Fer-De-Lance

by Rex Stout

  He pulled out the long sticker and waved it and it gleamed in the light of the flash. He was too damn good. Maria Maffei yelled and jumped for him and nearly got away from Bill Gore. Bill, who weighed two hundred and no fat, got all around her. Durkin was pulling Anna Fiore back away from the knife and saying to Orrie, “None of that! Cut it! You said you wouldn���t. None of that!”

  Orrie stopped waving the knife and put the light on Anna again.

  “All right.” He made it sound bloodthirsty. “Where���s your purse? I���ll get you later. Come on, don���t stand there shaking your head. Where���s your purse? Where���s that hundred dollars I sent you? No?-Hold her, I���ll frisk her for it.”

  He started for her stocking, and Anna was a wildcat. She busted loose from Durkin and let out a squawk that must have reached to White Plains. Orrie grabbed for her and tore her sleeve half off; Durkin was on her again, and when she saw she couldn���t get away she put on a kicking and biting exhibition that made me glad I was leaving that to the help. Durkin finally got her snug, with an arm wrapped around her pinning her arms and his other hand holding her head back, but Orrie never did get his hand inside her stocking, he had to tear it right off. I saw the getaway would have to be quick or we���d have to tie her up, so I had Saul back his car along the edge of the drive so I could get by with mine. Durkin came carrying Anna Fiore, still kicking and trying to bite him, and shoved her into the tonneau; Orrie was with him, growling at her, “You kept my money, did you? You wouldn���t burn it, huh? Next time you���ll keep your mouth shut.”

  I ran to the Buick and started the engine and rolled alongside. The others piled in. As we started off Maria Maffei was yelling at us, but I didn���t hear Anna’s voice. I twisted around the curves of the drive as fast as was practicable, and as soon as I had turned into the public road I stepped on it.

  Bill Gore in the back seat was laughing about ready to choke. I got to the Sawmill River Road and turned south, and eased down to forty. Orrie, beside me, wasn���t saying anything. I asked him: “You got the money?”

  “Yeah, I got it.” He didn���t sound very sweet. “I think I���ll keep it until I find out if Nero Wolfe carries workmen���s compensation insurance.”

  “Why, did she get you?”

  “She bit me twice. That lassie didn���t think any more of that hundred bucks than I do of my right eye. If you���d told me I had to subdue a tiger with my bare hands I���d have remembered I had a date.”

  Bill Gore started laughing again.

  I thought it had been pretty well staged. Wolfe couldn���t ask better than that. The only thing I had been afraid of was that Anna would get such a scare thrown into her that she would fold up for good, but now that didn���t seem likely. I was glad Wolfe had thought of using Maria Maffei and she had been ready for the job, for I wouldn���t have cared a bit about driving Anna Fiore back to town with her empty sock. The only question now was, what did she have and how soon would we get it? Would Wolfe���s program carry through to the end as he had outlined it, and if it did what kind of a climax would she hand us?

  Anyhow, my next move was to get back to the office without delay, so I didn���t take time to distribute my passengers where they belonged. I dropped Bill Gore off at 19th Street and took Durkin and Orrie on uptown and left them at the Times Square subway station. Since it wouldn���t do to leave the Buick out in front, I drove to the garage and delivered it, and walked home.

  I hadn���t cared much for the notion Manuel Kimball had got about the sort of present that would be appropriate for Nero Wolfe, and on leaving I had told Fritz to put the bolt on as soon as we got out, so now I had to ring him up to let me in. It was nearly midnight, but he came to the first ring.

  Wolfe was in the office, eating cookies and marking items in Hoehn���s catalog. I went in and stood, waiting for him to look up. He did so at length, and said, “On time.”

  I nodded. “And not on my shield, but Orrie Cather is, nearly. She bit him. She bit Durkin too. She was a holy terror. Your play went off swell. They ought to be here soon; I���m going up and dress for the next act. Can I have a glass of milk?”

  Wolfe said, “Good,” and turned back to his catalog.

  I took the milk upstairs with me to my room, and sipped it in between while I was getting undressed and putting on my pajamas. This part of the stunt seemed to me pretty fussy, but I didn���t mind because it gave me a chance to doll up in the dressing gown Wolfe had given me a couple of years before which I hadn���t had on more than about once. I lit a cigarette and finished the milk, then put on the dressing gown and gave it the once over in the mirror. While I was doing that I heard a car drive up and stop outside, and I moved closer to the open window and heard Saul Panzer���s voice, and then Maria Maffei���s. I sat down and lit another cigarette.

  I sat there nearly half an hour. I heard Fritz letting them in, and their voices in the hall as they passed on their way to the office, and then all I got was silence. I waited so long that I was beginning to wonder whether it wasn���t working right, or Wolfe was finishing his charade without me. Then there were footsteps in the hall, and in a minute on the stairs, and Fritz was at my door saying that Wolfe wanted me in the office. I waited a little, long enough to get awake and into my dressing gown, as if I had been asleep, and ruffled up my hair, and went down.

  Wolfe was seated at his desk. Maria Maffei was in a chair in front of him and Anna in one against the wall. Anna was a sight, with one sleeve nearly off, a leg bare, her face dirty and her hair all over.

  I stared. “Miss Maffei! Anna! Did they set the dogs on you?”

  Wolfe wiggled a finger at me. “Archie. I���m sony to have to disturb you. Miss Maffei and Miss Fiore have been subjected to violence. They were driving into the country, to visit Miss Maffei���s sister, when they were set upon by brigands. Their car was stopped; they were treated with discourtesy, and robbed. Miss Maffei���s purse was taken, and her rings. Miss Fiore was despoiled of the money which she has shown to us and which she so hardly earned.”

  “No!” I said. “Anna! They didn���t take that money!”

  Anna���s eyes were on me. I met them all right, but after a second I thought it would do to turn back to Wolfe.

  Anna said, “He took it.”

  Wolfe nodded. “Miss Fiore got the impression that the man who took her money was the one who had sent it to her. I have advised her and Miss Maffei to go to the police at once, but they do not fancy that suggestion. Miss Maffei mistrusts the police on principle. Miss Fiore seems to have conceived the idea that we, more especially you, are more likely to be of help. Of course you are not at the moment properly dressed to go out in search of robbers, and the scene is thirty miles off, but Miss Fiore asked for you. Does anything occur to you?”

  “Well,” I said. “This is awful. It���s terrible. And me upstairs sound asleep. I wish you had got me to drive you to the country, Anna; if you had this wouldn���t have happened, I don���t care who it was that tried to get your money. I don���t believe it could have been the man who sent it to you; that man kills people; he would have killed you.”

  Anna���s eyes were going back and forth between Wolfe and me, but I no longer thought there might be suspicion in them; she was only stunned, overwhelmed by her unimaginable loss. She said, “He wanted to kill me. I bit him.”

  “Good for you. You see, Anna, what happens when you try to act decent with a bad man. If you had burned that money the other day when I wanted you to, and told us what you know about things, now you would have Mr. Wolfe���s money. Now you can���t burn the money because you haven���t got it, and the only way you could get it back would be if I could catch him. Remember, he���s the man who killed Carlo Maffei. And look what he did to you! Tore your dress and pulled off your stockings-did he hurt you
?”

  Anna shook her head. “He didn���t hurt me. Could you catch him?”

  “I could try. I could if I knew where to look.”

  “Would you give it back to me?”

  “Your money? I sure would.”

  Anna looked down at her bare leg, and her hand slid slowly under the hem of her skirt and rested on the spot where the twenties had been. Maria Maffei started to speak, but Wolfe wiggled her into silence. Anna was still looking at her leg when she said, “I���ve got to undress.”

  I was slow; Wolfe got it at once. He spoke: “Ah. Certainly. Archie: the lights in the front room. Miss Maffei, if you will accompany Miss Fiore?”

  I went to the front room and turned the lights on, and closed the windows and the curtains. Anna and Miss Maffei had followed me in and stood there waiting for me to leave; as I went out I gave Anna a friendly grin; she looked pale but her eyes were brighter than I had ever seen them. In the office I closed the door behind me. Wolfe was sitting up in his chair, not leaning back; there was nothing to remark on the drowsy patient hemisphere of his face, but his forearms extended along the arms of the chair and the forefinger of his right hand was moving so that its tip described a little circle over and over on the polished wood. For Wolfe that was going pretty far in the way of agitation.

  I sat down. Faint sounds of movements and voices came from the front room. They were taking long enough. I said, “This is a swell toga you gave me.”

  Wolfe looked at me, sighed, and let his eyes go half shut again.

  When the door opened I sprang up. Anna came through in front, clutching a piece of paper in her hand; her torn sleeve had been pinned together and her hair fingered back. She came up to me and stuck the paper at me and mumbled, “Mr. Archie.” I wanted to pat her on the shoulder but I saw she was sure to cry if I did, so I just nodded and she went back to her chair and Maria Maffei to hers. The paper was a fat little manila envelope. I turned to Wolfe���s desk to hand it to him, but he nodded to me to open it. It wasn���t sealed. I pulled out the contents and spread them on the desk.

  There was quite a collection. Wolfe and I took our time inspecting it. Item, the Barstow death clipping that Carlo Maffei had cut from the Times on June fifth. Item, a series of drawings on separate little sheets, exact and fine, with two springs and a trigger and a lot of complications; the shape of one was the head of a golf driver. Item, a clipping from a Sunday Rotogravure, a photograph of Manuel Kimball standing by his airplane, and a caption with his name commenting on the popularity of aviation among the Westchester younger set. At the bottom was written in pencil, The man I made the golf club for. See drawings. May 26, 1933. Carlo Maffei. Item, a ten-dollar bill. It was a gold note, and there was pencil-writing on it too, the signatures of four people: Sarah Barstow, Peter Oliver Barstow, Lawrence Barstow, and Manuel Kimball. The signatures had been written with a broad-pointed soft pencil and covered half of one side of the bill.

  I looked it all over a second time and then murmured at Wolfe, “Lovin��� babe.”

  He said, “I tolerate that from Saul Panzer, Archie, I will not from you. Not even as a tribute to this extraordinary display. Poor Carlo Maffei! To combine the foresight that assembled this with the foolhardiness that took him to his fatal rendezvous! We alone profit by the foresight, he pays for the foolhardiness himself-a contemptible bargain.

  “Miss Maffei, you have lost your purse but gained the means of stilling the ferment of your blood; the murderer of your brother is known and the weapon for his punishment is at hand.

  “Miss Fiore, you will get your money back. Mr. Archie will get it and return it, I promise you. He will do it soon, for I can guess how little promises mean to you; the fierce flame of reality is your only warmth and light; the reality of twenty-dollar bills. Soon, Miss Fiore. Please tell me: when did Mr. Maffei give you all this?”

  Anna talked. Not what you could call voluble, but willingly enough to Wolfe���s questions. He got every detail and had me take it down. She had actually seen the driver. For many days Carlo Maffei had forbidden her to enter his room when he was there working, and had kept his closet locked; but one day during his absence the closet door had opened to her trial, only to disclose nothing to her curiosity more uncommon than a golf club evidently in process of construction. On Maffei���s return, finding that the driver was not placed as he had left it, he had been sufficiently disturbed to inform her that if she ever mentioned the golf club he would cut her tongue out. That was all she knew about it.

  The envelope had been given to her on June fifth, the day Maffei disappeared. Around seven o���clock, just after he had answered the telephone call, she had gone upstairs for something and he had called her into his room and given her the envelope. He had told her that he would ask her to return it in the morning, but that if he did not come back that night and nothing was heard from him Anna was to deliver the envelope to his sister.

  When Anna told that Maria Maffei got active. She jumped up and started toward the girl. I went after her, but Wolfe���s voice like a whip beat me to it:

  “Miss Maffei!” He wiggled his finger. “To your chair. Be seated, I say!-Thank you. Your brother was already dead. Save your fury. After pulling Miss Fiore���s hair you would, I suppose, inquire why she did not give you the envelope. That appears to me obvious; perhaps I can save her the embarrassment of replying. I do not know whether your brother told her not to look into the envelope; in any any event, she looked. She saw the ten dollar bill; it was in her possession.

  “Miss Fiore, before Carlo Maffei gave you that envelope, what was the largest sum you ever had?”

  Anna said, “I don���t know.”

  I asked her, “Did you ever have ten dollars before?”

  “No, Mr. Archie.”

  “Five dollars?”

  She shook her head. “Mrs. Ricci gives me a dollar every week.”

  “Swell. And you buy your shoes and clothes?”

  “Of course I do.”

  I threw up my hands. Wolfe said, “Miss Maffei, you or I might likewise be tempted by a kingdom, only its boundaries would not be so modest. She probably struggled, and by another sunrise might have won and delivered the envelope to you intact; but that morning���s mail brought her another envelope, and this time it was not merely a kingdom, it was a glorious world. She lost; or perhaps it is somewhere down as a victory; we cannot know. At any rate her struggle is over.

  “And now, Miss Maffei, do this and make no mistake: take Miss Fiore home with you and keep her there. Your driver is waiting outside for you. You can explain to your employer that your niece has come for a visit. Explain as you please, but keep Miss Fiore safe until I tell you that the danger is past. Under no circumstances is she to go to the street.-Miss Fiore, you hear?”

  “I will do what Mr. Archie says.”

  “Good. Archie, you will accompany them and explain the requirements. It will be only a day or so.”

  I nodded and went upstairs to put the dressing gown away for another year and get some clothes on.

  CHAPTER 17

  When I got back after escorting Anna and Maria Maffei to the apartment on Park Avenue where Maria Maffei was housekeeper, the office was dark and Wolfe had gone upstairs. There was a note for me: Archie, learn from Miss Barstow her excuse for mutilating United States currency. N. W. I knew that would be it. I went on up to the hay, but out of respect to Manuel Kimball I stepped to the rear of the upper hall to look for a line of light under Wolfe���s door. There wasn���t any. I called out: “Are you all in one bed?”

  Wolfe���s voice came, “Confound it, don���t badger me!”

  “Yes, sir. Is the switch on?”

  “It is.”

  I went to my own room and the bed I was ready for; it was after two o���clock.

  In the morning there was a drizzle, but I didn���t mind. I took my time at breakfast, and told Fritz to keep the bolt on while I was gone
, and then with a light raincoat and a rubber hat went whistling along on my way to the garage. One thing that gave me joy was an item in the morning paper which said that the White Plains authorities were on the verge of being satisfied that the death of Peter Oliver Barstow had resulted from an accidental snake bite and that various other details of the tragedy not connected with that theory could all be explained by coincidence. It would have been fun to call up Harry Foster at the Gazette and let him know how safe it would be to stick pins in Anderson���s chair for him to sit on, but I couldn���t risk it because I didn���t know what Wolfe���s plans were in that direction. Another source of joy was the completeness of the briefcase which Anna Fiore had been carrying around all the time pinned to whatever she wore underneath. When I considered that it must have been there that first day I had called at Sullivan Street with Maria Maffei and I hadn���t been keen enough to smell it, I felt like kicking myself. But maybe it was just as well. If the envelope had been delivered to Maria Maffei there was no telling what might have happened.

  I telephoned the Barstow place from uptown, and when I got there around nine-thirty Sarah Barstow was expecting me. In the four days since I had last seen her she had made some changes in her color scheme; her cheeks would have made good pinching; her shoulders sat straight with all the sag gone. I got up from my seat in the sun-room, a drizzle-room that day, when she came in, and she came over and shook hands. She told me her mother was well again, and this time Dr. Bradford said more likely than not she was well for good. Then she asked if I wanted a glass of milk!

  I grinned. “I guess not, thanks. As I told you on the phone, Miss Barstow, this time it���s a business call. Remember, the last time I said it was social? Today, business.” I pulled an envelope from my pocket and got out the ten dollar bill and handed it to her. “Nero Wolfe put it this way: what excuse did you have for mutilating United States currency?”