Three For The Chair Read Free Page B

half a dozen tries. Finally, just before Fritz announced dinner, I got Tim Evarts, assistant house dick, security officer to you, and asked him a few discreet questions. The answers were both for and against. For, the rent was paid on the de luxe Towers apartment, and the bar and restaurant staff all liked Johnny Arrow, especially his tipping standards. Against, Arrow had plugged a guy in the bar Saturday night, repeatedly and persistently, and had been removed by cops. Tim said that technically it had been a fine performance, but the Churchill bar wasn't the place for it.
    Fyfe had phoned that the arrangements had been made. At nine o'clock, when Doctor Frederick Buhl arrived, Wolfe and I were through in the dining room, having put away around four pounds of salmon mousse, Wolfe's own recipe, and a peck of summer salad, and were back in the office. The doorbell took me to the hall, and as I switched on the stoop light what I saw through the one-way glass panel of the front door gave me a double surprise. Doctor Buhl, if it was he, was no doddering old worn-out hick doc; he was an erect, gray-haired, well-dressed man of distinction. And with him was a young female having her own personal points of distinction, discernible even by a swift glance at a distance.
    I went and opened up. He moved aside for her to enter and then followed, saying that he was Doctor Buhl and had an appointment with Nero Wolfe. No hat covered his crown of distinguished gray hair, so there was nothing for the rack, and I led them down the hall and into the office. Inside, he halted to dart a glance around, then crossed to Wolfe's desk and said aggressively, 'I'm Frederick Buhl. David Fyfe asked me to come. What is all this nonsense?'
    'I don't know,' Wolfe murmured. He keeps his voice down to a murmur after a meal, unless goaded. 'I've been hired to find out. Sit down, sir. The young woman?'
    'She's the nurse. Miss Anne Goren. Sit down, Anne.'
    She was already sitting, in a chair I had moved up for her. I was making revisions in my opinion of Paul Fyfe. Probably he had been too impetuous, but the temptation had been strong; and the marks on her neck and cheeks and wrists must have been superficial since no scars were visible. Also a nurse's uniform is much more provocative than the blue cotton print she was wearing, with a bolero jacket to match. Even in the cotton print, I could have ' but skip it. She was there on business. She thanked me for the chair, coldly, no smile.
    Doctor Buhl, in the red leather chair, demanded, 'Well, what is it?'
    Wolfe murmured, 'Didn't Mr. Fyfe tell you?'
    'He told me that Paul thought there was something suspicious about Bert's death and wanted to go to the police, and David and Louise and Vincent Tuttle couldn't talk him out of it, and they agreed to get you to investigate and accept your decision, and he had talked with you, and you insisted on seeing me. I think it quite unnecessary. I am a reputable physician, and I signed a death certificate.'
    'So I understand,' Wolfe murmured. 'But if my decision is to be final it should be well fortified. I have no thought of challenging the propriety of your issuance of the death certificate. But there are a few questions. When did you last see Bertram Fyfe alive?'
    'Saturday evening. I was there half an hour, and left at twenty minutes past seven. The others were there, having dinner in the living room. He had refused to go to a hospital. I had put him under an oxygen tent, but he kept jerking it off, he wouldn't have it. I couldn't get him to leave it on, and neither could Miss Goren. He was in considerable pain, or said he was, but his temperature was down to a hundred and two. He was a difficult patient. He couldn't sleep, and I told the nurse to give him a quarter of a grain of morphine as soon as the guests had gone, and another quarter-grain an hour later if that didn't work ' he had had half a grain the night before.'
    'Then you returned to Mount Kisco?'
    'Yes.'
    'Did you