The League of Frightened Men

Remembering the mask that Paul Chapin had been using for a face as I saw him sitting in the Burton foyer the night before,I wasn't surprised that Cramer hadn't found him much of a conversationalist, and I wouldn't have expected to hear anything even if I had got to see him.

At Fourteenth Street I parked and went to a cigar store and phoned Wolfe. I told him, "Right again. They have to ask his wife whether he prefers white or dark meat, because he won't even tell them that. He's not interested in a lawyer.

Cramer wouldn't let me see him." ' Wolfe said, "Excellent. Proceed to Mrs.

Burton."

I went back to the roadster and rolled on uptown.

When they telephoned from the lobby to the Burton apartment to say that Mr.

Goodwin was there, I was hoping she hadn't got a new slant on this and that during the* night. As Wolfe had said once, you can depend on a woman for anything except – constancy. But she had stayed put; I was nodded to the elevator. Upstairs I was taken into the same room as the night before by a maid I hadn't seen – the housekeeper, Mrs. Kurtz, I surmised. She looked hostile and determined enough to make me contented that I didn't need to question her about a key or anything else.

Mrs. Burton sat in a chair by a window.

She looked pale. If people had been with her she had sent them away. I told her I wouldn't sit down, I only had a few questions Nero Wolfe had given me. I read the first one from my pad:* "Did Paul Chapin say anything whatever to you last night besides what you have already told me, and if so, what?"

She said, "No. Nothing."

"Inspector Cramer showed you the gun that your husband was shot with. How sure are you that it was your husband's, the one he kept in the drawer of his desk?"

She said, "Quite sure. His initials were on it, it was a gift from a friend."

"During the fifty minutes that Dora Chapin was in the apartment last evening, was there any time when she went, or could have gone, to the study, and if so was there anyone else in the study at that time?"

She said, "No." Then the frown came into her eyes. "But wait – yes, there was. | Soon after she came I sent her to the study tor a book. I suppose there was no one there. My husband was in his room dressing."

"This next one is the last. Do you know if Mr. Bowen was at any time alone in the study?"

She said, "Yes, he was. My husband came to my room to ask me a question."

I put the pad in my pocket, and said to her, "You might tell me what the question was."

"No, Mr. Goodwin. I think not."