“No. I just move around and look and listen.”
“Do you do that every day?”
“Hell, no.”
“How many times in the past month?”
“Only once before today. A couple of times when I got the part, in November.”
I was thinking that at least he had one of the basic qualifications for an actor. He was ready and willing to answer any and all questions about his career, with or without a dare, whether they applied or not. If Wolfe thought it would help to have the plot of Do As Thou Wilt described in detail all he had to do was ask.
But apparently he didn’t need it. His head moved. “And you, Mr. Ferris?”
“I’m feeling a lot better,” Noel Ferris said. “When the questions they asked made me realize that I was actually suspected of murder, and I also realized that I had no alibi, it looked pretty dark. Believe me. What if the others had all been somewhere else and could prove it? So I thank you, Mr. Wolfe. I feel a lot better. As for me, I left the house a little after ten and called at four agencies. Two of them would remember I was there, but probably not the exact time. When I got hungry I went back to the house to eat. I can’t afford five-dollar lunches, and I can’t eat eighty-cent ones. When I entered the house a man was at the phone telling someone that Tammy Baxter had been murdered and her body was in the parlor.”
“What kind of agencies?”
“Casting. Theater and television.”
“Do you visit them daily?”
“No. About twice a week.”
“And the other five days? How do you pass the time?”
“I don’t. It passes me. Two days, sometimes three, I make horses and kangaroos and other animals. I go to a workroom and model them and make molds. Something on the order of Cellini. I get eight dollars for a squirrel. Twenty for a giraffe.”
“Where is the workroom?”
“In the rear of a shop on First Avenue. The name of the shop is Harry’s Zoo. The name of the owner is Harry Arkazy. He has a sixteen-year-old daughter as beautiful as a rosy dawn, but she lisps. Her name is Ilonka. His son’s name—”
“This is not a comedy, Mr. Ferris,” Wolfe snapped. He twisted his neck to look at the wall clock. “I engaged to act for Miss Annis only five hours ago and I haven’t arranged my mind, so my questions may be at random, but they are not frivolous.” His eyes moved to take them in. “Now that I have seen you and heard you I am better prepared, and I can consider how to proceed. I will leave it to Miss Annis to thank you — three of you — for coming.” He arose. “I expect to see you again.”
Martha was gawking at him. “But Hattie said to tell you everything we told the cops!”
He nodded. “I know. It would take all night. I’ll go to that extreme only by compulsion; and if you told them anything indicative they are hours ahead of me and I would only breathe their dust.”
Dell boomed. “You call this investigating a murder? Asking me if I had paid my room rent and how I spend my afternoons?”
It was a little odd, the four suspects coming uninvited to empty the bag and being told to go almost before they got started. Noel Ferris, his lip twisted, got up and headed for the hall. Martha Kirk, getting no satisfaction from Wolfe, appealed to me: didn’t I realize that Hattie had been arrested for a murder she didn’t commit? Paul Hannah sat and listened to us, chewing his lip, then got up and touched her arm and said they might as well go. Raymond Dell stood, lowered his chin, gazed at Wolfe half a minute, registering indignation, wheeled, and marched out. (Exit Dell, center.) I followed Martha and Hannah to the hall, but she preferred to put on her galoshes herself. When I opened the door for them a few snowflakes danced in.
Back in the office, Wolfe was sitting again, leaning back with his eyes closed. I asked if he wanted beer, got a nod, and went to the kitchen and brought a bottle and glass, and a glass of milk for me. He opened his eyes, took in a bushel of air through his nose and let it out through his mouth, straightened up, picked up the bottle, and poured.
He spoke. “Saul and Fred and Orrie. At eight in the morning in my room.”
My brows went up. Saul Panzer is the best operative south of the North Pole. His rate is ten dollars an hour and he is worth twenty. Fred Durkin’s rate is seven dollars and he is worth seven-fifty. Orrie Gather’s rate is also seven dollars and he is worth six-fifty.
“Oh.” I took a sip of milk. “Then you did get an inkling?”
“I got a conclusion: that it would be futile to go on pecking at them. Mr. Leach has been on their flanks for three weeks, and now Mr. Cramer’s army has them under siege. My only chance of priority is to surprise him from the rear.”
The foam was down to the rim of his glass, and he lifted it and drank, a healthy gulp. “It’s a forlorn chance, certainly, but it’s worth trying for want of a better. I am not familiar with the procedures of counterfeiters, but it seems unlikely that an underling would be entrusted with five hundred twenty-dollar bills. Ten thousand dollars. We know he had that large supply; and that permits the conjecture that his connection may be not with a mere go-between, but with the source. If so, the quickest way to settle it would be to locate the source.”
“Yeah. It’s barely possible that Leach has had that idea.”
“No doubt. I assume that when Miss Baxter took a room in that house her primary mission was to search the premises for counterfeiting equipment. Obviously she found none. I also assume that, as you suggested, it was known that one of the inhabitants of that house had passed counterfeit money, but it was not known which one, and they were all under surveillance — by Miss Baxter in the house and by others outside. And if I were a Secret Service agent assigned to keep an eye on Raymond Dell I would suppose that any meeting he had with a supplier of contraband would be clandestine. That is how my mind would work. The first day I followed him to an East Side tenement I would of course make inquiries, with due caution, but when he went there five days a week and I learned from Miss Baxter what he did there, my attention would be diverted. But I am not a Secret Service agent. My attention is drawn to that tenement house, and specifically to Max Eder, a painter. An artist. I shall send Orrie Cather there tomorrow morning to reconnoiter. Fred Durkin will go to the shop on First Avenue — by the way, I want its address. Harry’s Zoo.” He made a face. “Saul Panzer will go to the Mushroom Theater. As I said, it’s a forlorn chance, but what better can we do with tomorrow? Unless you have a suggestion?”
“I have,” I said emphatically. “I respectfully suggest that you start thinking up something for day after tomorrow.”
He grunted. He picked up his glass, took a gulp of beer, swallowed it, licked his lips, and put the glass down. “‘Forlorn’ was too strong a word,” he said. “I have an expectation that is not wholly unreasonable. Twelve hours of the time of those three men plus expenses comes to more than three hundred dollars. I don’t hazard that amount, even of a client’s money, on a pig in a poke.”
“Then you did get an inkling.”
“Certainly.”
“Fine. I hope it’s not counterfeit.” I swiveled and got the phone and dialed Saul Panzer’s number.
Chapter 7
I was there at the beginning of the briefing session in Wolfe’s bedroom at eight o’clock Tuesday morning, but when the phone interrupted us a second time Wolfe told me to go down to the office and take it there. The first time it was a Times reporter wanting to speak with Wolfe, and when I told him Wolfe was busy and would I do, he said no and hung up. The second call, which I took in the office, was from Lon Cohen of the Gazette, who preferred me to Wolfe any day. He wanted to know when he could send a photographer to take a picture of the dirt Wolfe was going to feed the cops. Evidently one of the two who had carried Hattie out knew a newspaperman. Lon had other questions, naturally, but I told him the answers would have to wait until I found out what they were.