Black Orchids

by Rex Stout

  “I’ve uninvited him. Come, Mr. Huddleston.”

  Wolfe turned to Daniel. He was controlling himself under insufferable provocation. “Mr. Huddleston. I have invited you to my table. You are under no compulsion, legal or moral, to accompany this man on demand. He struts and blusters. Later Mr. Goodwin will drive you-”

  But Daniel said firmly, “I guess I’ll go along with him, Mr. Wolfe. After the days I’ve spent trying to get them started on this���”

  The partridge was swell, and I ate nearly as much as Wolfe did. Otherwise it was one of the dullest meals I had ever had under Wolfe’s roof. He didn’t say a word, clear to the coffee.

  Chapter 6

  I described that scene in detail, because if it hadn’t been for that I doubt if the murderer of Bess Huddleston would ever have been caught. One of Cramer’s bunch might possibly have doped it out, but they never in the world would have got enough evidence for an arrest. And Wolfe, with no client and no commitment, was through with it, or would have been if Cramer hadn’t kidnapped a dinner guest right under his nose and made him so damn mad he had to take Amphojel twice that evening.

  Twice. The first dose was right after dinner, when he sent me up to his room for the bottle. The second was long after midnight, when I got home after my call on Inspector Cramer downtown. I sneaked quietly up the two flights to my room, but was just starting to undress when the house phone on my table buzzed, and, answering it and getting a summons, I descended to Wolfe’s room and entered. The light was on and he wasn’t in his bed, and, proceeding to his bathroom, I found him taking another shot of Amphojel, with a scowl on his face that would have scared Joe Louis right out of the ring. He was a spectacle anyway, draped in the ten yards of yellow silk that it took to make him a suit of pajamas. “Well?” he demanded.

  “Nothing. Routine. Questions and a signed statement.”

  “He’ll pay for this.” Wolfe made a face like an infuriated gargoyle and put the Amphojel bottle back in the cabinet. “I haven’t had to take this stuff since that hideous experiment with eels in the spring. He’ll pay for it. Go to Riverdale early in the morning. Consult the stableman and learn-”

  “I doubt if there is one. The horses are gone. The creditors get two percent.”

  “Find him. Wherever he is. I wish to know whether anyone has recently removed anything, any material, from the vicinity of the stable. A small paper bag filled at the manure pile would have been ideal. Question him. If he’s difficult, bring him here. Also-is there a servant on the place?”

  I nodded. “The butler. I think he’s hanging on hoping to get paid.”

  “Ask him about that bottle that Miss Huddleston found broken in her bathroom. Whatever he knows about it. Ask any other servant who was there at the time. All details possible-”

  “The others too? Maryella, Janet, Larry-”

  “No. Mention it to no one but the servants. Phone before returning. Before you go, leave phone numbers on my desk-Riverdale, Mr. Huddleston, Dr. Brady-that’s all. He’ll pay for this. Good night.”

  So we had a case. We had no client, no retainer, and no fee in sight, but at least we had a case, which was better than sitting around on my tail listening to the radio.

  I made six hours’ sleep do me, and before eight o’clock next morning I was up at Riverdale. I didn’t phone in advance, since I had to go anyway to get my car which I had left on the driveway the day before. Greeted at the door by Hoskins, I was told that the stableman was gone and maybe Maryella had his address. I would have preferred asking Janet or even Larry, but Hoskins said they were both late sleepers and Maryella was already eating breakfast, so I got the address from her, and by good luck it wasn’t Bucyrus, Ohio, but merely Brooklyn. Whatever else you want to say about Brooklyn, and so do I, it does have one big advantage, it’s close.

  That errand was one of the simplest I have ever performed, once I found the address and the stableman. His name was Tim Lavery and a scar on his cheek made him look mean until he grinned. I started with him cautiously, pretending that my mind was on something else, but soon saw that it wasn’t necessary to sneak up on him, and put it to him straight.

  “Sure,” he said, “one day about a month ago, maybe a little more, Doc Brady filled up a box he brought, an empty candy box. I helped him. He said he wanted it for a test. One of his patients had died of tetanus-I forget her name-”

  I pretended there was nothing to be excited about. “Where’d he take it from? The stall?”

  “No. The pile. I dug into the middle of the pile for him.” “Who was with him that day? One of the girls?” Tim shook his head. “He was alone when he did it. They had been riding-I forget who was with him that day-and they went to the house and then he came back alone with that box and said what he wanted.” “Do you remember the day? The date?” The best he could do on that was the last week in July. I got the details all filled in, made sure that he would be available if and when needed, and, leaving, stopped at the first phone booth and called Wolfe. Answering from the plant rooms and therefore with his mind occupied, he displayed no exultation, which he wouldn’t anyway, and informed me that my discovery made no change in the rest of my assignment.

  Arriving at the Huddleston place in Riverdale a little after ten o’clock, my luck still held. Instead of stopping by the side gate, I continued along the drive, where another gate opened onto a path leading to the back door, and Hoskins was there in the kitchen having a conversation with a depressed-looking female in a maid’s uniform. They acted reserved but not hostile; in fact, Hoskins invited me to have a cup of coffee, which I accepted. Taking an inventory as a precaution against any unwelcome interruptions, I was told that Larry and Maryella had both gone out, Daniel hadn’t shown up that morning, no city employees were on the premises, and Janet had just had breakfast in bed. The field was clear, but I had a hunch that a delegation from Cramer’s office might be appearing any minute, so I got down to business without wasting any time.

  They both remembered all about it. Shortly after lunch that Tuesday afternoon Hoskins had been summoned to Miss Huddleston’s room upstairs and requested to take a look at the bathroom. Broken glass was everywhere, in the tub, on the floor, the remnants of a large bottle of bath salts that had been kept on a high shelf above the bathtub. Miss Huddleston hadn’t done it. Hoskins hadn’t done it. The maid, summoned, said she hadn’t done it, and then she and Hoskins cleaned up the mess. I asked what about the orangutan. Possibly, they said, with that beast anything was possible, but it had not been permitted upstairs and seldom went there, and had not been observed inside the house that day.

  I filled in details all I could, even asking to view the remains of the broken bottle, which they said had been thick and heavy and creamy yellow in color, but that had been carted away. Then I asked Hoskins to let me take a look at the bathroom, and when we started for the stairs the maid came along, mumbling something about Miss Nichols’ breakfast tray. Bess Huddleston’s room was more like a museum than a bedroom, the walls covered with framed autographed photographs and letters, and all the available space filled with everything from a lady manikin in an Eskimo suit to a string of Chinese lanterns, but what I was interested in was the bathroom. It was all colors, the World War camouflage type, or Devil’s Rainbow. It made me too dizzy to do a decent job of inspection, but I managed to note such details as the position of the shelf on which the bottle of bath salts had stood. There was a new bottle there, nearly full, and I was reaching for it to take it down to look at it when I suddenly jerked around and cocked an ear and stepped to the door. Hoskins was standing in the middle of the room in a state of suspended animation, his back to me.

  “Who screamed?” I demanded.

  “Down the hall,” he said without turning. “There’s nobody but Miss Nichols-”

  There had been nothing ear-piercing about it, in fact I had barely heard it, and there were no encores, but a scream is a scream. I marched past Hoskins and through the door, which was standing o
pen, to the hall, and kept going.

  “Last door on the right,” Hoskins said behind me. I knew that, having been in Janet’s room before. The door was shut. I turned the knob and went in, and saw no one, but another door, standing open, revealed a corner of a bathroom. As I started for it the maid’s voice came out:

  “Who is it?”

  “Archie Goodwin. What-”

  The maid appeared in the doorway, looking flustered. “You can’t come in! Miss Nichols isn’t dressed!”

  “Okay.” I halted out of delicacy. “But I heard a scream. Do you need any rescuing, Janet?”

  “Oh, no!” the undressed invisible Janet called, in a voice so weak I could just hear it. “No, I’m all right!” The voice was not only weak, it was shaky.

  “What happened?” I asked.

  “Nothing serious,” the maid said. “A cut on her arm. She cut herself with a piece of glass.”

  “She what?” I goggled. But without waiting for an answer, I stepped across and walked through the maid into the bathroom. Janet, undressed in the fullest sense of the word and wet all over, was seated on a stool. Ignoring protests and shaking off the maid, who was as red as a beet having her modesty shocked by proxy, I got a towel from a rack and handed it to Janet.

  “Here,” I said, “this will protect civilization. How the dickens did you do that?”

  I lifted her left arm for a look. The cut, nearly an inch long, halfway between the wrist and the elbow, looked worse than it probably was on account of the mixture of blood and iodine. It certainly didn’t seem to be worth fainting for, but Janet’s face looked as if she might be going to faint. I took the iodine bottle out of her hand and put the cork in it.

  “I never scream,” Janet said, holding the towel up to her chin. “Really, I never do. But it seemed so��� cutting myself with glass��� so soon after Miss Huddleston���” She swallowed. “I didn’t scream when I cut myself; I’m not quite that silly, really I’m not. I screamed when I saw the piece of glass in the bath brush. It seemed so-”

  “Here it is,” the maid said.

  I took it. It was a piece of jagged glass, creamy yellow, not much bigger than my thumbnail.

  “It’s like a piece of that bottle that was broke in Miss Huddleston’s room that you was asking about,” the maid said.

  “I’ll keep it for a souvenir,” I announced, and dropped it into the pocket where I had put the iodine bottle, and picked up the bath brush from the floor. It was soaking wet. “You mean you got in the tub and got soaped, and started to use the brush and cut yourself, and looked at the brush and saw the piece of glass wedged in the bristles, and screamed. Huh?”

  Janet nodded. “I know it was silly to scream-”

  “I was in the room,” the maid said, “and I ran in and-”

  “Okay,” I cut her off. “Get me some gauze and bandages.”

  “There in the cabinet,” Janet said.

  I did a neat job on her, using plenty of gauze because the cut was still trying to bleed. Where she needed the blood was in her face, which was still white and scared, though she tried to smile at me when she thanked me.

  I patted her on a nice round shoulder. “Don’t mention it, girlie. I’ll wait downstairs until you get dressed. I like you in that towel, but I think it would be sensible to go to a doctor and get a shot of antitoxin. I���ll drive you. When you-”

  “Anitoxin?” she gasped.

  “Sure.” I patted her again. “Just a precaution. Nothing to worry about. I’ll be waiting downstairs.”

  Hoskins, hovering around in the hall, was relieved when I told him there was nothing for him to do except to get me a piece of paper to wrap the bath brush in. I waited till I was alone, down in the living room, to take the iodine bottle from my pocket, uncork it, and smell it. Whatever it was, it wasn’t iodine. I put the cork back in good and tight, went to a lavatory across the hall and washed my hands, and then found a telephone and dialed Wolfe’s number.

  He answered himself, from the plant rooms since it wasn’t eleven o’clock yet, and I gave it to him, all of it. When I finished he said immediately and urgently:

  “Get her away from there!”

  “Yes, sir, that is my intention-”

  “Confound it, at once! Why phone me? If Mr. Cramer goes-”

  “Please,” I said firmly. “She was naked. I have no white horse, and she hasn’t got much hair, at least not that much. As soon as she’s dressed we’re off. I was going to suggest that you phone Doc Vollmer and tell him to have a dose of antitoxin ready. We’ll be there in about half an hour. Or I can phone him from here-”

  “No. I will. Leave as soon as possible.”

  “Righto.”

  I went upstairs to the door of Janet’s room and called to her that I’d be waiting by the side gate, and then went out and turned the car around and took it that far back down the drive. I was debating what course to follow if a police car put in an appearance, when here she came down the path, a little wobbly on her pins and far from pert but her buttons all buttoned. I helped her in and tore out of there with the gravel flying.

  She didn’t seem to feel like talking. I explained to her about Doc Vollmer being an old friend of ours, with his home and office on the same block as Nero Wolfe’s house, so I was taking her there, and I tried a few leading questions, such as whether she had any idea how the piece of glass got into the bristles of her bath brush, but she didn’t seem to be having any ideas. What she needed was a strong man to hold her hand, but I was driving. She had simply had the daylights scared out of her.

  I had no explaining to do at Doc Vollmer’s, since Wolfe had talked to him on the phone, and we weren’t in there more than twenty minutes altogether. He cleaned the cut thoroughly, applied some of his own iodine, gave her the antitoxin in that arm, and then took me to an inside room and asked me for the iodine bottle I had. When I gave it to him he uncorked it, smelled it, frowned, poured a little of the contents into a glass vial, corked it again even tighter than I had, and handed it back to me.

  “She’ll be all right,” he said. “What a devilish trick! Tell Mr. Wolfe I’ll phone him as soon as possible.”

  I escorted Janet back out to the car. It was only a couple of hundred feet from there to Wolfe’s door, and I discovered that I couldn’t drive the last thirty of them because two cars were parked in front. Janet hadn’t even asked why I was taking her to Wolfe’s house. Apparently she was leaving it up to me. I gave her a reassuring grin as I opened the door with my key and waved her in.

  Not knowing who the callers might be, the owners of the cars in front, instead of taking her straight to the office I ushered her into the front room. But one of them was there, sprawled in a chair, and when Janet saw him she emitted an exclamation. It was Larry Huddleston. I greeted him, invited Janet to sit, and not wanting to use the connecting door to the office, went around by the hall. Wolfe wasn’t in the office, but two more visitors were, and they were Dr. Brady and Daniel Huddleston, evidently, judging from their attitudes, not being chummy.

  Oho, I thought, we’re having a party, and went to the kitchen, and there was Wolfe.

  He was standing by the long table, watching Fritz rub a spice mixture into slices of calf���s liver, and watching with him, standing beside him, closer to him than I had ever seen any woman or girl of any age tolerated, with her hand slipped between his arm and his bulk, was Maryella.

  Wolfe gave me a fleeting glance. “Back, Archie? We’re doing mock terrapin. Miss Timms had a suggestion.” He leaned over to peer at the liver, straightened, and sighed clear to the bottom. He turned to me: “And Miss Nichols?”

  “In front. Doc Vollmer took a sample and will phone as soon as possible.”

  “Good. On the coldest shelf, Fritz; the time is uncertain; and leave the door to Archie. Archie, we are busy and not available. All of us. Come, Miss Timms.”

  She couldn’t cling to him as they went through the door, because there wasn’t room.


  Chapter 7

  Dr. Brady said sharply, “I’ve been waiting here over half an hour. How long will this take? I’m due at my office at one o’clock.”

  I was at my desk and he was nearby, on one of the straight-backed chairs. Next to him was Maryella, in the wing chair that I like to read in, and on the other side of her was Larry. Then Daniel Huddleston; and ending the arc was Janet in the red leather chair, her shoulders sagging, looking as if she were only about half there. As far as that goes, none of them looked very comfortable, not even Maryella; she would glance at one of them and then look back at Wolfe, and set her teeth on her lip and clear her throat again.

  Wolfe’s half-open eyes were directed at Brady. “I’m afraid you may be a little late at your office, doctor. I’m sorry-”

  “But what kind of a performance is this? You said on the telephone-”

  “Please,” Wolfe interrupted sharply. “I said that to get you here.” His glance went around. “The situation is no longer as I represented it on the phone, to any of you. I told you that it was definitely known that Miss Huddleston had been murdered. Now we’re a little further along. I know who murdered her.”

  They stared at him. Maryella’s teeth went deeper into her lip. Janet gripped the arms of her chair and stopped breathing. Daniel leaned forward with his chin stuck out like a halfback waiting for a signal. Brady made a noise in his throat. The only one who uttered anything intelligible was Larry. He said harshly:

  “The hell you do.”

  Wolfe nodded. “I do. That is one change in the situation. The other is that an attempt has been made to murder Miss Nichols. ��� Please! There is no cause for alarm. The attempt was frustrated-”

  “When?” Brady demanded. “What kind of an attempt?”

  “To murder Janet!” Maryella exclaimed incredulously.

  Wolfe frowned at them. “This will go more quickly and smoothly with no interruptions. I’ll make it as brief as possible; I assure you I have no wish to prolong the unpleasantness. Especially since I find less than enjoyable the presence in this room of an extremely unattractive person. I shall call that person X. As you all know, X began with an effort to injure Miss Huddleston by sending anonymous letters-”