“Yes, sir.”
“Good.”
He got busy with the glass again. I swung my legs. After a while the phone rang. Theodore went to his desk to answer it and told Cramer it was for him. The inspector went and grunted into it for three or four minutes, then hung up and returned to the stool. I knew he was glaring at me, but I was interested in the tips of my number nines swinging back and forth.
He said, and I knew what it must be costing him to restrain himself like that, “You, Goodwin.” There was even a suggestion of a tremble in his voice. “When did they move the Washington Market to the Maidstone Building?”
“Why,” I said in a friendly tone, “that must have been Sergeant Stebbins on the phone! How’s that for deduction?”
“Fine.” Cramer threw his cigar at the trash basket, missed, went and picked it up and dropped it in, and returned to the stool. “Don’t think I’m going to blow up, because I’m not. I’m beyond that. Ten minutes after you left I told Wolfe that Carla Lovchen was trailed to the Maidstone Building this morning and was holed up there, but that was after you left as I say. All I’m going to do is ask a simple question. Why did you go to the Maidstone Building?”
I grinned at him. “Here’s the first answer that occurs to me. There was a phone call here at noon from a certain party, and it was traced to a public phone at that building. All right?”
“No.”
I shrugged. “Get Mr. Wolfe to tell you one.”
Wolfe, going on with his work, paid no attention. Cramer said, “I still am not going to blow up. I have planted myself here on two assumptions. The first is that Wolfe has got something on this case that I stand damn little chance of getting unless and until the break comes and he loosens up. The second is, inasmuch as I have never yet found him picking up the pieces for a murderer, that he’s not doing that now. If my first assumption is wrong, I’m just out of luck. If my second one is, you are. Both of you. That’s all. Now you can take the Maidstone Building and stick it up your chimney. But in case you don’t already know it, Carla Lovchen went in that place on 38th Street at eleven o’clock this morning and came out again in ten minutes. I want her, and I want her plenty. I’m telling you. So if it turns out that she has actually pulled a getaway and you helped her do it …”
“The man’s mad,” I declared.
“Shut up. That’s all.”
I continued to admire my feet.
At five minutes to six Wolfe put the magnifying glass away in the drawer, gave Theodore a few instructions regarding the sprouts, and announced that it was time to descend. Never having felt full confidence in the capacity of the elevator as posted on its wall, I left it to him and took to the stairs, and Cramer joined me. Two flights down we saw that the elevator had stopped there and Wolfe was emerging. We halted as he approached us.
“I’ll go to my room and clean up a little. Archie, will you come with me? We’ll be with you in the office shortly, Mr. Cramer. Miss Tormic is there, you know.”
Cramer hesitated, looked at him suspiciously, and then tramped to the stairs and started down. We waited till we heard the office door close behind him and then went to the door of Wolfe’s room and entered. Carla was in a straight-backed chair by the wall, her shoulders hunched over, her hands clenched in her lap, her chin down; but she was wearing her own clothes. The bellboy’s outfit, neatly folded, was on the table.
Wolfe stopped in front of her and said, “How do you do, Miss Lovchen.”
She looked up at him for an instant, then let her head fall again and made no reply.
Wolfe said, “I have no time now because I am expected downstairs. Mr. Goodwin told me he brought a goose. He did. Whether you killed Mr. Ludlow and Mr. Faber or not, you are pure imbecile. Most people are, under great stress, but that merely gives you company. I don’t know how or where Mr. Goodwin found you, but you must have been making an awful fool of yourself or he wouldn’t have found you at all. Even though he is fairly good at finding things. If you think I am severe, it is because I have no sympathy to waste on people who come and ask my help and tell me nothing but lies. For the present you will stay in this room. I’ll come back pretty soon and ask you some questions.”
Carla raised her head again, moved it once from side to side, and said, “I won’t answer any questions. I’ve decided that. I won’t say anything. Not to you or anybody.”
“Oh. You won’t?”
“No. Nothing. No matter what happens. If I don’t say anything, what can anybody do? What can they prove if I don’t say anything? Maybe you think I haven’t enough will power for it, but I have.”
“You might have, for a while. Try it, by all means. It would be an improvement on your conduct so far.” Wolfe turned to go. “I’ll be back to see you, anyway, or send for you. Come, Archie.”
With his hand on the knob he asked, “Are you hungry? Could you eat something?”
“No, thank you.”
We went.
The trio in the office was now four; with us, six. The dick was still bored. Fred, the bum, had reoccupied my chair against my expressed orders, but as I entered he moved to another one. Cramer stood over by the big globe, twirling it. Neya Tormic’s eyes fastened on Wolfe as he appeared in the door and followed him as he crossed to his desk, sat, and reached for the button. I realized that he was in about as bad a humor as I could remember, because he issued no invitation for anyone to have beer. Neya Tormic said, with her eyes boring holes through him:
“I want to see you alone. To ask you something.”
Wolfe nodded. “I know what you want. That will have to wait. You didn’t get to finish your errand. Isn’t that it?”
“I –” She stopped and wet her lips. “You promised.”
“No, Miss Tormic, I didn’t. I know you’ve had a hard afternoon, but surely you remember why you and Mrs. Goodwin were looking for Miss Lovchen. And you didn’t find her.”
“She’s gone.”
“How do you know that?”
“This – Inspector Cramer just told me they can’t find her.”
“Where has she gone to?”
“I don’t know.”
Wolfe uncapped a bottle of beer and poured. “Anyway,” he declared, “that will have to wait. Confound it, everything will have to wait!” He drank until the glass was empty. “Mr. Cramer, you have been hanging around here since two o’clock. You have shown admirable patience and restraint – for instance, regarding Archie’s presence at the Maidstone Building – and of course I know why. You want something and you think you can get it here and nowhere else. I tell you frankly, it isn’t here. I don’t suppose you contemplate spending the night in my house …”
I didn’t hear the rest of the build-up for sending the inspector out into the night, because the doorbell rang and I went to answer it. Usually I performed that service anyway from six to eight, when Fritz was busy getting dinner, and on this occasion, considering the goose I had left in Wolfe’s room, I had a special interest in the possibility of invading hordes. But what I found on the stoop wasn’t a horde at all, but merely a youth in a snappy uniform with a little flat package he wanted to deliver to Nero Wolfe. I put out a hand for it, but he said he had instructions to put it into the hands of Nero Wolfe and no one else’s. So I took him to the office. He marched across to the desk like a West Point cadet ready for his commission, stood with his heels together and asked politely:
“Mr. Nero Wolfe?”
“Yes, sir.”
“From Seven Seas Radio. Sign here, please. The bill, sir. Twenty-six dollars, please.”
Wolfe, reaching for his pen, told me to fork over the dough. I did so. The youth uttered thanks, stowed away the cash and the receipt, and preceded me to the hall. I let him out and put the chain on, and went back in.
Wolfe was undoing the package, and Cramer was standing across from him, right against the desk, looking down at it. It certainly was an exhibition of bad manners. Wolfe said:
“You make me nervous, Mr. Cramer. Sit down.”