I was astonished. 'How did you know?' I asked her.
'How many do you need?' she asked, ignoring my question.
As I was leaving she dunned me for a dollar for the sick kit. I handed it over.
'Still betting on Hamish Hooter?' I asked her.
'I only bet on sure things,' she said loftily.
When Gertrude Kletz came in I called her into my office and showed her the photograph of Professor Stonehouse and the reward copy. I explained that she should expect the posters to be delivered by Gardner amp; Weiss in the early afternoon. Meanwhile, she could begin compiling a list of taxi garages, which she could get from the Yellow Pages.
'Or from the Hack Bureau,' she said.
I looked at her with admiration.
'Right,' I said. I told her the posters would have to be hand-carried to the garages and, with the permission of the manager, displayed on walls or bulletin boards.
'I'll need sticky tape and thumbtacks,' she said cheerfully. The Kipper file had hooked her; now the Stonehouse case had done the same. I could see it in her bright eyes. Her face was burning with eagerness.
I told her I was off to the lab to check into Stonehouse's tests, and that by the time I got back, she'd probably be out distributing the posters. I put on hat and coat, grabbed up my briefcase, and rushed out, waving at Yetta as I sailed past.
She was wearing the green sweater I had given her, but curiously this failed to stir me.
The chemical laboratory was on Eleventh Avenue near 55th Street. I took a cab over. Bommer amp; Son, Inc., was on the fourth floor of an unpretentious building set between a sailors' bar (BIG BOY DRINKS 75 CENTS DURING HAPPY HOUR, 9 TO 2 A.M.) and a gypsy fortune teller (READINGS. PAST, PRESENT, FUTURE. SICKNESS). The elevator was labelled FREIGHT ONLY, so I climbed worn stairs to the fourth floor, the nose-crimping smell of chemicals becoming more intense as I ascended.
The receptionist in the outer office was typing away at Underwood's first model. She stopped.
'I'd like to speak to Mr Bommer, please.'
In a few moments a stoutish man wearing a stained white laboratory coat flung himself into the office.
'Yes?' he demanded in a reedy voice.
The receptionist pointed me out. He came close to me, peering suspiciously at my face. I thought him to be in the sixties — possibly the 1860s.
'Yes?'
'Mr Waldo Bommer?'
'Yes.'
I proffered Mr Tabatchnick's card. He held it a few inches from his eyes and read it aloud: 'Leopold H.
Tabatchnick. Attorney-at-Law.' He lowered the card.
'Who's suing?' he asked me.
'No one,' I said. 'I just want a moment of your time. I represent the estate of Professor Yale Stonehouse. Among his papers is a cancelled cheque made out to Bommer amp; Son, with no accompanying voucher. The government is running a tax audit on the estate, and it would help if you could provide copies of the bill.'
'Come with me,' he said abruptly.
I followed him through a rear door into an enormous loft laboratory where five people, three men, two women, all elderly and all wearing stained laboratory coats, were seated on high stools before stone-topped workbenches.
They seemed intent on what they were doing; none looked up as we passed through.
Mr Waldo Bommer led the way to a private office tucked into one corner. He closed the door behind us.
'How do you stand it?' I asked him.
'Stand what?'
'The smell.'
'What smell?' he said. He took a deep breath through his nostrils. 'Hydrogen sulphide, hypochlorous acid, sulphur dioxide, a little bit of this, a little bit of that. A smell? I love it. Smells are my bread and butter, mister.
How do you think I do a chemical analysis? First, I smell.
You see before you an educated nose.'
He tapped the bridge of his nose. A small pug nose with trumpeting nostrils.
'An educated nose,' he repeated proudly. 'First, I smell.
Sometimes that tells me all I have to know.'
Suddenly he grabbed me by the shoulders and pulled me close. I thought he meant to kiss me. But he merely sniffed at my mouth and cheeks.
'You don't smoke,' he said. 'Right?'
'Right,' I said, pulling back from his grasp.
'And this morning, for breakfast, you had coffee and a pastry. Something with fruit in it. Figs maybe.'
'Prune Danish,' I said.
'You see!' he said. 'An educated nose. My father had the best nose in the business. He could tell you when you had changed your socks. Sit down.'
Waldo Bommer shuffled through a drawer in a battered oak file.
'Stacy, Stone, Stonehouse,' he intoned. 'Here it is.
Professor Yale Stonehouse. Two chemical analyses of unknown liquids. 14 December of last year.'
'May I take a look?' I asked.
'Why not?'
I scanned the two carbon-copy reports. There were a lot of chemical terms; one of them included arsenic trioxide.
'Could you tell me what these liquids were, please?'
He snatched the papers from my hands and scanned them. 'Simple. This one, plain cocoa. This one was brandy.'
'The brandy has the arsenic trioxide in it?'
'Yes.'
'Didn't you think that unusual?'
He shrugged.
'Mister, I just do the analysis. What's in it is none of my business. A week ago a woman brought in a tube of toothpaste loaded with strychnine.'
'Toothpaste?' I cried. 'How did they get it in?'
Again he shrugged. 'Who knows? A hypo through the opening maybe. I couldn't care less. I just do the analysis.'
'Could I get copies of these reports, Mr Bommer? For the government. The tax thing. . '
He thought a moment.
'I don't see why not,' he said finally. 'You say this Professor Stonehouse is dead?'
'Yes, sir. Deceased early this year.'
'Then he can't sue me for giving out copies of his property.'
Ten minutes later I was bouncing down the splintering stairs with photocopies in my briefcase. I had offered to pay for the copies, and Bommer had taken me up on it. I inhaled several deep breaths of fresh air, then went flying up Eleventh Avenue. There is no feeling on earth to match a hunch proved correct. I decided to press my luck. I stopped at the first unvandalized phone booth I came to.
'Yah?' Olga Eklund answered.
'Olga, this is Joshua Bigg.'
'Yah?'
'Is Miss Glynis in?'
'No. She's at her clinic.'
That was what I hoped to hear.
'But Mrs Stonehouse is at home?'
'Yah.'
'Well, maybe I'll drop by for a few moments. She's recovered from her, uh, indisposition?'
'Yah.'
'Able to receive visitors?'
'Yah.'
'I'll come right over. You might mention to her that I'll be stopping by for a minute or two.'
I waited for her 'Yah,' but there was no answer; she had hung up. Shortly afterwards Olga in the flesh was taking my coat in the Stonehouse hallway.
'I'm sorry Miss Glynis isn't at home,' I said to Olga.
'You think I might be able to call her at the clinic?'
'Oh yah,' she said. 'It's the Children's Eye, Ear, Nose and Throat Clinic. It's downtown, on the East Side.'
'Thank you,' I said gratefully. 'I'll call her there.'
Ula Stonehouse was half-reclining on the crushed velvet
couch. She was beaming, holding a hand out to me. As usual, there was a wineglass and a bottle of sherry on the glass-topped table.
'How nice!' she warbled. 'I was hoping for company and here you are!'
'Here I am, indeed, ma'am,' I said, taking her limp hand. 'I was sorry to hear you have been indisposed, but you look marvellously well now.'
'Oh, I feel so good,' she said, patting the couch next to her. I sat down obediently. 'My signs changed and now I feel like a new woman.'
'I'm delighted to hear it.'
I watched her reach forward to fill her glass with a tremulous hand. She straightened back slowly, took a sip, looking at me over the rim with those milk-glass eyes flickering. The mop of blonde curls seemed frizzier than ever. She touched the tip of her nose as one might gently explore a bruise.