Rex Stout - Nero Wolfe 21

by Triple Jeopardy

  Wolfe was frowning. “Are you saying that Mr. Goodwin and I have suborned perjury?”

  “You’ve tried to!”

  “Good heavens, that’s a serious charge. You must have warrants. Serve them, by all means.”

  “Just give it to him, Inspector,” Wengert advised.

  Cramer’s head jerked to me. “Did you go last evening to the apartment of Delia Devlin on Fifty-first Street?”

  “It’s hotter than yesterday,” I stated.

  “I asked you a question!”

  “This is infantile,” Wolfe told him. “You must know the legal procedure with suspected felons. We do.”

  “Just give it to him,” Wengert repeated.

  Cramer was glaring at Wolfe. “What you know about legal procedures. Okay. Yesterday you sent Goodwin to see Delia Devlin. In your name he offered her ten thousand dollars to testify falsely that she saw Fifi Goheen take the pillbox from the table, remove a capsule and replace it with another, and put the box back on the table. He said the money would be supplied by Mr. and Mrs. Rackell and would be handed her in currency after she had so testified. I shouldn’t have said subornation of perjury, I should have said attempt. Now do I ask Goodwin some questions?”

  “I’d like to ask him one myself.” Wolfe’s eyes moved. “Archie. Is what Mr. Cramer just said true?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Then don’t answer questions. A policeman has no right to make an inaccurate statement to a citizen about his actions and then order him to answer questions about it.” He went to Cramer. “We could drag this out interminably. Why not resolve it sensibly and conclusively?” He came to me. “Archie, get Miss Devlin on the phone and ask her to come down here at once.”

  I turned and started to dial.

  “Cut it, Goodwin,” Wengert snapped. I went on dialing. Cramer, who can move when he wants to, left his chair and was by me, pushing down the button. I cocked my head to look up at him. He scowled down at me. I put it back in the cradle. He returned to his chair.

  “Then we’ll have to change the subject,” Wolfe said dryly. “Surely your position is untenable. You want to bullyrag us for what Mr. Goodwin, as my agent, said to Miss Devlin; the first thing to establish is what was actually said; and the only satisfactory way to establish it is to have them both here. Yet you not only didn’t bring her with you, you are even determined that we shall not communicate with her. Obviously you don’t want her to know what’s going on. It’s quite preposterous, but I draw no conclusion. It’s hard to believe that the New York police and the FBI would conspire to bamboozle a citizen, even me.”

  Cramer was reddening up again.

  Wengert cleared his throat. “Look, Wolfe,” he said, not belligerently, “we’re here to talk sense.”

  “Good. Why not start?”

  “I am. The interest of the people and government of the United States is involved in this case. My job is to protect that interest. I know you and Goodwin can keep your mouths shut when you want to. I am now talking off the record. Is that understood?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Goodwin?”

  “Good here.”

  “See that you keep it good. Arthur Rackell told his aunt that he was working with the FBI. That was a lie. He was either a member of the Communist party or a fellow traveler, we’re not sure which. We don’t know who he told, besides his aunt, that he was with the FBI, but we’re working on it and so are the police. He may have been killed by a Communist who heard it somehow and believed it. There were other motives, personal ones, but the Communist angle comes first until and unless it’s ruled out. So you can see why we’re in on it. The public interest is involved, not only of this city and state but the whole country. You see that?”

  “I saw it,” Wolfe muttered, “when I sent Mr. Goodwin to see you day before yesterday.”

  “We’ll skip that.” Wengert didn’t want to offend. “The point is, what about you? I concede that all you’re after is to catch the murderer and collect a fee. But we know you sent Goodwin to Miss Devlin yesterday to offer to pay her to say that she saw Miss Goheen in the act. We also know that you are not likely to pull such a stunt just for the hell of it. You knew exactly what you were doing and why you were doing it. You say you have regard for the public interest. All right, the inspector here represents it, and so do I, and we want you to open up for us. We confidently expect you to. What and whom are you after, and where does that stunt get you?”

  Wolfe was regarding him sympathetically through half-closed eyes. “You’re not a nincompoop, Mr. Wengert.” The eyes moved. “Nor you, Mr. Cramer.”

  “That’s something,” Cramer growled.

  “It is indeed, considering the average. But your coming here to put this to me, either peremptorily or politely, was ill considered. Shall I explain?”

  “If it’s not too much bother.”

  “I’ll be as brief as possible. Let us make a complex supposition—that I got Mr. and Mrs. Rackell’s permission for an extraordinary disbursement for a stated purpose; that I sent Mr. Goodwin to see Miss Devlin; that he told her I had concluded that Miss Goheen had murdered Arthur Rackell and she had seen the act; that I suggested that she should inform the police of the fact; and that, as compensation for her embarrassment and distress, I engaged to pay her a large sum of money which would be provided by Mr. and Mrs. Rackell.”

  Wolfe upturned a palm. “Supposing I did that, it was not an attempt to suborn perjury, since it cannot be shown that I intended her to swear falsely, but certainly I was exposing myself to a claim for damages from Miss Goheen. That was a calculated risk I had to take, and whether the calculation was sound depended on the event. There was also a risk of being charged with obstruction of justice, and that too depended on the event. Should it prove to serve justice instead of obstructing it, and should Miss Goheen suffer no unmerited damage, I would be fully justified. I hope to be. I expect to be.”

  “Then you can—”

  “If you please. But suppose, having done all that, I now admit it to you and tell you my calculations and intentions. Then you’ll either have to try to head me off or be in it with me. It would be jackassery for you to head me off—take my word for it; it would be unthinkable. But it would also be unthinkable for you to be in it, either actively or passively. Whatever the outcome may be, you cannnot afford to be associated with an offer to pay a large sum of money to a person involved in a murder case for disclosing a fact, even an authentic one. Your positions forbid it. I’m a private citizen and can stand it; you can’t. What the devil did you come here for? If I’m headed for defeat, opprobrium, and punishment, then I am. Why dash up here only to get yourselves confronted with unthinkable alternatives?”

  Wolfe fluttered a hand. “Luckily, this is just talk. I was merely discussing a complex supposition. To return to reality, I will be glad to give you gentlemen any information that you may properly require—and Mr. Goodwin too, of course. So?”

  They looked at each other. Cramer let out a snort. Wengert pulled at his ear and gazed at me, and I returned the gaze, open-faced and perfectly innocent. He found that not helpful and transferred to Wolfe.

  “You called the turn,” he said, “when you told Goodwin to phone Miss Devlin. I should have forseen that. That was dumb.”

  The phone rang, and I swiveled and got it. “Nero Wolfe’s office, Archie Goodwin speaking.”

  “This is Rattner.”

  “Oh, hello. Keep it down, my ears are sensitive.”

  “Durkin sent me to phone so he could stay on the subject. The subject came out of the house at seven nineteen East Fifty-first Street at eleven forty-one. He was alone. He walked to Lexington and around the corner to a drugstore and is in there now in a phone booth. I’m across the street in a restaurant. Any instructions?”

  “Not a thing, thank you. Give my love to the family.”

  “Right.”

  It clicked off, and I hung up and swiveled back to rejoin the party, but apparently it was
over. They were on their feet, and Wengert was turning to go. Cramer was saying, “… but it’s not all off the record. I just want that understood.”

  He turned and followed Wengert out. I saw no point in dashing past them out to the door, since two grown men should be up to turning a knob and pulling, but I stepped to the hall to observe. When they were outside and the door closed I went back in and remarked to Wolfe, “Very neat. But what if they had let me phone her?”

  He made a face. “Pfui. If they had got it from her they wouldn’t have called on me. They would have sent for you, possibly with a warrant. That was one of the contingencies.”

  “They might have let me phone her anyway.”

  “Unlikely, since that would have disclosed their knowledge—to her and therefore to anyone—and betrayed their informant. But if they had, while she was on her way I would have proceeded with them, and they would have left before she arrived.”

  I put the yellow chair back in place. “All the same I’m glad they didn’t and so are you. That was Rattner on the phone, reporting for Fred. Heath was with Miss Devlin an hour and four minutes. He left at eleven forty-one and was in a phone booth in a drugstore when Rattner called.”

  “Satisfactory.” He picked up his pencil and bent over the crossword puzzle with a little sigh.

  VII

  JUNE twenty-first is supposed to be the longest day, but this year it was August third. It went on for weeks after Cramer and Wengert left. I spent it all in the office, and it was no fun. There was only one thing that could keep us floating, but there were a dozen that could sink us. They might lose him. Or he might handle it by phone—most unlikely, but not impossible. Or Wolfe might have it figured entirely wrong; he himself gave it one in twenty. Or Heath might meet him or her some place where they couldn’t be nailed. Or a city or federal employee might horn in and ruin it. Or and or and or.

  Five bucks an hour had been added to the outgo. If and when the call came that would start me moving, I didn’t want to waste any precious minutes or even seconds finding transportation, so Herb Aronson had his taxi parked at the filling station at the corner of Eleventh Avenue, on us. Also he came to us for lunch and again, at seven in the evening, for dinner.

  Every time the phone rang and I grabbed it, I wanted it and I didn’t. It might be the starting gun, but on the other hand it might be the awful news that they had lost him. Keeping a tail on a guy in New York, especially if he has an important reason for wanting privacy, needs not only great skill but also plenty of luck. We were buying the skill, in Saul and Fred and Orrie, but you can’t buy luck.

  The luck held, and so did they. There were two more calls from Fred, via Rattner, before two o’clock, when he was relieved by Orrie Cather. One was to report that Heath, after calls at an optician’s and a bookstore, had entered a restaurant on Forty-fifth Street and was lunching with two men, not known to me as described, and the other was to tell where Orrie could find him. There was still no sign of an official tail. During the afternoon and early evening there was a series of reports from Orrie. Heath and his companions left the restaurant at 2:52, taxied to the apartment house on Sixty-ninth Street where Heath lived, and entered. At 5:35 the two men emerged and walked off. At 7:03 Heath came out and took a taxi to Chezar’s restaurant, where he met Delia Devlin and they dined. At 9:14 they left and taxied to the gray brick house on Fifty-first Street and went in. Heath was still in there at ten o’clock, the hour for Orrie to be relieved by Saul Panzer, and it was at the corner of Fifty-first and Lexington that Orrie and Saul connected.

  By that time I would have been chewing on a railroad spike if I had had one, and Wolfe was working hard trying to be serene. Between nine-thirty and ten-thirty he made four trips to the bookshelves, trying different ones, setting a record.

  I snarled at him, “What’s the matter, restless?”

  “Yes,” he said placidly. “Are you?”

  “Yes.”

  It came a little before eleven. The phone rang, and I got it. It was Bill Doyle.

  He seemed to be panting. “I’m out of breath,” he said, wasting some of it. “When he left there he got smart and started tricks. We let him spot Al and ditch him, you know how Saul works it, but even then we damn near lost him. He came to Eighty-sixth and Fifth and went in the park on foot. A woman was sitting on a bench with a collie on a leash, and he stopped and started talking to her. Saul thinks you’d better come.”

  “So do I. Describe the woman.”

  “I can’t. I was keeping back and didn’t get close enough.”

  “Where is Saul?”

  “On the ground under a bush.”

  “Where are you?”

  “Drugstore. Eighty-sixth and Madison.”

  “Be at the Eighty-sixth-Street park entrance. I’m coming.”

  I whirled and told Wolfe, “In Central Park. He met a woman with a dog. So long.”

  “Are you armed?”

  “Certainly.” I was at the door.

  “They will be desperate.”

  “I already am.”

  I let myself out, ran down the stoop and to the corner. Herb was in his hack, listening to the radio. At sight of me on the lope he switched it off, and by the time I was in he had the engine started. I told him, “Eighty-sixth and Fifth,” and we rolled.

  We went up Eleventh Avenue instead of Tenth because with the staggered lights on Tenth you can’t average better than twenty-five. On Eleventh you can make twelve or more blocks on a light if you sprint, and we sprinted. At Fifty-sixth we turned east, had fair luck crosstown, and turned left on Fifth Avenue. I told Herb to quit crawling, and he told me to get out and walk. When we reached Eighty-sixth Street I had the door open before the wheels stopped, hopped out, and crossed the avenue to the park side.

  Bill Doyle was there. He was the pale gaunt type, from reading too much about horses and believing it. I asked him, “Anything new?”

  “No. I been here waiting.”

  “Can you show me Saul’s bush without rousing the dog?”

  “I can if he’s still there. It’s quite a ways.”

  “Within a hundred yards of them take to the grass. They mustn’t hear our footsteps stopping. Let’s go.”

  He entered the park by the paved path, and I trailed. The first thirty paces it was upgrade, curving right. Under a park light two young couples had stopped to have an argument, and we detoured around them. The path leveled and straightened under overhanging branches of trees. We passed another light. A man swinging a cane came striding from the opposite direction and on by. The path turned left, crossed an open space, and entered shrubbery. A little further on there was a fork, and Doyle stopped.

  “They’re down there a couple of hundred feet,” he whispered, pointing to the left branch of the fork. “Or they were. Saul’s over that way.”

  “Okay, I’ll lead. Steer me by touch.”

  I stepped onto the grass and started alongside the right branch of the fork. It was uphill a little, and I had to duck under branches. I hadn’t gone far when Doyle tugged at my sleeve, and when I turned he pointed to the left. “That bunch of bushes there,” he whispered. “The big one in the middle. That’s where he went, but I can’t see him.”

  My sight is twenty-twenty, and my eyes had got adjusted to the night, but for a minute I couldn’t pick him up. When I did the huddled hump under the bush was perfectly plain. A ripple ran up my spine. Since Saul was still there, Heath was still there too, under his eye, and almost certainly the woman with the dog was there also. Of course I couldn’t see them, on account of the bushes. I considered what to do. I wanted to confront them together, before they separated, but if Saul was close enough to hear their words I didn’t want to bust it up. The most attractive idea was to sneak across to Saul’s bush and join him, but I might be heard, if not by them by the dog. Standing there, peering toward Saul’s bush, concentrated, with Doyle beside me, I became aware of footsteps behind me, approaching along the path, but supposed it was just a la
te park stroller and didn’t turn—until the footsteps stopped and a voice came.

  “Looking for tigers?”

  I wheeled. It was a flatfoot on park patrol. “Good evening, officer,” I said respectfully. “Nope, just getting air.”

  “The air’s the same if you stay on the path.” He approached on the grass, looking not at us but past us, in the direction we had been gazing. Suddenly he grunted, quickened his step, and headed straight for Saul’s bush. Apparently he had good eyes too. There was no time to consider. I muttered fast at Doyle’s ear, “Grab his cap and run—jump, damn it!”

  He did. I will always love him for it, especially for not hesitating a tenth of a second. Four leaps got him to the cop, a swoop of his hand got the cap, and away he scooted, swerving right to double back to the path. I stood in my tracks. The cop acted by reflex. Instead of ignoring the playful prank and proceeding to inspect the object under the bush, or making for me, he bounded after Doyle and his cap, calling a command to halt. Doyle, reaching the path and streaking along it, had a good lead, but the cop was no snail. They disappeared.

  All that commotion changed the situation entirely. I made it double quick to the left across the grass until I reached the other fork of the path, and kept going. Around a bend, there they were—Heath seated on a bench with a woman, a big collie lying at their feet. When I stopped in front of them the collie rose to its haunches and made a noise, asking a question. I had a hand in a coat pocket.

  “Tell the dog it’s okay,” I suggested. “I hate to shoot a dog.”

  “Why should you—” Heath started, and stopped. He stood up.

  “Yeah, it’s me,” I said. “Representing Nero Wolfe. It won’t help if you scream, there’s two of us. Come on out, Saul. Watch the dog, it may not wait for orders.”