I was considering whether to rejoin the briefing session when the phone rang again. It was Nathaniel Parker. He was sorry he hadn’t been able to spring our client, but it had taken him three hours to find out where she was, and he hadn’t got to see her until midnight. He expected to have her out by noon.
At nine o’clock the trio came down. One of the reasons they are better than most is that none of them looks it. Saul Panzer, under-sized and wiry, with a big nose, could be a hackie. Fred Durkin, broad and burly and bald, could be a piano mover. Orrie Cather, tall and trim and dressy, could be an automobile salesman. They stepped into the office, and Saul said they had been told to take three hundred dollars apiece in used bills. I said as I went to open the safe that even with inflation and even with janitors promoted to building superintendents, fifty bucks was the top price for one, and they would please return the change. Orrie said that if they had to buy clerks and elevator men and neighbors there wouldn’t be any change. Saul said they would each give me a ring every couple of hours or so.
When they had gone I went on with the morning chores — opening the mail, dusting the desks, filing the cards of propagation and performance records which Theodore puts on my desk every evening. That was just for my hands and eyes; my mind was busy with something else. Of all the things I do to earn my pay, from sharpening pencils to jumping a visitor before he can get his gun up, the most important is riding Wolfe, and he knows it. Sometimes it’s next to impossible to tell whether he’s working or only pretending to. That was the question that morning. If he was only stalling, if he had sent for Saul and Fred and Orrie just to keep from starting his brain going, the thing for me to do was to go up to the plant rooms and go to work on him. It was the same old problem, and the trouble was that that time I would have nothing to say when he narrowed his eyes at me, as he would, and inquired coldly, “What would you suggest?”
That was what my mind was on, and was still on when the doorbell rang a little after ten o’clock and I went to the hall for a look. It was Albert Leach, with his snap-brim hat down even closer to his ears than yesterday. I went and opened the door.
“Good morning,” he said, and slipped his hand inside his overcoat.
I supposed he was producing his credentials. “Don’t bother,” I said, “I recognize you.”
But it wasn’t credentials. His name came out with a folded paper. Extending it, he said, “Order of the Federal District Court.”
I took it, unfolded it, and read. I read it through. “You know,” I said, “this is a new experience. I can’t remember that we have ever been served with an order from a Federal court. Mr. Wolfe will be glad to add it to his collection.” I stuck it in my pocket.
“You note,” he said, “that I am empowered to search for the object specified if necessary.”
“You won’t have to. You heard me tell Cramer yesterday that I put it in the safe, and it’s still there. Come in.” I gave him room.
He had excellent manners. He entered, removed his hat, stood while I shut the door, and followed me to the office. I swung the safe door open, got a corner of the wrapping paper with my thumb and forefinger, carried it dangling and put it on my desk, and went back and brought the lettuce and the string. “There you are,” I said. “I didn’t rewrap it after I lifted the prints.”
His lips tightened. “You said nothing to Inspector Cramer about lifting prints.”
“No? I thought I had. Of course that was routine after Miss Annis told us how and where she found it. You won’t find any except hers and mine. I couldn’t, and I was pretty thorough.”
“You tampered with evidence.”
“What was it evidence of — then?” My feelings were hurt. “Anyway, the prints are still there. I’ll give you a bag to carry it in, but first we’ll have to count it and I want a receipt. It’s still the property of Miss Hattie Annis.”
He opened his mouth and closed it again. It was a situation. He knew that I knew that he knew that I knew it was counterfeit, and therefore we both knew that Hattie would never see it again, but he was still keeping it off the record. “I’ll make a concession,” I offered. “We’ll weigh it on the postal scale. Put it on.”
He picked it up and put it on the scale, and we looked. Just under seventeen ounces. I brought a shopping bag from the kitchen and gave it to him, got at the typewriter, and tapped out a receipt for 16–11/12 oz. of twenty-dollar bills. I was tempted to add “in good condition,” but remembered that he had warned me not to try any fancy tricks with the Secret Service. As I handed him the receipt and my pen the doorbell rang, and I stepped to the hall.
It was Inspector Cramer. I went and opened the door. He entered. I shut the door. When I turned his hand was emerging from inside his coat with a folded paper. He handed it to me. I read it through. It wouldn’t be worth keeping as a souvenir — just the State of New York.
“You’ll notice,” he said, “that I can search for it if I have to.”
“You won’t have to. You know where it is.”
He strode to the office door and on in. I stopped on the sill. Leach, at my desk, with the shopping bag in one hand and the bills in the other, turned.
“It’s a problem,” I said. “Leach has signed a receipt for it, but I can tear it up. Why don’t you split it half and half?”
Cramer stood at arm’s length from the T-man. A muscle in the side of his neck was twitching. “That’s evidence in a murder case,” he said. “I have a court order for it.”
“So have I,” Leach said. “From a Federal court.” He put the bills in the bag, taking his time, and tucked the bag under his arm. “If you’ll send a man to our office he’ll be allowed to examine it, Inspector. We are always ready to cooperate with the local authorities.”
He moved, detouring around Cramer. Cramer wheeled and followed him, and I stepped aside to let them by. As Cramer passed he gave me a glare that would have withered a lesser man. I didn’t cooperate by going to open the door because I wasn’t sure I could keep my face straight, and when they were out and the door had closed I quit trying. A whoop had wanted out the second Cramer produced the paper, and now I let it come. I laughed so loud and so long that Fritz appeared at the kitchen door to ask what had happened.
There was no point in disturbing Wolfe in the plant rooms, so I let it wait until he came down at eleven o’clock. He never whoops, but when I reported and showed him the court orders he allowed himself an all-out chuckle and there was a twinkle in his eye. He said it was just as well he hadn’t been present, since Cramer would probably have accused him of staging it, and I agreed. I said I was glad the stuff was out of the house, and he agreed.
Calls came from Saul and Fred and Orrie during the next half hour. Nothing promising. Orrie had spoken with Max Eder, the janitor of the building, and three other tenants. Fred had bought a squirrel and a kangaroo and had spent an hour in the workroom in the rear of the shop. Saul hadn’t been inside the building that contained the Mushroom Theater. From the outside it looked as if it might collapse if you leaned against it. He had spent the two hours covering the neighborhood. When I relayed the reports to Wolfe, who was doing a crossword puzzle in the London Observer, all I got was a grunt. I had about decided it was time to go to work on him when the doorbell rang and I went to answer it.
It was our lawyer and our client. I hadn’t told him to bring her. I was in no mood for her, and Wolfe certainly wasn’t. All I could tell her was that Wolfe either had an inkling or hadn’t, and he was spending her money at the rate of fifty bucks an hour. I went and opened the door but occupied the threshold.