Rex Stout - Nero Wolfe 18

by Curtains for Three

  “No.” She dropped onto a chair as if she needed support quick. “Wayne Safford.”

  “Arrested what for?”

  “I don’t know. I saw him at the stable this morning and then I went downtown to see about a job. A while ago I phoned Lucy, my best friend here, and she told me there was talk about Vic Talbott selling those designs to Broadyke, so I came to find out what was happening and when I learned that Talbott and Pohl had both been arrested I phoned Wayne to tell him about it, and the man there answered and said a policeman had come and taken Wayne with him.”

  “For why?”

  “The man didn’t know. How do I get to see him?”

  “You probably don’t.”

  “But I have to!”

  I shook my head. “You believe you have to, and I believe you have to, but the cops won’t. It depends on what his invitation said. If they just want to consult him about sweating horses he may be home in an hour. If they’ve got a hook in him, or think they have, God knows. You’re not a lawyer or a relative.”

  She sat and looked at me, sourer than ever. In a minute she spoke, bitterly. “You said yesterday I may be nice.”

  “Meaning I should mount my bulldozer and move heaven and earth?” I shook my head again. “Even if you were so nice it made my head swim, the best I could do for you this second would be to hold your hand, and judging from your expression that’s not what you have in mind. Would you mind telling me what you have got in your mind besides curiosity?”

  She got up, circled two corners of the desk to reach the phone, put it to her ear, and in a moment told the transmitter, “This is Audrey, Helen. Would you get me—No. Forget it.”

  She hung up, perched on a corner of the desk, and started giving me the chilly eye again, this time slanting down instead of up.

  “It’s me,” she declared.

  “What is?”

  “This trouble. Wherever I am there’s trouble.”

  “Yeah, the world’s full of it. Wherever anybody is there’s trouble. You get shaky ideas. Yesterday you were scared because you thought they were getting set to hang a murder on you, and not one of them has even hinted at it. Maybe you’re wrong again.”

  “No, I’m not.” She sounded grim. “There was that business of accusing me of stealing those designs. They didn’t have to pick me for that, but you notice they did. Now all of a sudden that’s cleared up, I’m out of that, and what happens? Wayne gets arrested for murder. Next thing—”

  “I thought you didn’t know what they took him for.”

  “I don’t. But you’ll see. He was with me, wasn’t he?” She slid off the desk and was erect. “I think—I’m pretty sure—I’m going to see Dorothy Keyes.”

  “She’s busy with a caller.”

  “I know it, but he may be gone.”

  “A man named Donaldson, and I’m wondering about him. I have a hunch Miss Keyes is starting a little investigation on her own. Do you happen to know if this Donaldson is a detective?”

  “I know he isn’t. He’s a lawyer and a friend of Mr. Keyes. I’ve seen him here several times. Do you—”

  What interrupted her was a man coming in the door and heading for us.

  It was a man I had known for years. “We’re busy,” I told him brusquely. “Come back tomorrow.”

  I should have had sense enough to give up kidding Sergeant Purley Stebbins of the Homicide Squad long ago, since it always glanced off and rolled away. When he got sore, as he often did, it wasn’t at the kidding but at what he considered my interference with the performance of his duty.

  “So you’re here,” he stated.

  “Yep. Miss Rooney, this is Sergeant—”

  “Oh, I’ve met him before.” Her face was just as sour at him as it had been at me.

  “Yeah, we’ve met,” Purley acquiesced. His honest brown eyes were at her. “I’ve been looking for you, Miss Rooney.”

  “Oh, my Lord, more questions?”

  “The same ones. Just checking up. You remember that statement you signed, where you said that Tuesday morning you were at the riding academy with Safford from a quarter to six until after half-past seven, and both of you were there all the time? You remember that?”

  “Certainly I do.”

  “Do you want to change it now?”

  Audrey frowned. “Change what?”

  “Your statement.”

  “Of course not. Why should I?”

  “Then how do you account for the fact that you were seen riding a horse into the park during that period, and Safford, on another horse, was with you, and Safford has admitted it?”

  “Count ten,” I snapped at her, “before you answer. Or even a hun—”

  “Shut up,” Purley snarled. “How do you account for it, Miss Rooney? You must have figured this might come and got something ready for it. What’s the answer?”

  Audrey had left her perch on the desk to get on her feet and face the pursuer. “Maybe,” she suggested, “someone couldn’t see straight. Who says he saw us?”

  “Okay.” Purley hauled a paper from his pocket and unfolded it. He looked at me. “We’re careful about these little details when that fat boss of yours has got his nose in.” He held the paper so Audrey could see it. “This is a warrant for your arrest as a material witness. Your friend Safford wanted to read his clear through. Do you?”

  She ignored his generous offer. “What does it mean?” she demanded.

  “It means you’re going to ride downtown with me.”

  “It also means—” I began.

  “Shut up.” Purley moved a step. His hand started for her elbow, but didn’t reach it, for she drew back and then turned and was on her way. He followed and was at her heels as she went out the door. Apparently she thought she had found a way to get to see her Wayne.

  I sat a little while with my lips screwed up, gazing at the ashtray on the desk. I shook my head at nothing in particular, just the state of things, reached for the phone, got an outside line, and dialed again.

  Wolfe’s voice answered.

  “Where’s Orrie?” I demanded. “Taking a nap on my bed?”

  “Where are you?” Wolfe inquired placidly.

  “Still in Keyes’ office. More of the same. Two more gone.”

  “Two more what? Where?”

  “Clients. In the hoosegow. We’re getting awful low—”

  “Who and why?”

  “Wayne Safford and Audrey Rooney.” I told him what had happened, without bothering to explain that Audrey had walked in before our previous conversation had ended. At the end I added, “So four out of five have been snaffled, and Talbott too. We’re in a fine fix. That leaves us with just one, Dorothy Keyes, and it wouldn’t surprise me if she was also on her way, judging from the look on her face when she heard who was—Hold it a minute.”

  What stopped me was the sight of another visitor entering the room. It was Dorothy Keyes. I told the phone, “I’ll call back,” hung up, and left my chair.

  Dorothy came to me. She was still human, more so if anything. The perky lift of her was completely gone, the color scheme of her visible skin was washed-out gray, and her eyes were pinched with trouble.

  “Mr. Donaldson gone?” I asked her.

  “Yes.”

  “It’s a bad day all around. Now Miss Rooney and Wayne Safford have been pinched. The police seem to think they left out something about that Tuesday morning. I was just telling Mr. Wolfe when you came—”

  “I want to see him,” she said.

  “Who? Mr. Wolfe?”

  “Yes. Immediately.”

  “What about?”

  I’ll be damned if her brows didn’t go up. The humanity I thought I had seen was only on the surface.

  “I’ll tell him that,” she stated, me being mud. “I must see him at once.”

  “You can’t, not at once,” I told her. “You could rush there in a taxi, but you might as well wait till I go to Sixty-fifth Street and get my car, because it’s after four o’clo
ck and he’s up with the orchids, and he wouldn’t see you until six even though you are the only client he’s got still out of jail.”

  “But this is urgent!”

  “Not for him it isn’t, not until six o’clock. Unless you want to tell me about it. I’m permitted upstairs. Do you?”

  “No.”

  “Then shall I go get my car?”

  “Yes.”

  I went.

  XII

  At three minutes past six Wolfe, down from the plant rooms, joined us in the office. By the time Dorothy and I had got there she had made it perfectly plain that as far as I was concerned she was all talked out, our conversation during the ride downtown having consisted of her saying at one point, “Look out for that truck,” and me replying, “I’m driving,” so during the hour’s wait I hadn’t even asked her if she wanted a drink. And when Wolfe had entered and greeted her, and got his bulk adjusted in his chair behind his desk, the first thing she said was, “I want to speak to you privately.” Wolfe shook his head.

  “Mr. Goodwin is my confidential assistant, and if he didn’t hear it from you he soon would from me. What is it?”

  “But this is very—personal.”

  “Most things said in this room by visitors are. What is it?”

  “There is no one I can go to but you.” Dorothy was in one of the yellow chairs, facing him, leaning forward to him. “I don’t know where I stand, and I’ve got to find out. A man is going to tell the police that I forged my father’s name to a check. Tomorrow morning.”

  Her face was human again, with her eyes pinched.

  “Did you?” Wolfe asked.

  “Forge the check? Yes.”

  I lifted my brows.

  “Tell me about it,” Wolfe said.

  It came out, and was really quite simple. Her father hadn’t given her enough money for the style to which she wanted to accustom herself. A year ago she had forged a check for three thousand dollars, and he had of course discovered it and had received her promise that she would never repeat. Recently she had forged another one, this time for five thousand dollars, and her father had been very difficult about it, but there had been no thought in his head of anything so drastic as having his daughter arrested.

  Two days after his discovery of this second offense he had been killed. He had left everything to his daughter, but had made a lawyer named Donaldson executor of the estate, not knowing, according to Dorothy, that Donaldson hated her. And now Donaldson had found the forged check among Keyes’ papers, with a memorandum attached to it in Keyes’ handwriting, and had called on Dorothy that afternoon to tell her that it was his duty, both as a citizen and as a lawyer, considering the manner of Keyes’ death, to give the facts to the police. It was an extremely painful duty, he had asserted, but he would just have to grin and bear it.

  I will not say that I smirked as I got these sordid facts scratched into my notebook, but I admit that I had no difficulty in keeping back the tears.

  Wolfe, having got answers to all the questions that had occurred to him, leaned back and heaved a sigh. “I can understand,” he murmured, “that you felt impelled to get rid of this nettle by passing it on to someone. But even if I grasped it for you, what then? What do I do with it?”

  “I don’t know.” It is supposed to make people feel better to tell their troubles, but apparently it made Dorothy feel worse. She sounded as forlorn as she looked.

  “Moreover,” Wolfe went on, “what are you afraid of? The property, including the bank balance, now belongs to you. It would be a waste of time and money for the District Attorney’s office to try to get you indicted and brought to trial, and it wouldn’t even be considered. Unless Mr. Donaldson is an idiot he knows that. Tell him so. Tell him I say he’s a nincompoop.” Wolfe wiggled a finger at her. “Unless he thinks you killed your father and wants to help get you electrocuted. Does he hate you that much?”

  “He hates me,” Dorothy said harshly, “all he can.”

  “Why?”

  “Because once I let him think I might marry him, and he announced it, and then I changed my mind. He has strong feelings. It was strong when he loved me, and it is just as strong now when he hates me. Any way he can use that check to hurt me, he’ll do it.”

  “Then you can’t stop him, and neither can I. The forged check and your father’s memorandum are legally in his possession, and nothing can keep him from showing them to the police. Does he ride horseback?”

  “Oh, my God,” Dorothy said hopelessly. She stood up. “I thought you were clever! I thought you would know what to do!” She made for the door, but at the sill she turned. “You’re just a cheap shyster too! I’ll handle the dirty little rat myself!”

  I got up and went to the hall to let her out, to make sure that the door was properly closed behind her. When I was back in the office I sat down and tossed the notebook into a drawer and remarked, “Now she’s got us all tagged. I’m a coward, you’re a shyster, and the executor of her father’s estate is a rat. That poor kid needs some fresh contacts.”

  Wolfe merely grunted, but it was a good-humored grunt, for the dinner hour was near, and he never permits himself to get irritated just before a meal.

  “So,” I said, “unless she does some fancy handling in a hurry she will be gathered in before noon tomorrow, and she was the last we had. All five of them, and also the suspect we were supposed to pin it on. I hope Saul and Orrie are doing better than we are. I have a date for dinner and a show with a friend, but I can break it if there’s anything I can be doing—”

  “Nothing, thank you.”

  I glared at him. “Oh, Saul and Orrie are doing it?”

  “There’s nothing for this evening, for you. I’ll be here, attending to matters.”

  Yes, he would. He would be here, reading books, drinking beer, and having Fritz tell anyone who called that he was engaged. It wasn’t the first time he had decided that a case wasn’t worth the effort and to hell with it. On such occasions my mission was to keep after him until I had him jarred loose, but this time my position was that if Orrie Cather could spend the afternoon in my chair he could damn well do my work. So I let it lay and went up to my room to redecorate for the evening out.

  It was a very nice evening on all counts. Dinner at Lily Rowan’s, while not up to the standard Fritz had got my palate trained to, was always good. So was the show, and so was the dance band at the Flamingo Club, where we went afterward to get better acquainted, since I had only known her seven years. What with this and that I didn’t get home until after three o’clock, and, following routine, looked in at the office to jiggle the handle of the safe and glance around. If there was a message for me Wolfe always left it on my desk under a paperweight, and there one was, on a sheet from his pad, in his small thin handwriting that was as easy to read as type.

  I ran through it.

  AG: Your work on the Keyes case has been quite satisfactory. Now that it is solved, you may proceed as arranged and go to Mr. Hewitt’s place on Long Island in the morning to get those plants. Theodore will have the cartons ready for you. Don’t forget to watch the ventilation.

  NW

  I read it through again and turned it over to look at the back, to see if there was another installment, but it was blank.

  I sat at my desk and dialed a number. None of my closest friends or enemies was there, but I got a sergeant I knew named Rowley, and asked him, “On the Keyes case, do you need anything you haven’t got?”

  “Huh?” He always sounded hoarse. “We need everything. Send it C.O.D.”

  “A guy told me you had it on ice.”

  “Aw, go to bed.”

  He was gone. I sat a moment and then dialed again, the number of the Gazette office. Lon Cohen had gone home, but one of the journalists told me that as far as they knew the Keyes case was still back on a shelf, collecting dust.

  I crumpled Wolfe’s message and tossed it in the wastebasket, muttered, “The damn fat faker,” and went up to bed.

&n
bsp; XIII

  In the Thursday morning papers there wasn’t a single word in the coverage of the Keyes case to indicate that anyone had advanced even an inch in the hot pursuit of the murderer.

  And I spent the whole day, from ten to six, driving to Lewis Hewitt’s place on Long Island, helping to select and clean and pack ten dozen yearling plants, and driving back again. I did no visible fuming, but you can imagine my state of mind, and on my way home, when a cop stopped me as I was approaching Queens-boro Bridge, and actually went so low as to ask me where the fire was, I had to get my tongue between my teeth to keep myself from going witty on him.

  While I was lugging the last carton of plants up the stoop I had a surprise. A car I had often seen before, with PD on it, rolled up to the curb and stopped behind the sedan, and Inspector Cramer emerged from it.

  “What has Wolfe got now?” he demanded, coming up the steps to me.

  “A dozen zygopetalum,” I told him coldly, “a dozen renanthera, a dozen odontoglossum—”

  “Let me by,” he said rudely.

  I did so.

  What I should have done, to drive it in that I was now a delivery boy and not a detective, was to go on helping Theodore get the orchids upstairs, and I set my teeth and started to do that, but it wasn’t long before Wolfe’s bellow came from the office. “Archie!”

  I went on in. Cramer was in the red leather chair with an unlighted cigar tilted toward the ceiling by the grip of his teeth. Wolfe, his tightened lips showing that he was enjoying a quiet subdued rage, was frowning at him.

  “I’m doing important work,” I said curtly.

  “It can wait. Get Mr. Skinner on the phone. If he has left his office, get him at home.”

  I would have gone to much greater lengths if Cramer hadn’t been there. As it was, all I did was snort as I crossed to my desk and sat down and started to dial.

  “Cut it!” Cramer barked savagely.

  I went on dialing.

  “I said stop it!”

  “That will do, Archie,” Wolfe told me. I turned from the phone and saw he was still frowning at the inspector but his lips had relaxed. He used them for speech. “I don’t see, Mr. Cramer, what better you can ask than the choice I offer. As I told you on the phone, give me your word that you’ll cooperate with me on my terms, and I shall at once tell you about it in full detail, including of course the justification for it. Or refuse to give me your word, that’s the alternative, and I shall ask Mr. Skinner if the District Attorney’s office would like to cooperate with me. I guarantee only that no harm will be done, but my expectation is that the case will be closed. Isn’t that fair enough?”