Rex Stout - Nero Wolfe 18

by Curtains for Three

  I had been there eight or ten minutes, and getting relaxed and a little less bitter, when the door opened and she came in. Her companions were not along. By the time she had closed the door and turned to me I had got to my feet, with a friendly leer, and had begun, “I was just sitting here thinking—”

  The look on her face stopped me. There was nothing wrong with it basically, but something had got it out of kilter. She headed for me, got halfway, jerked to a stop, sank into one of the yellow chairs, and squeaked, “Could I have a drink?”

  Upstairs her voice had not squeaked at all. I had liked it.

  “Scotch?” I asked her. “Rye, bourbon, gin—”

  She just fluttered a hand. I went to the cupboard and got a hooker of Old Woody. Her hand was shaking as she took the glass, but she didn’t spill any, and she got it down in two swallows, as if it had been milk, which wasn’t very ladylike. She shuddered all over and shut her eyes. In a minute she opened them again and said hoarsely, the squeak gone, “Did I need that!”

  “More?”

  She shook her head. Her bright brown eyes were moist, from the whisky, as she gave me a full straight look with her head tilted up. “You’re Archie Goodwin,” she stated.

  I nodded. “And you’re the Queen of Egypt?”

  “I’m a baboon,” she declared. “I don’t know how they ever taught me to talk.” She looked around for something to put the glass on, and I moved a step and reached for it. “Look at my hand shake,” she complained. “I’m all to pieces.”

  She kept her hand out, looking at it, so I took it in mine and gave it some friendly but gentle pressure. “You do seem a little upset,” I conceded. “I doubt if your hand usually feels clammy. When I saw you upstairs—”

  She jerked the hand away and blurted, “I want to see Nero Wolfe. I want to see him right away, before I change my mind.” She was gazing up at me, with the moist brown eyes. “My God, I’m in a fix now all right! I’m one scared baboon! I’ve made up my mind, I’m going to get Nero Wolfe to get me out of this somehow—why shouldn’t he? He did a job for Dazy Perrit, didn’t he? Then I’m through. I’ll get a job at Macy’s or marry a truck driver! I want to see Nero Wolfe!”

  I told her it couldn’t be done until the party was over.

  She looked around. “Are people coming in here?”

  I told her no.

  “May I have another drink, please?”

  I told her she should give the first one time to settle, and instead of arguing she arose and got the glass from the corner of Wolfe’s desk, went to the cupboard, and helped herself. I sat down and frowned at her. Her line sounded fairly screwy for a member of the Manhattan Flower Club, or even for a daughter of one. She came back to her chair, sat, and met my eyes. Looking at her straight like that could have been a nice way to pass the time if there had been any chance for a meeting of minds, but it was easy to see that what her mind was fighting with was connected with me only accidentally.

  “I could tell you,” she said, hoarse again.

  “Many people have,” I said modestly.

  “I’m going to.”

  “Good. Shoot.”

  “I’m afraid I’ll change my mind and I don’t want to.”

  “Okay. Ready, go.”

  “I’m a crook.”

  “It doesn’t show,” I objected. “What do you do, cheat at canasta?”

  “I didn’t say I’m a cheat.” She cleared her throat for the hoarseness. “I said I’m a crook. Remind me someday to tell you the story of my life, how my husband got killed in the war and I broke through the gate. Don’t I sound interesting?”

  “You sure do. What’s your line, orchid-stealing?”

  “No. I wouldn’t be small and I wouldn’t be dirty—that’s what I thought, but once you start it’s not so easy. You meet people and you get involved. You can’t go it alone. Two years ago four of us took over a hundred grand from a certain rich woman with a rich husband. I can tell you about that one, even names, because she couldn’t move anyhow.”

  I nodded. “Blackmailers’ customers seldom can. What—”

  “I’m not a blackmailer!” Her eyes were blazing.

  “Excuse me. Mr. Wolfe often says I jump to conclusions.”

  “You did that time.” She was still indignant. “A blackmailer’s not a crook, he’s a snake! Not that it really matters. What’s wrong with being a crook is the other crooks—they make it dirty whether you like it or not. I’ve been up to my knees in it. It makes a coward of you too—that’s the worst. I had a friend once—as close as a crook ever comes to having a friend—and a man killed her, strangled her, and if I had told what I knew about it they could have caught him, but I was afraid to go to the cops, so he’s still loose. And she was my friend! That’s getting down toward the bottom. Isn’t it?”

  “Fairly low,” I agreed, eyeing her. “Of course I don’t know you any too well. I don’t know how you react to two stiff drinks. Maybe your hobby is stringing private detectives. If so, why don’t you wait for Mr. Wolfe? It would be more fun with two of us.”

  She simply ignored it. “I realized long ago,” she went on as if it were a one-way conversation, “that I had made a mistake. I wasn’t what I had thought I was going to be—a romantic reckless outlaw. You can’t do it that way, or anyhow I couldn’t. I was just a crook and I knew it, and about a year ago I decided to break loose. A good way to do it would have been to talk to someone the way I’m talking to you now, but I didn’t have sense enough to see that. And so many people were involved. It was so involved! You know?”

  I nodded. “Yeah, I know.”

  “So I kept putting it off. We got a good one in December and I went to Florida for a vacation, but down there I met a man with a lead and we followed it up here just a week ago. That’s what I’m working on now. That’s what brought me here today. This man—”

  She stopped abruptly.

  “Well?” I invited her.

  She looked dead serious, not more serious, but a different kind. “I’m not putting anything on him,” she declared. “I don’t owe him anything and I don’t like him, but this is strictly about me and no one else—only I had to explain why I’m here. I wish to God I’d never come!”

  There was no question about that coming from her heart, unless she had done a lot of rehearsing in front of a mirror.

  “It got you this talk with me,” I reminded her.

  She was looking straight through me and beyond. “If only I hadn’t come! If only I hadn’t seen him!” She leaned toward me for emphasis. “I’m either too smart or not smart enough, that’s my trouble. I should have looked away from him, turned away quick, when I realized I knew who he was, before he turned and saw it in my eyes. But I was so shocked I couldn’t help it! For a second I couldn’t move. God, I was dumb! I stood there staring at him, thinking I wouldn’t have recognized him if he hadn’t had a hat on, and then he looked at me and saw what was happening. I knew then all right what an awful fool I was, and I turned away and moved off, but it was too late. I know how to manage my face with nearly anybody, anywhere, but that was too much for me. It showed so plain that Mrs. Orwin asked me what was the matter with me and I had to try to pull myself together—then seeing Nero Wolfe gave me the idea of telling him, only of course I couldn’t right there with the crowd—and then I saw you going out and as soon as I could break away I came down to find you.”

  She tried smiling at me, but it didn’t work so good. “Now I feel some better,” she said hopefully.

  I nodded. “That’s good bourbon. Is it a secret who you recognized?”

  “No. I’m going to tell Nero Wolfe.”

  “You decided to tell me.” I flipped a hand. “Suit yourself. Whoever you tell, what good will that do?”

  “Why—then he can’t do anything to me.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because he wouldn’t dare. Nero Wolfe will tell him that I’ve told about him, so that if anything happened to me he would know it was him,
and he’d know who he is—I mean Nero Wolfe would know—and so would you.”

  “We would if we had his name and address.” I was studying her. “He must be quite a specimen, to scare you that bad. And speaking of names, what’s yours?”

  She made a little noise that could have been meant for a laugh. “Do you like Marjorie?”

  “So-so.”

  “I used Evelyn Carter in Paris once. Do you like that?”

  “Not bad. What are you using now?”

  She hesitated, frowning.

  “Good Lord,” I protested, “you’re not in a vacuum, and I’m a detective. They took the names down at the door.”

  “Cynthia Brown,” she said.

  “I like that fine. That’s Mrs. Orwin you came with?”

  “Yes.”

  “She’s the current customer? The lead you picked up in Florida?”

  “Yes. But that’s—” She gestured. “That’s finished. That’s settled now, since I’m telling you and Nero Wolfe. I’m through.”

  “I know. A job at Macy’s or marry a truck driver. There’s one thing you haven’t told me, though—who was it you recognized?”

  She turned her head for a glance at the door and then turned it still farther to look behind her. When her face came back to me it was out of kilter again, with the teeth pinching the lower lip.

  “Can anyone hear us?” she asked.

  “Nope. That other door goes to the front room—today the cloakroom. Anyhow this room’s soundproofed, including the doors.”

  She glanced at the hall door again, returned to me, and lowered her voice. “This has to be done the way I say.”

  “Sure, why not?”

  “I wasn’t being honest with you.”

  “I wouldn’t expect it from a crook. Start over.”

  “I mean—” She used the teeth on the lip again. “I mean I’m not just scared about myself. I’m scared all right, but I don’t just want Nero Wolfe for what I said. I want him to get him for murder, but he has to keep me out of it. I don’t want to have anything to do with any cops—not now I don’t especially. I’m through. If he won’t do it that way—do you think he will?”

  I was feeling a faint tingle at the base of my spine. I only get that on special occasions, but this was unquestionably something special, if Marjorie Evelyn Carter Cynthia Brown wasn’t taking me for a ride to pay for the drinks.

  I gave her a hard look and didn’t let the tingle get into my voice. “He might, for you, if you pay him. What kind of evidence have you got? Any?”

  “I saw him.”

  “You mean today?”

  “I mean I saw him then.” She had her hands clasped tight. “I told you—I had a friend. I stopped in at her apartment that afternoon. I was just leaving—Doris was inside, in the bathroom—and as I got near the entrance door I heard a key turning in the lock, from the outside. I stopped, and the door came open and a man came in. When he saw me he just stood and stared. I had never met Doris’s bank account and I knew she didn’t want me to, and since he had a key I supposed of course it was him, making an unexpected call, so I mumbled something about Doris being in the bathroom and went past him, through the door and on out.”

  She paused. Her clasped hands loosened and then tightened again.

  “I’m burning my bridges,” she said, “but I can deny all this if I have to. I went and kept a cocktail date, and then phoned Doris’s number to ask if our dinner date was still on, considering the visit of the bank account. There was no answer, so I went back to her apartment and rang the bell, and there was no answer to that either. It was a self-service elevator place, no doorman or hallman, so there was no one to ask anything. Her maid found her body the next morning. The papers said she had been killed the day before. That man killed her. There wasn’t a word about him—no one had seen him enter or leave. And I didn’t open my mouth! I was a lousy coward!”

  “And today all of a sudden there he is, looking at orchids?”

  “Yes.”

  “It’s a pretty good script,” I acknowledged. “Are you sure—”

  “It’s no script! I wish to God it was!”

  “Okay. Are you sure he knows you recognized him?”

  “Yes. He looked straight at me, and his eyes—”

  She was stopped by the house phone buzzing. Stepping to my desk, I picked it up and asked it, “Well?”

  Nero Wolfe’s voice, peevish, came. “Archie!”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “What the devil are you doing? Come back up here!”

  “Pretty soon. I’m talking with a prospective client—”

  “This is no time for clients! Come at once!”

  The connection went. He had slammed it down. I hung up and went back to the prospective client. “Mr. Wolfe wants me upstairs. He didn’t stop to think in time that the Manhattan Flower Club has women in it as well as men. Do you want to wait here?”

  “Yes.”

  “If Mrs. Orwin asks about you?”

  “I didn’t feel well and went home.”

  “Okay. I shouldn’t be long—the invitations said two-thirty to five. If you want a drink, help yourself. What name does this murderer use when he goes to look at orchids?”

  She looked blank. I got impatient.

  “Damn it, what’s his name? This bird you recognized.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You don’t?”

  “No.”

  “Describe him.”

  She thought it over a little, gazing at me, and then shook her head. “I don’t think—” she said doubtfully. She shook her head again, more positive. “Not now. I want to see what Nero Wolfe says first.” She must have seen something in my eyes, or thought she did, for suddenly she came up out of her chair and moved to me and put a hand on my arm. “That’s all I mean,” she said earnestly. “It’s not you—I know you’re all right.” Her fingers tightened on my forearm. “I might as well tell you—you’d never want any part of me anyhow—this is the first time in years, I don’t know how long, that I’ve talked to a man just straight—you know, just human? You know, not figuring on something one way or another. I—” She stopped for a word, and a little color showed in her cheeks. She found the word. “I’ve enjoyed it very much.”

  “Good. Me too. Call me Archie. I’ve got to go, but describe him. Just sketch him.”

  But she hadn’t enjoyed it that much. “Not until Nero Wolfe says he’ll do it,” she said firmly.

  I had to leave it at that, knowing as I did that in three more minutes Wolfe might have a fit. Out in the hall I had the notion of passing the word to Saul and Fritz to give departing guests a good look, but rejected it because (a) they weren’t there, both of them presumably being busy in the cloakroom, (b) he might have departed already, and (c) I had by no means swallowed a single word of Cynthia’s story, let alone the whole works. So I headed for the stairs and breasted the descending tide of guests leaving.

  Up in the plant rooms there were plenty left. When I came into Wolfe’s range he darted me a glance of cold fury, and I turned on the grin. Anyway, it was a quarter to five, and if they took the hint on the invitation it wouldn’t last much longer.

  II

  They didn’t take the hint on the dot, but it didn’t bother me because my mind was occupied. I was now really interested in them—or at least one of them, if he had actually been there and hadn’t gone home.

  First there was a chore to get done. I found the three Cynthia had been with, a female and two males, over by the odontoglossum bench in the cool room. Getting through to them, I asked politely, “Mrs. Orwin?”

  She nodded at me and said, “Yes?” Not quite tall enough but plenty plump enough, with a round full face and narrow little eyes that might have been better if they had been wide open, she struck me as a lead worth following. Just the pearls around her neck and the mink stole over her arm would have made a good haul, though I doubted if that was the kind of loot Cynthia specialized in.

  �
��I’m Archie Goodwin,” I said. “I work here.”

  I would have gone on if I had known how, but I needed a lead myself, since I didn’t know whether to say Miss Brown or Mrs. Brown. Luckily one of the males horned in.

  “My sister?” he inquired anxiously.

  So it was a brother-and-sister act. As far as looks went he wasn’t a bad brother at all. Older than me maybe, but not much, he was tall and straight, with a strong mouth and jaw and keen gray eyes. “My sister?” he repeated.

  “I guess so. You are—”

  “Colonel Brown. Percy Brown.”

  “Yeah.” I switched back to Mrs. Orwin. “Miss Brown asked me to tell you that she went home. I gave her a little drink and it seemed to help, but she decided to leave. She asked me to apologize for her.”

  “She’s perfectly healthy,” the colonel asserted. He sounded a little hurt. “There’s nothing wrong with her.”

  “Is she all right?” Mrs. Orwin asked.

  “For her,” the other male put in, “you should have made it three drinks. Three big ones. Or just hand her the bottle.”

  His tone was mean and his face was mean, and anyhow that was no way to talk in front of the help in a strange house, meaning me. He was some younger than Colonel Brown, but he already looked enough like Mrs. Orwin, especially the eyes, to make it more than a guess that they were mother and son. That point was settled when she commanded him, “Be quiet, Gene!” She turned to the colonel. “Perhaps you should go and see about her?”

  He shook his head, with a fond but manly smile at her. “It’s not necessary, Mimi. Really.”