Stout, Rex - Black Orchids

by Black Orchids (lit)

  It was a little after midnight when the doorbell rang again, and I went to answer it and got an unpleasant surprise. There on the stoop was Johnny Keems. I never resented any of the other boys being called in to work on a case, and I didn't actually resent Johnny either, only he gave me a pain in the back of my lap with his smirking around trying to edge in on my job. So I didn't howl with delight at sight of him, and then I nearly did howl, not with delight, when I saw he wasn't alone and what it was that kept him from being alone.

  It was Anne Tracy standing behind him. And standing behind her was Fred Updegraff.

  "Greetings," I said, concealing my emotions, and they all entered. And the sap said to her, "This way, Miss Tracy," and started for the office with her!

  I stepped around and blocked him. "Some day," I said, "you'll skin your nose. Wait in the front room."

  He smiled at me the way he does. I waited until all three of them had gone through the door to the front room and it had closed-behind them, and then returned to the office and told Wolfe:

  "I didn't know you had called out the army while I was gone. Visitors. The guy who wants my job and is welcome to it at any time, and my future wife, and the wholesome young fellow with the serious chin."

  "Ah," Wolfe said. "That's like Johnny. He should have phoned." He grunted. He leaned back. His eyes rested on Rose an instant, then they closed, and his lips pushed out, and in, and out and in.

  His eyes opened. "Bring them in here."

  "But-" Rose began, starting from her chair.

  "It's all right," he assured her.

  I wasn't so darned sure it was all right, but it was him that wanted the black orchids, not me, so I obeyed orders, went to the front room by the connecting doors, and told them to come in. Johnny, who is a gentleman from his skin out, let Anne and Fred pass through ahead of him. She stopped in the middle of the room.

  "How do you do," Wolfe said politely. "Forgive me for not rising; I rarely do. May I introduce-Miss Rose Lasher, Miss Anne Tracy. By the way, Miss Lasher has just been telling me that you were engaged to marry Mr. Gould."

  "That's a lie," Anne said.

  She looked terrible. At no time during the afternoon, when the turmoil had started or when Cramer had announced it was murder or when he had marched her out for examination, had she shown any sign of sag or yellow, but now she looked as if she had taken all she could. At least she did when she entered, and maybe that is why she reacted the way she did to Wolfe's statement and got rough.

  "Marry Harry Gould?" she said. "That isn't true!" Her voice trembled with something that sounded like scorn but might have been anything.

  Rose was out of her chair and was trembling all over. All right, I thought, Wolfe arranged for it and now he'll get it. She'll scratch Anne's eyes out. I moved a step. But she didn't. She even tried to control her voice.

  "You bet it ain't true!" she cried, and that was scorn. "Harry wasn't marrying into your family! He wasn't marrying any daughter of a thief!"

  Anne gawked at her.

  Rose spat. "You with your stuckup nose! Why ain't your father in jail where he belongs? And you up there showing your legs like a ten-cent floozie-"

  "Archie," Wolfe said sharply. "Take her upstairs."

  Rose went on, not even hearing him. I got her suitcase in one hand and gripped her arm with the other and turned her around, and the idea of her nonmarrying Harry marrying another girl, in spite of his being dead, occupied her brain so that she kept right on spitting compliments without even knowing I was propelling her out of the room until we were in the hall. Then she went flat-footed and shut her mouth and glared at me.

  "On up two flights," I said. "Or I know how to carry you so you can't bite." I still had her arm. "Up we go, sister."

  She came. I took her into the spare room on the same

  floor as mine, switched on the lights, and put her suitcase on a chair.

  I pointed. "Ten-cent bathroom there. Ten-cent bed there. You won't be needed-"

  She sat down on the bed and started to bawl.

  I went down to the kitchen and told Fritz, "Lady guest in the south room. She has her own nightie, but would you mind seeing about towels and flowers in her room? I'm busy."

  Chapter 7

  Anne slept in my bed that night. It went like this. When I got back to the office Anne was in my chair with her elbows on the desk and her hands covering her eyes. That was a favorite trick of Johnny's, putting someone else in my chair. He hadn't tried putting himself in it again since the day a couple of years back when I found him there looking at my notebook and sort of lost my temper.

  Fred Updegraff was on a chair against the wall and Johnny was standing in front of Wolfe's desk. Evidently Wolfe had made some pointed remarks, for Johnny didn't look at all cocky.

  "Yes, sir," he was saying in a hurt tone, "but the Tracys live in humble circumstances and have no phone, so I used my best judgment-"

  "You were at the Tracy home? Where is it?"

  "In Richdale, Long Island, sir. My instructions were to investigate Anne Tracy. I learned that she lives in Richdale, where the Dill nurseries and offices are. You know she works there-"

  "I was aware of that. Be brief."

  "Yes, sir. I went out to Richdale and made inquiries. I contacted a young woman-as you know, I am especially effective with young women-"

  "Contact is not a verb and I said be brief."

  "Yes, sir. The last time you told me that I looked it up in the dictionary and I certainly don't want to contradict you but it says contact is a verb. Transitive or intransitive."

  "Contact is not a verb under this roof."

  "Yes, sir. I learned that Miss Tracy's father had worked at Dill's for many years, up to about a year ago. He was assistant superintendent in charge of broad-leaved evergreens. Dill discovered he was kiting shipments and fired him."

  "Kiting shipments?"

  "Yes, sir. On shipments to a big estate in Jersey, the Cullen place. He would ship two hundred rhododendrons instead of one hundred and collect from Cullen for the extra hundred personally, at half price. It amounted to several thousand dollars."

  Anne lifted her head and turned it and made a noise of protest.

  "Miss Tracy says it was only sixteen hundred dollars,'' Johnny said. "I'm telling you what I was told. People exaggerate, and this never was made public, and Tracy wasn't arrested. He stole it to pay a specialist for fixing his son's eyes, something wrong with his son's eyes. He can't get another job. His daughter was Dill's secretary and still is. She gets fifty a week and pays back twenty on what her father stole, so I was told. She refuses to verify those figures."

  Wolfe looked at Anne.

  "It doesn't matter," Anne said, looking at me. "Does it?"

  "I suppose not," Wolfe said, but if it's wrong, correct it."

  "It's wrong. I get twenty dollars a week and I pay back ten."

  "Good God," I blurted, "you need a union."

  That was probably Freudian. Probably subconsciously I meant she needed a union with me. So I added hastily, "I mean a labor union. Twenty bucks a week!"

  Johnny looked annoyed. He's a conservative. "So of course that gave me an in. I went to Miss Tracy's home and explained to her confidentially the hole she was in. That this murder investigation would put the police on to her father's crime, and that she and Dill were compounding a felony, which is against the law, and that the police would have to be fixed or they'd all be in jail, and there was only one man I knew of who could fix it because he was on intimate terms with high police officials, and that was Mr. Nero Wolfe. I said she'd better come and see you immediately, and she came. It was nearly eleven o'clock and there was no train in from Richdale, so we took a taxi."

  Johnny shot me a glance, as much as to say, "Try and match that one."

  "How far is it to Richdale?" Wolfe demanded.

  "From here? Oh, twenty-five miles."

  "How much was the taxi fare?"

  "Eight dollars and forty cents counti
ng the tip. The bridge-"

  "Don't put it on expense. Pay it yourself."

  "But-but, sir-Archie always brings people here-"

  "Pay it yourself. You are not Archie. Thank God. One Archie is enough. I sent you to get facts, not Miss Tracy- certainly I didn't send you to coerce her with preposterous threats and fables about my relations with the police. Go to the kitchen-no. Go home."

  "But, sir-"

  "Go home. And for God's sake quit trying to imitate Archie. You'll never make it. Go home."

  Johnny went.

  Wolfe asked the guests if they would like some beer and they shook their heads. He poured a glass for himself, drank some, wiped his lips, and leaned back.

  "Then-" Anne began, but it got caught on the way out. She cleared her throat and swallowed, and tried again. "Then what he said-you said his threat was preposterous. You mean the police won't do that-won't arrest my father?"

  "I couldn't say, Miss Tracy. The police are unpredictable. Even so, that is highly improbable." Wolfe's eyes left her. "And you, Mr. Updegraff? By what bold stroke did Mr. Keems bring you along?"

  "He didn't bring me." Fred stood up. "I came."

  "By pure coincidence? Or automatism?"

  Fred moved forward and put a hand on the back of my chair, which Anne was still sitting in. "I'm protecting Miss Tracy."

  "Oh. From what?"

  "From everything," he said firmly. He appeared to have a tendency to talk too loud, and he looked more serious than ever, and the more serious he looked the younger he looked. At that moment he might even have passed for Anne's younger brother, which was okay, since I had no objection if she wanted to be a sister to him.

  "That's quite a job," Wolfe said. "Are you a friend of hers?"

  "I'm more than a friend!" Fred declared defiantly. Suddenly he got as red as a peony. "I mean I-she let me take her home."

  "You were there when Mr. Keems arrived?"

  "Yes. We had just got there. And I insisted on coming along. It sounded to me like a frame-up. I thought he was lying; I didn't think he was working for you. It didn't sound-I've heard my father talk about you. He met you once-you probably don't remember-"

  Wolfe nodded. "At the Atlantic States Exposition. How is he?"

  "Oh, he's-not very good." Fred's color was normal again. "He gave up when we lost the plantation of rhodaleas-he just sat down and quit. He had spent his whole life on it, and of course it was an awful wallop financially too. I suppose you know about it."

  "I read of it, yes. The Kurume yellows." Wolfe was sympathetic but casual. "And by the way, someone told me, I forget who, that your father was convinced that his plantation was deliberately infected by Lewis Hewitt, out of pique-or was it Watson or Dill he suspected?"

  "He suspected all of them." Fred looked uncomfortable. "Everybody. But that was just-he was hardly responsible, it broke him up so. He had been holding back over thirty varieties, the best ones, for ten years, and was going to start distribution this spring. It was simply too much for Dad to take."

  Wolfe grunted. "It seems to be still on your mind too. Mr. Goodwin tells me you invaded Rucker and Dill's exhibit this afternoon and made off with an infected twig. As a souvenir?"

  "I-" Fred hesitated. "I guess that was dumb. Of course it's still on my mind-it darned near ruined us. I wanted to test that twig and see if it was Kurume yellows that had somehow got into the exhibits."

  "And investigate the how?"

  "I might have. I might have tried to."

  "You never traced the infection of your plantation?"

  "No. We hadn't had a thing for two years from any of the people that had had Kurume yellows, except a few Ilex crenata as a gift from Hewitt, and they were from nowhere near his infected area and we had them half a mile from the rhodaleas." Fred gestured impatiently. "But that's old prunings. What I was saying, I didn't think you'd pull a trick like that on Miss Tracy." A look came into his eyes. "Now I can take her back home."

  The look in his eye took me back to high school days. It was the hand-holding look. Flutter, my heart, bliss looms and ecstasy, I shall hold her little hand in mine! I looked at Anne with pride. A girl who could enkindle Lewis Hewitt to the extent of a black orchid and a dinner on Tuesday, and on Thursday forment the hand-holding hankering in a pure young peony-grower-a girl with a reach like that was something.

  At that moment, I admit, she wasn't so overwhelming. She looked pretty dilapidated. She said to Wolfe, "I have to be at the District Attorney's office at ten in the morning. I said I would. I don't mind them asking me questions about that-what happened there today-but what I'm afraid of now, I'm afraid they'll ask me about my father. If they do, what am I going to say? Am I going to admit-" She stopped and her lip started to tremble and she put her teeth on it.

  "You need a lawyer," Fred declared. "I'll get one. I don't know any in New York-"

  "I do," Wolfe said. "Sit down, Mr. Updegraff." His eyes moved to Anne. "There's a bed here, Miss Tracy, and you'd better use it. You look tired. I doubt if the police will ask you about your father. If they do, don't answer. Refer them to Mr. Dill. They're much more apt to be inquisitive about your engagement to marry Mr. Gould."

  "But I wasn't!"

  "Apparently he thought you were."

  "But he couldn't. He knew very well I didn't like him! And he-" She stopped.

  "He what?"

  "I won't say that. He's dead."

  "Had he asked you to marry him?"

  "Yes, he had."

  "And you refused?"

  "Yes."

  "But you consented to perform that rustic charade at the Flower Show with him?"

  "I didn't know he was going to be in it-not when Mr. Dill asked me to do it, about two months ago, when he first thought of it. It was going to be another man, a young man in the office. Then Mr. Dill told me Harry Gould was going to do it. I didn't like him, but I didn't want to object because I couldn't afford to offend-I mean Mr. Dill had been so kind about my father-not having him arrested and letting me pay it off gradually-"

  "Call it kind if you want to," Fred blurted indignantly. 'My lord, your father had worked for him for twenty fears!"

  Wolfe ignored him. "Was Mr. Gould pestering you? About marrying him?"

  "Not pestering me, no. I was-" Anne bit her lip. "I just didn't like him."

  "Had you known him long?"

  "Not very long. I'm in the office and he was outside. I met him, I don't know, maybe three months ago."

  "Did your father know him?"

  She shook her head. "I don't think they ever met. Father was-had left before Harry came to work there,Harry used to work on the Hewitt estate on the other side of Richdale."

  "So I understand. Do you know why he quit?"

  "No, I didn't know him then."

  "Have you any idea who killed him?"

  "No," she said.

  I lifted a brow, not ostentatiously. She said it too quick and she shaded it wrong. There was enough change in tempo and tone to make it at least ten to one that she was telling a whopper. That was bad. Up to that everything had been wholesome and straightforward, and all of a sudden without any warning that big fly plopped in the milk. I cocked an eye at Fred, and of course he hadn't caught it. But Wolfe had. His eyes had gone nearly shut.

  He started after her. He kept it polite and friendly, but he went at her from every angle and direction. And for the second time that night he got the can sent back empty by a juvenile female. After a solid hour of it he didn't have even a hint of what it was she was keeping tucked away under her hair, whether it was a suspicion or a fact or a deduction she had made from a set of circumstances. Neither did I. But she was sitting on some kind of lid, and she was smart enough to see that Wolfe knew it and was trying to jostle her off.

  It was half past one when Fred Updegraff looked at his watch and stood up again and said it was late and he would take Miss Tracy home.

  Wolfe shook his head. "She's exhausted and it's twenty-five miles and there are
no trains. She can sleep here. I want to speak to her in the morning before she goes to the District Attorney's office. Archie, will you please see that the north room is in order?"

  That meant my room and my bed. Anne started to protest, but not with much spirit, and I went and got Fritz and took him upstairs with me to help change sheets and towels. As I selected a pajama suit for her from the drawer, tan with brown stripes, and put it on the turned down sheet, I reflected that things were moving pretty fast, considering that it was less than ten hours since she had first spoken to me and we never had actually been introduced. Fritz took my sheets and pillow and a blanket downstairs and I went up one flight to the plant rooms and cut three black orchids, one from each plant, and returned and put them in a vase on the bed table. Hewitt had given her one.

  On my way downstairs I stopped at the door to the south room and listened. No sound. I tried the door; it was bolted on the inside. I knocked, not very loud. Rose's voice came:

  "Who is it?"

  "Clark Gable," I called. "Good night, Ruby."

  In the lower hall I met Anne coming out of the office, escorted by Fritz. I suppose it would have been more genteel to take her up myself, but it would have been a temptation to get sentimental there among my own furniture, so I told her good night and let her go. In the office Wolfe was alone, in his chair with his arms folded and his chin down; evidently Fred had departed. I began taking cushions from the couch and tossing them into a corner, getting ready to fix my bed.

  "Two of them," Wolfe growled.

  "Two of what?"

  "Women. Nannygoats."

  "Not Anne. She's more like a doe. More like a gazelle."