She was groggy, but game. She was back in her chair and had a wary eye on him. She said, "I have answered many questions in the past two days."
"I don’t doubt it. I can imagine their tenor and their stupidity. I shall not waste your time or insult your intelligence. How did you learn that I knew anything of this business?"
She seemed surprised. "How did I learn it? Why, you are responsible for it. That is, you discovered it. Everyone knows it. It was in the paper--not New York, the White Plains paper."
I had a grin at that. Derwin would phone Ben Cook to come and assist me to the station, would he?
Wolfe nodded. "Have you asked the favor of Mr. Anderson that you have asked of me?"
"No."
"Why not?"
She hesitated. "Well--it didn’t seem necessary. It didn’t seem--I don’t know how to express it."
"Use your wits, Miss Barstow. Was it because it appeared unlikely that he would do any discovering worthy the name?"
She was holding herself tight. Her hands--damn good hands with strong fingers and honest knuckles-- were little fists in her lap. "No!" she said.
"Very well. But what made you think it likely, at least possible, that my discovering might be more to the point?"
She began, "I didn’t think--"
But he stopped her: "Come, control yourself. It is an honest plain question. You did think me more competent at discovery than Mr. Anderson, did you not? Was it because I had made the original discovery?"
"Yes."
"That is, because I had somehow known that your father was killed by a poisoned needle propelled from the handle of a golf club?"
"I--don’t--know. I don’t know, Mr. Wolfe."
"Courage. This will soon be over. Curiosity alone prompts the next question. What gave you the strange idea that I was so rare a person as to respond favorably to the idiotic request you meant to make of me?"
"I didn’t know. I didn’t have that idea really. But I was ready to try, and I had heard a professor at the university, Gottlieb, the psychologist, mention your name--he had written a book called Modern Crime Detection--"
"Yes. A book that an intelligent criminal should send as a gift to every detective he knows."
"Perhaps. His opinion of you is more complimentary. When I telephoned Professor Gottlieb he said that you were not susceptible of analysis because you had intuition from the devil, and that you were a sensitive artist as well as a man of probity. That sounded--well, I decided to come to see you. Mr. Wolfe, I beg you--I beg of you--"
I was sure she was going to cry and I didn’t want her to. But Wolfe brusquely brought her up: "That’s all, Miss Barstow. That is all I need to know. Now I shall ask a favor of you: will you permit Mr. Goodwin to take you upstairs and show you my plants?"
She stared; he went on, "No subterfuge is intended. I merely wish to be alone with the devil. Half an hour perhaps; and to make a telephone call. When you return I shall have a proposal for you." He turned to me. "Fritz will call you."
She got up and came with me without a word. I thought that was pretty good, for she was shaky and suspicious all over. Instead of asking her to walk up two flights of stairs I took her down the hall and used Wolfe’s elevator. As we got out on the top floor she stopped me by catching my arm.
"Mr. Goodwin. Why did Mr. Wolfe send me up here?"
I shook my head. "No good, Miss Barstow. Even if I knew I wouldn’t tell you, and since I don’t know we might as well look at the flowers." As I opened the door to the passage Horstmann appeared from the potting room. "All right, Horstmann. May we look around a little?" He nodded and trotted back.
As many times as I had been there, I never went in the plant-rooms without catching my breath. It was like other things I’ve noticed, for instance no matter how often you may have seen Snyder leap in the air and one-handed spear a hot-liner like one streak of lightning stopping another one, when you see it again your heart stops. It was that way in the plant-rooms.
Wolfe used concrete benches and angle-iron staging, with a spraying system Horstmann had invented for humidity. There were three main rooms, one for Cattleyas Laelias and hybrids, one for Odontoglossums, Oncidiums and Miltonia hybrids, and the tropical room. Then there was the potting room, Horstmann’s den, and a little corner room for propagation. Supplies--pots, sand, sphaguum, leafmold, loam, osmundine, charcoal, and crocks--were kept in an unheated and unglazed room in the rear alongside the shaft where the outside elevator came up.
Since it was June the lath screens were on, and the slices of shade and sunshine made patterns everywhere--on the broad leaves, the blossoms, the narrow walks, the ten thousand pots. I liked it that way, it seemed gay.
It was a lesson to watch the flowers get Miss Barstow. Of course when she went in she felt about as much like looking at flowers as I did like disregarding her mother’s ad, and down the first rows of Cattleyas she tried to be polite enough to pretend there was something there to see. The first one that really brought her up was a small side-bunch, only twenty or so, of Laeliocattleya Lustre. I was pleased because it was one of my favorites. I stopped behind her.
"Astonishing," she said. "I’ve never seen one like that. The colors--amazing."
"Yes. It’s a bi-generic hybrid, they don’t come in nature like that."
She got interested. In the next walk were some Brassocattlaelias Truffautianas and I cut off a couple and handed them to her. I told her a little about hybridization and seedlings and so on, but maybe she didn’t hear me. Then, in the next room, I had a disappointment. She liked the Odontoglossums better than the Cattleyas and hybrids! I suspected it was because they were more expensive and difficult, but it turned out that she hadn’t known that. No accounting for tastes, I thought. And best of all, even after we had been through the tropical room, she liked a little thing I had never looked at twice, a Miltonia blue anaeximina. She talked about its delicacy and form. I nodded and began to lose interest, and anyway I was wondering what Wolfe was up to. Then at last Fritz appeared. He came down the walk clear up to us and bent himself at the middle and said that Mr. Wolfe expected us. I grinned and would have liked to dig him in the ribs as I went by, but I knew he’d never forgive me.
Wolfe was still in his chair, and there was no indication that he had been out of it. He nodded at Miss Barstow’s chair and at mine, and waited till we were arranged to say: "You liked the flowers?"
"They are wonderful." She had a new eye on him, I could see that. "They are too much beauty."
Wolfe nodded. "At first, yes. But a long intimacy frees you of that illusion, and it also acquaints you with their scantiness of character. The effect they have produced on you is only their bluff. There is not such a thing as too much beauty."
"Perhaps." She had lost interest in the orchids. "Yes, perhaps."
"Anyway they passed your time. And of course you would like to know how I passed mine. First I telephoned my bank and asked them to procure immediately a report on the financial standing of Ellen Barstow, your mother, and the details of the will of Peter Oliver Barstow, your father. I then telephoned Dr. Bradford and endeavored to persuade him to call on me this afternoon or evening, but he will be otherwise engaged. I then sat and waited. Five minutes ago my bank telephoned me the report I had requested. I sent Fritz for you. Those were my activities."
She was getting worked up again. Her lips were getting tight. Apparently she didn’t intend to open them.
He went on. "I said I would have a proposal for you. Here it is. Your notebook, Archie. Verbatim, please. I shall use my best efforts to find the murderer of Peter Oliver Barstow. I shall disclose the result of my efforts to you, Sarah Barstow, and if you interpose no objection I shall also disclose them to the proper public authorities, and at the proper time shall expect a check for the sum your mother has offered as a reward. But if my inquiries lead to the conclusion that the murderer is actually the person you fear it is, whom you are now endeavoring to shield from justice, there will be no further disclosure. Mr. Goodwin and I will know; no one else ever will. Just a moment! This is a speech, Miss Barstow; please hear all of it. Two more points. You must understand that I can make this proposal with propriety. I am not a public servant, I am not even a member of the bar, and I have sworn to uphold no law. The dangerous position of an accessory after the fact does not impress me. Then: if your fears prove to be justified, and I withhold disclosure, what of the reward? I find I am too sentimental and romantic to make it part of this proposal that under those circumstances the reward shall be paid. The word blackmail actually strikes me as unpleasant. But though I am handicapped by romance and sentiment, at least I have not pride further to hamper me, and if you should choose to present a gift it would be accepted.