Fred Updegraff was on a chair against the wall and Johnny was standing in front of Wolfe’s desk. Evidently Wolfe had made some pointed remarks, for Johnny didn’t look at all cocky.
“Yes, sir,” he was saying in a hurt tone, “but the Tracys live in humble circumstances and have no phone, so I used my best judgment—”
“You were at the Tracy home? Where is it?”
“In Richdale, Long Island, sir. My instructions were to investigate Anne Tracy. I learned that she lives in Richdale, where the Dill nurseries and offices are. You know she works there—”
“I was aware of that. Be brief.”
“Yes, sir. I went out to Richdale and made inquiries. I contacted a young woman — as you know, I am especially effective with young women—”
“Contact is not a verb and I said be brief.”
“Yes, sir. The last time you told me that I looked it up in the dictionary and I certainly don’t want to contradict you but it says contact is a verb. Transitive or intransitive.”
“Contact is not a verb under this roof.”
“Yes, sir. I learned that Miss Tracy’s father had worked at Dill’s for many years, up to about a year ago. He was assistant superintendent in charge of broad-leaved evergreens. Dill discovered he was kiting shipments and fired him.”
“Kiting shipments?”
“Yes, sir. On shipments to a big estate in Jersey the Cullen place. He would ship two hundred rhododendrons instead of one hundred and collect from Cullen for the extra hundred personally, at half price. It amounted to several thousand dollars.”
Anne lifted her head and turned it and made a noise of protest.
“Miss Tracy says it was only sixteen hundred dollars,” Johnny said. “I’m telling you what I was told. People exaggerate, and this never was made public, and Tracy wasn’t arrested. He stole it to pay a specialist for fixing his son’s eyes, something wrong with his son’s eyes. He can’t get another job. His daughter was Dill’s secretary and still is. She gets fifty a week and pays back twenty on what her father stole, so I was told. She refuses to verify those figures.”
Wolfe looked at Anne.
“It doesn’t matter,” Anne said, looking at me. “Does it?”
“I suppose not,” Wolfe said, “but if it’s wrong, correct it.”
“It’s wrong. I get twenty dollars a week and I payback ten.”
“Good God,” I blurted, “you need a union.”
That was probably Freudian. Probably subconsciously I meant she needed a union with me. So I added hastily, “I mean a labor union. Twenty bucks a week!”
Johnny looked annoyed. He’s a conservative. “So of course that gave me an in. I went to Miss Tracy’s home and explained to her confidentially the hole she was in. That this murder investigation would put the police on to her father’s crime, and that she and Dill were compounding a felony, which is against the law, and that the police would have to be fixed or they’d all be in jail, and there was only one man I knew of who could fix it because he was on intimate terms with high police officials, and that was Mr. Nero Wolfe. I said she’d better come and see you immediately, and she came. It was nearly eleven o’clock and there was no train in from Richdale, so we took a taxi.”
Johnny shot me a glance, as much as to say, “Try and match that one.”
“How far is it to Richdale?” Wolfe demanded.
“From here? Oh, twenty-five miles.”
“How much was the taxi fare?”
“Eight dollars and forty cents counting the tip. The bridge—”
“Don’t put it on expense. Pay it yourself.”
“But— but, sir — Archie always brings people here—”
“Pay it yourself. You are not Archie. Thank God. One Archie is enough. I sent you to get facts, not Miss Tracy — certainly I didn’t send you to coerce her with preposterous threats and fables about my relations with the police. Go to the kitchen — no. Go home.”
“But, sir—”
“Go home. And for God’s sake quit trying to imitate Archie. You’ll never make it. Go home.”
Johnny went.
Wolfe asked the guests if they would like some beer and they shook their heads. He poured a glass for himself, drank some, wiped his lips, and leaned back.
“Then—” Anne began, but it got caught on the way out. She cleared her throat and swallowed, and tried again. “Then what he said — you said his threat was preposterous. You mean the police won’t do that — won’t arrest my father?”
“I couldn’t say, Miss Tracy. The police are unpredictable. Even so, that is highly improbable.” Wolfe’s eyes left her. “And you, Mr. Updegraff? By what bold stroke did Mr. Keems bring you along?”
“He didn’t bring me.” Fred stood up. “I came.”
“By pure coincidence? Or automatism?”
Fred moved forward and put a hand on the back of my chair, which Anne was still sitting in. “I’m protecting Miss Tracy.”
“Oh. From what?”
“From everything,” he said firmly. He appeared to have a tendency to talk too loud, and he looked more serious than ever, and the more serious he looked the younger he looked. At that moment he might even have passed for Anne’s younger brother, which was okay, since I had no objection if she wanted to be a sister to him.
“That’s quite a job,” Wolfe said. “Are you a friend of hers?”
“I’m more than a friend!” Fred declared defiantly. Suddenly he got as red as a peony. “I mean I — she let me take her home.”
“You were there when Mr. Keems arrived?”
“Yes. We had just got there. And I insisted on coming along. It sounded to me like a frame-up. I thought he was lying; I didn’t think he was working for you. It didn’t sound — I’ve heard my father talk about you. He met you once — you probably don’t remember—”
Wolfe nodded. “At the Atlantic States Exposition. How is he?”
“Oh, he’s — not very good.” Fred’s color was normal again. “He gave up when we lost the plantation of rhodaleas — he just sat down and quit. He had spent his whole life on it, and of course it was an awful wallop financially, too. I suppose you know about it.”
“I read of it, yes. The Kurume yellows.” Wolfe was sympathetic but casual. “And by the way, someone told me, I forget who, that your father was convinced that his plantation was deliberately infected by Lewis Hewitt, out of pique — or was it Watson or Dill he suspected?”
“He suspected all of them.” Fred looked uncomfortable. “Everybody. But that was just — he was hardly responsible, it broke him up so. He had been holding back over thirty varieties, the best ones, for ten years, and was going to start distribution this spring. It was simply too much for Dad to take.”
Wolfe grunted. “It seems to be still on your mind, too. Mr. Goodwin tells me you invaded Rucker and Dill’s exhibit this afternoon and made off with an infected twig. As a souvenir?”
“I—” Fred hesitated. “I guess that was dumb. Of course it’s still on my mind it darned near ruined us. I wanted to test that twig and see if it was Kurume yellows that had somehow got into the exhibits.”
“And investigate the how?”
“I might have. I might have tried to.”
“You never traced the infection of your plantation?”
“No. We hadn’t had a thing for two years from any of the people that had had Kurume yellows, except a few Ilex crenata as a gift from Hewitt, and they were from nowhere near his infected area and we had them half a mile from the rhodaleas.” Fred gestured impatiently. “But that’s old prunings. What I was saying, I didn’t think you’d pull a trick like that on Miss Tracy.” A look came into his eyes. “Now I can take her back home.”