but by then the maid has the garment repaired and Mrs. Irwin puts it on, and they leave. You leave with them, of course, going down in the elevator with them, and they go off. There you are. You have seen three of them and have only one more on your list, it’s a little after nine o’clock, and there is an hour to pass before you can see Mr. Arkoff. What do you do?”
“Nothing to it. As soon as the Irwins are out of sight I go back upstairs and see the maid.”
“Would Johnny?”
“Absolutely.”
“Then he did. Worth testing, surely.”
“Yeah, it stings, all right. If that maid took your hundred bucks she’ll take more.” I looked at my wrist. “Ten minutes to eleven. Shall I give her a whirl now?”
“I think not. Mr. and Mrs. Irwin might be there.”
“I can phone and find out.”
“Do so.”
I got the number from the book and dialed it, and after four whirrs a female voice told me hello.
I sent my voice through my nose. “May I speak to Mrs. Irwin, please?”
“This is Mrs. Irwin. Who is this?”
I cradled it, gently, not to be rude, and turned. “Mrs. Irwin answered. I guess it will have to wait until morning. I’ll call Mrs. Molloy first and get the maid’s name. She probably knows it.”
Wolfe nodded. “It will be ticklish, and it must not be botched.”
“Right. I’ll bring her here and take her to the basement and hold matches to her toes. I have a remark. Your asking Cramer for a list of the contents of Johnny’s pockets, that was only par for a genius, but your bumping him off the trail by pretending you wanted your money back-I couldn’t have done it better myself. Satisfactory. I hope I’m not flattering you.”
“Not likely,” he grumbled, and picked up his book.
Chapter 13
THE MAID’S NAME WAS Ella Reyes. I got that from Selma Molloy on the phone at eight o’clock Friday morning, and also that she was around thirty years old, small and neat, the color of coffee with cream, and had been with the Irwins for about a year.
But I didn’t get to tackle her. Relieving Fritz of the chore of taking Wolfe’s breakfast tray up to his room, where, a mountain of yellow silk pajamas, he stood barefoot in the flood of sunshine near a window, I learned that he had shifted the line-up. Orrie Cather was to call on the man and woman who, sitting in a parked car, had seen the end of Johnny Keems. Their name and address was in the papers, as well as the fact that they agreed that the driver of the hit-and-run car had been a man, and that was about all. They had of course been questioned by old hands at it, but Wolfe wanted Orrie to get it direct.
Saul Panzer was to take the maid, write his own opening, and ad lib it from there. He was to be equipped with five hundred bucks from the safe, which, added to the C he already had, would make six hundred. A rosy prospect for Ella Reyes, since it would be tax-free. I was to be on call for the ceremony of opening the safe- deposit box, if and when it was scheduled. Wolfe was good enough to supply a reason for giving Saul the maid and me the ceremony. He said that if difficulties arose Mrs. Molloy would be more tractable with me present. Wit.
I was fiddling around the office when Wolfe came down from the plant rooms at eleven o’clock. Saul had arrived at nine and got a thorough briefing and five Cs, and departed, and Orrie had come and gone, to see the eyewitnesses. Parker phoned a little after ten, said he would probably get the court order before noon, and told me to stand by. I asked if I should alert Mrs. Molloy, and he said she wouldn’t be needed, so I phoned her that she could relax.
Feeling that the situation called for a really cutting remark to the wit, I concocted a few, but none of them was sharp enough, so when he entered and crossed to his desk I merely said, “Mrs. Molloy isn’t coming to the party. You have bewitched her. She admits she wouldn’t stay last night because she was afraid to trust herself so close to you. She never wants to go anywhere any more unless you are there.”
He grunted and picked up a catalogue that had come in the morning mail, and the phone rang. It was Parker. I was to meet him and Patrick Degan at the Metropolitan Safe Deposit Company at noon.
When I got there, on Madison Avenue in the Forties, five minutes early, I discovered that I hadn’t exaggerated when I called it a party, and nobody was late. There were ten of us gathered down in the anteroom of the vaults: Parker; Degan; two officers of the safe deposit company; an attendant of the same; an Assistant District Attorney with a city dick, known to me, apparently as his bodyguard; a fingerprint scientist from the police laboratory, also known to me; a stranger in rimless cheaters whose identity I learned later; and me. Evidently opening a safe-deposit box outside of routine can be quite an affair. I wondered where the mayor was.
After the two MSDC officers had thoroughly studied a document Parker had handed them we were all escorted through the steel barrier and into a room, not any too big, with three chairs and a narrow table in its center. One of the MSDC officers went out and in a couple of minutes came back, carrying a metal box about twenty-four by eight by six, not normally, but with his fingertips hooked under the bottom edges at front and back. Before an appreciative audience he put it down, tenderly, on the table, and the fingerprint man took the stage, putting his case also on the table and opening it.
I wouldn’t say that he stretched it purposely, playing to the gallery, but he sure did an all-out job. He was at it a good half-hour, covering top, sides, ends, and bottom, with dusters, brushes, flippers, magnifying glasses, camera, and print records which came from a briefcase carried by the Assistant DA. They should have furnished more chairs.
