and then Saul had to get physical with him when he wanted to open doors on the upper floors trying to find Mrs Usher.
I expected more turmoil when, at ten-forty, the bell rang and Inspector Cramer was on the stoop, but it wasn’t Wolfe he had come early for. He merely asked if Mrs Robilotti had arrived, and, when I told him no, stayed outside. Theoretically, in a democracy, a police inspector should react just the same to a dame with a Fifth Avenue mansion as to an unmarried mother, but a job is a job, and facts are facts and one fact was that the Commissioner himself had taken the trouble to make a trip to the mansion. So I didn’t chalk it up against Cramer that he waited out on the sidewalk for the Robilotti limousine; and anyway, he was there to greet the three unmarried mothers when Sergeant Purley Stebbins arrived with them in a police car. The three chevaliers, Paul Schuster, Beverly Kent, and Edwin Laidlaw, came singly, on their own.
I had promised myself a certain pleasure, and I didn’t let Cramer’s one-man reception committee interfere with it. When the limousine finally rolled to the curb, a few minutes late, and he convoyed Mrs Robilotti up the stoop steps, followed by her husband, son, daughter, and butler, I held the door for them as they entered and then left them to Fritz. My objective was the last one in, Hackett. When he had crossed the sill I put my hands ready for his coat and hat, in the proper manner exactly.
'Good morning, sir,' I said. 'A pleasant day. Mr Wolfe will be down shortly.'
It got him. He darted a glance at the others, saw that no eye was on him, handed me his hat, and said, 'Quite. Thank you, Goodwin.'
That made the day for me personally, no matter how it turned out professionally. I took him to the office and then went to the kitchen, buzzed the plant rooms on the house phone, and told Wolfe the cast had arrived.
'Mrs Usher?' he asked.
'Okay. In her room. She’ll stay put.'
'Mr Byne?'
'Also okay. In the office with the others, with Saul glued to him.'
'Very well. I’ll be down.'
I went and joined the mob. They were scattered around, some seated and some standing. I permitted myself a private grin when I saw that Cramer, finding the red leather chair gone, had moved one of the yellow ones to its exact position and put Mrs Robilotti in it, and was on his feet beside it, bending down to her. As I threaded my way through to my desk the sound of the elevator came, and in a moment Wolfe entered.
No pronouncing of names was required, since he had met the Robilottis and the Grantham twins at the time of the jewellery hunt. He made it to his desk, sent his eyes around, and sat. He looked at Cramer.
'You have explained the purpose of this gathering, Mr Cramer?'
'Yes. You’re going to prove that Goodwin is either wrong or right.'
'I didn’t say ‘prove’. I said I intend to satisfy myself and deal with him accordingly.' He surveyed the audience. 'Ladies and gentlemen. I will not keep you long-at least, not most of you. I have no exhortation for you and no questions to ask. To form an opinion of Mr Goodwin’s competence as an eye-witness, I need to see, not what he saw, since these quarters are too cramped for that, but an approximation of it. You cannot take your positions precisely as they were last Tuesday evening, or re-enact the scene with complete fidelity, but we’ll do the best we can. Archie?'
I left my chair to stage-manage. Thinking that Mrs Robilotti and her Robert were the most likely to baulk, I left them till the last. First I put Hackett behind the table, which was the bar, and Laidlaw and Helen Yarmis at one end of it. Then Rose Tuttle and Beverly Kent, on chairs over where the globe had stood. Then Celia Grantham and Paul Schuster by the wall to the right of Wolfe’s desk, with her sitting and him standing. Then I put Saul Panzer on a chair near the door to the hall, and told the audience, 'Mr Panzer here is Faith Usher. The distance is wrong and so are the others, but the relative positions are about right.' Then I put an ashtray on a chair to the right of the safe, and told them, 'This is Faith Usher’s bag, containing the bottle of poison.' With all that arranged, I didn’t think Mrs Robilotti would protest when I asked her and her husband to take their places in front of the bar, and she didn’t.
That was all, except for Ethel Varr and me, and I got her and stood with her at a corner of my desk, and told Wolfe, 'All set.'
'Miss Tuttle and I were much farther away,' Beverly Kent objected.
'Yes, sir,' Wolfe agreed. 'It is not presumed that this is identical. Now.' His eyes went to the group at the bar. 'Mr Hackett, I understand that when Mr Grantham went to the bar for champagne for himself and Miss Usher, two glasses were there in readiness. You had poured one of them a few minutes previously, and the other just before he arrived. Is that correct?'
'Yes, sir.' Hackett had fully recovered from our brush in the hall and was back in character. 'I have stated to the police that one of the glasses had been standing there three or four minutes.'
'Please pour a glass now and put it in place.'
The bottles in the cooler on the table were champagne, and good champagne-Wolfe had insisted on it. Fritz had opened two of them. Pouring champagne is always nice to watch, but I doubt if any pourer ever had as attentive an audience as Hackett had, as he took a bottle from the cooler and filled a glass.
'Keep the bottle in your hand,' Wolfe directed him. 'I’ll explain what I’m after and then you may proceed. I want to see it from various angles. You will pour another glass, and Mr Grantham will come and get the two glasses and go with them to Mr Panzer-that is to say, to Miss Usher. He will hand him one, and Mr Goodwin will be there and take the other one. Meanwhile you will be pouring two more glasses, and Mr Grantham will come and get them and go with them to Miss Tuttle, and hand her one, and again Mr Goodwin will be there and take the other one. You will do the same with Miss Varr and Miss Grantham. Not with Miss Yarmis and Mrs Robilotti, since they are there at the bar. That way I shall see it from all sides. Is that clear, Mr Hackett?'
'Yes, sir.'
'It’s not clear to me,' Cecil said. 'What’s the idea? I didn’t do that. All I did was get two glasses and take one to Miss Usher.'
