He stopped chewing to ask, “Who has made such an accusation?”
“You have.”
“I have not. I have merely stated that Moore was murdered. The police? Pooh. They started their machinery the moment the body was discovered, but they have let it stop. Your intention, of course, was to force me into making disclosures by threatening to get the police after me. My dear Mr. Goodwin, I’m afraid this affair is far beyond the range of your abilities. A week ago I called upon Deputy Commissioner O’Hara, whom I have known for years, and stated to him that Moore was murdered. Naturally he wished me to elaborate, and naturally I refused. I told him that all I could furnish was the bare fact, that the procurement of evidence and apprehension of the criminal were functions of his department.”
Naylor tittered. “I really believe that for some moments the Deputy Commissioner was tempted to have the third degree tried on me. At the end he merely regarded me as a babbler.” He resumed on the Vitanutrita.
My impulse was to finish the milk, shove the third apple in my pocket, beat it to Thirty-fifth Street, and tell Wolfe that Kerr Naylor was a malicious chattering hay-eating beetle and that was all there was to it. Various considerations restrained me, two of which were that Naylor-Kerr, Inc., was good for any amount up to twenty million, and that I now knew where Miss Livsey’s room was.
“Okay,” I said, completely friendly, “threats are out, disclosures are out, and chess and bird-looking will keep you from calling on Mr. Wolfe before Monday. Meanwhile, I noticed that on that report to Mr. Pine, the one about Moore, where it asked how he got hired, you put, ‘Applied personally.’ Who did he apply to, the head of that section, Mr. Dickerson?”
That was the first dent I made in the beetle’s shell. It didn’t make him drop his fork, or even start the glint in his eyes dancing, but he went on conveying and chewing far beyond the limit of politeness. It was plain that he was finding it necessary to decide what to say.
He swallowed and spoke. “He applied to my sister.”
“Oh. Which sister?”
“I have only one.” The glint became perceptible. “My sister, Mr. Truett, is a remarkable and interesting woman, but she is far more conventional than I am. Each of us was given one-quarter of the stock of the corporation by our father, who wished to get rid of his burdens and responsibilities. I turned mine over, without compensation, to certain old employees of the business, because they had earned it and I hadn’t. I don’t like to own things to which other people might conceivably assert a claim, especially a moral claim. Legal claims don’t interest me. But my sister, being more conventional, kept her stock. That was lucky for her husband, Jasper Pine, whom I believe you have met, as otherwise it is unlikely that he would have become president of the corporation.”
“And Moore got his job through your sister?”
The glint did a jig. “You have a talent, Mr. Goodwin, for making statements in the most distasteful manner possible. My sister likes to do things for people. She sent Moore to me, and I spoke with him and had him interviewed by Dickerson, and he was given a job in that section. Now how about some pudding? And some Pink Steamer? Hot water with tangerine juice.”
He was through as an information bureau. From there on the only thing that appealed to him as a topic of conversation was the food, and questions about Moore or murder or sister were simply ignored. He irritated me most when he was ignoring. I gave up and sat and watched him sip Pink Steamer.
When we got back to the building on William Street I parted from him in the lobby, went to a phone booth and dialed the number of the Gazette, and asked for Lon Cohen. He knew more facts than the Police Department and the Public Library combined.
When he was on I told him, “It’s your turn on the favors. What about a Mrs. Jasper Pine? When born she was called Naylor. Her husband is president of a big engineers’ supply firm with offices downtown. Ever hear of her?”
“Sure, she’s meat.”
“What kind of meat?”
“Oh, that means anyone who might make a meal for a journalist some day, strictly as news. So far she has kept herself off the menu, except for paragraphs on the right inside pages, but not a sheet in town has lost hope.”
“What keeps the hope going?”
“Where are you phoning from? Wolfe’s office?”
I tutted at him. “Didn’t I tell you my name? That’s all right, I’m in a booth.”
“Okay. The subject of your inquiry is a befriender of young men. Not promiscuous. Discriminating, but chronic. She has plenty of dough, is well preserved, and presumably not a fool or she would have lost her balance long ago. I would advise you to try for it—how old are you, thirty? Just about right for herl You have the looks, and you could brush up on manners—”
“Yeah. You’ll get ten per cent. I don’t suppose you could get hold of a list of my predecessors she has befriended?”
“Well, we wouldn’t have one, we’re not that thorough. Do you think this paper would nose into people’s private af—Say! Wait a minute! You and Nero Wolfe and your homicides. I’ll try word association on you, damn it, what was that name? Murray? No. Moore?”
“Mr. Cohen,” I said in awe, “you have nailed the head on the hit as usual. Compared to you John Kieran is a blank page. Moore was killed by a hit-and-run on Thirty-ninth Street the night of December fourth. Do tell me he was being or had been befriended.”
“I do.”
“By Mrs. Pine?”
“Restate the question. Even from a booth I don’t like names on anything as fragile as this.”
“By the subject of my inquiry?”
“Yes.”
“Would you mind spreading it out?”
“Sure, it looked as if the meat might be on its way to the table, that was all. With him mowed down like that in the dead of night, and with that connection he had, we felt we owed it to the community to cover all angles in an effort to prevent any breath of scandal—”
“My God. Go on.”
“So we did, and I suppose the cops did too, but it was a washout. The details are hazy by now, but it was definitely nothing doing for the presses. I remember this, the most obvious line only got us to a starve-out. The husband had certainly not done a desperate deed to retrieve his honor, or for vengeance. Moore was nothing but number—I don’t know—seven or eight—and besides, he had been ditched months before and the current befriendee was—I forget his name, it doesn’t matter. And the husband had known all about it for years. That was absolutely established by our research department. You must be smothering in that booth. I’ve got to go to work. I do so by demanding that you come clean; for the record if possible. Who has hired Wolfe?”
“Not yet,” I told him. “You’ll get it as soon as it’s ripe if it hasn’t got worms. You know us, we return favors with interest. If I pay you a visit could I talk with whoever worked on it?”
“You’d better phone ahead.”
“I will. Thanks and love from all of us.”
I ducked out through the lobby to the street, down the block to a place I had spotted, bought three ham sandwiches and a quart of milk, and transported them to the building and up to my place of employment on the thirty-fourth floor. There in my room I ate my lunch without being disturbed. By the time it was all down I had arrived at a couple of decisions, the first one being that it was just as well I hadn’t obeyed my impulse to walk out of the Fountain of Health with nothing to show for my trouble but an apple.
10.
Having two things to do, it would have been in character for me to save the best till the last, and I had it programmed that way, but it didn’t work. The idea was to phone Jasper Pine to arrange to run up to see him at three o’clock, but when I tried it all I got was the word from a Mr. Stapleton that Mr. Pine would not be available until four-fifteen. That compelled me to shift. But before making a call on Miss Livsey I thought it would be well to get in a piece of equipment I needed, so I did what I had been told to do when the occasion arose, ca
lled Extension 637 and said I needed a stenographer. In two minutes, not more, one entered with a notebook. She was nothing like my nonspeller, but neither was she any evidence against my theory that there was a strong preference at Naylor-Kerr for females who were easy to look at.
After I had got her name I told her, “I have nothing against you, quite the contrary. The trouble is I don’t want you, just your typewriter. Could you bring it in here and let me use it?”
From the look on her face it might have been thought I had asked her to bring Mr. Kerr Naylor in handcuffs and set him on my lap. She tried to be nice about it, but what I had asked for was not done and could not be done. I let her go and went to work on the phone, and it wasn’t too long before I had a typewriter, with paper and other accessories. Then I emerged to the arena, crossed to the other side, found the door next to Rosenbaum’s on the left standing open, and entered.
I pushed the door shut, crossed to a chair near the end of her desk, and sat down. Her room was twice as big as mine, but there was just as little free space in it on account of the rows of files. The light from the window filtering through the top layer of her fine brown hair made it look as if someone had crowned her with a wreath of shiny silk mesh. She gave the typewriter a rest and let me have her full face.
“It was simply stinking,” I said. “Mr. Naylor eats oats and shredded bark.”
No smile for that, but she nodded. “Yes, he’s famous for that. Someone should have warned you.”
“But they didn’t, including you. Are you crowded for time?”
“No, I only have eight or nine more letters.” She glanced at her wrist. “It’s only three o’clock.”
“Good.” I tipped my chair back, with my hands in my pockets, to show how informal I was. “I guess the best way to start is just to follow the routine. How long have you been working here?”
“Three years. Well—two years and eight months. I’m twenty-four years old, nearly twenty-five. I get fifty dollars a week, and I can do over a hundred words a minute.”
“That’s wonderful. What are the three things you dislike most, or like least, about your job?”
“Oh, now, really.” Still no smile, but there was a little curving twist to her lips. “May I ask one?”
“Go ahead.”
“Why did you invite me to lunch?”
“Well—what do you want, candor?”
“I like it.”
“I do too. One look at you, and I seemed to be paralyzed all over, as in a dream. The two sides of my nature were fighting for control. One, the base and evil side, wanted to be alone with you on an island. The other side wanted to write a poem. The lunch thing was a compromise.”
“That’s pretty good,” she said, with some sign of appreciation but not enthusiastically. “If that’s candor, let’s have some double talk. Why? You wanted to ask me about Waldo Moore, didn’t you?”
“What makes you think so?”
“Why, my lord. You practically broadcast it! Asking that girl about him—it was all over the place in no time.”
“Okay, so I did. What did I want to ask you about him?”
“I don’t know, but here I am, ask me.”
“You shouldn’t be a stenographer,” I said admiringly. “You should be a personnel expert or a college president or a detective’s wife. You’re perfectly correct, it would be difficult for me to question you about Moore without giving you a hint of where I got on and what my ticket says. So I won’t try. You and Moore were engaged to marry, weren’t you?”
“Yes.”
“A long time?”
“No, just about a month, a little less.”
“And of course his death was an awful blow.”
“Yes.”
“Would you mind telling me in a general way what kind of a guy he was?”
“Why—” She hesitated. “That’s a strange question. He was the kind of guy I wanted to marry.”
I nodded. “That settles it for you,” I agreed, “but I’ve only known you about twenty minutes, altogether, so it leaves me hazy. You understand, of course, that this is just you and me talking. I represent no authority of any kind and your tongue is yours. Had he been married before?”
“No.”
“How long had you known him?”
“I met him soon after he came to work here.”
“What was he—tall, short, handsome, ugly, fat, thin—”
She opened a drawer of her desk and got her handbag, took a leather fold out of it, and opened the fold and handed it over.
So she was still carrying his photograph. I gave it a good look. To my eyes he was nothing remarkable one way or another—about my age and build, high forehead, lots of hair worn smooth over his dome. He could have been catalogued as the kind of specimen seen buying motorboats in ads if it hadn’t been for the chin, which started back for his throat too soon.
“Thanks,” I said, handing it back to her. “That clinches it that he didn’t make a play for you as a last resort. First, you are not a last resort. Second, he was apparently nice to look at. I suppose that was the opinion of those who knew him?”
“Yes. Every woman who saw him was attracted to him. There wasn’t a girl in the place who wouldn’t have been glad to get him.”
I frowned at her. That didn’t sound like my Miss Livsey, that vulgar boasting, but I had never assumed that she was without any defect at all. I followed it up.
“Then a lot of them must have been after him. Unless you reject the theory that girls have been known to chase—”
“Of course they do. They did.”
“Did it make him very mad?”
“No, he loved it.”
“Did it make you mad?”
She smiled. However, it was not precisely the sort of smile Rosenbaum had had in mind. I smiled back at her.
She asked, “Now we’re getting down to it, aren’t we?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “Are we?”
As soon as her words were out she had caught her lower lip with her teeth. After holding on for a moment, not long, the teeth let go. “That was silly,” she declared. “No, I don’t think it made me mad. In a way I enjoyed it and in a way I didn’t. Go ahead.”
I took my hands from my pockets and clasped them back of my head and regarded her. “I would like very much to go ahead, Miss Livsey, if I only knew which way. Say we try another door. Have you ever had any reason to suppose or suspect that Moore’s death was anything but a hit-and-run accident?”
“No,” she said bluntly.
“But there’s been gossip about it, hasn’t there?”
“There certainly has.”
“What started the gossip?”
“I don’t know what started it back in December, when it happened—I guess it just started itself, the way gossip does. Then it died down, it stopped entirely as far as I know, that was quite a while ago, and just last week it started up again.”
“Do you know what started it again?”
She looked at me, made sure she had her eyes into mine, and asked, “Do you?”
“I’ll say yes if you will.”
“It’s a go. Yes.”
“Same here. Have you any idea why he put that word on that report?”
“No. I don’t know and I can’t imagine. I know I’d like to—” She bit it off.
“What?”
She didn’t say what. She didn’t say anything. She was visibly, for the first time in my three encounters with her, having feelings about something. I wouldn’t have called her cold, that word simply didn’t fit her and never would, but even the name of Moore and talking of him had put nothing you could call emotion into her face or voice. Now she was letting something show. She didn’t exhibit anything as trite as quivering lips or eyes blinking to keep tears back, but a sort of loosening of her face muscles indicated that some strict discipline had met more than it could handle.
Suddenly and abruptly she got up, crossed to me, and put her hand, her open pa
lm, on top of my head and patted it several times. I got more the impression of a melon being tested to see if it was firm than of a woman caressing a man, but that might have been only my modesty. I didn’t budge.
She backed up a step and stood looking down at me, and my clasped hands let my head go back so as to meet her look.
“It’s a funny thing,” she said, half puzzled and half irritated. “I used to be able to handle men any way I wanted to. I’m not bragging, but I really could. I knew how to get anything I wanted from men, you know, little things, you know how girls are—and now I want something from you, and look at me! It isn’t you either—I mean there’s nothing wrong with you, you’re quite good-looking and there’s nothing wrong with you at all. I don’t know whether you’re a policeman or what you are, but whatever you are you’re a man.”
She stopped.
“Every inch,” I agreed warmly. “I could suggest better how you ought to go about it if I knew what you want. First tell me that.”
“Well, for one thing, I want to keep my job here.”
“Done. I’ll attend to that in my report. Next?”
Her voice muscles were loose too now. “That’s ridiculous,” she stated, not offensively. “I don’t know who you are or what you are, but I do know you’re trying to find out something about the death of the man I was going to marry, and it’s getting to be more than I can stand. I want to forget all about it, I want to forget about him—I do, I really do! You don’t know what hundreds of girls together in a place like this—you don’t know what they can be like when they get started talking—it’s horrible, just horrible! Why Mr. Naylor started it going again—I don’t know. I can’t stand it much longer and I’m not going to, but I like it here and I have to have a job—I like my work and I like my boss, Mr. Rosenbaum—”
She went to her chair and sat down, with her two fists resting on the desk in front of her, and addressed not me but the world.
“Oh, damn it!”
“I still don’t know,” I protested, “what you want from me.”
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