Just as I started in the direction of the sound, a tall blonde with lots of eye makeup and an overnight case popped out of a doorway about halfway down, obviously on her way out.
“Hi, who you lookin’ for?” she asked, showing a mouthful of teeth that deserved to be in a chewing-gum ad. When I answered, she said Maria was changing. “Why don’t you take a seat? She’s got to pass you to get out of here.”
Three more dancers, two of them lookers, sailed by chattering before Maria came out, wearing slacks and with her hair tied back in a scarf. She saw me and stopped, but before she could say anything, I was up and smiling.
“The more I thought about it, the more I felt I should take you home tonight. Come on, we can get a cab over on Broadway. And on the way, I’ll tell you why we should see your uncle together.”
Maria frowned and shook her head. “No, I’ve told you he won’t talk to you when he finds out why you’ve come. Please, I promised on the telephone that I’d ask him tonight about seeing Mr. Wolfe.”
Walking to Broadway and then on the cab ride north, I kept pressing Maria, but whatever charm Wolfe thinks I have with women wasn’t working on this one. Her one concession was to let me come into the building with her, but only as far as the lobby. I would wait there while she went up to talk to her uncle. Then, if she needed reinforcements, she’d call down for me. I wasn’t wild about the plan, because Stefanovic didn’t sound like the type to let his niece talk him into a damn thing. But I wasn’t getting a choice.
The cab squealed to a stop in front of an undistinguished brick building in the first block east of Park. I was expecting a little more class, at least a doorman, but this place looked like dozens of other fifty-year-old buildings in the area. I paid the driver, and we went into a small, dimly lit lobby. “Tom, this is Mr. Goodwin; he’s going to wait for me here,” Maria said to the hallman, a young, weak-chinned guy who looked up from behind the counter and nodded. “I’ll come down or call down for him in a few minutes.”
I hope so, I thought as she went up in the elevator. I plopped down on one of the dark red sofas and started thumbing through a magazine that was on the coffee table. No more than two minutes had passed when the phone at the front desk rang. “Mr. Goodwin, Miss Radovich wants you to go on up,” Tom said. “It’s the ninth floor, the door to your right as you get off the elevator. You can’t miss it; there’re only two apartments to the floor.”
Either Uncle Milos wasn’t home or Maria had gotten some fast results one way or the other. Ready for the worst, I tried to prepare an approach to him as the automatic elevator growled its way up to nine. But I wasn’t prepared for what I saw when the doors opened.
Maria was standing in the doorway of the apartment, or more correctly, leaning against one side of it. Her eyes were open wide, but she barely acknowledged me. I put an arm around her for support as her legs began to fold up. “On the floor...” she said, covering her face with her hands. “Dead, dead, dead...”
6
I got Maria inside and shut the door. We were in an entrance hall that had a chandelier and a handsome Oriental rug. I led her to a chair and eased her down as the sobs started. “Where?” I asked. She pointed to an open door at the far end of the hall. “Stay here,” I said. “Don’t try to move.”
The doorway led into a good-sized library with a high ceiling, fireplace, dark paneling, lots of bookshelves, a grand piano, and another Oriental rug, a Kashan. The body was lying facedown on the rug in one corner near a high monk-style writing desk that had a stool behind it. I knelt and made a quick check, but Maria had been right. Milan Stevens was dead, and it wasn’t hard to figure out why: The back of his white shirt was torn and stained dark red, and a fancy long-handled letter opener, one of those made to look like a sword, lay a few feet away. The blood on the opener glistened in the light, and from the look of Stevens’s shirt, that little sword had been run in and out of him several times.
I tried to freeze the scene in my mind, but there wasn’t much to freeze. None of the furniture appeared out of place, and there was no indication of a struggle. A softcover book lay open on the monk’s desk, and I covered my hand with my handkerchief as I turned the pages. It was music, plus a lot of penciled notations that might as well have been in Urdu. For the record, the cover sheet of the music said “Symphony No. 4 in E minor, for Orchestra, by Johannes Brahms, Op. 98.”
I went back to the hall, where Maria was still sitting. She’d stopped crying and now was staring straight ahead. “He is dead, isn’t he?” she asked, blinking.
“Yes. Now listen carefully; I’m going to have to call the police, and I have to do it soon. When they come, tell them everything about the notes, about going to see Mr. Wolfe, all of it. But first, I have two things to do. Please stay right here.” She nodded, but otherwise there was no reaction or expression. Shock was settling in.
I went back to the study and, using the handkerchief again, dialed the number I know best. Wolfe answered after one ring.
“The notes must have been for real,” I said. “Stevens is dead. Stabbed in his study. I’m there now, with Maria, and I’m about to call the police. Instructions?”
I could hear him draw in air and let it out slowly. “No,” he said. “I suppose you’ll have to go to headquarters?”
“Without question,” I said. “And I’ve told Maria not to keep anything from them. I figure it’s going to be a long night. I’ll report first thing in the morning, if they let me out by then.”
“Very well,” Wolfe said with disgust. “Have you eaten?” I assured him that Rusterman’s lamb chops would carry me through the night, and I went back to Maria. She hadn’t moved and gave me another mechanical nod when I told her I was going to the lobby for a couple of minutes.
Tom was still behind the counter. “Excuse me,” I said with what I hoped was a friendly smile. “Did Mr. Stevens have any guests earlier this evening, before Miss Radovich and I got here?”
He looked up with a slightly amused expression. “Why don’t you ask him yourself?”
“He’s asleep,” I said. “And Miss Radovich had been expecting a visitor. She wondered if anyone had come by.”
Tom was sizing me up, trying to decide whether or not I was okay, and he finally made up his mind. “Well... there was one,” he said. “His name was Milner, or something like that. He came in about eight-fifteen, but didn’t stay long — maybe five minutes.”
“His first name?” I asked.
“Didn’t leave one. I just called upstairs to Mr. Stevens and told him Mr. Milner was here, and he said to send him up.”
“Did Mr. Milner say anything to you when he left?”
“Nope. Just walked on out. All I saw was his back going through the lobby.”
“And he was the only caller?”
“Yeah.”
“Thanks, Tom,” I said. “You’ve leveled with me, and now I’d better tell you something. Mr. Stevens is dead — killed. The police will be here soon.”
I watched his face closely, and got the predictable openmouthed, wide-eyed look. “What? Hey, why didn’t you say that right away?” He jumped up, knocking his chair over. He looked scared. “I can’t tell them anything,” he said, swallowing hard. “It must have been that Milner guy, huh? What should I do when they come?”