Prisoner's Base

by Rex Stout

  They hadn't found a hackie who had taken a fare, between midnight and 1:45, to the address on East Eightieth or the immediate neighborhood, or from there after two o'clock. They were still looking, but the chances were slim. There was a subway station only three blocks away.

  The name of the night man was William Fisler. My appraisal had been sound; he was a dope. At first he had maintained that from 12:30 to 1:45, the period during which the murderer must have got in and up to the apartment, he had been right on the job every minute, on guard near the front entrance, except for a couple of elevator trips with known tenants; but when he realized that if he stuck to that he was allowing the murderer, for entry to the building and the stairs, only the times of the brief elevator trips, he did a full flop and practically stated that he had been so busy downstairs with sandwiches and coffee that he had hardly seen the front entrance at all. His position was approximately the same for the period from 1:58 to 2:23, during which the murderer must have descended the stairs and made his exit to the sidewalk, and on away. He did admit that around a quarter to two he had been out on the sidewalk with the door to the building standing open, because he had to; Sarah's statement to me on the phone that that had been the situation when she and Parker arrived in a taxi had been corroborated by Parker.

  Parker's alibi was airtight. Sarah had told me that he had not entered the building with her; the night man verified it; and the taxi driver, who of course had been found, and who had taken Parker on home, had testified likewise.

  The murder itself presented no problem. Having got himself in, the murderer had selected the bronze tiger and the Venetian blind cord as the proper tools, and concealed himself in the closet. If his plan had been to attack her at once when she entered, he had been forced to abandon it by the fact that the night man was there, letting her in. She had gone at once to the phone in the living room to call me, and of course that was no place for an act of violence, by a phone with the line open. When he heard her steps coming to the foyer, either he didn't know she had left the line open, or he couldn't resist so near a target, or he was afraid she was going outside; anyway, he struck. That done, he left, took the stairs down, and either found the main hall deserted and went out that way, or continued down to the basement and departed by the service alley.

  No fingerprints found in the apartment had been those of any of the suspects. There had been none on the bronze tiger, and none on the knob of the closet door.

  They were hunting a motive. Whereas with Priscilla Eads the motive had been as plain as the nose on a face, and fitted all five faces, with Sarah Jaffee there was none at all. For one of them to kill her, or have her killed, on account of the threatened injunction would have been batty, and none of those five was anywhere near batty. So finding a motive for any one of them would have been a big help, and that was a major objective of the supplementary questioning. Two of the five hours Cramer had spent with Helmar, me present, had been devoted to a thorough and fine-tooth review of his association with Sarah Jaffee from the beginning to the end.

  Purley unquestionably briefed me. It didn't look as if he was holding anything back, and I was touched. Therefore, when the waiter brought the check and he insisted on splitting it, and during the debate he made a crack about city dicks not starving, I made it a point of honor because I got what was eating him. He knew that my take-home pay, considering that my home was with Wolfe, was at least four times his, and he wasn't going to sponge fried clams off of any goddam plutocrat. So I had to tell him I had invited him and my honor was at stake.

  We parted outside, him going west and me heading for Leonard Street. I had my pick of Fomos or Pitkin, and on the way I voted for Pitkin.

  Chapter 15

  At five o'clock Saturday morning I sat in a room at Leonard Street, reading papers from a folder. Pitkin had been sent home an hour previously, from another room. This was the room where all reports and documents bearing on the three stranglings, either originals or copies, were being collected and held, and the report I was reading was about the movements of Jay Brucker during the rest of Thursday night after he left the meeting at Wolfe's office. The correctness of some of his statements seemed to be in question, and I was trying to find a basis of an opinion on whether, instead of going home to Brooklyn as he claimed, he had actually gone to Sarah Jaffee's apartment on Eightieth Street or to Daphne O'Neil's apartment on Fourth Street.

  A voice said, "Hey, Goodwin, better knock off." An assistant DA and two clerks were in the room, sorting and arranging the papers and folders, and the voice was the assistant DA's. I yanked myself up. I had been two-thirds asleep. It was silly to pretend I could sit there and read.

  "There's a room down the hall with a couch," one of them said, "and no one will be in it today. It's Saturday."

  I would have given a million dollars to be on a couch, so I decided against it. I arose, announced that I was going for a walk and would be back before long, and beat it. Emerging from the building to the sidewalk, I got a shock-it was daylight. Dawn had come, and that helped to wake me and changed my outlook. I stood at the curb, and when a taxi loomed before long, headed uptown, I flagged it and gave the driver the address I knew best.

  At that time of day we had Manhattan all to ourselves. West Thirty-fifth was empty too as I paid the hackie and climbed out. Since the chain bolt would of course be on the front door, instead of mounting the stoop I went down the four steps to the area door and pushed the button. It buzzed in the kitchen and Fritz's room. There were sounds from within, a door opening and footsteps, and Fritz gave me a look through the peep-glass and then opened up.

  "Good God," he said, "you look awful."

  I told him that was precisely why I had dropped in, to remedy that condition, apologized for disturbing him, and proceeded upstairs. Without even a glance in at the office as I passed by, I went on up to my room and started in on a shower, a shave, and a complete change. When I had finished I may or may not have looked better, but I sure felt better. Descending to the ground floor, I heard sounds in the kitchen and went in. Fritz was there, putting on his apron.

  "What now?" I demanded. "It's only half-past six."

  "Orange juice in two minutes. Breakfast in ten-enough to start."

  "I'm on my way out."

  "You'll eat first."

  So I did, though I felt that it was bad manners to eat Wolfe's grub under the circumstances. Fritz kept me company, sitting on a stool and yawning while he wasn't serving the meal. At one point he observed, "This is getting to be a habit."

  "What is?"

  "This early breakfast. Yesterday about this time-a little later-I was poaching eggs for Mr. Wolfe and Saul."

  I stopped a bite of pancake in midair. "You were what?"

  "Poaching eggs for Mr. Wolfe and Saul."

  I put the bite where it belonged and chewed slowly. Saul Panzer looked less, and acted more, like the best all-round operative in New York than any other candidate I had ever seen or heard of. He was so good that he could free-lance without an office and make more than anyone on a payroll. He was always Wolfe's first choice when we had to have help, and we had used him hundreds of times.

  I asked casually, "Saul's taking over my job, I suppose?"

  "I don't know," Fritz said firmly, "anything about what Saul is doing."

  That was plain enough. Obviously Fritz had been told that if I came around it was okay for me to know that Saul had come to an early breakfast, but no more. I made no effort to snake it out of him, having tried it once or twice before with no success at all.

  On my way out I stopped in the office. Friday's mail, under a paperweight on Wolfe's desk, contained nothing that couldn't wait. There was nothing on the desk, or on the memo pad or calendar, that gave any hint of what he wanted with Saul, but in the safe I found something that indicated that it was no trivial chore. I opened the safe because I wanted to hit petty cash for a loan. One of the drawers of the safe is partitioned in the middle, with petty cash on the right an
d emergency reserve on the left. Getting five twenties from petty, I noticed a slip of paper in emergency that hadn't been there before, and I picked it up for a look. Scribbled on it in pencil in Wolfe's neat hand was the notation, "6/27/52 $2000 NW." It was the long-standing rule to keep five grand in emergency, in used hundreds, twenties, and tens. A quick count showed that the slip was a record of a real transaction; two grand had been taken. That was interesting-so darned interesting that I might have forgotten to tell Fritz so long if he hadn't heard me leaving the office and come out to put the bolt back on the door. I told him it was okay to let Wolfe know I had been in for an early breakfast, but no more.

  Returning to Leonard Street in a taxi, naturally I tried to decide what Saul Panzer was supposed to be doing with two thousand bucks, granting that it was in connection with Eads-Fomos-Jaffee. I concocted quite a list of guesses, beginning with a trip to Venezuela to check on Eric Hagh, and ending with a bribe to Andy Fomos to spill something his wife had told him. I bought none of them.

  The five hours' sleep that I mentioned getting between early Friday morning and Monday morning came Sunday from 4 a.m. to 9 a.m., on a bumpy old couch at the headquarters of Manhattan Homicide West on Twentieth Street. I might be able, by digging hard, to give a complete report and timetable of a hundred other activities I had a share in during that stretch, but I don't know what good it would do you, and if you don't mind I would rather skip it. I sat in a couple of dozen quiz sessions, at Twentieth Street, Leonard Street, and Centre Street. I read tens of thousands of words of reports and summaries. Most of Sunday I spent in a PD car with a uniformed driver, with credentials signed by a deputy commissioner, calling on a long list of people who were connected in one way or another with something that had been said by one of the suspects. Returning to Twentieth Street Sunday around midnight, I admit I had in mind the possibility of another date with the couch, but I didn't get it. Brucker's alibi had been cracked. Feeling hot breath just behind him, he was now claiming that he had gone from Wolfe's house to Daphne O'Neil's apartment and spent the night there, and she was concurring. When I got in from my Sunday drive, Captain Olmstead was just starting to take Daphne over the bumps, and I was invited to join the party, and accepted. It ended around six a.m. Monday, and my thoughts again dived for the couch, but I didn't. I had to either get a clean shirt or go off and hide, so I went to Thirty-fifth Street and repeated Saturday's performance, including a breakfast by Fritz.

  Of course I didn't see Wolfe. I had phoned him once each day, but no mention had been made of murder or Saul Panzer. He was testy, and I was touchy. I looked in the safe again; no more dough had been taken from emergency.

  Returning to Twentieth Street, superficially clean and fresh, but pretty well fagged, and no bargain even at half price, I was going along the upper hall when one of my colleagues-for I might as well face it and admit it, during that period Homicide dicks were my colleagues-coming out of a room, caught sight of me, and yelled, "Hey, where the hell have you been?"

  "Look at me." I pointed to my shirt and tie. "Doesn't it show?"

  "Yeah, let me touch you. I was going to send out a general alarm. They want you down at the Commissioner's office."

  "Who wants me?"

  "Stebbins phoned twice. He's there with the inspector. There's a car down front. Come on."

  Some chauffeurs of PD cars like to have an excuse to step on it, and some don't. That one did. He didn't use much noise, but plenty of gas, and when he was in the fourth grade a maladjusted schoolteacher had made him write five hundred times, "A miss is as good as a mile," and it sank in. I should have clocked us from 230 West Twentieth Street to 240 Centre Street. As I got out I told him he should have an insurance vending machine, like those at airports, installed on his dash, and he grinned sociably. "Impressed you, did it, bud?"

  It did, at that, but not as much as the assortment I found waiting for me in the spacious and well-furnished office of Police Commissioner Skinner. Besides Skinner and District Attorney Bowen, there were two deputy commissioners, Cramer and another inspector, a deputy inspector, a captain, and Sergeant Purley Stebbins-and they were certainly waiting for me, from the way all faces turned and stayed turned as I entered and advanced.

  Skinner told me to sit, and they had a chair waiting too. He asked Bowen, "You want to take it, Ed?"

  "No, go ahead," the DA told him.

  Skinner eyed me. "I guess you know as much about where we stand as I do."

  I lifted my shoulders and let them down. "I don't know about the rest of you, but I'm flat on my back."

  He nodded. "We all are, not for quotation. Most of us gave up our weekends, but we might as well not have. During the last forty hours we've had more men on this case than any other in my time, and I can't see that we've gained an inch, and the others agree with me. It is an extremely bad situation, it couldn't be worse, and something has to be done. We've been discussing it here at length, and various proposals have been made and some adopted, and one of them concerns you. We want your help on it."

  "I've been trying to help."

  "I know you have. Ever since I read your report last Friday I have thought that our best single chance was the keys. Those keys were lifted from a lady's bag while twelve people were present in the room. I don't think it's possible that no one saw any significant glance or movement. As you know, they have been questioned over and over, and the only result has been to focus suspicion on Hagh, the ex-husband, because he was nearer Mrs. Jaffee than anyone else for most of the evening. But all of them had opportunities, as you make clear in your report-and in fact they don't deny it. We certainly can't charge Hagh just because he had more chances than the rest of them; and, besides that, what was his motive, and where would that leave us on the first two murders? Do you argue with that?"

  "No, I've got no arguments left."

  "And arguments don't catch murderers anyway. I agree. We want to make an all-out effort to get a line on the lifting of the keys. More questions won't do it. We want to take them to Nero Wolfe's office and have them go through it, with Wolfe and you taking part, of course. Words and actions. We want them to repeat, as closely as they can, everything they said and did Thursday evening, with three or four of us present, and we want to take a tape recording of it."

  I lifted my brows at him.

  "Mostly," he said, "to try to spot who took the keys, but there's another thing. If someone wanted to kill Mrs. Jaffee, why did he wait until then to do it? Why didn't he kill her before? Was it because he had no motive before? Was it something that happened that evening that gave him the motive? We want to watch for that too. We haven't found it in any of the reports or statements, but we might possibly get it this way. We want to try, and we'll have to have Wolfe's and your cooperation. We can't compel him to let us in his place with them, much less compel him to do his part. We want you to phone him or go to see him, whichever you think is better, and make the request of him."

  "I want to say, Goodwin," the DA put in, "that I regard it as extremely important that this be done. It must be done."

  "You guys," I said emphatically, "have one hell of a nerve."

  "Come on," Cramer rasped, "don't start that hard-to-get stuff, and don't be witty."

  "Poops." I took them in. "Last Tuesday, six days ago, I sat on a bench in this building with handcuffs on. You may remember also that Mr. Wolfe was conveyed to Leonard Street under a warrant, and you know how he felt about that. Wanting to make a scene, he announced that I was his client, and he was stuck. He had to go through some motions, and he did; and acting for him, I pulled Sarah Jaffee in, and she got it. That threw me off balance, and I made a mistake. I asked to work with you because I thought that way I would be in it more, and I guess I have been, but where are we? And Mr. Wolfe is sore as a pup, and you know damn well he is, and yet you have the gall to ask me to ask him this, because you think if you ask him he'll say no. I think so too, but I also think he'll say no if I ask him. Take your pick-would you rather ha
ve him say no to you or to me?"

  "We want him to say yes," Skinner declared.

  "So do I, but I don't think there's a glimmer. Do you want me to try?"

  "Yes."

  "When do you want to stage it? Today?"

  "As soon as possible. We can have them there in half an hour."

  I looked at my wrist; it was ten to nine. I might catch him before he went up to the plant rooms. "Which phone do I use?"

  Skinner indicated one of the five on his desk, even going so far as to lift the receiver and hand it to me as I stepped over. I gave the number and soon had Wolfe's voice.

  "Archie. Have you finished breakfast?"

  "Yes." He didn't sound so peevish. I knew him so well, and all the thousand shades and keys of his voice, that one "yes" gave me the tune. He added, "Fritz tells me you had yours here."

  "Yeah, I needed to rinse off. I'm calling you at the request of the People of the State of New York."

  "Indeed."

  "As requested by quite a mixture-the Police Commissioner and two of his deputies, the District Attorney, a bunch of inspectors and deputy inspectors, not to mention Sergeant Purley Stebbins. I'm talking from the private office of the Commissioner-you know it; you've been here. After these days and nights of camaraderie with them-is that the way to pronounce it?"

  "Almost."

  "Good. I am held in high esteem by the whole shebang, from Commissioner all the way down to Lieutenant Rowcliff, which is quite a distance. Wanting to show me what they think of me, they are bestowing a great honor on me. Having a request to make of you, they are letting me make it. They're all sitting here gazing at me so tenderly I've got a lump in my throat. You ought to see them."

  "How long are you going to drag this out?"

  "I'm through dragging. Here's the point. We're flumped. We have got to try something different-like this, for instance. We want to do a playback of the session at the office Thursday evening, with the original cast, and take a tape recording of it. We'll bring the personnel, with the exception of Sarah Jaffee, and the recorder, and all you will have to do is let us in and play your part. I have told my associates, who have done me the favor of letting me make this phone call, that I am practically certain you will tell us to go to hell; and since nothing gives you more pleasure than to prove me wrong, here's a chance for some good clean fun. All you have to do-"