Rex Stout - Nero Wolfe 45

by Please Pass the Guilt

  Personally I had done wonders. I had answered at least a hundred phone calls, including dozens from the three helpers. They were trying to help. Also including three from Mrs. Odell. I had discussed the situation for about an hour with a member of the CAN news staff, brought by Orrie. His real reason for coming had been to have a chat with Nero Wolfe. I had spent an evening with Sylvia Venner and a male chauvinist friend of hers, also a CAN employee, at her apartment. I had washed my hands and face every day. I could go on, but that’s enough to show you that I was fully occupied.

  Wolfe hadn’t been idle either. When Inspector Cramer had rung the doorbell at eleven-thirty Friday morning, he had told me to admit him, and he had held up his end of a twenty-minute conversation. Cramer had no chips on his shoulder. What brought him was the fact that Cass R. Abbott, the president of CAN, had come to see Wolfe the day before, a little after six o’clock, and stayed a full hour. Evidently Cramer had the old brownstone under surveillance, and if so, he positively was desperate in spite of his healthy ego. He probably thought that Abbott’s coming indicated that Wolfe had a fire lit, and if so, he wanted to warm his hands. I think when he left, he was satisfied that we were as empty as he was, but with those two you never know.

  What Abbott’s coming actually indicated was that the strain was getting on his nerves, and for a man so high up that would not do. When he got parked in the red leather chair, he told Wolfe he would like to speak with him confidentially, and when Wolfe said he could, there would be no recording, Abbott looked at me, then back to Wolfe, and said, “Privately.”

  Wolfe shook his head. “Professionally nothing is reserved between Mr. Goodwin and me. If he leaves the room and you tell me anything relevant to the job we are doing—trying to do—I would tell him, withholding nothing.”

  “Well.” Abbott ran his fingers through his mop of fine, white hair. “I have had a check on you but not on Goodwin. You hold up, but does he?”

  “If he doesn’t, I don’t. What good is a chain with a bad link?”

  Abbott nodded. “A good line. Who said it?”

  “I did. The thought is not new, no thought is, but said better.”

  “You use words, don’t you?”

  “Yes. On occasion, in six languages, which is a mere smattering. I would like to be able to communicate with any man alive. As it is, even you and I find it difficult. Are you sure you can prevent my getting more or less than you want me to from what you tell me or ask me?”

  Abbott’s raised eyebrows made his long, pale face look even longer. “By god, I can try.”

  “Go ahead.”

  “When I say ‘confidential,’ I mean you will not repeat to Mrs. Odell anything I say about her.”

  Wolfe nodded. “See? You don’t mean that. Of course I would repeat it if it would serve my purpose or her interest to do so. She has hired me. If you mean I am not to tell her your name, I am to give her no hint of who said it, yes.—Archie?”

  “Right,” I said. “Noted and filed.”

  “Then that’s understood,” Abbott said. He slid further back in the chair, which is deep. “I have known Mrs. Odell twenty years. I suppose you know she is a large stockholder in the Continental Air Network. I know her very well, and I knew him well—her husband. That’s one point. Another point is that I have been president of CAN for nine years, and I’m retiring in a few weeks, and I don’t want to leave in an atmosphere of distrust and doubt and suspicion. Not distrust or suspicion of me, not of anyone in particular, it’s just in the air. It pervades the whole damn place, the whole organization. To leave when it’s like that—it would look like I’m getting out from under.”

  He hit the chair arm with a fist. “This goddam murder has got to be cleared up! You probably wondered why I let you turn those three men loose in my building to go anywhere and see anyone. I did it because the police and the District Attorney were completely stumped, they were getting absolutely nowhere, and I thought you might. One reason I thought you might was that there was a good chance that Mrs. Odell had told you things that she hadn’t told them. But that was a week ago, a week yesterday, and where have you got to?”

  “Here.” Wolfe patted his desk blotter. “I’m always here.”

  “Hell, I know you are. Do you know who put that bomb in that drawer? Have you even got a good guess?”

  “Yes. You did. You thought they were going to choose Mr. Browning, and you favored Mr. Odell.”

  “Sure. All you need is proof. As I thought, you have done no better than the police, and you have had ten days. Last evening I discussed the situation with three of my directors, and as a result I phoned this morning to make the appointment. I am prepared to make a proposal with the backing of my Board. I suppose Mrs. Odell has paid you a retainer. If you will withdraw and return her retainer, we will reimburse you for all expenses you have incurred, and we will engage you to investigate the death of Peter Odell on behalf of the corporation, with a retainer in the same amount as Mrs. Odell’s. Or possibly more.”

  I had of course been looking at him. Now I looked at Wolfe. Since he was facing Abbott, he was in profile to me, but I had enough of his right eye to see what I call his slow-motion take. The eye closed, but so slow I couldn’t see the motion of the lid. At least twenty seconds. He certainly wasn’t giving Abbott a long wink, so the other eye was collaborating. They stayed shut about another twenty seconds, then opened in one, and he spoke. “It’s obvious, of course. It’s transparent.”

  “Transparent? It’s direct.”

  “It is indeed. You have concluded that Mr. Odell himself supplied the bomb, intending it for Mr. Browning, and mishandled it. And that Mrs. Odell hired me, not to discover and disclose the truth, but to impede its disclosure and prevent it if possible. You assume that either she is hoodwinking me or she has been candid with me. If the former, you decry my sagacity; if the latter, your proposal invites me to betray a trust. A waste of time, both yours and mine. I would have thought—”

  “You’re taking it wrong. It’s not—you’re twisting it. We merely think that if you were acting for the corpor—”

  “Nonsense. Don’t persist. I am neither a ninny nor a blackguard. Under a strain you and your colleagues have lost your wits. There is the possibility that you want to pay me to contrive some kind of skulduggery for you, but I doubt if you have misjudged me to that extreme. If you have, don’t bother. Don’t try floundering. Just go.”

  Abbott did not get up and go. He had to take it that he wasn’t going to get what he had come for, but he stuck for another half an hour, trying to find out what we had done or hadn’t done and what we expected to do. He found out exactly nothing, and so did Wolfe.

  When I went back to the office after letting Abbott out, Wolfe glared at me and muttered, “Part of his proposal is worth considering. Returning the retainer.”

  He considered it for two days and three nights. In the office at noon Sunday, after another two-hour session with us—as I reported six pages back—he told me to call Mrs. Odell and tell her he was quitting and to draw a check to her for the full amount of the retainer; and Saul and Fred and Orrie looked at me and I looked at Wolfe, especially the left corner of his mouth, to see how bad it was.

  It was bad all right, it was final, but I did not reach for the phone. “Okay,” I said. “Since I started it, I admit I should be the one to finish it, but not with a phone call. I’d rather finish it the way I started it, face to face with her, and to do it right I should take the check and hand it to her instead of mailing it. No deduction for expenses?”

  “No. The full amount. Very well, take it.”

  If we had been alone I might have tried discussing it, but with them there it was hopeless. Discussion would have to be with her, and then with him maybe. I went and got the checkbook from the safe, filled out the stub, tore the check out, and swung the typewriter around. I type all checks. That was the first one I had ever drawn for an even hundred grand, and with all the 0’s it was a nice round figure. I to
ok it to Wolfe and he signed it and handed it back. As I took it, Saul said, “I’ve asked so many people so many questions the last ten days, it’s a habit, and I’d like to ask one more. How much is it?”

  Even from Saul that was a mouthful, and my eyes opened at him. But Wolfe merely said, “Show it to him. Them.”

  I did so, and their eyes opened, and Saul said, “For her that’s petty cash, she’s really loaded. Sometimes you ask us for suggestions, and I’d like to make one. Or just another question. Instead of returning it to her, why not offer it to someone who needs it? A two-column ad in the Times and the Gazette with a heading like COULD YOU USE A HUNDRED THOUSAND DOLLARS? Then, ‘I’ll pay that amount in cash to the person who gives me information that will satisfactorily identify the person responsible for the death of Peter Odell by the explosion of a bomb on May twentieth.’ Your name at the bottom. Of course the wording would—”

  Wolfe’s “No” stopped him. He repeated it. “No. I will not make a public appeal for someone to do my job for me.”

  “You have,” Saul said. “You have advertised for help twice that I know of.”

  “For an answer to a particular question. Specific knowledge on a specified point. Not a frantic squawk to be pulled out of a mudhole. No.”

  So when they left a few minutes later, they weren’t expected back. By noon Monday Fred and Orrie would be on chores for Bascom or some other outfit, and Saul too if he felt like it.

  As for me, my chore wouldn’t wait—or I didn’t want it to. As someone said, probably Shakespeare, “’twere better done,” and so forth. Of course a person such as a Mrs. Peter Odell would ordinarily not be in town on a June Sunday, but she would be. She was ignoring weekends, and from a phone call by her Saturday morning she knew there would be a Sunday conference. So I rang her and asked if I could come at five o’clock, because earlier she would probably have the television on and I didn’t want to share her attention with Cleon Jones at bat or Tom Seaver on the mound.

  Wolfe had gone to the kitchen. For Sunday lunch with Fritz away he usually does something simple like eggs au beurre noir and a beet and watercress salad, but that time it was going to be larded shad roe casserole with anchovy butter and parsley and chervil and shallots and marjoram and black pepper and cream and bay leaf and onion and butter. It would take a lot of tasting, and he can taste. I went to the kitchen to tell him Mrs. Odell would see me at five o’clock, and he nodded, and I mounted the two flights to my room.

  That was a busy four hours; shaving and changing from the skin out, going down for my third of the shad roe, which we ate in the kitchen, looking at the telecast from Montreal—where the Mets were playing the Expos—on the color set, which, like everything else in my room, was bought and paid for by me, and writing. Not on the typewriter, because when I’m being particular, I do better longhand, and that had to be done right. When I went downstairs a little before four-thirty, the third draft was in my pocket, with the check. Wolfe was up in the plant rooms and I buzzed him on the house phone to tell him I was leaving.

  Since parking shouldn’t be a problem Sunday afternoon, I went to the garage for the Heron, crossed town on Thirty-fourth, and turned uptown on Park. Driving in midtown Manhattan can still be a pleasure—from two to eight A.M. and a couple of hours on Sunday. There was actually a gap at the curb on Sixty-third Street between Fifth and Madison. The LPS man at the entrance to the stone mansion was not the same one, and this one had better manners; he said thank you when he returned my card case. Inside I was ushered to the elevator by the same woman in a neat gray uniform and was told to push the button with a 4. In the upper hall, the client’s voice came through the open door to the big room, “In here!”

  She was on the oversized couch, one leg on it straight and the other one dangling over the edge, with sections of the Sunday Times scattered around. The television was not on—but of course the game was over. As I crossed to her she said, “You’d better have something. You certainly don’t on the telephone.”

  “We got careless once when our phone was tapped and we’re leery. I don’t suppose it’s tapped now, but once was enough. Yes, I have something.” I got the check from my pocket. “I thought I should bring it instead of mailing it.”

  She took it, frowned at it, frowned at me, again at the check, and back at me. “What’s the idea?”

  “Mr. Wolfe is bowing out. Quite a bow, since he has spent more than three thousand dollars. Three thousand dollars in twelve days and we haven’t got a smell. One reason I’m bringing it instead of mailing it, I wanted to tell you that that’s all there is to it, he’s simply pulling out. He thinks it shows strength of character to admit he’s licked. I can’t see it and don’t intend to, but I’m not a genius.”

  She surprised me. Up to that moment she had given me no reason to suppose that the arrangements inside her skull were any better than average, but she had reached a conclusion before I finished. Her eyes showed it, and she said it, with a question: “How much did Browning pay him?”

  “Uh-huh,” I said, and turned a chair to face her, and sat. “You would, naturally. If I talked for five hours, giving cases, I might be able to convince you that he couldn’t possibly double-cross a client, on account of his opinion of himself, but I think there’s a shorter way. I’ve told you on the phone about the three men we have called in to help. They were there this morning when he said it was hopeless and he was quitting. When he told me to draw a check to return the retainer, Saul Panzer suggested that instead of returning it, he might put an ad in the Times saying that he would pay it to anyone who would give him information that would identify the murderer, and Mr. Wolfe said no, he would not make a frantic squawk to be pulled out of a mudhole. That was—”

  “Of course! He would say that!”

  “Please hold it, I’ve just started. So I drew the check and he signed it, and I phoned you. But I think I can prove that he didn’t sell out, and I want to try. I think I can get him to tear the check up and go on with the job, with your help. May I use your typewriter?”

  “What for? I don’t believe it.”

  “You will. You’ll have to.” I got up and crossed to a desk, the one with a typewriter on an extension. As I pulled the chair out and sat, I asked where I would find paper and she said, “The top drawer, but you’re not fooling me,” and I said, “Wait and see,” and got out paper and a sheet of carbon.

  She preferred not to wait. As I got the third draft from my pocket and spread it out on the desk, she kicked the sections of the Times aside, left the couch, and came and stood at my elbow, and I hit the keys. I didn’t hurry because I wanted it clean. No exing. As I pulled it out, I said, “I had to type it here because he might recognize it from my machine, and this is going to be your idea.” I handed her the original and gave the carbon a look:

  NERO WOLFE HAS $50,000

  in cash, given to him by me. He will pay it, on my behalf, to any person or persons who supply information to him that leads to the conclusive identification of the man or woman who placed a bomb in a drawer of the desk of Amory Browning on Tuesday, May 20th, resulting in the death of my husband.

  The information is to be given directly to Nero Wolfe, who will use it on my behalf, and the person or persons supplying it will do so under these conditions:

  1. All decisions regarding the significance and value of any item of information will be made solely by Nero Wolfe and will be final.

  2. The total amount paid will be $50,000. If more than one person supplies useful information, the determination of their relative value and of the distribution of the $50,000 will be made solely by Nero Wolfe and will be final.

  3. Any person who communicates with Nero Wolfe or his agent as a result of this advertisement thereby agrees to the above conditions.

  “With your name at the bottom,” I said. “A reproduction of your signature, Madeline Odell, like on your check, and below it ‘Mrs. Peter J. Odell’ in parenthesis, as usual, printed. Now hear this. Of course he’ll
know I wrote it, but if he thinks I wrote it at home and brought it, he’ll balk. No go. As I said, that’s why I didn’t type it there. It has to be your idea, suggested by you after I told you about his reaction to Saul Panzer’s suggestion. He may phone you. If he does, you’ll have to do it right. Then of course the question will be, what will happen? I think it will work, and certainly it may work. It’s ten to one that someone knows something that would crack it open, and fifty grand is a lot of bait.”

  I was on my feet. “So if you’ll sign it, the original, and keep the carbon, and I’ll need two samples of your signature on plain paper, one for the Times and one for the Gazette, to make cuts.”

  “You’re pretty good,” she said.

  “I try hard. Whence all but me have fled.”

  “What?”

  “The burning deck.”

  “What burning deck?”

  “You don’t read the right poems.” I swiveled the chair. “Sit here? That pen is stingy, I tried it. Mine’s better.”

  “So is the one on my desk.” She moved, went to the other desk, which was bigger, and sat. “I’m not convinced, you know. This could be an act. You can phone to say it didn’t work.”

  “If I do, it won’t be an act, it will be because he is pigheaded. I mean strong-minded. It will depend on you if he phones.”

  “Well.” She reached for the pen in an elegant jade stand. “I have a suggestion. It shouldn’t be fifty thousand. Figures like that, fifty thousand or a hundred thousand, they don’t hit. In-between figures are better, like sixty-five thousand or eighty-five.”

  “Right. Absolutely. Change it. Make it sixty-five. Just draw a line through the fifty thousand.”

  She tried the pen on a scratch pad. I always do.

  13

  it worked.

  Driving downtown and across to the garage on Tenth Avenue, I considered the approach. Over the years I suppose I have told Wolfe 10,000 barefaced lies, or, if you prefer in-between figures, make it 8,392, either on personal matters that were none of his business or on business details that couldn’t hurt and might help, but I have no desire to break a world record, and anyway the point was to make it stick if possible. I decided on a flank attack and then to play it by ear.