by Rex Stout
Naturally I felt foolish. “I’ll take it up,” I said, “with the Housing Administration and see what I can do. Meanwhile I may be in a hurry, depending on how urgent Inspector Cramer feels. When I phoned you about an hour ago there was no answer.”
She reached for a cigarette. “Why, do I need clearance on that too? I was out for a bite to eat.”
“Has Cramer’s office called since you returned?”
“No.” She was frowning. “Does he want me? What for?”
“He either wants you now or he soon will.” It was in the line of duty to keep my eyes fastened to her, to get her reaction. “I just took him that case of cylinders that you left on a window sill Tuesday evening.”
I do not believe there was any menace in my tone. I don’t know where it would have come from, as I did not at that time regard myself as a menace to Miss Gunther. But Alger Kates suddenly stood up, as if I had brandished a monkey wrench at her. He immediately sat down again. She kept her seat, but stopped her cigarette abruptly on its way to her lips, and the muscles of her neck stiffened.
“That case? With the cylinders in it?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Did you-what’s on them?”
“Well, that’s a long story-”
“Where did you find it?”
“That’s another long story. We’ve got to step on it, because Cramer has it now, and he may send for you any minute, or come to see you, or he may wait until he has listened to the cylinders. Anyhow, Mr. Wolfe wants to see you first, and since it was me-”
“Then you don’t know what’s on them?”
Kates had left his dim corner and moved across to the end of the couch, and was standing there in an attitude of readiness to repel the enemy. I ignored him and told her:
“Sure, I know. So does Mr. Wolfe. We got a machine and ran them off. They’re interesting but not helpful. Their outstanding feature is that they weren’t dictated on Tuesday, but before that-some of them a week or more. I’ll tell-”
“But that’s impossible!”
“Nope. Possible and true. I’ll-”
“How do you know?”
“Dates and things. Absolutely.” I stood up. “I’m getting restless. As I say, Mr. Wolfe wants to see you first. With Cramer there’s no telling, especially when he’s hanging on by his fingernails, so let’s go. Kates can come along to protect you if you want him. I’ve got a transcription of the cylinders in my pocket and you can look at it on the way, and I’ll tell-”
A bell rang. Having, though from the outside, heard it ring twice previously, I knew what it was.
I thought goddam it. I asked her in a whisper, “You expecting anybody?”
She shook her head, and the look in her eyes, straight at mine, said plainly that I could name the tune. But of course it was hopeless. Whoever had got by the doorman had also got information. Even so, there’s nothing like trying, so I put a finger to my lips and stood there looking at them-at least I gave Kates a glance. His expression said belligerently, I’m not doing this for you, mister. We had held the tableau maybe ten seconds when a voice I knew well, the voice of Sergeant Purley Stebbins, came loud and irritated through the door.
“Come on, Goodwin, what the hell!”
I marched across and opened up. He came in past me rudely, took off his hat, and began to try to pretend he was a gentleman.
“Good afternoon, Miss Gunther. Good afternoon, Mr. Kates.” He looked at her. “Inspector Cramer would be much obliged if you’d let me drive you down to his office. He’s got some things there he wants you to look at. He told me to tell you they’re Stenophone cylinders.”
I was at his side. “You come right to the point, don’t you, Purley, huh?”
“Oh,” he said, pivoting his big fine empty head, “you still here? I supposed you was gone. The Inspector will be glad to know I ran into you.”
“Nuts.” I dropped him. “Of course you know, Miss Gunther, that you may do as you please. Some people think that when a city employee comes to take them somewhere they have to go. That’s a fallacy, unless he has a document, which he hasn’t.”
“Is that true?” She asked me.
“Yes. That’s true.”
She had stood up when Purley entered. Now she moved across right to me, facing me, and stood looking up to meet my eyes. It wasn’t much of a slant, because her eyes were only about five inches below mine, and therefore it wasn’t a strain for either of us.
“You know,” she said, “you have a way of suggesting things that appeal to me. With all I know about cops and their attitude toward people with power and position and money, and with the little I know about you, even if your boss has been hired by the NIA, I almost think I would let you hold my purse if I had to fix my garter. So you decide for me. I’ll go with you to see Mr. Wolfe, or I’ll go with this oversize sergeant, whichever you say.”
Whereupon I made a mistake. It isn’t so much that I regret it because it was a mistake, since I believe in having my share of everything on my way through life, including mistakes. The trouble was, as I now admit, that I did it not for my sake, or for Wolfe’s, or for the good of the job, but for her. I would have loved to escort her down to my car with Purley traipsing along behind growling. Wolfe liked nothing better than to rile Cramer. But I knew if I took her to Wolfe’s house Purley would camp outside, and after Wolfe finished with her she would either go on downtown for a night of it, or she would refuse to go, and she would certainly never hear the last of that. So I made the mistake because I thought Miss Gunther should have some sleep. Since she had told me herself that the tireder she got the better she looked, and there I was looking at her, it was evident that she was about all in.
So I said, “I deeply appreciate your confidence, which I deserve. You hold onto the purse while I fix the garter. For the present, I hate to say it, but it would be better to accept Cramer’s invitation. I’ll be seeing you.”
Twenty minutes later I walked into the office and told Wolfe:
“Purley Stebbins arrived at Miss Gunther’s before I could get her away, and she likes him better than she does me. She is now down at Twentieth Street.”
So not only had I made a mistake, but also I was lying to the boss.
Chapter 17
MONDAY WOULD FILL A book if I let it, and so would any other day, I suppose, if you put it all in. First thing in the morning Wolfe provided evidence of how we were doing, or rather not doing, by having Saul Panzer and Bill Gore sent up to his room during the breakfast hour for private instructions. That was one of his established dodges for trying to keep me from needling him. The theory was that if I contributed any remarks about inertia or age beginning to tell or anything like that, he could shut me up by intimating that he was working like a demon supervising Saul and Bill, and they were gathering in the sheaves. Also that it wouldn’t be safe to let me in on the secret because I couldn’t control my face. One reason that got my goat was that I knew that he knew it wasn’t true.
The sheaves they had so far delivered had not relieved the famine. The armful of words, typed, printed and mimeographed, that Bill Gore had brought in from the NIA would have kept the Time and Life research staff out of mischief for a week, and that was about all it was good for. Saul Panzer’s report of his weekend at the Waldorf was what you would expect, no man whose initials were not A.G. could have done better, but all it added up to was that no hair of a murderer’s head was to be found on the premises. What Wolfe was continuing to shell out fifty bucks a day for was, as I say, presumably none of my business.
Public Relations had tottered to its feet again, taken a deep breath, and let out a battle cry. There was a full page ad in the Times, signed by the National Industrial Association, warning us that the Bureau of Price Regulation, after depriving us of our shirts and pants, was all set to peel off our hides. While there was no mention of homicide, the implication was that since it was still necessary for the NIA to save the country from the vicious deep-laid plots of th
e BPR, it was silly to imagine that it had any hand in the bumping off of Cheney Boone. As strategy, the hitch in it was that it would work only with those who already agreed with the NIA regarding who or what had got the shirts and pants.
One of my Monday problems was to get my outgoing phone calls made, on account of so many coming in the other direction. I started bright and early after Phoebe Gunther and never did get her. First, from the Fifty-fifth Street apartment, I got no answer. At nine-thirty I tried the BPR office and was told she hadn’t arrived, and no one seemed to know whether she was expected. At ten-thirty I was informed that she was there, but was in with Mr. Dexter and would I call later. Twice later, before noon, she was still with Mr. Dexter. At twelve-thirty she had gone to lunch; my message for her to call me had been given to her. At one-thirty she wasn’t back yet. At two o’clock the word was that she wouldn’t be back, and no one that I got to knew where she was. That may all sound as if I am a pushover for a runaround, but I had two strikes on me all the way. Apparently there was nobody at the BPR, from switchboard girls to the Regional Director, who didn’t know that Nero Wolfe, as Alger Kates put it, was in the pay of NIA, and they reacted accordingly. When I made an attempt to get connected with Dorothy Unger, the stenographer who had phoned Don O’Neill Saturday evening to ask him to mail her the parcel check which she had enclosed in his envelope by mistake, I couldn’t even find anyone who would even admit he had ever heard of her.
What I got for my money on phone calls that day was enough to send Tel Tel to a new low. On incoming calls the score was no better. In addition to the usual routine on a big case, like newspaper boys wanting a ringside seat in case Nero Wolfe was winding up for another fast one, there were all kinds of client trouble on account of the letters Wolfe had sent about finding the cylinders. The ad in the Times may have indicated that the NIA was a united front, but the phone calls didn’t. Each one had a different slant. Winterhoff’s line was that the assumption in the letter that the manner of finding the cylinders vindicated Miss Gunther was unjustified; that on the contrary it reinforced the suspicion that Miss Gunther was lying about it, since the parcel check had been mailed to Don O’Neill in a BPR envelope. Breslow, of course, was angry, so much so that he phoned twice, once in the morning and once in the afternoon. What had him sore this time was that we had spread the news about the cylinders. In the interests of justice we should have kept it to ourselves and the cops. He accused us of trying to make an impression on the Executive Committee, of trying to show that we were earning our money, and that was a hell of a note; we should have only two things in mind: the apprehension of the criminal and the proof of his guilt.
Even the Erskine family was divided. Frank Thomas Erskine, the father, had no complaint or criticism. He simply wanted something: namely, the full text of what was on the cylinders. He didn’t get indignant but he was utterly astonished. To him the situation was plain. Wolfe was doing a paid job for the NIA, and any information he got in the performance of that job was the property of the NIA, and any attempt to exclude them from possession of their property was felonious, malevolent, and naughty. He insisted as long as he thought there was any chance, and then quit without any indication of hard feelings.
The son, Ed, was the shortest and funniest. All the others had demanded to talk to Wolfe, not just me, but he said it didn’t matter, I would do fine, all he wanted was to ask a question. I said shoot, and he asked this, “How good is the evidence that O’Neill got the parcel check the way he says he did, in the mail?” I said that all we had, besides a look at the envelope, was O’Neill’s say-so, but that of course the police were checking it and he’d better ask them. He said much obliged and hung up.
All day I kept expecting a call from Don O’Neill, but there wasn’t a peep out of him.
The general impression I got was that the Executive Committee had better call a meeting and decide on policy.
The day went, and dusk came, and I turned on lights. Just before dinner I tried Fifty-fifth Street, but no Phoebe Gunther. The meal took even longer than usual, which is to be expected when Wolfe is completely at a loss. He uses up energy keeping thoughts out and trying to keep me quiet, and that makes him eat more. After dinner, back in the office, I tried Fifty-fifth Street once more, with the same result. I was stretched out on the couch, trying to work out an attack that would make Wolfe explode into some kind of action, when the bell rang and I went to the front door and swung it wide open without a preliminary peek through the glass. As far as I was concerned anybody at all would have been welcome, even Breslow, just for a friendly chat.
Two men stepped in. I told them to hang up their things and went to the office door and announced:
“Inspector Cramer and Mr. Solomon Dexter.”
Wolfe sighed and muttered, “Bring them in.”
Chapter 18
SOLOMON DEXTER WAS A blurter. I suppose, as Acting Director of BPR, he had enough to make him blurt, what with this and that, including things like Congress in an election year and the NIA ad in the morning Times, not to mention the unsolved murder of his predecessor, but still Wolfe does not like blurters. So he listened with a frown when, after brief greetings and with no preamble, Dexter blurted:
“I don’t understand it at all! I’ve checked on you with the FBI and the Army, and they give you a clean bill and speak of you very highly! And here you are tied up with the dirtiest bunch of liars and cutthroats in existence! What the hell is the idea?”
“Your nerves are on edge,” Wolfe said.
He blurted some more. “What have my nerves got to do with it? The blackest crime in the history of this country, with that unscrupulous gang behind it, and any man, any man whatever, who ties himself up-”
“Please!” Wolfe snapped. “Don’t shout at me like that. You’re excited. Justifiably excited perhaps, but Mr. Cramer shouldn’t have brought you in here until you had cooled off.” His eyes moved. “What does he want, Mr. Cramer? Does he want something?”
“Yeah,” Cramer growled. “He thinks you fixed that stunt about the cylinders. So it would look as if the BPR had them all the time and tried to plant them on the NIA.”
“Pfui. Do you think so too?”
“I do not. You would have done a better job of it.”
Wolfe’s eyes moved again. “If that’s what you want, Mr. Dexter, to ask me if I arranged some flummery about those cylinders, the answer is I didn’t. Anything else?”
Dexter had taken a handkerchief from his pocket and was mopping his face. I hadn’t noticed any moisture on him, and it was cool out, and we keep the room at seventy, but apparently he felt that there was something to mop. That was probably the lumberjack in him. He dropped his hand to his thigh, clutching the handkerchief, and looked at Wolfe as if he were trying to remember the next line of the script.
“There is no one,” he said, “by the name of Dorothy Unger employed by the BPR, either in New York or Washington.”
“Good heavens.” Wolfe was exasperated. “Of course there isn’t.”
“What do you mean of course there isn’t.”
“I mean it’s obvious there wouldn’t be. Whoever contrived that hocus-pocus about the parcel check, whether Mr. O’Neill himself or someone else, certainly Dorothy Unger had to be invented.”
“You ought to know,” Dexter asserted savagely.
“Nonsense.” Wolfe moved a finger to brush him away. “Mr. Dexter. If you’re going to sit there and boil with suspicion you might as well leave. You accuse me of being ‘tied up’ with miscreants. I am ‘tied up’ with no one. I have engaged to do a specific job, find a murderer and get enough evidence to convict him. If you have any-”
“How far have you got?” Cramer interrupted.
“Well.” Wolfe smirked. He is most intolerable when he smirks. “Further than you, or you wouldn’t be here.”
“Yeah,” Cramer said sarcastically. “Here the other evening, I didn’t quite understand why you didn’t pick him out and let me take him.�
�
“Neither did I,” Wolfe agreed. “For one moment I thought I might, when one of them said something extraordinary, but I was unable-”
“Who said what?”
Wolfe shook his head. “I’m having it looked into.” His tone implied that the 82nd Airborne was at it from coast to coast. He shifted to one of mild reproach. “You broke it up and chased them out. If you had acted like an adult investigator instead of an ill-tempered child I might have got somewhere.”
“Oh, sure. I bitched it for you. I’d do anything to square it, anything you say. Why don’t you ask me to get them all in here again, right now?”
“An excellent idea.” Wolfe nearly sat up straight, he was so overcome with enthusiasm. “Excellent. I do ask it. Use Mr. Goodwin’s phone.”
“By God!” Cramer stared. “You thought I meant it?”
“I mean it,” Wolfe asserted. “You wouldn’t be here if you weren’t desperate. You wouldn’t be desperate if you could think of any more questions to ask anyone. That’s what you came to me for, to get ideas for more questions. Get those people here, and I’ll see what I can do.”
“Who the hell does this man think he is?” Dexter demanded of Cramer.
Cramer, scowling at Wolfe, didn’t reply. After some seconds he arose and, without any alteration in the scowl, came to my desk. By the time he arrived I had lifted the receiver and started to dial Watkins 9-8242. He took it, sat on the corner of the desk, and went on scowling.
“Horowitz? Inspector Cramer, talking from Nero Wolfe’s office. Give me Lieutenant Rowcliffe. George? No, what do you expect, I just got here. Anything from on high? Yeah. Yeah? File it under C for crap. No. You’ve got a list of the people who were here at Wolfe’s Friday evening. Get some help on the phones and call all of them and tell them to come to Wolfe’s office immediately. I know that, but tell them. You’d better include Phoebe Gunther. Wait a minute.”