2
IT WAS EXACTLY TWENTY-EIGHT hours later, Tuesday evening at half past ten, that I went to answer the doorbell and saw, through the one-way glass of the front door, a scared but determined little face bounded at the sides by the turned-up collar of a brown wool coat and on top by a fuzzy brown thing that flopped to the right. When I opened the door she told me with a single rush of breath, “You’re Archie Goodwin I’m Elma Vassos.”
It had been a normal nothing-stirring day, three meals, Wolfe reading a book and dictating letters in between his morning and afternoon turns in the plant rooms, Fritz housekeeping and cooking, me choring. It was still in the air whether I would have to find another bootblack. According to the papers the police had tagged Ashby’s death as murder, but no one had been charged. Around one o’clock Sergeant Purley Stebbins had phoned to ask if we knew where Peter Vassos was, and when I said no and started to ask a question he hung up on me. A little after four Lon Cohen of the Gazette had phoned to offer a grand for a thousand-word piece on Peter Vassos, a dollar a word, and another grand if I would tell him where Vassos was. I declined with thanks and made a counter offer, my autograph in his album if he would tell me who at Homicide or the DA’s bureau had given him the steer that we knew Vassos. When I told him I had no idea where Vassos was he pronounced a word you are not supposed to use on the telephone.
I usually stick to the rule that no one is to be ushered to the office when Wolfe is there without asking him, but I ignore it now and then in an emergency. That time the emergency was a face. I had been in the kitchen chinning with Fritz. Wolfe was buried in a book, we had no case and no client, and to him no woman is ever welcome in that house. Ten to one he would have refused to see her. But I had seen her scared little face and he hadn’t, and anyway he hadn’t done a lick of work for more than two weeks, and it would be up to me, not him, to find another bootblack if it came to that. So I invited her in, took her coat and put it on a hanger, escorted her to the office, and said, “Miss Elma Vassos. Pete’s daughter.” Wolfe closed his book on a finger and glared at me. She put a hand on the back of the red leather chair to steady herself. It looked as if she might crack, and I took her arm and eased her into the chair. Wolfe transferred the glare to her, and there was her face. It was a little face, but not too little, and the point was that you didn’t see any of the details, eyes or mouth or nose, just the face. I have supplied descriptions of many faces professionally, but with her I wouldn’t know where to begin. I asked her if she wanted a drink, water or something stronger, and she said no.
She looked at Wolfe and said, “You’re Nero Wolfe. Do you know my father is dead?” She needed more breath.
Wolfe shook his head. His lips parted and closed again. He turned to me. “Confound it, get something! Brandy. Whisky.”
“I couldn’t swallow it,” she said. “You didn’t know?”
“No.” He was gruff. “When? How? Can you talk?”
“I guess so.” She wasn’t any too sure. “I have to. Some boys found him at the bottom of a cliff. I went and looked at him-not there, at the morgue.” She set her teeth on her lip, hard, but it didn’t change the face. She made the teeth let go. “They think he killed himself, he jumped off, but he didn’t. I know he didn’t.”
Wolfe pushed his chair back. “I offer my profound sympathy, Miss Vassos.” Even gruffer. He arose. “I’ll leave you with Mr. Goodwin. You will give him the details.” He moved, the book in his hand.
That was him. He thought she was going to flop, and a woman off the rail is not only unwelcome, she is not to be borne. Not by him. But she caught his sleeve and stopped him. “You,” she said. “I must tell you. To my father you are a great man, the greatest man in the world. I must tell you.”
“She’ll do,” I said. “She’ll make it.”
There are few men who would not like to be told they are the greatest in the world, and Wolfe isn’t one of them. He stared down at her for five seconds, returned to his chair, sat, inserted the marker in the book and put it down, scowled at her, and demanded, “When did you eat?”
“I haven’t-I can’t swallow.”
“Pfui. When did you eat?”
“A little this morning. My father hadn’t come home and I didn’t know…”
He swiveled to push a button, leaned back, closed his eyes, and opened them when he heard a step at the door. “Tea with honey, Fritz. Toast, pot cheese, and Bar-le-Duc. For Miss Vassos.”
Fritz went.
“I really can’t,” she said.
“You will if you want me to listen. Where is the cliff?”
It took her a second to go back. “It’s in the country somewhere. I guess they told me, but I don’t-”
“When was he found?”
“Sometime this afternoon, late this afternoon.”
“You saw him at the morgue. Where, in the country?”
“No, they brought him; it’s not far from here. When I had-when I could-I came here from there.”
“Who was with you?”
“Two men, detectives. They told me their names, but I don’t remember.”
“I mean with you. Brother, sister, mother?”
“I have no brother or sister. My mother died ten years ago.”
“When did you last see your father alive?”
“Yesterday. When I got home from work he wasn’t there, and it was nearly six o’clock when he came, and he said he had been at the district attorney’s office for three hours; they had been asking him questions about Mr. Ashby. You know about Mr. Ashby, he said he told you about him when he came here. Of course I already knew about him because I work there. I did work there.”
“Where?”
“At the office. That company. Mercer’s Bobbins.”
“Indeed. In what capacity?”
“I’m a stenographer. Not anybody’s secretary, just a stenographer. Mostly typing and sometimes letters for Mr. Busch. My father got me the job through Mr. Mercer.”
“How long ago?”
“Two years ago. After I graduated from high school.”
“Then you knew Mr. Ashby.”
“Yes. I knew him a little, yes.”
“About last evening. Your father came home around six. Then?”
“I had dinner nearly ready, and we talked, and we ate, and then we talked some more. He said there was something he hadn’t told the police and he hadn’t told you, and he was going to go and tell you in the morning and ask you what he ought to do. He said you were such a great man that people paid you fifty thousand dollars just to tell them what to do, and he thought you would tell him for nothing, so it would be foolish not to go and ask you. He wouldn’t tell me what it was. Then a friend of mine came-I was going to a movie with her-and we went. When I got home father wasn’t there and there was a note on the table. It said he was going out and might be late. One of the detectives tried to take the note but I wouldn’t let him. I have it here in my bag if you want to see it.”
Wolfe shook his head. “Not necessary. Had your father mentioned before you left that he intended to go out?”