“Quarter past eleven.”
“Then the morning will have to do. How many?”
She considered, rubbing her lip with a fingertip. I admit there was nothing wrong with her lips and she had good hands. “On my payroll,” she said, “one woman and two men. Besides them, four women and three men whom I use occasionally.”
“That makes ten. Mr. Ide?”
“What’s this for?” Ide wanted to know.
“I’ll explain. Now just how many.”
“It depends on your definition of ‘competent.’ I have twelve good men on my staff. Eight or ten others might be available.”
“Say twenty. That makes thirty. Mr. Kerr?”
“Call it nine. For an emergency I could scare up maybe five more, maybe six.”
“Fifteen. That makes forty-five. Mr. Amsel?”
“I pass.”
“None at all?”
“Well, I might. I’ve got no payroll and no staff. Wait till I hear the pitch, and I might.”
“Then forty-five.” Abruptly Wolfe got to his feet. “Now, if you’ll permit me, I must arrange my mind. It shouldn’t take long. I beg you to stay, all of you, to hear a suggestion I want to offer. And you must be thirsty. For me, Archie, a bottle of beer.”
He moved his chair over near a window, turned it around, and sat, his back to the room.
They all took refills except Sally, who switched to coffee, and Ide, who declined with thanks. After phoning down the order I told them not to bother to keep their voices lowered, since nothing going on outside his head could disturb Wolfe when he was concentrating on the inside. They got up to stretch their legs, and Harland Ide went to Dol Bonner and asked her what her experience had been with women operatives, and Kerr and Amsel joined them and turned it into a general discussion. The drinks came and were distributed, and they went on exchanging views and opinions. You might have thought it was just a friendly gathering, and that nothing like a murder investigation, not to mention an official inquiry that might cost some of them their licenses, was anywhere near, unless you noticed their frequent glances at the back of Wolfe’s chair. I gathered that with the men the consensus was that women were okay in their place, which I guess was the way cavemen felt about it, and all their male descendants. The question was, and still is, what’s their place? I only hoped Wolfe wasn’t getting any fleabite of a notion that Dol Bonner’s place was in the old brownstone house on West Thirty-fifth Street.
When he finally arose and started turning his chair around I glanced at my wrist. Eight minutes to midnight. It had taken him half an hour to arrange his mind. He moved the chair back to its former position, and sat, and the others followed suit.
“We could hear it tick,” Steve Amsel said.
Wolfe frowned at him. “I beg your pardon?”
“In your pan. The knocker.”
“Oh. No doubt.” Wolfe was brusque. “It’s late, and we have work to do. I have reached a working hypothesis about the murder, and I want to describe it and suggest a collective effort. I intend to ask for full co-operation from all of you, and I expect to get it. I’ll try to supply my share, though I have no organization to compare with Mr. Ide’s and Mr. Kerr’s. Archie, I must talk with Saul Panzer and it must be confidential. Can I do so from this room?”
“Good God no.” I could have kicked him, asking such a dumb question in front of our fellow members. “Ten to one Groom would have it in ten minutes. And not from a booth in the hotel. You’ll have to go out to one.”
“Can you find one at this hour?”
“Sure. This is the City of Albany.”
“Then please do so, and get him. Tell him I’ll call him at eight in the morning at his home. If he has other commitments ask him to cancel them. I need him.”
“Right. As soon as we’re through here.”
“No. Now. If you please.”
I could have kicked him again, but I couldn’t start beefing in front of company. I went and got my hat and coat and beat it.
VII
IF YOU’RE NO MORE interested than I was in how I spent the next day, Tuesday, you’ll be bored stiff for the next four minutes.
There were happenings, but no developments that I was aware of. First about Monday night and Saul Panzer. Saul is the best there is and I would match him against all of the forty-five operatives our confreres had, all of them put together, but he ought to get home earlier and get to bed. I found a booth easy enough in a bar-and-grill, called the number, and got no answer. Going back to join the conference, and trying again later, was out. When Wolfe sends me on an errand he wants it done, and for that matter so do I. I waited five minutes and tried again, and then ten minutes and another try. That went on forever, and it was a quarter past one when I finally got him. He said he had been out on a tailing job for Bascom, and he was going to resume it at noon tomorrow. I said he wasn’t, unless he wanted Wolfe and me indicted for murder and probably convicted, and told him to stand by for a call at eight in the morning. I gave him the highlights of the jolly day we had had, told him good night, returned to the hotel and up to room 902, and found Wolfe in bed sound asleep, in the bed nearest the window, with the window wide open and the room as cold as yesterday’s corpse. From the open door to the bathroom I got enough light to undress by.
When I sleep I sleep, but even so I wouldn’t have thought it possible that an animal of his size could turn out, get erect, and move around dressing and so on, without rousing me. In the cold, too. I would have liked to watch him at it. What got to me was the click as he turned the door knob. I opened my eyes, bounced up, and demanded, “Hey, where you going?”
He turned on the threshold. “To phone Saul.”
“What time is it?”
“By the watch on your wrist, twenty past seven.”
“You said eight o’clock!”
“I’ll get something to eat first. Finish your rest. There’s nothing to do, after I speak to Saul.” He pulled the door shut and was gone. I turned over, worried a while about how he would squeeze into a booth, and went back to sleep.
Not as deep as before, though. At the sound of his key in the lock I was wide awake. I looked at my wrist: 8:35. He entered and closed the door, took off his hat and coat, and put them in the closet. I asked if he had got Saul, and he said yes and it was satisfactory. I asked how it had gone last night, had our fellow members agreed to co-operate, and he said yes and it was satisfactory. I asked what the program was for us, and he said there wasn’t any. I asked him if that was satisfactory too, and he said yes. During this conversation he was removing duds. He stripped, with no visible reaction to the deep freeze, put on his pajamas, got into bed and under the blankets, and turned his back on me.
It seemed to be my turn, I was wide awake, it was going on nine o’clock, and I was hungry. I rolled out, went to the bathroom and washed and shaved, got dressed, having a little trouble buttoning my shirt on account of shivering, went down to the lobby and bought a Times and a Gazette, proceeded to the dining room and ordered orange juice, griddle cakes, sausage, scrambled eggs, and coffee. Eventually wearing out my welcome there, I transferred to the lobby and finished with the papers. There was nothing in them about the murder of William A. Donahue that I didn’t already know, except a few dozen useless details such as the medical examiner’s opinion that he had died somewhere between two and five hours before he got to him. It was the first time the Gazette had ever run pictures of Wolfe and me as jailbirds. The one of me was fair, but Wolfe’s was terrible. There was one of Albert Hyatt, very good, and one of Donahue, which had evidently been taken after the scientists smoothed his face out. I went out for some air, turning up my overcoat collar against the wind, which was nearly as cold as room 902, and found that it was more fun to take a walk when you were out on bail. You want to go on and on and just keep going. It was after eleven o’clock when I got back to the hotel, took the elevator up to the ninth floor, and let myself into the deep freeze.