Rex Stout - Nero Wolfe 21

by Triple Jeopardy

  When I stood, her serious gray eyes beneath the wide smooth brow were level with the knot in my four-in-hand, She said her husband had told her that I was staying for a conference at a later hour. I confirmed it. She said I ought to have something to eat. I agreed that it was not a bad notion.

  “Won’t you,” she invited, “come down and have a sandwich with us? We don’t do any cooking, we even have our breakfast sent in, but there are some sandwiches.”

  “I don’t want to be rude,” I told her, “but are they in the room with the monkey?”

  “Oh, no.” She stayed serious. “Wouldn’t that be awful? Downstairs in the workroom.” She touched my arm. “Come on, do.”

  I went downstairs with her.

  II

  IN A large room at the rear on the ground floor the other four suspects were seated around a plain wooden table, dealing with the sandwiches. The room was a mess—drawing tables under fluorescent lights, open shelves crammed with papers, cans of all sizes, and miscellaneous objects, chairs scattered around, other shelves with books and portfolios, and tables with more stacks of papers. Messy as it was to the eye, it was even messier to the ear, for two radios were going full blast.

  Marcelle Koven and I joined them at the lunch table, and I perked up at once. There was a basket of French bread and pumpernickel, paper platters piled with slices of ham, smoked turkey, sturgeon, and hot corned beef, a big slab of butter, mustard and other accessories, bottles of milk, a pot of steaming coffee, and a one-pound jar of fresh caviar. Seeing Pete Jordan spooning caviar onto a piece of bread crust, I got what he meant about liking to eat.

  “Help yourself!” Pat Lowell yelled into my ear.

  I reached for the bread with one hand and the corned beef with the other and yelled back, “Why doesn’t someone turn them down or even off?”

  She took a sip of coffee from a paper cup and shook her head. “One’s By Hildebrand’s and one’s Pete Jordan’s! They like different programs when they’re working! They have to go for volume!”

  It was a hell of a din, but the corned beef was wonderful and the bread must have been from Rusterman’s, nor was there anything wrong with the turkey and sturgeon. Since the radio duel precluded table talk, I used my eyes for diversion and was impressed by Adrian Getz, whom Koven called the Squirt. He would break off a rectangle of bread crust, place a rectangle of sturgeon on it, arrange a mound of caviar on top, and pop it in. When it was down he would take three sips of coffee and then start over. He was doing that when Mrs. Koven and I arrived and he was still doing it when I was full and reaching for another paper napkin.

  Eventually, though, he stopped. He pushed back his chair, left it, went over to a sink at the wall, held his fingers under the faucet, and dried them with his handkerchief. Then he trotted over to a radio and turned it off, and to the other one and turned that off. Then he trotted back to us and spoke apologetically.

  “That was uncivil, I know.”

  No one contradicted him.

  “It was only,” he went on, “that I wanted to ask Mr. Goodwin something before going up for my nap.” His eyes settled on me. “Did you know when you opened that window that sudden cold drafts are dangerous for tropical monkeys?”

  His tone was more than mild, it was wistful. But something about him—I didn’t know what and didn’t ask for time out to go into it—got my goat.

  “Sure,” I said cheerfully. “I was trying it out.”

  “That was thoughtless,” he said, not complaining, just giving his modest opinion, and turned and trotted out of the room.

  There was a strained silence. Pat Lowell reached for the pot to pour some coffee.

  “Goodwin, God help you,” Pete Jordan muttered.

  “Why? Does he sting?”

  “Don’t ask me why, but watch your step. I think he’s a kobold.” He tossed his paper napkin onto the table. “Want to see an artist create? Come and look.” He marched to one of the radios and turned it on, then to a drawing table and sat.

  “I’ll clean up,” Pat Lowell offered.

  Byram Hildebrand, who had not squeaked once that I heard, went and turned on the other radio before he took his place at another drawing table.

  Mrs. Koven left us. I helped Pat Lowell clear up the lunch table, but all that did was pass time, since both radios were going and I rely mostly on talk to develop an acquaintance in the early stages. Then she left, and I strolled over to watch the artists. So far nothing had occured to change my opinion of Dazzle Dan, but I had to admire the way they did him. Working from rough sketches which all looked alike to me, they turned out the finished product in three colors so fast I could barely keep up, walking back and forth. The only interruptions for a long stretch were when Hildebrand jumped up to go and turn his radio louder, and a minute later Pete Jordan did likewise. I sat down and concentrated on the experiment of listening to two stations at once, but after a while my brain started to curdle and I got out of there.

  A door toward the front of the lower hall was standing open, and I looked in and stepped inside when I saw Pat Lowell at a desk, working with papers. She looked up to nod and went on working.

  “Listen a minute,” I said. “We’re here on a desert island, and for months you have been holding me at arm’s length, and I’m desperate. It is not mere propinquity. In rags and tatters as you are, without make-up, I have come to look upon you—”

  “I’m busy,” she said emphatically. “Go play with a coconut.”

  “You’ll regret this,” I said savagely and went to the hall and looked through the glass of the front door at the outside world. The view was nothing to brag about, and the radios were still at my eardrums, so I went upstairs. Looking through the archway into the room at the left, and seeing no one but the monkey in its cage, I crossed to the other room and entered. It was full of furniture, but there was no sign of life. As I went up the second flight of stairs it seemed that the sound of the radios was getting louder instead of softer, and at the top I knew why. A radio was going the other side of one of the closed doors. I went and opened the door to the room where I had talked with Koven; not there. I tried another door and was faced by shelves stacked with linen. I knocked on another, got no response, opened it, and stepped in. It was a large bedroom, very fancy, with an oversized bed. The furniture and Sittings showed that it was co-ed. A radio on a stand was giving with a soap opera, and stretched out on a couch was Mrs. Koven, sound asleep. She looked softer and not so serious, with her lips parted a little and relaxed fingers curled on the cushion, in spite of the yapping radio on the bedside table. I damn well intended to find Koven, and took a couple of steps with a vague notion of looking under the bed for him, when a glance through an open door at the right into the next room discovered him. He was standing at a window with his back to me. Thinking it might seem a little familiar on short acquaintance for me to enter from the bedroom where his wife was snoozing, I backed out to the hall, pulling the door to, moved to the next door, and knocked. Getting no reaction, I turned the knob and entered.

  The radio had drowned out my noise. He remained at the window. I banged the door shut. He jerked around. He said something, but I didn’t get it on account of the radio. I went and closed the door to the bedroom, and that helped some.

  “Well?” he demanded, as if he couldn’t imagine who I was or what I wanted.

  He had shaved and combed and had on a well-made brown homespun suit, with a tan shirt and red tie.

  “It’s going on four o’clock,” I said, “and I’ll be going soon and taking my gun with me.”

  He took his hands from his pockets and dropped into a chair. Evidently this was the Koven personal living room, from the way it was furnished, and it looked fairly livable.

  He spoke. “I was standing at the window thinking.”

  “Yeah. Any luck?”

  He sighed and stretched his legs out. “Fame and fortune,” he said, “are not all a man needs for happiness.”

  I sat down. Obviously
the only alternatives were to wrangle him into it or call it off.

  “What else would you suggest?” I asked brightly.

  He undertook to tell me. He went on and on, but I won’t report it verbatim because I doubt if it contained any helpful hints for you—I know it didn’t for me. I grunted from time to time to be polite. I listened to him for a while and then got a little relief by listening to the soap opera on the radio, which was muffled some by the closed door but by no means inaudible. Eventually, of course, he got around to his wife, first briefing me by explaining that she was his third and they had been married only two years. To my surprise he didn’t tear her apart. He said she was wonderful. His point was that even when you added to fame and fortune the companionship of a beloved and loving wife who was fourteen years younger than you, that still wasn’t all you needed for happiness.

  There was one interruption—a knock on the door and the appearance of Byram Hildebrand. He had come to show the revise on the third frame of Number 728. They discussed art some, and Koven okayed the revise, and Hildebrand departed. I hoped that the intermission had sidetracked Koven, but no; he took up again where he had left off.

  I can take a lot when I’m working on a case, even a kindergarten problem like that one, but finally, after the twentieth sidewise glance at my wrist, I called a halt.

  “Look,” I said, “this has given me a new slant on life entirely, and don’t think I don’t appreciate it, but it’s a quarter past four and it’s getting dark. I would call it late afternoon. What do you say we go ahead with our act?”

  He closed his trap and frowned at me. He started chewing his lip. After some of that he suddenly arose, went to a cabinet, and got out a bottle.

  “Will you join me?” He produced two glasses. “I’m not supposed to drink until five o’clock, but I’ll make this an exception.” He came to me. “Bourbon all right? Say when.”

  I would have liked to plug him. He had known from the beginning that he would have to drink himself up to it but had sucked me in with a noon appointment. Anything I felt like saying would have been justified, but I held in. I accepted mine and raised it with him, to encourage him, and took a swallow. He took a dainty sip, raised his eyes to the ceiling, and then emptied the glass at a gulp. He picked up the bottle and poured a refill.

  “Why don’t we go in there with the refreshment,” I sugested, “and go over it a little?”

  “Don’t rush me,” he said gloomily. He took a deep breath, swelling his chest, and suddenly grinned at me, showing the teeth. He lifted the glass and drained it, reached for the bottle and tilted it to pour, and changed his mind.

  “Come on,” he said, heading for the door. I stepped around him to open the door, since both his hands were occupied, closed it behind us, and followed him down the hall. At the farther end we entered the room where we were to stage it. He went to the desk and sat, poured himself a drink, and put the bottle down. I went to the desk too, but not to sit. I had taken the precaution of removing the cartridges from my gun, but even so a glance at it wouldn’t hurt any. I pulled the drawer open and was relieved to see that it was still there. I shut the drawer.

  “I’ll go get them,” I offered.

  “I said don’t rush me,” Koven protested, but no longer gloomy.

  “Thinking that two more drinks would surely do it, I moved to a chair. But I didn’t sit. Something wasn’t right, and it came to me what it was: I had placed the gun with the muzzle pointing to the right, and it wasn’t that way now. I returned to the desk, took the gun out, and gave it a look.

  It was a Marley .32 all right, but not mine.

  III

  IPUT my eye on Koven. The gun was in my left hand, and my right hand was a fist. If I had hit him that first second, which I nearly did, mad as I was, I would have cracked some knuckles.

  “What’s the matter?” he demanded.

  My eyes were on him and through him. I kept them there for five pulse beats. It wasn’t possible, I decided, that he was that good. Nobody could be.

  I backed up a pace. “We’ve found your gun.”

  He gawked at me. “What?”

  I broke it, saw that the cylinder was empty, and held it out. “Take a look.”

  He took it. “It looks the same—no, it doesn’t.”

  “Certainly it doesn’t. Mine was clean and bright. Is it yours?”

  “I don’t know. It looks like it. But how in the name of God—”

  I reached and took it from him. “How do you think?” I was so damn mad I nearly stuttered. “Someone with hands took mine out and put yours in. It could have been you. Was it?”

  “No. Me?” Suddenly he got indignant. “How the hell could it have been me when I didn’t know where mine was?”

  “You said you didn’t. I ought to stretch you out and tamp you down. Keeping me here the whole goddam day, and now this! If you ever talk straight and to the point, now is the time. Did you touch my gun?”

  “No. But you’re—”

  “Do you know who did?”

  “No. But you’re—”

  “Shut up!” I went around the desk to the phone, lifted it, and dialed. At that hour Wolfe would be up in the plant rooms for his afternoon shift with the orchids, where he was not to be disturbed except in emergency, but this was one. When Fritz answered I asked him to buzz the extension, and in a moment I had Wolfe.

  “Yes, Archie?” Naturally he was peevish.

  “Sorry to bother you, but. I’m at Koven’s. I put my gun in his desk, and we were all set for his stunt, but he kept putting it off until now. His will power sticks and has to be primed with alcohol. I roamed around. We just came in here where his desk is, and I opened the drawer for a look. Someone has taken my gun and substituted his—his that was stolen, you know? It’s back where it belongs, but mine is gone.”

  “You shouldn’t have left it there.”

  “Okay, you can have that, and you sure will, but I need instructions for now. Three choices: I can call a cop, or I can bring the whole bunch down there to you, don’t think I can’t the way I feel, or I can handle it myself. Which?”

  “Confound it, not the police. They would enjoy it too much. And why bring them here? The gun’s there, not here.”

  “Then that leaves me. I go ahead?”

  “Certainly—with due discretion. It’s a prank.” He chuckled. “I would like to see your face. Try to get home for dinner.” He hung up.

  “My God, don’t call a cop!” Koven protested.

  “I don’t intend to,” I said grimly. I slipped his gun into my armpit holster. “Not if I can help it. It depends partly on you. You stay put, right here. I’m going down and get them. Your wife’s asleep in the bedroom. If I find when I get back that you’ve gone and started chatting with her I’ll either slap you down with your own gun or phone the police, I don’t know which, maybe both. Stay put.”

  “This is my house, Goodwin, and—”

  “Goddam it, don’t you know a raving maniac when you see one?” I tapped my chest with a forefinger. “Me. When I’m as sore as I am now the safest thing would be for you to call a cop. I want my gun.”

  As I made for the door he was reaching for the bottle. By the time I got down to the ground floor I had myself well enough in hand to speak to them without betraying any special urgency, telling them that Koven was ready for them upstairs, for the conference. I found Pat Lowell still at the desk in the room in front and Hildebrand and Jordan still at their drawing tables in the workroom. I even replied appropriately when Pat Lowell asked how I had made out with the coconut. As Hildebrand and Jordan left their tables and turned off their radios I had a keener eye on them than before; someone here had swiped my gun. As we ascended the first flight of stairs, with me in the rear, I asked their backs where I would find Adrian Getz.

  Pat Lowell answered. “He may be in his room on the top floor.” They halted at the landing, the edge of the big square hall, and I joined them. We could hear the radio going upstairs. She
indicated the room to the left. “He takes his afternoon nap in there with Rookaloo, but not this late usually.”

  I thought I might as well glance in, and moved to the archway. A draft of cold air hit me, and I went on in. A window was wide open! I marched over and closed it, then went to take a look at the monkey. It was huddled on the floor in a corner of the cage, making angry little noises, with something clutched in its fingers against its chest. The light was dim, but I have good eyes, and not only was the something unmistakably a gun, but it was my Marley on a bet. Needing light, and looking for a wall switch, I was passing the large couch which faced the fireplace when suddenly I stopped and froze. Adrian Getz, the Squirt, was lying on the couch but he wasn’t taking a nap.

  I bent over him for a close-up and saw a hole in his skull northeast of his right ear, and some red juice. I stuck a hand inside the V of his vest and flattened it against him and held my breath for eight seconds. He was through taking naps.

  I straightened up and called, “Come in here, all three of you, and switch on a light as you come!”

  They appeared through the archway, and one of them put a hand to the wall. Lights shone. The back of the couch hid Getz from their view as they approached.

  “It’s cold in here,” Pat Lowell was saying. “Did you open another—”

  Seeing Getz stopped her, and the others too. They goggled.

  “Don’t touch him,” I warned them. “He’s dead, so you can’t help him any. Don’t touch anything. You three stay here together, right here in this room, while I—”

  “Christ Almighty,” Pete Jordan blurted. Hildebrand squeaked something. Pat Lowell put out a hand, found the couch back, and gripped it. She asked something, but I wasn’t listening. I was at the cage, with my back to them, peering at the monkey. It was my Marley the monkey was clutching. I had to curl my fingers until the nails sank in to keep from opening the cage door and grabbing that gun.