'Yeah. It would be if more of them were worth a damn. There are over a hundred of them on this case right now. Sitting out up at 38th Street. Looking for the thing he was stabbed with. Getting backgrounds. Tailing. Looking for Lovchen and Zorka. Checking alibis. I'm expecting any minute to be told to pull a bunch of them off. Hush-hush.' The inspector set his jaw. 'But until I get direct orders to the contrary, I'm going to proceed on the theory that the people who pay my salary don't want any kind of a murderer to get any kind of a break. That's why I'm sitting here chinning with you. This is the one place where I might get a line on whatever it is that the goddam consuls and ambassadors are so bashful about… much obliged.'
He took the beer Wolfe had poured for him, gulped, licked the foam from his lips, and gulped again.
He sat back holding the half-filled glass. 'Let me ask you something. If you had your pick of everybody, everybody in or near New York, to be brought in here right now, for you to ask questions of about this case, who would it be?'
'Thank heaven,' Wolfe declared, 'I can answer that unequivocally. Madame Zorka.'
The phone rang. It was for Cramer again and he took it at my desk. It was a short conversation this time, and when he disconnected and went back to his chair he had a satisfied grin on his mug.
'Well, well,' he said, 'I call that pretty good. No sooner asked for. They've got Zorka and I told them to bring her here.'
'Indeed.' Wolfe was filling his glass again. 'Where did they find her?'
'In a room at the Brissenden. Registered phoney. Arrived at ten minutes past five this morning.'
'I hope,' Wolfe muttered, 'that she has something to wear besides that red thing she had on last night.'
'Huh? I beg your pardon?'
'Nothing. Soliloquy- Yes, Fritz?'
Fritz was in again. He had the salver this time, and crossed to Wolfe. Wolfe took the card, read it and frowned.
'The devil,' he said. 'Where is he?'
'In the hall, sir.'
'Please put him in the front room, close the door, and come back.'
As Fritz went Wolfe addressed the inspector:
'I don't suppose you have an errand somewhere else.' 'Neither do I,' Cramer said emphatically. 'I've told you ten times I like it here. If I once got out you might not let me in again unless I brought a warrant.'
'Very well. Then I'm afraid- Oh, Fritz. Will you please take Mr Cramer up in the elevator and ask Theodore to show him the orchids?' He smiled at the inspector. 'You haven't been up there for a long while. I'm sure you'll enjoy it.'
'I'll love it,' Cramer declared, and got up and followed Fritz out.
Wolfe handed me the card and I read, 'John P. Barrett.' The sound came of the elevator door clanging, and Wolfe said, 'Bring him in.'
Chapter Fifteen
The appearance of Donnybonny's father in the flesh fitted the sound of his voice on the telephone. He was the kind many people call distinguished-looking and I call Headwaiter's Dream. He was around fifty, smooth-shaven, with grey eyes that needed to look only once at something, and was wearing $485 worth of quiet clothes. He shook hands with Wolfe in a pleasant manner, as if there could never be any hurry or urgency about anything in the world.
'You're over here by the river in a corner of your own,' he observed genially as he sat down.
Wolfe nodded. 'Yes, I bought this place a long time ago and I'm hard to move. You must excuse me, Mr Barrett, if I say that I haven't much time to spare. I'm wedging you in. Another caller kindly went up to my plant rooms for an interlude. Mr Cramer of the police.'
'Cramer?'
'Inspector Cramer of the Homicide Bureau.'
'Oh.' Barrett's tone was nonchalant, but his eyes, for an instant, were not. 'I came to see you on account of some remarks you made last night to my son. Regarding Bosnian forests, credits held by my firm, and the Donevitch gang. That was your word, I believe-gang.'
'I believe it was,' Wolfe admitted. 'Was there something wrong with my remarks?'
'Oh, no. Nothing wrong. May I smoke?'
Permission received, he got a cigarette from a case which boosted his freight loading from $485 up to around eight hundred berries, lit, and thanked me for the ash tray I provided.
'My son,' he said in a tone of civilized exasperation, 'is a little bit green. It's unavoidable that youth should arrange people in categories, it's the only way of handling the mass of material at first to avoid hopeless
