Gambit

approval, but it would be difficult.' She was shaking her head. 'He wouldn't. If Clan Kalmus said no, he wouldn't. And my mother wouldn't if my father said no. So it's just me. I can hire you, can't I?' 'Certainly not. Without the cooperation of your father and his attorney I couldn't move a 5 finger.5 Wolfe tore pages with a little extra force. Twenty-two grand wouldn't break any record, but it would be a nice start on 1962. 'That's silly,' Miss Blount said. 'Of course your mental processes are stultified by the fire. Why I told Clan Kalmus to get you, and why I came, I thought you could do things that nobody else can do. You're supposed to be a wizard. Everyone says you are. Clan Kalmus himself said you're a wizard, but he doesn't want you taking over his case. That's what he said, 'my case.' It's not his case, it's my father's case!' 'Yes,' Wolfe agreed, 'your father's case, not yours. You must--' 'I'm making it mine! Didn't I say this is the first good thing I've ever done?' Leaning forward, she grabbed his wrist and jerked his hand away from the dictionary, and hung on to the wrist. 'Does a wizard only do easy things? What if you're the only man on earth who can save my father from being convicted of a murder he didn't do? If there was something I could do that no one else on earth could do, I'd do it! You don't need my father or his attorney because I can tell you anything they can. I can tell you things they wouldn't, like that Clan Kalmus is in love with my mother. Clan Kalmus wouldn't, and my father couldn't because he doesn't know it, and he's in jail and I'm not!' She turned loose the wrist, and Wolfe tore 6 out pages and dropped them on the fire. He was scowling, not at the dictionary. She had hit exactly the right note, calling him a wizard and implying (not inferring) that he was the one and only?after mentioning what she had in her bag. He turned the scowl on her. 'You say you know he didn't do it. Is that merely an opinion seemly for a daughter or can you support it with evidence?' 'I haven't any evidence. All the evidence is against him. But it's not just an opinion, I know it. I know my father well enough to?' 'No.' He snapped it. 'That is cogent for you but not for me. You want to engage me, and pay me, to act on behalf of a man without his knowledge?a man who, in spite of his wealth and standing, has been charged with murder and locked up. The evidence must be strong. Your father wouldn't be my client; you would.' 'All right, I will.' She opened the bag. 'I said would. It's preposterous, but it is also tempting. I need to know?but first what Mr Goodwin and I already know.' His head turned. 'Archie. What do we know?' 'The crop?' I asked. 'Or the highlights?' 'Everything. Then we'll see if Miss Blount has anything to add.' 'Well.' I focused on the prospective client. 'This is from the papers and some talk I've heard. If I'm wrong on anything don't try to remember until I'm through, stop me. The 7 Gambit Club is a chess club with two floors in an old brick building on West Twelfth Street. It has about sixty members, business and professional men and a couple of bankers. As chess clubs go, it's choosy. Tuesday evening, January thirtieth, two weeks ago tomorrow, it had an affair. A man named Paul Jerin, twenty-six years old, not a member, was to play simultaneous blindfold games with twelve of the members. 'About Paul Jerin. I'm mixing the papers and the talk I've heard without separating them. He was a screw-ball. He had three sources of income: from writing verses and gags for greeting cards, from doing magic stunts at parties, and from shooting craps. Also he was hot at chess, but he only played chess for fun, no tournament stuff. You knew him. You met him?how long ago?' 'About a year. I met him at a party where he did tricks.' 'And he cultivated you?or you cultivated him. I've heard it both ways?of course you realize there's a lot of talk, a thing like this. Learning that he played chess, you arranged for him to play a game with your father, at your home. Then he came again, and again. How often? I've heard different versions.' 'He played chess with my father only three times. Three evenings. He said it was no fun because it was too easy. The last time he gave my father odds of a rook and beat him. That 8 was months ago.' 'But aside from chess you saw a lot of him. One version, you were going to marry him, but your father?' That's not true. I never dreamed of marrying him. And I didn't see a lot of him. The police have asked me about it, and I know exactly. In the last three months I saw him just five times, at parties, mostly dancing. He was a good dancer. No girl with any sense would have married him.' I nodded. 'So much for talk. But you got your father to arrange that affair at the Gambit Club.' We had to keep our voices up because of the noise Wolfe made tearing paper. 'They've asked me about that too,' she said. 'The way it happened, Paul suggested it to me, he said it would be fun to flatten their noses, and I told my father, but I didn't get him to do it. He said he thought two or three of the members could beat Paul with him playing blindfold, and he arranged it.' 'Okay, he arranged it. Of course that's important. Did your father know that Paul always drank hot chocolate when he was playing chess?' 'Yes. Paul drank hot chocolate when he was doing almost anything.' 'Then we'll tackle the affair of January thirtieth. It was stag. Men only.' ^Yes. 'This is from the papers. I read murders in 9 the papers, but with full attention only when we're in on it, so I may slip up. If I do, stop me. No one was there but club members, about forty of them, and Paul Jerin, and the steward, named Bernard Nash, and the cook, named Tony Laghi. In a big room on the ground floor there were twelve chess tables, in two rows, six tables in each row, ranged along the two long walls, and at each table a club member sat with his back to the wall. They were the players. That left room in the middle, the length of the room, for the other members to move around and watch the play. Right?' 'Yes.' 'But four of the other members didn't just watch the play, they were messengers. Paul Jerin was in a smaller room to the rear of the house which one paper, I think the Times, said contains the best chess library in the country. He was sitting on a couch, and, after play started, he was alone in the room. The tables were designated by numbers, and each messenger served three tables. When play started a messenger went in to Jerin and told him the table?' 'Not when play started. A man playing blindfold has white at all the boards and makes the first move.' 'I should think he'd need it. Anyway, whenever a member at one of the tables made a move the messenger serving that table went in to Jerin and told him the table number and the 10 move, and Jerin told him his move in reply, and he went back out to the table and reported it. Right?' 'Yes.' 'Okay, but I don't believe it. I have monkeyed with chess a little, enough to get the idea, and I do not believe that any man could carry twelve simultaneous games in his head without seeing the boards. I know men have done it, even twenty games, but I don't believe it.' Wolfe grunted. 'One hundred and sixty-nine million, five hundred and eighteen thousand, eight hundred and twenty-nine, followed by twenty-one ciphers. The number of ways the first ten moves, both sides, may be played. A man who can play twelve simultaneous games blindfold is a lusus nature. Merely a freak.' 'Is that material?' I asked him. 'No.' I returned to Sally Blount. She had told me on the phone that her name was Sarah but everyone called her Sally and she preferred it. 'Play was to start at eight-thirty,' I said, 'but it actually started at eight-forty, ten minutes late. From then on Jerin was alone in the library except when one of the messengers entered. I think I can name them. Charles W. Yerkes, banker. Daniel Kalmus, attorney-at-law. Ernst Hausman, wealthy retired broker, one of the founders of the club. Morton Farrow, a nephew of Mrs Matthew Blount, your 11 mother.' I paused, shutting my eyes. I opened them. 'I pass. I'm sure one of the papers said what your cousin Morton does for a living, but I can't recall it.' 'He's in my father's business.' Her brows were up, making her eyes even bigger. 'You must have a good memory, even without your full attention.' 'My memory is so good I'm practically a freak, but we keep newspapers for two weeks and I admit I looked them over after you phoned. From here on you may know things that haven't been published. The police and the District Attorney always save some details. I know from the papers that your father played at Table Number Six. That the steward and the cook, Bernard Nash and Tony Laghi, were in the kitchen in the basement, down a flight. That shortly after play started a pot of hot chocolate was taken from the kitchen to Paul Jerin in the library, and he drank some, I don't know how much, and about half an hour later he told one of the messengers, Yerkes, the banker, that he didn't feel well, and at or about nine-thirty he told another messenger, Kalmus, the lawyer, that he couldn't go on; and Kalmus went and brought a doctor, one of the players?I don't know which table? named Victor Avery. Dr Avery asked Jerin some questions and sent someone to a drug store on Sixth Avenue for something. By the time the medicine arrived Jerin was worse and 12 the doctor dosed him. In another half an hour Jerin was even worse and they sent for an ambulance. He arrived at St Vincent's Hospital in the ambulance, accompanied by Dr Avery, at a quarter to eleven, and he died at twenty minutes past three. Later the Medical Examiner found arsenic in him. The Times didn't say how much, but the Gazette said seven grains. Any correction?' 'I don't know.' 'Not published if the arsenic was in the chocolate. Was it?' 'I don't know.' 'Also not published, the name of the person who took the chocolate from the kitchen up to the library. Do you know that?' 'Yes. My father did.' I gawked at her. Wolfe's hand stopped short on its way to the fire with pages. I spoke. 'But your father was at Table Six, playing chess. Wasn't he?' 'Yes. But when he made his second move the messenger for that table, Mr Hausman, wasn't there at the moment, and he got up and went to see if Paul had been supplied with chocolate. Table Six was at the end of the room next to the library. The chocolate hadn't been brought, and my father went down to the kitchen and got it.' 'And took it up to Jerin himself?' 'Yes.' Wolfe shot a glance at her. I took a breath. 13 'Of course I believe you, but how do you know?' 'My father told me. The next day. He wasn't arrested until Saturday?of course you know that. He told my mother and me exactly what happened. That's partly why I know he didn't do it, the way he told us about it, the way he took it for granted that we would know he didn't do it.' Her eyes went to Wolfe. 'You would say that's not cogent for you, but it certainly is for me. I know.' 'Okay,' I said, 'he delivered the chocolate. Putting it on a table by the couch Jerin