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

by Rex Stout

  “As you please, sir.” Wolfe’s shoulders lifted a quarter of an inch and fell again. “It was unfortunate that the outcome was fatal. I did it to impress her. I was thunderstruck, and helpless, when she—er—abused it. I used the poisonous oil instead of a substitute because I thought she might uncork the bottle, and the odor … That too was for the psychological effect—”

  “Like hell it was. It was for exactly what she used it for. What are you trying to do, kid me?”

  “No, not really. But you began speaking of a signed statement, and I don’t like that. I like to be frank. You know perfectly well I wouldn’t sign a statement.” Wolfe wiggled a finger at him. “The fact is, you’re an ingrate. You wanted the case solved and the criminal punished, didn’t you? It is solved. The law is an envious monster, and you represent it. You can’t tolerate a decent and swift conclusion to a skirmish between an individual and what you call society, as long as you have it in your power to turn it into a ghastly and prolonged struggle; the victim must squirm like a worm in your fingers, not for ten minutes, but for ten months. Pfui! I don’t like the law. It was not I, but a great philosopher, who said that the law is an ass.”

  “Well, don’t take it out on me. I’m not the law, I’m just a cop. Where did you buy the oil of bitter almonds?”

  “Indeed.” Wolfe’s eyes narrowed. “Do you mean to ask me that?”

  Cramer looked uncomfortable. But he stuck to it: “I ask it.”

  “You do. Very well, sir. I know, of course, that the sale of that stuff is illegal. The law again! A chemist who is a friend of mine accommodated me. If you are petty enough to attempt to find out who he is, and to take steps to punish him for his infraction of the law, I shall leave this country and go to live in Egypt, where I own a house. If I do that, one out of ten of your murder cases will go unsolved, and I hope to heaven you suffer for it.”

  Cramer removed his cigar, looked at Wolfe, and slowly shook his head from side to side. Finally he said, “I’m all right, I’m sitting pretty. I won’t snoop on your friend. I’ll be ready to retire in another ten years. What worries me is this, what’s the police force doing to do, say a hundred years from now, when you’re dead? They’ll have a hell of a time.” He went on hastily, “Now don’t get sore. I know a jack from a deuce. There’s another thing I wanted to ask you. You know I’ve got a room down at headquarters where we keep some curiosities—hatchets and guns and so on that have been used at one time or another. How’s chances to take that red box and add it to the collection? I’d really like to have it. You won’t need it any more.”

  “I couldn’t say.” Wolfe leaned forward to pour more beer. “You’ll have to ask Mr. Goodwin. I presented it to him.”

  Cramer turned to me. “How about it, Goodwin? Okay?”

  “Nope.” I shook my head and grinned at him. “Sorry, Inspector. I’m going to hang onto it. It’s just what I needed to keep postage stamps in.”

  I’m still using it. But Cramer got one for his collection too, for about a week later McNair’s own box was found on the family property in Scotland, behind a stone in the chimney. It had enough dope in it for three juries, but by that time Calida Frost was already buried.

  Chapter 20

  Wolfe frowned, looking from Llewellyn Frost to his father and back again. “Where is she?” he demanded.

  It was Monday noon. The Frosts had telephoned that morning to ask for an interview. Lew was in the dunce’s chair; his father was on one at his left, with a taboret at his elbow and on it a couple of glasses and the bottle of Old Corcoran. Wolfe had just finished a second bottle of beer and was leaning back comfortably. I had my notebook out.

  Llewellyn flushed a little. “She’s out at Glennanne. She says she phoned you Saturday evening to ask if she could go out there. She … she doesn’t want to see any Frosts. She wouldn’t talk to me. I know she’s had an awful time of it, but my God, she can’t go on forever without any human intercourse … we want you to go out there and talk to her. You can make it in less than two hours.”

  “Mr. Frost.” Wolfe wiggled a finger at him. “You will please stop that. That I should ride for two hours—for you to entertain the notion at all is unpardonable, and to suggest it seriously to me is brazen impudence. Your success with that idiotic letter you brought me a week ago today has gone to your head. I don’t wonder at Miss McNair’s wanting a temporary vacation from the Frost family. Give her another day or two to accustom herself to the notion that you do not all deserve extermination. After all, when you do get to talk with her again you will possess two newly acquired advantages: you will not be an ortho-cousin, and you will be worth more than a million dollars. At least, I suppose you will. Your father can tell you about that.”

  Dudley Frost put down the whiskey glass, took a delicate sip of water with a carefulness which indicated that an overdose of ten drops of that fluid might be dangerous, and cleared his throat. “I’ve already told him,” he declared bluntly. “That woman, my sister-in-law, God rest her soul, has been aggravating me about that for nearly twenty years—well, she won’t any more. In a way she was no better than a fool. She should have known that if I handled my brother’s estate there would sooner or later be nothing left of it. I knew it; that’s why I didn’t handle it. I turned it over in 1918 to a lawyer named Cabot—gave him a power of attorney—I can’t stand him, never could, he’s bald-headed and skinny and he plays gold all day Sunday. Do you know him? He’s got a wart on the side of his neck. He gave me a quarterly report last week from a certified public accountant, showing that the estate has increased to date twenty-two percent above its original value, so I guess my son will get his million. And I will, too. We’ll see how long I can hang onto it—I’ve got my own ideas about that. But one thing I wanted to speak to you about—in fact, that’s why I came here with Lew this morning—it seems to me that’s the natural place for your fee to come from, the million I’m getting. If it wasn’t for you I wouldn’t have it. Of course I can’t give you a check now, because it will take time—”

  “Mr. Frost! Please! Miss McNair is my client—”

  But Dudley Frost was under way. “Nonsense! That’s tommyrot. I’ve thought all along my son ought to pay you; I didn’t know I’d be able to. Helen … that is … damn it, I say Helen! She won’t have anything, unless she’ll take part of ours—”

  “Mr. Frost, I insist! Mr. McNair left private instructions with his sister regarding his estate. Doubtless—”

  “McNair, that booby? Why should she take money from him? Because you say he was her father? Maybe. I have my doubts on these would-be discoveries about parentage. Maybe. Anyhow, that won’t be anything like a million. She may have a million, in case she marries my son, and I hope she will because I’m damned fond of her. But they might as well keep all of theirs, because they’ll need it, whereas I won’t need mine, since there isn’t much chance that I’ll be able to hang onto it very long whether I pay you or not. Not that ten thousands dollars is a very big slice out of a million—unless it’s more than ten thousand on account of the new developments since I had my last talk with you about it. Anyway, I don’t want to hear any more talk about Helen being your client—it’s nonsense and I won’t listen to it. You can send me your bill and if it isn’t preposterous I’ll see that it’s paid. —No, I tell you there’s no use talking! The fact is, you ought to regard it as I do, a damned lucky thing that I got the notion of turning the management of the estate over to Cabot—”

  I shut the notebook and tossed it on my desk, and leaned my head on my hand and shut my eyes and tried to relax. As I said before, that case was just one damned client after another.

  Not for publication

  Confidential Memo

  From Rex Stout

  September 15 1949

  DESCRIPTION OF NERO WOLFE

  Height 5 ft. 11 in. Weight 272 lbs. Age 56. Mass of dark brown hair, very little greying, is not parted but sweeps off to the right because he brushes with his right hand. Dark brown
eyes are average in size, but look smaller because they are mostly half closed. They always are aimed straight at the person he is talking to. Forehead is high. Head and face are big but do not seem so in proportion to the whole. Ears rather small. Nose long and narrow, slightly aquiline. Mouth mobile and extremely variable; lips when pursed are full and thick, but in tense moments they are thin and their line is long. Cheeks full but not pudgy; the high point of the cheekbone can be seen from straight front. Complexion varies from some floridity after meals to an ivory pallor late at night when he has spent six hard hours working on someone. He breathes smoothly and without sound except when he is eating; then he takes in and lets out great gusts of air. His massive shoulders never slump; when he stands up at all he stands straight. He shaves every day. He has a small brown mole just above his right jawbone, halfway between the chin and the ear.

  DESCRIPTION OF ARCHIE GOODWIN

  Height 6 feet. Weight 180 lbs. Age 32. Hair is light rather than dark, but just barely decided not to be red; he gets it cut every two weeks, rather short, and brushes it straight back, but it keeps standing up. He shaves four times a week and grasps at every excuse to make it only three times. His features are all regular, well-modeled and well-proportioned, except the nose. He escapes the curse of being the movie actor type only through the nose. It is not a true pug and is by no means a deformity, but it is a little short and the ridge is broad, and the tip has continued on its own, beyond the cartilage, giving the impression of startling and quite independent initiative. The eyes are grey, and are inquisitive and quick to move. He is muscular both in appearance and in movement, and upright in posture, but his shoulders stoop a little in unconscious reaction to Wolfe’s repeated criticism that he is too self-assertive.

  DESCRIPTION OF WOLFE’S OFFICE

  The old brownstone on West 35th Street is a double-width house. Entering at the front door, which is seven steps up from the sidewalk, you are facing the length of a wide carpeted hall. At the right is an enormous coat rack, eight feet wide, then the stairs, and beyond the stairs the door to the dining room. There were originally two rooms on that side of the hall, but Wolfe had the partition removed and turned it into a dining room forty feet long, with a table large enough for six (but extensible) square in the middle. It (and all other rooms) are carpeted; Wolfe hates bare floors. At the far end of the big hall is the kitchen. At the left of the bag hall are two doors; the first one is to what Archie calls the front room, and the second is to the office. The front room is used chiefly as an anteroom; Nero and Archie do no living there. It is rather small, and the furniture is a random mixture without any special character.

  The office is large and nearly square. In the far corner to the left (as you enter from the hall) a small rectangle has been walled off to make a place for a John and a washbowl — to save steps for Wolfe. The door leading to it faces you, and around the corner, along its other wall, is a wide and well-cushioned couch.

  SKETCH OF OFFICE

  In furnishings the room has no apparent unity but it has plenty of character. Wolfe permits nothing to be in it that he doesn’t enjoy looking at, and that has been the only criterion for admission. The globe is three feet in diameter. Wolfe’s chair was made by Meyer of cardato. His desk is of cherry, which of course clashes with the cardato, but Wolfe likes it. The couch is upholstered in bright yellow material which has to go to the cleaners every three months. The carpet was woven in Montenegro in the early nineteenth century and has been extensively patched. The only wall decorations are three pictures: a Manet, a copy of a Corregio, and a genuine Leonardo sketch. The chairs are all shapes, colors, materials, and sizes. The total effect makes you blink with bewilderment at the first visit, but if you had Archie’s job and lived there you would probably learn to like it.

  The Rex Stout Library

  Fer-de-Lance

  The League of Frightened Men

  The Rubber Band

  The Red Box

  Too Many Cooks

  Some Buried Caesar

  Over My Dead Body

  Where There’s a Will

  Black Orchids

  Not Quite Dead Enough

  The Silent Speaker

  Too Many Women

  And Be a Villain

  The Second Confession

  Trouble in Triplicate

  In the Best Families

  Three Doors to Death

  Murder by the Book

  Curtains for Three

  Prisoner’s Base

  Triple Jeopardy

  The Golden Spiders

  The Black Mountain

  Three Men Out

  Before Midnight

  Might As Well Be Dead

  Three Witnesses

  If Death Ever Slept

  Three for the Chair

  Champagne for One

  And Four to Go

  Plot It Yourself

  Too Many Clients

  Three at Wolfe’s Door

  The Final Deduction

  Gambit

  Homicide Trinity

  The Mother Hunt

  A Right to Die

  Trio for Blunt Instruments

  The Doorbell Rang

  Death of a Doxy

  The Father Hunt

  Death of a Dude

  Please Pass the Guilt

  A Family Affair

  Death Times Three

  Rex Stout

  Rex Stout, the creator of Nero Wolfe, was born in Noblesville, Indiana, in 1886, the sixth of nine children of John and Lucetta Todhunter Stout, both Quakers. Shortly after his birth, the family moved to Wakarusa, Kansas. He was educated in a country school, but by the age of nine he was recognized throughout the state as a prodigy in arithmetic. Mr. Stout briefly attended the University of Kansas, but left to enlist in the Navy, and spent the next two years as a warrant officer on board President Theodore Roosevelt’s yacht. When he left the Navy in 1908, Rex Stout began to write free-lance articles and worked as a sightseeing guide and as an itinerant bookkeeper. Later he devised and implemented a school banking system which was installed in four hundred cities and towns throughout the country. In 1927 Mr. Stout retired from the world of finance and, with the proceeds of his banking scheme, left for Paris to write serious fiction. He wrote three novels that received favorable reviews before turning to detective fiction. His first Nero Wolfe novel, Fer-de-Lance, appeared in 1934. It was followed by many others, among them Too Many Cooks, The Silent Speaker, If Death Ever Slept, The Doorbell Rang and Please Pass the Guilt, which established Nero Wolfe as a leading character on a par with Erle Stanley Gardner’s famous protagonist, Perry Mason. During World War II, Rex Stout waged a personal campaign against Nazism as chairman of the War Writers’ Board, master of ceremonies of the radio program “Speaking of Liberty,” a member of several national committees. After the war he turned his attention to mobilizing public opinion against the wartime use of thermonuclear devices, was an active leader in the Authors’ Guild, and resumed writing his Nero Wolfe novels. Rex Stout died in 1975 at the age of eighty-eight. A month before his death, he published his seventy-second Nero Wolfe mystery, A Family Affair. Ten years later, a seventy-third Nero Wolfe mystery was discovered and published in Death Times Three.