Rex Stout_Nero Wolfe 01

by Fer-De-Lance

  “Except his wife.”

  “Not even she. She shot at him from ten feet and missed him.”

  “Well.” Wolfe sighed, and gulped another glass of beer. “I’m afraid I have nothing to thank you for, Doctor.”

  “I’m afraid not. Believe me, Mr. Wolfe, I’d help you if I could. It is curious, what is happening inside of me at this moment; I would never have suspected it. Now that I know Ellen is out of it, I am not sure I disapprove of the reward she offered. I might even increase it. Am I vindictive, too, then? For Pete, maybe; I think he might have been for me.”

  It was altogether a bum evening, as far as I was concerned. For the last ten minutes I was half asleep and didn’t hear much. It was beginning to look to me as if Wolfe was going to have to develop a feeling for a new kind of phenomenon: murder by eeny-meeny-miny-mo. That was the only way that needle could have got into Barstow, since everybody was agreed that no one had wanted it there.

  It was a bum evening, but I got a grin out of it at the end. Bradford had got up to go and walked toward Wolfe’s chair to tell him good night. I saw him hesitating. He said, “There’s a little thing on my mind, Mr. Wolfe. I—I owe you an apology. In my office this afternoon I made a remark to your man, a quite unnecessary remark, something about raking scandal out of graveyards—”

  “But I don’t understand. Apology?” Wolfe’s quiet bewilderment was grand. “What had your remark to do with me?”

  Of course Bradford’s only out was the door.

  After seeing the distinguished old gentleman to the entrance and sliding the night bolt in, I went to the kitchen for a glass of milk on my way back to the office. Fritz was there and I told him he had wasted enough good port for one evening, he might as well shut up shop. In the office Wolfe was leaning back in his chair with his eyes shut. I sat down and sipped away at the milk. When it was all gone I was pretty well bored and began talking just for practice.

  “It’s like this, ladies and gentlemen. The problem is to discover what the devil good it does you to use up a million dollars’ worth of genius feeling the phenomenon of a poison needle in a man’s belly if it turns out that nobody put it there. Put it this way: if a thing gets where no one wants it, what happened? Or this way: since the golf bag was in the Barstow home for the twenty-four hours preceding the killing, how about finding out if one of the servants has got funnier ideas even than Mrs. Barstow? Of course, according to Sarah’s information there’s no chance of it, and another objection is that it doesn’t appeal to me. Lord, how I hate tackling a bunch of servants. So I guess I’ll drop in on the Barstows in the morning and go to it. It looks like it’s either that or quit and kiss the fifty grand good-bye. This case is a lulu all right. We’re right where we started. I wouldn’t mind so much if there was anyone to help me out on it, If only I didn’t have to do all the thinking and planning for myself, in addition to running around day after day and getting nowhere—”

  “Continue, Archie.” But Wolfe didn’t open his eyes.

  “I can’t, I’m too disgusted. Do you know something? We’re licked. This poison needle person is a better man than we are. Oh, we’ll go on for a few days fooling around with servants and trying to find out who put the ad in the paper for the metal-worker and so on, but we’re licked as sure as you’re full of beer.”

  His eyes opened. “I’m going to cut down to five quarts a day. Twelve bottles. A bottle doesn’t hold a pint. I am now going to bed.” He began the accustomed preparations for rising from his chair. He got up. “By the way, Archie, could you get out fairly early in the morning? You might reach the Green Meadow Club before the caddies depart with their babies. That is the only slang epithet you have brought me recently which seems to me entirely apt. Perhaps you could also kidnap the two who are attending school. It would be convenient if all four of them were here at eleven. Tell Fritz there will be guests at lunch. What do boys of that age eat?”

  “They eat everything.”

  “Tell Fritz to have that.”

  As soon as I had made sure that he could still get into the elevator, I went on upstairs and set my alarm for six o’clock and hit the hay.

  In the morning, rolling north along the Parkway again, I wasn’t singing at the sunshine. I was always glad to be doing something, but I was not so liable to burst from joy when I suspected that my activity was going to turn out to be nothing but discarding from a bum hand. I didn’t need anybody to tell me that Nero Wolfe was a wonder, but I knew this gathering in the caddies was just a wild stab, and I wasn’t hopeful. As a matter of fact, it seemed to me more likely than ever that we were licked, because if this was the best Wolfe could do—

  It was a motor cop. With the northbound half of the Parkway empty at that hour of the morning I had been going something above fifty without noticing, and this bicycle Cossack waved me over. I pulled alongside the curb and stopped. He asked for my license and I handed it to him, and he got out his book of tickets.

  I said, “Sure I was going too fast. It may not interest you, I don’t know, but I’m headed for Anderson’s office in White Plains—the District Attorney—with some dope on the Barstow case. He’s in a hurry for it.”

  The cop just had his pencil ready. “Got a badge?” I handed him one of my cards. “I’m private. It was my boss, Nero Wolfe, that started the party.”

  He handed the card and the license back. “All right, but don’t begin jumping over fences.”

  I felt better after that. Maybe luck was headed our way after all.

  I got the two caddies at the club without any trouble, but it took over an hour to round up the other two. They went to different schools, and while one of them didn’t need any persuading to go for a ride to New York, the other one must have been trying to qualify for teacher’s pet or a Rhodes scholarship. At first I kidded him, and when that didn’t work I switched to the ends of justice and the duties of a good citizen. That got him, and the woman in charge of the school, too. I suspected I wouldn’t care an awful lot for his companionship, so I put him and another one in the rumble seat, and with the other two in with me I found the trail back to the Parkway and turned south. I kept the speedometer down to forty thenceforth, for I knew I couldn’t expect Anderson to do me nothing but favors.

  We arrived at a quarter to eleven, and I took the boys to the kitchen and fed them sandwiches, for the lunch hour was one. I wanted to take them up and show them the orchids, thinking it wouldn’t hurt them any to get impressed, but there wasn’t time. I got their names and addresses down. One of them, the pale skinny kid who had caddied for Manuel Kimball, had a dirty face and I took him to the bathroom for a wash. By the time Wolfe appeared I was beginning to feel like a boy scout leader.

  I had them arranged on chairs in a row for him. He came in with a bunch of Cymbidiums in his hand which he put into a vase on his desk, then he got into his chair and flipped the mail. He had told the boys good morning as he entered; now he turned and settled himself comfortably and looked them over one by one. They were embarrassed and shifted around.

  “Excuse me, Archie. Bad staging.” He turned to the boy at the end, one with red hair and blue eyes. “Your name, sir?”

  “William A. Riley.”

  “Thank you. If you will move your chair over there, near the wall—much better.—And your name?” When he had got all their names and scattered them around he said, “Which one of you expressed doubt that Peter Oliver Barstow was killed by a needle shot from the handle of a golf driver?—Come, I’m only trying to get acquainted; which one?”

  Chunky Mike spoke up. “That was me.”

  “Ah. Michael Allen. Michael, you are young. You have learned to accept the commonplace, you must yet learn not to exclude the bizarre.—Now, boys, I’m going to tell you a story. Please listen, because I want you to understand it. This happens to be a true story. There was a meeting in a public hall of a hundred psychologists. A psychologist is—by courtesy—a man trained to observe. It had been arranged, without their knowledge,
that a man should run into the hall and down the aisle, followed by another man waving a pistol. A third man ran in by another door. The second man shot at the first man. The third man knocked the second man down and took the pistol from him. They all ran out by different doors. One of the psychologists then arose and stilled the clamor, and announced that the events had been prearranged, and asked each of his colleagues to write down immediately a complete detailed report of the whole affair. They did so, and the reports were examined and compared. Not one was entirely correct. No two agreed throughout. One even had the third man shooting at the first man.”

  Wolfe stopped and looked around at them. “That’s all. I’m not a good story-teller, but you may have caught the point. Do you see what I’m getting at?”

  They nodded.

  “You do. Then I shall not insult your intelligence with an exposition. Let us go on to our own story. We shall sit here and discuss the death of Peter Oliver Barstow, more particularly the events on the first tee which led up to it. At one o’clock we shall have lunch, then we shall return here and resume. We shall discuss all afternoon, many hours. You will get tired, but not hungry. If you get sleepy you may take a nap. I state the program thus in full so that you may know how elaborate and difficult an undertaking confronts us. Mr. Goodwin has heard two of your stereotypes; I fancy the other two are practically identical. A stereotype is something fixed, something that harbors no intention of changing. I don’t expect you boys to change your stories of what happened on that first tee; what I ask is that you forget all your arguments and discussions, all your recitals to families and friends, all the pictures that words have printed on your brains, and return to the scene itself. That is vitally important. I would have left my house and journeyed to the scene myself to be with you there, but for the fact that interruptions would have ruined our efforts. By our imaginations we must transfer the scene here. Here we are, boys, at the first tee.

  “Here we are. It is Sunday afternoon. Larry Barstow has engaged two of you; two of you are with the Kimballs, carrying their bags. You are on familiar ground, as familiar to you as the rooms of your own homes. You are occupied with activities so accustomed as to have become almost automatic. The straps of the bags are on your shoulders. You, Michael Allen, when you see Mr. Barstow, your last season’s baby, at a distance from the tee practicing with a mashie, you do not need to be told what to do; you join him, pick up his bag, hand him a club perhaps—”

  Mike was shaking his head.

  “No? What do you do?”

  “I begin chasing balls.”

  “Ah. The balls he was hitting with the mashie.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Good. What were you doing, William Riley, while Michael was chasing balls?”

  “I was chewing gum.”

  “Exclusively? I mean, was that the utmost of your efforts?”

  “Well, I was standing holding old Kimball’s bag.”

  Listening to him start, I was thinking that Wolfe’s long words would get the kids so tied up that pretty soon they would just go dead on him, but it worked the other way. Without telling them so he had given them the feeling that he was counting on them to help him show how dumb the hundred psychologists had been, and they weren’t going to get licked at it because it took long words to do it.

  He went along inch by inch, now with this boy, now with that, sometimes with all of them talking at once. He let them get into a long discussion of the relative merits of various brands of clubs, and sat with his eyes half closed pretending he enjoyed it. He questioned them for half an hour regarding the identities and characteristics of the other caddies and golfers present, those belonging to the matches which immediately preceded the Barstow foursome at the tee. Every time one of the boys bolted ahead to the actual teeing off Wolfe called him back. Among all the irrelevancies I could see one thing, perhaps the main thing, he was doing: he wasn’t losing sight for a single instant of each and every club in each and every bag.

  For lunch Fritz gave us two enormous chicken pies and four watermelons. I did the serving, as usual when there was company, and by speeding up with my knife and fork I barely managed to get my own meal in by the time the casseroles were empty. The watermelons were simple; I gave a half to each of the boys and the same for Wolfe and myself, and that left one for Fritz. I suspected he wouldn’t touch it but thought there might be use for it later on.

  After lunch we resumed where we had left off. It was wonderful the way Wolfe had long since opened those boys’ minds up and let the air in. They went right ahead. They had forgotten entirely that someone was trying to get something out of them or that they were supposed to be using their memories; they were just like a bunch of kids talking over the ball game they had played the day before, only Wolfe was on top of them every minute not letting them skip a thing and all the time making them go back, and back again. Even so they were making progress. Larry Barstow had made his drive, and Manuel Kimball had made his.

  When the break came it was so simple and natural, and went along so easy with all the rest of it, that for a minute I didn’t realize what was happening. Wolfe was saying to Chunky Mike:

  “Then you handed Barstow his driver. Did you tee up his ball?”

  “Yes, sir.—No—I couldn’t, because I was over hunting a ball he had put in the rough with his mashie.”

  “Exactly, Michael, you told us before you were hunting a ball. I wondered then how you could have teed up for Barstow.”

  William Riley spoke. “He teed up himself. The ball rolled off and I fixed it for him.”

  “Thank you, William.—So you see, Michael, you did not tee up for him. Wasn’t the heavy golf bag a nuisance while you were hunting the lost ball?”

  “Naw, we get used to it.”

  “Did you find the ball?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “What did you do with it?”

  “Put it in the ball pocket.”

  “Do you state that as a fact or an assumption?”

  “I put it in. I remember.”

  “Right away?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Then you must have had the bag with you while you were hunting the ball. In that case, you could not have handed Barstow his driver when he teed off, because you weren’t there. He could not have removed it from the bag himself, because the bag wasn’t there. Had you perhaps handed him the driver previously?”

  “Sure. I must have.”

  “Michael! We need something much better than must have. You did or you didn’t. Remember that you are supposed to have told us—”

  William Riley butted in: “Hey! Mike, that’s why he borrowed old Kimball’s driver, because you were off looking for the ball.”

  “Ah.” Wolfe shut his eyes for a tenth of a second and then opened them again. “William, it is unnecessary to shout. Who borrowed Mr. Kimball’s driver?” “Barstow did.” “What makes you think so?” “I don’t think so, I know. I had it out ready to hand to old Kimball, and Barstow’s ball rolled off his tee and I fixed it for him, and when I stood up old Kimball was saying to Barstow, ‘Use mine,’ and Barstow reached out and I handed old Kimball’s driver to him.” “And he used it?”

  “Sure. He drove right away. Mike didn’t come back with the bag until after old Kimball had drove too.”

  I was having all I could do to stay in my chair. I wanted to do a dance like Spring on the Mountaintop that I’d seen in the movies, and pin a bunch of orchids on William Riley, and throw my arms halfway around Wolfe which was as far as they would go. I was afraid to look at Wolfe for fear I would grin so hard and wide I’d burst my jaw.

  He was after the pale skinny kid and the one that wanted to be a good citizen, but neither of them remembered anything about Barstow borrowing the driver. The skinny one said he had his eyes glued far out on the fairway, spotting the place where Manuel Kimball had pulled his drive into the bushes, and the good citizen just didn’t remember. Wolfe turned to Chunky Mike. Mike could not say positi
vely that Barstow’s driver had been in the bag when he had had it with him hunting the ball, but he could not remember handing it to Barstow, and he could not remember receiving it back and returning it to the bag. During all this William Riley was straining his politeness to keep still. Finally Wolfe got back to him:

  “Excuse me, William. Do not think I doubt your memory or your fidelity to truth. Corroboration is always helpful. And it might be thought a little curious that you had forgotten so informing a detail.”

  The boy protested, “I hadn’t forgotten it, I just didn’t happen to think of it.”

  “You mean that you have not included that incident in any of your recitals to your friends?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Good, William. I put my question badly, but I see that you have the intelligence to stick to the main clause. Possibly you mentioned the incident to Mr. Anderson?”

  The boy shook his head. “I haven’t seen Mr. Anderson. The detective came and asked me a few questions, not much.”

  “I see.” Wolfe sighed, deep and long, and pushed the button. “It is tea time, messieurs.”

  Of course for Wolfe that meant beer. I got up and collected the boys and herded them into the kitchen; sure enough, the watermelon was intact. I cut it into four quarters and passed it around. Fritz, having been to answer Wolfe’s bell, was arranging a glass and two bottles on a tray; but as he went down the hall I noticed that he turned toward the stairs instead of the office. I glanced at my wrist. It was two minutes to four. The son-of-a-gun had saved his schedule! I left the boys with the melon and hurried out and caught him on his way to the elevator. He said: