Nikola Miltan and his wife were the only ones in the office. It looked to me as if she had been headed for the door when I entered, but when I took off my hat and coat and put them on the rack, explaining that I wanted to see Miss Tormic when she was disengaged, apparently she changed her mind and decided to stick around. Miltan invited me to have a chair, and I sat down not far from the desk where he was, while his wife opened a door of the big glass cabinet and began rearranging things which didn’t need it.
“I have met Mr. Nero Wolfe,” Miltan offered politely.
I nodded. “So I understand.”
“He is a remarkable man. Remarkable.”
“Well, I know of one guy that would agree with you.”
“Only one?”
“At least one. Mr. Wolfe.”
“Ah. A joke.” He laughed politely. “I imagine there are many others. In fact – what is it, Jeanne?”
His wife had uttered a foreign exclamation, of surprise or maybe dismay. “The col de mort,” she told him. “It’s not here. Did you remove it?”
“I did not. Of course not. It was there – I’m sure –”
He got up and trotted over to the cabinet, and I arose and wandered after him. Together they stared at a spot. He stretched, and then ducked, to inspect the other shelves.
“No,” she said, “it’s not there. It’s gone. There is nothing else gone. I was in favor long ago of having a lock put on –”
“But my dear.” Miltan looked defensive. “There is no sensible reason that could possibly exist why anyone would want to take that col de mort. It was a nice curiosity, but of no particular value.”
“What’s a col de mort!” I asked.
“Oh, just a little thing.”
“What kind of a little thing?”
“Oh, a little thing – look.” He put an arm through the open door of the cabinet and placed a finger upon the point of an épée which was displayed there. “See? It’s blunt.”
“I see it is.”
“Well, once in Paris, years ago, a man wanted to kill another man, and he made a little thing with a sharp point, very cleverly, which he could fit over the end of the épée.” He took the weapon from the shelf and dangled it in his hand. “Then, with the thing fitted on, he made a thrust in quarte –”
He made a lunge at an imaginary victim in my neighborhood, so unexpected and incredibly swift that I side-stepped and nearly tripped myself up, and was perfectly willing to concede him the championship. Just as swiftly he was back to normal position.
“So.” He smiled, and returned the weapon to its place. “A thrust in quarte gets the heart, theoretically, but that time it was not theory. A member of the police who was a friend of mine gave me the little thing as a curiosity. The newspapers called it col de mort. Neck – no, not neck. Collar. Collar of death. Because it fitted the end of the épée like a collar. It was amusing to have it.”
“It’s gone,” said his wife shortly.
“I hope not gone.” Miltan frowned. “There is no reason for it to be gone. There has been enough talk of stealing around here. We will find out. We will ask people.”
“I hope you find it,” I told him. “It sounds cute. Speaking of asking people, I was about to ask you if it would be okay for me to have a little chat with whoever it is that cleans up the fencing rooms.”
“Why … what for?”
“Oh, just a little chat. Who does the cleaning?”
“The porter. But I can’t imagine why you should want –”
His wife interrupted him, with her eyes on me. “He wants to find out if cigarette stubs and ashes were found in the room where Miss Tormic and Mr. Ludlow were fencing yesterday,” she said calmly.
I grinned at her. “If you will pardon a personal remark, Mrs. Miltan, I might have known from your eyes that you had that in you.”
She merely continued to look at me.
“For my part,” Miltan declared, “I don’t see why you should want to know about cigarette stubs and I don’t see how my wife knew you wanted to. I am slow-witted.”
“Well, you have to be slow at something, to even up for your speed with that sticker. May I see the porter?”
“No,” Jeanne Miltan said bluntly.
“Why not?”
“It isn’t necessary. I don’t know what is in your mind, but I saw you looking at Miss Tormic, you who were supposed to be here as her friend. If you want to know whether she and Mr. Ludlow were smoking cigarettes, ask her.”
“I will. I intend to. But how could I do her any harm by discussing the matter with the porter?”
“I don’t know. You may mean no harm. But this affair of yesterday and today is ended. It was bad. It could have turned out very badly for our business. It is a very delicate matter, the tone of a place like this. A breath may destroy it. Even if you mean no harm to Miss Tormic or to us, I shall tell the porter not to answer your questions if you do see him. I am plain-spoken. Nor may you go to the salle d’armes and inspect the pads to see if the strap of one is broken.”
“What makes you think I wanted to?”
“Because I don’t take you for a fool. If you were curious about the smoking, naturally you would also be curious about the broken strap.”
I shrugged. “Okay. Anyhow, you used the right word. I was just curious. As you know, I’m a detective, and I guess we get into bad habits. But if you’re aware of the reputation of Nero Wolfe, you’re also aware that he dishes out trouble only to people who have asked for it.”
She gazed at me a moment, turned and closed the sliding door of the cabinet, and then returned to me. “This morning,” she said, “my husband was saying that he would engage Mr. Wolfe to investigate the disappearance of Mr. Driscoll’s diamonds. Miss Tormic was present. She declared that she had engaged Nero Wolfe to act in the matter in her behalf. Shortly afterwards her friend, Miss Lovchen, asked permission to go out on an errand. It is not only detectives who are curious. I am sometimes curious. If I were to ask –”
She stopped with her mouth open, her body stiffening. Miltan spun on his heel to face the door to the hall. I did the same. The yell that had split the air sounded like something that you might expect but would certainly resent if you found yourself alone in a jungle at night.
When the second yell came all three of us were running for the door. Miltan was ahead, and in the hall he bounded for the stairs with us after him. There were no more yells, but sounds of commotion, steps and voices, came from above, and on the second-floor landing we were impeded by people who popped out of doors. Miltan was a kangaroo; I couldn’t have caught him for a purse. At the top of the second flight we were brought to a halt by obstructions. A colored man was wriggling, his arms held by the chinless wonder; Nat Driscoll, in his shirt but no trousers, was jumping up and down; the two Balkans, in fencing costumes, were backed against the wall; Zorka, in gold-leaf undies and that was all, was standing apart and systematically screaming. Before Miltan could make any progress or I could get around him, I felt myself brushed aside and Jeanne Miltan was there.
“What?” she demanded in a tone that would have stopped a hurricane. “Arthur! What is it?”
The colored man stopped wriggling and rolled his eyes at her and said something I didn’t get, but apparently she did, for she started off on a lope down the hall. I was close behind her and there were steps behind me. She went to the last door, the end room. It was standing open and she passed through, taking the curve without slowing down. She jerked to a halt, saw it there on the floor, and walked over to it. I was beside her. It was Percy Ludlow, lying on his side, so tilted that he would have been on his back if he hadn’t been propped up by the protruding point of the épée which was sticking clean through him.
Chapter 4
Jeanne Miltan said something foreign and then stood and stared down at it with her face frozen. I heard a gasp from Miltan behind me, and other noises, and turned and saw them ganged in the doorway.
“Keep out of here,” I said. “All of you.”