by Rex Stout
She shook her head, frowning at me. "Have I ever met you before?"
"Not that I remember, and I think I would. Why?"
"You seem to know exactly the right things to say, as if you knew all about me. What day's today?"
"Wednesday."
"Then the last time I saw Pris was one week ago today, last Wednesday. She phoned and asked me to have lunch with her, and I did. She wanted to know if I would come to a special meeting of Softdown stockholders on July first, the day after her twenty-fifth birthday."
"Did you say you would?"
"No. That's another way my mind is funny. Since my father died, seven years ago, and left me twelve thousand shares of Softdown stock, I have never gone near the place, for meetings or anything else. I get a very good income from it, but I don't know one single thing about it. Have you met a man named Perry Helmar?"
I said I had.
"Well, he's been after me for years to come to meetings, but I wouldn't, because I was afraid that if I did something would happen to the business that would reduce my income, and it would be my fault. Why should I run a risk like that when all I had to do was stay away? Do you know any of those people down there-Brucker and Quest and Pitkin and that Viola Duday?"
I said I did.
"Well, they've been after me too, every one of them at different times, to give them a proxy to vote my stock at a meeting, and I wouldn't do that either. I didn't-"
"You mean give them a proxy jointly-all of them?"
"Oh, no, separately. They've been after me one at a time, but the worst was that woman Duday. Isn't she a terror?"
"I guess so. I don't know her as well as you do. Why did Miss Eads want you at a special stockholders' meeting?"
"She said she wanted to elect a new board of directors, and it would be all women, and they would elect Viola Duday president of the corporation-that's right, isn't it, president of the corporation?"
"It sounds like it. Did she say who would be on the new board of directors?"
"Yes, but I don't-wait, maybe I do. She and I were to be-Pris and I-and Viola Duday, and some woman in charge of something at the factory-I forget her name-and Pris's maid, the one that's been with her so long-her name's Margaret, but I forget her last name."
I supplied it. "Fomos. Margaret Fomos."
"No, that's not-oh, yes, of course. She's been married."
I nodded. "She has also been killed. She was waylaid on the street and strangled to death Monday night, a couple of hours before Priscilla Eads."
Sarah Jaffee's eyes popped. "Margaret has-too?"
"Yes. Was that all, those five, to be-"
"She was strangled just like Pris?"
"Yes. Apparently the idea was to get a key to Miss Eads's apartment, since there was a key in the maid's bag and the bag was taken. Were they to make up the new board of directors, those five women?"
"Yes."
"But you told her you wouldn't go to the meeting?"
Mrs. Jaffee's hands were fists again, but not as tight as before. "And I told her I wouldn't be a director either. I didn't want to get mixed up in it in any way at all. I didn't want to have anything whatever to do with it. She said I seemed to be perfectly willing to accept the dividend checks, and I said certainly I was and I hoped they would keep coming forever, and they probably wouldn't if I started butting in. I told her I hoped her new arrangement, the board of directors and the president, would work all right, but if it didn't there was nothing I could do about it."
"Had she asked you before about coming to a stockholders' meeting?"
"No, that was the first time. I hadn't seen her for more than a year. She phoned and came to see me when she heard about Dick's-my husband's-death."
"I thought she was your closest friend."
"Oh, that was a long time ago."
"How long?"
She eyed me. "I'm not enjoying this a bit."
"I know you're not."
"It's not doing anyone any good either."
"It might. However. I figure I've got a dollar's worth, so I'll settle for two bucks if you insist."
She turned her head and called, "Olga!" In a moment the Valkyrie came marching in, by no means silently. Mrs. Jaffee asked her if there was any coffee left, and she said there was and was requested to bring some. She went and soon was back with the order, this time on a tray without being told. Mrs. Jaffee wriggled to the edge of the divan, poured, and sipped.
"I can tell you how old I was," she said, "when I first met Pris."
I said I would appreciate it very much.
She sipped more coffee. "I was four years old. Pris was about two weeks. My father was in her father's business, and the families were friends. Of course, with children four years is a big difference, but we liked each other all along, and when Pris's mother died, and soon afterward her father, and Pris went to live with the Helmars, she and I got to be like sisters. We were apart a lot, since we went to different schools, and I graduated from college the year she started, but we wrote to each other-we must have written a thousand letters back and forth. Do you know about her leaving college and setting up a menage in the Village?"
I said I did.
"That was when we were closest. My father had died then, and my mother long before, and I practically lived with Pris, though I had a little place of my own. The trouble with Pris is she has too much money."
"Was and had," I corrected.
"Oh. Yes. Her income was enormous. After a few months of the Village all of a sudden she was off, and do you know what her excuse was? Her maid-that was Margaret-she had to take Margaret to New Orleans to see her sick mother! Did you ever hear anything to beat it? Off she went, leaving me to close up the place in the Village. We were still friends all right; she wrote me from New Orleans raving about it, and the first thing I knew, here came a letter saying that she had found her prince and married him, and they were off for Peru, where he had an option on the Andes Mountains, or approximately that."
Mrs. Jaffee finished the coffee, put the cup and saucer down on the tray, and wriggled back until she was against the cushions. "That," she said, "was the last letter I ever got from Pris. The very last. Maybe I still have it-I remember she enclosed a picture of him. I wondered why she didn't write, and then one day she phoned me-she was back in New York, and she was alone, except for Margaret, and she was calling herself Miss Priscilla Eads. I saw her a few times, and when she bought a place up in Westchester I went there once, but she was a completely different person, and she didn't invite me again, and I wouldn't have gone if she had. For nearly three years I didn't see her at all, until she had been to Reno and come back and joined the Salvation Army-do you know about that?"
I said yes.
"She was through with that too at the time she heard of my husband's death and came to see me. She had decided to take up her father's business where he had left off, only of course she wouldn't own it until she was twenty-five. She seemed more like the old Pris, and we might have got together again, but I had just lost Dick and I was in no condition to get together with anyone, so, the way it went, I didn't see her again until last week, and then I didn't-"
She stopped abruptly and jerked her chin up. "For God's sake, my not doing what she wanted-that didn't have anything to do with her being killed, did it? Is that why you wanted to see me?"
I shook my head. "I can't answer the first one, but it's not why I wanted to see you. Did she get in touch with you again? A phone call or letter?"
"No."
"Did any of the others, the Softdown people?"
"No."
"Where were you Monday night? Not that I want an affidavit, but the police will be asking."
"They will not!"
"Sure they will, unless they crack it before they get to you. Practice on me. Name the people you were playing Canasta with."
"I wasn't. I was at home. Here."
"Any company? Or was Olga here?"
"No."
I shrugged.
"That requires no practice." I leaned to her a little. "Look, Mrs. Jaffee, I might as well admit it. I'm here under false pretenses. I said we wanted information, Mr. Wolfe and I, and we do, but we also want help. Of course you know of the provisions of Priscilla's father's will? Now that she is dead, you know that five people-Helmar, Brucker, Quest, Pitkin, and Miss Duday-you know that they will own most of the Softdown stock?"
"Yes, certainly." She was frowning, concentrating at me.
"Okay. You're a stockholder. We want you to bring an action against those five people. Use your own lawyer, or we'll recommend one. We want you to ask a court for an injunction restraining them from exercising any of the rights of ownership of that stock until it is determined whether one or more of them acquired it by the commission of a crime. We think that under the circumstances a court will entertain such a request and may grant it."
"But what-" Her frown was deeper. "Why should I do that?"
"Because you have a legitimate interest in the proper handling of the firm's affairs. Because you were Priscilla's oldest friend, and formerly her closest one. Who do you think killed her?"
"I don't know. I wish you-don't do this!"
"This is what I came for. It may amount to nothing. The police may get it fast, today or tomorrow, and if so that settles it. But they may never get it, that has been known to happen, and a week or a month from now may be too late for Mr. Wolfe to start on it, and anyhow his client won't wait. We can't march in as the cops can. We have to have some way of getting at those people, we have to get a foot in, and this will do it. I'll tell you, Mrs. Jaffee, I'm not going to contribute any cracks about your accepting dividend checks, but it is true that that business has been supporting you in pretty good style for a long time, and this isn't much for it to ask in return, especially since you can be darned sure Priscilla Eads would be asking it too if she could talk. It won't take-"
I stopped because only a sap goes on talking to someone who is walking out on him. As she left the divan and started off she said nothing, but she sure was walking out. At an arch at the far end of the room she turned and spoke. "I won't do it! I won't do that!"
She was gone. A moment later the sound came of a door closing-not slamming, but firmly closing. After standing and considering a little, and deciding that I was out of ammunition for that target at that time and place, I moved in the opposite direction to the one she had taken, to the entrance foyer. Crossing it, my eye caught the hat on the table and the coat on the back of the chair.
What the hell, I thought, and picked them up and took them along.
Chapter 8
It was going on noon when, having made three stops en route, I paid off my hackie at the corner of Twenty-ninth and Lexington and walked east. The first stop had been at a drugstore to phone Wolfe and report lack of progress; the second had been at the Salvation Army depot to donate the coat and hat; and the third had been at the restaurant where, according to Lon Cohen, Andreas Fomos was employed as a waiter. Informed that Fomos was taking the day off, I had proceeded to his residence.
Not with any high expectations. My main hope had been to escort Sarah Jaffee to Thirty-fifth Street for a session with Wolfe and Nathaniel Parker, the only lawyer Wolfe has ever sent orchids to, arranging details about the injunction. Having flubbed that one, this stab at Fomos, as instructed by Wolfe, struck me as a damn poor substitute motion. So it was not with any enthusiasm for the errand, but merely as routine through long training, that as I approached the number on East Twenty-ninth Street I cased the area with a sharp and thorough eye, and, focusing on a spot across the street, recognized something. Crossing over, I entered a dingy and cluttered shoe-repair shop, and confronted a man seated there who, at my approach, had lifted a newspaper so as to hide his face from view.
I addressed the newspaper distinctly. "Get Lieutenant Rowcliff. I think I'm going to impersonate an officer of the law. I feel it coming."
The newspaper came down, disclosing the plump features, not quite puffy yet, of a city employee named Halloran. "You got good eyes," he said, just stating a fact. "If you mean disrespect for the lieutenant you mentioned, go right ahead."
"Some other time. Right now I'm working. I was glad to see you because I may be walking into a trap. If I don't come out in three days, phone Rowcliff. Is this a really serious tail, or are you on him alone?"
"I came in here for a pair of shoestrings."
I apologized for interrupting, left him, and headed across the street. Apparently Homicide had by no means wrapped it up, since they thought it necessary to keep an eye on Fomos, who, so far as I knew from what I had read in the papers, was involved only in that he had been bereaved; but surely Fomos wasn't really hot or I would have got a very different reaction from Halloran.
It was a five-story old red brick building. In the row of names under the mailboxes at the right of the vestibule, Fomos was next to the end. I pressed the button, waited half a minute for the click to come, pushed the door open, entered, and made for the stairs. There were three doors on each landing, one at each end and one in the middle. Three flights up, the one at the far end was sporting a big rosette of black ribbon with streamers hanging nearly to the floor. I went to it and pressed the button, and in a moment a gruff deep voice came at me through the wood. "Who is it?"
On the theory that I deserved to take a little something for an hour and a half's hard work, I called, "A friend of Sarah Jaffee's! My name's Goodwin!"
Abruptly the door popped open, wide open, and standing there was Hercules, in white shorts, dazzling white in contrast to his dark skin and his tousled mop of coal-black hair. "I'm in mourning," he said. "What do you want?"
"You're Andreas Fomos?"
"I'm Andy Fomos. No one says Andreas. What do you want?"
"I want to ask if you know why Priscilla Eads was going to make your wife a director of Softdown, Incorporated."
"What?" He cocked his head. "Say that again."
I repeated it. When he was sure he had it he turned his palms up. "Look," he rumbled. "I don't believe it."
"That's what Miss Eads told Mrs. Jaffee last week, that she was going to make your wife a director. A week ago today."
"I still don't believe it. Look. That Priscilla Eads was mixed up with some bad stars. She went crazy every two years. I have studied the history of it and I had it written down, but the police wanted it and I let them have it. I only met my wife and married her two years ago, but she told me the whole story. The Greenwich Village, the New Orleans, the Peru with a husband, the back here without him and getting even with men, the Reno, the Salvation Army!" His hands went up. "I ask you! My wife was with her through all that. Now you say she was going to make my wife a director-did I say I don't believe it? Of course I believe it, why not? With that Priscilla Eads I could believe anything; but I don't know about it. What do you want?"
"We could talk better inside," I suggested, "if you don't mind."
"Are you a reporter?"
"No. I-"
"Are you a cop?"
"No. I work-"
I don't know how many hundreds of times people have undertaken to close doors on me, but often enough so that my reaction has become routine and automatic-in fact, too automatic. When Andy Fomos jerked aside and started swinging the door to, my foot went out as usual, ready to hold the floor against pressure as usual, but with him usual wasn't good enough. He was even faster and stronger than he looked, and instead of bringing his weight to it, which would have taken an extra half-second, he used muscle, and plenty. Before I could catch up the door banged shut and the lock clicked, and I was standing there with my nose flattened and a big scar across the polished toe of my second-best Bradley shoes.
I took my time descending the three flights to the ground floor. I was not buoyant. Whenever Wolfe sends me out to bring in something or someone, I like to deliver if possible, but I don't expect to pass miracles. On this one, though, it was beginning to look as if nothing less than a miracle would do, and thi
s was not merely a matter of satisfying a client and collecting a fee. I was the client, and I had roped Wolfe in. It was up to me. But it wasn't like the day before, when I had been on my own and could take a notion to roll down to the Softdown building and crash a meeting; now Wolfe was handling it, and no notion of mine would count without his okay. Added to that, as I made the sidewalk and turned right, deciding not to check out with Halloran across the street, was the difficulty that I had nothing remotely resembling a notion. At Lexington Avenue I got a taxi.
I did not like the way Wolfe took it. When I entered the office alone and announced that as far as I knew no company was expected, then or later, he grunted, settled back in his chair, and requested a verbatim report. Throughout the performance, covering all words and actions with both Sarah Jaffee and Andreas Fomos, he was motionless, his eyes closed and his fingers laced at the summit of his belly, and that was all right; that was perfectly normal. But when I had finished he asked not a single question, only muttering at me, "You'd better type it."
"You mean complete?" I demanded.
"Yes."
"It'll take all afternoon and maybe more."
"I suppose so."
It was true that it was lunchtime, not a moment to expect him to do any digging in, and I skipped it temporarily. But later, after we had been to the dining room and enjoyed a good meal, during which he furnished me with pointed comments on all of the prominent candidates for the Republican nomination for President, I tried again. As he got comfortable with a magazine in his chair behind his desk I remarked, "I could use a program if you can spare the time."
He glared, mildly. "I asked you to type that report."
"Yeah, I heard you. But that was only a stall, and you know it. If you want me to sit here on the back of my lap until you feel like thinking of something to do, just say so. What's the use of wasting a lot of paper and wearing out the typewriter?"
He lowered the magazine. "Archie. You may remember that I once returned a retainer of forty thousand dollars which a client named Zimmermann had paid me, because he wanted to tell me how to handle his case instead of leaving it to me. Well?" He lifted the magazine. He lowered it again. "Please type the report." He lifted it again.