Ellery looked astonished. “Why, Nikki, I thought you loved French food. Consequently, we’ll order the rarest, most exquisitely balanced, most perfectly fermented wine.—Pierre! Where the deuce has he gone? A Sauterne with body, bouquet, breeding...”
“Oh!” squeaked Nikki, then she looked guilty. It was only Pierre, breathing down her neck.
“After all, it’s a special occasion. Ah, there you are. La carte des vins! No, never mind, I know what I want. Pierre,” said Ellery magnificently, “a bottle of... Château d’Yquem!”
The dreary look on the waiter’s face rather remarkably vanished.
“But Monsieur,” he murmured, “Château d’Yquern...? That is an expensive wine. We do not carry so fine a wine in our cellar.”
And still, as Pierre said this, he contrived to give the impression that something of extraordinary importance had just occurred. Nikki glanced anxiously at Ellery to see if he had caught that strange overtone; but Ellery was merely looking crushed.
“Carried away by the spirit of Thanksgiving Eve. Very stupid of me, Pierre. Of course. Give us the best you have—which,” Ellery added as Pierre walked rapidly away, “will probably turn out to be vin ordinaire.” And Ellery laughed.
Something is horribly wrong, thought Nikki; and she wondered how long it would take Ellery to become himself again.
It happened immediately after the pêches flambeaux and the demitasse. Or, rather, two things happened. One involved the waiter. The other involved Clothilde.
The waiter seemed confused: Upon handing Ellery l’addition, he simultaneously whisked a fresh napkin into Ellery’s lap! This astounding non sequitur brought Mr. Queen to his slumbering senses. But he made no remark, merely felt the napkin and, finding something hard and flat concealed in its folds, he extracted it without looking at it and slipped it into his pocket.
As for the cashier, she too seemed confused. In payment of l’addition, Ellery tossed a twenty-dollar bill on the desk. Clothilde made change, chattering pleasantly all the while about Monsieur and Mad’moiselle and ’ow did they like the dinner? — and she made change very badly. She was ten dollars short.
Ellery had just pointed out this deplorable unfamiliarity with the American coinage system when a stout little whirlwind arrived, scattering French before him like leaves.
“Mais Monsieur Fouchet, je fais une méprise...”
“Bête à manger du foin—silence!” And M. Fouchet fell upon Ellery, almost weeping. “Monsieur, this ’as never ’appen before. I give you my assurance—”
For a chilled moment Nikki thought Ellery was going to produce what lay in his pocket for M. Fouchet’s inspection. But Ellery merely smiled and accepted the missing ten-dollar bill graciously and asked for Mother Carey’s address. M. Fouchet threw up his hands and ran to the rear of the restaurant and ran back to press an oil-stained scrawl upon them, chattering in French at Ellery, at Nikki, at his cashier; and then they were on the street and making for the Duesenberg in a great show of postprandial content... for through the plate glass M. Fouchet, and Clothilde, and—yes—Pierre of the long face were watching them closely.
“Ellery, what...?”
“Not now, Nikki. Get into the car.”
Nikki kept glancing nervously at the three Gallic faces as Ellery tried to start the Duesenberg. “Huh?”
“I said it won’t start, blast it. Battery.” Ellery jumped out into the snow and began tugging at the basket. “Grab those other things and get out, Nikki.”
“But—”
“Cab!” A taxicab parked a few yards beyond Fouchet’s shot forward. “Driver, get this basket and stuff in there beside you, will you? Nikki, hop to it. Get into the cab!”
“You’re leaving the car?”
“We can pick it up later. What are you waiting for, driver?”
The driver looked weary. “Ain’t you startin’ your Thanksgivin’ celebratin’ a little premature?” he asked. “I ain’t no fortune-teller. Where do I go?”
“Oh. That slip Fouchet gave me. Nikki, where...? Here! 214-B Henry Street, cab. The East Side.”
The cab slid away. “Wanna draw me diagrams?” muttered the driver.
“Now, Nikki. Let’s have a look at Pierre’s little gift.”
It was a stiff white-paper packet. Ellery unfolded it.
It contained a large quantity of a powdery substance—a white crystalline powder.
“Looks like snow,” giggled Nikki. “What is it?”
“That’s what it is.”
“Snow?”
“Cocaine.”
“That’s the hell of this town,” the cab driver was remarking. “Anything can happen. I remember once—”
“Apparently, Nikki,” said Ellery with a frown, “I gave Pierre some password or other. By accident.”
“He thought you’re an addict! That means Fouchet is—”
“A depot for the distribution of narcotics. I wonder what I said that made Pierre... The wine!”
“I don’t follow you,” complained the driver.
Ellery glared. The driver looked hurt and honked at an elderly Chinese in a black straw hat.
“Château d’Yquem, Nikki. That was the password! Pearls in a swinery... of course, of course.”
“I knew something was wrong the minute we walked in there, Ellery.”
“Mmm. We’ll drop this truck at Mrs. Carey’s, then we’ll shoot back uptown and get Dad working on this Fouchet nastiness.”
“Watch the Inspector snap out of that cold,” laughed Nikki; then she stopped laughing. “Ellery... do you suppose all this has anything to do with Mother Carey?”
“Oh, nonsense, Nikki.”
It was a bad day for the master.
For when they got to 214-B Henry Street and knocked on the door of Apartment 3-A and a voice as shaky as the stairs called out, “Who’s there?” and Nikki identified herself... something happened. There were certain sounds. Strange rumbly, sliding sounds. The door was not opened at once.
Nikki bit her lip, glancing timidly at Ellery. Ellery was frowning.
“She don’t act any too anxious to snag this turk-bird,” said the cab driver, who had carried up the pumpkin pie and the bottle of California wine which had been one of Mr. Sisquencchi’s inspirations, while Nikki took odds and ends and Ellery the noble basket. “My old lady’d be tickled to death—”
“I’d rather it were you,” said Ellery violently. “When she opens the door, dump the pie and wine inside, then wait for us in the cab—”
But at that instant the door opened, and a chubby little old woman with knobby forearms and flushed cheeks stood there, looking not even remotely like an Indian.
“Miss Porter!”
“Mother Carey.”
It was a poor little room with an odor. Not the odor of poverty; the room was savagely clean. Ellery barely listened to the chirrupings of the two women; he was too busy using his eyes and his nose. He seemed to have forgotten Massasoit and the Wampanoag.
When they were back in the cab, he said abruptly: “Nikki, do you happen to recall Mother Carey’s old apartment?”
“The one on Orchard Street? Yes—why?”
“How many rooms did she have there?”
“Two. A bedroom and a kitchen. Why?”
Ellery asked casually: “Did she always live alone?”
“I think so.”
“Then why has she suddenly—so very suddenly, according to that Orchard Street janitor—moved to a three-room flat?”