I suppose any woman who marries a man a dozen years younger is sure to get the short end of the stick when her name comes up among friends, let alone enemies, no matter what the facts are. The talk may have been just talk. Women of any age liked Jimmy Vail and liked to be with him, there was no question about that, and undoubtedly he could have two-timed his middle-aged wife any day in the week if he felt like it, but I had never with my own eyes seen him in the act. I’m merely saying that as far as I know, disregarding talk, he was a model husband. I had expected her to ask Wolfe to put a tail on him because I assumed that her friends had seen to it that she knew about the talk.
She also had made a public splash, twenty-five years back-Althea Purcell as the milkmaid in Meadow Lark-and she had quit to marry a man somewhat older and a lot richer. They had produced two children, a son and a daughter; I had seen them a couple of times at the Flamingo. Tedder had died in 1954, so Althea had waited a decent interval to get a replacement.
Actually, neither Jimmy nor Althea had done anything notorious, or even conspicuous, during the four years of their marriage. They were mentioned frequently in print only because they were expected to do something any minute. She had left Broadway in the middle of a smash hit to marry a middle-aged rich man with a prominent name, and he had left the mike in the middle of his smash hit to marry a middle-aged rich woman. With the Tedder house and the Tedder dough taken over by a pair like that, anything might happen and probably would. That was the idea.
Now something had happened, something sensational, two days ago, and not a word about it in print. There was nothing in Nero Wolfe’s notice to Mr Knapp to connect it with the Vails. If Helen Blount, Mrs Vail’s friend, saw it, she might make a guess, but not for publication. I saw it not long after Wolfe went up to the plant rooms. Not waiting until five-thirty, when a late edition of the Gazette is delivered to the old brownstone, I took a walk to the newsstand at 34th and Eighth Avenue. It was on page five, with plenty of margin. No one named Knapp could possibly miss it, but of course that wasn’t his name.
I had a date for that evening, dinner with a friend, and a show, and it was just as well. Most of the chores of a working detective, even Nero Wolfe’s right hand, not to mention his legs, are routine and pretty damn dull, and the idea of tailing a woman taking half a million bucks to a kidnaper was very tempting. Not only would it have been an interesting way to spend an evening, but there were a dozen possibilities. But since it was Wolfe’s case and I was working for him, I couldn’t do it without his knowledge and consent, and it would have been a waste of breath to mention it. He would have said pfui and picked up his book. So at six o’clock I went up to my room and changed and went to my date. But off and on that evening I wondered where our client was and how she was making out, and when I got home around one o’clock I had a job keeping myself from dialing her number before I turned in.
The phone rang. Of all the things that I don’t want to be wakened by, the one I resent most is the phone. I turned over, forced my eyes open enough to see that it was light and the clock said 7:52, reached for the receiver and got it to my ear, and managed to get it out: “Nero Wolfe’s residence, Archie Goodwin speaking.”
“Mr Goodwin?”
“I thought I said so.”
“This is Althea Vail. I want to speak to Mr Wolfe.”
“Impossible, Mrs Vail. Not before breakfast. If it’s urgent, tell me. Have you-”
“My husband is back! Safe and sound!”
“Good. Wonderful. Is he there with you?”
“No, he’s at our country place. He just phoned, ten minutes ago. He’s going to bathe and change and eat and then come to town. He’s all right, perfectly all right. Why I’m phoning, he promised them he would say nothing, absolutely nothing, for forty-eight hours, and I’m not to say anything either. I didn’t tell him I had gone to Nero Wolfe; I’ll wait till he gets here. Of course I don’t want Mr Wolfe to say anything. Or you. That’s why I’m phoning. You’d tell him?”
“Yes. With pleasure. You’re sure it was your husband on the phone?”
“Certainly I’m sure!”
“Fine. Whether the notice helped or not. Will you give us a ring when your husband arrives?”
She said she would, and we hung up. The radio clicked on, and a voice came: “… has five convenient offices in New York, one at the-” I reached and turned it off. When I get to bed after midnight I set it for eight o’clock, the news bulletins on WQXR, but I didn’t need any more news at the moment. I had a satisfactory stretch and yawn, said aloud, “What the hell, no matter what Jimmy Vail says we can say Mr Knapp must have seen it,” yawned again, and faced the fact that it takes will power to get on your feet.
With nothing pending I took my time, and it was after eight-thirty when I descended the two flights to the ground floor, entered the kitchen, told Fritz good morning, picked up my glass of orange juice, took a healthy sip, and felt my stomach saying thanks. I had considered stopping at Wolfe’s room on the way down but had vetoed it. He would have been in the middle of breakfast, since Fritz takes his tray up at eight-fifteen.
“No allspice in the sausage,” Fritz said. “It would be an insult. The best Mr Howie has ever sent us.”
“Then double my order.” I swallowed juice. “You give me good news, so I’ll give you some. The woman that came yesterday gave us a job, and it’s already done. All over. Enough to pay your salary and mine for months.”
“Fort bien.” He spooned batter on the griddle. “You did it last night?”
“No. He did it sitting down.”
“Yes? But he would do nothing without you to piquer.”
“How do you spell that?”
He spelled it. I said, “I’ll look it up,” put my empty glass down, went to the table against the wall where my copy of the Times was on the rack, and sat. I kept an eye on my watch, and at 8:57, when I had downed the last bite of my first griddle cake and my second sausage, I reached for the house phone and buzzed Wolfe’s room.
His growl came. “Yes?”
“Good morning. Mrs Vail called an hour ago. Her husband had just phoned from their house in the country. He’s at large and intact and will come to town as soon as he cleans up and feeds. He promised someone, presumably Mr Knapp, that neither he nor his wife will make a peep for forty-eight hours, and she wants us to keep the lid on.”
“Satisfactory.”
“Yeah. Nice and neat. But I’ll be taking a walk, to the bank to deposit her checks, and it’s only five more blocks to the Gazette. It’s bound to break soon, and I could give it to Lon Cohen to hold until we give the word. He’d hold it, you know that, and he would deeply appreciate it.”
“No.”
“You mean he wouldn’t hold it?”
“No. He has shown that he can be trusted. But I haven’t seen Mr Vail, nor have you. It’s useful to have Mr Cohen in our debt, but no. Perhaps later in the day.” He hung up. He would be two minutes late getting to the plant rooms on the roof. As Fritz brought my second cake and pair of sausages I said, “For a bent nickel I’d go up and peekay him.”
He patted my shoulder and said, “Now, Archie. If you should, you will. If you shouldn’t, you won’t.”
I buttered the cake. “I think that’s a compliment. It’s tricky. I’ll study it.”
For the next couple of hours, finishing breakfast and the Times (the notice was on page twenty-six), opening the mail, dusting our desks, removing yesterday’s orchids and putting fresh water in the vase, walking to the bank and back, and doing little miscellaneous office chores, I considered the situation off and on. It seemed pretty damn silly, being hired in connection with something as gaudy as the kidnaping of Jimmy Vail, merely to put an ad in the paper and collect a fee and then call it a day. But what else? I’m more than willing to peekay Wolfe when there’s any point or profit to it, but with Jimmy Vail back in one piece the job Wolfe had been hired for was done, so what? As soon as it broke, an army of cops and FBI scientists would be after Mr Knapp, and they’d probably get him sooner or later. We were done, except for one little detail, to see Jimmy Vail whole. Mrs Vail had said she would give us a ring when he arrived, and I would go up and ask him if Mr Knapp had shown him the Gazette with the notice in it.