Rex Stout - Nero Wolfe 19

by Murder by the Book

  Eight days had passed since we had seen our client, though we had had plenty of phone calls from him, some local and some from Peoria. Apparently the eight days hadn’t done him any good. Either he was wearing the same gray suit or he had two of them, but at least the tie and shirt were different. His face was pasty. As I hung his coat on the rack I remarked that he had lost some weight. When he didn’t reply I thought he hadn’t heard me, but after we had entered the office and he and Wolfe had exchanged greetings and he was in the red leather chair, he apologized.

  “Excuse me, what did you say about my weight?”

  “I said you had lost some.”

  “I guess so. I haven’t been eating much and I don’t seem to sleep. I go back home and go to the office or the warehouse, but I’m no darned good, and I take a train back here, and I’m no good here either.” He went to Wolfe. “He told me on the phone you didn’t have any real news but you wanted to see me.”

  Wolfe nodded. “I didn’t want to, I had to. I must put a question to you. In eight days I have spent—how much, Archie?”

  “Around eighteen hundred bucks.”

  “Nearly two thousand dollars of your money. You said you were going through with this even if it pauperized you. A man should not be held to a position taken under stress. I like my clients to pay my bills without immoderate pangs. How do you feel now?”

  Wellman looked uncomfortable. He swallowed. “I just said I don’t eat much.”

  “I heard you. A man should eat.” Wolfe gestured. “Perhaps I should first describe the situation. As you know, I regard it as established that your daughter was murdered by the man who, calling himself Baird Archer, phoned for an appointment with her. Also that he killed her because she had read the manuscript she told about in her letter to you. The police agree.”

  “I know they do.” Wellman was concentrating. “That’s something. You did that.”

  “I did more. Most of your money has been spent in an effort to find someone who could tell us something about either the manuscript or Baird Archer, or both. It missed success by a narrow margin. Yesterday afternoon a young woman named Rachel Abrams was murdered by being pushed from a window of her office. Mr. Goodwin entered her office three minutes later. This next detail is being withheld by the police and is not for publication. In a notebook in her desk Mr. Goodwin found entries showing that last September a Baird Archer paid her ninety-eight dollars and forty cents for typing a manuscript. Of course that clinches it that your daughter was killed because of her knowledge of the manuscript, but I was already acting on that assumption, so it doesn’t help any. We are—”

  “It proves that Baird Archer did it!” Wellman was excited. “It proves that he’s still in New York! Surely the police can find him!” He came up out of the chair. “I’m going—”

  “Please, Mr. Wellman.” Wolfe patted the air with a palm. “It proves that the murderer was in that building yesterday afternoon, and that’s all. Baird Archer is still nothing but a name, a will-o’-the-wisp. Having missed Rachel Abrams by the merest tick, we still have no one alive who has ever seen or heard him. As for finding his trail from yesterday, that’s for the police and they do it well; we may be sure that the building employees and tenants and passers-by are being efficiently badgered. Sit down, sir.”

  “I’m going up there. To that building.”

  “When I have finished. Sit down, please?”

  Wellman lowered himself, and nearly kept going to the floor when his fanny barely caught the edge of the leather. He recovered and slid back a few inches.

  “I must make it plain,” Wolfe said, “that the chance of success is now minute. I have three men interviewing Miss Abrams’ family and friends, to learn if she spoke to any of them about Baird Archer or his manuscript, but they have already talked with the most likely ones and have got nothing. Mr. Goodwin has seen everyone at the office of Scholl and Hanna who could possibly have what we’re after, and he has also called on other publishers. For a week the police, with far greater resources than mine, have been doing their best to find a trace of either Baird Archer or the manuscript. The outlook has never been rosy; now it is forlorn.”

  Wellman’s glasses had slipped down on his nose, and he pushed them back. “I asked about you before I came here,” he protested. “I thought you never gave up.”

  “I’m not giving up.”

  “Excuse me. I thought you sounded like it.”

  “I’m merely describing the situation. Forlorn is not too strong a word. It would indeed be desperate but for one possibility. The name Baird Archer was first seen on a sheet of paper in the handwriting of Leonard Dykes. It would not be poopery to assume that when he wrote that list of names, obviously invented, he was choosing a pseudonym for a manuscript of a novel, whether written by him or another. But it is a fact, not an assumption, that he included that name in a list he compiled, and that that was the name of Miss Abrams’ client, and it was also the name on the manuscript read by your daughter, and the name given by the man who phoned her for an appointment. If I make this too elaborate it is because I must make sure that it is completely clear.”

  “I like it clear.”

  “Good.” Wolfe sighed. He was not enjoying himself. “I undertook to learn about that manuscript through your daughter’s associates or the person who typed it, and I have met defeat. I’ve been licked. The only connection with Baird Archer that has not been explored is that of Leonard Dykes, and it is certainly flimsy, the bare fact that he wrote that name down; but to explore it is our only hope.”

  “Then go ahead.”

  Wolfe nodded. “That’s why I needed to see you. This is February twenty-seventh. Dykes was fished out of the water on New Year’s Day. He had been murdered. The police rarely skimp on a murder, and the law office where Dykes worked assuredly saw a great deal of them. Mr. Goodwin has been permitted to see the file. People there were even asked then about Baird Archer, along with the other names on that list Dykes had written. Dykes had few intimacies or interests outside the office where he worked. Then, eight days ago, I showed the police that the name of Baird Archer connected Dykes’s death with that of your daughter, and of course they again went after the people in that law office and are still after them. All possible questions have probably been asked, not once but over and over, of those people. It would be useless for me to open an inquiry there in the conventional manner. They wouldn’t even listen to my questions, let alone answer them.”

  Wellman was concentrating. “You’re saying you can’t do it.”

  “No. I’m saying the approach must be oblique. Young women work in law offices. Mr. Goodwin may have his equal in making the acquaintance of a young woman and developing it into intimacy, but I doubt it. We can try that. However, it will be expensive, it will probably be protracted, and it may be futile—for your purpose and mine. If there were only one young woman and we knew she had information for us, it would be simple, but there may be a dozen or more. There’s no telling what it will cost, or how long it will take, or whether we’ll get anything. That’s why I had to ask you, shall we try it or do you want to quit?”

  Wellman’s reaction was peculiar. He had been concentrating on Wolfe, to be sure he got it clear, but now he had shifted to me, and his look was strange. He wasn’t exactly studying me, but you might have thought I had suddenly grown an extra nose or had snakes in my hair. I sent my brows up. He turned to Wolfe.

  “Do you mean—” He cleared his throat. “I guess it’s a good thing you asked me. After what I said here that day you have a right to think I would stand for anything, but that’s a little too—with my money—a dozen young women—first one and then another like that—”

  “What the devil are you suggesting?” Wolfe demanded.

  I not only kept my face straight, I stepped in, for three good reasons: we needed the business, I wanted to get a look at Baird Archer, and I did not want John R. Wellman to go back and tell Peoria that New York detectives debauched stenograph
ers wholesale on order.

  “You misunderstand,” I told Wellman. “Much obliged for the compliment, but by intimacy Mr. Wolfe meant holding hands. He’s right that sometimes I seem to get along with young women, but it’s because I’m shy and they like that. I like what you said about its being your money. You’ll have to take my word for it. If things start developing beyond what I think you would approve, I’ll either remember it’s your money and back off or I’ll take off of the expense account all items connected with that subject.”

  “I’m not a prude,” Wellman protested.

  “This is farcical!” Wolfe bellowed.

  “I’m not a prude,” Wellman insisted manfully, “but I don’t know those young women. I know this is New York, but some of them may be virgins.”

  “Absolutely possible,” I agreed. I reproved Wolfe. “Mr. Wellman and I understand each other. His money is not to be used beyond a certain point, and he’ll take my word for it. That right, Mr. Wellman?”

  “I guess that’ll do,” he conceded. Meeting my eyes, he decided his glasses needed cleaning, removed them, and wiped them with his handkerchief. “Yes, that’ll do.”

  Wolfe snorted. “There is still my question. The expense, the time it will take, the slender prospect of success. Also it will be in effect an investigation of the death of Leonard Dykes, not of your daughter. The approach will be oblique in more ways than one. Well, sir? Do we proceed or quit?”

  “We proceed.” Our client, still our client, put his glasses back on. “If I might—I would like to be assured that our relations are confidential. I wouldn’t want my wife or my pastor to know about this—uh—this development.”

  Wolfe was looking as if he might bellow again, so I put in fast, “They won’t, not from us. No one will.”

  “That’s good. Do you want another check?”

  Wolfe said we didn’t, not just yet. That seemed to dispose of all the issues, but Wellman wanted to ask some questions, chiefly about Rachel Abrams and the building where her office was. Apparently he intended to go up there and poke around, and I was all for it, anything to get him outside before he got to worrying again about virgins, or Wolfe’s resentment at having to confer with a client got out of hand.

  After showing Wellman out I returned to the office. Wolfe was leaning back, scowling, running a fingertip around a race track on the arm of his chair.

  I stretched and yawned. “Well,” I remarked, “I suppose I’d better go up and change my clothes. The light brown, you know. They like a soft material that doesn’t scratch when they put their head on your shoulder. Meanwhile you can be thinking up my instructions.”

  “There will be no instructions,” he growled. “Confound it, get me something, that’s all.” He leaned forward to ring for beer.

  Chapter 7

  My remark about changing my clothes had of course been a feeble gag. Starting contacts with the personnel in the office of Corrigan, Phelps, Kustin and Briggs would require more elaborate outfitting than a light brown suit, though it was a good shade and a nice soft fabric. As Wolfe had told Wellman, everyone there would certainly be fed up with questions about Leonard Dykes and the name of Baird Archer, and if I had merely gone there and opened fire I would have been bounced.

  I did go up to my room though, to think it over away from Wolfe and the phone. The approach was simple. What did we have too much of that girls liked, besides me? That was a cinch: orchids, especially at that time of year, when there were thousands of blossoms and practically all of them would be left on the plants till they wilted. In a quarter of an hour I went down again to the office and announced to Wolfe, “I’m going to need a lot of orchids.”

  “How many?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe four or five dozen to start with. I want a free hand.”

  “You won’t get it. Consult me. No Cypripedium Lord Fisher, no Dendrobium Cybele, no—”

  “Not gaudy enough anyway. I’ll stick to Cattleyas, Brassos, and Laelios.”

  “You know the rarities.”

  “Sure. I ought to.”

  I went out and took a taxi to Homicide on Twentieth Street. There I hit a snag. Purley Stebbins was out to lunch. It would have been useless to try to get what I wanted from any of the riffraff, so I insisted on seeing Cramer and got waved down the hall to his room. He was at his desk, eating pickles and salami and drinking buttermilk. When I told him I wanted to take a look at the Dykes file and make a list of the employees at the law office where he had worked, he said he was busy and had no time to argue and would I please go away.

  “Yes, sir,” I said politely. “We give you all we have. We connect Dykes and Wellman for you. We tie in Abrams before she’s even cold, and hand it over. You still have nowhere to go, but neither have we. Now all I want is a list of names which I could get elsewhere by spending a couple of hours and maybe twenty bucks, but you’re too busy. I think it’s what you eat. It’s your stomach. Good God, look at that lunch.”

  He swallowed a mixture of pickle and salami he had been chewing, pushed a button, and spoke to the intercom.

  “Rossi? I’m sending Goodwin in, Archie Goodwin. Let him take the Leonard Dykes file and make a list of the employees in that law office. That’s all he does. Stay with him. Got it?”

  A metallic voice crackled, “Right, Inspector.”

  I got back to Thirty-fifth Street in time for lunch, having stopped at a stationery store for some plain gummed labels. The other things I would need were on hand.

  After lunch I went to it. There were sixteen female names on my list. I might have been able to dig out of the file who was what, but it would have been a job, and anyhow I didn’t want to discriminate. A filing clerk was just as apt to be my meat as the confidential secretary of James A. Corrigan, the senior partner. As a starter all I needed were the names, and I went to the office and typed a label for each of them. I also typed, on plain pieces of paper, sixteen times so as not to use carbons:

  These orchids are so rare that they cannot be bought. I picked them for you. If you care to know why, phone me at PE 3-1212.

  ARCHIE GOODWIN

  With the labels and typed notes in an envelope in my pocket, I ascended to the plant rooms, got a basket and knife, went to the warm room, and started cutting. I needed forty-eight, three apiece, but took a few extra because some were not perfect, mostly Cattleyas Dionysius, Katadin and peetersi, Brassocattleyas Calypso, fournierae and Nestor, and Laeliocattleyas barbarossa, Carmencita and St. Gothard. It was quite a collection. Theodore had offered to help, and I had no objection. The only one he tried to talk me out of was Calypso, because they weren’t blooming so well, but I was firm.

  In the potting room we got out boxes and tissue and ribbon, and Theodore packed them expertly and inserted the typed notes while I pasted on the labels and fought with the ribbon. The damn ribbon was what took time. Wolfe is better at it than either Theodore or me, but this was my party. When the last bow was tied and the sixteen boxes were carefully packed in a large carton, it was twenty minutes to four. Still time. I lugged the carton downstairs, got my hat and coat, went out and found a taxi, and gave the driver the address, on Madison Avenue in the Fifties.

  The office of Corrigan, Phelps, Kustin and Briggs was on the eighteenth floor of one of those buildings that think there is nothing like marble in big slabs if you want real class, with double doors for an entrance at the end of a wide corridor. The automatic door-closer was strong enough to push a horse out, and my entry was a little clumsy on account of the carton. In the long anteroom a couple of guys were on chairs, another one was pacing up and down, and back of a rail a three-shades-of-blond sourpuss was fighting it out with a switchboard. Near her, inside the rail, was a table. I took the carton there, put it on the floor by the rail, opened it, and began removing the ribboned boxes and putting them on the table.

  She sent me a withering glance. “Mother’s Day in February?” she inquired wearily. “Or atom bombs, perhaps?”

  I finished my unpacki
ng and then stepped to her. “On one of those boxes,” I told her, “you will find your name. On the others there are other names. They should be delivered today. It may possibly make you take a brighter view—”

  I stopped because I had lost her. She had left the switchboard and made a beeline for the table. I don’t know what it was that she was hoping life had in store for her, but it must have been something that could be put in a small box, the way she went for it. As she started her eye over the labels, I crossed to the door, pulled it open by getting a firm foothold, and departed.

  If that was typical of the reaction of females in that office to ribboned boxes there was no telling how soon I would be getting a phone call, so I told the taxi driver it would be okay if he made it to Thirty-fifth Street in less than an hour, but with the midtown traffic at that time of day it made no difference.

  When we had finally made it and I had mounted the stoop and let myself in, I went to the kitchen and asked Fritz, “Any calls?”

  He said no. There was a gleam in his eyes. “If you need any help with all the ladies, Archie, for my age I am not to be ignored. A Swiss has a long usefulness.”

  “Thanks. I may need you. Theodore told you?”

  “No. Mr. Wolfe told me.”

  “The hell he did.”

  I was supposed to report myself in whenever I returned from an errand, so I went to the office and buzzed the plant rooms, where Wolfe spent every afternoon from four to six, on the house phone.

  “I’m back,” I told him. “Delivered according to plan. By the way, I’ll put them on Wellman’s account at three dollars per. A bargain for him.”

  “No. I do not sell orchids.”

  “He’s a client. They were a required item.”