Wolfe gave him the dope and told him what he was supposed to find. Helen Frost told him how to get to Glennanne from the village of Brewster. I handed him the signed authorization and forty bucks for expenses, and he pulled out his old brown wallet and deposited them in it with care. Wolfe told him to get the car from the garage and wait in front to pick up Fred and Orrie as they arrived.
Saul nodded. “Yes, sir. If I find the box, do I leave Fred or Orrie at the place when I come away?” “Yes. Until notified. Fred.” “If any strangers offer to help me look, do I let them?” Wolfe frowned. “I was about to mention that. Surely there can be no objection if we show a preference for law and order. With all courtesy, you can ask to see a search warrant.” “Is there something hot in the box?” Saul blushed. “I mean, stolen property?” “No. It is legally mine. Defend it.” “Right.” Saul went. I reflected that if he ever got his mitts on the box I wouldn’t like to be the guy to try to take it away from him, small as he was. He didn’t think any more of Nero Wolfe than I do of my patrician nose and big brown intelligent eyes.
Wolfe had pushed the button for Fritz, the long push, not the two shorts for beer. Fritz came, and stood.
Wolfe frowned at him. “Can you stretch lunch for us? Two guests?” “No,” Llewellyn broke in, “really—well have to get back —I promised Dad and Aunt Gallic—” “You can phone them. I would advise Miss Frost to stay. At any moment we may hear that the box has been found, and that would mean a crisis. And to provide against the possibility that it will not be found, I shall need a great deal of information. Miss Frost?” She nodded. “I’ll stay. I’m not hungry. HI stay. You’ll stay with me, Lew?” He grumbled something at her, but stayed put. Wolfe told Fritz: “The fricandeau should be ample. Add lettuce to the salad if the endive is short, and of course increase the oil. Chill a bottle of the ’28 Marcobrunner.
As soon as you are ready.” He wiggled Fritz away with a finger, and settled back in his chair. “Now, Miss Frost. We are engaged in a joint enterprise. I need facts. I am going to ask you a lot of foolish questions. If one of them turns out to be wise or clever you will not know it, but let us hope that I will.
Please do not waste time in expostulation. If I ask you whether your mother has recently sent you to the corner druggist for potassium cyanide tablets, just say no, and listen to the next one. I once solved a difficult case by learning from a young woman, after questioning her for five hours, that she had been handed a newspaper with a piece cut out. Your inalienable rights of privacy are temporarily suspended. Is that understood?” “Yes.” She looked straight at him. “I don’t care. Of course I know you’re clever, I want you to be. I know how easily you caught me in a lie Tuesday morning. But you ought to know…you can’t catch me in one now, because I haven’t anything to lie about. I don’t see how anything I know can help you…” “Possibly it can’t. We can only try. Let us first straighten out the present a little, and work back. I should inform you: Mr. McNair did tell me a few things yesterday before he was interrupted. I have a little background to start with.
Now—for instance—what did Mr. Gebert mean yesterday when he said you were almost his fiancee?” She compressed her lips, but then spoke right to it: “He didn’t mean anything, really. He has—several times he has asked me to marry him.” “Have you encouraged him?” “No.” “Has anyone?” “Why…who could?” “Lots of people. Your maid, the pastor of his church, a member of your family—has anyone?” She said, after a pause, “No.” “You said you had nothing to lie about.” “But I—” She stopped, and tried to smile at him. It was then that I began to think she was a pretty good kid, when I saw her try to smile to show that she wasn’t meaning to cheat on him. She went on, “This is so very personal…I don’t see how…” Wolfe wiggled a finger at her. “We are proceeding on this theory, that in any event whatever, we wish to discover the murderer of Mr. McNair. Even—merely for instance—if it should mean dragging your mother into a courtroom to testify against someone she likes. If that is our aim, you must leave the method of pursuit to me; and I beg you, don’t balk and shy at every little pebble. Who encouraged Mr. Gebert?” “I won’t do it again,” she promised. “No one really encouraged him. I’ve known him all my life, and mother knew him before I was born. Mother and father knew him. He has always been… attentive, and amusing, and in some ways he is interesting and I like him. In other ways I dislike him extremely. Mother has told me I should control my dislike on account of his good points, and she said that since he was such an old friend I shouldn’t wound his feelings by cutting him off, that it wouldn’t hurt to let him think he was still in the field as long as I hadn’t decided.” “You agreed to that?” “Well, I…I didn’t fight it. My mother is very persuasive.” “What was the attitude of your uncle? Mr. Dudley Frost. The trustee of your property.” “Oh, I never discussed things like that with him. But I know what it would have been. He didn’t like Perren.” “And Mr. McNair?” “He disliked Perren more than I did. Outwardly they were friends, but…anyway, Uncle Boyd wasn’t two-faced. Shall I tell you…” “By all means.” “Well, one day about a year ago Uncle Boyd sent for me to go upstairs to his office, and when I went in Perren was there. Uncle Boyd was standing up and looking white and determined, I asked him what was the matter, and he said he only wanted to tell me, in Perren’s presence, that any influence his friendship and affection might have on me was unalterably opposed to my marriage with Perren. He said it very…formally, and that wasn’t like him. He didn’t ask me to promise or anything. He just said that and then told me to go.” “And in spite of that, Mr. Gebert has persisted with his courtship.” “Of course he has. Why wouldn’t he? Lots of men have. I’m so rich it’s worth quite an effort.” “Dear me.” Wolfe’s eyes flickered open at her and half shut again. “As cynical as that about it? But a brave cynicism which is of course proper. Nothing is more admirable than the fortitude with which millionaires tolerate the disadvantages of their wealth. What is Mr. Gebert’s profession?” “He hasn’t any. That’s one of the things I don’t like about him. He doesn’t do anything.” “Has he an income?” “I don’t know. Really, I don’t know a thing about it. I suppose he has…I’ve heard him make vague remarks. He lives at the Chesebrough, and he drives a car.”
“I know. Mr. Goodwin informed me he drove it here yesterday. At all events, a man of courage. You knew him in Europe; what did he do there?” “No more than here, as far as I remember—of course I was young then. He was wounded in the war, and afterwards came to visit us in Spain—that is, my mother, I was only two years old-and he went to Egypt with us a little later, but when we went on to the Orient he went back—” “One moment, please.” Wolfe was frowning. “Let us tidy up the chronology. There seems to have been quite a party in Spain; almost Mr. McNair’s last words were that he had gone to Spain with his baby daughter. We’ll start when your life started. You were born, you told me yesterday, in Paris—on May 7th, 1915. Your father was already in the war, as a member of the British Aviation Corps, and he was killed when you were a few months old. When did your mother take you to Spain?” “Early in 1916. She was afraid to stay in Paris, on account of the war. We went first to Barcelona and then to Cartagena. A little later Uncle Boyd and Glenna came down and joined us there. He had no money and his health was bad, and mother…helped him. I think Perren came, not long after, partly because Uncle Boyd was there—they had both been friends of my father’s. Then in 1917 Glenna died, and soon after that Uncle Boyd went back to Scotland, and mother took me to Egypt because they were afraid of a revolution or something in Spain, and Perren went with us.” “Good. I own a house in Egypt which I haven’t seen for twenty years. It has Rhages and Veramine tiles on the doorway. How long were you in Egypt?” “About two years. In 1919, when I was four years old—of course mother has told me all this—three English people were killed in a riot in Cairo, and mother decided to leave. Perren went back to France. Mother and I went to Bombay, and later to Bali and Japan and Hawaii. My uncle, who was the trustee of my property, kept insisting that I should have an American education, and finally, in 1924ק was nine years old then—we left Hawaii and came to New York. It was from that time on, really, that I knew Uncle Boyd, because of course I didn’t remember him from Spain, since I had been only two years old.” “He had his business in New York when you got here?” “No. He has told me—he started designing for Wilmerding in London and was very successful and became a partner, and then he decided New York was better and came over here in 1925 and went in for himself. Of course he looked mother up first thing, and she was a little help to him on account of the people she knew, but he would have gone to the top anyway because he had great ability. He was very talented. Paris and London were beginning to copy him. You would never have thought, just being with him, talking with him…you would never have thought…” She faltered, and stopped. Wolfe began to murmur something at her to steady her, but an interruption saved him the trouble. Fritz appeared to announce lunch.