Death Times Three SSC (13 page)

I waited until she had put her glass down. "A couple of corrections. I haven't got thousands of American girls, only three or four hundred. I can't make Mr. Wolfe do anything I want him to; it all depends. And a couple of questions? What you want him to do--does it involve any marital problems? Your brother's wife or someone else's wife that he's friendly with?"

"No. My brother isn't married."

"Good. For Mr. Wolfe that would be out. You say you're not so rich. Could you pay anything at all? Could you scrape up a few hundred without hocking that stole?"

"Yes. Oh, yes. I am not a pauvre pardon--a pauper. But Mr. Wolfe would sneer at a few hundred."

"That would be his impulse, but impulses can be sidetracked, with luck. I suggest that you proceed with your plan as outlined." I looked at my wrist. "It's going on six o'clock. For the Flamingo we would have to go home and dress, and that's too much trouble, but there's nothing wrong with the band at Colonna's in the Village. We can stick here for an hour or so and get acquainted, and you can give me some idea of what your problem is, and you can go right ahead with your program, getting me to like you enough to want to help

you. Then we can go to Colonna's and eat and dance. Well?"

"That's all right," she conceded, "but I ought to go home and change. I would look better and dance better."

I objected. "That can come later. We'll start at the bottom and work up. If you dress, I'll have to, too, and I'd rather not. As you probably know, I live in Mr. Wolfe's house, and he might want to discuss something with me. He often does. I would rather phone and tell him I have a personal matter to attend to and won't be home for dinner. You passed the buck. You said I'm the man and it's for me to say."

"Well, I would have to phone too."

"We can afford it." I got a dime from a pocket and proffered it.

At ten-thirty the next morning, Tuesday, I was in the office on the first floor of the old brownstone on West 35th Street which is owned and dominated by Nero Wolfe, when I remembered something I had forgotten to do. Closing the file drawer I was working on, I went to the hall, turned left, and entered the kitchen, where Fritz Brenner, chef and housekeeper, was stirring something in a bowl.

I spoke. "I meant to ask, Fritz: What did Mr. Wolfe have for breakfast?"

His pink, good-natured face turned to me, but he didn't stop stirring. "Why? Something wrong?"

"Of course not. Nothing is ever wrong. I'm going to jostle him and it will help to know what mood he's in."

"A good one. He was very cheerful when I went up for the tray, which was empty. He had melon, eggs a la Suisse with oatmeal cakes and croissants with black

berry jam. He didn't put cream in his coffee, which is always a good sign. Do you have to jostle him?"

I said it was for his own good--that is, Wolfe's and headed for the stairs. There is an elevator, but I seldom bother to use it. One flight up was Wolfe's room, and a spare, used mostly for storage. Two flights up was my room, and one for guests, not used much. Mounting the third flight, I passed through the vestibule to the door to the plant rooms, opened it and entered.

By then, after the years, you might think those ten thousand orchids would no longer impress me, but they did. In the tropical room I took the side aisle for a look at the pink Vanda that Wolfe had been offered six grand for, and in the intermediate room I slowed down as I passed a bench of my favorites, Miltonia hybrids. Then on through to the potting room.

The little guy with a pug nose, opening a bale of osmundine over by the wall, was Theodore Horstmann, orchid nurse. The one standing at the big bench, inspecting a seed pod, was my employer.

"Good morning," I said brightly. "Fred phoned in at ten-fourteen. Putz is at his office, probably reading the morning mail. I told Fred to stay on him."

"Well?"

I'll translate it. What that, "well" meant was, "You know better than to interrupt me here for that, so what is it?"

Having translated it, I replied to it, "I was straightening up a file when I suddenly realized that I hadn't told you that there's an appointment for eleven o'clock. A prospective client, someone I ran across yesterday. It might be quite interesting."

"Who is it?"

"I admit it's a woman. Her name is Flora Gallant; she's the sister of a man named Alec Gallant, who

makes dresses for duchesses that dukes pay a thousand bucks for. She could get things for your wife wholesale if you had a wife."

He put the seed pod down. "Archie."

"Yes, sir."

"You are being transparent deliberately. You did not suddenly realize that you hadn't told me. You willfully delayed telling me until it is too late to notify her not to come. How old is she?"

"Oh, middle twenties."

"Of course. Ill-favored? Ill-shaped? Ungainly?" "No, not exactly."

"She wouldn't be if you ran across her. What does she want?"

"It's a little vague. I'd rather she told you."

He snorted. "One of your functions is to learn what people want. You are trying to dragoon me. I won't see her. I'll come down later. Let me know when she has gone."

"Yes, sir." I was apologetic, "You're absolutely right. You'd probably be wasting your time. But when I was dancing with her last evening I must have got sentimental, because I told her I would help her with her problem. So I'm stuck. I'll have to tackle it myself. I'll have to take a leave of absence without pay, starting now. Say a couple of weeks, that should do it. We have nothing important on, and of course Fred can attend to Putz, and if you--"

"Archie, this is beyond tolerance. This is egregious."

"I know it is, but I'm stuck. If I were you I'd fire me. It may take--"

The house phone buzzed. He didn't move, so I went and got it. After listening to Fritz, I told him to hold on, and turned: "She's at the door. If she comes in, it will

disrupt your schedule, so I'd better go down and take her somewhere. I'll--"

"Confound you," he growled. "I'll be down shortly."

I told Fritz to put her in the office and I would be right down, hung up and went. On my way through the intermediate room I cut off a raceme of Miltonia and took it along. Orchids are good for girls, whether they have problems or not. At the bottom of the stairs, Fritz was posted on guard, awaiting me. He is by no means a woman hater, but he suspects every female who enters the house of having designs on his kitchen and therefore needing to be watched. I told him O.K., I'd see to her, and crossed to the office.

She was in the red leather chair facing the end of Wolfe's desk. I told her good morning, went and got a pin from my desk tray and returned to her.

"Here," I said, handing her the raceme and pin. "I see why you asked me what his favorite color is. He'll like that dress if he's not too grouchy to notice it."

"Then he'll see me?"

"Yeah, he'll see you, any minute now. I had to back him into a corner and stick a spear in him. I doubt if I like you that much, but my honor was at stake, and I well, if you insist

She was on her feet, putting her palms on my cheeks and giving me an emphatic kiss.

Since it was in the office and during hours, I merely accepted it.

"You should have another one," she said, sitting again, "for the orchids. They're lovely."

I told her to save it for a better occasion. "And," I added, "don't try it on Mr. Wolfe. He might bite you." The sound of the elevator, creaking under his seventh of a ton, came from the hall. "Here he comes. Don't offer him a hand. He doesn't like to shake hands even with men, let alone women."

There was the sound of the elevator door opening, and footsteps, and he entered. He thinks he believes in civility, so he stopped in front of her, told her good morning, and then proceeded to the over-sized, custom-made chair behind his desk.

"Your name is Flora Gallant?" he growled. The growl implied that he strongly doubted it and wouldn't be surprised if she had no name at all.

She smiled at him. I should have warned her to go slow on smiles. "Yes, Mr. Wolfe. I suppose Mr. Goodwin has told you who I am. I know I'm being nervy to expect you to take any time for my troubles--a man as busy and important as you are--but, you see, it's not for myself. I'm not anybody, but you know who my brother is? My brother Alec?"

"Yes. Mr. Goodwin has informed me. An illustrious dressmaker."

"He is not merely a dressmaker. He is an artist--a great artist." She wasn't arguing, just stating a fact. "The trouble is about him, and that's why I must be careful with it. That's why I came to you--not only that you are a great detective--the very greatest, of course; everybody knows that--but also that you are a gentleman. So I know you are worthy of confidence."

She stopped, apparently for acknowledgment. Wolfe obliged her: "Umph." I was thinking that I might also have warned her not to spread the butter too thick.

She resumed, "So it is understood I am trusting you?"

"You may," he growled.

She hesitated, seeming to consider if that point was properly covered, and decided that it was. "Then I'll tell you. I must explain that in France, where my brother and I were born and brought up, our name was not 'Gallant.' What it was doesn't matter. I have been in this country only four years. Alec came here in 1946, more than a year after the war ended. He had changed his name to Gallant and entered legally under that name. Within five years he had made a reputation as a designer, and then--I don't suppose you remember his fall collection in 1953?"

Wolfe merely grunted.

She fluttered a little hand. "But of course you are not married, and feeling as you do about women--" She let that hang. "Anyway, that collection showed everybody what my brother was--a creator, a true creator. He got financial backing, more than he needed, and opened his place on Fifty-fourth Street. That was when he sent for me to come to America, and I was glad to. From 1953 on, it has been all a triumph--many triumphs. Of course I have not had any hand in them, but I have been with him and have tried to help in my little way. The glory of great success has been my brother's, but then, he can't do everything in an affair so big as that. You understand?"

"No one can do everything," Wolfe conceded.

She nodded. "Even you, you have Mr. Goodwin. My brother has Carl Drew, and Anita Prince, and Emmy Thorne--and me, if I count. But now trouble has come. The trouble is. a woman--a woman named Bianca Voss."

Wolfe made a face. She saw it and responded to it. "No, not an
affaire d'amour
, I'm sure of that. Though my brother has never married, I am certain this Bianca Voss has not attracted him -that way. She first came there a little more than a year ago. My brother had told us to expect her, but we don't know where he had met her or where she came from. He designed a dress and a suit for her, and they were made there in the shop, but no bill was ever sent her. Then he gave her one of the rooms, the offices, on the third floor, and she started to come every day, and soon the trouble began. My brother never told us she had any authority, but she took it and he allowed her to. Sometimes she interferes directly, and sometimes through him. She pokes her nose into everything. She got my brother to discharge a fitter, a very capable woman, who had been with him for years. She has a private telephone line in her office upstairs, but no one else has. About two months ago some of the others persuaded me to try to find out about her, what her standing is, and I asked my brother, but he wouldn't tell me. I begged him to, but he wouldn't."

"It sounds," Wolfe said, "as if she owns the business. Perhaps she bought it."

Flora shook her head. "No, she hasn't. I'm sure she hasn't. She wasn't one of the financial backers in 1953, and since then there have been good profits, and anyway, my brother has control. But now she's going to cheapen it and spoil it, and he's going to let her, we don't know why. She wants him to design a factory line to be promoted by a chain of department stores using his name. She wants him to sponsor a line of Alec Gallant cosmetics on a royalty basis. And other things. We're against all of them, and my brother is, too, really, but we think he's going to give in to her, and that will ruin it."

She stopped to swallow. "Mr. Wolfe, I want you to ruin her."

He grunted. "By wiggling a finger?"

"No, but you can. I'm sure you can. I'm sure she has some hold on him, but I don't know what. I don't know who she is or where she came from. I don't know if Bianca Voss is her real name. She speaks with an accent, and it may be French, but if it is, it's from some part of France I don't know; I'm not sure what it is. I don't know when she came to America; she may be here illegally. She may have known my brother in France during the war; I was young then. You can find out. If she has a hold on my brother, you can find out what it is. If she is blackmailing him, isn't that against the law? Wouldn't that ruin her?"

"It might. It might ruin him too."

"Not unless you betrayed him." She gave a little gasp and added hastily, "I don't mean that, I only mean I am trusting you, you said I could, and you could make her stop, and that's all you would have to do. Couldn't you do just that?"

"Conceivably." Wolfe wasn't enthusiastic. "I fear, madam, that you're biting off more than you can chew. The procedure you suggest would be prolonged, laborious, and extremely expensive. It would probably require elaborate investigation abroad. Aside from my fee, which would not be modest, the outlay would be considerable and the outcome highly uncertain. Are you in a position to undertake it?"