Rex Stout - Nero Wolfe 44

by Death of a Dude

  “Which may be true, in spite of something he did yesterday. He came here yesterday afternoon with the defense counsel, the lawyer Miss Rowan has hired, to ask her some questions. He wanted to know—they wanted to know—if Miss Rowan had—”

  I stopped because I heard a car out front. Lily rose, but I said I would go, and when I did she came along, down the hall and on out to the terrace. It was the taxi, and the hackie had opened the rear door and was lifting out a big tan leather suitcase which hadn’t been out of the basement storeroom in the brownstone on West 35th Street for six years. The new guest’s luggage had come.

  * Death of a Doxy (New York: The Viking Press, 1966).

  Chapter 5

  At a quarter past three the next afternoon, Thursday, Nero Wolfe and I were sitting on rocks, facing each other. We had been there more than three hours. The top of his rock, about chair-height from the ground, was level and flat and fairly smooth, and had plenty of room for his rump. Mine was more rugged, level enough but far from smooth, but I had eased it by standing from time to time. To Wolfe’s right there was a tangle of brush, to his rear and left there were trees, mostly jack pine, and to his front, at a distance of some ten yards, Berry Creek was skimming and skittering over its rocky bottom toward the cabin, which was about half a mile away.

  The night before, after leaving him in his room Lily and I had agreed that he shouldn’t be pampered. He was in rough country and would have to rough it. If he wanted any of the frills to which he was accustomed such as breakfast on a tray in his room he would load it in the kitchen and carry it in himself. He would make his bed or not make it, as he chose, as we all did. I had gone back to his room, found him already under the electric blanket, and told him the household routine, and he had grunted and turned over.

  The breakfast hour was nine o’clock, and usually we all made it unless there was something special on the program—except Diana, who often slept late. That morning she was right on time, probably because there was a new man to practice on. Of course Mimi knew Wolfe’s reputation on food, and I gave her a grin when I saw her putting paprika on the scrambled eggs, and again when I saw that she had nearly doubled the amount of bacon and bread slices for toast. Also instead of three kinds of jam on the table there were six. As Wade Worthy sat he said, “A reputation like yours has advantages, Mr. Wolfe. Such abundance!”

  “Don’t mind him,” Diana said. She patted Wolfe’s sleeve with two fingertips. “He’s just jealous. I would love to butter a toast for you.”

  Wolfe declined the offer but didn’t scowl at her. A guest is a jewel. Mimi brought another platter of eggs, and they had paprika too.

  After breakfast Wolfe and I had gone to his room and I helped him unpack. I admit that smacked of pampering, but I was curious. And as I had suspected when I had helped the hackie with the luggage, he had prepared for an extended stay when he left home; there was another suit—the brown worsted with little green specks—another pair of shoes, five shirts, ten pairs of socks, and so forth, including four books, one of which he may have brought along for possible reference. It was Man’s Rise to Civilization as Shown by the Indians of North America from Primeval Times to the Coming of the Industrial State. By Peter Farb. He may have supposed that a Blackfoot or Chippewa might be a suspect and he wanted to know how their minds work.

  When everything was unpacked and in place in drawers and the closet, I had made a suggestion. “If it’s to be a full report, it will take hours, and you’re used to a larger room. Mine is twice the size of this, or there’s the big room, or the terrace. You would probably—”

  “No,” he said.

  “No? No report?”

  “Not here. Last evening I was constantly aware that we might be overheard, outside through the window or inside through the door or wall. Our discussions of problems have always been in a soundproofed room, secure, no unwanted interruptions. Whereas here—there are three women on the premises, and one of them is a congenital pest. Confound it, can’t we go somewhere?”

  “If you mean somewhere under a roof, no. Outdoors, almost anywhere. I know dozens of nice spots for a picnic. The storeroom shelves aren’t as full as they were a month ago, but there’s sturgeon, ham, dried beef, four kinds of cheese—we can take our pick. There’s half a roast turkey in the kitchen refrigerator. The temperature of the creek is perfect for beer.”

  “How far?”

  “Anywhere from a hundred yards to a hundred miles. If we take horses….”

  He glared at me and asked where the storeroom was.

  It was nearly eleven o’clock when we hit the trail because he spent a good twenty minutes looking over the storeroom shelves and cupboards, and anyway I had to go and tell Lily and change my shoes and pack the knapsack with the grub. When we left, by the morning terrace, Diana, there in a chair, looked up at Wolfe and put on a pout and said she would have loved to come along, and he didn’t actually growl at her.

  So at a quarter past three there we were, on the rocks, with the lunch remains, including three empty beer cans, back in the knapsack, and the report delivered and questions answered. Of course the report had not been full, if “full” means nothing left out, but he had the picture, including names and connections and guests that had fizzled—a thousand details that I haven’t put in this report. The trunks of three saplings were rubbing against the edge of his rock, and he had tried twenty times to use them for a back rest, but it made his feet leave the ground and dangle, so it was no go. Now he tried it again, said, “Grrrrh,” gave up, slid forward on the rock, stood up, and started to speak but didn’t because something behind me caught his eye. He raised an arm to aim a finger and asked, “What’s that?”

  I twisted around. A big gray bird had landed on a branch only twenty feet away and only six feet up. “Fool hen,” I said. “A kind of grouse that thinks everybody goes by its favorite saying, Peace on earth, good will to grouse. If I went slow and smooth, peaceful, I could walk over and pick it off.”

  “Are they palatable?”

  “Sure. Very tasty.”

  “Then why are there any left?”

  “I’ve asked about that, and apparently the feeling is that if a wild critter hasn’t got sense enough to act wild, to hell with it. So they call it fool hen. But you don’t see many of them.”

  He moved, and with his hand on a tree for balance shook his right leg and then his left, to get his pants legs down. “I’m going to try something,” he said. “A telephone call. You wrote that Miss Rowan’s line might be tapped. If so, by whom? The sheriff, or the county attorney?”

  “The sheriff.”

  “Then I can’t use it for this call. Is there one I can use with assurance?”

  I nodded. “At Lame Horse. A New York call? Saul?”

  “No. Mr. Veale.”

  “I haven’t mentioned anyone named Veale.”

  “I have—not by name, by title. The Attorney General in Helena. I have his number. He knows I’m here. Mr. McFarland telephoned him again yesterday, at my request, to tell him I was coming, and I went to see him when I got to Helena. I need to ask him something.”

  I was up, getting the knapsack strapped on. I said the car would probably be available, but if not I could borrow one at the ranch, and we moved. Since we were equals I could have demanded to know what he wanted to ask the Attorney General, but it didn’t matter because nothing he asked anybody could have made the situation any worse.

  Going back was tougher for him than coming had been, because it was downhill and there were a couple of places where anyone might do a tumble, but he made it without a scratch. The car was there, and I went in the cabin, got rid of the knapsack, went to Wolfe’s room to get a phone number from a slip of paper in a drawer, found Lily on the creek terrace, told her we had an errand in Lame Horse, and asked if the car was free. She said yes and asked if we would be back in time for supper, and I said yes, we were just going to make a phone call which I would tell her about later. Outside, Wolfe had taken the
car for granted and got in, which was a little cheeky for a guest, and he was in the front, which was unusual. In his Heron sedan, which I drive, he always sits in the back, where there is a strap for him to grab when the car decides to try climbing a curb or jostling some other car it doesn’t like. I got in behind the wheel and we rolled. As we turned onto the road at the end of the lane a wild animal scooted out from a tuft and bounded hell-bent for the brush, and he asked, “Native hare?”

  “That depends,” I said, “on whether a jackrabbit is a hare. I’ve never looked it up, but I will. They are not palatable.” I circled around a rock patch. “The man we’re going to ask to let us use his phone is Woodrow Stepanian. As I reported, he’s one of the few people who thinks Harvey is clean.”

  “The Hall of Culture. You told me three years ago that he tried to get you to read Bacon’s essays.”

  “I see you brought your memory along. It may come in handy.” I slowed the car to ease down the bank of a gully and climb back up. “He will expect you to shake hands. Everybody you meet out here will, and you’ve got enough built-in points against you without adding another one.”

  “I resent any formality requiring bodily contact.”

  “Yeah, I know. But what’s one more hardship after all you’ve gone through since yesterday morning?”

  He compressed his lips and turned his head to watch gophers diving into holes.

  At four in the afternoon on a weekday, in one respect Lame Horse is a big improvement on New York—the parking problem. Except Saturday nights, there isn’t any. When we got out, right at the entrance of the Hall of Culture, Wolfe stood there a minute, swiveling his head for a survey of the surroundings before preceding me inside. We crossed to a table by the wall where a four-sided game of Scrabble was in progress, though only one man was there—Woody—with the names of the four players written on cards by the racks: William Shakespeare, John Milton, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Woodrow Stepanian. I had seen that performance before, with different players, except Woody of course. He rose as we approached, and I pronounced names, and Wolfe took the offered hand like a gentleman. I concede that when he does shake he does it right.

  “It is an honor,” Woody said. “I bow to you. Do you play Scrabble?”

  Wolfe shook his head. “I don’t play games. I like using words, not playing with them.”

  “We came to ask a favor,” I said. “We have to make a private phone call and it could be that the sheriff has a tap on Miss Rowan’s line. She sends her regards. May we use your phone?”

  He said yes, certainly, looked down at the Scrabble game, muttered to himself, “Milton’s turn,” and went to the screen door and on out. Wolfe crossed to the desk in the corner where the phone was, and sat on a chair that was fine for Woody but not for him, and I told him to dial the operator and give her the number. He made a face, as always when he had to use the phone, and lifted the receiver.

  Since there was no extension for me I can report only one end of the talk. After he told somebody his name and asked for Mr. Veale, and a two-minute wait: “Yes, speaking…. No, I’m not in Timberburg, I’m staying at the cabin of Mr. Greve’s employer, the woman who owns the ranch…. Yes, Miss Lily Rowan. I have decided that I should communicate with Mr. Jessup forth with, and I need to know if you reached him…. Yes, I know, I understand the need for discretion…. No, he hasn’t, but he doesn’t know where I am…. Yes indeed, and I am obliged to you, and Mr. McFarland will be too.”

  He hung up and turned to me and said, “Get Mr. Jessup,” frowned, and added, “if you please.” Being my equal was an awful bother.

  Having rung the office of the county attorney in Timberburg four times to try to get an appointment, I didn’t have to look up the number. Standing at the end of the desk, I reached for the phone and dialed and told the female who answered that Nero Wolfe wanted to speak with Mr. Jessup, and in a minute his voice came.

  “Mr. Wolfe?”

  “Archie Goodwin. Here’s Mr. Wolfe.”

  Again I can give only one end: “Mr. Jessup? Nero Wolfe. I believe Mr. Veale has spoken to you of me…. Yes, so he told me. I wish to talk with you, probably at some length, and not, I think, on the telephone…. Yes…. Certainly…. I would much prefer today…. Yes, I understand that…. No, I’m at a telephone in Lame Horse, in the office of Mr. Woodrow Stepanian…. No. I don’t. You had better speak with Mr. Goodwin.”

  He held it out and I took it. “Archie Goodwin.”

  “Do you know where Whedon’s Graveyard is?”

  “Sure.”

  “I’ll leave in about ten minutes—perhaps twenty—and meet you there. Will anyone be with you besides Mr. Wolfe?”

  I said no, and he said all right and hung up. I told Wolfe, “We’re to meet him at Whedon’s Graveyard, which is a little farther from Timberburg than from here. About ten miles.”

  “A cemetery?”

  “No. A long time ago a man named Whedon got the idea that he could grow wheat there and he tried it, and the story is that he starved to death, but I doubt that. This begins to look interesting. Jessup doesn’t want you to come to his office because the sheriffs office is also in the courthouse.” I looked at my watch: 4:55. “I’ll ring Miss Rowan and tell her we’ll be late for supper.”

  While I was doing that, and getting the charges from the operator, he took a look at a few items of cultural material. When we went out I expected to see Woody there, but he wasn’t. He was with a little group in front of Vawter’s, watching a race up the road a little—or rather, a chase—coming this way. A scrawny little guy in Levi’s, no shirt, was loping down the middle of the road, and after him, some ten yards back, was a fat red-faced woman with a long leather strap. As he neared Vawter’s the man yelled at the group, “Rope her! Goddammit, rope her!” He yelled it again when he saw Wolfe and me. When he was about even with us he swerved to the right, stumbled and nearly fell, and headed for a path which curved around the side of a house, with the woman nearly at his tail. She almost had him as they disappeared back of the house.

  Wolfe looked at me with his brows up.

  “Local routine,” I said. “About once a month. Mr. and Mrs. Nev Barnes. She bakes bread and pies and sells them, and he snitches some of the proceeds and buys hooch from a bootlegger named Henrietta. There’s a theory that the reason she doesn’t hide the jack where he couldn’t find it is that it would gum the act. If he wasn’t lit she would never catch him. The reason he yells ‘Rope her’ is that one time a couple of years ago a cowboy was over by the hitching-rack trying a new rope he had just bought at Vawter’s, and when Nev saw him he yelled at him to rope her, and the cowboy did, and ever since Nev always yells it.”

  “Was that her bread at breakfast?”

  “Yes. Salt-rising. You ate four slices.”

  “It’s quite edible.” He went to the car and climbed in. Woody came and I thanked him and paid for the calls, waved to the Vawters, who were still out front, of course wondering who that was with me, got in behind the wheel and started the engine, and eased the car over the rough spot onto the start of the blacktop.

  We had gone three or four miles when Wolfe said, “You’re hitting bumps deliberately.”

  “I am not. It’s the road. Try driving it without hitting bumps. Also this is not your Heron with its special springs.” Bump. “Would it hurt to discuss what you’re going to say to Jessup?”

  “Yes. Jouncing along like this? I’ll decide what to say, and how to say it, after I see him.”

  If you want to visit Whedon’s Graveyard you have to know exactly where it is. There’s no sign and no lane to turn into, though there probably was one when Whedon was on his wheat caper. Now, just beyond a certain patch of aspen at the edge of the blacktop, and just before a culvert over a cut, you leave the road and turn right onto dry grass—dry in August—circle around the foot of a slope, follow the rim of a gulch for a couple of hundred yards, and there it is. There is no visible reason for you to be glad you came. What was presumably
once a house with a roof is now a pile of jackstraws for Paul Bunyan to play with if he happens by—old logs and boards sticking up and out at crazy angles, and others scattered around. Also, if you enjoy looking at bare white bones, well weathered, there are some here and there, where visitors have probably tossed them after taking a look. Johnny Vawter says some of them are Whedon’s, but he admits he isn’t a bone expert, and I have never checked his claim that an undertaker in Timberburg agrees with him.

  I had seen Jessup’s car, a dark blue Ford sedan, and it wasn’t there. Except what I have described, nothing and nobody was there. I turned the car around to head back, killed the engine, and said, “A suggestion. If he’s in the back seat you’ll have to twist around to face him. If you move to the back and he gets in with me he’ll have to do the twisting.”

  “I have never,” he said, “had an important conversation sitting in an automobile.”

  “Certainly you have. Once with Miss Rowan, once with me, and a couple of others. Your memory’s doing fine. You said once that a signal function of the memory is discarding what we want to forget. And where else would you like to sit? This graveyard has no tombstones.”

  He opened the door, slid out backwards, opened the rear door, and climbed in. I skewed around to face him and said, “Much better. Some day you’ll realize what a help I am.”

  “Pfui. Why am I here, two thousand miles from my house?”

  “To see justice done. To right a wrong. Now about Jessup. For sizing him up it may help to know that he was born in Montana, is forty-one years old, and is happily married with three children. University of Montana, which is at Missoula. In my report I didn’t mention that Luther Dawson says Jessup would rather be a judge than a governor, he was fourth in his class at law school, and he—and here he comes.”

  Since we were headed out we didn’t have to twist our necks to see the Ford leave the slope and bounce along the gulch rim. Twenty yards off it stopped, then came on again and nosed in alongside. I had thought it likely that he would have someone with him, not to be outnumbered, but he was alone. He got out, nodded to me, came to the rear door, said to Wolfe, “I’m Tom Jessup,” and offered a hand through the open window. For a second I thought Wolfe was going to revert to normal on me, but he said, “I’m Nero Wolfe,” and put out a hand to permit bodily contact. Jessup said he guessed our car was roomier than his, and we agreed, and he went around to the other side. I leaned across to open the front door, and he took the hint and got in.