“You lousy bastard.”
They all stared at her.
Especially Cramer. Finally he spoke not to her but to Wolfe, “This is quite a favor. Where did you get her?”
“Sit down, Miss Lasher,” Wolfe said.
“You might as well,” I told her. “It’s a party.”
Her face white and her lips tight, she went and dropped onto a bench. The others were all sitting on benches or packing boxes.
“I told you this morning,” Wolfe said, “that unless you told me what you saw in that corridor I would have to turn you over to the police.”
She didn’t say anything and didn’t look as if she intended to.
“So, your name’s Lasher,” Cramer growled. “You might as well-”
“I think,” Wolfe put in, “I can save you some time. Details can be supplied later. Her name is Rose Lasher. Yesterday at the Flower Show she saw Miss Tracy and Mr. Gould in Mr. Dill’s exhibit. She wished to discuss an extremely important matter with Miss Tracy, so-”
“With me?” It popped out of Anne. She looked indignant. “There was nothing she could possibly-”
“Please, Miss Tracy.” Wolfe was peremptory. “This will go better without interruptions. So, to intercept Miss Tracy on her exit, Miss Lasher found her way to the corridor and hid among the shrubs and packing cases along the rear wall opposite the door labeled ‘Rucker and Dill.’ That was at or about half past three. She remained concealed there until after half past four, and she was watching that door. Therefore she must have seen whatever went on there during that hour or more.”
There were stirrings and sounds, then silence, except for the hissing of Theodore’s hose in the potting room and the slapping and sloshing of the water against the pots. Wolfe told me to shut the door, and I did so, and then sat on the bench next to W. G. Dill.
“Okay,” Cramer said dryly, “details later. What did she see?”
“She prefers not to say. Will you tell us now, Miss Lasher?”
Rose’s eyes moved to him and away again, and that was all.
“Sooner or later you will,” Wolfe declared. “Mr. Cramer will see to that. He can be-persuasive. In the meantime, I’ll tell you what you saw, at least part of it. You saw a man approach that door with a cane in his hand. He was furtive, he kept an eye on the corridor in both directions, and he was in a hurry. You saw him open the door and close it again, and kneel or stoop, doing something with his hands, and when he went away he left the cane there on the floor, its crook against the crack at the bottom of the door. You saw that, didn’t you?”
Rose didn’t even look at him.
“Very well. I don’t know what time that happened, except that it was between four and four-twenty. Probably around four o’clock. The next episode I do know. At twenty minutes past four you saw three men come along the corridor. They saw the cane and spoke about it. One of them picked it up, brushed a loop of green string from the crook, and handed it to one of the others. I don’t know whether you saw the string or not. I’m certain that you didn’t know that it was part of a longer string that had been tied to the trigger of a revolver, and that by picking up the cane the man had fired the revolver and killed Harry Gould. Nor did you know their names, though you do now. Mr. Goodwin picked up the cane and handed it to Mr. Hewitt. The man with them was myself.”
Wolfe took something from his vest pocket, with his left hand, because his right was holding the osmundine fork for support. “Here’s the piece of string that was looped on the cane. Not that I would expect you to identify it. I may as well say here that the cane was handed to Mr. Hewitt because it was his property.”
He handed the string to Cramer.
I was sunk. Ordinarily, in such circumstances, I would have been watching faces and movements, and hearing what sounds were made or words blurted, but this time he had me. He looked as if he was in his right mind, with all the assured arrogance of Nero Wolfe salting away another one, but either he was cuckoo or I was. He was not only spilling the beans; he was smashing the dish. In any conceivable case it was good-bye orchids. I looked at Hewitt.
And Hewitt should have been half astonished and half sore, and he wasn’t. He was pale, and he was trying to pretend he wasn’t pale. He was staring at Wolfe, and he licked his lips-the end of his tongue came out and went in, and then came out again.
Uh-uh, I thought. So that’s it. But my God, then- Cramer was looking at the string. W. G. Dill asked, “May I see it?” and held out a hand, and Cramer gave it to him but kept his eyes on it.
“Of course,” Wolfe said, “the point is, not who picked the cane up, but who put it there. Miss Lasher, who saw him do it, could tell us but prefers not to. She claims she didn’t see him. So we’ll have to get at it by indirection. Here are some facts that may help-but it isn’t any too comfortable in here. Shall we move downstairs?” “No,” Hewitt said. “Go ahead and finish.” “Go ahead,” Cramer said. He reached for the string and Dill handed it to him and he stuffed it in his pocket.
“I’ll make it as brief as possible,” Wolfe promised. “Harry Gould had an employer. One day he found a garage job-card in one of his employer’s cars-possibly it had slipped under a seat and been forgotten-I don’t know. Anyhow he found it and he kept it. I don’t know why he kept it. He may have suspected that his employer had been on a trip with a woman, for the card was from a garage in Salamanca, New York, which is quite a distance from Long Island. A man with the blackmailing type of mind is apt to keep things. It is understandable that he kept the card. It is less understandable that his employer had been careless enough to leave it in the car.” Wolfe turned his head suddenly and snapped at Hewitt: “Was it just an oversight, Mr. Hewitt?” But Hewitt had stuff in him at that. He was no longer pale and he wasn’t licking his lips. His eyes were steady and so was his voice:
“Finish your story, Mr. Wolfe. I am inclined-but no matter. Finish your story.”
“I prefer to use your name instead of clumsy circumlocutions like ‘his employer.’ It’s neater.”
“By all means keep it neat. But I warn you that merely because I acknowledged ownership of that cane-”
“Thank you. I appreciate warnings. So I’ll say Hewitt hereafter. The time came when Harry Gould’s suspicions regarding the card became more definite. Again I don’t know why, but my surmise is that he learned about the loss of the most valuable plantation of broad-leaved evergreens in the country-the rhodalea plantation of the Updegraff Nurseries of Erie, Pennsylvania-by an attack of the Kurume yellows. He knew that Hewitt was inordinately proud of his own broad-leaved evergreens, and that he was capable of abnormal extremes in horticultural pride and jealousy. He also, being a gardener, knew how easy it would be, with a bag or two of contaminated peat mulch, to infect another plantation if you had access to it. At any rate, his suspicion became definite enough to cause him to go to Salamanca, which is in the western part of New York near the Pennsylvania border, not far from Erie, and see the proprietor of the Nelson Garage. That was in December. He learned that when Hewitt had gone there with his car months before, damaged in an accident, he had been accompanied not by a woman, but by a man of a certain description, with a cast in his eye. He went to Erie and found the man among the employees of the Updegraff Nurseries. His name was Pete Arango.”
Fred Updegraff started up with an ejaculation.
Wolfe showed him a palm. “Please, Mr. Updegraff, don’t prolong this.” He turned. “And Mr. Hewitt, I’m being fair. I’m not trying to stampede you. I admit that much of this detail is surmise, but the main fact will soon be established beyond question. I sent a man to Salamanca last night, partly to learn why Harry Gould had so carefully preserved an old garage job-card, and partly because he had written on the back of it that name Pete Arango, and I knew that Pete Arango was in the employ of the Updegraff Nurseries. My man phoned me this morning to say that he will be back here at one o’clock, and the proprietor of the Nelson Garage will be with him. He’ll tell us whether you were there with Pete Arango. Do you suppose you’ll remember him?”