It didn't take long. As I was folding the sheets and returning them to the envelopes, Buff spoke. 'Your name is Archie Goodwin?'
'Right.'
'Please write on each envelope, 'Opened, and the contents copied, by Archie Goodwin, on April thirteenth, nineteen-fifty-five, in the presence of Talbott Heery, Oliver Buff, and Patrick O'Garro,' and sign it.'
I gave it a thought. 'I don't like it,' I told him. 'I don't want to sign anything so closely connected with a million dollars. How about this: I'll write 'Opened, and the contents copied, by Archie Goodwin, on April thirteenth, nineteen-fifty-five, with our consent and in our presence,' and you gentlemen sign it.'
They decided that would do, and I wrote, and they signed, and O'Garro returned the envelopes to the box and locked it, and went out with it. Soon he rejoined us, and the four of us went up a broad flight of marble steps and out to the street. On the sidewalk Heery asked where they were bound for, and they said their office, which was around the corner, and he turned to me. 'You, Goodwin?'
I told him West Thirty-fifth Street, and he said he was going downtown and would give me a lift. The others went, and he flagged a taxi and we got in, and I told the driver Thirty-fifth and Ninth Avenue. My watch said ten to three, so I should make it by the time the second customer arrived.
As we stopped for a red light at Fifth Avenue, headed west on Forty-seventh Street, Heery said, 'I have some spare time and I think I'll stop in for a talk with Nero Wolfe.'
'Not right now,' I told him. 'He's tied up.' 'But now is when I have the time.' 'Too bad, but it'll have to be later-in fact, much later. He has appointments that run right through until late this evening, to ten-thirty or eleven.' 'I want to see him now.'
'Sony. Ill tell him, and he'll be sorry too. If you want to give me your number I'll ring you and tell you when.'
He got a wallet from his pocket, fingered in it, and came up with a crisp new twenty. 'Here,' he said. ' I don't need long. Probably ten minutes will do it.'
I felt flattered. A finiff would have been at the market, and a sawbuck would have been lavish. 'I deeply appreciate it,' I said with feeling, 'but I'm not the doorman or receptionist. Mr. Wolfe has different men for different functions, and mine is to collect poetry out of safe deposit boxes. That's all I do.'
Returning the bill neatly to the wallet, he stated, with no change whatever in tone or manner, 'At a better time and place I'll knock your goddam block off.' You see why I wanted you to meet him. That ended the conversation. To pass the time as we weaved along with the traffic I thought of three or four things to say, but after all it was his taxi and it had been nice of him to make it a twenty. When the cab stopped at Thirty-fifth Street I only said, 'See you at a better time and place,' as I got out.
At the corner drugstore I went to the phone booth, dialed our number, got Wolfe, and was told that no company had come. It may have been a minor point, whether Homicide had tails on all five of them or was giving Miss Frazee special attention, but it wouldn't hurt to find out, so I went down the block to Doc Vollmer's place, thirty yards from Wolfe's, and stepped down into the areaway, from where I could see our stoop. My watch said ten past three. I was of course expecting a taxi and wasn't interested in pedestrians, until I happened to send a glance to the east and saw a figure approaching that I could name. I swiveled my head to look west, and saw a female mounting the seven steps to our stoop. So I moved up to the sidewalk into the path of the approaching figure--Art Whipple of Homicide West. He stopped on his heels, opened his mouth, and closed it.
'I won't tell her,' I assured him. 'Unless you want me to give her a message?'
'Go chin yourself,' he suggested. 'At a better time and place. She'll probably be with us nearly an hour. If you want to go to Tony's around the corner I'll give you a ring just before she leaves. Luck.' I went on to our stoop, and as I was mounting the steps the door opened a crack and Fritz's voice came through it 'Your name, please, madam?'
I said okay, and he slipped the bolt and opened up, and I told the visitor to enter. While Fritz attended to the door I offered to take her coat, a brown wool number that would have appreciated a little freshening up, but she said she would keep it and her name was Wheelock.
I ushered her to the office and told Wolfe, 'Mrs. James R. Wheelock, of Richmond, Virginia.' Then I went and opened the safe, took the four leaves from my notebook that I had written on, put them in the inner compartment, closed that door and twirled the knob of the combination, and closed the outer door. By the time I got to my desk Carol Wheelock was in the red leather chair, with her coat draped over the back.
According to the information she was a housewife, but if so her house was nearly out of wife. She looked as if she hadn't eaten for a week and hadn't slept for a month. Properly fed and rested for a good long stretch, filled in from her hundred pounds to around a hundred and twenty, she might have been a pleasant sight and a very satisfactory wife for a man who was sold on the wife idea, but it took some imagination to realize it. The only thing was her eyes. They were dark, set in deep, and there was fire back of them.
'I ought to tell you,' she said in a low even voice, 'that I didn't want to come here, but Mr. O'Garro said it was absolutely necessary. I have decided I shouldn't say anything to anybody. But if you have something to tell me --go ahead.'
Wolfe was glowering at her, and I would have liked to tell her that it meant nothing personal, it was only that the sight of a hungry human was painful to him, and the sight of one who must have been hungry for months was intolerable. He spoke. 'You understand, Mrs. Wheelock, that I am acting for the firm of Lippert, Buff and Assa, which is handling the contest for Heery Products, Incorporated.'
'Yes, Mr. O'Garro told me.'
'I do have a little to tell you, but not much. For one item, I have had a talk with one of the contestants, Miss Gertrude Frazee. You may know that she is the founder and president of an organization called the Women's Nature League. She says that some three hundred of its members have helped her in the contest, which is not an infraction of the rules. She does not say that she has telephoned to them the verses that were distributed last evening, and that they are now working on them, but it wouldn't be fanciful to assume that she has and they are. Have you any comment?'
She was staring at him, her mouth working.
'Three hundred,' she said.
Wolfe nodded.
