Champagne for One

I hung up and swivelled. "The timing," I told Wolfe, "couldn’t have been better. Satisfactory. I suppose you arranged it with her while I was out getting Laidlaw. That was Celia Grantham. She wants to see me. Urgently. Presumably to tell me why she insulted Laidlaw when he asked her to marry him, though she didn’t say." I arose. "Marvellous timing."

"Where?" Wolfe growled.

"At her home." I was on my way, and turned to correct it. "I mean her mother’s home. You have the number." I went.

Since there were at least twenty possible reasons, excluding personal ones, why Celia wanted to see me, and she had given no hint which it was, and since I would soon know anyhow, it would have been pointless to try to guess, so on the way uptown in a taxi that’s what I did. When I pushed the button in the vestibule of the Fifth Avenue mansion I had considered only half of them.

I was wondering which I would be for Hackett, the hired detective or the guest, but he didn’t have to face the problem. Celia was there with him and took my coat as I shed it and handed it to him, and then fastened on my elbow and steered me to the door of a room on the right that they called the hall room, and on through it. She shut the door and turned to me.

"Mother wants to see you," she said.

"Oh?" I raised a brow. "You said you did."

"I do, but it only occurred to me after Mother got me to decoy for her. The Police Commissioner is here, and they wanted to see you but thought you might not come, so she asked me to phone you, and I realized I wanted to see you too. They’re up in the music room, but first I want to ask you something. What is it about Edwin Laidlaw and that girl? Faith Usher."

That was turning the tables. Wolfe’s idea had been that I might manage, without showing any cards, to find out if she was on to our client’s secret, and here she was popping it at me and I had to play ignorant.

"Laidlaw?" I shook my head. "Search me. Why?"

"You don’t know about it?"

"No. Am I supposed to?"

"I thought you would, naturally, since it’s you that’s making all the trouble. You see, I may marry him some day. If he gets into a bad jam I’ll marry him now, since you’ve turned out to be a skunk. That’s based on inside information but is not guaranteed. Are you a skunk?"

"I'll think it over and let you know. What about Laidlaw and Faith Usher?"