but there was no sign that the date had smacked him as it had me.
He sighed good and deep, surrendering with fairly good grace to the necessity of work. 'The police?' he inquired, not hopefully.
Helmar shook his head. 'As I said before, discretion is essential.'
'It usually is, for people who hire a private detective. Tell me about it briefly. Since you're a lawyer you should know what I need to decide whether I'll take the job.'
'Why shouldn't you take it?'
'I don't know. Tell me about it.'
Helmar shifted in his chair and leaned back, but not at ease. I decided that his lacing and unlacing of his fingers was not merely a habit; he was on edge. 'In any case,' he said, 'this is confidential. The name of the young woman who has disappeared is Priscilla Eads. I have known her all her life and am her legal guardian, and also I am the trustee of her property under the will of her father, who died ten years ago. She lives in an apartment on East Seventy-fourth Street, and I was to call there this evening to discuss some business matters with her. I did so, arriving a little after eight, but she wasn't there, and the maid was alarmed, as she had expected her mistress home for an early dinner and there had been no word from her.'
'I don't need that much,' Wolfe said impatiently.
'Then I'll curtail it. I found on her writing desk an envelope addressed to me. Inside was a handwritten note.' He reached for his briefcase and opened it. 'Here it is.' He took out a folded sheet of blue-tinted paper, but put it down to get a spectacle case from a pocket and put on black-rimmed glasses. He retrieved the paper. 'It reads, 'Dear Perry-''
He stopped, lifting his chin to glance at me and then at Wolfe. 'She has called me by my first name,' he stated, 'ever since she was twelve years old and I was forty-nine. Her father suggested it.'
Apparently he invited comment, and Wolfe obliged. 'It is not actionable,' he muttered.
Helmar nodded. 'I only mention it. It reads:
'Dear Perry:
I hope you won't be too mad at me for standing you up. I'm not going to do anything loony. I just want to be sure where I stand. I doubt if you will hear from me before June 30th, but you will then all right. Please, and I mean this, please don't try to find me.
Love, Pris.'
Helmar folded the note and returned it to the briefcase. 'Perhaps I should explain the significance of June thirtieth. That will be my ward's twenty-fifth birthday, and on that day, under the terms of her father's will, the trust terminates and she takes complete possession of the property. That is the basic position, but there are complications, as there always are. One is that the largest single item of the property is ninety per cent of the stock of a large and successful corporation, and there is some feeling among part of the managing and directing personnel about my ward's taking control. Another is my ward's former husband.'
Wolfe frowned. 'Alive?' he demanded. He refuses to touch marital messes.
'Yes.' Helmar was frowning too. 'That was my ward's one disastrous blunder. She ran away with him when she was nineteen, to South America, and left him three months later, and divorced him in nineteen forty- eight. There was no further communication between them, but two weeks ago I received a letter from him, sent to me as the trustee of the property, claiming that, under the provisions of a document she had signed shortly after their marriage, half of the property legally belonged to him. I doubt-'
I horned in. I had stood the suspense long enough. 'You say,' I blurted, 'her name is Priscilla Eads?'
'Yes, she took her maiden name. The husband's name is Eric Hagh. I doubt-'
'I think I've met her. I suppose you've got a picture for us?' I got up and crossed to him. 'I'd like to see.'
'Certainly.' He didn't care much for an underling butting in, but condescended to reach for his briefcase and finger in it. 'I have three good pictures of her I brought from her apartment. Here they are.' I took them and stood looking them over.
He went on. 'I doubt if his claim has any legal validity, but morally-that may be a question. It is indubitably a question with my ward. His letter came from Venezuela and I think she may have gone there to see him. She fully intended-she intends-to be here on June thirtieth, but how long does it take to get from New York to Caracas by plane? Not more than twenty hours, I think. She has a wild streak in her. The first thing to do will be to check all plane passengers to Venezuela, and if it's humanly possible I want to reach her before she sees that man Hagh.'
I handed the photographs to Wolfe. 'She's worth looking at,' I told him. 'Not only the pictures, but, as I thought, I've seen her. Just recently. I forget exactly where and when, but I remember from something somebody said, it was the day we had bacalhau for dinner. I don't-'
'What the devil are you gibbering about?' Wolfe demanded.
I looked him in the eye. 'You heard me,' I said, and sat down.
Chapter 3
One of Wolfe's better performances was his handling of Perry Helmar after my disclosure that Priscilla Eads was upstairs in the south room. The problem was to get Helmar out of there reasonably soon with his conviction of his need for Wolfe's services intact, without any commitment from us to take his job. Wolfe broke it by telling Helmar that he would sleep on it, and that if he decided to tackle it I would call at Helmar's office at ten in the morning for further details. Of course Helmar blew up. He wanted action then and there.
'What would you think of me,' Wolfe asked him, 'if, solely on information furnished by you here and now, I accepted this case and started to work on it?'
