by Rex Stout
“No.”
“Did Mr. Walsh or Miss Lindquist do so?”
“Kill anyone?”
“Yes.”
She smiled at him. “As a philosopher, I don’t know. I’m not a detective. As a woman, they didn’t.”
“If they did, you have no knowledge of it?”
“No.”
“Good. Have you a dollar bill?”
“I suppose I have.”
“Give me one.”
She shook her head, not in refusal, but in resigned perplexity at senseless antics. She looked in her bag and got out a dollar bill and handed it to Wolfe. He took it and unfolded it and handed it across to me.
“Enter it, please, Archie. Retainer from Miss Clara Fox. And get Mr. Perry on the phone.” He turned to her. “You are now my client.”
She didn’t smile. “With the understanding, I suppose, that I may—”
“May sever the connection?” His creases unfolded. “By all means. Without notice.”
I found Perry’s number and dialed it. After giving my fingerprints by television to some dumb kluck I finally got him on, and nodded to Wolfe to take it.
Wolfe was suave. “Mr. Perry? This is Nero Wolfe. I have Mr. Goodwin’s report of his preliminary investigation. He was inclined to agree with your own attitude regarding the probable innocence of Clara Fox, and he thought we might therefore be able to render some real service to you. But by a curious chance Miss Fox called at our office this evening—she is here now, in fact—and asked us to represent her interests in the matter.… No, permit me, please.… Well, it seemed to be advisable to accept her retainer.… Really, sir, I see nothing unethical …”
Wolfe hated to argue on the telephone. He cut it as short as he could, and rang off, and washed it down with beer. He turned back to Clara Fox.
“Tell me about your personal relations with Mr. Perry and Mr. Muir.”
She didn’t answer right away. She was sitting there frowning at him. It was the first time I had seen her brow wrinkled, and I liked it better smoothed out. Finally she said, “I supposed you had already taken that case for Mr. Perry. I had gone to a lot of trouble deciding that you were the best man for us—Miss Lindquist and Mr. Walsh and Mr. Scovil and me—and I had already telephoned on Saturday and made the appointment with you, before I heard anything about the stolen money. I didn’t know until two hours ago that Mr. Perry had engaged you, and since we had the appointment I thought we might as well go through with it. Now you tell Mr. Perry you’re acting for me, not the Seaboard, and you say I’ve given you a retainer for that. That’s not straight. If you want to call that a retainer, it’s for the business I came to see you about, not that silly rot about the money. That’s nonsense.”
Wolfe inquired, “What makes you think it’s nonsense?”
“Because it is. I don’t know what the truth of it is, but as far as I’m concerned it’s nonsense.”
Wolfe nodded. “I agree with you. That’s what makes it dangerous.”
“Dangerous? How? If you mean I’ll lose my job, I don’t think so. Mr. Perry is the real boss there, and he knows I’m more than competent, and he can’t possibly believe I took that money. If this other business is successful, and I believe it will be, I won’t want the job anyhow.”
“But you will want your freedom.” Wolfe sighed. “Really, Miss Fox, we are wasting time that may be valuable. Tell me, I beg you, about Mr. Perry and Mr. Muir. Mr. Muir hinted this afternoon that Mr. Perry is enjoying the usufructs of gallantry. Is that true?”
“Of course not.” She frowned, and then smiled. “Calling it that, it doesn’t sound bad at all, does it? But he isn’t. I used to go to dinner and the theater with Mr. Perry fairly frequently, shortly after I started to work for Seaboard. That was during my adventuress phase. I was going to be an adventuress.”
“Did something interrupt?”
“Nothing but my disappointment. I have always been determined to get somewhere, not anywhere in particular, just somewhere. My father died when I was nine, and my mother when I was seventeen. She always said I was like my father. She paid for my schooling by sewing fat women’s dresses. I loved my mother passionately, and hated the humdrum she was sunk in and couldn’t get out of.”
“She couldn’t find George Rowley.”
“She didn’t try much. She thought it was fantastic. She wrote once to Harlan Scovil, but the letter was returned. After she died I tried various things, everything from hat-check girl to a stenographic course, and for three years I studied languages in my spare time because I thought I’d want to go all over the world. Finally, by a stroke of luck, I got a good job at the Seaboard three years ago. For the first time I had enough money so I could spend a little trying to find George Rowley and the others mentioned in father’s letter—I realized I’d have to find some of the others so there would be someone to recognize George Rowley. I guess mother was right when she said I’m like father; I certainly had fantastic ideas, and I’m terribly confident that I’m a very unusual person. My idea at that time was that I wanted to get money from George Rowley as soon as possible, so I could pay that old debt of my father’s in California, and then go to Arabia. The reason I wanted to go to Arabia—”
She broke off abruptly, looked startled, and demanded, “What in the name of heaven started me on that?”
“I don’t know.” Wolfe looked patient. “You’re wasting time again. Perry and Muir?”
“Well.” She brushed her hair back. “Not long after I started to work for Seaboard, Mr. Perry began asking me to go to the theater with him. He said that his wife had been sick in bed for eight years and he merely wanted companionship. I knew he was a multi-millionaire, and I thought it over and decided to become an adventuress. If you think that sounds like a loony kid, don’t fool yourself. For lots of women it has been a very exciting and satisfactory career. I never really expected to do anything much with Mr. Perry, because there was no stimulation in him, but I thought I could practice with him and at the same time keep my job. I even went riding with him, long after it got to be a bore. I thought I could practice with Mr. Muir, too, but I was soon sorry I had ever aroused his interest.”
She drew her shoulders in a little, a shade toward the center of her, and let them out again, in delicate disgust. “It was Mr. Muir that cured me of the idea of being an adventuress, I mean in the classical sense. Of course I knew that to be a successful adventuress you have to deal with men, and they have to be rich, and seeing what Mr. Muir was like made me look around a little, and I realized it would be next to impossible to find a rich man it would be any fun to be adventurous with. Mr. Muir seemed to go practically crazy after he had had dinner with me once or twice. Once he came to my apartment and almost forced his way in, and he had an enormous pearl necklace in his pocket! Of course it was disgusting in a way, but it was even more funny than it was disgusting, because I have never cared for pearls at all. But the worst thing about Mr. Muir is his stubbornness. He’s a Scotsman, and apparently if he once gets an idea in his head he can’t get it out again—”
Wolfe put in, “Is Mr. Muir a fool?”
“Why … yes, I suppose he is.”
“I mean as a business man. A man of affairs. Is he a fool?”
“No. Not that way. In fact, he’s very shrewd.”
“Well, you are.” Wolfe sighed. “You are quite an amazing fool, Miss Fox. You know that Mr. Muir, who is a shrewd man, is prepared to swear out a warrant against you for grand larceny. Do you think that he would consider himself prepared if preparations had not actually been made? Why does he insist on immediate action? So that the preparations may not be interfered with, by design, or by mischance. As soon as a warrant is in force against you, the police may search any property of yours, including that item of it where the $30,000 will be found. Couldn’t Mr. Muir have taken it himself from his desk and put it anywhere he wanted to, with due circumspection?”
“Put it …” She stared at him. “Oh, no.” She shook her
head. “That would be too low. A man would have to be a dirty scoundrel to do that.”
“Well? Who should know better than you, an ex-adventuress, that the race of dirty scoundrels has not yet been exterminated? By the eternal, Miss Fox, you should be tied in your cradle! Where do you live?”
“But, Mr. Wolfe … you could never persuade me …”
“I wouldn’t waste time trying. Where do you live?”
“I have a little flat on East 61st Street.”
“And what other items? We can disregard your desk at the office, that would not be conclusive enough. Do you have a cottage in the country? A trunk in storage? An automobile?”
“I have a little car. Nothing else whatever.”
“Did you come here in it?”
“No. It’s in a garage on 60th Street.”
Wolfe turned to me. “Archie. What two can you get here at once?”
I glanced at the clock. “Saul Panzer in ten minutes. If Fred Durkin’s not at the movies, him in twenty minutes. If he is, Orrie Cather in half an hour.”
“Get them. Miss Fox will give you the key to her apartment and a note of authority, and also a note to the garage. Saul Panzer will search the apartment thoroughly. Tell him what he’s looking for, and if he finds it bring it here. Fred will get the automobile and drive it to our garage, and when he gets it there go through it, and leave it there. This alone will cost us twenty dollars, twenty times the amount of Miss Fox’s retainer. Everything we undertake nowadays seems to be a speculation.”
I got at the telephone. Wolfe opened his eyes on Clara Fox:
“You might learn if Miss Lindquist and Mr. Walsh will care to wash before dinner. It will be ready in five minutes.”
She shook her head. “We don’t need to eat. Or we can go out for a bite.”
“Great hounds and Cerberus!” He was about as close to a tantrum as he ever got. “Don’t need to eat! In heaven’s name, are you camels, or bears in for the winter?”
She got up and went to the front room to get them.
My dinner was interrupted twice. Saul Panzer came before I had finished my soup, and Fred Durkin arrived while we were in the middle of the beef and vegetables. I went to the office both times and gave them their instructions and told them some hurry would do.
Wolfe made it a rule never to talk business at table, but we got a little forward at that, because he steered Hilda Lindquist and Mike Walsh into the talk and we found out things about them. She was the daughter of Victor Lindquist, now nearly 80 years old and in no shape to travel, and she lived with him on their wheat farm in Nebraska. Apparently it wasn’t coffee cups she snapped in her fingers, it was threshing-machines. Clara Fox had finally found her, or rather her father, through Harlan Scovil, and she had come east for the clean-up on the chance that she might get enough to pay off a few dozen mortgages and perhaps get something extra for a new tractor, or at least a mule.
Walsh had gone through several colors before fading out to his present dim obscurity. He had made three good stakes in Nevada and California and had lost all of them. He had tried his hand as a building contractor in Colorado early in the century, made a pile, and dropped it when a sixty-foot dam had gone down the canyon three days after he had finished it. He had come back east and made a pass at this and that, but apparently had used up all his luck. At present he was night watchman on a construction job up at 55th and Madison, and he was inclined to be sore on account of the three dollars he was losing by paying a substitute in order to keep this appointment with Clara Fox. She had found him a year ago through an ad in the paper.
Wolfe was the gracious host. He saw that Mike Walsh got two rye highballs and the women a bottle of claret, and like a gentleman he gave Walsh two extra slices of the beef, smothered with sauce, which he would have sold his soul for. But he wouldn’t let Walsh light his pipe when the coffee came. He said he had asthma, which was a lie. Pipe smoke didn’t bother him much, either. He was just sore at Walsh because he had had to give up the beef, and he took it out on him that way.
We hadn’t any more than got back to the office, a little after nine o’clock, and settled into our chairs—the whole company present this time—when the doorbell rang. I went out to the front door and whirled the lock and slid the bolt, and opened it. Fred Durkin stepped in. He looked worried, and I snapped at him:
“Didn’t you get it?”
“Sure I got it.”
“What’s the matter?”
“Well, it was funny. Is Wolfe here? Maybe he’d like to hear it too.”
I glared at him, fixed the door, and led him to the office. He went across and stood in front of Wolfe’s desk.
“I got the car, Mr. Wolfe. It’s in the garage. But Archie didn’t say anything about bringing a dick along with it, so I pushed him off. He grabbed a taxi and followed me. When I left the car in the garage just now and walked here, he walked too. He’s out on the sidewalk across the street.”
“Indeed.” Wolfe’s voice was thin; he disliked after-dinner irritations. “Suppose you introduce us to the dick first. Where did you meet him?”
Fred shifted his hat to his other hand. He never could talk to Wolfe without getting fussed up, but I must admit there was often enough reason for it. Fred Durkin was as honest as sunshine, and as good a tailer as I ever saw, but he wasn’t as brilliant as sunshine. Warm and cloudy today and tomorrow. He said:
“Well, I went to the garage and showed the note to the guy, and he said all right, wait there and he’d bring it down. He went off and in a couple of minutes a man with a wide mouth came up and asked me if I was going for a ride. I’d never saw him before, but I’d have known he was a city feller if I’d had my eyes shut and just touched him with my finger. I supposed he was working on something and was just looking under stones, so I just answered something friendly. He said if I was going for a ride I’d better get a horse, because the car I came for was going to remain there for the present.”
Wolfe murmured, “So you apologized and went to a drug store to telephone here for instructions.”
Fred looked startled. “No, sir, I didn’t. My instructions was to get that car, and I got it. That dick had no documents or nothing, in fact he didn’t have nothing but a wide mouth. I went upstairs with him after me. When the garage guy saw the kind of an argument it might be he just disappeared. I ran the car down on the elevator myself and got into the street and headed east. The dick jumped on the running-board, and when I reached around to brush a speck off the windshield I accidentally pushed the dick off. By that time we was at Third Avenue and he hopped a taxi and followed me. When I got to Tenth Avenue, inside your garage, I turned the car inside out, but there was nothing there but tools and an old lead pencil and a busted dog leash and a half a package of Omar cigarettes and—”
Wolfe put up a palm at him. “And the dick is now across the street?”
“Yes, sir. He was when I come in.”
“Excellent. I hope he doesn’t escape in the dark. Go to the kitchen and tell Fritz to give you a cyanide sandwich.”
Fred shifted his hat. “I’m sorry, sir, if I—”
“Go! Any kind of a sandwich. Wait in the kitchen. If we find ourselves getting into difficulties here, we shall need you.”
Fred went. Wolfe leaned back in his chair and got his fingers laced on his belly; his lips were moving, out and in, and out and in. At length he opened his eyes enough for Clara Fox to see that he was looking at her.
“Well. We were too late. I told you you were wasting time.”
She lifted her brows. “Too late for what?”
“To keep you out of jail. Isn’t it obvious? What reason could there be for watching your car except to catch you trying to go somewhere in it? And is it likely they would be laying for you if they had not already found the money?”
“Found it where?”
“I couldn’t say. Perhaps, in the car itself. I am not a necromancer, Miss Fox. Now, before we—”
The phone rang, and
I took it. It was Saul Panzer. I listened and got his story, and then told him to hold the wire and turned to Wolfe:
“Saul. From a pay station at 62nd and Madison. There was a dick playing tag with himself in front of Miss Fox’s address. Saul went through the apartment and drew a blank. Now he thinks the dick is sticking there, but he’s not sure. It’s possible he’s being followed, and if so should he shake the dick and then come here, or what?”
“Tell him to come here. By no means shake the dick. He may know the one Fred brought, and in that case they might like to have a talk.”
I told Saul, and hung up.
Wolfe was still leaning back, with his eyes half closed. Mike Walsh sat with his closed entirely, his head swaying on one side, and his breathing deep and even in the silence. Hilda Lindquist’s shoulders sagged, but her face was flushed and her eyes bright. Clara Fox had her lips tight enough to make her look determined.
Wolfe said, “Wake Mr. Walsh. Having attended to urgencies—in vain—we may now at our leisure fill in some gaps. Regarding the fantastic business of the Rubber Band. —Mr. Walsh, a sharp blow with your hand at the back of your neck will help. A drink of water? Very well. —Did I understand you to say, Miss Fox, that you have found George Rowley?”
She nodded. “Two weeks ago.”
“Tell me about it.”
“But Mr. Wolfe … those detectives …”
“To be sure. You remember I told you you should be tied in your cradle? For the present, this house is your cradle. You are safe here. We shall return to that little problem. Tell me about George Rowley.”
She drew a breath. “Well … we found him. I began a long while ago to do what I could, which wasn’t much. Of course I couldn’t afford to go to England, or send someone, or anything like that. But I gathered some information. For instance, I learned the names of all the generals who had commanded brigades in the British army during the war, and as well as I could from this distance I began to eliminate them. There were hundreds and hundreds of them still alive, and of course I didn’t know whether the one I wanted was alive or not. I did lots of things, and some of them were pretty bright if I am a fool. I had found Mike Walsh through an advertisement, and I got photographs of scores of them and showed them to him. Of course, the fact that George Rowley had lost the lobe of his right ear was a help. On several occasions, when I learned in the newspapers that a British general or ex-general was in New York, I managed to get a look at him, and sometimes Mike Walsh did too. Two weeks ago another one came, and in a photograph in the paper it looked as if the bottom of his right ear was off. Mike Walsh stood in front of his hotel all one afternoon when he should have been asleep, and saw him, and it was George Rowley.”