Rex Stout - Nero Wolfe 27

by Three Witnesses

  “Don’t you want to tell him?” he asked.

  She shook her head. “No, you.” She put out a hand to touch his knee and then jerked it away.

  His eyes went to Wolfe. “We were married six months ago—six months and four days—but now we’re not married, according to the law. We’re not married because my wife, Caroline—” He paused to look down at her, and, his train of thought interrupted, reached to take her hand, but it moved, and he didn’t get it.

  He stood up, squared his shoulders, faced Wolfe, and spoke faster and louder. “Four years ago she married a man named Sidney Karnow. A year later he enlisted in the Army and was sent to Korea. A few months later she was officially informed that he was dead—killed in action. A year after that I met her and fell in love with her and asked her to marry me, but she wouldn’t until two years had passed since Karnow died, and then she did. Three weeks ago Karnow turned up alive—he phoned his lawyer here from San Francisco—and last week he got his Army discharge, and Sunday, day before yesterday, he came to New York.”

  Aubry hunched his shoulders like Jack Dempsey ready to move in. “I’m not giving her up,” he told the world. “I—will—not—give—her—up!”

  Wolfe grunted. “It’s fifteen million to one, Mr. Aubry.”

  “What do you mean, fifteen million?”

  “The People of the State of New York. They’re lined up against you, officially at least, I’m one of them. Why in heaven’s name did you come to me? You should have cleared out with her days ago—Turkey, Australia, Burma, anywhere—if she was willing. It may not be too late if you hurry. Bon voyage.”

  Aubry stood a moment, took a deep breath, turned and went to the yellow chair I had placed, and sat. Becoming aware that his fists were clenched, he opened them, cupped his hands on his knees, and looked at Caroline. He lifted a hand and let it fall back to his knee. “I can’t touch you,” he said.

  “No,” she said. “Not while—no.”

  “Okay, you tell him. He might think I was bulling it. You tell him.”

  She shook her head. “He can ask me. I’m right here. Go ahead.”

  He went to Wolfe. “It’s like this. Karnow was an only child, and his parents are both dead, and he inherited a pile, nearly two million dollars. He left a will giving half of it to my—to Caroline, and the other half to some relatives, an aunt and a couple of cousins. His lawyer had the will. After notice of his death came it took several months to get the will probated and the estate distributed, on account of special formalities in a case like that. Caroline’s share was a little over nine hundred thousand dollars, and she had it when I met her, and was living on the income. All I had was a job selling automobiles, making around a hundred and fifty a week, but it was her I fell in love with, not the million, just for your information. When we got married it was her idea that I ought to buy an agency, but I’m not saying I fought it. I shopped around and we bought a good one at a bargain, and—”

  “What kind of agency?”

  “Automobile.” Aubry’s tone implied that that was the only kind of agency worth mentioning. “Brandon and Hiawatha. It took nearly half of Caroline’s capital to swing it, but in the past three months we’ve cleared over twenty thousand after taxes, and the future was looking rosy—when this happened. I was figuring— but to hell with that, that’s sunk. This proposition we want to offer Karnow, it’s not my idea and it’s not Caroline’s, it’s ours. It just came out of all our talking and talking after we heard Karnow was alive. Last week we went to Karnow’s lawyer, Jim Beebe, to get him to propose it to Karnow, but we couldn’t persuade him. He said he knew Karnow too well—he was in college with him—and he knew Karnow wouldn’t even listen to it. So we decided—”

  “What was the proposal?”

  “We thought it was a fair offer. We offered to turn it all over to him, the half-million Caroline has left, and the agency, the whole works, if he would consent to a divorce. Also I would continue to run the agency if he wanted to hire me. Also Caroline would ask for no settlement and no alimony.”

  “It was my idea,” she said.

  “It was ours,” he insisted.

  Wolfe was frowning at them. My brows were up again. Evidently he really was in love with her and not the dough, and I’m all for true love up to a point. As for her, my attitude flopped back to the purely professional. Granting that she was set to ditch her lawful husband, if she felt that her Paul was worth a million bucks to her it would have taken too much time and energy to try to talk her out of it. Cocking an eye at his earnest phiz, which was passable, but no pin-up, I would have said that she was overpricing him.

  He was going on. “So when Beebe wouldn’t do it and we learned that Karnow had come to New York, we decided I would see him myself and put it up to him. We only decided that last night. I had some business appointments this morning, and this afternoon I went to his hotel—he’s at the Churchill—and went up to his room. I didn’t phone ahead because I’ve never seen him, and I wanted to see him before I spoke with him. I wanted a look at him.”

  Aubry stopped to rub a palm across his forehead, pressing hard. When his hand dropped to his thigh it became a fist again. “One trouble,” he said, “was that I wasn’t absolutely sure what I was going to say. The main proposition, that was all right, but there were two other things in my mind. The agency is incorporated, and half of the stock is in Caroline’s name and half in mine. Well, I could tell him that if he didn’t take the offer I would hang on to my half and fight for it, but I hadn’t decided whether to or not. The other thing, I could tell him that Caroline is pregnant. It wouldn’t have been true, and I guess I wouldn’t have said it, but it was in my mind. Anyhow it doesn’t matter because I didn’t see him.”

  He clamped his jaw and then relaxed it. “This is where I didn’t shine, I admit that, but it wasn’t just cold feet. I went up to the door of his room, twenty-three-eighteen, without phoning, and I lifted my hand to knock, but I didn’t. Because I realized I was trembling, I was trembling all over. I stood there a while to calm down, but I didn’t calm. I realized that if I went in there and put it to him and he said nothing doing, there was no telling what might happen. The way I was feeling I was a lot more apt to queer it than help it. So I just ducked it. I’m not proud of it, but I’m telling you, I gave it a miss and came away. Caroline was waiting for me in a bar down the street, and I went and told her, and that wasn’t easy either, telling her I had muffed it. Up to then she had thought I could handle about anything that came along. She thought I was good.”

  “I still do, Paul,” she told him.

  “Yeah? I can’t touch you.”

  “Not now. Not until—” Her hand fluttered. “Don’t keep saying that.”

  “Okay, we’ll skip it.” He went back to Wolfe. “So I told her the man-to-man approach was a bum idea, and we sat and chewed at it. We decided that none of our friends was up to it. The lawyer I use for the agency wouldn’t be worth a damn. When one of us thought of you—I forget which—it clicked with both of us, and I went to a booth to phone for an appointment. Maybe you can get him down here and you make him the proposition yourself, or if he won’t come you can send Archie Goodwin to see him. Caroline has the idea it might be better to send Goodwin because Karnow’s thin-skinned and you might irritate him. We’ll leave that to you. I wish I could say if you get him to take our offer you can write your own ticket, any amount you want to make it, but in that case we won’t be any too flush so I have to mention it. Five thousand dollars, something like that, we could manage that all right. But for God’s sake go to it—now, today, tonight!”

  Wolfe cleared his throat. “I’m not a lawyer, Mr. Aubry, I’m a detective.”

  “I know that, but what’s the difference? You have a reputation for getting things out of people. We want you to detect a way of getting Karnow to accept our proposition.”

  Wolfe grunted. “I could challenge your diction, but you’re in no mood to debate semantics. And my fees are based on
the kind and amount of work done. Your job seems fairly simple. In describing it to me, how candid have you been?”

  “Completely. Absolutely.”

  “Nonsense. Complete candor is beyond the reach of man or woman. If Mr. Karnow accepts your proposal, can I rely on you to adhere to its terms as you have stated them?”

  “Yes. You’re damn right you can.”

  Wolfe’s head turned. “Mrs. Karnow, are you—”

  “She’s not Mrs. Karnow!” Aubrey barked. “She’s my wife!”

  Wolfe’s shoulders went up half an inch and dropped back. “Madam, are you sure you understand the proposal and will faithfully adhere to it?”

  “Yes,” she said firmly.

  “You know that you will be relinquishing a dower right, a legal right, in a large property?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then I must ask a few questions about Mr. Karnow—of you, since Mr. Aubry has never met him. You had no child by him?”

  “No.”

  “You were in love when you married, presumably?”

  “We thought—I guess we were. Yes, say we were.”

  “Did it cool off?”

  “Not exactly.” She hesitated, deciding how to put it. “Sidney was sensitive and high-strung—you see. I still say ‘was’ because for so long I thought he was dead. I was only nineteen when we were married, and I suppose I didn’t know how to take him. He enlisted in the Army because he thought he ought to, because he hadn’t been in the World War and he thought he should do his share of peeling potatoes—that was how he put it—but I didn’t agree with him. I had found out by then that what I thought wasn’t very important, nor what I felt either. If you’re going to try to get him to agree to this of course you want to know what he’s like, but I don’t really know myself, not after all this time. Maybe it would help for you to read the letters I got from him after he enlisted. He only sent me three, one from Camp Givens and two from Korea—he didn’t like writing letters. My husb—Paul said I should bring them along to show you.”

  She opened her bag, fished in it, and produced some sheets of paper clipped together. I went to get them and hand them to Wolfe, and, since I would probably be elected to deliver the proposal, I planted myself at his elbow and read along with him. All three letters are still in the archives in our office, but I’ll present only one, the last one, to give you a sample of the tone and style:

  Dear Carrie my true and loving mate I hope:

  Pardon me, but my weakness is showing. I would like to be where you are this minute and tell you why I didn’t like your new dress, and you would go and put on another one, and we would go to Chambord and eat snails and drink Richebourg and then go to the Velvet Yoke and eat lady fingers and drink tomato soup, and then we would go home and take hot baths and go to sleep on fine linen sheets spread over mattresses three feet thick, covered with an electric blanket. After several days of that I would begin to recognize myself and would put my arms around you and we would drown in delight.

  Now I suppose I should tell you enough about this place to make you understand why I would rather be somewhere else, but that would be too easy to bother with, and anyway, as you well know, I hate to write, and especially I hate to try to write what I feel. Since the time is getting closer and closer when I’ll try to kill somebody and probably succeed, I’ve been going through my memory for things about death. Herodotus said, “Death is a delightful hiding-place for weary men.” Epictetus said, “What is death but a bugbear?” Montaigne said, “The deadest deaths are the best.” I’ll quote those to the man I’m going to kill and then he won’t mind so much.

  Speaking of death, if he should get me instead of me getting him, something I did before I left New York will give you quite a shock. I wish I could be around to see how you take it. You claim you have never worried about money, that it’s not worth it. Also you’ve told me that I always talk sardonic but haven’t got it in me to act sardonic. This will show you. I’ll admit I have to die to get the last laugh, but that will be sardonic too. I wonder do I love you or hate you? They’re hard to tell apart. Remember me in thy dreams.

  Your sardonic

  Kavalier Karnow

  As I went to my desk to put the letters under a paperweight Caroline was speaking. “I wrote him two long letters every week. I must have sent him over fifty letters, and he never mentioned them the few times he wrote. I want to try to be fair to him, but he always said he was egocentric, and I guess he was.”

  “Not was,” Aubry said grimly. “Is. He is.” He asked Wolfe, “Doesn’t that letter prove he’s a nut?”

  “He is—uh—picturesque,” Wolfe conceded. He turned to Caroline. “What had he done before he left New York that—upon his death—gave you quite a shock?”

  She shook her head. “I don’t know. Naturally I thought he had changed his will and left me out. After word came that he was dead I showed that letter to the lawyer, Jim Beebe, and told him what I thought, and he said it did sound like it, but there had been no change made in the will as far as he knew, and Sidney must have been stringing me.”

  “Not too adroitly,” Wolfe objected. “It isn’t so simple to disinherit a wife. However, since he didn’t try—What do you know about the false report of his death?”

  “Only a little from an item in the paper,” she said, “but Jim Beebe told me some more. He was left for dead in the field in a retreat, but actually he was only stunned, and he was taken prisoner. He was a prisoner for nearly two years, and then he escaped across the Yalu River, and then he was in Manchuria. By that time he could talk their language—he was wonderful with languages—and he made friends in a village and wore their clothes, and it seems—I’m not sure about this, but apparently he was converted to communism.”

  “Then he’s a jackass,” Wolfe asserted.

  “Oh, no, he’s not a jackass.” She was positive. “Maybe he was just being picturesque. Anyhow, a few months after the truce was signed and the fighting stopped he finally decided he had had enough of it and went back across the Yalu and made his way to South Korea and reported to an army post, and they sent him home. And now he’s here,” She stretched her hands out, at arm’s length. “Please, Mr. Wolfe? Please?”

  Though of course she didn’t know it, that was bad tactics. Wolfe’s reaction to an emotional appeal from a man is rarely favorable, and from a woman, never. He turned away from the painful sight, to me. “Archie. You’re in my hire, and I can dispatch you on errands within the scope of my métier, but this one isn’t. Are you willing to tackle it?”

  He was being polite. What he really meant was: Five grand will pay a lot of salaries, including yours, and you will please proceed to earn it for me. So, wishing to be polite too, I suggested a compromise. “I’m willing to go get him and bring him here, and you can tackle it.”

  “No,” he said flatly. “Regarding the proposal as quixotic, as I do, I would be a feeble advocate. I abandon it to your decision.”

  “I deeply appreciate it,” I assured him. “Nuts. If I say no I won’t hear the last of it for months, so I’ll meet you all the way and say yes. I’ll take a shot at it.”

  “Very well. We’ll discuss it after dinner, and in the morning you can—”

  They drowned him out, both of them cutting in to protest. They couldn’t wait until tomorrow, they had to know. They protested to him and then appealed to me. Why put it off? Why not now? I do not react to emotional appeals the way Wolfe does, and I calmed them down by agreeing with them.

  “Very well,” Wolfe acquiesced, which was noble of him. “But you must have with you the proposal in writing, in duplicate, signed by Mr. Aubry and—uh—you, madam. You must sign it as Caroline Karnow. Archie. At the bottom, on the left, type the word ‘accepted’ and a colon. Under the circumstances he would be a nincompoop not to sign it, but it would probably be imprudent to tell him so. Your notebook, please?”

  I swiveled and got it from the drawer.

  II

  I rapped with
my knuckles, smartly but not aggressively, on the door of Room 2318 on the twenty-third floor of the Hotel Churchill.

  The clients had wanted to camp in Wolfe’s office to await word from me, but I had insisted they should be as handy as possible in case developments called for their personal appearance, and they were downstairs in the Tulip Bar, not, I hoped, proceeding to get lit. People in serious trouble have a tendency to eat too little or drink too much, or both.

  I knocked again, louder and longer.

  On the way in the taxi I had collected a little more information about Sidney Karnow, at least as he had been three years back. His attitude toward money had been somewhat superior, but he had shown no inclination to scatter his pile around regardless. So far as Caroline knew, he hadn’t scattered it at all. He had been more than decent about meeting her modest requirements, and even anticipating them. That gave me no lead, but other details did. The key words were “egocentric,” which was bad, and “proud,” which was good. If he really had pride and wasn’t just using it as a cover for something that wouldn’t stand daylight, fine. No proud man would want to eat his breakfasts with a woman who was eager to cough up nearly a million bucks for the privilege of eating them with another guy. That, I had decided, was the line to take, but I would have to go easy on the wording until I had sized him up.

  Evidently the sizing up would be delayed, since my knocking got no response. Not wanting to risk a picturesque refusal to make an appointment, I hadn’t phoned ahead. I decided to go down and tell the clients that patience would be required for ten minutes or ten hours, and take on a sandwich and a glass of milk and then come up for another try, but before I turned away my hand went automatically to the knob for a twist and a push, and the door opened. I stood a second, then pushed it a foot farther, stuck my head in, and called, “Mr. Karnow! Karnow!”

  No answer. I swung the door open and crossed the sill. Beyond the light I was letting in was darkness, and I would probably have backed out and shut the door and beat it if I hadn’t had such a good nose. When it told me there was a faint odor that I should recognize, and a couple of sniffs confirmed it, I found the wall switch and flipped it, and moved on in. A man was there, spread-eagled on the floor near an open door, flat on his back.