Chapter Two

After three tries that Saturday at the listed Manhattan number of Madeline Fraser, with don't answer as the only result, I finally resorted to Lon Cohen of the Gazette and he dug it out for me that both Miss Fraser and her manager, Miss Deborah Koppel, were weekending up in Connecticut.

As a citizen in good standing-anyway pretty good-my tendency was to wish the New York Police Department good luck in its contacts with crime, but I frankly hoped that Inspector Cramer and his homicide scientists wouldn't get Scotch tape on the Orchard case before we had a chance to inspect the contents. Judging from the newspaper accounts I had read, it didn't seem likely that Cramer was getting set to toot a trumpet, but you can never tell how much is being held back, so I was all for driving to Connecticut and horning in on the weekend, but Wolfe vetoed it and told me to wait until Monday.

By noon Sunday he had finished the book of poems and was drawing pictures of horses on sheets from his memo pad, testing a theory he had run across somewhere that you can analyse a man's character from the way he draws a horse. I had completed Forms 1040 and 1040-ES and, with cheques enclosed, they had been mailed. After lunch I hung around the kitchen a while, listening to Wolfe and Fritz Brenner, the chef and household jewel, arguing whether horse mackerel is as good as Mediterranean tunny fish for vitello tonnato-which, as prepared by Fritz, is the finest thing on earth to do with tender young veal. When the argument began to bore me because there was no Mediterranean tunny fish to be had anyhow, I went up to the top floor, to the plant rooms that had been built on the roof, and spent a couple of hours with Theodore Horstmann on the germination records. Then, remembering that on account of a date with a lady I wouldn't have the evening for it, I went down three flights to the office, took the newspapers for five days to my desk, and read everything they had on the Orchard case.

When I had finished I wasn't a bit worried that Monday morning's paper would confront me with a headline that the cops had wrapped it up.

Chapter Three

The best I was able to get on the phone was an appointment for 3 p.m., so at that hour Monday afternoon I entered the lobby of an apartment house in the upper Seventies between Madison and Park. It was the palace type, with rugs bought by the acre, but with the effect somewhat spoiled, as it so often is, by a rubber runner on the main traffic lane merely because the sidewalk was wet with rain. That's no way to run a palace. If a rug gets a damp dirty footprint, what the hell, toss it out and roll out another one, that's the palace spirit.

I told the distinguished-looking hallman that my name was Archie Goodwin and I was bound for Miss Eraser's apartment. He got a slip of paper from his pocket, consulted it, nodded, and inquired: “And? Anything else?”

I stretched my neck to bring my mouth within a foot of his ear, and whispered to him: “Oatmeal.”

He nodded again, signalled with his hand to the elevator man, who was standing outside the door of his car fifteen paces away, and said in a cultivated voice, “Ten B.”

“Tell me,” I requested, “about this password gag, is it just since the murder trouble or has it always been so?”

He gave me an icy look and turned his back. I told the back: “That cost you a nickel. I fully intended to give you a nickel.”

With the elevator man I decided not to speak at all. He agreed. Out at the tenth floor, I found myself in a box no bigger than the elevator, another palace trick, with a door to the left marked 10A and one to the right marked 10B. The elevator man stayed there until I had pushed the button on the latter, and the door had opened and I had entered.

The woman who had let me in, who might easily have been a female wrestling champion twenty years back, said, “Excuse me, I'm in a hurry,” and beat it on a trot. I called after her, “My name's Goodwin!”but got no reaction.

I advanced four steps, took off my hat and coat and dropped them on a chair, and made a survey. I was in a big square sort of a hall, with doors off to the left and in the wall ahead. To the right, instead of a wall and doors, it just spread out into an enormous living-room which contained at least twenty different kinds of furniture. My eye was professionally trained to take in anything from a complicated street scene to a speck on a man's collar, and really get it, but for the job of accurately describing that room I would have charged double. Two of the outstanding items were a chrome-and-red-leather bar with stools to match and a massive old black walnut table with carved legs and edges. That should convey the tone of the place.

There was nobody in sight, but I could hear voices. I advanced to pick out a chair to sit on, saw none that I thought much of, and settled on a divan ten feet long and four feet wide, covered with green burlap. A near-by chair had pink embroidered silk. I was trying to decide what kind of a horse the person who furnished that room would draw, when company entered the square hall sector from one of the doors in the far wall-two men, one young and handsome, the other middle-aged and bald, both loaded down with photographic equipment, including a tripod.

“She's showing her age,” the young man said.

“Age hell,” the bald man retorted, “she's had a murder, hasn't she? Have you ever had a murder?” He caught sight of me and asked his companion, “Who's that?”

“I don't know, never saw him before.” The young man was trying to open the entrance door without dropping anything. He succeeded, and they passed through, and the door closed behind them.

In a minute another of the doors in the square hall opened and the female wrestler appeared. She came in my direction, but, reaching me, trotted on by, made for a door near a corner off to the left, opened it, and was gone.

I was beginning to feel neglected.

Ten minutes more and I decided to take the offensive. I was on my feet and had taken a couple of steps when there was another entrance, again from an inside door at the far side of the square hall, and I halted. The newcomer headed for me, not at a jerky trot but with a smooth easy flow, saying as she approached: “Mr Goodwin?”

I admitted it.

“I'm Deborah Koppel.” She offered a hand. “We never really catch up with ourselves around here.”

She had already given me two surprises. At first glance I had thought her eyes were small and insignificant, but when she faced me and talked I saw they were quite large, very dark, and certainly shrewd. Also, because she was short and fat, I had expected the hand I took to be pudgy and moist, but it was firm and strong though small. Her complexion was dark and her dress was black. Everything about her was either black or dark, except the grey, almost white by comparison, showing in her night-black hair.

“You told Miss Fraser on the phone,” she was saying in her high thin voice, “that you have a suggestion for her from Mr Nero Wolfe.”

“That's right.”

“She's very busy. Of course she always is. I'm her manager. Would you care to tell me about it?”

“I'd tell you anything,” I declared. “But I work for Mr Wolfe. His instructions are to tell Miss Fraser, but now, having met you, I'd like to tell her and you.”

She smiled. The smile was friendly, but it made her eyes look even shrewder.

“Very good ad libbing,” she said approvingly. “I wouldn't want you to disobey your instructions. Will it take long?”

“That depends. Somewhere between five minutes and five hours.”