and you could come for it tonight or tomorrow.' She frowned. 'Except that he knows I had a key, but I could explain that.'
But she no longer had the document. I had reached and taken it. You are welcome to think I should have changed holds on her and gone on fighting, but you weren't there seeing and hearing her, and I was. I gave up. I got out my pocket notebook, tore out a page, and began writing on it.
'I could use another drink,' she stated.
'In a minute,' I mumbled, and went on writing, as follows:
To Nero Wolfe:
I hereby declare that Archie Goodwin has tried his best to persuade me to sign the statement you wrote, and explained its purpose to me, and I have toM him why I must refuse to sign it.
Curtains for Three 63
'There,' I said, handing it to her. 'That won't be signing something; it's just stating that you refuse to sign something. The reason I've got to have it, Mr. Wolfe knows how beautiful girls appeal to me, especially sophisticated girls like you, and if I take that thing back to him unsigned he'll think I didn't even try. He might even fire me. Just write your name there at the bottom.'
She read it over again and took the pen. She smiled at me, glistening. 'You're not kidding me any,' she said, not unfriendly. 'I know when I appeal to a man. You think I'm cold and calculating.'
'Yeah?' I made it a little bitter, *ut not too bitter. 'Anyhow it's not the point whether you appeal to me, but what Mr. Wolfe will think. It'll help a lot to have that. Much obliged.' I took the paper from her and blew on her signature to dry it.
'I know when I appeal to a man,' she stated. There wasn't another thing there I wanted, but I had practically promised to buy her another drink, so I Jdid so.
It was after six when I got back to West Thirty f|Mth Street, so Wolfe had finished in the plant rooms was down in the office. I marched in and put the
tied statement on his desk in front of him. He grunted. 'Well?'
|? I sat down and told him exactly how it had gone, up |ittie point where she had offered to take the docu at home and show it to her father. Wl'm sorry,' I said, 'but some of her outstanding i didn't show much in that crowd the other eve I give this not as an excuse but merely a fact, r mental operations could easily be carried on inside TOd-out pea. Knowing what you think of unsupl statements, and wanting to convince you of the
64 Rex Stout
truth of that one. I got evidence to back it up. Here's a paper she did sign.'
I handed him the page I had torn from my notebook. He took a look at it and then cocked an eye at me.
'She signed this?'
'Yes, sir. In my presence.'
'Indeed. Good. Satisfactory.'
I acknowledged the tribute with a careless nod. It does not hurt my feelings when he says, 'Satisfactory,' like that
'A bold, easy hand,' he said. 'She used your pen?'
'Yes, sir.'
'May I have it, please?'
I arose and handed it to him, together with a couple of sheets of typewriter paper, and stood and watched with interested approval as he wrote 'Clara James' over and over again, comparing each attempt with the sample I had secured. Meanwhile, at intervals, he spoke.
'It's highly unlikely that anyone will ever see it-- except our clients. . . . That's better. . . . There's time to phone all of them before dinner--first Mrs. Mion and Mr. Weppler--then the others. . . . Tell them my opinion is ready on Mrs. Mion's claim against Mr. James. . . . If they can cpme at nine this evening --If that's impossible tomorrow morning at eleven will do. ... Then get Mr. Cramer. . . . Tell him it might be well to bring one of his men along. . . .'
He flattened the typed statement on his desk blotter, forged Clara James' name at the bottom, and compared it with the true signature which I had provided.
'Faulty, to ah expert,' he muttered, 'but no expert will ever see it. For our clients, even if they know her writing, it will do nicely.'
Curtains for Three 65
VIII
It took a solid hour on the phone to get it fixed for that evening, but I finally managed it. I never did catch up with Gifford James, but his daughter agreed to find him and deliver him, and made good on it. The others I tracked down myself.
The only ones that gave me an argument were the clients, especially Peggy Mion. She balked hard at sitting in at a meeting for the ostensible purpose of collecting from Gifford James, and I had to appeal to Wolfe. Fred and Peggy were invited to come ahead of the others for a private briefing and then decide whether to stay or not. She bought that.
They got there in time to help out with the after dinner coffee. Peggy had presumably brushed her teeth and had a nap and a bath, and manifestly she had changed her clothes, but even so she did not sparkle. She was wary, weary, removed, and skeptical. She didn't say in so many words that she wished she had never gone near Nero Wolfe, but she might as well have. I had a notion that Fred Weppler felt the same way about it but was being gallant and loyal. It was Peggy who had insisted on coming to Wolfe, and Fred didn't want her to feel that he thought she had made things worse instead of better.
