Wolfe murmured, “Yes, it’s a pretty problem. Thank goodness it isn’t mine. But as to our agreement-I’ve performed my part, haven’t I? Have I cast strong doubt on Mr. Berin’s guilt?”
The sheriff snorted. Tolman said shortly, “Yes. The fact that those sauce dishes were shifted around-certainly. But damn it, who shifted them?”
“I couldn’t say. Perhaps the murderer, or possibly Mr. Laszio himself, to make a fool of Berin.” Wolfe shrugged. “Quite a job for you. You will set Berin free this morning?”
“What else can I do? I can’t hold him now.”
“Good. Then if you don’t mind… since you’re in a hurry, and I haven’t been to bed…”
“Yeah.” Tolman stayed put. He sat with his hands still in his pockets, his legs stretched out, the toes of his shoes making little circles in the air. “A hell of a mess,” he declared after a silence. “Except for Blanc, there’s nowhere to begin. That nigger’s description might be almost anyone. Of course, it’s possible that it was a nigger that did it and used black gloves and burnt cork to throw us off, but what nigger around here could have any reason for wanting to kill Laszio?” He was silent again. Finally he abruptly sat up. “Look here. I’m not sorry you got Berin out of it, whether you made it into a mess or not. And I’ll meet the conditions I agreed to, including no interference with your leaving here tonight. But since you’re turning over evidence, what else have you got? I admit you’re good and you’ve made a monkey out of me on this Berin business-not to mention the sheriff here. Maybe you can come across with some more of the same. What more have you found out?”
“Nothing whatever.”
“Have you any idea who it was the niggers saw in the dining room?”
“None.”
“Do you think that Frenchman did it? Blanc?”
“I don’t know. I doubt it.”
“The Chinese woman who was outdoors-do you think she was mixed up in it?”
“No.”
“Do you think the radio being turned on at that particular time had anything to do with it?”
“Certainly. It drowned the noise of Laszio’s fall-and his outcry, if he made one.”
“But was it turned on purposely-for that?”
“I don’t know.”
Tolman frowned. “When I had Berin, or thought I had, I decided that the radio was a coincidence, or a circumstance that he took advantage of. Now that’s open again.” He leaned forward at Wolfe. “I want you to do something for me. I don’t pass for a fool, but I admit I’m a little shy on experience, and you’re not only an old hand, you’re recognized as one of the best there is. I’m not too proud to yell for help if I need it. It looks like the next step is a good session with Blanc, and I’d like to have you in on it. Better still, handle it yourself and let me sit and listen. Will you do that?”
“No, sir.”
Tolman was taken aback. “You won’t?”
“No. I won’t even discuss it. Confound it, I came down here for a holiday!” Wolfe made a face. “Monday night, on the train, I got no sleep. Tuesday night it was you who kept me up until four o’clock. Last night my engagement to clear Mr. Berin prevented my going to bed at all. This evening I am supposed to deliver an important address to a group of eminent men, on their own subject. I need the refreshment of sleep, and there is my bed. As for your interview with Mr. Blanc, I remind you that you agreed to free Mr. Berin immediately upon presentation of my evidence.”
He looked and sounded very final. The sheriff started to growl something, but I was called away by a knock on the door. I went to the foyer, telling myself that if it was anyone who was likely to postpone the refreshment of sleep any longer, I would lay him out with a healthy sock on the button and just leave him there.
Which might have done for Vukcic, big as he was, but I wouldn’t strike a woman merely because I was sleepy, and he was accompanied by Constanza Berin. I flung the door the rest of the way and she crossed the threshold. Vukcic began a verbal request, but she wasn’t bothering with amenities, she was going right ahead.
I reached for her and missed her. “Hey, wait a minute! We have company. Your friend Barry Tolman is in there.”
She wheeled on me. “Who?”
“You heard me. Tolman.”
She wheeled again and opened the door to Wolfe’s room and breezed on through. Vukcic looked at me and shrugged, and followed her, and I went along, thinking that if I needed a broom and dustpan I could get them later.
Tolman had jumped to his feet at sight of her. For two seconds he was white, then a nice pink, and then he started for her:
“Miss Berin! Thank God-”
An icy blast hit him and stopped him in his tracks with his mouth open. It wasn’t vocal; her look didn’t need any accompaniment. With him frozen, she turned a different look, practically as devastating, on Nero Wolfe:
“And you said you would help us! You said you would make them free my father!” Nothing but a superworm could deserve such scorn as that. “And it was you who suggested that about his list-about the sauces! I suppose you thought no one would know-”
“My dear Miss Berin-”
“Now everybody knows! It was you who brought the evidence against him! That evidence! And you pretending to Mr. Servan and Mr. Vukcic and me-”
I got Wolfe’s look and saw his lips moving at me, though I couldn’t hear him. I stepped across and gripped her arm and turned her. “Listen, give somebody a chance-”
She was pulling, but I held on. Wolfe said sharply, “She’s hysterical. Take her out of here.”
I felt her arm relax, and turned her loose, and she moved to face Wolfe again.
She told him quietly, “I’m not hysterical.”
“Of course you are. All women are. Their moments of calm are merely recuperative periods between outbursts. I want to tell you something. Will you listen?”
She stood and looked at him.
He nodded. “Thank you. I make this explanation because I don’t want unfriendliness from your father. I made the suggestion that the lists be compared with the correct list, not dreaming that it would result in implicating your father-in fact, thinking that it would help to clear him. Unfortunately it happened differently, and it became necessary to undo the mischief I had unwittingly caused. The only way to do that was to discover other evidence which would establish his innocence. I have done so. Your father will be released within an hour.”
Constanza stared at him, and went nearly as white as Tolman had on seeing her, and then her blood came back as his had done. She stammered, “But-but-I don’t believe it. I’ve just been over to that place-and they wouldn’t even let me see him-”
“You won’t have to go again. He will rejoin you here this morning. I undertook with you and Mr. Servan and Mr. Vukcic to clear your father of this ridiculous charge, and I have done that. The evidence has been give to Mr. Tolman. Don’t you understand what I’m saying?”
Apparently she was beginning to, and it was causing drastic internal adjustments. Her eyes were drawing together, diagonal creases were appearing from the corners of her nose to the corners of her mouth, her cheeks were slowly puffing up, and her chin began to move. She was going to cry, and it looked as if it might be a good one. For half a minute, evidently, she thought she was going to be able to stave it off; then all of a sudden she realized that she wasn’t. She turned and ran for the door. She got it open and disappeared. That galvanized Tolman. Without stopping for farewells he jumped for the door she had left open-and he was gone too.