“Now?”
“Yes. The sooner the better.”
I stood up. “It may take a while if the cops and the DA are working on them, and they probably are. How urgent is it? Do you want progress reports by phone?”
“Not unless you think it necessary. You must get all five of them.”
“Right. Don’t wait dinner for me.” I went.
On the way uptown in the taxi I was using my brain. I will not explain at this point why Wolfe wanted to know if any of the subjects had known Sarah Yare, and if so how well, for two reasons: first, you have certainly spotted it yourself; and second, since I am not as smart as you are, I had not yet come up with the answer. It was underneath. On top, what I was using my brain for, was the phone book. Unquestionably it was connected with his being hoodwinked, since that was what was biting him, and therefore it probably had some bearing on the call that had been made from his office to Bianca Voss, but what could he accomplish by consulting the phone book? For that I had no decent guess, let alone an answer, by the time I paid the hackie at Fifty-fourth and Fifth Avenue.
Alec Gallant Incorporated, on the north side of the street near Madison Avenue, was no palace, either outside or in. The front was maybe thirty feet, and five feet of that was taken by the separate entrance to the side hall. The show window, all dark green, had just one exhibit: a couple of yards of plain black fabric, silk or rayon or nylon or Orlon or Dacron or cottonon or linenon, draped on a little rack. Inside, nothing whatever was in sight — that is, nothing to buy. The wall-to-wall carpet was the same dark green as the show window. There were mirrors and screens and tables and ashtrays, and a dozen or more chairs, not fancy, more to sit in than to look at. I had taken three steps on the carpet when a woman standing with a man by a table left him to come to meet me. I told her my name and said I would like to see Mr. Gallant. The man, approaching, spoke.
“Mr. Gallant is not available. What do you want?”
That didn’t strike me as a very tactful greeting to a man who, for all he knew, might be set to pay eight hundred dollars for an afternoon frock, but of course he had had a tough twenty-four hours, so I kept it pleasant. “I’m not a reporter,” I assured him, “or a cop, or a lawyer drumming up trade. I’m a private detective named Archie Goodwin, sent by a private detective named Nero Wolfe to ask Mr. Gallant a couple of harmless questions — not connected with the death of Bianca Voss.”
“Mr. Gallant is not available.”
I hadn’t heard his voice in person before, only on the phone, but I recognized it. Also he looked like a business manager, with his neat well-arranged face, his neat well-made dark suit, and his neat shadow-stripe four-in-hand. He was a little puffy around the eyes, but the city and county employees had probably kept him from getting much sleep.
“May I ask,” I asked, “if you are Mr. Carl Drew?”
“Yes. I am.”
“Then I’m in luck. I was instructed to see five different people here — Mr. Gallant, Miss Gallant, Miss Prince, Miss Thorne, and Mr. Carl Drew. Perhaps we could sit down?”
He ignored that. “See us about what?”
The woman had left us. She was in earshot if her hearing was good, but this was certainly no secret mission, with five of them on the list. “To get information,” I told him, “if you have any, about a woman who died yesterday. Not Bianca Voss. Miss Sarah Yare.”
“Oh.” He blinked. “Yes. That was tragic. Information? What kind of information?”
“I don’t exactly know.” I was apologetic. “All I know is that someone has engaged Mr. Wolfe to make inquiries about her, and he sent me to ask you people if you had any messages or letters from her in the past month or so, and if so will you let him see them.”
“Messages or letters?”
“Right.”
“That seems a little— Who engaged him?”
“I don’t know.” I was not permitting my face or voice to show that I had caught sight of a fish. “If you have had messages or letters, and would like to know who wants to see them before you produce them, I suppose Mr. Wolfe would tell you. He would have to.”
“I have no messages or letters.”
I was disappointed. “None at all? I said the past month or so, but before that would help. Any time.”
He shook his head. “I never have had any. I doubt if she ever wrote a letter — that is, to anyone here — or any messages, except phone messages. She always did everything by telephone. And for the past month, longer than that, more than a year, she hasn’t been — uh — she hasn’t been around.”
“I know.” I was sympathetic, and I meant it, though not for him. “Anyway, I don’t think Mr. Wolfe would be interested in letters about clothes. I think it’s personal letters he wants, and he thought you might have known her well enough personally to have some.”
“Well, I haven’t. I can’t say I didn’t know her personally — she was a very fine customer here for two years, and she was a very personal person. But I never had a personal letter from her.”
I had to resist temptation. I had him talking, and there was no telling if or when I would get at the others. But Wolfe had said not to labor it, and I disobey instructions only when I have reason to think I know more about it than he does, and at that moment I didn’t even know why he had been consulting the phone book. So I didn’t press. I thanked him and said I would appreciate it if he would tell me when Mr. Gallant would be available. He said he would find out, and left me, going to the rear and disappearing around the end of a screen, and soon I heard his voice, but too faint to get any words. There was no other voice, so, being a detective, I figured it out that he was on a phone. That accomplished, I decided to detect whether the woman, who was seated at a table going through a portfolio, was either Anita Prince or Emmy Thorne. I voted no, arriving at it by a process so subtle and complicated that I won’t go into it.
Drew reappeared, and I met him in the middle of the room. He said that Mr. Gallant was in his office with Miss Prince and could let me have five minutes. Another fish. Certainly Drew had told Gallant what my line was, and why did I rate even five seconds? As Drew led me to an elevator and entered with me, and pushed the button marked “2,” I had to remember to look hopeful instead of smug.
The second-floor hall was narrow, with bare walls, and not carpeted. As I said, not a palace. After following Drew down six paces and through a door, I found myself in a pin-up paradise. All available space on all four walls was covered with women, drawings and prints and photographs, both black-and-white and color, all sizes, and in one respect they were all alike: none of them had a stitch on. It hadn’t occurred to me that a designer of women’s clothes should understand female anatomy, but I admit it might help. The effect was so striking that it took me four or five seconds to focus on the man and woman seated at a table. By that time Drew had pronounced my name and gone.
Though the man and woman were fully clothed, they were striking too. He reminded me of someone, but I didn’t remember who until later: Lord Byron — a picture of Lord Byron in a book in my father’s library that had impressed me at an early age. It was chiefly Gallant’s dark curly hair backing up a wide sweeping forehead, but the nose and chin were in it too. The necktie was all wrong; instead of Byron’s choker he was sporting a narrow ribbon tied in a bow with long ends hanging.