by Rex Stout
"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 killed 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 kidnapped. 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 until 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."
"Would it accomplish anything?"
"The least it would accomplish would be that there wouldn't be a second murder as long as we were there. Beyond that – circumstances might offer suggestions. I might add, not being a candidate for president, that when I went there alone it accomplished a little something."
Marko wheeled to Wolfe with his arms extended. "Nero, you must go! At once! You must!"
Wolfe's eyes came half open, slowly. "Pfui," he said scornfully.
"But it is the only thing! Let me tell you what Archie –"
"I heard him." The open eyes saw an unfinished glass of beer, and he picked it up and drank. He looked at me. "There was a flaw. You assume that if we withhold this information from the police, and Mrs. Whitten gets killed, we'll be in a pickle. Why? Technically it is not murder evidence; it has no necessary connection with a committed crime. Legally we are clear. Morally we are also clear. What if we accept and credit Mrs. Whitten's explanation as she gives it?
Then there is no menace to her from the members of her family."
"You mean you buy it?" I demanded. "That she couldn't even tell whether it was a man or a woman?"
"Why not?"
I got up, threw up my hands, and sat down again.
"But this is not logical," Marko protested earnestly. "Your questions indicated that you thought she had lied to the doctor. I don't see why –"
"Nuts," I said in disgust. "He knows damn well she lied. If he liked to bet he would give you odds that it was one of the family that cut her up, either in the house or out, and she knows who it was and so do the rest of them. I know him better than you do, Marko. If he did leave his damn house and ride at night through the dangerous streets, when he got there he would have to work like a dog, put all he's got into it, to nail the one that has it coming. If instead of that he goes to bed and sleeps well, something may happen to simplify matters. That's all there is to it."
"Is that true, Nero?" Marko demanded.
"It contains truth," Wolfe conceded big-heartedly. "So does this. Patently Mrs. Whitten is in danger. Anyone who cuts a five-inch gash in the territory of the eighth rib may be presumed to have maleficent intentions, and probably pertinacity to boot. But though Archie is normally humane, his exasperation does not come from a benevolent passion to prevent further injury to Mrs. Whitten. She is much too old for him to feel that way. It comes from his childish resentment that his coup, which was unquestionably brilliant, will not be immediately followed up as he would like it to be. That is understandable, but I see no reason –"
The doorbell rang. I got up and went for it. I might have left it to Fritz, but I was glad of an excuse to walk out on Wolfe's objectionable remarks. The panel in our entrance door is one-way glass, permitting us to see out but not the outsider to see in, and on my way down the hall I flipped the switch for the stoop light to get a look.
One glance was enough, but I took a step for another one before turning, marching back to the office, and telling Wolfe, "You may remember that you instructed me to get six people down here – as many of them as possible, you said. They're here. Out on the stoop. Shall I tell them you're sleepy?"
"All of them?"
"Yes, sir."
Wolfe threw his head back and laughed. He did that about once a year. When it had tapered off to a chuckle he spoke.
"Marko, will you leave by way of the front room? Through that door. Your presence might embarrass them. Bring them in, Archie."
I went
back out, pulled the door wide open, and greeted them.
"Hello there! Come on in."
"You goddam rat," Mortimer snarled at me through his teeth.
VI
The two sons were supporting their mother, one on either side, and continued to do so along the hall and on into the office. She was wearing a tan summer outfit, dotted with brown, which I would have assumed to be silk if I had not heard tell that in certain shops you can part with three centuries for a little number in rayon. Eve was in white, with yellow buttons, and Phoebe was in what I would call calico, two shades of blue. My impulse to smile at her of course had to be choked.
Thinking it might prevent an outburst, or at least postpone it, I formally pronounced their names for Wolfe and then saw that their chairs were arranged the way he liked it when we had a crowd, so that he wouldn't have to work his neck too much to take them all in. Jerome and Mortimer, declining my offer of the big couch for Mom, got her comfortable in the red leather chair, but it was Phoebe who took the chair next to her. Mortimer stayed on his feet. The others sat.
Wolfe's eyes swept the arc. "You all look mad," he said inoffensively.
"If you think that's witty," Eve snapped.
"Not at all," he assured her. "I was merely acknowledging an atmosphere." His eyes moved to Mrs. Whitten. "Do you want me to talk, madam? You came here, and you might like to tell me why."
"Your lousy punk," Mortimer blurted, "might like to step outside and ask me why!"
"Mortimer!" Mrs. Whitten turned to him. "Sit down."
He hesitated, opened his trap and shut it again, moved, and sat, next to Phoebe. A fine brother she picked.
"You will please remember," Mrs. Whitten told the flock, "that I am to do the talking. I wanted to come alone, but you talked me out of it, and now you will please keep silent. Including you, Dan," she added to the son-in-law. She returned to Wolfe. "I was getting my breath. The exertion was – not too much, but enough." She was still using sighs to get oxygen, and she was even paler than when I had seen her in bed.