The League of Frightened Men

by Rex Stout

  He said all right, and I went to the hall and explained Fritz's new duties to him.

  Then I went out to the sidewalk. T›

  The taxi was still there. The driver wasn't winking any more; he just looked at me. I said, "Greetings."

  He said, ‹I very seldom talk that much."

  "How much?"

  "Enough to say greetings. Any form of salutation." r;

  "I don't blame you. May I glance inside?"

  I pulled the door open and stuck my head in far enough to get a good look at the framed card fastened to the panel, showing the driver's picture and name.

  That was only a wild guess, but I thought if it happened to hit it would save time. I backed out again and put a foot up on the running-board and grinned at him:

  "I understand you're a good engineer."

  I He looked funny for a second, then he laughed. "That was when I was in burlesque. Now I'm just doing straight parts. Damn it, quit grinning at me. I've got a headache."

  I rubbed the grin off. "Why did you wink at me as I went by?"

  "Why shouldn't I?" ‹I don't know. Hell, don't try to be quaint. I just asked you a friendly question. What was the idea of the wink?"

  He shook his head. "I'm a character.

  Didn't I say I had a headache? Let's see if we can't think of some place for you to go to. Is your name Nero Wolfe?"

  "No. But yours is Pitney Scott. I've got you down on a list I made up for a contribution of five dollars."

  "I heard about that list.".

  "Yes? Who from?" |

  "Oh… people. You can cross me off.

  Last week I made eighteen dollars and twenty cents."

  "You know what it's for." y He nodded. "I know that too. You want to save my life. Listen, my dear fellow. To charge five dollars for saving my life would be outrageous. Believe me, exorbitant. Rank profiteering." He laughed. "These things have a bottom, I suppose. There is no such thing as a minus quantity except in mathematics. You have no idea what a feeling of solidity and assurance that reflection can give a man.

  Have you got a drink in your house?"

  "How about two dollars? Make it two."

  "You're still way high.",y

  "One even buck."

  "Still you flatter me. Listen." Though it was cold for November, with a raw wind, he had no gloves and his hands were red and rough. He got his stiff fingers into a pocket, came out with some chicken feed, picked a nickel and pushed it at me.

  "I'll pay up now and get it off my mind.

  Now that I don't owe you anything, have you got a drink?" j "What flavor do you want?"

  "I… if it were good rye…" He leaned toward me and a look came into his eyes. Then he jerked back. His voice got harsh and not friendly at all. "Can't |you take a joke? I don't drink when I'm driving. Is that woman hurt much?"

  "I don't think so, her head's still on.

  The doctor'11 fix her up. Do you take her places often? Or her husband?"

  He was still harsh. ‹I take her when she calls me, her husband too. I'm a taxidriver.

  Mr. Paul Chapin. They give me their trade when they can, for old time's sake. Once or twice they've let me get drunk at their place, Paul likes to see me drunk and he furnishes the liquor." He laughed, and the harshness went. "You know, you take this situation in all its aspects, and you couldn't ask for anything more hilarious. I'm going to have to stay sober so as not to miss any of it. I winked at you because you're in on it now, and you're going to be just as funny as all the rest." _ "That won't worry me any, I always | have been pretty ludicrous. Does Chapin get drunk with you?"

  "He doesn't drink. He says it makes his leg hurt.",

  "Did you know that there's a reward of five thousand dollars for finding Andrew ^ Hibbard?"

  "No."

  "Alive or dead."

  It looked to me as if, just stabbing around, I had hit something. His face had changed; he looked surprised, as if confronted with an idea that hadn't occurred to him. He said, "Well, he's a valuable man, that's not too much to offer for him. At that, Andy's not a bad guy. Who offered the reward?"

  "His niece. It'll be in the papers tomorrow."

  "Good for her. God bless her." He laughed. "It is an incontrovertible fact that five thousand dollars is a hell of a lot more money than a nickel. How do you account for that? I want a cigarette."

  I got a packet out and lit us both up.

  His fingers weren't steady at all, and I began to feel sorry for him. So I said,

  "Just figure it out. Hibbard's home is up at University Heights. If you drove downtown somewhere – say around the Perry Street neighborhood, I don't know Just where – and from there to One Hundred Sixteenth Street, ordinarily what (Would you get for it? Let's see – two, eight miles – that'd be around a dollar and a half. But if going uptown you happened to have your old classmate Andrew Hibbard with you – or just his corpse, maybe even only a piece of it, say his head and a couple of arms – instead of a dollar-fifty you'd get five grand. As | you see, it all depends on your cargo."

  So as not to take my eyes off him, I blew cigarette smoke out of the corner of my mouth. Of course, riding a guy who | needed a drink bad and wouldn't take it was like knocking a cripple's crutch from under him, but I didn't need to remind myself that all's fair in love and business.

  Basic truths like that are either born right in a man or they're not.

  At that he had enough grip on himself to keep his mouth shut. He looked at his _ fingers trembling holding the cigarette, so J long that I finally looked at them too.

  Finally he let his hand fall to his knee, and looked at me and began to laugh. He demanded, "Didn't I say you were going to be funny?" His voice went harsh again.

  "Listen, you. Beat it. Come on, now, beat it. Go back in the house or you'll catch cold."

  I said, "All right, how about that drink?"

  But he was through. I prodded at him a little, but he had gone completely dumb and unfriendly. I thought of bringing out some rye and letting him smell it, but decided that would just screw him down tighter. I said to myself, anon, and passed him up.

  Before going in the house I went around back of the taxi and got the license number.

  I went to the kitchen. Wolfe was still there, in the wooden chair with arms where he always sat to direct Fritz and to eat when he was on a relapse.

  I said, "Pitney Scott's out front. The taxi-driver. He brought her. He paid me a nickel for his share, and he says that's all it's worth. He knows something about Andrew Hibbard."

  "What?"

  "You mean what does he know? Search me. I told him about the reward Miss Hibbard, my client, is offering, and he looked like get thee behind me, Satan.

  He's shy, he wants to be coaxed. My surmise is that he might not exactly know where Hibbard or his remains has been cached, but he thinks he might guess. He's got about seven months to go to pink snakes and crocodiles. I tried to get him to come in for a drink, but he fought that off too. He won't come in. He may not be workable at the present moment, but I was thinking of suggesting that you go out and look at him."

  "Out?" Wolfe raised his head at me.

  "Out and down the stoop?"

  "Yeah, just on the e sidewalk, you wouldn't have to step off the curb. He's right there."

  Wolfe shut his eyes. "I don't know,

  Archie. I don't know why you persist in trying to badger me into frantic sorties.

  Dismiss the notion entirely. It is not feasible. You say he actually gave you a nickel?"

  "Yes, and where's it going to get you to act eccentric with a dipsomaniac taxidriver even if he did go to Harvard?

  Honest to God, sir, sometimes you run it in the ground."

  "That will do: Definitely. Go and see if Mrs. Chapin has been made presentable.^ I went. I found that Dr. Vollmer had finished with his patient in the bathroom and had her back in a chair in the office, with her neck bandaged so that she had to hold it stiff whether she wanted to or not.

&nb
sp; He was giving her instructions how to conduct herself, and Fritz was taking away basins and rags and things. I waited till the doc was through, then took him to the kitchen. Wolfe opened his eyes at him.

  Vollmer said: ' n

  "Quite a novel method of attack, Mr.

  Wolfe. Quite original, hacking at her from behind like that. He got into one of the posterior externals; I had to shave off some of her hair.^ "He?"

  The doctor nodded. "She explained that her husband, to whom she has been married three years, did the carving. With a little caution, which I urged upon her, she should be all right in a few days. I took fourteen stitches. Her husband must be a remarkable and unconventional man.

  She is remarkable too, in her way: the Spartan type. She didn't even clench her hands while I was sewing her; the fingers were positively relaxed."

  "Indeed. You will want her name and address for your record.",

  "I have it, thanks. She wrote it down | for me." i "Thank you, doctor."

  Vollmer went. Wolfe got to his feet, pulled at his vest in one of his vain attempts to cover the strip of canary yellow shirt which encircled his magnificent middle, and preceded me to the office. I stopped to ask Fritz to clean off the inside of the furpiece as well as he could. • By the time I joined them Wolfe was back in his chair and she was sitting facing | him. He was saying to her: i "I am glad it was no worse, Mrs. | Chapin. The doctor has told you, you must be careful not to jerk the stitches loose for a few days. By the way, his fee – did you pay him?"

  "Yes. Five dollars." ai "Good. Reasonable, I should say. Mr. j Goodwin tells me your cab is waiting. Tell the driver to go slowly; jolting is always J abominable, in your present condition even dangerous. We need not detain you longer."

  She had her eyes fixed on him again.

  Getting washed off and wrapped up hadn't made her any handsomer. She took a breath through her nose and let it out again so you could hear it.

  She said, finally, "Don't you want me to tell you about it? I want to tell you what he did." Wolfe's head went left and right. "It isn't necessary, Mrs. Chapin. You should go home and rest. I undertake to notify the police of the affair; I can understand your reluctant delicacy; after all, one's own husband to whom one has been married three years… I'll attend to that for you."

  "I don't want the police." That woman could certainly pin her eyes. "Do you think I want my husband arrested? With his standing and position… all the publicity… do you think I want that? •That's why I came to you… to tell you about it."

  "But, Mrs. Chapin." Wolfe wiggled a finger at her. "You see, you came to the wrong place. Unfortunately for you, you came to the one man in New York, the one man in the world, who would at once understand what really happened at your home this morning. It was unavoidable, I suppose, since it was precisely that man, myself, whom you wished to delude. The devil of it is, from your standpoint, that I have a deep aversion to being deluded.

  Let's just call it quits. You really do need rest and quiet, after your nervous tension and your loss of blood. Go on home."

  Of course, as had happened a few times before, I had missed the boat; I was swimming along behind trying to keep up.

  For a minute I thought she was going to get up and go. She started to. Then she was back again, looking at him. She said:

  "I'm an educated woman, Mr. Wolfe.

  I've been in service and I'm not ashamed of that, but I'm educated. You're trying to talk so I won't understand you, but I |do." • w "Good. Then there is no need -"

  She snapped at him suddenly and violently. "You're a fat fool!", ^ Wolfe shook his head. "Fat visibly, though I prefer Gargantuan. A fool only in the broader sense, as a common characteristic of the race. It was not magnanimous of you, Mrs. Chapin, to blurt my corpulence at me, since I had spoken of your fatuity only in general terms and had refrained from demonstrating it. I'll do that now." He moved a finger to indicate the knife which still lay on the newspaper on the desk.

  "Archie, will you please clean that homely weapon."

  I didn't know, I thought maybe he was bluffing her. I picked up the knife and stood there with it, looking from her to him. "Wash off the evidence?"

  "If you please."

  I took the knife to the bathroom and turned on the faucet, rubbed the blood off with a piece of gauze, and wiped it.

  Through the open door I couldn't hear any talking. I went back.

  "Now," Wolfe instructed me, "grip the – handle firmly in your right hand. Come | towards the desk, so Mrs. Chapin can see you better; turn your back. So. Elevate your arm and pull the knife across your neck; kindly be sure to use the back of the blade, not to carry the demonstration too far. You noted the length and the position of the cuts on Mrs. Chapin? Duplicate them on yourself. – Yes. Yes, quite good.

  A little higher for that one. Another, somewhat lower. Confound you, be careful. That will do. – You see, Mrs. 1 Chapin? He did it quite neatly, don't you think? I am not insulting your intelligence by hinting that you expected us to think the wounds could not have been selfinflicted in the position you chose for them. More likely, you selected it purely as a matter of precaution, knowing that the front, the neighborhood of the ( anterior jugular…" ^ He stopped, because he had no one to | talk to except me. When I turned around after my demonstration she was already getting up from her chair, holding her head stiff and a clamp on her mouth.

  Without a word, without bothering to make any passes at him with her little gray glass eyes, she just got up and went; and ' – -"^ no attention, he went on with his speech until she had opened the office door and was through it. I noticed she was leaving her knife, but thought we might as well have it in our collection of odds and ends. Then all of a sudden I jumped for the hall.

  "Hey, lady, wait a minute! Your fur!"

  I got it from Fritz and caught her at the front door and put it around her. Pitney Scott got out of his cab and came over to help her down the stoop, and I went back in. •- • – - – ^ Wolfe was glancing through a letter from Hoehn and Company that had come in the morning mail. When he had finished he put it under a paperweight – a piece of petrified wood that had once been used to bust a guy's skull – and said:

  "The things a woman will think of are beyond belief. I knew a woman once in Hungary whose husband had frequent headaches. It was her custom to relieve them by the devoted application of cold compresses. It occurred to her one day to stir into the water with which she wetted the compresses a large quantity of a penetrating poison which she had herself distilled from an herb. The result was gratifying to her. The man on whom she tried the experiment was myself. The woman -"

  He was just trying to keep me from annoying him about business. I cut in.

  "Yeah. I know. The woman was a witch you had caught riding around in the curl of a pig's tail. In spite of all that, it's time for me to brush up a little on this case we've got. You can give me a shove by explaining in long words how you knew Dora Chapin did her own manicuring."

  Wolfe shook his head. "That would not be a shove, Archie; it would be a laborious and sustained propulsion. I shall not undertake it. I remind you merely: I have read all of Paul Chapin's novels. In two of them Dora Chapin is a character.

  He of course appears in all. The woman who married Dr. Burton, Paul Chapin's unattainable, seems to be in four out of ^five; I cannot discover her in the latest one. Read the books, and I shall be more inclined to discuss the conclusions they have led me to. But even then, of course, I would not attempt to place plain to your eyes the sights my own have discerned.

  God made you and me, in certain respects, quite unequal, and it would be futile to try any interference with His arrangements."

  Fritz came to the door and said lunch was ready. »

  11

  Sometimes I thought it was a wonder

  Wolfe and I got on together at all. The differences between us, some of them, showed up plainer at the table than anywhere else. He was a taster and I was a swallower. Not that I didn
't know good from bad; after seven years of education from Fritz's cooking I could even tell, usually, superlative from excellent. But the fact remained that what chiefly attracted Wolfe about food in his pharynx was the affair it was having with his taste buds, whereas with me the important point was that it was bound for my belly. To avoid any misunderstanding, I should add that Wolfe was never disconcerted by the problem of what to do with it when he was through tasting it. He could put it away. I have seen him, during a relapse, dispose completely of a ten-pound goose between eight o'clock and midnight, while I was in a corner with ham sandwiches and milk hoping he would choke. At those times he always ate in the kitchen.

  It was the same in business, when we were on a case. A thousand times I've wanted to kick him, watching him progress leisurely to the elevator on his way to monkey with the plants upstairs, or read a book tasting each phrase, or discuss with Fritz the best storage place for dry herbs, when I was running around barking my head off and expecting him to tell me where the right hole was. I admit he was a great man. When he called himself a genius he had a right to mean it whether he did or not. I admit that he never lost us a bet by his piddling around. But since I'm only human, I couldn't keep myself from wanting to kick him just because he was a genius. I came awful close to it sometimes, when he said things like,

  "Patience, Archie; if you eat the apple before it's ripe your only reward is a bellyache."

  Well, this Wednesday afternoon, after lunch, I was sore. He went indifferent on me; he even went contrary. He wouldn't cable the guy in Rome to get into converse with Santini; he said it was futile and expected me to take his word for it. He wouldn't help me concoct a loop we could use to drag Leopold Elkus into the office; according to him, that was futile too. He kept trying to read in a book while I was after him. He said there were only two men in the case whom he felt any inclination to talk to: Andrew Hibbard and Paul Chapin; and he wasn't ready yet for Chapin and he didn't know where Hibbard was, or whether he was alive or dead. I knew Saul Panzer was going to the morgue every morning and afternoon to look over the stiffs, but I didn't know what else he was doing. I also knew that Wolfe had talked with Inspector Cramer on the phone that morning, but that was nothing to get excited about; Cramer had shot his bolt a week ago at Paul Chapin and all that was keeping him awake was the routine of breathing. W '