“I know. Marko was concerned about them. He thought you and your wife were competent to calculate your risks, but they were not. He wanted you to send them to him in New York. Ivan is five years old and Zosha three. It is not a question of trusting ears; they are old enough to babble, as you should know.”
“Of course.” Danilo went and shut a door and returned. “They can’t hear us. Who are you?”
“Nero Wolfe. This is Archie Goodwin. Marko may have spoken of him.”
“Yes. But I can’t believe it.”
Wolfe nodded. “That comes first, naturally, for you to believe. It shouldn’t be too difficult.” He looked around. “If we could sit?”
None of the chairs in sight met his specifications, but there were several that would serve his main purpose, to get his weight off his feet. I wouldn’t have known that the big tiled object in the corner was a stove if I hadn’t had the habit of spending an hour or so each month looking at the pictures in the National Geographic, and I had also seen most of the other articles of furniture, with the exception of the rug. It was a beaut, with red and yellow roses as big as my head on a blue background. Only a vulgar barbarian would have dragged a chair across it, so I lifted one to place it so as to be in the group after Wolfe had lowered himself onto the widest one available.
“It should help,” Wolfe began, “to tell you how we got here.” He proceeded to do so, in full, going back to the day, nearly a month earlier, when the news had come that Marko had been killed. From first to last Danilo kept a steady gaze at him, ignoring me completely, making no interruptions. He was a good listener. When Wolfe got to the end and stopped, Danilo gave me a long hard look and then went back to Wolfe.
“It is true,” he said, “that through my uncle Marko I have heard of Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin. But why should you go to such trouble and expense to get here, and why do you come to me?”
Wolfe grunted. “So you’re not satisfied. I understand the necessity for prudence, but surely this is excessive. If I am an imposter I already know enough to destroy you — Marko’s associates in New York, the messages to me through Paolo Telesio, the house in Bari where you have met Marko, a dozen other details which I included. Either I am already equipped as the agent of your doom, or I am Nero Wolfe. I don’t understand your incredulity. Why the devil did you send those messages if you didn’t expect me to act?”
“I sent only one. The first one, that Carla was here, was only from Telesio. The second, that the man you sought was here, was sent because Carla said to. The last, that she had been killed, I sent because she would have wanted you to know. From what Marko had told me of you, I had no idea that you would come. When he was alive you had refused to give any support to the Spirit of the Black Mountain, so why should we have expected help from you when he was dead? Am I supposed to believe you have come to help?”