by Rex Stout
Vukcic was brusque. “We want to see Mr. Wolfe.”
I told them to come in. “If you wouldn’t mind waiting in here?” I indicated my room. “He’s engaged at the moment with Mr. Barry Tolman.”
Constanza backed up and bumped the wall of the foyer. “Oh!” Her expression would have been justified if I had told her that I had my pockets full of toads and snakes and poisonous lizards. She made a dive for the knob of the outer door. Vukcic grabbed her arm and I said: “Now, hold it. Can Mr. Wolfe help it if an attractive young fellow insists on coming to cry on his shoulder? Here, this way, all of you-”
The door to Wolfe’s room opened and Tolman appeared. It was a little dim in the foyer, and it took him a second to call the roll. When he saw her, he had called it a day. He stared at her and turned a muddy white, and his mouth opened three times for words which got delayed en route. It didn’t seem that she got any satisfaction out of the state he was in, for apparently she didn’t see him; she looked at me and said that she supposed they could see Mr. Wolfe now, and Vukcic took her elbow, and Tolman sidestepped in a daze to let them by. I stayed behind to let Tolman out, which I did after he had exchanged a couple of words with Servan.
The new influx appeared neither to cheer Wolfe nor enrage him. He received Miss Berin without enthusiasm but with a little extra courtesy, and apologized to Vukcic and Servan for having stayed away all day from the gathering at Pocahontas Pavilion. Servan assured him politely that under the unhappy circumstances no apology was required, and Vukcic sat down and ran all his fingers through his dense tangle of hair and growled something about the rotten luck for the meeting of the fifteen masters. Wolfe inquired if the scheduled activities would be abandoned, and Servan shook his head. No, Servan said, they would continue with affairs although his heart was broken. He had for years been looking forward to the time when, as doyen of Les Quinze Maitres, he would have the great honor of entertaining them as his guests; it was to have been the climax of his career, fittingly and sweetly in his old age; and what had happened was an incredible disaster. Nevertheless, they would proceed; he would that evening, as dean and host, deliver his paper on Les Mysteres du Gout, on the preparation of which he had spent two years; at noon the next day they would elect new members-now, alas, four-to replace those deceased; and Thursday evening they would hear Mr. Wolfe’s discourse on Contributions Americaines a la Haute Cuisine. What a calamity, what a destruction of friendly, confraternity!
Wolfe said, “But such melancholy, Mr. Servan, is the worst possible frame of mind for digestion. Since placidity is out of the question, wouldn’t active hostility be better? Hostility for the person responsible?”
Servan’s brows went up. “You mean for Berin?”
“Good heavens, no. I said the person responsible. I don’t think Berin did it.”
“Oh!” It was a cry from Constanza. From the way she jerked up in her chair, and the look she threw at Wolfe, I was expecting her to hop over and kiss him, or at least spill ginger ale on him, but she just sat and looked.
Vukcic growled, “They seem to think they have proof. About those seven mistakes on his list of the sauces. How the devil could that be?”
“I have no idea. Why, Marko, do you think Berin did it?”
“No. I don’t think.” Vukcic ran his fingers through his hair again. “It’s a hell of a thing. For awhile they suspected me; they thought because I had been dancing with Dina my blood was warm. It was warm!” He sounded defiant. “You wouldn’t understand that, Nero. With a woman like that. She has a fire in her that warmed me once, and it could again, no doubt of that, if it came near and I felt it and let my head go I could throw myself in it.” He shrugged, and suddenly got savage. “But to stab that dog in the back-I would not have done him that honor! Pull his nose well, is all one does with that sort of fellow!
“But look here, Nero.” Vukcic tossed his head around. “I brought Miss Berin and Mr. Servan around to see you. I suggested it. If we had found that you thought Berlin guilty, I don’t know what could have been said, but luckily you don’t. It has been discussed over there among most of us, and the majority have agreed to contribute to a purse for Berin’s defense-since he is here in a country strange to him-and certainly I told them that the best way to defend him is to enlist you-”
“But please,” Servan broke in earnestly. “Please, Mr. Wolfe, understand that we deplore the necessity we can’t avoid-you are our guest, my guest, and I know it is unforgivable that under the circumstances we should dare to ask you-”
“But the fact is,” Vukcic took it up, “that they were quite generous in their contributions to the purse, after I explained your habits in the matter of fees-”
Constanza had edged to the front of her chair and put in an oar: “The eleven thousand francs I promised, it will take awhile to get them because they’re in the bank in Nice-”
“Confound it!” Wolfe had to make it almost a shout. He wiggled a finger at Servan. “Apparently, sir, Marko has informed you of my rapacity. He was correct; I need lots of money and ordinarily my clients get soaked. But he could have told you that I am also an incurable romantic. To me the relationship of host and guest is sacred. The guest is a jewel resting on the cushion of hospitality. The host is king, in his parlor and his kitchen, and should not condescend to a lesser role. So we won’t discuss-”
“Damn all the words!” Vukcic gestured impatiently. “What do you mean, Nero, you won’t do anything about Berin?”
“No. I mean we won’t discuss purses and fees. Certainly I shall do something about Berin, I had already decided to before you came, but I won’t take money from my hosts for it. And there is no time to lose, and I want to be alone here to consider the matter. But since you are here-” His eyes moved to Constanza. “Miss Berin. You seem to be convinced that your father didn’t kill Mr. Laszio. Why?”
Her eyes widened at him. “Why… you’re convinced too. You said so. My father wouldn’t.”
“Never mind about me. Speaking to the law, which is what we’re dealing with, what evidence have you? Any?”
“Why… only… it’s absurd! Anyone-”
“I see. You haven’t any. Have you any notion, or any evidence, as to who did kill Laszio?”
“No! And I don’t care! Only anyone would know-”
“Please, Miss Berin. I warn you, we have a difficult task and little time for it. I suggest that on leaving here you go to your room, compose your emotions, and in your mind thoroughly recapitulate-go back over-all you have seen and heard, everything, since your arrival at Kanawha Spa. Do it thoroughly. Write down anything that appears to have the faintest significance. Remember this is a job, and the only one you can perform that offers any chance of helping your father.”
He moved his eyes again. “Mr. Servan. First, the same questions as Miss Berin. Proof of Berin’s innocence, or surmise or evidence of another’s guilt. Have you any?”
Servan slowly shook his head.
“That’s too bad. I must warn you, sir, that it will probably develop that the only way of clearing Berin is to find where the guilt belongs and fasten it there. We can’t clear everybody; after all, Laszio’s dead. If you know of anything that would throw suspicion elsewhere, and withhold it, you can’t pretend to be helping Berin.”
The dean of the masters shook his head again. “I know of nothing that would implicate anybody.”
“Very well. About Berin’s list of the sauces. He handed it to you himself?”
“Yes, immediately on leaving the dining room.”
“It bore his signature?”
“Yes. I looked at each one before putting it in my pocket, to be sure they could be identified.”
“How sure are you that no one had a chance to change Berin’s list after he handed it to you, before you gave it to Mr. Tolman?”
“Positive. Absolutely. The lists were in my inside breast pocket every moment. Of course, I showed them to no one.”
Wolfe regarded him a little, sighed,
and turned to Vukcic. “You, Marko. What do you know?”
“I don’t know a damned thing.”
“Did you ask Mrs. Laszio to dance with you?”
“I… what’s that got to do with it?”
Wolfe eyed him and murmured, “Now, Marko. At the moment I haven’t the faintest idea how I shall discover what must be discovered, and I must be permitted any question short of insult. Did you ask Mrs. Laszio to dance, or did she ask you?”
Vukcic wrinkled his forehead and sat. Finally he growled, “I think she suggested it. I might have if she didn’t.”
“Did you ask her to turn on the radio?”
“No.”
“Then the radio and the dancing at that particular moment were her ideas?”
“Damn it.” Vukcic was scowling at his old friend. “I swear I don’t see, Nero-”
“Of course you don’t. Neither do I. But sometimes it’s astonishing how the end of a tangled knot gets buried. It is said that two sure ways to lose a friend are to lend him money and to question the purity of a woman’s gesture to him. I wouldn’t lose your friendship. It is quite likely that Mrs. Laszio found the desire to dance with you irresistible.-No, Marko, please; I mean no flippancy. And now, if you don’t mind… Miss Berin? Mr. Servan? I must consider this business.”
They got up. Servan tried, delicately, to mention the purse again, but Wolfe brushed it aside. Constanza went over and took Wolfe’s hand and looked at him with an expression that may or may not have been pure but certainly had appeal in it. Vukcic hadn’t quite erased his scowl, but joined the others in their thanks and seemed to mean it. I went to the foyer with them to open the door.
Returning, I sat and watched Wolfe consider. He was leaning back in his favorite position, though by no means as comfortably as in his own chair at home, with his eyes closed. He might have been asleep but for the faint movement of his lips. I did a little considering on my own hook, but I admit mine was limited. It looked to me like Berin, but I was willing to let in either Vukcic or Blanc in case they insisted. As far as I could see, everyone else was absolutely out. Of course there was still the possibility that Laszio had been absent from the dining room only temporarily, during Vukcic’s session with the dishes, and had later returned and Vallenko or Rossi had mistaken him for a pincushion before or after tasting, but I couldn’t see any juice in that. I had been in the large parlor the entire evening, and I tried to remember whether I had at any time noticed anyone enter the small parlor-or rather, whether I would have been able to swear that no one had. I thought I would. After over half an hour of overworking my brain, it still looked to me like Berin, and I thought it just as well Wolfe had turned down two offers of a fee, since it didn’t seem very probable he was going to earn one.
I saw Wolfe stir. He opened his mouth but not his eyes.
“Archie. Those two colored men on duty in the main foyer of Pocahontas Pavilion last evening. Find out where they are.
I went to the phone in my room, deciding that the quickest way was to get hold of my friend Odell and let him do it. In less than ten minutes I was back again with the report.
“They went on at Pocahontas again at six o’clock. The same two. It is now 6:07. Their names-”
“No, thanks. I don’t need the names.” Wolfe pulled himself up and looked at me. “We have an enemy who has sealed himself in. He fancies himself impregnable, and he well may be-no door, no gate, no window in his walls-or hers. Possibly hers. But there is one little crack, and we’ll have to see if we can pry it open.” He sighed. “Amazing what a wall that is; that one crack is all I see. If that fails us…” He shrugged. Then he said bitterly, “As you know, we are dressing for dinner this evening. I would like to get to the pavilion as quickly as possible. What the tongue has promised the body must submit to.”
He began operations for leaving his chair.
7
IT WAS STILL twenty minutes short of seven o’clock when we got to Pocahontas. Wolfe had done pretty well with the black and white, considering that Fritz Brenner was nearly a thousand miles away, and I could have hired out as a window dummy.
Naturally I had some curiosity about Wolfe’s interest in the greenjackets, but it didn’t get satisfied. In the main hall, after we had been relieved of our hats, he motioned me on in to the parlor, and he stayed behind. I noted that Odell’s information was correct; the two colored men were the same that had been on duty the evening before.
It was more than an hour until dinnertime, and there was no one in the large parlor except Mamma Mondor, knitting and sipping sherry, and Vallenko and Keith, with Lisette Putti between them, chewing the rag on a divan. I said hello and strolled over and tried to ask Mamma Mondor what was the French word for knitting, but she seemed dumb at signs and began to get excited, and it looked as if it might end in a fight, so I shoved off.
Wolfe entered from the hall, and I saw by the look in his eye that he hadn’t lost the crack he had mentioned. He offered greetings around, made a couple of inquiries, and was informed that Louis Servan was in the kitchen overlooking the preparations for dinner. Then he came up to me and in a low tone outlined briefly an urgent errand. I thought he had a nerve to wait until I got my glad rags on to ask me to work up a sweat, particularly since no fee was involved, but I went for my hat without stopping to grumble.
I cut across the lawn to get to the main path and headed for the hotel. On the way I decided to use Odell again instead of trying to develop new contacts, and luckily I ran across him in the corridor by the elevators and without having to make inquiries. He looked at me pleased and expectant.
“Did you tell Wolfe? Has he seen Liggett?”
“Nope, not yet. Give us time, can’t you? Don’t you worry, old boy. Right now I need some things in a hurry. I need a good ink pad, preferably a new one, and fifty or sixty sheets of smooth white paper, preferably glazed, and a magnifying glass.”
“Jumping Jesus.” He stared at me. “Who you working for, J. Edgar Hoover?”
“No. It’s all right, we’re having a party. Maybe Liggett will be there. Step on it, huh?”
He told me to wait there and disappeared around the corner. In five minutes he was back, with all three items. As I took them he told me:
“I’ll have to put the pad and paper on the bill. The glass is a personal loan, don’t forget and skip with it.”
I told him okay, thanked him, and beat it. On the way back I took the path which would carry me past Upshur, and I made a stop there and sought suite 60. I got a bottle of talcum powder from my bathroom and stuck it in my pocket, and my pen and a notebook, then found the copy of the Journal of Criminology I had brought along and thumbed through it to some plates illustrating new classifications of fingerprints. I cut one of the pages out of the magazine with my knife, rolled it up in the paper Odell had given me, and trotted out again and across to Pocahontas. All the time I was trying to guess at the nature of the crack Wolfe thought he was going to pry open with that array of materials.
I got no light on that point from Wolfe. He had apparently been busy, for though I hadn’t been gone more than fifteen minutes I found him established in the biggest chair in the small parlor, alongside the same table behind which Tolman had been barricaded against the onslaught of Constanza Berin. Across the table from him, looking skeptical but resigned, was Sergei Vallenko.
Wolfe finished a sentence to Vallenko and then turned to me. “You have everything, Archie? Good. The pad and paper here on the table, please. I’ve explained to Mr. Servan that if I undertake this inquiry I shall have to ask a few questions of everyone and take fingerprint samples. He has sent Mr. Vallenko to us first. All ten prints, please.”
That was a hot one. Nero Wolfe collecting fingerprints, especially after the cops had smeared all over the dining-room and it had been reopened to the public! I knew darned well it was phoney, but hadn’t guessed his charade yet, so once again I had to follow his tail light without knowing the road. I got Vallenko’s specimens, on
two sheets, and labelled them, and Wolfe dismissed him with thanks.
I demanded, when we were alone, “What has this identification bureau-”
“Not now, Archie. Sprinkle powder on Mr. Vallenko’s prints.”
I stared at him. “In the name of God, why? You don’t put powder-”
“It will look more professional and mysterious. Do it. Give me the page from the magazine.-Good. Satisfactory. We’ll use only the upper half; cut it off and keep it in your pocket. Put the magnifying glass on the table-ah, Mme. Mondor? Asseyez-vous, s’il vous plait.”
She had her knitting along. He asked her some questions of which I never bothered him for a translation, and then turned her over to my department and I put her on record. I never felt sillier in my life than dusting that talcum powder on those fresh clear specimens. Our third customer was Lisette Putti, and she was followed by Keith, Blanc, Rossi, Mondor… Wolfe asked a few questions of all of them, but knowing his voice and manner as well as I did, it sounded to me as if his part of it was as phoney as mine. And it certainly didn’t sound as if he was prying any crack open.
Then Lawrence Coyne’s Chinese wife came in. She was dressed for dinner in red silk, with a sprig of mountain laurel in her black hair, and with her slim figure and little face and narrow eyes she looked like an ad for a Round the World cruise. At once I got a hint that it was her we were laying for, for Wolfe told me sharply to take my notebook, which he hadn’t done for any of the others, but all he did was ask her the same line of questions and explain about the prints before I took them. However, there appeared to be more to come. As I gave her my handkerchief, already ruined, to wipe the tips of her fingers on, Wolfe settled back.