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Have they found a container?”
    He reached for a phone, sat a moment with his fingers on it, vetoed it, and settled back. “No,” he said, “I don’t think so. If they had I think one of our men would know.”
    “Did Jerin know or suspect he had been poisoned?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “Gazette men must have talked with men who were there.”
    “Sure, but the last four hours, at the hospital, only doctors and nurses were with him and they don’t talk.”
    “At the club, Jerin didn’t point to someone and say, ‘You did this, you bastard’?”
    “No. If he had, whom should he have pointed to?”
    “I’ll tell you later. Not today. Who went to the hospital'I know Dr Avery went in the ambulance, and Blount went. Who else?”
    “Three of the club members. One of them was Kalmus, the lawyer. I can get the names of the other two if you want them.”
    “Not unless it was Hausman or Yerkes or Farrow.”
    “It wasn’t.”
    “Then don’t bother. What’s the talk in the trade'I’ve heard this and that, at the Flamingo and around, but I don’t see much of journalists except you. What are they saying'Have they got angles?”
    “None that you would like. Of course there were plenty of angles the first few days, but not since they took Blount. Now the big question is did Jerin lay Sally or didn’t he. That wouldn’t interest you.”
    “Not a particle. Then they all think Blount’s wrapped up'No minority opinion?”
    “None worth mentioning. That’s why this from you, and Wolfe, is a bomb. Now there will be angles.”
    “Fine. So there’s been no interest in anyone else since Blount was charged, but how about before that'The four messengers. Hausman, Yerkes, Farrow, Kalmus. You must have got quite a collection of facts you didn’t print.”
    He eyed me exactly the way he eyed me when I took another look at my hole card,
    lifted one brow, and raised him the limit. “I’d give more than a nickel,” he said, “I’d give a shiny new dime, to know which one of them you want to know about. Damn it, we could help. We have our share of beetle-brains, but also there’s a couple of good men. At your service.”
    “Wonderful,” I said. “Send me their names and phone numbers. Tell them not to call me, I’ll call them. Now tell me about the messengers. Start with Kalmus.”
    He told me. Not only what he had in his head; he sent for the files. I filled eight pages of my notebook with the most useless-looking conglomeration of facts you could imagine. Of course you never know; Wolfe had once been able to crack a very hard nut only because Fred Durkin had reported that a certain boy had bought bubble gum at two different places, but there’s no point in bothering to tell you that Yerkes had been a halfback at Yale or that Farrow had a habit of getting bounced out of night clubs. I’ll keep it to a minimum:
    Ernst Hausman, seventy-two, retired but still owner of a half interest in a big Wall Street firm, was a widower with no children, no friends (Blount didn’t count?), and no dogs. His obsession with chess was common knowledge. Owned the finest collection of chessmen in the world, some two hundred sets, one of Imperial jade, white and green.
    Morton Farrow, thirty-one, single, lived at the Blount apartment on Fifth Avenue (not mentioned by Sally). He was an assistant vice-president of the Blount Textiles Corporation. Had got a ticket for speeding the night of January thirtieth, the night of the affair at the Gambit Club.
    Charles W. Yerkes, forty-four, senior vice-president of the Continental Bank and Trust Company, was married and had two children. At the age of twenty-six he had come out eleventh in a field of fourteen in the annual tournament for the United States chess championship, and had entered no tournament since.
    Daniel Kalmus, fifty-one, prominent corporation lawyer, a partner in the firm of McKinney, Best, Kalmus, and Green, was a widower, with four children, all married. One of the club