Wolfe shifted his eyes to me. “Archie, I’m afraid there’s no help for it. Mr Barrett will take you to Madame Zorka. You will bring her here.”
“What if she’s skipped town?”
“I doubt it. She can’t have got far. Take the roadster and go after her. Hang on to Mr Barrett.”
“That’s the part I don’t like, hanging on to Barrett.”
“I know. You’ll have to put up with it. It may be only—” He switched to Barrett. “Where is she? How far away?”
The financier was standing there trying to concentrate, with his gaze fastened on Wolfe and his lips working. He made them function: “Damn you, if you let this out—”
Wolfe said curtly, “I’ve told you what I want, and that’s all I want. Where is she?”
“She’s—I think—not far away.”
“In the city?”
“I think so.”
“Good. Don’t try any tricks with Mr Goodwin. They make him lose his temper.”
“I’m coming back with them. I want to talk—”
“No. Not to-night. To-morrow, perhaps. Don’t let him in, Archie.”
“Okay.” I was on my feet. “For God’s sake, let’s step on it, or my bed will think I’m having an affair with the couch. I only wish I was.”
He didn’t like going, leaving Wolfe there within three feet of a telephone and all that intimate knowledge of Bosnian forests buzzing in his head, but I eased him into the hall and on out into the November night.
I had rather expected to find a Minerva town car waiting at the kerb, considering his category, but there wasn’t anything there at all, and we had to hoof it to Eighth Avenue before we could ambush a taxi at that ungodly hour. We piled in, me last, and he told the driver Times Square.
As we jolted off I surveyed him disapprovingly. “Don’t tell me you left her standing on the sidewalk.”
Disregarding that, he twisted himself on the cushion to face me in a confidential manner. “See here, Goodwin,” he demanded, “you’ve got to help me. I’m in a bad hole. It wouldn’t have done any good to try to persuade Wolfe that I don’t know where Zorka is, because he was convinced that I do. But the fact is, I don’t know.”
“That’s too bad.”
“Yes. I’m in one hell of a fix. If you go back and say I told you I couldn’t take you to her because I don’t know where she is, he’ll do what he threatened to do.”
“He sure will. So I won’t go back and say that.”
“No, that wouldn’t do. If I couldn’t persuade him I don’t know, I can’t expect you to. But we could work it this way. We can drop in somewhere and have a couple of drinks. Then, say in half an hour or so, you go back and tell him I took you to an address—pick out any likely address—and we went in expecting to find Zorka and she wasn’t there. You can describe how astonished and upset I was—you know, make it vivid.”
“Sure, I’m good at that. But you haven’t—”
“Wait a minute.” The taxi swerved into 42nd Street, and he lurched against me and got straight again. “I know you’ll get the devil for going back without Zorka, but you can’t help that anyway, because I don’t know where she is. I wouldn’t expect you to help me out on this just for the hell of it. Why should you? You know? How about fifty dollars?”
I have never seen a worse case of briber’s itch.
I made a scornful sound. “Now, brother! Fifty lousy bucks with a big deal in international finance trembling in the balance? A century at least.”
The driver called back, “Which corner?”
Barrett told him to stop at the kerb and leave his meter on. Then he stretched out a leg to get into his trousers pocket, and extracted a modest roll. “I don’t know if I happen to have that much with me.” He peered and counted in the dim light. Glancing through the window, I saw an old woman in a shawl headed for us with a box of chewing gum. I wouldn’t even have to leave the cab.
“I’ve got it,” Barrett said.
“Good. Gimme, please. I can concentrate on the details better with a jack in my jeans.”
He handed it over. Without bothering to count it, I shoved it through the window at the old woman and told her, “Here, grandma, two packets and keep the change.” She passed them in, took the currency and gave it a look, gave me a swift startled glance from bleary old eyes and shuffled off double-quick. I offered a packet of gum to Barrett and said, “Here, one apiece.”
Instead of taking it, he sputtered, “You goddam lunatic!”
I shook my head. “Nope, wrong again. You sure do make a lot of mistakes, mister. That little gesture I just made, that wasn’t original—I first had the idea upstate in a cow barn and the beneficiary was a guy in overalls with a pitchfork.” I stuck a piece of gum in my mouth. “Maybe this will keep me awake. That’s enough horse-play; and, besides, Mr Wolfe is waiting. Lead me to Zorka.”
“Why, you dirty, cheap—”
“Oh, can it! What’s the address?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know where she is.”
“Okay.” I leaned forward to the driver. “Go to 48th Street, east of Lexington.”
He nodded and got in gear.
Barrett demanded, “What are you going to do? What are you going to Miltan’s for?”
“I left my car there. I’m going to get it and drive it home and tell Mr Wolfe the sad news, and then, I suppose, help him until dawn with phone calls and so on. He never puts off till to-morrow what I can do to-day.”
“Do you mean to say that after taking my money and giving it to that hag—?”
“I mean to say exactly this: Either you quit stalling and squirming and take me to Zorka, or I go back to Nero Wolfe and watch him throw the switch. I ought to be asleep right now. You claim you don’t know where Zorka is. My employer claims you do. I have no opinion. My mind is open, but I follow instructions blindly. Take me to Zorka or pop goes the weasel.”
The taxi bumped across Sixth Avenue and scooted ahead for Fifth, along Bryant Park. Nearing the library, he called to the driver, “Stop at the kerb and leave the meter on.” As we rolled to a standstill I said, “You’d better kept the rest of your dough to pay the fare with.”
He sat and glared at me in silence. Finally he blurted, “Look here, I can’t take you to her. I can’t do that. I’ll tell you what I’ll do: You wait right here, and I’ll take another cab and be back here with her inside of twenty minutes.”
I stared at him. “The reason I don’t talk,” I told him, “is because I’m speechless. Holy heaven!”
“What’s wrong with that? I give you my word—”
“I don’t want it. Cut the comedy and let’s go.”
He glared some more. I permitted it for a full minute and then got impatient. “I’ll count up to twenty-nine,” I said, “one for each year of my life and one to grow on and one to get married on, and then—”
“Wait a minute.” He was approaching the pleading stage. “The reason I can’t take you to her is a personal reason. I don’t intend to try any deception; I can’t. You know damn well the hole I’m in. What about this? You go with me to a phone booth, and I’ll call her up and tell her to meet us—”
I shook my head emphatically. “No. A thousand times no. Quit trying to wiggle off the hook. How do I know but what you’ve got a code with her to use in emergencies? Remember I’m ignorant. I don’t even know but what Wolfe has got it figured out that she killed Ludlow and, in that case . . .” I shrugged. “I’m only a puppet and I’m under orders. For God’s sake, shut up and let’s go.”
He curled his fingers to make fists. “I can just open this door and beat it. You know?”
“Go ahead. Don’t let me stop you. Then I could phone Wolfe and go on home.”
“But, goddam it, if you hear me phone—”
“Shut up! I’m bored stiff.”
He gave me one more good long glare and then leaned forward and gave the driver an address on Madison Avenue, not ten blocks away. The driver nodded and got g
oing again.
He had enough left to pay the fare. It wasn’t a modern apartment house we stopped in front of, but an older building whose days of pride were in the past. The ground floor was a trinket shop, dark, of course. Barrett got out a key and unlocked a door that let us into a small public corridor, went to the rear of it, and with another key admitted us into a miniature elevator of the drive-it-yourself variety. That took us up five storeys, and then we had to climb a flight of stairs. The layout wasn’t exactly shabby, though it was far from ostentatious. From the top of the stairs he preceded me through a sort of vestibule and used a third key on a wide, solid-looking door. I followed him in and he shut the door and turned to call out:
“Yoohoo!”
An answer came: “Back here, Donnybonny!”
I could already smell perfume, and the temperature even there in the foyer must have been close to ninety. I copied his example when he took off his coat, but when he scowled at me and said, “Wait here a minute,” I disregarded it and went along behind him into a large and dazzling room full of heat, synthetic smells, thick rugs, divans and cushions, miscellaneous fluff, and a pair of damsels. They were sprawled out, one on a divan and the other on a chaise-longue.
Zorka, a loose red thing around her, started a wave of greeting at Barrett and then halted in mid-air as she saw me. Belinda Reade, nothing at all around her, called, “How’s my Donny— Oh!” and grabbed for a pale blue neglig&;233;e that was draped over the back of the divan.
Chapter Eleven
Barrett growled at me, “Didn’t I ask you to wait?”
“It doesn’t matter,” I soothed him. “When my mind is on business—”
“Why,” Belinda Reade cried in innocent delight, “it’s the detective man! Have a drink?”
She was working on one herself, and the ingredients for plenty more were handy on a little table. Zorka was having one, too. She had raised herself to her elbow on the chaise-longue and was smiling at me foolishly, without any intention, apparently, of saying anything.
Barrett said, “Be quiet, Bel. This fellow came . . .” He turned to Zorka. “He came for you. My God, look at you—both of you.” He frowned at her and switched at me: “You explain it to her.”
“Thees ees no time,” Zorka declared in an injured tone, “for explanations.”
“Have a drink,” Miss Reade insisted. “I have never had a drink with a detective, and especially such a darned good-looking detective.” She patted the divan and tugged at the negligée to cover a knee. “Sit here by me and have a drink.”
“Don’t be a damned fool,” Barrett told her.
Zorka tittered. “She only wants to make you jealous, Donald. Because you make her jealous of the Tormic girl.”
“Bah,” said Miss Reade. “Have a drink! What’s your name?”
“Call me Archie.” It struck me that a little reinforcement might help, so I stretched for the bottle and a glass. Then I drew back and turned to Barrett. “But excuse me. If you’re the host . . .”
“This is Miss Reade’s apartment,” he said stiffly. “But you came here—”
“Please have a drink,” the lady begged me.
“Thanks, I will.” I poured a good one and tossed it off, and then advised Barrett, “You ought to have a shot yourself. You’re under a strain.” I confronted Zorka. “The idea is this. After you phoned me at Nero Wolfe’s office and told me—”
“What? After what?”
I went closer so she could focus easier. “After you phoned and told me you saw Miss Tormic putting something in my overcoat pocket—”
“But I didn’t! I? I phoned you?” She waved her glass at Belinda, spilling a drop or two on the rug, and said in a hurt tone, “Don’t let him have another drink! He says I phoned him!”
“Maybe you did, darling. You phone so many men. I wouldn’t blame you for phoning him. I like him.”
“But I didn’t!”
“Well, you should have.” Belinda used the blue eyes on me. “Have a drink, Percy.”
“Not Percy, Archie. Percy was the one that got murdered.”
“Oh.” She frowned at me. “That’s right. That’s why we started drinking, to forget about it. Brrrh.” She shivered, “And I called you Percy! How funny! Don’t you think that’s funny, Donnyhoney?”
“No,” Barrett declared curtly. “This fellow—”
“But of course it’s funny! I like Archie, and why should I call him Percy?” She shivered again. “It was perfectly terrible! Simply awful! The porter yelling and Percy lying there on the floor, and the police and—” She stopped and stared at me with her lips parted. “Why! I forgot! You son-of-a-gun! It was you that wouldn’t let me out of that door! You dirty bum!”
Barrett tapped me on the shoulder. “You know, you came—”
“Yeah, I know.” I faced Zorka. She had the fixed smile on again. I would have given an hour’s sleep to know how many drinks she had had. “About your phoning me,” I said. “Maybe I was just trying to brag. It’s my one weakness, bragging about women phoning me. The fact is, I came along with Donald Barrett to save him some trouble. I had to come to 48th Street anyway, to get my car. He told me he had asked you to come and spend the night with Miss Reade, but after the talk we had that wasn’t necessary, so he supposed you would want to go home, and that’s really what I came for, to take you home. Isn’t that right, Barrett?”
“I didn’t agree—”
“Isn’t that right?”
“Well . . . yes.”
“Sure it is. So if you’ll just put on a coat—you don’t need to bother to dress—we can take your bag and suitcase—”
“What for?” she demanded.
“Why, if you’re going home you’ll want your luggage—”
“I’m not going home.”
“My God, it’s nearly daylight—”
“I’m not going home. Am I going home, Belinda?”
“You are not. Even if you were, you wouldn’t go with him. I don’t like him. Didn’t you hear me say I remembered that I don’t like him?”
I poured myself another drink, drank it, sat down on the end of the chaise-longue next to Zorka’s feet and considered the situation. It had various aspects, the basic problem being whether she was or was not honestly stoozled. If she was, she wouldn’t be worth a damn to Wolfe even if I got her there. But I had my reputation to consider. Over a period of years Wolfe had sent me many places many times, to bring him everything from a spool of thread to a Wall Street broker, and I had batted mighty close to a thousand. Besides that, if I went back without her I knew what Wolfe would say: and in addition to that, her silly smile aggravated me.
I stood up and told Barrett in a cold inflexible tone, “It’s up to you, brother. You got her here, now you can get her out.”
“He didn’t get me here,” Zorka said. “I came here myself.”
“How do you expect me to get her out?” Barrett demanded. “Carry her?”
Zorka said, “Nobody had better touch me. Nobody!”
Belinda said, “Nobody had better touch anybody. Especially you, you good-looking bum.”
Barrett said, “I brought you here. That’s all I agreed to do. I didn’t agree—what’s the idea?”
I ignored him and continued on around the head of the divan to where a red-enamelled phone was resting on a long narrow table. He scowled at me while I dialled a number. Belinda commanded him.
“Tackle him, Donny darling. Knock him down and walk on him. Don’t let him use my phone. Don’t let him use anything—”
A voice sounded in my ear: “This is Nero Wolfe.”
I said, “Hullo, Police Headquarters? Give me Inspector Cramer of the homicide squad.”
Wolfe’s voice said, “Indeed. Go ahead.”
Barrett leaned across the divan at me and started to expostulate. I waved a hand at him to subside, and talked again:
“Hello, Homicide Division? I want to talk to Inspector Cramer. Oh, he has. Who is this talking? Sergeant
Finkle? I guess you’ll do. This is Archie Goodwin of Nero Wolfe’s office. I want to report a development on the Ludlow mur—”
Barrett’s hand shot out and pushed the cradle down and held it.
“Don’t be a sap,” I told him politely. “Even if I don’t want to start a rough house—”
“What are you going to tell him?”
“Where he can find a woman who says she saw Miss Tormic put something in my pocket and is now saying she didn’t say it.”
“You’re a goddam fool. You’re supposed to be protecting Miss Tormic.”
“I know I am. But in the long run the truth is the best protection against—”
“Truth, hell. Do you realize they can trace that call?”
I shrugged. “I presume so. If they do, they’ll ring back. Then, if they don’t get satisfaction, I presume they’ll send somebody here, and it would be bad tactics not to let them in. And, of course, if they find Zorka and me here—”
He had his jaw clamped. “You dirty, treacherous—”
I shrugged.
Miss Reade said, “I am darned sick and tired of hearing about that Tormic! As far as I am concerned, Archie—”
“Be quiet!” Barrett told her savagely. “You know damn well—” He bit it off and wheeled to Zorka. “You’ll have to go, and go quick! Get a move on!”
“But,” she protested, “you told me—”
“I don’t care what I told you! This double-crossing . . .” He grabbed her shoulder and got her upright. He was pretty masterful in a real emergency. “Where’s your coat? Where’s your shoes and stockings? To hell with stockings. Shoes!”
Over My Dead Body Page 12