She didn’t thaw any. “What do you want?”
“Nothing now, I guess. I was going to explain why I thought you might want to come to the meeting this evening at Mr. Wolfe’s office, but now I suppose you wouldn’t be interested.”
“Why not?”
“Because you’ve already got your lick in. Not only that, you’ve spilled the beans. Outsiders weren’t supposed to know about the meeting, especially not the press, but now those reporters will be after everybody, and they’re sure to find out, and they’ll be camping on Mr. Wolfe’s stoop. I wouldn’t be surprised if they even got invited in. The others will know they’ve heard your side of the story, and naturally they’ll want to get theirs in too. So if you were there it might get into a wrangle in front of the reporters, and you wouldn’t want that. Anyhow, as I say, you’ve already got your lick in.”
With her unique facial design nothing could be certain, but I was pretty sure I had her, so I finished, “So I guess you wouldn’t be interested and I’ve made the trip for nothing. Sorry to bother you. If you care at all to know what happens at the meeting, see the morning papers, especially the Times.” I was turning to go.
Her voice halted me. “Young man.”
I faced her.
“What time is this meeting?”
“Nine o’clock.”
“I’ll be there.”
“Sure, Miss Frazee, if you want to, but under the circumstances I doubt—”
“I’ll be there.”
I grinned at her. “I promised my grandmother I’d never argue with a lady. See you later then.”
Leaving, I took the door along, pulling it shut gently until the lock clicked.
By the time I got home it was after six and Wolfe should’have been down from the plant rooms, but he wasn’t. I went to the kitchen, where Fritz was arranging two plump ducklings on the rack of a roasting pan, asked what was up, and was told that Wolfe had descended from the roof but had left the elevator one flight up and gone to his room. That was unusual but not alarming, and I proceeded with another step of the preparations for the meeting. When I got through the table at the end of the couch in the office was ready for business: eight brands of whisky, two of gin, two of cognac, a decanter of port, cream sherry, armagnac, four fruit brandies, and a wide assortment of cordials and liqueurs. The dry sherry was in the refrigerator, as were the cherries, olives, onions, and lemon peel, where they would remain until after dinner. As I was arranging the bottles I caught myself wondering which one the murderer would fancy, but corrected it hastily to wallet thief, since we weren’t interested in the murder.
At six-thirty I thought I’d better find out if Wolfe had busted a shoestring or what, and, mounting a flight and tapping on his door and hearing him grunt, entered. I stopped and stared. Fully dressed, with his shoes on, he was lying on the bed, on top of the black silk coverlet. Absolutely unheard of.
“What have you got?” I demanded.
“Nothing,” he growled.
“Shall I get Doc Vollmer?”
“No.”
I approached for a close-up. He looked sour, but he had never died of that. “Miss Frazee is coming,” I told him. “She was holding a press conference. Do you want to hear about it?”
“No.”
“Excuse me for disturbing you,” I said icily, and turned to go, but in three steps he called my name and I halted. He raised himself to his elbows, swung his legs over the edge, got upright, and took a deep breath.
“I’ve made a bad mistake,” he said.
I waited.
He took another breath. “What time is it?”
I told him twenty-five to seven.
“Two hours and a half and dinner to eat. I was confident that this development would of itself supply me with ample material for an effective stratagem, and I was wrong. I don’t say I was an ass. I relied overmuch on my ingenuity and resourcefulness, though on the solid basis of experience. But I did make a mistake. Various people have been trying to see me all afternoon, and I have declined to see them. I thought I could devise a stroke without any hint or stimulant from them, but I haven’t. I should have seen them. Oh, I can proceed; I am not without expedients; I may even bring something off; but I blundered. Just now you asked me if I wanted to hear about Miss Frazee, and I said no. That was fatuous. Tell me.”
“Yes, sir. As I said, she was holding a press conference. When I got there—”
The sound of the doorbell came up and in to us. I lifted my brows at Wolfe. He snapped at me, “Go! Anybody!”
Chapter 17
It was Vernon Assa. He wasn’t as much of a misfit for the red leather chair as Mrs. Wheelock, at least he was plump, and his deep tan went well with the red, but he was much too short. I have surveyed a lot of people in that chair, and there has only been one who was exactly right for it. I must tell about him some time.
You might have thought, after what had just been said upstairs, that Wolfe would have been spreading butter on the caller, but he wasn’t. When he came down, after brushing his hair and tucking his shirt in, he crossed to his chair, sat, and said brusquely, “I can spare a few minutes, Mr. Assa. What can I do for you?”
Assa looked at me. I thought he was going to start the old routine about seeing Wolfe privately, but apparently he only wanted something attractive to look at while he got his words collected. I remembered that at the first visit of the LBA bunch he had been the impatient one, snapping at Hansen to get on and telling Wolfe he was wasting time, but now he seemed to feel that deliberation was better.
He looked at Wolfe. “About the meeting this evening. You’ll have to call it off.”
“Indeed.” Wolfe cocked his head. “Under what compulsion?”
“Well . . . it’s obvious. Isn’t it?”
“Not to me. I’m afraid you’ll have to elaborate.”
Assa shifted in the chair. I had noticed that he seemed to be having trouble getting comfortably adjusted. “You realize,” he said, “that our main problem is solved, thanks to you. The problem that brought us to you last Wednesday in a state of panic. There was no chance of finishing the contest without confusion and some discord after what happened to Dahlmann, and the wallet gone, but as it looked when we came to you we were headed for complete disaster, and you have prevented it. Hansen is certain that legally we are in the clear. With the contestants receiving the answers as they have, and it won’t do Miss Frazee any good to deny she got them, if we repudiate those verses and replace them with others, as of course we will, our position would be upheld by any court in the land. There is still serious embarrassment, but that couldn’t be helped. You have rescued the contest from utter ruin by a brilliant stroke and are to be congratulated.”
“Mr. Assa.” Wolfe’s eyes, on him, were half closed. “Are you speaking for my client, the firm of Lippert, Buff and Assa, or for yourself?”
“Well… I am a member of the firm, as you know, but I came here on my own initiative and responsibility.”
“Do your associates know you’re here and what for?”
“No. I didn’t want to start a long and complicated discussion. I decided to come only half an hour ago. Your meeting starts at nine, and it’s nearly seven now.”
“I see. And you are assuming that I sent the answers to the contestants—or had them sent.”
Assa passed his tongue over his lips. “I didn’t put it baldly like that, but I suppose it doesn’t matter. Goodwin is in your confidence anyway. It was impossible to figure why one of the contestants would have sent them, if he had killed Dahlmann and got them from the wallet, and that leaves only you.”
“Not impossible,” Wolfe objected. “Not if he found to his dismay that in the situation he had created they were worse than useless to him.”
Assa nodded. “I considered that, of course, but still thought it impossible. Another reason I didn’t mention my coming to my associates was that I realize you can’t acknowledge what you did to save us. I don’t expect you to acknowledge it even to me, and you certainly wouldn’t if one or two of them had come along, especially Hansen. We wouldn’t want you to acknowledge it anyhow, because we’ve hired you, and the legal position would probably be that we did it ourselves, and that would be disastrous. So you see why I didn’t put it baldly.”