Rex Stout - Nero Wolfe 25 (5 page)

“Just a flash—of what is coming. I had two of them long ago, when I was young, and then never any more until the day I saw the advertisement. It came on me, into me, so swiftly that I only knew it was there—the certainty that we would get their money. Certainty can be a very sweet thing, very beautiful, and that day it filled me from head to foot, and I went to a mirror to see if I could see it. I couldn’t, but it was there, so there has never been any question about it. The first prize. Our budget committee is already working on projects, what to do with it.”

“Indeed.” The frown was there to stay. “The five new verses, those that Mr. Dahlmann gave you last evening—how did you send them to your colleagues? Telephone or telegraph or airmail?”

“Ha,” she said. Apparently that was all.

“Because,” Wolfe observed matter-of-factly, “you have sent them, naturally, so they could go to work. Haven’t you?”

Her back was straight again. “I fail to see that that is anybody’s business. There is nothing in the rules about getting assistance. Nothing was said about it last night. This morning I telephoned my vice-president, Mrs. Charles Draper, because I had to, to tell her I couldn’t return today and I didn’t know when I could. It was a private conversation.”

Evidently it was going to stay private. Wolfe dropped it and switched. “Another reason for seeing you, Miss Frazee, was to apologize on behalf of Lippert, Buff and Assa, my clients, for the foolish joke that Mr. Dahlmann indulged in last evening—when he exhibited a paper and said it was the answers to the
verses he had just given you. Not only was it witless, it was in bad taste. I tender you the apologies of his associates.”

“So that’s how it is,” she said. “I thought it would be something like that, that’s why I came, to find out.” Her chin went up and her voice hardened. “It won’t work. Tell them that. That’s all I wanted to know.” She stood up. “You think because I’m ugly I haven’t got any brains. They’ll regret it. I’ll see that they regret it.”

“Sit down, madam. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Ha. You’re supposed to have brains too. They know that one of them went there and killed him and took the paper, and now they’re going—”

“Please! Your pronouns. Are you saying that one of my clients took the paper?”

“Of course not. One of the contestants. That would put them in a hole they couldn’t get out of unless they could prove which one took it, so they’re going to say it was a joke, there was no such paper, and when we send in the answers they’ll award the prizes, and they think that will settle it unless the police catch the murderer, and maybe they never will. But it won’t work. The murderer will have the right answers, all five of them, and he’ll have to explain how he got them, and he won’t be able to. These five are going to be very difficult, and nobody can get them by spending a few hours in a library.”

“I see. But you could explain how you got them. Your colleagues at home are working on them now. You’re going?”

She had headed for the door, but turned. “I’m going back to the hotel for an appointment with a policeman. I use my brains with them too, and I know my
rights. I told them I didn’t have to go to see them, they could come to see me unless they arrested me, and they don’t dare. I wouldn’t let them search my room or my belongings. I’ve told them what I’ve seen and heard, and that’s all I’m going to tell them. They want to know what I thought! They want to know if I thought the paper he showed us really had the answers on it! I fail to see why I should tell them what I thought—but I’ll certainly tell you and you can tell your clients …”

She came back to the chair and was sitting down, so I held on to my notebook, but as her fanny touched the leather she said abruptly, “No, I have an appointment,” got erect, and strode from the room. By the time I got to the rack in the hall she had her coat on, and I had to move to get to the doorknob before her.

When I returned to the office Wolfe was sitting slumped, taking air in through his nose and letting it out through his mouth, audibly. I stuck my hands in my pockets and looked down at him.

“So she told the cops about Dahlmann showing the paper,” I said. “That’ll help. Twenty minutes to lunch. Beer? I’ll make an exception.”

He made a face.

“I could probably,” I suggested, “get Los Angeles phone information to dig up a Mrs. Charles Draper, and you could ask her how they’re making out with the verses.”

“Pointless,” he growled. “If she killed him and got the answers, she would certainly have made the call and given her friends the verses. She admits she has brains. If I had had the answers I might … but no, that would have been premature. You have an appointment at two-thirty.”

“Right. Since expenses are on the house it
wouldn’t cost you anything to get Saul and Fred and Orrie and Johnny and Bill and hang tails on them, but with four of them living at the Churchill it would be a hell of a job—”

“Useless. If anything is to be learned by that kind of routine the police will get it long before we can. They probably—”

The phone rang. I got it at my desk, heard a deep gruff voice that needed filing, an old familiar voice, asked it to hold on, and told Wolfe that Sergeant Purley Stebbins wished to speak to him. He reached for his instrument, and since I am supposed to stay on unless I am told not to, I did so.

“This is Nero Wolfe, Mr. Stebbins. How do you do.”

“So-so. I’d like to drop in to see you—say three o’clock?”

“I’m sorry, I’ll be engaged.”

“Three-thirty?”

“I’ll still be engaged.”

“Well … I guess it can wait until six. Make it six o’clock?”

Purley knew that Wolfe’s schedule, four to six up in the plant rooms, might be changed for an H-bomb, but nothing much short of that.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Stebbins, but I’ll have no time today or this evening. Perhaps you can tell me—”

“Sure, I can tell you. Just a little friendly talk, that’s all. I want to get your slant on a murder case.”

“I have no slant on any murder case.”

“No? Then why the hell—” He bit it off. He went on, “Look, I know you and you know me. I’m no fancy dancer. But how about this, at half-past twelve a woman named Gertrude Frazee entered your premises and as far as I know she’s still there. And you
have no slant on the murder of a man named Louis Dahlmann? Tell it to Goodwin. I’m not trying to get a piece of hide, I just want to come and ask you some questions. Six o’clock?”

“Mr. Stebbins.” Wolfe was controlling himself. “I have no commission to investigate the murder of Louis Dahlmann, or any other. On past occasions you and your associates have resented my presumption in undertaking to investigate a homicide. You have bullied me and harried me. When I offend again I shall expect you upon me again, but this time I am not invading your territory, so for heaven’s sake let me alone.”

He hung up and so did I, synchronizing with him. I spoke. “I admit that was neat and a chance not to be passed up, but wait till he tells Cramer.”

“I know.” He sounded better. “Is the chain bolt on?”

I went to the hall to make sure, and then to the kitchen to tell Fritz we were under siege.

I
could merely report that I kept my two-thirty appointment and got the verses and answers, and let it go at that, but I think it’s about time you had the pleasure of meeting Mr. Talbott Heery. He was quite a surprise to me, I don’t know why, unless I had unconsciously decided what a perfume tycoon should look like and he didn’t match. Nor did he smell. He was over six feet, broader than me and some ten years older, and his clear smooth skin, stretched tight over the bones, didn’t look as if it had ever needed to be shaved. Nor was there any sign of grease or soot or paint. He might have been a member of the Men’s Nature League.

Buff and O’Garro were with him, but not Assa. They had to do some explaining to get me admitted to the vault. Buff and Heery and I went to a small room, and soon O’Garro and an attendant came with the box, only about five by three and eighteen inches long, evidently rented for this purpose exclusively. The attendant left, and O’Garro unlocked the box and opened it, and took out some envelopes, six of them. The sealed flaps had gobs of sealing wax. Four of
them had been cut open. He asked me, “You want only the last group of five?”

I told him yes, and he handed me the two uncut envelopes. One of them was inscribed, “Verses, second group of five, Pour Amour Contest,” and the other, “Answers, second group of five, Pour Amour Contest.” As I got out my knife to slit them open O’Garro said, “I don’t want to see them,” and backed up against the end wall, and the others followed suit. From that distance they couldn’t read typing, but they could watch me, and they did. There were pencils and paper pads on the table, but I preferred my pen and notebook, and sat down and used them. The five four-line verses were all on one sheet, and so were the answers—the names of five women, with brief explanations of the references in the verses.

It didn’t take long. As I was folding the sheets and returning them to the envelopes, Buff spoke. “Your name is Archie Goodwin?”

“Right.”

“Please write on each envelope, ‘Opened, and the contents copied, by Archie Goodwin, on April thirteenth, nineteen-fifty-five, in the presence of Talbott Heery, Oliver Buff, and Patrick O’Garro,’ and sign it.”

I gave it a thought. “I don’t like it,” I told him. “I don’t want to sign anything so closely connected with a million dollars. How about this: I’ll write ‘Opened, and the contents copied, by Archie Goodwin, on April thirteenth, nineteen-fifty-five, with our consent and in our presence,’ and you gentlemen sign it.”

They decided that would do, and I wrote, and they signed, and O’Garro returned the envelopes to the box and locked it, and went out with it. Soon he rejoined us, and the four of us went up a broad flight of marble steps and out to the street. On the sidewalk
Heery asked where they were bound for, and they said their office, which was around the corner, and he turned to me. “You, Goodwin?”

I told him West Thirty-fifth Street, and he said he was going downtown and would give me a lift. The others went, and he flagged a taxi and we got in, and I told the driver Thirty-fifth and Ninth Avenue. My watch said ten to three, so I should make it by the time the second customer arrived.

As we stopped for a red light at Fifth Avenue, headed west on Forty-seventh Street, Heery said, “I have some spare time and I think I’ll stop in for a talk with Nero Wolfe.”

“Not right now,” I told him. “He’s tied up.”

“But now is when I have the time.”

“Too bad, but it’ll have to be later—in fact, much later. He has appointments that run right through until late this evening, to ten-thirty or eleven.”

“I want to see him now.”

“Sorry. I’ll tell him, and he’ll be sorry too. If you want to give me your number I’ll ring you and tell you when.”

He got a wallet from his pocket, fingered in it, and came up with a crisp new twenty. “Here,” he said. “I don’t need long. Probably ten minutes will do it.”

I felt flattered. A finiff would have been at the market, and a sawbuck would have been lavish. “I deeply appreciate it,” I said with feeling, “but I’m not the doorman or receptionist. Mr. Wolfe has different men for different functions, and mine is to collect poetry out of safe deposit boxes. That’s all I do.”

Returning the bill neatly to the wallet, he stated, with no change whatever in tone or manner, “At a better time and place I’ll knock your goddam block off.” You see why I wanted you to meet him. That
ended the conversation. To pass the time as we weaved along with the traffic. I thought of three or four things to say, but after all it was his taxi and it had been nice of him to make it a twenty. When the cab stopped at Thirty-fifth Street I only said, “See you at a better time and place,” as I got out.

At the corner drugstore, I went to the phone booth, dialed our number, got Wolfe, and was told that no company had come. It may have been a minor point, whether Homicide had tails on all five of them or was giving Miss Frazee special attention, but it wouldn’t hurt to find out, so I went down the block to Doc Vollmer’s place, thirty yards from Wolfe’s, and stepped down into the areaway, from where I could see our stoop. My watch said ten past three. I was of course expecting a taxi and wasn’t interested in pedestrians, until I happened to send a glance to the east and saw a figure approaching that I could name. I swiveled my head to look west, and saw a female mounting the seven steps to our stoop. So I moved up to the sidewalk into the path of the approaching figure—Art Whipple of Homicide West. He stopped on his heels, opened his mouth, and closed it.

“I won’t tell her,” I assured him. “Unless you want me to give her a message?”

“Go chin yourself,” he suggested.

“At a better time and place. She’ll probably be with us nearly an hour. If you want to go to Tony’s around the corner I’ll give you a ring just before she leaves. Luck.”

I went on to our stoop, and as I was mounting the steps the door opened a crack and Fritz’s voice came through it. “Your name, please, madam?”

I said okay, and he slipped the bolt and opened up, and I told the visitor to enter. While Fritz attended to
the door I offered to take her coat, a brown wool number that would have appreciated a little freshening up, but she said she would keep it and her name was Wheelock.

I ushered her to the office and told Wolfe, “Mrs. James R. Wheelock, of Richmond, Virginia.” Then I went and opened the safe, took the four leaves from my notebook that I had written on, put them in the inner compartment, closed that door and twirled the knob of the combination, and closed the outer door. By the time I got to my desk Carol Wheelock was in the red leather chair, with her coat draped over the back.

According to the information she was a housewife, but if so her house was nearly out of wife. She looked as if she hadn’t eaten for a week and hadn’t slept for a month. Properly fed and rested for a good long stretch, filled in from her hundred pounds to around a hundred and twenty, she might have been a pleasant sight and a very satisfactory wife for a man who was sold on the wife idea, but it took some imagination to realize it. The only thing was her eyes. They were dark, set in deep, and there was fire back of them.