Rex Stout - Nero Wolfe 02

by The League of Frightened Men

  “But nothing came of it. As you know, it takes a fillip on the flank for my mare to dance, and the fillip was not forthcoming. You were away at the time, and since your return the incident has not been discussed. It is odd that you should have innocently been the cause, by mere chance, of its revival.”

  “I don’t get you.”

  Fritz came with beer. Wolfe took the opener from the drawer, poured a glass, gulped, and leaned back again. He resumed, “By annoying me about the man on the witness-stand. I resigned myself to your tantrum because it was nearly four o’clock. As you know, the book came. I read it last night.”

  “Why did you read it?”

  “Don’t badger me. I read it because it was a book. I had finished The Native’s Return, by Louis Adamic, and Outline of Human Nature, by Alfred Rossiter, and I read books.”

  “Yeah. And?”

  “This will amuse you. Paul Chapin, the man on the witness-stand, the author of Devil Take the Hindmost, is the villain of Andrew Hibbard’s tale. He is the psychopathic avenger of an old and tragic injury.”

  “The hell he is.” I gave Wolfe a look; I had known him to invent for practice. “Why is he?”

  Wolfe’s eyelids went up a shade. “Do you expect me to explain the universe?”

  “No, sir. Retake. How do you know he is?”

  “By no flight. Pedestrian mental processes. Must you have them?”

  “I’d greatly appreciate it.”

  “I suppose so. A few details will do. Mr. Hibbard employed the unusual phrase, embark on a ship of vengeance, and that phrase occurs twice in Devil Take the Hindmost. Mr. Hibbard did not say, as the stenographer has it, that was difficult, for pawn, which is of course meaningless; he said, that was difficult, for Paul, and caught himself up pronouncing the name, which he did not intend to disclose. Mr. Hibbard said things indicating that the man was a writer, for instance speaking of his disguising his style in the warnings. Mr. Hibbard said that five years ago the man began to be involved in compensatory achievement. I telephoned two or three people this morning. In 1929 Paul Chapin’s first successful book was published, and in 1930 his second. Also, Chapin is a cripple through an injury which he suffered twenty-five years ago in a hazing accident at Harvard. If more is needed … “

  “No. Thank you very much. I see. All right. Now that you know who the guy is, everything is cozy. Why is it? Who are you going to send a bill to?”

  Two of the folds in Wolfe’s cheeks opened out a little, so I knew he thought he was smiling. I said, “But you may just be pleased because you know it’s corn fritters with anchovy sauce for lunch and it’s only ten minutes to the bell.”

  “No, Archie.” The folds were gently closing. “I mentioned that I entertained a notion. It may or may not be fertile. As usual, you have furnished the fillip. Luckily our stake will be negligible. There are several possible channels of approach, but I believe … yes. Get Mr. Andrew Hibbard on the phone. At Columbia, or at his home.”

  “Yes, sir. Will you speak?”

  “Yes. Keep your wire and take it down as usual.”

  I got the number from the book and called it. First the university. I didn’t get Hibbard. I monkeyed around with two or three extensions and four or five people, and it finally leaked out that he wasn’t anywhere around, but no one seemed to know where he was. I tried his home, an Academy number, up in the same neighborhood. There a dumb female nearly riled me. She insisted on knowing who I was and she sounded doubtful about everything. She finally seemed to decide Mr. Hibbard probably wasn’t home. Through the last of it Wolfe was listening in on his wire.

  I turned to him. “I can try again and maybe with luck get a human being.”

  He shook his head. “After lunch. It is two minutes to one.”

  I got up and stretched, thinking I would be able to do a lot of destructive criticism on a corn fritter myself, especially with Fritz’s sauce. It was at that moment that Wolfe’s notion decided to come to him instead of waiting longer for him to go to it. It was a coincidence, too, though that was of no importance; she must have been trying to get our number while I was talking.

  The telephone rang. I sat down again and got it. It was a woman’s voice, and she asked to speak to Nero Wolfe. I asked if I might have her name, and when she said “Evelyn Hibbard” I told her to hold the line and put my hand over the transmitter.

  I grinned at Wolfe. “It’s a Hibbard.”

  His brows lifted.

  “A female Hibbard named Evelyn. Voice young, maybe a daughter. Take it.”

  He took his receiver off and I put mine back to my ear and got my pad and pencil ready. As Wolfe asked her what she wanted I was deciding again that he was the only man I had ever met who used absolutely the same tone to a woman as to a man. He had plenty of changes in his voice, but they weren’t based on sex. I scribbled on the pad my quick symbols, mostly private, for the sounds in the receiver:

  “I have a note of introduction to you from a friend, Miss Sarah Barstow. You will remember her, Mr. Wolfe, you … you investigated the death of her father.* Could I see you at once? If possible. I’m talking from the Bidwell, Fifty-second Street. I could be there in fifteen minutes.”

  “I’m sorry, Miss Hibbard, I am engaged. Could you come at a quarter past two?”

  “Oh.” A little gasp floated after that. “I had hopes … I just decided ten minutes ago. Mr. Wolfe, it is very urgent. If you could possibly …”

  “If you would describe the urgency.”

  “I’d rather not, on the telephone—but that’s silly. It’s my uncle, Andrew Hibbard, he went to see you two weeks ago, you may remember. He has disappeared.”

  “Indeed. When?”

  “Tuesday evening. Four days ago.”

  “You have had no word of him?”

  “Nothing.” The female Hibbard’s voice caught. “Nothing at all.”

  “Indeed.” I saw Wolfe’s eyes shift to take in the clock—it was four minutes past one—and shift again towards the door to the hall, where Fritz stood on the threshold, straight for announcing. “Since ninety hours have passed, another one may be risked. At a quarter past two? Will that be convenient?”

  “If you can’t … all right. I’ll be there.”

  Two receivers were returned simultaneously to their racks. Fritz spoke as usual:

  “Luncheon, sir.”

  *See Fer-de-Lance, by Rex Stout.

  Chapter 3

  I’m funny about women. I’ve seen dozens of them I wouldn’t mind marrying, but I’ve never been pulled so hard I lost my balance. I don’t know whether any of them would have married me or not, that’s the truth, since I never gave one a chance to collect enough data to form an intelligent opinion. When I meet a new one there’s no doubt that I’m interested and I’m fully alive to all the possibilities, and I’ve never dodged the issue as far as I can tell, but I never seem to get infatuated. For instance, take the women I meet in my line of business—that is, Nero Wolfe’s business. I never run into one, provided she’s not just an item for the cleaners, without letting my eyes do the best they can for my judgment, and more than that, it puts a tickle in my blood. I can feel the nudge on the accelerator. But then of course the business gets started, whatever it may happen to be, and I guess the trouble is I’m too conscientious. I love to do a good job more than anything else I can think of, and I suppose that’s what shorts the line.

  This Evelyn Hibbard was little and dark and smart. Her nose was too pointed and she took too much advantage of her eyelashes, but nobody that knew merchandise would have put her on a bargain counter. She had on a slick gray twill suit, with a fur piece, and a little red hat with a narrow brim on the side of her head. She sat straight without crossing her legs, and her ankles and halfway to her knees was well trimmed but without promise of any plumpness.

  I was at my desk of course with my pad, and after the first couple of minutes got only glances at her in between. If worry about her uncle was eating her, and I suppose it was, she
was following what Wolfe called the Anglo-Saxon theory of the treatment of emotions and desserts: freeze them and hide them in your belly. She sat straight in the chair I had shoved up for her, keeping her handsome dark eyes level on Wolfe but once in a while flapping her lashes in my direction. She had brought with her a package wrapped in brown paper and held it on her lap. Wolfe leaned back in his seat with his chin down and his forearms laid out on the arms of the chair; it was his custom to make no effort to join his fingers at the high point of his middle mound sooner than a full hour after a meal.

  She said that she and her younger sister lived with their uncle in an apartment on One Hundred Thirteenth Street. Their mother had died when they were young. Their father was remarried and lived in California. Their uncle was single. He, Uncle Andrew, had gone out Tuesday evening around nine o’clock, and had not returned. There had been no word from him. He had gone out alone, remarking casually to Ruth, the younger sister, that he would get some air.

  Wolfe asked, “This has no precedent?”

  “Precedent?”

  “He has never done this before? You have no idea where he may be?”

  “No. But I have an idea … I think … he has been killed.”

  “I suppose so.” Wolfe opened his eyes a little. “That would naturally occur to you. On the telephone you mentioned his visit to me. Do you know what its purpose was?”

  “I know all about it. It was through my Mend Sarah Barstow that I heard of you. I persuaded my uncle to come to see you. I know what he told you and what you said to him. I told my uncle he was a sentimental romantic. He was.” She stopped, and kept her lips closed a moment to get them firm again; I looked up to see it. “I’m not. I’m hard-boiled. I think my uncle has been murdered, and the man who killed him is Paul Chapin, the writer. I came here to tell you that.”

  So here was the notion Wolfe had entertained, coming right to his office and sitting on a chair. But too late? The five hundred a week had gone out to get some air.

  Wolfe said, “Quite likely. Thank you for coming. But it might be possible, and more to the point, to engage the attention of the police and the District Attorney.”

  She nodded. “You are like Sarah Barstow described you. The police have been engaged since Wednesday noon. They have been willing so far, at the request of the president of the university, to keep the matter quiet. There has been no publicity. But the police—you might as well match me at chess against Capablanca. Mr. Wolfe …” The fingers of her clasped hands, resting on the package on her lap, twisted a closer knot, and her voice tightened. “You don’t know. Paul Chapin has the cunning and subtlety of all the things he mentioned in his first warning, the one he sent after he killed Judge Harrison. He is genuinely evil … all evil, all dangerous … you know he is not a man …”

  “There, Miss Hibbard. There now.” Wolfe sighed. “Surely he is a man, by definition. Did he indeed kill a judge? In that instance the presumption is of course in his favor. But you mentioned the first warning. Do you by any chance have a copy of it?”

  She nodded. “I have.” She indicated the package. “I have all the warnings, including …” She swallowed. “… the last one. Dr. Burton gave me his.”

  “The one after the apparent suicide.”

  “No. The one … another one came this morning to them. I suppose to all of them; after Dr. Burton told me I telephoned two or three. You see, my uncle has disappeared … you see …”

  “I see. Indeed. Dangerous. For Mr. Chapin, I mean. Any kind of a rut is dangerous in his sort of enterprise. So you have all the warnings. With you? In that package?”

  “Yes. Also I have bundles of letters which Paul Chapin has at various times written to my uncle, and a sort of diary which my uncle kept, and a book of records showing sums advanced to Paul Chapin from 1919 to 1928 by my uncle and others, and a list of the names and addresses of the members—that is, of the men who were present in 1909 when it happened. A few other things.”

  “Preposterous. You have all that? Why not the police?”

  Evelyn Hibbard shook her head. “I decided not. These things were in a very private file of my uncle’s. They were precious to him, and they are now precious to me … in a different way. The police would get no help from them, but you might. And you would not abuse them. Would you?”

  At the pause I glanced up, and saw Wolfe’s lips pushing out a little … then in, then out again … That excited me. It always did, even when I had no idea what it was all about. I watched him. He said, “Miss Hibbard. You mean you removed this file from the notice of the police, and kept it, and have now brought it to me? Containing the names and addresses of the members of the League of Atonement? Remarkable.”

  She stared at him. “Why not? It has no information that they cannot easily obtain elsewhere—from Mr. Farrell or Dr. Burton or Mr. Drummond—any of them—”

  “All the same, remarkable.” Wolfe reached to his desk and pushed a button. “Will you have a glass of beer? I drink beer, but would not impose my preferences. There is available a fair port, Solera, Dublin stout, Maderia, and more especially a Hungarian vin du pays which comes to me from the cellar of the vineyard. Your choice …”

  She shook her head. “Thank you.”

  “I may have beer?”

  “Please do.”

  Wolfe did not lean back again. He said, “If the package could perhaps be opened? I am especially interested in that first warning.”

  She began to untie the string. I got up to help. She handed me the package and I put it on Wolfe’s desk and got the paper off. It was a large cardboard letter-file, old and faded but intact. I passed it to Wolfe, and he opened it with the deliberate and friendly exactness which his hands displayed towards all inanimate things.

  Evelyn Hibbard said, “Under I. My uncle did not call them warnings. He called them intimations.”

  Wolfe nodded. “Of destiny, I suppose.” He removed papers from the file. “Your uncle is indeed a romantic. Oh yes, I say is. It is wise to reject all suppositions, even painful ones, until surmise can stand on the legs of fact. Here it is. Ah! Ye should have killed me, watched the last mean sigh. Is Mr. Chapin in malevolence a poet? May I read it?”

  She nodded. He read:

  Ye should have killed me, watched the last mean sigh

  Sneak through my nostril like a fugitive slave

  Slinking from bondage.

  Ye should have killed me.

  Ye killed the man,

  Ye should have killed me!

  Ye killed the man, but not

  The snake, the fox, the mouse that nibbles his hole,

  The patient cat, the hawk, the ape that grins,

  The wolf, the crocodile, the worm that works his way

  Up through the slime and down again to hide.

  Ah! All these ye left in me,

  And killed the man.

  Ye should have killed me!

  Long ago I said, trust time.

  Banal I said, time will take its toll.

  I said to the snake, the ape, the cat, the worm:

  Trust time, for all your aptitudes together

  Are not as sure and deadly. But now they said:

  Time is too slow; let us, Master.

  Master, count for us!

  I said no.

  Master, let us. Master, count for its!

  I felt them in me. I saw the night, the sea,

  The rocks, the neutral stars, the ready cliff.

  I heard ye all about, and I heard them:

  Master, let us. Master, count for us!

  I saw one there, secure at the edge of death;

  I counted: One!

  I shall count two I know, and three and four …

  Not waiting for time’s toll.

  Ye should have killed me.

  Wolfe sat with the paper in his hand, glancing from it to Miss Hibbard. “It would seem likely that Mr. Chapin pushed the judge over the edge of a cliff. Presumably impromptu. I presume also, totally unobserved, since
no suspicions were aroused. There was a cliff around handy?”

  “Yes. It was in Massachusetts, up near Marble-head. Last June. A crowd was there at Fillmore Collard’s place. Judge Harrison had come east, from Indiana, for commencement, for his son’s graduation. They missed him that night, and the next morning they found his body at the foot of the cliff, beaten among the rocks by the surf.”

  “Mr. Chapin was among them?”

  She nodded. “He was there.”

  “But don’t tell me the gathering was for purposes of atonement. It was not a meeting of this incredible league?”

  “Oh no. Anyway, Mr. Wolfe, no one ever quite seriously called it a league. Even Uncle Andrew was not—” she stopped short, shut her lips, stuck her chin up, and then went on, “as romantic as that. The crowd was just a crowd, mostly from the class of 1912, that Fillmore Collard had taken up from Cambridge. Seven or eight of the—well, league—were there.”

  Wolfe nodded and regarded her for a moment, then got at the file again and began pulling things out of its compartments. He flipped through the sheets of a loose-leaf binder, glanced inside a record book, and shuffled through a lot of papers. Finally he looked at Miss Hibbard again:

  “And this quasi-poetic warning came to each of them after they had returned to their homes, and astonished them?”

  “Yes, a few days later.”

  “I see. You know, of course, that Mr. Chapin’s little effort was sound traditionally. Many of the most effective warnings in history, particularly the ancient ones, were in verse. As for the merits of Mr. Chapin’s execution, granted the soundness of the tradition, it seems to me verbose, bombastic, and decidedly spotty. I cannot qualify as an expert in prosody, but I am not without an ear.”

  It wasn’t like Wolfe to babble when business was on hand, and I glanced up wondering where he thought he was headed for. She was just looking at him. I had to cut my glance short, for he was going on:

  “Further, I suspect him specifically, in his second stanza—I suppose he would call it stanza—of plagiarism. It has been many years since I have read Spenser, but in a crack of my memory not quite closed up there is a catalogue of beasts—Archie. If you wouldn’t mind, bring me that Spenser? The third shelf, at the right of the door. No, farther over—more yet—dark blue, tooled. That’s it.”