Wolfe let out a mild grunt. I gave her an admiring eye for her calm voice and manner in dishing out a fact like that, but of course it was a year old for her.
“Under the surface of that geyser,” she said, “down below, the pressure in the pipe from above keeps the temperature far above the boiling point, according to an article about it I read in a newspaper.”
“That seems conclusive,” Wolfe murmured. “Why do you now question it?”
“Because he didn’t die. Because he’s not dead. I saw him last week, here in New York, alive.”
III
I felt myself relaxing. It had seemed that we were about to be tagged for the chore of ripping the false face off of a murder disguised as a suicide, and at the smell of murder I always go tight all over. In the detective business that’s the center ring in the big tent. The headline MAN DEAD gets the eye good, but Cynthia Nieder had scrapped that and changed it to MAN ALIVE, which was quite a comedown. Another thought had struck me: that if Uncle Paul was alive her inheriting half the business was out the window and her ability to pay a good exorbitant fee was open to question. My attitude toward her personally remained intact; she rated high priority on looks, voice, and other observable factors. But professionally I was compelled to grade her way down in the little routine items.
So I relaxed and tossed my notebook on my desk, which is so placed that a half-turn of my swivel chair puts me facing Wolfe, and with another half-turn I am confronting the red leather chair beyond the end of his desk where a lone visitor is usually seated. Some visitors clash with it, but Cynthia, in a deep-toned yellow dress, maybe silk, a jacket in brown and yellow checks, flaring open, and a little brown affair slanting on her head, looked fine. Having learned one or two little things about women’s clothes from Lily Rowan and other reliable sources, I decided that if Cynthia had designed that outfit Wolfe should eat his skepticism about her talent.
She was talking, telling about the man alive.
“It was last Tuesday,” she said, “a week ago tomorrow, June third. We were showing our fall line to the press. We don’t show in hotels because we don’t have to, since our showroom seats over two hundred comfortably. For a press showing we don’t let anyone in without a ticket because if we did the place would be mobbed. I was modeling a blue and black ensemble of lightweight Bishop twill when I saw him. He was in the fifth row, between Agnes Pemberton of Vogue and Mrs. Gumpert of the Herald Tribune. If you asked me how I recognized him I couldn’t tell you, but I simply knew it was him, there wasn’t the slightest doubt—”
“Why shouldn’t you recognize him?” Wolfe demanded.