“The reason I spoke about a preacher, I’m going to be married. We just decided to, just before the phone rang.”
“Well! That’s just fine! I can be there in twenty minutes. Of course I shouldn’t butt in, but I won’t be in the city-”
“That’s all right. Come ahead. Come on and come ahead.”
“Thank you very much.”
I pushed the phone back and told Wolfe, “Lit. Not plastered, but lit.”
He was busy pouring beer, which Fritz had brought, and uttered only a low growl. Nor did he make any comment as he observed me returning the gun, still lying on my desk, to my side coat-pocket, and arranging its little brother, which I got from a drawer, in an armpit holster of my own design.
I did not actually expect ambush and sudden death as I emerged from the house into the early October dark, but I wasn’t kidding myself that any street or any two-legged animal that had become an object of interest to Dazy Perrit was exactly the same street or the same animal it had been before. And though there is absolutely nothing wrong with my nervous system, things looked and felt different as I went to the garage around the corner, got the convertible, and headed uptown.
V
In one way Perrit had given me a false impression of his daughter. I had got the idea that practically all the dough he gave her was dished out for worthy things like textbooks and health work, but it was evident that her apartment on One hundred and twelfth Street had not been furnished with spare change. The big room-and there was nothing like a bed in it, which meant that wasn’t all-was provided with all the articles of comfort and then some. I admit the biggest thing in it was a lacewood desk between two windows, and there was no question about her owning books.
Otherwise Perrit had her right. Her performance on the phone had given me a suspicion that Dazy was just one more male parent with wool over his eyes, but one good look at her was enough. She was no bar heifer. Me not being her father, I could face the reality that she was a little short and overweight, but everything was there that should have been at the age of twenty-one, in its proper place, including a fairly well-arranged face with light-colored eyes totally different from dad’s. Since she had told me that they had just decided to get married when the phone rang, I was fully expecting to find the lucky man there, and there he was. “This is Mr. Schane,” Beulah told me, and he came forward for a shake. She went on, “He’s been scolding me. He says I was maudlin on the phone, talking to you about a preacher. Maybe I was, but he shouldn’t have got me drunk.”
“Now wait a minute,” Schane protested with a smile at me and then at her. “Who made the cocktails?”
“I did,” she admitted, and somehow they were next to each other, touching, though neither had deliberately managed it. Evidently they were at the stage where the two organisms naturally float to a junction. She asked me, “Hasn’t a girl got a right to make cocktails when she’s got engaged? By the way, there’s a little left. Won’t you have one?” She went to a table and picked up a shaker. “I’ll get a glass.”
“I’ve got a better idea,” I declared, intercepting her. “I ought to be ashamed of myself for busting in on your celebration, and especially right at dinnertime. Why not let me help you go on celebrating, in a mild sort of way? How about a betrothal dinner?” I was giving them my best grin. “With no rooms in hotels, I’m putting up with a friend down on Thirty-fifth Street, and he happens to be a famous man, and also he’s very hospitable. I’ll call him up and tell him we’re coming. All right?”
They looked at each other. “But after all,” Schane objected. “We’re utter strangers, not only to him but to you too.”
“What’s he famous for?” Beulah asked. “Who is he?”
“Nero Wolfe, the detective. I’ve known him for years. He saved my life once-uh, on a murder charge. I was innocent and he proved it.”
“Oh, Morton, let’s go!” Beulah had both her hands on his arm, holding him and looking up at him. “This is my first request as your bride-to-be, to come and eat dinner with Nero Wolfe! You can’t refuse the first one!” She turned her head to me. “We’ll make him go! He has a strong sense of propriety because he’s in his last year at law school and he thinks lawyers are the guardians of everything from social conventions to moral righteousness.”
“Not righteousness,” Schane said firmly. “Right.” He looked it. He stood, about my height, like a bulwark against something, with a good strong chin, a face that had bones, and, just to round out the picture, dark straight-aiming eyes behind glasses in thick black frames. He said he had intended to go home and do some studying in preparation for a stiff test that was coming. She said, still holding on to his arm, surely not on their engagement evening, and when it ended the way those things always end I got permission to use the phone and crossed over to it.
Fritz’s voice came. “Mr. Wolfe’s residence.”
“Fritz, this is Harold Stevens… No, no, Mr. Wolfe’s guest, Harold Stevens. May I speak to Mr. Wolfe, please?”
VI
My first chance to check on Beulah’s habit that we were supposed to cure her of, sitting with her shoulders slumped and then straightening up with a jerk, came at the dinner table after Fritz had served the broiled chicken and grilled sweet potatoes. It didn’t look particularly noticeable to me, but of course I didn’t have the same background for it as Dazy Perrit. It would have been a cinch to kid her out of it, I thought, if she hadn’t just got herself engaged. A girl who has just collared her man is not likely to be in a frame of mind to be easily persuaded that anything about her needs correcting.
Her man was, in my opinion, a pain in the neck. He seemed to be under the impression that he was already married, with accumulated burdens. The food may not have been red meat but there was nothing wrong with it, as there never is when it has Fritz’s by-line, and the wines were some of the best in Wolfe’s cellar, but he didn’t loosen up once. Law students may think they have a lot on their minds, but my God, this was a celebration of his contract for happiness. I was doing my best to keep it gay and carefree because I was afraid that if the conversation turned serious Beulah would ask me for a detailed account of the activities and plans of the Dayton
