Three for the Chair nwo-28

by Rex Stout

  “Not especially.” Wolfe darted a glance at Louise, alert to danger, and back at him. “I am thinking of Mr. Arrow and trying to cover all the possibilities. Of course he had a key to the apartment, and so might have entered during the night, performed an errand if he had one, and left again. Might he not?”

  Tuttle considered. To watch him consider I had to make an effort to forget his shiny dome and concentrate on his features. It would have been simpler if his eyes and nose and mouth had been on top of his head. “Possibly,” he conceded, “but I doubt it. I’m not a very sound sleeper and I think I would have heard him. And he would have had to go through the living room and Paul was there on the couch, but of course Paul was pretty well gone.”

  “I was all gone,” Paul asserted. “He would have had to slug me again if he wanted me to notice him.”

  He looked at Wolfe. “It’s an idea. What kind of an errand?”

  “No special kind. I’m merely asking questions. – Mr. Tuttle, when did you next see Mr. Arrow?”

  “That morning, Sunday morning, he came to the apartment around nine o’clock, just after Doctor Buhl arrived.”

  “Where had he been?”

  “I don’t know. I didn’t ask him and he didn’t say. It was – well, it was in the presence of death. He asked us a great many questions, some of them impertinent, I thought, but under those circumstances I made allowances.”

  Wolfe leaned back, closed his eyes, and lowered his chin. The brothers sat and looked at him. Tuttle turned to his wife, smoothing her shoulder and murmuring to her, and before long she uncovered her face and lifted her head. He got a nice clean handkerchief from his breast pocket, and she took it and dabbed around with it. There was no sign of any tear gullies down her cheeks.

  Wolfe opened his eyes and moved them from left to right and back again. “I see no likely advantage,” he pronounced, “in keeping you longer. I had hoped it would be possible to reach a decision this evening” – he leveled at Paul – “but your conjecture about the morphine merits a little inquiry – by me, that is, and of course discreet. It would be no service to expose you to an action for slander.” His eyes went to David and back across to Tuttle. “By the way, I haven’t mentioned that Doctor Buhl asked me to let you know that if Miss Goren is charged with negligence he will advise her to bring such an action, and he will support it. She maintains that before she left she put hot water in the bags, and he believes her. You will hear further from me, probably not later -”

  The doorbell rang. When we have company in the office Fritz usually answers it, but I had a hunch, which I frequently do, and I got up and, passing behind the customers’ chairs, reached the hall in time to head Fritz off on his way to the front. The stoop light was on, and through the panel I saw a stranger – a square-shouldered specimen about my age and nearly my size. Telling Fritz I’d take it, I went and opened the door to the extent allowed by the chain of the bolt and asked through the crack, “Can I help you?”

  A soft drawly voice slipped through. “I guess so. My name’s Arrow. Johnny Arrow. I want to see Nero Wolfe. If you open the door that’ll help.”

  “Yeah, but I’ll have to ask him. Hold it a minute.” I shut the door, got a piece of paper from my pocket and wrote “Arrow” on it, returned to the office and crossed to Wolfe’s desk, and handed him the paper. The visitors were out of their chairs, ready to leave.

  Wolfe glanced at the paper. “Confound it,” he grumped. “I thought I was through for the day. But perhaps I can – very well.”

  I will concede that I can be charged with negligence, since I knew what had happened Saturday night in the Churchill bar, but I deny that it was intentional. I have as much respect for the furniture in the office as Wolfe has, or Fritz. I just didn’t stop to consider, as I went to the front door and let the uranium prince in and ushered him to the office and stepped aside to observe expressions on faces. When, the instant he caught sight of Paul Fyfe, Arrow went for him, I was too far away and therefore one of the yellow chairs got busted. The consolation was that I saw a swell demonstration of how Paul had got his jaw bruised on both sides. Arrow jabbed with his left, hard enough to rock him off balance, and then swung his right and sent him some six feet crashing onto the chair. As he was reaching to yank him up, presumably to attend to the other eye, I got there and put my arm around his neck from behind, and my knee in his back. Tuttle was there, trying to grab Arrow’s sleeve. David was circling around, apparently with the notion of getting in between them, which is rotten tactics. Louise was making shrill noises.

  “Okay,” I told them, “just back off. I’ve got him locked.” Arrow tried to wriggle, found that the only question was which would snap first, his neck or his back, and quit. Wolfe spoke, disgusted, saying they had better go. Paul had scrambled to his feet, and for a second I thought he was going to take a poke at Arrow while I held him, but David had his arm, pulling him away. Tuttle went to Louise and started her out, and David got Paul moving. At the door to the hall David turned to protest to Wolfe, “You shouldn’t have let him in, you might have known.” When they were all in the hall I unlocked Arrow and went to see them out, and as they crossed the threshold I wished them good night, but only David wished me one in return.

  Back in the office Johnny Arrow was sitting in the red leather chair, working his head gingerly forward and back to check on his neck. I may have been a little thorough, but with a complete stranger how can you tell?

  IV

  I SAT WITH MY BACK to my desk and took him in as an object with assorted points of interest. He was a uranium millionaire, the very newest kind. He was a chronic jaw-puncher, no matter where. He knew a good-looking nurse when he saw one, and acted accordingly. And he had been nominated as a candidate for the electric chair. Quite a character for one so young. He wasn’t bad-looking himself, unless you insist on the kind they use for cigarette ads. His face and hands weren’t as rough and weathered as I would have expected of a man who had spent five years in the wilderness pecking at rocks, but since finding Black Elbow he had had time to smooth up some.

  He quit working his head and returned my regard with a stare of curiosity from brown eyes that had wrinkles at their corners from squinting for uranium. “That was quite a squeeze,” he said in his soft drawl, no animosity. “I thought my neck was broken.”

  “It should have been,” Wolfe told him severely. “Look at that chair.”

  “Oh, I’ll pay for the chair.” He got a big roll of lettuce from his pants pocket. “How much?”

  “Mr. Goodwin will send you a bill.” Wolfe was scowling. “My office is not an arena for gladiators. You came, I suppose, in response to the message we left for you?”

  He shook his head. “I didn’t get any message. If you sent it to the hotel, I haven’t been there since morning. What did it say?”

  “Just that I wanted to see you.”

  “I didn’t get it.” He lifted a hand to massage the side of his neck. “I came because I wanted to see you.” He emphasized a word by stretching it. “I wanted to see that Paul Fyfe too, but I didn’t know he was here, that was just luck. I wanted to see him about a trick he tried to work on a friend of mine. You know about the hot-water bags.”

  Wolfe nodded. “And me?”

  “I wanted to see you because I understand you’re fixing it up that I killed my partner, Bert Fyfe.” The brown eyes had narrowed a little. Evidently they squinted at other things besides uranium. “I wanted to ask if you needed any help.”

  Wolfe grunted. “Your information is faulty, Mr. Arrow. I have been hired to investigate and decide whether any of the circumstances of Mr. Fyfe’s death warrant a police inquiry, and for that I do need help. There is no question of ‘fixing it up,’ as you put it. Of course your offer of help was ironic, but I do need it. Shall we proceed?”

  Arrow laughed. No guffaws; just an easy little chuckle that went with the drawl. “That depends on how,” he said. “Proceed how?”

  “With an exchange of inf
ormation. I need some, and you may want some. First, I assume that you got what you already have from Miss Goren. If I’m wrong, correct me. You must have talked with her since four o’clock this afternoon. No doubt she thought she was reporting events accurately, but if she gave you the impression that I’m after you with malign intent she was wrong. Do you care to tell me whether the information that brought you here came from Miss Goren?”

  “Certainly it did. She had dinner with me. Doctor Buhl came to the restaurant for her to bring her here.”

  If I’m giving the impression that he was eager to co-operate with Wolfe I am wrong. He was merely bragging. He was jumping at the chance to tell somebody, anybody, that Miss Goren had let him buy her a dinner.

  “Then,” Wolfe said, “you should realize that her report was ex parte, though I don’t say she deliberately colored it. I will say this, and will have it typed and sign it if you wish, that so far I have found no shred of evidence to inculpate you with regard to Bertram Fyfe’s death. Let’s get on to facts. What do you know about the hot-water bags? Not what any one has told you, not even Miss Goren, but what do you know from your own observation?”

  “Nothing whatever. I never saw them.”

  “Or touched them?”

  “Of course not. Why would I touch them?” The drawl never accelerated. “And if you’re asking because that Paul Fyfe says he found them empty, what has that got to do with facts?”

  “Possibly nothing. I’m not a gull. When did you last see Bertram Fyfe alive?”

  “Saturday evening, just before we left to go to the theater. I went in just for a minute.”

  “Miss Goren was there with him?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “You didn’t go in to see him when you returned from the theater?”

  “No. Do you want to know why?”

  “I already know. You found what Mr. David Fyfe calls a situation, and you went out again, abruptly. I have inferred that you went to look for Paul Fyfe. Is that correct?”

  “Sure, and I found him. After what Miss Goren told us I would have spent the night finding him, but I didn’t have to. I found him down in the bar.”

  “And assaulted him.”

  “Sure I did. I wasn’t looking for him to shine his shoes.” The easy little chuckle rippled out, pleasant and peaceful. “I guess I ought to be glad a cop stepped in because I was pretty mad.” He looked at me with friendly interest. “That was quite a squeeze you gave me.”

  “What then?” Wolfe asked. “I understand you didn’t return to the apartment.”

  “I sure didn’t. Another cop came, but I was still mad and I didn’t want to be held, so they got mad. They put handcuffs on me and one of them took me to a station house and locked me up. I wouldn’t tell them who it was I had hit or why I hit him, and I guess they were trying to find him to make a charge. Finally they let me use a phone, and I got someone to send a lawyer and he talked me out. I went to the apartment and found that Paul Fyfe there, and that Tuttle and his wife, and Bert was dead. That doctor was there too.”

  “Of course it was a shock to find him dead.”

  “Yes, it was. It wouldn’t have been if I had killed him, is that it?” Johnny Arrow chuckled. “If you’re really straight on this, if you’re not trying to fix me up, let me tell you something, mister. Bert and I had been knocking around together for five years, some pretty rough going. We never starved to death, but we came close to it. Nobody ever combed our hair for us. When we found Black Elbow it took a lot of hard fast work to sew up the claims, and neither of us could have swung it alone. That was when we had a lawyer put our agreement in writing, so if something happened to one of us there wouldn’t be some outsiders mixing in and making trouble. It had got so we liked to be together, even when we rubbed. That was why I came to New York with him when he asked me to. There was nothing in New York I wanted. We could handle all our business matters in Black Elbow and Montreal. I sure didn’t come here with him to kill him.”

  Wolfe was regarding him steadily. “Then he didn’t come to New York on business?”

  “No, sir. He said it was a personal matter. After we got here he got in touch with his sister and brothers, and I had the idea something was eating him from away back. He went to Mount Kisco a few times and took me along. We rode all around the place in a Cadillac. We went to the house where he was born, and went all through it – there’s an Italian family living there now. We went and had ice cream sodas at Tuttle’s drugstore. We went to see a woman that ran a rooming house he had lived in once, but she had gone years ago. Just last week he found out she was living in Poughkeepsie, and we drove up there.”

  It took him quite a while to get that much out because he never speeded up. There was the advantage that he didn’t have to stop for breath. “I seem to be talking a lot,” he said, “but I’m talking about Bert. For five years I didn’t do much talking except to him, and now I guess I want to talk about him.”

  He cocked his head to consider a moment, and then went on. “I wouldn’t want to be fixed up, and I wouldn’t want to fix anyone else up, but I guess that was too vague what I said about something eating Bert from away back. He told me a little about it when we were sitting under a rock one day up in Canada. He said if we really hit it he might go back home and attend to some unfinished business. Do you know how his father died and how he was tried for murder?”

  Wolfe said he did.

  “Well, he told me about it. He said he had never claimed his share of the inheritance because he didn’t want any part of the mess he had run away from, and if you knew Bert that wouldn’t surprise you. He said he had always kidded himself that he had rubbed it out and forgotten it, but now that it looked as if we might hit big he was thinking he might go back and look around. And that’s what he did. If he had anyone in particular in mind he never told me, but I noticed a few things. When he told his family what he was doing he watched their faces. When he told them he was getting a complete transcript of the testimony at his trial for murder they didn’t like it. When he told them he had been to see the woman that ran the rooming house they didn’t like that either. It looked to me as if he was trying to give them an itch to scratch.”

  His eyes narrowed a little, showing crinkles. “But don’t get the idea I’m trying to fix anybody up. The doctor says Bert died of pneumonia, and I guess he’s a good doctor. I just didn’t want to leave it vague about why Bert came to New York. Got any more questions?”

  Wolfe shook his head. “Not at the moment. Later perhaps. But I suggested an exchange of information. Do you want any?”

  “Now I call that polite.” Arrow sounded as if he really appreciated it. “I guess not.” He rose from the chair, and stood a moment. “Only you said you’ve found no evidence to – what was that word?”

  “Inculpate.”

  “That’s it. So why don’t you just move out? That’s what Bert and I did when we found a field was dead, we moved out.”

  “I didn’t say it was dead.” Wolfe was glum. “It’s not, and that’s the devil of it. There is one mysterious circumstance that must somehow be explained before I can move out.”

  “What is it?”

  “I’ve already asked you about it, and you dispute it. If I broach it again with you I’ll be better armed. Mr. Goodwin will send you a bill for the chair when we know the amount. Good evening, sir.”

  He wanted more about the mysterious circumstance, but didn’t get it. Nothing doing. When he found the field was dead he moved out, and I went to the hall to open the door for him. After he crossed the sill he turned to tell me, “That sure was a squeeze.”

  In the office, Wolfe was leaning back with his eyes closed, frowning. I stowed the broken chair in a corner, put the others back in place, straightened up my desk for the night, locked the safe, and then approached him. “What’s the idea, trying to make him mad? If there’s a mysterious circumstance I must have been asleep. Name it.”

  He muttered, without opening his eyes,
“Hot-water bags.”

  I stretched and yawned. “I see. You force yourself to go to work, find there is no problem, and make one up. Forget it. Settle for the grand, which isn’t too bad for eight hours’ work, and vote no. Case closed.”

  “I can’t. There is a problem.” His eyes opened. “Who in the name of heaven emptied those bags, and why?”

  “Paul did. Why not?”

  “Because I don’t believe it. Disregarding his repeated declarations here this evening, though they were persuasive, consider the scene. He enters his brother’s room and finds him dead. He pulls the covers down and finds the hot-water bags empty. He turns to go and call his sister and brother-in-law, but it occurs to him that the empty bags are a weapon that may be used on Miss Goren. He doesn’t want them to come to his sister’s attention, so before he calls her he puts the bags in the bathroom. You accept that as credible?”

  “Certainly I do, but -”

  “If you please. I’ll use the ‘but.’ But try it this way. He enters his brother’s room and finds him dead. He pulls the covers down to feel the heart. The bags are there, with water in them. Seeing them, he conceives a stratagem – and remember, he is under the shock of just having found a corpse where he expected, presumably, to find his living brother. He conceives, on the spot, before calling the others, the notion of taking the bags to the bathroom and emptying them, so he can go at some future time to Miss Goren and tell her he found them empty; and he proceeds to do so. Do you accept that as credible?”

  “It’s a little fancy,” I admitted, “as you describe it.”

  “I describe it as it must have happened, if it happened. I say it didn’t. He noticed the bags only because they were empty; if they had been full he probably wouldn’t have been aware of them at all, there in a sickbed, now a deathbed. Doubtless there are men capable of so sly an artifice at such a moment, but he is not one of them. I am compelled to assume that he found the bags empty, and where does that leave me?”