Rex Stout - Nero Wolfe 02

by The League of Frightened Men

  Of course it was in the coffee, she probably put it right in the pot since she didn’t drink any, but I didn’t notice a taste. It was strong but it tasted all right. However, she must have put in all the sleeping tablets and a few other things she could get hold of, for God knows it was potent. I began to feel it when I was reaching to hand Scott a cigarette, and at the same time I saw the look on his face. He was a few seconds ahead of me. Dora Chapin was out of the room again. Scott looked at the door she had gone through, and tried to get up out of his chair, but couldn’t make it. That was the last I really remember, him trying to get out of his chair, but I must have done one or two things after that, because when I came out of it I was in the dining-room, halfway across to the door which led to the sitting-room and the hall.

  When I came out of it, it was dark. That was the first thing I knew, and for a while it was all I knew, because I couldn’t move and I was fighting to get my eyes really open. I could see, off to my right, at a great distance it seemed, two large oblongs of dim light, and I concentrated on deciding what they were. It came with a burst that they were windows, and it was dark in the room where I was, and the street was lit. Then I concentrated on what room I was in.

  Things came back but all in a jumble. I still didn’t know where I was, though I was splitting my head fighting for it. I rolled over on the floor and my hand landed on something metal, sharp, and I shrunk from it; I pulled myself to my knees and began to crawl. I bumped into a table and a chair or two, and finally into the wall. I crawled around the wall with my shoulder against it, detouring for furniture, stopping every couple of feet to feel it, and at last I felt a door. I tried to stand up, but couldn’t make it, and compromised by feeling above me. I found the switch and pushed on it, and the light went on. I crawled over to where there was some stuff on the floor, stretching the muscles in my brow and temples to keep my eyes open, and saw that the metal thing that had startled me was my ring of keys. My wallet was there too, and my pad and pencil, pocketknife, fountain pen, handkerchief—things from my pockets.

  I got hold of a chair and pulled myself to my feet, but I couldn’t navigate. I tried, and fell down. I looked around for a telephone, but there wasn’t any, so I crawled to the sitting-room and found the light switch by the door and turned it on. The phone was on a stand by the further wall. It looked so far away that the desire to lie down and give it up made me want to yell to show I wouldn’t do that, but I couldn’t yell. I finally got to the stand and sat down on the floor against it and reached up for the phone and got the receiver off and shoved it against my ear, and heard a man’s voice, very faint. I said the number of Wolfe’s phone and heard him say he couldn’t hear me, so then I yelled it and that way got enough steam behind it. After a while I heard another voice and I yelled:

  “I want Nero Wolfe!”

  The other voice mumbled and I said to talk louder, and asked who it was, and got it into my bean that it was Fritz. I told him to get Wolfe on, and he said Wolfe wasn’t there, and I said he was crazy, and he mumbled a lot of stuff and I told him to say it again louder and slower. “I said, Archie, Mr. Wolfe is not here. He went to look for you. Somebody came to get him, and he told me he was going for you. Archie, where are you? Mr. Wolfe said—”

  I was having a hard time holding the phone, and it dropped to the floor, the whole works, and my head fell into my hands with my eyes closed, and I suppose what I was doing you would call crying.

  Chapter 19

  I haven’t the slightest idea how long I sat there on the floor with my head laying in my hands trying to force myself out of it enough to pick up the telephone again. It may have been a minute and it may have been an hour. The trouble was that I should have been concentrating on the phone, and it kept sweeping over me that Wolfe was gone. I couldn’t get my head out of my hands. Finally I heard a noise. It kept on and got louder, and at last it seeped into me that someone seemed to be trying to knock the door down. I grabbed the top of the telephone stand and pulled myself up, and decided I could keep my feet if I didn’t let go of the wall, so I followed it around to the door where the noise was. I got my hands on it and turned the lock and the knob, and it flew open and down I went again. The two guys that came in walked on me and then stood and looked at me, and I heard remarks about full to the gills and leaving the receiver off the hook.

  By that time I could talk better. I said I don’t know what, enough so that one of them beat it for a doctor, and the other one helped me get up and steered me to the kitchen. He turned the light on. Scott had slewed off of his chair and curled up on the floor. My chair was turned over on its side. I felt cold air and the guy said something about the window, and I looked at it and saw the glass was shattered with a big hole in it. I never did learn what it was I had thrown through the window, maybe the plate of chicken; anyway it hadn’t aroused enough curiosity down below to do any good. The guy stooped over Scott and shook him, but he was dead to the world. By working the wall again, and furniture, I got back to the dining-room and sat on the floor and began collecting my things and putting them in my pockets. I got worried because I thought something was missing and I couldn’t figure out what it was, and then I realized it was the leather case Wolfe had given me, with pistols on one side and orchids on the other, that I carried my police and fire cards in. And by God I started to cry again. I was doing that when the other guy came back with the doctor. I was crying, and trying to push my knuckles into my temples hard enough to get my brains working on why Dora Chapin had fed me a knockout so she could frisk me and then took nothing but that leather case.

  I had a fight with the doctor. He insisted that before he could give me anything he’d have to know just what it was I had inside of me, and he went to the bathroom to investigate bottles and boxes and I went after him with the idea of plugging him. I was beginning to have thoughts and they were starting to bust in my head. I got nearly to the bathroom when I forgot all about the doctor because I suddenly remembered that there had been something peculiar about Scott curled up on the floor, and I turned around and started for the kitchen. I was getting overconfident and fell down again, but I picked myself up and went on. I looked at Scott and saw what it was: he was in his shirt-sleeves. His gray taxi-driver’s jacket was gone. I was trying to decide why that was important when the doctor came in with a glass of brown stuff in his hand. He said something and handed me the glass and watched me drink it, and then went over and knelt down by Scott.

  The stuff tasted bitter. I put the empty glass on the table and got hold of the guy who had gone for the doctor—by this time I recognized him as the elevator man—and told him to go downstairs and switch the Chapin phone in, and then go outside and see if Scott’s taxi was at the curb. Then I made it through the dining-room again into the sitting-room and got into a chair by the telephone stand. I got the operator, and gave her the number.

  Fritz answered. I said, “This is Archie. What was it you told me a while ago about Mr. Wolfe?”

  “Why … Mr. Wolfe is gone.” I could hear him better, and I could tell he was trying not to let his voice shake. “He told me he was going to get you, and that he suspected you of trying to coerce him into raising your pay. He went—”

  “Wait a minute, Fritz. Talk slow. What time is it? My watch says a quarter to seven.”

  “Yes. That’s right. Mr. Wolfe has been gone nearly four hours. Archie, where are you?”

  “To hell with where I am. What happened? Someone came for him?”

  “Yes. I went to the door, and a man handed me an envelope.”

  “Was it a taxi-driver?”

  “Yes, I think so. I took the envelope to Mr. Wolfe, and pretty soon he came to the kitchen and told me he was going. Mr. Hibbard helped him into his coat, the brown one with the big collar, and I got his hat and stick and gloves—”

  “Did you see the taxi?”

  “Yes, I went out with Mr. Wolfe and opened the door of the cab for him. Archie, for God’s sake, tell me what I can do�
�”

  “You can’t do anything. Let me talk to Mr. Hibbard.”

  “But Archie—I am so disturbed—”

  “So am I. Hold the fort, Fritz, and sit tight. Put Hibbard on.”

  I waited, and before long heard Hibbard’s hello. I said to him:

  “This is Archie Goodwin, Mr. Hibbard. Now listen, I can’t talk much. When Nero Wolfe gets home again we want to be able to tell him that you’ve kept your word. You promised him to stay dead until Monday evening. Understand?”

  Hibbard sounded irritated. “Of course I understand, Mr. Goodwin, but it seems to me—”

  “For God’s sake forget how it seems to you. Either you keep your word or you don’t.”

  “Well … I do.”

  “That’s fine. Tell Fritz I’ll call again as soon as I have anything to say.”

  I hung up. The brown stuff the doctor had given me seemed to be working, but not to much advantage; my head was pounding like the hammers of hell. The elevator man had come back and was standing there. I looked at him and he said Scott’s taxi was gone. I got hold of the phone again and called Spring 7-3100.

  Cramer wasn’t in his office and they couldn’t find him around. I got my wallet out of my pocket and with some care managed to find my lists of telephone numbers, and called Cramer’s home. At first they said he wasn’t there, but I persuaded them to change their minds, and finally he came to the phone. I didn’t know a cop’s voice could ever sound so welcome to me. I told him where I was and what had happened to me, and said I was trying to remember what it was he had said that morning about doing a favor for Nero Wolfe. He said whatever it was he had meant it. I told him:

  “Okay, now’s your chance. That crazy Chapin bitch has stole a taxi and she’s got Nero Wolfe in it taking him somewhere. I don’t know where and I wouldn’t know even if my head was working. She got him four hours ago and she’s had time to get to Albany or anywhere else.—No matter how she got him, I’ll settle for that some other day. Listen, inspector, for God’s sake. Send out a general for a brown taxi, a Stuyvesant, MO 29-6342. Got it down? Say it back.— Will you put the radios on it? Will you send it to Westchester and Long Island and Jersey? Listen, the dope I was cooking up was that it was her that croaked Doc Burton. By God, if I ever get my hands on her— What? I’m not excited.—Okay. Okay, inspector, thanks.”

  I hung up. Someone had come in and was standing there, and I looked up and saw it was a flatfoot wearing a silly grin, directed at me. He asked me something and I told him to take his shoes off to rest his brains. He made me some kind of a reply that was intended to be smart, and I laid my head down on the top of the telephone stand to get the range, and banged it up and down a few times on the wood, but it didn’t seem to do any good. The elevator man said something to the cop and he went towards the kitchen.

  I got up and went to open a window and damn near fell out. The cold air was like ice. The way I felt I was sure of two things: first, that if my head went on like that much longer it would blow up, and second, that Wolfe was dead. It seemed obvious that after that woman once got him into that taxi there was nothing for her to do with him but kill him. I stood looking out onto Perry Street, trying to hold my head together, and I had a feeling that all of New York was there in front of me, between me and the house fronts I could see across the street—the Battery, the river fronts, Central Park, Flatbush, Harlem, Park Avenue, all of it—and Wolfe was there somewhere and I didn’t know where. Something occurred to me, and I held on to the window jamb and leaned out enough so I could see below. There was the roadster, where I had parked it, its fender shining with the reflection from a street light. I had an idea that if I could get down there and get it started I could drive it all right.

  I decided to do that, but before I moved away from the window I thought I ought to decide where to go. One man in one roadster, even if he had a head on him that would work, wouldn’t get far looking for that taxi. It was absolutely hopeless. But I had a notion that there was something important I could do, somewhere important I could go, if only I could figure out where it was. All of a sudden it came to me that where I wanted to go was home. I wanted to see Fritz, and the office, and go over the house and see for myself that Wolfe wasn’t there, look at things …

  I didn’t hesitate. I let go of the window jamb and started across the room, and just as I got to the hall the telephone rang. I could walk a little better. I went back to the telephone stand and picked up the receiver and said hello. A voice said:

  “Chelsea-two three-nine-two-four? Please give me Mr. Chapin’s apartment.”

  I nearly dropped the receiver, and I went stiff. I said, “Who is this?” The voice said:

  “This is someone who wishes to be connected with Mr. Chapin’s apartment. Didn’t I make that clear?”

  I let the phone down and pressed it against one of my ribs for a moment, not wanting to make a fool of myself. Then I put it up to my mouth again: “Excuse me for asking who it is. It sounded like Nero Wolfe. Where are you?”

  “Ah! Archie. After what Mrs. Chapin has told me, I scarcely expected to find you operating an apartment house switchboard. I am much relieved. How are you feeling?”

  “Swell. Wonderful. How are you?”

  “Fairly comfortable. Mrs. Chapin drives staccato, and the jolting of that infernal taxicab … ah well. Archie. I am standing, and I dislike to talk on the telephone while standing. Also I would dislike very much to enter that taxicab again. If it is practical, get the sedan and come for me. I am at the Bronx River Inn, near the Woodlawn railroad station. You know where that is?”

  “I know. I’ll be there.”

  “No great hurry. I am fairly comfortable.”

  “Okay.”

  The click of his ringing off was in my ear. I hung up and sat down.

  I was damn good and sore. Certainly not at Wolfe, not even at myself, just sore. Sore because I had phoned Cramer an SOS, sore because Wolfe was to hell and gone up beyond the end of the Grand Concourse and I didn’t really know what shape he was in, sore because it was up to me to get there and there was no doubt at all about the shape I was in. I felt my eyes closing and jerked my head up. I decided that the next time I saw Dora Chapin, no matter when or where, I would take my pocketknife and cut her head off, completely loose from the rest of her. I thought of going to the kitchen and asking the doctor for another shot of the brown stuff, but didn’t see how it could do me any good.

  I picked up the phone and called the garage, on Tenth Avenue, and told them to fill the sedan with gas and put it at the curb. Then I got up and proceeded to make myself scarce. I would rather have done almost anything than try walking again, except go back to crawling. I made it to the hall, and opened the door, and on out to the elevator. There I was faced by two new troubles: the elevator was right there, the door standing wide open, and I didn’t have my hat and coat. I didn’t want to go back to the kitchen for the elevator man because in the first place it was too far, and secondly if the flatfoot found out I was leaving he would probably want to detain me for information and there was no telling how I would act if he tried it. I did go back to the hall, having left the door open. I got my hat and coat and returned to the elevator, inside, and somehow got the door closed, and pulled the lever, hitting down by luck. It started down and I leaned against the wall.

  I thought I was releasing the lever about the right time, but the first thing I knew the elevator hit bottom like a ton of brick and shook me loose from the wall. I picked myself up and opened the door and saw there was a dark hall about two feet above my level. I climbed out and got myself up. It was the basement. I turned right, which seemed to be correct, and for a change it was. I came to a door and went through, and through a gate, and there I was outdoors with nothing between me and the sidewalk but a flight of concrete steps. I negotiated them, and crossed the street and found the roadster and got in.

  I don’t believe yet that I drove that car from Perry Street to Thirty-sixth, to the garage. I m
ight possibly have done it by caroms, bouncing back from the buildings first on one side of the street and then on the other, but the trouble with that theory is that next day the roadster didn’t have a scratch on it. If anyone is keeping a miracle score, chalk one up for me. I got there, but I stopped out in front, deciding not to try for the door. I blew my horn and Steve came out. I described my condition in round figures and told him I hoped there was someone there he could leave in charge of the joint, because he had to get in the sedan and drive me to the Bronx. He asked if I wanted a drink and I snarled at him. He grinned and went inside, and I transferred to the sedan, standing at the curb. Pretty soon he came back with an overcoat on, and got in and shoved off. I told him where to go and let my head fall back in the corner against the cushion, but I didn’t dare to let my eyes shut. I stretched them open and kept on stretching them every time I blinked. My window was down and the cold air slapped me, and it seemed we were going a million miles a minute in a swift sweeping circle and it was hard to keep up with my breathing.

  Steve said, “Here we are, mister.”

  I grunted and lifted my head up and stretched my eyes again. We had stopped. There it was, Bronx River Inn, just across the sidewalk. I had a feeling it had come to us instead of us to it. Steve asked, “Can you navigate?”

  “Sure.” I set my jaw again, and opened the door and climbed out. Then after crossing the sidewalk I tried to walk through a lattice, and set my jaw some more and detoured. I crossed the porch, with cold bare tables around and no one there, and opened the door and went inside to the main room. There some of the tables had cloths on them and a few customers were scattered here and there. The customer I was looking for was at a table in the far corner, and I approached it. There sat Nero Wolfe, all of him, on a chair which would have been economical for either half. His brown greatcoat covered another chair, beside him, and across the table from him I saw the bandages on the back of Dora Chapin’s neck. She was facing him, with her rear to me. I walked over there.