Rex Stout - Nero Wolfe 32

by Plot It Yourself

  I raised a brow. “Probably somewhere in the United States, and there are now fifty of them. I doubt if she sent it out of the country. Do you want me to find it?”

  “Yes,”

  I got up. “Are you in a hurry?”

  “Don’t clown. If such an envelope exists, and I strongly suspect that it does, I want to know where it is. If we can get our hands on it, all the better, but merely to locate it would be enough. Where would you start?”

  “I’d have to think it over. Her bank, her lawyer if she has one, her pastor if she goes to church, a relative or an intimate friend—”

  “Much too diffuse. It would take days. You might get a hint, or even better than a hint, from the executive secretary, Cora Ballard. Alice Porter joined that association in nineteen fifty-one, was dropped for nonpayment of dues in nineteen fifty-four, and rejoined in nineteen fifty-six. I gathered that Miss Ballard is extremely well informed about the members, and presumably she will help if she can. See her.”

  “Okay. She may not be enthusiastic. She wanted them to fire you. But I suppose she’ll—”

  The doorbell rang. I stepped to the hall, took a look through the one-way glass panel, and turned to tell Wolfe, “Cramer.” He made a face and growled, “I have nothing for him.” I asked if I should tell him that and ask him to come back tomorrow, and he said yes, and then said, “Confound it, he’ll be after me all day and you won’t be here. Let him in.”

  I went to the front and opened the door and got a shock, or rather, a series of shocks. Cramer said, “Good morning,” distinctly, as he crossed the threshold, plainly implying that I was a fellow being. Then he dropped his hat on the bench and waited while I closed the door, instead of tramping on to the office. Then he not only told Wolfe good morning but asked him how he was. Evidently it was Brotherhood Day. I had to control an impulse to slap him on the back or poke him in the ribs. To cap it, he said as he sat in the red leather chair, “I hope you won’t be charging me rent for this chair.” Wolfe said politely that a guest was always welcome to a seat to rest his legs, and Cramer said, “And a glass of beer?”

  It was a ticklish situation. If Wolfe pushed the button, the beer signal, two shorts and a long, Fritz would get a wrong impression and there would have to be an explanation. He looked at me, and I got up and went to the kitchen, got a tray and a bottle and a glass, telling Fritz it was for a guest, and returned. As I entered Cramer was saying, “… but I never expected to see the day when you would cut down on your beer. What next? Thank you, Goodwin.” He poured. “What I’m here for, I came to apologize. One day last week—Friday, I think it was—I accused you of using Jane Ogilvy for a decoy and bungling it. I may have been wrong. If you or Goodwin told anybody you were going after her he’s not admitting it. And Kenneth Rennert was killed that same night, and you certainly wouldn’t have set them both up. So I owe you an apology.” He picked up the glass and drank.

  “It’s welcome,” Wolfe told him. “All the more since you owe me a dozen other apologies that you have never made. Let this one do for all.”

  “You’re so goddam impervious.” Cramer put the glass down on the stand. “Instead of coming to apologize, I could have come to tell you to stop interfering with a homicide investigation. You sent Goodwin to Putnam County to coerce a woman into coming to see you, a woman who was under surveillance by officers of the law.”

  “Possibly you did.”

  “Did what?”

  “Come for that purpose. There was no coercion.”

  “The hell there wasn’t. She went to the sheriff’s office in Carmel this morning and told him to keep his men away from her place, and she said that Goodwin had told her that Sergeant Stebbins had sicked Putnam County on her because he suspected her of murder, and she had better go with him to see you, and go quick. That’s not coercion?” He looked at me. “Did you tell her that?”

  “Sure I did. Why not? Have you crossed her off?”

  “No.” He went to Wolfe. “He admits it. I call that interfering in a murder investigation, and so would any judge. And this is once too often. I’m being fair. I have apologized for accusing you of something I can’t prove. But by God, I can prove this.”

  Wolfe put his palms on the chair arms. “Mr. Cramer. I know, of course, what you’re after. You have no intention or desire to charge me formally with obstructing justice; that would be both troublesome and futile. What you want is to learn whether I got any information that would help you in a case that has you baffled; and if I did, you want to know what it is. I’m willing to oblige you, and to the full. As you know, Mr. Goodwin has an extraordinary memory. Archie. Give Mr. Cramer our conversation with Miss Porter last evening. In toto. Omit nothing.”

  I shut my eyes for a moment to concentrate. Getting it straight with no fumbling would be a little tricky, with all the names and titles and dates, and the way Wolfe had steered it along to the main point. Evidently, for some reason, he wanted Cramer to have it all, and I didn’t want him stopping me to insert something I was leaving out. I started slow, speeded up when I got going, and tripped only once, when I said “extortion” instead of “attempted extortion,” and I caught that and corrected it. Toward the end, knowing that I had it by the tail, I leaned back and crossed my legs just to show that there was really nothing to it for a man of my caliber. Finishing, I yawned. “Sorry,” I said, “but I’m a little short on sleep. Did I skip anything?”

  “No,” Wolfe said. “Satisfactory.” His eyes went to Cramer. “So you have it, every word. There was manifestly no attempt to interfere with a homicide investigation; murder was mentioned only incidentally. You are welcome to the information I got from her.”

  “Yeah.” Cramer didn’t sound grateful. “I could put it under a fingernail. She didn’t tell you a single solitary thing. And I don’t believe it, and you don’t expect me to. Why did you let her go? You had her. You had her backed into a corner that she couldn’t possibly squirm out of, and you quit and sent her home. Why?”

  Wolfe turned a hand over. “Because nothing more was to be expected of her, at the moment. She had identified X for me. More accurately, she had given me a hint, a strong one, and I wanted to confirm it. I have done so. Now that I know him, or her, the rest should be easy.”

  Cramer took a cigar from his pocket, stuck it in his mouth, and clamped his teeth on it. I wasn’t as impressed as he was, since the second I had seen Wolfe lean back and shut his eyes and start his lips going I had known there would soon be some fireworks, though I hadn’t expected anything quite so showy. Not caring to have Cramer know that this development was as new to me as to him, I yawned again.

  Cramer removed the cigar. “You mean that, do you? You know who killed Simon Jacobs and Jane Ogilvy and Kenneth Rennert?”

  Wolfe shook his head. “I haven’t said so. I know who wrote those stories and instigated the plagiarism claims. You’re investigating a series of murders; I’m investigating a series of frauds. I have my X and you have yours. True, the two Xs are the same person, but I need only expose a swindler; it will be your job to expose a murderer.”

  “You know who he is?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you got it from what Alice Porter told you last night? And Goodwin has repeated all of it?”

  “Yes. I have confirmed the hint she gave me.”

  Cramer’s fingers had closed on the cigar, which was probably no longer fit for chewing, let alone smoking. “Okay. That’s not your kind of lie. What was the hint?”

  “You have heard it.” Wolfe’s fingertips met at the peak of his middle mound. “No, Mr. Cramer. Surely that’s enough. I asked Mr. Goodwin to repeat that conversation, and I told you it contained a disclosure of the identity of X, only because I felt I owed you something and I don’t like to be in debt. I know what it cost you to tender me an apology. Even though you did it in desperation, because you’re stumped, and even though you immediately reverted to your customary manner, it took great will power and I appreciate it. So now
we’re even. You know everything that I know, and it will be interesting to see whether you get your murderer first, or I my swindler.”

  Cramer stuck the cigar in his mouth, learned too late that it was in shreds, jerked it out and threw it at my wastebasket, and missed by two feet.

  A while back, when it took me nearly two hours to spot the screw Wolfe was going to use on Alice Porter, I remarked that you had probably seen it and thought me as dumb as they come, and now of course you are thinking that Cramer and I were both dumb, since you have almost certainly caught on to the hint Wolfe had got from Alice Porter and you now know who X was. But you’re reading it, and Cramer and I were in it. If you don’t believe that makes a big difference, try it once. Anyhow, even though you now know X’s name, you may be curious to see how Wolfe nailed him—or her. So I’ll go on.

  When Cramer left, some ten minutes later, he wasn’t curious because there wasn’t room enough in him for it. He was too damn sore. When I stepped back into the office after going to the hall to see that he didn’t forget to cross the sill before he shut the door, the phone was ringing and I went and got it. It was Saul Panzer. He asked for Wolfe, and Wolfe, lifting his receiver, told me, “You might catch Miss Ballard before she goes to lunch.”

  I may not be much at hints, but I got that one. I departed.

  18

  Of all the thousands of ways of getting a credit mart from a woman, young or old, high on the list is to take her to lunch at Rusterman’s, the restaurant that was owned and operated by Marko Vukcic when he died. Since Wolfe is still the trustee of the estate, there is always a table for me, and when Cora Ballard and I edged through the crowd to the green rope and Felix caught sight of me, he led us to the banquette at the left wall. As we sat and took our napkins Cora Ballard said, “If you’re trying to impress me you’re doing fine.”

  I’m all for Wolfe’s rule not to discuss business at meals, but that time it couldn’t be helped because she had to be back at her office by two-thirty for an appointment. So after we had taken a sip of our cocktails I said I supposed she knew a good deal about all of the NAAD members. No, she said, not all of them. Many of them lived in other parts of the country, and of those in the metropolitan area some were active in NAAD affairs and some weren’t. How well did she know Alice Porter? Fairly well; she had always come to craft meetings until recently, and in 1954, when Best and Green had decided to publish her book, The Moth That Ate Peanuts, she had visited the NAAD office several times for advice on the contract.

  Time out to get started on our ham timbales.

  What I was after, I said, was a document that we had reason to believe Alice Porter had left in somebody’s care. Did members deposit important documents with the NAAD for safe-keeping? No, the association had no facilities for that kind of service. Did she have any idea with whom or where Alice Porter might leave something very important—for instance, an envelope to be opened if and when she died?

  She had started a loaded fork to her mouth but stopped it. “I see,” she said. “That might be pretty smart, if—What’s in the envelope?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t even know there is one. Detectives spend most of their time looking for things that don’t exist. Mr. Wolfe thought it was possible she had left it with you.”

  “She didn’t. If we started doing things like that for members we’d have to have a vault. But I might have some ideas. Let’s see.… Alice Porter.” She opened her mouth for the forkload.

  She had six ideas:

  1. Alice Porter’s safe-deposit box. If she had one.

  2. Mr. Arnold Green of Best and Green, who had published her book. He was one of the few publishers who liked to do favors for authors, even one whose book had been a flop.

  3. Her father and mother, who lived somewhere on the West Coast, Miss Ballard thought in Oregon.

  4. Her agent, if she still had one. Lyle Bascomb had taken her on after her book had been published, but he might have dropped her by now.

  5. The woman who ran Collander House on West 82nd Street, the hive-home for girls and women who couldn’t afford anything fancy, where Alice Porter had lived for several years. Her name was Garvin, Mrs. Something Garvin. One of the girls in the NAAD office was living there now. She was the kind of woman anybody would trust with anything.

  6. The lawyer who handled her suit against Ellen Sturdevant. Cora Ballard couldn’t remember his name, but I did, from the pile of paper I had waded through at the office.

  Over the years I have chased a lot of wild geese, but that was about the wildest, asking a bunch of strangers about something that maybe didn’t exist, and if it did maybe they had never heard of it, and if one of them had it why should he tell me? So I spent five hours at it. I tackled Lyle Bascomb, the agent, first, because his office was only a short walk from Rusterman’s. He was out to lunch and would be back any minute. So I waited fifty minutes. He returned from lunch at 3:33, and his eyes were having a little trouble focusing. He had to think a minute before he could remember who Alice Porter was. Oh yes, that one. He had taken her on when she had a book published, but had dropped her when she made that plagiarism claim. I gathered from his tone that anyone who made a plagiarism claim was a louse.

  At the lawyer’s office I had to wait only thirty minutes, which was an improvement. He would be glad to help. When a lawyer says he will be glad to help he means that he will be glad to relieve you of any information you may have that he could ever possibly use, and at the same time will carefully refrain from burdening you with any information that you don’t already have. That one wasn’t even going to admit that he had ever heard of a woman named Alice Porter until I told him I had read three letters signed by him referring to her as his client. I finally pried it out of him that he hadn’t seen her or communicated with her for some time. Two years? Three? He couldn’t say definitely, but an extended period. As for the information he relieved me of, I will only say that I put him under no obligation.

  It was after five o’clock when I arrived at the office of Best and Green, so it was a tossup whether I would catch him, but I did. The receptionist halted a lipstick operation long enough to tell me that Mr. Green was in conference, and I was asking her if she had any idea how long the conference would last, when a man appeared from within and headed for the door, and she called to him, “Mr. Green, someone to see you,” and I went for him, pronouncing my name, and he said, “I’m making a train,” and loped out. So, as I say, I caught him.

  I had used up half of Cora Ballard’s ideas. Of those left, two weren’t very promising. There are about a thousand banks with safe-deposit vaults in New York, and anyway I didn’t have keys to all the boxes, and besides, it was after hours. Taking a plane to the West Coast to look up Alice Porter’s parents seemed a little headlong. Finding an empty taxi in midtown Manhattan at that time of day was almost as hopeless, but I finally grabbed one and gave the driver the address on West 82nd Street.

  Collander House could have been worse. The girl in the neat little office had a vase of daisies on her desk, and the room across the hall, which she called the lounge, where she sent me to wait for Mrs. Garvin, had two vases of daisies, comfortable chairs, and rugs on the floor. Another thirty-minute wait. When Mrs. Garvin finally appeared, one straight look from her sharp gray eyes confirmed Cora Ballard’s statement that anyone would trust her with anything. Certainly she remembered Alice Porter, who had lived there from August 1951 until May 1956. She had the dates in her head because she had looked them up at the request of a city detective last week, and had recalled them that morning because a woman had come and asked about Alice Porter. She hadn’t seen Alice Porter for three years and was keeping nothing for her. Not even some little thing like an envelope? No. Which didn’t mean a thing. She was a busy woman, and it was quicker to say no than to explain that it was none of my business and have me trying to persuade her that it was. A lie isn’t a lie if it is in reply to a question that the questioner has no right to ask.

  A
ll in all, a hell of an afternoon. Not one little crumb. And the immediate future was as bleak as the immediate past: another meatless dinner for Wolfe, after a beerless day. More gloom. He would be there at his desk, glaring into space, wallowing in it. As I climbed out of the taxi in front of the old brownstone I had a notion to go to Bert’s diner around the corner and eat hamburgers and slaw and discuss the world situation for an hour or so, but, deciding it wouldn’t be fair to deprive him of an audience, I mounted the stoop and used my key on the door; and, with one foot inside and one out, stopped and stared. Wolfe was emerging from the kitchen, carrying a large tray loaded with glasses. He turned in at the office. I brought my other foot in, shut the door, and proceeded.

  I stood and looked it over. One of the yellow chairs was at the end of my desk. Six of them were in two rows facing Wolfe’s desk. Five more of them were grouped over by the big globe. The table at the far wall was covered with a yellow cloth, and on it was an assortment of bottles. Wolfe was there, transferring the glasses from the tray to the table.

  I spoke. “Can I help?”

  “No. It’s done.”

  “A big party, apparently.”

  “Yes. At nine o’clock.”

  “Have the guests all been invited?”

  “Yes.”

  “Am I invited?”

  “I was wondering where you were.”

  “Working. I found no envelope. Is Fritz disabled?”

  “No. He is grilling a steak.”

  “The hell he is. Then the party’s a celebration?”

  “No. I am anticipating events by a few hours. I have a job ahead of me that I prefer not to tackle on an empty stomach.”

  “Do I get some of the steak?”

  “Yes. There are two.”

  “Then I’ll go up and comb my hair.”

  I went.

  19

  Wolfe, at his desk, put down his coffee cup and sent his eyes to the ex-chairman of the Joint Committee on Plagiarism. “I like my way better, Mr. Harvey,” he said curtly. “You may ask questions when I finish if I haven’t already answered them.” His head went right, and left. “I could merely name the culprit and tell you that I have enough evidence to convict her, but while that would complete my job it wouldn’t satisfy your curiosity.”