“Which one?”
Wolfe glanced at the card again. “Mr. Rudolph Faber.”
“You don’t say.” Cramer stared at Wolfe’s face for seven seconds. “This is a hell of a time of night for a complete stranger to be making an unexpected call.”
“It certainly is. Show him in, please, Fritz.”
Cramer turned to face the door.
I chalked up one for the chinless wonder. He may have been shy on chin, but his nerve was okay. While there may have been no reason why the unlooked-for sight of Inspector Cramer’s visage should have paralyzed him with terror, it must have been at least quite a surprise, but he did no shrinking or blanching. He merely halted in a manner that should have made his heels click but didn’t, lifted a brow, and then marched on.
Cramer grunted something at him, grunted a good night to Wolfe and me, and tramped out. I got up to greet the newcomer, leaving the front hall politeness to Fritz. Wolfe submitted to a handshake and motioned the caller to the chair that was still warm from Cramer. Faber thanked him and blinked at him, and then turned on me and demanded:
“How did you get away up there? Bribe the cop?”
I could have told, just looking at him, that that was the tone he would use asking a question. A tone that took it for granted any question he asked was going to be answered just because he asked it. I don’t like it and I know of no way anybody is ever going to make me like it.
I said, “Write me special delivery and I’ll refer the matter to my secretary’s secretary.”
His forehead wrinkled in displeasure. “Now, my man –”
“Not on your life. Not your man. I belong to me. This is the United States of America. I’m Nero Wolfe’s employee, bodyguard, office manager, and wage slave, but I can quit any minute. I’m my own man. I don’t know in what part of the world the door is that your key fits, but –”
“That will do, Archie.” Wolfe said that without bothering to glance at me; his eyes were on the caller. “Apparently, Mr. Faber, Mr. Goodwin doesn’t like you. Let’s disregard that. What can I do for you?”
“You can first,” said Faber in his perfect precise English, “instruct your subordinate to answer questions that are put to him.”
“I suppose I can. I’ll try it some time. What else can I do for you?”
“There is no discipline in your country, Mr. Wolfe.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t say that. There are various kinds of discipline. One man’s flower is another man’s weed. We submit to traffic cops and the sanitary code and so on, but we are extremely fond of certain liberties. Surely you didn’t come here in order to discipline Mr. Goodwin? Don’t try it; you’d soon get sick of the job. Forget it. Beyond that? …”
“I came to satisfy myself as to your position and intentions regarding Miss Neya Tormic.”
“Well.” Wolfe was keeping his voice oiled – controlling himself. “What is it in you that requires satisfaction? Your curiosity?”
“No. I am interested. I might be prepared, under certain conditions, to explain my interest, and you might find it profitable to help me advance it. I know your reputation of course – and your methods. You’re expensive. What you want is money.”
“I like money, and I use a lot of it. Would it be your money, Mr. Faber?”
“It would be yours after it was paid to you.”
“Quite right. What would I have to do to earn it?”
“I don’t know. It is an affair of urgency and it demands great discretion. That inspector of police who was here – can you satisfy me that you are not a secret agent of the police?”
“I couldn’t say. I don’t know how hard you are to satisfy. I can give you my word, but I know what it’s worth and you don’t. Before I went to a lot of trouble to establish my good faith, I would need satisfaction on a few points myself. Your own position and intentions, for instance. Is your interest a personal one in Miss Tormic, or is it – somewhat broader? And does it coincide with hers? It is at least, I suppose, not hostile to her, or you wouldn’t have established that alibi for her when she was threatened with a charge of murder. But exactly what is it?”
Rudolph Faber looked at me, with his thin lips thinner, and then said to Wolfe, “Send him out of the room.”
I started to deride him with a grin, knowing the reception that kind of suggestion always got, no matter who made it; but the grin froze on my face with amazement when I heard Wolfe saying calmly, “Certainly, sir. Archie, leave us, please.”
I was so damn flabbergasted and boiling I got up to go without a word. I guess I staggered. But when I was nearly to the door Wolfe’s voice from behind stopped me:
“By the way, we promised to phone Mr. Green. You might do so from Mr. Brenner’s room.”
So that was it. I might have known it. I said, “Yes, sir,” and went on out, closing the door behind me, and proceeded three paces towards the kitchen. Where I stopped there was hanging on the left wall, the one that separated the hall from the office, an old brown wood carving, a panel in three sections. The two side sections were hinged to the middle one. I swung the right section around, stooped a little – for it had been constructed at the level of Wolfe’s eyes – and looked through the peephole, camouflaged on the other side by a painting with the two little apertures backed by gauze, into the office. I could see them both, Faber’s profile and Wolfe’s full, and I mean full, face. Also I could hear their words, by straining a little, but it was obvious that they were both going on with the sparring with no prospect of getting anywhere, so I went to the kitchen. Fritz was there in his sock feet reading a newspaper, with his slippers beside him on another chair in case of a summons. He looked up and nodded.
“Milk, Archie?”
“No. Keep it low. The hole’s uncovered. Tricks.”
“Ah!” His eyes gleamed. He loved conspiracies and sinister things. “Good case?”
“Case hell. The second World War. It started this afternoon up on 48th Street. We’d better not talk.”
I sat on the edge of the table for two minutes by my watch and then went to the house phone on the wall and buzzed the office. Wolfe answered.
“Well?”
“Mr. Goodwin speaking. Green says he has got to talk with you.”
“I’m busy.”
“I told him that. He said what the hell.”
“You can give him the program as well as I can, and the reports we got yesterday –”
“I told him that too. He says he wants to hear it from you. I’ll switch him onto your line.”
“No, no, don’t do that. Confound him anyway. You know I’m not alone – and that’s a confidential – tell him to hold the wire. He’s an unspeakable nuisance. I’ll come there and take it.”
“Okay.”
I hung up and tiptoed back to the wood carving in the hall. In a moment the office door opened and Wolfe came out and shut the door. He got to me fast, whispered to me, “Quick on the signal,” and glued his eyes to the peephole.
And I nearly missed connections. Rudolph Faber must have been in a hurry. Wolfe hadn’t been at the peephole more than ten seconds before he jerked his hand up and waved it. I wasn’t supposed to jump or run, so I trod the three paces to the office door, giving my steps plenty of weight, and flung the door open and kept going on in. Faber, in an attitude of arrested motion, was standing across the room from where his chair was, with his back to the bookshelves, but his hands were empty. He blinked at me once, but otherwise his face was impassive except for its inborn expression of superior and bullheaded meanness. With only one swift glance at him, I went to my desk and sat down, opened a drawer and took out a file of papers, and began going through them to look for something.
He didn’t say a word and neither did I. I finished going through the file and started on another one, and was prepared to continue with that indefinitely, but it wasn’t necessary. I was halfway through the second one when noises filtered in through the door to the hall, and pretty soon the door opened and I looked up and got another shock. Nero Wolfe was there, in overcoat, muffler, hat and gloves, with his applewood stick in his hand. I gawked at him.