“I’m not speaking of trips to Denver! When did you leave there?”
“Two years ago. Nearly. My father gave me money for a trip to Paris – and I got a job there and learned to design – and I met Donald Barrett and he suggested –”
“Where did you get the name Zorka?”
“I saw it somewhere –”
“Have you ever been in Yugoslavia?”
“No.”
“Or anywhere in Europe besides Paris?”
“No.”
“Is what you said last night – about the reason for your phoning here and then running away to Miss Reade’s place – is that the truth?”
“Yes, it is. Like a fool, an utter fool” – she gulped – “I let my conscience bother me because it was murder. If I hadn’t done that, none of this …” She flung out her hands. “Oh, can it be – can’t this be –” Her chin was quivering.
“Miss Bupp!” Wolfe thundered. “Don’t you dare! Archie, get her out of here! Get her out of the house!”
“Zat weel be a plaizhoore,” I said.
Chapter 16
Wolfe looked up at the wall clock and said, “Ten minutes to four. I’ll have to leave you pretty soon to go up to my plants.”
We were comparatively peaceful again. The two dicks had departed with Miss Bupp, and Lieutenant Rowcliff had been phoned to expect her at headquarters for a little talk.
Cramer said, “It could be a frame, you know. We’ve tried some of her friends and associates too. We heard she was a Turk, a Hungarian, a Russian Jew, and maybe part Jap. It won’t hurt any to check it up.”
Wolfe shook his head, grimaced, and muttered, “Ottumwa, Iowa.”
“I guess so,” the inspector admitted. “Does that shove you off onto a siding?”
“No. It merely …” Wolfe shrugged.
“It merely leaves you still waiting at the station, huh?” Getting no answer, he regarded Wolfe a moment and then went on, “As far as I’m concerned, I’m still playing these. If you go up to your plants, I go along. If you go to the kitchen to mix salad dressing –”
“You don’t mix salad dressing in the kitchen. You do it at the table and use it immediately.”
“All right. No matter what you go to the kitchen for, I go too. It’s plainer than ever that you know where the kernel is in this nut and I don’t. Take the fact of Donald Barrett chasing this Zorka Bupp away so we couldn’t get at her. I would get fat trying to put the screws on Donald Barrett, with both the commissioner and the district attorney having a bad attack of bashfulness. Wouldn’t I? But you don’t even waste time with Donald. You have his old man, John P., himself, coming right here and walking right into your office. That goes to show.”
Wolfe looked at me. “Archie. Find out if Theodore failed to understand that when I send a gentleman to look at orchids –”
Cramer snorted. “Don’t bother. I didn’t sneak downstairs and take a peek. Rowcliff told me on the phone that he had received a report that John P. Barrett had been seen entering this address at 2:55 this p.m.”
“Were you having Mr. Barrett followed?”
“No.”
“I see. You have a regiment watching this house.”
“I wouldn’t say a regiment. But I’ve said and I say again that right now I’m more interested in this house than any other building in the borough of Manhattan. If you want me out of it you’ll have to call the police. By the way, another thing Rowcliff told me, they’ve found Belinda Reade. She’s at a matinee at the Lincoln Theater. Do we want her in here?”
“I don’t.”
“Then I don’t either. The boys’ll take care of her. If she can account satisfactorily for – is that for me?”
I nodded, and vacated my chair for him to take another phone call. This was a comparatively short one. He emitted a few grunts and made a few unilluminating remarks, and hung up and returned to his chair. No sooner had I got back into mine than the house phone buzzed. As I pulled it over to me I heard Wolfe asking Cramer if there was anything new and the inspector replying that there was nothing worth mentioning and then, over the house phone, in response to my hello, Fred Durkin’s voice was in my ear:
“Archie? Come up here.”
I said with irritation, “Damn it, Fritz, I’m busy.” Then I waited a minute and said, “Okay, okay, quit running off your face,” and got up and beat it to the hall, shutting the door behind me. I went quickly but noiselessly up one flight of stairs, opened the door of Wolfe’s room, and entered. Fred Durkin was there on a chair beside the bed, within reach of the phone, where he had been instructed to place himself two hours previously.
He started to grumble, “This is one hell of a job –”
“Don’t crab, my boy. From each according to his ability. What is it, Lovchen?”
He nodded. “I didn’t call you when he got the report on Zorka, because he told them to bring her here, but –”
“What about Lovchen?”
“Her tail phoned in to headquarters.” Fred looked at a pad of paper he had scribbled on. “They followed her to Miltan’s this morning, and she left there at 10:53 and went back to 404 East 38th Street –”
“The hell she did. Anyone with her?”
“No, she was alone. She stayed in there only about ten minutes. At 11:15 she came out and went to Second Avenue and took a taxi. She got out at the Maidstone Building on 42nd Street. They were a little behind her as she entered the building, and she popped into an elevator just as the door was closing and they missed it. They couldn’t find out from the elevator boy what floor she got off at, and anyway, as you know and I know, that would be bad tailing because she could have taken to the stairs and gone up or down. There are four different rows of elevators to watch in that building, and they were afraid to leave to go to a phone, but just now a cop passed by and they flagged him and had him send in a report. They’re sure she hasn’t left the building and they want help because the rush hour will be on at five o’clock.”
“Is that all?”
“That’s the crop.”
I made a face. “And Cramer, the louse, said there was no news worth mentioning! He’s going upstairs with Wolfe, to the roof. When you hear the elevator go up, you go down to the office and stay there. Take all calls. If anybody comes, tell Wolfe on the house phone. Write out a report of what you’ve told me, and add to it that I’ve gone to the Maidstone Building, and send it up to Wolfe by Fritz. If I call in and there’s anyone in the office, use code. Got it?”
“I’ve got it, but why not let me go –”
“No, my boy, this is a job for a master.”
I left him there. Descending the stairs as fast as I could without making a hubbub, I went to the kitchen and told Fritz:
“Go to the office and tell Wolfe the goose hasn’t been delivered and you’ve sent me to the Washington Market for it. Tell him I protested and complain bitterly of the language I used. That is for the benefit of Inspector Cramer. Fred has the low-down. Got it?”
“Yes,” Fritz hissed.
I left by way of the front hall, grabbing my hat and coat. Outside was no regiment, but there was a dick on the sidewalk not far from the stoop, and another one across the street, and a taxi was parked fifty yards east. Not to mention Cramer’s police car, there nosing the hind end of my roadster. I climbed in the roadster and started the engine, called to Cramer’s chauffeur, “Follow me to the scene of the crime!” and rolled. I didn’t go far, only around the corner and a couple of blocks on Tenth Avenue, and then stopped at the curb, locked the ignition, got out, and stopped the first taxi that came along. I waited a minute to see either the police car or the taxi if they turned in from 35th Street, but apparently my invitation hadn’t been accepted, so I hopped in and told the driver 42nd and Lexington.
Entering the marble lobby of the fifty-story Maidstone Building, I felt fairly sappy. I had come because Wolfe had instructed me that if Fred copped any news about Carla Lovchen I was to follow it up, and the only way I could follow it up was to go there. I felt sappy because, observing the extent and complications of the lobby, with the four banks of elevators and the twisting crowds, not to mention such things as stairways and possibly basement exits, it seemed good for even money that she had moved out and on; and also, even if she hadn’t, I stood a fat chance of grabbing her and getting away with her under the circumstances. Apparently the tails had already got their reinforcements; I had easily spotted three of them on one quick survey. It was obvious that the lobby was no place for me, even if she walked out of an elevator right into my arms.