Rex Stout_Nero Wolfe 07

by Over My Dead Body

  Wolfe’s face was set in a grimace, showing that he was in the throes of an agitation away beyond his chronic reluctance to bother his mind about business when the bank balance was up in five figures. Displaying a palm at her, he tried to expostulate:

  “I tell you I’m too busy—”

  She hopped right over it. “I came instead of Neya because she has important lessons this morning, and it is necessary we should keep our jobs. But you will have to see her, of course, so you will have to go there, and anyway Miltan is arranging for everyone to be there together today, this afternoon, to settle it. It’s the biggest nonsense anyone could imagine to suppose that Neya would put her hand in a man’s pocket and steal diamonds, but it will be terrible if it happens the way Miltan says it will happen if the diamonds are not returned—but wait—you must let me tell you—”

  My mouth was standing open in astonishment. After two hours on his feet in the plant rooms, when he came to the office at eleven o’clock and got lowered into his chair, with me there to annoy him pleasantly and the beer-tray freshly delivered by Fritz Brenner, Wolfe was ordinarily as immovable as a two-ton boulder. But now he was rising; he was risen. With a mutter that might have been taken either for an excuse or an imprecation, and with no glance at either of us, he stalked out of the room, by the door that led to the hall. We watched him go and then the immigrant turned and let me have her eyes wide open.

  “He gets sick!” she demanded.

  I shook my head, eccentric,” I explained. “I suppose you might call it a form of sickness, but it’s nothing tangible like concussion of the brain or whooping-cough. Once when a respectable lawyer was sitting in that very chair you’re in now—Yes, Fritz?”

  The door which Wolfe had closed behind him had opened again and Fritz Brenner stood there with a bewildered look on his face.

  “In the kitchen a moment, please, Archie.”

  I got up and excused myself and went to the kitchen. Preliminary preparations for lunch were scattered around on the big linoleum-covered table, but it was obvious that Wolfe had not been suddenly seized with a violent curiosity about food. He stood at the far side of the refrigerator, facing me in a determined manner that seemed entirely uncalled for, and told me abruptly as I entered:

  “Send her away.”

  “My God!” I admit I blew up a little. “She said she’d pay something, didn’t she? It’s enough to freeze the blood of an alligator! If you read it in her eyes that her friend Neya did actually glumb the glass, you might at least—”

  “Archie.” It was about as hostile as his voice ever got. “I have skedaddled, physically, once in my life, from one person, and that was a Montenegrin woman. It was many years ago, but my nerves remember it. I neither desire nor intend to explain how I felt when that Montenegrin female voice in there said ‘Hvala Bogu.’ Send her away.”

  “But there’s no—”

  “Archie!”

  I saw it was hopeless, though I had no idea whether he was overcome by terror or was staging a stunt. I gave it up and went back to the office and stood in front of her.

  “Mr. Wolfe regrets that he will be unable to help your friend out of her trouble. He’s busy.”

  Her head was tilted back to look up at me, and a little gasp left her mouth open. “But he can’t—he must!” She jumped to her feet and I backed up a step as her eyes flashed at me. “We are from Tsernagora! She is—my friend is—” Indignation choked it off.

  “It’s final,” I said brusquely. “He won’t touch it. Sometimes I can change his mind for him, but there are limits. What does ‘hvala Bogu’ mean?”

  She stared. “It means ‘Thank God.’ If I see him, tell him—”

  “You shouldn’t have said it. It gives him the willies to hear a Montenegrin female voice talk Montenegrin. It’s a kind of allergy. I’m sorry, Miss Lovchen, but there’s not a chance. I know him from A to P, which is as far as he goes. P is for pigheaded.”

  “But he—I must see him, tell him—”

  She was stubborn enough herself so that it took five minutes to persuade her out, and since the only prejudice I had acquired against Montenegrin females up to that point was based merely on pronunciation, which is not after all vital, I didn’t want to get rough. Finally I closed the front door behind her and went to the kitchen and announced sarcastically:

  “I think it’s safe now. Stay close behind me and if I holler run like hell.”

  Wolfe’s inarticulate growl, as I wheeled and headed for the office, warned me that there was barbed wire in that neighborhood, so when he came in a few minutes later and got re-established in his chair I made no effort to explain my viewpoint any further. He drank beer and fiddled around with a pile of catalogues, while I checked over a couple of invoices from Hoehn’s and did some miscellaneous chores. When a little later he asked me to please open the window a crack, I knew the tension was relaxing toward normal.

  But if either or both of us had any idea that we were through with the Balkans for that day, it wasn’t long before we had it jostled out of us. It was customary for Fritz to answer the doorbell from eleven on, when I was in the office with Wolfe. Around twelve thirty he came in, advanced the usual three paces, stood formally, and announced a caller named Stahl who would not declare his business but stated that he was an agent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

  I let out a low whistle and ejaculated cautiously “Aha!” Wolfe opened his eyes a trifle and nodded, and Fritz went for the caller.

  We hadn’t bumped into a G-man before in the course of business, and when he entered I did him the honor of swiveling clear around for a look. He was all right, medium-sized, with good shoulders and good eyes, a little skimpy in the jaw, and he needed a shoeshine. He told us his name again and shook hands with both of us, and took from his pocket a little leather case which he flipped open and exhibited to Wolfe with a reserved but friendly smile.

  “My credentials,” he explained in an educated voice. He certainly had fine manners, something on the order of a high-class insurance salesman.

  Wolfe glanced at the exhibit, nodded, and indicated a chair. “Well, sir?”

  The G-man looked politely apologetic. “We’re sorry to bother you, Mr. Wolfe, but it’s our job. I’d like to ask whether you are acquainted with the Federal statute which recently went into effect, requiring persons who are agents in this country of foreign principals to register with the Department of State.”

  “Not intimately. I read newspapers. I read about that some time ago.”

  “Then you know of that law?”

  “I do.”

  “Have you registered?”

  “No. I am not an agent of a foreign principal.”

  The G-man threw one knee over the other. “The law applies to agents of foreign firms, individuals or organizations, as well as to foreign governments.”

  “So I understand.”

  “It also applies, here, both to aliens and to citizens. Are you a citizen of the United States?”

  “I am. I was born in this country.”

  “You were at one time an agent of the Austrian government?”

  “Briefly, as a boy. Not here, abroad. I quit.”

  “And joined the Montenegrin army?”

  “Later, but still a boy. I then believed that all misguided or cruel people should be shot, and I shot some. I starved to death in 1916.”

  The G-man looked startled. “I beg your pardon?”

  “I said I starved to death. When the Austrians came and we fought machine guns with fingernails. Logically I was dead; a man can’t live on dry grass. Actually I went on breathing. When the United States entered the war and I walked six hundred miles to join the A. E. F., I ate again. When it ended I returned to the Balkans, shed another illusion, and came back to America.”

  “Hvala Bogu,” I put in brightly.

  Stahl, startled again, shot me a glance. “I beg your pardon? Are you a Montenegrin?”

  “Nope. Pure Ohio. The ejaculation wa
s involuntary.”

  Wolfe, ignoring me, went on, “I would like to say, Mr. Stahl, that my temperament would incline me to resent and resist an attempt by any individual to inquire into my personal history or affairs, but I do not regard you as an individual. Naturally. You represent the Federal government. You are, in effect, America itself sitting in my office wanting to know something about me, and I am so acutely grateful to my native country for the decencies it still manages to preserve … by the way, would you care for a glass of American beer?”

  “No, thank you.”

  Wolfe pushed the button and leaned back. He grunted. “Tb your question, sir: I represent no foreign principal, firm, individual, organization, dictator, or government. Occasionally I pursue inquiries here, professionally as a detective, on requests from Europe, chiefly from Mr. Ethelbert Hitchcock of London, an English confrere, as he does there for me. I am pursuing none at present. I am not an agent of Mr. Hitchcock or of anyone else.”

  “I see,” Stahl sounded open to conviction. “That’s definite enough. But your early experiences in Europe … may I ask … do you know a Prince Donevitch?”

  “I knew him long ago. He’s getting ready to die, I believe, in Paris.”

  “I don’t mean him. Isn’t there another one?”

  “There is. Old Peter’s nephew. Prince Stefan Donevitch. I believe he lives in Zagreb. When I was there in 1916 he was a six-year-old boy.”

  “Have you communicated with him recently?”

  “No. I never have.”

  “Have you sent money to him or to anyone or any organization for him—or the cause he represents?”

  “No, sir.”

  “You do make remittances to Europe, don’t you?”

  “I do.” Wolfe grimaced. “From my own funds, earned at my trade. I have contributed to the Loyalists in Spain. I send money occasionally to the—translated, it is the League of Yugoslavian Youth. Prince Stefan Donevitch assuredly has no connection with that.”

  “I wouldn’t know. What about your wife? Weren’t you married?”

  “No. Married? No. That was what—” Wolfe stirred, as under restraint, in his chair. “It strikes me, sir, that you are nearing the point where even a grateful American might tell you to go to the devil.”

  I put in emphatically, “I know damn well I would, and I’m only a sixty-fourth Indian.”

  The G-man smiled and uncrossed his legs. “I suppose,” he said amiably, “you’d have no objection to putting this in the form of a signed statement. What you’ve told me.”

  “On a proper occasion, none at all.”

  “Good. You represent no foreign principal, directly or indirectly?”

  “That is correct.”

  “Well, that’s all we wanted to know.” He got up. “At present. Thank you very much.”

  “You’re quite welcome. Good day, sir.”

  I followed him out, to open the front door for America and make sure he was on the proper side of it when it was closed again. Wolfe could get sentimental about it if he wanted to, but I don’t like any stranger nosing around my private affairs, let alone a nation of 130 million people. When I returned to the office he was sitting back with his eyes closed.

  “You see what happens,” I told him bitterly. “Just because you rake in two fat fees and the bank account is momentarily bloated, in the space of three weeks you refuse nine cases. Not counting the poor little immigrant girl with a friend who likes diamonds. You refuse to investigate anything for anybody. Then what happens? America gets suspicious because it’s un-American not to make all the money you can, and sicks a Senior G-man on you, and now, by God, you’re going to have to investigate yourself! You don’t need—”

  “Archie. Shut up.” His eyes opened. “You’re a liar. Since when have you been a sixty-fourth Indian?”

  Before I could parry his counterattack Fritz appeared to announce lunch. I knew it was to be warmed-over duck scraps, so I was off at the gun.

  Chapter 2

  During meals Wolfe ordinarily excludes business not only from his conversation but also from his mind. But that day it appeared that his thoughts were straying from the food, though I didn’t see how they could have been on business, since there was none on hand. He did his share of demolition to the remains of three ducks—his old friend Marko Vukčić had dined with us the day before—but there was an air of absent-mindedness in his ardor as he tore the backbones apart and scraped the juicy shreds off with his gleaming white teeth. It somewhat prolonged the operations, so that it was after two o’clock when we finished with the coffee and waddled back to the office. That is, he waddled. I strode.

  Then, instead of resuming with the catalogues or playing with some other of his toys, he leaned back and clasped his hands over the duck repository and shut his eyes. It wasn’t a coma, for several times during the hour he sat there I saw his lips push in and out, so I knew he was hard at work on something.

  Suddenly he spoke.

  “Archie. What made you say that girl wanted to borrow a book?”

  So he hadn’t been able to get his mind off of Montenegrin females. I waved a hand. “Persiflage. Chaff.”

  “No. You said she asked if I had read it.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And if I study it.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And are you reading it.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  He nearly opened his eyes. “Did it occur to you that she was finding out if either of us would be apt to look at that book in the immediate future?”

  “No, sir. My mind was occupied. I was sitting down and she was standing in front of me and I was thinking about her curves.”

  “That is not thought. Those nerves are in the spinal column, not the brain. You said it was United Yugoslavia by Henderson.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Where was it when you returned to the office?”

  “On the shelf where it belongs. She had put it back herself. For a Monteneg—”

  “Get it, please.”

  I crossed the room and got it down and took it to him. He rubbed the cover caressingly with his palm, as he always did with a book, and then turned it with its front edge facing him, squeezed it tight shut and held it for a moment, and suddenly released the pressure. Then he opened it around the middle and took out a piece of paper that was there between the leaves. The paper was folded, and he unfolded it and started reading it. I sat down and set my teeth on my lip to hold in what might otherwise have come out. I set them hard.

  “Indeed,” Wolfe said. “Shall I read it to you?”

  “Oh, please do, yes, sir.”

  He began an incoherent jabber and splutter that didn’t even sound human. I knew he expected me to butt in with an outcry, so I set my teeth again. When he had finished I grinned at him.

  “Okay,” I said, “but why couldn’t she tell me to my face how handsome and seductive I was and so on instead of writing it down and sticking it in that book. Especially that last—”

  “And especially writing it in Serbo-Croat. Do you speak Serbo-Croat, Archie?”

  “No.”

  “Then I’ll translate. It’s dated at Zagreb, 20th August, 1938, and bears the Donevitch crest. It says, roughly, ‘The bearer of these presents, my wife, the Princess Vladanka Donevitch, is hereby empowered without reservation to talk and act in my name, and attach my name and honor by her signature, which appears herewith below my own, in all financial and political matters and claims pertaining to me and to the Donevitch dynasty, with particular reference to Bosnian forest concessions and to the disposal of certain credits at present in the care of Barrett & De Russy, bankers of New York. I bespeak for her loyalty from those who owe it, and co-operation from those whose interests ride with mine.’”

  Wolfe folded the paper and imprisoned it under his palm. “It is signed Stefan Donevitch and Vladanka Donevitch. The signatures are attested.”

  “Good.” I glared at him. “He even spent two bits on a notary.
Let’s take one thing at a time. How did you know that thing was in that book?”

  “I didn’t know it. But her questioning you—”

  “Sure. Your curiosity got aroused. Check that off. Do you mean to say that that girl is a Balkan princess?”

  “I don’t know. Stefan married only three years ago. I got that from this book. Don’t badger me, Archie. I don’t like this.”

  “What don’t you like about it?”

  “I like nothing about it. Of all the activities of man, international intrigue is the dirtiest. The Balkan mess, as it is today, I know only superficially, but even on the surface the maggots of corruption may be seen writhing. The regent who rules Yugoslavia deviously courts the friendship of certain nations. He is a Karageorgevitch. Prince Stefan, the head of the Donevitch clan now that old Peter is dying, is being used by certain other nations, and he is using them for his own ambition. And now look at this!” He slapped the paper with his palm. “They bring this to America! If it could be used to destroy them all, I would use it!”

  He puffed. “Bah!” He made a gesture of spitting, which I had seen him do only once before in the years I had lived under his roof. “Pfui! Bosnian forest concessions from a Donevitch! As soon as I saw that girl and heard her voice I knew the devil was around. Confound them for crossing the ocean and stepping on this shore—confound her for coming here, here to my office, and soiling one of my books with this—this nauseous—”

  “Hold it,” I cautioned him. “Breathe deep three times. How do you know she put it there? It’s been months since you’ve had that book down, and maybe somebody—”

  “Who? When?”