“Saul?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Have you had lunch?”
“No, sir.”
“How soon can you get here?”
“Eight to ten minutes.”
“There is a change or two in the program, dictated by circumstances. I’ll need you here earlier than I thought. Come and join us at luncheon — Miss Beulah Page, Mr. Morton Schane, Archie, and me.”
“Yes, sir. Probably eight minutes.”
XII
Whether Wolfe enjoyed his lunch or not, I didn’t.
It is my habit to make big discounts anyhow, and that day I reached my all-time peak in skepticism. I didn’t think he had any program whatever. I thought his line that he needed Saul, and he knew what for, was unadulterated guff. I was sure that Cramer had laid off because he had all the stuff he wanted, through the flock of stools the police always know where to find, and he regarded Wolfe and me as bad company even for an inspector. I thought the only reason Wolfe asked Saul to lunch was to have someone to talk to about something pleasant.
The last thought proved to be sound. It was not a meal full of sparkle. Morton was aloof and not a bit intimate. Beulah, who showed no traces of the recent irrigation, was trying to pretend she wasn’t somewhere else, without great success. I was so firmly convinced that it was a hell of a time for a man to sit and eat that I had to grit my teeth to stay in my chair, and you can neither chew nor talk very well with your teeth gritted. So the conversation was almost exclusively confined to Wolfe and Saul. Saul, in a suit that didn’t fit, and needing a shave as usual, could do almost anything better than anyone I knew — even talk. They discussed plant germination, the meat shortage, books about Roosevelt, and the World Series.
At one-fifty-five Wolfe pushed his chair back and said he was sorry to end the meal so abruptly but callers were expected. He thought it best for Beulah and Morton to leave the way they had come.
Beulah protested that she wasn’t going to leave, that there were things she wanted to ask about. She would wait until the callers had gone. Then, Wolfe said, she could go back to the plant rooms and do her waiting there, and also Morton if he wished to stay.
“We’ll do that,” Beulah agreed. She was out of her chair and moving to the dining-room door. “Come on, Morton.”
But the law student balked. The way the light was I could see his eyes behind his black-rimmed glasses, and they looked determined. His voice matched them. “I don’t like the way things look here. I don’t know what explanation you have given Miss Page about last night. Then what happened in front of this house afterwards. And asking Miss Page to sneak in the back way. Who are these callers you’re expecting?”
To my surprise, Wolfe obliged him. “One of them,” he said, “is a man named Fabian. The other is named Schwartz. L. A. Schwartz, a lawyer. A member of the bar.”
That was news to me. He must have invited Schwartz after I left the office.
“Are they connected with this — with Miss Page’s affairs?” Morton demanded.
“With Miss Page, no. With her affairs, yes.”
“I want to see them. I intend to be present.”
Beulah didn’t approve and said so. Wolfe said that her name would not appear in the conversation and that there was no reason why Morton shouldn’t be there if he wanted to. That settled it. The fiancée started upstairs for the plant rooms, and the fiancé went with the rest of us to the office. As we were crossing the hall the doorbell rang, and I went to answer it.
Fingering back the edge of the curtain over the glass panel for a look through, and seeing it was Schwartz, I opened up. He had his brief case and was wearing the same suit and nose-pinchers, but in spite of that he was a different man. In the morning his face had been pale and colorless; now it was rosy. Before I hadn’t smelled him at all; now I couldn’t help smelling him. He had been spending some of the fifty grand in advance, at the courage counter. Judging from the smell, he had alternated with gin, rum, rye, vodka, and turpentine. My study of him was cut short because the bell rang again as I was hanging up his coat, and this time it was an object deserving much closer and longer study.
It was Fabian.
I had seen him around, at the ringside at fights and so on, but never met him. I had never had any desire to meet him. The most famous fact about his physical make-up, that he had no nose, wasn’t true. His nose was almost normal in size and shape when you looked at it, but the point was that three other features — the mouth, ears, and eyes — grabbed the scene and the nose might as well not have been there.
Schwartz was still there, standing rigid by the coat rack, clasping his brief case. I began politely, “Do you two gentlemen—”
“You’re Schwartz,” Fabian stated, hoarse as ever.
“Yes, Mr. Fabian,” the lawyer said hastily. He wasn’t too plastered to talk straight. “You may remember—”
“Yeah.” Fabian’s head jerked to me. “Which way?”
I took a step, but checked it because the door between the hall and the front room opened and Wolfe appeared. He said, in his best manner, “Good afternoon, Mr. Schwartz. If you’ll go to the office and make yourself comfortable we’ll join you shortly.” He paused. Schwartz, getting the cue, marched down the hall toward the door to the office. Wolfe turned. “Mr. Fabian? How do you do, sir? I’m Nero Wolfe.” He had a hand out, and Fabian came through for a shake. Wolfe was going on, “Would you step in here for a private word with me?” He moved toward the door to the front room.
Fabian, not budging, looked at me, which struck me as childish under the circumstances, but not caring to make a point of it I followed Wolfe, and Fabian followed me. When he had passed through I closed the door, and saw at a glance that the connecting door to the office was already shut. They were both soundproofed.
Figured by pounds, Wolfe would have made more than two of Fabian. Figured by survival potential, it was anybody’s guess. Wolfe didn’t seem to be concerned with either calculation. He only said, “It is a part of your legend, sir, that you never go anywhere unarmed. Are you armed now?”
As far as I could see there wasn’t the slightest change in the expression of Fabian’s eyes, but a little crease showed between his eyebrows, as if he wasn’t sure he had heard right. Then apparently he decided he had, because the crease disappeared.
“Yeah,” he said. “Any objections?”
“None at all. But — I’m not calling you a liar — but I would be better satisfied if I saw proof. Where is your weapon? Easily available?”
“Yeah.”
“Would you mind showing it to me?”
“Comedy,” Fabian said. The crease had appeared again. “I could have had it out and in again twenty times. I came to get some proof from you. You and this Goodwin—”
“Excuse me.” Wolfe was crisp and cool. “We’ll go in the office and sit down. The people in there are a lawyer, Mr. Schwartz, a law student, Mr. Schane, and a man who works for me, Mr. Panzer.” He had stepped to the connecting door and was opening it. “This way, sir.”
I followed him, preceding Fabian in accordance with the underworld’s Emily Post. Wolfe stood in the middle of the office and pronounced names, but there was no handshaking. Fabian got the scene with a slow take, his head doing the arc from right to left, and then picked a chair backed up against a section of the bookshelves. Schwartz was in the red leather chair, and Morton Schane was off to my right, on the couch in the corner made by the wall of the lavatory that had been built in. Saul Panzer, in a chair with its back to the wall, was six feet the other side of Schwartz.