Black Orchids

by Rex Stout

  “What the hell are you doing back here?”

  The dick’s mouth opened and shut again. It didn’t want to say what it had to say. On the second try it got it out:

  “I lost her.”

  Cramer groaned and looked speechless.

  “It wasn’t my fault,” the dick said, “I swear it wasn’t, Inspector. That damn subway. A local rolled in and stopped and she hung back like waiting for an express and then the last second she dived through-”

  “Can it,” Cramer said. “Choke on it. My God. The wonder to me is that-what does it matter what the wonder to me is? What’s that name and address?”

  Murphy flipped back through the pages of his notebook and stopped at one. “Ruby Lawson. One fourteen Sullivan Street.”

  The dick got out his memo book and wrote it down. “I don’t think it was deliberate,” he said. “I think she just changed her mind. I think she just-”

  “You think? You say you think?”

  “Yes, Inspector, I-”

  “Get out. Take another man, take Dorsey, and go to that address and look into her. Don’t pick her up. Keep on her. And for God’s sake don’t think. It’s repulsive, the idea of you thinking.”

  The thinker made himself scarce. Naturally I was now itching to be on my way, so I leaned back comfortably and crossed my legs and began, “You know, when I am tailing someone and they go into a subway station, it is my invariable custom-”

  “You can go,” Cramer snapped. “On out. If I want you, which God forbid, I know where to get you.”

  “But I think-”

  “I said go!”

  I got up leisurely and went out leisurely, and on my way through the outer room paused for a friendly word with Purley, but when I got to the stairs outside I stepped on it. It was at least a hundred to one that I had been stood up, but nevertheless I hotfooted it to the Lexington Avenue entrance of Grand Central Station and on to the newsreel theater, parted with money, and entered. She wasn’t in the back row, and I didn’t waste time inspecting any other rows. Since she had given a phony name and address to Cramer, and had been smart enough to make it one that matched the RL on her bag, I figured she probably wouldn’t be letting grass come up between her toes. Out in the lighted corridor I took a hasty glance at a page jn my memo book, considered patronizing the subway and decided no, and headed for 46th Street where I had parked the car.

  My high-hatting the subway nearly lost me a trick, for it was slow work at that hour getting around on to Park Avenue, but once headed downtown I made good time.

  Number 326 Morrow Street, down at the southern fringe of Greenwich Village, was one of those painted brick fronts that were painted too long ago. There were supposed to be two lights on black iron brackets at the entrance to the vestibule, but only one was working. I parked across the street and moseyed over. Inside the vestibule was the usual row of mailboxes and bell pushes, and the card below one of them had LASHER printed on it. That was okay, but what made it interesting was that on the same card, above LASHER, another name was printed: GOULD. I was leaning over looking at it when the inside door opened and there she was.

  It was easy to see that high-hatting the subway had nearly cost me a trick, because she had a traveling bag in her hand and was stooping to pick up a suitcase with the hand she had used to open the door with.

  “Allow me,” I said, extending a hand. “That looks heavy.”

  She gave me one startled glance and dropped the suitcase and sat down on it and started to cry. She didn’t cover her face with her hands or anything like that, she just burst.

  I waited a minute for a lull. “Look,” I said, “you’re blocking the way in case anyone wants to come in or go out. Let’s take these things-”

  “You dirty-” The crying interfered with it. “You lousy-”

  “No,” I said firmly. “No, sister. You stood me up. You humiliated me.” I picked up the traveling bag which she had also dropped. “Let’s go.”

  “He’s dead,” she said. She wasn’t bothering about small things like tears. “He’s dead, ain’t he? Hasn’t anybody got any heart at all? The way I had to sit up there-sit there and pretend-” She stopped and chewed her lip, and all of a sudden she stood up and blazed at me. “Who are you, anyway? How did you know who I was? How did you get here so quick? You’re a detective, that’s what you are, you’re a lousy detective-”

  “No.” I gripped her arm. “If you mean a city employee, no. My name is Archie Goodwin and I work for Nero Wolfe. My car’s outside and I’m taking you up to Wolfe’s place for a little conference. He’s got one of the biggest hearts in the world, encased in a ton of blubber.”

  Of course she balked. She even defied me to call a cop, but then she started to cry again, and during that deluge I picked up the bag and suitcase and herded her out and across the street to the car. All the way up to 35th Street she cried and I had to lend her a handkerchief.

  With my hands full of luggage, I had her precede me up the stoop and ring the bell for Fritz to let us in. He did so, and helped her off with her coat like a head waiter helping the Duchess of Windsor, one of the nicest things about Fritz being that to him anything in a skirt is a lady.

  “Mr. Wolfe is at dinner,” he announced.

  “I’ll bet he is. Take Miss Lasher to the office.”

  I took the luggage with me to the dining room, set it down against the wall, and approached the table. There he was, floating in clouds of bliss. He looked from the luggage tome.

  “What’s that? Those aren’t your bags.”

  “No, sir,” I agreed. “They are the property of an object I brought with me named Rose Lasher, who may help you hang onto those orchids. She is bereaved and hungry and I’m hungry. Shall I stay with her in the office-”

  “Hungry? Bring her in here. There’s plenty.”

  I went to the office and returned with her. She had stopped crying but sure was forlorn.

  “Miss Lasher,” I said, “this is Nero Wolfe. He never discusses business at the table, so we’ll eat first and go into things later.” I held a chair for her.

  “I don’t want to eat,” she said in a thin voice. “I can’t eat.”

  She ate seven sausages, which was nothing against her grief. Fritz’s saucisse minuit would make Gandhi a gourmet.

  Chapter 6

  And now,” Wolfe demanded, “what is Miss Lasher here for?”

  Dinner was over and we were settled in the office. Wolfe was seated behind his desk, leaning back with his fingers laced over his sausage mausoleum, his eyes half closed. I was at my desk, and Rose was in a red leather chair facing Wolfe. The set of her lips didn’t indicate that the meal had made her one of us.

  I recited particulars, briefly but completely.

  “Indeed.” Wolfe inclined his head a sixteenth of an inch. “Satisfactory, Archie.” The head turned. “You must have a lot to tell, Miss Lasher. Tell it, please.”

  She looked sullen. “Tell what?”

  “Start at the end. Where did you hide in that corridor from half past three to half past four and who and what did you see?”

  “I didn’t hide. I went out and went back and the second time I saw that man opening that door. Then I went-”

  “No. That won’t do. You were waiting to intercept Mr. Gould when he came out, and you hid. The police won’t like it that you lied to them and gave them a false name and address and were running away. So I may not tell the police if you tell me the truth.”

  “I wasn’t running away. I was merely going to visit a friend.”

  It was certainly a job to steam her off the envelope. She stuck for ten minutes in spite of all Wolfe said, and she didn’t loosen up until after I brought the luggage from the dining room and went through it. I had to dig the keys out of her handbag, and at one point I thought she was going to start clawing and kicking, but finally she stopped squealing and only sat in the chair and made holes in me with her eyes.

  I did it thoroughly and methodically. When I got
through, the suitcase was nearly filled with female garments and accessories, mostly intimate, and piled on Wolfe’s desk was a miscellaneous collection not so female. Shirts and ties, three photographs of Harry Gould, a bunch of snapshots, a bundle of letters tied with string, the top one addressed to Rose, various other items, among them a large Manila envelope fastened with a clasp.

  I opened the envelope and extracted the contents. There were only two things in it and neither of them made my heart jump. One was a garage job-card with grease smears on it. At the top was printed, “Nelson’s Garage, Salamanca, New York,” and judging from the list of repairs required the car must have had an argument with a mountain. It was dated 4-11-40. The other item was sheets of printed matter. I unfolded them. They had been torn from the Garden Journal, which I would have recognized from the page and type without the running head, and the matter was an article entitled “Kurume Yellows in America” by Lewis Hewitt. I lifted the brows and handed it to Wolfe. Then my eye caught something I had missed on the garage job-card, something written in pencil on the reverse side. It was a name, “Pete Arango,” and it was written in a small fine hand quite different from the scribbling on the face of the card. There was another sample of a similar small fine hand there in front of me, on the envelope at the top of the bundle addressed to Rose Lasher, and I untied the string and got out the letter and found that it was signed “Harry.”

  I passed the outfit to Wolfe and he looked it over.

  He grunted. “This will interest the police.” His eyes went to Rose. “Even more than your-”

  “No!” she cried. She was wriggling. “You won’t��� oh, for God’s sake, you mustn’t-”

  “Where did you hide in that corridor?”

  She unloaded. She had hid in the corridor, yes, from the time I saw her there until some time after she had opened the door of the exhibit to look in. She had hid behind the packing cases and shrubs against the rear wall of the corridor. The sound of commotion had alarmed her, and she had sneaked out and gone to the main room and pushed into the crowd around the exhibit and I had returned her bag to her, which she had dropped without knowing it.

  What and whom had she seen while hiding in the corridor?

  Nothing. Maybe a few people, she didn’t know who, passing by. Nothing and no one she remembered, except Fred Updegraff.

  Of course she was lying. She must have seen Wolfe and Hewitt and me go by and me pick up the stick. The stick was there at the door that she was watching. And she must have seen someone leave the stick there, stoop down to pass the crook through the loop of the string, probably open the door to get hold of the loop which was ready inside, hidden among the foliage. But Wolfe was handicapped. He didn’t dare mention the stick. That was out. But boy, did he want her to mention it, and incidentally mention who had walked in there with it and left it there?

  Didn’t he? He did. But she wouldn’t. She was stuck tight again, and I never saw Wolfe try harder and get nowhere. Finally he pulled the bluff of phoning Cramer, and even that didn’t budge her. Then he gave up and rang for Fritz to bring beer.

  At that point the phone rang and I answered it, and heard a familiar voice:

  “Archie? Saul Panzer. May I speak to Mr. Wolfe?”

  Wolfe took it on his phone, and I learned that during my absence he had got hold of Saul and sent him to the Flower Show. After getting a report he told Saul to drop the line he was on and come to the office. He hung up and leaned back and heaved a sigh, and regarded Rose with no sign of esteem.

  “That,” he said, “was a man I sent to collect facts about Mr. Gould. I’d rather get them from you. I’ll allow you until tomorrow to jog your memory about what you saw in that corridor this afternoon, but you’ll tell me about him now. We’ve got all night. How long had you known him?”

  ���About two years,” she said sullenly.

  “Are you his wife? His widow?”

  She flushed and her lips tightened. “No. He said he wasn’t the marrying kind. That’s what he said.”

  “But he lived on Morrow Street with you?”

  “No, he didn’t. He only came there. He had a room in one of the houses on the Dill place on Long Island. No one ever knew about Morrow Street-I mean no one out there.” She suddenly perked forward and her eyes flashed, and I was surprised at her spunk. “And no one’s going to know about it! You hear that? Not while I’m alive they’re not!”

  “Do you have relatives on Long Island? Do your folks live there?”

  “None of your business!”

  “Perhaps not,” Wolfe conceded. “I wouldn’t want it to be. When and where did you meet Mr. Gould?”

  She shut her mouth.

  “Come,” Wolfe said sharply. “Don’t irritate me beyond reason. The next time I tell Mr. Goodwin to get Mr. Cramer on the phone it won’t be a bluff.”

  She swallowed. “I was clerking in a store at Richdale and he-I met him there. That was nearly two years ago, when he was working at Hewitt’s.”

  “Do you mean Lewis Hewitt’s.”

  “Yes, the Hewitt estate.”

  “Indeed. What did he do there?”

  “He was a gardener and he did some chauffeuring. Then he got fired. He always said he quit, but he got fired.”

  “When was that?”

  “Over a year ago. Winter before last, it was. He was a good greenhouse man, and it wasn’t long before he got another job at Dill’s. That’s about two miles the other side of Richdale. He went to live there in one of the houses.”

  “Did you live there with him?”

  “Me?” She looked shocked and indignant. “I certainly didn’t! I was living at home!”

  “I beg your pardon. How long have you been living at the place on Morrow Street?”

  She shut her mouth.

  “Come, Miss Lasher. Even the janitor could tell me that.”

  “Look here,” she said. “Harry Gould was no good. He never was any good. I knew that all the time. But the trouble is you get started, that’s what makes the trouble, you get started and then you keep it up-even if I knew he was no good there was something about him. He always said he wasn’t the marrying kind, but when he took me to that place on Morrow Street one day-that was last June, June last year-and said he had rented it, that looked like he wanted a home and maybe to get married after a while, so I quit my job and went there to live. That’s how long I’ve been living there, nine months. At first I was scared, and then I wasn’t. There wasn’t much money, but there was enough, and then I got scared again on account of the money. I didn’t know where he got it.”

  The seam had ripped and the beans were tumbling out, and Wolfe sat back and let them come.

  “He came there one night-he came four or five nights a week-that was one night in December not long before Christmas-and he had over a thousand dollars. He wouldn’t let me count it, but it must have been, it might have been two or three thousand. He bought me a watch, and that was all right, but all the money did to me, it scared me. And he began to act different and he didn’t come so often. And then about a month ago he told me he was going to get married.”

  Her lips went tight and after a moment she swallowed.

  “Not to you,” Wolfe said.

  “Oh, no.” She made a noise. “Me? Not so you could notice it. But he wouldn’t tell me her name. And he kept having money. He didn’t show it to me any more, but several times at night I looked in his pockets and he had a bankbook with over three thousand dollars in it and he always had a big roll of bills. Then yesterday I saw a picture of him in the paper, at the Flower Show with that girl. He hadn’t said a word to me about it, not a word. And he hadn’t been to Morrow Street for nearly a week, and he didn’t come last night, so I went there today to see, and there he was in there with her. When I saw him in there with her I wanted to kill him, I tell you that straight, I wanted to kill him!”

  “But you didn’t,” Wolfe murmured.

  Her face worked. “I wanted to!”

&nb
sp; “But you didn’t.”

  “No,” she said, “I didn’t.”

  “But someone did.” Wolfe’s voice was silky. “He was murdered. And naturally you are in sympathy with the effort to find the murderer. Naturally you intend to help-”

  “I do not!”

  “But my dear Miss Lasher-”

  “I’m not your dear Miss Lasher.” She leaned to him from the edge of the chair. “I know what I am, I’m a bum, that’s what I am and I know it. But I’m not a complete dumbbell, see? Harry’s dead, ain’t he? Who killed him I don’t know, maybe you did, or maybe it was that tencent Clark Gable there that thinks he’s so slick he can slide uphill. Whoever it was, I don’t know and I don’t care, all I care about now is one thing, my folks aren’t going to know anything about all this, none of it, and if it gets so I can’t help it and they find out about it, all they’ll have left to do with me is bury me.”

  She straightened up. “It’s my honor,” she said. “It’s my family’s honor.”

  Whether that came from the movies or wherever it came from, that’s exactly what she said. I suspected the movies, considering her cheap crack about me being a tencent Clark Gable, which was ridiculous. He simpers, to begin with, and to end with no one can say I resemble a movie actor, and if they did it would be more apt to be Gary Cooper than Clark Gable.

  Anyhow, that’s what she said. And apparently she meant it, for although Wolfe went on patiently working at her he didn’t get much. She didn’t know why Harry had been fired from Hewitt’s, or where his sudden wealth had come from, or why he had carefully saved that garage job-card, or why he had been interested in the Kurume yellows, which she had never heard of, and above all she couldn’t remember anyone or anything she had seen while she was hiding in the corridor. Wolfe kept at her, and it looked as if she was in for a long hard night.