For me par in bed is eight full hours, but of course I have to make exceptions, and Wednesday morning I entered the kitchen at nine-thirty, only half awake but with my hair brushed and my clothes on, greeted Fritz with forced cheerfulness, got my orange juice, which I take at room temperature, from the table, and had just swallowed a gulp when the phone rang. I answered it there, and had Albert Freyer’s voice in my ear. He said he had arranged it and I was to meet him in the City Prison visitors’ room at ten-thirty. I said I wanted to be alone with his client, and he said he understood that but he had to be there to identify me and vouch for me.
I hung up and turned to Fritz. “I’m being pushed, damn it. Can I have two cakes in a hurry? Forget the sausage, just the cakes and honey and coffee.”
He protested, but he moved. “It’s a bad way to start a day, Archie, cramming your breakfast down.”
I told him I was well aware of it and buzzed the plant rooms on the house phone to tell Wolfe.
Chapter 4
I WASN’T EXACTLY ALONE. Ten feet to my right a woman sat on a wooden chair just like mine, staring through the holes of the steel lattice at a man on the other side. By bending an ear I could have caught what the man was saying, but I didn’t try because I assumed she was as much in favor of privacy as I was. Ten feet to my left a man on another chair like mine was also staring through the lattice, at a lad who wasn’t as old as Paul Herold had been when the picture was taken. I couldn’t help hearing what he was saying, and apparently he didn’t give a damn. The boy across the lattice from him was looking bored. There were three or four cops around, and the one who had brought me in was standing back near the wall, also looking bored.
During the formalities of getting passed in, which had been handled by Freyer, I had been told that I would be allowed fifteen minutes, and I was about to leave my chair to tell the cop that I hoped he wouldn’t start timing me until the prisoner arrived, when a door opened in the wall on the other side of the lattice and there he was, with a guard behind his elbow. The guard steered him across to a chair opposite me and then backed up to the wall, some five paces. The convict sat on the edge of the chair and blinked through the holes at me.
“I don’t know you,” he said. “Who are you?”
At that moment, with his pale hollow cheeks and his dead eyes and his lips so thin he almost didn’t have any, he looked a lot more than eleven years away from the kid in the flattop.
I hadn’t decided how to open up because I do better if I wait until I have a man’s face to choose words. I had a captive audience, of course, but that wouldn’t help if he clammed up on me. I tried to get his eyes, but the damn lattice was in the way.
“My name is Goodwin,” I told him. “Archie Goodwin. Have you ever heard of a private detective named Nero Wolfe?”
“Yes, I’ve heard of him. What do you want?” His voice was hollower than his cheeks and deader than his eyes.
“I work for Mr. Wolfe. Day before yesterday your father, James R. Herold, came to his office and hired him to find you. He said he had learned that you didn’t steal that money eleven years ago, and he wanted to make it square with you. The way things stand that may not mean much to you, but there it is.”
Considering the circumstances, he did pretty well. His jaw sagged for a second, but he jerked it up, and his voice was just the same when he said, “I don’t know what you’re talking about. My name is Peter Hays.”
I nodded at him. “I knew you’d say that, of course. I’m sorry, Mr. Herold, but it won’t work. The trouble is that Mr. Wolfe needs money, and he uses part of it to pay my salary. So we’re going to inform your father that we have found you, and of course he’ll be coming to see you. The reason I’m here, we thought it was only fair to let you know about it before he comes.”
“I haven’t got any father.” His jaw was stiff now, and it affected his voice. “You’re wrong. You’ve made a mistake. If he comes I won’t see him!”
I shook my head. “Let’s keep our voices down. What about the scar on your left leg on the inside of the knee? It’s no go, Mr. Herold. Perhaps you can refuse to see your father-I don’t know how much say they give a man in your situation-but he’ll certainly come when we notify him. By the way, if we had had any doubt at all of your identity you have just settled it, the way you said if he comes you won’t see him. Why should you get excited about it if he’s not your father? If we’ve made a mistake the easiest way to prove it is to let him come and take a look at you. We didn’t engage to persuade you to see him; our job was just to find you, and we’ve done that, and if-”
I stopped because he started to shake. I could have got up and left, since my mission was accomplished, but Freyer wouldn’t like it if I put his client in a state of collapse and just walked out on him, and after all Freyer had got me in. So I stuck. There was a counter on both sides to keep us away from the lattice, and he had his fists on his, rubbing it with little jerks.
“Hang on,” I told him. “I’m going. We thought you ought to know.”
“Wait.” He stopped shaking. “Will you wait?”
“Sure.”
He took his fists off the counter, and his head thrust forward. “I can’t see you very well. Listen to me, for God’s sake. For God’s sake don’t tell him. You don’t know what he’s like.”
“Well, I’ve met him.”
“And my mother and sisters, they’ll know. I think they believed I was framed for stealing that money, I think they believed me, but he didn’t, and now I’ve been framed again. For God’s sake don’t tell him. This time it’s all over, I’m going to die, and I might as well be dead now, and it’s not fair for me to have this too. I don’t want them to know. My God, don’t you see how it is?”
“Yeah, I see how it is.” I was wishing I had gone.
