Stebbins.'
He shook his head, either at Purley or at me, I didn't know which. 'What else did you give him?'
'Nothing. There was nothing else to give. Nothing to anybody, including the medical examiner and Lieutenant Burnham, whom you have never met. I didn't count, but Fritz says there were nineteen of them altogether. The door of the South Room is sealed. A bomb specialist is coming to get clues, probably this afternoon.'
When he wants to give something a good look and is in the office at his desk, in the one chair that he thoroughly approves, he leans back and shuts his eyes, but the back of that chair isn't the right angle for it, so he just squinted and pulled at his ear lobe. A full two minutes.
'Nothing,' he said. 'Nothing whatever.'
'Right. Because you're the greatest detective in the world. Stebbins doesn't believe it. He thinks he told me something, maybe not a name but something, and I left it out because we want to get him ourselves. Of course we do, at least I do. I might have unscrewed the cap of that tube myself. So I owe him something.'
'So do I. In my own house, asleep in my own bed, and that. That-that…'
I raised my brows at him. That was a first. The first time in my long experience that he had ever been at a loss for words.
He hit the chair arm with a fist. 'So. Call Felix. Tell him we'll be there for lunch.'
He looked at the wall clock. 'In half an hour. If no upstairs room is available, perhaps on the top floor, if that's convenient. Do you know of any source of information about Pierre other than the restaurant?'
I said no, got up, went to the phone on the bed-stand, switched it on, and dialed.
The top floor at Rusterman's restaurant was once the living quarters of Marko Vukcic, its owner, who had been Wolfe's boyhood friend in Montenegro and one of the only three men I knew who called him by his first name. For a year or so after Marko's death it had been unoccupied, and then Felix, who had left a one-third share and ran the restaurant under Wolfe's supervision as trustee, had moved in with his wife and two children. Soon the children had got married and left.
At twenty-five minutes to one, Wolfe and I were Seated at a table near a window on that floor which looked down on Madison Avenue. Felix, slim and trim, elegant in blue-black and white for the lunch customers, standing at Wolfe's left and my right, said, 'Then the scallops. Fresh from the bay, I never saw finer ones, and the shallots were perfect. They'll be ready in ten minutes.'
Wolfe nodded. 'And the rice fritters. I'll tell his name is Philip?'
'Philip Correla. Of course everyone knew Pierre, but Philip knew him best. As I said, I don't think I ever saw Pierre except here. We'll miss him, Mr. Wolfe. He was a good man. It's hard to believe, there in your house.'
He looked at his watch. 'You'll ex- cuse me-Ill send Philip.'
He went. The early ones would be coming down below.
'Uhuh,' I said. 'A million people will be saying that, it's hard to believe, there in Nero Wolfe's house. Or some of them will say it's easy to believe. I don't know which is worse.'
He glared at me.
Of the seventy-some at Rusterman's altogether, there were few that Wolfe had never seen, only seven or eight who had come since he had bowed out as trustee. When Philip Correla appeared, white apron and cap, he crossed to us and said, 'You may remember me, Mr. Wolfe. And Mr. Goodwin.'
'Certainly,' Wolfe said. 'You once disagreed with me about Rouennaise sauce.'
'Yes, sir. You said no bay leaf.'
'I nearly always say no bay leaf. Tradition should be respected but not sanctified. I concede that you make good sauces. Will you sit, please? I prefer eyes at a level.'
He waited until Philip had moved a chair to face him and was on it. Then: 'I presume Felix told you what I want.'
'Yes, sir. To ask me about Pierre. We were friends. Good friends. I tell you, I cried. In Italy men cry. I didn't leave Italy until I was twenty-four. I met Pierre in Paris.'
He looked at me. 'It said on the radio you found him.'
He looked at Wolfe. 'In your house. It didn't say why he was at your house or why he got killed.'
Wolfe took in a bushel of air through his nose and let it out through his mouth. Felix, and now Philip, and they knew him. 'He came to ask me something,' he said, 'but I was in bed. So I don't know what he wanted to ask, and that's why I need information from you. Since you were his friend, since you wept, it may be assumed that you want the man who killed him exposed and punished. Yes?'
'Of course I do. Have you-do you know who killed him?'
'No. I'm going to find out. I want to tell you something in confidence and ask you some questions. You are to tell no one-no one. Can you keep it to yourself?'
'Yes, sir.'
'Not many people are sure of themselves. Are you?'
'I'm sure I can keep a secret. I'm sure I can keep this kind of a secret.'
'Good. Pierre told Mr. Goodwin that a man was going to kill him, but that's all he told him. Had he told
