“Try what?”
“A shove. A dig in their ribs. If their past is too much for us, their future isn’t, or shouldn’t be. We’ll have to try it. If it doesn’t work we’ll try again.” He was scowling. “The best I can give it is one chance in twenty. Confound it, it requires the cooperation of Mrs. Rackell, so I’ll have to see her again; that can’t be helped.”
He scooped a bite of melon. “You’ll need some instructions. I’ll finish this, and we’ll go to the office.”
He put the bite where it belonged and concentrated on his taste buds.
IV
It didn’t work out as scheduled. The program called for getting Mrs. Rackell to the office at eleven o’clock the next morning, Thursday, but when I phoned a little before nine the maid said it was too early to disturb her. At ten she hadn’t called back, and I tried again and got her. I explained that Wolfe had an important confidential question to put to her, and she said she would be at the office not later than eleven-thirty. Shortly before eleven she phoned again to say that she had called her husband at his office, and it had been decided if the question was important and confidential they should both be present to consider it. Her husband would be free for an hour or so after lunch but had a four-o’clock appointment he would have to keep. We finally settled for six o’clock, and I called Rackell at his office and confirmed it.
Henry Jameson Heath was on the front page of the Gazette again that morning, not in connection with homicide. Once more he had refused to disclose the names of contributors to the fund for bail for the indicted Communists and apparently he was going to stick to it no matter how much contempt he rolled up. The day’s installment on the Rackell murder was on page seven, and there wasn’t enough meat in it to feed a cricket. As for me, after an hour at the phone, locating Saul Panzer and Fred Durkin and Orrie Cather and passing them the word, I might as well have gone to the ball game. Wolfe had given me plenty of instructions, but I couldn’t act on them until and unless the clients agreed to string along.
Mrs. Rackell arrived first, at six on the dot. A minute later Wolfe came down from the plant rooms, and she started in on him. She had the idea that he was responsible for Fifi Goheen’s slanderous lie about her dead nephew, since it had been uttered in his office, and what did he propose to do about it? Why didn’t he have her arrested? Wolfe controlled himself fairly well, but his tone was beginning to get sharp when the doorbell rang and I beat it to the front to let Rackell in. He jogged past me to the office on his short legs, nodded at Wolfe, kissed his wife on the cheek, dropped onto a chair, wiped his long narrow face with a handkerchief, and asked wearily, “What is it? Did you get anywhere with them?”
“No.” Wolfe was short. “Not to any conclusion.”
“What’s this important question?”