But the law student balked. The way the light was I could see his eyes behind his black-rimmed glasses, and they looked determined. His voice matched them. “I don’t like the way things look here. I don’t know what explanation you have given Miss Page about last night. Then what happened in front of this house afterwards. And asking Miss Page to sneak in the back way. Who are these callers you’re expecting?”
To my surprise, Wolfe obliged him. “One of them,” he said, “is a man named Fabian. The other is named Schwartz. L. A. Schwartz, a lawyer. A member of the bar.”
That was news to me. He must have invited Schwartz after I left the office.
“Are they connected with this — with Miss Page’s affairs?” Morton demanded.
“With Miss Page, no. With her affairs, yes.”
“I want to see them. I intend to be present.”
Beulah didn’t approve and said so. Wolfe said that her name would not appear in the conversation and that there was no reason why Morton shouldn’t be there if he wanted to. That settled it. The fiancée started upstairs for the plant rooms, and the fiancé went with the rest of us to the office. As we were crossing the hall the doorbell rang, and I went to answer it.
Fingering back the edge of the curtain over the glass panel for a look through, and seeing it was Schwartz, I opened up. He had his brief case and was wearing the same suit and nose-pinchers, but in spite of that he was a different man. In the morning his face had been pale and colorless; now it was rosy. Before I hadn’t smelled him at all; now I couldn’t help smelling him. He had been spending some of the fifty grand in advance, at the courage counter. Judging from the smell, he had alternated with gin, rum, rye, vodka, and turpentine. My study of him was cut short because the bell rang again as I was hanging up his coat, and this time it was an object deserving much closer and longer study.
It was Fabian.
I had seen him around, at the ringside at fights and so on, but never met him. I had never had any desire to meet him. The most famous fact about his physical make-up, that he had no nose, wasn’t true. His nose was almost normal in size and shape when you looked at it, but the point was that three other features — the mouth, ears, and eyes — grabbed the scene and the nose might as well not have been there.