“Here’s a postcard he sent you from Salamanca on December 14th, 1940. A picture of the public library. It says, Will be back tomorrow or next day. Love and kisses. Harry.’”
“Then I guess he was there,” Rose admitted sullenly.
“Archie, give Saul a hundred dollars.” Wolfe handed Saul the postcard and the garage job-card. “Go to Salamanca. Take a plane to Buffalo and hire a car. Do you know what Harry Gould looked like?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Note the dates — but I don’t need to tell you. Go up there and get all you can. Phone me on arrival.”
“Yes, sir. If necessary do I pay for it?”
Wolfe grimaced. “Within reason. I want all I can get. Make it two hundred, Archie.”
I counted ten twenties into Saul’s hand from the stack I got from the safe, and he stuffed it into his pocket and went, as usual, without any foolish questions.
Wolfe resumed with Rose, after ringing for beer. First he spent five minutes trying to get her to remember what Harry had gone to Salamanca for, or anything he had said to her about it, but that was a blank. No savvy Salamanca. Then he returned to former topics, but with a series of flanking movements. He discussed cooking with her. He asked about Harry’s abilities and experience as a gardener, his pay, his opinion of Hewitt and Dill, his employers, his drinking habits and other habits.
I was busy getting it down in my notebook, but I certainly wasn’t trembling with excitement. I knew that by that method, by the time dawn came Wolfe could accumulate a lot of facts that she wouldn’t know he was getting, and one or two of them might even mean something, but among them would not be the thing we wanted most to know, what and who she had seen in the corridor. As it stood now we didn’t dare to let the cops get hold of her even if we felt like it, for fear Cramer would open her up by methods of his own, and if he learned about the stick episode his brain might leap a barricade and spoil everything. And personally I didn’t want to toss her to the lions anyhow, even after that Clark Gable crack.