Gambit

was sitting on?' 'Yes. A tray, with the pot and a cup and saucer and a napkin.' 'You say your father told you all about it. Did Jerin eat or drink anything besides the chocolate?' 'No. There was nothing else.' 'Between the time your father took him the chocolate and the time he told Yerkes he didn't feel well, about half an hour, did anyone enter the library besides the messengers?' 'No. At least my father thought not, but he wasn't absolutely certain.' She smiled at Wolfe. 'I can ask him. You said you couldn't move a finger without his cooperation, but I can get to see him and ask him anything you want me to. Of course without telling him it's for you.' No comment. He tore pages out. 14 I eyed her. 'You said you don't know if the arsenic was in the chocolate. Didn't your father mention if there was any left in the pot and if it was kept for the police?' 'Yes, it was kept, but the pot was full.' 'Full? Hadn't Jerin drunk any?' 'Yes, he had drunk a lot. When Mr Yerkes told my father that Paul had told him he wasn't feeling well, my father went to the library. The pot had a little left in it, and the cup was half full. He took them down to the kitchen and rinsed them out. The cook and steward said nothing had been put in but milk and powdered chocolate and sugar. They had some more ready, and they filled the pot, and my father took it up to the library with a clean cup. Apparently Paul didn't drink any of that because the pot was still full.' I was staring at her, speechless. Wolfe wasn't staring, he was glaring. 'Miss Blount,' he said. 'Either your father is an unexampled jackass, or he is innocent.' She nodded. 'I know. I said I'd have to tell you things I shouldn't tell anybody. I've already told you Clan Kalmus is in love with my mother, and now this. I don't know whether my father has told the police about it. I suppose the cook and steward have, but maybe they haven't. But I had to tell you, I have to tell you everything I know, so you can decide what to do. Don't I?' 'Yes. I commend you. People seldom tell me 15 everything they know. The cook and steward have of course told the police; no wonder your father has been charged with murder.5 Wolfe shut his eyes and tried leaning back, but it was no go in that chair. In the made-to- order oversized chair at his desk that was automatic when he wanted to consider something, leaning back and closing his eyes, and, finding that it wouldn't work, he let out a growl. He straightened up and demanded, 'You have money in that bag?5 She opened it and took out a fat wad of bills with rubber bands around them. 'Twenty- two thousand dollars,' she said, and held it out to him. He didn't take it. 'You said you sold some things. What things? Yours?' 'Yes. I had some in my bank account, and I sold some jewelry.' 'Your own jewelry?' 'Yes. Of course. How could I sell someone else's?' 'It has been done. Archie. Count it.' I extended a hand and she gave me the wad. As I removed the rubber bands and started counting, Wolfe tore out pages and dropped them on the fire. There wasn't much of the dictionary left, and, while I counted, fivehundreds and then C's, he tore and dropped. I counted it twice to make sure, and when I finished there was no more dictionary except the binding. 16 'Twenty- two grand,' I said. 'Will this burn?' he asked. 'Sure; it's buckram. It may smell a little. You knew you were going to burn it when you bought it. Otherwise you would have ordered leather.' No response. He was bending forward, getting the binding satisfactorily placed. There was still enough fire, since Fritz had used wood as well as kindling. Watching the binding starting to curl, he spoke. 'Take Miss Blount to the office and give her a receipt. I'll join you shortly.' fc CHAPTER TWO Twenty-two thousand dollars is not hay. Even after expenses and taxes it would make a healthy contribution to the upkeep of the old brownstone on West Thirty-fifth Street, owned by Wolfe, lived in and worked in by him, by Fritz Brenner, chef and house-keeper, and by me, and worked in by Theodore Horstmann, who spent ten hours a day, and sometimes more, nursing the ten thousand orchids in the plant rooms at the top of the house. I once calculated the outgo per hour for a period of six months, but I won't mention the figure because the District Director of Internal Revenue might read this and tell one of his 17 sniffers to compare it with the income tax report. As for the twenty-two grand, received in cash, he would find it included in income. But when, at a quarter past one, I returned to the office after letting Sally Blount out and put the wad in the safe, I was by no means chipper. We had the wad with no strings attached; Wolfe had made it clear that his only commitment was to give it a try, but it seemed more than likely that we were licked before we started, and that's hard to take for the ego of a wizard, not to mention a dog. I had filled a dozen pages of my notebook with such items as: 1. As far as Sally knew, none of the four messengers, the only ones besides her father and the cook and steward who had been in reaching distance of the chocolate, had ever seen Paul Jerin before or had any connection with him; and if they had she would almost certainly have known because they were all in the Blounts' circle, one way or another, and she saw them fairly frequently. Ditto for Bernard Nash and Tony Laghi, the steward and cook, though she had never seen them. 2. The messengers. Charles W. Yerkes, the banker, had occasional social contacts with the Blounts. Blount was on the Board of Directors of Yerkes's bank. Yerkes enjoyed being in the same room with Mrs Blount, Sally's mother. but so did lots of men. In my notes I included a parenthesis, a guess that Sally thought it would 18 be just as well if men would take time out from looking at her mother to give her a glance now and then. That was a little odd, since Sally herself was no eyesore, but of course I hadn't seen her mother. 3. Morton Farrow, age thirty-one, was not a wizard, but wasn't aware of it. He drew a good salary from the Blount Textile Corporation only because he was Mrs Blount's nephew, and thought he was underpaid. I'm translating what Sally told us, not quoting it. 4. Ernst Hausman, retired broker, a lifelong friend of Matthew Blount, was Sally's godfather. He was an unhappy man and would die unhappy because he would give ten million dollars to be able to play a chess master without odds and mate him, and there was no hope. He hadn't played a game with Blount for years because he suspected Blount of easing up on him. He had disapproved of the idea of having Paul Jerin come to the club and do his stunt; he thought no one but members should ever be allowed in. In short, a suffering snob. 5. Daniel Kalmus, the lawyer, had for years been counsel for Blount's corporation. Sally had some kind of strong feeling for him, but I wasn't sure what it was, and I'm still not sure, so I'll skip it. She had said that Yerkes was in his forties, and Hausman, her godfather, was over seventy, but she said definitely that Kalmus was fifty-one. If a twenty-two-year- old girl can rattle off the age of a man more 19 than twice as old who is not a relative and with whom she isn't intimate, there's a reason. There were other indications, not only things she said but her tone and manner. I put it down that her not trusting Kalmus--she always said 'Clan Kalmus,' not 'Mr Kalmus' or just 'Kalmus'--that her not trusting him to pull her father out of the hole was only partly because she thought he couldn't. The other part was a suspicion that even if he could, he wouldn't. If Blount were sent to the chair, or even sent up for life, Mrs Blount might be available. Sally didn't say that, but she mentioned for the third time that Clan Kalmus was in love with her mother. Wolfe asked her, 'Is your mother in love with him?' and she said, 'Good heavens, no. She's not in love with anyone--except of course my father.' 6. So much for the messengers. Of the other items in my notebook I'll report only one, the only one that was material. If any container that had held arsenic had been found the newspapers didn't know about it, but that's the kind of detail the police and DA often save. When Wolfe asked Sally if she knew anything about it I held my breath. I wouldn't have been surprised if she had said yes, a bottle half full of arsenic trioxide had been found in her father's pocket. Why not? But she said that as far as she knew no container had been found. Dr Avery, who was usually called on by her father or mother when a doctor was needed, had told her 20 father two or three days after the affair, before Blount had been arrested, that after questioning and examining Jerin he had considered the possibility of poison and had looked around; he had even gone down to the kitchen; and he had found nothing. And four days ago, last Thursday, when Sally, after two sleepless nights, had gone to his office to get a prescription for a sedative, he had said that he had been told by an assistant DA that no container had ever been found, and now that Blount had been charged and was in custody he doubted if the police would try very hard to find one. The police hadn't been called in until after Jerin died, and Blount, who had walked to the hospital, only a couple of blocks from the Gambit Club, after the ambulance had taken Jerin, had had plenty of opportunity to ditch a small object if he had one he wanted to get rid of. Dr Avery, convinced that his friend and patient Matthew Blount was innocent, had told Sally that someone must have had a container and disposed of it, and had advised her to tell Kalmus to hire a detective to try to find it. It was that advice from Dr Avery that had given Sally the idea of coming to Nero Wolfe. One item not in the notebook. At the end Wolfe told her that it was absurd to suppose that he could act without the knowledge of Kalmus and her father. He would have to see people. At the very least he would have to see 21 the four men who had been messengers, and, since he never left the house on business, they would have to come to him, and Sally would have to bring them or send them. Inevitably Kalmus would hear about it and would tell Blount. Sally didn't like that. For a couple of minutes it had looked as if there was going to be an exchange, me handing her the wad and her giving me back the receipt, but after chewing on her lip for twenty seconds she decided to stick. She asked Wolfe who he wanted to see first, and he said we would let her know. She asked when, and he said he had no idea, he had to consider it. At a quarter past one, when I returned to the office, not chipper, after letting her out, and put the wad in the safe, he was sitting straight, his mouth pressed so tight he had no lips, his palms flat on the desk pad, scowling at the door to the front room. It could have been either his farewell to the subversive dictionary or his greeting to a hopeless job, and it wouldn't help matters any to ask him which. As I swung the safe door shut, Fritz appeared to announce lunch, saw Wolfe's pose and expression, looked at me, found my face no