I told her that the only thing that had been wrong with her was that she thought Peter Hays had killed Molloy, whereas now she didn’t, got the keys from her, went downstairs, where the hired help was waiting for me in the hall, put the phone number on Wolfe’s desk, told Fritz where we were going, and left. Saul and Fred had assembled a kit of tools from the cupboard in the office where we kept an assortment of everything from keys to jimmies.
If I described every detail of our performance in the Molloy apartment that day between 9:35 A.M. and 3:10 P.M. you might get some useful pointers on how to look for a lost diamond or postage stamp, but if you haven’t lost a diamond or a postage stamp it wouldn’t interest you. When we got through we knew a lot of things: that Molloy had hoarded old razor blades in a cardboard box in his dresser; that someone had once upon a time burned a little hole in the under side of a chair cushion, probably with a cigarette, and at a later time someone had stuffed a piece of lemon peel in the hole, God knew why; that there were three loose tiles in the bathroom wall and a loose board in the living room floor; that Mrs. Molloy had three girdles, liked pale yellow underwear and white nighties, used four different shades of nylons, and kept no letters except those from a sister who lived in Arkansas; that apparently there were no unpaid bills other than one for $3.84 from a laundry; that none of the pieces of furniture had hollow legs; that if a jar of granulated sugar slips from your hand and spills you have a problem; and a thousand others. Saul and I together went over every scrap of the contents of the three cartons, already inspected by Orrie.
It would be misleading to say we found nothing whatever. We found two empty drawers. They were the two top drawers, one on each side, of a desk against the wall of what Molloy might have called his den. None of the six keys Selma had given me fitted their locks, which were good ones, Wetherbys, and Saul had to work on them with the assortment in the kit. The drawers were as empty as the day they were built, and had presumably been locked from force of habit.
At 3:10 P.M. I used the phone there in the apartment and told Wolfe the bad news, including the empty drawers. Orrie said to tell him that never had so many searched so long for so little, but it didn’t appeal to me. Wolfe told me to tell Fred and Orrie that was all for the day and to bring Saul in with me. After making a tour to verify that we were leaving things as we had found them, we moved out. Down on the sidewalk we parted, Fred and Orrie heading for the corner to get a drink to drown the disappointment, and Saul and I, with the kit of tools, flagging a taxi. It wasn’t a cheerful ride. If the best the genius could do was start us combing the metropolitan area, including Jersey and Long Island, for a relic that might not exist, the future wasn’t very bright.
But he had something a little more specific. We had barely crossed the sill to the office when he blurted at me, “About that Delia Brandt. About Molloy’s proposal to her of a trip to South America. You said last Wednesday that she told you she had put him off, but you thought she lied. Why did you think she lied?”
I stood. “The way she said it, the way she looked, the way she answered questions about it. And just her. I had formed an opinion of her.”
“Have you changed your opinion? Since she is going to marry William Lesser?”
“Hell no. She couldn’t go to South America with a dead man, and evidently, from Fred’s reports, she was playing Lesser all the time on an option. If Lesser found out what the score was and decided to take-”
“That’s not my target. If Molloy was preparing to decamp and take that girl with him, and if she had agreed to go, he might have entrusted certain objects to her care-for example, some of the objects he removed from the empty drawers you found. Is it fantastic to assume that he left them in her apartment for safekeeping pending departure?”
“No, not fantastic. I wouldn’t trust her with a subway token, but apparently his opinion of her wasn’t the same flavor as mine. It’s quite possible.”
“Then you and Saul will go and search her apartment. Now.”
When Wolfe gets desperate he is absolutely fearless. He will expose me to the risk of a five-year stretch up the river without batting an eye. That’s okay, since I am old enough to vote and can always say no, but that time he was inviting another party too, so I turned to look at Saul. He merely asked, “Will she be there?”
“If she’s working, probably not until around five-thirty, maybe later. If she’s there I might be able to take her out to buy champagne, but then you’d have to do the work. Shall I phone?”
“You might as well.”
I went to my desk and dialed the number, waited through fifteen whirrs, hung up, and swiveled. “No answer. If you like the idea, we won’t want the kit, just some of the keys. The door downstairs has a Manson lock, old style. The one to her apartment is a Wyatt. You know more about them than I do.”
Saul brought the kit to my desk and opened it, selected four strings of keys and dropped them in his pocket, and closed the kit. While he was doing that I went to the cupboard and got two pairs of rubber gloves.
“I must remind you,” Wolfe said as we started out, “that prudence is no shame to valor. I shall not evade my responsibility as accessory.”
“Much obliged,” I thanked him. “If we’re caught we’ll say you begged us not to.”
We went to Ninth Avenue for a taxi, and on the way downtown discussed modus operandi. Not that it needed much discussion. Dismissing the cab on Christopher Street, we walked on to Arbor Street, rounded the corner, and continued to Number 43. Nobody had painted it in the five days since I had seen it. We entered the vestibule, and I pushed the button marked Brandt. Getting no click, I pushed it again, and, after another wait, a third time.
“Okay,” I told Saul, and stepped to the outer door, which was standing open, for an outlook. Arbor Street is not Fifth Avenue, and only two boys and a woman with a dog had passed by when Saul told my back, “Come on in.” It had taken him about a minute and a half. We entered.
He preceded me up the narrow dingy stairs, the idea being that we would do a quick once-over and then I would stand guard outside, at the head of the stairs, while he dug deeper. As we reached the top of the third flight he had a string of keys in his hand, ready to tackle the Wyatt, but I remembered that prudence is no shame to valor and went to the door first and knocked. I waited, knocked louder, got no response, and stepped aside for Saul. The Wyatt took longer than the one downstairs, perhaps three minutes. When he got it he pushed the door open. Since I was supposed to be in command, the proper thing would have been for him to let me go in first, but he crossed the threshold, saying, “Jumping Jesus.”
