I missed some then because I had to answer the doorbell. It was Charlie Heath. He started for the office as if he owned the place, but I blocked him off and demanded, “Would you mind explaining what it was that took so long?”
“I’ll report to the inspector.”
“He’s busy and you’ll wait in here.” I opened the door to the front room, where Fred Durkin was sitting with a magazine. “What used up all the time?”
“Nothing used it up. I mean I got back ten minutes ago. I’ve been out front.”
“You have.”
“I have.”
“Okay. Wait here.”
I went back to the office and ran into a scowling match, and took advantage of it to report the return of Heath. All Cramer did was to favor me with five seconds of his share of the scowl. Wolfe didn’t even look at me. Apparently he was still trying to undermine Barrett without a bomb and was finding it hard digging.
“No,” he said, “I wouldn’t expect that. We don’t expect much from you, Mr. Barrett, in any event. But you seem to have overlooked one thing, at least. You seem to be ignoring the existence of a person who knows as much about all this as the princess herself does. Including your part in it, and your son’s part. I mean, of course, the friend who came here with the princess from Zagreb.”
“Maybe he’s ignoring it,” Cramer put in, “but I’m not. And you let her go, and gave her money to go with. That was cute.”
“No,” Wolfe asserted, “I did not.”
Cramer stared. Wolfe said, “Archie, get that package from the safe and give it to Mr. Cramer.”
I went and got it and handed it over. Cramer started to unfold it.
“That,” Wolfe said, “is the photograph of the Princess Vladanka Donevitch, radioed from London. If I had only got it this morning –”
Cramer jumped up, sputtering, “What kind of a goddam run-around – this is that Tormic –”
“Now, please!” Wolfe pushed a palm at him. “Yes, it is Miss Tormic. I agreed –”
“And she’s – and by God, you had one of my men take her and turn her loose –”
“I did. What else could I do? She was sitting here in my office, thinking she was my client, under my protection. I didn’t agree to catch the murderer for you, I agreed to disclose the identity and the motive. If you’ll take my advice, the simplest way to get her –”
But Cramer wasn’t taking advice. He nearly knocked me out of my chair, getting at the phone. Father and son sat tight. Wolfe looked up at the clock and heaved a sigh. Cramer got his number and began spouting orders to someone. I picked up the radiophoto of the princess and laid it on Wolfe’s desk, and gathered up the wrapping paper and put it in the wastebasket.
Cramer finished and stood up and yapped at Wolfe, “If we don’t get her I’ll –”
“It was a bargain,” Wolfe snapped.
“One hell of a bargain.” He moved for the door, turned, and spoke to the Barretts, “I’ll want to see you. If you try setting a fire under me, I’ll give you all I’ve got.” He went and I was right behind him. While he grabbed his coat and hat I got Heath from the front room, always glad to get cops out of the house, from flatfoots on up. I followed them out to the stoop, leaving the door ajar, and watched the army that had been surrounding the house being called into action. Cramer waved them in and gave them curt and crackling orders. His own car had to back up a few feet before it could nose around the rear of the Barrett town car. The taxi down the street rolled up, then it and Heath’s car sped away. Cramer’s car started, then stopped, and my name was called:
“Hey, Goodwin, come here!”
I trotted down the steps and past Barrett’s car on over to him. Cramer leaned from the window:
“I want that picture. Understand?”
“Sure we’re through with it,” I told him obligingly, and stood at the curb and watched their tail light as they headed for the corner.
I watched them too long.
What happened, happened quick, but even so I might have headed her off if I had turned two seconds sooner. She came from inside the tonneau of Barrett’s car, leaping out, and went like a bat out of hell across the sidewalk, up the steps and through the door I had left ajar. I was after her, and I am not old enough to be incapable of rapid movement. I was starting up the steps as she hurtled through the door, and by the light in the hall I saw a glittering streak from something she had in her hand. I gave it all I had then, but I couldn’t catch lightning. When I was at the door she was swerving into the office. As I made the office she was halfway across it and her hand was up with the shining blade, and Wolfe was there in his chair with no time to move, and I had no gun, and all I could do was yell and keep going.
I do not know how Wolfe did it and I never will know, though he has kindly explained it to me several times. He says that when he heard the commotion in the hall he stiffened into attention, which is the most incredible part of it; that when he saw her leaping in with the dagger flashing he grabbed a beer bottle with each hand; that when she was upon him he struck simultaneously with both hands, with his left at her descending wrist and with his right at anything at all. I don’t know. I do know that something broke her right wrist and something cracked her skull.
When I reached them he was still sitting in his chair with a beer bottle in each hand and she was on the floor back of his chair, flat on the floor, with her legs twitching spasmodically. I looked at him for blood and didn’t see any. Fred Durkin busted in from the front room. Fritz came running from the kitchen. Father and son stood there white and speechless. I couldn’t see anything wrong with Wolfe, but I asked him in a voice that sounded funny to me:
“Did she get you?”
“No!” he bellowed. He couldn’t get up because her body against his chair kept him from shoving it back to make room.
I knelt down to take a look at her. Her legs had stopped twitching. I couldn’t feel any heart. It was close quarters, with her there between Wolfe’s chair and the wall, and I squirmed around to get on the other side of her. As I did so I heard a voice from the middle of the room:
“Excuse me for walking right in, Mr. Wolfe, but the door was standing open. I was on my way uptown and I dropped in to say that we may expect a ruling from the attorney general on that point in about a week – the matter of registration as the agent of a foreign principal when the –”
I raised myself up enough to see the face of Stahl the G-man looking polite but stern. Then I sat back on my heels and howled with laughter.
Chapter 19
Wolfe said in a tone of exasperation, “Fritz tells me nothing on your tray was touched. Confound it, you have to eat something!”
Carla shook her head. “I can’t. I’m sorry. I can’t.”
I had brought her down to the office. The clock on the wall said 11:20. The chairs were back in place.
Wolfe sighed. “It’s nearly midnight. Mr. Goodwin is yawning. You may go now whenever you want to. Or I’ll ask one or two questions if you feel like telling the truth.”
“I can tell the truth – now.”
“It would have been just as well …” His massive shoulders went up a sixteenth of an inch and down again. “I would like to know if you were aware that that woman was a maniac.”
“But she wasn’t –” Carla stopped for repairs to her voice. “I never had any idea …” Her hand fluttered and dropped again to her lap.
“Were you in fact her friend?”
“Not – no, not her friend. It wasn’t like that. When Mrs. Campbell died I was left dependent on the Donevitch family. Then Prince Stefan married her and she came there and in no time she was head of things.
She treated me as well as I could expect, since I was not a Donevitch. I didn’t dislike her. I was a little afraid of her and so was everybody else, even Prince Stefan. When she decided to come to America she selected me to come with her, and I thought then that the reason she did that was because she knew about you and she thought she might need to use you. One reason I thought that was because she told me to bring that adoption paper along –”