The Rubber Band/The Red Box 2-In-1

by Rex Stout

  I swiveled and opened a drawer unostentatiously and got out my automatic and laid it on the desk at my elbow. Hombert was starting to bellyache:

  “I don’t know, Wolfe, what kind of a high-handed procedure you think—”

  Wolfe, who had moved around the desk and into his chair, put up a palm at him: “Please, Mr. Hombert. I think it is always advisable to take a short-cut when it is feasible. That’s why I requested a favor of Lord Clivers.” He looked at Clivers. “Be seated, sir. And tell us, have you ever met Mr. Perry before?”

  Clivers, with his hand still in his pocket, lowered himself into his chair, which was between Hombert and me, without taking his eyes off of Perry. “I have,” he said gruffly. “By gad, you were right. He’s Coleman. Rubber Coleman.”

  Perry just looked at him.

  Wolfe asked softly, “What about it, Mr. Perry?”

  You could see from Perry’s chin that his teeth were clamped. His eyes went suddenly from Clivers to Wolfe and stayed there; then he looked at me, and I returned it. His shoulders started going up, slowly up, high, as he took in a long breath, and then slowly they started down again. When they touched bottom he looked at Wolfe again and said:

  “I’m not talking. Not just now. You go on.”

  Wolfe nodded. “I don’t blame you, sir. It’s a lot to give up, to surrender that old secret.” He glanced around the circle. “You gentlemen may remember, from Miss Fox’s story last night, that Rubber Coleman was the man who led that little band of rescuers forty years ago. That was Mr. Perry here. But you do not yet know that on account of that obligation Lord Clivers, in the year 1906, twenty-nine years ago, paid Coleman—Mr. Perry—the sum of one million dollars. Nor that this Coleman-Perry has never, to this day, distributed any of that sum as he agreed to do.”

  Cramer grunted and moved himself another inch forward. Skinner was sunk in his chair with his elbows on its arms and his finger-tips placed neatly together, his narrow eyes moving from Wolfe to Clivers to Perry and back again. Hombert was biting his lip and watching Clivers. Muir suddenly squeaked:

  “What’s all this about? What has this got to do—”

  Wolfe snapped at him, “Shut up. You are here, sir, because that seemed the easiest way to bring Mr. Perry, and because I thought you should know the truth regarding your charge against Miss Fox. If you wish to leave, do so; if you stay, hold your tongue.”

  Clivers put in brusquely, “I didn’t agree to this man’s presence.”

  Wolfe nodded. “I think you may leave that to me. After all, Lord Clivers, it was you who originally started this, and if the hen has come home to roost and I am to pluck it for you, I must be permitted a voice in the method.” He turned abruptly. “What about it, Mr. Perry? You’ve had a moment for reflection. You were Rubber Coleman, weren’t you?”

  “I’m not talking.” Perry was gazing at him, and this time he didn’t have to strain the words through his teeth. His lips compressed a little, his idea being that he was smiling. “Lord Clivers may quite possibly be mistaken.” He tried the smile again. “It may even be that he will … will realize his mistake.” He looked around. “You know me, Mr. Skinner. You too, Mr. Hombert. I am glad you are here. I have evidence to present to you that this man Wolfe is engaged in a malicious attempt to damage my reputation and that of my vice-president and the firm I direct. Mr. Muir will bear me out.” He turned small hard eyes on Wolfe. “I’ll give you rope. All you want. Go on.”

  Wolfe nodded admiringly. “Superlative.” He leaned back and surveyed the group. “Gentlemen, I must ask you to listen, and bear with me. You will reach my conclusion only if I describe my progress toward it. I’ll make it as brief as possible.

  “It began some forty-five hours ago, when Mr. Perry called here and asked me to investigate a theft of $30,000 from the drawer of Mr. Muir’s desk. Mr. Goodwin called at the Seaboard office and asked questions. He was there from 4:45 until 5:55, and for a period of 35 minutes, from 5:20 until 5:55, he saw neither Mr. Perry nor Mr. Muir, because they had gone to a conference in the directors’ room. The case seemed to have undesirable features, and we decided not to handle it. I find I shall need some beer.”

  He reached to push the button, and leaned back again. “You know of Harlan Scovil’s visit to this office Monday afternoon. Well, he saw Mr. Perry here. He not only saw him, he stared at him. You know of the phone call, at 5:26, which summoned Mr. Scovil to his death. Monday night, in addition to these things, I also knew the story which Miss Fox had related to us in the presence of Mr. Walsh and Miss Lindquist; and when, having engaged myself in Miss Fox’s interest, it became necessary to consider the murder of Harlan Scovil, I scanned the possibilities as they presented themselves at that moment.

  “Assuming, until disproven, that Harlan Scovil’s murder was connected with the Rubber Band affair, the first possibility was of course Lord Clivers himself, but Tuesday morning he was eliminated, when I learned that the murderer was alone in the automobile. An article in Sunday’s Times, which Mr. Goodwin had kindly read to me, stated that Lord Clivers did not know how to drive a car, and on Tuesday, yesterday, I corroborated that through an agent in London, at the same time acquiring various bits of information regarding Lord Clivers. The second possibility was Michael Walsh. I had talked with him and formed a certain judgment of him, and no motive was apparent, but he remained a possibility. The same applied to Miss Lindquist. Miss Fox was definitely out of it, because I had upon consideration accepted her as a client.”

  Somebody burst out, “Ha!” Hombert ventured a comment, while Wolfe poured beer and gulped, but it went unheeded. Wolfe wiped his lips and went on:

  “Among the known possibilities, the most promising one was Anthony D. Perry. On account of the phone call which took Mr. Scovil to the street to die, it was practically certain that his murderer had known he was in this office; and because, so far as I was aware, Mr. Perry was the only person who had known that, it seemed at least worth while to accept it as a conjecture. Through Metropolitan Biographies and also through inquiries by one of my men, I got at least negative support for the conjecture; and I got positive support by talking over long distance to Nebraska, with Miss Lindquist’s father. He remembered with considerable accuracy the appearance of the face and figure of Rubber Coleman, and while of course there could be no real identification by a telephone talk after forty years, still it was support. I asked Mr. Lindquist, in fact, for descriptions of all the men concerned in that affair, thinking there might be some complication more involved than this most obvious one, but it was his description of Rubber Coleman which most nearly approximated that of Mr. Perry. The next step—”

  “Wait a minute, Wolfe.” Skinner’s croak was imperative. “You can’t do this. Not this way. If you’ve got a case, I’m the District Attorney. If you haven’t—”

  Perry cut in, “Let him alone! Let him hang himself.”

  Hombert muttered something to Cramer, and the inspector rumbled back. Clivers spoke up: “I’m concerned in this. Let Wolfe talk.” He used a finger of his left hand to point at Perry because his ring hand was still in his coat pocket. “That man is Rubber Coleman. Wolfe learned that, didn’t he? What the devil have the rest of you done, except annoy me?”

  Perry leveled his eyes at the marquis. “You’re mistaken, Lord Clivers. You’ll regret this.”

  Wolfe had taken advantage of the opportunity to finish his bottle and ring for another. Now he looked around. “You gentlemen may be curious why, if Mr. Perry is not Rubber Coleman, he does not express indignant wonderment at what I am talking about. Oh, he could explain that. Long ago, shortly after she entered Seaboard’s employ, Miss Fox told him the story which, you heard from her last night. He knows all about the Rubber Band, from her, and also about her efforts to find its surviving members. And by the way, as regards the identity—did Mr. Walsh telephone you around five o’clock yesterday afternoon, Lord Clivers, and tell you he had just found Rubber Coleman?”

  Clivers nodded. “He d
id.”

  “Yes.” Wolfe looked at Cramer. “As you informed me, immediately after leaving the Seaboard office, where he had gone on account of his unfortunate suspicions regarding Miss Fox and myself after Harlan Scovil had been killed, Mr. Walsh sought a telephone. There—as can doubtless be verified by inquiry, along with multitudinous other details—he had seen Mr. Perry. It is a pity he did not inform me, since in that case he would still be alive; but what he did do was to phone Lord Clivers, with whom he had had a talk in the morning. He had called at the Hotel Portland and Lord Clivers had considered it advisable to see him, had informed him of the payment which had been made to Rubber Coleman long before, and had declared his intention of giving him a respectable sum of money. Now, learning from Mr. Walsh over the telephone that he had found Rubber Coleman, Lord Clivers saw that immediate and purposeful action was required if publicity was to be avoided; and he told Mr. Walsh that around seven o’clock that evening, on his way to a dinner engagement, he would stop in at the place Mr. Walsh was working, which was a short distance from his hotel. I have been told these details within the last hour. Is that correct, sir?”

  Clivers nodded. “It is.”

  Wolfe looked at Perry, but Perry’s eyes were fixed on Clivers. Wolfe said, “So, for the identity, we have Mr. Lindquist’s description, Mr. Walsh’s phone call, and Lord Clivers’ present recognition. Why, after forty years, Mr. Scovil and Mr. Walsh should have recognized Rubber Coleman is, I think, easily explicable. On account of the circumstances, their minds were at the moment filled with vivid memories of that old event, and alert with suspicion. They might have passed Mr. Perry a hundred times on the street without a second glance at him, but in the situations in which they saw him recollection jumped for them.” He looked again at the Seaboard president, and again asked, “What about it now, Mr. Perry? Won’t you give us that?”

  Perry moved his eyes at him. He spoke smoothly. “I’m still not talking. I’m listening.” He suddenly, spasmodically, jerked forward, and there was a stir around the circle. Cramer’s bulk tensed in his chair. Skinner’s hands dropped. Clivers stiffened. I got my hand to my desk, on the gun. I don’t think Perry noticed any of it, for his gaze stayed on Wolfe, and he jerked back again and set his jaw. He said not quite so smoothly, “You go on.”

  Wolfe shook his head. “You’re a stubborn man, Mr. Perry. However—as I started to say, the next step for me, yesterday afternoon, was to get in touch with Mr. Walsh, persuade him of my good faith, show him a photograph of Mr. Perry, and substantiate my conjecture. That became doubly important and urgent after Lord Clivers called here and I learned of the payment that had been made to Coleman in 1906. I considered the idea of asking Lord Clivers for a description of Coleman, and even possibly showing him Perry’s photograph, but rejected it. I was at that moment by no means convinced of his devotion to scruple, and even had I been, I would not have cared to alarm him further by showing him the imminence of Coleman’s discovery—and the lid blown off the pot. First I needed Mr. Walsh, so I sent a man to 55th Street to reconnoitre.

  “Of course, I had found out other things. For instance, one of my men had visited the directors’ room of the Seaboard Products Corporation and learned that it has a second door, into the public hall, through which Mr. Perry might easily have departed at 5:20 or thereabouts Monday afternoon on some errand, and returned some thirty minutes later, without Mr. Goodwin’s knowledge. Questions to his business associates who were present might elicit answers. For another instance, Miss Fox had breakfast with me yesterday morning—and I assure you, Mr. Skinner, I did not waste the time in foolish queries as to where her mother used to keep letters sixteen years ago.

  “Combining information with conjecture, I get a fair picture of some of Mr. Perry’s precautionary activities. In the spring of 1932 he saw an advertisement in a newspaper seeking knowledge of the whereabouts of Michael Walsh and Rubber Coleman. In a roundabout way he learned who had inserted it; and a month later Clara Fox was in the employ of the Seaboard Products Corporation. He could keep an eye on her, and did so. He cultivated her company, and earned a degree of her confidence. When she found Harlan Scovil, and later Hilda Lindquist, and still later Michael Walsh, he knew of it. He tried to convince her of the foolishness of her enterprise, but without success. Then suddenly, last Thursday, he learned she had found Lord Clivers, and he at once took measures to hamstring her. He may even then have considered murder and rejected it; at any rate, he decided that sending her to prison as a thief would completely discredit her and would be sufficient. He knew that her initiative was the only active force threatening him, and that with her removed there would be little danger. An opportunity was providentially at hand. Friday afternoon he himself took that $30,000 from Mr. Muir’s desk, and sent Miss Fox into that room with a cablegram to be copied. I don’t know—”

  Muir had popped up out of his chair and was squealing, “By God, I believe it! By God if I don’t! And all the time you were plotting against her! You dirty sneak, you dirty—”

  Cramer, agile on his feet, had a hand on Muir’s shoulder. “All right, all right, you just sit down and well all believe it. Come on, now.” He eased him down, Muir chattering.

  Perry said contemptuously, bitingly, “So that’s you, Muir.” He whirled, and there was a quality in his movement that made me touch my gun again. “Wolfe, all this you’re inventing, you’ll eat it.” He added slowly, “And it will finish you.”

  Wolfe shook his head. “Oh no, sir, I assure you.” He sighed. “To continue: I don’t know how and when Mr. Perry concealed the money in Miss Fox’s automobile, but one of my men has uncovered a possibility which the police can easily follow. At any rate, it is certain that he did. That is unimportant. Another thing that moved him to action was the fact that Clara Fox had told him that, having heard him speak favorably of the abilities of Nero Wolfe, she had decided to engage me in the Rubber Band enterprise. Apparently Mr. Perry did give my competence a high rating, for he took the trouble to come here himself to get me to act for the Seaboard Products Corporation, which would of course have prevented me from taking Miss Fox as a client.

  “But he had an unpleasant surprise here. He was sitting in that chair, the one he is in now, when a man walked into the room and said, ‘My name’s Harlan Scovil.’ And the man stared at Mr. Perry. We cannot know whether he definitely recognized him as Rubber Coleman or whether Mr. Perry merely suspected that he did. In any event, it was enough to convince Mr. Perry that something more drastic than a framed-up larceny charge was called for without delay; for obviously it would not do for any living person to have even the remotest suspicion that there was any connection between Anthony D. Perry, corporation president, bank director, multi-millionaire, and eminent citizen, and the Rubber Band. Lord Clivers tells me that forty years ago Rubber Coleman was headstrong, sharp of purpose, and quick on the trigger. Apparently he has retained those characteristics. He went to his office and at once phoned Mr. Goodwin to come there. At 5:20 he went to the directors’ room. A moment later he excused himself to his associates, left by the door to the public hall, descended to the ground floor and telephoned Harlan Scovil, saying what we can only guess at but certainly arranging a rendezvous, went to the street and selected a parked automobile and took it, drove to where Scovil was approaching the rendezvous and shot him dead, abandoned the car on Ninth Avenue, and returned to the Seaboard Building and the directors’ room. It was an action admirably quick-witted, direct and conclusive, with probably not one chance in a million of its being discovered but for the fact that Miss Fox had happened to pick me to collect a fantastic debt for her.”

  Wolfe paused to open and pour beer. Skinner said, “I hope you’ve got something, Wolfe. I hope to heaven you’ve got something, because if you haven’t …”

  Wolfe drank, and put his glass down. “I know. I can see the open jaws of the waiting beasts.” He thumbed at Perry. “This one here in front. But let him wait a little longer. Let us go on to last evening.
That is quite simple. We are not concerned with the details of how Mr. Walsh got to see Mr. Perry at his office yesterday afternoon; it is enough to know that he did, since he phoned Lord Clivers that he had found Rubber Coleman. Well, there was only one thing for Mr. Perry to do, and he did it. Shortly after half-past six o’clock he entered that building enclosure by one of the ways we know of—possibly he is a member of the Orient Club, another point for inquiry—crept up on old Mr. Walsh and shot him in the back of the head, probably muffling the sound of the shot by wrapping the gun in his overcoat or something else, moved the body to the vicinity of the telephone if it was not already there, left by the way he had come, and drove rapidly—”

  “Wait a minute!” Cramer broke in, gruff. “How do you fit that? We know the exact time of that shot, two minutes to seven, when Walsh called you on the phone. And you heard the shot. We already know—”

  “Please, Mr. Cramer.” Wolfe was patient. “I’m not telling you what you already know; this, for you, is news. I was saying, Mr. Perry drove rapidly downtown and arrived at this office at exactly seven o’clock.”

  Hombert jerked up and snorted. Cramer stared at Wolfe, slowly shaking his head. Skinner, frowning, demanded, “Are you crazy, Wolfe? Yesterday you told us you heard the shot that killed Walsh, at 6:58. Now you say that Perry fired it, and then got to your office at seven o’clock.” He snarled, “Well?”

  “Precisely.” Wolfe wiggled a finger at him. “Do you remember that last night I told you that I was confronted by a difficulty which had to be solved before anything could be done?

  That was it. You have just stated it. —Archie, please tell Saul to go ahead.”

  I got up and went and opened the door to the front room. Saul Panzer was sitting there. I called to him, “Hey, Mr. Wolfe says to go ahead.” Saul made for the hall and I heard him going out the front door.