Too Many Clients (12 page)

“Exactly what time did you leave?”

“I don’t know exactly. It must have been about half past nine. It was a quarter past when I got there.”

“Yeager expected you at a quarter past nine?” “No, at nine o’clock, but I was fifteen minutes late.” “You went to take dictation?” “Yes.”

“At nine o’clock Sunday evening?” “Yes.”

Wolfe grunted. “I think I’ll ignore that, Miss McGee. It’s a waste of time to challenge lies that are immaterial. It would be pointless to poke the fact at you that Mr. Yeager had arranged for the delivery of caviar and pheasant at midnight. Was there any indication that there had been a struggle?”

“No.”

“Did you see a gun?” “No.”

“Did you take anything from the room when you left?” “No.”

“Have you ever owned a gun?” “No.”

“Or borrowed one?”

“No.”

“Have you ever shot one?” “No.”

“Where did you go when you left the house?” “I went home. My apartment. On Arbor Street.” “Did you tell anyone of your experience?” “No. Of course not.” “You didn’t tell Mr. Aiken?” “No.”

“Then he didn’t know until now that you were there Sunday evening?”

“No. Nobody knew.”

“Do you know what a hypothetical question is?” “Certainly.”

“I submit one. You said Tuesday evening that you decided your loyalty should be to the corporation, not to Mr. Yeager, so you betrayed him. Then if�”

“I didn’t betray him. I only thought Mr. Aiken should know.”

Wolfe swiveled to the Webster’s Unabridged on its stand, opened it, and found the page. “Betray, verb, Definition Two: To prove faithless or treacherous to, as to a trust or one who trusts.’” He closed the dictionary and wheeled back. “Surely Yeager trusted you not to tell about that room, but you did. Then if�this is the hypothesis-if you went there Sunday evening, not to take dictation, but to participate in activities congenial to that decor, what am I to assume regarding your disposition at that time toward Mr. Yeager and Mr. Aiken'Had you reconsidered and decided your loyalty was to Mr. Yeager?”

It didn’t faze her. She didn’t chew on it. “My disposition had nothing to do with it. Mr. Yeager asked me to go there to take dictation, and I went.” She was darned good. If I hadn’t seen that bower I might have had a sliver of doubt myself. She went on. “That trick question you asked me, why I killed him, I want to ask you, why would I kill him'Would I go there to take dictation and take a gun to shoot him?”

Wolfe’s shoulders went up a fraction of an inch, and down. “I said I’d ignore your purpose in going there, and I shouldn’t have brought it up again. It’s futile. If you had a reason for killing him, I won’t learn it from you. I doubt if I’ll learn anything from you. You say you went there, found him dead, and left.” He leaned back, closed his eyes, and pushed his lips out. In a moment he pulled them in. Out again, in again. Out and in, out and in.

Aiken spoke. “I have things to ask Miss McGee myself, but they can wait. You have only made it worse, bringing it out that he was killed in that room. I don’t think she killed him, and I don’t think you do. What are you going to do now?”

No reply. Wolfe was still working his lips. “He didn’t hear you,” I told Aiken. “When he’s doing that he doesn’t hear anything or anybody. We’re not here.”

Aiken stared at him. He transferred the stare to Miss McGee. She didn’t meet it.

Wolfe opened his eyes and straightened up. “Miss McGee. Give me the keys. To the door of that house and the elevator.”

“Did you hear what I said?” Aiken demanded.

“No. The keys, Miss McGee.”

“I said you’ve made it worse!” Aiken hit the chair arm with a fist. “Yeager dead in that room! She didn’t kill him, she had no reason to, but what if she did'Do you call this protecting the interests of my corporation?”

Wolfe ignored him. “The keys, Miss McGee. You have no further use for them, and you’re hardly in a position to balk. You have them?”

She opened her bag, the one I had opened Tuesday evening while she was on the floor wrapped in the coverlet, and took out the key fold. I went and got it, looked at the two keys, and handed it to Wolfe. He put it in a drawer, turned to Aiken, and inquired, “How the deuce did you get to head a large and successful corporation?”

The president goggled at him, speechless. Wolfe went on. “You spout and sputter. You say / have made it worse. In your business, do you blame subordinates when they expose problems not of their making which must be solved if the business is to prosper'If I hadn’t resorted to humbug we wouldn’t know that Yeager was killed in that room, whether by Miss McGee or another, and I might have blundered fatally. I pried it out of her by a ruse. I had cause to suspect she was there Sunday evening, but nothing that could be used as a lever on her, so I fabricated one. I had no client Sunday evening; Mr. Durkin was not posted at that house; he wasn’t there to see her enter. But now that I know she did enter, and that Yeager was killed there�”

“You tricky bastard!” Aiken was on his feet. “Where’s that paper I signed'I want it!”

“Nonsense.” Wolfe didn’t bother to tilt his head to look up at him. Conservation of energy. “Sit down. You hired me, but you can’t fire me. I was already on slippery ground, withholding information; now that I know Yeager was killed in that room and his body was seen there I am not merely vulnerable, I am gravely compromised. You are in no personal jeopardy, but I am. If I had my share of prudence I would be at my telephone now, speaking to Mr. Cramer of the police. What are you risking'The repute of your confounded corporation. Pfui. Sit down and tell me where you were last evening from nine o’clock to midnight.”

Aiken stood, glaring. His jaw was working, and a cord at the side of his neck was twitching. “It’s none of your damned business where I was last evening,” he said through his teeth. “I warn you, Wolfe, you’re playing a dangerous game. You lie when you say Durkin wasn’t at that house Sunday. How else did you know Miss McGee was there'You never have told me how you found out about that room. And you had keys. Did Durkin go up after Miss McGee left and find Yeager’s body and take it out and dump it in that hole'I think he did. And now you’re blackmailing me and my corporation, that’s what it amounts to. All right, you had the handle Tuesday evening and you still have it, but I warn you.”

“Thank you,” Wolfe said politely. His head turned. “Miss McGee, where were you last evening from nine o’clock to midnight?”

“Don’t answer him,” Aiken commanded her. “Don’t answer anything. We’re going. You can answer me, but not here. Come on.”

She looked at him, at Wolfe, and back at him. “But Mr. Aiken, I have to! I have to answer that. I told you, I thought that was what he wanted to see me about-that girl, Maria Perez.” She didn’t pronounce either “Maria” or “Perez” the way they did. “That’s why he wants to know where I was last evening.” She turned to Wolfe. “I never saw that girl. I never heard of her until I read the paper today. I didn’t kill Mr. Yeager and I didn’t kill her. I don’t know anything about her. Last evening I had dinner with friends and I was there all evening, with them and other people, until after midnight. Their name is Quinn and they live at Ninety-eight West Eleventh Street. I had to tell him that, Mr. Aiken. It’s bad enough for me without�I had to.”

He was focused on Wolfe. “What about the girl?” he demanded.

Wolfe shook his head. “Since I lie, why bother to ask?”

That was the note it ended on. Plenty of times clients have left that office boiling or sore or sulky, but I have never seen one quite as peevish as Aiken. Not, I must admit, without reason. As he said, Wolfe had the handle, and a president is used to having the handle himself. Leaving with Julia McGee, he forgot his manners, leading the way out of the office and down the hall to the door, and when I reached to get his homburg from the rack he snatched it from my hand. Miss McGee was in for a bad half-hour. I returned to the office and told Wolfe, “It’s a good thing presidents don’t sign corporation checks. He’d get palsy signing one made out to you. //.”

He grunted. “If indeed. You realize that we have never been so close to catastrophe. And ignominy.” “Yes, sir.”

“It is imperative that we find the murderer before Mr. Cramer finds that room.” “Yes, sir.”

“Will Mr. and Mrs. Perez hold out?” “Yes, sir.”

“Tell Fritz to set a place at lunch for Fred. Then get Saul and Orrie. Here at two-thirty. If they have other commitments I’ll speak to them. I must have them this afternoon.”

“Yes, sir.” I moved.

“Wait. That woman, Meg Duncan�presumably she was at the theater last evening?”

“Presumably. I can find out.”

“Until when?”

“The play ends about ten to eleven; then she had to change. If she had made a date with Maria Perez for eleven-thirty she could have kept it without rushing. Have I missed something?”

“No. We must cover contingencies. Instructions after you get Saul and Orrie.”

I went to the kitchen to tell Fritz.

May I introduce Mr. Saul Panzer and Mr. Orrie Cather'Mr. Panzer is the one in the red leather chair. Looking at him�his big nose, his little deep-set eyes, his hair that won’t stay in place �you will suppose that he isn’t much. Hundreds of people who have supposed that have regretted it. A good operative has to be good in a dozen different ways, and in all of them Saul is the best. Mr. Cather, in the yellow chair to Saul’s left, might fool you too. He is fully as handsome as he looks, but not quite as smart as he looks, though he might be if his ego didn’t get in the way. If a man is to be judged by a single act and you have a choice, the one to pick is how he looks at himself in a mirror, and I have seen Orrie do that. You have met Mr. Fred Durkin, in the chair next to Orrie’s.

Wolfe and Fred and I had just come from the dining room to join Saul and Orrie in the office. During lunch I had been wondering what Wolfe had on the program for them, considering the instructions he had given me. With me it had got to the point where earning a fee was only secondary; the main question was how we were going to wriggle down off the limb we were out on; and while I fully appreciated the talents and abilities of those three men, I couldn’t guess how they were going to be used to find an answer to that. So I wanted to hear that briefing, but as I went to my chair and whirled it around Wolfe spoke.

“We won’t need you, Archie. You have your instructions.”

I sat. “Maybe I can supply details.”

“No. You had better get started.”

I got up and went. There were several pointed remarks I could have made, for instance that I had a right to know what the chances were that I would sleep in my bed that night, but it might not fit his script, granting that he had one, for Saul and Fred and Orrie to

know how bad it was. So I went, spry and jaunty until I was in the hall out of sight.

I had a date with an actress, made on the phone, but not for a specified minute-any time between three and four. It was five after three when I entered the lobby of the Balfour on Madison Avenue in the Sixties, gave the hallman my name, and said Miss Meg Duncan was expecting me. He gave me a knowing look and inquired, “How’s the fat man?” I said, “Turn around. I’m not much good at faces, but I remember backs.” He said, “You wouldn’t remember mine. I used to hop at the Churchill. Has Miss Duncan lost something?”

“Questions answered while I wait,” I told him. “Mr. Wolfe is just fine, thanks. Miss Duncan can’t find her solid gold knuckleduster and thinks you took it.”

He grinned. “It’s a treat to meet you. You can pick it up on your way out. Twelfth floor. Twelve D.”

I went and entered the elevator and was lifted. Twelve D was at the end of the hall. I pushed the button, and in half a minute the door opened a crack and a voice asked who it was. I pronounced my name, the door swung wide, and a square-jawed female sergeant gave me an unfriendly look. “Miss Duncan has a bad headache,” she said in a voice that went with the jaw and the look. “Can’t you tell me what-“

“Mike!” A voice from inside somewhere. “Is that Mr. Goodwin?”

“Yes! He says it is!”

“Then send him in here!”

A man is bound to feel a little uneasy if he has an appointment to call on a young woman in the middle of the afternoon and is ushered into a room dimmed by Venetian blinds, and she is in bed and clad accordingly, especially if as soon as the door is closed behind you she says, “I haven’t got a headache, sit here,” and pats the edge of the bed. Even if you are certain that you can keep control of the situation-but that’s the trouble; you can’t help feeling that keeping control of the situation is not what your fellow men have a right to expect of you, let alone her fellow women.

There was a chair turned to face the bed, and I took it. As I sat she asked if I had brought her cigarette case.

“No,” I said, “but it’s still there in the safe, and that’s something. Mr. Wolfe sent me to ask you a question. Where were you yesterday evening from nine o’clock to midnight?”

If she had been on her feet, or even on a chair, I believe she would have jumped me again, from the way her eyes flashed. It was personal, not professional. “I wish I had clawed your eyes out,” she said.

“I know, you said that before. But I didn’t come to fire that question at you just to hear you say it again. If you have seen a newspaper you may have noticed that a girl named Maria Perez was murdered last night?”

“Yes.”

“And that she lived at One-fifty-six West Eighty-second Street?” “Yes.”

“So where were you?”

“You know where I was. At the theater. Working.”

“Until ten minutes to eleven. Then you changed. Then?”

She was smiling. “I don’t know why I said that about clawing your eyes out. I mean I do know. Holding me so tight my ribs hurt, and then just a cold fish. Just a�a stone.”

“Not a fish and a stone. In fact, neither. Just a detective on an errand. I still am. Where did you go when you left the theater?”

“I came home and went to bed. Here.” She patted the bed. The way she used her hands had been highly praised by Brooks Atkinson in the Times. “I usually go somewhere and eat something, but last night I was too tired.”

“Had you ever see Maria Perez'Ever run into her in that basement hall?”

“No.”

“I beg your pardon; I doubled up the questions. Had you ever seen her or spoken with her?” “No.”

I nodded. “You would say that, naturally, if you thought you could make it stick. But you may have to eat it. This is how it stands. The police haven’t got onto that room yet. They still haven’t connected Yeager with that house. Mr. Wolfe hopes they won’t, for reasons that don’t matter to you. He believes that whoever killed Yeager killed Maria Perez, and so do I. He wants to find the murderer and clear it up in such a way that that house doesn’t come into it. If he can do that you’ll never have to go on the witness stand and identify your cigarette case. But he can do that only if he gets the facts, and gets them quick.”

I left the chair and went and sat on the bed where she had patted it. “For example, you. I don’t mean facts like where were you Sunday night. We haven’t the time or the men to start checking alibis. I asked you about last night just to start the conversation. Your alibi for last night is no good, but it wouldn’t have been even if you had said you went to Sardi’s with friends and ate a steak. Friends can lie, and so can waiters.”

“I was at a benefit performance at the Majestic Theater Sunday night.”

“It would take a lot of proving to satisfy me that you were there without a break if I had a healthy reason to think you killed Yeager �but I’m not saying you didn’t. An alibi, good or bad, isn’t the kind of fact I want from you. You say you never saw or spoke with Maria Perez. Last night her mother phoned me to come, and I went, and searched her room, and hidden under a false bottom in a drawer I found a collection of items. Among them were three photographs of you. Also there was some money, five-dollar bills, that she hadn’t wanted her parents to know about. I’m being frank with you, Miss Duncan; I’ve told you that Mr. Wolfe would prefer to close it up without the police ever learning about that room and the people who went there. But if they do learn about it, not from us, then look out. Not only that you walked in on Mr. and Mrs. Perez and me, and your cigarette case, but what if they find your fingerprints on those five-dollar bills?”

That was pure dumb luck. I would like to say that I had had a hunch and was playing it, but if I once started dolling up these reports there’s no telling where I’d stop. I was merely letting my tongue go. If there was anything more in Meg Duncan than the fact (according to her) that she had gone straight home from the theater last night, I wanted to talk it out of her if possible. It was just luck that I didn’t mention that the photographs were magazine and newspaper reproductions and that I tossed in the question about the bills.

Luck or not, it hit. She gripped my knee with one of the hands she used so well and said, “My God, the bills. Do they show fingerprints?”

“Certainly.”

“Where are they?”

“In the safe in Mr. Wolfe’s office. Also the photographs.” “I only gave her one. You said three.”

“The other two are from magazines. When did you give it to her?”

“I�I don’t remember. There are so many . . .”

My left hand moved to rest on the coverlet where her leg was, above her knee, the fingers bending, naturally, to the curve of the surface they were touching. Of course it would have been a mistake if I had given the hand a definite order to do that, but I hadn’t. I’m not blaming the hand; it was merely taking advantage of an opportunity that no alert hand could be expected to ignore; but it got a quicker and bigger reaction than it had counted on. When that woman had an impulse she wasted no time. As she came up from the pillow I met her, I guess on the theory that she was going to claw, but her arms clamped around my neck and she took me back with her, and there I was, on top of her from the waist up, my face into the pillow. She was biting the side of my neck, not to hurt, just cordial.

The time, the place, and the girl is a splendid combination, but it takes all three. The place was okay, but the time wasn’t, since I had other errands, and I doubted if the girl’s motives were pure. She was more interested in a cigarette case, a photograph, and some five-dollar bills than in me. Also I don’t like to be bullied. So I brought my hand up, slipped it between her face and my neck, shoved her head into the pillow while raising mine, folded the ends of the pillow over, and had her smothered. She squirmed and kicked for ten seconds and then stopped. I got my feet on the floor and my weight on them, removed my hands from the pillow, and stepped back. I spoke.

“When did you give her the photograph?”

She was panting, gasping, to catch up on oxygen. When she could she said, “Damn you, you put your hand on me.”

“Yeah. Do you expect me to apologize'Patting a place on the bed for me to sit and you in that gauzy thing'You know darned well your nipples show through it. That wasn’t very smart, trying to take my mind off of my work when you’ve got as much at stake as I have.” I sat on the chair. “Look, Miss Duncan. The only way you can possibly get clear is by helping Nero Wolfe wrap it up, and we haven’t got all summer. We may not even have all day. I want to know about the photograph and the five-dollar bills.”

She had got her breath back and pulled the coverlet up to her chin. “You did put your hand on me,” she said.

“Conditioned reflex. The wonder is it wasn’t both hands. When did you give her the photograph?”

“A long time ago. Nearly a year ago. She sent a note to my dressing room at a Saturday matinee. The note said she had seen me at her house and she would like to have three tickets for next Saturday so she could bring two friends. At the bottom below her name was her address. That address … I had her sent in. She was incredible. I have never seen a girl as beautiful. I thought she was�that she had been . . .”

I nodded. “A guest in that room. I don’t think so.”

“Neither did I after I talked with her. She said she had seen me in the hall�twice, she said�and she had recognized me from pictures she had seen. She said she had never told anyone, and she wouldn’t, and I gave her an autographed picture and the three tickets. That was in June, and in July we closed for a month for summer vacation, and in August she came to see me again. She was even more beautiful, she was incredible. She wanted three more tickets, and I said I’d mail them to her, and then she said she had decided she ought to have hush money. That’s what she said, hush money. Five dollars a month. I was to mail it to her the first of each month, to a branch post office on Eighty-third Street, the Planetarium Station. Have you ever seen her?”

“Yes.”

“Then aren’t you surprised?”

“No. I quit being surprised after two years of detective work, long ago.”

“I was. A girl as beautiful and proud as she was�my God, she was proud. And of course I�well, I supposed that would be only a start. Ever since then I have been expecting her to come again, to tell me she had decided five dollars a month wasn’t enough, but she never did.”

“You never saw her again?”

“No, but she saw me. She had told me what she did; when she heard the street door open she put out the light in her room and opened the door a crack, and after that when I went there I saw it when I went down the hall, her door open a little. It gave me a feeling�I don’t know why�it made it more exciting that she was there looking at me.” She patted the bed. “Sit here.”

I stood up. “No, ma’am. It’s even more of a strain when you have the cover up like that, because I know what’s under it. I have chores to do. How many five-dollar bills did you send her?”

“I didn’t count. It was in August, so the first one was September first, and then every month.” The coverlet slipped down.

“Including May'Twelve days ago?”

“Yes.”

“That makes nine. They’re in Mr. Wolfe’s safe. I told Mrs. Perez she’d get them back some day, but since they were hush money you have a valid claim.” I took a step, stretched an arm, curved my fingers around her leg, and gave it a gentle squeeze. “See'Conditioned reflex. I’d better go.” I turned and walked out. Mike, the female sergeant, appeared from somewhere as I reached the foyer, but let me open the door myself. Down in the lobby I took a moment to tell the hallman, “You can relax. We found them in her jewel box. The maid thought they were earrings.” It pays to be on sociable terms with lobby sentries. As I emerged to the sidewalk my watch said 3:40, so Wolfe would be in the office, and I found a phone booth down the block and dialed.

His voice came. “Yes?” He will not answer the phone properly.

“Me. In a booth on Madison Avenue. Money paid to a blackmailer is recoverable, so those bills belong to Meg Duncan. Maria Perez spotted her in the hall a year ago and went to see her and bled her for nine months, five bucks per month. One of the biggest operations in the history of crime. Meg Duncan worked last night and went straight home from the theater and went to bed. I saw the bed and sat on it. Probably true, say twenty to one. From here it’s only about eight minutes to the Yeager house. Shall I go there first?”