by Fer-De-Lance
He sighed. “Must I again remind you, Archie, of the reaction you would have got if you had asked Velasquez to explain why Aesop’s hand was resting inside his robe instead of hanging by his side? Must I again demonstrate that while it is permissible to request the scientist to lead you back over his footprints, a similar request of the artist is nonsense, since he, like the lark or the eagle, has made none? Do you need to be told again that I am an artist?”
“No, sir. All I need to be told is how you knew Barstow was poisoned.”
He took up the magnifying glass. I sat and waited, lighting another cigarette. I had finished it, and had about decided to go to the front room for a book or magazine, when he spoke.
“Carlo Maffei is gone. Common enough, beaten and robbed probably, until the telephone call and the advertisement. The telephone call as a whole does not lack interest, but it is the threat, I’m not the one to be scared, that has significance. The advertisement adds a specification; to that point Maffei has been this and that, he now becomes also a man who may have made something intricate and difficult that would work. The word mechanism made that a good advertisement, but it also offered magnificent suggestions to an inquiring mind. Then, quite by accident just as the creation of life was an accident, Maffei becomes something else: a man who clipped the Barstow news from the paper on the morning of his disappearance. So, read the Barstow news again and find the aspect of it that closely concerned Carlo Maffei. An obscure Italian metal-worker immigrant; a famous learned wealthy university president. Still there must be a connection, and the incongruity of the elements would make it only the more plain if it was visible at all. There is the article; find the link if it is there; stop every word and give it passage only if its innocence is sure. But little effort is required; the link is so obvious that it is at once apparent. At the moment of, and for some time immediately preceding, his collapse, Barstow had in his hands and was using not one, but an entire assortment, of instruments which if they were not intricate and difficult mechanisms were admirably adapted to such a use. It was a perfectly composed picture. But while it needed no justification, nothing indeed but contemplation, as a work of art, if it were to be put to practical uses a little fixative would help. So I merely asked Miss Fiore if she had ever seen a golf club in Maffei’s room. The result was gratifying.”
“All right,” I said. “But what if the girl had just looked and Said no, she never saw one anywhere?”
“I have told you before, Archie, that even for your amusement I shall not advise replies to hypothetical questions.”
“Sure, that’s an easy out.”
Wolfe shook his head regretfully. “To reply is to admit the validity of your jargon, but I have learned not to expect better of you. How the devil do I know what I would have done if anything? Probably bade her good night. Would I have found varnish for my picture elsewhere? Maybe; maybe not. Shall I ask you how you would have seen to eat if your head had been put on backwards?”
I grinned. “I wouldn’t have starved. Neither will you; if I know anything I know that. But how did you know that Maffei had been murdered?”
“I didn’t, until O’Grady came. You heard what I said to him. The police had searched his room. That could only be if he had been taken in a criminal act, or been murdered. The first was unlikely in the light of other facts.”
“All right. But I’ve saved the best till the last. Who killed Barstow?”
“Ah.” Wolfe murmured it softly. “That would be another picture, Archie, and I hope an expensive one. Expensive for the purchaser and profitable for the artist. Also, one of its characters would be a worthy subject. To continue my threadbare metaphor, we shan’t set up our easel until we are sure of the commission.—Yet in point of fact that isn’t strictly true. We shall get in a spot of the background tomorrow morning if you can bring Miss Fiore here.” “Let me get her now. It’s only a little after nine.” “No—hear the rain? Tomorrow will do.” I knew there was no use insisting, so after a try at a couple of magazines had got me good and bored I got a raincoat from upstairs and went out for an hour at a movie. I wouldn’t have admitted to anyone else, but I did to myself, that I wasn’t any too easy in my mind. I had had the same kind of experience often before, but that didn’t make me like it any better. I did absolutely feel in my bones that Wolfe would never let us tumble into a hole without having a ladder we could climb out with, but in spite of that I had awful doubts sometimes. As long as I live I’ll never forget the time he had a bank president pinched, or rather I did, on no evidence whatever except that the fountain pen on his desk was dry. I was never so relieved in my life as I was when the guy shot himself an hour later. But there was no use trying to get Wolfe to pull up a little; I hardly ever wasted time on that any more. If I undertook to explain how easy he might be wrong he would just say, “You know a fact when you see it, Archie, but you have no feeling for phenomena.” After I had looked up the word phenomena in the dictionary I couldn’t see that he had anything, but there was no use arguing with him.
So here I was uneasy again. I wanted to think it over, so I got my raincoat and went to a movie where I could sit in the dark with something to keep my eyes on and let my mind work. It wasn’t hard tc see how Wolfe had doped it out. Someone wanted to kill Barstow, call him X. He put an ad in the paper for an expert to make him something, fixing it to get someone intending to leave the country for good so if he had any curiosity later on it wouldn’t hurt him any. Maffei answered the ad and got the job, namely to make an arrangement inside a golf club so that when the inset on the face hit a ball it would release a trigger and shoot a needle out of the handle at the other end. Probably X presented it as a trial of skill for the European commission to follow; but he gave the Italian so much money for doing it that Maffei decided not to go back home after all. That started an argument inside a golf club so that when the inset on the face anyhow, X proceeded to use the club for its calculated purpose, putting it in Barstow’s bag (it had of course been made identical in appearance with Barstow’s own driver). Then Maffei happened to read Monday’s Times and put two and two together, which wasn’t strange considering the odd affair he had been paid to construct. X had telephoned; Maffei had met him, made him a present of his suspicions, and tried blackmail. X didn’t wait this time for an expert design and mechanism, he just used a knife, leaving it in Maffei’s back to keep from soiling the upholstery of the car. He then drove around the Westchester hills until he found a secluded spot, put the body in a thicket and pulled out the knife and later tossed it into a handy stream or reservoir. Arriving home at a decent hour, he had a drink or two before going to bed, and when he got up in the morning put on a cutaway instead of a business suit because he was going to his friend Barstow’s funeral.
Of course that was Wolfe’s picture, and it was a lulu, but what I figured as I sat in the movie was this, that though it used all the facts without any stretching, anyone could have said that much a thousand years ago when they thought the sun went around the earth. That didn’t stretch any of the facts they knew, but what about the ones they didn’t know? And here was Wolfe risking ten grand and his reputation to get Barstow dug up. Once one of Wolfe’s clients had told him he was insufferably blithe. I liked that; Wolfe had liked it too. But that didn’t keep me from reflecting that if they cut Barstow open and found only coronary thrombosis in his veins and no oddments at all in his belly, within a week everybody from the D. A. down to a Bath Beach flatfoot would be saving twenty cents by staying home and laughing at us instead of going to a movie to see Mickey Mouse. I wasn’t so dumb, I knew anyone may make a mistake, but I also knew that when a man sets himself up as cocksure as Wolfe did, he had always got to be right.
I was dumb in a way though. All the time I was stewing I knew damn well Wolfe was right. It was that note I went to sleep on when I got home from the movie and found that Wolfe had already gone up to his room.
The next morning I was awake a little after seven, but I dawdled in bed,
knowing that if I got up and dressed I would have to dawdle anyway, since there was no use bringing Anna Fiore until time for Wolfe to be down from the plant-rooms. I lay, yawning, looking at the picture of the woods with grass and flowers, and at the photograph of my father and mother, and then closed my eyes, not to nap for I was all slept out, but to see how many different noises from the street I could recognize. I was doing that when there was a knock on the door and in answer to my call Fritz came in.
“Good morning,” I said. “I’ll have grapefruit juice and just a tiny cup of chocolate.”
Fritz smiled. He had a sweet sort of faraway smile. He could catch a joke but never tried to return it. “Good morning. There’s a gentleman downstairs to see Mr. Wolfe.”
I sat up. “What’s his name?”
“He said Anderson. He had no card.”
“What!” I swung myself to the edge of the bed. “Well well well well. He’s not a gentleman, Fritz, he’s a noovoh reesh. Mr. Wolfe is hoping that soon he’ll be less reesh. Tell him—no, don’t bother. I’ll be right down.”
I doused some cold water over my face, got on enough clothes for an emergency, and gave my hair a few swipes with a brush. Then I went down.
Anderson didn’t get up from his chair when I entered the office. He was so sunburned that on the street it would have taken me a second glance to recognize him. He looked sleepy and sore and his hair hadn’t been brushed any better than mine.
I said, “My name’s Archie Goodwin. I don’t suppose you remember me.”
He kept his chair. “I suppose not, I’m sorry. I came to see Wolfe.”
“Yes, sir. I’m afraid you’ll have to wait a little. Mr. Wolfe isn’t up yet.”
“Not long I hope.”
“I couldn’t say. I’ll see. If you’ll excuse me.”
I beat it to the hall and stood there at the foot of the stairs. I had to decide whether this was a case when Wolfe would want to break a rule. It was a quarter to eight. Finally I went on upstairs and down the hall to a point about ten feet from his door where there was a push-button in the wall. I pushed it, and right away heard his voice faintly:
“Well?”
“Turn off the switch. I’m coming in.”
I heard the little click and then: “Come.” You would never believe there was such a thing in the world as Wolfe in bed if you didn’t see it. I had seen it often, but it was still a treat. On top was a black silk puffy cover which he always used, winter and summer. From the mound in the middle it sloped precipitously on all sides, so that if you wanted to see his face you had to stand well up front, and then you had to stoop to look under the canopy arrangement that he had sticking out from the head of the bed. It was also of black silk, and extended a foot beyond his chin and hung quite low on all three sides. Inside it on the white pillow his big fat face reposed like an image in a temple.
His hand came from beneath the cover to pull a cord that hung at his right, and the canopy folded back against the headboard. He blinked. I told him that Fletcher M. Anderson was downstairs and wanted to see him.
He cursed. I hated to hear him curse. It got on my nerves. The reason for that, he told me once, was that whereas in most cases cursing was merely a vocal explosion, with him it was a considered expression of a profound desire. He did it seldom. That morning he cursed completely. At the end he said, “Leave, get out, go.”
I hated to stammer, too. “But—but—Anderson—”
“If Mr. Anderson wishes to see me he may do so at eleven o’clock. But that is unnecessary. What do I pay you for?”
“Very well, sir. Of course you’re right. I break a rule and I get bawled out. But now that that’s done with may I suggest that it would be a good idea to see Anderson—”
“You may not.”
“Ten thousand dollars?”
“No.”
“In the name of heaven, sir, why not?”
“Confound it, you badger me!” Wolfe’s head turned on the pillow, and he got a hand around to wiggle a finger. “Yes, you badger me. But it is a valuable quality at times and I won’t cavil at it. Instead I’ll answer your question. I shall not see Mr. Anderson for three reasons: first, being still in bed I am undressed and in an ugly temper. Second, you can do our business with him just as well. Third, I understand the technique of eccentricity; it would be futile for a man to labor at establishing a reputation for oddity if he were ready at the slightest provocation to revert to normal action. Go. At once.”
I left the room and went downstairs to the office and told Anderson that if he wanted to wait he could see Mr. Wolfe at eleven o’clock.
Of course he couldn’t believe his ears. As soon as he became able to credit the fact that the message was like that and that it was meant for him, he blew up. He seemed especially indignant that he had come straight to Wolfe’s place from a sleeper at Grand Central Station, though I couldn’t see why. I explained to him several times how it was, I told him it was eccentricity and there was no help for it. I also told him that I had been to White Plains the day before and was acquainted with the situation. That seemed to calm him a little and he began asking me questions. I fed it to him in little pieces, and had the fun of seeing the look on his face when I told him about Derwin calling Ben Cook in. When he had the whole story he sat back and rubbed his nose and looked over my head.
Finally he brought his look down to me. “This is a startling conclusion Wolfe has made. Isn’t it?”
“Yes, sir. It is indeed.”
“Then he must have some startling information.”
I grinned. “Mr. Anderson, it is a pleasure to talk with you, but there’s no use wasting time. As far as startling information is concerned, Wolfe and I are the same as two mummies in a museum until that grave is opened and Barstow is cut up. Not a chance.”
“Well. That’s too bad. I might offer Wolfe a fee as a special investigator—a sort of inquiry and report.”
“A fee? That’s like saying as long as a piece of string.”
“Say, five hundred dollars.”
I shook my head. “I’m afraid he’s too busy. I’m busy too, I may have to run up to White Plains this morning.”
“Oh.” Anderson bit his lip and looked at me. “You know, Goodwin. I rarely go out of my way to be offensive, but doesn’t it occur to you that this whole thing is fairly nasty? It might be better to say unethical.”
I got sore at that. I looked back at him and said, “Look here, Mr. Anderson. You said you didn’t remember me. I remember you. You haven’t forgotten the Goldsmith case five years ago. It wouldn’t have hurt you a bit to let people know what Wolfe handed you on that. But let them go, let’s say you needed to keep it for yourself. We wouldn’t have minded that so much. But how ethical was it for you to turn it around so that Wolfe got a nice black eye instead of what was really coming to him? You tend to your own ethics maybe.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” “All right. But if I go to White Plains today somebody will know what I’m talking about. And whatever you get this time you’ll pay for.”
Anderson smiled and got up. “Don’t bother, Goodwin. You won’t be needed at White Plains today. On information that I have received I have decided definitely on the exhumation of Barstow’s body. You will be here throughout the day, or Wolfe? I may wish to get in touch with him later.”
“Wolfe is always here, but you can’t get him between nine and eleven or four and six.”
“Well. Such an eccentric!”
“Yes, sir. Your hat’s in the hall.”
I went to the front room window and watched his taxi roll off. Then I turned to the office, to the telephone. I hesitated; but I knew Wolfe was right, and if he wasn’t, a little publicity wouldn’t make it any harder for us. So I called the Gazette office for Harry Foster, and by luck he was in.
“Harry? Archie Goodwin. Here’s something for you, but keep it so quiet you can hear a pin drop. This morning at White Plains, Anderson, the District Attorney, is
going to get a court order for an exhumation and autopsy on Peter Oliver Barstow. He’ll probably try to keep it mum, but I thought you might like to help him out. And listen. Some day, when the time comes, I’d be glad to tell you what it was that made Anderson so curious. Don’t mention it.”
I went upstairs and shaved and did my dressing over. By the time I had finished with that, and with breakfast and a little chat in the kitchen with Fritz about fish, it was nine-thirty. I went to the garage for the roadster and filled up with gas and oil, and headed south for Sullivan Street.
Since it was school hours it wasn’t as noisy and dirty around there as it had been before, and it was different otherwise. I might have expected the decorations, but it hadn’t occurred to me. There was a big black rosette with long black ribbons hanging on the door and above it was a large wreath of leaves and flowers. A few people were standing around, mostly across the street. A little distance off a cop stood on the sidewalk looking uninterested; but when my roadster pulled up some yards short of the door with the wreath on it I saw him cock an eye at me. I got out and went over to him to say hello.
I handed him a card. “I’m Archie Goodwin of Nero Wolfe’s office. We were engaged by Maffei’s sister to look for him the day before his body was found. I’ve come to see the landlady and check up a little.”
“Yeah?” The cop stuck my card in a pocket. “I don’t know a thing except that I’m standing here. Archie Goodwin? Pleased to meet you.”
We shook hands and as I moved off I asked him to keep an eye on my car.
Mrs. Ricci didn’t seem very glad to see me, but I could understand that easy enough. That dick O’Grady had probably raked her over for letting me take stuff from Maffei’s room, of course without any right or reason, but that wouldn’t deter O’Grady. I grinned when I saw the landlady’s lips go shut, getting ready for the questions she thought I had come to ask. It’s never any fun having a murdered man lying upstairs, even when he was only a roomer. So I sympathized with her a little before I mentioned that I’d like to see Anna Fiore.