Champagne for One

"So far," Saul reported, "we’re only scouting. Marjorie Betz lives with Mrs Elaine Usher at the address on Eighty-seventh Street. Mrs Usher is the tenant. I got in to see Miss Betz by one of the standard lines, and got nowhere. Mrs Usher left Wednesday night, and she doesn’t know where she is or when she’ll be back. We have seen two elevator men, the janitor, five neighbours, fourteen people in local shops and stores, and a hackie Mrs Usher patronizes, and Orrie is now after the maid, who left at five-thirty. Do you want Mrs Usher’s description?"

Wolfe said no and I said yes simultaneously. "Very well," Wolfe said, "oblige him."

"Around forty. We got as low as thirty-three and as high as forty-five. Five feet six, hundred and twenty pounds, blue eyes set close, oval face, takes good care of good skin, hair was light brown two years ago, now blonde, wears it loose, medium cut. Dresses well but a little flashy. Gets up around noon. Hates to tip. I think that’s fairly accurate, but this is a guess with nothing specific, that she has no job but is never short of money, and she likes men. She has lived in that apartment for eight years. Nobody ever saw a husband. Six of them knew the daughter, Faith, and liked her, but it has been four years since they last saw her and Mrs Usher never mentions her."

Wolfe grunted. "Surely that will do."

"Yes, sir. Do we proceed?"

"Yes."

"Okay. I’ll wait to see if Orrie gets anywhere with the maid, and if not I have a couple of ideas. Miss Betz may go out this evening, and the lock on the apartment door is only a Wyatt."

"The hackie she patronizes," I said. "She didn’t patronize him Wednesday night?"

"According to him, no. Fred found him. I haven’t seen him. Fred thinks he got it straight."

"You know," I said, "you say only a Wyatt, but you need more than a paper clip for a Wyatt. I could run up there with an assortment, and we could go into conference-"

"No," Wolfe said firmly. "You’re needed here."

For what, he didn’t say. After we hung up all he did was ask how I had disposed of Laidlaw and then ask for a report of the hour and a quarter I had spent with him, and I could have covered that in one sentence just by saying it had been a washout. But he kept pecking at it until dinner time. I knew what the idea was, and he knew I knew. It was simply that if I had gone to help Saul with an illegal entry into Elaine Usher’s apartment there was a chance, say one in a million, that I wouldn’t be there to answer the phone in the morning.