I had had one feeble idea on my way up in the taxi, and I proceeded to use that up. The building directory board was in two sections, on two sides of the lobby, one A to L and the other M to Z. I tackled the first section and went over it thoroughly, a name at a time, hoping for a hint or a hunch. I got neither, and moved across to the second section, and there, nearing the end, I saw Wheeler & Driscoll 3259. It looked slim, but I went to the information booth and told the guy, “I’m looking for a tenant and don’t know his firm. Nat Driscoll. Or maybe instead of Nat, Nathaniel.”
He opened his book with weary hands and looked at it with weary eyes and said in a weary voice, “Driscoll, Nathaniel, 3259, thirty-second floor, elevators on the –”
I was gone. My heart had started to pump. I love the feeling of a hunch.
I got out at the thirty-second and walked half a mile, around three corners, to 3259. The lettering on the door said:
WHEELER & DRISCOLL
IMPORTERS AND BROKERS
I opened the door and went in, and right away, even in the anteroom, found myself in the midst of prosperity, judging by the rugs and furniture and the type of employee displayed. She was the kind who without any visible effort conveys the impression that she got a job in an office only because she was fed up with yachting and riding to hounds. Not wanting to frighten anyone into scooting out of any other Wheeler & Driscoll doors into the public corridor, I told her:
“My name is Goodwin and I would like to see Mr. Nathaniel Driscoll.”
“Have you an appointment?”
“Nope, I just dropped in. Have you heard about the diamonds? The ones he thought had been stolen from him?”
“Oh, yes.” Her lip twitched. “Yes, indeed.”
“Tell him my name is Goodwin and Miss Tormic sent me to see him. I represent Miss Tormic.”
“I’m sorry. Mr. Driscoll isn’t in.”
“Has he gone home?”
“He hasn’t been here this afternoon.”
In the first place, my hunch was still alive and kicking, and in the second place, she wasn’t a good liar, even with a common conventional lie like that. I got out my memo pad and wrote on it:
If you don’t want the cops busting in here in about two minutes looking for your fencing teacher, let’s have a little talk. And for God’s sake, don’t let her show her face in the hall.
A.G.
I grinned at the employee to show there was no hard feeling, and indeed there wasn’t. “May I have an envelope?”
She got one and handed it to me, and I inserted the note and licked the flap and sealed it. “Here,” I said, “take this to Mr. Driscoll, there’s a good girl, and don’t argue. Do I look like a man who would come all this way to see him unless I knew he was here?”
Without saying a word, she pressed a button. A boy entered from a door at the left, and she gave him the envelope and told him to deliver it to Mr. Driscoll’s desk. I said, “Deliver it to him,” and then, as the boy disappeared, I went to the entrance door and opened it and stood there where I could see the hall in both directions. There were several passers-by, but no sign of any frantic dash for freedom. I must have stood there all of three minutes before I saw, about fifty feet down the hall, the top of a head and then a pair of eyes protruding beyond the edge of a door jamb. I called in a tone of authority:
“Hey, back in there!”
The head disappeared. It had not shown again when I heard the employee’s voice calling my name. I turned. The boy was there holding a door open. He said, “This way, sir,” and I followed him into an inner corridor and past three doors to one at the end, which he opened.
The room I entered was at least five times as big as the anteroom and six times as prosperous. I realized that in my one swift glance as I started to where Nat Driscoll stood at the corner of a large and elegant desk, telling him: “If you sneaked her out while I was coming in here, the cops will have her inside of a minute.”
With one hand gripping the edge of the desk hard enough to bleach the knuckles, he said, “Unh.” He looked as bewildered and terrified as a corpulent uncle who had been inveigled into taking a ride on the Ziparoo at Coney Island.
I looked around. “Where is she?”
He said, “Unh.”
There were two doors besides the one I had entered by. I trotted across and opened one, and saw only gleaming tiles and a washbowl and sittery. I closed that and went and opened the other one, and looked into a small room with filing cabinets, a bookcase, and a de luxe secretary’s desk. The secretary sat there staring at me with big round blue eyes, and a more glittering stare was bestowed on me from a chair in a corner occupied by Carla Lovchen.
She didn’t say anything, just goggled at me. My elbow was grabbed from behind, and I was agreeably surprised to find that Nat Driscoll could grip like that.
I pulled away, and we were both inside the small room, and I shut the door.
I demanded, “What did you figure on doing? Keeping her here till after the funeral?”
Carla asked in a low tense voice, without altering her stare, “Where’s Neya?”
“She’s all right. For a while anyhow. You were tailed to this building –”
“Tailed?”
“Shadowed. Followed by policemen. There are a dozen of them downstairs now, covering all the elevators and exits.”
Driscoll dropped onto a chair and groaned. The blue-eyed secretary inquired in a cool business-like tone:
“Are you Archie Goodwin of Nero Wolfe’s office?”
“I am. Pleased to meet you.” I met Carla’s stare. “Did you kill Rudolph Faber?”
“No.” A shiver ran over her, and she controlled it and sat rigid again.
Driscoll mumbled at me, “You mean Ludlow. Percy Ludlow.”
“Do I? I don’t.” I fired at the secretary, “What time did Driscoll get here this morning?”
“Ask him,” she said icily.
“I’m asking you. Let me tell you folks something. I may not be your best and dearest friend, but I’m quite a pal compared to the guys downstairs I mentioned. Otherwise I would have brought them up here. That can be done at any moment. What time did Driscoll get here this morning?”
“About half past eleven.”
“That was his first appearance here today?”
“Yes.”
“What time did he leave?”
“He didn’t leave at all. He had some lunch brought in on account of Miss Lovchen.”
“She got here at 11:20.”
“Yes.” The secretary was getting no warmer. “How did you know that? How did you know she was here?”
“Intuition. I’m an intuitive genius.” I shifted to Driscoll. “So you didn’t kill Faber, huh?”
He stammered, “You mean … you must mean Ludlow –”
“I mean Rudolph Faber. A little before noon today he was found in the apartment occupied by Neya Tormic and Carla Lovchen, lying on the floor dead. Stabbed. Miss Tormic and I went there looking for Miss Lovchen, and found him.”
The secretary looked impressed. Driscoll’s eyes widened and his mouth stood open. I snapped at Carla:
“He was there when you went there. Either alive or dead, or alive and then dead.”
“I didn’t – I wasn’t there –”
“Can it. What do you think this is, hide and seek? They were tailing you. You went in there at 11:05 and came out again at 11:15. Faber was there.”
She shivered again. “I didn’t kill him.”
“Was he there?”
She shook her head and took a deep jerky breath. “I’m not … going to say anything. I am going away, away from America.” She clasped her hands at me. “Pliz you must help me! Mr. Driscoll would help me! Oh you must, you must –”
Driscoll demanded in an improved voice, “You say Faber was there in her apartment stabbed to death?”
“Yes.”
“And she had just been there?”
“She left there about thirty minutes before the body was found.”
“Good God.” He stared at her. The secretary was staring at her too.
I said briskly, “She says she didn’t do it. I don’t know. The immediate point is that Nero Wolfe wants to see her before the cops get hold of her. What were you going to do, help her get away?”
Driscoll nodded. Then he shook his head. “I don’t know. Good God – she didn’t tell me about Faber. She said …” He flung out his hands. “Damn it, she appealed to me! She swore she had nothing to do with – Ludlow – but she didn’t need to! She has been damn fine with me down there – that fencing – greatest pleasure I ever had in my life – she has been damn fine and understanding! She is a very fine young woman! I would be proud to have her for a sister and I’ve told her so! Or daughter! Daughter would be better! She came here and appealed to me to help her get away from trouble, and by God I was doing it, and I didn’t consult any lawyer either! And by God I’ll still do it! Do you realize that she appealed to me? I don’t care if her apartment was as full of dead bodies as the morgue, that young woman is no damn murderer!”