by Ellery Queen
“Neither do I.” I drank milk, emptying the glass. “Why, have you done something to me?”
“I didn’t mean to.”
“Of course not.”
“It came out. You remember you explained it for me one night.”
I nodded. “I said you have a bypass in your wiring. With ordinary people like me, when words start on their way out they have to go through a checking station for an okay, except when we’re too mad or scared or something. You may have a perfectly good checking station, but for some reason, maybe a loose connection, it often gets bypassed.”
She was frowning. “But the trouble is, if I haven’t got a checking station I’m just plain dumb. If I do have one, it certainly got bypassed when the words came out about my going to meet you there yesterday.”
“Meet me where?”
“On Forty-eighth Street. There at the entrance to the alley where I used to turn to deliver the corn to Rusterman’s. I said I was to meet you there at five o’clock and we were going to wait there until Ken came because we wanted to have a talk with him. But I was late, I didn’t get there until a quarter past five, and you weren’t there, so I left.”
I kept my shirt on. “You said that to whom?”
“To several people. I said it to a man who came to the apartment, and in that building he took me to downtown I said it to another man, and then to two more, and it was in a statement they had me sign.”
“When did we make the date to meet there? Of course they asked that.”
“They asked everything. I said I phoned you yesterday morning and we made it then.”
“It’s just possible that you are dumb. Didn’t you realize they would come to me?”
“Why, of course. And you would deny it. But I thought they would think you just didn’t want to be involved, and I said you weren’t there, and you could probably prove you were somewhere else, so that wouldn’t matter, and I had to give them some reason why I went there and then came away without even going in the restaurant to ask if Ken had been there.”
She leaned forward. “Don’t you see, Archie? I couldn’t say I had gone there to see Ken, could I?”
“No. Okay, you’re not dumb.” I crossed my legs and leaned back. “You had gone there to see Ken?”
“Yes. There was something—about something.”
“You got there at a quarter past five?”
“Yes.”
“And came away without even going in the restaurant to ask if Ken had been there?”
“I didn’t—Yes, I came away.”
I shook my head. “Look, Sue. Maybe you didn’t want to get me involved, but you have, and I want to know. If you went there to see Ken and got there at a quarter past five, you did see him. Didn’t you?”
“I didn’t see him alive.” Her hands on her lap, very nice hands, were curled into fists. “I saw him dead. I went up the alley and he was there on the ground. I thought he was dead, but, if he wasn’t, someone would soon come out and find him, and I was scared. I was scared because I had told him just two days ago that I would like to kill him. I didn’t think it out, I didn’t stop to think, I was just scared. I didn’t realize until I was several blocks away how dumb that was.”
“Why was it dumb?”
“Because Felix and the doorman had seen me. When I came I passed the front of the restaurant, and they were there on the sidewalk, and we spoke. So I couldn’t say I hadn’t been there and it was dumb to go away, but I was scared. When I got to the apartment I thought it over and decided what to say, about going there to meet you, and when a man came and started asking questions I told him about it before he asked.” She opened a fist to gesture. “I did think about it, Archie. I did think it couldn’t matter to you, not much.”
That didn’t gibe with the bypassing-the-checking-station theory, but there was no point in making an issue of it. “You thought wrong,” I said, not complaining, just stating a fact. “Of course they asked you why we were going to meet there to have a talk with Ken, since he would be coming here. Why not here instead of there?”
“Because you didn’t want to. You didn’t want to talk with him here.”
“I see. You really thought it over. Also they asked what we wanted to talk with him about. Had you thought about that?”
“Oh, I didn’t have to. About what he had told you, that I thought I was pregnant and he was responsible.”
That was a little too much. I goggled at her, and my eyes were in no shape for goggling. “He had told me that?” I demanded. “When?”
“You know when. Last week. Last Tuesday when he brought the corn. He told me about it Saturday—no, Sunday. At the farm.”
I uncrossed my legs and straightened up. “I may have heard it wrong. I may be lower than I realized. Ken Faber told you on Sunday that he had told me on Tuesday that you thought you were pregnant and he was responsible? Was that it?”
“Yes. He told Carl too—you know, Carl Heydt. He didn’t tell me he had told Carl, but Carl did. I think he told two other men too—Peter Jay and Max Maslow. I don’t think you know them. That was when I told him I would like to kill him, when he told me he had told you.”
“And that’s what you told the cops we wanted to talk with him about?”
“Yes. I don’t see why you say I thought wrong, thinking it wouldn’t matter much to you, because you weren’t there. Can’t you prove you were somewhere else?”
I shut my eyes to look it over. The more I sorted it out, the messier it got. Mandel hadn’t been fooling when he asked the judge to put a fifty-grand tag on me; the wonder was that he hadn’t hit me with the big one.
I opened my itching eyes and had to blink to get her in focus. “For a frame,” I said, “it’s close to perfect, but I’m willing to doubt if you meant it. I doubt if you know the ropes well enough, and why pick on me? I am not a patsy. But whether you meant it or not, what are you here for? Why bother to come and tell me about it?”
“Because—I thought—don’t you understand, Archie?”
“I understand plenty, but not why you’re here.”
“But don’t you see, it’s my word against yours. They told me last night that you denied that we had arranged to meet there. I wanted to ask you—I thought you might change that, you might tell them that you denied it just because you didn’t want to be involved, that you had agreed to meet me there but you decided not to go, and they’ll have to believe you because of course you were somewhere else. Then they won’t have any reason not to believe me.”
She put out a hand. “Archie—will you? Then it will be all right.”
“Holy saints. You think so?”
“Of course it will. The way it is now they think either I’m lying or you’re lying, but if you tell them—”
“Shut up!”
She gawked at me; then all of a sudden she broke. Her head went down and her hands up to cover her face. Her shoulders started to tremble and then she was shaking all over. If she had sobbed or groaned or something I would have merely waited it out, but there was no sound effect at all, and that was dangerous. She might crack.
I went to Wolfe’s desk and got the vase of orchids, Dendrobium nobile that day, removed the flowers and put them on my desk pad, went to her, got fingers under her chin, forced her head up, and sloshed her good. The vase holds two quarts. Her hands came down and I sloshed her again, and she squealed and grabbed for my arm. I dodged, put the vase on my desk, went to the bathroom, which is over in the corner, and came back with a towel. She was on her feet, dabbing at her front.
“Here,” I said, “use this.”
She took it and wiped her face. “You didn’t have to do that,” she said.
“The hell I didn’t.” I got another chair and put it at a dry spot, went to my desk, and sat. “It might help if someone did it to me. Now listen. Whether you meant it or not, I am out on an extremely rickety limb. Ken did not tell me last Tuesday that you thought you were pregnant and he was responsible, he told me nothin
g whatever, but whether he lied to you or you’re lying to the cops and me, they think he did.
“They also think or suspect that you and I have been what they call intimate. They also expect you to say under oath that I agreed to meet you at the entrance of that alley yesterday at five o’clock, and I can’t prove I wasn’t there. There’s a man who will say he was with me somewhere else, but he’s a friend of mine and he often works with me when Mr. Wolfe needs more help, and the cops don’t have to believe him and neither would a jury. I don’t know what else the cops have or haven’t got, but any time now—”
“I didn’t lie to you, Archie.” She was on the dry chair, gripping the towel. A strand of wet hair dropped over her eye and she pushed it back. “Everything I told—”
“Skip it. Any time now, any minute, I may be hauled in on a charge of murder, and then where am I? Or suppose I somehow made it stick that I did not agree to meet you there, that you’re lying to them, and I wasn’t there. Then where will you be? The way it stands, the way you’ve staged it, today or tomorrow either you or I will be in the jug with no out. So either I—”
“But Archie, you—”
“Don’t interrupt. Either I wriggle off by selling them on you—and by the way, I haven’t asked you.” I got up and went to her. “Stand up. Look at me.” I extended my hands at waist level, open, palms up. “Put your hands on mine, palms down. No, don’t press, relax, just let them rest there. Damn it, relax! Right. Look at me. Did you kill Ken?”
“No.”
“Again. Did you kill him?”
“No, Archie!”
I turned and went back to my chair. She came a step forward, backed up, and sat. “That’s my private lie detector,” I told her. “Not patented. Either I wriggle off by selling them on you, and it would take some wriggling, which is not my style, or I do a job that is my style—I hope.
“As you know, I work for Nero Wolfe. First I see him and tell him I’m taking a leave of absence—I hope a short one. Then you and I go someplace where we’re sure we won’t be interrupted, and you tell me things, a lot of things, and no fudging. Where I go from there depends on what you tell me. I’ll tell you one thing now, if you—”
The door opened and Wolfe was there. He crossed to the corner of his desk, faced her, and spoke. “I’m Nero Wolfe. Will you please move to this chair?” He indicated the red-leather chair by a nod, circled around his desk, and sat. He looked at me. “A job that is your style?”
Well. As I remarked when he insisted that I see her in the office, if I hadn’t been pooped I would have given that offer a little attention. If I had been myself I would have known, or at least suspected, what he intended. I suppose he and I came as close to trusting each other as any two men can, on matters of joint concern, but as he had told Parker, this was my affair, and I was discussing it with someone in his office, keeping him away from his favorite chair, and I had just told him that nothing of what I had told Cramer was flummery. So he had gone to the hole in the alcove.
I looked back at him. “I said I hope. What if I heard the panel open and steered clear?”
“Pfui. Clear of what?”
“Okay. Your trick. But I think she has a right to know.”
“I agree.” Sue had moved to the red-leather chair, and he swiveled. “Miss McLeod. I eavesdropped, without Mr. Goodwin’s knowledge. I heard all that was said, and I saw. Do you wish to complain?”
She had fingered her hair back, but it was still a sight. “Why?” she asked.
“Why did I listen? To learn how much of a pickle Mr. Goodwin was in. And I learned. I have intruded because the situation is intolerable. You are either a cockatrice or a witling. Whether by design or stupidity, you have brought Mr. Goodwin to a desperate pass. That is—”
I broke in. “It’s my affair. You said so.”
He stayed at her. “That is his affair, but now it threatens me. I depend on him. I can’t function properly, let alone comfortably, without him. He just told you he would take a leave of absence. That would be inconvenient for me but bearable, even if it were rather prolonged, but it’s quite possible that I would lose him for good, and that would be a calamity. I won’t have it. Thanks to you, he is in grave jeopardy.” He turned. “Archie. This is now our joint affair. By your leave.”
I raised both eyebrows. “Retroactive? Parker and my bail?”
He made a face. “Very well. Intimate or not, you have known Miss McLeod three years. Did she kill that man?”
“No and yes.”
“That doesn’t help.”
“I know it doesn’t. The ‘no’ because of a lot of assorted items, including the lie-detector test I just gave her, which of course you would hoot at if you hooted. The ‘yes,’ chiefly because she’s here. Why did she come? She says to ask me to change my story and back hers up, that we had a date to meet there. That’s a good deal to expect, and I wonder.
“If she killed him, of course she’s scared stiff and she might ask anybody anything, but if she didn’t, why come and tell me she went in the alley and saw him dead and scooted? I wonder. On balance, one will get you two that she didn’t. One item for ‘no,’ when a man gets a girl pregnant her normal procedure is to make him marry her, and quick. What she wants most and has got to have is a father for the baby, and not a dead father. She certainly isn’t going to kill him unless—”
“That’s silly,” Sue blurted, “I’m not pregnant.”
I stared. “You said Ken told you he told me.”
She nodded. “Ken would tell anybody anything.”
“But you thought you were?”
“Of course not. How could I? There’s only one way a girl can get pregnant, and it couldn’t have been that with me because it’s never happened.”
Like everybody else, I like to kid myself that I know why I think this or do that, but sometimes it just won’t work, and that was once. I don’t mean why I believed her about not being pregnant and how she knew she couldn’t be; I do know that; it was the way she said it and the way she looked. I had known her three years. But since, if I believed her on that, I had to scrap the item I had just given Wolfe for “no” on her killing Faber, why didn’t I change the odds to even money?
I pass. I could cook up a case—for instance if she was straight on one thing, about not being pregnant and why not, she was probably straight on other things too—but who would buy it? It’s even possible that every man alive, of whom I am one, has a feeling down below that an unmarried girl who knows she can’t be pregnant is less apt to commit murder than one who can’t be sure. I admit that a good private detective shouldn’t have feelings down below, but have you any suggestions?
Since Wolfe pretends to think I could qualify on the witness stand as an expert on attractive young women, of course he turned to me and said, “Archie?” and I nodded yes. An expert shouldn’t back and fill, and as I just said, I believed her on the pregnancy issue. Wolfe grunted, told me to take my notebook, gave her a hard eye for five seconds, and started in.
An hour and ten minutes later, when Fritz came to announce lunch, I had filled most of a new notebook and Wolfe was leaning back with his eyes shut and his lips tight. It was evident that he was going to have to work. She had answered all his questions with no apparent fumbling, and it still looked very much as if either I was going to ride the bumps or she was. Or possibly both.
As she told it, she had met Ken Faber eight months ago at a party at the apartment of Peter Jay. Ken had been fast on the follow-up, and four months later, in May, she had told him she would marry him someday—say in two or three years, when she was ready to give up modeling—if he had shown that he could support a family.
From the notebook: “I was making over eight hundred dollars a week, ten times as much as he was, and of course if I got married I couldn’t expect to keep that up. I don’t think a married woman should model anyway because if you’re married you ought to have babies, and there’s no telling what that will do to you, and who looks aft
er the babies?”
In June, at his request, she had got her father to give him a job on the farm, but she had soon regretted it. From the notebook: “Of course he knew I went to the farm weekends in the summer, and the very first weekend it was easy to see what his idea was. He thought it would be different on the farm than in town, it would be easy to get me to do what he wanted, as easy as falling off a log.
“The second week it was worse, and the third week it was still worse, and I was seeing what he was really like and I wished I hadn’t said I would marry him. He accused me of letting other men do what I wouldn’t let him do, and he tried to make me promise I wouldn’t date any other man, even for dinner or a show.
“Then the last week in July he seemed to get some sense and I thought maybe he had just gone through some kind of phase or something, but last week, Friday evening, he was worse than ever all of a sudden, and Sunday he told me he had told Archie Goodwin that I thought I was pregnant and he was responsible, and of course Archie would pass it on, and if I denied it no one would believe me, and the only thing to do was to get married right away.
“That was when I told him I’d kill him. Then the next day, Monday, Carl—Carl Heydt—told me that Ken had told him the same thing, and I suspected he had told two other men, on account of things they had said, and I decided to go there Tuesday and see him. I was going to tell him he had to tell Archie and Carl it was a lie, and anybody else he had told, and if I had to I’d get a lawyer.”
If that was straight, and the part about Carl Heydt and Peter Jay and Max Maslow could be checked, that made it more like ten to one that she hadn’t killed him. She couldn’t have ad-libbed it; she would have had to go there intending to kill him, or at least bruise him, since she couldn’t have just happened to have with her apiece of two-inch pipe sixteen inches long. Say twenty to one.
But if she hadn’t who had? Better than twenty to one, not some thug. There had been eighty bucks in Ken’s pockets, and why would a thug go up that alley with the piece of pipe, much less hide under the platform with it? No. It had to be someone out for Ken specifically who knew that spot, or at least knew about it, and knew he would come there, and when.
