The best prospect of some kind of a lead was finding someone who had been at Fowler’s Inn or The Fatted Calf Tuesday evening and had seen one of the kidnapers. The man Mrs Vail had given the suitcase to had had his face covered. It was assumed that a confederate had been present at both places to make sure that Mrs Vail didn’t show anyone the notes she got from the phone books. People at both places remembered seeing Mrs Vail, and the cashier at Fowler’s Inn had seen her go to the phone book and open it, but no one had been found who had seen anybody take a visible interest in her.
Funeral services for Jimmy Vail would be held at the Dunstan Chapel Saturday morning at eleven.
Thanks to Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin, though no one but Lon Cohen was thanking us, the murder of Dinah Utley was getting a big play both in print and on the air. Not only had her body been found at or near the spot where Mrs Vail had delivered the suitcase, but also someone had leaked it, either in White Plains or in Manhattan, that she had been an accomplice in the kidnaping. So Cramer had bought the deduction Wolfe had made from the notes and had passed it on to Westchester, and when Ben Dykes came at eleven-thirty there would be some fancy explaining to do.
As I said, I was in the office listening to the nine-o’clock news when Saul and Fred and Orrie came down from Wolfe’s room. The kidnaping and murder items had been covered, so I switched it off and greeted them. If you wanted an operative for a tough job and were offered your pick of those three, never having seen or heard of them before, you would probably take Fred Durkin or Orrie Cather, and you would be wrong. Fred was big and broad, and looked solid and honest and was, but from the neck up he was a little too solid for situations that needed quick reactions. Orrie was tall and handsome and smart, and in any situation his reaction was speedy enough, but it might be the right reaction and it might not. Saul was small and wiry, with a long narrow face and a big nose. He always looked as if he would need a shave in another hour, he wore a cap instead of a hat, and his pants had always been pressed a week ago. But there wasn’t an agency in New York that wouldn’t have taken him on at the top figure if he hadn’t preferred to free lance, and at ten dollars an hour he was a bargain for any job you could name.
“Six hundred three ways,” Orrie said. “And I want a picture of Noel Tedder.”
“I’ll take one of Ralph Purcell,” Fred said.
“So you’re taking one apiece?” I went to the safe and squatted to twirl the knob. “The very best way to waste time and money. Foolproof. As for pictures, I only have newspaper shots.”
“I’ll get them from Lon,” Saul said. “Mr Wolfe says your credit’s good with him.”
“It sure is.” I swung the safe door open and got the cash box. “Credit, hell. A truckload of pictures wouldn’t make a dent in what he owes us. So you’ve got Andrew Frost?”
He said he had, and added that Wolfe had said that I would be in the office to receive reports. I had known that was coming. In a tough case it’s nice to know that we have three good men on the job, even for chores as chancy as solo tailing, but the catch is that I have to sit there on the back of my lap to answer the phone and go to help if needed. I gave each of them two cees in used fives, tens, and twenties, made entries in the cash book, and supplied a few routine details, and they went. They had arrived at eight and it was then nine-thirty, so we were already out $37.50.
I was behind on the germination and blooming records, which I typed on cards from notes Wolfe brought down from the plant rooms, so after opening the mail I got the drawer from the cabinet and began entering items like “27 flks agar sip no fung sol B autoclaved 18 lbs 4/18/61.” I was fully expecting a phone call from either Noel or Margot, or possibly their mother, but none had come by eleven, when Wolfe came down. There would be no calls now, since they would all be at the funeral services.
The session with Ben Dykes, who came at 11:40, ten minutes late, which I had thought would be fairly ticklish, wasn’t bad at all. He didn’t even hint at any peril to us, as far as he was concerned, though he mentioned that Hobart was considering whether we should be summoned and charged. What he wanted was information. He had seen our signed statement, and he knew what we had told Cramer and I had told Mandel, but he wanted more. So he laid off. Though he didn’t say so, for him the point was that a kidnaper had collected half a million dollars right there in his county, and there was a chance that it was still in his county, stashed somewhere, and finding it would give him a lot of pleasure, not to mention profit. If at the same time he got a line on the murderer of Dinah Utley, okay, but that wasn’t the main point. So he stayed for more than an hour, trying to find a crumb, some little thing that Mrs Vail or Dinah Utley or Jimmy had said that might give him a trace of a scrap of a hint. When, going to the hall with him to let him out, I said Westchester was his and he and his men must know their way around, he said yeah, but the problem was to keep from being jostled or tramped on by the swarms of state cops and FBI supermen.
At one o’clock the radio had nothing new, and neither had we. Saul and Fred and Orrie had phoned in. They had all gone to the funeral, which was a big help. That’s one of the fine features of tailing; wherever the subject leads you, you will follow. I once spent four hours tagging a guy up and down Fifth and Madison Avenues, using all the tricks and dodges I knew, and learned later that he had been trying to find a pair of gray suspenders with a yellow stripe.
It was one of those days. Shad roe again for lunch, this time larded with pork and baked in cream with an assortment of herbs. Every spring I get so fed up with shad roe that I wish to heaven fish would figure out some other way. Whales have. Around three o’clock, when we were back in the office, there was a development, if you don’t care what you call it. The phone rang and it was Orrie Cather. He said his and Fred’s subjects were together, so they were. He was in a booth at 54th and Lexington. Noel Tedder and Ralph Purcell had just entered a drugstore across the street. That was all. Ten seconds after I hung up it rang again. Noel Tedder. You couldn’t beat that for a thrill to make your spine tingle: Fred and Orrie across the street, eagle-eyed, and the subject talking to me on the phone. He said he had persuaded Purcell to come and talk with Wolfe and he would be here in twenty minutes. I turned and asked Wolfe, and he looked at the clock and said of course not, and I turned back to the phone.
“Sorry, Mr Tedder, Mr Wolfe will be-”
“I knew it! My sister!”
“Not your sister. He turned her down, and the arrangement with you stands. But he’ll be busy from four to six. Can Mr Purcell come at six?”
“I’ll see. Hold the wire.” In half a minute: “Yes, he’ll be there at six o’clock.”
“Good.” I hung up and swiveled. “Six o’clock. Wouldn’t it be amusing if he gives us a hot lead and Fred and I hop on it-of course Fred will tail him here and be out front-and we’re two hours late getting there and someone already has it? Just a lousy two hours.”
Wolfe grunted. “You know quite well that if I permit exceptions to my schedule I soon will have no schedule. You would see to that.”
I could have made at least a dozen comments, but what was the use? I turned to the typewriter and the cards. When he left for the plant rooms at 3:59 I turned on the radio. Nothing new. Again at five o’clock. Nothing new. When the Gazette came it had pictures of fourteen people who had been at Fowler’s Inn or The Fatted Calf Tuesday evening, which showed what a newspaper that’s on its toes can do to keep the public informed. I was back at the typewriter when the doorbell rang at 5:55. I went to the hall, saw Ralph Purcell through the one-way glass, and stepped to the door and opened it, and he said apologetically, “I guess I’m a little early,” and offered a hand. I took it.