“All right, I’ll come in and wait. I’m half froze. Are
you nailed down?”
A notion struck me. Wolfe believes, or claims he does,
that any time I talk him into seeing a female would-be
client he knows exactly what to expect if and when he
sees her, and this would show him how wrong he was.
“Your name, please?” I asked her.
“My name’s Annis. Hattie Annis.”
“What do you want to see Mr. Wolfe about?”
“I’ll tell him when I see him. If my tongue’s not
froze.”
“You’ll have to tell me, Mrs. Annis. My name—”
“Miss Annis.”
“Okay. My name is Archie Goodwin.”
“I know it is. If you’re thinking I don’t look like I can
pay Nero Wolfe, there’ll be a reward and I’ll split it with
him. If I took it to the cops they’d do the splitting. I
wouldn’t trust a cop if he was naked as a baby.”
“What will the reward be for?”
“For what I’ve got here.” She patted her black
leather handbag, the worse for wear, with a hand in a
woolen glove.
“What is it?”
“I’ll tell Nero Wolfe. Look, Buster, I’m no Eskimo.
Let the lady in.”
That wasn’t feasible. I had been in the hall with my
hat and overcoat and gloves on, on my way for a mom-
ing walk crosstown to the bank to deposit a check for
$7417.65 in Wolfe’s account, when I had seen her
through the one-way glass panel aiming her finger at
the bell button. Letting her in and leaving her in the
office while I took my walk was out of the question. The
other inhabitants of that old brownstone on West 35th
Street, the property of Nero Wolfe except for the fur-
niture and other items in my bedroom, were around but
they were busy. Fritz Brenner, the chef and house-
keeper, was in the kitchen making chestnut soup. Wolfe
was up in the plant rooms on the roof for his two-hour
morning session with the orchids, and of course
Theodore Horstmann was with him.
I wasn’t rude about it. I told her there were several
places nearby where she could spend the hour and thaw
out—Sam’s Diner at the comer of Tenth Avenue, or the
drug store at the comer of Ninth, or Tony’s tailor shop
where she could have a button sewed on her coat and
charge it to me. She didn’t push. I said if she came back
at a quarter past eleven I might have persuaded Wolfe
to see her, and she turned to go, and then turned back,
opened the black leather handbag, and took out a pack-
age wrapped in brown paper with a string around it.
“Keep this for me, Buster,” she said. “Some nosy cop
might take it on himself. Come on, it won’t bite. And
don’t open it. Can I trust you not to open it?”
I took it because I liked her. She had fine instincts
and no sense at all. She had refused to tell me what was
in it, and was leaving it with me and telling me not to
open it—my idea of a true woman if only she would
comb her hair and wash her face and sew a button on. So
I took it, and told her I would expect her at a quarter
past eleven, and she went. When I had seen her descend
the seven steps to the sidewalk and turn left, toward
Tenth Avenue, I shut the door from the inside and took
a look at the package. It was rectangular, some six
inches long and three wide, and a couple of inches thick.
I put it to my ear and held my breath, and heard
nothing. But you never know what science will do next,
and there were at least three dozen people in the met-
ropolitan area who had it in for Wolfe, not to mention a
few who didn’t care much for me, so instead of taking it
to the office, to my desk or the safe, I went to the front
room and stashed it under the couch. If you ask if I
untied the string and unwrapped the paper for a look,
your instincts are not as fine as they should be. Any-
how, I had gloves on.
Also there had been nothing doing for more than a
week, since we had cleaned up the Brigham forgery
case, and my mind needed exercise as much as my legs
and lungs, so walking crosstown and back I figured out
144 Rex Stout
what was in the package. After discarding a dozen
guesses that didn’t appeal to me I decided it was the
Hope diamond. The one that had been sent to Washing-
ton was a phony. I was still working on various details,
such as Hattie Annis’s real name and station and how
she had got hold of it, on the last stretch approaching
the old brownstone, and therefore got nearly to the
stoop before I saw that it was occupied. Perched on the
top step was exactly the kind of female Wolfe expects to
see when I talk him into seeing one. The right age, the
right face, the right legs—what showed of them below
the edge of her fur coat. The coat was not mink or sable.
As I started to mount she got up.
“Well,” she said. “A grand idea, this outdoor waiting
room, but there ought to be magazines.”
I reached her level. The top of her fuzzy little turban
was even with my nose. “I suppose you rang?” I asked.
“I did. And was told through a crack that Mr. Wolfe
was engaged and Mr. Goodwin was out. Mr. Goodwin, I
presume?”
“Right.” I had my key ring out. “I’ll bring some
magazines. Which ones do you like?”
“Let’s go in and look them over.”
Wolfe wouldn’t be down for more than half an hour,
and it would be interesting to know what she was
selling, so I used the key on the door and swung it open.
When I had disposed of my hat and coat on the hall rack
I ushered her to the office, moved one of the yellow
chairs up for her, and went to my desk and sat.
“We have no vacancies at the moment,” I said, “but
you can leave your number. Don’t call us, we’ll call—”
“That’s pretty corny,” she said. She had thrown her
coat open to drape it over the back of the chair, reveal-
ing other personal details that went fine with the face
and legs.
“Okay,” I conceded. “It’s your turn.”
“My name is Tammy Baxter. Short for Tamiris. I
haven’t decided yet which one to use on a theater
program when the time comes. What do you think,
Tammy or Tamiris?”
The Homicide Trinity 145
“It would depend on the part. If it’s the lead in a
musical, Tammy. If it packs some weight, O’Neill for
instance, Tamiris.”
“It’s more apt to be a girl at one of the tables in the
night-club scene. The one who jumps up and says,
‘Come on, Bill, let’s get out of here.’ That’s her big line.”
She fluttered a gloved hand. “Oh, well. What do you
care? Why don’t you ask me what I want?”
“I’m putting it off because I may not have it.”
“That’s nice. I like that. That’s a good line, only you
threw it away. There should be a pause after ‘off.’ ‘I’m
putting it off … because I may not have it.’ Try it
again.”
“Nuts. I said it the way I felt it. You actresses are all
alike. I was getting a sociable feeling about you and look
what you’ve done to it. What do you want?”
She laughed a little ripple. “I’m not an actress, I’m
only going to be. I don’t want anything much, just to ask
about my landlady, Miss Annis—Hattie Annis. Has she
been here?”
I raised a brow. “Here? When?”
“This morning.”
“I’ll ask.” I turned my head and sang out, “Fritz!” and
when he appeared, in the doorway to the hall, I in-
quired, “Did anyone besides this lady come while I was
out?”
“No, sir.” He always sirs me when there is company,
and I can’t make him stop.
“Any phone calls?”
“No, sir.”
“Okay. Thank you, sir.” He went, and I told Tammy
or Tamiris, “Apparently not. You say your landlady?”
She nodded. “That’s funny.”
“Why, did you tell her to come?”
“No, she told me. She said she was going to take
something—she was going to see Nero Wolfe about
something. She wouldn’t say what, and after she left I
^ began to worry about her. She never got here?”
“You heard what Fritz said. Why should you worry?”
“You would too if you knew her. She almost never
146
The Homicide Trinity 147
Rex Stout
leaves the house, and she never goes more than a block
away. She’s not a loony, really, but she’s not quite all