I dismissed the taxi at the address on Seventy-sixth Street, east of Lexington Avenue. The house had had its front done over for the current century, unlike Nero Wolfe’s old brownstone on West Thirty-fifth Street, which still sported the same front stoop it had started with. To enter this one you went down four steps instead of up seven, and I did so, after noting the pink shutters at the windows of all four floors and the tubs of evergreens flanking the entrance.
I was let in by a maid in uniform, with a pug nose and lipstick about as thick as Wolfe spreads Camembert on a wafer. I told her I had an appointment with Mr. Koven. She said Mr. Koven was not yet available and seemed to think that settled it, making me no offer for my hat and coat.
I said, “Our old brownstone, run by men only, is run better. When Fritz or I admit someone with an appointment we take his things.”
“What’s your name?” she demanded in a tone indicating that she doubted if I had one.
A loud male voice came from somewhere within. “Is that the man from Furnari’s?”
A loud female voice came from up above. “Cora, is that my dress?”
I called out, “It’s Archie Goodwin, expected by Mr. Koven at noon! It is now two minutes past twelve!”
That got action. The female voice, not quite so loud, told me to come up. The maid, looking frustrated, beat it. I took off my coat and put it on a chair, and my hat. A man came through a doorway at the rear of the hall and approached, speaking.
“More noise. Noisiest goddam place. Up this way.” He started up the stairs. “When you have an appointment with Sir Harry, always add an hour.”
I followed him. At the top of the flight there was a large square hall with wide archways to rooms at right and left. He led me through the one at the left.
There are few rooms I can’t take in at a glance, but that was one of them. Two huge TV cabinets, a monkey in a cage in a corner, chairs of all sizes and colors, rugs overlapping, a fireplace blazing away, the temperature around eighty—I gave it up and focused on the inhabitant. That was not only simpler but pleasanter. She was smaller than I would specify by choice, but otherwise acceptable, especially the wide smooth brow above the serious gray eyes, and the cheekbones. She must have been part salamander, to look so cool and silky in that oven.
“Dearest Pete,” she said, “you are going to stop calling my husband Sir Harry.”
I admired that as a time-saver. Instead of the usual pronouncement of names, she let me know that she was Marcelle, Mrs. Harry Koven, and that the young man was Pete Jordan, and at the same time told him something.
Pete Jordan walked across to her as for a purpose. He might have been going to take her in his arms or slap her or anything in between. But a pace short of her he stopped.
“You’re wrong,” he told her in his aggressive baritone. “It’s according to plan. It’s the only way I can prove I’m not a louse. No one but a louse would stick at this, doing this crap month after month, and here look at me just because I like to eat. I haven’t got the guts to quit and starve a while, so I call him Sir Harry to make you sore, working myself up to calling him something that will make him sore, and eventually I’ll come to a boil and figure out a way to make Getz sore, and then I’ll get bounced and I can start starving and be an artist. It’s a plan.”
He turned and glared at me. “I’m more apt to go through with it if I announce it in front of a witness. You’re the witness. My name’s Jordan, Pete Jordan.”
He shouldn’t have tried glaring because he wasn’t built for it. He wasn’t much bigger than Mrs. Koven, and he had narrow shoulders and broad hips. An aggressive baritone and a defiant glare coming from that make-up just couldn’t have the effect he was after. He needed coaching.
“You have already made me sore,” she told his back in a nice low voice, but not a weak one. “You act like a brat and you’re too old to be a brat. Why not grow up?”
He wheeled and snapped at her, “I look on you as a mother!”
That was a foul. They were both younger than me, and she couldn’t have had more than three or four years on him.
I spoke. “Excuse me,” I said, “but I am not a professional witness. I came to see Mr. Koven at his request. Shall I go hunt for him?”
A thin squeak came from behind me. “Good morning, Mrs. Koven. Am I early?”
As she answered I turned for a look at the owner of the squeak, who was advancing from the archway. He should have traded voices with Pete Jordan. He had both the size and presence for a deep baritone, with a well-made head topped by a healthy mat of gray hair nearly white. Everything about him was impressive and masterful, including the way he carried himself, but the squeak spoiled it completely. It continued as he joined us.
“I heard Mr. Goodwin, and Pete left, so I thought—”
Mrs. Koven and Pete were both talking too, and it didn’t seem worth the effort to sort it out, especially when the monkey decided to join in and started chattering. Also I could feel sweat coming on my forehead and neck, overdressed as I was with a coat and vest, since Pete and the newcomer were in shirt sleeves. I couldn’t follow their example without displaying my holster. They kept it up, including the monkey, ignoring me completely but informing me incidentally that the squeaker was not Adrian Getz as I had first supposed, but Byram Hildebrand, Pete’s co-worker in the grind of drawing Dazzle Dan.
It was all very informal and homey, but I was starting to sizzle and I crossed to the far side of the room and opened a window wide. I expected an immediate reaction but got none. Disappointed at that but relieved by the rush of fresh air, I filled my chest, used my handkerchief on the brow and neck, and, turning, saw that we had company. Coming through the archway was a pink-cheeked creature in a mink coat with a dark green slab of cork or something perched on her brown hair at a cocky slant. With no one bothering to glance at her except me, she moved across toward the fireplace, slid the coat off onto a couch, displaying a tricky plaid suit with an assortment of restrained colors, and said in a throaty voice that carried without being raised, “Rookaloo will be dead in an hour.”
They were all shocked into silence except the monkey. Mrs. Koven looked at her, looked around, saw the open window, and demanded, “Who did that?”
“I did,” I said manfully.
Byram Hildebrand strode to the window like a general in front of troops and pulled it shut. The monkey stopped talking and started to cough.
“Listen to him,” Pete Jordan said. His baritone mellowed when he was pleased. “Pneumonia already! That’s an idea! That’s what I’ll do when I work up to making Getz sore.”
Three of them went to the cage to take a look at Rookaloo, not bothering to greet or thank her who had come just in time to save the monkey’s life. She stepped to me, asking cordially, “You’re Archie Goodwin? I’m Pat Lowell.” She put out a hand, and I took it. She had talent as a handclasper and backed it up with a good straight look out of clear brown eyes. “I was going to phone you this morning to warn you that Mr. Koven is never ready on time for an appointment, but he arranged this himself so I didn’t.”
“Never again,” I told her, “pass up an excuse for phoning me.”
“I won’t.” She took her hand back and glanced at her wrist. “You’re early anyway. He told us the conference would be at twelve-thirty.”
“I was to come at twelve.”
“Oh.” She was taking me in—nothing offensive, but she sure was rating me. “To talk with him first?”
I shrugged. “I guess so.”
She nodded, frowning a little. “This is a new one on me. I’ve been his agent and manager for three years now, handling all his business, everything from endorsements of cough drops to putting Dazzle Dan on scooters, and this is the first time a thing like this has happened, him getting someone in for a conference without consulting me—and Nero Wolfe, no less! I understand it’s about a tie-up of Nero Wolfe and Dazzle Dan, having Dan start a detective agency?”
I put that question mark th
ere, though her inflection left it to me whether to call it a question or merely a statement. I was caught off guard, so it probably showed on my face—my glee at the prospect of telling Wolfe about a tie-up between him and Dazzle Dan, with full details. I tried to erase it.
“We’d better wait,” I said discreetly, “and let Mr. Koven tell it. As I understand it, I’m only here as a technical adviser, representing Mr. Wolfe because he never goes out on business. Of course you would handle the business end, and if that means you and I will have to have a lot of talks—”
I stopped because I had lost her. Her eyes were aimed past my left shoulder toward the archway, and their expression had suddenly and completely changed. They weren’t exactly more alive or alert, but more concentrated. I turned, and there was Harry Koven crossing to us. His mop of black hair hadn’t been combed, and he hadn’t shaved. His big frame was enclosed in a red silk robe embroidered with yellow Dazzle Dans. A little guy in a dark blue suit was with him, at his elbow.
“Good morning, my little dazzlers!” Koven boomed.
“It seems cool in here,” the little guy said in a gentle worried voice.
In some mysterious way the gentle little voice seemed to make more noise than the big boom. Certainly it was the gentle little voice that chopped off the return greetings from the dazzlers, but it could have been the combination of the two, the big man and the small one, that had so abruptly changed the atmosphere of the room. Before they had all been screwy perhaps, but all free and easy; now they were all tightened up. They even seemed to be tongue-tied, so I spoke.
“I opened a window,” I said.
“Good heavens,” the little guy mildly reproached me and trotted over to the monkey’s cage. Mrs. Koven and Pete Jordan were in his path, and they hastily moved out of it, as if afraid of getting trampled, though he didn’t look up to trampling anything bigger than a cricket. Not only was he too little and too old, but also he was vaguely deformed and trotted with a jerk.
Koven boomed at me, “So you got here! Don’t mind the Squirt and his damn monkey. He loves that damn monkey. I call this the steam room.” He let out a laugh. “How is it, Squirt, okay?”
“I think so, Harry. I hope so.” The low gentle voice filled the room again.
“I hope so too, or God help Goodwin.” Koven turned on Byram Hildebrand. “Has seven-twenty-eight come, By?”
“No,” Hildebrand squeaked. “I phoned Furnari, and he said it would be right over.”
“Late again. We may have to change. When it comes, do a revise on the third frame. Where Dan says, ‘Not tonight, my dear,’ make it, ‘Not today, my dear.’ Got it?”
“But we discussed that—”
“I know, but change it. We’ll change seven-twenty-nine to fit. Have you finished seven-thirty-three?”
“No. It’s only—”
“Then what are you dome up here?”
“Why, Goodwin came, and you said you wanted us at twelve-thirty—”
“I’ll let you know when we’re ready—sometime after lunch. Show me the revise on seven-twenty-eight.” Koven glanced around masterfully. “How is everybody? Blooming? See you all later. Come along, Goodwin, sorry you had to wait. Come with me.”
He headed for the archway, and I followed, across the hall and up the next flight of stairs. There the arrangement was different; instead of a big square hall there was a narrow corridor with four doors, all closed. He turned left, to the door at that end, opened it, held it for me to pass-through, and shut it again. This room was an improvement in several ways: it was ten degrees cooler, it had no monkey, and the furniture left more room to move around. The most prominent item was a big old scarred desk over by a window. After inviting me to sit, Koven went and sat at the desk and removed covers from dishes that were there on a tray.
“Breakfast,” he said. “You had yours.”
It wasn’t a question, but I said yes to be sociable. He needed all the sociability he could get, from the looks of the tray. There was one dejected poached egg, one wavy thin piece of toast, three undersized prunes with about a teaspoonful of juice, a split of tonic water, and a glass. It was an awful sight. He waded into the prunes. When they were gone he poured the tonic water into the glass, took a sip, and demanded, “Did you bring it?”
“The gun? Sure.”
“Let me see it.”
“It’s the one we showed you at the office.” I moved to another chair, closer to him. “I’m supposed to check with you before we proceed. Is that the desk you kept your gun in?”
He nodded and swallowed a nibble of toast. “Here in this left-hand drawer, in the back.”
“Loaded.”
“Yes. I told you so.”
“So you did. You also told us that you bought it two years ago in Montana, when you were there at a dude ranch, and brought it home with you and never bothered to get a license for it, and it’s been there in the drawer right along. You saw it there a week or ten days ago, and last Friday you saw it was gone. You didn’t want to call the cops for two reasons, because you have no license for it, and because you think it was taken by one of the five people whose names you gave—”
“I think it may have been.”
“You didn’t put it like that. However, skip it. You gave us the five names. By the way, was that Adrian Getz, the one you called Squirt?”
“Yes.”
“Then they’re all five here, and we can go ahead and get it over with. As I understand it, I am to put my gun there in the drawer where yours was, and you get them up here for a conference, with me present. You were to cook up something to account for me. Have you done that?”
He swallowed another nibble of toast and egg. Wolfe would have had that meal down in five seconds flat—or rather, he would have had it out the window. “I thought this might do,” Koven said. “I can say that I’m considering a new stunt for Dan, have him start a detective agency, and I’ve called Nero Wolfe in for consultation, and he sent you up for a conference. We can discuss it a little, and I ask you to show us how a detective searches a room to give us an idea of the picture potential. You shouldn’t start with the desk; start maybe with the shelves back of me. When you come to do the desk I’ll push my chair back to be out of your way, and I’ll have them right in front of me. When you open the drawer and take the gun out and they see it—”
“I thought you were going to do that.”
“I know, that’s what I said, but this is better because this way they’ll be looking at the gun and you, and I’ll be watching their faces. I’ll have my eye right on them, and the one that took my gun, if one of them did it—when he or she suddenly sees you pull a gun out of the drawer that’s exactly like it, it’s going to show on his face, and I’m going to see it. We’ll do it that way.”
I admit it sounded better there on the spot than it had in Wolfe’s office—and besides, he had revised it. This way he might really get what he wanted. I considered it, watching him finish the tonic water. The toast and egg were gone.
“It sounds all right,” I conceded, “except for one thing. You’ll be expecting a look of surprise, but what if there are five looks of surprise? At seeing me take a gun out of your desk—those who don’t know you had a gun there.”
“But they do know.”
“All of them?”
“Certainly. I thought I told you that. Anyhow, they all know. Everybody knows everything around this place. They thought I ought to get rid of it, and now I wish I had. You understand, Goodwin, all there is to this—I just want to know where the damn thing is, I want to know who took it, and I’ll handle it myself from there. I told Wolfe that.”
“I know you did.” I got up and went to his side of the desk, at his left, and pulled a drawer open. “In here?”
“Yes.”
“The rear compartment?”
“Yes.”
I reached to my holster for the Marley, broke it, removed the cartridges and dropped them into my vest pocket, put the gun in the drawer, s
hut the drawer, and returned to my chair.
“Okay,” I said, “get them up here. We can ad lib it all right without any rehearsing.”
He looked at me. He opened the drawer for a peek at the gun, not touching it, and pushed the drawer to. He shoved the tray away, leaned back, and began working on his upper lip with the jagged yellow teeth.
“I’m going to have to get my nerve up,” he said, as if appealing to me. “I’m never much good until late afternoon.”
I grunted. “What the hell. You told me to be here at noon and called the conference for twelve-thirty.”
“I know I did. I do things like that.” He chewed the lip some more. “And I’ve got to dress.” Suddenly his voice went high in protest. “Don’t try to rush me, understand?”
I was fed up, but had already invested a lot of time and a dollar for a taxi on the case, so kept calm. “I know,” I told him, “artists are temperamental. But I’ll explain how Mr. Wolfe charges. He sets a fee, depending on the job, and if it takes more of my time than he thinks reasonable he adds an extra hundred dollars an hour. Keeping me here until late afternoon would be expensive. I could go and come back.”
He didn’t like that and said so, explaining why, the idea being that with me there in the house it would be easier for him to get his nerve up and it might only take an hour or so. He got up and walked to the door and opened it, then turned and demanded, “Do you know how much I make an hour? The time I spend on my work? Over a thousand dollars. More than a thousand an hour! I’ll go get some clothes on.”
He went, shutting the door.
My wristwatch said 1:17. My stomach agreed. I sat maybe ten minutes, then went to the phone on the desk, dialed, got Wolfe, and told him how it was. He told me to go out and get some lunch, naturally, and I said I would, but after hanging up I went back to my chair. If I went out, sure as hell Koven would get his nerve up in my absence, and by the time I got back he would have lost it again and have to start over. I explained the situation to my stomach, and it made a polite sound of protest, but I was the boss. I was glancing at my watch again and seeing 1:42 when the door opened and Mrs. Koven was with me.
Rex Stout - Nero Wolfe 21 Page 14