“Archie.” Wolfe looked at me. “Get him out of here.” There wasn’t the slightest indication from Blaney that anyone had said anything except him, and I was too fascinated to move.
Blaney went on, “The truth is, you have no reasons. The fact that Gene was afraid I would kill him proves nothing. He was a born coward. I did describe to him some of the methods by which I could kill a man without detection, but that was merely to impress upon him the fact that he continued to own half of the business by my sufferance and therefore my offer of twenty thousand dollars for his half was an act of generosity. I wouldn’t condescend to kill a man. No man is worth that much to me, or that little.”
As he went on his squeak showed a tendency to hoarsen.
“So you have no reasons. I suspected you didn’t, but if you did I wanted to answer them. We can go back to my one, two, and three later, but right now about this talking orchid. When I get hold of a creative idea I can’t concentrate on anything else. You will have to give me three or four orchid plants to work from, and they ought to be your favorite plants. And here’s the stroke of genius, I was saving this, the voice that does the talking will be-your voice! Whoever you send it to, preferably a lady, she will lift the pot, suspecting nothing, and your own voice, the voice of Nero Wolfe, will say to her, Orchids to you! Probably she’ll drop the pot. But-”
He had performed a miracle. I saw it with my own eyes, Nero Wolfe fleeing in haste from his own office. He had chased many a fellow being from that room, but that was the first time he had ever himself been chased. It became evident that he wasn’t even going to risk staying on that floor when the sound was heard of the door of his elevator banging open and shut. I told Blaney, “Overlook it. He’s eccentric.”
Blaney said, “So am I.”
I nodded. “Geniuses are.”
Blaney was frowning. “Does he really think I killed Gene Poor?”
“Yeah. He does now.”
“Why now?”
I waved it away. “Forget it. I’m eccentric too.” Blaney was still frowning.
“There’s another possibility. The idea of the orchid having his voice doesn’t appeal to him. Then how about its having your voice? You have a good baritone voice. I would let you have it at cost, and you could give it to him for Christmas. Let’s see how it would sound. Say it in a medium tone, Orchids to you-”
The house phone buzzed, and I swung my chair around and took it. It was Wolfe, on his room extension. “Archie. Is that man gone?”
“No, sir. He wants me-”
“Get him out of there at once. Phone Saul and tell him to come here as soon as possible.”
“Yes, sir.”
The line went dead. So he had actually been stirred up enough to blow some dough on the case. Saul Panzer, being merely the best all-around investigator west of Nantucket, not counting me, came to twenty bucks a day plus expenses.
To get Blaney out I nearly had to carry him.
VI
As luck would have it, Saul Panzer was not to be had at the moment. Since he was free-lancing, you never knew. I finally got it that he was out on Long Island on a job for Atlantic and left word for him to call. He did so around three and said he would be able to get to the office soon after six o’clock.
It became obvious that to Wolfe, who had been stirred up, money was no object, since he blew another dollar and eighty cents on a phone call to Washington. I got it through without any trouble to General Carpenter, head of G-2, under whom I had been a major and for whom Wolfe had helped to solve certain problems connected with the war. The favor he asked of Carpenter, and of course got, was a telegram that would open doors at the premises of the Beck Products Corporation. Not satisfied with that, he opened another valve. At ten minutes to four he said to me, “Archie. Find out whether it seems advisable for me to talk with that man Joe Groll.”
“Yes, sir. Tea leaves? Or there’s a palmist over on Seventh-”
“See him and find out. Why did he ask where Blaney was up there Tuesday evening? Anything else.”
“As, for instance, when does he marry Mrs. Poor and did she ever eat him?”
“Anything.”
So after he went up to the plant rooms I phoned the office of Blaney and Poor and got Joe Groll. No persuasion was required. His tone implied that he would be glad to talk with anybody, any time, anywhere, after business hours. He would be free at five-thirty. I told him I’d be waiting for him at the corner of Varick and Adams in a brown Wethersill sedan.
He was twenty minutes late. “Sorry to keep you waiting,” he apologized as he climbed in front beside me. “I only quit being a GI hero two months ago, and they gave me my old job back, and it keeps me busy catching up.”
His glance at me was a question, but I postponed answering it, because my eye being used to taking in things, I had noticed something on the sidewalk in the twilight. Sure enough, as I let the clutch in and we slid away from the sidewalk, somebody’s desire to find a taxi got practically frantic. To oblige, I took my time. When I saw in the mirror that a taxi had actually been snagged, I fed gas and went ahead. Then I answered the question his glance had asked.
“I don’t sport a ruptured duck because I didn’t get over to kill any Germans. They gave me a majority so I could run errands for Nero Wolfe while he was winning the war. There’s a bar and grill on Nineteenth Street that has good Scotch. All right?”
He didn’t object, so I kept my course, crowding no lights so as not to complicate matters for the taxi behind. Its driver was no bargain, because when I pulled up in front of Pete’s Bar Grill, instead of going on by the sap swerved toward the curb not more than thirty yards back.
In addition to good Scotch, Pete’s had booths partitioned to the ceiling, which furnished privacy. Seated in one of them, I was surprised to realize that you could make out a case for calling Joe Groll handsome. They had overdone it a little on the ears, but on the whole he was at least up to grade if not fancy.
After we got our drinks I remarked casually, “As I told you on the phone, I want to discuss this murder. You may have heard of Nero Wolfe. Poor and his wife came to see him Tuesday afternoon, to tell him Blaney was going to dissolve the partnership by killing Poor.”
He nodded. “Yes, I know.”
“Oh. The cops told you?”
“No, Martha told me yesterday. Mrs. Poor. She asked me to come up and help about things-the funeral.” He made a gesture. “Gosh, one lousy civilian funeral makes more fuss than a thousand dead men over there did.”
I nodded. “Sure, the retail business always has more headaches than the wholesale.” I sipped my highball. “I don’t go for this theory that it was Helen Vardis that killed Poor. Do you?”