him to tell her about the FBI. Or possibly very deep. 'Ever, ever shalt thou kiss.' And 'Forever wilt thou love.' But he told her he was going to marry another girl, so she shot him, probably with his own gun. The second alternative, which we prefer by far. It would be hard to nail her. She might be able to prove she was at that lecture but not what time she left. Possibly she wasn't there at all. She spent the evening at Sixty-three Arbor Street, having it out with the bold lover, and she shot him before the G-men arrived. Does that appeal to you?'
'As conjecture, yes.'
'Then I should look into the lecture question. She might have a tight alibi. According to Cramer, the G-men left about eleven o'clock, and of course they had combed the place, whether they killed him or not; they got the material he had gathered. So they arrived not later than ten-thirty, or even make it ten-forty. If she shot him she was out before they came. The New School is on Twelfth Street. If anyone saw her at the lecture as late as ten-twenty, or even a quarter past, she's clear. I'll start asking.'
'No.'
'No?'
'No. If they learned you were doing that, either by surveillance of you or through inadvertence, they would know we were seriously considering the possibility that that woman killed him, and that would be disastrous. We must maintain the illusion that we are convinced that a member of the Federal Bureau of Investigation killed Morris Althaus and that we are procuring evidence to establish it; otherwise our preparations for next Thursday evening will come to nothing. For protection of our flank we needed to know definitely if Miss Dacos was lying, and you have settled that: she was. Satisfactory. She lied to conceal the fact that she had compromised herself, and that satisfies us. Whether her involvement was merely a secret intimacy she doesn't want revealed, or was murder by her hand, is of no importance to us.'
'Cramer would love to know that. After giving us the steer.
I'll call him and tell him, to relieve his mind.'
'Pfui. When we have relieved our minds by finishing the job we were hired to do we'll consider our obligation to him. If it seems feasible without excessive effort we'll expose the murderer for him. If it isn't a member of the FBI, as he expects and hopes, he won't thank us, but we'll owe him no apology.'
'Then we forget the murder until after Thursday.'
'Yes.'
'That's just dandy. Agencies are closed today and tomorrow, so Hewitt can't start looking until Monday. I'll be at the Flamingo this evening if anything happens; for instance, if Hewitt calls to say he has decided that it's too much trouble and we have to find someone else. Tomorrow Miss Rowan is having a crowd in for Sunday lunch and dancing and I'll stay afterwards to help empty ashtrays. Any instructions for this afternoon?'
'Turn off the radio,' he growled.
11
It bothered me for four days and four nights, from Saturday afternoon, when Wolfe said we would forget the murder, to Wednesday morning, when I did something about it on my own.
There were two aspects. First, if the conjecture about Sarah Dacos, or something like it, was actually a fact, I had removed evidence from the scene of a murder and was withholding it. Of course the cops had had their whack at it, they had certainly seen the photograph and had left it there, and Mrs Althaus had given me the keys, but that was only a legal out. It was the second aspect that really bothered me. Cramer had saved our licenses for us, at least so far, and it was me, Archie Goodwin, he had invited to a conference and bought a carton of milk for and turned loose on a homicide. I have no objection to playing games with cops, sometimes you want to and sometimes you have to, but this was different. I owed Cramer something personally.
So it bothered me, but something else was bothering me still more, the act Wolfe was staging, the fanciest on record. Too much of it, nearly all of it, was entirely out of our control. For instance, when I called Hewitt from a booth Monday evening to ask how he had made out, and he said fine, he had got one actor at one agency and the other at another, and they would both come to his place Tuesday afternoon, and I asked if he had made sure that the one for me could drive a car and had a license, he said he had forgotten to ask, but everyone could drive a car! And that was absolutely vital and he knew it. He said he would find out right away; he had the actor's phone number. On some other details he was okay, like his phone call to our number Tuesday noon, as arranged. He told Wolfe he was extremely sorry, he apologized, but he would be able to include only twelve Phalaenopsis Aphrodite in the shipment instead of twenty, and no Oncidium flexuosum at all. He said he would do his best to get it off by noon Wednesday, so it should arrive by two o'clock. He handled that perfectly. He was also okay on the call he made Tuesday evening, to report on the supplies and arrangements for the dinner for the Ten for Aristology, but for him that was just routine, and anyway it was straight.
Fred Durkin and Orrie Cather were no worry because they had been left to Saul to handle, and if there was any snag he would let us know. How was up to him.
Off and on all day and evening Monday, and even some on Tuesday, Wolfe and I discussed a problem. It wasn't an argument; we just discussed it. Should I phone Wragg, the special agent in charge, arrange to meet him somewhere, tell him that Wolfe had got enough dope on the Althaus homicide to make it really tough and I wanted out, and offer to pass everything we had over to him for ten grand or twenty grand or fifty grand?
The trouble was we didn't know him. It might make it next to certain that he would take the bait, but it might do just the opposite, make him smell a rat. Finally, late Tuesday morning, we crossed it off. It was too chancy, and time was too short.
At nine o'clock Wednesday morning, when I heard the elevator taking Wolfe up to the plant rooms, I took my second cup of breakfast coffee to the office, to sit and look at an idea that had been pecking at me off and on since Monday morning. There would be nothing for me until the truckload of orchids arrived at two o'clock; everything had been done that could be done as far as I knew, which wasn't very far. When I finished the coffee it was only nine-twenty, and Sarah Dacos probably didn't start the day at the Bruner office until nine-thirty or even
