Cramer stared. “Are you telling me that you could fit that many names to that many faces after seeing them just once?”
Saul’s shoulders went slightly up and down. “There’s more to people than faces. I might go wrong on a few, but not many. I was at that door to do a job and I did it.”
“You should know by this time,” Wolfe rumbled, “that Mr. Panzer is an exceptional man.”
Cramer spoke to a dick standing by the door. “You heard that name, Levy — Malcolm Vedder. Tell Stebbins to check it on that list and send a man to bring him in.”
The dick went. Cramer returned to Saul. “Put it this way. Say I sit you here with that list, and a man or woman is brought in, and I point to a name on the list and ask you if that person came this afternoon under that name. Could you tell me positively?”
“I could tell you positively whether the person had been here or not, especially if he was wearing the same clothes and hadn’t been disguised. On fitting him to his name I might go wrong in a few cases, but I doubt it.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“Mr. Wolfe does,” Saul said complacently. “Archie does. I have developed my faculties.”
“You sure have. All right, that’s all for now. Stick around.”
Saul and Fritz went. Wolfe, in his own chair at the end of the dining table, where ordinarily, at this hour, he sat for a quite different purpose than the one at hand, heaved a deep sigh and closed his eyes. I, seated beside Cramer at the side of the table that put us facing the door to the hall, was beginning to appreciate the kind of problem we were up against. The look on Cramer’s face indicated that he was appreciating it too. The look was crossing my bow, direct at Wolfe.