Too Many Women nwo-12

by Rex Stout

And now you say you’re not curious at all. It certainly is funny.” I am no Nero Wolfe at reading faces, but I know what I see, and it was a bet that during my brief speech she had decided three times to call me a liar, and had thrice changed her mind and made a grab for some better idea. When I stopped purposely without asking a question, and sat and waited for her to bat it back, what she said was: “It certainly is.” I nodded. “So since you’re not curious I suppose you had some special reason for wanting to know how far I had got. The reason I’m speaking to you about it like this, alone with you, is because I think it’s much better this way than it would be if I made a report of it and you got a bunch of nitwits barking at you-you know what the police are like…” I let it fade out because she had made up her mind. With a charming impulsive movement she was out of her chair and standing in front of me, leaning over, getting my hands in hers. In the close little room with the door shut she smelled like a new name for a perfume, but there was no time to invent one then and there.

  “You don’t believe that,” she said, not much more than a whisper, into my face.

  “Do you honestly think I’m that sort of girl, honestly? Do my hands feel like the kind of hands that would do mean things like that? Are you going to believe everything mean you hear about me? Just because someone says they saw me coming in your room or going out again-can you honestly look at me and tell me you believe it? Can you?” “No,” I said. “Impossible.” I was going on, but couldn’t for the moment, because she thought I had earned a citation and was proceeding to bestow it when the door of the room swung open, and with my right eye, the only one that could see anything past her ear, I observed Kerr Naylor walking in.

  At the sound my seducer jerked away and whirled to face the door.

  “It’s past quitting time, Miss Ferris,” Naylor said.

  I batted for her. “I sent for Miss Ferris,” I told the glint in his eyes, “and we’re having a talk which has at least an hour to go and maybe more. She was taking a mote out of my eye. Can I help you with something?” Naylor smiled, stepped to the chair that was still warm from Gwynne, and sat down. “Perhaps I can help you instead,” he piped. “I’ll be glad to take part in the talk if you’ll limit it to an hour.” I shook my head at him emphatically. “Much obliged, but it’s strictly private.– No, Miss Ferris, don’t leave. You stay here.– So if all you came for was to say good night, good night.” “This is my department, Mr. Truett.” “Not the part of it I’m in at any given moment. Yours is the stock department.

  Mine is the murder department. Good night-unless you came for something else.” He was speechless with fury. Not that it showed on his little wax face, but he was speechless, and nothing short of fury could have done that to him. He stood up, stared at Gwynne, who did not stare back, and finally transferred it to me.

  “Very well. The question of your status here can be settled on Monday-if you are here Monday. I came to tell you something, and while Miss Ferris is not ideal for the purpose, it is just as well to have a witness. I am told you have reported that I told you I know the name of the person who murdered Waldo Moore.

  Is that true?” “Yep, that’s true.” “Then you reported a lie. I have not made that statement to you, nor any statement that could possibly be so construed. I have no idea why you reported such a lie, and I don’t intend to waste time trying to find out.” He walked to the door, turned, and smiled at us. “You can now resume the conversation I interrupted. Good night.” He was gone, closing the door behind him. I sat still to listen, and in the silence of the depopulated arena heard his footsteps receding, fading into the silence.

  Gwynne approached and began, “You see? No matter who said they saw me sneaking into your room, you wouldn’t believe it, and no matter who said you had told a lie, I wouldn’t believe-” “Shut up, pet. Shut up and sit down while I sharpen a wit.” She did so. I gazed at the neighborhood of her chin, found that distracting, and switched to something neuter. On a quick and concentrated survey, this latest impetuosity of Kerr Naylor looked like the beginning of his big retreat. Once started backward he would probably keep going, and by the middle of next week would be taking the position that Moore hadn’t been killed at all, maybe not even hurt.

  I spoke to Gwynne. “What makes it chilly in here is the cold feet of Mr. Kerr Naylor. They are practically frozen. To go back to you, or should I say us, when Naylor came I was about to tell you that you were wasting a lot of ammunition, and damn good ammunition, because nobody told me they saw you coming in here or going out. It’s fingerprints. You left about five dozen scattered all over, on the folders and the reports. I’m going to keep them to remember you by. Now what? Were you walking in your sleep? Try that.” She was wrinkling her forehead in profound concentration, as if I had been giving instructions for an intricate typing job and she was deeply anxious to get it straight. My free-for-nothing suggestion about walking in her sleep didn’t appeal to her, or more probably she didn’t even hear it. At length she spoke.

  “Fingerprints?” Her tone implied that it must be a Russian word and unfortunately she didn’t know that language.

  “That’s right. Little lines on the tips of your fingers that make pretty patterns when you touch something. F-I-N-G-” “Don’t be offensive,” she said in a hurt tone. “Anyway, you said it would be impossible for you to believe I could do such a thing!” “No you don’t,” I said firmly. “In the first place, I didn’t say that. In the second place, one of my favorite rules is never to let a woman start an argument about what she said or what I said. You’ve had time now to think up something.

  What will it be?” She was still hurt. “I don’t have to think up something,” she declared indignantly. “All I have to do is tell you the truth even if I think you don’t deserve it. Yesterday you said you wanted to see me, and I couldn’t come because I had a pile of work for Mr. Henderson, because his secretary is home sick, and I had to stay overtime, and when I got through I came here because I thought you might still be waiting for me, and you were gone, and I thought perhaps you had left some work for me in your cabinet, so I looked in it to see, and of course I had to look in the folders because that was where you would leave it. And now you accuse me of something underhanded just because I tried to do my duty even if it was nearly seven o’clock!” My head was moving slowly up and down, with my eyes maintaining focus on hers.

  “Not bad,” I conceded. “It would really be good, although loony, if you hadn’t denied it at first and come clear here to my chair with your perfume and other attributes. Why did you deny it, precious?” “Well-I guess I just can’t help kidding people. I guess it’s part of my character.” “And that’s your story and you like it, huh?” “Of course it is, it’s the truth!” I would have liked to use assorted tortures on her in a well-equipped underground chamber. “This room is not suitable,” I admitted reluctantly, “for giving you the kind of attention merited by your character and abilities. But there are other rooms, policemen act sore at accomplished and fantastic liars much quicker than I do. Tomorrow will be Saturday and this office will be closed, but policemen work seven days a week. It will be nice meeting you in other surroundings. Go on home.” “You’re not a policeman,” she stated, as if she were contradicting me. She got out of her chair. “You’re too handsome and cultured.” When I had just got through saying, or at least plainly implying, that I was not a policeman!

  I took the carton home with me, not caring to leave its contents there even with the cabinet locked.

  CHAPTER Nineteen

  That evening after dinner Wolfe was going on with his three books. Since there was wide variation in the number of pages it looked to me as if he was going to run into trouble when the shortest one suddenly petered out on him, unless he had foreseen the difficulty and was adjusting his installments accordingly.

  After I had given him the day’s report, to which he reacted the same as he had the day before, namely not at all, and after getting nothing but a grunt of indifference when I
volunteered the opinion that Kerr Naylor had been read the riot act by his sister and as a result was crawling from under, I decided to take in a flat-face opera.

  Ordinarily I let the movies wait when we’re busy on a case, but I broke precedent that Friday evening because (a) we weren’t busy-at least God knows Wolfe wasn’t- and (b) I strongly doubted if it was a case. I would have been willing to settle for nothing more homicidal than a mess of dirty internal politics on the higher levels at Naylor-Kerr, Inc., and while that may have seemed important and even exciting to the Board of Directors and hostile camps of executives, I had to confess that I couldn’t blame Wolfe for going aloof on it, since I was inclined to feel the same way. So I let my mind go blank and enjoyed the movie up to a certain point, staying nearly to the end. When it came to where they were preparing to wind it up right and let it out that the hero really had not put over the fake contract and cleaned up, I left in a hurry, because I had formed my own opinion of the hero from where I sat and chose to think otherwise.

  Then, when I got home at half-past eleven, I found Inspector Cramer there in the office, seated in the red leather chair, talking to Wolfe. Evidently it wasn’t a very amiable conversation, for Cramer’s look at me as I entered was an unfriendly glare, and, since I had done nothing to earn it, it must have been the state of his feelings toward Wolfe.

  “Where the hell have you been?” he demanded, as if he had me under contract or I was on the parole list.

  “It was a wonderful movie,” I informed them, sitting down at my desk. “Only two people in it have amnesia, this incredibly beautiful girl with-” “Archie,” Wolfe snapped. He was out of humor too. “Mr. Cramer wants to ask you something. I suppose you have seen the piece about us in this evening’s Gazetee?” “Sure. It’s a bum picture of you, but-” “You didn’t mention it to me.” “Yeah, you were busy reading and anyway it wasn’t worth wasting breath on.” “It’s an outrage!” Cramer rasped. “It’s a flagrant betrayal of a client’s confidence!” “Nuts.” I had to keep my eyes on the go to meet the two glares alternately. “It doesn’t quote me and it doesn’t even say I was interviewed. It merely says that Archie Goodwin, Nero Wolfe’s brilliant lieutenant, is investigating the death of Waldo Wilmot Moore, and therefore it may be conjectured that somebody smells murder. Except for those it mentions no names. Since about a thousand people down at Naylor-Kerr know about it and at least one of them knows who I am and probably a lot more, you can have that word betrayal back and use it somewhere else. Even so, Lon Cohen wouldn’t have done it without getting my okay. It was that damn Whosis, the city editor. Whose belly aches, the client’s? Have you been promoted from homicide to patting the kittens?” Wolfe and Cramer started to speak both at once, and Wolfe won. “The piece,” he said, “does indeed apply that word, brilliant, to you, and that’s all I find in it to object to. But jVlr. Cramer is seriously annoyed. It seems that Mr.

  O’Hara, the Deputy Commissioner, is also annoyed. They want us to quit the job.”

  “They’ve got a hell of a nerve,” I asserted. “Will they feed us?” Cramer started again to speak, but Wolfe pushed a palm at him.

  “Nothing edible,” Wolfe said with a grimace. There was no joking about food with him. “They say the piece in the Gazetee is the opening of another campaign of criticism of the police for an unsolved murder, and that it is irresponsible because there isn’t the slightest evidence that Mr. Moore’s death was anything but a hit-and-run accident. They say that our undertaking an investigation is the only valid excuse the Gazetee can have for starting such a campaign or continuing it. They say that either we have been gulled by the whimsicality of an eccentric man, Mr. Kerr Naylor, or that, not gulled, we are exploiting it in order to build up for a fee. They say that you have even gone so far as to report that Mr. Naylor said something to you-that he knows who killed Mr.

  Moore-which he never said, in the necessity to invent something that would justify our continued employment. Does that cover it, Mr. Cramer?” “It’ll do for an outline,” Cramer rasped. “I want to ask Goodwin-” “If you please.” Wolfe was brusque. He turned to me. “Archie. If I need to tell you, I do, that I have unqualified confidence in you and am completely satisfied with your performance in this case, as I have been in all past cases and expect to be in all future ones. Of course you tell lies and so do I, even to clients when it seems advisable, but you would never lie to me nor I to you in a matter where mutual trust and respect are involved. Your lack of brilliance may be regrettable but is really a triviality, and in any event two brilliant men under one roof would be intolerable. Your senseless peccadilloes, such as your refusal to use a noiseless typewriter, are a confounded nuisance, but this idiotic accusation that you lied in that report to Mr. Pine has put me in a different frame of mind about it. Keep your typewriter, but for heaven’s sake oil it.” “Good God,” I protested, “I oil it every-” Cramer exploded with a word which the printer would not approve of. “Your goddam household squabbles will keep,” he said rudely. He was at me. “Do you stick to it that Naylor told you he knew who killed Moore?” “No, I don’t,” I told him, “not to you. To you I don’t stick to anything. This is a private investigation about a guy shooting off his mouth, and I do my reporting to Mr. Wolfe and to our client. Where do you come in? You’re the head of the Homicide Squad, but you say yourself that Moore’s death was an accident, so it’s none of your business what I stick to and what I let go of. I don’t blame you for not wanting the Gazetee to start a howl, but if you expect any cooperation from me you’re not going to get it by asking me whether I stick to it that I’m not a liar. I suppose O’Hara has been on the phone and given you a pain in the sitdown, a substitute I use out of respect for your age, but you don’t need to take it out on me.” I spread out my palms. “Take it this way. Let’s suppose you’re a reasonable man instead of a hothead, and you come here to ask me something in that spirit, suppose you even call me Archie. And you tell me what you want in a friendly well-modulated tone. What would it be?” “I’ve already told Wolfe, and he has told you.” Cramer was no longer bellicose, merely firm. “I want you to quit stirring up a murder stink where there’s no evidence and peddling stale rumors to the papers.” “I didn’t peddle. I went to the Gazetee boys for information, and I got it. As for stink-stirring, do you mean you want me to quit my job at Naylor-Kerr?” “Yes. You don’t need money that bad.” “I wouldn’t know, I’m only the bookkeeper. That’s up to Mr. Wolfe. He employs me and I follow orders.” “And I,” Wolfe put in, “am in turn employed by Naylor-Kerr, Inc., through its president, Mr. Pine. I am inclined to think that in hiring me he and his fellow executives had certain special undeclared purposes in mind. Their nature is not known to me, but I have no reason to suppose them to be criminal or unethical, and they may even be praiseworthy. Why don’t you ask Mr. Pine about it? Have you talked to him?” “The Deputy Commissioner has.” Cramer had got out a cigar and was threatening his teeth with it. “This afternoon. I understand it was mostly about Goodwin lying about what Naylor had said to him. I don’t suppose the Deputy Commissioner asked him specifically to call you off. That part of it was left to me.” “I wouldn’t feel justified,” Wolfe said virtuously, “in quitting the case without the approval of the client.” “Okay, then get it. Call him up now. We’ll both talk to him, and me first.” Wolfe nodded at me. “Get Mr. Pine, Archie. But not you first, Mr. Cramer. You second.” I got the number from the book and dialed it. When, after a short wait, there was a voice in my ear that I recognized, I was surprised that a woman with enough money to keep pets answered the phone herself, but it was midnight and the servants probably didn’t get to sleep as late in the morning as she did. I told her who I was and she reacted instantly.

  “Of course, I knew your voice at once! How is your face, Archie?” She sounded as if she had really had it on her mind and wanted to know. “Better, thanks,” I told her. “I’m sorry to disturb you so late at night, but-” “Oh, it’s not late for me! I’m never in bed b
efore three or four. The season tickets aren’t available yet, but they will be next week, and yours will be sent at once.” “Much obliged. Is your husband there? Mr. Wolfe would like to speak to him.” “Yes he’s here but he may be asleep. He goes to bed much earlier than I do. Hold the wire and I’ll find out. Is it important?” “Not important enough to wake him up if he hates it as much as I do.” “All right, hold the wire. I’ll see.” It took her long enough. I sat and held it, reflecting that considering the state of their romance her husband’s bed was probably not just the other side of a door. Finally she was back.

  “No., I’m sorry, he’s sound asleep. I thought he might be reading. Is it about what I came to see you about?” “Yes, it’s connected with that. We’ll get him in the morning. Many thanks.” “Maybe I could help. What is it?” “I don’t think so, it’s just a detail. Hold it a second.” I covered the transmitter and announced, “He’s asleep and she wants to know if she can help.

  She would like very much to help.” “No,” Wolfe said positively.

  “Wait a minute,” Cramer began, but I ignored him and told the phone, “Mr. Wolfe thanks you for your offer, Mrs. Pine, but he will call your husband tomorrow.” “Then just tell me what it is, Archie, and I can discuss it with him before Mr.

  Wolfe calls.” It took me a good three minutes to get it concluded without being impolite.

  A childish wrangle started. Cramer adopted the position that I should have persuaded her to wake Pine up, and Wolfe, who hates having his sleep interrupted even more than I do, violently disagreed. They kept at it as if it had been one of the world’s major problems, like what to do with the Ruhr. Neither of them budged an inch, so they ended where they began, stalemated.

  “Very well,” Cramer said finally, still belligerent. “So I get nothing for losing two hours of my own sleep and coming clear over here to ask you a favor.”