“Too bad Cramer bollixed it up like that. If we had been able to keep them here a while, say two weeks, we might have got started somewhere. Too bad.”
“It was not too bad,” he said testily.
“Oh.” I gestured, and sat down. “Okay, then it was a screaming success. Of all our guests, which do you think was the most interesting?”
To my surprise, he answered, “The most interesting was Miss Gunther.”
“Yeah? Because?”
“Because she didn’t come. You have her address.”
“Sure. I sent the telegram-”
“Go and bring her here.”
I stared at him, looked at my wrist, and stared at him again. “It is now twenty minutes past eleven.”
He nodded. “The streets are less dangerous at night, with the reduced traffic.”
“I won’t argue.” I stood up. “You are in the pay of the NIA, and I am in the pay of you. So it goes.”
Chapter 10
I TOOK AN ASSORTMENT of keys along, to simplify things in case 611 East Fifty-fifth Street proved to be an old-fashioned walkup with a locked entrance door, but instead of that it was one of the twelve-story beehives with an awning and hired men. I stepped down the broad hall to the elevator, went in, and said casually:
“Gunther.”
Without even glancing at me, the pilot finished a yawn and called out, “Hey, Sam! For Gunther!”
The doorman, whom I had by-passed, appeared and looked in at me. “I’ll phone up,” he said, “but it’s a waste of time. What’s your name and what paper are you from?”
Ordinarily I like to save butter, but under the circumstances, with no ceiling on expenses, I saw no reason why he shouldn’t be in the pay of the NIA too. So I left the elevator and walked down the hall with him, and when we got to the switchboard I spread out a ten-dollar bill thereon, saying:
“I’m not on a paper. I sell sea shells.”
He shook his head and started manipulations at the board. I put a hand on his arm and told him, “You didn’t let me finish. That was papa. Here’s mamma.” I deployed another ten. “But I warn you they have no children.”
He only shook his head again and flipped a lever. I was shocked speechless. I have had a lot to do with doormen, and I am certainly able to spot one too honest to accept twenty bucks for practically nothing, and that was not it. His principles didn’t even approach as high a standard as that, and he was being pure from some other motive. I emerged from the shock when I heard him telling the receiver:
“He says he sells sea shells.”
“The name,” I said, “is Archie Goodwin, and I was sent by Mr. Nero Wolfe.”
He repeated it to the receiver, and in a moment hung up and turned to me with a look of surprise. “She says go on up. Nine H.” He accompanied me toward the elevator. “About papa and mamma, I’ve changed my mind, in case you still feel-”
“I was kidding you,” I told him. “They really have got children. This is little Horace.” I handed him two bits and went in and commanded the pilot, “Nine H.”
It is not my custom to make personal remarks to young women during the first five minutes after meeting them, and if I violated it this time it was only because the remark popped out of me involuntarily. When I pushed the button and she opened the door and said good evening, and I agreed and removed my hat and stepped inside, the ceiling light right above her was shining on her hair, and what popped out was:
“Golden Bantam.”
“Yes,” she said, “that’s what I dye it with.”
I was already understanding, from the first ten seconds, what motive it was that the doorman was being pure from. Her pictures in the papers had been just nothing compared with this. After we had disposed of my hat and coat she preceded me into the room, and from the middle of it turned her head to say:
“You know Mr. Kates?”
I thought it had popped out of her as my remark had popped out of me, but then I saw him, rising to his feet from a chair in a corner where the light was dim.
“Hello,” I said.
“Good evening,” he piped.
“Sit down.” Phoebe Gunther straightened a corner of a rug with the toe of a little red slipper. “Mr. Kates came to tell me what happened at your party this evening. Will you have some Scotch? Rye? Bourbon? Gin? Cola?”
“No, thanks.” I was getting my internal skull fixtures jerked back into place.
“Well.” She sat on a couch against a nest of cushions. “Did you come to see what color my hair is or was there something else?”
“I’m sorry to bust in on you and Mr. Kates.”
“That’s all right. Isn’t it, Al?”
“It is not all right,” Alger Kates said, without hesitation, in his thin voice stretched tight but extremely distinct, “with me. It would be folly to trust him at all or to believe anything he says. As I told you, he is in the pay of the NIA.”
“So you did.” Miss Gunther was relaxing among the cushions. “But since we know enough not to trust him, all we have to do is to be a little smarter than he is in order to get more out of him than he gets out of us.” She looked at me, and seemed to be smiling, but I had already discovered that her face was so versatile, especially her mouth, that it would be better not to jump to conclusions. She told me, possibly smiling, “I have a theory about Mr. Kates. He talks the way people talked before he was born, therefore he must read old-fashioned novels. I wouldn’t suppose a research man would read novels at all. What would you suppose?”
“I don’t discuss people who don’t trust me,” I said politely. “And I don’t think you are.”
“Are what?”
“Smarter than me. I admit you’re prettier, but I doubt if you’re smarter. I was spelling champion of Zanesville, Ohio, at the age of twelve.”
“Spell snoop.”
‘That’s just childish.” I glared at her. “I don’t imagine you’re hinting that catching people who commit crimes is work to be ashamed of, since you’re smart, so if what you have in mind is my coming here, why didn’t you tell the doorman-”
I stopped short because she was possibly laughing at me. I quit glaring, but went on looking at her, which was a bad policy because that was what was interfering with my mental processes.
“Okay,” I said curtly, “you got a poke in and made me blink. Round one for you. Round two. Your Mr. Kates may be as loyal as What’s-his-name, the boy that stood on the burning deck, but he’s a sap. Nero Wolfe is tricky, that I admit, but the idea that he would cover a murderer because he happened to belong to something out of the alphabet that signed checks is plain loony. Look at the record and show me where he ever accepted a substitute, no matter who said it was just as good. Here’s a free tip: if you think or know a BPR man did it, and don’t want him caught, bounce me out immediately and keep as far away from Wolfe as you can get. If you think an NIA man did it and you’d like to help, put on some shoes and get your hat and coat and come to his office with me. As far as I’m concerned you don’t need to bother about the hat.” I looked at Kates. “If you did it yourself, with some motive not to be mentioned for the sake of common decency, you’d better come along and confess and get it over with.”