"What if it's a cop?"
"One chance in a million. Not even that. Tell him you've forgotten your name and he'll have to ring me at Nero Wolfe's office. Then I'll know what happened."
"And I'll be in the coop."
"Right. But not for long. We'll have you out by Christmas easy. There's half a pound of fresh caviar in the refrigerator, twenty dollars' worth. Help yourself."
I entered the elevator. Downstairs I explained the situation to Mrs. Perez and asked her to take up a loaf of bread, and left the house. My watch said noon, on the dot, as I headed for Columbus Avenue for a taxi.
5
At five minutes past one, Wolfe, at his desk growled at me. "Your objective was to find an acceptable client, not a pair of wretches who probably killed him and another wretch who offers a reward for a cigarette case. I concede your craft, your finesse, and your gumption, and I even felicitate you, but if you have discovered the culprits, as seems probable, where do you send a bill?"
I had reported in full, omitting only one detail, a factual description of Maria. He was quite capable of assuming, or pretending to assume, that I was prejudiced in favor of Mr. and Mrs. Perez on account of their daughter. I had described the place accurately and completely, and had even included my handling of the nightie problem. I had admitted that I had tried to get Saul Panzer (ten dollars an hour), and had got Fred Durkin instead (seven-fifty an hour) only because Saul was not available.
"I won't see them," he said.
I knew, or thought I did, where the real snag was, but I had to go easy. I nodded thoughtfully. "Of course they could have killed him,'' I said, "but one will get you five that they didn't. For the reasons I gave. His tone and his expression when he told me why he put the tarp over the body. The fact that she let the daughter come to the door when I rang the bell. If she had killed him she would have come herself. But chiefly, with him alive they were in clover. Of course he was paying them plenty. With him dead they're not only minus a fat income, they're in a hell of a fix, and they would have been even if I hadn't got to them. When the executor of his estate learns that he owned that house and goes to inspect it?"
I crossed my legs. "Naturally," I said, "you don't like it, I understand that. If it was just a nice place he had fixed up where he could safely spend a night now and then with his mistress, that wouldn't be so bad, but obviously it wasn't that. There are probably half a dozen women with keys to that door and elevator, and maybe twenty or more. I realize that you wouldn't like to be involved with that kind of setup, but now that I have - "
"Nonsense," he said.
I raised a brow. "Nonsense?"
"Yes. A modern satyr is part man, part pig, and part jackass. He hasn't even the charm of the roguish; he doesn't lean gracefully against a tree with a flute in his hand. The only quality he has preserved from his Attic ancestors is his lust, and he gratifies it in dark corners or other men's beds or hotel rooms, not in the shade of an olive tree on a sunny hillside. The preposterous bower of carnality you have described is a sorry makeshift, but at least Mr. Yeager tried. A pig and a jackass, yes, but the flute strain was in him too - as it once was in me, in my youth. No doubt he deserved to die, but I would welcome a sufficient inducement to expose his killer."
I suppose I was staring. "You would?"
"Certainly. But who is likely to offer it? Granting that you have shown commendable alacrity and wit, and that you are right about Mr. and Mrs. Perez, where are we? Where is a prospective client? To whom can we disclose the existence of that preposterous bower and his connection with it? Neither his family nor his business associates, surely. They would be more likely to want it concealed than disclosed, and are we blackmailers? I concede that there is one remote possibility: who is the man who came here yesterday posing as Yeager, and why did he come?"
I shook my head. "Sorry I can't oblige. Have you read my report?"
"Yes. Manifestly he is a man with a special and educated fondness for words. He said, 'Else there was no use coming.' He said, 'I can speak in assured confidence?' He said, 'That will suffice.' The last two are merely noticeable, but the first is extraordinary. 'Else' instead of 'or' or 'otherwise'? Remarkable."
"If you say so."
"I do. But also, merely talking along, he quoted from John Webster's The Duchess of Malfi: 'Other sins only speak; murder shrieks out.' He quoted from John Harington's Al-cilia: 'Treason doth never prosper.' He quoted from Browning's Paracelsus: 'Measure your mind's height by the shade it casts.' People quote to display their erudition, but why to you? You heard him and were looking at him. Was he trying to impress you?"
"No. He was talking, that was all."
"Just so. And he had sentences at the tip of his tongue from two Elizabethans and Robert Browning. Not one man in ten thousand is familiar with both Webster and Browning. He's a pedagogue. He's a teacher of literature."
"You're not."
"I recognized only Webster. I looked up the others. I don't know Harington, and Browning repels me. So he is one in ten thousand, and there are less than a thousand of him in New York. I invite a trial of your ingenuity: if he knew Yeager was dead, either because he had killed him or otherwise, why did he come here with that tarradiddle?"
"I pass. I've already tried it, last night. If he had killed him, the only possibility was that he was cracked, and he wasn't. If he hadn't killed him but knew he was dead, the best I could do was that he wanted to call attention to that block on Eighty-second Street and that house, and to buy that I'd have to be cracked myself. An anonymous phone call to the police would have been quicker and simpler. Can you do any better?"
"No. No one can. He did not know Yeager was dead. Then, thinking Yeager alive, what did he hope to accomplish by that masquerade? He could not assume with confidence that when Yeager failed to appear you would either telephone his house or go there, but he knew that before long, either last evening or this morning, you would communicate with him, you would learn that your caller was an impostor, and you would tell Yeager about it. With what result? Merely that Yeager would know what the impostor had told you. If he identified the impostor from your description, he would know that that man knew of his visits to the Eighty-second Street address, but I reject that. If the impostor wanted Yeager to know who knew about that house, why all the fuss of coming to you? Why not just tell him, by phone or mail or face-to-face, or even in an anonymous note? No. He knew that Yeager would not identify him from your description. He merely wanted Yeager to know that someone knew of his connection with that house, and possibly also that you and I now knew about it. So I doubt if he could or would be helpful, but all the same I would like to speak with him."
"So would I. That was one reason I got Fred there. There's a bare chance that he has keys and will show up."
Wolfe grunted. "Pfui. The chance that anyone at all will come there is minute and you know it. You got Fred there because I cannot now say merely that the incident is closed. I would have to tell you to recall him, and you know that I respect your commitments as I do my own. Yes, Fritz?"
"Lunch is ready, sir. The parsley had wilted and I used chives."
"We'll see." Wolfe pushed his chair back and arose. "Pepper?"
"No, sir, I thought not, with chives."
"I agree, but we'll see."
I followed him out and across the hall to the dining room. As we finished the clam juice Fritz came with the first installment of dumplings, four apiece. Some day I would like to see how long I can keep going on Fritz's marrow dumplings, of chopped beef marrow, bread crumbs, parsley (chives today), grated lemon rind, salt, and eggs, boiled four minutes in strong meat stock. If he boiled them all at once of course they would get mushy after the first eight or ten, but he does them eight at a time, and they keep coming. They are one of the few dishes with which I stay neck and neck with Wolfe clear to the tape, and they were the reason I had let it pass when he had said he wouldn't see the clients I had got. Those marrow dumplings induce a state of mind in which anybody would see anybody. And it worked. We had finished the salad and returned to the office, and Fritz had brought coffee, when the doorbell rang. I went to the hall for a look through the one-way glass, stepped back in, and told Wolfe, "Meg Duncan. At least we might as well collect for the cigarette case. Say two bucks?"