“First I’d like to explain why we’re late.
I said on the telephone that I couldn’t make the appointment before Monday because I was expecting someone from out of town who had to be here.
It was a man from out west named Harlan Scovil.
He arrived this morning, and I saw him during the lunch hour, and arranged to meet him at a quarter past five, at his hotel, to bring him here.
I went for him, but he wasn’t there.
I waited and … well, I tried to make some inquiries.
Then I met Miss Lindquist and Mr. Walsh, as agreed, and we went back to Mr. Scovil’s hotel again.
We waited until a quarter past six, and decided it would be better to come on without him.”
“Is his presence essential?”
“I wouldn’t say essential.
At least not at this moment.
We left word, and he may join us here any second.
He must see you too, before we can do anything.
I should warn you, Mr. Wolfe, I have a very long story to tell.”
She hadn’t looked at me once. I decided to quit looking at her, and tried her companions.
They were just barely people.
Of course I remembered Harlan Scovil telling Anthony D.
Perry that he wasn’t Mike Walsh.
Apparently this bird was.
He was a scrawny little mick, built wiry, over sixty and maybe even seventy, dressed cheap but dean, sitting only half in his chair and keeping an ear palmed with his right hand.
The Lindquist dame, with a good square face and wearing a good brown dress, had size, though I wouldn’t have called her massive, first because it would have been only a half-truth, and second because she might have socked me.
I guess she was a fine woman, of the kind that would be more apt to be snapping a coffee cup in her fingers than a champagne glass.
Remembering Harlan Scovil to boot, it looked to me as if, whatever game Miss Fox was training for, she was picking some odd numbers for her team.
Wolfe had told her that the longer the story the sooner it ought to begin, and she was saying,
“It began forty years ago, in Silver City, Nevada.
But before I start it, Mr. Wolfe, I ought to tell you something that I hope will make you interested.
I’ve found out all I could about you, and I understand that you have remarkable abilities and an equally remarkable opinion of their cash value to people you do things for.”
Wolfe sighed.
“Each of us must choose his own brand of banditry, Miss Fox.”
“Certainly.
That is what I have done.
If you agree to help us, and if we are successful, your fee will be one hundred thousand dollars.”
Mike Walsh leaned forward and blurted,
“Ten per cent!
Fair enough?”
Hilda Undquist frowned at him.
Clara Fox paid no attention.
Wolfe said,
“The fee always depends.
You couldn’t hire me to hand you the moon.”
She laughed at him, and although I had my notebook out I decided to look at her in the pauses. She said,
“I won’t need it.
Is Mr. Goodwin going to take down everything?
With the understanding that if you decide not to help us his notes are to be given to me?”
Cagey Clara.
The creases of Wolfe’s cheeks unfolded a little.
“By all means.”
“All right.”
She brushed her hair back.
“I said it began forty years ago, but I won’t start there. I’ll start when I was nine years old, in 1918, the year my father was killed in the war, in France.