It was ten minutes to ten when I emerged to the sidewalk and turned left for Lexington Avenue and the subway, and a quarter past when I entered the marble lobby of a towering beehive on Wall Street and consulted the building directory. Gilbert Irving’s firm had the whole thirteenth floor, and I found the proper bank of elevators, entered one, and was hoisted straight up three hundred feet for nothing. In a paneled chamber with a thick conservative carpet a handsome conservative creature at a desk bigger than Wolfe’s told me in a voice like silk that Mr. Irving was not in and that she knew not when he would arrive or where he was. If I cared to wait?
I didn’t. I left, got myself dropped back down the three hundred feet, and went to another subway, this time the west side; and, leaving at Christopher, walked to Ferrell Street and on to its dead end and through the alley. Morton, still at work in the garden, greeted me with reserve but not coldly, said Kearns had not returned and there had been no word from him, and, as I was turning to go, suddenly stood up and asked, “Did you say you wanted to buy a picture?”
I said that was my idea but naturally I wanted to see it first, left him wagging his head, walked the length of Ferrell Street the fourth time that day, found a taxi, and gave the driver the address which might or might not still be mine. As we turned into 35th Street from Eighth Avenue, at five minutes past eleven, there was another taxi just ahead of us, and it stopped at the curb in front of the brownstone. I handed my driver a bill, hopped out, and had mounted the stoop by the time the man from the other cab had crossed the sidewalk. I had never seen him or a picture of him, or heard him described, but I knew him. I don’t know whether it was his floppy black hat or shoestring tie, or neat little ears or face like a squirrel, but I knew him. I had the door open when he reached the stoop.
“I would like to see Mr. Nero Wolfe,” he said. “I’m Waldo Kearns.”
VII
Since Wolfe had suggested that I should bring Kearns there so we could look at him together, I would just as soon have let him think that I had filled the order, but of course that wouldn’t do. So when, having taken the floppy black hat and put it on the shelf in the hall, I escorted him to the office and pronounced his name, I added, “I met Mr. Kearns out front. He arrived just as I did.”
Wolfe, behind his desk, had been pouring beer when we entered. He put the bottle down. “Then you haven’t talked with him?”
“No, sir.”
He turned to Kearns, in the red leather chair. “Will you have beer, sir?”
“Heavens, no.” Kearns was emphatic. “I didn’t come for amenities. My business is urgent. I am extremely displeased with the counsel you have given my wife. You must have hypnotized her. She refuses to see me. She refuses to accept the services of my lawyer, even to arrange bail for her. I demand an explanation. I intend to hold you to account for alienating the affections of my wife.”
“Affections,” Wolfe said.
“What?”
“Affections. In that context the plural is used.” He lifted the glass and drank, and licked his lips.
Kearns stared at him. “I didn’t come here,” he said, “to have my grammar corrected.”
“Not grammar. Diction.”
Kearns pounded the chair arm. “What have you to say?”
“It would be futile for me to say anything whatever until you have regained your senses, if you have any. If you think your wife had affection for you until she met me twelve hours ago, you’re an ass. If you know she hadn’t your threat is fatuous. In either case what can you expect but contempt?”
“I expect an explanation! I expect the truth! I expect you to tell me why my wife refuses to see me!”
“I can’t tell you what I don’t know. I don’t even know that she has, since in your present state I question the accuracy of your reporting. When and where did she refuse?”
“This morning. Just now, in the District Attorney’s office. She won’t even talk to my lawyer. She told him she was waiting to hear from you and Goodwin.” His head jerked to me. “You’re Goodwin?”
I admitted it. His head jerked back. “It’s humiliating! It’s degrading! My wife under arrest! Mrs. Waldo Kearns in jail! Dishonor to my name and to me! And you’re to blame.”
Wolfe took a breath. “I doubt if it’s worth the trouble,” he said, “but I’m willing to try. I presume what you’re after is an account of our conversation with your wife last evening. I might consider supplying it, but first I would have to be satisfied of your bona fides. Will you answer some questions?”
“It depends on what they are.”
“Probably you have already answered them, to the police. Has your wife wanted a divorce and have you refused to consent?”
“Yes. I regard the marriage contract as a sacred covenant.”
“Have you refused to discuss it with her in recent months?”
“The police didn’t ask me that.”
“I ask it. I need to establish not only your bona fides, Mr. Kearns, but also your wife’s. It shouldn’t embarrass you to answer that.”
“It doesn’t embarrass me. You can’t embarrass me. It would have been useless to discuss it with her since I wouldn’t consider it.”
“So you wouldn’t see her?”
“Naturally. That was all she would talk about.”
“Have you been contributing to her support since she left you?”
“She didn’t leave me. We agreed to try living separately. She wouldn’t let me contribute to her support. I offered to. I wanted to.”
“The police certainly asked you if you killed Phoebe Arden. Did you?”
“No. Why in God’s name would I kill her?”
“I don’t know. Miss Judith Bram suggested that she may have had a bad cold and you were afraid you would catch it, but that seems farfetched. By the way—”
“Judy? Judy Bram said that? I don’t believe it!”
“But she did. In this room last evening, in the chair you now occupy. She also called you a sophisticated ape.”
“You’re lying!”
“No. I’m not above lying, or below it, but the truth will do now. Also—”
“You’re lying. You’ve never seen Judy Bram. You’re merely repeating something my wife said.”
“That’s interesting, Mr. Kearns, and even suggestive. You are willing to believe that your wife called you a sophisticated ape, but not that Miss Bram did. When I do lie I try not to be clumsy. Miss Bram was here last evening, with Mr. Goodwin and me, for half an hour or more; and that brings me to a ticklish point. I must ask you about a detail that the police don’t know about. Certainly they asked about your movements last evening, but they didn’t know that you had arranged with Judith Bram to call for you in her cab at eight o’clock. Unless you told them?”
Kearns sat still, and for him it is worth mentioning. With many people sitting still is nothing remarkable, but with him it was. His sitting, like his face, reminded me of a squirrel; he kept moving or twitching something — a hand, a shoulder, a foot, even his head. Now he was motionless all over.
“Say that again,” he commanded.
Wolfe obeyed. “Have you told the police that you had arranged with Miss Bram to call for you in her cab at eight o’clock last evening?”
“No. Why should I tell them something that isn’t true?”
“You shouldn’t, ideally, but people often do. I do occasionally. However, that’s irrelevant, since it would have been the truth. Evidently Miss Bram hasn’t told the police, but she told me. I mention it to ensure that you’ll tell me the truth when you recount your movements last evening.”
“If she told you that she lied.”