Rex Stout - Nero Wolfe 12

by Too Many Women

  “Does Mr. Cramer still think you lied in your report to Mr. Pine?”

  “No, but O’Hara does. I admit I lied to him. I told him that you’re just a front here and the real brains of this business is a skinny old woman with asthma that we keep locked in the basement.”

  Wolfe sighed and leaned back. “I suppose you’d better tell me all about it.”

  I did so. Assuming that he wanted everything, I gave it to him, including not only facts but also a few interpretations and some personal analysis. It was obvious, I explained, that Cramer was now taking my word for gospel, since he had concentrated on the units of personnel I had told him about, though he had also used the police file on the death of Waldo Moore as a reference work, and doubtless they were all in that. I interpreted Gwynne Ferris by remarking that her broadcasting of the news she got from my filing cabinet might have been a highly intelligent cover for intentions and plans of her own, or it might have been merely promiscuous chin pumping, and I refused to commit myself until I had known her much longer—a minimum of five years. Whichever it was, the result was the same: assuming that Naylor had been finished off because of his announcement that he knew who had killed Moore, everyone was eligible. Up to six o’clock, when I had left, neither elimination nor spotlighting had even got a start, although Cramer had his whole army going through the routine—collecting alibis, tracing the movements of people, including Naylor, trying to find witnesses of events on Thirty-ninth Street, Ninety-fifth Street, Forty-eighth Street, and other vital spots, and all the rest of it. They had found no one who would admit seeing Kerr Naylor after he left the building on William Street Friday afternoon, or any knowledge of him. That was interesting, because it left it that Gwynne Ferris and I were the last people who had seen him alive. It had been around half-past five when he had walked in on us in my room at Naylor-Kerr to tell me I was a liar. Everybody else had left for the day, and none of the elevator boys remembered taking him down. One of O’Hara’s strongest convictions had been that Naylor and I had left the building together, and I had merely shrugged it off. It’s a waste of time trying to extract a conviction from an Irishman.

  When I was empty, both of facts and of annotations, I observed, “One thing to consider, you know what we were hired for, to establish the manner of Moore’s death. Remember your letter to Pine? Well, that seems to be established, anyhow as far as the cops are concerned. So have we still got a client? If we go on wearing out your muscles and my brains, do we get paid?”

  Wolfe nodded. “That occurred to me, naturally. I telephoned Mr. Pine this morning, and he seems a little uncertain about it. He says there will be a directors’ meeting Monday morning and he’ll let us know. By the way, his wife came to see me this morning.”

  “What! Cecily? Up and around before noon? What did she want?”

  “I haven’t the slightest idea. Possibly she knows, but I don’t. I suspect she’s hysterical but manages somehow to conceal it. Her ostensible purpose was to learn exactly what her brother said to you his last three days. She wanted it verbatim, and she wanted to pay for it. How the devil that woman has any money left, with her passion for getting rid of it, is a mystery. She asked me to tell you that the baseball tickets will reach you Thursday or Friday. She also wanted to know if you are taking care of your face.” He wiggled a finger at me. “Archie. That woman is a wanton maniac. It would be foolhardy to accept baseball tickets—”

  The doorbell rang.

  “If it’s her again,” Wolfe commanded me in quick panic, “don’t let her in!”

  It wasn’t. I went to the hall, to the front door, and opened up, and was confronted by one of the faces I like best, Saul Panzer’s.

  “What the hell,” I asked as he entered and hung his cap on the rack, “did you trip up on Bascom’s forgery and have to solicit?”

  Saul is always businesslike, never frolicsome, but now he was absolutely glum. He didn’t even return my grin.

  “Mr. Wolfe?” he asked.

  “In the office. What bit you?”

  He went ahead and I followed. Saul never sits in the red leather chair, not on account of any false modesty that he doesn’t rate it, but because he doesn’t like to face a window. Having the best pair of eyes I know of, not even excepting Wolfe, he likes to give them every advantage. He picked his usual perch, a straight-backed yellow chair not far from mine, and spoke to Wolfe in a gloomy tone.

  “I believe this is about the worst I’ve ever done for you. Or for anybody.”

  “That could still be true,” Wolfe said handsomely, “even if you had done well. You said on the phone that you lost him. Did he know he was being followed? What happened?”

  “It wasn’t that bad,” Saul asserted. “It isn’t often that a man spots me on his tail, and I’m sure he didn’t. Of course he might have, but we can’t ask him now. Anyhow, he was walking west on Fifty-third Street, uptown side, between First and Second Avenues—”

  “Excuse me,” I put in. “Shall I go upstairs and take a nap or would you care to invite me to join you?”

  “He was following Mr. Naylor,” Wolfe informed me.

  It was nothing new for Wolfe to take steps, either on his own or with one or more of the operatives we used, without burdening my mind with it. His stated reason was that I worked better if I thought it all depended on me. His actual reason was that he loved to have a curtain go up revealing him balancing a live seal on his nose. I had long ago abandoned any notion of complaining about it, so I merely asked:

  “When?”

  “Yesterday. Last evening. Go ahead, Saul.”

  Saul resumed. “I was across the street and thirty paces behind. He had been walking, off and on, for two hours, and there was nothing to indicate he was ready to quit. There was no warning, such as keeping an eye to the rear for a taxi coming. He did it as if he got the idea all of a sudden. A taxi rolled past me, and just as it got even with him he yelled at it, and the driver made a quick stop, and he ducked across to it and hopped in, and off it went. I was caught flatfooted. I ran after it to the corner, Second Avenue, but the light was green and it went on through. There was no taxi for me in sight, so I kept on running, but either he had told his driver to step on it or the driver liked to get places.”

  Saul shook his head. “I admit it looks as if he was on to me, but I don’t believe it. I think he took a sudden notion. I don’t especially mind losing one, we all lose them sometimes, but just three hours before he was murdered! That’s what gets me. Even say it was bad luck, if my luck’s gone I might as well quit. At the time, of course, not knowing he would be dead before midnight, I wasn’t much upset. I tried some leads I had, his chess club and a couple of other places, but didn’t get a smell. I went home and went to bed, thinking to try him again this morning. As soon as I saw the morning paper I phoned you, and you told me—”

  “Never mind what I told you,” Wolfe said crisply. So he was getting up another charade, I thought. He asked Saul, “What time was it?”

  “It was eight-thirty-four when I quite running, so it was eight-thirty, maybe one minute one way or the other, when he got his taxi.”

  “Get Mr. Cramer, Archie.”

  I tried to fill the order but couldn’t, because Cramer was not to be had. He was probably home asleep after a hard night and morning, though no one was indelicate enough to tell me so. I was offered a captain and my choice of lieutenants, but turned them down and got Sergeant Purley Stebbins. Wolfe took it.

  “Mr. Stebbins? How are you? I have some information for Mr. Cramer. At half-past eight last evening, Friday, Mr. Kerr Naylor stopped a taxicab on Fifty-third Street between First and Second Avenues. He got in the cab and it proceeded westward, through Second Avenue and beyond. He was alone.—If you please, let me finish.” He consulted a slip of paper that Saul had handed him. “It was a Sealect cab, somewhat dilapidated, and its number was WX one-nine-seven-four-four-naught. That’s right. How the devil would I know the driver’s name? Isn’t that enough for you?�
�If you please. This information can be depended on, I guarantee it, but I have not, and shall not have, anything to add to it. Nonsense. If the driver denies it, bring him to me.”

  I was thinking that at least I was no longer the last one to see Naylor alive, though it was no great improvement since the honor had been transferred to Saul. It would be nice when they hauled in the taxi driver and took it entirely out of the family.

  “What happened,” Wolfe asked Saul, “before you lost him? You got him at William Street?”

  Saul nodded. “Yes, sir. He left the building at five-thirty-eight, walked to City Hall Park, bought an evening paper, and sat on a bench in the park and read it until a quarter past six. Then he went to Brooklyn Bridge, took the Third Avenue El, and got off at Fifty-third Street. He seemed now to be in a hurry, he walked faster. At First Avenue and Fifty-second Street he met a girl who was apparently expecting him. A young woman. They walked together west on Fifty-second Street, talking. At Second Avenue they turned right, and turned right again on Fifty-third Street, and walked back to First Avenue. There they turned left, and again left on Fifty-fourth Street, and back to Second Avenue. They were talking all the time. They kept that up for a solid hour, walking back and forth on different streets, talking. I couldn’t tell whether they were arguing or what. If they were, they never raised their voices enough for me to hear any words.”

  “You heard no words at all?”

  “No, sir. If I had got close enough I would have been spotted.”

  “Were they friends? Lovers? Enemies? Did they embrace or shake hands?”

  “No, sir. I don’t think they liked each other, from their manner, and that’s all I can say. They met at six-thirty-eight and parted at seven-forty-one, at the corner of Fifty-seventh Street and Second Avenue. The woman started downtown on Second Avenue. Naylor walked east on Fifty-seventh Street, stopped at a fruitstand around the corner on First Avenue and bought a bag of bananas, walked east to the Drive and sat on a bench, and ate nine bananas, one right after the other.”

  Wolfe shuddered. “Enough to kill a man.”

  “Yes, sir. He took his time at it, and then started walking again. He didn’t hurry, not much more than a stroll, and at Fifty-fifth Street he started the crosstown promenade again, over to Second Avenue, back on Fifty-fourth to First Avenue, and west again on Fifty-third. By that time I was expecting him to keep it up until he hit the Battery, and maybe I got careless. Anyhow, it was on Fifty-third that he suddenly flagged a taxi and I lost him.”

  Saul shook his head. “And he was on his way to get killed. Goddam the luck.”

  Saul never swore.

  Wolfe heaved a sigh. “Not your fault. Satisfactory. The woman?”

  “Yes, sir. She was twenty-three or four, five-feet-five, hundred and eighteen pounds, wearing a light brown woolen coat over a tan woolen skirt or maybe dress, a dark brown hat with a white cloth flower, and brown pumps without open toes. Brown hair and I think brown eyes, but I’m not sure. Good figure and good posture and walks with a swing but not exaggerated. Hair soft and fine. Face more long than round, with oval chin. Features regular, nothing to fasten on, light complexion, attractive. Her back was to me nearly all the time, so that’s as good as I can do with the face. What I could see of her legs curved down well to narrow ankles.”

  Wolfe turned to me. “Well, Archie?”

  Anywhere else, with anyone else, I would have stalled to get a little time for consideration, and would have had no difficulty. But this was Nero Wolfe and Saul Panzer.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Her name is Hester Livsey.”

  “Good. Week-ending in Connecticut? Told the Westport police that she knows nothing of Mr. Naylor and her association with him was remote?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Get Mr. Cramer—or Mr. Stebbins.”

  23.

  It is a simple thing to make a swivel-chair swivel a half-turn and to pick up a phone, but sometimes the simple things are the hardest. I did not perform that maneuver. Instead, I wet my upper lip with my tongue, then my lower lip, and then got the tip of the tongue between my teeth and experimented to see how hard I had to bite to produce pain.

  “Well?” Wolfe demanded. “What’s the matter?”

  I gave the tongue its freedom. “I am reminded,” I said, “of the famous remark of Ferdinand Bowen up at Sing Sing when they told him to walk to the chair they had got ready for him. He muttered at them, ‘The idea is repugnant to me.’ Not that I regard the fix I’m in as identical, but I am strongly disinclined—”

  “What’s repugnant about it?”

  “I like the way the sun shines through Miss Livsey’s hair.”

  “Pfui. Phone Mr. Stebbins.”

  “Also, while it is true I pronounced her name, all I had was a description and I think it should be verified by having Saul look at her before we toss her into the fire.”

  “We’re not engaged to catch the murderer of Mr. Naylor. I’m not going to pay transportation to Westport for Saul and you.”

  “You don’t have to. He can see her Monday down at the office.”

  “It would be improper to withhold information—”

  “Listen to you! Will you please listen to you?” My voice was up without needing any instructions. “One of the main reasons you love to get information is so you can keep it from the cops, and you know it! You’re just being pig-headed, and if you phone Stebbins yourself, which you won’t because exercise is bad for you, I’ll withdraw my identification. From Saul’s description I would guess that it was the Duchess of Brimstone, who is in this country—”

  “Archie.” Wolfe was glaring. “Has that girl enravished you? Has she cajoled you into frenzy?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  That took the edge off him instantly. He leaned back, nodded to himself, made a circle with his lips, and exhaled with a sort of hiss that was the closest he ever got to a whistle.

  “Monday will do,” he declared, as if no one but a fool could think otherwise. “I was impetuous.” He looked at the clock on the wall, which said two minutes to four, time for his afternoon session with the orchids. He engineered himself out of his chair and was erect. “You can come here Monday morning, Saul, and go downtown with Archie. For the present—come up to the plant rooms with me. I have one or two suggestions for you.”

  They left, Saul for the stairs and Wolfe for his elevator. Their destination reminded me that I had got behind on the germination and blooming records, and I opened a desk drawer to get the accumulation of memos from Theodore.

  24.

  I had got behind on sleep too, and I caught up that night, Saturday. But not quite to the extent that Wolfe thought I did. Soon after he had gone up to the roof with Saul my mind had informed me that it was too restless to concentrate on germination records, at least of plants, and I had gone and got the car and driven to Twentieth Street to see what was stirring. Sergeant Purley Stebbins had not thought it necessary, just because for some hours I had enjoyed the important role of last man to see the victim alive, to open all the books for me, but I was allowed to hang around long enough to get an impression that nothing startling had developed. Of course a couple of them took a stab at trying to filter out of me the dope on how Wolfe had learned about Naylor taking a taxi on Fifty-third Street, but I had insisted that I had had nothing whatever to do with it, which was perfectly true. The taxi driver had not yet been collected, though the number of his cab had of course led them straight to where he should have been. He had gone to Connecticut to fish for shad, and a courier had been sent to get him, and I only hoped to God he wouldn’t find him walking back and forth on a river bank with Hester Livsey.

  It was because of her that Wolfe thought I got more sleep Saturday night than I really did. Saturday nights I usually take some person of an interesting sex to a hockey or basketball game, or maybe a fight at the Garden, but that one I worked in the office a while after dinner and then announced that I was sleepy. Taking some doughnuts, blackberry ja
m, and a pitcher of milk upstairs with me, I sat in the chair I had selected and paid for myself and went over matters. On account of Saul’s description of her clothes, particularly the dark brown hat with a white cloth flower, I knew darned well it had been Hester Livsey he had seen with Naylor. I deny I was in a frenzy, but when a garl has patted a man’s head he should be willing to go to a little trouble to see that she gets a break. Besides, it isn’t often that at first sight, in the very first minute, a girl gives you the feeling that no one on earth but you knows how beautiful she is, and that too seemed to me to be worthy of consideration.

  I thought she should have a chance to wipe off the smudge, in case it hadn’t made a stain that wouldn’t come out, and I well knew what the wiping process would be like if we turned her over to Cramer and his bozos. It could be that her walkie-talkie with Naylor had concerned a private matter not connected with what was about to happen to him, and if it had, and if she chose to keep it to herself, she was as likely a prospect as I had ever seen for an all-day and all-night conference with men, coming at her in shifts, who think nothing of taking their coats off in front of ladies. What I had come to my room to consider was whether to go get the car and drive to Westport and have some conversation with her. I decided against it finally, and undressed and went to bed, because if it turned out wrong in the end it would be Wolfe who would have to save the pieces, not me.

  Next morning, Sunday, I was in the kitchen finishing breakfast, enjoying the last two swallows of my second cup of coffee and reading the paper, when the doorbell rang. Fritz went to answer it, and when, a moment later, I heard a female voice in the hall I tossed the paper down and went to see.

  “A lady, Archie,” Fritz told me.

  “Yeah, that’s what you always think. Hello there.”

  It was Rosa Bendini, Mrs. Harold Anthony, and she was good and scared if I know what emotions look like.