Rex Stout - Nero Wolfe 45 (6 page)

Since you’re meeting them, you should see them. Cass R. Abbott, the president, looked like one. The mop of well-tended white hair, which he had a right to be proud of and probably was, was a good cap for the well-arranged, long, pale face. Amory Browning, who would soon be president if he wasn’t otherwise engaged, didn’t rate it on looks. If he was fifty-two, which would have been my guess, he had probably been pudgy for about five years, and he would be bald in another five. Theodore Falk, the Wall Street Falk, was about the same age, but he had kept himself lean and limber and had a deep tan. He probably played tennis. You have already seen Kenneth Meer’s long, pointed nose and wide, square chin.

As for the females, I would have recognized Sylvia Venner from the dozen or so times I had seen her do “The Big Town,” the program Browning had bounced her from. She was easy to look at, especially when she was using certain muscles to show her dimples, but TV girls, like all actresses, are always working at it and if you get really interested you have to make allowances. I don’t want to be unfair to Mrs. Browning merely because our client had her husband tagged for murder, but the truth is she was scrawny. I could give details, but why rub it in? She was about her husband’s age, and she was scrawny, and facts are facts. Helen Lugos, Browning’s secretary, was the one you would have to see with your own eyes, because she was the kind with whom details like color of eyes and hair, and shape of face, and kind of mouth don’t really tell it. She was probably three or four years under thirty, but that was only another unimportant detail. The point was that I had put her in the back row chair the other side of Kenneth Meer because that was where I could see her best and oftenest without turning my head much. I would have liked to put her in the red leather chair where I would have had her full face, but of course that was the president’s place. Hers was the kind of face that is different from any two angles.

I had invited orders for liquids, but they had all been declined, and when Kenneth Meer was in and seated, I went to Wolfe’s desk and gave the kitchen button three stabs, and in a moment he came, detoured between the red leather chair and the wall to his desk, sat, and sent his eyes around. As I pronounced the seven names, he gave each of them a nod—
his
nod, about an eighth of an inch.

“On behalf of Mrs. Odell,” he said, “I thank you for coming. She intended to be here, but she conceded my point that her presence would make our discussion more difficult, both for you and for me. I know, of course, that you have all been questioned at length by officers of the law, and I shall not try to emulate them, either in pertinacity or in scope. I frankly admit that I strongly doubt if I’ll get what Mrs. Odell wants. She hired me to learn who killed her husband, and the prospect is forlorn. Apparently no one knows whether his death was premeditated, or fortuitous—except the person who put the bomb in the drawer.”

His eyes went right, then left. “What information I have has come from three sources: the newspapers, Mrs. Odell, and four or five journalists who have worked on the case and with whom Mr. Goodwin is on friendly terms. There is no agreement among the opinions they have formed. One of them thinks that Mr. Odell went to that room and opened that drawer, and put the bomb in it, in order to—”

“Oh for god’s sake.” It was Theodore Falk. “That kind of crap?”

Wolfe nodded. “Certainly. In the effort to solve any complex problem, there are always many apparent absurdities; the job is to find the correct answer and demonstrate that it is
not
absurd. Another of the journalists thinks that Mr. Abbott put the bomb in the drawer because he didn’t want Mr. Browning to succeed him as president of CAN. Still another thinks that Mrs. Browning did it, or arranged to have it done, because she didn’t want her husband to continue to enjoy the favors of Miss Lugos. He hasn’t decided whom it was intended for, Mr. Browning or Miss Lugos. And another thinks that Miss Lugos did it because she did want Mr. Browning to continue to enjoy her favors but he—”

“Tommyrot!” Cass R. Abbott, in the red leather chair, blurted it. “I came because Mrs. Odell asked me to, but not to hear a list of idiotic absurdities. She said you wanted to get some facts from us. What facts?”

Wolfe turned a palm up. “How do I know? All of you have been questioned at length by the police; you have given them thousands of facts, and in assembling, comparing and evaluating a collection of facts they are well practiced and extremely competent. It’s possible that from the record of all the questions they have asked, and your answers to them, I might form a surmise or reach a conclusion that they have failed to see, but I doubt it. I confess to you, though I didn’t to Mrs. Odell, that I have little hope of getting useful facts from you. What I needed, to begin at all, was to see you and hear you. It seems likely that one of you put the bomb in the drawer. There are other possibilities, but probabilities have precedence. A question, Mr. Abbott: Do you think it likely that the person who put the bomb in the drawer is now in this room?”

“
That’s
absurd,” Abbott snapped. “I wouldn’t answer that and you know it.”

“But you
have
answered it. You didn’t give me a positive no, and you’re a positive man.” Wolfe’s eyes went right. “Mr. Falk. Do you think it likely?”

“Yes, I do,” Falk said, “and I could name names, three of them, but I won’t. I have no evidence, but I have an opinion, and that’s what you asked for.”

“I don’t expect names. Mrs. Browning. The same question.”

“Don’t answer, Phyllis,” Browning said. A command.

“Of course not. I wasn’t going to.” Her voice didn’t match her scrawniness; it was a full, rich contralto, with color.

Wolfe asked, “Then you, Mr. Browning? Are you going to answer?”

“Yes. I’ll tell you exactly what I have told the police and the District Attorney. I not only have no evidence, I have no basis whatever for an opinion. Not even an opinion as to whether the bomb was intended for me or for Odell. It was my room and my desk, but the fact remains that it was Odell who got it. I’ll also tell you that I am not surprised that Mrs. Odell has engaged you, and I don’t blame her. After nearly three weeks the official investigation is apparently completely stymied.”

Wolfe nodded. “I
may
have better luck. Miss Lugos? The same question.”

“The same as Mr. Browning,” she said. I acknowledge that her voice wasn’t as good as Mrs. Browning’s; it was thinner and pitched higher. “I have no idea. None at all.” Also she wasn’t a good liar. When you have asked about ten thousand people about a million questions you may not be able to spot a lie as well as you think you can, but you’re right a lot oftener than you’re wrong.

“Mr. Meer?”

Naturally I was wondering about Kenneth Meer. Like everybody who reads about murders in newspapers, I knew that he had been the fourth or fifth person to enter Browning’s room after the explosion, so he had seen blood all right, but that alone wouldn’t account for the blood-on-his-hands crisis that had sent him to the clinic, unless he had bad kinks in his nervous system, bad enough to keep him from working up to such an important job at CAN and hanging onto it. There was the obvious possibility that he had planted the bomb, but surely not for Browning, and if for Odell, how did he know Odell was going to the room and open the drawer? Of course Mrs. Odell had made the answer to that one easy: Browning had told him. Now, how would he answer Wolfe’s question?

He answered it with a declaration which he had had plenty of time to decide on: “I think it extremely likely that the person who put the bomb in the drawer is now in this room, but that’s all I can say. I can’t give any reason or any name.”

“You can’t, or you won’t?”

“Does it matter? Just make it I don’t.”

“But I ask you if—no. That will come later, if at all. Miss Venner?”

She wasn’t showing the dimples. Instead, she had been squinting at Wolfe, and still was. “I don’t get it,” she said. “I don’t think you are dumb, but
this
is dumb, and I wonder why you’re doing it. Even if I thought I could name the person who put the bomb in the drawer, would I tell you with them here? Mr. Abbott is the head of the company that employs me, and Mr. Browning is going to be. I can’t, but even if I could … I don’t get it.”

“You haven’t listened,” Wolfe told her. “I said that I had little hope of getting any useful facts from you, and I could have added that even if I do, you probably won’t know it. For instance, the question I ask you now. About three months ago CAN had a special program called ‘Where the Little Bombs Come From.’ Did you see it?”

“Yes. Of course.”

“Then you know that the preparation for that program required extensive research. There had to be numerous contacts between members of the CAN staff and people who knew about bombs and had had experience with them. Call them the
sources
. Now I ask you regarding three weeks ago—Friday, May sixteenth, to Sunday, May eighteenth—where and how did you spend that weekend? It may help to remember that the Tuesday following, two days later, Mr. Odell died.”

“But why do you—” She wasn’t squinting; her eyes were wide in a stare. “Oh. You think I went to one of the ‘sources’ and got a bomb. Well, I didn’t.”

“I don’t ‘think’ anything. I’m trying to get a start for a thought. I asked where and how you spent that weekend. Have you a reason for not telling me?”

“No. I have no reason for telling you either, but I might as well. I’ve told the police four or five times. I took a train to Katonah late Friday afternoon and was a house guest of friends—Arthur and Louise Dickinson. They know nothing about bombs. I came back by train Sunday evening.”

I had got my notebook and a pen and was using them. Wolfe asked, “Mr. Meer? Have you any objection to telling me how you spent that weekend?”

“Certainly not. I drove to Vermont Friday evening and I hiked about forty miles in the mountains Saturday and Sunday, and drove back Sunday night.”

“Alone, or with companions?”

“I was alone. I don’t like companions on a hike. Something always happens to them. I helped some with the research for that program, and none of the ‘sources’ was in Vermont.”

“I am hoping that Mr. Browning will tell me about the sources. Later. Miss Lugos?”

Her face was really worth watching. As he pronounced her name, she turned her head for a glance at Browning, her boss. It was less than a quarter-turn, but from my angle it wasn’t the same face as when she was looking at Wolfe. Her look at Browning didn’t seem to be asking or wanting anything; evidently it was just from habit. She turned back to Wolfe and said, “I stayed in town all that weekend. Friday evening I went to a movie with a friend. Saturday afternoon I did some shopping, and Saturday evening I went to a show with three friends. Sunday I got up late and did things in my apartment. In a file at the office we have a record of all the research for that program, all the people who were contacted, and I didn’t see any of them that weekend.”

Wolfe’s lips were tight. In his house, “contact” is not a verb and never will be, and he means it. He was glad to quit her. “Mr. Falk?”

Falk had been holding himself in, shifting in his chair and crossing and uncrossing his legs. Obviously he thought it was
all
crap. “You said,” he said, “that you wouldn’t try to emulate the police, but that’s what you’re doing. But Peter Odell was my best and closest friend, and there may be a chance that you’re half as good as you’re supposed to be. As for that weekend, I spent it at home—my place on Long Island. We had four house guests—no, five—and none of them was a bomb expert. Do you want their names and addresses?”

“I may, later.” As Wolfe’s eyes went to Mrs. Browning, her husband spoke: “My wife and I were together that weekend. We spent it on a yacht on the Sound, guests of the man who owns it, James Farquhar, the banker. There were two other guests.”

“The whole weekend, Mr. Browning?”

“Yes. From late Friday afternoon to late Sunday afternoon.”

I put my eyes on my notebook and kept them there. With all the practice I have had with my face, I should of course always have it under control, but I had got two jolts, not just one. First, was that why Wolfe had started the whole rigmarole about that weekend, to check on Browning, and second, had Browning heard it coming and got set for it, or had he just given a straight answer to a straight question? I don’t know how well Wolfe handled
his
face, since my eyes were on my notebook, but otherwise he did fine. There were two or three other questions he must have wanted to ask Browning, but he didn’t. He merely remarked that he doubted if Mr. Farquhar or the other guests were in the bomb business and then said, “And you, Mr. Abbott?” and my eyes left the notebook.

“I resent this,” Abbott said. “I knew Pete Odell for twenty years and we worked together for ten of them, and I have a warm and deep sympathy for his wife, his widow, but this is ridiculous. I assumed you would have some new angle, some new approach, but all you’re doing, you’re starting the same old grind. Each of us has spent long hours with the police, answering questions and signing statements, and while we want to oblige Mrs. Odell, naturally we do, I certainly don’t think she should expect us to repeat the whole performance with you. Why doesn’t she ask the police to let you see their files? In one of them you’ll find out how I spent that weekend. I spent it at home, near Tarrytown. There were guests. I played golf all day and bridge at night. But I repeat, this is ridiculous.”

A corner of Wolfe’s mouth was up. “Then it would be fruitless to continue,” he said—not complaining, just stating a fact. He put his hands on the edge of his desk for purchase, pushed his chair back, and rose. “I’ll have to contrive a new approach. On behalf of Mrs. Odell, I thank you again for coming. Good evening.” He moved, detoured again between the wall and the red leather chair, and, out in the hall, turned left.

“I’ll be damned,” Theodore Falk said.

I think they all said things, but if any of it was important, that will be a gap in this report. I wasn’t listening, as I went through the appropriate motions for godspeeding a flock of guests. I had heard enough, more than enough, for one evening. I didn’t even notice who went with whom as they descended the seven steps of the stoop to the sidewalk. Closing the door and sliding the chainbolt in its slot, I went to the kitchen. Fritz, who had kept handy to fill orders for refreshments if called for, was perched on the stool by the big center table with a magazine, but his eyes weren’t on it. They were on Wolfe, who was standing, scowling at a glass of beer in his hand, waiting for the bead to settle to the right level.