by Rex Stout
Heydt cleared his throat. “If I could, I don’t have to furnish it to you. It seems to me-oh, what the hell. No, I can’t.”
“Mr. Jay?”
“Incontestable, no.” Jay leaned forward, his chin out. “I came here because Miss McLeod asked me to, but if I understand what you’re after I might as well go. You intend to find out who killed Faber and pin it on him. To prove it wasn’t Archie Goodwin. Is that it?”
“Yes.”
“Then count me out. I don’t want Goodwin to get it, but neither do I want anyone else to. Not even Max Maslow.”
“That’s damn nice of you, Pete,” Maslow said. “A real pal.”
Wolfe turned to him. “You, sir. Can you eliminate yourself?”
“Not by proving I wasn’t there.” Maslow flipped a hand. “I must say, Wolfe, I’m surprised at you. I thought you were very tough and cagey, but you’ve swallowed something. You said we all wanted to marry Miss McLeod. Who fed you that? I admit I do, and as far as I know Carl Heydt does, but not my pal Pete. He’s the pay-as-you-go type. I wouldn’t exactly call him a Casanova, because Casanova never tried to score by talking up marriage, and that’s Pete’s favorite gambit. I could name-”
“Stand up.” It was his pal Pete, on his feet, with fists, glaring down at him.
Maslow tilted his head back. “I wouldn’t, Pete. I was merely-”
“Stand up or I’ll slap you out of the chair.”
Of course I had plenty of time to get there and in between them, but I was curious. It was likely that Jay, not caring about his knuckles, would go for the jaw, and I wanted to see what effect it would have on the twisted smile. My curiosity didn’t get satisfied. As Maslow came up out of the chair he sidestepped, and Jay had to turn, hauling his right back. He started it for Maslow’s jaw by the longest route, and Maslow ducked, came on in, and landed with his right at the very best spot for a bare fist. A beautiful kidney punch. As Jay started to bend Maslow delivered another one to the same spot, harder, and Jay went down. He didn’t tumble, he just wilted. By then I was there. Maslow went to his chair, sat, breathed, and fingered his string tie. The smile was intact, maybe twisted a little more. He spoke to Wolfe. “I hope you didn’t misunderstand me. I wasn’t suggesting that I think he killed Faber. Even if he did I wouldn’t want him to get it. On that point we’re pals. I was only saying I don’t see how you got your reputation if you- You all right, Pete?”
I was helping Jay up. A kidney punch doesn’t daze you, it just makes you sick. I asked him if he wanted a bathroom, and he shook his head, and I steered him to his chair. He turned his face to Maslow, muttered a couple of extremely vulgar words, and belched.
Wolfe spoke. “Will you have brandy, Mr. Jay? Whisky? Coffee?”
Jay shook his head and belched again.
Wolfe turned. “Mr. Heydt. The others have made it clear that if they have information that would help to expose the murderer they won’t divulge it. How about you?”
Heydt cleared his throat. “I’m glad I don’t have to answer that,” he said. “I don’t have to answer it because I have no information that would help. I know Archie Goodwin and I might say we’re friends. If he’s really in a jam I would want to help if I could. You say Miss McLeod has said something to the police that set them on him, but you won’t tell us what she said.”
“Ask her. You can give me no information whatever?”
“No.”
Wolfe’s eyes moved right, to the other two, and back again. “I doubt if it’s worth the trouble,” he said. “Assuming that one of you killed that man, I doubt if I can get at him from the front; I must go around. But I may have given you a false impression, and if so I wish to correct it. I said that to lift the suspicion from Mr. Goodwin we must find out where it belongs, but that isn’t vital, for we have an alternative. We can merely shift the suspicion to Miss McLeod. That will be simple, and it will relieve Mr. Goodwin of further annoyance. We’ll discuss it after you leave, and decide. You gentlemen may view the matter differently when Miss McLeod is in custody, charged with murder, without bail, but that is your-”
“You’re a goddam liar.” Peter Jay.
“Amazing.” Max Maslow. “Where did you get your reputation? What do you expect us to do, kick and scream or go down on our knees?”
“Of course you don’t mean it.” Carl Heydt. “You said you’re satisfied that she didn’t kill him.”
Wolfe nodded. “I doubt if she would be convicted. She might not even go to trial; the police are not blockheads. It will be an ordeal for her, but it will also be a lesson; her implication of Mr. Goodwin may not have been willful, but it was inexcusable.” His eyes went to Maslow. “You have mentioned my reputation. I made it and I don’t risk it rashly. If tomorrow you learn that Miss McLeod has been arrested and is inaccessible, you may-”
“‘If.’” That crooked smile.
“Yes. It is contingent not on our power but on our preference. I am inviting you gentlemen to have a voice in our decision. You have told me nothing whatever, and I do not believe that you have nothing whatever to tell. Do you want to talk now, to me, or later, to the police, when that woman is in a pickle?”
“You’re bluffing,” Maslow said. “I call.” He got up and headed for the hall. I got up and followed him out, got his hat from the shelf, and opened the front door; and as I closed it behind him and started back down the hall here came the other two. I opened the door again, and Jay, who had no hat, went by and on out, but Heydt stood there. I got his hat and he took it and put it on. “Look, Archie,” he said. “You’ve got to do something.”
“Check,” I said. “What, for instance?”
“I don’t know. But about Sue-my God, he doesn’t mean it, does he?”
“It isn’t just a question of what he means, it’s also what I mean. Damn it, I’m short on sleep, and I may soon be short on life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Get the news every hour on the hour. Pleasant dreams.”
“What did Sue tell the police about you?”
“No comment. My resistance is low and with the door open I might catch cold. If you don’t mind?”
He went. I shut the door, put the chain bolt on, returned to the office, sat at my desk, and said, “So you thought it might be useful.”
He grunted. “Have you finished it?”
“Yes. Twelve pages.”
“May I see it?”
Not an order, a request. At least he was remembering that it was a joint affair. I opened a drawer, got the original, and took it to him. He inspected the heading and the first page, flipped through the sheets, took a look at the end, dropped it on his desk, and said, “Your notebook, please.” I sat and got my notebook and pen.
“There will be two,” he said, “one for you and one for me. First mine. Heading in caps, affidavit by Nero Wolfe. The usual State of New York, County of New York. The text: I hereby depose that the twelve foregoing typewritten pages attached hereto, comma, each page initialed by me, comma, are a full and accurate record of a conversation that took place in my office on October thirteenth, nineteen sixty-one, by Susan McLeod, comma, Archie Goodwin, comma, and myself, semicolon; that nothing of consequence has been omitted or added in this typewritten record, semicolon; and that the conversation was wholly impromptu, comma, with no prior preparation or arrangement. A space for my signature, and below, the conventional formula for notarizing. The one for you, on the same sheet if there is room, will be the same with the appropriate changes.”
I looked up. “All right, it wasn’t just to keep me off your neck. Okay on the power. But there’s still the if on the preference. She didn’t kill him. She came to me and opened the bag. I’m her hero. She as good as told Maslow that she’d marry me if I asked her. Maybe she could learn how to dance if she tried hard, though I admit that’s doubtful. She makes a lot more than you pay me, and we could postpone the babies. You said you doubt if she would be convicted, but that’s not good enough. Before I sign that affidavit I would need to
know that you won’t chuck the joint affair as soon as the heat is off of me.”
“Rrrhhh,” he said.
“I agree,” I said, “it’s a goddam nuisance. It’s entirely her fault, she dragged me in without even telling me, and if a girl pushes a man in a hole he has a right to wiggle out, but you must remember that I am now a hero. Heroes don’t wiggle. Will you say that it will be our joint affair to make sure that she doesn’t go to trial?”
“I wouldn’t say that I will make sure of anything whatever.”
“Correction. That you will be concerned?”
He took air in, all the way, through his nose, and let it out through his mouth. “Very well. I’ll be concerned.” He glanced at the twelve pages on his desk. “Will you bring Miss Pinelli to my room at five minutes to nine in the morning?”
“No. She doesn’t get to her office until nine-thirty.”
“Then bring her to the plant rooms at nine-forty with the affidavit.” He looked at the wall clock. “You can type it in the morning. You’ve had no sleep for forty hours. Go to bed.”
That was quite a compliment, and I was appreciating it as I mounted the stairs to my room. Except for a real emergency he will permit no interruptions from nine to eleven in the morning, when he is in the plant rooms, but he wasn’t going to wait until he came down to the office to get the affidavit notarized. As I got into bed and turned the light off I was considering whether to ask for a raise now or wait till the end of the year, but before I made up my mind I didn’t have a mind. It was gone.
I never did actually make up my mind about passing the buck to Sue. I was still on the fence after breakfast Thursday morning, when I dialed the number of Lila Pinelli, who adds maybe two bucks a week to the take of her secretarial service in a building on Eighth Avenue by doubling as a notary public. Doing the affidavits didn’t commit me to anything; the question was, what then? So I asked her to come, and she came, and I took her up to the plant rooms. She was in a hurry to get back, but she had never seen the orchids, and no one alive could just breeze on by those benches, with everything from the neat little Oncidiums to the big show-offs like the Laeliocattleyas. So it was after ten o’clock when we came back down and I paid her and let her out, and I went to the office and put the document in the safe.
As I say, I never did actually make up my mind; it just happened. At ten minutes past eleven Wolfe, having come down at eleven as usual, was at his desk looking over the morning crop of mail, and I was at mine sorting the germination slips he had brought, when the doorbell rang. I stepped to the hall for a look, turned, and said, “Cramer. I’ll go hide in the cellar.”
“Confound it,” he growled. “I wanted- Very well.”
“There’s no law about answering doorbells.”
“No. We’ll see.”
I went to the front, opened up, said good morning, and gave him room. He crossed the sill, took a folded paper from a pocket, and handed it to me. I unfolded it, and a glance was enough, but I read it through. “At least my name’s spelled right,” I said. I extended my hands, the wrists together. “Okay, do it right. You never know.”
“You’d clown in the chair,” he said. “I want to see Wolfe.” He marched down the hall and into the office. Very careless. I could have scooted on out and away, and for half a second I considered it, but I wouldn’t have been there to see the look on his face when he found I was gone. When I entered the office he was lowering his fanny onto the red leather chair and putting his hat on the stand beside it. Also he was speaking. “I have just handed Goodwin a warrant for his arrest,” he was saying, “and this time he’d stay.”
I stood. “It’s an honor,” I said. “Anyone can be banged by a bull or a dick. It takes me to be pinched by an inspector, and twice in one week.”
His eyes stayed at Wolfe. “I came myself,” he said, “because I want to tell you how it stands. A police officer with a warrant to serve is not only allowed to use his discretion, he’s supposed to. I know damn well what Goodwin will do, he’ll clam up, and a crowbar wouldn’t pry him open. Give me that warrant, Goodwin.”
“It’s mine. You’ve served it.”
“I have not. I just showed it to you.” He stretched an arm and took it. “When I was here Tuesday night,” he told Wolfe, “you were dumfounded by my fatuity. So you said in your fancy way. All you cared about was who picked that corn. I came myself to see how you feel now. Goodwin will talk if you tell him to. Do you want me to wait in the front room while you discuss it? Not all day, say ten minutes. I’m giving you a-”
He stopped to glare. Wolfe had pushed his chair back and was rising, and of course Cramer thought he was walking out. It wouldn’t have been the first time. But Wolfe headed for the safe, not the hall. As he turned the handle and pulled the door open, there I was. If he had told me to bring it instead of going for it himself, I could have stalled while I made up my mind, even with Cramer there, but as I have said twice before I never did actually make up my mind. I merely went to my desk and sat. I owed Sue McLeod nothing. If either she or I was going to be cooped, there were two good reasons why it should be her: she had made the soup herself, and I wouldn’t be much help in the joint affair if I was salted down. So I sat, and Wolfe got it from the safe, went and handed it to Cramer, and spoke. “I suggest that you look at the affidavits first. The last two sheets.”
Over the years I have made a large assortment of cracks about Inspector Cramer, but I admit he has his points. Having inspected the affidavits, he went through the twelve pages fast, and then he went back and started over and took his time. Altogether, more than half an hour; and not once did he ask a question or even look up. And when he finished, even then no questions. Lieutenant Rowcliff or Sergeant Purley Stebbins would have kept at us for an hour. Cramer merely gave each of us a five-second straight hard look, folded the document and put it in his inside breast pocket, rose and came to my desk, picked up the phone, and dialed. In a moment he spoke.
“Donovan? Inspector Cramer. Give me Sergeant Stebbins.” In another moment: “Purley? Get Susan McLeod. Don’t call her, get her. Go yourself. I’ll be there in ten minutes and I want her there fast. Take a man along. If she balks, wrap her up and carry her.”
He cradled the phone, went to the stand and got his hat, and marched out.
5
OF ALL THE THOUSAND or more times I have felt like putting vinegar in Wolfe’s beer, I believe the closest I ever came to doing it was that Thursday evening when the doorbell rang at a quarter past nine, and after a look at the front I told him that Carl Heydt, Max Maslow, and Peter Jay were on the stoop, and he said they were not to be admitted.
In the nine and a half hours that had passed since Cramer had used my phone to call Purley Stebbins I had let it lie. I couldn’t expect Wolfe to start any fur flying until there was a reaction, or there wasn’t, say by tomorrow noon, to what had happened to Sue. However, I had made a move on my own. When Wolfe had left the office at four o’clock to go up to the plant rooms, I had told him I would be out on an errand for an hour or so, and I had taken a walk, to Rusterman’s, thinking I might pick up some little hint.
I didn’t. First I went out back for a look at the platform and the alley, which might seem screwy, since two days and nights had passed and the city scientists had combed it, but you never know. I once got an idea just running my eye around a hotel room where a woman had spent a night six months earlier. But I got nothing from the platform or alley except a scraped ear from squeezing under the platform and out again, and after talking with Felix and Joe and some of the kitchen staff I crossed it off. No one had seen or heard anyone or anything until Zoltan had stepped out for a cigarette (no smoking is allowed in the kitchen) and had seen the station wagon and the body on the ground.
I would have let it ride that evening, no needling until tomorrow noon. When Lily Rowan phoned around seven o’clock and said Sue had phoned her from the DA’s office that she was under arrest and had to have a lawyer and would Lily send her o
ne, and Lily wanted me to come and tell her what was what, I would have gone if I hadn’t wanted to be on hand if there was a development. But when the development came Wolfe told me not to let it in.
I straight-eyed him. “You said you’d be concerned.”
“I am concerned.”
“Then here they are. You tossed her to the wolves to open them up, and here-”
“No. I did that to keep you out of jail. I am considering how to deal with the problem, and until I decide there is no point in seeing them. Tell them they’ll hear from us.”
The doorbell rang again. “Then I’ll see them. In the front room.”
“No. Not in my house.” He went back to his book.
Either put vinegar in his beer or get the Marley.32 from my desk drawer and shoot him dead, but that would have to wait; they were on the stoop. I went and opened the door enough for me to slip through, did so, bumping into Carl Heydt, and pulled the door shut. “Good evening,” I said. “Mr. Wolfe is busy on an important matter and can’t be disturbed. Do you want to disturb me instead?”
They all spoke at once. The general idea seemed to be that I would open the door and they would handle the disturbing.
“You don’t seem to realize,” I told them, “that you’re up against a genius. So am I, only I’m used to it. You were damn fools to think he was bluffing. You might have known he would do exactly what he said.”
“Then he did?” Peter Jay. “He did it?”
“We did. I share the glory. We did.”
“Glory hell.” Max Maslow. “You know Sue didn’t kill Ken Faber. He said so.”
“He said we were satisfied that she didn’t. We still are. He also said that we doubt if she’ll be convicted. He also said that our interest was to get me from under, and we had alternatives. We could either find out who killed Faber, for which we needed your help; or, if you refused to help, we could switch it to Sue. You refused, and we switched it, and I am in the clear, and here you are. Why? Why should he waste time on you now? He is busy on an important matter; he’s reading a book entitled My Life in Court, by Louis Nizer. Why should he put it down for you?”