My high-hatting the subway nearly lost me a trick, for it was slow work at that hour getting around on to Park Avenue, but once headed downtown I made good time.
Number 326 Morrow Street, down at the southern fringe of Greenwich Village, was one of those painted brick fronts that were painted too long ago. There were supposed to be two lights on black iron brackets at the entrance to the vestibule, but only one was working. I parked across the street and moseyed over. Inside the vestibule was the usual row of mailboxes and bell pushes, and the card below one of them had LASHER printed on it. That was okay, but what made it interesting was that on the same card, above LASHER, another name was printed: GOULD. I was leaning over looking at it when the inside door opened and there she was.
It was easy to see that high-hatting the subway had nearly cost me a trick, because she had a traveling bag in her hand and was stooping to pick up a suitcase with the hand she had used to open the door with.
“Allow me,” I said, extending a hand. “That looks heavy.”
She gave me one startled glance and dropped the suitcase and sat down on it and started to cry. She didn’t cover her face with her hands or anything like that, she just burst.
I waited a minute for a lull. “Look,” I said, “you’re blocking the way in case anyone wants to come in or go out. Let’s take these things-”
“You dirty-” The crying interfered with it. “You lousy-”
“No,” I said firmly. “No, sister. You stood me up. You humiliated me.” I picked up the traveling bag which she had also dropped. “Let’s go.”
“He’s dead,” she said. She wasn’t bothering about small things like tears. “He’s dead, ain’t he? Hasn’t anybody got any heart at all? The way I had to sit up there- sit there and pretend-” She stopped and chewed her lip, and all of a sudden she stood up and blazed at me. “Who are you, anyway? How did you know who I was? How did you get here so quick? You’re a detective, that’s what you are, you’re a lousy detective-”
“No.” I gripped her arm. “If you mean a city employee, no. My name is Archie Goodwin and I work for Nero Wolfe. My car’s outside and I’m taking you up to Wolfe’s place for a little conference. He’s got one of the biggest hearts in the world, encased in a ton of blubber.”
Of course she balked. She even defied me to call a cop, but then she started to cry again, and during that deluge I picked up the bag and suitcase and herded her out and across the street to the car. All the way up to 35th Street she cried and I had to lend her a handkerchief.
With my hands full of luggage, I had her precede me up the stoop and ring the bell for Fritz to let us in. He did so, and helped her off with her coat like a head waiter helping the Duchess of Windsor, one of the nicest things about Fritz being that to him anything in a skirt is a lady.
“Mr. Wolfe is at dinner,” he announced.
“I’ll bet he is. Take Miss Lasher to the office.”
I took the luggage with me to the dining room, set it down against the wall, and approached the table. There he was, floating in clouds of bliss. He looked from the luggage tome.
“What’s that? Those aren’t your bags.”
“No, sir,” I agreed. “They are the property of an object I brought with me named Rose Lasher, who may help you hang onto those orchids. She is bereaved and hungry and I’m hungry. Shall I stay with her in the office-”
“Hungry? Bring her in here. There’s plenty.”
I went to the office and returned with her. She had stopped crying but sure was forlorn.
“Miss Lasher,” I said, “this is Nero Wolfe. He never discusses business at the table, so we’ll eat first and go into things later.” I held a chair for her.
“I don’t want to eat,” she said in a thin voice. “I can’t eat.”
She ate seven sausages, which was nothing against her grief. Fritz’s saucisse minuit would make Gandhi a gourmet.
Chapter 6
And now,” Wolfe demanded, “what is Miss Lasher here for?”
Dinner was over and we were settled in the office. Wolfe was seated behind his desk, leaning back with his fingers laced over his sausage mausoleum, his eyes half closed. I was at my desk, and Rose was in a red leather chair facing Wolfe. The set of her lips didn’t indicate that the meal had made her one of us.
I recited particulars, briefly but completely.
“Indeed.” Wolfe inclined his head a sixteenth of an inch. “Satisfactory, Archie.” The head turned. “You must have a lot to tell, Miss Lasher. Tell it, please.”
She looked sullen. “Tell what?”
“Start at the end. Where did you hide in that corridor from half past three to half past four and who and what did you see?”
“I didn’t hide. I went out and went back and the second time I saw that man opening that door. Then I went-”
“No. That won’t do. You were waiting to intercept Mr. Gould when he came out, and you hid. The police won’t like it that you lied to them and gave them a false name and address and were running away. So I may not tell the police if you tell me the truth.”
“I wasn’t running away. I was merely going to visit a friend.”
It was certainly a job to steam her off the envelope. She stuck for ten minutes in spite of all Wolfe said, and she didn’t loosen up until after I brought the luggage from the dining room and went through it. I had to dig the keys out of her handbag, and at one point I thought she was going to start clawing and kicking, but finally she stopped squealing and only sat in the chair and made holes in me with her eyes.
I did it thoroughly and methodically. When I got through, the suitcase was nearly filled with female garments and accessories, mostly intimate, and piled on Wolfe’s desk was a miscellaneous collection not so female. Shirts and ties, three photographs of Harry Gould, a bunch of snapshots, a bundle of letters tied with string, the top one addressed to Rose, various other items, among them a large Manila envelope fastened with a clasp.
I opened the envelope and extracted the contents. There were only two things in it and neither of them made my heart jump. One was a garage job-card with grease smears on it. At the top was printed, “Nelson’s Garage, Salamanca, New York,” and judging from the list of repairs required the car must have had an argument with a mountain. It was dated 4-11-40. The other item was sheets of printed matter. I unfolded them. They had been torn from the Garden Journal, which I would have recognized from the page and type without the running head, and the matter was an article entitled “Kurume Yellows in America” by Lewis Hewitt. I lifted the brows and handed it to Wolfe. Then my eye caught something I had missed on the garage job-card, something written in pencil on the reverse side. It was a name, “Pete Arango,” and it was written in a small fine hand quite different from the scribbling on the face of the card. There was another sample of a similar small fine hand there in front of me, on the envelope at the top of the bundle addressed to Rose Lasher, and I untied the string and got out the letter and found that it was signed “Harry.”
I passed the outfit to Wolfe and he looked it over.
He grunted. “This will interest the police.” His eyes went to Rose. “Even more than your-”
“No!” she cried. She was wriggling. “You won’t . . . oh, for God’s sake, you mustn’t-”
“Where did you hide in that corridor?”
She unloaded. She had hid in the corridor, yes, from the time I saw her there until some time after she had opened the door of the exhibit to look in. She had hid behind the packing cases and shrubs against the rear wall of the corridor. The sound of commotion had alarmed her, and she had sneaked out and gone to the main room and pushed into the crowd around the exhibit and I had returned her bag to her, which she had dropped without knowing it.
What and whom had she seen while hiding in the corridor?
Nothing. Maybe a few people, she didn’t know who, passing by. Nothing and no one she remembered, except Fred Updegraff.
Of course she was lying. She must have seen Wolfe and Hewitt and me go by and me pick up the stick. The stick was there at the door that she was watching. And she must have seen someone leave the stick there, stoop down to pass the crook through the loop of the string, probably open the door to get hold of the loop which was ready inside, hidden among the foliage. But Wolfe was handicapped. He didn’t dare mention the stick. That was out. But boy, did he want her to mention it, and incidentally mention who had walked in there with it and left it there?