Rex Stout - Nero Wolfe 19

by Murder by the Book

  “But that would be a lie—saying you have a copy of the manuscript when you haven’t. I couldn’t tell them a deliberate lie!”

  “Maybe not,” I said regretfully. “If you’re the kind of person who has never told a lie in all your life, I can’t expect you to tell one just to help find the man who killed your brother—and who also killed two young women, ran a car over one of them and pushed the other one out of a window. Even if it couldn’t possibly hurt any innocent person, I wouldn’t want to urge you to tell your very first lie.”

  “You don’t have to be sarcastic.” Her face had turned a mild pink. “I didn’t say I never told a lie. I’m no angel. You’re perfectly right, I would have done it for the money, only then I wouldn’t have known it was a lie.” Suddenly her eyes twinkled. “Why don’t we start over and do it the other way?”

  I would have liked to give her a good hug. “Listen,” I suggested, “let’s take things in order. We’ve got to go through his letters first anyhow, there’s no objection to that, then we can decide on the next step. You get the letters, huh?”

  “I guess so.” She arose. “They’re in a box in the garage.”

  “Can I help?”

  She said no, thanks, and left me. I got up and crossed to a window to look out at the California climate. I would have thought it was beautiful if I had been a seal. It would be beautiful anyway if one of Dykes’s letters had what I was after. I wasn’t asking for anything elaborate like an outline of the plot; just one little sentence would do.

  When she came back, sooner than I expected, she had two bundles of white envelopes in her hands, tied with string. She put them down on the glass-topped table, sat, and pulled the end of a bowknot.

  I approached. “Start about a year ago. Say March of last year.” I pulled a chair up. “Here, give me some.”

  She shook her head. “I’ll do it.”

  “You might miss it. It might be just a vague reference.”

  “I won’t miss it. I couldn’t let you read my brother’s letters, Mr. Thompson.”

  “Goodwin. Archie Goodwin.”

  “Excuse me. Mr. Goodwin.” She was looking at postmarks.

  Evidently she meant it, and I decided to table my motion, at least temporarily. Meanwhile I could do a job. I got out my notebook and pen and started writing at the top of a sheet:

  Corrigan, Phelps, Kustin & Briggs

  522 Madison Avenue

  New York, N.Y.

  Gentlemen:

  I am writing to ask your advice because my brother worked for you for many years up to the time of his death. His name was Leonard Dykes. I am his sister and in his will he left everything to me, but I suppose you know that.

  A man named Walter Finch has just been to see me. He says he is a literary agent. He says that last year my brother wrote a novel.

  I stopped to consider. Mrs. Potter was reading a letter, with her teeth clamped on her lower lip. Well, I thought, I can put it in, and it will be easy enough to take it out if we have to. I resumed with my pen:

  I already knew that because my brother mentioned it once in a letter, but that was all I knew about it. Mr. Finch says he has a copy of the manuscript and its title is “Put Not Your Trust,” and my brother put the name of Baird Archer on it as the author, but my brother really wrote it. He says he thinks he can sell it to the movies for $50,000.00, and he says since my brother left everything to me I am the legal owner of it and he wants me to sign a paper that he is my agent and I will pay him 10 percent of what he gets for it from the movies.

  I am writing to you air mail because it is a big sum of money and I know you will give me good advice. I don’t know any lawyer here that I know I can trust. I want to know if the 10 percent is all right and should I sign the paper. Another thing I want to know is that I haven’t seen the manuscript except just the envelope he has it in and he won’t leave it with me, and it seems to me I ought to see it and read it if I am going to sell it because I ought to know what I am selling.

  Please answer by air mail because Mr. Finch says it is urgent and we must act quick. Thanking you very much.

  Sincerely yours,

  It didn’t come out that way all at once. I did a lot of crossing out and changing, and the preceding was the final result, of which I made a clear copy. I read it over and passed it. There was the one sentence that might have to come out, but I hoped to God it wouldn’t.

  My accomplice was reading steadily, and I had kept an eye on her progress. There were four envelopes in a little stack at her right, finished, and if she had started with March and he had written one a month, she was up to July. My fingers itched to reach for the next one. I sat and controlled them until she finished another one and began folding it for return to the envelope, and then got up to take a walk. She was reading so damn slow. I crossed to the glass doors at the far end of the room and looked out. In the rain a newly planted tree about twice my height was slanting to one side, and I decided to worry about that but couldn’t get my mind on it. I got stubborn and determined that I damn well was going to worry about that tree, and was fighting it out when suddenly her voice came.

  “I knew there was something! Here it is. Listen!”

  I wheeled and strode. She read it out.

  “Here is something just for you, Peggy dear. So many things have been just for you all my life. I wasn’t going to tell even you about this, but now it’s finished and I have to. I have written a novel! Its title is ‘Put Not Your Trust.’ For a certain reason it can’t be published under my name and I have to use a nom de plume, but that won’t matter much if you know, so I’m telling you. I have every confidence that it will be published, since I am by no means a duffer when it comes to using the English language. But this is strictly for you alone. You mustn’t even tell your husband about it.”

  Mrs. Potter looked up at me, at her elbow. “There! I had forgotten that he mentioned the title, but I knew—no! What are you—”

  She made a quick grab, but not quick enough. I had finally pounced. With my left hand I had snatched the letter from her fingers, and with my right the envelope from the table, and then backed off out of reach.

  “Take it easy,” I told her. “I’d go through fire for you and I’ve already gone through water, but this letter goes home with me. It’s the only evidence on earth that your brother wrote that novel. I’d rather have this letter than one from Elizabeth Taylor begging me to let her hold my hand. If there’s anything in it that you don’t want read in a courtroom that part won’t be read, but I need it all, including the envelope. If I had to I would knock you down and walk on you to get out of here with it. You’d better take another look at my ears.”

  She was indignant. “You didn’t have to grab it like that.”

  “Okay, I was impulsive and I apologize. I’ll give it back, and you can hand it to me, with the understanding that if you refuse I’ll take it by force.”

  Her eyes twinkled, and she knew it, and flushed a little. She extended a hand. I folded the letter, put it in the envelope, and handed it to her. She looked at it, glanced at me, held it out, and I took it.

  “I’m doing this,” she said gravely, “because I think my brother would want me to. Poor Len. You think he was killed because he wrote that novel?”

  “Yes. Now I know it. It’s up to you whether we get the guy that killed him.” I got out my notebook, tore out a sheet, and handed it to her. “All you have to do is write that letter on your own paper. Maybe not quite all. I’ll tell you the rest.”

  She started to read it. I sat down. She looked beautiful. The phony logs in the phony fireplace looked beautiful. Even the pouring rain—but no, I won’t overdo it.

  Chapter 15

  I phoned Wolfe at 3:23 from a booth in a drugstore somewhere in Glendale. It is always a pleasure to hear him say “Satisfactory” when I have reported on an errand. This time he did better. When I had given him all of it that he needed, including the letter written by Dykes that I had in my pocket and th
e one written by Mrs. Potter that I had just put an air-mail stamp on and dropped in the slot at the Glendale Post Office, there was a five-second silence and then an emphatic “Very satisfactory.” After another five bucks’ worth of discussion of plans for the future, covering contingencies as well as possible, I dove through the rain to my waiting taxi and gave the driver an address in downtown Los Angeles. It rained all the way. At an intersection we missed colliding with a truck by an eighth of an inch, and the driver apologized, saying he wasn’t used to driving in the rain. I said he soon would be, and he resented it.

  The office of the Southwest Agency was on the ninth floor of a dingy old building with elevators that groaned and creaked. It occupied half the floor. I had been there once before, years back, and, having phoned that morning from the hotel that I would probably be dropping in, I was more or less expected. In a corner room a guy named Ferdinand Dolman, with two chins, and fourteen long brown hairs deployed across a bald top, arose to shake hands and exclaim heartily, “Well, well! Nice to see you again! How’s the old fatty?”

  Few people know Nero Wolfe well enough to call him the old fatty, and this Dolman was not one of them, but it wasn’t worth the trouble to try to teach him manners, so I skipped it. I exchanged words with him enough to make it sociable and then told him what I wanted.

  “I’ve got just the man for you,” he declared. “He happens to be here right now, just finished a very difficult job. This is a break for you, it really is.” He picked up a phone and told it, “Send Gibson in.”

  In a minute the door opened and a man entered and approached. I gave him one look, and one was enough. He had a cauliflower ear, and his eyes were trying to penetrate a haze that was too thick for them.

  Dolman started to speak, but I beat him to it. “No,” I said emphatically, “not the type. Not a chance.”

  Gibson grinned. Dolman told him he could go, and he did so. When the door had closed behind him I got candid. “You’ve got a nerve, trotting in that self-made ape. If he just did a difficult job I’d hate to see who does your easy ones. I want a man who is educated or can talk like it, not too young and not too old, sharp and quick, able to take on a bushel of new facts and have them ready for use.”

  “Jesus.” Dolman clasped his hands behind his head. “J. Edgar Hoover maybe?”

  “I don’t care what his name is, but if you haven’t got one like that, say so, and I’ll go shopping.”

  “Certainly we’ve got one. With over fifty men on the payroll? Certainly we’ve got one.”

  “Show him to me.”

  He finally did, I admit that, but not until after I had hung around for more than five hours and had interviewed a dozen prospects. I also admit I was being finicky, especially since there was a good chance that all he would ever do was collect his twenty a day and expenses, but after getting it set up as I had I didn’t want to run a risk of having it bitched up by some little stumble. The one I picked was about my age, named Nathan Harris. His face was all bones and his fingers were all knuckles, and if I knew anything about eyes he would do. I didn’t go by ears, like Peggy Potter.

  I took him to my room at the Riviera. We ate in the room, and I kept him there, briefing him, until two in the morning. He was to go home and get some luggage and register at the South Seas Hotel under the name of Walter Finch, and get a room that met the specifications I gave him. I let him make notes all he wanted, with the understanding that he was to have it all in his head by the time it might be needed, which could be never. One decision I made was to tell him only what Walter Finch, the literary agent, might be expected to know, not to hold out on him but to keep from cluttering his mind, so when he left he had never heard the names of Joan Wellman or Rachel Abrams, or Corrigan, Phelps, Kustin and Briggs.

  Going to bed, I opened the window three inches at the bottom, and in the morning there was a pool that reached to the edge of the rug. I got my wristwatch from the bedstand and saw 9:20, which meant 12:20 in New York. At the Glendale Post Office they had told me that the letter would make a plane which would land at La Guardia at eight in the morning New York time, so it should be delivered at Madison Avenue any time now, possibly right this minute as I stretched and yawned.

  One of my worries was Mr. Clarence Potter. Mrs. Potter had assured me that her husband wouldn’t try to interfere, whether he approved or not, but it tied a knot in me, especially with an empty stomach, to think of the damage he could do with a telegram to Corrigan, Phelps, Kustin and Briggs. It was too much for me. Before I even shut the window or went to the bathroom I called the Glendale number. Her voice answered.

  “Good morning, Mrs. Potter. This is Archie Goodwin. I was just wondering—did you tell your husband about it?”

  “Yes, of course. I told you I was going to.”

  “I know you did. How did he take it? Should I see him?”

  “No, I don’t think so. He doesn’t quite understand it. I explained that you have no copy of the manuscript and there doesn’t seem to be one anywhere, but he thinks we should try to find one and perhaps it can be sold to a movie studio. I told him we should wait for an answer to my letter, and he agreed. I’m sure he’ll understand when he thinks it over.”

  “Of course he will. Now about Walter Finch. I’ve got him, and he’s in his room at the South Seas. He’s a little taller than average, and you’d probably guess him at thirty-five. He has a bony face, and bony hands with long fingers, and dark brown eyes that you might call black. He looks straight at you when he talks, and his voice is a medium baritone, you’d like it. Do you want to write that down?”

  “I don’t need to.”

  “Sure you’ve got it?”

  “Yes.”

  “I believe you. I’ll be in my room at the Riviera all day. Call me any time if anything happens.”

  “All right, I will.”

  There’s a loyal little woman with twinkles, I thought, hanging up. She knows damn well she’s married to a dumbbell, but by gum she’ll never say so. I phoned down for breakfast and newspapers, washed and brushed my teeth, and ate in my pajamas. Then I called the South Seas Hotel and asked for Walter Finch. He was there in his room, 1216, and said he was getting along fine with his homework. I told him to stay put until further notice.

  When I showered and shaved and dressed, and finished with the newspapers and looked out at the rain some, I phoned down for magazines. I refused to let myself start listening for the phone to ring because it might be all day and night and into another day before there was a peep, and it wouldn’t help to wear my nerves out. However, I did look at my watch fairly often, translating it into New York time, as I gave the magazines a play. Eleven-fifty meant two-fifty. Twelve-twenty-five meant three-twenty-five. Four minutes after one meant four minutes after four. One-forty-five meant a quarter to five, nearing the end of the office day. I tossed a magazine aside and went to a window to admire the rain again, then called room service and ordered lunch.

  I was chewing a bite of albacore steak when the phone rang. To show how composed I was, I finished chewing and swallowing before I picked it up. It was Mrs. Potter.

  “Mr. Goodwin! I just had a phone call! From Mr. Corrigan!”

  I was glad I had finished swallowing. “Fine! What did he say?”

  “He wanted to know all about Mr. Finch. I said just what you told me to.” She was talking too fast, but I didn’t interrupt. “He asked where the manuscript is, and I told him Mr. Finch has it. He asked if I had seen it or read it, and I said no. He told me not to sign any paper or agree to anything until he has seen me. He’s taking a plane in New York and he’ll get to Los Angeles at eight in the morning and he’s coming right here to see me.”

  It was a funny thing. I was swallowing albacore, although I would have sworn that it was already down. It tasted good.

  “Did he sound as if he suspected anything?”

  “He did not! I did it perfectly!”

  “I’m sure you did. If I was there I’d pat you on the head.
I might even go further than that, so it’s just as well I’m not there. Do you want me to come out and go over it again? What you’ll say to him?”

  “I don’t think it’s necessary. I remember everything.”

  “Okay. He’ll want to get to Finch as soon as possible, but he may ask you a lot of questions. What do you say if he asks to see the letter from your brother in which he mentioned writing a novel?”

  “I say I haven’t got it. That I didn’t keep it.”

  “Right. He’ll probably get to your place around nine o’clock. What time does your husband leave?”

  “Twenty minutes past seven.”

  “Well. It’s a million to one that you’ll be in no danger, even if he’s a killer, since he knows you have never seen the manuscript, but we can’t take a chance. I can’t be there myself because I have to be in Finch’s room before he gets there. Now listen. At eight in the morning a man will come and show you his credentials from the Southwest Agency, a detective agency. Hide him where he can hear what goes on, but be darned sure he’s well hid. Keep him—”

  “No, that’s silly! Nothing’s going to happen to me!”

  “You bet it isn’t. Three murders is enough for one manuscript. He’ll be there, and you—”

  “My husband can take the morning off and stay home.”

  “No. I’m sorry, but that’s out. Your talk with Corrigan is going to be ticklish to handle, and we don’t want anyone joining in, not even your husband. A man will come with credentials, and you’ll let him in and hide him and keep him there until an hour after Corrigan has left. Either that or I come myself, and that would ball it up. What hotel is Finch at?”

  “The South Seas.”

  “Describe him.”

  “He’s rather tall, in his thirties, with a bony face and hands and dark eyes, and he looks straight at you when he talks.”

  “Right. For God’s sake don’t get careless and describe me. Remember it was Finch who came to see you—”

  “Really, Mr. Goodwin! If you have no confidence in me!”