Triple Jeopardy

by Rex Stout

  "Not, apparently, the one who assaulted Miss Stahl."

  "That was in the shop. Is that a point?"

  "I suppose not. Then we assume that the object is still here. The seventh and last assumption is this, that no proper search for such an object has been made. I hasten to add, Mr. Stebbins, that that is not a point either. You and your men

  "5

  are unquestionably capable of making a proper search, but I assume that you haven't done so here on account of Carl and Tina. Thinking them guilty, naturally you thought they wouldn't leave an incriminating object behind them. However, I can just ask you. Have you searched thoroughly?"

  "We've looked."

  "Yes. But granting all my assumptions, which of course you don't, has there been a proper search?"

  "No."

  "Then it's about time. Mr. Fickler!"

  Fickler nearly jumped out of his skin. He, like all the others, had been buried, intent on Wolfe's buildup, and the sudden pop and crackle of his own name startled him. He jerked his head up, and I had never seen his pudgy face look so bloated.

  "Me?" he squeaked.

  "You run this place and can help us. However, I address all of you who work here. Put your minds on this. You too, Jimmie. Stop a moment and listen."

  "I can work and listen too."

  "No. I want full attention."

  Jimmie backed off a step and stood.

  "This," Wolfe said, "could take a few minutes or it could take all night. What we're after is an object with something on it that identifies it as coming from this shop. Ideally it should be the name and address or phone number, but we'll take less if we have to. Since we're proceeding on my assumptions, we are supposing that it was inside the newspaper as Wallen was carrying it, so it is not a business card or match folder or bottle or comb or brush. It should be flat and of considerable dimensions. Another point, it should be easily recognizable. All of you went to the booth and were questioned by Wallen, but he showed you no such object and mentioned none. Is that correct?"

  They nodded and mumbled affirmatives. Ed said "Yes!" in a loud voice.

  "Then only the murderer saw it or was told of it. Wallen must for some reason have shown it to him or asked him 116

  about it, and not the rest of you; or its edge may have been protruding from the newspaper, unnoticed by the others; or the murderer may merely have suspected that Wallen had it. In any case, when opportunity offered later for him to dive into the booth and kill Wallen he got the object and disposed of it. If Mr. Stebbins is right about the surveillance that has been maintained, it is still here in the shop. I put it to you, and especially to you, Mr. Fickler: what is it and where is it?"

  They looked at one another and back at Wolfe. Philip said in his thin tenor, "Maybe it was the newspaper itself."

  "Possibly. I doubt it. Where is it, Mr. Cramer?"

  "At the laboratory. There's nothing on it or in it that could have brought Wallen here."

  "What else has been taken from here to the laboratory?"

  "Nothing but the scissors and the bottle that was used on Miss Stahl."

  "Then it's here. All right, jimmie, finish."

  Jimmie moved to the left of him and carried on.

  "It looks to me," Purley objected in his bass rumble, "like a turkey. Even with your assumptions. Say we find something like what you want, how do we know it's it? Even if we think it's it, where does that get us?"

  "We'll see when we find it." Wolfe was curt. "For one thing, fingerprints."

  "Nuts. If it belongs here of course it will have their prints."

  "Not their prints, Mr. Stebbins. Wallen's prints. If he picked it up in the car he touched it. If he touched it he left prints. As I understand it, he didn't go around touching things here. He entered, spoke to Mr. Fickler, was taken to the booth, and never left it alive. If we find anything with his prints on it we've got it. Have you equipment here? If not, I advise you to send for it at once, and also for Wallen's prints from your file. Will you do that?"

  Purley grunted. He didn't move.

  "Go ahead," Cramer told him. "Phone. Give him what he wants. Get it over. Then he'll give us what we want, what he's here for, or else."

  117

  Purley descended from the chair and headed for the phone at the cashier's counter.

  "The search," Wolfe said, "must be thorough and will take time. First I ask all of you to search your minds. What object is here, belongs here, that meets the specifications as I have described them? Surely you can tell us. Mr. Fickler?"

  "I've been thinking." Fickler shook his head. "I've been thinking hard. I don't know unless it's a towel, and why would he carry a towel like that?"

  "He wouldn't. Anyway a towel wouldn't help us any, so I reject it. Philip?"

  "No, sir. I don't know what."

  "Tom?"

  Tom just shook his head gloomily.

  "Ed?"

  "You've got me. Pass."

  "Miss Stahl?"

  "I think he might have been keeping the paper because there was something in it he wanted to read. I know I often do that, say it's in an evening paper and I don't have time�"

  "Yes. We'll consider that. Jimmie?"

  "I don't know a thing like that in the shop, Mr. Wolfe. Not a thing."

  "Pfui." Wolfe was disgusted. "Either you have no brains at all, or they're temporarily paralyzed, or you're all in a conspiracy. I'm looking straight at such an object right now."

  From behind I couldn't see where his gaze was directed, but I didn't have to. The others could, and I saw them. Eleven pairs of eyes, including Purley's�he had finished at the phone and rejoined us�were aimed at the magazine table next to Janet's chair from eleven different angles. Up to that moment my brain may have been as paralyzed as the others', but it could still react to a stimulus. I left the stool and stood right behind Wolfe, ready if and when needed.

  "You mean the magazines?" Cramer demanded.

  "Yes. You subscribe to them, Mr. Fickler? They come through the mail? Then the name and address is on them."

  "Not on this one," said the dick on the other side of 118

  slftagazine table, picking up the New Yorker on top. iJDfop it!" Cramer barked. "Don't touch it!" io," Wolfe conceded, "that comes in a wrapper. But don't. For instance that Time, there on the shelf belie addressee is on the cover. Surely it deserves examinaand others too. What if he took it from here and had it jlfcis pocket when he stole the car and drove up Broadway? in the excitement of his misadventure he failed to notice at it had dropped from his pocket and was on the seat of i car? And Wallen found it there, took it, and saw the name ad address on it? You have sent for the equipment and Walt's prints, Mr. Stebbins? Then we--"

  i "Oh! I remember!" Janet cried. She was pointing a finger. ifou remember, Jimmie? This morning I was standing here, , you came by with a hot towel and you had that magazine find you tossed it under there, and I asked if you had been jtiteaming it, and you said--"

  Jimmie leaped. I thought his prey was Janet and in spite of �Everything I was willing to save her life, but Wolfe and the chair were in my way and cost me a fifth of a second. And it wasn't Janet he was after, it was the magazine. He went for it in a hurtling dive and got his hands on it, but then the three dicks, not to mention Cramer and Purley, were on his neck and various other parts of him. It was a handsome pile-up. Janet, except for pulling her feet back under her chair out of harm's way, did not move, nor did she make a sound. I suppose she was considering what to say to the reporters. "Confound it," Wolfe grumbled savagely behind me. "My barber." Anyhow that haircut was practically done.

  jjs stubborn as Cramer was, he never did learn why Wolfe uU went to get a haircut that day. Eventually he stopped trying.

  He learned plenty about Jimmie Kirk. Kirk was wanted

  119

  as a bail-jumper, under another name, in Wheeling, West Virginia, on an old charge as a car stealer, with various fancy complications such as slugging a respected citizen who had
surprised him in the act. Apparently he had gone straight in New York for a couple of years and had then resumed his former avocation. Unquestionably he had been fortified with liquids that Monday evening. Driving a stolen car while drunk is a risky operation, especially with a stolen magazine in your pocket.

  As for Carl and Tina, I took a strong position on them Tuesday evening in the office after they had been sent up to the south room to bed.

  "You know damn well what will happen," I told Wolfe. "They won't go to Ohio or anywhere else, they'll stay here. Some day, maybe next week, maybe next year, they'll be confronted and they'll be in trouble. Being in trouble, they will come to me, because Carl likes me and because I rescued them this time--" Wolfe snorted. 'You did!"

  "Yes, sir. I had already noticed that magazine there several times, and it just happened to catch your eye. Anyhow, I am secretly infatuated with Tina so I'll try to help them and will get my finger caught, and you'll have to butt in again because you can't get along without me. It will go on like that year after year. Why not take care of it now and live in peace? There are people in Washington who owe you something, for instance Carpenter. Start him working on it. Do you want them hanging in the air on a thread over your head the rest of your life? I don't. It will cost a measly buck for a phone call, and I can get that from the fifty they have earmarked for us. I have Carpenter's home number, and I might as well get him right now."

  No comment.

  I put my hand on the phone. "Person to person, huh?"

  Wolfe grunted. "I got my naturalization papers twenty four years ago."

  "I wasn't discussing you. You've caught it from Janet," I said coldly and lifted the phone and dialed.

  120

  a was doing two things at once. With my hands I was getting my armpit holster and the Marley .32 from a drawer of my desk, and with my tongue I was giving Nero Wolfe a lecture on economics.

  "The most you can hope to soak him," I stated, "is five hundred bucks. Deduct a C for twenty per cent for overhead and another C for expenses incurred, that leaves three hundred. Eighty-five per cent for income tax will leave you with forty-five bucks clear for the wear and tear on your brain and my legs, not to mention the risk. That wouldn't buy--"

  "Risk of what?" He muttered that only to be courteous, to show that he had heard what I said, though actually he wasn't listening. Seated behind his desk, he was scowling, not at me but at the crossword puzzle in the London Times.

  "Complications," I said darkly. "You heard him explain it. Playing games with a gun is sappy." I was contorted, buckling the strap of the holster. That done, I picked up my coat. "Since you're listed in the red book as a detective, and since I draw pay, such as it is, as your licensed assistant, I'm all for detecting for people on request. But this bozo wants to do it himself, using our firearm as a prop." I felt my tie to see if it was straight. I didn't cross to the large mirror on the far wall of the office for a look, because whenever I did so in Wolfe's presence he snorted. "We might just as well," I declared, "send it up to him by messenger."

  "Pfui," Wolfe muttered. "It is a thoroughly conventional proceeding. You are merely out of humor because you don't

  121

  like Dazzle Dan. If it were Pleistocene Polly you would be zealous."

  "Nuts. I look at the comics occasionally just to be cultured. It wouldn't hurt any if you did."

  I went to the hall for my things, let myself out, descended the stoop, and headed toward Tenth Avenue for a taxi. A cold gusty wind came at my back from across the Hudson, and I made it brisk, swinging my arms, to get my blood going.

  It was true that I did not care for Dazzle Dan, the hero of the comic strip that was syndicated to two thousand newspapers --or was it two million?--throughout the land. Also I did not care for his creator, Harry Koven, who had called at the office Saturday evening, forty hours ago. He had kept chewing his upper lip with jagged yellow teeth, and it had seemed to me that he might at least have chewed the lower lip instead of the upper, which doesn't show teeth. Moreover, I had not cared for his job as he outlined it. Not that I was getting snooty about the renown of Nero Wolfe--a guy who has had a gun lifted has got as much right to buy good detective work as a rich duchess accused of murder--but the way this Harry Koven had programmed it he was going to do the detecting himself, so the only difference between me and a messenger boy was that I was taking a taxi instead of the subway.

  Anyhow Wolfe had taken the job and there I was. I pulled a slip of paper from my pocket, typed on by me from notes taken of the talk with Harry Koven, and gave it a look.

  MARCELLE KOVEN, Wife

  Adrian getz, friend or camp follower, maybe both patricia lowell, agent (manager?), promoter pete Jordan, artist, draws Dazzle Dan byram hildebrand, artist, also draws D.D.

  One of those five, according to Harry Koven, had stolen his gun, a Marley .32, and he wanted to know which one. As he had told it, that was all there was to it, but it was a cinch that if the missing object had been an electric shaver or a pair of cufflinks it would not have called for all that lip-chew122

  not to mention other signs of strain. He had gone out of , way, not once but twice, to declare that he had no reason i suspect any of the five of wanting to do any shooting. The and time he had made it so emphatic that Wolfe had ited and I had lifted a brow.

  Since a Marley .32 is by no means a collector's item, it was great coincidence that there was one in our arsenal and fthat therefore we were equipped to furnish Koven with the I prop he wanted for his performance. As for the performance itself, the judicious thing to do was wait and see, but there was no point in being judicious about something I didn't like, so I had already checked it off as a dud.

  I dismissed the taxi at the address on Seventy-sixth Street,

  east of Lexington Avenue. The house had had its front done

  over for the current century, unlike Nero Wolfe's old brown ' stone on West Thirty-fifth Street, which still sported the same

  ; front stoop it had started with. To enter this one you went

  down four steps instead of up seven, and I did so, after

  noting the pink shutters at the windows of all four floors and

  the tubs of evergreens flanking the entrance.

  I was let in by a maid in uniform, with a pug nose and lipstick about as thick as Wolfe spreads Camembert on a wafer. I told her I had an appointment with Mr. Koven. She said Mr. Koven was not yet available and seemed to think that settled it, making me no offer for my hat and coat.

  I said, "Our old brownstone, run by men only, is run better. When Fritz or I admit someone with an appointment we take his things."

  "What's your name?" she demanded in a tone indicating that she doubted if I had one.

  A loud male voice came from somewhere within. "Is that the man from Furnari's?"

  A loud female voice came from up above. "Cora, is that my dress?"

  I called out, "It's Archie Goodwin, expected by Mr. Koven at noon! It is now two minutes past twelve!"

  That got action. The female voice, not quite so loud, told me to come up. The maid, looking frustrated, beat it. I took

  123

  off my coat and put it on a chair, and my hat. A man came through a doorway at the rear of the hall and approached, speaking.

  "More noise. Noisiest goddam place. Up this way." He started up the stairs. "When you have an appointment with Sir Harry, always add an hour."

  I followed him. At the top of the flight there was a large square hall with wide archways to rooms at right and left. He led me through the one at the left.

  There are few rooms I can't take in at a glance, but that was one of them. Two huge TV cabinets, a monkey in a cage in a corner, chairs of all sizes and colors, rugs overlapping, a fireplace blazing away, the temperature around eighty--I gave it up and focused on the inhabitant. That was not only simpler but pleasanter. She was smaller than I would specify by choice, but otherwise acceptable, especially the wide smooth brow above the serious gray eyes,
and the cheekbones. She must have been part salamander, to look so cool and silky in that oven.

  "Dearest Pete," she said, "you are going to stop calling my husband Sir Harry."

  I admired that as a time-saver. Instead of the usual pronouncement of names, she let me know that she was Marcelle, Mrs. Harry Koven, and that the young man was Pete Jordan, and at the same time told him something.

  Pete Jordan walked across to her as for a purpose. He might have been going to take her in his arms or slap her or anything in between. But a pace short of her he stopped.

  "You're wrong," he told her in his aggressive baritone. "It's according to plan. It's the only way I can prove I'm not a louse. No one but a louse would stick at this, doing this crap month after month, and here look at me just because I like to eat. I haven't got the guts to quit and starve a while, so I call him Sir Harry to make you sore, working myself up to calling him something that will make him sore, and eventually I'll come to a boil and figure out a way to make Getz sore, and then I'll get bounced and I can start starving and be an artist. It's a plan." 124

  He turned and glared at me. "I'm more apt to go through with it if I Announce it in front of a witness. You're the witness. My name's Jordan, Pete Jordan."

  He shouldn't have tried glaring because he wasn't built for it. He wasn't much bigger than Mrs. Koven, and he had narrow shoulders and broad hips. An aggressive baritone and a defiant glare coming from that make-up just couldn't have the effect he was after. He needed coaching.

  "You have already made me sore," she told his back in a nice low voice, but not a weak one. "You act like a brat and you're too old to be a brat. Why not grow up?"

  He wheeled and snapped at her, "I look on you as a mother!"

  That was a foul. They were both younger than me, and she couldn't have had more than three or four years on him.

  I spoke. "Excuse me," I said, "but I am not a professional witness. I came to see Mr. Koven at his request. Shall I go hunt for him?"

  A thin squeak came from behind me. "Good morning, Mrs. Koven. Am I early?"

  As she answered I turned for a look at the owner of the squeak, who was advancing from the archway. He should have traded voices with Pete Jordan. He had both the size and presence for a deep baritone, with a well-made head topped by a healthy mat of gray hair nearly white. Everything about him was impressive and masterful, including the way he carried himself, but the squeak spoiled it completely. It continued as he joined us.