Champange for One

“That was a hell of a mess I got you into,” he said. “I’m damn sorry.”

“Don’t mention it,” I told him. “I admit I wondered a little why you picked me. If you want some free advice, free but good, next time you want to cook up a reason for skipping something, don’t overdo it. If you make it a cold, not that kind of a cold, just a plain everyday virus.”

He turned a chair around and sat. “Apparently you’ve convinced yourself that was a fake.”

“Sure I have, but my convincing myself doesn’t prove anything. The proof would have to be got, and of course it could be if it mattered enough—items like people you saw or talked to Monday evening, or phoned to yesterday or they phoned you, and whoever keeps this place so nice and clean, if she was here yesterday—things like that. That would be for the cops. If I needed any proof personally, I got it when as soon as I mentioned that the cold was a fake you had to see me right away. So why don’t we just file that?”

“You said you haven’t told the cops.”

“Right. It was merely a conclusion I had formed.”

“Have you told anyone else? My aunt?”

“No. Certainly not her. I was doing you a favour, wasn’t I?”

“Yes, and I appreciate it. You know that, Archie, I appreciate it.”

“Good. We all like to be appreciated. I would appreciate knowing what it is you want to talk over.”

“Well.” He clasped his hands behind his head, showing how casual it was, just a pair of pals chatting free and easy. “To tell the truth, I’m in a mess too. Or I will be if you’d like to see me squirm. Would you like to see me squirm?”

“I might if you’re a good squirmer. How do I go about it?”

“All you have to do is spill it about my faking a cold. No matter who you spill it to it will get to my aunt, and there I am.” He unclasped his hands and leaned forward. “Here’s how it was. I’ve gone to those damn a

He sat back. “That’s how it was. Then this morning comes the news of what happened. I said I was sorry I got you into it, and I am, I’m damned sorry, but frankly, I’m damned glad I wasn’t there. It certainly wasn’t a pleasant experience, and I’m just selfish enough to be glad I missed it. You’ll understand that.” “Sure. Congratulations. I didn’t enjoy it much myself.” “I’ll bet you didn’t. So that’s what I wanted, to explain how it was so you’d see it wouldn’t help matters any for anyone to know about my faking a cold. It certainly wouldn’t help me, because it would get to my aunt sooner or later, and you know how she’d be about a thing like that. She’d be sore as hell.”

I nodded. “I don’t doubt it. Then it’s an ideal situation. You want something from me, and I want something from you. Perfect. We’ll swap. I don’t broadcast about the phoney cold, and you get me an audience at Grantham House. What’s that woman’s name? Irving ?”

“Irwin. Blanche Irwin.” He scratched the side of his neck with a forefinger.” You want to swap, huh?”

“I do. What could be fairer?”

“It’s fair enough,” he conceded. “But I told you on the phone I’m not in a position to do that.”

“Yeah, but then I was asking a favour. Now I’m making a deal.”

His neck itched again. “I might stretch a point. I might, if I knew what you want with her. What’s the idea?”

“Greed. Desire for dough. I’ve been offered five hundred dollars for an eye-witness story on last night, and I want to decorate it with some background. Don’t tell Mrs Irwin that, though. She’s probably down on journalists by now. Just tell her I’m your friend and a good loyal citizen and have only been in jail five times.”

He laughed. “That’ll do it all right. Wait till you see her.” He sobered.” So that’s it. It’s a fu

I had to admit that was one way of looking at it. He said he felt like saluting the fu

Back home, the conference was over, the trio had gone, and Wolfe was at his desk with his current book, one he had said I must read, World Peace through World Law , by Grenville Clark and Louis B. Sohn. He finished a paragraph, lowered it, and told me to enter expense advances to Saul and Fred and Orrie, two hundred dollars each. I went to the safe for the book and made the entries, returned the book, locked the safe, and asked him if I needed to know anything about their assignments. He said that could wait, meaning that he wanted to get on with his reading, and asked about mine. I told him it was all set, that he wouldn’t see me in the morning because I would be leaving for Grantham House before nine.

“I now call Austin Byne ‘Dinky’,” I told him. “I suppose because he’s an inch over six feet, but I didn’t ask. I should report that he balked and I had to apply a little pressure. When he phoned yesterday he tried to sound as if his tubes were dogged, but he boggled it. He had no cold. He now says that he had been to three of those affairs and had had enough, and he rang me only after he had tried five others and they weren’t available. So we made a deal. He gets me in at Grantham House, and I won’t tell his aunt on him. He seems to feel that his aunt might bite.”

Wolfe grunted. “Nothing is as pitiable as a man afraid of a woman. Is he guileless?”

“I would reserve it. He is not a dope. He might be capable of knowing that someone was going to kill Faith Usher so that it would pass for suicide, and he wanted somebody there alert and brainy and observant to spot it, so he got me, and he is now counting on me, with your help, to nail him. Or her. Or he may be on the level and merely pitiable.”

“You and he have not been familiar?”

“No, sir. Just acquaintances. I have only seen him at parties.”

“Then his selecting you is suggestive per se .”

“Certainly. That’s why I took the trouble to go to see him. To observe. There were other ways of getting to Mrs Irwin of Grantham House.”

“But you have formed no conclusion.”

“No, sir. Question mark.”

“Very well. Pfui. Afraid of a woman.” He lifted his book, and I went to the kitchen for a glass of milk.

At eight-twenty the next morning, Thursday, I was steering the 1957 Heron sedan up the Forty-sixth Street ramp to the West Side Highway. Buying the sedan, the year before, had started an argument that wasn’t finished yet. Wolfe pays for the cars, but I do the driving, and I wanted one I could U-turn when the occasion arose, and that clashed with Wolfe’s notion that anyone in a moving vehicle was in constant deadly peril, and that the peril was in inverse ratio to the size of the vehicle. In a forty-ton truck he might actually have been able to relax. So we got the Heron, and I must say that I had nothing against it but its size.