They're covered with hard candy of different colors. Holes had been bored in them, or picked in, and filled with the cyanide, and then coated over again so that you'd hardly notice it unless you looked for it.” Cramer hunched up his shoulders and dropped them again. “You say the box of candy was a starting-point? Well, I started, and where am I? I'm sitting here in your office telling you I'm licked, with that damn Goodwin pup there grinning at me.”
“Don't mind Mr. Goodwin. Archie, don't badger him! But, Mr. Cramer, you didn't start; you merely made the preparations for starting. It may not be too late.
If, for instance…”
Wolfe, leaning back, closed his eyes, and I saw the almost imperceptible movement of his lips-out and in, a pause, and out and in again. Then again…
Cramer looked at me and lifted his brows. I nodded and told him, “Sure, it'll be a miracle, wait and see.”
Wolfe muttered, “Shut up, Archie.”
Cramer glared at me and I winked at him. Then we just sat. If it had gone on long I would have had to leave the room for a bust, because Cramer was funny. He sat cramped, afraid to make a movement so as not to disturb Wolfe's genius working; he wouldn't even knock the ashes off his cigar. I'll say he was licked.
He kept glaring at me to show he was doing something.
Finally Wolfe stirred, opened his eyes, and spoke. “Mr. Cramer. This is just an invitation to luck. Can you meet Mr. Goodwin at nine o'clock tomorrow morning at
Mr. McNair's place, and have with you five boxes of that Royal Medley?”
“Sure. Then what?”
“Well…try this. Your notebook, Archie?”
I flipped to a fresh page.
Three hours later, after dinner, at ten o'clock that night, I went over to
Broadway and hunted up a box of Bailey's Royal Medley, and sat in the office until midnight with my desk covered with pieces of candy, memorizing a code.
Chapter Six
At three minutes to nine the following morning, Wednesday, as I rolled the roadster to a stop on 52nd Street, in a nice open space evidently kept free by special police orders, I was feeling a little sorry for Nero Wolfe. He loved to stage a good scene and get an audience sitting on the edge of their chairs, and here was this one, his own idea, taking place a good mile from his plant rooms and his oversized chair. But, stepping onto the sidewalk in front of Boyden
McNair Incorporated, I merely shrugged my shoulders and thought to myself,
Well-a-day, you fat son-of-a-gun, you can't be a homebody and see the world too.
I walked across to the entrance, where the uniformed McNair doorman was standing alongside a chunky guy with a round red face and a hat too small for him pushed back on his forehead. As I reached for the door this latter moved to block me.
He put an arm out. “Excuse me, sir. Are you here by request? Your name, please?”
He brought into view a piece of paper with a typewritten list on it.
I gazed down my nose at him. “Look here, my man. It was I who made the requests.”
He squinted at me. “Yeah? Sure. The inspector says, nothing for you boys here.
Beat it.”
Naturally I would have been sore anyhow at being taken for a reporter, but what made it worse was that I had taken the trouble to put on my suit of quiet brown with a faint tan stripe, a light tan shirt, a green challis four-in-hand and my dark green soft-brim hat. I said to him:
“You're blind in one eye and can't see out of the other. Did you ever hear that one before? I'm Archie Goodwin of Nero Wolfe's office.” I took out a card and stuck it at him.
He looked at it. “Okay. They're expecting you upstairs.”
Inside was another dick, standing over by the elevator, and no one else around.
This one I knew: Slim Foltz. We exchanged polite greetings, and I got in the elevator and went up.
Cramer had done pretty well. Chairs had been gathered from all over, and about fifty people, mostly women but a few men, were sitting there in the big room up front. There was a lot of buzz and chatter. Four or five dicks, city fellers, were in a group in a corner where the booths began. Across the room Inspector
Cramer stood talking to Boyden McNair, and I walked over there.
Cramer nodded. “Just a minute, Goodwin.” He went on with McNair, and pretty soon turned to me. “We got a pretty good crowd, huh? Sixty-two promised to come, and there's forty-one here. Not so bad.”
“All the employees here?”
“All but the doorman. Do we want him?”
“Yeah, make it unanimous. Which booth?”
“Third on the left. Do you know Captain Dixon? I picked him for it.”
“I used to know him.” I walked down the corridor, counting three, and opened the door and went in. The room was a little bigger than the one we had used the day before. Sitting behind the table was a little squirt with a bald head and big ears and eyes like an eagle. There were pads of paper and pencils arranged neatly in front of him, and at one side was a stack of five boxes of Bailey's
Royal Medley. I told him he was Captain Dixon and I was Archie Goodwin, and it was a nice morning. He looked at me by moving his eyes without disturbing his head, known as conservation of energy, and made a noise something between a hoot-owl and a bullfrog. I left him and went back to the front room.
McNair had gone around back of the crowd and found a chair. Cramer met me and said, “I don't think we'll wait for any more. They're going to get restless as it is.”
“Okay, shoot.” I went over and propped myself against the wall, facing the audience. They were all ages and sizes and shapes, and were about what you mght expect. There are very few women who can afford to pay 300 bucks for a spring suit, and why do they have to be the kind you might as well wrap in an old piece of burlap for all the good it does? Nearly always. Among the exceptions present that morning was Mrs. Edwin Frost, who was sitting with her straight back in the front row, and with her were the two goddesses, one on each side. Llewellyn
Frost and his father were directly behind them. I also noted a red-haired woman with creamy skin and eyes like stars, but later, during the test, I learned that her name was Countess von Rantz-Deichen of Prague, so I never tried to follow it up.
Cramer had faced the bunch and was telling them about it:
“…First I want to thank Mr. McNair for closing his store this morning and permitting it to be used for this purpose. We appreciate his cooperation, and we realize that he is as anxious as we are to get to the bottom of this…this sad affair. Next I want to thank all of you for coming. It is a real pleasure and encouragement to know that there are so many good citizens ready to do their share in a…a sad affair like this. None of you had to come, of course. You are merely doing your duty-that is, you are helping out when it is needed. I thank you in the name of the Police Commissioner, Mr. Hombert, and the District
Attorney, Mr. Skinner.”
I wanted to tell him, “Don't stop there, what about the Mayor and the Borough
Presidents and the Board of Aldermen and the Department of Plant and