The items in Bascom's reports about Louis Rony's visits to Bischoff's pet shop had cost Sperling some dough. If it hadn't been for that Wolfe would certainly have let Rony slide until I reported on my week-end, since it was a piddling little job and had no interest for him except the fee, and since he had a sneaking idea that women came on a lope from every direction when I snapped my fingers, which was foolish because it often takes more than snapping your fingers. But when I got back from my call on Sperling on Thursday afternoon Wolfe had already been busy on the phone, getting Saul Panzer and Fred Durkin and Orrie Gather, and when they came to the office Friday morning for briefing Saul was assigned to a survey of Rony's past, after reading Bascom, and Fred and Orrie were given special instructions for fancy tailing. Obviously what Wolfe was doing was paying for his self-esteem-or letting Sperling pay for it. He had once told Arnold Zeck, during their third and last phone talk, that when he undertook an investigation he permitted prescription of limits only by requirements of the job, and now he was leaning backward. If Rony's pet shop visits really meant that he was on one of Zeck's payrolls, and if Zeck was still tacking up his KEEP OFF signs, Nero Wolfe had to make it plain that no one was roping him off. We've got our pride. So Saul and Fred and Orrie were at it.
So was I, the next morning, Saturday, driving north along the winding Westchester parkways, noticing that the trees seemed to have more leaves than they knew what to do with, keeping my temper when some dope of a snail stuck to the left lane as if he had built it, doing a little snappy passing now and then just, to keep my hand in, dipping down off the parkway on to a secondary road, following it a couple of miles as directed, leaving it to turn into a gravelled drive between ivy-covered stone pillars, winding through a park and assorted horticultural exhibits until I broke cover and saw the big stone mansion, stopping at what looked as if it might be the right spot, and telling a middle-aged sad looking guy in a mohair uniform that I was the photographer they were expecting.
Sperling and I had decided that I was the son of a business associate who was concentrating on photography, and who wanted pictures of Stony Acres for a corporation portfolio, for two reasons: first, because I had to be something, and second, because I wanted some good shots of Louis Rony.
Four hours later, having met everybody and had lunch and used both cameras all over the place in as professional a manner as I could manage, I was standing at the edge of the swimming pool, chasing a fly off Gwenn's leg. We were both dripping, having just climbed out.
“Hey,” she said, “the snap of that towel is worse than a fly bite-if there was a fly.” I assured her there had been.
“Well, next time show it to me first and maybe I can handle it myself. Do that dive from the high board again, will you? Where's the Leica?” She had been a pleasant surprise. From what her father had said I had expected an intellectual treat in a plain wrapper, but the package was attractive enough to take your attention off the contents. She was not an eye-stopper, and there was no question about her freckles, and while there was certainly nothing wrong with her face it was a little rounder than I would specify if I were ordering a la carte; but she was not in any way hard to look at, and those details which had been first disclosed when she appeared in her swimming rig were completely satisfactory. I would never have seen the fly if I had not been looking where it lit.
I did the dive again and damn near pancaked. When I was back on the marble, wiping my hair back, Madeline was there, saying, “What are you trying to do, Andy, break your back? You darned fool!” “I'm making an impression,” I told her. “Have you got a trapeze anywhere? I can hang by my toes.
“Of course you can. I know your repertory better than you think I do. Come and sit down and I'll mix you a drink.” Madeline was going to be in my way a little, in case I decided to humour Wolfe by trying to work on Gwenn. She was more spectacular than Gwenn, with her slim height and just enough curves not to call anywhere flat, her smooth dark oval face, and her big dark eyes which she liked tc keep half shut so she could suddenly open them on you and let you have it. I already knew that her husband was dead, having been shot down in a B-17 over Berlin in 1943, that she thought she had seen all there was but might be persuaded to try another look, that she liked the name Andy, and that she thought there was just a chance that I nught know a funny story she hadn't heard. That was why she was going to be in my way a little.
I went and sat with her on a bench in the sun, but she didn't mix me a drink because three men were gathered around the refreshment cart and one of them attended to it-James U. Sperling, Junior. He was probably a year or two older than Madeline and resembled his father hardly at all. There was nothing about his slender straightness or his nice smooth tanned skin or his wide spoiled mouth that would have led anyone to say he looked like a miner. I had never seen him before but had heard a little of him. I couldn't give you a quote, but my vague memory was that he was earnest and serious about learning to make himself useful in the corporation his father headed, and he frequently beat it to Brazil or Nevada or Arizona to see how mining was done, but he got tired easy and had to return to New York to rest, and he knew lots of people in New York willing to help him rest.
The two men with him at the refreshment cart were guests. Since our objective was confined to Rony and Gwenn I hadn't bothered with the others except to be polite, and I wouldn't be dragging them in if it wasn't that later on they called for some attention. Also it was beginning to look as if they could stand a little attention right then, on account of a situation that appeared to be developing, so the field of my interest was spreading out a little. If I ever saw a woman make a pass, Mrs Paul Emerson, Connie to her friends and enemies, was making one at Louis Rony.
First the two men. One of them was just a super, a guy some older than me named Webster Kane. I had gathered that he was some kind of an economist who had done some kind of a job for Continental Mines Corporation, and he acted like an old friend of the family. He had a big well-shaped head and apparently didn't own a hairbrush, didn't care what his clothes looked like, and was not swimming but was drinking. In another ten years he could pass for a senator.
I had welcomed the opportunity for a close-up of the other man because I had often heard Wolfe slice him up and feed him to the cat. At six-thirty p.m. on WPIT, five days a week, Paul Emerson, sponsored by Continental Mines Corporation, interpreted the news. About once a week Wolfe listened to him, but seldom to the end; and when, after jabbing the button on his desk that cut the circuit, Wolfe tried some new expressions and phrases for conveying his opinion of the performance and the performer, no interpreter was needed to clarify it.
The basic idea was that Paul Emerson would have been more at home in Hitler's Germany or Franco's Spain. So I was glad of a chance to take a slant at him but it didn't get me much because he confused me by looking exactly like my chemistry teacher in high school out in Ohio, who had always given me better marks than I had earned. Also it was a safe bet that he had ulcers-I mean Paul Emerson-and he was drinking plain soda with only one piece of ice. In swimming trunks he was really pitiful, and I had taken some pictures of him from the most effective angles to please Wolfe with.
It was Emerson's wife, Connie, who seemed to be heading for a situation that might possibly have a bearing on our objective as defined by Wolfe. She couldn't have had more than four or five years to dawdle away until her life began at forty, and was therefore past my deadline, but it was by no means silly of her to assume that it was still okay for her to go swimming in mixed company in broad daylight. She was one of those rare blondes that take a good tan, and had better legs and arms, judged objectively, than either Gwenn or Madeline,
