He hung up. I went to the safe and looked in the cash drawer to see if Saul had been supplied with generous funds, but the cash was as I had last seen it and there was no entry in the book. I emptied the ashtray. I went to the kitchen, where I found Fritz pouring a mixture into a bowl of fresh pork tenderloin, and said I hoped Saul had enjoyed his lunch, and Fritz said he hadn’t stayed for lunch. So steps must have been begun right after I left in the morning. I went back to the office, read over the carbon copy of my statement before filing it, and passed the time by thinking up eight different steps that Saul might have been assigned, but none of them struck me as promising. A little after five the phone rang and I answered. It was Saul. He said he was glad to know I was back home safe, and I said I was too.
“Just a message for Mr. Wolfe,” he said. ‘Tell him everything is set, no snags.”
“That’s all?”
“Right. I’ll be seeing you.”
I cradled the receiver, sat a moment to consider whether to go up to the plant rooms or use the house phone, decided the latter would do, and pulled it to me and pushed the button. When Wolfe’s voice came it was peevish; he hates to be disturbed up there.
“Yes?”
“Saul called and said to tell you everything is set, no snags. Congratulations. Am I in the way?”
“Oddly enough, no. Have chairs in place for visitors; ten should be enough. Four or five will come shortly after six o’clock; I hope not more. Others will come later.”
“Refreshments?”
“Liquids, of course. Nothing else.”
“Anything else for me?”
“No.”
He was gone. Before going to the front room for chairs, and to the kitchen for supplies, I took time out to ask myself whether I had the slightest notion what kind of charade he was cooking up this time. I hadn’t.
VII
It was four. They all arrived between six-fifteen and six-twenty-first Mrs. Perry Porter Jerome and her son Leo, then Cherry Quon, and last Emil Hatch. Mrs. Jerome copped the red leather chair, but I moved her, mink and all, to one of the yellow ones when Cherry came. I was willing to concede that Cherry might be headed for a very different kind of chair, wired for power, but even so I thought she rated that background and Mrs. Jerome didn’t. By six-thirty, when I left them to cross the hall to the dining room, not a word had passed among them.
In the dining room Wolfe had just finished a bottle of beer. “Okay,” I told him, “it’s six-thirty-one. Only four. Kiernan and Margot Dickey haven’t shown.”
“Satisfactory.” He arose. “Have they demanded information?”
“Two of them have, Hatch and Mrs. Jerome. I told them it will come from you, as instructed. That was easy, since I have none.”
He headed for the office, and I followed. Though they didn’t know, except Cherry, that he had poured champagne for them the day before, introductions weren’t necessary because they had all met him during the tapestry hunt. After circling around Cherry in the red leather chair, he stood behind his desk to ask them how they did, then sat.
“I don’t thank you for coming,” he said, “because you came in your own interest, not mine. I sent-”
“I came,” Hatch cut in, sourer than ever, “to find out what you’re up to.”
“You will,” Wolfe assured him. “I sent each of you an identical message, saying that Mr. Goodwin has certain information which he feels he must give the police not later than tonight, but I have persuaded him to let me discuss it with you first. Before I-”
“I didn’t know others would be here,” Mrs. Jerome blurted, glaring at Cherry.
“Neither did I,” Hatch said, glaring at Mrs. Jerome.
Wolfe ignored it. “The message I sent Miss Quon was somewhat different, but that need not concern you. Before I tell you what Mr. Goodwin’s information is, I need a few facts from you. For instance, I understand that any of you-including Miss Dickey and Mr. Kiernan, who will probably join us later-could have found an opportunity to put the poison in the bottle. Do any of you challenge that?”
Cherry, Mrs. Jerome, and Leo all spoke at once. Hatch merely looked sour.
Wolfe showed them a palm. “If you please. I point no finger of accusation at any of you. I merely say that none of you, including Miss Dickey and Mr. Kiernan, can prove that you had no opportunity. Can you?”
“Nuts.” Leo Jerome was disgusted. “It was that guy playing Santa Claus. Of course it was. I was with Bottweill and my mother all the time, first in the workshop and then in his office. I can prove that.”
“But Bottweill is dead,” Wolfe reminded him, “and your mother is your mother. Did you go up to the office a little before them, or did your mother go up a little before you and Bottweill did? Is there acceptable proof that you didn’t? The others have the same problem. Miss Quon?”
There was no danger of Cherry’s spoiling it. Wolfe had told me what he had told her on the phone: that he had made a plan which he thought she would find satisfactory, and if she came at a quarter past six she would see it work. She had kept her eyes fixed on him ever since he entered. Now she chirped, “If you mean I can’t prove I wasn’t in the office alone yesterday, no, I can’t.”
“Mr. Hatch?”
“I didn’t come here to prove anything. I told you what I came for. What information has Goodwin got?”
“We’ll get to that. A few more facts first. Mrs. Jerome, when did you learn that Bottweill had decided to marry Miss Quon?”
Leo shouted, “No!” but his mother was too busy staring at Wolfe to hear him. “What?” she croaked. Then she found her voice. “Kurt marry her? That little strumpet?”
Cherry didn’t move a muscle, her eyes still on Wolfe.
“This is wonderful!” Leo said. “This is marvelous!”
“Not so damn wonderful,” Emil Hatch declared. “I get the idea, Wolfe. Goodwin hasn’t got any information, and neither have you. Why you wanted to get us together and start us clawing at each other, I don’t see that, I don’t know why you’re interested, but maybe I’ll find out if I give you a hand. This crowd has produced as fine a collection of venom as you could find. Maybe we all put poison in the bottle and that’s why it was such a big dose. If it’s true that Kurt had decided to marry Cherry, and Al Kiernan knew it, that would have done it. Al would have killed a hundred Kurts if it would get him Cherry. If Mrs. Jerome knew it, I would think she would have gone for Cherry instead of Kurt, but maybe she figured there would soon be another one and she might as well settle it for good. As for Leo, I think he rather liked Kurt, but what can you expect? Kurt was milking mamma of the pile Leo hoped to get some day, and I suspect that the pile is not all it’s supposed to be. Actually-”
He stopped, and I left my chair. Leo was on his way up, obviously with the intention of plugging the creative artist. I moved to head him off, and at the same instant I gave him a shove and his mother jerked at his coattail. That not only halted him but nearly upset him, and with my other hand I steered him back onto his chair and then stood beside him.
Hatch inquired, “Shall I go on?”
“By all means,” Wolfe said.
“Actually, though, Cherry would seem to be the most likely. She has the best brain of the lot and by far the strongest will. But I understand that while she says Kurt was going to marry her, Margot claims that he was going to marry her. Of course that complicates it, and anyway Margot would be my second choice. Margot has more than her share of the kind of pride that is only skin deep and therefore can’t stand a scratch. If Kurt did decide to marry Cherry and told Margot so, he was even a bigger imbecile than I thought he was. Which brings us to me. I am in a class by myself. I despise all of them. If I had decided to take to poison I would have put it in the champagne as well as the Pernod, and I would have drunk vodka, which I prefer-and by the way, on that table is a bottle with the Korbeloff vodka label. I haven’t had a taste of Korbeloff for fifteen years. Is it real?”