Read Online The Twelve Crimes of Christmas by Martin H. Greenberg et al (Ed) - Free Book Online

of blood. Is it all right for me to
empty my ashtray?”
    “Yes.
Please do so.”
    “Then
what do I do?”
    “I’ll
tell you at six o’clock. Possibly earlier.”
    He
hung up. I went to the safe and looked in the cash drawer to see if Saul had
been supplied with generous funds, but the cash was as I had last seen it and
there was no entry in the book. I emptied the ashtray. I went to the kitchen,
where I found Fritz pouring a mixture into a bowl of fresh pork tenderloin, and
said I hoped Saul had enjoyed his lunch, and Fritz said he hadn’t stayed for
lunch. So steps must have been begun right after I left in the morning. I went
back to the office, read over the carbon copy of my statement before filing it,
and passed the time by thinking up eight different steps that Saul might have
been assigned, but none of them struck me as promising. A little after five the
phone rang and I answered. It was Saul. He said he was glad to know I was back
home safe, and I said I was too.
    “Just
a message for Mr. Wolfe,” he said. ‘Tell him everything is set, no snags.”
    “That’s
all?”
    “Right.
I’ll be seeing you.”
    I
cradled the receiver, sat a moment to consider whether to go up to the plant
rooms or use the house phone, decided the latter would do, and pulled it to me
and pushed the button. When Wolfe’s voice came it was peevish; he hates to be
disturbed up there.
    “Yes?”
    “Saul
called and said to tell you everything is set, no snags. Congratulations. Am I
in the way?”
    “Oddly
enough, no. Have chairs in place for visitors; ten should be enough. Four or
five will come shortly after six o’clock; I hope not more. Others will come
later.”
    “Refreshments?”
    “Liquids,
of course. Nothing else.”
    “Anything
else for me?”
    “No.”
    He
was gone. Before going to the front room for chairs, and to the kitchen for
supplies, I took time out to ask myself whether I had the slightest notion what
kind of charade he was cooking up this time. I hadn’t.
    VII
    It
was four. They all arrived between six-fifteen and six-twenty—first Mrs. Perry
Porter Jerome and her son Leo, then Cherry Quon, and last Emil Hatch. Mrs.
Jerome copped the red leather chair, but I moved her, mink and all, to one of
the yellow ones when Cherry came. I was willing to concede that Cherry might be
headed for a very different kind of chair, wired for power, but even so I
thought she rated that background and Mrs. Jerome didn’t. By six-thirty, when I
left them to cross the hall to the dining room, not a word had passed among
them.
    In
the dining room Wolfe had just finished a bottle of beer. “Okay,” I told him, “it’s
six-thirty-one. Only four. Kiernan and Margot Dickey haven’t shown.”
    “Satisfactory.”
He arose. “Have they demanded information?”
    “Two
of them have, Hatch and Mrs. Jerome. I told them it will come from you, as
instructed. That was easy, since I have none.”
    He
headed for the office, and I followed. Though they didn’t know, except Cherry,
that he had poured champagne for them the day before, introductions weren’t
necessary because they had all met him during the tapestry hunt. After circling
around Cherry in the red leather chair, he stood behind his desk to ask them
how they did, then sat.
    “I
don’t thank you for coming,” he said, “because you came in your own interest,
not mine. I sent—”
    “I
came,” Hatch cut in, sourer than ever, “to find out what you’re up to.”
    “You
will,” Wolfe assured him. “I sent each of you an identical message, saying that
Mr. Goodwin has certain information which he feels he must give the police not
later than tonight, but I have persuaded him to let me discuss it with you first.
Before I—”
    “I
didn’t know others would be here,” Mrs. Jerome blurted, glaring at Cherry.
    “Neither
did I,” Hatch said, glaring at Mrs. Jerome.
    Wolfe
ignored it. “The message I sent Miss Quon was somewhat different, but that need
not concern you.