I stopped in the kitchen long enough to learn from Saul that he had phoned the message to headquarters but hadn’t been able to convince them that he was King George and so had rung off.
In the office, Wolfe sat with his eyes closed and his lips moving. After sitting down and glancing over my notebook and putting it in the drawer, I observed aloud, “He’s wise.”
No reply, no acknowledgment. I added, “Which is more than you are.” That met with the same lack of encouragement. I waited a courteous interval and resumed, “The poor old fellow would give anything in the world to forestall unpleasant publicity for the Seaboard Products Corporation- Just think what he has sacrificed! He has spent the best part o£ his life building up that business, and I’ll bet his share of the profits is no more than a measly half a million a year. But what I want to know-”
“Shut up, Archie.” Wolfe’s eyes opened. “I can do without that now.” He grimaced at his empty glass. “I am atrociously uncomfortable. It is sufficiently annoying to deal with inadequate information, which is what one usually has, but to sit thus while surmises, the mere ghosts of facts, tumble idiotically in my brain, is next to insupportable. It would have been better, perhaps, if you had gone to Fifty-fifth Street. With prudence. At any rate, we can try for Mr. Cramer. I told him I would telephone him by eight, and it lacks only ten minutes of that. I particularly resent this sort of disturbance at this time of day. I presume you know we are having guinea chicken Braziliera. See about Mr. Cramer.”
That proved to be a job. Cramer’s extension seemed to be permanently busy. After five or six tries I finally got it, and was told by someone that Cramer wasn’t there. He had left shortly after seven o’clock, and it wasn’t known where he was, and he had left no word about any expected message from Nero Wolfe. Wolfe received the information standing up, for Fritz had appeared to announce dinner. I reported Cramer’s absence and added, “Why don’t I go uptown now and see if something fell and broke? Or send Saul.”
Wolfe shook his head. “No. The police are there, and if there is anything to hear we shall hear it later by reaching Mr. Cramer, without exposing ourselves.” He moved to the door. “There is no necessity for Johnny to sit in the kitchen at a dollar and a half an hour. Send him home. Saul may remain. Bring Miss Fox.”
I performed the errands.
At the dinner table, of course, business was out. Nothing was said to Clara Fox about the call for help from Mike Walsh or Perry’s visit. In spite of the fact that she had a rose pinned on her, she was distinctly down in the mouth and wasn’t making any effort in the way of peddling charm, but even so, appraising her coolly, I could see that she might be a real problem for any man who was at all impressionable. She had been in the plant rooms with Wolfe for an hour before six o’clock, and during dinner he went on with a conversation which they had apparently started then, about folk dances and that sort of junk. He even hummed a couple of tunes for her, after the guinea chicken had been disposed of, which caused me to take a firm hold on myself so as not to laugh the salad out of my mouth. At that, it was better than when he tried to whistle, for he did produce some kind of a noise.
With the coffee he told her that the larceny charge had been dropped.
She opened her eyes and her mouth both. “No, really? Then I can go!” She stopped herself and put out a hand to touch his sleeve, and color came to her cheeks. “Oh, I don’t mean… that was terrible, wasn’t it? But you know how I feel, hiding…”
“Perfectly.” Wolfe nodded. “But I’m afraid you must ask us to tolerate you a little longer. You can’t go yet.”
“Why not?”
“Because, first, you might get killed. Indeed, it is quite possible, though I confess not very likely. Second, there is a development that must still be awaited. On that you must trust me. I know, since Archie told you of Lord Clivers’ statement that he has paid-”
I didn’t hear the finish, because the doorbell rang and I wasn’t inclined to delay about answering it. I was already on pins and I would soon have been on needles if something hadn’t happened to open things up. I loped down the hall.
It was only Johnny Keems, whom I had sent home over an hour before. Wondering what for, I let him in. He said, “Have you seen it?”
I said, “No, I’m blind. Seen what?”
He pulled a newspaper from his pocket and stuck it at me. “I was going to a movie on Broadway and they were yelling this extra, and I was nearby so I thought it would be better to run over with it than to phone-”
I had looked at the headlines. I said, “Go to the office. No, go to the kitchen. You’re on the job, my lad. Satisfactory.”
I went to the dining room and moved Wolfe’s coffee cup to one side and spread the paper in front of him. “Here,” I said, “here’s that development you’re awaiting.” I stood and read it with him while Clara Fox sat and looked at us.
MARQUIS ARRESTED!
BRITAIN’S ENVOY FOUND STANDING OVER, MURDERED MAN’
Gazette Reporter Witnesses Unprecedented Drama!
At 7:05 this evening the Marquis of Clivers, special envoy of Great Britain to this country, was found by a city detective, within the cluttered enclosure of a building under construction on 5501 Street, Manhattan, standing beside the body of a dead man who had just been shot through the back of the head. The dead man was Michael Walsh, night watchman. The detective was Purley Stebbins of the Homicide Squad.
At 7:00 a Gazette reporter, walking down Madison Avenue, seeing a crowd collected at 5501 Street, stopped to in- vestigate. Finding that it was only two cars with shat- tered windshields and other minor damages from a collision, he strolled on, turning into 55th. Not far from the corner he saw a man stepping off the curb to cross the street. He recognized the man as Purley Stebbins, a city detective, and was struck by something purposeful in his gait. He stopped, and saw Stebbins push open the door of a board fence where a building is being constructed.
The reporter crossed the street likewise, through curiosity, and entered the enclosure after the detective. He ventured further, and saw Stebbins grasping by the arm a man elegantly attired in evening dress, while the man tried to pull away. Then the reporter saw something else: the body of a man on the ground.
Advancing close enough to see the face of the man in evening dress and recognizing him at once, the reporter was quick- witted enough to call sharply, “Lord Clivers!”
The man replied, “Who the devil are you?”
The detective, who was feeling the man for a weapon, instructed the reporter to telephone headquarters and get Inspector Cramer. The body was lying in such a position that the reporter had to step over it to get at the telephone on the wall of a wooden shed. Meanwhile Stebbins bad blown his whistle and a few moments later a patrolman in uniform entered. Stebbins spoke to him, and the patrolman leaned over the body and exclaimed, “It’s the night watchman, old Walsh!”
Having phoned police headquarters, the reporter approached Lord Clivers and asked him for a statement. He was brushed aside by Stebbins, who commanded him to leave. The reporter persisting, Stebbins instructed the patrolman to put him out, and the reporter was forcibly ejected.
The superintendent of the construction, reached on the tele- phone, said that the name of the night watchman was Michael Walsh. He knew of no possible connection between Walsh and a member of the British nobility.
No information could be obtained from the suite of Lord Clivers at the Hotel Portland.
At 7:30 Inspector Cramer and various members of the police force had arrived on the scene at 55th Street, but no one was permitted to enter the enclosure and no information was forthcoming.
There was a picture of Clivers, taken the preceding week on the steps of the White House.
I was raving. If only I had gone up there! I glared at Wolfe. “Be prudent! Don’t expose ourselves! I could have been there in ten minutes after that phone call! Great God and Jehosaphat!”
I felt a yank at my sleeve and saw it was Clara Fox. “What is it? What-”
I took it out on her. I told her savagely, “Oh, nothing much. Just another of your playmates bumped off. You haven’t got much of a team left. Mike Walsh shot and killed dead. Clivers standing there-“