by Rex Stout
He came up out of the chair and was erect. "I am not comfortable," he told Joseph G. stiffly, "sitting here in your house with you standing. Mr. Krasicki has engaged me to get him cleared and I intend to do it. It would be foolhardy to assume that you would welcome a thorn for the sake of such abstractions as justice or truth, since that would make you a rarity almost unknown, but you have a right to be asked. May I stay here, with Mr. Goodwin, and talk with you and your family and servants, until I am either satisfied that Mr. Krasicki is guilty or am equipped to satisfy others that he isn't?"
Sybil, though still scornful, nodded approvingly. "That's more like it," she declared. "That rolled."
"You may not," Pitcairn said, controlling himself. "If the officers of the law are satisfied, it is no concern of mine that you are not." He put his hand in his side coat pocket. "I've been patient and I'm not going to put up with any more of this. You know where your car is."
His hand left the pocket, and damned if there wasn't a gun in it. It was a Colt .38, old but in good condition.
"Let me see your license," I said sternly.
"Pfui." Wolfe lifted his shoulders a millimeter and let them down. "Very well, sir, then I'll have to manage." He put his hand into his own side pocket, and I thought my God, he's going to shoot it out with him, but when the hand reappeared all it held was a key. "This," he said, "is the key to Mr. Krasicki's cottage, which he gave me so I could enter to collect his belongings – whatever is left of them after the illegal visitations of the police. Mr. Goodwin and I are going there, unaccompanied. When we return to our car we shall await you or your agent to inspect our baggage. Have you any comment?"
"I –" Pitcairn hesitated, frowning, then he said, "No."
"Good." Wolfe turned and went to a table for his coat, hat, and cane. "Come, Archie." He marched.
As we reached the door Sybil's voice came at our backs. "If you find the box of morphine don't tell anybody."
Outdoors I held Wolfe's coat for him and got mine on. The whole day had been dark, but now it was getting darker, though a cold wind was herding the clouds down to the horizon and on over. When we reached the rear of the house I swung left for a detour to the car to get a flashlight, and caught up with Wolfe on the path. No ducking was necessary now, as the twigs had dried. We passed the tennis court and entered the grove of evergreens, where it was already night.
I glanced at my wrist. "Four o'clock," I announced cheerily to Wolfe, who was ahead. "If we were home, and Theodore was still there, or Andy had come, you would be just going up to the plant rooms to poke around."
He didn't even tell me to shut up. He was way beyond that.
It was dark enough in the cottage to need lights, and I turned them on. Wolfe glanced around, spotted a chair nearly big enough, took off his hat and coat, and sat, while I started a tour. The dicks had left it neat. This medium-sized room wasn't bad, though the rugs and furniture had seen better days. To the right was a bedroom and to the left another one, and in the rear was a bathroom and a kitchen.
I took only a superficial look and then returned to Wolfe and told him, "Nothing sticks out. Shall I pack?"
"What for?" he asked forlorn.
"Shall I see if they missed something important?"
He only grunted. Not feeling like sitting and looking at him, I began a retake. A desk and a filing cabinet yielded nothing but horticultural details and some uninteresting personal items, and the rest of the room nothing at all. The bedroom at the left was even blanker. The one at the right was the one Andy had used, and I went over it good, but if it contained anything that could be used to flatten Lieutenant Noonan's nose I failed to find it. The same for the bathroom. And ditto for the kitchen, except that at the rear of a shelf, behind some packages of prunes and cereals, I dug up a little cardboard box. There was no morphine in it, and there was no reason to suppose there ever had been, and I reported its contents to Wolfe merely to get conversation started.
"Keys," I said, jiggling the box, "and one of them is tagged d-u-p period g-r-n-h-s period, which probably means duplicate to the greenhouse. It would come in handy if we want to sneak in some night and swipe that Phalaenopsis."
No comment. I put the keys in my pocket and sat down.
Pretty soon I spoke. "I'd like to make it plain," I said distinctly, "that I don't like the way you're acting. Many times, sitting in the office, you have said to me, 'Archie, go get Whosis and Whosat and bring them here.' Usually, I have delivered. But if you now tell me to drive you home, and, upon arriving, tell me to go get the Pitcairns and Imbries and Gus Treble, which is what I suspect you of, save it. I wouldn't even bother to answer, not after the way you've bitched it up just because a pretty girl called you by your first name."
"She isn't pretty," he growled.
"Nuts. Certainly she's pretty, though I don't like her any better than you do. I just wanted to make sure that you understand what the situation will be if we go home."
He studied me. After a while he nodded, with his lips compressed, as if in final acceptance of an ugly fact.
"There's a phone," he said. "Get Fritz."
"Yeah, I saw it, but what if it's connected with the house?"
"Try it."
I went to the desk and did so, dialing the operator, and, with no audible interference, got her, gave the number, and heard Fritz's voice in my ear. Wolfe got up and came across and took it away from me.
"Fritz? We have been delayed. No, I'm all right. I don't know. The delay is indefinite. No, confound it, he's in jail. I can't tell now but you'll hear from me again well before dinnertime. How are the plants? I see. No, that's all right, that won't hurt them. I see. No no no, not those on the north! Not a one! Certainly I did, but …"
I quit listening, not that I was callous, but because my attention was drawn elsewhere. Turning away, for no special reason, a window was in my line of vision, and through it, outdoors near the pane, I saw a branch of a shrub bob up and down and then wiggle to a stop. I am no woodsman, but it didn't seem reasonable that wind could make a leafless branch perform like that, so I turned to face Wolfe again, listened for another minute, and then sauntered across the room and into the kitchen. I switched off the light there, carefully and silently eased the back door open, slipped outside, and pulled the door to.
It was all black, but after I had stood half a minute I could see a little. I slipped my hand inside my vest to my shoulder holster, but brought it out again empty; it was just an automatic check. I saw now that I was standing on a concrete slab only a shallow step above the ground. Stepping off it to the left, I started, slow motion, for the corner of the house. The damn wind was so noisy that my ears weren't much help. Just as I reached the corner a moving object came from nowhere and bumped me. I grabbed for it, but it, instead of grabbing, swung a fist. The fist was hard when it met the side of my neck, and that got me sore. I sidestepped, whirled, and aimed one for the object's kidney, but there wasn't enough light for precision and I missed by a mile, nearly cracking a knuckle on his hip. He came at me with a looping swing that left him as open as a house with a wall gone, I ducked, and he went on by and then turned to try again. When he turned I saw who it was: Andy's assistant, Gus Treble.
I stepped back, keeping a guard up for defense only.
"Lookit," I said, "I'd just as soon go on if you really want to, but why do you want to? It's more fun when I know what it's for."
"You double-crossing sonofabitch," he said, not panting.
"Okay, but it's still vague. Who did I cross? Pitcairn? The daughter? Who?"
"You made him think you were with him and then you helped get him framed."
"Oh. You think we crossed Andy?"
"I know damn well you did."
"Listen, brother." I let my guard down. "You know what you are? You're the answer to a prayer. You're what I wanted for Christmas. You're dead wrong, but you're wonderful. Come in and have a talk with Nero Wolfe."
"I wouldn't talk with that crook."
> "You were looking at him through a window. What for?"
"I wanted to see what you were up to."
"That's easy. You should have asked. We were up to absolutely nothing. We were sunk up to our ears. We were phut. We were and are crazy for Andy. We wanted to take him home with us and pamper him, and they wouldn't let us."
"That's a goddam lie."
"Very well. Then you ought to come in and tell Mr.
Wolfe to his face that he's a double-crosser, a crook, and a liar. You don't often get such a chance. Unless you're afraid. What are you afraid of?"
"Nothing," he said, and wheeled and marched to the kitchen door, opened it, and went in. I was right behind.
Wolfe's voice boomed from the other room. "Archie! Where the devil –"
We were with him. He had finished with the phone. He shot a glance at Gus and then at me.
"Where did you get him?"
I waved a hand. "Oh, out there. I've started deliveries."
VI
IT took a good ten minutes to convince Gus Treble that we were playing it straight, and though Wolfe used a lot of his very best words and tones, it wasn't words that put it over, it was logic. The major premise was that Wolfe wanted Andy in his plant rooms, quick. The minor was that Andy couldn't be simultaneously in Wolfe's plant rooms and in the coop at White Plains, or in the death house at Sing Sing. Gus didn't have to have the conclusion written out for him, but even so it took ten minutes. The last two were consumed by my recital, verbatim, of the conversation with Joseph G. and Sybil just before leaving the greenhouse.
Gus was seated at the desk, turned to face Wolfe, and I was straddling a straight-backed chair.
"Last July," Gus said, "that Noonan beat up a friend of mine, for nothing."
Wolfe nodded. "There you are. A typical uniformed blackguard. I take it, Mr. Treble, that you share my opinion that Mr. Krasicki didn't kill that woman. And I heard you tell those men that you didn't, so I won't pester you about it. But though you answered freely and fully all questions concerning yourself, you were manifestly more circumspect regarding others. I understand that. You have a job here and your words were being recorded. But it won't do for me. I want to get Mr. Krasicki out of jail, and I can do so only by furnishing a replacement for him. If you want to help you can, but not unless you forget your job, discard prudence, and tell me all you know about these people. Well, sir?"
Gus was scowling, which made him look old enough to vote. In the artificial light he looked paler than he had outdoors in the morning, and his rainbow shirt looked brighter.
"It's a good job," he muttered, "and I love it."
"Yes," Wolfe agreed sympathetically, "Mr. Krasicki told me you were competent, intelligent, and exceptionally talented."
"He did?"
"Yes, sir. He did."
"Goddam it." Gus's scowl got blacker. "What do you want to know?"
"About these people. First, Miss Lauer. I gathered that you were not yourself attracted by her."
"Me? Not that baby. You heard what I told them. She was out for a sucker."
"You mean out for money?"
"No, not money. I don't think so. Hell, you know the kind. She liked to see males react, she got a kick out of it. She liked to see females react too. Even Neil Imbrie, old enough to be her father, you should have seen her giving him the idea when his wife was there.
Not that she was raw; she could put it in a flash and then cover. And what she could do with her voice! Sometimes I myself had to walk off. Anyhow I've got a girl at Bedford Hills."
"Wasn't Mr. Krasicki aware of all this?"
"Andy?" Gus leaned forward. "Listen. That was one of those things. From the first day he glimpsed her and heard her speak, he got drowned. He didn't even float, he just laid there on the bottom. And him no fool, anything but, but it hit him so quick and hard he never got a chance to analyze. Once I undertook to try a couple of words, very careful, and the look he gave me! It was pathetic." Gus shook his head. "I don't know. If I had known he had talked her into marrying him I might have fumigated her myself, just as a favor to him."
"Yes," Wolfe agreed, "that would have been an adequate motive. So much for you. You mentioned Mr. Imbrie. What about him? Assume that Miss Lauer also gave him the idea when his wife was not there, that he reacted like a male, as you put it, that developments convinced him that he was in heaven, that she told him last evening of her intention to go away and marry Mr. Krasicki, and that he decided she must die. Are those assumptions permissible?"
"I wouldn't know. They're not mine, they're yours."
"Come come," Wolfe snapped. "I'm not Mr. Noonan, thank God. Prudence will get us nowhere. Has Mr. Imbrie got that in him?"
"He might, sure, if she hooked him deep enough."
"Have you any facts that contradict the assumptions?"
"No."
"Then we'll keep them. You understand, of course, that there are no alibis. There were four hours for it: from eleven o'clock, when Miss Lauer said good night to Mr. Krasicki and left him, to three o'clock, when you and Mr. Krasicki entered the greenhouse to fumigate. Everyone was in bed, and in separate rooms except for Mr. and Mrs. Imbrie. Their alibi is mutual, but also marital and therefore worthless. His motive we have assumed. Hers is of course implicit in the situation as you describe it, and besides, women do not require motives that are comprehensible by any intellectual process."
"You said it," Gus acquiesced feelingly. "They roll their own."
I wondered what the girl at Bedford Hills had done now. Wolfe went on.
"Let's finish with the women. What about Miss Pitcairn?"
"Well –" Gus opened his mouth wide to give his lips a stretch, touched the upper one with the tip of his tongue, and closed up again. "I guess I don't understand her. I feel as if I hate her, but I don't really know why, so maybe I don't understand her."
"Perhaps I can help?"
"I doubt it. She puts up a hell of a front, but one day last summer I came on her in the grove crying her eyes out. I think it's a complex, only she must have more than one. She had a big row with her father one day on the terrace, when I was working there in the shrubs and they knew it – it was a couple of weeks after Mrs. Pitcairn's accident and he was letting the registered nurse go and sending for a practical nurse which turned out later to be this Dini Lauer – and Miss Pitcairn was raising the roof because she thought she ought to look after her mother herself. She screamed fit to be tied, until the nurse called down from an upstairs window to please be quiet. Another thing, she not only seems to hate men, she says right out that she does. Maybe that's why I feel I hate her, just to balance it up."
Wolfe made a face. "Does she often have hysterics?"
"I wouldn't say often, but of course I'm hardly ever in the house." Gus shook his head. "I guess I don't understand her."
"I doubt if it's worth an effort. Don't try. What I'd like to get from you, if you have it, is not understanding but a fact. I need a scandalous fact about Miss Pitcairn. Have you got one?"
Gus looked bewildered. "You mean about her and Dini?"
"Her and anyone or anything. The worse the better. Is she a kleptomaniac or a drug addict? Does she gamble or seduce other women's husbands or cheat at cards?"
"Not that I know of." Gus took a minute to concentrate. "She fights a lot. Will that help?"
"I doubt it. With what weapons?"
"I don't mean weapons; she just fights – with family, friends, anyone. She always knows best. She fights a lot with her brother. As far as he's concerned, it's a good thing somebody knows best, because God knows he don't."
"Why, does he have complexes too?"
Gus snorted. "He sure has got something. The family says he's sensitive – that's what they tell each other, and their friends, and him. Hell, so am I sensitive, but I don't go around talking it up. He has a mood every hour on the hour, daily including Sundays and holidays. He never does a damn thing, even pick flowers. He's a four-college man – he got booted o
ut of Yale, then Williams, then Cornell, and then something out in Ohio."
"What for?" Wolfe demanded. "That might help."
"No idea."
"Confound it," Wolfe complained, "have you no curiosity? A good damning fact about the son might be even more useful than one about the daughter. Haven't you got one?"
Gus concentrated again, and when a minute passed without any sign of contact on his face, Wolfe insisted, "Could his expulsion from those colleges have been on account of trouble with women?"
"Him?" Gus snorted again. "If he went to a nudist camp and they lined the men up on one side and the women on the other, he wouldn't know which was which. With clothes on I suppose he can tell. Not that he's dumb, I doubt if he's a bit dumb, but his mind is somewhere else. You asked if he has complexes –"
There was a knock at the door. I went and opened it and took a look, and said, "Come in."
Donald Pitcairn entered.
I had surveyed him before, but now I had more to go on and I checked. He didn't look particularly sensitive, though of course I didn't know which mood he had on. He had about the same weight and volume as me, but it's no flattery to say that he didn't carry them the same. He needed tuning. He had dark deep-set eyes, and his face wouldn't have been bad at all if he had felt better about it.
"Oh, you here, Gus?" he asked, which wasn't too bright.
"Yeah, I'm here," Gus replied, getting that settled.
Donald, blinking in the light, turned to Wolfe. His idea was to make it curt. "We wondered why it took so long to pack Andy's things. That's what you said you wanted to do, but it doesn't look as if you're doing it."
"We were interrupted," Wolfe told him.
"I see you were. Don't you think it would be a good idea to go ahead and pack and get started?"
"I do, yes. We'll get at it shortly. I'm glad you came, Mr. Pitcairn, because it provides an opportunity for a little chat. Of course you are under –"