“Were you here when she came?”
“Yes.”
“Well?”
I grinned at him. “When I was a kid out in Ohio we had a swell comeback for that. If someone said ‘Well?’ to you, you said, ‘Enough wells will make a river.’ Wasn’t that a stunner?”
“You bet it was. Had Lewis Hewitt engaged Wolfe to arrange for payment to W. G. Dill of the amount Anne Tracy’s father had stolen, and get a release?”
I stared at him. “By golly, that’s an idea,” I said enthusiastically. “That’s pretty cute. Hewitt took her to dinner—”
The door opened and Fritz entered. I nodded at him.
“A young man,” Fritz said, being discreet.
“Who?” I asked. “Don’t mind the Inspector; he already knows everything in the world—”
Fritz didn’t get a chance to tell me, because the young man came bouncing in. It was Fred Updegraff. He stopped in the middle of the room, saw Cramer, said, “Oh,” looked at me and demanded:
“Where’s Miss Tracy?”
I surveyed him disapprovingly. “That’s no way to behave,” I told him. “Inspector Cramer is grilling me. Go to the front room and wait your turn—”
“No.” Cramer stood up. “Get Miss Tracy down here and I’ll take her to the front room. I want to see her before I have a talk with Wolfe, and then we can all go to the D.A.’s office together.”
“The hell we can,” I remarked.
“The hell we can. Send for her.”
I sent Fritz. He used the elevator, since a lady was involved. In the office you could hear it creaking and groaning up, and pretty soon it came down again and jolted to a stop. When Anne entered Fred looked at her the way a blind man looks at the sun. I hoped I wasn’t that obvious, and anyway she wasn’t very sunny. She tried to greet us with a kind of smile, but with the red-rimmed eyes and the corners of the mouth down it certainly wasn’t the face that had stolen the show from a million flowers.
Cramer took her to the front room and shut the soundproof door behind him. I went to my desk and took advantage of this first chance to open the morning mail. Fred wandered around restlessly, looking at the titles of books on the shelves, and finally sat down and lit a cigarette.
“Am I in the way?” he asked.
“Not at all,” I assured him.
“Because if I am I can wait outdoors. Only I got a little chilly. I’ve been out there since eight o’clock.”
I abandoned the mail to swivel around and stare at him in awe.
“Good God,” I said, stupefied. “You win.” I waved a hand. “You can have her.”
“Have her?” He flushed. “What are you talking about? Who do you think you are?”
“Brother,” I said, “who I am can be left to the worms that eventually eat me, but I know who I am not. I am not a guy who swims the Hellespont, nor him who — he who flees the turmoil of battle to seek you know what on the silken cushions of Cleopatra’s barge. I’m not the type—”
The phone rang and I put the receiver to my ear and heard Wolfe’s voice: “Archie, come up here.”
“Right away,” I said, and arose and asked Fred, “Which do you want, whisky or hot coffee?”
“Coffee, if it’s not—”
“Righto. Come with me.”
I turned him over to Fritz in the kitchen and mounted the three flights to the plant rooms. It was a sunny day and some of the mats were drawn, but mostly the glass was clear, especially in the first two rooms, and the glare and blaze of color was dazzling. In the long stretch where the germinating flasks were, of course the glass was painted. Theodore Horstmann was there examining the flasks. I opened the door into the potting room, and after taking one step stopped and sniffed. My nose is good and I knew that odor. One glance at Wolfe there on his special stool, which is more like a throne, showed me that he was alive, so I dived across to the wall and grabbed the valve to turn it. It was shut tight.
“What’s the matter?” Wolfe inquired peevishly.
“I smelled ciphogene. I still do.”
“I know. Theodore fumigated those plants a little while ago and opened the door too soon. There’s not enough to do any harm.”
“Maybe not,” I muttered, “but I wouldn’t trust that stuff on top of the Empire State Building on a windy day.” The door to the fumigating room was standing open and I glanced inside. The benches were empty, as well as I could tell in the half dark. It had no glass. The smell didn’t seem any stronger inside. I returned to Wolfe.
“How’s Mr. Cramer?” he asked. “Stewing?”
I looked at him suspiciously. His asking that, and the tone of his voice, and the expression on his face — any one would have been enough for me the way I knew him, and the three together made it so obvious that the only question was how he got that way.
I confronted him. “Which one did you crack?” I demanded. “Rose or Anne?”
“Neither,” he replied complacently. “I had an hour’s talk with Miss Lasher while you were still sleeping, and later some conversation with Miss Tracy. They still clutch their secrets. When Mr. Hewitt—”
“Then where did you lap up all the cream? What are you gloating about?”
“I’m not gloating.” He cocked his massive head on one side and rubbed his nose with a forefinger. “It is true that I have conceived a little experiment.”
“Oh, you have. Goody. Before or after Cramer carts us off to the D.A.’s office?”
Wolfe chuckled. “Is that his intention? Then it must be before. Is Miss Tracy with him?”
“Yes. The youthful Updegraff is in the kitchen. He’s going to marry Anne provided your experiment doesn’t land him in the coop for murder.”
“I thought you were affianced to Miss Tracy.”
“That’s off. If I married her he’d stand around in front of the house and make me nervous. He’s started it already.”
“Well, that saves us the trouble of sending for him. Keep him. When Mr. Hewitt arrives send him up to me immediately. Go down and get Mr. Dill on the phone and put him through to me. On your way make sure that Miss Lasher is in her room and going to stay there and not have hysterics. Except for Mr. Dill, and Mr. Hewitt when he comes, don’t disturb me. I have some details to work out. And by the way, do not mention ciphogene.”
His tone and look of smug self-satisfaction were absolutely insufferable. Not only that, as I well knew, they were a sign of danger for everyone concerned. When he was in that mood God alone could tell what was going to happen.
I went back through the plant rooms to the door to the stairs with my fingers crossed.
9
It was nearly an hour later, 11:45, and I was alone in the office, when the door to the front room opened and Anne and Cramer entered. She looked mad and determined, and Cramer didn’t appear to be exactly exultant, so I gathered that no great friendship had burst its bud.
“Where’s Updegraff?” Cramer asked.
“Upstairs.”
“I want to see Wolfe.”
I buzzed the house phone, got an answer, held a brief conversation, and told the Inspector:
“He says to come up. Hewitt and Dill are up there.”
“I’d rather see him down here.”
That irritated me, and anyway I was already jumpy, waiting for Wolfe’s experiment to start exploding. “My God,” I said, “you’re fussy. On arrival you insist on going upstairs right through me or over me. Now you have to be coaxed. If you want him down here go up and get him.”
He turned. “Come, Miss Tracy, please.”
She hesitated. I said, “Fred’s up there. Let’s all go.”
I led the way and they followed. I took the elevator because the stairway route went within ten feet of the door to the south room and Rose might pick that moment to sneeze.