The Red Box Read Free

them. I did it right. You notice I restricted my list to the very best. Will you come?”
    Wolfe sighed. “Alec Martin has forty thousand plants at Rutherford. He wouldn’t sign it, eh?”
    “He would if I’d gone after him. Glueckner told me that you regard Martin as tricky and an inferior grower. Will you come?”
    “Humbug.” Wolfe sighed again. “An infernal imposition.” He wiggled a finger at the young man. “Look here. You seem to be prepared to stop at nothing. You interrupt these expert and worthy men at their tasks to get them to sign this idiotic paper. You badger me. Why?”
    “Because I want you to solve this case.”
    “Why me?”
    “Because no one else can. Wait till you see—”
    “Yes. Thank you. But why your overwhelming interest in the case? The murdered girl—what was she to you?”
    “Nothing.” Frost hesitated. He went on, “She was nothing to me. I knew her—an acquaintance. But the danger—damn it, let me tell you about it. The way it happened—”
    “Please, Mr. Frost.” Wolfe was crisp. “Permit me. If the murdered girl was nothing to you, what standing will there be for an investigator engaged by you? If you could not persuade Mr. McNair and the others to come to me, it would be futile for me to go to them.”
    “No, it wouldn’t. I’ll explain that—”
    “Very well. Another point. I charge high fees.”
    The young man flushed. “I know you do.” He leaned forward in his chair. “Look, Mr. Wolfe. I’ve thrown away a lot of my father’s money since I put on long pants. A good gob of it in the past two years, producing shows, and they were all flops. But now I’ve got a hit. It opened two weeks ago, and it’s a ten weeks buy.
Bullets for Breakfast
. I’ll have plenty of cash to pay your fee. If only you’ll find out where the hell that poison came from—and help me find a way.…”
    He stopped. Wolfe prompted him, “Yes, sir? A way—”
    Frost frowned. “A way to get my cousin out of that murderous hole. My ortho-cousin, the daughter of my father’s brother.”
    “Indeed.” Wolfe surveyed him. “Are you an anthropologist?”
    “No.” Frost flushed again. “I told you, I’m in show business. I can pay your fee—within reason, or evenwithout reason. But we ought to have an understanding about that. Of course the amount of the fee is up to you, but my idea would be to split it, half to find out where that candy came from, and the other half for getting my cousin Helen away from that place. She’s as stubborn as you are, and you’ll probably have to earn the first half of the fee in order to earn the second, but I don’t care if you don’t. If you get her out of there without clearing up Molly Lauck’s death, half the fee is yours anyhow. But Helen won’t scare, that won’t work, and she has some kind of a damn fool idea about loyalty to this McNair, Boyden McNair. Uncle Boyd, she calls him. She’s known him all her life. He’s an old friend of Aunt Callie’s, Helen’s mother. Then there’s this dope, Gebert—but I’d better start at the beginning and sketch it—hey! You going now?”
    Wolfe had pushed his chair back and elevated himself to his feet. He moved around the end of his desk with his customary steady and not ungraceful deliberation.
    “Keep your seat, Mr. Frost. It is four o’clock, and I now spend two hours with my plants upstairs. Mr. Goodwin will take the details of the poisoning of Miss Molly Lauck—and of your family complications if they seem pertinent. For the fourth time, I believe it is, good day, sir.” He headed for the door.
    Frost jumped up, sputtering. “But you’re coming uptown—”
    Wolfe halted and ponderously turned. “Confound you, you know perfectly well I am! But I’ll tell you this, if Alec Martin’s signature had been on that outlandish paper I would have thrown it in the wastebasket. He splits bulbs. Splits them! —Archie. We shall meet Mr. Frost at the McNair place tomorrow morning at ten