Rex Stout - Nero Wolfe 02

by The League of Frightened Men

  “Archie. Take Mr. Hibbard’s cap, remove the handcuffs, and place a chair for him.”

  I did those things. This gentleman, it appeared, represented the second fact Wolfe had demanded, and I was glad to wait on him. He held his hands out for me to take the bracelets off, but it seemed to be an effort for him, and a glance at his eyes showed me that he wasn’t feeling any too prime. I eased the chair up back of his knees, and all of a sudden he slumped into it, buried his face in his hands, and stayed that way. Wolfe and I regarded him, with not as much commiseration as he might have thought he had a right to expect if he had been looking at us. To me he was the finest hunk of bacon I had lamped for several moons.

  Wolfe tipped me a nod, and I went to the cabinet and poured a stiff one and brought it over. I said:

  “Here, try this.”

  Finally he looked up. “What is it?”

  “It’s a goddam drink of rye whiskey.”

  He shook his head and reached for the drink simultaneously. I knew he had some soup in him so didn’t look for any catastrophe. He downed half of it, spluttered a little, and swallowed the rest. I said to Wolfe:

  “I brought him in with his cap on so you could see him that way. Anyhow, all I ever saw was a photograph. And he was supposed to be dead. And I’m here to tell you, it would have been a pleasure to plug him, and no kinds of comments will be needed now or any other time.”

  Wolfe, disregarding me, spoke to the runt: “Mr. Hibbard. You know of the ancient New England custom of throwing a suspected witch into the river, and if she drowned she was innocent. My personal opinion of a large drink of straight whiskey is that it provides a converse test: if you survive it you can risk anything. Mr. Goodwin did not in fact plug you?”

  Hibbard looked at me and blinked, and at Wolfe and blinked again. He cleared his throat twice, and said conversationally:

  “The truth of the matter is, I am not an adventurous man. I have been under a terrible strain for eleven days. And shall be—for many more.”

  “I hope not.”

  Hibbard shook his head. “And shall. God help me. And shall.”

  “You call on God now?”

  “Rhetorically. I am further than ever from Him, as a reliance.” He looked at me. “Could I have a little more whiskey?”

  I got it for him. This time he started sipping it, and smacked his lips. He said, “This is a relief. The whiskey is too, of course, but I was referring particularly to this opportunity to become articulate again. No; I am further than ever from a Deity in the stratosphere, but much closer to my fellow man. I have a confession to make, Mr. Wolfe, and it might as well be to you as anyone. I have learned more in these eleven days masquerading as a roughneck than in all the previous forty-three years of my existence.”

  “Harun-al-Rashid—”

  “No. Excuse me. He was seeking entertainment, I was seeking life. First, I thought, merely my own life, but I found much more. For instance, if you were to say to me now what you said three weeks ago, that you would undertake to remove my fear of Paul Chapin by destroying him, I would say: certainly, by all means, how much do I owe you? For I understand now that the reason for my former attitude was nothing but a greater fear than the fear of death, the fear of accepting responsibility for my own preservation.—You don’t mind if I talk? God, how I want to talk!”

  Wolfe murmured, “This room is hardened to it.” He rang for beer.

  “Thank you. In these eleven days I have learned that psychology, as a formal science, is pure hocus-pocus. All written and printed words, aside from their function of relieving boredom, are meaningless drivel. I have fed a half-starved child with my own hands. I have seen two men batter each other with their fists until the blood ran. I have watched boys picking up girls. I have heard a woman tell a man, in public and with a personal application, facts which I had dimly supposed were known, academically, only to those who have read Havelock Ellis. I had observed hungry workingmen eating in a Coffee Pot. I have seen a tough boy of the street pick up a wilted daffodil from the gutter. It is utterly amazing, I tell you, how people do things they happen to feel like doing. And I have been an instructor in psychology for seventeen years! Merde! Could I have a little more whiskey?”

  I didn’t know whether Wolfe needed him sober, but I saw no warning gesture from him, so I went and filled the glass again. This time I brought some White Rock for a chaser and he started on that first.

  Wolfe said, “Mr. Hibbard. I am fascinated at the prospect of your education and I shall insist on hearing it entire, but I wonder if I could interpose a question or two. First I shall need to contradict you by observing that before your eleven days’ education began you had learned enough to assume a disguise simple and effective enough to preserve your incognito, though the entire police force—and one or two other people—were looking for you. Really an achievement.”

  The fizz had ascended into the psychologist’s nose, and he pinched it. “Oh no. That sort of thing is rule of thumb. The first rule, of course, is, nothing that looks like disguise. My best items were the necktie and the scratch on my cheek. My profanity, I fear, was not well done; I should not have undertaken it. But my great mistake was the teeth; it was the very devil to get the gold leaf cemented on, and I was forced to confine my diet almost exclusively to milk and soup. Of course, having once made my appearance, I could not abandon them. The clothing, I am proud of.”

  “Yes, the clothing.” Wolfe looked him over. “Excellent. Where did you get it?”

  “A second-hand store on Grand Street. I changed in a subway toilet, and so was properly dressed when I went to rent a room on the lower West Side.”

  “And you left your second pipe at home. You have estimable qualities, Mr. Hibbard.”

  “I was desperate.”

  “A desperate fool is still a fool. What, in your desperation, did you hope to accomplish? Did your venture pretend to any intelligent purpose?”

  Hibbard had to consider. He swallowed some whiskey, washed it off with fizz, and coated that with another sip of whiskey. He finally said, “So help me, I don’t know. I mean I don’t know now. When I left home, when I started this, all that I felt moving me was fear. The whole long story of what that unlucky episode, twenty-five years ago—of what it did to me, would sound fantastic if I tried to tell it. I was too highly sensitized in spots; I suppose I still am, doubtless it will show again in the proper surroundings. I am inclining now to the environmental school—you hear that? Atavism! Anyhow, fear had me, and all I was aware of was a desire to get near Paul Chapin and keep him under my eye. I had no plans, further than that. I wanted to watch him. I knew if I told anyone, even Evelyn—my niece, there would be danger of his getting onto me, so I made a thorough job of it. But the last few days I have begun to suspect that in some gully of my mind, far below consciousness, was a desire to kill him. Of course there is no such thing as a desire without an intention, no matter how nebulous it may be. I believe I meant to kill him. I believe I have been working up to it, and I still am. I have no idea what this talk with you will do to me. I see no reason why it should have any effect one way or another.”

  “You will see, I think.” Wolfe emptied his glass. “Naturally you do not know that Mr. Chapin has mailed verses to your friends stating explicitly that he killed you by clubbing you over the head.”

  “Oh yes. I know that.”

  “The devil you do. Who told you?”

  “Pit. Pitney Scott.”

  I gritted my teeth and wanted to bite myself. Another chance underplayed, and all because I had believed the cripple’s warning. Wolfe was saying:

  “Then you did keep a bridge open.”

  “No. He opened it himself. The third day I was around there I met him face to face by bad luck, and of course he recognized me.” Hibbard suddenly stopped, and turned a little pale. “By heaven—ha, there goes another illusion—I thought Pit …”

  “Quite properly, Mr. Hibbard. Keep your illusion; Mr. Scott has told us nothin
g; it was Mr. Goodwin’s acuteness of observation, and my feeling for phenomena, that uncovered you.—But to resume: if you knew that Mr. Chapin had sent those verses, falsely boasting of murdering you, it is hard to see how you could keep your respect for him as an assassin. If you knew one of his murders, the latest one, to be nothing but rodomontade …”

  Hibbard nodded. “You make a logical point, certainly. But logic has nothing to do with it. I am not engaged in developing a scientific thesis. There are twenty-five years behind this … and Bill Harrison, Gene Dreyer … and Paul that day in the courtroom … I was there, to testify to the psychological value of his book … It was on the day that Pit Scott showed me those verses about me sucking air in through my blood that I discovered that I wanted to kill Paul, and if I wanted it I intended it, or what the devil was I doing there?”

  Wolfe sighed. “It is a pity. The back-seat driving of the less charitable emotions often makes me wonder that the brain does not desert the wheel entirely, in righteous exasperation. Not to mention their violent and senseless oscillations. Mr. Hibbard. Three weeks ago you were filled with horrified aversion at the thought of engaging me to arrange that Mr. Chapin should account legally for his crimes; today you are determined to kill him yourself. You do intend to kill him?”

  “I think so.” The psychological runt put his whiskey glass on the desk. “That doesn’t mean that I will. I don’t know. I intend to.”

  “You are armed? You have a weapon?”

  “No. I … no.”

  “You what?”

  “Nothing. I should have said, he. He is physically a weakling.”

  “Indeed.” The shadows on Wolfe’s face altered; his cheeks were unfolding. “You will rip him apart with your bare hands. Into quivering bloody fragments …”

  “I might,” Hibbard snapped. “I don’t know whether you taunt me through ignorance or through design. You should know that despair is still despair, even when there is an intellect to perceive it and control its hysteria. I can kill Paul Chapin and still know what I am doing. My physical build is negligible, next to contemptible, and my mental equipment has reached the decadence which sneers at the blood that feeds it, but in spite of those incongruities I can kill Paul Chapin.—I think I understand now why it was such a relief to be able to talk again in my proper person, and I thank you for it. I think I needed to put this determination into words. It does me good to hear it.—Now I would like you to let me go. I can go on, of course, only by your sufferance. You have interfered with me, and frankly I’m grateful for it, but there is no reason—”

  “Mr. Hibbard.” Wolfe wiggled a finger at him. “Permit me. The least offensive way of refusing a request is not to let it be made. Don’t make it.—Wait, please. There are several things you either do not know or fail to consider. For instance, do you know of an arrangement I have entered into with your friends?”

  “Yes. Pit Scott told me. I’m not interested—”

  “But I am. In fact I know of nothing else, at the moment, that interests me in the slightest degree; certainly not your recently acquired ferocity. Further, do you know that there, on Mr. Goodwin’s desk, is the typewriter on which Mr. Chapin wrote his sanguinary verses? Yes, it was at the Harvard Club; we negotiated a trade. Do you know that I am ready for a complete penetration of Mr. Chapin’s defenses, in spite of his pathetic bravado? Do you know that within twenty-four hours I shall be prepared to submit to you and your friends a confession from Mr. Chapin of his guilt, and to remove satisfactorily all your apprehensions?”

  Hibbard was staring at him. He emptied his whiskey glass, which he had been holding half full, and put in on the desk, and stared at Wolfe again. “I don’t believe it.”

  “Of course you do. You merely don’t want to. I’m sorry, Mr. Hibbard, you’ll have to readjust yourself to a world of words and compromises and niceties of conduct. I would be glad—well?”

  He stopped to look at Fritz, who had appeared on the threshold. Wolfe glanced at the clock; it was seven-twenty-five. He said, “I’m sorry, Fritz. Three of us will dine, at eight o’clock. Will that be possible?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Good.—As I was saying, Mr. Hibbard, I would like to help make the readjustment as pleasant as possible for you, and at the same time serve my own convenience. The things I have just told you are the truth, but to help me in realizing the last one I shall need your co-operation. I mentioned twenty-four hours. I would like to have you remain here as my guest for that period. Will you?”

  Hibbard shook his head, with emphasis. “I don’t believe you. You may have the typewriter, but you don’t have Paul Chapin as I do. I don’t believe you’ll get him to confess, ever in God’s world.”

  “I assure you, I will. But that can be left to the event. Will you stay here until tomorrow evening, and communicate with no one? My dear sir. I will bargain with you. You were about to make a request of me. I counter with one of my own. Though I am sure twenty-four hours will do, let us allow for contingencies; make it forty-eight. If you will agree to stay under this roof incommunicado until Monday evening, I engage that at that time, if I have not done as I said and closed the Chapin account forever, you will be free to resume your whimsical adventure without fear of any betrayal from us. Do I need to add a recommendation of our discretion and intelligence?”

  As Wolfe finished speaking Hibbard unaccountably burst into laughter. For a runt he had a good laugh, deeper than his voice, which was baritone but a little thin. When he had laughed it out he said, “I was thinking that you probably have an adequate bathtub.”

  “We have.”

  “But tell me this. I am still learning. If I refused, if I got up now to walk out, what would you do?”

  “Well … you see, Mr. Hibbard, it is important to my plans that your discovery should remain unknown until the proper moment. Certain shocks must be administered to Mr. Chapin, and they must be well timed. There are various ways of keeping a desired guest. The most amiable is to persuade him to accept an invitation; another would be to lock him up.”

  Hibbard nodded. “You see? What did I tell you? You see how people go ahead and do things they feel like doing? Miraculous!”

  “It is indeed.—And now the bathtub, if we are to dine at eight. Archie, if you would show Mr. Hibbard the south room, the one above mine …”

  I got up. “It’ll be clammy as the devil, it hasn’t been used … he can have mine …”

  “No. Fritz has aired it and the heat is on; it has been properly prepared, even to Brassocattlaelias Truffautianas in the bowl.”

  “Oh.” I grinned. “You had it prepared.”

  “Certainly.—Mr. Hibbard. Come down when you are ready. I warn you, I am prepared to demonstrate that the eighth and ninth chapters of The Chasm of the Mind are mystic nonsense. If you wish to repel my attack, bring your wits to the table.”

  I started out with Hibbard, but Wolfe’s voice came again and we returned. “You understand the arrangement, sir; you are to communicate with no one whatever. Away from your masquerade, the desire to reassure your niece will be next to irresistible.”

  “I’ll resist it.”

  Since it was two flights up, I took him to Wolfe’s elevator. The door of the south room stood open, and the room was nice and warm. I looked around: the bed had been made, comb and brush and nail file were on the dresser, orchids were in the bowl on the table; fresh towels were in the bathroom. Not bad for a strictly male household. I went out, but at the door was stopped by Hibbard:

  “Say. Do you happen to have a dark brown necktie?”

  I grinned and went to my room and picked out a genteel solid-color, and took it up to him.

  Down in the office Wolfe sat with his eyes shut. I went to my desk. I was sore as hell. I was still hearing the tone of Wolfe’s voice when he said, “Sixty-five hours,” and though I knew the reproach had been for himself and not for me, I didn’t need a whack on the shins to inform me that I had made a bad fumble. I sat and considered the gener
al and particular shortcomings of my conduct. Finally I said aloud, as if to myself, not looking at him:

  “The one thing I won’t ever do again is believe a cripple. It was all because I believed that damn warning. If it hadn’t been imbedded in my nut that Andrew Hibbard was dead, I would have been receptive to a decent suspicion no matter where it showed up. I suppose that goes for Inspector Cramer too, and I suppose that means that I’m of the same general order as he is. In that case—”

  “Archie.” I glanced at Wolfe enough to see that he had opened his eyes. He went on, “If that is meant as a defense offered to me, none is needed. If you are merely rubbing your vanity to relieve a soreness, please defer it. There is still eighteen minutes before dinner, and we might as well make use of them. I am suffering from my habitual impatience when nothing remains but the finishing touches. Take your notebook.”

  I got it out, and a pencil.

  “Make three copies of this, the original on the good bond. Date it tomorrow, November eleventh—ha, Armistice Day! Most appropriate. It will have a heading in caps as follows: CONFESSION OF PAUL CHAPIN REGARDING THE DEATHS OF WILLIAM R. HARRISON AND EUGENE DREYER AND THE WRITING AND DISPATCHING OF CERTAIN INFORMATIVE AND THREATENING VERSES. It is a concession to him to call them verses, but we should be magnanimous somewhere, let us select that for it. There will then be divisions, properly spaced and subheaded. The subheadings will also be in caps. The first one is DEATH OF WILLIAM R. HARRISON. Then begin … thus—”

  I interrupted. “Listen, wouldn’t it be fitting to type this on the machine from the Harvard Club? Of course it’s crummy, but it would be a poetic gesture …”

  “Poetic? Oh. Sometimes, Archie, the association of your ideas reminds me of a hummingbird. Very well, you may do that. Let us proceed.” When he was giving me a document Wolfe usually began slow and speeded up as he went along. He began, “I, Paul Chapin, of 203 Perry Street, New York City, hereby confess that—”

  The telephone rang.