ing that time neither of us communicated with Mion, nor arranged for anyone else to, I believe that covers it?'
'Thank you,' Wolfe said politely. 'You corroborate, of course, Mr. James?'
'I do,' the baritone said gruffly. 'This is a lot of goddam nonsense.'
'It does begin to sound like it,' Wolfe conceded. 'Dr. Lloyd? If you don't mind?'
He hadn't better, since he had been mellowed by four ample helpings of our best bourbon, and he didn't. 'Not at all,' he said cooperatively. 'I made calls on five patients, two on upper Fifth Avenue, one in the East Sixties, and two at the hospital. I got home a little after six and had just finished dressing after taking a bath when Fred Weppler phoned me about Mion. Of course I went at once.'
'You hadn't seen Mion or phoned him?'
'Not since I left after the conference. Perhaps I should have, but I had no idea--I'm not a psychiatrist, but I was his doctor.'
'He was mercurial, was he?'
'Yes, he was.' Lloyd pursed his lips. 'Of course, that's not a medical term.'
'Far from it,' Wolfe agreed. He shifted his gaze. 'Mr. Grove, I don't have to ask you if you phoned Mion, since it is on record that you did. Around five o'clock?'
Rupert the Fat had his head tilted again. Apparently that was his favorite pose for conversing. He corrected Wolfe. 'It was after five. More like a quarter past.'
'Where did you phone from?'
'The Harvard Club.' 34 Rex Stout
I thought, 111 be damned, it takes all kinds to make a Harvard Club.
'What was said?'
'Not much.' Grove's lips twisted. 'It's none of your damn business, you know, but the others have obliged, and I'll string along. I had forgotten to ask him if he would endorse a certain product for a thousand dollars, and the agency wanted an answer. We talked less than five minutes. First he said he wouldn't and then he said he would. That was all.'
'Did he sound like a man getting ready to kill himself?'
'Not the slightest. He was glum, but naturally, since he couldn't sing and couldn't expect to for at least two months.'
'After you phoned Mion what did you do?'
'I stayed at the club. I ate dinner there and hadn't quite finished when the news came that Mion had killed himself. So I'm still behind that ice cream and coffee.'
'That's too bad. When you phoned Mion, did you again try to persuade him not to press his claim against Mr. James?'
Grove's head straightened up. 'Did I what?' he demanded.
'You heard me,' Wolfe said rudely. 'What's surprising about it? Naturally Mrs. Mion has informed me, since I'm working for her. You were opposed to Mion's asking for payment in the first place and tried to talk him out of it. You said the publicity would be so harmful that it wasn't worth it. He demanded that you support the claim and threatened to cancel your contract if you refused. Isn't that correct?'
'It is not.' Grove's black eyes were blazing. 'It wasn't like that at all! I merely gave him my opinion.
Curtains for Three 35
When it was decided to make the claim I went along.' His voice went up a notch higher, though I wouldn't have thought it possible. 'I certainly did!'
'I see.' Wolfe wasn't arguing. 'What is your opinion now, about Mrs. Mion's claim?'
'I don't think she has one. I don't believe she can collect. If I were in James' place I certainly wouldn't pay her a cent.'
Wolfe nodded. 'You don't like her, do you?'
'Frankly, I don't. No. I never have. Do I have to like her?'
'No, indeed. Especially since she doesn't like you either.' Wolfe shifted in his chair and leaned back. I could tell from the line of his lips, straightened out, that the next item on the agenda was one he didn't care for, and I understood why when I saw his eyes level at Clara James. I'll bet that if he had known that he would have to be dealing with that type he wouldn't have taken the job. He spoke to her testily. 'Miss James, you've heard what has been said?'
'I was wondering,' she complained, as if she had been holding in a grievance, 'if you were going to go on ignoring me. I was around too, you know.'
'I know. I haven't forgotten you.' His tone implied that he only wished he could. 'When you had a drink in the Churchill bar with your father and Judge Arnold, why did they send you up to Mion's studio to see him? What for? *
Arnold and James protested at once, loudly and simultaneously. Wolfe, paying no attention to them, waited to hear Clara, her voice having been drowned by theirs.
'. . . nothing to do with it,' she was finishing. 'I sent myself.'
'It was your own idea?'
