"Yes. I never spent anybody's money, not even my own, on a slimmer chance."
"Especially your own. And incidentally sticking my neck out. You don't know the meaning of fear when it comes to sticking my neck out. Do we proceed?"
"What alternative is there?"
"None. Has Saul got his men there?"
"Yes."
"Tell him to step on it and meet me at the northeast corner of Sixty-ninth and Fifth Avenue. She could be phoning Heath right now."
"Very well. Then you'll come home?"
I said I would, hung up, and got out of the oven. Nothing would have been more appreciated right then than a large coke-and-lime with the ice brushing my lips, but it was possible that Delia was already phoning him and he was at home to get the call, so I marched on by the fountain and out. A taxi got me to the corner of Sixty-ninth and Fifth in six minutes. My watch said 9:42.
I strolled east on Sixty-ninth and stopped across the street from the canopied entrance of the towering tenement of which Henry Jameson Heath was a tenant. It was no casing problem for me, since Saul Panzer had been there in the afternoon to make a survey and spot foxholes. That was elaborate but desirable, because it was to be a very fancy tail, using three shifts of three men each, with Saul in charge of one, Fred Durkin of the second, and Orrie Cather of the third. Fifteen skins an hour that setup would cost, which was quite a disbursement on what Wolfe had admitted was a oneintwenty chance. Seeing no one but a uniformed doorman
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in evidence around the canopy, I moseyed back to the corner.
A taxi pulled up, and three men got out. Two of them were just men whose names I knew and with whose records I was fairly familiar, but the third was Saul Panzer, the one guy I want within hearing the day I get hung on the face of a cliff with jet eagles zooming at me. With his saggy shoulders and his face all nose, he looks one-fifth as strong and hardy, and one-tenth as smart, as he really is. I shook hands with him, not having seen him for a week or so, and nodded to the other two.
"Is there anything to say?" I asked him.
"I don't think so. Mr. Wolfe filled me in."
"Okay, take it. You know the Homicide boys may be on him too?"
"Sure. We'll try not to trip on 'em."
"You know it's a long shot and the only bet we've got? So lose him quick, what do we care."
"We'll lose him or die."
"That's the spirit. That's what puts statues of private detectives in the park. See you on the witness stand."
I left them. My immediate and urgent objective was Madison Avenue for a coke-and-lime, but I went a block north to Seventieth Street. Sixty-ninth Street now belonged to Saul and his squad.
ittVr eleven o'clock the next morning, Friday, I sat in the uu office listening to the clank of Wolfe's elevator as it brought him down from the plant rooms.
There had been no cheep from Delia Devlin, but we hadn't wanted one anyway. What we wanted we had got, at least the first installment. At 12:42 Thursday night Saul had phoned that Heath had checked in at Sixty-ninth Street, arriving in a taxi, alone. That was all for the night. At 6:20 in the morning he had phoned that Fred Durkin and his two men had taken over and had been briefed on the terrain. And
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at 10:23 Fred had phoned that Heath had left his tenement and taken a taxi to 719 East Fifty-first Street and entered the building. That was the gray brick house I had visited the day before. Fred said they had seen no sign of an official tail. They were deployed. I told him he was my favorite mick and still would be if he hung on, and buzzed Wolfe in the plant rooms to inform him.
Wolfe entered, got at his desk, looked over the morning mail, signed a couple of checks, dictated a letter of inquiry about sausage to a man in Wisconsin, and settled down with the crossword puzzle in the London Times. I carried on my routine neatly and normally, making it perfectly plain that I could be just as placid as him, no matter how tense and ticklish it got. I had just finished typing the envelope for the letter and was twirling it out of the machine when the doorbell rang. I went to the hall to answer it, took one look through the one-way glass panel, wheeled and returned to the office, and spoke.
. "I guess I'm through as a bookie. I said forty to one she wouldn't spill it. Wengert and Cramer want in. We can sneak out the back way and head for Mexico."
He finished putting in a letter, with precision, before he looked up. "Is this flummery?"
"No, sir. It's them."
"Indeed." His brows went up a trifle. "Bring them in."
I went out and to the door, turned the knob, and pulled it open. "Hello hello," I said brightly. "Mr. Wolfe was saying only a minute ago that he would like to see Mr. Cramer and Mr. Wengert, and here you are."
Bright as it was, it didn't go over so well because they stepped in with the first hello and were well along the hall by the time I finished. I shut the door and followed. Entering the office, it struck me as encouraging that Wengert and Wolfe were shaking hands, but then I remembered the District Attorney who always shook hands with the defendant before he opened up, to show there was no personal feeling. Cramer usually took the red leather chair at the end of
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Wolfe's desk, but this time he let Wengert have it, and I moved up one of the yellow ones for him.
"I sent you my regards the other day by Goodwin," Wengert said. "I hope he remembered."
Wolfe inclined his head. "He did. Thank you."
"I didn't know then I'd be seeing you so soon."
"Nor did I."
"No, I suppose not." Wengert crossed his legs and leaned back. "Goodwin said you had taken on a job for Mr. and Mrs. Benjamin Rackell."
"That's right." Wolfe was casual. "To investigate the death of their nephew. They said he had been working for the FBI. It would have been impolitic to wander into your line of fire, so I sent Mr. Goodwin to see you."
"Let's cut the blah. You sent him to get information you could use."
Wolfe shrugged. "Confronted with omniscience, I bow. My motives are often obscure to myself, but you know all about them. Your advantage. If that was his errand, he failed. You told him nothing."
"Right. Our files are for us, not for private operators. My coming here tells you that we've got a hand in this case, but that's not for publication. If you didn't want to get into our line of fire you certainly stumbled. But officially it's a Manhattan homicide, so I'm here to listen." He nodded at Cramer. "Go ahead, Inspector."
Cramer had been holding in with difficulty. Holding in is a chronic problem with him, and it shows in various ways, chiefly by his big red face getting redder, with the color spreading lower on his thick muscular neck. He blurted at Wolfe, "Honest to God, I'm surprised! Not at Goodwin so much, but you! Subornation of perjury. Attempting to bribe a witness to give false testimony. I've known you to take some fat risks, but holy saints, this ain't risking it, it's yelling for it!"
Wolfe was frowning. "Are you saying that Mr. Goodwin and I have suborned perjury?"
"You've tried to!"
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"Good heavens, that's a serious charge. You must have warrants. Serve them, by all means."
"Just give it to him, Inspector," Wengert advised.
Cramer's head jerked to me. "Did you go last evening to the apartment of Delia Devlin on Fifty-first Street?"
"It's hotter than yesterday," I stated.
"I asked you a question!"
"This is infantile," Wolfe told him. "You must know the legal procedure with suspected felons. We do."
"Just give it to him," Wengert repeated.
Cramer was glaring at Wolfe. "What you know about legal procedures. Okay. Yesterday you sent Goodwin to see Delia Devlin. In your name he offered her ten thousand dollars to testify falsely that she saw Fifi Goheen take the pillbox from the table, remove a capsule and replace it with another, and put the box back on the table. He said the money would be supplied by Mr. and Mrs. Rackell and would be handed her in currency after she had so testified. I shouldn't have said subornation of perjury, I should have said attempt. Now do I ask Goodwin some questions?"