“No. You wouldn’t. I might also add that I have discussed this with Inspector Cramer and he knows I’m here. We learned of Mrs. Britton’s involvement only last night. To put it all on the table, her disappearance suggests two possibilities: one, that she has been dealt with as Vukcic was, by the same person or persons; and two, that she was double-crossing Vukcic, working for the Communists, and was in on the plan to kill him and helped with it, and it was getting too hot for her here. Is that enough to warrant the question, when did you see her last?”
“The answer won’t help you much. In this room four days ago, Monday afternoon, about six-thirty. She was here not more than ten minutes. She gave no hint of an intention to disappear or of any reason for such an intention. Of your two possibilities, I advise you to dismiss the second, but that will not necessarily leave only the first; there are others.”
“Why dismiss the second?”
Wolfe cocked his head. “Mr. Stahl. The miasma of distrust that has poisoned the air we breathe is so pervasive that it reduced you to the fatuity of going up to look in my South Room. I would have liked then to tell you to leave, but I couldn’t afford the gesture because I’m up a stump. I’ve been hunting the murderer of Marko Vukcic for eight days now, and am floundering in a bog, and if there is any chance that you can offer a straw I want it. So I’ll tell you all I know about Mrs. Britton’s connection with this affair.”
He did so in full, making no objection to Stahl’s getting out his notebook and taking notes. At the end he observed, “You asked why I advised you to dismiss the second of your two possibilities, and that’s my answer. You will discount it as your caution may dictate. Now I would appreciate a straw. With your prerogatives and resources, you must have one to toss me.”
I had never heard or seen him being abject before, and in spite of the strain he was under I didn’t care for it. Stahl didn’t either. He smiled, and I would have liked to wipe it off with one hand. He glanced at his wristwatch and rose from the chair. He didn’t even bother to say he was late for an appointment. “This is something new,” he stated. “Nero Wolfe asking for a straw. We’ll think it over. If you hear from your daughter, or of her, we’ll appreciate it if you’ll let us know.”
When I returned to the office after letting him out I told Wolfe, “There are times when I wish I hadn’t been taught manners. It would have been a pleasure to kick his ass down the stoop.”
“Get them in here,” he growled. “We must find her.”
But we didn’t. We certainly tried. It is true that Stahl and Cramer had it on us in prerogatives and resources, but Fred Durkin knows how to dig, Orrie Cather is no slouch, Saul Panzer is the best operative north of the equator, and I have a good sense of smell. For the next six days we concentrated on picking up a trace of her, but we might as well have stayed up in my room and played pinochle. Not a glimmer. It was during that period that Wolfe made most of his long-distance calls to London and Paris and Bari. At the time I thought he was just expanding the bog to flounder in, and I still think he was merely making some wild stabs, but I have to admit it was Hitchcock in London and Bodin in Paris who finally put him onto Telesio in Bari; and if he hadn’t found Telesio we might still be looking for Carla and for the murderer of Marko. I also admit that I regard myself as the one for hunches around this joint, and I resent anyone horning in, even Wolfe. His part is supposed to be brainwork. However, what matters is that if he hadn’t got in touch with Telesio and talked with him forty bucks’ worth, in Italian, the Tuesday after Stahl’s visit, he would never have got the calls from Telesio.
There were three of them. The first one came Thursday afternoon while I was out tracking down a lead that Fred thought might get somewhere. When I got back to the office just before dinner Wolfe snapped at me, “Get them here this evening for new instructions.”