chance, certainly, but it's worth trying for want of a better. I am not familiar with the procedures of counterfeiters, but it seems unlikely that an underling would be entrusted with five hundred twenty-dollar bills. Ten thousand dollars. We know he had that large supply; and that permits the conjecture that his connection may be not
190 Rex Stout
with a mere go-between, but with the source. If so, the quickest way to settle it would be to locate the source.'
'Yeah. It's barely possible that Leach has had that idea.'
'No doubt. I assume that when Miss Baxter took a room in that house her primary mission was to search the premises for counterfeiting equipment. Obviously she found none. I also assume that, as you suggested, it was known that one of the inhabitants of that house had passed counterfeit money, but it was not known which one, and they were all under surveillance-by Miss Baxter in the house and by others outside. And if I were a Secret Service agent assigned to keep an eye on Raymond Dell I would suppose that any meeting he had with a supplier of contraband would be clandestine. That is how my mind would work. The first day I followed him to an East Side tenement I would of course make inquiries, with due caution, but when he went there five days a week and I learned from Miss Baxter what he did there, my attention would be di- verted. But I am not a Secret Service agent. My atten- tion is drawn to that tenement house, and specifically to Max Eder, a painter. An artist. I shall send Orrie Gather there tomorrow morning to reconnoiter. Fred Durkin will go to the shop on First Avenue-by the way, I want its address. Harry's Zoo.' He made a face. 'Saul Panzer will go to the Mushroom Theater. As I said, it's a forlorn chance, but what better can we do with tomorrow? Unless you have a suggestion?'
'I have,' I said emphatically. 'I respectfully suggest that you start thinking up something for day after tomorrow.'
He grunted. He picked up his glass, took a gulp of beer, swallowed it, licked his lips, and put the glass down. ''Forlorn' was too strong a word,' he said. 'I have an expectation that is not wholly unreasonable. Twelve hours of the time of those three men plus ex- penses comes to more than three hundred dollars. I don't hazard that amount, even of a client's money, on a pig in a poke.'
The Homicide Trinity 191
'Then you did get an inkling.' 'Certainly.'
'Fine. I hope it's not counterfeit.' I swiveled and got the phone and dialed Saul Panzer's number.
Chapter 7
I was there at the beginning of the briefing session in Wolfe's bedroom at eight o'clock Tuesday morning, but when the phone interrupted us a second time Wolfe told me to go down to the office and take it there. The first time it was a Times reporter wanting to speak with Wolfe, and when I told him Wolfe was busy and would I do, he said no and hung up. The second call, which I took in the office, was from Lon Cohen of the Gazette, who preferred me to Wolfe any day. He wanted to know when he could send a photographer to take a picture of the dirt Wolfe was going to feed the cops. Evidently one of the two who had carried Hattie out knew a newspaperman. Lon had other questions, naturally, but I told him the answers would have to wait until I found out what they were.
I was considering whether to rejoin the briefing ses- sion when the phone rang again. It was Nathaniel Parker. He was sorry he hadn't been able to spring our client, but it had taken him three hours to find out where she was, and he hadn't got to see her until midnight. He expected to have her out by noon.
At nine o'clock the trio came down. One of the rea- sons they are better than most is that none of them looks it. Saul Panzer, under-sized and wiry, with a big nose, could be a hackie. Fred Durkin, broad and burly and bald, could be a piano mover. Orrie Gather, tall and trim and dressy, could be an automobile salesman. They stepped into the office, and Saul said they had been told
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to take three hundred dollars apiece in used bills. I said as I went to open the safe that even with inflation and even with janitors promoted to building superinten- dents, fifty bucks was the top price for one, and they would please return the change. Orrie said that if they had to buy clerks and elevator men and neighbors there wouldn't be any change. Saul said they would each give me a ring every couple of hours or so.
When they had gone I went on with the morning chores-opening the mail, dusting the desks, filing the cards of propagation and performance records which Theodore puts on my desk every evening. That was just for my hands and eyes; my mind was busy with something else. Of all the things I do to earn my pay, from sharpening pencils to jumping a visitor before he can get his gun up, the most important is riding Wolfe, and he knows it. Sometimes it's next to impossible to tell whether he's working or only pretending to. That was the question that morning. If he was only stalling, if he had sent for Saul and Fred and Orrie just to keep from starting his brain going, the thing for me to do was to go up to the plant rooms and go to work on him. It was the same old problem, and the trouble was that that time I would have nothing to say when he nar- rowed his eyes at me, as he would, and inquired coldly, 'What would you suggest?'
That was what my mind was on, and was still on when the doorbell rang a little after ten o'clock and I went to the hall for a look. It was Albert Leach, with his snap- brim hat down even closer to his ears than yesterday. I went and opened the door.
'Good morning,' he said, and slipped his hand inside his overcoat.
I supposed he was producing his credentials. 'Don't bother,' I said, 'I recognize you.'
But it wasn't credentials. His name came out with a folded paper. Extending it, he said, 'Order of the Fed- eral District Court.'
