Chapter 7
I HAVE OFTEN WONDERED how Paul Rago felt when, at his trial a couple of months later, no evidence whatever was introduced about fingerprints. He knew then, of course, that it had been a treek and nothing but, that no prints had been lifted from the tape by Saul or anyone else, and that if he had kept his mouth shut and played along he might have been playing yet.
I once asked Wolfe what he would have done if that had happened.
He said. “It didn’t happen.”
I said, “What if it had?”
He said, “Pfui. The contingency was too remote to consider. It was as good as certain that the murderer had untied the tape. Confronted with the strong probability that it was about to be disclosed that his print was on the tape, he had to say something. He had to explain how it got there, and it was vastly preferable to do so voluntarily instead of waiting until evidence compelled it.”
I hung on. “Okay, it was a good trick, but I still say what if?”
“And I still say it is pointless to consider remote contingencies. What if your mother had abandoned you in a tiger’s cage at the age of three months? What would you have done?”
I told him I’d think it over and let him know.
As for motive, you can have three guesses if you want them, but you’ll never get warm if you dig them out of what I have reported. In all the jabber in Wolfe’s office that day, there wasn’t one word that had the slightest bearing on why Philip Holt died, which goes to show why detectives get ulcers. No, I’m wrong; it was mentioned that Philip Holt liked women, and certainly that had a bearing. One of the women he had liked was Paul Rago’s wife, an attractive blue-eyed number about half as old as her husband, and he was still liking her, and, unlike Flora Korby, she had liked him and proved it.
Paul Rago hadn’t liked that.
MURDER IS NO JOKE
Chapter 1
I WAS A LITTLE disappointed in Flora Gallant when she arrived that Tuesday morning for her eleven-o’clock appointment with Nero Wolfe. Her getup was a letdown. One of my functions as Wolfe’s factotum is checking on people who phone for an appointment with him, and when I learned that Flora Gallant was one of the staff of her brother Alec’s establishment on East Fifty-fourth Street, and remembered remarks a friend of mine named Lily Rowan had made about Alex Gallant, I had phoned Lily for particulars.
And got them. Gallant was crowding two others for top ranking in the world of high fashion. He thumbed his nose at Paris and sneered at Rome, and was getting away with it. He had refused to finish three dresses for the Duchess of Harwynd because she postponed flying over from London for fittings. He declined to make anything whatever for a certain famous movie actress because he didn’t like the way she handled her hips when she walked. He had been known to charge as little as eight hundred dollars for an afternoon frock, but it had been for a favorite customer so he practically gave it away.
And so forth. Therefore when I opened the door to admit his sister Flora that Tuesday morning it was a letdown to see a dumpy middle-aged female in a dark gray suit that was anything but spectacular. It needed pressing, and the shoulders were too tight, and her waist wasn’t where it thought it was. As I ushered her down the hall to the office and introduced her to Wolfe, I was thinking that if the shoemaker’s son went barefoot I supposed his sister could too, but all the same I felt cheated.
Her conversation was no more impressive than her costume, at least at the beginning. Seated on the edge of the red leather chair beyond the end of Wolfe’s desk, the fingers of both hands gripping the rim of the gray leather bag on her lap, she apologized, in a low meek mumble with just a trace of a foreign accent, for asking such an important man as Nero Wolfe to give any of his valuable time to her and her troubles. That didn’t sound promising, indicating as it did that she was looking for a bargain. As she went on with it Wolfe started a frown going, and soon he cut her off by saying that it would take less of his time if she would tell him what her troubles were.
She nodded. “I know. I just wanted you to understand that I don’t expect anything for myself. I’m not anybody myself, but you know who my brother is? My brother Alec?”
“Yes. Mr. Goodwin has informed me. An illustrious dressmaker.”
“He is not merely a dressmaker. He is an artist, a great artist.” She wasn’t arguing, just stating a fact. “This trouble is about him, and that’s why I must be careful with it. That’s why I come to you, and also”-she sent me a glance and then back to Wolfe-”also Mr. Archie Goodwin, because I know that although you are private detectives, you are gentlemen. I know you are worthy of confidence.”
She stopped, apparently for acknowledgment. Wolfe obliged her. “Umph.”
“Then it is understood I am trusting you?”
“Yes. You may.”
She looked at me. “Mr. Goodwin?”
“Right. Whatever Mr. Wolfe says. I only work here.”
