The Golden Spiders

by Rex Stout

  “The body of Mrs. Damon Fromm, wealthy New York socialite and philanthropist, was found early today lying in a passage between pillars of the East Side elevated highway now under construction. According to the police, she had been run over by a car, and it is not believed to have been an accident.

  “An estimated million and a quarter New Yorkers got an impressive capsule demonstration of the might of American armed forces …”

  Wolfe didn’t turn it off. As far as I could tell from his expression, he was actually listening. But by the time the five minutes were up he was developing a scowl, and after flipping the switch he let it have his face without restraint.

  “So,” I said.

  There were a dozen comments that could have been made, but none would have helped any. Wolfe certainly didn’t need to be reminded that he had warned her not to be foolhardy or even imprudent. Also his scowl did not encourage comment. After a little he placed his palms on the arms of his chair and slowly moved them back and forth, rubbing the rough tapestry with a swishing sound. That went on for a while, then he folded his arms and sat straight.

  “Archie.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “How long will it take you to type an account of our conversation with Mrs. Fromm? Not verbatim. With your superlative memory you could come close to it, but that isn’t necessary. Just the substance, adequately, as you would report to me.”

  “You could dictate it.”

  “I’m in no humor for dictation.”

  “Leave out anything?”

  “Include only what is significant. Do not include my telling her that the same car killed Peter Drossos and Matthew Birch, since that has not been published.”

  “Twenty minutes.”

  “Type it in the form of a statement to be signed by you and me. Two carbons. Date it twelve noon today. You will take the original to Mr. Cramer’s office immediately.”

  “Half an hour. For a signed statement I’ll want to take more care.”

  “Very well.”

  I exceeded my estimate by less than five minutes. It covered three pages, and Wolfe read each page as it was finished. He made no corrections, and even no remarks, which was even stronger evidence of his state of mind than his refusal to dictate. We both signed it, and I stuck it in an envelope.

  “Cramer won’t be there,” I told him. “Neither will Stebbins. Not with this to work on.”

  He said anyone would do, and I went.

  I’m not a stranger at the Tenth Precinct on West 20th Street, which includes the headquarters of Manhattan Homicide West, but that day I saw no familiar faces until I mounted to the second floor and approached one at a desk with whom I was on speaking terms. I had been right; no Cramer and no Stebbins. Lieutenant Rowcliff was in charge, and the desk man phoned that I was there to see him.

  If there were twenty of us, including Rowcliff, starving on an island, and we were balloting to elect the one we would carve up for a barbecue, I wouldn’t vote for Rowcliff because I know I couldn’t keep him down; and compared to his opinion of me, mine of him is sympathetic. So I wasn’t surprised when, instead of having me conducted within, he came striding out and up to me, and rasped, “What do you want?”

  I took the envelope from my pocket. “This,” I said, “is not my application for a job on the force so I can serve under you.”

  “By God, if it were.” He talked like that.

  “Nor is it a citation—”

  He jerked the envelope from my hand, removed the contents, darted a glance at the heading, turned to the third page, and darted another at the signatures.

  “A statement by you and Wolfe. A masterpiece, no doubt. Do you want a receipt?”

  “Not necessarily. I’ll read it to you if you want me to.”

  “All I want of you is the sight of your back on the way out.”

  But without waiting for what he wanted, he wheeled and strode off. I told the one at the desk, “Kindly note that I delivered that envelope to that baboon at one-six Daylight Saving,” and departed.

  Back at the house, Wolfe had just started lunch, and I joined him in the operation on an anchovy omelet. He permits no talk of business at meals, and interruptions are out of the question, so it was further evidence of his state of mind when, as he was working on a fig and cherry tart, the phone ringing took me to the office, and I returned and told him, “A man named Dennis Horan on the line. You may remem—”

  “Yes. What does he want?”

  “You.”

  “We’ll call him back in ten minutes.”

  “He’s going places and won’t be available.”

  He didn’t even confound it. He didn’t hustle any, but he went. I did too, and was at the phone at my desk before he reached his. He sat and got it to his ear.

  “Nero Wolfe speaking.”

  “I’m Dennis Horan, Mr. Wolfe, counselor-at-law. There has been a terrible tragedy. Mrs. Damon Fromm is dead. Run over by a car.”

  “Indeed. When?”

  “The body was found at five o’clock this morning.” His voice was a thin tenor that seemed to want to squeak, but that could have been from the shock of the tragedy. “I was a friend of hers and handled some matters for her, and I’m calling about the check she gave you yesterday for ten thousand dollars. Has it been deposited?”

  “No.”

  “That’s good. Since she is dead of course it won’t go through. Do you wish to mail it to her home address, or would you prefer to send it to me?”

  “Neither. I’ll deposit it.”

  “But it won’t go through! Outstanding checks signed by a deceased person are not—”

  “I know. It is certified. It was certified at her bank yesterday afternoon.”

  “Oh.” A fairly long pause. “But since she is dead and can’t use your services, since you can do nothing for her, I don’t see how you can claim—I mean, wouldn’t it be proper and ethical for you to return the check?”

  “You are not my mentor in propriety and ethics, Mr. Horan.”

  “I don’t say I am. But without any animus or prejudice, I put it to you, under the circumstances how can you justify keeping that money?”

  “By earning it.”

  “You intend to earn it?”

  “I do.”

  “How?”

  “That’s my affair. If you are an accredited representative of Mrs. Fromm’s estate I am willing to discuss it with you, but not now on the telephone. I’ll be available here at my office from now until four o’clock, or from six to seven, or from nine in the evening until midnight.”

  “I don’t know—I don’t believe—I’ll see.”

  He hung up. So did we. Back in the dining room Wolfe finished his tart and his coffee in silence. I waited until we had returned to the office and he was adjusted in his chair to remark, “Earning it would be fine, but the main thing is to feel you’ve earned it. No animus, but I doubt if delivering that statement to Rowcliff is quite enough. My ego is itching.”

  “Deposit the check,” he muttered.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “We need information.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “See Mr. Cohen and get it.”

  “About what?”

  “Everything. Include Matthew Birch, with the understanding that his knowledge of that connection is not to be disclosed unless the police release it or he gets it from some other source. Tell him nothing. It may be published that I am engaged on the case, but not the source of my interest.”

  “Do I tell him that Pete came to see you?”

  “No.”

  “He would appreciate it. It would be an exclusive human interest story for him. Also it would show that your reputation—”

  His fist hit the desk, which for him was a convulsion. “No!” he roared. “Reputation? Am I to invite the comment that it is a mortal hazard to solicit my help? On Tuesday, that boy. On Friday, that woman. They are both dead. I will not have my office converted into an anteroom for the morgue!”
/>
  “Yeah. Something of the sort had occurred to me.”

  “You were well advised not to voice it. The person responsible would have been well advised not to induce it. We will need Saul and Fred and Orrie, but I’ll attend to that. Go.”

  I did so. I took a taxi to the Gazette office. The receptionist on the third floor, who had not only received me before but also had been, for three or four years, on the list of those who receive a box of orchids from Wolfe’s plant rooms twice a year, spoke to Lon on the intercom and waved me in.

  I don’t know what Lon Cohen is on the Gazette and I doubt if he does. City or wire, daily or Sunday, foreign or national or local, he seems to know his way in and around without ever having to work at it. His is the only desk in a room about nine by twelve, and that’s just as well because otherwise there would be no place for his feet, which are also about nine by twelve. From the ankles up he is fairly regular.

  There were two colleagues in with him when I entered, but they soon finished and went. As we shook he said, “Stay on your feet. You can have two minutes.”

  “Nuts. An hour may do it.”

  “Not today. We’re spinning on the Fromm murder. The only reason you got in at all, I want your release on the item that Nero Wolfe was making inquiries yesterday about Mrs. Fromm.”

  “I don’t think—” I let it hang while I moved a chair and sat. “No, better not. But okay on an item that he is working on the murder.”

  “He is?”

  “Yep.”

  “Who hired him?”

  I shook my head. “It came by carrier pigeon, and he won’t tell me.”

  “Take off your shoes and socks while I light a cigarette. A few applications to your tender flesh should do it. I want the name of the client.”

  “J. Edgar Hoover.”

  He made an unseemly noise. “Just a whisper, to me?”

  “No.”

  “But it’s open that Wolfe is working on the Fromm murder?”

  “Yes. Just that.”

  “And the boy, Peter Drossos? And Matthew Birch? Them too?”

  I gave him a look. “How come?”

  “Oh, for God’s sake. Wolfe’s ad in the Times wanting to date a woman wearing spider earrings who had asked a boy at Ninth Avenue and Thirty-fifth Street to get a cop. Mrs. Fromm was wearing spider earrings, and you were here yesterday asking about her. As for Birch, the pattern. His body was found in a secluded spot, flattened by a car, and so was Mrs. Fromm’s. I repeat the question.”

  “I answer it. Nero Wolfe is investigating the murder of Mrs. Fromm with his accustomed vigor, skill, and laziness. He will not rest until he gets the bastard or until bedtime, whichever comes first. Any mention you make of other murders should come on another page.”

  “No connection implied?”

  “Not by him or me. If I should ask for information on Birch, it will be because you dragged him in yourself.”

  “Okay, hold everything. I want to catch the early.”

  He left the room. I sat and tried to argue Wolfe into letting Lon have the juicy item about the flap from Matthew Birch’s pocket being found on the car that had killed Pete, but since Wolfe wasn’t there I made no progress. Before long Lon came back, and after he had crossed to his desk and got his big feet under it I told him, “I still need an hour.”

  “We’ll see. There’s not much nourishment in that crumb.”

  It didn’t take a full hour, but a big hunk of one. He gave me nearly everything I wanted without consulting any documents and with only two phone calls to shopmates.

  Mrs. Fromm had had lunch Friday at the Churchill with Miss Angela Wright, Executive Secretary of Assadip—the Association for the Aid of Displaced Persons. Presumably she had gone to the Churchill upon leaving Wolfe’s office, but I didn’t go into that with Lon. After lunch, around two-thirty, the two women had gone together to the office of Assadip, where Mrs. Fromm signed some papers and made some phone calls. The Gazette didn’t have her taped from around 3:15 to around five, when she had returned to her home on Sixty-eighth Street and had spent an hour or so working with her personal secretary, Miss Jean Estey. According to Lon, Angela Wright was a credit to her sex, since she would talk to reporters, and Jean Estey wasn’t, since she wouldn’t.

  A little before seven o’clock Mrs. Fromm had left home, alone, to go out to dinner, driving one of her cars, a Cadillac convertible. The dinner was at the apartment of Mr. and Mrs. Dennis Horan on Gramercy Park. It wasn’t known where she had parked the car, but in that neighborhood in the evening there are always spaces. There had been six people at the dinner:

  Dennis Horan, the host

  Claire Horan, his wife

  Laura Fromm

  Angela Wright

  Paul Kuffner, public-relations expert

  Vincent Lipscomb, magazine publisher

  The party had broken up a little after eleven, and the guests had gone their ways separately. Mrs. Fromm had been the last to leave. The Gazette had a tip that Horan had taken her down to her car, but the police weren’t saying, and it couldn’t be checked. That was all on Laura Fromm until five o’clock Saturday morning, when a man on his way to work in a fish market, passing through the construction lane between the pillars, had found the body.

  Just a few minutes before I reached the Gazette office the District Attorney had announced that Mrs. Fromm had been run over by her own car. The convertible had been found parked on Sixteenth Street between Sixth and Seventh Avenues, only a five-minute walk from the Tenth Precinct, and had yielded not only evidence of that fact but also a heavy tire wrench, found on the floor, which had been used on the back of Mrs. Fromm’s head. Whether the murderer had been concealed in the car, under a rug behind the front seat, when Mrs. Fromm had come down to it, or whether he had been allowed by her to get in with her, then or later, it seemed better than a guess that he had picked a moment and spot to hit her with the wrench, replace her at the wheel, drive to an appropriate site, unoccupied and unobserved at that hour, unload her, and run the car over her. It would have been interesting and instructive to go down to Centre Street and watch the scientists working on that car, but they wouldn’t have let me get within a mile of it, and anyhow I was busy with Lon.

  As far as the Gazette knew, as of that moment the field was wide open, with no candidate favored either by the police or by any outside talent. Of course those who had been present at the dinner were in a glare, but it could have been anyone who had known where Mrs. Fromm would be, or even possibly someone who hadn’t. Lon had no suggestions to offer, though he tossed in the comment that one Gazette female was being curious about Mrs. Horan’s attitude toward the progress of the friendship between her husband and Mrs. Fromm.

  I made an objection. “But if you want to fit in Pete Drossos and Matthew Birch, that’s no good. Unless you can make it good. Who was Matthew Birch?”

  Lon snorted. “On your way out buy a Wednesday Gazette.”

  “I’ve got one at home and I’ve read it. But that was three days ago.”

  “He hasn’t changed any. He was a special agent of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, had been for twenty years, with a wife and three children. He had only twenty-one teeth, looked like a careworn statesman, dressed beyond his station, wasn’t any too popular in his circle, and bet on the races through Danny Pincus.”

  “You said you counted Birch in because of the pattern. Was there any other reason?”

  “No.”

  “Just to your old and trusted friend Goodwin. Any at all?”

  “No.”

  “Then I’ll do you a favor, expecting it back with interest at your earliest convenience. It’s triple classified. The cops have it sewed up that the car that killed Pete Drossos was the one that killed Birch.”

  His eyes widened. “No!”

  “Yes.”

  “Sewed up how?”

  “Sorry, I’ve forgotten. But it’s absolutely tight.”

  “I’ll be damned.” Lon rubbed
his palms together. “This is sweet, Archie. This is very sweet. Pete and Mrs. Fromm, the earrings. Pete and Birch, the car. That ties Birch and Mrs. Fromm. You understand that the Gazette will now have a strong hunch that the three murders are connected and will proceed accordingly.”

  “As long as it’s just a hunch, okay.”

  “Right. As for the car itself—as you know, the license plate was a floater; the car was stolen in Baltimore four months ago. It’s been repainted twice.”

  “That hasn’t been published.”

  “They released it at noon.” Lon leaned to me. “Listen, I’ve got an idea. How can you be absolutely sure I’m to be trusted unless you try me? Here’s your chance. Tell me how they know the same car killed Birch and the boy. Then I’ll forget it.”

  “I forgot it first.” I stood up and shook my pants legs down. “My God, are you a glutton! Dogs should be fed once a day, and you’ve had yours.”

  Chapter 6

  When I got back to Thirty-fifth Street it was after four o’clock and the office was empty. I went to the kitchen to ask Fritz if there had been any visitors, and he said yes, Inspector Cramer.

  I raised my brows. “Any blood flow?”

  He said no, but it had been pretty noisy. I treated myself to a tall glass of water, returned to the office, and buzzed the plant rooms on the house phone, and when Wolfe answered I told him, “Home again. Regards from Lon Cohen. Do I type the report?”

  “No. Come up and tell me.”

  That was not exactly busting a rule, like the interruption at lunch, but it was exceptional. It suited me all right, since as long as he stayed sore because he thought someone had made a monkey of him he would probably make his brain work. I went up the three flights and through the aluminum door into the vestibule, and the door to the warm room, where the Miltonia roezli and Phalaenopsis Aphrodite were in full bloom. In the next room, the medium, only a few of the big show-offs, the Cattleyas and Laelias, had flowers, which was all right with me, and anyway the biggest show-off in the place, named Wolfe, was there, helping Theodore adjust the muslin shaders. When I appeared he led the way to the rear, through the cool room into the potting room, where he lowered himself into the only chair present and demanded, “Well?”