Rex Stout - Nero Wolfe 25 (20 page)

Cramer said he’d be right down, and arose. The dick left. Cramer addressed me. “Get your machine and type that talk with Assa. Bring it up and do it here so you can keep an eye on your boss. We don’t want him humiliated again.” He walked out.

I faced Wolfe and he faced me. I wouldn’t have liked his look either if his expression of cold fury had been meant for me. “Any instructions?” I asked.

“Not at present. I may call on you any time during the night. I won’t try to sleep. With a murderer roaming my house, and me empty-handed and empty-headed …”

“He’s not roaming. You ought to squeeze in a nap, with your door locked of course. I’ll stick around until the company leaves—and incidentally, what about refreshments? With the gate-crashers there won’t be
enough marinated mushrooms and almond balls. Sandwiches and coffee?”

“Yes.” He shut his eyes. “Archie. Let me alone.”

“Glad to.”

I left him and went downstairs. Opening the door to the kitchen to tell Fritz sandwiches and coffee, I saw only Cramer and Rowcliff and Susan Tescher and Hibbard, and backed out. Three guests in uniform were in the hall, one in charge of the front door. The doors to the dining room and front room were closed. The one to the office was also closed, and I opened it and entered. The corpse was gone. Half a dozen scientists were still researching, and Purley Stebbins and a dick from the DA’s office had Patrick O’Garro between them over by the refreshment table. That could last all night, bringing each one in separately to tell who was where and when. Fritz was still perched behind Wolfe’s desk and I went to him.

“Nice party.”

“It’s nothing to joke about, Archie.
Cochon!”

“I never joke. I’m relieving you. Evidently nothing in this room is available, including the refreshments, so I guess you’ll have to produce sandwiches and coffee. You’ll find characters in the kitchen, but ignore them. If they complain tell them you’re under orders. Don’t bother taking anything up to Mr. Wolfe. He’s chewing nails and doesn’t want to be disturbed.”

Fritz said he should have some beer, and I said okay if he wanted to risk it, and he departed. As for me, I was relieving Fritz on guard duty, and furthermore, the day had not come for me to tell Purley that Cramer had ordered me to remove my typewriter to another room and would he kindly permit me to do so; and I didn’t want to lug it up two flights anyway; and
it would be interesting and instructive to watch trained detectives solving a crime.

Speaking of trained detectives, I was supposed to be one, but I certainly wasn’t bragging. I went to my desk and took my gun from the holster and put it in the drawer, and locked the drawer. In this report I could have omitted any mention of it, but I didn’t want to fudge, and I preferred not to skip the way I felt when, after going around armed for several days, I thoughtfully set it up for a homicide right there in the office—and a lot of good my gun did. To hell with it. It would have made it perfect if, soon after ditching it, I had really needed it, but I didn’t get even that satisfaction.

I got paper and carbon from another drawer, rolled the typewriter stand around to the rear of Wolfe’s desk, sat in Wolfe’s chair, and started tapping.

I
would appreciate it if they would call a halt on all their devoted efforts to find a way to abolish war or eliminate disease or run trains with atoms or extend the span of human life to a couple of centuries, and everybody concentrate for a while on how to wake me up in the morning without my resenting it. It may be that a bevy of beautiful maidens in pure silk yellow very sheer gowns, barefooted, singing
Oh, What a Beautiful Morning
and scattering rose petals over me would do the trick, but I’d have to try it.

That Tuesday morning it was terrible. I had been in bed only three hours, and what woke me was the phone, about the worst way of all. I rolled over, opened my eyes to see the alarm clock at seven-twenty-five, reached, and yanked the damn thing off the cradle.

“Yeah?”

“Good morning, Archie. Can you be down in thirty minutes? I’m breakfasting with Saul, Fred, Orrie, and Bill.”

That woke me all right, though it had no effect on the resentment. I told Wolfe I’d try, rolled out, and headed for the bathroom. Usually I yawn around for a
couple of minutes before digging in, but there wasn’t time. As I shaved I wished I had asked him what kind of a program it was, so I would know what to dress for, but if it had been anything special he would have said so, and I just grabbed the shirt on top.

When I made it to the ground floor, in thirty minutes flat, they were in the dining room with coffee. As I greeted them Fritz came with my orange juice, and I sat and took a healthy swallow.

“This is a hell of a time,” I said, still resenting, “to spring a surprise party on me.”

Bill Gore laughed. I said something funny to him once back in 1948, and ever since he has had a policy of laughing whenever I open my trap. Bill is not too smart to live, but he’s tough and hangs on. Orrie Cather is smarter and is not ashamed of it, and since he got rid of the idea that it would be a good plan for him to take over my job, some years ago, he has helped Wolfe with some very neat errands when called upon. Fred Durkin is just Fred Durkin and knows it. He thinks Wolfe could prove who killed Cock Robin any time he felt like spending half an hour on it. He thinks Wolfe could prove anything whatever. You’ve met Saul Panzer, the one and only.

As I finished my orange juice and started on griddle cakes, Wolfe expounded. He said the surprise was incidental; he had phoned them after I had gone to bed, when he had conceived a procedure.

“Fine,” I approved, spreading butter to melt, “we’ve got a procedure. For these gentlemen?”

“For all of us,” he said. “I have described the situation to them, as much as they’ll need. It is a procedure of desperation, with perhaps one chance in twenty of success. After hours on it, most of the night, this was the best I could do. As you know, I was assuming
that one of four men—Hansen, Buff, O’Garro, Heery—had killed Dahlmann and taken the wallet, and that because Assa had learned of it or suspected it he had been killed too.”

“I know that’s what you told Cramer.”

“It’s also what I told myself.”

“Why would one of them kill Dahlmann?”

“I don’t know, but if he did he had a reason. That remains, along with his identity. To search into motives would take long and toilsome investigation, and even then motive alone is nothing. I preferred to focus on identity. Which of the four? I went over and over every word they have uttered, to you and to me; all their tones and glances and postures. There was no hint—at least, not for me. I considered all possible lines of inquiry, and found that all of them either had already been pursued by the police, or were now being pursued, or were hopelessly tenuous. All I had left, at five o’clock this morning, that gave the slightest promise of some result without a prolonged and laborious siege, was the possibility of a satisfactory answer to the question: where did he get the poison?”

Chewing griddle cake and ham, I looked at him. “Good lord, if that’s the best we can do. Cramer has an army on it right now. There are six of us and we have no badges, and if—” I stopped because I saw his eyes. “You’ve got something?”

“Yes. A straw to grab at. Can’t it be reasonably supposed that the decision to kill Mr. Assa was made only yesterday afternoon, resulting from the situation caused by the contestants’ receipt of the answers by mail? Various circumstances support such—”

“Don’t bother. I’ve gone over it too a little. I’ll buy that.”

“Then some time yesterday afternoon, not before,
he decided that Mr. Assa would have to be killed, and he conceived the idea of using cyanide and putting it in his drink. Correct?”

“Yes.”

“Then where the devil did he get the cyanide?”

“I couldn’t—oh. That does make it a little special.”

“It does indeed. Did he choose cyanide as something he knew to be lightning-swift and go out and buy some? Hardly. He could of course have procured it easily—a photographic supply house, for one—but he was not an imbecile. No. He knew where some was, handy; he knew where he could get some without being observed. Where? There are a thousand possibilities, and it may have been any one of them, but I didn’t bother speculating about them because one of them was looking at me—or rather, at you. I hadn’t seen it, but you had.”

“Hold it.” I put my coffee cup down. “I’ve seen it?”

“Yes.”

“And told you about it?”

“Yes.”

“That’s interesting.” I closed my eyes, opened them, and slapped the table. “Oh, sure. The display cases at the LBA office. I might have thought of it myself if I had stayed up all night—but I don’t remember seeing any cyanide.”

“You weren’t looking for it. You said there are thousands of items from hundreds of firms. We’re going to look for it.”

“After it’s gone? If he took it, it’s not there.”

“All the better. If he took only what he needed of it we’ll find the residue. If he took it all yesterday or has removed the residue since, we’ll find where it was—or we won’t. There must be a list of the contents of those cases. There’s no point in our trying to intrude
before office hours, so there’s plenty of time. Now for the details. I’ll be with you, but you should know what I have in mind for the various eventualities—all of you. Fritz! Coffee!”

He gave us details.

If anyone considers this incident an exception to Wolfe’s rule never to leave the house on business, I say no. It was not business. He was after the man who had abused his hospitality, which was unforgivable, and made him eat crow in front of Cramer, which was outrageous. I have evidence. On a later day, when he was going over the expense account I had prepared for LBA, he left in the fare for one taxi that morning, the one that Fred and Orrie and Bill took, but took out the other, the one that had carried him and Saul and me.

It lacked a minute of nine-thirty when the six of us entered an elevator in the modern midtown skyscraper, but when we got out at the twenty-second floor the aristocratic brunette with nice little ears was there on the job behind her eight-foot desk. The sudden appearance of a gang of half a dozen males startled her a little, but as I approached and she recognized me she recovered.

I told her good morning. “I’m afraid we’ll be making a little disturbance, but we’ve got a job to do. This is Mr. Nero Wolfe.”

Wolfe, at my elbow, nodded. “We have to inventory the contents of the cabinets. The death of Mr. Assa—of course you know of it.”

“Yes, I … I know.”

“That makes it necessary to proceed without delay.”

She looked beyond us, and I turned to do likewise. The squad was certainly proceeding without delay.
Saul Panzer had slid open the glass front of the end cabinet at the left wall and had his notebook out. Fred Durkin was at the end cabinet at the right wall, and Bill and Orrie were at the far wall, which was solid with cabinets, a stretch of some fifty feet. It was a relief to see that they all had doors open. I had seen no locks on my former visit, but there could have been tricky ones. We had brought along an assortment of keys, but using them would have made it complicated.

“I know nothing about this,” the brunette said. “Who told you to do it?”

“It’s part of a job,” Wolfe told her, “that was given me by Messrs. Buff, O’Garro, and Assa last Wednesday. I refer you to them.—Come, Archie.”

We headed for the cabinets at the right wall, those nearest the elevators, and as we reached them Fred left and went to join Saul at the left wall. That was according to the plan of battle as outlined at headquarters. I didn’t bother to get out my notebook, wanting both hands free for moving things when necessary. For the first cabinet it wasn’t necessary. It held a picture of an ocean liner, some miniature bags of a line of fertilizers, cartons of cigarettes, a vacuum cleaner, and various other items. The bottom shelf of the second cabinet was no more promising, with an outboard motor, soaps and detergents, canned soup, and beer in both bottles and cans, but the second shelf had packaged goods and got more attention. It didn’t seem likely that cyanide would have fitted in with cereals and cake mixes and noodles, but the program said to look at each and every package. I was doing so, with Wolfe standing behind me, when an authoritative voice sounded.

“Are you Nero Wolfe? What’s going on?”

I straightened and turned. A six-foot executive
with a jutting jaw was facing Wolfe and wanted no nonsense. Since he hadn’t emerged from an elevator, he must have been inside and the brunette had summoned him.

“I’ve explained,” Wolfe said, “to the woman at the desk.”

“I know what you told her and it sounds fishy. Get away from these cabinets and stay away until I can check.”

Wolfe shook his head. “I’m sorry, Mr….”

“My name’s Falk.”

“I’m sorry we can’t oblige you, Mr. Falk. I was hired by Mr. Buff and Mr. O’Garro—and Mr. Assa, who is dead. We’ve started and we’re going to finish. You look truculent, but I advise you to consult Mr. Buff or Mr. O’Garro. Where are they?”

“They’re not here.”

“You must know where they are. Phone them.”

“I’m going to, and you’re going to stay away from these cabinets until I do.”

“No, sir.” Wolfe was firm but unruffled. “I make allowances for your state of mind, Mr. Falk, after what happened last night, but you must know I’m not a bandit and these men are working for me. It shouldn’t take long to get Mr. Buff or Mr. O’Garro. Do so by all means.”

One test of a good executive is how long it takes him to realize he has lost an argument, and Falk passed it. He turned on his heel and left, striding across the carpet to the door leading to the inside corridor. Wolfe and I resumed, finishing with the shelf of packages and going on to the next one—buckets and cans of paint, electric irons, and so forth.

During the next half hour the elevators delivered eight or nine people, not more than that, and took
most of them away again, but nobody bothered us. On the whole it was a nice quiet place to work. Once Wolfe and I thought we might be getting hot, when we came to the display of Jonas Hibben & Co., Pharmaceuticals, but it seemed to be intact, with no vacant spot, and there was no box or bottle from which someone could have removed a dose of cyanide. We gave it up finally, and moved on, and were at the last cabinet on that wall when Saul called to us to come and look at something, and we crossed the room to him, where he and Fred were focusing on the second shelf of the last cabinet in their battery.