But not for long. A voice of authority came from the bed.
“You children get out!”
“But mother—”
They all protested. From the way she insisted, not with any vehemence, it was obvious that she took obedience for granted, and she got it, though for a moment I thought Phoebe, who was said to resemble her father, might stick it. But she too went, the last one out, and closed the door after her as instructed.
“Well?” Mrs. Whitten demanded. She took in a long breath, with a long loud sigh. “What about Miss Alving?”
She was lying flat on her back with a thin blue silk coverlet nearly up to her throat, and against the blue pillow her face was so pale that I might not have recognized her from the pictures and descriptions. That made her look older, of course, and then her hair was in no condition for public display. But the snap and fire were in her eyes, as specified, and the firm pointed chin was even exaggerated at that angle.
“What about her?” she repeated impatiently.
“Excuse me,” I apologized. “I was wondering if I should bother you after all — right now. You look sick.”
“I’m not sick. It’s only — my heart.” She took a long sighing breath. “What would you expect? What about Miss Alving?”
I could and would have done better if my mind had been on it, but it wasn’t. I couldn’t even remember which tack I had decided to take, because an interesting idea had not only entered my head but evicted all the previous tenants. But I couldn’t just turn on my heel and blow, so I spoke.
“I don’t want to be crude, Mrs. Whitten, but you understand that while you have your personal situation and problems, other people have theirs. At least you will grant that the death of Floyd Whitten means more to Miss Alving than it does to people who never knew him, though they’re all reading about it and talking about it. The idea was for Nero Wolfe to have a little talk with you regarding certain aspects of the situation which are of special interest to Miss Alving.”
“I owe Miss Alving nothing.” Mrs. Whitten had raised her head from the pillow, aiming her eyes at me, but now she let it fall back, and again she sighed, taking in all the air she could get. “It is no secret that my husband knew her once, but their — it was ended when he got married. That is no secret either.”
“I know that,” I agreed. “But I couldn’t discuss things even if I knew about them. I’m just a messenger boy. My job was to arrange for Mr. Wolfe to talk with you, and it looks as if I’ll have to pass it up for now, since he never leaves his house to see anyone on business, and you can’t very well be expected to leave yours if your doctor has put you to bed.” I grinned down at her. “That’s why I apologized for bothering you. Maybe tomorrow or next day?” I backed away. “I’ll phone you, or Mr. Wolfe will.”
Her head had come up again. “You’re going to tell me,” she said in a tone that could not have been called a cluck, “exactly why Miss Alving sent you here to annoy me.”
“I can’t,” I told her from the door. “Because I don’t know. And I promised your son I’d make it brief.” I turned the knob and pulled. “You’ll be hearing from us.”
Two daughters and a son were out on the landing. “Okay,” I told them cheerfully, got by, and started down. Bahr and Mortimer were in the reception hall, and I nodded as I breezed past, opened the door for myself, and was out.
Since what I wanted was the nearest phone booth, I turned left, toward Madison, and one block down, at the corner, entered a drug store.
Routine would have been to call Wolfe and get his opinion of my interesting idea, but he had sicked me onto them with nothing to go by but his snooty remark that circumstances might offer suggestions, so I went right past him. I could have got what I wanted from 20th Street, but if I got a break and my hunch grew feathers I didn’t want the Homicide boys in on it, so the number I dialed was that of the Gazette office. Lon Cohen was always there until midnight, so I soon had him.
“I’m looking,” I told him, “for a good doctor to pierce my ears for earrings, and I think I’ve found one. Call me at this number” — I gave it to him — “and tell me who New York license UMX four three three one seven belongs to.”
He had me repeat it, which shouldn’t have been necessary with a veteran newspaperman. I hung up and did my waiting outside the booth, since the temperature inside was well over a hundred. The phone rang in five minutes, exactly par for that routine item of research, and a voice — not Lon’s, for he was a busy man at that time of night — gave me a name and address: Frederick M. Cutler, M.D., with an office on East 65th and a residence on Park Avenue.
It was ten blocks away, so I went for the car and drove it, parked on the avenue a polite distance from the canopy with the number on it, and went in. The lobby was all it should have been in that locality, and the night man took exactly the right attitude toward a complete stranger. On my way I had decided what would be exactly the right attitude for me.
“Dr. Frederick M. Cutler,” I said. “Please phone up.”
“Name?”
“Tell him a private detective named Goodwin has an important question to ask him about the patient he was visiting forty minutes ago.”
I thought that would do. If that got me to him my hunch would already have an attractive fuzz on its bare pink skin. So when, after finishing at the phone, he crossed to the elevator with me and told his colleague I was to be conveyed to 12C, my heart had accelerated a good ten per cent.
At 12C I was admitted by the man I had seen leaving the Whitten house with his black case. Here, with a better view of him, I could note such details as the gray in his hair, his impatient gray-blue eyes, and the sag at the corners of his wide full mouth. Also I could see, through an arch, men and women at a couple of card tables in the large room beyond.
“Come this way, please,” my victim said gruffly, and I followed him down a hall and through a door. This was a small room, its walls solid with books, and a couch, a desk, and three chairs, leaving no space at all. He closed the door, confronted me, and was even gruffer.
“What do you want?”
The poor guy had already given me at least half of what I wanted, but of course he would have had to be very nifty on the draw not to.
“My name,” I said, “is Archie Goodwin, and I work for Nero Wolfe.”
“So that’s who you are. What do you want?”
“I was sent to see Mrs. Floyd Whitten, and while I was parking my car in front I saw you leaving her house. Naturally I recognized you, since you are pretty well known.” I thought he might as well have a lump of sugar. “I went in and had a little talk with Mrs. Whitten up in her bedroom. Her son said, and she said, that the trouble was her heart. But then how come? There is a widespread opinion that she is in splendid health and always has been. At her age she plays tennis. She walks up two flights to her bedroom. People who know her admire her healthy complexion. But when I saw her, there in bed, she was as pale as a corpse, in fact she was pale like a corpse, and she kept taking long sighing breaths. I’m not a doctor, but I happen to know that those two symptoms — that kind of pallor and that kind of breathing — go with a considerable loss of blood, say over a pint. She didn’t have a cardiac hemorrhage, did she?”
Cutler’s jaw was working. “The condition of my patient is none of your business. But Mrs. Whitten has had an extremely severe shock.”
“Yeah, I know she has. But the business I’m in, I have seen quite a few people under the shock of the sudden death of someone they loved, and I’ve seen a slew of reactions, and this one is brand new. The pallor possibly, but combined with those long frequent sighs?” I shook my head. “I will not settle for that. Besides, why did you let me come up after the kind of message I sent, if it’s just shock? Why did you let me in and herd me back here so private? At this point I think you ought to either toss me out or invite me to sit down.”