He rose. In any case, I am obliged to you on behalf of my client. He headed for the hall, five minutes ahead of schedule. Leo Bingham looked at the brandy bottle, then at his watch, sprang to his feet, and went. I followed. In the hall Wolfe was entering the elevator. Bingham beat me to the front door, and I held it open because the other two were coming. They nodded as they passed by, and I stood on the sill and watched them down the stoop before I returned to the office.
There were several things to chew on, but of course the main one was Bingham’s alternatives. If he had known Carol Mardus as well as he said he did there were just four candidates. Even if he had killed her himself, he would name the ones she would have been most likely to pick if she hadn’t picked him, so it was highly probable that it was one of those four. I stood at a window, and sat at my desk, and stood some more, going over them. Which one? That’s the silliest game of solitaire there is, and we all play it, trying to tag a murderer as one of a bunch from what they said and how they looked and acted, unless you can spot something that really opens a crack. I couldn’t.
The trouble was, there was no telling how much time we had a month or a week or a day. Or an hour. Homicide would check all angles on Carol Mardus, and they would all be seen and questioned, probably Willis Krug first, and one of them might wilt. If he did we were in the soup. There’s a big difference between not giving information you haven’t been asked for, and declining to give it, or faking it, when you are asked. All Cramer needed was a hint that there was a connection between Carol Mardus and the baby, or just that she had come to see Wolfe anything at all that would bring him to the door, to march to the office and ask Wolfe if he had ever heard of Carol Mardus. That would do it. It was the thinnest ice we had ever been on. I had to go to the kitchen and chin with Fritz to keep from going up to the plant rooms and telling Wolfe that since he hadn’t asked me before spilling it to Krug and Haft and Bingham, I wasn’t going to ask him when and where I could spill it, and he could either fire me or quit fiddling with the damn orchids and do something. I decided to wait till he came down, and if he asked me if I had a suggestion I would throw something at him.
But he wouldn’t find me in the office, sitting there like patience in the hoosegow. I would be in the hall and he could take it standing up. I wouldn’t poke, I would punch. So when the sound came of the elevator I went out and took position facing its door, and when it jolted to a stop and the door opened, and he stepped out, he found himself confronted. As I opened my mouth the doorbell rang, and we both turned our heads for a look through the one-way glass. It was Inspector Cramer.
Our heads jerked back and our eyes met. No words were needed, and no smoke signals. He muttered, Come, and started to the rear, and I followed. In the kitchen Fritz was at the sink, sprinkling watercress with ice water. He glanced around, saw the look on Wolfe’s face, and whirled. Mr. Cramer is at the door, Wolfe said. Archie and I are leaving at the back and don’t know when we’ll return. Certainly not tonight. Don’t admit him. Put the chain bolt on. Tell him we are not here and nothing else. Nothing. If he returns with a search warrant you’ll have to admit him, but tell him nothing. You don’t know when we left.
The doorbell rang.
You understand?
Yes, but Go.
Fritz went. Wolfe asked me, Pajamas and toothbrushes?
No time. If Stebbins is along he’ll send him around to Thirty-fourth Street on the jump.
You have cash?
Not enough. I’ll get some. I hopped. But Fritz was opening the front door to the crack the chain bolt allowed, so I tiptoed to the office, to the safe, got the lettuce from the cash drawer, shut the safe door and twirled the dial, and tiptoed back to the hall. Wolfe was there, starting down the stairs.At the bottom I took the lead, on out, up the four steps, and along the brick wall to the gate with its Hotchkiss lock. Then through the passage to the 34th Street sidewalk. There was no point in stopping for a look around; it wasn’t likely that Cramer had put a man there in advance, but if he had we would soon know it. We turned left. You wouldn’t suppose that a man who does as little walking as Wolfe could stretch his legs without straining, but he can.
He can even talk. Are we followed?
I doubt it. We’ve never done this before. Anyway we wouldn’t be followed, we’d be stopped.
There was more sidewalk traffic than you would suppose on a July Saturday. We split to let a bee-line arm-swinger through and joined again. Wolfe asked, Must it be a hotel?
No. Your picture has been in the paper too often. We can slow down when we’re around the corner. I have a suggestion. At the beach this morning I had an idea that we might need a dugout, and I asked Mrs. Valdon for a key to her house. It’s in my pocket.
Isn’t it under surveillance?
Why would it be? They went to the beach yesterday. There’s no one there.
At the corner we waited for a green light, crossed 34th Street, and were headed downtown on Ninth Avenue. We let up a little. It’s under two miles, I said. Exercise in the open air keeps the body fit and the mind alert. Hackies talk too much. For instance, one having a bowl of soup at a lunch counter says, Nero Wolfe is out. I just took him to that house on Eleventh Street where the woman’s got that baby.’ Within an hour it’s all over town. We can stop at a bar for a beer break. Say when.
You talk too much. You have seen me tramp through valleys and mountains for days.
Yeah, and I’ll never forget it.
We did stop on the way, at a delicatessen on Sixth Avenue and Twelfth Street, and when we entered the vestibule that had once lodged a baby in a blanket we were both loaded down. Ham, corned beef, sturgeon, anchovies, lettuce, radishes, scallions, cucumbers, oranges, lemons, peaches, plums, three kinds of crackers, coffee, butter, milk, cream, four kinds of choose, eggs, pickles, olives, and twelve bottles of beer. No bread. If Fritz dies Wolfe will probably never eat bread again. It was ten minutes past seven when I got my arm unloaded enough, in the kitchen, to look at my watch, and it was a quarter to eight by the time I had things put away and Wolfe had dinner laid out on the kitchen table.
His salad dressing, from ingredients in the cupboard, wasn’t as good as Fritz’s, but of course he didn’t have the materials. I washed the dishes and he dried.
There was now no point in punching or even poking. He was an exile from his house, his plant rooms, his chair, and his dining table, and there was only one way he could get back with his tail up. Of course I couldn’t be sent on errands since I was an exile too, but there were Saul and Fred and Orrie, and presumably they were on his mind, where to start them digging, as we left the kitchen. But he asked me where the nursery was. I told him I doubted if he would find any clues there.
The rug, he said. You said there’s a fine Tekke.
He not only inspected the Tekke, he looked at every rug in the house. Perfectly natural. He likes good rugs and knows a lot about them, and he seldom has a chance to see any but his own. Then he spent half an hour examining the elevator and running it up and down while I looked into the bed problem. A very enjoyable evening, but there was no point in poking. We turned in, finally, in the two spare rooms on the fourth floor. His had a nice rug which he said was an eighteenth-century Feraghan.
Sunday morning a smell woke me at least it was the first thing I was aware of a smell I knew well. It was faint, but I recognized it. I got erect and went out to the head of the stain and sniffed; no doubt about it. I went down three flights to the kitchen and there he was, eating breakfast in his shirt sleeves. Eggs au beurre noir. He was playing house.