'No, the stairs inside the apartment. We entered the studio. Mion was on the floor. We went over to him. There was a big hole through the top of his head. He was dead. I led Mrs. Mion out, made her come, and on the stairs-- they're too narrow to go two abreast--she fell and rolled halfway down. I carried her to her room and put her on her bed, and I started for the living room, for the phone there, when I thought of something to do first. I went out and took the elevator to the ground floor, got the doorman and elevator man together, and asked them who had been taken up to the Mion apartment, either the twelfth floor or the thirteenth, that afternoon. I said they must be damn sure not to skip anybody. They gave me the names and I wrote them down. Then I went back up to the apartment and phoned the police. After I did that it struck me that a layman isn't supposed to decide if a man is dead, so I phoned Dr. Lloyd, who has an apartment there in the building. He came at once, and I took him up to the studio. We hadn't been there more than three or four minutes when the first policeman came, and of course--'
'If you please,' Wolfe put in crossly. 'Everything is sometimes too much. You haven't even hinted at the trouble you're in.'
'I'll get to it--'
'But faster, I hope, if I help. My memory has been jogged. The doctor and the police pronounced him dead. The muzzle of the revolver had been thrust into his mouth, and the emerging bullet had torn out a
Curtains for Three 7
i of his skull. The revolver, found lying on the floor | beside him, belonged to him and was kept there in the No . There was no sign of any struggle and no mark f any other injury on him. The loss of his voice was an scellent motive for suicide. Therefore, after a routine vestigation, giving due weight to the difficulty of the barrel of a loaded revolver into a man's pnouth without arousing him to protest, it was retried as suicide. Isn't that correct?' R* They both said yes.
'Have the police reopened it? Or is gossip at kf
They both said no.
'Then let's get on. Where's the trouble?' 'It's us,' Peggy said. 'Why? What's wrong with you?' 'Everything.' She gestured. 'No. I don't mean that not everything, just one thing. After my husband's ath and the--the routine investigation, I went away a while. When I came back--for the past two onths Fred and I have been together some, but it sn't right--I mean we didn't feel right. Day before ay, Friday, I went to friends in Connecticut for s weekend, and he was there. Neither of us knew the was coming. We talked it out yesterday and last and this morning, and we decided to come and ; you to help us--anyway, I did, and he wouldn't let i come alone.'
Peggy leaned forward and was in deadly earnest. STou must help us, Mr. Wolfe. I love him so much--so i!--and he says he loves me, and I know he does! ay afternoon we decided we would get married October, and then last night we got started talking at it isn't what we say, it's what is in our eyes when
8 Sex Stout
we look at each other. We just can't get married with that back of our eyes and trying to hide it--'
A little shiver went over her. 'For years--forever? We can't! We know we can't--it would be horrible! What it is, it's a question: who killed Alberto? Did he? Did I? I don't really think he did, and he doesn't really think I did--I hope he doesn't--but it's there back of our eyes, and we know it is!'
She extended both hands. 'We want you to find out!'
Wolfe snorted. 'Nonsense. You need a spanking or a psychiatrist. The police may have shortcomings, but they're not nincompoops. If they're satisfied--'
'But that's it! They wouldn't be satisfied if we had told the truth!'
'Oh.' Wolfe's browsVent up. 'You lied to them?'
'Yes. Or if we didn't lie, anyhow we didn't tell them the truth. We didn't tell them that when we first went in together and saw him, there was no gun lying there. There was no gun in sight.'
'Indeed. How sure are you?'
'Absolutely positive. I never saw anything clearer than I saw that--that sight--all of it. There was no gun.'
Wolfe snapped at Weppler, 'You agree, sir?'
'Yes. She's right.'
Wolfe sighed. 'Well,' he conceded, 'I can see that you're really in trouble. Spanking wouldn't help.'
I shifted in my chair on account of a tingle at the lower part of my spine. Nero Wolfe's old brownstone house on West Thirty-fifth Street was an interesting place to live and work--for Fritz Brenner, the chef and housekeeper, for Theodore Horstmann, who fed and nursed the ten thousand orchids in the plant rooms up on the roof, and for me, Archie Goodwin, whose main
Curtains for Three 9
operations was the big office on the ground faturally I thought my job the most interesting, confidential assistant to a famous private de is constantly getting an earful of all kinds of and problems--everything from a missing to a new blackmail gimmick. Very few clients bored me. But only one kind of case gave me le in the spine: murder. And if this pair of were talking straight, this was it.
II
filled two notebooks when they left, more than hours later.
they had thought it through before they phoned appointment with Wolfe, they wouldn't, have All they wanted, as Wolfe pointed out, was the They wanted him, first, to investigate a four i-old murder without letting on there had been second, to prove that neither of them had killed Mion, which could be done only by finding out had; and third, in case he concluded that one of had done it, to file it away and forget it. Not that put it that way, since their story was that they both absolutely innocent, but that was what it itedto.
fe Wolfe made it good and plain. 'If I take the job,' he them, 'and find evidence to convict someone of no matter who, the use I make of it will be ly in my discretion. I am neither an Astraea nor a but I like my door open. But if you want to drop now, here's your check, and Mr. Goodwin's note will be destroyed. We can forget you have been and shall.'
