Rex Stout - Nero Wolfe 02

by The League of Frightened Men

  Chapin showed no alarm. “Yes, George. And what made me a goddam cripple?”

  Pratt didn’t retreat. “I helped to, once. Sure I did. That was an accident, we all have ’em, maybe not as bad as yours. Christ, can’t you ever forget it? Is there no man in you at all? Has your brain got twisted—”

  “No. Man? No.” Chapin cut him off, and smiled at him with his mouth. He looked around at the others. “You fellows are all men though. Aren’t you? Every one. God bless you. That’s an idea, depend on God’s blessing. Try it. I tried it once. Now I must ask you to excuse me.” He turned to Wolfe. “Good evening, sir. I’ll go. Thank you for your courtesy. I trust I haven’t put too great a strain on your intelligence.”

  He inclined his head to Wolfe and to me, turned and made off. His stick had thumped three times on the rug when he was halted by Wolfe’s voice:

  “Mr. Chapin. I almost forgot. May I ask you for a very few minutes more? Just a small—”

  Nicholas Cabot’s voice broke in, “For God’s sake, Wolfe, let him go—”

  “Please, Mr. Cabot. May I, gentlemen? Just a small favor, Mr. Chapin. Since you are innocent of any ill intent, and as anxious as we are to see your friends’ difficulties removed, I trust you will help me in a little test. I know it will seem nonsensical to you, quite meaningless, but I should like to try it. Would you help me out?”

  Chapin had turned. I thought he looked careful. He said, “Perhaps. What is it?”

  “Quite simple. You use a typewriter, I suppose?”

  “Of course. I type all my manuscripts myself.”

  “We have a typewriter here. Would you be good enough to sit at Mr. Goodwin’s desk and type something at my dictation?”

  “Why should I?” He hesitated, and was certainly being careful now. He looked around and saw twelve pairs of eyes at him; then he smiled and said easily, “But for that matter, why shouldn’t I?” He limped back towards me.

  I pulled the machine up into position, inserted a sheet of paper, got up, and held my chair for him. He shook his head and I moved away, and he leaned his stick up against the desk and got himself into the chair, shoving his bum leg under with his hand. Nobody was saying a word. He looked around at Wolfe and said, “I’m not very fast. Shall I double-space it?”

  “I would say, single-space. In that way it will most nearly resemble the original. Are you ready?” Wolfe suddenly and unexpectedly put volume and depth into his voice: “Ye should have killed me—comma—watched the last mean sigh—”

  There was complete silence. It lasted ten seconds. Then Chapin’s fingers moved and the typewriter clicked, firm and fast. I followed the words on it. It got through the first three, but at the fourth it faltered. It stopped at the second l in killed, stopped completely. There was silence again. You could have heard a feather falling. The sounds that broke it came from Paul Chapin. He moved with no haste but with a good deal of finality. He pushed back, got himself onto his feet, took his stick, and thumped off. He brushed past me, and Arthur Kommers had to move out of his way. Before he got to the door he stopped and turned. He did not seem especially perturbed, and his light-colored eyes had nothing new in them as far as I could see from where I was.

  He said, “I would have been glad to help in any authentic test, Mr. Wolfe, but I wouldn’t care to be the victim of a trick. I was referring, by the way, to intelligence, not to a vulgar and obvious cunning.”

  He turned. Wolfe murmured, “Archie,” and I went out to help him on with his coat and open the door for him.

  Chapter 7

  When I got back to the office everybody was talking. Mike Ayers had gone to the table to get a drink, and three or four others had joined him. Dr. Burton stood with his hands dug into his pockets, frowning, listening to Farrell and Pratt. Wolfe had untwined his fingers and was showing his inner tumult by rubbing his nose with one of them. When I got to his desk Cabot the lawyer was saying to him:

  “I have an idea you’ll collect your fees, Mr. Wolfe. I begin to understand your repute.”

  “I shall make no discount for flummery, sir.” Wolfe sighed. “For my part, I have an idea that if I collect my fees I shall have earned them. Your friend Mr. Chapin is a man of quality.”

  Cabot nodded. “Paul Chapin is a distorted genius.”

  “All genius is distorted. Including my own. But so for that matter is all life; a mad and futile ferment of substances meant originally to occupy space without disturbing it. But alas, here we are in the thick of the disturbance, and the only way that has occurred to us to make it tolerable is to join in and raise all the hell our ingenuity may suggest.—How did Paul Chapin acquire his special distortion? I mean the famous accident. Tell me about it. I understand it was at college, a hazing affair.”

  “Yes. It was pretty terrible.” Cabot sat on the edge of the desk. “No doubt of that, but good God, other men, the war, for instance … oh well. I suppose Paul was distorted from the beginning. He was a freshman, the rest of us were sophomores and on up. Do you know the Yard?”

  “The Yard?”

  “At Harvard.”

  “I have never been there.”

  “Well. There were dormitories—Thayer Hall. This was at Thayer Middle Entry—Hell Bend. We were having a beer night downstairs, and there were some there from outside—that’s how fellows like Gaines and Collard happened to be present. We were having a good time around ten o’clock when a fellow came in and said he couldn’t get in his room; he had left his key inside and the doors had snap locks. Of course we all began to clap.”

  “That was a masterpiece, to forget one’s key?”

  “Oh no. We were clapping the opportunity. By getting out a hall window, or another room, you could make your way along a narrow ledge to the window of any locked room and get in that way. It was quite a trick—I wouldn’t try it now for my hope of the Supreme Court—but I had done it in my freshman year and so had many others. Whenever an upperclassman forgot his key it was the native custom to conscript a freshman for that service. There was nothing extraordinary about it, for the agility of youth. Well, when this fellow—it was Andy Hibbard—when he announced he had locked himself out, of course we welcomed the opportunity for a little discipline. We looked around for a victim. Somebody heard a noise in the hall and looked out and saw one going by, and called to him to come in. He came in. It was Chapin.”

  “He was a freshman.”

  Cabot nodded. “Paul had a personality, a force in him, already at that age. Maybe he was already distorted. I’m not a psychiatrist. Andy Hibbard has told me … but that wouldn’t help you any. Anyway, we had been inclined to let him alone. Now, here he was delivered to us by chance. Somebody told him what was expected of him. He was quite cool about it. He asked what floor Andy’s room was on, and we told him the fourth, three flights up. He said he was sorry, in that case he couldn’t do it. Ferd Bowen said to him, ‘What’s the matter, you’re not a cripple, are you?’ He said he was perfectly sound. Bill Harrison, who was serious-minded in his cradle, asked him if he had vertigo. He said no. We marched him upstairs. Ordinarily not more than a dozen or so would probably have gone up to see the fun, but on account of the way he was taking it thirty-five of us herded him up. We didn’t touch him. He went, because he knew what would happen if he didn’t.”

  “What would happen?”

  “Oh, things. Whatever might occur to us. You know college kids.”

  “As few as possible.”

  “Yes. Well, he went. I’ll never forget his face as he was getting out of the hall window, backwards. It was white as a sheet, but it was something else too, I don’t know what. It got me. It got Andy Hibbard too, for he jumped forward and called to Chapin to come back in, he would do it himself. Others grabbed Andy and told him not to be a damn fool. All who could crowded up and looked out of the window. It was moonlight. Others ran to one of the rooms and looked out of the windows there. Chapin got onto the ledge all right, and got straightened up and moved along a little, his hand stre
tched out as far as he could, trying to reach the next window. I didn’t see it, I wasn’t looking, but they said that all of a sudden he began to tremble, and down he went.”

  Cabot stopped. He reached in his pocket for his case and lit a cigarette. He didn’t hold the match to it as steady as he might have. He took a couple of puffs and said, “That’s all. That’s what happened.”

  Wolfe grunted. “You say there were thirty-five of you?”

  “Yes. So it turned out.” Cabot pulled at his cigarette. “We chipped in, of course, and did all we could. He was in the hospital two months and had three operations. I don’t know where he got a list of our names; I suppose from Andy. Andy took it hard. Anyway, the day he left the hospital he sent all of us copies of a poem he had written. Thanking us. It was clever. There was only one of us smart enough to see what kind of thanks it was. Pitney Scott.”

  “Pitney Scott is a taxi-driver.”

  Cabot raised his brows. “You should write our class history, Mr. Wolfe. Pit took to drink in 1930, one of the depression casualties. Not, like Mike Ayers, for the annoyance of other people. For his own destruction. I see you have him down for five dollars. I’ll pay it.”

  “Indeed. That would indicate that you are prepared to accept my proposal.”

  “Of course I am. We all are. But you know that. What else can we do? We are menaced with death, there’s no question about it. I have no idea why, if Paul had this in him, he waited so long to get it out—possibly his recent success gave him a touch of confidence that he needed, or money to finance his plans—I don’t know. Of course we accept your proposal. Did you know that a month ago Adler and Pratt and Bowen seriously discussed the notion of hiring a gangster to kill him? They invited me in, but I wouldn’t—everyone’s squeamishness begins somewhere, and I suppose that was the starting point for mine—and they abandoned the idea. What else can we do? The police are helpless, which is understandable and nothing against them; they are equipped to frustrate many kinds of men, but not Paul Chapin—I grant him his quality. Three of us hired detectives a month ago, and we might as well have engaged a troop of Boy Scouts. They spent days looking for the typewriter on which the warnings were written, and never even found it; and if they had found it they would not have been able to fasten it on Paul Chapin.”

  “Yes.” Wolfe reached out and pressed the button for Fritz. “Your detectives called on me and offered to place their findings at my disposal—with your consent.” Fritz appeared, and Wolfe nodded for beer. “Mr. Cabot. What does Mr. Chapin mean when he says that you killed the man in him?”

  “Well … that’s poetry, isn’t it?”

  “It might be called that. Is it merely poetry, or is it also technical information?”

  “I don’t know.” Cabot’s eyes fell. I watched him and thought to myself, he’s actually embarrassed; so there’s kinks in your love-life too, huh, smoothie? He went on, “I couldn’t say; I doubt if any of us could. You’d have to ask his doctor.”

  A new voice cut in. Julius Adler and Alex Drummond had come over a few minutes before and stood listening; Adler, I suppose, because he was a lawyer and therefore didn’t trust lawyers, and Drummond since he was a tenor. I never saw a tenor that wasn’t inquisitive. At this point Drummond horned in with a giggle:

  “Or his wife.”

  Wolfe snapped at him, “Whose wife?”

  “Why, Paul’s.”

  If I had seen Wolfe astonished only three times in seven years, which is what I would guess, this was the fourth. He even moved in his chair. He looked at Cabot, not at Drummond, and demanded, “What is this nonsense?”

  Cabot nodded. “Sure, Paul has a wife.”

  Wolfe poured a glass of beer, gulped half of it, let it settle a second, and swallowed the rest. He looked around for his handkerchief, but it had dropped to the floor. I got him one out of the drawer where I kept them, and he wiped his lips.

  He said, “Tell me about her.”

  “Well …” Cabot looked for words. “Paul Chapin is full of distortions, let us say, and his wife is one of them. Her name was Dora Ritter. He married her three years ago, and they live in an apartment on Perry Street.”

  “What is she like and who was she?”

  Cabot hesitated again, differently. This time he didn’t seem to be looking for words, he was looking for a way out. He finally said, “I don’t see—I really don’t see that this is going to help you any, but I suppose you’ll want to know it. But I’d rather not—you’d better get it from Burton himself.” He turned and called, “Lorry! Come over here a minute.”

  Dr. Burton was with the group at the table, talking and working on a highball. He looked around, made some remark to Farrell the architect, and crossed to Wolfe’s desk. Cabot said to him:

  “Mr. Wolfe has just asked me who Paul’s wife was. Maybe I’m being more delicate than the circumstances require, but I’d rather you’d tell him.”

  Burton looked at Wolfe and frowned. He looked at Cabot, and his voice sounded irritated: “Why not you, or anybody? Everybody knows it.”

  Cabot smiled. “I said maybe I was overdelicate.”

  “I think you were.” Burton turned to Wolfe. “Dora Ritter was a maid in my employ. She is around fifty, extremely homely, disconcertingly competent, and stubborn as a wet boot. Paul Chapin married her in 1931.”

  “What did he marry her for?”

  “I am as likely to tell you as he is. Chapin is a psychopath.”

  “So Mr. Hibbard informed me. What sort of maid was she?”

  “What sort?”

  “Was she in your office, for instance?”

  Burton was frowning. “No. She was my wife’s maid.”

  “How long have you known her and how long has Chapin known her?—Wait.” Wolfe wiggled a finger. “I must ask you to bear with me, Dr. Burton. I have just received a shock and am floundering in confusion. I have read all of Paul Chapin’s novels, and so naturally supposed myself to be in possession of a fairly complete understanding of his character, his temperament, his processes of thought and his modes of action. I thought him incapable of following any of the traditional channels leading to matrimony, either emotional or practical. Learning that he has a wife, I am greatly shocked; I am even desperate. I need to have disclosed everything about her that is discoverable.”

  “Oh. You do.” Burton looked at him, sizing him up, with sour steadiness. “Then I might as well disclose it myself. It was common gossip.” He glanced at the others. “I knew that, though naturally it didn’t reach my ears. If I show reluctance, it is only because it was … unpleasant.”

  “Yes.”

  “Yes, it was. I presume you don’t know that of all of us, this group, I was the only one who knew Paul Chapin before the college days. We came from the same town—I more or less grew up with him. He was in love with a girl. I knew her—one of the girls I knew, that was all. He was infatuated with her, and he finally, through persistence, reached an understanding with her before he went away to college. Then the accident occurred, and he was crippled, and it was all off. In my opinion it would have been off anyway, sooner or later, without the intervention of an accident. I didn’t go home for my vacations; I spent my summers working. It wasn’t until after I was through with medical school that I went back for a visit, and discovered that this girl had become … that is … I married her.”

  He glanced aside at Cabot’s cigarette case thrust at him by the lawyer, shook his head, turned back to Wolfe and went on, “We came to New York. I was lucky in my profession; I have a good bedside manner and a knack with people’s insides, especially women. I made a lot of money. I think it was in 1923 that my wife engaged Dora Ritter—yes, she was with us eight years. Her competence was a jewel in a nigger’s ear—”

  “Ethiope.”

  “Well, that’s a nigger. One day Paul came to me and said he was going to marry my wife’s maid. That was what was unpleasant. He made a nasty scene out of if.”

  Wolfe inclined his head. “
I can imagine him explaining that the action contemplated was by way of a paraphrase on the old institution of whipping-boy.”

  Dr. Burton jerked his head up, startled, and stared at him. “How the devil did you know that?”

  “He said that?”

  “Those words. He said paraphrase.”

  “I suspected he would have lit on that.” Wolfe scratched his ear, and I knew he was pleased. “Having read his novels, I am not unacquainted with his style of thought and his taste in allusion.—So he married her. She, of course, having but one jewel and the rest all slag, would not be finicky. Do they make a happy pair? Do you ever see her?”

  “Not frequently.” Burton hesitated, then went on, “I see her very seldom. She comes once or twice a week to dress my wife’s hair, and occasionally to sew. I am usually not at home.”

  Wolfe murmured, “It is a temptation to cling to competence when we find it.”

  Burton nodded. “I suppose so. My wife finds it impossible to forgo the indulgence. Dora is an expert hag.”

  “Well.” Wolfe took some beer. “Thank you, doctor. It has often been said, you will find romance in the most unlikely spots. Mr. Chapin’s no longer upsets me, since it fits my presumptions. By the way, this probably clears up another little point. Permit me.—Archie, would you ask Mr. Farrell to join us?”

  I went and got Farrell and brought him over. He was brisk; the Scotch was putting some spring into him. He gave Wolfe an amiable look.

  “Mr. Farrell. Earlier this evening you remarked to Dr. Burton that it was a wonder he was not the first. I suppose that you meant, the first victim of Mr. Chapin’s campaign. Did that remark mean anything in particular?”

  Farrell looked uncomfortable. “Did I say that?”

  “You did.”

  “I don’t remember it. I suppose I thought I was cracking a joke, I don’t know.”