cop I see I can think, You bastard, what I know and you don't.' Mike, grinning, took his three twenties. 'I'm different,' he said. 'Just as apt as not I'd tell 16 Rex Stout everybody in reach, including cops, but now I can't because I'd have to give your forty bucks back. I may not be noble but I'm honest.' He put the bills in a pocket and extended a paw. 'But we'd better shake on it just to be sure.' We shook, and I got back into Al's cab and told him to take me to the Gazette building. If Lon Cohen had a title, I didn't know what it was and I doubt if he did. Just his name was on the door of the little room on the twentieth floor, two doors down from the corner office of the publisher, and in that situation you would think he would be out of the dust stirred up by the daily whirlwind of a newspaper, but he always seemed to be up, not only on what had just happened but on what was just going to happen. We kept no account of how we stood on give and take over the years, but it pretty well evened up. He was very dark?dark skin stretched tight over his neat little face, dark brown deep-set eyes, hair almost black, slicked back and up over his sloping dome. He was next to the best of the poker players I occasionally spent a night with, the best being Saul Panzer, whom you will meet later. When I entered the little room that Monday evening he was on the phone, and I took the chair at the end of his desk and sat and listened. It went on for minutes, and all he said was 'No' nine times. When he hung up I said, 'Just a yes man.' 'I have to make a call,' he said. 'Here, pass the time.' He picked up a cardboard folder and handed it to me and returned to the phone. It was the file on Thomas G. Yeager. Not bulky?a dozen or so newspaper clippings, four typewritten memos, tear sheets of an article in a Too Many Clients 17 trade journal, Plastics Today, and three photographs. Two of the photographs were studio jobs with his name typed at the bottom, and one was of a gathering in the Churchill ballroom, with a typed caption pasted on: 'Thomas G. Yeager speaking at the banquet of the National Plastics Association, Churchill Hotel, New York City, October 19, 1958.' He was at the mike on the stage with his arm raised for a gesture. I read the memos and glanced through the clippings, and was looking over the article when Lon finished at the phone and turned. 'All right, give,' he demanded. I closed the folder and put it on the desk. 'I came,' I said, 'to make a deal, but first you should know something. I have never seen Thomas G. Yeager or spoken with him or had any communication from him, and neither has Mr. Wolfe. I know absolutely nothing about him except what you told me on the phone and what I just read in that folder.' Lon was smiling. 'Okay for the record. Now just between you and me.' 'The same, believe it or not. But I heard something just before I phoned you at five o'clock that made me curious about him. For the time being I would prefer to keep what I heard to myself--for at least twenty-four hours and maybe longer. I expect to be busy and I don't want to spend tomorrow at the DA's office. So it's not necessary for anyone to know that I rang you this afternoon to ask about Yeager.' 'It may be desirable. For me. I sent for his file. If I say I dreamed something was going to happen to him people might talk.' I grinned at him. 'Come off it. You haven't even 18 Rex Stout got a pair. You can say anything you damn please. You can say someone told you something off the record and you're hanging on to it. Besides, I'm offering a deal. If you'll forget about my curiosity about Yeager until further notice, I'll put you on my Christmas card list. This year it will be an abstract painting in twenty colors and the message will be 'We want to share with you this picture of us bathing the dog, greetings of the season from Archie and Mehitabel and the children.'' 'You haven't got a Mehitabel or any children.' 'Sure, that's why it will be abstract.' He eyed me. 'You could give me something not for quotation. Or something to hold until you're ready to let go.' 'No. Not now. If and when, I know your number.'
'As usual.' He raised his hands, palms up. 'I have things to do. Drop in some day.' His phone rang, and he turned to it, and I went. On my way to the elevator and going down, I looked it over. I had told Wolfe I would be back before bedtime, but it was only nine o'clock. I was hungry. I could go to a soda counter for a bite and decide how to proceed while I bit, but the trouble was that I knew darned well what I wanted to do, and it might take all night. Besides, although it was understood that when I was out on an errand I would be guided by intelligence and experience, as Wolfe had put it, it was also understood that if things got complicated I would phone. And the phone was no good for this, not only because he hated talking on the phone about anything whatever, but also because it had to be handled just right or he would refuse to play. So I flagged a taxi and Too Many Clients 19 gave the driver the address of the old brownstone on West 35th Street. Arriving, I mounted the seven steps to the stoop and pushed the bell button. My key isn't enough when the chain bolt is on, as it usually is when I'm out. When Fritz opened the door and I entered, he tried not to look a question at me but couldn't keep it out of his eyes?the same question he hadn't asked that afternoon: Did we have a client? I told him it was still possible, and I was empty, and could he spare a hunk of bread and a glass of milk? He said but of course, he would bring it, and I went to the office. Wolfe was at his desk with a book, leaning back in the only chair in the world that he can sit down in without making a face, made to order by his design and under his supervision. The reading light in the wall above and behind his left shoulder was the only one on in the room, and like that, with the light at that angle, he looks even bigger than he is. Like a mountain with the sun rising behind it. As I entered and flipped the wall switch to cut him down to size, he spoke. He said, 'Umph.' As I crossed to my desk he asked, 'Have you eaten?' 'No.' I sat. 'Fritz is bringing something.' 'Bringing?' Surprise with a touch of annoyance. Ordinarily, when an errand has made me miss a meal and I come home hungry, I go to the kitchen to eat. The exceptions are when I have something to report that shouldn't wait, and when he is settled down for the evening with a book he is in no mood to listen to a report, no matter what. I nodded. 'I have something on my chest.' His lips tightened. The book, a big thick one, 20 Rex Stout was spread open, held with both hands. He closed it on a finger to keep his place, heaved a sigh, and demanded, 'What?' I decided it was useless to try circling around. With him you have to fit the tactics to the atmosphere. 'That slip I put on your desk,' I said. 'The bank balance after drawing those checks. The June tax payment will be due in thirty-seven days. Of course we could file an amended declaration if someone doesn't turn up with a major problem and a retainer to match.' He was scowling at me. 'Must you harp on the obvious?' 'I'm not harping. I haven't mentioned it for three days. I refer to it now because I would like to have permission to take a stab at digging up a client instead of sitting here on my fanny waiting for one to turn up. I'm getting calluses on my rump.' 'And your modus? A sandwich board?' 'No, sir. I have a possible target, just barely possible. About that man who came to hire me to spot a tail, Thomas G. Yeager. I got two cabs and had them waiting at seven o'clock, one for him to take and one for me to follow in. He didn't show up. I got tired waiting and rang his house, and Purley Stebbins answered the phone. I went around a corner and there was a car with Purley's driver in it, in front of Yeager's house. I rang Lon Cohen and he wanted to know why I had phoned him to ask about Thomas G. Yeager two hours before Yeager's body was found in a hole on West Eighty-second Street. With a hole in his head. So our client was gone, but it occurred to me that his going might possibly get us another one. He was a big shot in his field, with a big title and a nice house in a nice Too Many Clients 21 neighborhood, and it could be that no one but me knew of his suspicion that he was being tailed or was going to be. Also the address that he thought he was going to be tailed to was One-fifty-six West Eighty-second Street, and it was in that block on that street that his body had been found. So I spent some of your money. Besides paying the two hackies for their time, I gave them an extra forty bucks to forget where they had been--that is, I gave it to Mike Collins. Al Goller preferred to do his forgetting for personal reasons.' Wolfe grunted. 'Your initiative. They may already have the murderer.' 'Then you're out forty dollars in addition to the fifty-three dollars and sixty cents spent on behalf of a client from whom we won't collect because he's dead. But it's not as simple as that. Actually our client is not dead. Or, putting it another way, we didn't have a client. On my way home I stopped in at the Gazette to ask Lon Cohen to forget that I had phoned to ask him about Thomas G. Yeager, and there was a folder on his desk with some items about Yeager, including three pictures of him, which I looked at. The man who came this afternoon to hire me to spot his tail was not Yeager. No resemblance. So I suppose it's more accurate to say we didn't have a client.' FR1;Chapter 3 Naturally I expected to get a strong reaction, and I did. Wolfe straightened up to reach to the desk for his bookmark, a thin strip of gold which he used only for books he considered worthy of a place on the shelves in the office. As he inserted it in the book Fritz appeared with a tray and brought it to my desk. Seeing that Wolfe was putting his book down, he winked at me approvingly, and I swiveled to get at the tray. There was a bowl of chestnut soup, a cucumber-and-shrimp sandwich on toast, a roast-beef sandwich on a hard roll, home-baked, a pile of watercress, an apple baked in white wine, and a glass of milk. A question of etiquette. When we are at table in the dining room for lunch or dinner, any mention of business is taboo. The rule has never been formally extended to fill-ins, but Wolfe feels strongly that when a man is feeding nothing should interfere with his concentration on his palate. Having disposed of the book, he leaned back and shut his eyes. After a few spoonfuls of soup I said, 'I'm too hungry to taste anyway. Go right ahead.' His eyes opened. 'Beyond all doubt?' 24 Rex Stout 'Yes, sir.' I took in a spoonful and swallowed. 'His name was typed on the pictures. Also there was a picture of him in a magazine. A face like a squirrel with a pointed nose and not much chin. The man this afternoon had a long bony face and broad forehead.' 'And, calling himself Yeager, he said that he expected to be followed to a specified
