than with the cops in command. And of course I can find the body any time I want to if that seems to be called for.”
He grunted. “You won’t be home to dinner.”
I told him no and hung up, and sat a while, getting my mind arranged. The probability of the murderer’s giving himself away while under the suspense of waiting for someone to find the body would be reduced by about nine-tenths if any word or look of mine aroused a suspicion that I already knew. Or would it? It might be better. Finally I left the booth, walked back to the house and rang the bell, and was admitted by the viqueen. She was as stolid as ever, so presumably there had been no discovery while I was out. As I started for the stairs down to the kitchen, intending to find Mrs. O’Shea, my name was called, and I turned to see Dorothy Riff coming through a door.
“I was looking for you.” she said.
“I went out to phone Mr. Wolfe. What time do you go home?”
“I usually leave around six, but today...” She fluttered a hand. “I told Mr. Huck I’d stay until you’re through.” She glanced around. “This isn’t very private, is it? Let’s go in here.”
She led the way into the room where I had watched the TV with Mrs. O’Shea, and through an arch into a larger room where a table toward one end was set with six places. She was telling me, “Since Mrs. Huck died we eat in here mostly, only I’m not often here for dinner. Sit down. We’ll have cocktails later, upstairs with Mr. Huck.”