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expect to for at least two months.”
    “After you phoned Mion what did you do?”
    “I stayed at the club. I ate dinner there and hadn’t quite finished when the news came that Mion had killed himself. So I’m still behind that ice cream and coffee.”
    “That’s too bad. When you phoned Mion, did you again try to persuade him not to press his claim against Mr. James?”
    Grove’s head straightened up. “Did I what?” he demanded.
    “You heard me,” Wolfe said rudely. “What’s surprising about it'Naturally Mrs.
    Mion has informed me, since I’m working for her. You were opposed to Mion’s asking for payment in the first place and tried to talk him out of it. You said the publicity would be so harmful that it wasn’t worth it. He demanded that you support the claim and threatened to cancel your contract if you refused. Isn’t that correct?”
    “It is not.” Grove’s black eyes were blazing. “It wasn’t like that at all! I merely gave him my opinion. When it was decided to make the claim I went along.”
    His voice went up a notch higher, though I wouldn’t have thought it possible. “I certainly did!”
    “I see.” Wolfe wasn’t arguing. “What is your opinion now, about Mrs. Mion’s claim?”
    “I don’t think she has one. I don’t believe she can collect. If I were in James’
    place I certainly wouldn’t pay her a cent.”
    Wolfe nodded. “You don’t like her, do you?”
    “Frankly, I don’t. No. I never have. Do I have to like her?”
    “No, indeed. Especially since she doesn’t like you either.” Wolfe shifted in his chair and leaned back. I could tell from the line of his lips, straightened out,
    that the next item on the agenda was one he didn’t care for, and I understood why when I saw his eyes level at Clara James. I’ll bet that if he had known that he would have to be dealing with that type he wouldn’t have taken the job. He spoke to her testily. “Miss James, you’ve heard what has been said?”
    “I was wondering,” she complained, as if she had been holding in a grievance,
    “if you were going to go on ignoring me. I was around too, you know.”
    “I know. I haven’t forgotten you.” His tone implied that he only wished he could. “When you had a drink in the Churchill bar with your father and Judge Arnold, why did they send you up to Mion’s studio to see him'What for?”
    Arnold and James protested at once, loudly and simultaneously. Wolfe, paying no attention to them, waited to hear Clara, her voice having been drowned by theirs.
    “… nothing to do with it,” she was finishing. “I sent myself.”
    “It was your own idea?”
    “Entirely. I have one once in a while, all alone.”
    “What did you go for?”
    “You don’t need to answer, my dear,” Arnold told her.
    She ignored him. “They told me what had happened at the conference, and I was mad. I thought it was a holdup - but I wasn’t going to tell Alberto that. I thought I could talk him out of it.”
    “You went to appeal to him for old times’ sake?”
    She looked pleased. “You have the nicest way of putting things! Imagine a girl my age having old times!”
    “I’m glad you like my diction, Miss James.” Wolfe was furious. “Anyhow, you went. Arriving at a quarter past six?”
    “Just about, yes.”
    “Did you see Mion?”
    “No.”
    “Why not?”
    “He wasn’t there. At least - ” She stopped. Her eyes weren’t glistening quite so much. She went on, “That’s what I thought then. I went to the thirteenth floor and rang the bell at the door to the studio. It’s a loud bell - he had it loud to be heard above his voice and the piano when he was practicing - but I couldn’t hear it from the hall because the door is soundproofed too, and after I had pushed the button a few times I wasn’t sure the bell was ringing so I knocked on the door. I like to finish anything I start, and I thought he must be there, so I rang the bell some more and took off my shoe and pounded