“There’s no animus. Here’s the complication. The car that killed the boy was found yesterday morning, with that floater Connecticut plate still on it, parked up on One hundred and eighty-sixth Street. Laboratory men worked on it all day. They cinched it that it killed the boy, but not only that, underneath it, caught tight where an axle joins a rod, they found a piece of cloth the size of a man’s hand. That piece of cloth was the flap torn from the jacket which was on the body of Matthew Birch when it was found. The laboratory is looking for further evidence that it was that car that killed Birch, but I’m no hog and I don’t need it. Do you?”
Wolfe was patient. “For a working hypothesis, if I were working on it, no.”
“That’s the point. You are working on it. You put that ad in.”
Wolfe’s head wagged slowly from side to side to punctuate his civilized forbearance. “I’ll stipulate,” he conceded, “that I am capable of flummery, that I have on occasion gulled and hoaxed you, but you know I eschew the crudeness of an explicit lie. I tell you that the facts we have given you in this matter are guileless and complete, that I have no client connected with it in any way, and that I am not engaged in it and do not intend to be. I certainly agree-”
The phone ringing stopped him. I got it at my desk. “Nero Wolfe’s office, Archie Goodwin speaking.”
“May I speak to Mr. Wolfe, please?” The voice was low, nervous, and feminine.
“I’ll see if he’s available. Your name?”
“He wouldn’t know my name. I want to see him-it’s about his advertisement in the
I kept it casual. “I handle his appointments. May I have your name, please?”
“I’d rather-when I come. Could I come at twelve o’clock?”
“Hold the wire a minute.” I consulted my desk calendar, turning to a page for next week. “Yes, that’ll be all right if you’re punctual. You have the address?”
She said she did. I hung up and turned to report to Wolfe. “A character who probably wants to look at the orchids. I’ll handle it as usual.”
He resumed to Cramer. “I certainly agree that the evidence that the boy and Matthew Birch were killed by the same car is a noteworthy complication, but actually that should make it simpler for you. Even though the license plate is useless, surely you can trace the car itself.”
Cramer’s expression had reverted to the cold stare he had started with. “I have never had any notion,” he stated, “that you are a crude liar. I have never seen you crude.” He arose. In Wolfe’s presence he always made a point of getting upright from a chair with the leverage of his leg muscles only, because Wolfe used hands and arms. “No,” he said, “not crude,” and turned and marched out.
I went to the hall to see the door close behind him and then returned to the office and my desk.
“The letter to Mr. Jordan,” Wolfe instructed me.
“Yes, sir.” I got my notebook. “First, though, I still say it was one in a million, but the one turned up this time. That was a woman on the phone about the ad. No name, and I didn’t want to press her with company present. She made an appointment for noon today.”
“With whom?”
“You.”
His lips tightened. He released them. “Archie. This is insufferable.”
“I know damn well it is. But considering that Cramer wasn’t being civilized, I thought it might be satisfactory to have a little chat with her before phoning him to come and get her.” I glanced up at the wall clock. “She’ll be here in twenty minutes-if she comes.”
He grunted. “‘Dear Mr. Jordan…’”
Chapter 4
She came. She was much more ornamental in the red leather chair than Inspector Cramer, or, for that matter, most of the thousands of tenants I had seen in it, but she sure was nervous. At the door, after I opened it and invited her in, I thought she was going to turn and scoot, and so did she, but she finally made her legs take her over the sill and let me conduct her to the office.
The scratch on her left cheek, on a slant down toward the corner of her mouth, was faint but noticeable on her smooth fair skin, and it was no wonder that Pete, looking straight at her face, had taken in the spider earrings. I agreed with him that they were gold, and they were fully as noticeable as the scratch. In spite of the scratch and the earrings and the jerky nervousness, on her the red leather chair looked good. She was about my age, which was not ideal, but I have nothing against maturity if it isn’t overdone.
When Wolfe asked her, not too grumpily, what he could do for her, she opened her bag and got out two pieces of paper. The bag was of soft green suede, the same as the jacket she wore over a dark green woolen dress, and also the cocky little pancake tilted to one side of her head. It was an ensemble if I ever saw one.
“This,” she said, “is just a clipping of your advertisement.” She returned it to the bag. “This is a check made out to you for five hundred dollars.”
“May I see it, please?”
“I don’t-not yet. It has my name on it.”
