by Rex Stout
“Is this necessary?” Perdis demanded. “Is it so important how we got in?”
“Yes. There were no keys in Hazen’s pockets. Twenty seconds gone.”
I am enough of a gentleman to turn my back or at least avert my eyes when a lady is undressing, but one of those ladies might possibly have had a gun on her leg, so I forgot my manners. It took the men twice as long as the women. I decided to let Anne Talbot keep her bra and panties; she would have had no reason to bury the key as deep as that. Mrs. Oliver’s girdle was so tight she couldn’t have slipped a key inside even if she had tried. Khoury had jockeys, no undershirt. Perdis had a baby blue silk altogether, to the knees. I had them turn around, and then used a foot to rake Perdis’ pile across the rug, out of range of a kick.
It took longer than it should on account of the gun in my hand, and of course I not only looked for the key but for any other item that might be helpful. No soap. Khoury had a keyfold and Perdis a key ring, but no soap. It wasn’t much of a letdown because I had expected it when they all shed and turned their backs. If one of them had had Hazen’s key he would either have tried to ditch it or produced it and tried to explain it. Now that I was certain none of them had a cannon or a bomb I could relax a little. I told them to dress, went to the stand at the head of the bed, lifted the receiver from the phone, and was dialing a number when Perdis’ voice came.
“Wait a minute! One minute!” He had a touch of accent. “I have something to say. You are calling the police?”
“No.” I cradled the receiver. “Say it fast and short.”
He was handicapped for man-to-man talk, with his shirt on but his pants in his hands. “You are not a policeman,” he said.
“No. I told you who I am.”
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“He’s Archie Goodwin,” Anne Talbot said. “I’ve seen him at the Flamingo.”
“You are a private detective,” Perdis said.
“Right.”
“Then you do things for money. We will pay you fifty thousand dollars if you will leave this house and forget that you have been here. Half of it in cash tomorrow morning and the other half later. We will give you a satisfactory guarantee, perhaps something in writing.”
“How much later?”
“That’s hard to say. It is delicate. We would need to be sure of your forgetting until certain difficulties have ended.”
“That’s pretty vague. Get your clothes on and we’ll see.” I picked up the phone and dialed, and he started toward me. I showed the gun, but he kept coming, saying something, and I dropped the phone and moved to meet him, and damned if he didn’t swerve around me and dart for the phone. I had intended to tap him with the gun, not caring for bruised knuckles, but his swerve got him on the wrong side, so I took him from behind, with my left arm hooked under his chin and my hip at his rump, and levered him up and over. He landed on his hands and knees nine feet away. I said, “Cut out the horseplay and put your pants on,” and went to the phone and dialed. After nine buzzes Wolfe’s voice came. “Yes?”
“Me. Could we use fifty grand?”
A grunt. “In the box?”
“No. I haven’t got it yet. I’m in Hazen’s bedroom. There are four people with me, two men and two women, lined up against the wall. The four that came to dinner last night. They were in this room looking for something and hadn’t found it. Perdis just off-”
“One of them has Hazen’s key.”
“No. I had them strip and went through their clothes. They say the maid let them in. She’s not here; of course they greased her. Perdis just offered me fifty grand to go away and forget I was here. I’ll split it with you. He would probably double it.”
106 Rex Stout
“Pfui. Are you intact?”
“Sure. I’m calling just to tell you to expect us, say in half an hour, maybe less.”
Silence. He would have to work, not tomorrow, but now-and two women. Then: “I suppose I must,” and he hung up.
Perdis had joined the others at the wall. As I cradled the phone he spoke. “We will double it. One hundred thousand dollars.”
“Skip it.” I moved to the foot of the bed. “What would I tell my wife if I had one? You heard me tell Nero Wolfe to expect us in half an hour, but you have a choice. You can leave and go your ways and try to forget you were here, and I’ll phone Inspector Cramer and report this incident, omitting nothing. Or you can come and talk it over with Nero Wolfe, and he may or may not care to bother Cramer about it. You may have two minutes to consider it.” I looked at my wrist.
“Listen, Mr. Goodwin,” Anne Talbot said. She had her clothes on, and with or without them she was highly ornamental. “We were looking for something that belongs to us. We’re not thieves. We’re respectable-”
I cut her off. “Sorry, but don’t waste it on me. I just run errands. It’s either Nero Wolfe or the police. If you pick Nero Wolfe there will be a slight delay because I have a little chore to do in this room. You will take your things and go downstairs and on out, and get two taxis. You will get into one of the taxis and wait there in front of the house, and have the other one there for me. I’ll be down soon, probably in a couple of minutes. There’s one complication: if you split and one or two of you prefer to go somewhere else, I’ll phone the police immediately. I would rather not, but I’d have to.”
Two of them, Perdis and Mrs. Oliver, started to speak, but I shut them off and moved away from the bed. Anne Talbot went to the bed and got her coat, and Khoury went and held it for her, and then got his own. Anne Talbot said to Perdis and Mrs. Oliver, “Is there any alternative?” Perdis went and got Mrs. Oliver’s
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coat and took it to her, and she went to the bed for her bag.
Perdis was the last one out. When he had started down the stairs I shut the door, put a chair against it, went to the chest of drawers, a big heavy piece at the left wall, and took out the bottom drawer. There was a folded blanket in it. I squatted at the opening. The board that the drawer slid on, solid, not a plywood panel, was flush and snugly fitted, no play to it. I tried to get its edge with my thumbnails; nothing doing. I got out my pocketknife, stuck the point of the blade in the crack at the center, just barely in, pried gently, and up it came. The front edge of the board was beveled. Very neat. I put my hand in, felt metal, got a finger under, and here came the box. It was steel, anything but flimsy, twelve inches by six and about two inches deep, and weighed a good four pounds, with a lock not to be opened with a nail file. I shook it and heard no movement, which didn’t prove anything. With the board down, I replaced the drawer, moved the chair away from the door and opened it, and went to the head of the stairs. No sound of voices from below. If I had gone down and joined them in the hall carrying a steel box which I must have found in Hazen’s room they would have made quite a party of it. I descended a flight, stood to listen half a minute, and went on down. They had turned on the light in the lower hall. My hat and coat were there on the floor. I put the Marley in the holster, put on the hat and coat, slipped the box under the coat, with my hand in my pocket holding it, turned out the light, and opened the door.
They had followed instructions to a T. Two taxis were there, and they were in the one in the rear, all four of them. After glancing in I told the driver to follow my taxi, went and got in and gave the driver the address, and we rolled.
Chapter 6
When you mount the seven steps to the stoop and enter the hall of the old brownstone on West 35th Street, the first door on your left is to what we call the front room, with the office door farther along on that side. The walls and doors of the front room and office are soundproofed. After convoy-ing the company to the front room and telling them they wouldn’t have to wait long, I returned to the hall, put my hat and coat on the rack, proceeded to the office, and put the box on Wolfe’s desk pad.
“Good timing,” I said. “In another hour or two they would probably have found it.”
He reached
to pass his fingertips along its edge. “You
haven’t opened it.”
“No. It’s a good lock. They’re in the front room, all four. I gave them their pick, you or the cops, and they preferred you. There’s nothing to add to what I told you on the phone. Before I open it I want to register a guess. Not that it’s what Hazen had on them, that’s a cinch. My guess is specifically what he had on Mrs. Oliver. She murdered her husband. Wait till you see her.”
He made a face. “This will be distasteful. Bring
keys.”
I went to the cabinet at the far wall, opened a drawer, and made selections. Although I couldn’t qualify on the witness stand as a lock expert, I know a Hotchkiss from a Euler, and I can open your suitcase with a paper clip if you’ll be patient. Moving the box to my desk, I sat and started in. I had selected four types, little boxes of assortments. In three minutes I eliminated the first type, and in another three the second one. The third
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seemed more promising, and I was getting hot when Wolfe growled, “Get a hammer and screwdriver.”
As he spoke it clicked and I had it. I raised the lid. The box was empty. I upended it for Wolfe to see. “Yeah,” I said. “It sure is distasteful.”
He took in air, about a bushel, and let it out again. “It’s just as well. It would probably have presented us with a problem. More than one. I presume he decided it was a mistake to tell his wife of it and removed the contents. Elsewhere in the house?”
“I doubt it.”
“So do I.” He leaned back, closed his eyes, and pushed his lips out. In a moment he pulled them in, and then out and in, out and in. He was working. A minute passed, two minutes, three��� He opened his eyes and straightened up. “Lock the box and leave it on your desk. Put the keys away. Have a gun in your hand when you admit them, and go to your desk and stay there. Proceed.”
I proceeded. After locking the box and returning the keys to the cabinet, I moved four of the yellow chairs up, in a row facing Wolfe’s desk, got the gun out, opened the door to the front room, and invited them to enter. The gentlemen followed the ladies. I went to my desk and pronounced names, and when they were seated I sat, with the gun in my hand resting on my thigh.
Wolfe’s eyes went right and then left. “This shouldn’t take long,” he said. “First the situation. I shall not resort to euphemism. You were being blackmailed by Mr. Hazen, either collectively-please don’t interrupt. Either collectively or separately. He had other victims, but you four alone were paying him around a hundred and fifty thousand dollars a year, ostensibly for professional services, but that was merely a subterfuge. I don’t know whether the police know that or not, probably not, but I do. If there was any doubt it was removed when Mr. Goodwin found you in that house surreptitiously, looking for something, and you offered him a large sum of money. So much-”
“I didn’t,” Mrs. Oliver blurted. “Mr. Perdis did.”
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“Pfui. You were there. Did you object? So much for that. I am acting for my client, Mrs. Hazen. She is being held under suspicion of killing her husband, and has given me certain information. This is one item: one day about a year ago her husband showed her a box, a metal box, he had in his bedroom. To show it to her he removed the bottom drawer of a chest and pried up the board the drawer slid on, and the box was underneath the board. He told her that if he died she should get the box, have it opened by a locksmith, and burn the contents without looking at them. It was to get that box that Mr. Goodwin went there this evening, with Mrs. Hazen’s key and authority. After you left the room he removed the drawer and lifted the board, and got it. It’s there on his desk.”
That was like him. I hadn’t told him that I had sent them from the room before I got it, and that they hadn’t seen it; he took it for granted. I appreciate his compli-ments, but some day he may overestimate me. I had no idea where or what he was headed for, but I thought a little gesture wouldn’t hurt, so I got the box with my left hand, the gun being in my right, and displayed it. Four pairs of eyes were on it, glued to it. Anne Talbot mumbled something. Perdis started up, thought better of it, and sank back. Jules Khoury muttered, “So it was there.” I had the gun, but there were four of them, so I got up, detoured around them to the safe, opened the safe door, put the box in, closed the door, and spun the knob. As I returned to my chair Wolfe was speaking.
“I have a proposal to make, but first a question or two. My objective, of course, is to demonstrate that Mrs. Hazen did not kill her husband. Yesterday evening you dined at her table. After dinner she went to her room, and soon after that Mr. Weed left. I’m not going to ask about the sequence and the times of your departures, or where you went and what you did; the police have got all that from you, and if the matter can be resolved by such details they are extremely competent at that sort of thing, and they are ahead of me, with an army. But I want to know about your conversation
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with Mr. Hazen after his wife and Mr. Weed left. What was said?”
“Nothing,” Khoury declared.
“Nonsense. Mr. Hazen had told his wife he was going to discuss something with you. What?”
“Nothing of any importance. He opened champagne. We discussed the stock market. He asked Mrs. Talbot what plays she had seen. He got Perdis talking about ships.”
“He talked about poisons,” Perdis said.
“He talked about his wife’s father,” Mrs. Oliver said. “He said his wife’s father was a great inventor, a ge-nius.”
Wolfe scowled at them. “This is egregious. If he discussed some aspect of his peculiar relations with you, naturally you didn’t tell the police about it. But I know of those relations and the police don’t. I intend to know what was said.”
“You don’t understand, Mr. Wolfe.” It was Anne Talbot. She was leaning forward, appealing to him. “You didn’t know him. He was a monster. He was a demon. He didn’t want to discuss anything, he just wanted to have us there together, and we had to go. It was his special kind of torture. He wanted each of us to know about the others and to know that the others knew about us. He liked to see us trying to act as if it were just a��� just a dinner party. You didn’t know him.”
“He was a devil,” Perdis said.
Wolfe surveyed them. “Did he reveal to any of you the nature of his hold on the others, last evening or any other time? Or hint at it?”
Anne Talbot and Khoury shook their heads. Mrs. Oliver said, “No, oh, no.” Perdis said, “I think he hinted. For instance, poison. I thought he hinted.”
“But no particulars?”
“No.”
“I must concede that he was not an estimable man. Very well, he is dead, and here we are. As I said, I have a proposal. It is highly likely, all but certain, that he
112 Rex Stout
kept in that box whatever support he had for his demands on you. The box is in my safe. I don’t desire or intend to inspect its contents. But Mrs. Hazen is my client and I am committed to protect both her person and her property. She is not bound to follow her husband’s instructions to bum the contents of the box, and it would be quixotic to destroy anything so valuable. I will surrender it to you, you four, for one million dollars.”
They gawked at him.
“That’s a large sum, but it is not exorbitant. In another seven years, if Mr. Hazen had lived, you would have paid him more than that, and that wouldn’t have ended it. This will; this will be final. If I left it to you to apportion the burden you would probably haggle, and time is short, so I shall expect one quarter of the million from each of you, either in currency or certified checks, within twenty-four hours. There is no question of extortion by Mrs. Hazen or me; we haven’t seen the contents of the box; I only say, as her agent, you may have them at that price if you want them.”
“You haven’t opened the box,” Perdis said.
“No, I haven’t.”
“What if it’s empty?�
��
“You get nothing and you pay nothing.” Wolfe looked up at the clock. “The box will be opened here tomorrow at midnight, with all of you present, or earlier if and when you meet the terms. If it is empty, so much for that. If it isn’t, there will of course be a difficulty. None of you will want the others to inspect the items that pertain to him. I don’t want to look at any of them. I suggest that Mr. Goodwin, who is thoroughly discreet, may remove the items singly, examine each one only enough to determine whom it applies to, and hand it over. If you have a better procedure to suggest, do so.”
Mrs. Oliver was licking her lips and swallowing, by turns. Perdis was hunched over, his lips tight, his heavy broad shoulders rising and falling with his breathing. Khoury had his chin up, his narrowed eyes aimed at Wolfe past the tip of his long thin nose. Anne Talbot’s
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eyes were closed, and a muscle at the side of her pretty neck was twitching.
“I realize,” Wolfe said, “that it may not be easy to produce so large a sum in so short a time, but it is not impossible, and I dare not give you longer. While it is true that the box and its contents are the property of Mrs. Hazen, the police would no doubt regard it as evidential in their investigation of a murder, and I can’t undertake to withhold my knowledge of it longer than twenty-four hours.” He pushed his chair back and rose. “I shall await your pleasure.”
But if he was through they weren’t. Mrs. Oliver wanted the box opened then and there, and a display of its contents by me. Khoury said that there was a question of extortion, that they were being told to fork over a million dollars in twenty-four hours or else. Perdis demanded that they be given the time and opportunity to talk with Mrs. Hazen, but of course she was in the coop. Anne Talbot was the only one who had nothing to say; she was on her feet, gripping the back of the chair, the muscle in her neck still twitching. Thinking it might help if I went and brought their coats, I did so, and it took Anne Talbot three tries to find the armhole.