“No,” Polly Zarella said emphatically.
“No?” I inquired courteously.
“No,” she repeated. “I losed much time today. I will be here all evening with cutters cutting.”
“This is pretty important. Miss Zarella.”
“I do not think so.” She said “zink.” “He was here, he is gone, and we forget it. I told that to the policemen and I tell it to you- Miss Nieder is not dangered. If she was dangered I would fight it off with these hands” —she lifted them as claws—”because she is the best designer in America or Europe or the world. But she is not. No.”
She got up and started for the door. Cynthia, darting to her feet, intercepted her and caught her by the arm.
“I think you ought to wait,” I said, “for Mr. Roper’s vote. Mr. Roper?”
Ward Roper cleared his throat. “It doesn’t seem to me,” he offered, in the sort of greasy voice that makes me want to take up strangling, “that this is exactly the proper step to take, under the circumstances.”
Seeing that Polly’s exit was halted, I was looking at Roper. Getting along toward fifty, by no means too old to strangle, he was slender, elegant, and groomed to a queen’s taste if you let him pick the queen. His voice fitted him to a T.
“What’s wrong with it?” I asked him.
He cocked his head to one side to contemplate me. “Almost everything, I would say. I understand and sympathize with Mr. Dauroery’s desire to think it over. It assumes that we, the five of us, are involved in this matter, which is ridiculous. One may indeed be involved, deeply involved, but not the other four. Not the rest of us.”
“What the hell are you getting at?” Bernard demanded with heat.
“Nothing, Bernard. Nothing specific. Just a comment expressing my reaction.”
Plainly it was no time for diplomacy. I arose and stepped to a spot nearer Cynthia, where I could face them all without neck-twisting.
“This is a joke,” I declared offensively, “and if you ask me, a rotten one.” I focused on Bernard. “Have you got around to your thinking, Mr. Daumery? Made up your mind?”
“Certainly not!” He resented it. “Who do you think you are?”
“Just at present I’m Miss Nieder’s hired man.” My eyes went around. “You’re acting, all but Demarest, like a bunch of halfwits! Who do I think I am? Who do you think Miss Nieder is, some little girl asking you to please be nice and help her out? You damn fools, she owns half of this outfit!” I looked at Bernard. “Who are you? You’re her business partner, fifty-fifty, and what couldn’t she do to you if she felt like it! So you say you’ll think it over! Nuts!” I looked at Polly and Roper. “And what are you? You’re her employees, her hired help. She owns half of this firm that you work for. And through me she makes a sensible and reasonable request, and listen to you! As for you, Roper, I hear that you’re a good imitator and adapter. I understand that you. Miss Zarella, are as good as they come at producing the goods. But you’re not indispensable—neither or both of you. In this affair Mr. Wolfe and I are acting for Miss Nieder. Speaking as her representative, I hereby instruct you to report at the office of Nero Wolfe, Nine- twentyfour West Thirty-fifth Street, at half-past eight this evening.”
I wheeled and got Cynthia’s eye. “You confirm that. Miss Nieder?”
Her yes was creaky. There was a tadpole in her throat, and she got rid of it and repeated, “Yes. I confirm it.”
“Good for you.” I turned. “You’ll be there, Miss Zarella?”
Polly was staring at me with what seemed to be wide-eyed admiration, but I could be wrong. “But certainly,” she said, fully as emphatically as she had previously said no. “If it is so exciting as you make it I will be there with bells on.”
“Fine. You, Mr. Roper?”
Roper was chewing his lip. No doubt it was hard for a man of his eminence to swallow a threat of being fired.
“The way you put it,” he told me, with a strong suggestion of a tremble in his greasy voice, “I hardly know what to say. It is true, of course, that at some future time Miss Nieder will probably own a half-interest in this business, in the success of which I have had some part for the past fourteen years. That is, she will if she is—available.”
“What do you mean, available?”
“Isn’t it obvious?” He spread out his hands. “Of course your job is to get her out of it, so you can’t be expected to take an objective attitude. But the police are usually right about these things, and you know what they think.” The grease suddenly got acutely bitter. “So I merely ask, what if she’s not available? As for your—”
What stopped him was movement by Bernard. Cynthia’s partner had left his chair and taken four healthy strides to the one occupied by Roper. Roper, startled, got erect in a hurry, nearly knocking his chair over.
“I warned you last night, Ward,” Bernard said as if he meant it. “I told you to watch your nasty tongue.” His hands were fists. “Apologize to Cynthia, and do it quick.”
“Apologize? But what did I~”
Bernard slapped him hard. I couldn’t help approving of my rival’s good taste in making it a slap, certainly better than my strangling idea, and to spend a solid punch on him would have been flattering him. The first slap teetered Roper’s head to the left, and a second one, harder if anything, sent it the other way.
A thought struck me. “Don’t fire him!” I called. “Miss Nieder doesn’t want him fired! She wants him there tonight!”
“He’ll be there,” Bernard said grimly, without turning. He had backed up a step to glare at Roper. “You’ll be there, Ward, understand?”
That sounded swell, so I crowded my luck. “You will too, Mr. Daumery, won’t you?”
What the hell, it was a cinch, with him ordering Roper to come. But he turned around to tell me, “I’ll decide later. I’ll let you know. I’ll phone you. Your number’s in the book?”
Demarest chuckled.
x
I LIKE to keep my word, and having on the spur of the moment promised refreshments, they were there. On the table near the big globe were treeripened olives, mahallebi, three howls of nuts, and a comprehensive array of liquids ranging from Wolfe’s best brandy down to beer. Each of the guests had a little table at his elbow. At a quarter to nine, when the last arrival had been ushered in, Bernard Daumery and Ward Roper had nothing on their tables but their napkins, Cynthia had Scotch and water, Demarest a Tom Collins, and Polly Zarella a glass and a botde of Tokaji Essencia. Bernard had phoned around seven o’clock that we could expect him.
If the cops were tailing all of them, as they almost certainly were, I thought there must be quite a convention outside on g^th Street.
I had completed, before dinner, an extra fancy job of reporting. Wolfe had wanted all the details of my party-arranging mission at Daumery and Nieder s, both the libretto and the full score, and I had to get it all in and still leave time for questions before Fritz announced dinner, knowing as I did that if we were late to the table and had to hurry Wolfe would be in a bad humor all evening. In my opinion there would be plenty of bad humor to go around without Wolfe contributing a share, which was another reason for keeping my promise on the refreshments.
Since the staging had been left to me I had placed Cynthia in the red leather chair because I liked her there. Polly Zarella had insisted on having the chair nearest to mine, which might have been just her maternal instinct. On her right was Demarest, and then Roper and Bernard. That seemed a good arrangement, since if Bernard took it into his head to do some more slapping he wouldn’t have far to go.
“Thank you for coming,” Wolfe said formally.
“We had to/’ Demarest stated. “Your man Goodwin dragooned us.”
“Not you, I understand, Mr. Demarest.”
“Oh yes, me too. Only I saw the compulsion a little ahead of the others.” Wolfe shrugged. “Anyway, you’re here.” His eyes swept the arc. “I believe that Mr. Goodwin has explained to you that, guided by inclination and temperament and compelled by circumstances, my field of investigation in a case like this is severely limited. Fingerprints, documentation, minute and exhaustive inquiry, having people followed around—those are not for me. If this murderer can be identified and exposed by such activities as a thorough examination of all entrances and exits of people at that building last evening, which is possible but by no means assured, the police will do the job. They’re fairly good at it. I haven’t the patience. But I think we might start by clearing up one point: how you spent your time last evening from eight o’clock to midnight. I take it you have told the police, so I hope you will have no objection to telling me in my capacity as Miss Nieder’s servant.”