Rex Stout - Nero Wolfe 17

by Three Doors to Death

  “What about her?” she repeated impatiently.

  “Excuse me,” I apologized. “I was wondering if I should bother you after all—right now. You look sick.”

  “I’m not sick. It’s only—my heart.” She took a long sighing breath. “What would you expect? What about Miss Alving?”

  I could and would have done better if my mind had been on it, but it wasn’t. I couldn’t even remember which tack I had decided to take, because an interesting idea had not only entered my head but evicted all the previous tenants. But I couldn’t just turn on my heel and blow, so I spoke.

  “I don’t want to be crude, Mrs. Whitten, but you understand that while you have your personal situation and problems, other people have theirs. At least you will grant that the death of Floyd Whitten means more to Miss Alving than it does to people who never knew him, though they’re all reading about it and talking about it. The idea was for Nero Wolfe to have a little talk with you regarding certain aspects of the situation which are of special interest to Miss Alving.”

  “I owe Miss Alving nothing.” Mrs. Whitten had raised her head from the pillow, aiming her eyes at me, but now she let it fall back, and again she sighed, taking in all the air she could get. “It is no secret that my husband knew her once, but their—it was ended when he got married. That is no secret either.”

  “I know that,” I agreed. “But I couldn’t discuss things even if I knew about them. I’m just a messenger boy. My job was to arrange for Mr. Wolfe to talk with you, and it looks as if I’ll have to pass it up for now, since he never leaves his house to see anyone on business, and you can’t very well be expected to leave yours if your doctor has put you to bed.” I grinned down at her. “That’s why I apologized for bothering you. Maybe tomorrow or next day?” I backed away. “I’ll phone you, or Mr. Wolfe will.”

  Her head had come up again. “You’re going to tell me,” she said in a tone that could not have been called a cluck, “exactly why Miss Alving sent you here to annoy me.”

  “I can’t,” I told her from the door. “Because I don’t know. And I promised your son I’d make it brief.” I turned the knob and pulled. “You’ll be hearing from us.”

  Two daughters and a son were out on the landing. “Okay,” I told them cheerfully, got by, and started down. Bahr and Mortimer were in the reception hall, and I nodded as I breezed past, opened the door for myself, and was out.

  Since what I wanted was the nearest phone booth, I turned left, toward Madison, and one block down, at the corner, entered a drug store.

  Routine would have been to call Wolfe and get his opinion of my interesting idea, but he had sicked me onto them with nothing to go by but his snooty remark that circumstances might offer suggestions, so I went right past him. I could have got what I wanted from 20th Street, but if I got a break and my hunch grew feathers I didn’t want the Homicide boys in on it, so the number I dialed was that of the Gazette office. Lon Cohen was always there until midnight, so I soon had him.

  “I’m looking,” I told him, “for a good doctor to pierce my ears for earrings, and I think I’ve found one. Call me at this number”—I gave it to him—“and tell me who New York license UMX four three three one seven belongs to.”

  He had me repeat it, which shouldn’t have been necessary with a veteran newspaperman. I hung up and did my waiting outside the booth, since the temperature inside was well over a hundred. The phone rang in five minutes, exactly par for that routine item of research, and a voice—not Lon’s, for he was a busy man at that time of night—gave me a name and address: Frederick M. Cutler, M.D., with an office on East 65th and a residence on Park Avenue.

  It was ten blocks away, so I went for the car and drove it, parked on the avenue a polite distance from the canopy with the number on it, and went in. The lobby was all it should have been in that locality, and the night man took exactly the right attitude toward a complete stranger. On my way I had decided what would be exactly the right attitude for me.

  “Dr. Frederick M. Cutler,” I said. “Please phone up.”

  “Name?”

  “Tell him a private detective named Goodwin has an important question to ask him about the patient he was visiting forty minutes ago.”

  I thought that would do. If that got me to him my hunch would already have an attractive fuzz on its bare pink skin. So when, after finishing at the phone, he crossed to the elevator with me and told his colleague I was to be conveyed to 12C, my heart had accelerated a good ten per cent.

  At 12C I was admitted by the man I had seen leaving the Whitten house with his black case. Here, with a better view of him, I could note such details as the gray in his hair, his impatient gray-blue eyes, and the sag at the corners of his wide full mouth. Also I could see, through an arch, men and women at a couple of card tables in the large room beyond.

  “Come this way, please,” my victim said gruffly, and I followed him down a hall and through a door. This was a small room, its walls solid with books, and a couch, a desk, and three chairs, leaving no space at all. He closed the door, confronted me, and was even gruffer.

  “What do you want?”

  The poor guy had already given me at least half of what I wanted, but of course he would have had to be very nifty on the draw not to.

  “My name,” I said, “is Archie Goodwin, and I work for Nero Wolfe.”

  “So that’s who you are. What do you want?”

  “I was sent to see Mrs. Floyd Whitten, and while I was parking my car in front I saw you leaving her house. Naturally I recognized you, since you are pretty well known.” I thought he might as well have a lump of sugar. “I went in and had a little talk with Mrs. Whitten up in her bedroom. Her son said, and she said, that the trouble was her heart. But then how come? There is a widespread opinion that she is in splendid health and always has been. At her age she plays tennis. She walks up two flights to her bedroom. People who know her admire her healthy complexion. But when I saw her, there in bed, she was as pale as a corpse, in fact she was pale like a corpse, and she kept taking long sighing breaths. I’m not a doctor, but I happen to know that those two symptoms—that kind of pallor and that kind of breathing—go with a considerable loss of blood, say over a pint. She didn’t have a cardiac hemorrhage, did she?”

  Cutler’s jaw was working. “The condition of my patient is none of your business. But Mrs. Whitten has had an extremely severe shock.”

  “Yeah, I know she has. But the business I’m in, I have seen quite a few people under the shock of the sudden death of someone they loved, and I’ve seen a slew of reactions, and this one is brand new. The pallor possibly, but combined with those long frequent sighs?” I shook my head. “I will not settle for that. Besides, why did you let me come up after the kind of message I sent, if it’s just shock? Why did you let me in and herd me back here so private? At this point I think you ought to either toss me out or invite me to sit down.”

  He did neither. He glared.

  “Lookit,” I said, perfectly friendly. “Do some supposing. Suppose you were called there and found her with a wound and a lot of blood gone. You did what was needed, and when she asked you to keep it quiet you decided to humor her and ignore your legal obligation to make a report to the authorities in such cases. Ordinarily that would be nothing for a special broadcast; doctors do it every day. But this is far from ordinary. Her husband was murdered, stabbed to death. A man named Pompa has been charged with it, but he’s not convicted yet. Suppose one of the five people hid in the dining room Wiled Whitten? They could have, easily, while Pompa and Mrs. Whitten were in the living room—a whole half-hour. Those five people are in Mrs. Whitten’s house with her now, and two of them live there. Suppose the motive for killing Whitten is good for her too, and one of them tried it, and maybe tonight or tomorrow makes another try and this time it works? How would you feel about clamming up on the first try? How would others feel when it came out, as it would?”

  “You’re crazy,” Cutler growled. “They’
re her sons and daughters!”

  “Oh, for God’s sake,” I growled back at him. “And you a doctor who sees inside people? The parents who have been killed by sons and daughters would fill a hundred cemeteries. I’m not crazy, but I’m good and scared. I guess I scare easier than you. I say that woman has lost blood, and you’re not denying it, so one of two things has to happen. Either you give me the lowdown confidentially, and it will have to sound right, or I suggest to the cops that they send a doctor to have a look at her. Then if my supposes all come true I won’t have to feel that I helped to kill her. How you will feel is your affair.”

  “The police have no right to invade a citizen’s privacy in that manner.”

  “You’d be surprised. In a house where a murder was committed, and she was there and so were they?”

  “Your suppositions are contrary to the facts.”

  “Fine. That’s what I’m after, the facts. Let me have a look at them. If they appeal to us, Mr. Wolfe and I can ignore obligations as easy as you.”

  He sat down, rested his elbows on the arms of the chair with his hands dangling, and thoroughly inspected a corner of a rug. I inspected him. He stood up again, said, “I’ll be back shortly,” and started for the door.

  “Hold it,” I snapped. “This is your place and I can’t keep you from going to another room to phone, but if you do, any facts you furnish will need a lot of checking. It all comes down to which you like better, giving it to me straight or having a police doctor go over your patient.”

  “I ought to kick you the hell out of here,” he said grimly.

  I shook my head. “Not now. If you had taken that attitude when that message was phoned up to you I would have had to think again, but now it’s too late.” I gestured at the desk. “Use that phone, if all you want is to tell Mrs. Whitten that a skunk named Goodwin has got you by the tail and you’ve got to break your promise to keep it quiet.” I took a step and held his eye with mine. “You see, brother, when I said I was scared I meant it. Sons and daughters phooey. If Pompa is innocent, and he is, there’s a murderer in that house, and an animal that has killed can kill again, and often does. What is going on there right now? I’d like to know, and I’m getting tired of talking to you. And what’s more, something’s biting you too or you wouldn’t have let me up here.”

  Cutler went and sat down again, and I sat on the edge of the couch, facing him. I waited.

  “It couldn’t be,” he declared.

  “What couldn’t be?”

  “Something biting me.”

  “Something bit Mrs. Whitten. Or was it a bite or a bullet or what?”

  “It was a cut.” His voice was weary and precise, not gruff at all. “Her son Jerome phoned me at a quarter to ten, and I went at once. She was upstairs on the bed and things were bloody. They had towels against her, pressing the wound together. There was a cut on her left side, five inches long and deep enough to expose the eighth rib, and a shallow cut on her left arm above the elbow, two inches long. The cuts had been made with a sharp blade. Twelve sutures were required in the side wound, and four in the arm. The loss of blood had been substantial, but not serious enough to call for more than iron and liver, which I prescribed. That was all. I left.”

  “How did she get cut?”

  “I was proceeding to tell you. She said she had gone in the late afternoon to a conference in her business office, made urgent by the death of her husband and the arrest of Pompa. It had lasted longer than expected. Riding back uptown, she had dismissed her chauffeur, sent him home in a taxi, and had driven herself around the park for a while. Then she drove to her house. As she got out of her car someone seized her from behind, and she thought she was being kidnaped. She gouged with her elbows and kicked, and suddenly her assailant released her and darted away. She crossed the sidewalk to her door, rang, and was admitted by Borly, the butler. Only after she was inside did she learn that she had been stabbed, or cut. The sons and daughters were there, and they phoned me and got her upstairs. They also, directed by her, cleaned up; indoors and out. The butler washed the sidewalk with a hose. He was doing that when I arrived. Mrs. Whitten explained to me that the haste in cleaning up was on account of her desire to have no hullabaloo, as she put it. Under the circumstances the episode would naturally have been greatly—uh, magnified. She asked me to do her the favor of exercising professional discretion, and I saw no sufficient reason to refuse. I shall explain to her that your threat to have a police doctor see her left me no choice.”

  He turned up his palms. “Those are the facts.”

  I nodded. “As you got them. Who was it that jumped her?”

  “She doesn’t know.”

  “Man or woman?”

  “She doesn’t know. She was attacked from behind, and it was after dark. When her assailant dashed off, by the time she got straightened and turned he—or she—was the other side of a parked car. Anyway, she was frightened, and her concern was safety.”

  “She didn’t see him before he jumped her? As she drove up?”

  “No. He could have been concealed behind the parked car.”

  “Were there no passers-by?”

  “None. No one appeared.”

  “Did she scream?”

  “I didn’t ask her.” He was getting irritated. “I didn’t subject her to an inquisition, you know. She had been hurt and needed attention, and I gave it to her.”

  “Sure.” I stood up. “I won’t say much obliged because I squeezed it out. I accept your facts—that is, what you were told—but I ought to warn you that you may get a phone call from Nero Wolfe. I can find my way out.”

  He stood up. “I think you used the word ‘confidential.’ May I tell Mrs. Whitten that she need not expect a visit from a police doctor?”

  “I’ll do my best. I mean it. But if I were you I wouldn’t give her any more quick promises. They’re apt not to stick.”

  I reached for the doorknob, but he was ahead of me and opened it. He took me back down the hall and let me out, and even told me good night. The elevator man kept slanted eyes on me, evidently having been told of the vulgar message I had sent up to a tenant, so I told him that his starting lever needed oil, which it did. Outside I climbed in the car and rolled downtown a little faster than I was supposed to. The clock on the dash said ten minutes to midnight.

  When I’m not in the house, especially at night, the front door is always chain bolted, so I had to ring for Fritz to let me in. I went along with him to the kitchen, got a glass and a pitcher of milk, took them to the office, and announced, “Home again, and I brought no company. But I’ve got a tool I think you can pry Pompa loose with, if you want to play it that way. I need some milk on my stomach. My nerves are doubling in brass.”

  “What is it?” Marko demanded, out of his chair at me. “What did you—”

  “Let him alone,” Wolfe muttered, “until he has swallowed something. He’s hungry.”

  V

  “If you don’t tell the police about this at once, I will,” Marko said emphatically. He hit the chair arm with his fist. “This is magnificent! It is a masterpiece of wit!”

  I had finished my report, along with the pitcher of milk, and Wolfe had asked questions, such as whether I had seen any bloodstains, inside or out, which the cleaners had overlooked. I hadn’t. Wolfe was leaning back in his chair with his eyes closed, and Marko was pacing back and forth. I was smirking, but not visibly.

  “They must release him at once!” Marko exclaimed. “Tell them now! Phone! If you don’t—”

  “Shut up,” Wolfe said rudely.

  “He’s using his brain,” I informed Marko, “and you’re breaking the rules. Yell at me if you want to, but not at him. It’s not as simple as it looks. If we pass it to the cops it’s out of our hands, and if they’re stubborn and still like the idea of Pompa where are we? We couldn’t get through to that bunch again with anything less than a Sherman tank. If we don’t tell the cops but keep it for our private use, and we monkey around unt
il whoever used a knife on Mrs. Whitten uses it again only more to the point, the immediate question would be how high the judge would set our bail.”

  “Including me?” Marko demanded.

  “Certainly including you. You especially, because you started the conspiracy to spring Pompa.”

  Marko stopped pacing to frown at me. “But you make it impossible. We can’t tell the police, and we can’t not tell the police. Is this what I called a masterpiece?”

  “Sure, and you were right. It was so slick that I’m going to ask for a raise. Because there’s a loophole, namely we don’t have to monkey around. We can keep going the way I started. We’ve got a club to use on Mrs. Whitten, which means all of them, and if she hadn’t just been sliced and had her side sewed up we could phone her that we want her down here within the hour, along with the family. As it is, I guess that’s out. The alternative is for Mr. Wolfe and me to get in the car, which is out at the curb, and go there—now.”

  I ignored a little grunt from Wolfe’s direction.

  “It has been years,” I told Marko, “since I tried to get him to break his rule never to go anywhere outside this house on business, and I wouldn’t waste breath on it now. But this has nothing to do with business. You’re not a client, and Pompa isn’t, and he has told you that he wouldn’t take your money. This is for love, a favor to an old friend, which makes it entirely different. No question of rule-breaking is involved.”

  Marko was gazing at me. “You mean go to Mrs. Whitten’s home?”

  “Certainly. Why not?”

  “Would they let you in?”

  “You’re damn right they would, if that doctor has phoned her, and it’s ten to one he did.”