Too Many Cooks/Champagne for One Read Free

me, the brows faintly up. She gurgled. “He is chef de cuisine at the Corridona at San Remo. Didn’t you know that?”
    I nodded. “Yeah, I’ve seen a list of the fifteen. Yesterday, in the magazine section of the
Times
. I was just opening up. Do you do any cooking yourself?”
    “No. I hate it. Except I make good coffee.” She looked down as far as my tie—I had on a dark brown polkadot four-in-hand with a pin-stripe tan shirt—and up again. “I didn’t hear your name when Mr. Vukcic said it. Are you a detective too?”
    “The name is Archie Goodwin. Archibald means sacred and good, but in spite of that my name is not Archibald. I’ve never heard a French girl say Archie. Try it once.”
    “I’m not French.” She frowned. Her skin was so smooth that the frown was like a ripple on a new tennis ball. “I’m Catalana. I’m sure I could say Archie. Archiearchiearchie. Good?”
    “Wonderful.”
    “Are you a detective?”
    “Certainly.” I got out my wallet and fingered in it and pulled out a fishing license I had got in Maine the summer before. “Look. See my name on that?”
    She read at it. “Ang … ling?” She looked doubtful, and handed it back. “And that Maine? I suppose that is your arrondissement?”
    “No. I haven’t got any. We have two kinds of detectives in America, might and main. I’m the main kind. That means that I do very little of the hard work, like watering the horses and shooting prisoners and greasing the chutes. Mostly all I do is think, as for instance when they want someone to think what to do next. Mr. Wolfe there is the might kind. You see how big and strong he is. He can run like a deer.”
    “But … what are the horses for?”
    I explained patiently. “There is a law in this country against killing a man unless you have a horse on him. When two or more men are throwing dice for the drinks, you will often hear one of them say, ‘horse on you’ or ‘horse on me.’ You can’t kill a man unless you say that before he does. Another thing you’ll hear a man say, if he finds out something is only a hoax, he’ll call it a mare’s nest, because it’s full of mares and no horses. Still another trouble is a horse’s feathers. In case it has feathers—”
    “What is a mare?”
    I cleared my throat. “The opposite of a horse. As you know, everything must have its opposite. There can’t be a rightwithout a left, or a top without a bottom, or a best without a worst. In the same way there can’t be a mare without a horse or a horse without a mare. If you were to take, say, ten million horses—”
    I was stopped, indirectly, by Wolfe. I had been too interested in my chat with the Catalana girl to hear the others’ talk; what interrupted me was Vukcic rearing himself up and inviting Miss Berin to accompany him to the club car. It appeared that Wolfe had expressed a desire for a confidential session with her father, and I put the eye on him, wondering what kind of a charade he was arranging. One of his fingers was tapping gently on his knee, so I knew it was a serious project. When Constanza got up I did too.
    I bowed. “If I may?” To Wolfe: “You can send the porter to the club car if you need me. I haven’t finished explaining to Miss Berin about mares.”
    “Mares?” Wolfe looked at me suspiciously. “There is no information she can possibly need about mares which Marko can’t supply. We shall—I am hoping—we shall need your notebook. Sit down.”
    So Vukcic carried her off. I took the undersized chair again, feeling like issuing an ultimatum for an eight-hour day, but knowing that a moving train was the last place in the world for it. Vukcic was sure to disillusion her about the horse lesson, and might even put a crimp in my style for good.
    Berin had filled his pipe again. Wolfe was saying, in his casual tone that meant look out for an attack in force, “I wanted, for one thing, to tell you of an experience I had twenty-five years ago. I trust it