Three Doors to Death (The Rex Stout Library)

by Rex Stout

  For one o'clock lunch in the dining room, which was across the hall from the office, Fritz served us with chicken livers and tomato halves fried in oil and trimmed with chopped peppers and parsley, followed by rice cakes and honey. I took it easy on the livers because of my attitude toward Fritz's rice cakes. I was on my fifth cake, or maybe sixth, when the doorbell rang. During meals Fritz always answers the door, on account of Wolfe's feeling that the main objection to atom bombs is that they may interrupt people eating. Through the open door from the dining room to the hall I saw Fritz pass on his way to the front, and a moment later his voice came, trying to persuade someone to wait in the office until Wolfe had finished lunch. There was no other voice, but there were steps, and then our visitor was marching in on us – a man about Wolfe's age, heavy-set, muscular, red-faced, and obviously aggressive.

  It was our chum Inspector Cramer, head of Homicide. He advanced to the table before he stopped and spoke to Wolfe.

  "Hello. Sorry to break in on your meal."

  "Good morning," Wolfe said courteously. For him it was always morning until he had finished his lunch coffee. "If you haven't had lunch we can offer you -"

  "No, thanks, I'm busy and in a hurry. A woman named Cynthia Nieder came to see you yesterday."

  Wolfe put a piece of rice cake in his mouth. I had a flash of a thought: Good God, the client's dead.

  "Well?" Cramer demanded.

  "Well what?" Wolfe snapped. "You stated a fact. I'm eating lunch."

  "Fine. It's a fact. What did she want?"

  "You know my habits and customs, Mr. Cramer."

  Wolfe was controlling himself. "I never talk business at a meal. I invited you to join us and you declined. If you will wait in the office -"

  Cramer slapped a palm on the table, rattling things. My guess was that Wolfe would throw the coffee pot, since it was the heaviest thing handy, but I couldn't stay for it because along with the sound of Cramer's slap the doorbell rang again, and I thought I'd better not leave this one to Fritz. I got up and went, and through the one-way glass panel in the front door I saw an object that relieved me. The client was still alive and apparently unhurt. She was standing there on the stoop.

  I pulled the door open, put my finger on my lips, muttered at her, "Keep your mouth shut," and with one eye took in the police car parked at the curb, seven steps down from the stoop. The man seated behind the wheel, a squad dick with whom I was acquainted, was looking at us with an expression of interest. I waved at him, signaled Cynthia to enter, shut the door, and elbowed her into the front room, which faces the street and adjoins the office.

  She looked scared, untended, haggard, and determined.

  "The point is," I told her, "that a police inspector named Cramer is in the dining room asking about you. Do you want to see him?"

  "Oh." She gazed at me as if she were trying to remember who I was. "I've already seen him." She looked around, saw a chair, got to it, and sat. "They've been – asking me – questions for hours -"

  "Why, what happened?"

  "My uncle -" Her head went forward and she covered her face with her hands. In a moment she looked up at me and said, "I want to see Nero Wolfe," and then covered her face with her hands again.

  It might, I figured, take minutes to nurse her to the point of forming sentences. So I told her, "Stay here and sit tight. The walls are soundproofed, but keep quiet anyhow."

  When I rejoined them in the dining room the coffee pot was still on the table unthrown, but the battle was on. Wolfe was out of his chair, erect, rigid with rage.

  "No, sir," he was saying in his iciest tone, "I have not finished my gobbling now, as you put it. I would have eaten two more cakes, and I have not had my coffee. You broke in, and you're here. If you were not an officer of the law Mr. Goodwin would knock you unconscious and drag you out."

  He moved. He stamped to the door, across the hall, and into the office. I was right behind him. By the time Cramer was there, seated in the red leather chair, Wolfe was seated too, behind his desk, breathing at double speed, with his mouth closed tight.

  "Forget it," Cramer rasped, trying to make up.

  Wolfe was silent.

  "All I want," Cramer said, "is to find out why Cynthia Nieder came to see you. You have a right to ask why I want to know, and I would have told you if you hadn't lost your temper just because I arrived while you were stuffing it in. There's been a murder."

  Wolfe said nothing.

  "Last night," Cramer went on. "Time limits, eight p.m. and midnight. At the place of business of Daumery and Nieder on the twelfth floor of Four-ninety-six Seventh Avenue. Cynthia Nieder was there last night between nine and nine-thirty, she admits that; and nobody else as far as we know now. She says she went to get some drawings, but that's got holes in it. The body was found this morning, lying in the middle of the floor in the office. He had been hit in the back of the head with a hardwood pole, one of those used to raise and lower windows, and the end of the pole with the brass hook on it had been jabbed into his face a dozen times or more – like spearing a fish."

  Wolfe had his eyes closed. I was considering that after all Cramer was the head of Homicide and he was paid for handling murders, and he always tried hard and deserved a little encouragement, so I asked in a friendly manner, "Who was it?"

  "Nobody knows," he said sarcastically and without returning the friendliness. "A complete stranger to all the world, and nothing on him to tell." He paused, and then suddenly barked at me, "You describe him!"

  "Nuts. Who was it?"

  "It was a medium-sized man around forty, with a brown beard and slick brown hair parted on the left side, with glasses that were just plain glass. Can you name him?"

  I thought it extremely interesting that Cramer's description consisted of the three items that Cynthia had specified. It showed what a well-planned disguise could do.

  V

  Wolfe remained silent.

  "Sorry," I said. "Never met him."

  Cramer left me for Wolfe. "Under the circumstances," he argued, still sarcastic, "you may concede that I have a right to ask what she came to you for. It was only after she tried two lies on us about how she spent yesterday morning that we finally got it out of her that she came here. She didn't want us to know, she was dead against it, and she wouldn't tell what she came for. Add to that the fact that whenever you are remotely connected with anyone who is remotely connected with a murder you always know everything, and there's no question about my needing to know what you were consulted about. I came to ask you myself because I know what you're like."

  Wolfe broke his vow. He spoke. "Is Miss Nieder under arrest?"

  The phone rang before Cramer could answer. I took it, a voice asked to speak to Inspector Cramer, and Cramer came to my desk and talked. Or rather, he listened. About all he used was grunts, but at one point he said "Here?" with an inflection that started my mind going, and simple logic carried it on to a conclusion.

  So as Cramer hung up I pushed in ahead of him to tell Wolfe. "Answering your question, she is not under arrest. They turned her loose because they didn't have enough to back up anything stiffer than material witness, and they put a tail on her, and the tail phoned in that she came here, and the call Cramer just got was a relay on the tail's report. She's in the front room. I put her there because I know how you are about having your meals interrupted. Shall I bring her in?"

  Cramer returned to the red leather chair, sat, and said to someone, "You snippy little bastard." I ignored it, knowing it couldn't be for me, since I am just under six feet and weigh a hundred and eighty and therefore could not be called little.

  Cramer went at Wolfe. "So the minute we let her go she comes here. That has some bearing on my wanting to know what she was after yesterday, huh?"

  Wolfe spoke to me. "Archie. You say Miss Nieder is in the front room?"

  "Yes, sir."

  "It was she who rang the bell while Mr. Cramer was trying to knock my luncheon dishes off the table?"

/>   "Yes, sir."

  "What did she say?"

  "Nothing, except that she wanted to see you. She has spent hours with cops and her tongue's tired."

  "Bring her in here."

  Cramer started offering objections, but I didn't hear him. I went and opened the connecting door to the front room, which was as soundproof as the wall, and said respectfully for all to hear, "Inspector Cramer is here asking about you. Will you come in, please?"

  She stood up, hesitated, stiffened herself, and then walked to me and on through. I placed one of the yellow chairs for her, facing Wolfe, closer to my position than to Cramer's. She nodded at me, sat, gave Cramer a straight full look, transferred it to Wolfe, and swallowed.

  Wolfe was frowning at her and his eyes were slits. "Miss Nieder," he said gruffly, "I am working for you and you have paid me a retainer. Is that correct?"

  She nodded, decided to wire it for sound, and said, "Yes, certainly."

  "Then first some advice. The police could have held you as a material witness and you would have had to get bail. Instead, they let you go to give you an illusion of freedom, and they are following you around. Should you at any time want to go somewhere without their knowledge, there's nothing difficult about it. Mr. Goodwin is an expert on that and can tell you what to do."

  Cramer was unimpressed. He had got out a cigar and was rolling it between his palms. I never understood why he did that, since you roll a cigar to make it draw better, and he never lit one but only chewed it.

  "I understand," Wolfe continued, "that Mr. Cramer and his men have dragged it out of you that you came here yesterday, but that you have refused to tell them what for. Is that correct?"

  "Yes."

  "Good. I think that was sensible. You are suspected of murder, but that puts you under no compulsion to disclose all the little secrets you have locked up. We all have them, and we don't surrender them if we can help it. But my position in this is quite different from yours. It is true you have hired me, but I am not an attorney-at-law, and therefore what you said to me was not a privileged communication. In my business I need to have the good will, or at least the tolerance, of the police, in order to keep my license to work as a detective. I cannot afford to be intransigent with a police inspector. Besides, I respect and admire Mr. Cramer and would like to help him. I tell you all this so that you will not misunderstand what I am about to do."

  Cynthia opened her mouth, but Wolfe pushed a palm at her, and no words came. He turned to Cramer.

  "Since your army has had several hours to poke into corners, you have learned, I suppose, that Mr.

  Goodwin went to that place yesterday and sat through a show."

  "Yeah, I know about that."

  "You didn't mention it."

  "I hadn't come to it."

  "Your reserves?" Wolfe smiled, as mean a smile as I had ever seen. "Well. You heard what I just told Miss Nieder. She came yesterday morning to consult me about her uncle."

  "Yeah? What uncle?"

  "Mr. Paul Nieder. He is dead. Miss Nieder inherited half of that business from him. Back files of newspapers will tell you that he committed suicide a little over a year ago by jumping into a geyser in Yellowstone Park. Miss Nieder told me about that and many other things – the present status of the business, her own position in it, the deaths of her uncle's former partner and his wife, and so on. I don't remember everything she said, and I don't intend to try. Anyhow it was a melange of facts which your men can easily collect elsewhere. The only thing I can furnish that might help you is the conclusion I formed. I concluded that Miss Nieder had herself pushed her uncle into the geyser, murdered him, and had become fearful of exposure, and had come to me with the fantastic notion of having me get her out of it."

  "Why you -" Cynthia was sputtering. "You -"

  "Shut up," Wolfe snapped at her. He turned. "Archie. Was that the impression you got?"

  "Precisely," I declared.

  Cynthia had done fine, I thought, by shutting up as instructed, but I would have risked a wink at her, or at least a helpful glance, if Cramer's eyes hadn't been so comprehensive.

  "Thanks for the conclusion," Cramer growled. "Did she tell you that? That she had killed her uncle?"

  "Oh, no. No, indeed."

  "Exactly what did she want you to do?"

  Wolfe smiled the same smile. "That's why I came to that conclusion. She left it very vague about what I was to do. I couldn't possibly tell you."

  "Try telling me what you told Goodwin to do when you sent him up there."

  Wolfe frowned and called on me. "Do you remember, Archie?"

  "Sure I remember." I was eager to help. "You told me to keep a sharp lookout and report everything that happened." I beamed at Cramer. "Talk about the dancers of Bali! Did you ever sit and watch six beautiful girls prancing -"

  "You're a goddam liar," he rasped at Wolfe.

  Wolfe's chin went up an eighth of an inch. "Mr. Cramer," he said coldly, "I'm tired of this. Mr. Goodwin can't throw you out of here once you're in, but we can leave you here and go upstairs, and you know the limits of your license as well as I do."

  He pushed back his chair and was on his feet. "You say I'm lying. Prove it. But for less provocation than you have given me by your uncivilized conduct in my dining room, I would lie all day and all night. Regarding this murder of a bearded stranger, where do I fit, or Mr. Goodwin? Pah. Connect us if you can! Should you be rash enough to constrain us as material witnesses, we would teach you something of the art of lying, and we wouldn't squeeze out on bail; we would dislocate your nose with a habeas corpus ad subjiciendum."

  His eyes moved. "Come, Miss Nieder. Come, Archie."

  He headed for the door to the hall, detouring around the red leather chair, and I followed him, gathering Cynthia by the elbow as I went by. I presumed we were bound for the plant rooms, which were three flights up, and as we entered the hall I was wondering whether all three of us could crowd into Wolfe's personal elevator without losing dignity. But that problem didn't have to be solved. I was opening my mouth to tell Wolfe that Cynthia and I would use the stairs when here came Cramer striding by. Without a glance at us or a word he went to the front door, opened it, crossed the sill to the stoop, and banged the door shut.

  I stepped to the door and put the chain bolt in its slot. Any city employee arriving with papers would have only a two-inch crack to hand the papers through.

  Wolfe led us back to the office, motioned us to our chairs, sat at his desk, and demanded of Cynthia, "Did you kill that man?"

  She met his eyes and gulped. Then her head went down, her hands went up, her shoulders started to shake, and sounds began to come.

  VI

  That was terrible. The only thing that shakes Wolfe as profoundly as having a meal rudely interrupted is a bawling woman. His reaction to the first is rage, to the second panic.

  I tried to reassure him. "She'll be all right. She just has to -"

  "Stop her," he muttered desperately.

  I crossed to her, yanked her hands away, using muscle, pulled her face up, and kissed her hard and good on the lips. She jerked her face aside, shoved at me, and protested, "What the hell!"

  That sounded better, and I turned to Wolfe and told him reproachfully, "You can't blame her. I doubt if it's fear or despair or anything normal like that. It's probably hunger. I'll bet she hasn't had a bite since breakfast."

  "Good heavens." His eyes popped wide open. "Is that true, Miss Nieder? Haven't you had lunch?"

  She shook her head. "They kept me there – and then I had to see you -"

  Wolfe was pushing the button. Since it was only five steps from the office to the kitchen door, in seconds Fritz was there.

  "Sandwiches and beer at once," Wolfe told him. "Beer, Miss Nieder?"

  "I don't have to eat."

  "Nonsense. Beer? Claret? Milk? Brandy?"

  "Scotch and water. I could use that."

  Which of course halted progress for a good twenty minutes. It wasn't
only his own meals that Wolfe insisted on safeguarding from extraneous matters. When Fritz brought the tray Cynthia wasn't reluctant about the Scotch, but she needed urging on the sandwiches and got it from both of us. After a taste of the homemade pate no further urging was required. To make her feel that she could take her time Wolfe conversed with me about the plant germination records. Not about Cramer. His feelings about Cramer were much too warm and too recent. When she was through I put the tray on the table by the big globe, leaving her a glass full of her mixture, and then resumed my seat at my desk.

  Wolfe was regarding her warily. "Do you feel better?"

  "Much better, yes. I guess I was pretty empty."

  "Good." Wolfe leaned back and sighed. "Now. You came to me as soon as the police let you go. Does that mean that you want my help in this new circumstance?"

  "It certainly does. I want -"

  "Excuse me. We'll go faster if I lead, and Mr. Cramer is quite capable of sending men here with warrants. Let's compress it. There are two points on which I must be satisfied before we can proceed. First, whether you killed that man. An attorney may properly work for a murderer, but I'm not an attorney, and anyway I don't like money from murderers. Did you kill him?"

  "No. I want to -"

  "Just the no will do if it's the truth. Is it?"

  "Yes. It's no."

  "I'm inclined to accept it, for reasons mostly not communicable. Some are. For instance, if you had been unable to eat that pate -" Wolfe cut himself off and sent his eyes at me. "Archie. Did Miss Nieder kill that man?"

  I looked at her, my lips puckered, and her gaze met mine. I must admit that she looked pretty ragged, not at all the same person as the one who had modeled, just twenty-four hours before, a dancing dress of Swiss eyelet organdy with ruffled shoulders. She had sure been through something, but not necessarily a murder.