“No.”
“I see.” I stood and looked down at him. That annoys him because he has to tilt his head to look up. “It must be wonderful to be a genius. Like that singer, Doria Ricco, whenever anything goes wrong she just walks out. Then she has a press conference. Shall I set one up for six o’clock? You could tell them that a great artist like you can’t be expected to take a setback which any ordinary detective would only-”
“You will please keep your remarks to yourself.”
So it was a mutiny, not just a passing peeve. If he had merely barked at me “Shut up!” as he does two or three times a week, I would have known he would snap out of it in an hour or so and go to work, but that was bad. It would take time, no telling how much. And he left his chair, crossed to the bookshelves, took a volume of Shakespeare from the set, returned to his seat, leaned back, and opened the book. Bowing out not only from the case, but from the country and the century. I went. Leaving the room and the house, I walked to Ninth Avenue and flagged a taxi and told the driver 632 West 21st Street.
That building was a tenement not only as defined in the New York Tenement House Act, but also as what people usually mean when they say “tenement.” It was a dump. Having decided in the taxi how to start a conversation with Simon Jacobs, I found his name in the row, next to the top, and pressed the button. When the click sounded I pushed the door open, entered, and went to the stairs and started up, smelling garlic. The smell of garlic in Spanish sauce as Fritz makes it is a come-on, but in a tenement hall where it has been seeping into the plaster for fifty years it’s a pinch-nose. The best way is to pull in a long deep breath of it immediately and then your insides know it’s hopeless.
Three flights up a woman was standing at an open door near the front of the hall, with a boy, nine or ten, at her elbow. As I approached, the boy said, “Oh, it’s not Tommy,” and disappeared. I asked the woman, “Mrs Jacobs?”
She nodded. She was a surprise. Simon Jacobs, now sixty-two, had been fifty-one when he had married in 1948, but she was no crone. There wasn’t a wrinkle showing, and there was no sign of gray in her soft brown hair. When I told her my name and I would like to speak with her husband, and she said he didn’t like to be disturbed when he was working and would I please tell her what I wanted, and I said I wasn’t selling anything, it was a business matter and might be to his advantage, she turned and went, leaving the door open. After a long moment he appeared, a good likeness to the photograph-thin and scrawny, with enough wrinkles for two, and, as Title House’s lawyer had said, hair like Mark Twain’s.
“Well, sir?” A thin high voice would have fitted him, but his was deep and full.
“My name’s Goodwin, Mr Jacobs.”
“So my wife said.”
“I’m on the staff of a magazine with national circulation. I won’t name it until I find out if you’re interested in an idea we are considering. May I come in?”
“That depends. I’m right in the middle of a story. I don’t want to be rude, but what’s the idea?”
“Well-we thought we might ask you to do an article for us. About how it feels to have a story you have written stolen by another author and turned into a best-seller. We thought Tlot It Yourself might be a good title for it. I’d like to tell you how we think it might be handled, and we can discuss-”
He shut the door in my face. You may think I’m not much of a detective, that an experienced snoop should have had sense enough to have it blocked with his foot, but in the first place it was totally unexpected, and in the second place you don’t block a door unless you’re on the offensive. So I merely put my thumb to my nose and wiggled my fingers, turned, and made for the stairs. When I got to the sidewalk I took a long, deep breath to let my insides know they could relax. Then I walked to Tenth Avenue, stopped a taxi, and told the driver 37th and Lexington.
That building, between Lexington and Third, was a house of a different colour. It may have been nearly as old as the 21st Street tenement, but it had used make-up. Its brick front was painted silver-gray with bright blue trim, the doorframe was aluminum, and there were evergreens in boxes. There were eight names on the panel in the vestibule, two tenants to a floor, with a grill to talk through and a receiver on a hook. I pushed the button opposite Rennert and put the receiver to my ear, and in a moment had a crackle and then a voice.
“Who is it?”
“You don’t know me. My name’s Goodwin. Nothing to sell. I may want to buy something.”
“Bill Goodwin?”
“No. Archie Goodwin.”
“Archie? Not by any chance Nero Wolfe’s Archie Goodwin?”
“In person.”
“Well, well! I often wonder what detectives buy one-half so precious as the goods they sell. Come on up and tell mel Top floor.”
I hung up and turned, and when the buzz sounded opened the door and entered. More aluminum, framing the self-service elevator. I stepped in and pushed the “4” button and was lifted. When it stopped and the door opened he was there in the little hall, shirt sleeves rolled up and no tie, virile, muscular, handsome, looking younger than thirty-four. I took his offered hand and returned his manly grip and was ushered through a door and was in the nice big room. It was even nicer and bigger than the report had led me to expect. He had me take a nice big chair and asked, “Scotch, rye, bourbon, gin?”
I declined with thanks, and he sat on a nice big couch which probably doubled as a bed. “This is a pleasure,” he said, “unless you want my fingerprints to compare them with the ones you found on the dagger that was sticking in the back of the corpse. I swear I didn’t do it. I always stab people in front. I like that suit. Matthew Jonas?”
I told him no, Peter Darrell. “Fingerprints wouldn’t help,” I said. “There were none on the dagger. It was one of those old Arabian antiques with a fancy handle. What I told you was straight. I may want to buy something-or rather, a client of Nero Wolfe’s may. He’s a guy with money who wants more. He gets ideas. He has the idea that he might like to buy your claim against Mortimer Oshin and Al Friend for stealing your play outline, ‘A Bushel of Love,’ and turning it into
