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

by Rex Stout

  I moved to the phone and started dialing. I got Saul and Orrie right off the bat, and they said they would come pronto. Fred Durkin was out, but his wife said she knew where to get hold of him and would have him call in ten minutes. Johnny Keems, when he wasn’t on a job for us, had formed the habit of phoning every day at nine to give me his program, and had told me that morning that he was still on a watchdog assignment for Del Pritchard, so I tried that office. They had Johnny booked for the day, but before I finished typing the authorization for Saul, Fred called, so I had three anyhow.

  Saul Panzer arrived first and Wolfe had Fritz show him into the office. He came in with his hat in his hand, shot me a wink, asked Wolfe how he did, got himself an everlasting blueprint of the two Frosts in one quick glance, and pointed his big nose inquiringly at Wolfe.

  Wolfe gave him the dope and told him what he was supposed to find. Helen Frost told him how to get to Glennanne from the village of Brewster. I handed him the signed authorization and forty bucks for expenses, and he pulled out his old brown wallet and deposited them in it with care. Wolfe told him to get the car from the garage and wait in front to pick up Fred and Orrie as they arrived.

  Saul nodded. “Yes, sir. If I find the box, do I leave Fred or Orrie at the place when I come away?”

  “Yes. Until notified. Fred.”

  “If any strangers offer to help me look, do I let them?”

  Wolfe frowned. “I was about to mention that. Surely there can be no objection if we show a preference for law and order. With all courtesy, you can ask to see a search warrant.”

  “Is there something hot in the box?” Saul blushed. “I mean, stolen property?”

  “No. It is legally mine. Defend it.”

  “Right.” Saul went. I reflected that if he ever got his mitts on the box I wouldn’t like to be the guy to try to take it away from him, small as he was. He didn’t think any more of Nero Wolfe than I do of my patrician nose and big brown intelligent eyes.

  Wolfe had pushed the button for Fritz, the long push, not the two shorts for beer. Fritz came, and stood.

  Wolfe frowned at him. “Can you stretch lunch for us? Two guests?”

  “No,” Llewellyn broke in, “really—we’ll have to get back—I promised Dad and Aunt Callie—”

  “You can phone them. I would advise Miss Frost to stay. At any moment we may hear that the box has been found, and that would mean a crisis. And to provide against the possibility that it will not be found, I shall need a great deal of information. Miss Frost?”

  She nodded. “I’ll stay. I’m not hungry. I’ll stay. You’ll stay with me, Lew?”

  He grumbled something at her, but stayed put. Wolfe told Fritz:

  “The fricandeau should be ample. Add lettuce to the salad if the endive is short, and of course increase the oil. Chill a bottle of the ’28 Marcobrunner. As soon as you are ready.” He wiggled Fritz away with a finger, and settled back in his chair. “Now, Miss Frost. We are engaged in a joint enterprise. I need facts. I am going to ask you a lot of foolish questions. If one of them turns out to be wise or clever you will not know it, but let us hope that I will. Please do not waste time in expostulation. If I ask you whether your mother has recently sent you to the corner druggist for potassium cyanide tablets, just say no, and listen to the next one. I once solved a difficult case by learning from a young woman, after questioning her for five hours, that she had been handed a newspaper with a piece cut out. Your inalienable rights of privacy are temporarily suspended. Is that understood?”

  “Yes.” She looked straight at him. “I don’t care. Of course I know you’re clever, I want you to be. I know how easily you caught me in a lie Tuesday morning. But you ought to know … you can’t catch me in one now, because I haven’t anything to lie about. I don’t see how anything I know can help you …”

  “Possibly it can’t. We can only try. Let us first straighten out the present a little, and work back. I should inform you: Mr. McNair did tell me a few things yesterday before he was interrupted. I have a little background to start with. Now—for instance—what did Mr. Gebert mean yesterday when he said you were almost his fiancée?”

  She compressed her lips, but then spoke right to it: “He didn’t mean anything, really. He has—several times he has asked me to marry him.”

  “Have you encouraged him?”

  “No.”

  “Has anyone?”

  “Why … who could?”

  “Lots of people. Your maid, the pastor of his church, a member of your family—has anyone?”

  She said, after a pause, “No.”

  “You said you had nothing to lie about.”

  “But I—” She stopped, and tried to smile at him. It was then that I began to think she was a pretty good kid, when I saw her try to smile to show that she wasn’t meaning to cheat on him. She went on, “This is so very personal … I don’t see how …”

  Wolfe wiggled a finger at her. “We are proceeding on this theory, that in any event whatever, we wish to discover the murderer of Mr. McNair. Even—merely for instance—if it should mean dragging your mother into a courtroom to testify against someone she likes. If that is our aim, you must leave the method of pursuit to me; and I beg you, don’t balk and shy at every little pebble. Who encouraged Mr. Gebert?”

  “I won’t do it again,” she promised. “No one really encouraged him. I’ve known him all my life, and mother knew him before I was born. Mother and father knew him. He has always been … attentive, and amusing, and in some ways he is interesting and I like him. In other ways I dislike him extremely. Mother has told me I should control my dislike on account of his good points, and she said that since he was such an old friend I shouldn’t wound his feelings by cutting him off, that it wouldn’t hurt to let him think he was still in the field as long as I hadn’t decided.”

  “You agreed to that?”

  “Well, I … I didn’t fight it. My mother is very persuasive.”

  “What was the attitude of your uncle? Mr. Dudley Frost. The trustee of your property.”

  “Oh, I never discussed things like that with him. But I know what it would have been. He didn’t like Perren.”

  “And Mr. McNair?”

  “He disliked Perren more than I did. Outwardly they were friends, but … anyway, Uncle Boyd wasn’t two-faced. Shall I tell you …”

  “By all means.”

  “Well, one day about a year ago Uncle Boyd sent for me to go upstairs to his office, and when I went in Perren was there. Uncle Boyd was standing up and looking white and determined. I asked him what was the matter, and he said he only wanted to tell me, in Perrens’s presence, that any influence his friendship and affection might have on me was unalterably opposed to my marriage with Perren. He said it very … formally, and that wasn’t like him. He didn’t ask me to promise or anything. He just said that and then told me to go.”

  “And in spite of that, Mr. Gebert has persisted with his courtship.”

  “Of course he has. Why wouldn’t he? Lots of men have. I’m so rich it’s worth quite an effort.”

  “Dear me.” Wolfe’s eyes flickered open at her and half shut again. “As cynical as that about it? But a brave cynicism which is of course proper. Nothing is more admirable than the fortitude with which millionaires tolerate the disadvantages of their wealth. What is Mr. Geberts profession?”

  “He hasn’t any. That’s one of the things I don’t like about him. He doesn’t do anything.”

  “Has he an income?”

  “I don’t know. Really, I don’t know a thing about it. I suppose he has … I’ve heard him make vague remarks. He lives at the Chesebrough, and he drives a car.”

  “I know. Mr. Goodwin informed me he drove it here yesterday. At all events, a man of courage. You knew him in Europe; what did he do there?”

  “No more than here, as far as I remember—of course I was young then. He was wounded in the war, and afterwards came to visit us in Spain—that is, my mother, I was only t
wo years old—and he went to Egypt with us a little later, but when we went on to the Orient he went back—”

  “One moment, please.” Wolfe was frowning. “Let us tidy up the chronology. There seems to have been quite a party in Spain; almost Mr. McNair’s last words were that he had gone to Spain with his baby daughter. We’ll start when your life started. You were born, you told me yesterday, in Paris—on May 7th, 1915. Your father was already in the war, as a member of the British Aviation Corps, and he was killed when you were a few months old. When did your mother take you to Spain?”

  “Early in 1916. She was afraid to stay in Paris, on account of the war. We went first to Barcelona and then to Cartagena. A little later Uncle Boyd and Glenna came down and joined us there. He had no money and his health was bad, and mother … helped him. I think Perren came, not long after, partly because Uncle Boyd was there—they had both been friends of my father’s. Then in 1917 Glenna died, and soon after that Uncle Boyd went back to Scotland, and mother took me to Egypt because they were afraid of a revolution or something in Spain, and Perren went with us.”

  “Good. I own a house in Egypt which I haven’t seen for twenty years. It has Rhages and Veramine tiles on the doorway. How long were you in Egypt?”

  “About two years. In 1919, when I was four years old—of course mother has told me all this—three English people were killed in a riot in Cairo, and mother decided to leave. Perren went back to France. Mother and I went to Bombay, and later to Bali and Japan and Hawaii. My uncle, who was the trustee of my property, kept insisting that I should have an American education, and finally, in 1924—I was nine years old then—we left Hawaii and came to New York. It was from that time on, really, that I knew Uncle Boyd, because of course I didn’t remember him from Spain, since I had been only two years old.”

  “He had his business in New York when you got here?”

  “No. He has told me—he started designing for Wilmerding in London and was very successful and became a partner, and then he decided New York was better and came over here in 1925 and went in for himself. Of course he looked mother up first thing, and she was a little help to him on account of the people she knew, but he would have gone to the top anyway because he had great ability. He was very talented. Paris and London were beginning to copy him. You would never have thought, just being with him, talking with him … you would never have thought …”

  She faltered, and stopped. Wolfe began to murmur something at her to steady her, but an interruption saved him the trouble. Fritz appeared to announce lunch. Wolfe pushed back his chair:

  “Your coat will be all right here, Miss Frost. Your hat? But permit me to insist, as a favor; to eat with a hat on, except in a railroad station, is barbarous. Thank you. Restaurant? I know nothing of restaurants; short of compulsion, I would not eat in one were Vatel himself the chef.”

  Then, after we were seated at the table, when Fritz came to pass the relish platter, Wolfe performed the introduction according to his custom with guests who had not tasted that cooking before:

  “Miss Frost, Mr. Frost, this is Mr. Brenner.”

  Also according to custom, there was no shop talk during the meal. Llewellyn was fidgety, but he ate; and the fact appeared to be that our new client was hungry as the devil. Probably she had had no breakfast. Anyway, she gave the fricandeau a play which made Wolfe regard her with open approval. He carried the burden of the conversation, chiefly about Egypt, tiles, the uses of a camel’s double lip, and the theory that England’s colonizing genius was due to her repulsive climate, on account of which Britons with any sense and willpower invariably decided to go somewhere else to work. It was two-thirty when the salad was finished, so we went back to the office and had Fritz serve coffee there.

  Helen Frost telephoned her mother. Apparently there was considerable parental protest from the other end of the wire, for Helen sounded first persuasive, then irritated, and finally fairly sassy. During that performance Llewellyn sat and scowled at her, and I couldn’t tell whether the scowl was for her or the opposition. It had no effect on our client either way, for she was sitting at my desk and didn’t see it.

  Wolfe started in on her again, resuming the Perren Gebert tune, but for the first half hour or so it was spotty because the telephone kept interrupting. Johnny Keems called to say that he could leave the Pritchard job if we needed him, and I told him that we’d manage to struggle along somehow. Dudley Frost phoned to give his son hell, and Llewellyn took it calmly and announced that his cousin Helen needed him where he was, whereupon she kept a straight face but I smothered a snicker. Next came a ring from Fred Durkin, to say that they had arrived and taken possession of Glennanne, finding no one there, and had begun operations; the phone at the cottage was out of order, so Saul had sent Fred to the village to make that report. A man named Collinger phoned and insisted on speaking to Wolfe, and I listened in and took it down as usual; he was Boyden McNair’s lawyer, and wanted to know if Wolfe could call at his office right away for a conference regarding the will, and of course the bare idea set Wolfe’s digestion back at least ten minutes. It was arranged that Collinger would come to 35th Street the following morning. Then, a little after three o’clock, Inspector Cramer got us, and reported that his army was making uniform progress on all fronts: namely, none. No red box and no information about it; no hide or hair of motive anywhere; nothing among McNair’s papers that could be stretched to imply murder; no line on a buyer of potassium cyanide; no anything.

  Cramer sounded a little weary. “Here’s a funny item, too,” he said in a wounded tone, “we can’t find the young Frosts anywhere. Your client, Lew, isn’t at his home or his office in the Portland Theatre or anywhere else, and Helen, the daughter, isn’t around either. Her mother says she went out around eleven o’clock, but she doesn’t know where, and I’ve learned that Helen was closer to McNair than anyone else, very close friends, so she’s our best chance on the red box. Then what’s she doing running around town, with McNair just croaked? There’s just a chance that something’s got too hot for them and they’ve faded. Lew was up at the Frost apartment on 65th Street and they went out together. We’re trying to trail—”

  “Mr. Cramer. Please. I’ve mumbled at you twice. Miss Helen Frost and Mr. Llewellyn Frost are in my office; I’m conversing with them. They had lunch—”

  “Huh? They’re there now?”

  “Yes. They got here this morning shortly after you left.”

  “I’ll be damned.” Cramer shrilled a little. “What are you trying to do, lick off some cream for yourself? I want to see them. Ask them to come down—or wait, let me talk to her. Put her on.”

  “Now, Mr. Cramer.” Wolfe cleared his throat. “I do not lick cream; and this man and woman came to see me unannounced and unexpected. I am perfectly willing that you should talk with her, but there is no point—”

  “What do you mean, willing? What’s that, humor? Why the devil shouldn’t you be willing?”

  “I should. But it is appropriate to mention it, since Miss Frost is my client, and is therefore under my—”

  “Your client? Since when?” Cramer was boiling. “What kind of a shenanigan is this? You told me Lew Frost hired you!”

  “So he did. But that—er—we have changed that. I have—speaking as a horse—I have changed riders in the middle of the stream. I am working for Miss Frost. I was about to say there is no point in a duplication of effort. She has had a bad shock and is under a strain. You may question her if you wish, but I have done so and am not through with her, and there is little likelihood that her interests will conflict with yours in the end. She is as anxious to find Mr. McNair’s murderer as you are; that is what she hired me for. I may tell you this: neither she nor her cousin has any knowledge of the red box. They have never seen it or heard of it.”

  “The devil.” There was a pause on the wire. “I want to see her and have a talk with her.”

  Wolfe sighed. “In that infernal den? She is tired, she has nothing to say
that can help you, she is worth two million dollars, and she will be old enough to vote before next fall. Why don’t you call at her home after dinner this evening? Or send one of your lieutenants?”

  “Because I—Oh, the hell with it. I ought to know better than to argue with you. And she doesn’t know where the red box is?”

  “She knows nothing whatever about it. Nor does her cousin. My word for that.”

  “Okay. I’ll get her later maybe. Let me know what you find, huh?”

  “By all means.”

  Wolfe hung up and pushed the instrument away, leaned back and locked his fingers on his belly, and slowly shook his head as he murmured, “That man talks too much. —I’m sure, Miss Frost, that you won’t be offended at missing a visit to police headquarters. It is one of my strongest prejudices, my disinclination to permit a client of mine to appear there. Let us hope that Mr. Cramer’s search for the red box will keep him entertained.”

  Llewellyn put in, “In my opinion, that’s the only thing to do anyway, wait till it’s found. All this hash of ancient history—if you were as careful to protect your client from your own annoyance as you are—”

  “I remind you, sir, you are here by sufferance. Your cousin has the sense, when she hires an expert, to permit him his hocus-pocus. —What were we saying, Miss Frost? Oh, yes. You were telling me that Mr. Gebert came to New York in 1931. You were then sixteen years old. You said that he is forty-four, so he was then thirty-nine, not an advanced age. I presume he called upon your mother at once, as an old friend?”

  She nodded. “Yes. We knew he was coming; he had written. Of course I didn’t remember him; I hadn’t seen him since I was four years old.”

  “Of course not. Did he perhaps come on a political mission? I understand that he was a member of the camelots du roi.”

  “I don’t think so. I’m sure he didn’t—but that’s silly, certainly I can’t be sure. But I think not.”