It was Dewdrop Irby with a companion in a white linen suit, somewhat wrinkled and none too clean. I slipped the bolt and opened up and they stepped in.
“Mr Archie Goodwin,” Irby said. “Mr Eric Hagh.”
There had been so much talk of South America that I had been expecting something like a cross between Diego Rivera and Peron, but if this bird had been thoroughly bleached to fit his blond hair and blue eyes I couldn’t have told him from a Viking if it hadn’t been for his clothes. He was maybe a little older than me, and also, as I would have conceded in spite of his looking fagged and puffy, maybe a little handsomer.
Leaving his luggage, a bag and a suitcase, in the hall, I took them to the office and introduced Hagh to Wolfe. Hagh was inclined to boom when he spoke, but otherwise didn’t seem specially objectionable, and I resented it. I was prepared to object to a guy who had married an heiress and got her to sign that document as described, and naturally I felt it was up to him to supply evidence to support my objection. He disappointed me. He did speak with an accent I couldn’t place, but I couldn’t very well hold that against him with the United Nations only a mile and a half away.
Apparently they were expecting an extended session, from the way they settled in their chairs, but Wolfe made it short and not too sweet. Actually, from our standpoint, those two were now nothing but supers. Irby had been a godsend the day before, when he had come from nowhere to bring us a rake to pull in the Softdown stockholders, but now that Sarah Jaffee had furnished us with a much better one, he and his client were just extras.
Wolfe was moderately polite. “Did you have a tolerable journey, Mr Hagh?”
“Not too bad,” Hagh replied. “A bit bumpy.”
Wolfe shuddered. “I congratulate you on your safe arrival.” He went to Irby. “There has been a new development. I’m not free to describe it in detail, but it concerns Mr Helmar and his associates sufficiently for them to have agreed to come here this evening at nine o’clock to discuss the matter. Although—”
“I want to meet them,” Hagh said emphatically.
“I know you do. Although they are not coming on your affair, there is no reason why it cannot be broached, since the other matter is closely related. But if you come this evening it must be understood that the proceedings are entirely in my hands. You will take part only if and when invited, and you may not be invited at all. Do you wish to be present under those conditions?”
“But,” Irby protested, “you said there should be a meeting to discuss my client’s claim! I must insist—”
“You are in no position to insist, sir. By making me that silly offer yesterday you forfeited your right to equity. Do you wish to be present this evening?”
“I want only,” Hagh said, “what belongs to me—what I can prove belongs to me!”
“I may have worded my offer badly,” Irby admitted. “I may have misunderstood the nature of your interest in the matter. But it would be imprudent for us to meet those people here unless we have some assurance that you and Mr Goodwin are going to testify to the authenticity—”
“Then don’t come,” Wolfe snapped.
Hagh pulled an envelope from his pocket and waggled it. “I have here the document that my wife signed and Margaret Caselli witnessed. I was present when she wrote it and signed it. It has been in my possession ever since, and there is no honest question that it is genuine. All we want is your help for the truth.”
He was absolutely in earnest, probably as much so as he had been on August 12, 1946, when he had finagled Priscilla into signing it. His appeal did not bring tears to my eyes.
Nor to Wolfe’s. He said flatly, “There will be no assurance, gentlemen, and no hint of a covenant. I am engaged for the rest of the afternoon. Under the conditions I have proposed, you will be welcome here at nine this evening if you care to come.”
That settled it. Hagh wanted him to take a look at the precious document, and Irby was too damn stubborn to give in without a couple more tries, but that was all. They could have saved their breath. I went to the hall with them and was disappointed again when Hagh, who was younger, bigger, and stronger than Irby, insisted on carrying both the bag and the suitcase. I kept looking for little points to score against him, and he kept double-crossing me.
I went to the kitchen and told Fritz there would be nine guests instead of seven.
But as it turned out that was not the final figure. Some four hours later, when I was up in my room changing my shirt and tie in honor of the approaching soiree, the doorbell rang, and a minute later Fritz called up that a man on the stoop who refused to give his name wanted to see me. I finished my grooming and descended and came upon a tableau. Fritz was at the front door, peering at the fastening of the chain bolt. Out on the stoop, visible through the one-way glass, was Andreas Hercules Fomos, glaring angrily at the crack which the bolt and chain were holding the door to, his posture indicating that he was making some kind of muscular effort.
“He’s pushing at it,” Fritz told me.
I walked to him and called through the crack, “You’ll never make it, son. I’m Goodwin. What do you want?”
“I can’t see you plain.” His voice was even gruffer and deeper than when he had been on the inside talking out. “I want in.”
“So did I, and what did I get? What do you want? That’s twice, so I have one coming. You asked me three times.”
“I could break your neck, Goodwin!”
“Then you’ll never get in. I use my neck. What do you want? Now we’re even.”
A voice came at me from behind. “What is all this uproar?”
Wolfe had emerged from the office and was advancing, which wasn’t as impetuous as it might have seemed. It was close to dinnertime, and he would soon have had to mobilize himself anyhow. Fritz trotted off toward the kitchen, where something was probably reaching its climax.
I told Wolfe, “It’s Andy Fomos, who ruined a shoe for me yesterday.” I told the crack, “In ten seconds we close the door the rest of the way, and don’t think we can’t.”
“What you told me yesterday!” he bellowed.
“What? Do you mean about Priscilla Eads going to make your wife a director of Softdown?”
“Yes! I was thinking about it, and a little while ago I phoned that Mrs Jaffee. She wouldn’t say much, but she told me who you are and said I should see you. If that woman was going to make my wife an important thing like a director there must have been some good reason, and I want you to tell me what it was. She must have owed my wife something big, and I want to know what it was, because if it belongs to me I want it. My wife would have wanted me to have it. And you must know about it, or why did you come to see me?”
I turned to Wolfe. “When you send me out for objects you get ’em, huh? This one completes the order. Do you want it?”
He was standing with his gaze focused through the one-way glass at the visitor. Fomos was not quite as impressive draped as he had been in shorts, but he was quite a figure. Wolfe grunted. “If he came this evening would he be uncontrollable?”
“Not if I have tools handy, and I will.”
“Invite him.”
I turned to the crack. “Listen, Junior. Some people are coming at nine o’clock this evening to talk the whole thing over, and we might get around to what’s biting you, why your wife was to be made a director, or we might not. You may come if you’ll behave yourself. If you don’t behave you won’t stay.”
“I won’t wait! I want in now! I want—”
“Oh, can it! You heard me. We’re now going to eat dinner, and the thought of you camped on the stoop would annoy us. If you’re down on the sidewalk by the time I count ten I’ll let you in at nine o’clock. If not, not. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight . . .”
He had made it. Wolfe was headed for the dining room. I went to the kitchen and told Fritz, “One more. There will be ten. Counting Mr Wolfe and me, an even dozen. Counting you, thirteen.”