“I’m always skeptical.” Griffin’s voice would have suited a man twice his size. “I want to see that witness and hear what she has to say. I admit I can see no reason why you would invent her — if there is one it’s too deep for me, since it puts you in the same boat with us — but I’m not going to believe her until I see her. Maybe I will then, and maybe I won’t.”
“I think you will. Meanwhile, what about your relations with Philip Holt? How long and how well did you know him?”
“Oh, to hell with this jabber!” Griffin bounced up, not having far to bounce. “If there was anything in my relations with him that made me kill him, would I be telling you?” He flattened his palms on Wolfe’s desk. “Are you going to produce that witness? No?” He wheeled. “I’ve had enough of this! You, Jim? Rago?”
That ended the party. Wolfe could have held Korby and Rago for more jabber, but apparently he didn’t think it worth the effort. They asked some questions, what was Wolfe going to do now, and what was the witness going to do, and why couldn’t they see her, and why did Wolfe believe her, and was he going to see her and question her, and of course nobody got anything out of that. The atmosphere wasn’t very cordial when they left. After letting them out I returned to the office and stood in front of Wolfe’s desk. He was leaning back with his arms folded.
“Lunch in twenty minutes,” I said cheerfully.
“Not in peace,” he growled.
“No, sir. Any instructions?”
“Pfui. It would take an army, and I haven’t got one. To go into all of them, to trace all their connections and dealings with the man one of them murdered...” He unfolded his arms and put his fists on the desk. “I can’t even limit it by assuming that it was an act of urgency, resulting from something that had been said or done that day or in the immediate past. The need or desire to kill him might have dated from a week ago, or a month, or even a year, and it was satisfied yesterday in that tent only because circumstances offered the opportunity. No matter which one it was — Rago, who visited the tent first, or Korby or Griffin or Vetter, who visited it after him in that order — no matter which, the opportunity was tempting. The man was there, recumbent and disabled, and the weapon was there. He had a plausible excuse for entering the tent. To spread the cloud of suspicion to the multitude, all he had to do was untie the tape that held the flap. Even if the body was discovered soon after he left the tent, even seconds after, there would be no question he couldn’t answer.”
He grunted. “No. Confound it, no. The motive may be buried not only in a complexity of associations but also in history. It might take months. I will have to contrive something.”
“Yeah. Any time.”
“There may be none. That’s the devil of it. Get Saul and Fred and Orrie and have them on call. I have no idea for what, but no matter, get them. And let me alone.”
I went to my desk and pulled the phone over.
Chapter 5
There had been only five occasions in my memory when Wolfe has cut short his afternoon session with the orchids in the plant rooms, from four o’clock to six, and that was the fifth.
If there had been any developments inside his skull I hadn’t been informed. There had been none outside, unless you count my calling Saul and Fred and Orrie, our three best bets when we needed outside help, and telling them to stand by. Back at his desk after lunch, Wolfe fiddled around with papers on his desk, counted the week’s collection of bottle caps in his drawer, rang for Fritz to bring beer and then didn’t drink it, and picked up his current book, The Fall by Albert Camus, three or four times, and put it down again. In between he brushed specks of dust from his desk with his little finger. When I turned on the radio for the four-o’clock newscast he waited until it was finished to leave for his elevator trip up to the roof.
Later, nearly an hour later, I caught myself brushing a speck of dust off my desk with my little finger, said something I needn’t repeat here, and went to the kitchen for a glass of milk.
When the doorbell rang at a quarter past five I jumped up and shot for the hall, realized that was unmanly, and controlled my legs to a normal gait. Through the one-way glass panel of the front door I saw, out on the stoop, a tall lanky guy, narrow from top to bottom, in a brown suit that needed pressing and a brown straw hat. I took a breath, which I needed apparently, and went and opened the door the two inches allowed by the chain-bolt. His appearance was all against it, but there was no telling what kind of a specimen District Attorney Delaney or Chief of Detectives Baxter might have on his staff.
I spoke through the crack. “Yes, sir?”
“I would like to see Mr. Nero Wolfe. My name is Banau, Alexander Banau.”
“Yes, sir.” I took the bolt off and swung the door open, and he crossed the sill. “Your hat, sir?” He gave it to me and I put it on the shelf. “This way, sir.” I waited until I had him in the office and in the red leather chair to say, “Mr. Wolfe is engaged at the moment. I’ll tell him you’re here.”
I went to the hall and on to the kitchen, shutting doors on the way, buzzed the plant rooms on the house phone, and in three seconds, instead of the usual fifteen or twenty, had a growl in my ear. “Yes?”
“Company. Captain Alexander Banau.”
Silence, then: “Let him in.”
“He’s already in. Have you any suggestions how I keep him occupied until six o’clock?”
“No.” A longer silence. “I’ll be down.”
As I said, that was the fifth time in all the years I have been with him. I went back to the office and asked the guest if he would like something to drink, and he said no, and in two minutes there was the sound of Wolfe’s elevator descending and stopping, the door opening and shutting, and his tread. He entered, circled around the red leather chair, and offered a hand.
“Mr. Banau? I’m Nero Wolfe. How do you do, sir?”
He was certainly spreading it on. He doesn’t like to shake hands, and rarely does. When he was adjusted in his chair he gave Banau a look so sociable it was damn close to fawning, for him.
“Well, sir?”
“I fear,” Banau said, “that I may have to make myself disagreeable. I don’t like to be disagreeable. Is that gentleman” — he nodded at me — “Mr. Archie Goodwin?”
“He is, yes, sir.”
“Then it will be doubly disagreeable, but it can’t be helped. It concerns the tragic event at Culp’s Meadows yesterday. According to the newspaper accounts, the police are proceeding on the probability that the murderer entered the tent from the rear, and left that way after he had performed the deed. Just an hour ago I telephoned to Long Island to ask if they still regard that as probable, and was told that they do.”
He stopped to clear his throat. I would have liked to get my fingers around it to help. He resumed.
“It is also reported that you and Mr. Goodwin were among those interviewed, and that compels me to conclude, reluctantly, that Mr. Goodwin has failed to tell you of a conversation he had with my wife as she sat in our car outside the tent. I should explain that I was in the crowd in front, and when your speech was interrupted by the scream, and confusion resulted, I made my way around to the car, with some difficulty, and got in and drove away. I do not like tumult. My wife did not tell me of her conversation with Mr. Goodwin until after we got home. She regards it as unwise to talk while I am driving. What she told me was that Mr. Goodwin approached the car and spoke to her through the open window. He asked her if anyone—”
“If you please.” Wolfe wiggled a finger. “Your assumption that he hasn’t reported the conversation to me is incorrect. He has.”