Rex Stout - Nero Wolfe 12

by Too Many Women

  “Thirty-three.”

  “Wonderful! Men in their twenties are so raw. Have you got a list of that eleven thousand, four hundred and sixty-five dollars?”

  Wolfe made an emphatic sound without words, arose, told the visitor good evening, and left the room. In a moment we heard the opening and closing of the door of his elevator.

  “There is no list,” I said in a hurt tone. “If your trust in me is so shaky that you have to see lists … And speaking of my blood, it ought to be good, since I’m half gypsy.” I crossed to her and put a hand on her shoulder. “That’s why I can understand things, without knowing exactly how, that even Mr. Wolfe can’t understand. About these two deaths, Waldo Moore and your brother—”

  She began to laugh, a real laugh, from her throat and on out.

  “You certainly don’t understand me!” she declared, and laughed some more. “Your father’s name is James Amer Goodwin, and you were born in Canton, Ohio, in nineteen-fourteen. Your mother’s maiden name was Leslie. You have two brothers and two sisters. No, no gypsy. I’m a very cautious woman, Archie, cautious and dependable.” She stood up, abruptly, and I must admit not clumsily. “The reason I want to see a list is to make sure you’re including everything. Let’s sit on the couch and talk about it.”

  We were alone, with the whole floor to ourselves. Fritz had gone to his bed in the basement. I had been up and around all of eighteen hours, Cecily probably not more than twelve. It was not a situation that could be handled with half-measures.

  “This,” I said, “is dangerous. Mr. Wolfe already suspects me. You’ll have to go, for my sake. If I stay here alone with you he’ll think I’m double-crossing him on this case and he’ll have my license revoked, and then I couldn’t go into business for myself even if you wanted me to. When this case is finished we’ll talk … and talk … and talk … but you’ll have to go now, Mrs. Pine.”

  I thought I might as well clinch it, and added, “Cecily.”

  28.

  The next day, Friday, I got home from Naylor-Kerr around five-thirty and went up to my room to bathe and change. Gwynne Ferris had maneuvered me into an agreement to try the food and music at the Silver Room at the Churchill that evening, and that called for black and white. I had to step on it because Wolfe expected me in the office at six o’clock, when he would descend from the plant rooms, to report on the day. The report, God knows, would be totally without nourishment, but by that time Wolfe would have welcomed an underfed straw to grab at, and he would want all details.

  He didn’t get them, not then, for when I got down to the office at five past six Inspector Cramer was there with him and was already off to a good start.

  It was obvious from the first growls I heard that Cramer had come to try something that he had often tried before, and never with any profit. He had come to take the lid off of Wolfe and look inside. That meant he was all out of everything. It had come to snafu and he was helpless.

  “So you were having Naylor tailed,” he was barking. “So, by God, you knew something was going to happen to him! I’ll tell you what I think! That Saul Panzer is the best tailer in New York. I don’t for a minute believe he lost Naylor! He don’t lose ’em! Even if he did, when Naylor came here, wouldn’t you have had him tailed when he left, since you were interested in him? Of course you would! I think Panzer was right up with Naylor all that evening, right up to the time he was killed and then some, right up to the car running over him on Thirty-ninth Street!”

  “Pfui,” Wolfe muttered.

  “Look at this.” Cramer put up a finger. “One. You were hired to smoke Naylor out in connection with the death of Moore.” Another finger. “Two. Goodwin pressured him into a deadly threat against someone.” A third finger. “Three. You had your best man on his tail.” A finger. “Four. You kept Panzer away from me for two days.” Thumb. “Five. You tried to sick us on that Hoff and it’s a phony,” The fingers made a fist. “And six, you keep Goodwin down there to sit on it, not doing a damn thing but play with the girls! Look at him, dressed for a party!”

  “I didn’t know you had noticed me,” I murmured politely. “Thanks.”

  But Cramer was beyond minding me. “Look at it!” he bellowed.

  “I am,” Wolfe said dryly. “Is that all there is?”

  Cramer settled back, then suddenly jerked forward again and laid the fist on Wolfe’s desk. “I’m going to come out with it,” he said slowly and emphatically. “I’ve had occasion many times, Wolfe, to ride you—or to try to. But actually, and you know it, I have never accused you of covering for a murderer, and I have never considered you capable of that.” He lifted the fist and brought it down again. “I do now. I think you’re capable of it, and I think you’re doing it. I think you know who killed Moore and Naylor, and I think you intend to keep me from getting him. Is that plain enough?”

  “You know what you’re saying, Mr. Cramer.”

  “You’re damn right I do.”

  “Archie.” Wolfe’s eyes came to me. “Get him out of my house. By force if necessary.”

  That did not appeal to me. He was a police inspector, he was probably armed, and I had on my best clothes.

  I stayed in my chair. “Gentlemen,” I said sneeringly, “I had supposed you could take it, both of you, but I see I was wrong. You’re both licked, that’s all there is to it, and you’re trying to take it out on each other by acting childish. Inspector Cramer, you know damn well how tricky Mr. Wolfe is, and you know he’s at least ten times too tricky ever to go around—or rather sit around—with a murderer in his pocket with the idea of guarding his health. You’re just mad and kicking the furniture. Mr. Wolfe, you are fully aware that he is merely shooting off his mouth, and if you were yourself you would be only bland and offensive to him instead of ordering me to make an ass of myself. You’re just sore and savage because you’ve finally run into one too slick for you.”

  I arose, crossed to the hall door, and turned. “You’ll have to excuse me, gentlemen, I’ve got a date with a suspect. I’m a detective and I’m working on a murder case.”

  I have never learned how that conversation ended. Wolfe never mentioned it, and when, somewhat later, I tried a question or two about it, all I got was a grunt.

  Saturday and Sunday it was really pitiful. Saturday morning Wolfe buzzed me to come to his room while he was eating breakfast, and when I went, he, having remembered his taboo on talk of business during meals, let me sit and watch him gloomily dispose of four pieces of toast and a dish of eggs au beurre noir. When he had finished he had instructions for me, and they were a knockout. He was sure going to wade into it. I was to spend my week-end getting Ben Frenkel, Harold Anthony, Rosa Bendini, and Gwynne Ferris, one at a time, and bringing them to him! And he was to spend his week-end getting things out of them!

  So it was. That’s how we spent Saturday and Sunday, with one or two other items worked in, such as my going with Lieutenant Rowcliff to look over Naylor’s papers and effects. Nor was Wolfe merely making motions and trying to pass the time. Saturday he spent three hours on Harold Anthony and four hours on Gwynne Ferris. Sunday he spent five hours on Rosa Bendini and six on Ben Frenkel. He was really digging and sweating. Late Sunday evening, after Frenkel had gone, he stayed motionless in his chair a long while and then remarked in a low rumble that indicated he had caught it from Frenkel:

  “I suppose I’ll have to see those other people. The directors and executives. Can you have them here tomorrow morning at eleven?”

  I was busy at the typewriter, catching up on the germination records. Without bothering to turn my head I declared firmly, “I cannot. They’re busy supplying engineers. They think we’re a false alarm as it is. Even Armstrong—you know, the wiry little guy—even he is beginning to suspect they’re wasting corporation funds.”

  He didn’t even grunt, let alone argue. I resumed on the typewriter. I finished with the Miltonias and started on the Phalaenopsis. The minutes collected enough for an hour and started on another one
. It was midnight, bedtime, but I stayed on because Wolfe was leaning back with his eyes closed and with his lips working—pushing out, then back in, then out and in again—and I was curious to learn if anything would come of it.

  He stirred in his chair, sighed clear to his solar plexus, and opened his eyes to a slit.

  “Archie.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You were correct.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I have, as you put it, run up against one too slick for me. Either too slick or too lucky. Mr. Moore has been dead nearly four months, and Mr. Naylor nine days, and what have we got?”

  “An expense account.”

  “Yes. It is wholly unprecedented. We have one fact only that might be helpful—Miss Livsey’s promenade with Mr. Naylor—but we don’t know whether it is significant or not, and no way of finding out. We can’t sort out the real clues and the false ones because we have no clues at all. Literally none. Neither has Mr. Cramer. Has that ever happened to us before?”

  “No, sir.”

  “No. It hasn’t. I find it interesting and stimulating. What do we do when we have no clues? Do you know?”

  “No, sir.”

  “We make one. We may have to make more, but we’ll start with one. Experimentally. Cover that confounded machine and turn your chair around and listen to me.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  It took him nearly an hour to complete the diagram, with me making notes. At the end he asked sharply, “Well?”

  I nodded uncertainly. “If it’s the best you can do we’ll have to try it—or rather I will. The least we can get is another murder.”

  29.

  The best evidence of where we stood and how we were doing on that case was the changed attitude toward me, when I appeared in the Naylor-Kerr stock department that Monday morning, on the part of the personnel. The time had been when my progress down an aisle had been followed by hundreds of pairs of eyes. No more. I got about the same attention as one of the messenger boys toting mail around.

  The first item of the build-up was a visit, not too brief, with Hester Livsey, and, wanting to be sure of getting it in before she got called by Rosenbaum for the morning dictation, I crossed the arena to her office as soon as I had deposited my hat and coat in my own room, which I was still being allowed to occupy. Her door was standing open, but I closed it behind me when I entered.

  She had finished dusting and was sorting papers on her desk. She sent me a sidewise glance, then jerked her head around and demanded, “What do you want?”

  I sat down and grinned at her. “That’s a bad habit you’re forming, that what do you want. It’s nerves.”

  “What do you want?”

  She looked older and somewhat more used, and I didn’t try to kid myself that to me she had become merely a collection of assorted cells and was around ninety per cent water. I could still look at her and not be repulsed by the notion that she needed me, and the hell of it was that I was committed to an operation that was likely to make her need me a lot more.

  “Sit down and relax,” I told her.

  “No.” She stood with papers in her hand. “I could tell Mr. Rosenbaum that you’re annoying me.”

  “Indeed you could,” I agreed. “And I wouldn’t deny it. I’m annoying lots of people, and so are you. That’s the way it goes under circumstances like this. I doubt if Rosenbaum would try to bounce me, it would make such a commotion, with me yelling and hanging onto the doorjamb, and maybe breaking loose and dodging around the desks out there. However, you can try it—or you can just ignore me and go on with your work. I won’t pounce on you from behind.”

  She was sorting papers, with her face looking distorted because of the way her jaw was set, with tight muscles.

  “Speaking of your work,” I went on, “do you remember that you told me once that you like it here and have to have a job? I shouldn’t think you’d like it here much now, with all the annoyance. But I can understand your having to have a job because I do too. I can understand your not wanting to do anything that would get you fired. So don’t get fired. Quit. Mr. Wolfe knows a lot of people, and one of them is a senior partner in one of the best and biggest law firms in New York. You can have a job with them, secretary to a member of the firm, seventy a week to start, nine-thirty to five and closed Saturdays, haven’t skipped a Christmas bonus for eighteen years. Your room will be three times as big as this one, two windows, two rugs, any kind of typewriter you want, good view of the harbor and the Statue of Liberty. What do you say?”

  She sorted papers, with no glance at me. I warmed up to it and proceeded to analyze her chances for a glowing future in the law business. To get the effect I was after it was desirable to spend at least a quarter of an hour with her, and twenty minutes would be better. So I went into the matter thoroughly and considered it from every angle. I found as I went on that what appealed strongest to my fancy was the possibility of her becoming a court stenographer, with all the dramatic opportunities and financial advantages which that offered. On that I really went to town. I had been with her twenty-three minutes, and saw no reason why it shouldn’t go on until lunchtime, when I heard the door opening behind me. Twisting my head, I saw Sumner Hoff.

  He shut the door, circled around to confront me, and told me in a low threatening tone, “Get out of here.”

  I couldn’t have asked for anything better. This would be a real help. I looked up at him and matched his tone. “Get out yourself, you goddam snooping son of a bitch.”

  He reacted as might have been expected from the cavalier who had plugged Waldo Moore in full view of the whole arena. He made me aware, in fact, that I might have done him an injustice that day in Wolfe’s office; he was capable of rating a sock when his emotions were fully aroused. But it would have been bad tactics to smash him at that point, and anyway his ideas of combat were so ill advised that it would have been a shame. As I left my chair he came for me with his right as if it was the only fist in the world and nothing else was worth considering. I jerked my head aside out of the way, and while he was recovering his balance I stepped to the door and opened it, saying in a loud voice:

  “You’re too late to stop her, Hoff! You’re too late!”

  Then I ran. I ran across the middle of the arena, glancing over my shoulder, in flight, to see that Hoff had started after me, got as far as the fourth desk, and stopped. I kept going, getting, now, the attention I deserved from all eyes. When I reached the other side I darted into my room, grabbed my hat and coat, emerged, left by the main entrance, took a down elevator, flagged a taxi on William Street, and gave the driver Wolfe’s address.

  I found Wolfe up in the potting room with Theodore, inspecting a newly arrived shipment of osmundine. It was humid and warm in there, so I perched on a stool, got out my handkerchief, and wiped my brow.

  “Well?” he inquired.

  “Yes, sir. I was with her over twenty minutes. Hoff busted in and ordered me out, and I called him names and let him chase me. He must have spies.”

  “Excellent. Proceed.”

  “Yes, sir. I’ll stay here a while, to show that I had to consult you on an exciting development, and then go back. But there’s one thing I still don’t like. Each and every day I have been typing my report in the afternoon and taking it upstairs around four-thirty. If I change that routine and turn in a report before noon someone may suspect it’s a phony.”

  “You said that last night.”

  “I say it again today.”

  “The substance of the report justifies it.”

  “It did with Naylor too, but I followed routine.”

  He shrugged. “Very well. It doesn’t matter. Make it this afternoon as usual.”

  I left, went downstairs to the office, dialed the Naylor-Kerr number, asked for the extension of the head of the reserve pool in the stock department, and said I wanted to speak to Gwynne Ferris. I was told she was busy. So, I said, was I. In a couple of minutes I heard her voice.

 
; “Listen, darling,” I beseeched her. “I’m up at Thirty-fifth Street, had to come to see Mr. Wolfe. But I’ll be through here in about an hour, and there’s something I want to ask you about, and I’ll even go so far as to buy you a lunch. Meet me at the corner of William and Wall at twelve-thirty?”

  “You bum,” she said resentfully. “Letting that Hoff chase you clear off the floor and me not getting to see it because I was in Mr. Henderson’s office working. What do you want to ask me about?”

  “Something special. The next to last step in that rumba. Twelve-thirty?”

  She said all right.

  I was sitting with my legs extended and my hands pushed into my pants pockets, frowning at the knob of the combination on the safe, when Wolfe came down from the plant rooms. After he got in his chair and had his center of gravity adjusted I transferred the frown to him and asked:

  “Did the boys come?”

  He nodded.

  “All four of them?”

  He nodded.

  “You gave them the set-up?”

  He nodded.

  I shook my head. “Okay. If this thing really works, which I admit is one chance in a hundred and so do you, I only hope to God they don’t lose her and I have to do some more identifying.”

  “Nonsense.” Wolfe pushed the button for beer. “As I told you, I expect nothing as conclusive as that. But there may be some word, some gesture, some cautious countermove, and you, I trust, will not miss it.”

  “Yeah.” My frown remained. “Some trust. I have dated Gwynne for lunch and have reserved a booth at Frisbie’s, where shad roe is three bucks. Have you any further suggestions?”

  He said no, and Fritz entered with the beer.

  30.

  “Yes, turtledove,” I said, “you may have another Martini if it’s okay with Emily Post in the middle of a meal, and further if you don’t get dizzy. I need your head clear.”