Chapter 5
Of course I had a card up my sleeve. Wolfe had taken my dagger away and done the twisting himself in Hewitt’s ribs instead of his own, but I still had a card.
I had a chance to make arrangements for playing it while Wolfe went around, after we returned to the other room, inviting people to lunch. That was actually what he did. Anyhow he invited W. G. Dill and Fred Updegraff; I heard that much. Apparently he intended to spend the evening thinking it out, and have them all to lunch the next day to announce the result. Hewitt declined my help on the orchid portage from upstairs. It seemed as if he didn’t like me. When Wolfe had finished the inviting he calmly opened, without knocking, the door into the room where Cramer had gone with Anne, and disappeared within.
I approached Purley Stebbins, stationed on a chair near the door to the anteroom, and grinned at him reassuringly. He was always upset in the presence of either Wolfe or me, and the two of us together absolutely gave him the fidgets. He gave me a glancing eye and let out a growl.
“Look, Purley,” I said cordially, “here’s one for the notebook. That lady over there.” She was sitting by the far wall with her coat still on and the blue leather bag under her arm. “She’s a phony. She’s really a Chinese spy. So am I. We were sent to do this job by Hoo Flung Dung. If you don’t believe it watch us talk code.”
“Go to hell,” Purley suggested.
“Yeah? You watch.”
I ambled across the room and stood right in front of her so Purley couldn’t see her face.
“Hello, dear old friend,” I said not too loud.
“You’ve got a nerve,” she said. “Beat it.”
“Nerve? Me?”
“Beat it. ‘Dear old friend!’ I never saw you before.”
“Aha!” I smiled down at her. “Not a chance in the world. If I tell them I saw you in that corridor at half past three waiting for someone, they’ll believe me, don’t think they won’t, and you’ll have to start all over again about opening that door at half past four because you got there by mistake and were looking for a way out. Think fast and don’t tell me to beat it again or we part forever. And control your face and keep your voice down.”
Her fingers were twisting under a fold of the coat. “What do you want?”
“I want to get to know you better. I’ll be leaving here in a minute to drive my boss home, but I’ll be back before long for a little talk with the Inspector. Then I’ll go to the news movie in Grand Central and you’ll be there in the back row. Won’t you?”
“Yes.”
“You’re sure.”
“Yes.”
“You’d better be. If you are, it’s all right that you never saw me before. If you put over your song and dance there may be a tail on you when you leave. Don’t try to shake him. We’ll take care of that when we leave the movie. Understand?”
“Yes.”
“Righto. Stick to me and you’ll wear black orchids.”
I started to go back to Purley to kid him out of any suspicions that might be pecking at the shell, but a door opened and Wolfe emerged, and Cramer stood on the sill and spoke:
“Purley! Goodwin’s taking Wolfe home and will be back in half an hour.”
“Yeah,” Purley said disrespectfully.
“Come, Archie,” Wolfe said.
We waited in the anteroom, and in a few minutes here came Lewis Hewitt, followed by a guard balancing the glass case on his upper limbs. The transfer was made to me without ceremony, after Wolfe peered through the glass for a good gloating look, and off we went. When we got to where I had parked the car Wolfe got in the back, always a major operation, and I deposited the case on the floor at his feet. Ten minutes later we arrived at the old house on West 35th Street near the river, and the sigh he heaved as he deposited his weight and volume in a chair that had been made for them was a record for both depth and duration.
“You’d better get back up there,” he said. “I regret it and I resent it, but I gave Mr. Cramer my word. Theodore will attend to the plants. Get back for dinner if you can. We’re having saucisse minuit.”
He was being sweet. “I didn’t give Cramer my word,” I suggested.
“No.” He wiggled a finger at me. “Archie! No shenanigan.”
“I’ll see. But I need refreshment.”
I went to the kitchen and put two bowls of crackers and milk where they belonged, meanwhile chinning with Fritz and getting sniffs of the sausage he was preparing. Eating crackers and milk and smelling saucisse minuit simultaneously is like sitting with your arm around a country lass while watching Hedy Lamarr raise the temperature. I told Fritz to save some for me if I was late getting back, and departed.
It was 7:15 when I entered the big inside room of the offices on the second floor of Grand Central Palace. There were a dozen or more people in there, most of whom were new to me, but including W. G. Dill and Lewis Hewitt. Updegraff wasn’t in sight, and neither was Anne Tracy, and neither was the girl friend I had a date with. Her absence made it desirable to get troublesome without delay, but it wasn’t necessary because in a couple of minutes the door to the inner room opened and Pete Arango came out, and I got a sign from Purley and went in. Cramer was there with a dick I had never seen and Murphy with a notebook. His unlighted cigar was chewed halfway to the end and he looked unjubilant.
“Now,” I said brightly, taking a seat, “what can I do to help?”
“Join a circus,” Cramer said. “By God, you’ll clown at your own funeral. What have you been hanging around here all week for?”
That was all it amounted to, a bunch of whats and whys and whens and four pages of the notebook filled, and my wit wasted on the homicide squad as usual. As a matter of fact, the wit was below par because I wanted to get out of there for my date, since it appeared that she had had her session and been turned loose. So I kept it fairly succinct and tried to co-operate on details, and we were about running out of material when the door opened and in came an undersized dick with a flat nose. Cramer looked at him and demanded:
“What the hell are you doing back here?”
The dick’s mouth opened and shut again. It didn’t want to say what it had to say. On the second try it got it out:
“I lost her.”
Cramer groaned and looked speechless.
“It wasn’t my fault,” the dick said, “I swear it wasn’t, Inspector. That damn subway. A local rolled in and stopped and she hung back like waiting for an express and then the last second she dived through-”
“Can it,” Cramer said. “Choke on it. My God. The wonder to me is that-what does it matter what the wonder to me is? What’s that name and address?”
Murphy flipped back through the pages of his notebook and stopped at one. “Ruby Lawson. One fourteen Sullivan Street.”
The dick got out his memo book and wrote it down. “I don’t think it was deliberate,” he said. “I think she just changed her mind. I think she just-”
“You think? You say you think?”
“Yes, Inspector, I-”
“Get out. Take another man, take Dorsey, and go to that address and look into her. Don’t pick her up. Keep on her. And for God’s sake don’t think. It’s repulsive, the idea of you thinking.”
The thinker made himself scarce. Naturally I was now itching to be on my way, so I leaned back comfortably and crossed my legs and began, “You know, when I am tailing someone and they go into a subway station, it is my invariable custom-”
“You can go,” Cramer snapped. “On out. If I want you, which God forbid, I know where to get you.”
“But I think-”
“I said go!”
I got up leisurely and went out leisurely, and on my way through the outer room paused for a friendly word with Purley, but when I got to the stairs outside I stepped on it. It was at least a hundred to one that I had been stood up, but nevertheless I hotfooted it to the Lexington Avenue entrance of Grand Central Station and on to the newsreel theater, parted with money, and entered. She wasn’t in the back row, and I didn’t waste time inspecting any other rows. Since she had given a phony name and address to Cramer, and had been smart enough to make it one that matched the RL on her bag, I figured she probably wouldn’t be letting grass come up between her toes. Out in the lighted corridor I took a hasty glance at a page jn my memo book, considered patronizing the subway and decided no, and headed for 46th Street where I had parked the car.