“Job?”
“Yes. I am a professor of history at Bemis College, but I won’t be very long. It will amuse you to hear—no, that’s not the right way to look at it. It will amuse me to tell you; that’s better. One day last September a colleague showed me an advertisement of this contest, and said facetiously that as a student and teacher of history I should be interested. As a puzzle the thing was so obvious it was inane, and so was the second one, which my colleague also showed me. I was curious as to how long the inanity would be maintained, and got others as they appeared, and before long I found I was being challenged. I made a point of getting them without referring to any book, but the twelfth one so distracted me that I broke that ban just to get rid of it.”
He screwed up his lips. “Have I said that I hadn’t entered the contest?”
“No.”
“Well, I hadn’t. I regarded it as a diversion, an amusing toy. But after I had solved the twentieth and last, which I must confess was rather ingenious, I sent in an entry blank with my answers. If you were to ask me why I did so I would be at a loss. I suppose in the lower strata of my psyche the primitive lusts are slopping around in the mire, and somehow they managed it; they are not in direct communication with me. The next day I was appalled at what I had done. I had a professorship at the age of thirty-six; I was a serious and able scholar with two books to my credit; and I had well-defined ambitions which I was determined to realize. If I won a prize in a perfume contest—a perfume called Pour Amour—it would be a blemish on my career, and if I won a sensational one, a half or a quarter of a million, I would never live it down.”
He smiled and shook his head. “But you won’t believe I was appalled, because when I was notified that I was in a tie with seventy-one others, and was sent five new verses to solve in a week, I had the answers in four days and sent them in. I can only plead that schizophrenia must have many forms and manifestations, or I could resort to demonology. I was once much impressed by Roskoff’s Geschichte des Teufels. Anyhow, I sent the answers, and was asked to come to New York, and arrived just twenty-four hours ago; and now I’m involved not only in a perfume contest—Pour Amour Rollins they’ll call me—but in a murder, a nationwide cause célèbre. I am done for. If I don’t resign I’ll be fired. Can you get me a job?”
I was wishing he would take his glasses off so I could see his eyes. From his easy posture and his voice and his superior smile he was taking it well, a manly and gallant bozo refusing to squirt blood under the wheels of calamity. But without more sales pressure I wasn’t buying the notion that one definition of “calamity” was half a million bucks, even for a man as highly educated as him, and I wanted to see his eyes. All I could see was the reflection of the ceiling light from the lenses.
“You’re in a fix,” Wolfe admitted, “but I still think your despair is excessive. Establish academic scholarships with your prize money.”
“I’ve thought of that. It wouldn’t help much.” He smiled. “The simplest way would be to confess to the murder. That would do it.”
“Not without corroboration. Could you furnish any?”
“I’m afraid not. I couldn’t describe his apartment, and I don’t know what kind of gun was used.”
“Then it would be hopeless. Perhaps a better expedient, expose the murderer and become a public hero. The acclaim would smother the infamy. You are not a bloodhound by profession, I know, but you have cerebral resources. You could start by recalling all the details of the meeting last evening. How did they act and talk? What signs of greed or zealotry did they display? Particularly, what did they say and do when Mr. Dahlmann showed the paper and said it was the answers?”
“Nothing. Nothing whatever.”
“It was a shock, naturally. But afterward?”
“Not afterward either.” The smile was getting more superior. “I would suppose you wouldn’t need to be told what the atmosphere was like. We were tigers crouching to spring upon the same prey. Vultures circling to swoop and be first on the carcass to get the heart and liver. The amenities were forced and forged. We separated immediately after the meeting, each clutching his envelope, each wishing the others some crippling misfortune, anything up to death.”
“Then you have no idea which of them, if any, thought Mr. Dahlmann was joking.”
“Not the faintest.”
“Did you?”
“Ah,” Rollins looked pleased. “This is more like it, only I thought you would be more subtle. The police wouldn’t believe my answer, and you won’t either. I really don’t know. I was in a sort of nightmare. My demon had brought me there with the single purpose of winning the contest by my own wit and ingenuity. Whether the paper he showed us held the answers or not was a matter of complete indifference to me. If careless chance had put it in my way I would have burned it without looking at it, at the dictate not of conscience, but of pride. I’m sorry to disappoint you, but I can’t say if I thought Dahlmann was joking or not because I didn’t think one way or the other. Now you want to know what I did last evening after the meeting.”
Wolfe shook his head. “Not especially. You have told the police, of course, and they’re much better equipped to trace movements and check alibis than I am. And I’m not investigating the murder.”
“Exactly what are you doing?”
“I’m trying to find a way to settle the contest in a manner acceptable to all parties. You say Mr. Younger spoke to you? What did he say?”
“He told me what Goodwin told him about Miss Frazee, and he wanted Mrs. Wheelock and me to join him in getting a lawyer and starting legal action. But also he wanted us to propose to Miss Tescher and Miss Frazee that the amount of the first five prizes will be divided equally among us. I told him we couldn’t very well do both.”
“Which do you prefer?”
“Neither. Since I have to pay the piper I’m going to dance. Dahlmann said these verses are much more obscure than any of the others, and I believe him. I doubt if Miss Frazee’s friends can get any of them, and I’ll be surprised if Miss Tescher can. When I leave here I’m going to one of the finest private libraries in New York and spend the night there, and I already know which book I’ll go to first. This is one of the verses:
“From Jack I learned love all the way,
And to the altar would be led;
But on my happy wedding day
I married Charles instead.”
He lifted his hand to his glasses, but only shifted them a little on his nose. “Does that suggest anything to you?”
“No,” Wolfe said emphatically.
“It does to me. Not any detail of it, but the flavor. I have no idea what her name was, but I think I know where to find her. I may be wrong, but I doubt it, and if not, there’s one right off.”
He probably had it. Either he had had a lucky hunch, or he knew a lot about flavors, or he had got the paper from Dahlmann’s wallet and was preparing the ground for a later explanation of how and where he got the answers. I could certainly have impressed him by asking if the book he would go to first would be Jacques Casanova’s Memoirs, but he might have suspected me if I had also told him her name was Christine and he should try Volume Two, pages one hundred seventy-two to two hundred one, of the Adventures edition.
Wolfe said abruptly, “Then I mustn’t keep you, if you’re going to work. I wouldn’t care to stir the choler of a demon.” He put his hands on the desk edge to push his chair back, and arose. “I hope to see you again, Mr. Rollins, but I shall try to interfere as little as may be with your labors. You will excuse me.” He headed for the door and was gone.
Rollins looked at me. “What was that, pique? Or did I betray myself and he has gone for handcuffs?”
“Forget it.” I stood up. “Don’t you smell anything?”
He sniffed. “Nothing in particular. What is it?”
“Of course,” I conceded, “you’re not a bloodhound. It’s shad roe in casserole with parsley, chervil, shallot, marjoram, bay leaf, and cream. That’s his demon, or one of them. He has an assortment. You’re going? If you don’t mind, what was Number Nine? I think it was. It goes: