Triple Jeopardy

by Rex Stout

"You told me once," Carl practically whined, "that people in danger only have to mention your name."

  "Nuts. A pleasantry. I talk too much." But I was stuck. "Okay, come in and tell me about it."

  I led the way up the steps and let us in with my key. Inside, the first door on the left of the long wide hall was to what we called the front room, not much used, and I opened it, thinking to get it over with in there, but Fritz was there, dusting, so I took them along to the next door and on into the office. After moving a couple of chairs so they would be facing me I sat at my desk and nodded at them impatiently. Tina had looked around swiftly before she sat.

  "Such a nice safe room," she said, "for you and Mr. Wolfe, two such great men."

  "He's the great one," I corrected her. "I just caddy. What's this about danger?"

  "We love this country," Carl said emphatically. All of a sudden he started trembling, first his hands, then his arms and shoulders, then all over. Tina darted to him and grabbed his elbows and shook him, not gently, and said things to him in some language I wasn't up on. He mumbled back at her and then got more vocal, and after a little the trembling stopped, and she returned to her chair.

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  "We do love this country," she declared. I nodded. "Wait till you see Chillicothe, Ohio, where I was born. Then you will love it. How far west have you been, Tenth Avenue?"

  "I don't think so." Tina was doubtful. "I think Eighth Avenue. But that's what we want to do, go west." She decided it would help to let me have a smile, but it didn't work too well. "We can't go east, can we, into the ocean?" She opened her blue leather handbag and, with no fingering or digging, took something from it. "But you see, we don't know � where to go. This Ohio, maybe? I have fifty dollars here." "That would get you there," I allowed. She shook her head. "Oh, no. The fifty dollars is for you. I You know our name, Vardas? You know we are married? So I there is no question of morals, we are very high in morals, LQnly all we want is to do our work and live in private, Carl |�nd me, and we think--"

  Having heard the clatter of Wolfe's elevator descending 'from the plant rooms on the roof, I had known an interrup|tion was coming but had let her proceed. Now she stopped its Wolfe's steps sounded and he appeared at the door. Carl gJUid Tina both bounced to their feet. Two paces in, after a lauick glance at them, Wolfe stopped short and glowered at tie.

  "I didn't tell you we had callers," I said cheerfully, "besuse I knew you would be down soon. You know Carl, at the rber shop? And Tina, you've seen her there too. It's all ght, they're married. They just dropped in to buy fifty ticks' worth of--"

  Without a word or even a nod, Wolfe turned all of his yenth of a ton and beat it out and toward the door to the len at the rear. The Vardas family stared at the doorway t moment and then turned to me.

  "Sit down," I invited them. "As you said, he's a great man. Je's sore because I didn't notify him we had company, and was expecting to sit there behind his desk"--I waved a id--"and ring for beer and enjoy himself. He wouldn't gle a finger for fifty dollars. Maybe I won't either, but

  59

  let's see." I looked at Tina, who was back on the edge of her chair. "You were saying . . ."

  "We don't want Mr. Wolfe mad at us," she said in distress.

  "Forget it. He's only mad at me, which is chronic. What do you want to go to Ohio for)"

  "Maybe not Ohio." She tried to smile again. "It's what I said, we love this country and we want to go more into itfar in. We would like to be in the middle of it. We want you to tell us where to go, to help us�"

  "No, no." I was brusque. "Start from here. Look at you, you're both scared stiff. What's the danger Carl mentioned?"

  "I don't think," she protested, "it makes any difference�"

  "That's no good," Carl said harshly. His hands started trembling again, but he gripped the sides of his chair seat, and they stopped. His dark: eyes fastened on me. "I met Tina," he said in a low level voice, trying to keep feeling out of it, "three years ago in a concentration camp in Russia. If you want me to I will tell you. why it was that they would never have let us get out of there alive, not in one hundred years, but I would rather not t^lk so much about it. It makes me start to tremble, and I am. trying to learn to act and talk of a manner so I can quit trembling."

  I concurred. "Save it for some day after you stop trembling. But you did get out alive pounds "

  "Plainly. We are here/' There was an edge of triumph to the level voice. "I will not tell you about that either. But they think we are dead. Of covarse Vardas was not our name then, neither of us. We took that name later, when we got married in Istanbul. Then we so managed�"

  "You shouldn't tell an_y places," Tina scolded him. "No places at all and no people at all."

  "You are most right," Cjarl admitted. He informed me, "It was not Istanbul."

  I nodded. "Istanbul is out. You would have had to swim. You got married, that's th e point."

  "Yes. Then, later, we r*early got caught again. We did get caught, but�"

  "No!" Tina said positively. 60

  "Very well, Tina. You are most right. We went many , other places, and at a certain time in a certain way we crossed the ocean. We had tried very hard to come to this country according to your rules, but it was in no way possible. When we did get into New York it was more by an accident--no, ; I did not say that. I will not say that much. Only I will say we i>oot into New York. For a while it was so difficult, but it has been nearly a year now, since we got the jobs at the barber that life has been so fine and sweet that we are almost lliealthy again. What we eat! We have even got some money ||aved! We have got--"

  "Fifty dollars," Tina said hastily.

  "Most right," Carl agreed. "Fifty American dollars. I can as a fact that we would be healthy and happy beyond our nost dreams three years ago, except for the danger. The ager is that we did not follow your rules. I will not deny jt they are good rules, but for us they were impossible. ; cannot expect ourselves to be happy when we don't know at minute someone may come and ask us how we got here. i�e minute that just went by, that was all right, no one i, but here is the next minute. Every day is full of those nutes, so many. We have found a way to learn what would and we know where we would be sent back to. We exactly what would happen to us. I would not be sur if you felt a deep contempt when you saw me tremag the way I do, but to understand a situation like this I we you have to be somewhat close to it. As I am. As is. I am not saying you would tremble like me--after rTina never does--but I think you might have your own

  of showing that you were not really happy." irYeah, I might," I agreed. I glanced at Tina, but the exon on her face could have made me uncomfortable, so bked back at Carl. "But if I tried to figure a way out I doubt ||Would pick on spilling it to a guy named Archie Goodwin 'because he came to the barber shop where I worked. He tttvbe crazy about the rules you couldn't follow, and any there are just as many minutes in Ohio as there are in 'York."

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  "There is that fifty dollars." Carl extended his hands, not trembling, toward me.

  Tina gestured impatiently. "That's nothing to you," she said, letting bitterness into it for the first time. "We know that, it's nothing. But the danger has come, and we had to have someone tell us where to go. This morning a man came to the barber shop and asked us questions. An official! A policeman!"

  "Oh." I glanced from one to the other. "That's different. A policeman in uniform?"

  "No, in regular clothes, but he showed us a card in a case, New York Police Department. His name was on it, Jacob Wallen."

  "What time this morning?"

  "A little after nine o'clock, soon after the shop was open. He talked first with Mr. Fickler, the owner, and Mr. Fickler brought him around behind the partition to my booth, where I do customers when they're through in the chair or when they only want a manicure, and I was there, getting things together, and he sat down and took out a notebook and asked me questions. Then he�"

  "What kind of questions?"

  "A
ll about me. My name, where I live, where I came from, how long I've been working there, all that kind, and then about last night, where I was and what I was doing last night."

  "Did he say why he was curious about last night?"

  "No. He just asked questions."

  "What part of last night did he ask about? All of it?"

  "Yes, from the time the shop closes, half-past six, from then on."

  "Where did you tell him you came from?"

  "I said Carl and I are DPs from Italy. That's what we had decided to say. We have to say something when people are just curious."

  "I suppose you do. Did he ask to see your papers?"

  "No. That will come next." She set her jaw. "We can't go back there. We have to leave New York today�now."

  "What else did he ask?" 62

  t's all. It was mostly about last night." what? Did he question Carl too?" but not right after me. He sent me away, and Mr. sent Philip to him in the booth, and when Philip itout he sent Carl in, and when Carl came out he sent ie in. Jimmie was still in the booth with him when I : to Carl, up front by the rack, and we knew we had to IflUt. We waited until Mr. Fickler had gone to the back of shop for something, and then we just walked out. We it to our room down on the East Side and packed our stuff Started for Grand Central with it, and then we realized (didn't know anything about where to go and might make terrible mistake, so there in Grand Central we talked it p We decided that since the police were after us already Jdn't be any worse, but we weren't sure enough about roi the people we have met in New York, so the best thing be to come to you and pay you to help us. You're a sional detective, and anyway Carl likes you about the i of all the customers. You only tip him a dime, so it's not Bt. I have noticed you myself, the way you look. You look

  I a man who would break rules too--if you had to." Ip gave her a sharp look, suspicious, but if she was trying to jitter me she was very good. All that showed in her blue ; was the scare that had put them on the run and the hope me they were hanging on to for dear life. I looked at Carl. : scare was there too, but I couldn't see the hope. Still he : solid on the chair, with no sign of trembling, as I thought * myself that it would have been no surprise to him if I had eked up the phone and called the cops. Either he had his

  share of guts or he had run out entirely. I was irritated. "Damn it," I protested, "you bring it here lalready broke. What did you beat it for? That alone fixes | you. He was questioning the others too and he was concenJ tearing on last night. What about last night? What were you i doing, breaking some more rules?"

  They both started to answer, but she let him take it. He sisaid no, they weren't. They had gone straight home from I work and eaten in their room as usual. Tina had washed

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  some clothes, and Carl had read a book. Around nine they had gone for a walk, and had been back in their room and in bed before ten-thirty.

  I was disgusted. "You sure did it up," I declared. "If you're clean for last night, why didn't you stay put? You must have something in your heads or you wouldn't have stayed alive and got this far. Why didn't you use it?"

  Carl smiled at me. He really did smile, but it didn't make me want to smile back. "A policeman asking questions," he said in the level tone he had used before, "has a different effect on different people. If you have a country like this one and you are innocent of crime, all the people of your country are saying it with you when you answer the questions. That is true even when you are away from home�especially when you are away from home. But Tina and I have no country at all. The country we had once, it is no longer a country, it is just a place to wait to die, only if we are sent back there we will not have to wait. Two people alone cannot answer a policeman's questions anywhere in the world. It takes a whole country to speak to a policeman, and Tina and I�we do not have one."

  "You see," Tina said. "Here, take it." She got up and came to me, extending a hand with the money in it. "Take it, Mr. Goodwin! Just tell us where to go, all the little facts that will help us�"

  "Or we thought," Carl suggested, not hopefully, "that you might give us a letter to some friend, in this Ohio perhaps� not that we should expect too much for fifty dollars."

  I looked at them, with my lips pressed together. The morning was shot now anyway, with Wolfe sore and my chores not done. I swiveled to my desk and picked up the phone. Any one of three or four city employees would probably find out for me what kind of errand had taken a dick named Wallen to the Goldenrod Barber Shop, unless it was something very special. But with my finger in the dial hole I hesitated and then replaced the phone. If it was something hot I would be starting PD cars for our address, and Wolfe and I both have a prejudice against cops yanking people out of his office, no 64

  matter who they are, unless we ourselves have got them ready for delivery. So I swiveled again. Carl was frowning at me, his head moving from side to side. Tina was standing tense, the money clutched in her fist.

  "This is silly," I said. "If they're really after you, you'd i be throwing your money away on carfare to Ohio or anywhere else. Save it for a lawyer. I'll have to go up there and see what it's all about." I got up, crossed to the soundproof door to the front room, and opened it. "You can wait here. In here, please."

  'We'll go," Tina said, back to her gasping whisper again. "We won't bother you any more. Come, Carl--" ; "Skip it," I said curtly. "If this amounts to anything more than petty larceny you'd be nabbed sure as hell. This is my 'day for breaking a rule, and I'll be back soon. Come on, I'll put you in here, and I advise you to stay put."

  They looked at each other.

  "I like him," Carl said.

  Tina moved. She came and passed through into the front room, and Carl was right behind her.

  I told them to sit down and relax and not get restless, shut the door, went to the kitchen, where Wolfe was seated at the far end of the long table, drinking beer, and told him, "The check from Pendexter came and has been deposited. 1 That pair of foreigners have got themselves in a mess. I put them in the front room and told them to stay there until I get back."

  "Where are you going?" he demanded.

  "A little detective work, not in your class. I won't be gone ' long. You can dock me."

  I left.

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  aa

  gnaHE Goldenrod Barber Shop was in the basement of
  Goldenrod, with only six chairs and usually only four of them manned, and two manicures, was no Framinelli's, but it was well equipped and clean, and anyhow it had Ed, who was a little rough at tilting a head maybe but knew exactly how to handle my hair and had a razor so sharp and slick you never knew it was on you.

  I hadn't shaved that morning and as, at noon, I paid the taxi driver, entered the building, and descended the stairs to the basement, my plan of campaign was simple. I would get in Ed's chair, waiting if necessary, and ask him to give me a once-over, and the rest would be easy.

  But it was neither simple nor easy. A medium-sized mob of white-collar workers, buzzing and chattering, was ranged three deep along the wall of the corridor facing the door of the shop. Others, passing by in both directions, were stopping to try to look in, and a flatfoot, posted in the doorway, was telling them to keep moving. That did not look promising, or else it did, if that's how you like things. I swerved aside and halted for a survey through the open door and the glass. Joel Fickler, the boss, was at the rack where Carl usually presided, taking a man's coat to put on a hanger. A man with his hat on was backe
d up to the cashier's counter, with 66

  his elbows on it, facing the whole shop. Two other men with f their hats on were seated near the middle of the row of chairs for waiting customers, one of them next to the little table for magazines. They were discussing something without much enthusiasm. Two of the barbers' chairs, Ed's and Tom's, were occupied. The other two barbers, Jimmie and Philip, were on their stools against the wall. Janet, the other manicure, was not in sight.

  I stepped to the doorway and was going on in. The flatfoot blocked me.

  I lifted my brows at him. "What's all the excitement?" "Accident in here. No one allowed in." "How did the customers in the chairs get in? I'm a cus^tomer." "Only customers with appointments. You got one?" "Certainly." I stuck my head through the doorway and [yelled, "Ed! How soon?"

  The man leaning on the counter straightened up and | turned for a look. At sight of me he grunted. "I'll be damned. Who whistled for you?"

  ,. The presence of my old friend and enemy Sergeant Purley Stebbins of Manhattan Homicide gave the thing an entirely different flavor. Up to then I had just been mildly curious, i floating along. Now all my nerves and muscles snapped to , attention. Sergeant Stebbins is not interested in petty larceny. '�I didn't care for the possibility of having shown a pair of |, murderers to chairs in our front room.

  "Good God," Purley grumbled, "is this going to turn into >one of them Nero Wolfe babies?"

  "Not unless you turn it." I grinned at him. "Whatever it is, I dropped in for a shave, that's all, and here you boys are, to my surprise." The flatfoot had given me leeway, and I had crossed the sill. "I'm a regular customer here." I turned to Fickler, who had trotted over to us. "How long have I been leaving my hair here, Joel?"

  None of Fickler's bones were anywhere near the surface jjf-except on his bald head. He was six inches shorter than me, I which may have been one reason why I had never got a

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  straight look into his narrow black eyes. He had never liked me much since the day he had forgotten to list an appointment with Ed I had made on the phone, and I, under provocation, had made a few pointed remarks. Now he looked as if he had been annoyed by something much worse than remarks.