by Rex Stout
“Yes,” he said. “You have made it clear.”
Wolfe opened his eyes and grunted.
“Obviously,” Ballou said, “I’m in a trap. I can’t check a single thing you have said. I did want a drink, I always have one as soon as I get home, but what I had to have was a little time to consider. I have decided that the probability is that the facts are as you have given them, partly because I don’t see what you could possibly expect to gain by inventing them. The only alternative is to walk out, and I can’t risk it. I have a question: when did Miss Kerr – when did that man, Cather, first learn my name?”
Wolfe turned. “Do we know, Archie?”
“No, sir.” To Ballou: “I can find out, if it’s important.”
“Could it have been as long as four months ago?”
“Certainly.”
“I would like to know. It may not be important now, but I would like to know.” He got the glass and took a sip. “I have nothing to say to your guess that I killed Miss Kerr except that I didn’t. Would a man in my position, of my standing – No, that wouldn’t impress you. To me the idea is simply fantastic. You say you expect me to help you identify the man who killed her. If Cather didn’t, and if the facts are as you say, I certainly want to, but how?”
“First you,” Wolfe said. “Where were you Saturday morning?”
“I was at home all morning and until about three o’clock. We had guests for lunch.”
“If pressed, could you account for every half-hour from eight o’clock to noon?”
“I think so. There were phone calls.”
“Could your wife?”
“Why the devil should she?”
Wolfe shook his head. “Don’t start that. You have held your poise admirably; don’t spoil it. I don’t drag your wife in, circumstances do. Did she know of your association with Miss Kerr?”
“No.”
“How sure are you?”
“Completely. I have taken great precautions.”
Wolfe frowned. “You see how difficult it is. It may be highly desirable for Mr. Goodwin or me to see your wife, but with what excuse, without involving you? It must be managed somehow, and Mr. Goodwin -”
“It will not be managed! You will not see my wife!”
“Your poise. As you said, you’re in a trap; don’t thrash about. If it wasn’t you or your wife, who was it? I must have a fact, a hint, a name. You spent many intimate hours with her. You may have to spend hours with me. She told you of places she went and people she knew. Tell me.”
A muscle on Ballou’s neck was twitching. “I insist, I insist, that my wife is not to be disturbed. You expect to be paid, naturally. I never ‘thrash about.’ How much?”
Wolfe nodded. “Naturally for you. Men with money always assume there is no other medium of exchange. I am engaged on behalf of Mr. Cather, and you can’t hire me or pay me. I am coercing you, certainly, but only to get information. We shall disturb your wife only if it is requisite. From you I want all the facts, all -”
The phone rang. I turned and got it. “Nero Wolfe’s -”
“Saul, Archie. I’m -”
“Hold it.” I put it down and moved, to the hall and on to the kitchen, and took the phone.
“We have company. Okay, shoot.”
“You’re going to have more company. I’m licked. I have met my match. Julie Jaquette. I would give a week’s pay to know if you could have handled her. The trouble is partly that Nero Wolfe’s a celebrity, so she says, but mostly it’s the orchids. If he will show her his orchids she’ll tell him all about Isabel Kerr. She won’t tell me a damn thing. Nothing.”
“Well, well. It might have taken me a whole ten minutes.”
“Go soak it. I said a week’s pay. She -”
“Where are you?”
“A booth on Christopher Street. The one at the Ten Little Indians had a line waiting. She’s working. She’ll be off until eight and then from nine-ten to ten-fifteen.”
“Then it’s simple. Bring her at nine-ten.”
“Like hell it’s simple.” It clicked and he was gone.
I don’t expect you to believe me when I report the first words I heard as I re-entered the office, but you have a right to know why we got about as little from Avery Ballou as Saul had got from Julie Jaquette. The words, uttered by Ballou, were, “Rudyard Kipling.” As I crossed to my desk my head kept turning to have my eyes on him. As I sat, Wolfe asked him, “The poems?”
“Mostly the poems,” Ballou said, “but some of the stories too. And Robert Service and Jack London. A little of some others, but of those three, Kipling and Service and London, I had complete sets there, bound in leather. There’s something I have wanted to ask about, but haven’t, and you would know. Can they get my fingerprints from those bindings? The leather isn’t smooth, it’s rippled.”
Wolfe’s head turned. “Archie?”
“Probably not,” I told Ballou, “from rippled leather, but your prints must be on other surfaces there. Are they on file anywhere?”
“I don’t know. I simply don’t know.”
Wolfe’s shoulders went up a quarter of an inch and down. “Then on that you can only abide. But this isn’t easy to believe, Mr. Ballou, that you spent ten hours or more a week there, five hundred hours a year for three years, and Miss Kerr never spoke of how she spent the other – let’s see – nearly twenty-five thousand hours. The places she went, the people she saw.”
“I have told you,” Ballou said, “under coercion. Except for physical intimacy there was no sharing of experience. But I did not read those poems and stories just to hear myself. I did not impose them on her. She understood them and enjoyed them, and we discussed them. You realize that I am not enjoying this. This is the first time in my life that I have wanted to tell a man to go to hell and can’t.”
“I still find it hard to believe. Did she never speak of her sister?”
“Yes. Speak of her, yes, but casually and rarely.”
“You didn’t know that her sister strongly disapproved of her association with you?”
“No. I don’t know it now.”
“She did and does. Did Miss Kerr ever mention this name: Julie Jaquette?”
“I don’t think so. If she did it was only casual and I don’t remember it.”
“Remarkable. You were with her, close, frequently, for a period of three years. I wanted and expected names, and you have supplied three: Jack London, Robert Service, and Rudyard Kipling.” Wolfe pushed his chair back. “A question: why did you want to know when Mr. Cather first learned your name?”
“Oh… I was curious.”
“You said it may not be important now. When would it have been important, and why?”
“I meant important to me, not to you, not for what you are trying to do. What are you going to do? You say I can’t hire you or pay you, but why not? There’s no conflict between Cather’s interest and mine, as you tell it. Ten thousand now as a retainer? Twenty thousand?”
“No.” Wolfe rose. “I’m committed.” He walked out.
Chapter 8
At a quarter past nine we were back in the office and Fritz had taken the coffee things out; so, though I didn’t know it yet, the stage was set for one of the most impressive floor shows the old brownstone has ever seen. After letting Ballou out I had gone to the kitchen and told Wolfe about Saul’s phone call. Of course he would have enjoyed the onion soup and Kentucky burgoo more if I had waited, but it would have created an atmosphere if I had sprung it on him with the coffee. The question was which could stand it best, appetite or digestion, and it takes a lot to make a serious dent in his appetite.
It is true that digestion was getting it too. He had drunk more coffee than usual, emptying the pot, and now that it was gone, and I was there – I’m usually out on Tuesday evenings – he was making a stab at continuing the dinner conversation, which had been mostly about Viet Nam, but just then he wasn’t really interested in Viet Nam. He was going to tackle not only a woman,
which was bad enough, but also a night-club singer, which was preposterous. A hell of a way to spend an evening. When the doorbell rang he glared at me, though he should have saved it for Saul, and I told him so as I got up to go.
Even through the one-way glass, as I approached the door, she took the eye. She was two inches taller than Saul, and if the coat was real sable it must have taken at least a hundred sables. As she entered she gave me a dazzling three-inch smile, and another one when I turned after hanging her coat up. Saul was trying not to grin. She took my arm and asked, “Where is he, Archie?” in a rich cuddly voice, and she kept the arm down the hall and into the office, but then she broke away, danced to the middle of the room and faced Wolfe’s desk, let her handbag fall to the floor, and burst into song:
“Big man, go-go,
Big man, go big,
Talk big, act big,
Lo-o-o-o-o-o-ove big!
Go-go-go-go-go-go,
Big man, big man,
Be big, do big,
Lo-o-o-o-o-o-ove big,
Go!”
She extended two long, bare, well-shaped arms to him and said, “Now the orchids. Show me!”
It was impressive. So, I admit, was Wolfe. He was giving her exactly the same scowl I have often seen him give a crossword puzzle that had him stumped. He switched the scowl to me and demanded, “Did you suggest this?”
“No,” she said. “Nobody ever suggests anything to me; they don’t have to. Now the orchids, big man. Go!”
“Miss Jackson,” he said.
“Not here,” she said. “I’m Julie Jaquette.”
“Not here,” he said. “It’s conceivable that long ago, in different circumstances, I might have appreciated your performance, but not here and -”
“It’s not a performance, man, it’s me.”
“I don’t believe it. The creature who pranced in here and mouthed that doggerel couldn’t possibly eat or sleep or read or write – or love. Are you capable of love?”
“Ha! Am I!”
Wolfe nodded. “You see? One minute ago you would have said, ‘Am I, man.’ We’re making progress. As for your wish to see my orchids, that can easily be gratified. Either Mr. Panzer or Mr. Goodwin can take you to them at a suitable hour, perhaps tomorrow. Now we have other business, and little time. Do you want the man who killed Isabel Kerr to be exposed and punished?”
“Yes, damn him, I do. I do, man.”
Wolfe made a face. “Don’t revert. I too want him exposed, because that’s the only feasible way to get a man who is in custody released. Orrie Cather. Miss Kerr may have told you of him.”
She stared down at him from her five feet nine. “Are you sick?” she demanded.
“No. I am sour, but I’m not sick. If you think Mr. Cather killed her, you’re wrong, he didn’t, and I’m going to find out who did. Did you?”
Saul and I were standing between her and the door. She turned to us and said distinctly, “You rat.”
“Not guilty,” Saul said. “You made it plain right away that you thought he killed her. You also made it plain -”
“You said Nero Wolfe wanted me to help nail him.”
“I did not. I merely said he wanted you to help. You also made it plain that you would tell me nothing.”
She glanced around, went to my chair at my desk, sat, and eyed Wolfe. It would have been quite a lifting job for both of us, so I went to the red leather chair and Saul moved up one of the yellow ones.
“So you think you’re going to bounce him,” she said. “Because he works for you. Nuts. Tell me how.”
Wolfe shook his head. “I can’t. I don’t know. Manifestly you are satisfied that he’s guilty, and of course you have told the police why, but it hasn’t fully satisfied them. He is being held only as a material witness. If you care to, try to satisfy me. Why are you so sure?”
“Damn it, I warned her,” she said.
“You warned her that Mr. Cather would kill her?”
“No, but I warned her there was no telling what he would do. I suppose you know he wanted to marry another girl?”
“Yes.”
“So it was an ungodly mess, the kind people get into when a screw gets loose. They had a perfect setup, the damn fools. Whoever was paying her bills, she never told me who it was, he had a place with her in it whenever he needed a change, and you couldn’t beat that. She had the place to herself most of the time, and she had a man who did her good, and you couldn’t beat that. He had a woman who suited him, ready for him nearly any time, for nothing, and you couldn’t beat that. A perfect setup. But she decides she has got to marry him, and he decides he has got to marry some other dame, and even she has got a good job – an airline stewardess. You know that?”
“Yes.”
“So she could stay loose too if she had any brains. None of them had any brains. I warned Isabel she had better deal him out, he had the sweat up and might do anything, but she wouldn’t listen. She put the sting on him, and he killed her. When people’s brains quit working, just go somewhere else. But he killed her, and now he’ll have to go somewhere else.”
“You have told the police all this?”
“I sure have.”
“What if he didn’t kill her?”
“Nuts.”
Wolfe regarded her. Since his eyes were used to seeing me when they aimed at that chair, he had to adjust. “Do you ever gamble?” he asked her. “Do you like to bet?”
“That’s a silly question. Who doesn’t?”
“Good. Saul, what odds will you give Miss Jackson that Orrie Cather didn’t kill Isabel Kerr?”
Saul didn’t hesitate. “Ten to one.” He got his wallet from a pocket and took bills out. “A hundred to ten.”
“She may not have it. Will you -”
“I always have it.” She opened her bag, which she had put on my desk after picking it up from the floor, where she had dropped it while performing. “But who settles it?”
“The District Attorney,” Saul said. “A hundred to ten that he isn’t even tried. All right for Archie Goodwin to hold it?”
“No. Nero Wolfe.” She got up and handed Wolfe a bill, and Saul went with his. Wolfe checked Saul’s, five twenties, opened a drawer, and dropped them in. She went back to my chair, put her bag on my desk, and told Wolfe, “Now tell me why I have just lost ten bucks.”
He shook his head. “That must await the event. I merely wished to demonstrate that we are acting on a conclusion, not a conjecture. Do you have animus for Mr. Cather?”
“What’s animus?”
“Hostility. Hatred.”
“Of course not. I don’t hate anybody.”
“If he didn’t kill Miss Kerr, are you willing to lose that ten dollars?”
“Why not? It’s a bet.”
“Then if someone else killed her you would rather have him justly punished than Mr. Cather wrongfully punished?”
“Certainly.”
“Again, good. You and Miss Kerr were close friends. Except for the name of the man who was paying her bills, she confided in you. What kind of woman was she? That question is not at random; I need to know. What was she like?”
“She was a duck. She was a damn fine woman until she flapped about that square. She knew the game and she knew the score. She always had her dignity, all the way. She had a good big heart, but she never let it bleed. I’d rather not have any heart than have it bleeding around everywhere. One reason we were so close was that we both knew exactly what men are for and what they’re not for – until that Cather baboon popped up.”
“You know him?”
“No. I’ve never seen him and I don’t want to.”
Wolfe looked at the clock. “You must be back at a quarter past ten?”
“At ten past ten. I have to change.”
“Then we haven’t much time. I ask you to accept a hypothesis. Suppose you knew positively, no matter how, that he did not kill her. Then who did? Whom would you suspect?”
“That’s easy.
The lobster, of course.”
“What? Lobster?”
“Excuse me. The man who was keeping her.”
“You don’t even know his name.”
“So what? He was shelling out around twenty grand a year. Maybe it was stripping him. Maybe he was hooking it. He found out about that Cather, and he killed her. That’s ABC.”
“Very well, I’ll consider it. But extend the hypothesis. Eliminate him too. Who then? Didn’t you and Miss Kerr have many mutual friends?”
“Yes. If you want to call them friends to be polite. Sure we did.”
“Suppose it was one of them. Which one?”
She pronounced a word which she should have kept to herself, since there was a lady present.
“Meaning?” Wolfe asked.
“Meaning I know them. You don’t kill someone unless you have a reason, and even if you have a reason you’ve got to have the guts. They don’t fit.”
“Not one?”
“No.”
“Will you give Mr. Goodwin or Mr. Panzer some of their names while he is showing you the orchids?”
“He can’t show me the orchids. I have to be going.”
“Perhaps tomorrow morning.”
“He’d have to bring them to me in bed. Spread them all over me. I’d like that, but he wouldn’t. In bed in the morning I’m no treat.”
“Then the afternoon. Have you ever met a Dr. Gamm?”
“Teddy?” She laughed. “Yes, I know Teddy. I guess he’s a pretty good doctor, but as a man you can have him. He got the idea he was going to make Isabel, and that was an idea. God knows what he’ll do for an idea now.”
“That one didn’t work?”
“Certainly not.”
“Have you ever met Miss Kerr’s sister? Mrs. Fleming?”
She nodded. “That beetle. Now there’s an idea. It’s not funny, either. I honestly believe she thought Isabel would be better off dead. All right, if it wasn’t Cather and it wasn’t the lobster, it was her.” She looked at the wall clock. “I’ve got to go.” She left my chair. “Come along. Why not? You can have a front table and I’ll spot you. I’ll announce you big. I’ll tell the suckers that Nero Wolfe in person is here and will take a bow. You can bow sitting down if you want to, they’ll stand on their chairs to see you. It will be a feather in my bra. Come along. The beer will be on the house.”