Rex Stout - Nero Wolfe 27

by Three Witnesses

“Nope. Guaranteed straight as delivered. I just want to get my employer’s name in the paper. Mine is spelled, A-R-C-H—”

  “I know that too. Who else has got this?”

  “From me, nobody. Only you, son.”

  “What did they want Wolfe to do?”

  Of course that was to be expected. Give a newspaperman an inch and he wants a column. I finally convinced him that that was all for now and resumed my way downtown.

  At Manhattan Homicide West on Twentieth Street I was hoping to be assigned to Lieutenant Rowcliff so I could try once more to make him mad enough to stutter, but I got a college graduate named Eisenstadt who presented no challenge. All he wanted was facts, and I dished them out, withholding, naturally, that I had entered the room. It took less than an hour, including having my statement typed and signed, and I declined his pressing invitation to stick around until Inspector Cramer got in. I told him another fact, that I was a citizen in good standing, or fair at least, with a known address, and could be found if and when needed.

  Back at the office Wolfe was yawning at a book. The yawn was an act. He wanted to make it clear to me that losing a fee of five grand was nothing to get riled about. I had a choice: either proceed to rile him or go up to bed. They were equally attractive, and I flipped a quarter and caught it. He didn’t ask me what I was deciding because he thought I wanted him to. It was heads, and I told him my session at Homicide wasn’t worth reporting, said good night, and mounted the two flights to my room.

  In the morning, at breakfast in the kitchen, with Fritz supplying me with hot griddle cakes and the paper propped in front of me, I saw that I had given Lon not one inch but two. He had stretched it because it was exclusive. Aside from that, there was a pile of miscellaneous information, such as that Karnow had an Aunt Margaret named Mrs. Raymond Savage, and she had a son Richard, and a daughter Ann, now married to one Norman Horne. There was a picture of Ann, and also one of Caroline, not very good.

  I seldom see Wolfe in the morning until eleven, when he comes down from the plant rooms, and that morning I didn’t see him at all. A little after ten a call came from Sergeant Stebbins to invite me to drop in at the District Attorney’s office at my earliest inconvenience. I don’t apologize for taking only four minutes to put weights on papers on my desk, phone up to Wolfe, and get my hat and go, because there was a chance of running into our former clients, and they might possibly be coming to the conclusion that they hadn’t had enough of Wolfe after all.

  I needn’t have been in such a hurry. In a large anteroom on an upper floor at 155 Leonard Street I sat for nearly half an hour on a hard wooden chair, waiting. I was about ready to go over to the window and tell the veteran female that another three minutes was all I could spare when another female appeared, coming from a corridor that led within. That one was not veteran at all, and I postponed my ultimatum. The way she moved was worthy of study, her face invited a full analysis, her clothes deserved a complete inventory, and either her name was Ann Savage Horne or the Gazette had run the wrong picture.

  She saw me taking her in, and reciprocated frankly, her head tilted a little to one side, came and sat on a chair near mine, and gave me the kind of straight look that you expect only from a queen or a trollop.

  I spoke. “What’s that stole?” I asked her. “Rabbit?”

  She smiled to dazzle me and darned near made it. “Where did you get the idea,” she asked back, “that vulgarity is the best policy?”

  “It’s not policy; I was born vulgar. When I saw your picture in the paper I wondered what your voice was like, and I wanted to hear it. Talk some more.”

  “Oh. You’re one up on me.”

  “I don’t mind squaring it. I am called Goodwin, Archie Goodwin.”

  “Goodwin?” she frowned a little. She brightened. “Of course! You’re in the paper too—if you’re that one. You work for Nero Wolfe?”

  “I practically am Nero Wolfe, when it comes to work. Where were you yesterday afternoon from eleven minutes past two until eighteen minutes to six?”

  “Let’s see. I was walking in the park with my pet flamingo. If you think that’s no alibi, you’re wrong. My flamingo can talk. Ask me some more.”

  “Can your flamingo tell time?”

  “Certainly. It wears a wristwatch on its neck.”

  “How can it see it?”

  She nodded. “I knew you’d ask that. It has been trained to tie its neck in a knot, just a plain single knot, and when it does that the watch is on a bend so that—well, Mother?” She was suddenly out of her chair and moving. “What, no handcuffs on anybody?”

  Mother, Sidney Karnow’s Aunt Margaret, leading a procession emerging from the corridor, would have made two of her daughter Ann and more than half of Nero Wolfe. She was large not only in bulk but also in facial detail, each and all of her features being so big that space above her chin was at a premium. Besides her was a thin young man, runty by comparison, wearing black-rimmed glasses, and behind them were two other males, one, obviously, from his resemblance to Mother, Ann’s brother Richard, and the other a tall loose-jointed specimen who would have been called distinguished-looking by any woman between sixteen and sixty.

  As I made my swift survey the flamingo trainer was going on. “Mother, this is Mr. Goodwin—the Archie Goodwin who was at the Churchill yesterday with Caroline and Paul. He’s grilling me. Mr. Goodwin, my mother, my brother Dick, my husband, Norman Horne —no, not the one with the cheaters, that’s Jim Beebe, the lawyer to end all laws. This is my husband.” The distinguished-looking one had pushed by and was beside her. She was flowing on. “You know how disappointed I was at the District Attorney being so godawful polite to us, but Mr. Goodwin is different. He’s going to give me the third degree—physically, I mean; he’s built for it, and I expect I’ll go to pieces and confess—”

  Her husband’s palm pressed over her mouth, firm but not rough, stopped her. “You talk too much, darling,” he said tolerantly.

  “It’s her sense of humor,” Aunt Margaret explained. “All the same, Ann dear, it is out of place, with poor Sidney just cruelly murdered. Cruelly.”

  “Nuts,” Dick Savage snapped.

  “It was cruel,” his mother insisted. “Murder is cruel.”

  “Sure it was,” he agreed, “but for us Sid has been dead more than two years, and he’s been alive again only two weeks, and we never even saw him, so what do you expect?”

  “I suggest,” Beebe the lawyer put in, in a high thin voice that fitted his stature perfectly, “that this is rather a public spot for a private discussion. Shall we go?”

  “I can’t,” Ann declared. “Mr. Goodwin is going to wear me down and finally break me. Look at his hard gray eyes. Look at his jaw.”

  “Now, darling,” Norman Horne said affectionately, and took her elbow and started her toward the door. The others filed after them, with Beebe in the rear. Not one mentioned the pleasure it had given them to meet me, though the lawyer did let me have a nod of farewell as he went by.

  As I stood and watched the door closing behind them the veteran female’s voice came. “Mr. Mandelbaum will see you, Mr. Goodwin.”

  Only two assistant district attorneys rate corner rooms, and Mandelbaum wasn’t one of them. Halfway down the corridor, his door was standing open, and, entering, I had a surprise. Mandelbaum was at his desk, and across from him, on one of the two spare chairs that the little room sported, was a big husky guy with graying hair, a broad red face, and gray eyes that had been found hard to meet by tougher babies than Mrs. Norman Horne. If she called mine hard she should have seen those of Inspector Cramer of Homicide.

  “I’m honored,” I said appreciatively and accepted Mandelbaum’s invitation to use the third chair.

  “Look at me,” Cramer commanded.

  I did so with my brows up, which always annoys him.

  “I’m late for an appointment,” he said, “so I’ll cut it short. I’ve just been up to see Wolfe. Of course he corroborates you, and he says he h
as no client. I’ve read your statement. I tell you frankly that we have no proof that you entered that hotel room.”

  “Now I can breathe again,” I said with feeling.

  “Yeah. The day you stop I’ll eat as usual. I admit we have no proof, as yet, that you went in that room, but I know damn well you did. Information that the body was there came to us over the phone in a voice that was obviously disguised. You won’t deny that I know pretty well by now how you react to situations.”

  “Sure. Boldly, bravely, and brilliantly.”

  “I only say I know. Leaving Aubry and Mrs. Karnow down in the bar, you go up and knock on the door of Karnow’s room, and get no answer. In that situation there’s not one chance in a thousand that you would leave without trying the knob.”

  “Then I must have.”

  “So you did?”

  I stayed patient and reasonable. “Either I didn’t try the knob—”

  “Can it. Of course you did, and you found the door wasn’t locked. So you opened it and called Karnow’s name and got no answer, and you went in and saw the body. That I know, because I know you, and also because of what followed. You went back down to the bar and sat with them a while, and then took them back to Wolfe. Why? Because you knew Karnow had been murdered. If you had merely gone away when your knock wasn’t answered, you would have stuck there until Karnow showed, if it took all night. And that’s not half of it. When Stebbins went to Wolfe’s place after them, with no warrant and no charge entered, Wolfe meekly handed them over! He says they were no longer his clients, since Stebbins had brought the news that Karnow was dead, but why weren’t they? Because he won’t take a murderer for a client knowingly, and he thought Aubry had killed Karnow. That’s why.”

  I shook my head. “Gee, if you already know everything, I don’t see why you bother with me.”

  “I want to know exactly what you did in that room, and whether you changed anything or took anything.” Cramer leaned to me. “Look, Goodwin, I advise you to unload. The way it’s going, I fully expect Aubry to break before the day’s out, and when he does we’ll have it all, including what you told them you had seen in Karnow’s room when you rejoined them in the bar, and why the three of you went back to Wolfe’s place. If you let me have it now I won’t hold it against you that — What are you grinning for?”

  “I’m thinking of Mr. Wolfe’s face when I tell him this. When Stebbins came with the news that Karnow was dead, and therefore the job was up the flue, Mr. Wolfe hinted as far as his dignity would let him that he would consider another job if they had one, but they sidestepped it. So this will upset him. He keeps telling me we mustn’t get discouraged, that some day you will be right about something, but this will be a blow—”

  Cramer got up and tramped from the room.

  I let Mandelbaum have the tail end of the grin. “Is he getting more sensitive?”

  “Someday,” the Assistant DA declared, “certain people are going to decide that Wolfe and you are doing more harm than good, and you won’t have so much fun without a license. I’m too busy to play games. Please beat it.”

  When I got back to Thirty-fifth Street, a little after noon, Wolfe was at his desk, fiddling with stacks of cards from the files, plant germination records. I asked if he wanted a report of my visit with Mandelbaum and Cramer, and he said none was needed because he had talked with Cramer and knew the nature of his current befuddlement. I said I had met Karnow’s relatives and also his lawyer, and would he care for my impressions, and got no reply but a rude grunt, so I passed it and went to my desk to finish some chores that had been interrupted by Stebbins’ phone call. I had just started in when the doorbell rang, and I went to the hall to answer it.

  Caroline Karnow was there on the stoop. I went and opened the door, and she stepped in.

  “I want to see Mr. Wolfe,” she blurted, and proved it by going right on, to the office door and in. I am supposed to block visitors until I learn if Wolfe will see them, but it would have taken a flying tackle, and I let her go and merely followed. By the time I got there she was in the red leather chair as if she owned it.

  Wolfe, a germination card in each hand, was scowling at her.

  “They’ve arrested him,” she said. “For murder.”

  “Naturally,” Wolfe growled.

  “But he didn’t do it!”

  “Also naturally. I mean naturally you would say that.”

  “But it’s true! I want you to prove it.”

  Wolfe shook his head. “Not required. They must prove he did. You’re all tight, madam. Too tight. Have you eaten today?”

  “Good lord,” she said, “all you two think about is eating. Last night him, and now—” She started to laugh, at first a sort of gurgle, and then really out with it. I got up and went to her, took her head between my hands to turn her face up, and kissed her on the lips unmistakably. With some customers that is more satisfactory than a slap, and just as effective. I paid no attention to her first convulsive jerks, and released her head only when she quit shaking and got hold of my hair. I pulled loose and backed up a step.

  “What on earth—” She gasped.

  I decided she had snapped out of it, went to the kitchen and asked Fritz to bring crackers and milk and hot coffee, and returned. As I sat at my desk she demanded, “Did you have to do that?”

  “Look,” I said, “evidently you came to get Mr. Wolfe to help you. He can’t stand hysterical women, and in another four seconds he would have been out of the room and would have refused to see you again. That’s one angle of it. I am going on talking to give both you and Mr. Wolfe a chance to calm down. Another angle is that if you think it’s undesirable to be kissed by me I am willing to submit it to a vote by people who ought to know.”

  She was passing her hands over her hair. “I suppose I should thank you?”

  “You’re welcome.”

  “Are you recovered,” Wolfe rasped, “or not?”

  “I’m all right.” She swallowed. “I haven’t slept, and it’s quite true I haven’t eaten anything, but I’m all right. They’ve arrested Paul for murder. He wants me to get a lawyer, and of course I have to, but I don’t know who. The one he uses in business is no good for this, and certainly Jim Beebe won’t do, and two other lawyers I know—I don’t think they’re much good. I told Paul I was coming to you, and he said all right.”

  “You want me to recommend a lawyer?”

  “Yes, but we want you too. We want you to do—well, whatever you do.” Suddenly she was flushing, and the color was good for her face. “Paul says you charge very high, but I suppose I have lots of money again, now that Sidney is dead.” The flush deepened. “I’ve got to tell you something. Last night when you told us about it, that Sidney had been murdered, for just one second I thought Paul had done it—one awful second.”

  “I know you did. Only I would say ten seconds. Then you went to him.”

  “Yes. I went and touched him and let him touch me, and then it was over, but it was horrible. And that’s partly why I must ask you, do you believe Paul killed him?”

  “No,” Wolfe said flatly.

  “You’re not just saying that?”

  “I never just say anything.” Wolfe suddenly realized that he had swiveled his chair away from her when she started to erupt, and now swung it back. “Mr. Cramer, a policeman, came this morning and twitted me for having let a murderer hoodwink me. When he had gone I considered the matter. It would have to be that Mr. Aubry, having killed Mr. Karnow, and having discussed it with you, decided to come and engage me to deal with Karnow in order to establish the fact that he didn’t know Karnow was dead. That is Mr. Cramer’s position, and I reject it. I sat here for an hour yesterday, listening to Mr. Aubry and looking at him, and if he had just come from killing the man he was asking me to deal with, I am a dolt. Since I am not a dolt, Mr. Aubry is not a murderer. Therefore—Yes, Fritz. Here’s something for you, madam.”

  I would like to think it was my kiss that gave her an appetite, b
ut I suppose it was the assurance from Wolfe that he didn’t think her Paul was guilty of murder. She disposed not only of the crackers and milk but also of a healthy portion of toast spread with Fritz’s liver pâté and chives, while Wolfe busied himself with the cards and I found something to do on my desk.

  “I do thank you,” she said. “This is wonderful coffee. I feel better.”

  It is so agreeable to Wolfe to have someone enjoy food that he had almost forgiven her for losing control. He nearly smiled at her.

  “You must understand,” he said gruffly, “that if you hire me to investigate there are no reservations. I think Mr. Aubry is innocent, but if I find he isn’t I am committed to no evasion or concealment. You understand that?”

  “Yes. I don’t—All right.”

  “For counsel I suggest Nathaniel Parker. Inquire about him if you wish; if you settle on him we’ll arrange an appointment. Now, if Mr. Aubry didn’t kill Karnow, who did?”

  No reply.

  “Well?” Wolfe demanded.

  She put the coffee cup down. “Are you asking me?”

  “Yes.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Then we’ll return to that. You said Mr. Aubry has been arrested for murder. Has that charge been entered, or is he being held as a material witness?”

  “No, murder. They said I couldn’t get bail for him.”

  “Then they must have cogent evidence, surely something other than the manifest motive. He has talked, of course?”

  “He certainly has.”

  “He has told of his going to the door of Karnow’s room yesterday afternoon?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you know what time that was?”

  “Half-past three. Very close to that.”

  “Then opportunity is established, and motive. As for the weapon, the published account says it was Karnow’s. Has that been challenged?”

  “Not that I know of.”

  “Then the formula is complete; but a man cannot be convicted by a formula and should not be charged by one. Have they got evidence? Do you know?”

  “I know one thing.” She was frowning at him, concentrated, intent. “They told Paul that one of his business cards was found in Sidney’s pocket—the agency name and address, with his name in the corner—and asked him to account for it. He said he and his salesmen hand out dozens of cards every day, and Sidney could have got one many different places. Then they told him this card had his fingerprints on it—clear, fresh ones—and asked him to account for that.”