'She is your daughter.'
'My daugh-' Wolfe was speechless. He found a piece of his voice:
'You said her name is Tormic.'
'I told you her name in America is Neya Tormic, just as mine is Carla Lovchen.'
Wolfe, erect, was glaring at her. She glared back. They stayed that way.
Wolfe blurted, 'I don't believe it. It's flummery. My daughter disappeared. I have no daughter.'
'You haven't seen her since she was three years old. Have you?'
'No.'
'You should. Now you will. She's very good-looking.' She opened her handbag and fished in it. 'I suspected you wouldn't want to believe me, so I got this from Neya and brought it along. Here.' She reached to hand him a paper. 'There is your name where you signed it…'
She went on talking. Wolfe was scowling at the paper. He went over it slowly and carefully, holding it at an angle for better light from the window. His jaw was clamped. I watched him and listened to her. What with the paper hid in his book and now this, it began to look as if the Montenegrin female situation held great promise.
He finished inspecting the thing, folded it with deliberation, and stuck it in his pocket.
Miss Lovchen extended a hand. 'No, you must give it back. I must return it to Neya. Unless you take it to her yourself?'
Wolfe regarded her. He grunted. 'I don't know anything about this. The paper's all right. That is my signature. It belonged to that girl. It still does, if she lives. How do I know it wasn't stolen?'
'For what?' She shrugged. 'You're suspicious beyond anything to be expected. Stolen to be brought across the ocean for what? To have an effect on you, here in America? No, you are famous, but not as famous as all that. It was not stolen from her. She sent me to show it to you and to tell you. She is in trouble!' Her eyes flashed at him. 'What are you in your opinion-a rock on Durmitor for a goat to stand on? You will see your grown daughter for the first time perhaps in a jail?'
'I don't know. I am not in my opinion a rock. Neither am I a gull. I couldn't find that girl when I went back to Yugoslavia to look for her. I don't know her.'
'But your America will know her! The daughter of Nero Wolfe! In jail for stealing! Only she didn't steal! She is no thief!' She sprang up and put her hands on his desk and leaned across at him: 'Pfui!' She sat down again and flashed her eyes at me to let me know she was making no exceptions. I winked at her. Admitting the princess theory and counting me as a peasant, I suppose it was out of character.
Wolfe sighed, long and deep. There was a silence during which I could hear both of them breathing. At length he muttered:
'It's preposterous. Grotesque. No matter how many tricks you learn, life knows a better one. I've put many people in jail, and kept many out. Now this. Archie, your notebook. Miss Lovchen, please give Mr Goodwin the details of this trouble your friend has got into.' He leaned back and shut his eyes.
She told it and I put it down. It looked to me, as it unfolded, as if somebody's confidence in someone's daughter might turn out to be misplaced. The two girls taught both dancing and fencing at Nikola Miltan's Studio on East 48th Street. It was an exclusive joint with a pedigreed clientиle and appropriate prices for lessons. They had got their jobs through an introduction from Donald Barrett, son of John P. Barrett of Barrett & De Russy, the bankers. Dancing lessons were given in private rooms. The salle d'armes, on the floor above, consisted of a large room and two smaller ones, and there were two locker rooms, one for men and one for women, where clients exchanged street clothes for fencing costumes.
One of the fencing pupils was a man named Nat Driscoll. She pronounced it Nawht. He was middle- aged or more and fat and rich. Yesterday afternoon he had informed Nikola Miltan that upon going to the locker- room after completing his fencing lesson, which had been given by Carla Lovchen, he had seen the other female fencing instructor, namely Neya Tormic, standing by the open door of the locker, in the act of returning the coat of his street suit, on its hanger, to its hook within the locker; and that she had then closed the locker door and departed by the door to the hall. Upon inspection, to which he had proceeded as soon as possible, he had found that his gold cigarette-case and wallet, the contents intact, were in the pockets where they belonged, and it was not until after he got dressed that he remembered about the diamonds, in a pillbox, which should be there too. They were gone. He had carefully explored each and every pocket. They were not there. He demanded their immediate recovery.
Miss Tormic, summoned by Nikola Miltan, denied any knowledge of the diamonds, and further denied that she had opened Mr Driscoll's locker or touched his clothing. The accusation, she said, was outrageous, infamous, and false. She had not been in the locker-room. Had she been in the locker-room for any conceivable purpose, it would not have been to go through men's clothes. Had she gone through a man's clothes, it would not have been Mr Driscoll's clothes; it was beyond the bounds of possibility that she should have the faintest interest in the contents of Mr Driscoll's pockets. She had been justly and somewhat violently indignant.
She had submitted to a search of her person, performed by Jeanne Miltan, Nikola's wife. Everybody at that time in the studio, on both floors, employees and clients alike, had been questioned by Miltan, and a search of the premises conducted. Driscoll stated positively he had seen Neya Tormic's face, from the side, as she stood by the locker, and furthermore that she was wearing her fencing costume. Neya and Carla had both insisted that they be searched again before leaving the studio to go home. Miltan was half frantic at the threat of disgrace to the reputation of his place, and had successfully resisted Driscoll's demand that the police be called. In the morning-this day-he had spent two hours pleading with Neya to tell where the diamonds were, what she had done with them, to whom she had given them, who was her accomplice, and had met with the disdain which his assumption deserved. In a desperate effort to solve the affair without police or publicity, he had arranged for everyone concerned, all who had been on the premises yesterday afternoon, to meet in his office at five o'clock to-day. In Neya Tormic's presence he had told his wife that he would engage the services of Nero Wolfe; and Neya, knowing Nero Wolfe to be her father, had promptly stated that he would be present in her behalf. But Neya had a strong disinclination to reveal her identity to her father, for reasons understandable to him, and therefore Carla, hotfooting it for Wolfe's office, had been instructed not to divulge it.
That was the crop. Miss Lovchen, looking at her wrist and stating that it was five minutes to four, added that Wolfe must come immediately-fast.
