Twice a year, on her birthday and on New Year's Day, Wolfe sent her a bushel of orchids from his choicest plants, but that was all, except that he had gone to the funeral when Britton died of a heart attack in 1950. That was what Fritz disapproved of. He thought any man, even Nero Wolfe, should invite his daughter, even an adopted one, to dinner once in a while. When he expressed that opinion to me, as he did occasionally, I told him that he knew damn well that Caria found Wolfe as irritating as he found her, so what was the use? 30 I followed Wolfe into the office. Caria was in the red leather chair. As we entered she got up to face us and said indignantly, 'I've been waiting here over two hours!' Wolfe went and took her hand and bowed over it. 'At least you had a comfortable chair,' he said courteously, and went to the one behind his desk, the only one in the world he thoroughly approved of, and sat. Caria offered me a hand with her mind elsewhere, and I took it without bowing. 'Fritz didn't know where you were,' she told Wolfe. 'No,' he agreed. 'But he said you knew about Marko.' 'Yes.' 'I heard it on the radio. I was going to go to the restaurant to see Leo, then I thought I would go to the police, and then I decided to come here. I suppose you were surprised, but I wasn't.' She sounded bitter. She looked bitter too, but I had to admit it didn't make her any less attractive. With her dark eyes flashing, she might still have been the young Balkan damsel who had bounded in on me years before. Wolfe's eyes had narrowed at her. 'If you are saying that you came here and waited two hours for me on account of Marko's 31 death, I must ask why. Were you attached to him?' 'Yes.' Wolfe shut his eyes. 'If I know,' she said, 'what that word means ? attached. If you mean attached as a woman to a man, no, of course not. Not like that.' Wolfe opened his eyes. 'Then how?' 'We were attached in our devotion to a great and noble cause! The freedom of our people! And your people! And there you sit making faces! Marko has told me ? he has asked you to help us with your brains and your money, and you refused!' ; 'He didn't tell me you were in it. He didn't mention you.' 'I suppose not.' She was scornful. 'He ( knew that would make you sneer even more. s Here you are, rich and fat and happy with 1 your fine home and fine food and your glass rooms on the roof with ten thousand orchids for you to smirk at, and with this Archie 1 Goodwin for a slave to do all the work and 1 take all the danger! What do you care if the ^ people of the land you came from are groant ing under the heel of the oppressor, with s the light of their liberty smothered and t the fruits of their labor snatched from them 1 and their children at the point of the 32 sword? Stop making faces!' Wolfe leaned back and sighed deeply. 'Apparently,' he said dryly, 'I must give you a lecture. I grimaced neither at your impudence nor at your sentiment, but at your diction and style. I condemn cliches, especially those that have been corrupted by fascists and communists. Such phrases as 'great and noble cause' and 'fruits of their labor' have been given an ineradicable stink by Hitler and Stalin and all their vermin brood. Besides, in this century of the overwhelming triumph of science, the appeal of the cause of human freedom is no longer that it is great and noble, it is more or less than that, it is essential. It is no greater or nobler than the cause of edible food or the cause of effective shelter. Man must have freedom or he will cease to exist as man. The despot, whether fascist or communist, is no longer restricted to such puny tools as the heel or the sword or even the machine gun; science has provided weapons that can give him the planet, and only men who are willing to die for freedom have any chance of living for it.' 'Like you?' She was disdainful. 'No. Like Marko. He died.' Wolfe flapped a hand. 'I'll get to Marko. As for me, no one has ordained you as my 33 monitor. I make my contributions to the cause of freedom -- they are mostly financial -- through those channels and agencies that seem to me most efficient. I shall not submit a list of them for your inspection and judgment. I refused to contribute to Marko's project because I distrusted it. Marko was himself headstrong, gullible, oversanguine, and naive. He had --' 'For shame! He's dead, and you insult --' 'That will do!' he roared. It stopped her. He went down a few decibels. 'You share the common fallacy, but I don't. I do not insult Marko. I pay him the tribute of speaking of him and feeling about him precisely as I did when he lived, the insult would be to smear his corpse with the honey excreted by my fear of death. He had no understanding of the forces he was trying to direct from a great distance, no control of them, and no effective check on their honor or fidelity. For all he knew, some of them may be agents of Tito, or even of Moscow --' 'That isn't true! He knew all about them -- anyway, the leaders. He wasn't an idiot, and neither am I. We do check on them, all the time, and I -- Where are you going?' Wolfe had shoved his chair back and was on his feet. 'You may not be an idiot,' he 34 told her, 'but I am. I was letting this become a pointless brawl when I should have known better. I'm hungry. I was in the middle of dinner when the news came of Marko's death. It took my appetite. I tried to finish anyway, but I couldn't swallow. With an empty stomach, I'm a dunce, and I'm going to the kitchen and eat something.' He glanced up at the wall clock. 'It's nearly two o'clock. Will you join me?' She shook her head. 'I had dinner. I couldn't eat.' 'Archie?' I said I could use a glass of milk and followed him out. In the kitchen Fritz greeted us by putting down his magazine, leaving his chair, telling Wolfe, 'Starving the live will not profit the dead,' and going to open the refrigerator door. 'The turkey,' Wolfe said, 'and the cheese and pineapple. I've never heard that before. Montaigne?' 'No, sir.' Fritz put the turkey on the table, uncovered it, and got the slicer and handed it to Wolfe. 'I made it up. I knew you would have to send for me, or come, and I wished to have an appropriate remark ready for you.' 'I congratulate you.' Wolfe was wielding the knife. 'To be taken for Montaigne is a 35 peak few men can i reach-' I had only had mnilk in n-iind, ^ut Fritz's personal version of .'cottage cheese with fresh pineapple soaked inn white wine is something that even a Vishins^s-ky wouldn't veto. Also Wolfe offered me aa wing and a drumstick, and it would have boeen unsociable to refuse. Fritz fixed a tasty ^ tray and took it in to Caria, but when Wolfe and I rejoined her, some twenty minutltes l^te^ [t was still untouched on the tabble at her elbow. I admit it could have been i that she was too upset to eat, but I suspecttted her. She knew damn well that it irritated I ^oife to see good food turned down. Back at his desk, hh?e frowned at her. 'Let's see if we can avoicid- contention. You said earlier that you supposed I was surprised, but that you weren'/t. SUH^sed at what?' She was retumingg the frown. <<I don't -- oh, of course. SurRprise4 that Marko was murdered.' 'And you weren't Jt?' 'No.' 'Why not?' 'Because of what : he v^as doing. Do you know what he was didoin^' 'Circumstantially, , no. Tell me.' 'Well, in the past t -three years he has put nearly sixty thousand dollars of his own :36 money into the cause, and he has collected more than half a million. He has gone seven times to Italy to confer with leaders of the movement who crossed the Adriatic to meet him. He has sent twelve men and two women over from this country to help -- three Montenegrins, three Slovenians, two Croats, and six Serbs. He has had things printed and arranged for them to get to the peasants. He has sent over many tons of supplies, many different things --' 'Weapons? Guns?' She gave it a thought. 'I don't know. Of course, that would be against the law -- American law. Marko had a high regard for American law.' Wolfe nodded. 'Not unmerited. I didn't know he was in so deep. So you are assuming that he was murdered because of these activities. That either Belgrade or Moscow regarded him as a menace, or at least an intolerable nuisance, and arranged for his removal. Is that it?' 'Yes.' 'Belgrade or Moscow?' Caria hesitated. 'I don't know. Of course there are those who secretly work with the Russians all over Yugoslavia, but more in Montenegro than other parts, because it is next to Albania, and Albania is ruled by the 37 puppets of the Russians.' 'So are Hungary and Rumania and Bulgaria.'
'Yes, but you know the border between Montenegro and Albania. You know those mountains.' 'I do indeed. Or I did.' From the look on Wolfe's face, the emotions aroused by the memory were mixed. 'I was nine years old the first time I climbed the Black Mountain.' He shrugged it off. 'Whether Belgrade or Moscow, you think they had an agent in New York, or sent one, to deal with Marko. Do you?' 'Of course!' 'Not of course if it is merely a surmise. Can you validate it? Have you any facts?' 'I have the fact that they hated him and he was a danger to them.' Wolfe shook his head. 'Not that kind. Something specific -- a name, an act, a thing said.' 'No.' 'Very well. I accept your surmise as worthy of inquiry. How many persons are there in and around New York, other than contributors of money, who have been associated with Marko in this?' 'Why, altogether, about two hundred.' 38 'I mean closely associated. In his confidence.'
She had to think. 'Four or five. Six, counting me.' 'Give me their names and addresses and phone numbers. Archie, take them down.' I got my notebook and pen and was ready, but nothing came. I looked at her. She was sitting with her dark Montenegrin eyes focused on Wolfe, her chin up and her lips pressed together. 'Well?' he demanded. 'I don't trust you,' she said. Naturally he would have liked to tell me to bounce her, and I must say I couldn't have blamed him, but she wasn't just a prospective client with a checkbook. She had or might have something he needed for paying a personal debt. So he merely barked at her. 'Then why the devil did you come here?' They glared at each other. It was not a sight to impel me to hurry up and get married and have a daughter, especially not an adopted one. She broke the tableau. 'I came because I had to do something. I knew if I went to the police they would want me to tell everything about us, and I couldn't do that because some of the things some of us do -- 39 well, you asked about sending weapons.' She fluttered a hand. 'But Marko was your good friend, and he thought you were his, and you have a famous reputation for catching murderers, and after all I still have
