Before Midnight Page 6

  “All the same,” Wolfe persisted, “there are the other egos and other viewpoints. I accept the validity of yours, but theirs cannot be brushed aside. Each of you has made a huge investment of time and energy and ingenuity. How much time have you spent on it since the beginning?”

  “I don’t know. Hundreds and hundreds of hours.”

  “The rules didn’t forbid help. Have you had any?”

  “No. A friend of mine with a large library let me use it nights and early mornings before I went to work, but she didn’t help. I’m very expert at researching. When they gave me five to do in one week, to break the tie—that was on March twenty-eighth—I took a week off without pay.”

  Wolfe nodded. “And of course the others made similar sacrifices and endured similar strains. Look at them now. They are detained here willy-nilly, far from their base of operations, by no fault of their own—except possibly for one of them, but that’s moot. Whereas you’re at home and can proceed as usual. You have an overwhelming advantage and it is fortuitous. Can you pursue it without a qualm? Can you justify it?”

  “I don’t have to justify it. We made an agreement and I’m not breaking it. And I can’t proceed as usual—if I could I’d be at the library now, working. I’ve got another week off, but I had to spend today with the police and the conference at the office and now here with you. I’ll work tonight, but I don’t know what tomorrow will be like.”

  “Would you accept an invitation to meet with the others and discuss a new arrangement?”

  “I would not. There’s nothing to discuss.”

  “You are admirably single-minded, Miss Tescher.” Wolfe leaned back with his elbows on the chair arms and matched his finger tips. “I must tell you about Miss Frazee-she is in a situation comparable to yours. Her home is in Los Angeles, where three hundred of her friends, fellow members of a league of which she is president, have worked with her on the contest throughout. It is presumed, though not established, that she has telephoned them the verses that were distributed last evening, and that they are busy with them. A situation comparable to yours, though by no means identical. Have you any comment?”

  She was staring at him, speechless. “Because,” Wolfe went on, “while there may be no infraction of the rules or the agreement, it is surely an unfair advantage—even against you, since you have already lost a day and there’s no telling how much you’ll be harassed the rest of the week; but Miss Frazee’s friends can proceed unhampered. Don’t you think that’s worth discussing?”

  From the look on Susan’s face she would have liked to discuss it with Miss Frazee herself, with fingernails and teeth at ten inches. Before she found any words Knudsen arose, crooked his finger at the other two men and at Susan, and headed for the door. They all got up and followed. Wolfe sat and gazed at their receding backs. Not knowing whether they were adjourning or only taking a recess, I sat pat until I saw that Schultz, out last, was shutting the door to the hall, then I thought I’d better investigate, put down my notebook, went to the door and opened it, and crossed the sill. The quartet was in a close huddle over by the big walnut rack. “Need any help?” I asked brightly. “No,” Susan said. “We’re conferring.”

  I re-entered the office, closed the door, and told Wolfe, “They’re in conference. If I go in the front room and put my ear to the keyhole of the door to the hall I can catch it. After all, it’s your house.”

  Pfui,” he said, and shut his eyes. I treated myself to a good yawn and stretch, and looked at my wrist. Twenty to seven.

  For the second time that day we had a king-size wait. At six-forty-five I turned on the radio to see how the Giants had made out with the Phillies, and got no glow out of that. I would have gone to the kitchen for a glass of milk, since dinner would be late, but the only route was through the rear of the hall, and I didn’t want to disturb the conference. At six-fifty-five I reminded Wolfe that Harold Rollins was due in five minutes, and he only nodded without opening his eyes. At seven-two the doorbell rang, and I went.

  Still in a huddle at the rack, they broke off as I appeared and gave me their faces. Out on the stoop was a lone male. I went on by the huddle, opened the door, and said, “Mr. Rollins? Come in.”

  My own idea would have been to put him in the front room until the conference was over and we had got the score, but if Wolfe had wanted that he would have said so, and I’m perfectly willing to let him have things his way unless his ego is jostling mine. So I took Rollins’ hat and coat and ushered him along to the office. I was inside too and was shutting the door when Susan’s voice came. “Mr. Goodwin!”

  I pulled the door to with me on the hall side. As I approached she asked, “Wasn’t that one of them? The one named Rollins?”

  “Right. Harold Rollins, Burlington, Iowa, professor of history at Bemis College.”

  She looked at her pals. Their heads all moved, an inch to the left and back again. She looked at me. “Mr. Wolfe asked me if I had any comment about what he told me about Miss Frazee. He asked me if I thought it was worth discussing. I have no comment now, but I will have. It’s absolutely outrageous to expect—”

  A quick tug at her sleeve by Knudsen stopped her. She shot him a glance and then pushed her head forward at me. “No comment!” she shrilled, and turned to reach to the rack for her coat. The men simultaneously reached for theirs.

  “If you gentlemen don’t mind,” I said, perfectly friendly, “my grandmother out in Ohio used to ask me if the cat had my tongue. I’ve always wondered about it. Was it a cat in your case?”

  No soap. Not a peep. I gave up and opened the door to let them out.

  Chapter 8

  Back in the office, I attended to the lights before going to my desk. There are eight different lights-one in the ceiling above a big bowl of banded Oriental alabaster, which is on the wall switch, one on the wall behind Wolfe’s chair, one on his desk, one on my desk, one flooding the big globe, and three for the book shelves. The one on Wolfe’s desk is strictly for business, like crossword puzzles. The one on the wall behind him is for reading. He likes all the others turned on, and after making the rounds I sat, picked up my notebook, and gave Harold Rollins a look.

  “They have gone?” Wolfe asked

  “Yes, sir. No comment.”

  Rollins was comfortable in the red leather chair, right at home, though one about half the size would have been better for him. He hadn’t shrunk from underfeeding like Carol Wheelock; he looked healthy enough, what there was of him. Nor was there much to his face except a wide flexible mouth and glasses in thick black frames. You didn’t see his nose and chin at all unless you concentrated.

  It’s hard to tell with glasses like those, but apparently he was returning my regard. “Your name’s Goodwin, isn’t it?” he asked.

  I admitted it.

  “Then it was you who sicked that man Younger on me. You don’t expect me to be grateful, do you? I’m not.” He switched to Wolfe. “We might as well start right. I made this appointment, and kept it, only to pass the time. I’m in this grotesque imbroglio, with no discoverable chance of emerging with honor and dignity, so why miss an opportunity of meeting an eminent bloodhound?” He smiled and shook his head. “No offense intended. I am hardly in a position to offend anybody. What are we going to talk about?”

  Wolfe was contemplating him. “I suggest, Mr. Rollins, that your despair is excessive. My client is the firm of Lippert, Buff and Assa, but in many respects your interest runs with theirs, and their honor and dignity are involved with yours. Both may be salvaged; and in addition, you may get a substantial amount of money. You didn’t like what Mr. Younger proposed?”

  He was still smiling. “Of course I know I should make allowances.”

  “For Mr. Younger?”

  “For all of you. Your frame of reference is utterly different from mine, in fact to me it seems quite contemptible, but it was my own thoughtlessness that got me entangled in it. I dug my own grave, that’s true; but, realizing and confessing it, I may s
till resent the slime and the worms. Can you get me back my job?”

  “Job?”

  “Yes. I am a professor of history at Bemis College, but I won’t be very long. It will amuse you to hear—no, that’s not the right way to look at it. It will amuse me to tell you; that’s better. One day last September a colleague showed me an advertisement of this contest, and said facetiously that as a student and teacher of history I should be interested. As a puzzle the thing was so obvious it was inane, and so was the second one, which my colleague also showed me. I was curious as to how long the inanity would be maintained, and got others as they appeared, and before long I found I was being challenged. I made a point of getting them without referring to any book, but the twelfth one so distracted me that I broke that ban just to get rid of it.”

  He screwed up his lips. “Have I said that I hadn’t entered the contest?”

  “No.”

  “Well, I hadn’t. I regarded it as a diversion, an amusing toy. But after I had solved the twentieth and last, which I must confess was rather ingenious, I sent in an entry blank with my answers. If you were to ask me why I did so I would be at a loss. I suppose in the lower strata of my psyche the primitive lusts are slopping around in the mire, and somehow they managed it; they are not in direct communication with me. The next day I was appalled at what I had done. I had a professorship at the age of thirty-six; I was a serious and able scholar with two books to my credit; and I had well-defined ambitions which I was determined to realize. If I won a prize in a perfume contest—a perfume called Pour Amour—it would be a blemish on my career, and if I won a sensational one, a half or a quarter of a million, I would never live it down.”

  He smiled and shook his head. “But you won’t believe I was appalled, because when I was notified that I was in a tie with seventy-one others, and was sent five new verses to solve in a week, I had the answers in four days and sent them in. I can only plead that schizophrenia must have many forms and manifestations, or I could resort to demonology. I was once much impressed by Roskoff’s Geschichte des Teufels. Anyhow, I sent the answers, and was asked to come to New York, and arrived just twenty-four hours ago; and now I’m involved not only in a perfume contest—Pour Amour Rollins they’ll call me—but in a murder, a nationwide cause c��l��bre. I am done for. If I don’t resign I’ll be fired. Can you get me a job?”

  I was wishing he would take his glasses off so I could see his eyes. From his easy posture and his voice and his superior smile he was taking it well, a manly and gallant bozo refusing to squirt blood under the wheels of calamity. But without more sales pressure I wasn’t buying the notion that one definition of “calamity” was half a million bucks, even for a man as highly educated as him, and I wanted to see his eyes. All I could see was the reflection of the ceiling light from the lenses.

  “You’re in a fix,” Wolfe admitted, “but I still think your despair is excessive. Establish academic scholarships with your prize money.”

  “I’ve thought of that. It wouldn’t help much.” He smiled. “The simplest way would be to confess to the murder. That would do it.”

  “Not without corroboration. Could you furnish any?”

  “I’m afraid not. I couldn’t describe his apartment, and I don’t know what kind of gun was used.”

  “Then it would be hopeless. Perhaps a better expedient, expose the murderer and become a public hero. The acclaim would smother the infamy. You are not a bloodhound by profession, I know, but you have cerebral resources. You could start by recalling all the details of the meeting last evening. How did they act and talk? What signs of greed or zealotry did they display? Particularly, what did they say and do when Mr. Dahlmann showed the paper and said it was the answers?”

  “Nothing. Nothing whatever.”

  “It was a shock, naturally. But afterward?”

  “Not afterward either.” The smile was getting more superior. “I would suppose you wouldn’t need to be told what the atmosphere was like. We were tigers crouching to spring upon the same prey. Vultures circling to swoop and be first on the carcass to get the heart and liver. The amenities were forced and forged. We separated immediately after the meeting, each clutching his envelope, each wishing the others some crippling misfortune, anything up to death.”

  “Then you have no idea which of them, if any, thought Mr. Dahlmann was joking.”

  “Not the faintest.”

  “Did you?”

  “Ah,” Rollins looked pleased. “This is more like it, only I thought you would be more subtle. The police wouldn’t believe my answer, and you won’t either. I really don’t know. I was in a sort of nightmare. My demon had brought me there with the single purpose of winning the contest by my own wit and ingenuity. Whether the paper he showed us held the answers or not was a matter of complete indifference to me. If careless chance had put it in my way I would have burned it without looking at it, at the dictate not of conscience, but of pride. I’m sorry to disappoint you, but I can’t say if I thought Dahlmann was joking or not because I didn’t think one way or the other. Now you want to know what I did last evening after the meeting.”

  Wolfe shook his head. “Not especially. You have told the police, of course, and they’re much better equipped to trace movements and check alibis than I am. And I’m not investigating the murder.”

  “Exactly what are you doing?”

  “I’m trying to find a way to settle the contest in a manner acceptable to all parties. You say Mr. Younger spoke to you? What did he say?”

  “He told me what Goodwin told him about Miss Frazee, and he wanted Mrs. Wheelock and me to join him in getting a lawyer and starting legal action. But also he wanted us to propose to Miss Tescher and Miss Frazee that the amount of the first five prizes will be divided equally among us. I told him we couldn’t very well do both.”

  “Which do you prefer?”

  “Neither. Since I have to pay the piper I’m going to dance. Dahlmann said these verses are much more obscure than any of the others, and I believe him. I doubt if Miss Frazee’s friends can get any of them, and I’ll be surprised if Miss Tescher can. When I leave here I’m going to one of the finest private libraries in New York and spend the night there, and I already know which book I’ll go to first. This is one of the verses:

  “From Jack I learned love all the way,

  And to the altar would be led;

  But on my happy wedding day

  I married Charles instead.”

  He lifted his hand to his glasses, but only shifted them a little on his nose. “Does that suggest anything to you?”

  “No,” Wolfe said emphatically.

  “It does to me. Not any detail of it, but the flavor. I have no idea what her name was, but I think I know where to find her. I may be wrong, but I doubt it, and if not, there’s one right off.”

  He probably had it. Either he had had a lucky hunch, or he knew a lot about flavors, or he had got the paper from Dahlmann’s wallet and was preparing the ground for a later explanation of how and where he got the answers. I could certainly have impressed him by asking if the book he would go to first would be Jacques Casanova’s Memoirs, but he might have suspected me if I had also told him her name was Christine and he should try Volume Two, pages one hundred seventy-two to two hundred one, of the Adventures edition.

  Wolfe said abruptly, “Then I mustn’t keep you, if you’re going to work. I wouldn’t care to stir the choler of a demon.” He put his hands on the desk edge to push his chair back, and arose. “I hope to see you again, Mr. Rollins, but I shall try to interfere as little as may be with your labors. You will excuse me.” He headed for the door and was gone.

  Rollins looked at me. “What was that, pique? Or did I betray myself and he has gone for handcuffs?”

  “Forget it.” I stood up. “Don’t you smell anything?”

  He sniffed. “Nothing in particular. What is it?”

  “Of course,” I conceded, “you’re not a bloodhound. It’s shad roe in cas
serole with parsley, chervil, shallot, marjoram, bay leaf, and cream. That’s his demon, or one of them. He has an assortment. You’re going? If you don’t mind, what was Number Nine? I think it was. It goes:

  “By the law himself had earlier made

  I could not be his legal wife;

  The law he properly obeyed

  And loved me all my life.”

  He had turned at the door, and his smile was super-superior. “That was palpable. Aspasia and Pericles.”

  “Oh, sure. I should have known.”

  We went to the hall and I held his coat. As I opened the door he inquired, “Wasn’t that Miss Tescher here when I came?”

  I told him yes.

  “Who were the three men?”

  “Advisers she brought along. You should have heard them. They talked Mr. Wolfe into a corner.”

  He thought he was going to ask me more, vetoed it, and went. I shut the door and started for the kitchen to tell Wolfe about Aspasia and Pericles, but the phone ringing pulled me into the office. I answered it, bad a brief exchange with the caller, and then went to the kitchen, where Wolfe was in conference with Fritz, and told him:

  “Talbott Heery will be here at a quarter past nine.”

  Already on edge, he roared. “I will not gallop through my dinner!”

  I told him, apologetically, that I was afraid he’d have to. He only had an hour and a half.

  Chapter 9

  The subject of discussion at Wolfe’s dinner table, whether we had company or not, might be anything from politics to polio, so long as it wasn’t current business. Business was out. That evening was no exception, strictly speaking, but it came close. Apparently at some time during the day Wolfe had found time to gallop through the encyclopedia article on cosmetics, and at dinner he saw fit, intermittently, to share it with me. He started, when we had finished the chestnut soup and were waiting for Fritz to bring the casserole, by quoting verbatim a bill which he said had been introduced into the English Parliament in 1770. It ran, he said: