by Rex Stout
“If and when you get proof, what are you going to do with it?”
“Show it to my daughter. But it has to be proof. She already knows what I think; I told her long ago. Of course she told Rony, and he looked me in the eye and denied it.”
Wolfe grunted. “You may be wasting your time and money. Even if you get proof, what if it turns out that your daughter regards a Communist party card as a credential for romance?”
“She doesn’t. Her second year in college she got interested in communism and went into it, but it didn’t take her long to pull out. She says it’s intellectually contemptible and morally unsound. I told you she’s smart enough.” Sperling’s eyes darted to me and went back to Wolfe. “By the way, what about you and Goodwin? As I said, I looked you up, but is there any chance I’m putting my foot in it?”
“No,” Wolfe assured him. “Though of course only the event can certify us. We agree with your daughter.” He looked at me. “Don’t we?”
I nodded. “Completely. I like the way she put it. The best I can do is ‘a Commie is a louse’ or something like that.”
Sperling looked at me suspiciously, apparently decided that I merely had IQ trouble, and returned to Wolfe, who was talking.
“Exactly what,” he was asking, “is the situation? Is there a possibility that your daughter is already married to Mr. Rony?”
“Good God, no!”
“How sure are you?”
“I’m sure. That’s absurd—but of course you don’t know her. There’s no sneak in her—and anyhow, if she decides to marry him she’ll tell me—or her mother—before she tells him. That’s how she’d do it—” Sperling stopped abruptly and set his jaw. In a moment he let it loose and went on, “And that’s what I’m afraid of, every day now. If she once commits herself it’s all over. I tell you it’s urgent. It’s damned urgent!”
Wolfe leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes. Sperling regarded him a while, opened his mouth and closed it again, and looked at me inquiringly. I shook my head at him. When, after another couple of minutes, he began making and unmaking fists with his big bony hands, I reassured him.
“It’s okay. He never sleeps in the daytime. His mind works better when he can’t see me.”
Finally Wolfe’s lids went up and he spoke. “If you hire me,” he told Sperling, “it must be clear what for. I can’t engage to get proof that Mr. Rony is a Communist, but only to find out if proof exists, and, if it does, get it if possible. I’m willing to undertake that, but it seems an unnecessary restriction. Can’t we define it a little better? As I understand it, you want your daughter to abandon all thought of marrying Mr. Rony and stop inviting him to your home. That’s your objective. Right?”
“Yes.”
“Then why restrict my strategy? Certainly I can try for proof that he’s a Communist, but what if he isn’t? Or what if he is but we can’t prove it to your daughter’s satisfaction? Why limit the operation to that one hope, which must be rather forlorn if Mr. Bascom has spent a month at it and failed? Why not hire me to reach your objective, no matter how—of course within the bounds permitted to civilized man? I would have a much clearer conscience in accepting your retainer, which will be a check for five thousand dollars.”
Sperling was considering. “Damn it, he’s a Communist!”
“I know. That’s your fixed idea and it must be humored. I’ll try that first. But do you want to exclude all else?”
“No. No, I don’t.”
“Good. And I have—yes, Fritz?”
The door to the hall had opened and Fritz was there.
“Mr. Hewitt, sir. He says he has an appointment. I seated him in the front room.”
“Yes,” Wolfe glanced at the clock on the wall. “Tell him I’ll see him in a few minutes.” Fritz went, and Wolfe returned to Sperling.
“And I have correctly stated your objective?”
“Perfectly.”
“Then after I’ve read Mr. Bascom’s reports I’ll communicate with you. Good day, sir. I’m glad you like my office—”
“But this is urgent! You shouldn’t waste an hour!”
“I know.” Wolfe was trying to stay polite. “That’s another characteristic of matters discussed in this office—urgency. I now have an appointment, and shall then eat lunch, and from four to six I shall be working with my plants. But your affair need not wait on that. Mr. Goodwin will read the reports immediately, and after lunch he will go to your office to get all required details—say two o’clock?”
James U. Sperling didn’t like it at all. Apparently he was set to devote the day to arranging to save his daughter from a fate worse than death, not even stopping for meals. He was so displeased that he merely grunted an affirmative when, as I let him out the front door, I courteously reminded him that he was to expect me at his office at 2:15 and that he could save himself the trouble of mailing the check by handing it to me then. I took time out for a brief survey of the long black Wethersill limousine waiting for him at the curb before I returned to the office.
The door to the front room was open and Wolfe’s and Hewitt’s voices came through. Since their mutual interest was up in the plant rooms and they wouldn’t be using the office, I got the bulky envelope Sperling had left on Wolfe’s desk and made myself comfortable to read Bascom’s reports.
Chapter 2
A couple of hours later, at five to two, Wolfe returned his empty coffee cup to the saucer, pushed his chair back, got all of him upright, walked out of the dining room, and headed down the hall toward his elevator. I, having followed, called to his half an acre of back, “How about three minutes in the office first?”
He turned. “I thought you were going to see that man with a daughter.”
“I am, but you won’t talk business during meals, and I read Bascom’s reports, and I’ve got questions.”
He shot a glance at the door to the office, saw how far away it was, growled, “All right, come on up,” and turned and made for the elevator.
If he has his rules so do I, and one of mine is that a three-by-four private elevator with Wolfe in it does not need me too, so I took the stairs. One flight up was Wolfe’s bedroom and a spare. Two flights up was my bedroom and another spare. The third flight put me on the roof. There was no dazzling blaze of light, as in winter, since this was June and the shade slats were all rolled down, but there was a blaze of color from the summer bloomers, especially in the middle room. Of course I saw it every day, and I had business on my mind, but even so I slowed up as I passed a bench of white and yellow Dendrobium bensoniae that were just at their peak.
Wolfe was in the potting room, taking his coat off, with a scowl all ready for me.
“Two things,” I told him curtly. “First, Bascom not only—”
He was curter. “Did Mr. Bascom get any lead at all to the Communist party?”
“No. But he—”
“Then he got nothing for us.” Wolfe was rolling up his shirt sleeves. “We’ll discuss his reports after I’ve read them. Did he have good men on it?”
“He sure did. His best.”
“Then why should I hire an army to stalk the same phantom, even with Mr. Sperling’s money? You know what that amounts to, trying to track a Communist down, granting that he is one—especially when what is wanted is not presumption, but proof. Bah. A will-o’-the-wisp. I defined the objective and Mr. Sperling agreed. See him and get details, yes. Get invited to his home, socially. Meet Mr. Rony and form an opinion of him. More important, form one of the daughter, as intimately and comprehensively as possible. Make appointments with her. Seize and hold her attention. You should be able to displace Mr. Rony in a week, a fortnight at the most—and that’s the objective.”
“I’ll be damned.” I shook my head reproachfully. “You mean make a pass at her.”
“Your terms are yours, and I prefer mine. Mr. Sperling said his daughter is excessively curious. Transfer her curiosity from Mr. Rony to you.”
“You mean break her
heart.”
“You can stop this side of tragedy.”
“Yeah, and I can stop this side of starting.” I looked righteous and outraged. “You’ve gone a little too far. I like being a detective, and I like being a man, with all that implies, but I refuse to degrade whatever glamour I may—”
“Archie!” He snapped it.
“Yes, sir.”
“With how many young women whom you met originally through your association with my business have you established personal relationships?”
“Between five and six thousand. But that’s not—”
“I’m merely suggesting that you reverse the process and establish the personal relationship first. What’s wrong with that?”
“Everything.” I shrugged. “Okay. Maybe nothing. It depends. I’ll take a look at her.”
“Good. You’re going to be late.” He started for the supply shelves.
I raised my voice a little. “However, I’ve still got a question, or two, rather. Bascom’s boys had a picnic trying to tail Rony. The first time out, before anything could have happened to make him suspicious, he had his nose up and pulled a fade. From then on not only did they have to use only the best, but often even that wasn’t good enough. He knew the whole book and some extra chapters. He may or may not be a Communist, but he didn’t learn all that in Sunday school.”
“Pfui. He’s a lawyer, isn’t he?” Wolfe said contemptuously. He took a can of Elgetrol from the shelf and began shaking it. “Confound it, let me alone.”
“I will in a minute. The other thing, three different times, times when they didn’t lose him, he went into Bischoff’s Pet Shop on Third Avenue and stayed over an hour, and he doesn’t keep any pets.”
Wolfe stopped shaking the can of Elgetrol. He looked at it as if he didn’t know what it was, hesitated, put the can back on the shelf, and looked at me.
“Oh,” he said, not curtly. “He did?”
“Yes, sir.”
Wolfe looked around, saw the oversized chair in its place, and went to it and sat down.
I wasn’t gratified at having impressed him. In fact, I would have preferred to pass the chance up, but I hadn’t dared. I remembered too well a voice—a hard, slow, precise voice, cold as last week’s corpse—which I had heard only three times altogether, on the telephone. The first time had been in January 1946, and the second and third had been more than two years later, while we were looking for the poisoner of Cyril Orchard. Furthermore, I remembered the tone of Wolfe’s voice when he said to me, when we had both hung up after the second phone call, “I should have signaled you off, Archie, as soon as I recognized his voice. I tell you nothing because it is better for you to know nothing. You are to forget that you know his name. If ever, in the course of my business, I find that I am committed against him and must destroy him, I shall leave this house, find a place where I can work—and sleep and eat if there is time for it—and stay there until I have finished.”
I have seen Wolfe tangle with some tough bozos in the years I’ve been with him, but none of them has ever had him talking like that.
Now he was sitting glaring at me as if I had put vinegar on his caviar.
“What do you know about Bischoff’s Pet Shop?” he demanded.
“Nothing to speak of. I only know that last November, when Bischoff came to ask you to take on a job, you told him you were too busy and you weren’t, and when he left and I started beefing you told me that you were no more eager to be committed for Arnold Zeck than against him. You didn’t explain how you knew that that pet shop is a branch of Zeck’s far-flung shenanigans, and I didn’t ask.”
“I told you once to forget that you know his name.”
“Then you shouldn’t have reminded me of it. Okay, I’ll forget again. So I’ll go down and phone Sperling that you’re too busy and call it off. He hasn’t—”
“No. Go and see him. You’re late.”
I was surprised. “But what the hell? What’s wrong with my deducting? If Rony went three times in a month to that pet shop, and probably more, and stayed over an hour, and doesn’t keep pets, and I deduce that he is presumably an employee or something of the man whose name I forget, what—”
“Your reasoning is quite sound. But this is different. I was aware of Mr. Bischoff’s blemish, no matter how, when he came to me, and refused him. I have engaged myself to Mr. Sperling, and how can I scuttle?” He looked up at the clock. “You’d better go.” He sighed. “If it could be managed to keep one’s self-esteem without paying for it …”
He went and got the can of Elgetrol and started shaking it, and I headed out.
Chapter 3
That was two o’clock Thursday. At two o’clock Saturday, forty-eight hours later, I was standing in the warm sunshine on a slab of white marble as big as my bedroom, flicking a bright blue towel as big as my bathroom, to chase a fly off of one of Gwenn Sperling’s bare legs. Not bad for a rake’s progress, even though I was under an assumed name. I was now Andrew instead of Archie. When I had told Sperling of Wolfe’s suggestion that I should meet the family, not of course displaying Wolfe’s blueprint, and he had objected to disclosing me to Rony, I had explained that we would use hired help for tailing and similar routine, and that I would have a try at getting Rony to like me. He bought it without haggling and invited me to spend the weekend at Stony Acres, his country place up near Chappaqua, but said I’d have to use another name because he was pretty sure his wife and son and elder daughter, Madeline, knew about Archie Goodwin. I said modestly that I doubted it, and insisted on keeping the Goodwin because it was too much of a strain to keep remembering to answer to something else, and we settled for changing Archie to Andrew. That would fit the A. G. on the bag Wolfe had given me for my birthday, which I naturally wanted to have along because it was caribou hide and people should see it.
The items in Bascom’s reports about Louis Rony’s visits to Bischoff’s Pet Shop had cost Sperling some dough. If it hadn’t been for that Wolfe would certainly have let Rony slide until I reported on my weekend, since it was a piddling little job and had no interest for him except the fee, and since he had a sneaking idea that women came on a lope from every direction when I snapped my fingers, which was foolish because it often takes more than snapping your fingers. But when I got back from my call on Sperling Thursday afternoon Wolfe had already been busy on the phone, getting Saul Panzer and Fred Durkin and Orrie Cather, and when they came to the office Friday morning for briefing Saul was assigned to a survey of Rony’s past, after reading Bascom, and Fred and Orrie were given special instructions for fancy tailing. Obviously what Wolfe was doing was paying for his self-esteem—or letting Sperling pay for it. He had once told Arnold Zeck, during their third and last phone talk, that when he undertook an investigation he permitted prescription of limits only by requirements of the job, and now he was leaning backward. If Rony’s pet shop visits really meant that he was on one of Zeck’s payrolls, and if Zeck was still tacking up his KEEP OFF signs, Nero Wolfe had to make it plain that no one was roping him off. We’ve got our pride. So Saul and Fred and Orrie were at it.
So was I, the next morning, Saturday, driving north along the winding Westchester parkways, noticing that the trees seemed to have more leaves than they knew what to do with, keeping my temper when some dope of a snail stuck to the left lane as if he had built it, doing a little snappy passing now and then just to keep my hand in, dipping down off the parkway onto a secondary road, following it a couple of miles as directed, leaving it to turn into a graveled drive between ivy-covered stone pillars, winding through a park and assorted horticultural exhibits until I broke cover and saw the big stone mansion, stopping at what looked as if it might be the right spot, and telling a middle-aged sad-looking guy in a mohair uniform that I was the photographer they were expecting.
Sperling and I had decided that I was the son of a business associate who was concentrating on photography, and who wanted pictures of Stony Acres for a corporation portfolio, for two
reasons: first, because I had to be something, and second, because I wanted some good shots of Louis Rony.
Four hours later, having met everybody and had lunch and used both cameras all over the place in as professional a manner as I could manage, I was standing at the edge of the swimming pool, chasing a fly off Gwenn’s leg. We were both dripping, having just climbed out.
“Hey,” she said, “the snap of that towel is worse than a fly bite—if there was a fly.”
I assured her there had been.
“Well, next time show it to me first and maybe I can handle it myself. Do that dive from the high board again, will you? Where’s the Leica?”
She had been a pleasant surprise. From what her father had said I had expected an intellectual treat in a plain wrapper, but the package was attractive enough to take your attention off of the contents. She was not an eye-stopper, and there was no question about her freckles, and while there was certainly nothing wrong with her face it was a little rounder than I would specify if I were ordering a la carte; but she was not in any way hard to look at, and those details which had been first disclosed when she appeared in her swimming rig were completely satisfactory. I would never have seen the fly if I had not been looking where it lit.
I did the dive again and damn near pancaked. When I was back on the marble, wiping my hair back, Madeline was there, saying, “What are you trying to do, Andy, break your back? You darned fool!”
“I’m making an impression,” I told her. “Have you got a trapeze anywhere? I can hang by my toes.”
“Of course you can. I know your repertory better than you think I do. Come and sit down and I’ll mix you a drink.”
Madeline was going to be in my way a little, in case I decided to humor Wolfe by trying to work on Gwenn. She was more spectacular than Gwenn, with her slim height and just enough curves not to call anywhere flat, her smooth dark oval face, and her big dark eyes which she liked to keep half shut so she could suddenly open them on you and let you have it. I already knew that her husband was dead, having been shot down in a B-17 over Berlin in 1943, that she thought she had seen all there was but might be persuaded to try another look, that she liked the name Andy, and that she thought there was just a chance that I might know a funny story she hadn’t heard. That was why she was going to be in my way a little.