“Woman with spider earrings and scratch on cheek who on Tuesday, driving a car, told boy at Thirty-fifth Street and Ninth Avenue to get a cop, please communicate with Nero Wolfe at address in phone book.”
I slid the paper across his desk to him. “In the Times the fee might not quite cover it, but I’ll be glad to toss in a buck or two. I regard it as brilliant. It will spend Pete’s money on Pete. It will make Cramer and Stebbins sore, and Stebbins has it coming to him. And since there’s not one chance in a million that it will get a nibble, it won’t expose you to the risk of any work or involvement. Last but not least, it will get your name in the paper. What do you say?”
He picked up the sheet and glanced over it with his nose turned up. “Very well,” he agreed grumpily. “I hope to heaven this has taught you a lesson.”
Chapter 3
The hardware manufacturer’s son was finally spotted and corralled the next day, Thursday afternoon. Since that was a hush operation for more reasons than one — to show you how hush, he wasn’t a hardware manufacturer and he wasn’t from Youngstown — I can supply no details. But I make one remark. If Wolfe felt that he earned the fee he soaked that bird for, no ego was ever put to a severer test.
So Thursday was a little hectic, with no spare time for consideration of the question whether, if we had taken a different slant on the case Pete had come to share with us, Pete might still be breathing. In the detective business there are plenty of occasions for that kind of consideration, and while there is no percentage in letting it get you down, it doesn’t hurt to take time out now and then for some auditing.
It had been too late Wednesday night to get the ad in for Thursday. Friday morning I had to grin at myself a couple of times. When I went down the two flights from my bedroom and entered the kitchen, the first thing I did after greeting Fritz was to turn to the ads in the Times for a look at ours. That rated a grin. It meant nothing, either professionally or personally, since the chance of getting an answer was even slimmer than my estimate of one in a million. The second grin came later, when I was dealing with corn muffins and sausage — Fritz having taken Wolfe’s breakfast tray up to him according to schedule — with the Times in front of me on the rack, and the phone rang and I nearly knocked my chair over getting up to go for it. It was not someone answering the ad. Some guy on Long Island wanted to know if we could let him have three plants in bloom of Vanda caerulea. I told him we didn’t sell plants, and anyway that Vandas didn’t bloom in May.
But Pete’s case was brought to us again before noon, though not by way of the ad. Wolfe had just got down to the office from the plant rooms and settled himself at his desk for a look at the morning mail when the doorbell rang. Going to the hall and seeing the ringer through the one-way panel, I had no need to proceed to the door to ask him what he wanted. That customer always wanted to see Wolfe, and his arriving on the dot of eleven made it certain.
I turned and told Wolfe, “Inspector Cramer.”
He scowled at me. “What does he want?” Childish again.