“May I have your address, Mr. Watson?”
“Miss Voss knows my address. Is she all right?”
“I must have your address, Mr. Watson. I must insist. You will understand the necessity when I tell you that Miss Voss is dead. She was assaulted in her office and is dead. Apparently, from what you said, the assault came while she was on the phone with you, and I want your address. I must insist.”
“Who assaulted her?”
“I don’t know. Damn it, how do I know? I must—”
I hung up, gently not to be rude, swiveled and asked Flora, “Who is Carl Drew?”
“My brother’s business manager. What happened?”
I looked at Wolfe. “My guess was close. Miss Voss is dead. In her office. He said she was assaulted, but he didn’t say with what or by whom.”
He glowered at me, then turned to let her have it. She was coming up from the chair, slow and stiff. When she was erect, she said, “No. No! It isn’t possible!”
“I’m only quoting Carl Drew,” I told her.
“But it’s crazy! He said she is dead? Bianca Voss?”
“Distinctly.” She looked as if she might be needing a prop, and I stood up.
“But how—” She let it hang. She repeated, “But how—” stopped again, turned, and was going.
When Wolfe called to her, “Here, Miss Gallant, your money!” she paid no attention, but kept on, and he poked it at me, and I took it and headed for the hall.
I caught up with her halfway to the front door, but when I offered it, she just kept going so I blocked her off, took her bag, opened it, dropped the bills in, closed it and handed it back.
I spoke. “Easy does it, Finger. Take a breath. Going without your stole?”
“Oh.” She swallowed. “Where is it?” I got it for her.
“In my opinion,” I said, “you need a little chivalry. I’ll come and get you in a taxi.”
She shook her head. “I’m all right.”
“You are not. You’ll get run over.”
“No, I won’t. Don’t come. Just let me... please.”
She meant it, so I stepped to the door and pulled it open, and she crossed the sill. I stood there and watched, thinking she might stumble going down the steps of the stoop, but she made it to the sidewalk and turned west toward Tenth Avenue. Evidently she wasn’t completely paralyzed, since Tenth was one-way uptown.
There are alternative explanations for the fact that I did not choose to return immediately to the office. One would be that I was afraid to face the music — not the way to put it, since the sounds that come from Wolfe when he is good and sore are not musical. The other would be that purely out of consideration for him I decided he would rather be alone for a while. I prefer the latter. Anyway, I made for the stairs, but I was only halfway up the first flight when his bellow came, “Archie! Come here!”
I about-faced, descended, crossed the hall and stood on the threshold. “Yes, sir? I was going up to my room to see if I left the faucet dripping.”
“Let it drip. Sit down.”
I went to my chair and sat down. “Too bad,” I said regretfully. “Three hundred dollars may be hay, but—”
“Shut up.”
I lifted my shoulders half an inch and dropped them. He leaned back comfortably and eyed me.
“I must compliment you,” he said, “on the ingenuity of your stratagem. Getting me with you on the phone, so that I could corroborate your claim that both you and Miss Gallant were here in my office at the moment the murder was committed was well conceived and admirably executed. But I fear it was more impetuous than prudent. You are probably in mortal jeopardy, and I confess I shall be seriously inconvenienced if I lose your services, even though you get only a long term in prison. So I would like to help, if I can. It will be obvious, even to a slower wit than Mr. Cramer’s, that you and Miss Gallant arranged for the attack to occur on schedule, precisely at the moment that Miss Voss was speaking to me on the phone; and therefore, patently, that you were in collusion with the attacker. So our problem is not how to fend suspicion from you, but whether you can wriggle out of it, and if so how. No doubt you have considered it?”
“Yeah. Sure.”
“And?”
“I think it’s hopeless. I’m in for it. Not a prison term; I’ll get six thousand volts. I know it will inconvenience you, but it will inconvenience me too. I regret it very much because it has been a rare experience working for you.” I uncrossed my legs. “Look. Naturally, you are boiling. I let her come here, yes. I — uh — persuaded you to see her, yes. If you’re in a tantrum, O.K., go ahead and tantrum and get it over with.”
“I am not in a tantrum and ‘tantrum’ is not a verb.”
“Then I take it back. Apparently it’s worse than a tantrum, since instead of ragging me, you burlesque it. Can’t you just tell me what you think of me?”
“No. It’s not in my vocabulary. You realize what we are in for?”
“Certainly. If it was murder, and evidently it was, Flora Gallant will tell them where she was and what happened. Then we will have visitors, and not only that, but if and when someone is nominated for it and put on trial, we will be star witnesses because we heard it happen. Not eyewitnesses, earwitnesses. We can time it right to the minute. You will sit for hours on a hard wooden bench in a courtroom, with no client and no fee in sight. I know how you feel and I don’t blame you. Go ahead and tell me what you think of me.”
“You admit you are answerable?”
“No. I was unlucky.”
“That doesn’t absolve you. A man is as responsible for his luck as for his judgment. How long have you known that woman?”
“Nineteen hours. She picked me up on Thirty-eighth Street at five o’clock yesterday afternoon.”
“Picked you up?”
“Yes. I thought she was tailing Putz, but she said she was after me. That gave me a sense of well-being and stimulated my manhood. I took her to a bar and bought her a drink — she took vermouth — and it came out that it was you she was really after. Thinking there might be a fee in it, I took her to a place and fed her and danced with her. If it had led to a fee, that would have gone on my expense account, but now I don’t suppose—”
“No.”
“Very well. She didn’t tell me the whole story, but enough so it seemed possible it was worth half an hour of your time, and I told her to come at eleven this morning.”
“How long were you out?”
“Until midnight. Altogether, seven hours.”
“Did you take her home?”
“No. She was against it. I put her in a taxi.”
“Did she phone you this morning before she came?”
“No.”
“How did she come? In a cab?”
“I don’t know. Fritz may know; he let her in.”
“She probably did.” His lips tightened. He released them. “Cabs and cars have thousands of accidents every day. Why couldn’t hers have been one of them?” He came forward in the chair and rang for beer. “Confound it. It will save time and harassment if we have a report ready. You will type one. Your meeting with her yesterday, your conversation with her, and what occurred here today, including everything that was said. We will both sign it.”
“Not everything that was said last evening.”
“No, I suppose not. You said you got sentimental. What I sign I read, and I certainly wouldn’t read that.”
I swiveled and pulled the typewriter around and got out paper and carbons. Reports, especially when they are to be signed statements, have to be in triplicate.
That kept me busy the rest of the day, with an hour out for lunch and various interruptions, mostly phone calls, including one from Lon Cohen, of the Gazette, to ask for the low-down on the murder of Bianca Voss. I wondered why the cops had been so free and fast about Flora Gallant’s call on Nero Wolfe, but that wasn’t it: one of the Gazette’s journalists had seen me at Colonna’s with her, and Lon is one of a slew of people who have the idea that whenever I am seen anywhere near anybody who is anyhow connected with a death by violence, Nero Wolfe is looming. I told him our only interest in the Voss murder was not to get involved in it, which was no lie.