Wolfe told Tolman, “Excuse me, please.” With a healthy grunt he lifted himself from his chair and made his way across to the serving stands. Moulton joined him and hovered deferentially. Wolfe lifted one of the covers, bent his head and gazed, and sniffed. Then he looked at Moulton. “Piroshki?”
“Yes, sir. By Mr. Vallenko.”
“Yes. I know.” He lifted other covers, bent and smelled, with careful nods to himself. He straightened up again. “Artichokes barigoule?”
“I think, sir, he called them drigante. Mr. Mondor. Something like that.”
“No matter. Leave it all here, please. We’ll serve ourselves, if you don’t mind.”
“But Mr. Servan told me-”
“I prefer it that way. Leave it here on the trays.”
“I’ll leave a man-”
“No. Please. I’m having a conversation. Out, all of you.”
They went. It appeared that if I was going to get anything to eat I’d have to work for it, so I called on the muscles for another effort. As Wolfe returned to his chair I asked, “How do we do it? Boardinghouse style a la scoop shovel?”
He waited until he got deposited before he answered. Then he sighed first. “No. Telephone the hotel for a luncheon menu.”
I stared at him. “Maybe you’re delirious?”
“Archie.” He sounded savage. “You may guess the humor I’m in. That piroshki is by Vallenko, and the artichokes are by Mondor. But how the devil do I know who was in that kitchen or what happened there? These trays were intended for us, and probably everyone knew it. For me. I am still hoping to go home to-night. Phone the hotel, and get those trays out of here so I can’t smell them. Put them in your room and leave them there.”
Tolman said, “But my God, man… if you really think… we can have that stuff analyzed…”
“I don’t want to analyze it, I want to eat it. And I can’t. I’m not going to. There probably is nothing at all wrong with it, and look at me, terrorized, intimidated by that blackguard! What good would it do to analyze it? I tell you, sir-Archie?”
It was the door again. The smell from those covered dishes had me in almost as bad a state as Wolfe, and I was hoping it might be a food inspector from the Board of Health to certify them unadulterated, but it was only the greenjacket from the hall. He had a telegram addressed to Nero Wolfe.
I went back in with it, tore the envelope open, and handed it to him.
He pulled it out and read it.
He murmured, “Indeed.” At the sound of the new tone in his voice I gave him a sharp glance. He handed the telegram back to me, unfolded. “Read it to Mr. Tolman.”
I did so:
NERO WOLFE KANAWHA SPA W VA NOT MENTIONED ANY PAPER STOP CRAMER COOPERATING STOP PROCEEDING STOP WILL PHONE FROM DESTINATION
PANZER
Wolfe said softly, “That’s better. Much better. We might almost eat that piroshki now, but there’s a chance… no. Phone the hotel, Archie. And Mr. Tolman, I believe there will be an opportunity for you also to cooperate…”
15
JEROME BERIN SHOOK BOTH his fists so that his chair trembled under him. “God above! Such a dirty dog! Such a-” He stopped himself abruptly and demanded, “You say it was not Blanc? Not Vukcic? Not my old friend Zelota?”
Wolfe murmured, “None of them, I think.”
“Then I repeat, a dirty dog!” Berin leaned forward and tapped Wolfe on the knee. “I tell you frankly, it did not take a dog to kill Laszio. Anyone might have done that, anyone at ail, merely as an incident in the disposal of garbage. En passant. True, it is bad to stab a man in the back, but when one is in a hurry the niceties must sometimes be overlooked. No, only for killing Laszio, even in that manner, I would not say a dog. But to shoot at you through a window-you, the guest of honor of Les Quinze Maitres! Only because you had interested yourself in the cause of justice! Because you had undertaken to establish my innocence! Because you had the good sense to know that I could not possibly have made seven mistakes of those nine sauces! And let me tell you… will you credit it when I tell you what they gave me to eat in that place… in that jail in that place?”
He went on to tell, and it sounded awful. He had come, with his daughter, to express his appreciation of Wolfe’s efforts in his behalf. It was nearly four o’clock, and there was sunlight in the room, for Tolman had arranged for a double guard on the windows, the other side of the shrubbery, and the shades were up and the windows open. The lunch from the hotel may not have been piroshki by Vallenko, but it had been adequate for my purposes, and Wolfe had been able to get it down in spite of the difficulty he had chewing. I had completely abandoned the idea of a little nap; there wasn’t a chance. Tolman had stayed nearly until the end of lunch, and after that was finished Rossi and Mondor and Coyne had dropped in to offer commiseration for Wolfe’s wound, and they had been followed by others. Even Louis Servan had made it for a few minutes, though I didn’t understand how he had been able to get away from the kitchen. Also, around three o’clock, there had been a phone call from New York, which Wolfe took himself. His end of it consisted mostly of grunts, and all I knew about it when he got through was that he had been talking with Inspector Cramer. But I knew he hadn’t got any bad news, for afterwards he sat and rubbed the side of his nose and looked self-satisfied.
Constanza Berin sat for twenty minutes on the edge of her chair trying to get a word in, and when her father called an intermission to get his pipe lit she finally succeeded.
“Mr. Wolfe, I… I was terrible this morning.”
He moved his eyes at her. “You were indeed, Miss Berin. I have often noticed that the more beautiful a woman is, especially a young one, the more liable she is to permit herself unreasonable fits. It’s something that you acknowledge. Tell me, when you feel it coming on like that, is there nothing you can do to stop it? Have you ever tried?”
She laughed at him. “But it isn’t fits. I don’t have fits. I was scared and mad because they had put my father in jail for murder, and I knew he hadn’t done it, and they seemed to think they had proof against him, and then I was told that it was you who had found the proof… How was I going to be reasonable about that? And in a strange country I had never been in before… America is an awful country.”
“There are those who would disagree with you.”
“I suppose so… I suppose it isn’t so much the country… maybe it’s the people who live here… Oh, excuse me, I don’t mean you, or Mr. Goodwin… I’m sure you are very amiable, and of course Mr. Goodwin is, with a wife and so many children…”
“Indeed.” Wolfe shot me a withering glance. “How are the children, Archie? Well, I hope?”
“Fine, thanks.” I waved a hand. “Doggone the little shavers, I sure do miss ’em, away from home like this. I can hardly wait to get back.”
Berin took his pipe from his mouth to nod at me. “The little ones are nice. Now my daughter here…” He shrugged. “She is nice, naturally, but God above, she drives me mad!” He leaned to tap Wolfe’s knee with the stem of the pipe. “Speaking of getting back. Is it true what I am told, that these dogs can keep us here on and on until they permit us to go? Merely because that Laszio got a knife in his back? My daughter and I were to leave to-night, for New York, and then to Canada. I am out of jail but I am not free. Is that it?”