'First,' I told him, 'this call is strictly personal. Nero Wolfe is neither involved nor interested. With that understood, kindly tell me all facts, surmises, and rumors connected directly or indirectly with Miss Priscilla Eads and her murder.'
'The paper costs a nickel, son. I'm busy.'
'So am I. I can't wait for the paper. Did she leave any relatives?'
'None in New York that we know of. A couple of aunts in California.'
'Have you got any kind of a line that you can mention on the phone?'
'Yes and no. Nothing exclusive. You know about her father's will?'
'I know absolutely nothing.'
'Her mother died when she was an infant, and her father when she was fifteen. The cash and securities he left her, and the insurance, were nothing spectacular, but he set up a trust of ninety per cent of the stock of Softdown, Incorporated, a ten-million-dollar towel and textile business. The trustee was his friend and lawyer, Perry Helmar. Eighty per cent of the income of the trust was to go to Priscilla, and on her twenty-fifth birthday the whole works was to become her property. In case she died before her twenty-fifth birthday, the stock was to become the property of the officers and employees of the corporation. They were named in a schedule that was part of the will, with the amount to go to each one. Most of it went in big gobs to less than a dozen of them. Okay, she was killed six days before her twenty-fifth birthday. That is obviously a line, but it's certainly not exclusive.'
'I'll bet it's not. The damn fool-I mean the father. What about the guy she married? I hear she ran away with him. Who was she running from? Her father was dead.'
'I don't know-maybe the trustee; he was her guardian. That wasn't here. She met him somewhere on a trip, down South I think. There's very little on it in New York. What do you mean, Wolfe is neither involved nor interested?'
'Just that. He isn't.'
'Ha-ha. I suppose you're calling for a friend. Give him my regards. Have you got your dime's worth?'
'For now, yes. I'll buy you a steak at Pierre's at seven-thirty.'
He made a smacking noise. 'That's the best offer I've had today. I hope I can make it. Ring me at seven?'
'Right. Much obliged.'
I hung up, pulled the door open, and got out a handkerchief and wiped my brow and behind my ears. The booth was hot. I stepped out, found the Manhattan phone book, looked up an address, went out and crossed Thirty-fourth Street, and got a taxi going east.
Chapter 5
The headquarters of Softdown, Incorporated, at 192 Collins Street, in the middle of the ancient jungle between City Hall Park and Greenwich Village, was not an office or a floor, it was a building. Its four-storied front may once have been cream-colored brick, but you would have had to use a chisel or a sand-blaster to find out. However, the two enormous street-floor windows, one on either side of the entrance, were so bright and clean they sparkled. Behind one was a vast geometrical array of bath towels, in a dozen colors and twice that many sizes, and behind the other was a crazy old contraption with a placard resting on one of its crosspieces which said:
HARGREAVE'S SPINNING JENNY
1768
Both sides of the double door were standing open, and I entered. The left half of the wide and deep room was partitioned off all the way back, with a string of doors, but the right half was open, with an army of tables, piled with merchandise. Only four or five people were in sight, scattered around. An opening in the first eight feet of partition had the word information above it, but the old war mare inside, seated at a switchboard, looked too damn skeptical, and I went on by, to the right, to where a rotund and ruddy type stood scratching the top of his ear. I showed him my case, open to display my license card with its photograph, and snapped, 'Goodwin. Detective. Where's the boss?'
He barely glanced at it. 'Which boss?' he squeaked. 'What do you want?'
Another skeptic. 'Relax,' I told him in an official tone. 'I'm on an errand connected with the death of Priscilla Eads. I want to talk with everyone here who will own part of this business because she died, preferably starting at the top. Would it be better to start with you? Your name, please?'
He didn't bat an eye. 'You want to see Mr. Brucker,' he squeaked.
'I agree. Where is he?'
'His office is down at the end, but right now he's upstairs in the conference room.'
'And the stairs?'
He jerked a thumb. 'Over there.'
I went in the direction indicated and through a door. Everything about the stairs was contemporary with the building except the treads and risers, which were up-to-date rough-top plastic. The second floor was visibly a busier place than the first. There were row after row of desks with typewriters and other machines, cabinets and shelves, and of course the girls, easily a hundred of them. There is no more agreeable form of research than the study of animated contour, color, and motion in a large business office, but that day I was preoccupied. I crossed to a dark-eyed smooth-skinned creature manipulating a machine bigger than her, and asked where the conference room was, and she pointed to the far end of the room, away from the street. I went there, found a door in a partition, opened it and passed through, and closed the door behind me.
The partition was well soundproofed, for as soon as I shut the door the clatter and hum of the big
