“Yes. Until notified. Fred.”
“If any strangers offer to help me look, do I let them?” Wolfe frowned. “I was about to mention that. Surely there can be no objection if we show a preference for law and order. With all courtesy, you can ask to see a search warrant.”
“Is there something hot in the box?” Saul blushed. “I mean, stolen property?”
“No. It is legally mine. Defend it.”
“Right.” Saul went. I reflected that if he ever got his mitts on the box I wouldn't like to be the guy to try to take it away from him, small as he was. He didn't think any more of Nero Wolfe than I do of my patrician nose and big brown intelligent eyes.
Wolfe had pushed the button for Fritz, the long push, not the two shorts for beer. Fritz came, and stood.
Wolfe frowned at him. “Can you stretch lunch for us? Two guests?”
“No,” Llewellyn broke in, “really-well have to get back -I promised Dad and Aunt
Gallic-”
“You can phone them. I would advise Miss Frost to stay. At any moment we may hear that the box has been found, and that would mean a crisis. And to provide against the possibility that it will not be found, I shall need a great deal of information. Miss Frost?”
She nodded. “I'll stay. I'm not hungry. HI stay. You'll stay with me, Lew?”
He grumbled something at her, but stayed put. Wolfe told Fritz:
“The fricandeau should be ample. Add lettuce to the salad if the endive is short, and of course increase the oil. Chill a bottle of the ’28 Marcobrunner.
As soon as you are ready.” He wiggled Fritz away with a finger, and settled back in his chair. “Now, Miss Frost. We are engaged in a joint enterprise. I need facts. I am going to ask you a lot of foolish questions. If one of them turns out to be wise or clever you will not know it, but let us hope that I will.
Please do not waste time in expostulation. If I ask you whether your mother has recently sent you to the corner druggist for potassium cyanide tablets, just say no, and listen to the next one. I once solved a difficult case by learning from a young woman, after questioning her for five hours, that she had been handed a newspaper with a piece cut out. Your inalienable rights of privacy are temporarily suspended. Is that understood?”
“Yes.” She looked straight at him. “I don't care. Of course I know you're clever, I want you to be. I know how easily you caught me in a lie Tuesday morning. But you ought to know…you can't catch me in one now, because I haven't anything to lie about. I don't see how anything I know can help you…”
“Possibly it can't. We can only try. Let us first straighten out the present a little, and work back. I should inform you: Mr. McNair did tell me a few things yesterday before he was interrupted. I have a little background to start with.
Now-for instance-what did Mr. Gebert mean yesterday when he said you were almost his fiancee?”
She compressed her lips, but then spoke right to it: “He didn't mean anything, really. He has-several times he has asked me to marry him.”
“Have you encouraged him?”
“No.”
“Has anyone?”
“Why…who could?”
“Lots of people. Your maid, the pastor of his church, a member of your family-has anyone?”
She said, after a pause, “No.”
“You said you had nothing to lie about.”
“But I-” She stopped, and tried to smile at him. It was then that I began to think she was a pretty good kid, when I saw her try to smile to show that she wasn't meaning to cheat on him. She went on, “This is so very personal…I don't see how…”
Wolfe wiggled a finger at her. “We are proceeding on this theory, that in any event whatever, we wish to discover the murderer of Mr. McNair. Even-merely for instance-if it should mean dragging your mother into a courtroom to testify against someone she likes. If that is our aim, you must leave the method of pursuit to me; and I beg you, don't balk and shy at every little pebble. Who encouraged Mr. Gebert?”
“I won't do it again,” she promised. “No one really encouraged him. I've known him all my life, and mother knew him before I was born. Mother and father knew him. He has always been… attentive, and amusing, and in some ways he is interesting and I like him. In other ways I dislike him extremely. Mother has told me I should control my dislike on account of his good points, and she said that since he was such an old friend I shouldn't wound his feelings by cutting him off, that it wouldn't hurt to let him think he was still in the field as long as I hadn't decided.”
“You agreed to that?”
“Well, I…I didn't fight it. My mother is very persuasive.”
“What was the attitude of your uncle? Mr. Dudley Frost. The trustee of your property.”
“Oh, I never discussed things like that with him. But I know what it would have been. He didn't like Perren.”
