“Yeah.” I chewed my lip. There was a long silence. “So that’s how your mind’s working. I could offer a guess.”
“I prefer a calculation to a guess. For that a basis is needed, and we have it. We know the situation as we have assumed it, and we know something of his character.”
“Okay,” I conceded, “a calculation. I’ll be damned. The answer I get, he would stick around until the body was found, and if he did, then he is one of the bunch Cramer has been talking with. So that’s what occurred to you, huh?”
“No. By no means. That’s a different matter. This is merely a tentative calculation for a starting point. If it is sound, I know who the murderer is.”
I gave him a look. Sometimes I can tell how much he is putting on and sometimes I can’t. I decided to buy it. With the office sealed up by the crabbed and envious mind of Inspector Cramer, he was certainly in no condition to entertain himself by trying to string me.
“That’s interesting,” I said admiringly. “If you want me to get him on the phone I’ll have to use the one in the kitchen.”
“I want to test the calculation.”
“So do I.”
“But there’s a difficulty. The test I have in mind, the only one I can contrive to my satisfaction — only you can make it. And in doing so you would have to expose yourself to great personal risk.”
“For God’s sake.” I gawked at him. “This is a brand-new one. The errands you’ve sent me on! Since when have you flinched or faltered in the face of danger to me?”
“This danger is extreme.”
“So is the fix you’re in. The office is sealed, and in it are the book you’re reading and the television set. Let’s hear the test. Describe it. All I ask is ninety-nine chances in a hundred.”
“Very well.” He turned a hand over. “The decision will be yours. The typewriter in the office is inaccessible. Is that old one in your room in working order?”
“Fair.”
“Bring it down here, and some sheets of blank paper — any kind. I’ll need a blank envelope.”
“I have some.”
“Bring one. Also the telephone book, Manhattan, from my room.”
I went to the hall and up two flights of stairs. Having collected the first three items in my room, I descended a flight, found that the door of Wolfe’s room was still locked, and had to put the typewriter on the floor to get out my keys. With a full cargo I returned to the dining room, unloaded, and was placing the typewriter in position on the table when Wolfe spoke.
“No, bring it here. I’ll use it myself.”
I lifted my brows at him. “A page will take you an hour.”
“It won’t be a page. Put a sheet of paper in it.”
I did so, got the paper squared, lifted the machine, and put it in front of him. He sat and frowned at it for a long minute and then started pecking. I turned my back on him to make it easier to withhold remarks about his two-finger technique, and passed the time by trying to figure his rate. That was hopeless, because at one moment he would be going at about twelve words a minute and then would come a sudden burst of speed, stepping it up to twenty or more. All at once there was the sound of the ratchet turning as he pulled the paper out, and I supposed he had ruined it and was going to start over, but when I turned to look his hand was extended to me with the sheet in it.
“I think that will do,” he said.
I took it and read what he had typed:
She told me enough this afternoon so that I know who to send this to, and more. I have kept it to myself because I haven’t decided what is the right thing to do. I would like to have a talk with you first, and if you will phone me tomorrow, Tuesday, between nine o’clock and noon, we can make an appointment; please don’t put it off or I will have to decide myself.
I read it over three times. I looked at Wolfe. He had put an envelope in the typewriter and was consulting the phone book.
“It’s all right,” I said, “except that I don’t care for the semicolon after ‘appointment.’ I would have put a period and started a new sentence.”
He began pecking, addressing the envelope. I waited until he had finished and rolled the envelope out.
“Just like this?” I asked. “No name or initials signed?”
“No.”
“I admit it’s nifty,” I admitted. “Hell, we could forget the calculation and send this to every guy on that list and wait to see who phoned. He has just about got to phone — and also make a date.”
“I prefer to send it only to one person — the one indicated by your report of that conversation. That will test the calculation.”
“And save postage.” I glanced at the paper. “The extreme danger, I suppose, is that I’ll get strangled. Or of course in an emergency like this he might try something else. He might even arrange for help. If you want me to mail this I’ll need that envelope.”
“I don’t want to minimize the risk of this, Archie.”
“Neither do I. I’ll have to borrow a gun from Saul; ours are in the office. May I have that envelope? I’ll have to go to Times Square to mail it.”
“Yes. Before you do so, copy that note; we should have a copy. Keep Saul here in the morning. If and when the phone call comes you will have to use your wits to arrange the appointment as advantageously as possible. Discussion of plans will have to wait upon that.”
“Right. The envelope, please?”
He handed it to me.
VIII
As far as Wolfe was concerned, the office being sealed made no difference in the morning up to eleven o’clock, since his schedule had him in the plant rooms from nine to eleven. With me it did. From breakfast on was the best time for my office chores, including the morning mail.
That Tuesday morning, however, it didn’t matter much, since I was kept busy from eight o’clock on by the phone and the doorbell. After nine Saul was there to help, but not with the phone because the orders were that I was to answer all calls. They were mostly from newspapers, but there were a couple from Homicide — once Rowcliff and once Purley Stebbins — and a few scattered ones, including one with comic relief from the president of the Manhattan Flower Club. I took them on the extension in the kitchen. Every time I lifted the thing and told the transmitter, “Nero Wolfe’s office, Archie Goodwin speaking,” my pulse went up a notch and then had to level off again. I had one argument, with a bozo in the District Attorney’s office who had the strange idea that he could order me to report for an interview at eleven-thirty sharp, which ended by my agreeing to call later to fix an hour.
A little before eleven I was in the kitchen with Saul, who at Wolfe’s direction had been briefed to date, trying to come to terms on a bet. I was offering him even money that the call would come by noon and he was holding out for five to three, having originally asked for two to one. I was suggesting sarcastically that we change sides when the phone rang and I got it and said distinctly, “Nero Wolfe’s office, Archie Goodwin speaking.”
“Mr. Goodwin?”
“Right.”
“You sent me a note.”
My hand wanted to grip the phone the way Vedder had gripped the flowerpot, but I wouldn’t let it.
“Did I? What about?”
“You suggested that we make an appointment. Are you in a position to discuss it?”
“Sure. I’m alone and no extensions are on. But I don’t recognize your voice. Who is this?”
That was just putting a nickel’s worth of breath on a long shot. Saul, at a signal from me, had raced up to the extension in Wolfe’s room, and this bird might possibly be completely loony. But no.
“I have two voices. This is the other one. Have you made a decision yet?”