Rex Stout - Nero Wolfe 03

by The Rubber Band

  “Plant rooms fourth and last stop. And take it from me, if you knock over a bench of orchid pots you’ll find more trouble here than you brought with you.”

  Rowcliff was licked. He wasn’t saying so, and he was trying not to look it, but he was. He growled:

  “Wolfe up there?”

  “He is.”

  “All right. Come along, Jack. You two wait here.”

  The three of us got to the top in single file and I called to him to push in. We entered and he saw the elevator standing there with the door gaping. He opened the door to the stairs and called down, “Hey, Al! Come up and give this elevator a go and look over the shaft!” Then he rejoined us.

  Those plant rooms had been considered impressive by better men than Lieutenant Rowcliff—for example among many others, by Pierre Fracard, President of the Horticultural Society of France. I was in and out of them ten times a day and they impressed me, though I pretended to Theodore Horstmann that they didn’t. Of course they were more startling in February than they were in October, but Wolfe and Horstmann had developed a technique of forcing that made them worth looking at no matter when it was. Inside the door of the first room, which had Odontoglossums, Oncidiums and Miltonia hybrids, Rowcliff and the dick stopped short. The angle-iron staging gleamed in its silver paint, and on the concrete benches and shelves three thousand pots of orchids showed greens and blues and yellows and reds. It looked spotty to me, since I had seen it at the top of its glory, but it was nothing to sniff at. I said:

  “Well, do you think you’re at the flower show? You didn’t pay to get in. Get a move on, huh?”

  Rowcliff led the way. He didn’t leave the center aisle. Once he stopped to stoop for a peek under a bench, and I let a laugh bust out and then choked it and said, “Excuse me, lieutenant, I know you have your duty to perform.” He went on with his shoulders up, but I knew the eager spirit of the chase had oozed down into his shoes.

  In the next room, Cattleyas, Laelias, hybrids and miscellaneous, Theodore Horstmann was over at one side pouring fertilizer on a row of Cymbidiums, which are terrestrials, and Rowcliff took a look at him but didn’t say anything. The dick in between us stopped to bend down and stick his nose against a big lilac hybrid, and I told him, “Nope. If you smell anything sweet, it’s me.”

  We went on through the tropical room, where it was hot with the sun shining and the lath screens already off, and continued to the potting room. It had enough free space to move around in, and it also had inhabitants. Francis Horrocks, still unsoiled, stood leaning with his back against an angle-iron, talking to Nero Wolfe, who was using the pressure spray. A couple of boards had been laid along the top of a long low wooden box which was filled with osmundine, and on the boards had been placed 35 or 40 pots of Laeliocattleya Lustre. Wolfe was spraying them with high pressure, and it was pretty wet around there. Horrocks was saying:

  “It really seems a devilish lot of trouble. What? Of course, you know, it’s perfectly proper for every chap …”

  Rowcliff looked around. There were sphagnum, sand, charcoal, crock for drainage, stacks of hundreds of pots. Rowcliff moved forward, and Wolfe shut off the spray and turned to him.

  I closed in. “Mr. Nero Wolfe, Lieutenant Rowcliff.”

  Wolfe inclined his head one inch. “How do you do.” He looked toward the door, where the dick stood. “And your companion?”

  He was using his aloof tone, and it was good. Rowcliff said, “One of my men. We’re here on business.”

  “So I understand. If you don’t mind, introduce him. I like to know the names of people who enter my house.”

  “Yeah? His name’s Loedenkrantz.”

  “Indeed.” Wolfe looked at him and inclined his head an inch again. “How do you do, sir.”

  The dick said without moving, “Pleased to meetcha.”

  Wolfe returned to Rowcliff. “And you are a lieutenant. Reward of merit? Incredible.” His voice deepened and accelerated. “Will you take a message for me to Mr. Cramer? Tell him that Nero Wolfe pronounces him to be a prince of witlings and an unspeakable ass! Pfui!” He turned on the spray, directed it on the orchids, and addressed Francis Horrocks. “But my dear sir, since all life is trouble, the only thing is to achieve a position where we may select varieties …”

  I said to Rowcliff, “There’s a room there at the side, the gardener’s. You don’t want to miss that.”

  He went with me and looked in, and I hand it to him that he had enough face left to enter and look under the bed and open the closet door. He came out again, and he was done. But as he moved for the door he asked me, “How do you get out to the roof?”

  “You don’t. This covers all of it. Anyhow you’ve got it spotted. Haven’t you? Don’t tell me you overlooked that.”

  We were returning the way we had come, and I was behind them again. He didn’t answer. Mr. Loedenkrantz didn’t stop to smell an orchid. There was a grin inside of me trying to burst into flower, but I was warning it, not yet, sweetheart, they’re not out yet. We left the plant rooms and descended to the third floor, and Rowcliff said to the pair he had left there:

  “Fall in.”

  One began, “I thought I heard a noise—”

  “Shut up.”

  I followed them down, on down. After all the diversion I had been furnishing I didn’t think it advisable to go suddenly dumb, so I manufactured a couple of nifties during the descent. In the lower hall, before I unlocked the door, I squared off to Rowcliff and told him:

  “Listen. I’ve been free with the lip, but it was my day. We all have to take it sometimes, and hey-nonny-nonny. I’m aware it wasn’t you that pulled this boner.”

  But being a lieutenant, he was stern and unbending. “Much obliged for nothing. Open the door.”

  I did that, and they went. On the sidewalk they were joined by their brothers who had been left there. I shut the door, heard the lock snap, and put on the bolt. I turned and went to the office. I seldom took a drink before dark, but the idea of a shot of bourbon seemed pleasing, so I went to the cabinet and helped myself. It felt encouraging going down. In my opinion, there was very little chance that Rowcliff had enough eagerness left in him to try a turn-around, but I returned to the entrance and pulled the curtain and stood looking out for a minute. There was no one in sight that had the faintest resemblance to a city employee. So I mounted the stairs, clear to the plant rooms, and went through to the potting room. Wolfe and Horrocks were standing there, and Wolfe looked at me inquiringly.

  I waved a hand. “Gone. Done.”

  Wolfe hung the spray tube on its hook and called, “Theodore!”

  Horstmann came trotting. He and I together lifted the pots of Laeliocattleyas, which Wolfe had been spraying, from the boards, and put them on a bench. Then we removed the boards from the long box of osmundine; Horrocks took one. Wolfe said:

  “All right, Miss Fox.”

  The mossy fibre, dripping with water, raised itself up out of the box, fell all around us, and spattered our pants. We began picking off patches of it that were clinging to Clara Fox’s soaked dress, and she brushed back her hair and blurted:

  “Thank God I wasn’t born a mermaid!”

  Horrocks put his fingers on the sleeve of her dress. “Absolutely saturated. Really, you know—”

  He may have been straight, but he had no right to be in on it. I cut him off: “I know you’ll have to be going. Fritz can attend to Miss Fox. If you don’t mind?”

  AT TWELVE o’clock noon Wolfe and I sat in the office. Fred Durkin was out in the kitchen eating pork chops and pumpkin pie. He had made his appearance some twenty minutes before, with the pork chops in his pocket, for Fritz to cook, and a tale of injured innocence. One of Barber’s staff had found him in a detention room down at headquarters, put there to weigh his sins after an hour of displaying his ignorance to Inspector Cramer. The lawyer had pried him loose without much trouble and sent him on his way, which of course was West 35th Street. Wolfe hadn’t bothered to see him.
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  Up in the tropical room was the unusual sight of Clara Fox’s dress and other items of apparel hanging on a string to dry out, and she was up in the south room sporting the dressing gown Wolfe had given me for Christmas four years before. I hadn’t seen her, but Fritz had taken her the gown. It looked as if we’d have to get her out of the house pretty soon or I wouldn’t have a thing to put on.

  Francis Horrocks had departed, having accepted my hint without any whats. Nothing had been explained to him. Wolfe, of course, wasn’t openly handing Clara Fox anything, but it was easy to see that she was one of the few women he would have been able to think up a reason for, from the way he talked about her. He told me that when she and Horrocks had come running into the potting room she had immediately stepped into the osmundine box, which had been all ready for her, and standing there she had fixed her eyes on Horrocks and said to him, “No questions, no remarks, and you do what Mr. Wolfe says. Understand.” And Horrocks had stood and stared with his mouth open as she stretched herself out in the box and Horstmann had piled osmundine on her three inches deep while Wolfe got the spray ready. Then he had come to and helped with the boards and the pots.

  In the office at noon, Wolfe was drinking beer and making random remarks as they occurred to him. He observed that since Inspector Cramer was sufficiently aroused to be willing to insult Nero Wolfe by having his house invaded with a search warrant, it was quite possible that he had also seen fit to proceed to other indefensible measures, such as tapping telephone wires, and that therefore we should take precautions. He stated that it had been a piece of outrageous stupidity on his part to let Mike Walsh go Monday evening before asking him a certain question, since he had then already formed a surmise which, if proven correct, would solve the problem completely. He said he was sorry that there was no telephone at the Lindquist prairie home in Nebraska, since it meant that the old gentleman would have to endure the rigors of a nine-mile trip to a village in order to talk over long distance; and he hoped that the connection with him would be made at one o’clock as arranged. He also hoped that Johnny Keems would be able to find Mike Walsh and escort him to the office without interference, fairly soon, since a few words with Walsh and a talk with Victor Lindquist should put him in a position where he could proceed with arrangements to clean up the whole affair. More beer. And so forth.

  I let him rave on, thinking he might fill in a couple of gaps by accident, but he didn’t.

  The phone rang. I took it, and heard Keems’ voice. I stopped him before he got started:

  “I can’t hear you, Johnny. Don’t talk so close.”

  “What?”

  “I said, don’t talk so close.”

  “Oh. Is this better?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well … I’m reporting progress backwards. I found the old lady in good health and took care of her for a couple of hours, and then she got hit by a brown taxi and they took her to the hospital.”

  “That’s too bad. Hold the wire a minute.” I covered the transmitter and turned to Wolfe: “Johnny found Mike Walsh and tailed him for two hours, and a dick picked him up and took him to headquarters.”

  “Picked up Johnny?”

  “No. Walsh.”

  Wolfe frowned, and his lips went out and in, and again. He sighed. “The confounded meddlers. Call him in.”

  I told the phone, “Come on in, and hurry,” and hung up. Wolfe leaned back with his eyes shut, and I didn’t bother him. It was a swell situation for a tantrum, and I didn’t feel like a dressing-down. If his observations had been anything at all more than shooting off, this was a bad break, and it might lead to almost anything, since if Mike Walsh emptied the bag for Cramer there was no telling what might be thought necessary for protecting the Marquis of Clivers from a sinister plot. I didn’t talk, but got out the plant records and pretended to go over them.

  At a quarter to one the doorbell rang, and I went and admitted Johnny Keems. I was still acting as hallboy, because you never could tell about Cramer. Johnny, looking like a Princeton boy with his face washed, which was about the only thing I had against him, followed me to the office and dropped into a chair without an invitation. He demanded:

  “How did I come through on the code? Not so bad, huh?”

  I grunted. “Perfectly marvelous. You’re a wonder. Where did you find Walsh?”

  He threw one leg over the other. “No trouble at all. Over on East 64th Street, where he boards. Your instructions were not to approach him until I had a line or in case of emergency, so I found out by judicious inquiry that he was in there and then I stuck around. He came out at a quarter to ten and walked to Second Avenue and turned south. West on 58th to Park. South on Park—”

  Wolfe put in, “Skip the itinerary.”

  Johnny nodded. “We were about there anyhow. At 56th Street he went into the Hotel Portland.”

  “Indeed.”

  “Yep. And he stayed there over an hour. He used the phone and then took an elevator, but I stayed in the lobby because the house dick knows me and he saw me and I knew he wouldn’t stand for it. I knew Walsh might have got loose because there are two sets of elevators, but all I could do was stick, and at a quarter past eleven he came down and went out. He headed south and turned west on 55th, and across Madison he went in at a door where it’s boarded up for construction. That’s the place you told me to try if I drew a blank at 64th Street, the place where he works as a night watchman. I waited outside, thinking I might get stopped if I went in, and hoping he wouldn’t use another exit. But he didn’t. In less than ten minutes he came out again, but he wasn’t alone any more. A snoop had him and was hanging onto him. They walked to Park and took a taxi, and I hopped one of my own and followed to Centre Street. They went in at the big doors, and I found a phone.”

  Wolfe, leaning back, shut his eyes. Johnny Keems straightened his necktie and looked satisfied with himself. I tossed my notebook to the back of the desk, with his report in it, and tried to think of some brief remark that would describe how I felt. The telephone rang.

  I took it. A voice informed me that Inspector Cramer wished to speak to Mr. Goodwin, and I said to put him on and signalled to Wolfe to take his line.

  The sturdy inspector spoke: “Goodwin? Inspector Cramer. How about doing me a favor?”

  “Surest thing you know.” I made it hearty. “I’m flattered.”

  “Yeah? It’s an easy one. Jump in your wagon and come down to my office.”

  I shot a glance at Wolfe, who had his receiver to his ear, but he made no sign. I said, “Maybe I could, except for one thing. I’m needed here to inspect cards of admission at the door. Like search warrants, for instance. You have no idea how they pile in on us.”

  Cramer laughed. “All right, you can have that one. There’ll be no search warrants while you’re gone. I need you down here for something. Tell Wolfe you’ll be back in an hour.”

  “Okay. Coming.”

  I hung up and turned to Wolfe. “Why not? It’s better than sitting here crossing my fingers. Fred and Johnny are here, and together they’re a fifth as good as me. Maybe he wants me to help him embroider Mike Walsh. I’d be glad to.”

  Wolfe nodded. “I like this. There’s something about it I like, I may be wrong. Go, by all means.”

  I shook my pants legs down, put the notebook and plant record away in the drawers, and got going. Johnny came to bolt the door behind me.

  I hadn’t been on the sidewalk for nearly twenty hours, and it smelled good. I filled the chest, waved at Tony with a cart of coal across the street, and opened up my knees on the way to the garage. The roadster whinnied as I went up to it, and I circled down the ramp, scared the daylights out of a truck as I emerged, and headed downtown with my good humor coming in again at every pore. I doubt if anything could ever get me so low that it wouldn’t perk me up to get out and enjoy nature, anywhere between the two rivers from the Battery to 110th Street, but preferably below 59th.

  I parked at the triangle and went in a
nd took an elevator. They sent me right in to Cramer’s little inside room, but it was empty except for a clerk in uniform, and I sat down to wait. In a minute Cramer entered. I was thinking he might have the decency to act a little embarrassed, but he didn’t; he was chewing a cigar and he appeared hearty. He didn’t go to his desk, but stood there. I thought it wouldn’t hurt to rub it in, so I asked him:

  “Have you found Clara Fox yet?”

  He shook his head. “Nope. No Clara Fox. But we will. We’ve got Mike Walsh.”

  I lifted the brows. “You don’t say. Congratulations. Where’d you find him?”

  He frowned down at me. “I’m not going to try to bluff you, Goodwin. It’s a waste of time. That’s what I asked you to come down here for, this Mike Walsh. You and Wolfe have been cutting it pretty thin up there, but if you help me out on this we’ll call it square. I want you to pick this Mike Walsh out for me. You won’t have to appear, you can look through the panel.”

  “I don’t get you. I thought you said you had him.”

  “Him hell.” Cramer bit his cigar. “I’ve got eight of ’em.”

  “Oh,” I grinned at him sympathetically. “Think of that, eight Mike Walshes! It’s a good thing it wasn’t Bill Smith or Abe Cohen.”

  “Will you pick him out?”

  “I don’t like to.” I pulled a hesitation. “Why can’t the boys grind it out themselves?”

  “Well, they can’t. We’ve got nothing at all to go on except that Harlan Scovil had his name on a piece of paper and he was at your place last night. We couldn’t use a hose on all eight of them even if we were inclined that way. The last one was brought in less than an hour ago, and he’s worse than any of the others. He’s a night watchman and he’s seventy if he’s a day, and he says who he knows or doesn’t know is none of our damn business, and I’m inclined to believe him. Look here, Goodwin. This Walsh isn’t a client of Wolfe’s. You don’t owe him anything, and anyway we’re not going to hurt him unless he needs it. Come on and take a look and tell me if we’ve got him.”