'The dumplings and burnt sugar?'
'Yes, sir.'
'Satisfactory. Beer, please. I'm so dry I crackle.'
His hat and stick disposed of, he went to the office, and I tagged. For hours I had been sweaty where the leather holster kept my skin from breathing, and it was a relief to get rid of the thing. That attended to, I did not sit at my desk. Instead I went to the red leather chair-the chair where a thousand clients had sat, not to mention thousands who had never attained cliency. I lowered myself into it, leaned back, and crossed my legs. Fritz came with beer, and Wolfe opened, poured, and drank.
He looked at me. 'Buffoon,' he stated.
I shook my head. 'No, sir. I sit here not as a gag but to avoid misunderstanding. As a client, the closer to you the better. As an employee, nothing doing until my personal problem is solved. If you meant what you said down there, tell me how much you want for a retainer, and I'll give you a check. If not, all I can do is bound out of your house like a man obsessed.'
'Confound it, I'm helpless! I'm committed!'
'Yes, sir. How about a retainer?'
'No!'
'Would you care to hear how I spent the day?'
'Care to? No. But how the devil can I escape it?'
I reported in full. Gradually, as he progressed to his third glass of beer and on through it, the wrinkles of his scowl smoothed out some. Apparently he was paying no attention to me, but I had long ago learned not to worry about that. It would all be available any time he needed it. When I finished he grunted.
'How many of those five people could you have here at eleven in the morning?'
'As it stands now? With no more bait?'
'Yes.'
'I wouldn't bet on one, but I'm ready to try. I might get something useful from Lon Cohen if I buy him a thick enough steak-and by the way, I ought to call him.'
'Do so. Invite him to dine with us.'
On the face of it that suggestion was gracious and generous, and maybe it was, but the situation was complicated. If we had been engaged on the case in the usual manner, and, after dope, I had taken Lon to Pierre's for a feed, it would of course have gone on the expense account and we would have been reimbursed. But this was different. If I listed it as an expense Wolfe was stuck unless he billed me as client. If I didn't list it I was stuck and there could be no deduction on an income-tax report, either Wolfe's or mine, which wouldn't do at all.
So I phoned Lon, and he came and ate kidneys mountain style, and carameled dumplings, instead of a Pierre steak, which was convenient and economical but had its drawback-namely, that I usually dispose of six of those dumplings and this time was limited to four; and Wolfe had to be content with seven instead of ten. He took it like a man, filling the gap with an extra helping of salad and cheese.
Back in the office after dinner, I had to hand it to Lon. He was full of food as good as a man can hope for anywhere, and wine to go with it, but he was not blurry. My phoning him twice and the invitation to dine had him set either to take or to give, whichever was on the program, and as he relaxed in one of the yellow chairs, sipping B
Wolfe's chest billowed with a deep sigh. 'I'm in a pickle, Mr. Cohen,' he declared. 'I am committed to investigate a murder and I have no entree. When Archie told you today that I was not interested in the death of Miss Eads it was the truth, but now I am, and I need a toehold. Who killed her?'
Lon shook his head. 'I was intending to ask you. Of course you know it's out that she was here yesterday, that she left here not long before she was killed, so everybody takes it for granted that you're working on it. Since when have you needed an entree?'
Wolfe squinted at him. 'Are you in my debt, Mr. Cohen, or am I in yours?'
'I'll call it square if you will.'
'Good. Then I assume I have credit. I'll read your paper in the morning, and others too, but here we are now. Do you mind talking about it?'
Lon said he didn't mind a bit and proceeded to prove it. He talked for nearly an hour, with some questions from Wolfe and a few from me, and when he finished we may have been better informed but had nothing we could call an entree.
Helmar, Brucker, Quest, Pitkin, and Miss Duday would not only own eighty per cent of the Softdown stock; they would also be in control of the distribution of another ten per cent of it to employees, with power to decide who got what. That made up the ninety per cent disposed of under the will of Priscilla's father. The remaining ten per cent had been owned by an associate in the business, deceased, and now belonged to his daughter, a Mrs. Sarah Jaffee, a widow. Mrs. Jaffee had formerly been a close friend of Priscilla Eads. Her husband had been killed a year ago in Korea.
The favorite suspect with male journalists was Oliver Pitkin, for no convincing reason; the favorite with females was Viola Duday. No evidence had been disclosed that any of the five main beneficiaries was in financial difficulties or was excessively rancorous, greedy, or bloodthirsty; but since each of them would get an engraved certificate worth roughly a million and a half, the consensus was that such evidence was not required. As far as the press knew, none of them was eliminated by alibi or other circumstance. Of some sixty reporters, from all papers and wire services, working on the case, at least half were certain that Daphne O'Neil was deeply involved one way or another, and were determined to find out how.
The news that Priscilla had spent seven of her last hours on earth at Wolfe's house had come through Perry Helmar, who had got it from an assistant DA. Helmar had told an AP City News man in the middle of
