“Sure. It’s also a thing for anyone who is interested. Let’s put it that I’m interested. Are you?”
“You bet I am.”
“In what way?”
“I’m just interested. I don’t want to see anybody get away with murder!” There was a quick blaze in her eyes, one flash, up and out. She added, “He was a friend of mine.”
“Oh, was he murdered?”
“Certainly he was!”
“By whom?”
“I don’t know.” With sudden accurate movement, but nothing impetuous about it, she covered my hand, there on the tablecloth, with both of hers. Her fingers and palms were warm and firm, and neither too moist nor too dry. “Or maybe I do. What if I do know?”
“Well, considering your character as I know it, I suppose you’d be a good girl and tell papa.”
She kept my hand covered. “I wish,” she said, “you had taken me where we could be alone. I don’t know how to talk to a man until after he has had his arms around me and kissed me. Then I know what he’s like. I could tell you anything then.”
I sized her up. If I had let myself get cooped up in a booth at Rusterman’s with a chronic nymph and that was all there was to it, at least I could preserve my dignity by not letting it cost me anything but twenty bucks or so of Wolfe’s money. But I doubted if that was it. My analysis indicated that she simply had her own definite opinion of what constituted human companionship, and I wasn’t prepared to argue with her.
I slid out clear of the table, got upright, drew the curtain across the entrance to the booth, got on my knees on the seat beside her, and enfolded her good. Her lips, like her hands, were warm and firm, and neither too moist nor too dry. She not only had her theory about companionship, she was willing to submit it to a thorough test, which is more than some people will do with their theories.
When it was obviously time to go I backed off, went and pulled the curtain open, and got back into my seat. As I did so the waiter entered with our baked grapefruit. When he had it arranged and left us she asked:
“What were you doing in Hester Livsey’s room? What you just did with me?”
“There you go again,” I protested. “You said you had a lot to tell me, not to ask me. How do you know Moore was murdered?”
She swallowed some grapefruit. “How did I know it would be all right if you held me and kissed me?”
“Anybody would know that from looking at me. Thanks for the passing mark, anyway. You couldn’t tell Moore was murdered just by looking at him, with his head smashed flat. Even the cops and the city scientists couldn’t.”
Her spoon had stopped in mid-air. “That’s an awful thing to say.”
“Sure. Also it’s fairly awful to say a guy was murdered, especially when he was your friend. How good a friend?”
She ate some grapefruit, but, as it seemed to me, not to gain time for deciding what to say, but just because she felt like eating. After three more sections had been disposed of she spoke.
“I called him Wally, because I didn’t like Waldo, it sounds too intellectual, and anyway I often use nicknames, I just like to. My husband’s name is Harold, but I call him Harry. Wally and I were very close friends. We still were when he—got murdered. Didn’t I say I could tell you anything?” She spooned for grapefruit.
“Your husband?” I turned the surprise out. “Bendini?”
“No, his name is Anthony, Harold Anthony. I was working at Naylor-Kerr when I was married, nearly three years ago, and I didn’t bother to change my name there. I’m glad I didn’t, because he’ll let me get a divorce sooner or later. When he got out of the Army he seemed to think he had left me put away in moth balls. Wally would never have been silly enough to think that about me. Neither would you.”
“Never,” I declared. “Does your husband work at Naylor-Kerr?”
“No,” he’s a broker—I mean he works for a broker, on Nassau Street. He’s educated, some college, I can never remember which one. I haven’t been living with him for quite some months, but he isn’t reconciled to losing me, and I don’t seem to be able to persuade him that we’re incompatible, no matter how much I explain that it wasn’t true love, it was just an impulse.”
She put her spoon down. “Let me tell you something, Mr. Truett. I really and truly loved Wally Moore. One way I know I did, I have never been jealous of anyone in my life, but I was with him. I was so jealous of all his other girls I would think of ways they might die. You wouldn’t think I could be like that, would you? I wouldn’t.”
My reply was noncommittal because the waiter arrived with the steak. After he had served it, with grilled sweet potatoes and endive and the wine, and left the reserve there on our table over a brazier of charcoal, I picked up my knife and fork but was interrupted by Rosa.
“This looks wonderful. I’ll bet that curtain’s stuck so you couldn’t close it again.”
I went and closed the curtain. This time she left her seat too, and we had companionship standing. All the time it lasted the warm inviting smell of the steak came floating up to us, with a tang in it that came from the poured Burgundy, and the combination of everything made it a very pleasant experience.
“We mustn’t let it get cold,” I said finally.
She agreed, with good common sense, and I pulled the curtain open for air.
That wrecked most of the remaining barriers. By the time the meal was finished I had enough to fill six pages, single-spaced. She gave me most of it in straight English, but on the two or three points where she merely implied I am supplying my own translation. Beginning with the day he started to work, Waldo Wilmot Moore had gone through the personnel of the stock department like a dolphin through waves. There could be no conservative estimate of the total score he had piled up, because there had been nothing conservative about it. I got the impression that he had tallied up into the dozens, but Rosa was probably exaggerating through loyalty to his memory, and only four names stood out—and two of those were men.
GWYNNE FERRIS, according to Rosa, was a perfect bitch. Being a born beckoner and promiser, she had tried her routine on Moore, had been caught off balance, and had had her beckoning and promising career abruptly terminated, or at least temporarily interrupted. She was about Rosa’s age, in her early twenties, and was still a stenographer in the reserve pool after nearly two years.
BENJAMIN FRENKEL, a serious and intense young man who was assistant head of a section, and who was generally regarded as the third-best letter dictator in the whole department, had been beckoned and promised by Gwynne Ferris until he didn’t know which way was south. He had hated Waldo Moore with all the seriousness and intensity he had, or even a little extra.
HESTER LIVSEY was a phony, a heel, and a halfwit. Moore had kidded her along and had never had the faintest intention of marrying her. He would never have married anyone, but she was too dumb to know it. For a while she had actually believed that Moore was her private property, and when she had learned that he was still enjoying the companionship of Rosa, not to mention any others, she had gone completely crazy and had not recovered to date.
SUMNER HOFF was something special, being a civil engineer and a technical adviser to the whole stock department. He had been the hero—or the villain, depending on where you stood—of the most dramatic episode of the whole Moore story. On a day in October, just before quitting time, at the edge of the arena outside Dickerson’s office, he had plugged Moore in the jaw and knocked him into the lap of a girl at a near-by desk, ruining a letter she was typing. He had implied, just before he swung, that what was biting him was a checker’s report Moore had made on a letter he had dictated, but according to Rosa that was only a cover and what was really biting him was Moore’s conquest of Hester Livsey. Sumner Hoff had been after Hester Livsey, strictly honorable, for over a year.
I was beginning to understand why Pine had said that Moore was the type that stirs up gossip.
For nearly two hours, sitting there working on the steak and its accessori
es, and another bottle of wine, and then pastry and coffee and brandy, Rosa told me things. When she got through I had a bushel of details, but fundamentally I didn’t know anything I hadn’t known before. It was no news that Moore had made various people sore in his capacity as a correspondence checker, or that his own section head hadn’t liked him or wanted him, or even that he was death on dames. All Rosa had done was fill in, and when we got right down to it, how did she know Moore had been murdered and who did it, all she had was loose feathers. She knew he had been murdered because she knew who wanted him dead. Okay, who? On that she reminded me of the old gag about which one would he save, his wife or his son? She would have rooted for Hester Livsey if it hadn’t been for Gwynne Ferris, and she would have rooted for Ferris if it hadn’t been for Livsey. As for the actual circumstances of Moore’s death, she had plenty of gossip, unshakable opinions, and a fine healthy set of suspicions and prejudices, but no facts I didn’t already know.
I wasn’t greatly disappointed, since in the detective business you always draw ten times as many blanks as you do paying numbers, but with all her pouring it out I had an uneasy feeling that she might have something I wasn’t getting. It was plausible that she had waylaid me just to give me moral support and a friendly shove in what she regarded as the right direction, she was quite capable of that, but by the time we finished with the brandy I had decided that she was also capable of hiding an ace. And I seemed to be stymied. So I told her:
“It’s only a little after eight. We could go somewhere and dance, or take in a show, or I could get my car and we could ride around, but that can wait. I think for tonight we ought to concentrate on Wally Moore. Did you ever hear of Nero Wolfe?”
“Nero Wolfe the detective? Certainly.”
“Good. I know him quite well. As I said, I’m not a cop, but I’m sort of a detective myself, and I often consult Nero Wolfe. His office is in his house on Thirty-fifth Street. What do you say we go down there and talk it over with him? He knows how to fit things together.”
She had got completely relaxed, but now she darted a glance at me.
“What is it, just a house?”
“Sure, with a room in it he uses for an office.”
She shook her head. “You’ve got me wrong, Mr. Truett. I wouldn’t go into a house I’d never been in with a man I didn’t know well enough to call him by his first name.”
The girl interpreted everything in terms of companionship. “You’ve got me wrong,” I assured her. “If and when I ask you to enjoy life with me it won’t be on the pretense that we’ve got work to do. I doubt if I’ll feel like it until you get this Wally Moore out of your system. That might even be why I want to go and discuss it with Mr. Wolfe.”
She wasn’t stubborn. Fifteen minutes later we were down on the sidewalk, climbing into a taxi. In that quarter-hour I had signed the check, drawn the curtain again for a decent interval, and phoned Wolfe to tell him what was coming.
In the taxi she was nervous. Thinking it would be a good idea to keep her relaxed, and anyway I had drunk my half of the wine and brandy, I courteously got hold of her hand, but she pulled it away. It irritated me a little, because I felt sure that what made her balky was not the idea of discussing murder with Nero Wolfe but the prospect of entering a strange house with me. It seemed a little late in the day for a Puritan streak to show. As a result, however, my faculties resumed their normal operations, and therefore I became aware, at Forty-seventh Street and Tenth Avenue, that we had an outrider. Another taxi had stuck to our rear all the way across town, and turned south on Tenth Avenue behind us. The driver was apparently not the subtle type. Since Rosa had seen fit to build a fence between us, I said nothing about it to her.
When we turned right on Thirty-fifth Street our suffix came along. By the time we rolled to the curb in front of Wolfe’s house there wasn’t even a hyphen between us. I paid the driver from my seat, and my giving Rosa a hand out to the sidewalk, and the emergence from the other cab of a big husky male in a topcoat and a conservative felt hat, were simultaneous.
As he started toward us I addressed him, “I didn’t quite catch the name.”
He snubbed me and spoke to her, coming right up to her and ignoring me entirely. “Where are you going with this man?”
Masterful as he was, it by no means withered her. “You’re getting to be a bigger fool every day, Harry,” she declared, extremely annoyed. “I’ve told you a thousand times that it’s none of your business where I go or who with!”
“And I’ve told you it is and it still is.” He was towering over her. “You were going in that house with him. By God, you come with me!” He gripped her shoulder.
She squirmed, but not a panicky squirm; he was probably squeezing her flesh into her bones. With his build he could have tucked her under one arm. Grimacing from it, she appealed to me.
“Mr. Truett, this is that husband I was telling you about. He’s so big!”
Implying I was helpless. So I spoke to him. “Listen, brother, here’s a suggestion. We’ll only be in there three or four hours, that ought to do it. You wait here on the stoop and when she comes out you can take her home.”
I suppose it was badly phrased, but husbands who try to go on steering when the car is upside down in a ditch always aggravate me. He reacted immediately by letting go of her shoulder, which was a necessary preliminary to his next move, an accurate and powerful punch aimed for the middle of my face.
Ducking out of its path, my thought was that this would be simple, since he didn’t know enough about it to go for something more vulnerable and easier to get at than a face, but I was wrong. He knew plenty about it, and evidently, also think-it would be simple, hadn’t bothered about tactics. When I merely jerked my head sideways to let the punch go by and planted a left hook with my weight behind it just below the crotch of his ribs, thereby informing him that I knew the alphabet, he became a different man.
Within a minute he had landed on my body three timesand underneath my jaw once, and I had become aware that, with his extra fifteen or twenty pounds, he had the advantage in every way but one: he was mad and I wasn’t. Believing as I do in advantages, so long as you don’t do anything you aren’t willing to have done back at you, I carefully chose moments to use a little precious breath on remarks.
When he missed with a right swing and had to dance back a step to recover I told him, “Three hours with her … seems like three minutes … huh?”
When I sneaked in a swift short punch and had the other one coming up and he had to clinch, I muttered, “In a month or so I’ll be through with her anyway.”
At one point, just after he had jolted me good with a solid one over the heart, I thought he was doing some conversing himself. I distinctly heard a voice say, “You might as well pay me now. He shouldn’t try to talk. You can’t talk and fight both.”
Then I realized at the edge of my mind that it wasn’t him. The taxi drivers were leaning against the fender of the cab I had paid for, enjoying a free show. I resented that, and, knowing I was in no position to resent anything, shoved it out of the way. The husband apparently had oversized lungs. With no gong to announce intermissions I was beginning to wish I had learned to breathe through my ears, but he didn’t even have his mouth open. He just kept coming. I told him, “Even if you put me to sleep … I’ll wake up again … and so will she … not three hours … three days and nights … and it’ll be worth it …”
With his right he started a haymaker for my head practically putting his left in his pocket. He had done that once before, and I had been a tenth of a second too slow. My best punch is a right to the body, the kidney spot, turning my whole weight behind it exactly as if I meant to spin clear on around. When the timing and distance are just right it’s as good as I’ve got. That one clicked. He didn’t go down, but it softened the springs in his legs, and for an instant his arms were paralyzed. I was on him, in close, sawing with both elbows, my face not six inches from his, and when I saw he was really o
n the way and perfectly safe for two full seconds, I backed out a little and let him have two more kidney punches. The second one was a little high because he had started down.
I stood over him with my fists still tight and became aware that I was trembling from head to foot and there was nothing I could do about. I heard the voice of one of the taxi drivers:
“Boy, Oh boy. Pretty as a picture! I felt them last two myself.”
I looked around. That block was never much populated, and at that time of day was deserted. We hadn’t done any yelping or bellowing. Not a soul was in sight except the two drivers.
“Where’s the lady?” I asked.
“She beat it like a streak when he slammed you up against my car.” He aimed a thumb west. “That way. And I don’t want no argument with you. What the hell, Mac, you’re good enough for the Garden!”
I was still trying to catch up on my breathing. The husband rose to an elbow and was evidently on his way up. I spoke to him.
“You goddam married wife-chaser, the second you’re on your feet you get more of the same, or even on one foot. Do you know who lives in this house? Nero Wolfe. I was taking her to see him on business. Now she’s gone, and damned if I’m going in with nothing, so I’ll take you. Besides, you ought to get brushed off and drink a cup of tea.”
He was sitting up, looking the way I felt. “Is that straight?” he demanded. “You were bringing her here to see Nero Wolfe?”
“Yes.”
“Then I’m sorry. I apologize.” He scrambled to his feet. “When it comes to her I don’t stop to think. I could use a drink and I don’t mean tea, and I’d like to take a look in a mirror.”
“Then up that stoop. I know where there’s a mirror. Your hat’s there in the gutter.”
One of the drivers handed it to him. I followed him up the seven steps and let us in with my key. We hung our things in the hall, and I steered him on to the office. Wolfe was there behind his desk. He took the husband in with a swift glance, then transferred it to me and demanded:
“What the devil are you up to now? Is this the young woman who dined with you?”
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