Rex Stout - Nero Wolfe - Second Confession

by The Second Confession (lit)

  Now he was sitting glaring at me as if I had put vinegar on his caviar.

  “What do you know about Bischoff's Pet Shop?” he demanded.

  “Nothing to speak of. I only know that last November, when Bischoff came to ask you to take on a job, you told him you were too busy and you weren't, and when he left and I started beefing you told me that you were no more eager to be committed for Arnold Zeck than against him. You didn't explain how you knew that that pet shop is a branch of Zeck's far-flung shenanigans, and I didn't ask.” “I told you once to forget that you know his name.” Then you shouldn't have reminded me of it. Okay, I'll forget again. So I'll go down and phone Sperling that you're too busy and call it off. He hasn't—” “No. Go and see him. You're late.” I was surprised. “But what the hell? What's wrong with my deducting? If Rony went three times in a month to that pet shop, and probably more, and stayed over an hour, and doesn't keep pets, and I deduce that he is presumably an employee or something of the man whose name I forget, what—” “Your reasoning is quite sound. But this is different. I was aware of Mr Bischoff's blemish, no matter how, when he came to me and refused him. I fiave engaged myself to Mr Sperling, and how can I scuttle?” He looked up at the clock. “You'd better go' He sighed. “If it could be managed to keep one's self-esteem without paying for it...” He went and got the can of Elgetrol and started shaking it, and I headed out.

  CHAPTER Three

  That was two o'clock Thursday. At two o'clock Saturday, forty-eight hours later, I was standing in the warm sunshine on a slab of white marble as big as my bedroom, flicking a bright blue towel as big as my bathroom, to chase a fly off one of Gwenn Sperling's bare legs. Not bad for a rake's progress, even though I was under an assumed name. I was now Andrew instead of Archie. When I had told Sperling of Wolfe's suggestion that I should meet the family, not of course displaying Wolfe s blueprint, and he had objected to disclosing me to Rony, I had explained that we would use hired help for tailing and similar routine, and that I would have a try at getting Rony to like me. He bought it without haggling and invited me to spend the weekend at Stony Acres, his country place up near Chappaqua, but said I'd have to use another name because he was pretty sure his wife and son and elder daughter, Madeline, knew about Archie Goodwin. I said modestly that I doubted it, and insisted on keeping the Goodwin because it was too much of a strain tc keep remembering to answer to something else, and we settled for changing Archie to Andrew. That would fit the A. G. on the bag Wolfe had given me for my birthday, which I naturally wanted to have along because it was caribou hide and people should see it.

  The items in Bascom's reports about Louis Rony's visits to Bischoff's pet shop had cost Sperling some dough. If it hadn't been for that Wolfe would certainly have let Rony slide until I reported on my week-end, since it was a piddling little job and had no interest for him except the fee, and since he had a sneaking idea that women came on a lope from every direction when I snapped my fingers, which was foolish because it often takes more than snapping your fingers. But when I got back from my call on Sperling on Thursday afternoon Wolfe had already been busy on the phone, getting Saul Panzer and Fred Durkin and Orrie Gather, and when they came to the office Friday morning for briefing Saul was assigned to a survey of Rony's past, after reading Bascom, and Fred and Orrie were given special instructions for fancy tailing. Obviously what Wolfe was doing was paying for his self-esteem—or letting Sperling pay for it. He had once told Arnold Zeck, during their third and last phone talk, that when he undertook an investigation he permitted prescription of limits only by requirements of the job, and now he was leaning backward. If Rony's pet shop visits really meant that he was on one of Zeck's payrolls, and if Zeck was still tacking up his KEEP OFF signs, Nero Wolfe had to make it plain that no one was roping him off. We've got our pride. So Saul and Fred and Orrie were at it.

  So was I, the next morning, Saturday, driving north along the winding Westchester parkways, noticing that the trees seemed to have more leaves than they knew what to do with, keeping my temper when some dope of a snail stuck to the left lane as if he had built it, doing a little snappy passing now and then just, to keep my hand in, dipping down off the parkway on to a secondary road, following it a couple of miles as directed, leaving it to turn into a gravelled drive between ivy-covered stone pillars, winding through a park and assorted horticultural exhibits until I broke cover and saw the big stone mansion, stopping at what looked as if it might be the right spot, and telling a middle-aged sad looking guy in a mohair uniform that I was the photographer they were expecting.

  Sperling and I had decided that I was the son of a business associate who was concentrating on photography, and who wanted pictures of Stony Acres for a corporation portfolio, for two reasons: first, because I had to be something, and second, because I wanted some good shots of Louis Rony.

  Four hours later, having met everybody and had lunch and used both cameras all over the place in as professional a manner as I could manage, I was standing at the edge of the swimming pool, chasing a fly off Gwenn's leg. We were both dripping, having just climbed out.

  “Hey,” she said, “the snap of that towel is worse than a fly bite—if there was a fly.” I assured her there had been.

  “Well, next time show it to me first and maybe I can handle it myself. Do that dive from the high board again, will you? Where's the Leica?” She had been a pleasant surprise. From what her father had said I had expected an intellectual treat in a plain wrapper, but the package was attractive enough to take your attention off the contents. She was not an eye-stopper, and there was no question about her freckles, and while there was certainly nothing wrong with her face it was a little rounder than I would specify if I were ordering a la carte; but she was not in any way hard to look at, and those details which had been first disclosed when she appeared in her swimming rig were completely satisfactory. I would never have seen the fly if I had not been looking where it lit.

  I did the dive again and damn near pancaked. When I was back on the marble, wiping my hair back, Madeline was there, saying, “What are you trying to do, Andy, break your back? You darned fool!” “I'm making an impression,” I told her. “Have you got a trapeze anywhere? I can hang by my toes.

  “Of course you can. I know your repertory better than you think I do. Come and sit down and I'll mix you a drink.” Madeline was going to be in my way a little, in case I decided to humour Wolfe by trying to work on Gwenn. She was more spectacular than Gwenn, with her slim height and just enough curves not to call anywhere flat, her smooth dark oval face, and her big dark eyes which she liked tc keep half shut so she could suddenly open them on you and let you have it. I already knew that her husband was dead, having been shot down in a B-17 over Berlin in 1943, that she thought she had seen all there was but might be persuaded to try another look, that she liked the name Andy, and that she thought there was just a chance that I nught know a funny story she hadn't heard. That was why she was going to be in my way a little.

  I went and sat with her on a bench in the sun, but she didn't mix me a drink because three men were gathered around the refreshment cart and one of them attended to it—James U. Sperling, Junior. He was probably a year or two older than Madeline and resembled his father hardly at all. There was nothing about his slender straightness or his nice smooth tanned skin or his wide spoiled mouth that would have led anyone to say he looked like a miner. I had never seen him before but had heard a little of him. I couldn't give you a quote, but my vague memory was that he was earnest and serious about learning to make himself useful in the corporation his father headed, and he frequently beat it to Brazil or Nevada or Arizona to see how mining was done, but he got tired easy and had to return to New York to rest, and he knew lots of people in New York willing to help him rest.

  The two men with him at the refreshment cart were guests. Since our objective was confined to Rony and Gwenn I hadn't bothered with the others except to be polite, and I wouldn't be dragging them in if it wasn'
t that later on they called for some attention. Also it was beginning to look as if they could stand a little attention right then, on account of a situation that appeared to be developing, so the field of my interest was spreading out a little. If I ever saw a woman make a pass, Mrs Paul Emerson, Connie to her friends and enemies, was making one at Louis Rony.

  First the two men. One of them was just a super, a guy some older than me named Webster Kane. I had gathered that he was some kind of an economist who had done some kind of a job for Continental Mines Corporation, and he acted like an old friend of the family. He had a big well-shaped head and apparently didn't own a hairbrush, didn't care what his clothes looked like, and was not swimming but was drinking. In another ten years he could pass for a senator.

  I had welcomed the opportunity for a close-up of the other man because I had often heard Wolfe slice him up and feed him to the cat. At six-thirty p.m. on WPIT, five days a week, Paul Emerson, sponsored by Continental Mines Corporation, interpreted the news. About once a week Wolfe listened to him, but seldom to the end; and when, after jabbing the button on his desk that cut the circuit, Wolfe tried some new expressions and phrases for conveying his opinion of the performance and the performer, no interpreter was needed to clarify it.

  The basic idea was that Paul Emerson would have been more at home in Hitler's Germany or Franco's Spain. So I was glad of a chance to take a slant at him but it didn't get me much because he confused me by looking exactly like my chemistry teacher in high school out in Ohio, who had always given me better marks than I had earned. Also it was a safe bet that he had ulcers—I mean Paul Emerson—and he was drinking plain soda with only one piece of ice. In swimming trunks he was really pitiful, and I had taken some pictures of him from the most effective angles to please Wolfe with.

  It was Emerson's wife, Connie, who seemed to be heading for a situation that might possibly have a bearing on our objective as defined by Wolfe. She couldn't have had more than four or five years to dawdle away until her life began at forty, and was therefore past my deadline, but it was by no means silly of her to assume that it was still okay for her to go swimming in mixed company in broad daylight. She was one of those rare blondes that take a good tan, and had better legs and arms, judged objectively, than either Gwenn or Madeline, and even from the other side of the wide pool the blue of her eyes carried clear and strong.

  That's where she was at the moment, across the pool, sitting with Louis Rony, getting her breath after showing him a double knee lock that had finally put him flat, and he was no matchstick. It was a new technique for making a pass at a man, but it had obvious advantages, and anyway she had plenty of other ideas and wasn't being stingy with them. At lunch she had buttered rolls for him. Now I ask you.

  I didn't get it. If Gwenn was stewing about it she was keeping it well hid, though I had noticed her casting a few quick glances. There was a chance that she was counter-attacking by pretending she would rather help me take pictures than eat, and that she loved to watch me dive, but who was I to suspect a fine freckled girl of pretending? Madeline had made a couple of cracks about Connie's routine, without any sign that she really cared a damn. As for Paul Emerson, the husband, the sour look on his undistinguished map when his glance took in his wife and her playmate didn't seem to mean much, since it stayed sour no matter where he was glancing.

  Louis Rony was the puzzle, though. The assumption was that he was making an all-out play for Gwenn, either because he was in love with her or because he wanted something that went with her; and if so, why the monkeyshines with the mature and beautifully tanned blonde? Was he merely trying to give Gwenn a nudge? I had of course done a survey on him, including the contrast between his square-jawed rugged phiz and the indications that the race of fat and muscle would be a tie in another couple of years, but I wasn't ready for a final vote.

  From my research on him, which hadn't stopped with Bascom's reports, I knew all about his record as a sensational defender of pickpockets, racketeers, pluggers, fences, and on down the line, but I was holding back on whether he was a candidate for the throne Abe Hummel had once sat on, or a Commie trying out a new formula for raising a stink, or a lieutenant, maybe even better in one of Arnold Zeck's field divisions, or merely a misguided sucker for guys oh hot spots.

  However, the immediate puzzle about him was more specific. The question for the moment wasn't what did he expect to accomplish with Connie Emerson, or what kind of fuel did he have in his gas tank, but what was all the fuss about the waterproof wallet, or bag, on the inside of his swimming trunks? I had seen him give it his attention, not ostentatiously, four times altogether; and by now my curiosity had really got acute, for the fourth time, right after the knee lock episode with Connie, he had gone so far as to pull it out for a look and stuff it back in again. My eyes were still as good as ever, and there was no doubt about what it was.

  Naturally I did not approve of it. At a public beach, or even at a private beach or pool where there is a crowd of strangers and he changes with other males in a common room, a man has a right to guard something valuable by putting it into a waterproof container and keeping it next to his hide, and he may even be a sap if he doesn't. But Rony, being a house guest like the rest of us, had changed in his own room, which wasn't far from mine on the second floor. It is not nice to be suspicious of your hosts or fellow guests, and even if you think you ought to be there must have been at least a dozen first-class hiding places in Rony's room for an object small enough to go in that thing he kept worrying about. It was an insult to everybody, including me. It was true that he kept his worry so inconspicuous that apparently no one else noticed it, but he had no right to take such a risk of hurting our feelings, and I resented it and intended to do something about it.

  Madeline's fingers touched my arm. I finished a sip of my Tom Collins and turned my head.

  “Yeah?” “Yeah what?” she smiled, opening her eyes.

  “You touched me.” “No, did I? Nothing.” It was evidently meant as a teaser, but I was watching Gwenn poise for a back flip, and anyway there was an interruption. Paul Emerson had wandered over and now growled down at me.

  “I forgot to mention it, Goodwin, I don't want any pictures unless they have my okay—I mean for publication.” I tilted my head back. “You mean any at all, or just of you?” “I mean of me. Please don't forget that.” “Sure. I don't blame you.” When he had made it to the edge of the pool and fallen in, presumably on purpose, Madeline spoke.

  “Do you think a comparative stranger like you ought to take swipes at a famous character like him?” “I certainly do. You shouldn't be surprised, if you know my repertory so well.

  What was that crack, anyhow?” “Oh—when we go in I guess I'll have to show you something. I should control my tongue better.” On the other side Rony and Connie Emerson had got their breath back and were making a dash for the pool. Jimmy Sperling, whom I preferred to think of as Junior, called to ask if I could use a refill, and Webster Kane said he would attend to it. Gwenn stopped before me, dripping again, to say that the light would soon be right for the west terrace and we ought to put on some clothes, and didn't I agree with her?

  It was one of the most congenial jobs of detecting I had had m a long while, and there wouldn't have been a cloud in sight if it hadn't been for that damn waterproof wallet or bag that Rony was so anxious about. That called for a little work, but it would have to wait.

  CHAPTER Four

  Hours later, in my room on the second floor, which had three big windows, two three-quarter beds, and the kind of furniture and rugs I will never own but am perfectly willing to use as a transient without complaining, I got clean and neat for dinner. Then I retrieved my keys from where I had hidden them behind a book on a shelf, took my medicine case from the caribou bag, and unlocked it.

  This was a totally different thing from Rony's exhibition of bad manners, since I was there on business, and the nature of my business required me to carry various unusual items in what I
called my medicine case. All I took from it was a tiny, round, soft light brown object, which I placed tenderly in the little inner coin pocket inside the side pocket of my jacket. I handled it with tweezers because it was so quick to dissolve that even the moisture of my fingers might weaken it. I relocked the medicine case and returned it to the bag.

  There was a knock on my door and I said come in. It opened and Madeline entered and advanced, enveloped in a thin white film of folds that started at her breast and stopped only at her ankles. It made her face smaller and her eyes biggert “How do you like my dress, Archie?” she asked.

  “Yep. You may not call that formal, but it certainly—” I stopped. I looked at her. “I thought you said you liked the name Andy. No?” “I like Archie even better.” Then I'd better change over. When did Father confide in you?” “He didn't.” She opened the eyes. “You think I think I'm sophisticated and just simply impenetrable, don't you? Maybe I am, but I wasn't always. Come along, I want to show you something.” She turned and started off.

  I followed her out and walked beside her along the wide hall, across a landing, and down another hall into another wing. The room she took me into, through a door that was standing open, was twice as big as mine, which I had thought was plenty big enough, and in addition to the outdoor summer smell that came in the open windows it had the fragrance of enormous vases of roses that were placed around. I would just as soon have taken a moment to glance around at details, but she took me across to a table, opened a bulky leather-bound portfolio as big as an atlas to a page where there was a marker, and pointed.