by Rex Stout
“Mr. Gallant is not available. What do you want?”
That didn’t strike me as a very tactful greeting to a man who, for all he knew, might be set to pay eight hundred dollars for an afternoon frock, but of course he had had a tough twenty-four hours, so I kept it pleasant. “I’m not a reporter,” I assured him, “or a cop, or a lawyer drumming up trade. I’m a private detective named Archie Goodwin, sent by a private detective named Nero Wolfe to ask Mr. Gallant a couple of harmless questions-not connected with the death of Bianca Voss.”
“Mr. Gallant is not available.”
I hadn’t heard his voice in person before, only on the phone, but I recognized it. Also he looked like a business manager, with his neat well-arranged face, his neat well-made dark suit, and his neat shadow-stripe four-in-hand. He was a little puffy around the eyes, but the city and county employees had probably kept him from getting much sleep.
“May I ask,” I asked, “if you are Mr. Carl Drew?”
“Yes. I am.”
“Then I’m in luck. I was instructed to see five different people here-Mr. Gallant, Miss Gallant, Miss Prince, Miss Thorne, and Mr. Carl Drew. Perhaps we could sit down?”
He ignored that. “See us about what?”
The woman had left us. She was in earshot if her hearing was good, but this was certainly no secret mission, with five of them on the list. “To get information,” I told him, “if you have any, about a woman who died yesterday. Not Bianca Voss. Miss Sarah Yare.”
“Oh.” He blinked. “Yes. That was tragic. Information? What kind of information?”
“I don’t exactly know.” I was apologetic. “All I know is that someone has engaged Mr. Wolfe to make inquiries about her, and he sent me to ask you people if you had any messages or letters from her in the past month or so, and if so will you let him see them.”
“Messages or letters?”
“Right.”
“That seems a little-Who engaged him?”
“I don’t know.” I was not permitting my face or voice to show that I had caught sight of a fish. “If you have had messages or letters, and would like to know who wants to see them before you produce them, I suppose Mr. Wolfe would tell you. He would have to.”
“I have no messages or letters.”
I was disappointed. “None at all? I said the past month or so, but before that would help. Any time.”
He shook his head. “I never have had any. I doubt if she ever wrote a letter-that is, to anyone here-or any messages, except phone messages. She always did everything by telephone. And for the past month, longer than that, more than a year, she hasn’t been-uh-she hasn’t been around.”
“I know.” I was sympathetic, and I meant it, though not for him. “Anyway, I don’t think Mr. Wolfe would be interested in letters about clothes. I think it’s personal letters he wants, and he thought you might have known her well enough personally to have some.”
“Well, I haven’t. I can’t say I didn’t know her personally-she was a very fine customer here for two years, and she was a very personal person. But I never had a personal letter from her.”
I had to resist temptation. I had him talking, and there was no telling if or when I would get at the others. But Wolfe had said not to labor it, and I disobey instructions only when I have reason to think I know more about it than he does, and at that moment I didn’t even know why he had been consulting the phone book. So I didn’t press. I thanked him and said I would appreciate it if he would tell me when Mr. Gallant would be available. He said he would find out, and left me, going to the rear and disappearing around the end of a screen, and soon I heard his voice, but too faint to get any words. There was no other voice, so, being a detective, I figured it out that he was on a phone. That accomplished, I decided to detect whether the woman, who was seated at a table going through a portfolio, was either Anita Prince or Emmy Thorne. I voted no, arriving at it by a process so subtle and complicated that I won’t go into it.
Drew reappeared, and I met him in the middle of the room. He said that Mr. Gallant was in his office with Miss Prince and could let me have five minutes. Another fish. Certainly Drew had told Gallant what my line was, and why did I rate even five seconds? As Drew led me to an elevator and entered with me, and pushed the button marked “2,” I had to remember to look hopeful instead of smug.
The second-floor hall was narrow, with bare walls, and not carpeted. As I said, not a palace. After following Drew down six paces and through a door, I found myself in a pin-up paradise. All available space on all four walls was covered with women, drawings and prints and photographs, both black-and-white and color, all sizes, and in one respect they were all alike: none of them had a stitch on. It hadn’t occurred to me that a designer of women’s clothes should understand female anatomy, but I admit it might help. The effect was so striking that it took me four or five seconds to focus on the man and woman seated at a table. By that time Drew had pronounced my name and gone.
Though the man and woman were fully clothed, they were striking too. He reminded me of someone, but I didn’t remember who until later: Lord Byron-a picture of Lord Byron in a book in my father’s library that had impressed me at an early age. It was chiefly Gallant’s dark curly hair backing up a wide sweeping forehead, but the nose and chin were in it too. The necktie was all wrong; instead of Byron’s choker he was sporting a narrow ribbon tied in a bow with long ends hanging.
The woman didn’t go with him. She was small and trim, in a tailored suit that had been fitted by an expert, and her face was all eyes. Not that they popped, but they ran the show. In spite of Alec Gallant’s lordly presence, as I approached the table I found myself aiming at Anita Prince’s eyes.
Gallant was speaking. “What’s this? About Sarah Yare?”
“Just a couple of questions.” He had eyes too, when you looked at them. “It shouldn’t take even five minutes. I suppose Mr. Drew told you?”
“He said Nero Wolfe is making an inquiry and sent you. What about? About how she died?”
“I don’t think so, but I’m not sure. The fact is, Mr. Gallant, on this I’m just an errand boy. My instructions were to ask if you got any messages or letters from her in the past month or so, and if so will you let Mr. Wolfe see them.”
“My God.” He closed his eyes, tilted his head back, and shook it-a lion pestered by a fly. He looked at the woman. “This is too much. Too much!” He looked at me. “You must know a woman was assassinated here yesterday. Of course you do!” He pointed at the door. “There!” His hand dropped to the desk like a dead bird. “And after that calamity, now this, the death of my old and valued friend. Miss Yare was not only my friend; in mold and frame she was perfection, in movement she was music, as a mannequin she would have been divine. My delight in her was completely pure. I never had a letter from her.” His head jerked to Anita Prince. “Send him away,” he muttered.
She put fingers on his arm. “You gave him five minutes, Alec, and he has only had two.” Her voice was smooth and sure. The eyes came to me. “So you don’t know the purpose of Mr. Wolfe’s inquiry?”
“No, Miss Prince, I don’t. He only tells me what he thinks I need to know.”
“Nor who hired him to make it?”
So Drew had covered the ground. “No. Not that either. He’ll probably tell you, if you have what he wants, letters from her, and you want to know why he wants to see them.”
“I have no letters from her. I never had any. I had no personal relations with Miss Yare.” Her lips smiled, but the eyes didn’t. “Though I saw her many times, my contact with her was never close. Mr. Gallant preferred to fit her himself. I just looked on. It seems-” She stopped for a word, and found it. “It seems odd that Nero Wolfe should be starting an inquiry immediately after her death. Or did he start it before?”
“I couldn’t say. The first I knew, he gave me this errand this morning. This noon.”
“You don’t know much, do you?”
“No, I just take orders
.”
“Of course you do know that Miss Yare committed suicide?”
I didn’t get an answer in. Gallant, hitting the table with a palm, suddenly shouted at her, “Name of God! Must you? Send him away!”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Gallant,” I told him. “I guess my time’s up. If you’ll tell me where to find your sister and Miss Thorne, that will-”
I stopped because his hand had darted to an ashtray, a big metal one that looked heavy, and since he wasn’t smoking he was presumably going to let fly with it. Anita Prince beat him to it. With her left hand she got his wrist, and with her right she got the ashtray and moved it out of reach. It was very quick and deft. Then she spoke, to me. “Miss Gallant is not here. Miss Thorne is busy, but you can ask Mr. Drew downstairs. You had better go.”
I went. In more favorable circumstances I might have spared another five minutes for a survey of the pin-ups, but not then, not if I had to dodge ashtrays.
In the hall, having pulled the door shut, the indicated procedure, indicated both by the situation and by Miss Prince’s suggestion, was to take the elevator down and see Drew again, but a detective is supposed to have initiative. So when I heard a voice, female, floating out through an open door, I went on past the elevator, to the door, for a look. Not only did I see, I was seen, and a voice, anything but female, came at me.
“You. Huh?”
I could have kicked myself. While, as I said, my mission couldn’t be called secret with five people on the list, certainly Wolfe had intended it to be private, and there was Sergeant Purley Stebbins of Homicide West, glaring at me.
“Sightseeing?” he asked. Purley’s idea of humor is a little primitive. “The scene of the crime?”
I descended to his level. “Just morbid,” I told him, crossing the sill. “Compulsion neurosis. Is this it?”
Evidently it was. The room was about the same size as Alec Gallant’s, but while his had been dominated by women without clothes, this one ran to clothes without women. There were coats, suits, dresses, everything. They were on dummies, scattered around; on hangers, strung on a pole along a wall; and piled on a table. At my right one dummy, wearing a skirt, was bare from the waist up; she might have blushed if she had had a face to blush with. There was one exception: a well-made tan wool dress standing by a corner of a desk contained a woman-a very attractive specimen in mold and frame, and in movement she could have been music. Standing beside her was Carl Drew. Seated at the desk was Sergeant Purley Stebbins, with a paper in his hand and other papers on the desk. Also on the desk, at his left, was a telephone-the one, presumably, that Wolfe and I had heard hit the floor.
What I had stumbled into was obvious. Purley was examining the effects, including papers, probably the second time over, of Bianca Voss, deceased, under surveillance on behalf of Alec Gallant Incorporated.
“Actually,” I said, advancing past the immodest dummy, “this is one homicide I have no finger in. I’m on a fishing trip.” I moved my eyes. “Would you tell me, Mr. Drew, where I can find Miss Thorne?”
“Right here,” the tan wool dress said. “I am Miss Thorne.”
“I’m Archie Goodwin of Nero Wolfe’s office. May I have a word with you?”
She exchanged glances with Carl Drew. Her glance told me that Drew had told her about me; and his, if I am half as bright as I ought to be, told me that if he was not on a more personal basis with her than he had been with Sarah Yare it wasn’t his fault. If he wasn’t he would like to be.
“Go ahead,” Drew told her. “I’ll stick around.” She moved toward the door, and I was following when Purley pronounced my name, my last name. He has on occasion called me Archie, but not when I suddenly appeared, uninvited, when he was working on a homicide. I turned.
“Who are you fishing for?” he demanded.
“If I knew,” I said, “I might tell you, but don’t hold your breath.” There was no point in trying to sugar him. The damage, if any, had been done the second he saw me. “See you in court.”
Emmy Thorne led me down the hall to a door, the next one, and opened it. Walking, she could have been music at that, if her heels had had any purchase. She held the door for me to enter, shut it, went to a chair behind a desk, and sat. The room was less than half the size of the others and displayed neither women nor clothes.
“Sit down,” she said. “What is this nonsense about letters from Sarah Yare?”
I took the chair at the end of her desk. “You know,” I said, “my tie must be crooked or I’ve got a grease spot. Mr. Drew resented me, and Mr. Gallant was going to throw an ashtray at me. Now you. Why is it nonsense to ask a simple question politely and respectfully?”
“Maybe ‘nonsense’ isn’t the word. Maybe I should have said ‘gall.’ What right have you to march in here and ask questions at all? Polite or not.”
“None. It’s not a right, it’s a liberty. I have no right to ask you to have dinner with me this evening, which might not be a bad idea, but I’m at liberty to, and you’re at liberty to tell me you’d rather dine at the automat with a baboon, only that wouldn’t be very polite. Also when I ask if you have any letters from Sarah Yare you’re at liberty to tell me to go climb a tree if you find the question ticklish. I might add that I would be at liberty to climb a pole instead of a tree. Have you any letters from Sarah Yare?”
She laughed. She had fine teeth. She stopped laughing abruptly. “Good Lord,” she said, “I didn’t think I would laugh for a year. This mess, what happened here yesterday, and then Sarah. No, I have no letters from her. You don’t have to climb a tree.” The laughter was all gone, and her gray eyes, straight at me, were cool and keen. “What else?”
Again I had to resist temptation. With Drew the temptation had been purely professional; with her it was only partly professional and only partly pure. Cramer had said she was in charge of contacts, and one more might be good for her.
Having resisted, I shook my head. “Nothing else, unless you know of something. For instance, if you know of anyone who might have letters.”
“I don’t.” She regarded me. “Of course I’m curious, if you want to call it that. I was very fond of Sarah, and this coming after all her trouble, naturally I’m wondering why you came here. You say Nero Wolfe is making an inquiry?”
“Yes, he sent me. I don’t know who his client is, but my guess would be that it’s some friend of Miss Yare’s.”
I stood up. “Someone else may be curious. Thank you, Miss Thorne. I’m glad I don’t have to climb a tree.”
She got up and offered a hand. “You might tell me who it is.”
“I might if I knew.” Her hand was cool and firm and I kept it for a second. “I’m sorry I interrupted you in there.” That was absolutely true. “By the way, one more liberty: is Miss Gallant around?”
She said no and came with me to the hall and left me, heading for the scene of the crime. I went the other way, to the elevator. Down on the main floor the woman was there alone, at a table with a portfolio. Not at all like Macy’s main floor. Emerging, I turned left, found a phone booth on Madison Avenue, dialed the number I knew best, got Fritz, and asked for Wolfe.
His voice came. “Yes, Archie?”
“It’s full of fish. Swarming. Sarah Yare bought her clothes there for two years and they all loved her. I’m phoning to ask about Flora Gallant. I’ve seen all the others, but Flora isn’t around. My guess is that she’s at the DA’s office. Do I stick until she comes?”
“No. Satisfactory.”
“Any further instructions?”
“No. Come home.”
Chapter 4
IN THE OFFICE, after a late lunch of corned-beef hash with mushrooms, chicken livers, white wine, and grated cheese, which Fritz apologized for because he had had to keep it warm too long, I gave Wolfe a full report of the fishing trip, including all dialogue. When I had finished he nodded, took in air through his nose all the way down, and let it out through his mouth.
“Very well,” he said, “that se
ttles it. You will now go-”
“Just a minute,” I cut in. “It doesn’t settle it for me. It was bad enough up there, not knowing the score, and before I do any more going I want a little light. Why did you pick on Sarah Yare, and where did the phone book come in?”
“I have an errand for you.”
“Yeah. Will it keep for ten minutes?”
“I suppose so.”
“Then why?”
He leaned back. “As I told you this morning, I thought I might have been hoodwinked and I intended to find out. It was quite possible that that performance here yesterday-getting us on the phone just in time to hear a murder committed-was flummery. Indeed, it was more than possible. Must I expound that?”
“No. Even Cramer suspected it.”
“So he did. But his theory that Bianca Voss had been killed earlier and that another woman, not the murderer, was there beside the corpse waiting for a phone call, was patently ridiculous. Must I expound that?”
“No, unless it was a lunatic. Anyone who would do that, even the murderer, with the chance that someone might come in any second, would be batty.”
“Of course. But if she wasn’t killed at the time we heard those sounds she must have been killed earlier, since you phoned almost immediately and sent someone to that room. Therefore the sounds didn’t come from there. Miss Gallant did not dial that number. She dialed the number of some other person whom she had persuaded to perform that hocus-pocus.”
