Bendini? Some clothes?” “Yes, but I-” “You have three minutes to change, unless you want to travel around like that.
Go and change.” “No,” Wolfe said. His forefinger was tapping on the desk, which meant he was ready to pick up tigers and knock their heads together. “Stay here, Miss Bendini.” His eyes darted to Cramer. “Have you a warrant? Or are you charging her?” “Nuts. Murder. Material witness.” “Witness to what?” “I’ll tell her, not you.” “Bah. Miss Bendini. I advise you not to leave here unless you are taken by force. Make them carry you.” I intervened for several reasons. First, Wolfe was not following a program but was simply so mad he couldn’t see. Second, Rosa had gone so white and rigid that I doubted if she could walk, especially accompanied by a cop, and I didn’t regard it as desirable to let her be carried out of our house in the costume she had on. Third, while I hadn’t promised her, I had unquestionably given her an inducement.
“Look,” I said to Cramer, “why all the war paint? If you do carry her out, and if she proves to be no more material than I am, with Mr. Wolfe as sore as he is you’ll get blisters. If you don’t like conversing with her here I’ll make an offer, take it or leave it. She changes her clothes, and Purley and I drive her downtown in Mr. Wolfe’s car, and I am present, not too talkative, during your talk with her. I’ll stay as long as she does. When the time comes, unless you are prepared to charge her, she leaves with me. What the hell, I was with you all Friday night, wasn’t I? Well?” “You might,” Wolfe said testily, “ask my permission, Archie.” “This is Sunday.” I told Cramer, “It’s no deal unless you say yes out loud so everybody can hear you. I would prefer to see you carry her and let Mr. Wolfe see what the law can do, but Miss Bendini is like a sister to me. Yes?” “Yes,” Cramer snarled.
I was thinking, as I went for the car, that one of the leading roles had bounced back to us again-the last to see Naylor alive. For a while it had been me. Then Saul Panzer, who had passed it on to the taxi driver. Now it was once more back in the family, with Fritz ticketed for it. Who next?
CHAPTER Twenty-Five
I missed Sunday dinner but not supper.
It was no wonder that under the circumstances Cramer thought he had hooked a real fish and had also made a monkey out of Wblfe. But after half an hour with Rosa and me in his office, beginning to suspect that he had merely got caught on a snag, he left us to Lieutenant Rowcliff and beat it for Centre Street.
Rowcliff didn’t care much for the assignment, since his opinion of me is a perfect match for mine of him. He shot questions at Rosa for an hour or so in his correspondence-school grammar, meanwhile trying to keep me from contributing any kind of sound, let alone a word, and halted only when he was interrupted by the return of a squad man who had been sent to Washington Heights to check with the in-laws.
Not only had father-in-law and mother-in-law verified Rosa’s story, but husband-in-law came back with the squad man to try to raise some hell. He wasn’t going to let his wife be abused and would see to it personally that she wasn’t.
Knowing what had led up to his wife’s departure from his parental apartment in the Sunday dawn, I regarded him with awe. I had noticed on the Naylor-Kerr stationery that the motto of the firm was ANYTHING IN THE WORLD, ANYWHERE IN THE WORLD. It struck me that the motto of the male personnel of the stock department appeared to be PROTECT THE WOMAN. Or if they wanted it to have eight words like the firm’s it could be PROTECT YOUR WOMAN NO MATTER WHOSE SHE IS.
That left Rowcliff with nothing to discuss with Rosa except the time she had spent in bed Friday night, especially the hours from ten to twelve, which gave him limited space to turn around in. He sent a man down to Bank Street to see the janitor and the other tenants, but all they could say was that they hadn’t happened to see Miss Bendini come home Friday evening. Finally, around seven o’clock, he adjourned sine die, and I drove Rosa, with her luggage, to her home address, having phoned Wolfe and been told that there was no reason to suppose she had saved anything for him. The husband went with us and then came away with me, and I let him out at a subway station. Knowing by now that his wife’s relations with me were purely on a business basis, he even wanted to buy me a drink.
I spent Sunday evening in the office with my typewriter. Wolfe was there too, but sight was the only one of my five senses that knew about it. When Saul Panzer phoned to make another classified report to Wolfe I arranged for him to meet me downtown in the morning instead of coming to Wolfe’s place. The authorities, looking for him, had phoned his home a few times, and he was going to spend the night at a friend’s apartment. It was just possible that they were eager enough about it to keep an eye on our address, and I still thought it would be polite to give Hester Livsey a chance to do some explaining in a congenial atmosphere.
I fully expected Saul’s check on her to be nothing more than a formality, and so it was. Monday morning I met him and took him with me to the lobby of the building on William Street, and chose a strategic point for overlooking the arriving throng and the stampede for the elevators. I recognized a few of the faces as the feet trotted, walked, marched, and click-clicked on the way to another week’s paycheck. At two minutes to nine I was thinking we had missed her and would have to proceed upstairs, where it would be more awkward and would require arranging, when Saul suddenly pinched me and muttered at me: “To the right, thirty feet, turning now, same hat and coat, behind the tall man with glasses, going on the elevator-” “Okay,” I said as she was swallowed up in the elevator and its door started to close. “How many coats do you think she has? She’s an honest working girl.” “It’s none of my business,” Saul said.
“Meaning, not her honesty, but her name. Yes, you have heard the name. If you happen to be phoning Wolfe and he happens to ask, you can tell him yes, and also tell him I’ll bring her to see him but I don’t know when. I have to find out whether I’m still working here or not. There’s to be a directors’ meeting-you’re not listening.” “I’m looking. Do you know that man”- his eyes were pointing-“gray coat and hat, big and broad, fleshy face, now his back is to us-he’s stepping on the elevator-” “Yeah, I know him. Why?” “I’ve seen him.” “I wouldn’t doubt it.” The combination of Saul’s eyes and the filing equipment in his skull is the equal of any card system yet invented. “You probably saw him August seventeenth, nineteen hundred and thirty-eight, crossing Madison Avenue against a light-” “No. I saw him Friday, twice. When Naylor met the woman at First Avenue and Fifty-second Street that man was standing across the street in a doorway looking at them. An hour later, when they parted at Second Avenue and Fifty-seventh Street, he was standing forty feet away, again in a doorway, and when the woman walked downtown on Second Avenue he started after her. That’s all I saw because Naylor was on his way and I was tailing him.” “Is this certified?” “For me it is.” “Then me too. In case this head-flattener is going on with his career and picks me next, the man’s name is Sumner Hoff. He works for Naylor-Kerr and his office is in the stock department. File it.” “I will. Is that all here?” I said it was, and Saul went.
I took an elevator to the thirty-fourth floor, not knowing what to expect. It was quite possible that a delegation of executives would be waiting for me, to tell me to get the hell out and stay out. But nobody at all was
