Certainly, as possibilities, many people.
Wolfe grunted impolitely. I asked, for another fact, what about the insinuations in the anonymous letters? The wrong medicine and the questionable afternoons? Bess Huddleston’s black eyes snapped at me. She knew nothing about those things. And anyway, they were irrelevant. The point was that some malicious person was trying to ruin her by spreading hints that she was blabbing guilty secrets about people, and whether the secrets happened to be true or not had nothing to do with it. Okay, I told her, forget about where Mrs. Rich Man spends her afternoons, maybe at the ball game, but as a matter of record did Mrs. Jervis Horrocks have a daughter, and had she been sick, and had Dr. Brady attended her? Yes, Bess Huddleston said impatiently, Mrs. Horrocks’ daughter had died a month ago and Dr. Brady had been her doctor. Died of what? Tetanus. How had she got tetanus? By scratching her arm on a nail in a riding-academy stable.
Wolfe muttered, “There is no wrong medicine-”
“It was terrible,” Bess Huddleston interrupted, “but it has nothing to do with this. I’m going to be late for my appointment with the Mayor. This is perfectly simple. Someone wanted to ruin me and conceived this filthy way of doing it, that’s all. It has to be stopped, and if you’re as smart as you’re supposed to be, you can stop it. Of course, I ought to tell you, I know who did it.”
I cocked my head at her. Wolfe’s eyes opened wide.
“What? You know?”
“Yes, I think I know. No, I do know.”
“Then why, madam, are you annoying me?”
“Because I can’t prove it. And she denies it.”
“Indeed.” Wolfe shot a sharp glance at her. “You seem to be less intelligent than you look. If, having no proof, you charged her with it.”
“Did I say charged her with it? I didn’t. I discussed it with her, and also with Maryella, and my nephew, and Dr. Brady, and my brother. I asked them questions. I saw I couldn’t handle it. So I came to you.”
“By elimination-the culprit is Miss Nichols.”
“Yes.”
Wolfe was frowning. “But you have no proof. What do you have?”
“I have-a feeling.”
“Pfui. Based on what?”
“I know her.”
“You do.” Wolfe continued to frown, and his lips pushed out, once, and in again. “By divination? Phrenology? What specific revelations of her character have you observed? Does she pull chairs from under people?”
“Cut the glitter,” Bess Huddleston snapped, frowning back at him. “You know quite well what I mean. I say I know her, that’s all. Her eyes, her voice, her manner-”
“I see. Flatly, you don’t like her. She must be either remarkably stupid or extremely clever, to have used her own stationery for anonymous letters. Had you thought of that?”
“Certainly. She is clever.”
“But knowing she did this, you keep her in your employ, in your house?”
“Of course I do. If I discharged her, would that stop her?”
“No. But you say you think her guilty because you know her. That means you knew a week ago, a month ago, a year ago that she was the sort of person who would do this sort of thing. Why didn’t you get rid of her?”
“Because I-” Bess Huddleston hesitated. “What difference does that make?” she demanded.
“It makes a big difference to me, madam. You’ve hired me to investigate the source of those letters. I am doing so now. I am considering the possibility that you sent them yourself.”
Her eyes flashed at him. “I? Nonsense.”
“Then answer me.” Wolfe was imperturbable. “Since you knew what Miss Nichols was like, why didn’t you fire her?”
“Because I needed her. She’s the best assistant I’ve ever had. Her ideas are simply . . . take the Stryker dwarf and giant party . . . that was her idea . . . this is confidential . . . some of my biggest successes . . .”
“I see. How long has she worked for you?”
“Three years.”
“Do you pay her adequately?”
“Yes. I didn’t, but I do now. Ten thousand a year.”
“Then why does she want to ruin you? Just cussedness? Or has she got it in for you?”
“She has-she thinks she has a grievance.”
“What about?”
“Something . . .” Bess Huddleston shook her head. “That’s of no importance. A private matter. It wouldn’t help you any. I am willing to pay your bill for finding out who sent those letters and getting proof.”
“You mean you will pay me for fastening the guilt on Miss Nichols.”
“Not at all. On whoever did it.”
“No matter who it is?”
“Certainly.”
“But you’re sure it’s Miss Nichols.”
“I am not sure. I said I have a feeling.” Bess Huddleston stood up and picked up her handbag from Wolfe’s desk. “I have to go. Can you come up to my place tonight?”
“No. Mr.-”
“When can you come?”
“I can’t. Mr. Goodwin can go-” Wolfe stopped himself. “No. Since you have already discussed it with all of those people, I’d like to see them. First the young women. Send them down here. I’ll be free at six o’clock. This is a nasty job and I want to get it over with.”
“My God,” Bess Huddleston said, her eyes snapping at him, “you would have made a wonderful party! If I could sell it to the Crowthers I could make it four thousand- only there won’t be many more parties for me if we don’t get these letters stopped. I’ll phone the girls-“
“Here’s a phone,” I said.
She made the call, gave instructions to one she called Maryella, and departed in a rush.
When I returned to the office after seeing the visitor to the door, Wolfe was out of his chair. There was nothing alarming about that, since it was one minute to four and therefore time for him to go up to the orchids, but what froze me in my tracks was the sight of him stooping over, actually bending nearly double, with his hand in my waste-basket.
He straightened up.
“Did you hurt yourself?” I inquired anxiously.
Ignoring that, he moved nearer the window to inspect an object he held between his thumb and forefinger. I stepped over and he handed it to me and I took a squint at it. It was a snapshot of a girl’s face, nothing special to my taste, trimmed off so it was six-sided in shape and about the size of a half dollar.
“Want it for your album?” I asked him.
He ignored that too. “There is nothing in the world,” he said, glaring at me as if I had sent him an anonymous letter, “as indestructible as human dignity. That woman makes money killing time for fools. With it she pays me for rooting around in mud. Half of my share goes for taxes which are used to make bombs to blow people to pieces. Yet I am not without dignity. Ask Fritz, my cook. Ask Theodore, my gardener. Ask you, my-”
“Right hand.”
“No.”
“Prime minister.”
“No.”
“Pal.”
“No!”
“Accomplice, flunkey, Secretary of War, hireling, comrade . . .” He was on his way out to the elevator. I tossed the snapshot onto my desk and went to the kitchen for a glass of milk.
Chapter 2
You’re late,” I told the girls reproachfully as I showed them into the office. “Mr. Wolfe supposed you would be here at six o’clock, when he comes down from the plant rooms, and it’s twenty after. Now he’s gone to the kitchen and started operations on some corned beef hash.”
They were sitting down and I was looking them over.
“You mean he’s eating corned beef hash?” Maryella Timms asked.
“No. That comes later. He’s concocting it.”
“It’s my fault,” Janet Nichols said. “I didn’t get back until after five, and I was in riding clothes and had to change. I’m sorry.”
She didn’t look much like a horseback rider. Not that she was built wrong, she had a fairly nice little body, with good hips, but her face was more of a subway face than a bridle-path face. Naturally I had been expecting something out of the ordinary, one way or another, since according to Bess Huddleston she was an anonymous letter writer and had thought up the Stryker dwarf and giant party, and to tell the truth I was disappointed. She looked more like a school teacher-or maybe it would be more accurate to say that she looked like what a school teacher looks like before the time comes that she absolutely looks like a school teacher and nothing else.
Maryella Timms, on the other hand, was in no way disappointing, but she was irritating. Her hair started far back above the slant of her brow, and that made her brow look even higher and broader than it was, and noble and spiritual. But her eyes were very demure, which didn’t fit. If you’re noble and spiritual you don’t have to be demure. There’s no point in being demure unless there’s something on your mind to be demure about. Besides, there was her accent. Cawned beef ha-a-sh. I am not still fighting the Civil War, and anyway my side won, but these Southern belles-if it sounds like a deliberate come-on to me then it does. I was bawn and braht up in the Nawth.