by Rex Stout
"No, thanks." I sat on the couch, four feet away, twisted around to face her. "I don't suppose the champagne's what you came here for. Is it?" "No. I came to get my umbrella." "Yellow with a red plastic handle?" "No. Gray with a black handle." "It's there in a drawer, but you'll have to manage without it for a while. If and when the police get interested in this place they won't like it if things have been taken away. How did it get here?" Too Many Clients 113 "I need a refill." She was off of the couch and on her feet in one smooth movement. "Can't I bring you some?" "No, thanks." "You, Fred?" "No, one's enough of this stuff." She crossed to the kitchen door and on through. I asked Fred, "Did she try to buy you off or talk you off?" He shook his head. "She didn't try anything. She gave me a look and saw I'm twice as big as she is, and she said, *I don't know you, do I? What's your name?' She's a damn cool specimen if you ask me. Do you know what she asked me after we got talking? She asked me if I thought this would be a good place to have meetings of the Parent-Teachers Association. Believe me, if I was a woman and I had keys to this place and I came and found a stranger--" Mrs. Hough had reappeared, with a full glass. She came and resumed her place on the couch without spilling a drop, lifted the glass, said, "Faith, hope, and charity," and took a sip. She adjusted her legs. "I left it here," she said. "Two weeks ago Friday, three weeks this coming Friday. It was raining. Torn Yeager had told me he knew a place that was different, worth seeing, he said, and he gave me keys and told me how to get in. When I came, this is what I found." She waved a hand. "You have to admit it's different. But there was no one here but him, and he had ideas I didn't like. He didn't actually assault me, say nothing but good of the dead, but he was pretty difficult, and I was glad to get away without my umbrella but with everything else." fi 114 Rex Stout She took a sip. "And when I read about his death, about his body being found in a hole in the street, this street, you can imagine. I wasn't worried about being suspected of having something to do with his death, that wasn't it, but I knew how clever they are at tracing things, and if the umbrella was traced to me, and this room described in the papers--well . . ." She gestured. "My husband, my friends, everyone who knows me--and if it got bad enough my husband might even lose his job. But this place wasn't mentioned in the papers yesterday, and when it wasn't mentioned again today I thought they probably didn't know about it, and I decided to come and see and perhaps I could get my umbrella. So here I am." She took a sip. "And you say I can't have it and talk about going to see Nero Wolfe. It would be fun to see Nero Wolfe, I wouldn't mind that, but I want my umbrella, and I have an idea. You say it's here in a drawer?" "Right." "Then you take it, and tonight take me to the Flamingo and we'll dance. Not just a turn, we'll dance till they close, and then you might feel like letting me have the umbrella. That may sound conceited, but I don't mean it that way, I just think you might, and it won't hurt to find out, and anyhow you'll have the umbrella." "Yeah." The curve of her lips really caught the eye. "And it won't be here. I appreciate the invitation, Mrs. Hough, but I'll be working tonight. Speaking of working, why would your husband lose his job? Does he work for Continental Plastic Products?" "No. He's an assistant professor at NYU. A wife Too Many Clients 115 of a faculty member getting involved in a thing like this--even if I'm not really involved . . ." There was a click in my skull. It wasn't a hunch; you never know where a hunch comes from; it was the word "professor" that flipped a switch. "What's he professor of?" I asked. "English literature." She took a sip. "You're changing the subject. We can go to the Flamingo tomorrow night. You won't be losing anything except a few hours if you don't like me, because you'll have the umbrella." She looked at her wrist watch. "It's nearly half past one. Have you had lunch?" "No." "Take me to lunch and maybe you'll melt a little." I was listening with only one ear. Teacher of literature. Measure your mind's height by the shade it casts, Robert Browning. I would have given ten to one, which would have been a sucker's bet, but a detective has as much right to look on the bright side as anyone else. I stood up. "You're getting on my nerves, Mrs. Hough. It would be no strain at all to call you Di. I haven't seen anyone for quite a while that I would rather take to lunch or dance with, melting would be a pleasure, but I have to go. Nero Wolfe will still want to see you, but that can wait. Just one question: Where were you Sunday night from seven o'clock on?" "No." Her eyes widened. "You can't mean that." "Sorry, but I do. If you want to have another conference with yourself, I'll wait while you go to fill your glass again." "You really mean it." She emptied the glass, taking her time. "I didn't go to the kitchen to have 116 Rex Stout a conference with myself. Sunday night I was at home, at our apartment, with my husband. Seven o'clock on? We went to a restaurant in the Village a little after six for dinner, and got home after eight--around half past eight. My husband worked at some papers, and I read and watched television, and I went to bed around midnight, and stayed there, really I did. I seldom get up in the middle of the night and go and shoot a man and drop his body in a hole." "It's a bad habit," I agreed. "Now Mr. Wolfe won't have to ask you that. I suppose you're in the phone book?" I turned to Fred. "Don't let her talk you out of the umbrella. How's the room service here? Okay?" "No complaints. I'm beginning to feel at home. How much longer?" "A day or a week or a year. You never had it softer." "Hunh. You leaving her?" "Yeah, she might as well finish the bottle. I've got an errand." As I made for the elevator Dinah Hough left the couch and headed for the kitchen. She was in there when the elevator came and I entered. Down below Mr. and Mrs. Perez were still in their kitchen, and I poked my head in and told them that their only hope of steering clear of trouble was to sit tight, and blew. At the corner of 82nd and Columbus was a drugstore where I could have treated my stomach to a glass of milk, but I didn't stop. I had a date with an assistant professor of English literature, though he didn't know it. sl & L- Chapter 10
' t was 1:40 when I left that house. It was 6:10, four and a half hours later, when I said to I . Austin Hough, "You know damn well you can't. Come on." During the four and a half hours I had accomplished a good deal. I had learned that in a large university a lot of people know where an assistant professor ought to be or might be, but no one knows where he is. I had avoided getting trampled in corridors twice, once by diving into an alcove and once by fighting my way along the wall. I had sat in an anteroom and read a magazine article entitled "Experiments in Secondary Education in Japan." I had sweated for fifteen minutes in a phone booth, reporting to Wolfe on the latest developments, including the acquisition of a house by Cesar and Felita Perez. I had taken time out to find a lunch counter on University Place and take in a comedbeef sandwich, edible, a piece of cherry pie, not bad, and two glasses of milk. I had been stopped in a hall by three coeds, one of them as pretty as a picture (no reference to the pictures on the top floor of the Perez house), who asked for my autograph. They 120 Rex Stout curb in front. Mounting the stoop and finding the chain bolt was on, I had to ring for Fritz to let us in. Wolfe was at his desk, scowling at a crossword puzzle in the Observer. He didn't look up as we entered. I put Hough in the red leather chair and went to mine, saying nothing. When a master brain is working on a major problem you don't butt in. In twenty seconds he muttered, "Confound it," slammed his pencil on the desk, swiveled, focused on the guest, and growled, "So Mr. Goodwin rooted you out. What have you to say for yourself?" "Where's my wife?" Hough blurted. He had been holding it in. "Wait a second," I put in. "I've told him I talked with his wife this afternoon and got his name and address from items in her bag. That's all." "Where is she?" Hough demanded. Wolfe regarded him. "Mr. Hough. When I learned Monday evening that a man named Thomas G. Yeager had been murdered, it would have been proper and natural for me to give the police a description of the man who had been here that afternoon impersonating him. For reasons of my own, I didn't. If I tell them about it now I'll give them not a description, but your name and address. Whether I do or not will depend on your explanation of that strange imposture. What is it?" "I want to know where Goodwin saw my wife and why, and where
she is. Until I know that, I'm explaining nothing." Wolfe closed his eyes. In a moment he opened them. He nodded. "That's understandable. If your wife was a factor, you can't explain without involving her, and you won't do that unless she is already involved. Very well, she is. Monday afternoon, EToo Many Clients 121 posing as Yeager, you told Mr. Goodwin that you expected to be followed to One-fifty-six West Eighty-second Street. When your wife entered a room in the house at that address at noon today, she found a man there who is in my employ. He notified Mr. Goodwin, and he went there and talked with her. She had keys to the house and the room. That's all I intend to tell you. Now your explanation." I seldom feel sorry for people Wolfe has got in a corner . Usually they have asked for it one way or another, and anyhow if you can't stand the sight of a fish flopping on the gaff you shouldn't go fishing. But I had to move my eyes away from Austin Hough. His long bony face was so distorted he looked more like a gargoyle than a man. I moved my eyes away, and when I forced them back he had hunched forward and buried his face in his hands. Wolfe spoke. "Your position is hopeless, Mr. Hough. You knew that address. You knew Yeager's unlisted telephone number. You knew that he frequented that address. You knew that your wife also went there. What did you hope to accomplish by coming here to send Mr. Goodwin on a pointless errand?" Hough's head raised enough for his eyes to come to me. "Where is she, Goodwin?" It was an appeal, not a demand. "I don't know. I left her in that room at that address at twenty minutes to two. She was drinking champagne but not enjoying it. The only other person there was the man in Mr. Wolfe's employ. He wasn't keeping her; she was free to go. I left because I wanted to have a look a^ you, but she didn't know that. I don't know when she left or where she went." 122 Rex Stout "You talked with her? She talked?" "Right. Twenty minutes or so." "What did she say?" I sent a glance at Wolfe, but he didn't turn his head to meet it, so I was supposed to use my discretion and sagacity. I did so. "She told me a lie, not a very good one. She said she had been there only once and hadn't stayed long. She had left her umbrella there and had gone today to get it. The part about the umbrella was okay; it was there in a drawer and still is. She invited me to take her to lunch. She invited me to take her to the Flamingo tonight and dance till they close." "How do you know it was a lie, that she had been there only once?" I shook my head. "You want too much for nothing. Just file it that I don't think she lied; I know she did. And I know you know it too." "You do not." "Oh, nuts. Go climb a rope." Wolfe wiggled a finger at him. "Mr. Hough. We have humored you, but our indulgence isn't boundless. Your explanation." "What if I don't give you one? What if I get up and walk out?" "That would be a misfortune for both of us. Now that I know who you are I would be obliged to tell the police of your performance Monday afternoon, and I'd rather not, for reasons of my own. In that respect your interest runs with mine--and your wife's. Her umbrella is still there." He was licked and he knew it. His face didn't go gargoyle again, but his mouth twisted and the skin FR1;Too Many Clients 123 around his eyes was squeezed in as if the light was too strong. "Circumstances," he said. "Men are the sport of circumstances. Good God, as I sat in this chair talking to Goodwin, Yeager was dead, had been dead for hours. When I read it in the paper yesterday morning I knew how it would be if you found me, and I decided what to say; I was going to deny it, but now that won't do." He nodded, slowly. "So. Circumstances. Of course my wife shouldn't have married me. It was a circumstance that she met me at a moment when she was--but I won't go into that. I'll try to keep to the point. I was a fool to think that I might still save our marriage, but I did. She wanted things that I couldn't supply, and she wanted to do things that I am not inclined to and not equipped for. She couldn't do them with me, so she did them without me." "The point," Wolfe said. "Yes. This is the first time I have ever said a word about my relations with my wife to anyone. About a year ago she suddenly had a watch that must have cost a thousand dollars or more. Then other things--jewelry, clothes, a fur coat. She had frequently spent evenings out without me, but it became more than evenings; occasionally she came home after dawn. You realize that now that I've started it's difficult to confine myself to the essentials."
"Do so if possible." "I'll try. I descended to snooping. Curiosity creeps into the homes of the unfortunate under the names of duty or pity. When my wife--" "Is that Pascal?" "No, Nietzsche. When my wife went out in the -^T- 1 124 Rex Stout evening I followed her--not always, but when I could manage it. Mostly she went to a restaurant or the address of a friend I knew about, but twice she went to that address on Eighty-second Street and entered at the basement door. That was incomprehensible, in that kind of neighborhood, unless it was a dive of some sort--dope or God knows what. I went there one afternoon and pushed the button at the basement door, but learned nothing. I am not a practiced investigator like you. A man, I think a Puerto Rican, told me only that he had no vacant rooms." He stopped to swallow. "I also snooped at home, and one day I found a phone number that my wife had scribbled on the back of an envelope. Chisholm five^ three-two-three-two. I dialed it and learned that it was the residence of Thomas G. Yeager. It wasn't listed. I made inquiries and found out who he was, and I saw him, more by luck than design. Do you want to know how it happened?" "No. You met him?" "No, I saw him at a theater. That was two weeks ago. And three days later, Friday, a week ago last Friday, I followed her when she went out, and she went again', that was the third time, to that house on Eighty-second Street. I went and stood across the street, and very soon, not more than five minutes, Yeager came, walking. It was still daylight. He turned in, to the basement entrance, and entered. What would you have done?" Wolfe grunted. "I wouldn't have been there." Hough turned to me. "What would you have done, Goodwin?" "That's irrelevant," I said. "I'm not you. You Too Many Clients 125 might as well ask what I would do if I were a robin and saw a boy robbing my nest. What did you do?" "I walked up and down the block until people began to notice me, and then went home. My wife came home at six o'clock. I didn't ask her where she had been; I hadn't asked her that for a year. But I decided I must do something. I considered various things, various plans, and rejected them. I finally settled on one Sunday evening. We had had dinner--" "Which Sunday?" "Last Sunday. Three days ago. We had had dinner at a restaurant and returned home. My wife was watching television, and I was in my room working, only I wasn't working. I was deciding what to do, and the next day I did it. I came here and saw Archie Goodwin. You know what I said to him." "Yes. Do you think you've accounted for it?" "I suppose not. It was like this: I knew that when Yeager didn't turn up Goodwin would find out why, either phone him--that was why I gave him the number--or go to the house. He would want to see Yeager, and he would tell him about me and what I had said. So Yeager would know that someone, someone he wouldn't identify from Goodwin's description, knew about his going to that house. He would know that Archie Goodwin and Nero Wolfe also knew about it. And he would tell my wife about it and describe me to her, and she would know I knew. That was the most important. I couldn't tell her, but I wanted her to know that I knew." His eyes came to me and returned to Wolfe. "Another thing. I knew that Archie Goodwin wouldn't just dismiss it from his mind. He would 126 Rex Stout wonder why I had mentioned that particular address, and he would wonder what secret connection there might be between Yeager and that house in that neighborhood, and when Archie Goodwin wonders about anything he finds out. All of this was in my mind, but the most important was that my wife would know that I knew." His mouth worked, and he gripped the chair arms. "And that evening on the radio, the eleveno'clock news, I learned that Yeager was dead, and yesterday morning in the paper I learned that he had died, had been murdered, Sunday night, and his body had been found in a hole in front of that house. Thank God my wife wasn't there Sunday night." "You're sure of that?" "Certainly I'm sure. We sleep in separate beds, but when she turns over I hear her. You realize--" He stopped. "What?" "Nothing. I was going to say you realize that I have told you things I wouldn't have thought I could possibly ever tell anybody, but you don't care ab
out that. Perhaps I have blundered again, but I was trapped by circumstance. Is there any chance, any chance at all, that it will stay with you? I can't ask you for any consideration, I know that, after the way I imposed on Goodwin Monday afternoon. But if you could find it possible . . ." Wolfe looked up at the clock. "It's my dinnertime. It doesn't please me to hurt a man needlessly, Mr. Hough, and your puerile imposition on Mr. Goodwin doesn't rankle. On the contrary; you gave him that address and he went there, and as a result we have a client." He pushed his chair back Too Many Clients 127 and rose. "What you have told us will be divulged only if it becomes requisite." "Who is your client?" When Wolfe said that was hardly his concern, he didn't try to insist. I permitted myself to feel sorry for him again as he left the chair. He was in a hell of a spot. He wanted to see his wife, he had to see her, but what was he going to say? Was he going to explain that he was responsible for her finding a reception committee when she went to get her umbrella? Was he going to admit�I turned that switch off. He had married her, I hadn't. When I went to the front to let him out, I stood on the stoop for a minute to see if there was someone around who was curious enough about him to follow him. There wasn't. I shut the door and went to join Wolfe in the dining room. The two letters in the morning mail hadn't been answered, and when we returned to the office after dinner and had finished coffee we attended to them. One was from a Putnam County farmer asking how many starlings he wanted this year, and the other was from a woman in Nebraska saying that she would be in New York for a week late in June, with her husband and two children, and could they come and look at the orchids. The reply to the first was forty; Wolfe always invites two dinner guests for the starling pie. The reply to the second was no; she shouldn't have mentioned the children. When the answers had been typed and Wolfe had signed them, he sat and watched while I folded them and put them in the envelopes, and then spoke. "Your exclusion of Mr. and Mrs. Perez is no longer valid. They knew they would get the house." Of course I had known that was coming. I 128 Rex Stout swiveled. "It's a funny thing about the Bible. I haven't been to church for twenty years, and modem science has proved that heaven is two hundred degrees Fahrenheit hotter than hell, but if I was asked to put my hand on a Bible and swear to a lie, I'd dodge. I'd say I was a Hindu or a Buddhist-- Zen, of course. And Mr. and Mrs. Perez undoubtedly go to mass once a week and probably oftener." "Pfui. To get a house, perhaps not; but to save their skins?" I nodded. "Thousands of murderers have lied under oath on the witness stand, but this was different. They still sort of think I'm their detective."