“I don’t know. I don’t know what to say.” Degan took a puff, and this time blew it at Parker. “Frankly, I’m sorry I agreed to this. I did it for a friend who has had a tough break, Selma Molloy, and I wish I hadn’t. I’m on a spot. I know she’s all for the job you’re doing, trying to find grounds for a new trial for Peter Hays, and I am too, personally, so you might think I’d be willing to commit the estate to pay for your services and expenses, but the hell of it is that she says she won’t take the estate or any part of it. That didn’t matter when there were no visible assets to speak of, but now it does. It will go to someone eventually, relatives always turn up when there’s a pile in it, and what will they say if I’ve paid you some of it? You see my problem.” He took a puff.
“I do indeed.” Wolfe’s lips were slightly twisted-one of his smiles. “But you asked the wrong question. Instead of asking
“You won’t? You mean that?”
“I do.”
“Then why didn’t you say so?”
“I have said so.” Wolfe’s lips straightened. “And now that I have answered your questions, I beg you to reciprocate. You knew Mr. Molloy for some years. Have you any knowledge of the source of that money?”
“No. I was absolutely amazed when I saw it.”
“Please bear with me. I don’t challenge you, I’m merely trying to stimulate you. You were intimate with him?”
“Intimate? I wouldn’t say intimate. He was one of my friends, and I did a little business with him from time to time.”
“What kind of business?”
“I bought advice from him now and then.” Degan reached to break cigar ash into the tray. “In connection with investments of my organization. He was an expert on certain areas of the real-estate market.”
“But you didn’t pay him enough to supply an appreciable fraction of that fortune in the box.”
“My God, no. On an average, maybe two or three thousand a year.”
“Was that the main source of Molloy’s income, supplying investment advice regarding real estate?”
“I couldn’t say. It may have been, but he did some brokerage and I think he did a little operating on his own. I never heard him say much about his affairs. He had a closed mouth.”
Wolfe cocked his head. “I appeal to you, Mr. Degan. You had a problem and I relieved you of it. Now I have one. I want to know where that money came from. Surely, in your long association with Mr. Molloy, both business and social, he must have said or done something that would furnish a hint of activities which netted him a third of a million dollars. Surely he did, and if it meant nothing to you at the time, it might now if you recall it. I ask you to make the effort. If, as you said, you wish me success in my efforts on behalf of Mrs. Molloy, I think my request is justified. Don’t you agree?”
“Yes, I do.” Degan looked at his watch and arose. “I’m late for an appointment. I’ll put my mind on it and let you know if I remember anything.” He turned, and turned back. “I know a few people who had dealings with Molloy. Do you want me to ask them?”
“Yes indeed. I would appreciate it.”
“I suppose you’ll ask Mrs. Molloy yourself.”
Wolfe said he would, and Degan went. Returning to the office after seeing him out, I stopped at the sill because Parker was on his feet, set to go. He told me not to bother, but I like to be there when the gate of Wolfe’s castle opens to the world, so I got his coat from the rack and held it for him.
In the office, Wolfe was having a burst of energy. He had left his chair to get the ashtray Degan had used and was on his way to the door of the bathroom in the corner, to dump it. When he reappeared I asked him, “Nothing from Saul or Fred or Orrie?”
He returned the tray to its place, sat, rang for beer, two short and one long, and roared at me, “No!”
When a hippopotamus is peevish it’s a lot of peeve. I should have brought a bundle of Cs for him to play with, and told him so.
Chapter 14
HOW MUCH WOLFE LIKES to show the orchids to people depends on who it is. Gushers he can stand, and even jostlers. The only ones he can’t bear are those who pretend they can tell a P. stuartiana from a P. schilleriana but can’t. And there is an ironclad rule that except for Fritz and me, and of course Theodore, who is there all the time, no one goes to the plant rooms for any other purpose than to look at orchids.
Since he refuses to interrupt his two daily turns up there for a trip down to the office, no matter who or what, there have been some predicaments over the years. Once I chased a woman who was part gazelle clear to the top of the second flight before I caught her. The rule hasn’t been broken more than a dozen times altogether, and that afternoon was one of them. He was in no better mood at four o’clock than an hour earlier. Fred Durkin had come with a report on William Lesser. He was twenty-five years old, lived with his parents in Washington Heights, had been to Korea, was a salesman for a soft-drink distributor, and had never been in jail. No discoverable connection with the Arkoffs or Irwins. No one who had heard him announce that a man named Molloy was going to cart his girl off to South America and he intended to prevent it. No one who knew he had a gun. And more negatives. Wolfe asked Fred if he wanted to try Delia Brandt, disguised as the editor who wanted the magazine article, and Fred said no. As I said before, Fred knows what he can expect of his brains and what he can’t. He was told to go and dig some more at Lesser, and went.
Orrie Cather, who came while Fred was there, also drew a blank. The man and woman who had
