that you couldn’t find a better argument to persuade a man to marry a woman twenty years his junior, which was what Millard Bynoe had done.
Having given Tabby a sign, I had the camera to my eye again, so I didn’t actually see all of what happened in the next two seconds, but I can show one instant of it, the instant I pressed the button, with four pictures I took of her. I had warned Tabby not to try for the spray while cameras were on her, as I knew they would be as she left the church, and of course her having an escort at each elbow made it impossible to sneak up from the side, but evidently the vision of another C was too much for him, and he had worked his way around to get at her from the front. Seeing his head and arm in the finder, and the arm and hand of the man on Mrs. Bynoe’s left warding him off, I lowered the camera, slid off the boxes, and started forward with the notion of grabbing his coattail and jerking him away, but he had wriggled off before I got there. Mrs. Bynoe was looking upset, with her teeth clamped on her lip, and her escorts were asking her questions, but she shook her head, said something to her husband, and turned uptown, the men close beside her. The pink spray was intact.
I looked around, over shoulders and between hats, saw Tabby making himself small against the railing, and saw him move, uptown. The nervy little cuss was stalking his prey. It wouldn’t have been discreet to chat with him there in the public eye, even if I had anything helpful to say, and anyway it was understood that he was strictly on his own, but there was nothing against my being an impartial observer. So I tagged along, some eight rows of hats behind Tabby and fifteen or so behind the trio.
They took their time. Of course Fifth Avenue was closed to traffic, but one of the Bynoe limousines was probably parked nearby on Madison, so Tabby didn’t have all day. At Fifty-fourth Street they headed across the avenue, and that was slow going since they kept three abreast. By the time they reached the other curb Tabby had closed in to eight or ten feet, and I was keeping my distance from Tabby.
It happened when they had gone some fifty yards along Fifty-fourth Street, about halfway to Madison. The throng wasn’t as thick there as on the avenue, but it was still a throng. Tabby was almost directly behind them, and I wasn’t far off, when suddenly Mrs. Bynoe stopped short, grabbed her husband’s arms, and said to him in a sort of half-strangled scream, “I can’t stand it! I didn’t want to-here on the street-I can’t breathe! Mil, you-” She let go of his arms, straightened up, rigid, shuddered all over, and toppled. The two men had her before she went down, but then she went into convulsion, her neck and spine arching backward and she got away from them and was on the sidewalk.
Tabby darted in from the circle of bystanders, snatched the pink spray from her shoulder, darted out again, through the circle, and sprinted for Madison Avenue.
There was only one thing for me to do, and I did it. I went after him. For one thing, if anyone else felt like chasing him, my being ahead would show him he wasn’t needed. For another, I couldn’t have asked for a better excuse to make myself scarce. So I stretched my legs, and while I can no longer do the hundred in 10:7, I can move. So could Tabby. When he got to Madison I was still ten steps behind. He took the corner, turning downtown, without slackening, and ran into luck. Twenty yards down a taxi was discharging a couple of passengers. Tabby was there before they shut the door, and I was too. He tumbled in, and while I didn’t tumble, I didn’t dawdle. The hackie, swiveling his neck for a look, inquired mildly, “Ghosts?”
I controlled my panting enough to speak. “Right. My friend here had never been in a church before, and the choir’s costumes got him. Nine-eighteen West Thirty-fifth Street.”
He surveyed the street to the rear, saw no cop or other pursuer coming for fugitives, turned and pulled the gear lever, and we rolled. When we had gone a block Tabby opened his mouth to speak, but I glared at him and he shut it again. Hackies usually have good ears, sometimes too good, and it wouldn’t help to give that one any items to remember us by. It was already bad enough. So he had heard nothing, because there was nothing for him to hear, when he deposited us at the curb in front of the old brownstone. I led the way up the seven steps of the stoop, let us in with my key, got my hat and coat on the hall rack and shelf, and was going to do likewise with Tabby’s, but he hung on to his coat, carefully inserted his hand in the left side pocket, and carefully withdrew it with thumb and forefinger closed on the stem of the spray.
“Here it is,” he said. “Come across. I’m on my way.”
“Hold your horses. I have to tap the till.” I put his coat on a hanger and his hat on the shelf, steered him across the hall and into the front room, told him to wait, opened the soundproofed door to the office, passed through, and shut it behind me.
Wolfe, at his desk with sections of the Sunday paper scattered around, looked up, saw I was empty-handed except for the camera, and demanded, “Well?”
I crossed to my desk and put the camera down, and stood. “Yes, sir. I got pictures, and he got the spray. But first I want-”
“Where is it?”
“Just a minute. He’s in the front room with it, hanging on to it until he sees his money, and as soon as I pay him he’ll want to skip, and there’s a complication. Mrs. Bynoe collapsed on the sidewalk, in convulsion, and while she was lying there with her head curved back nearly to her heels he dashed in and grabbed the spray and ran. It wasn’t a pretty performance and I would have liked to collar him and call a cop, but that wouldn’t have helped her any, and also there was you to consider, sitting here with your mouth watering. So I ran after him. If I had caught him in time I would have walked him here, but before I reached him he had hopped a taxi. There was no use-”
“I want to see the spray.”
“Just a minute. We may-”
“There will be many minutes. Get him in here.”
I let him have his way because he wasn’t listening anyhow. I went to the front room and brought Tabby. When he got to Wolfe’s desk and Wolfe extended a hand, I thought Tabby was going to refuse to part with it until he touched the money, and so did he, but Wolfe growled like a lion at sight of a hunk of juicy meat, and Tabby handed him the spray, which had been crushed some, but not badly. Half of the dozen or so blossoms were intact. Wolfe looked them over, one by one, and then got a magnifying glass from a drawer and went over them again, with his lips closed so tight he didn’t have any. Finally he pushed his chair back, arose, and, holding the spray by the butt of the stem, made for the hall and the kitchen, where there were two refrigerators, one cool and one cold. Soon he returned, without the spray, crossed to his desk and sat, and announced, “I would give three thousand dollars for that plant.”
I shook my head. “Don’t look at me. No, thanks. And if you want to deal with Tabby, deal direct. Before I pay him I would like to report in detail, if and when you’ve got yourself enough under control to listen.”
