Rex Stout - Nero Wolfe - Too Many Women

by Too Many Women (lit)

  Moore was nothing but number —I don’t know—seven or eight—and besides, he had been ditched months before and the current befriendee was—I forget his name, it doesn’t matter. And the husband had known all about it for years. That was absolutely established by our research department. You must be smothering in that booth. I’ve got to go to work. I do so by demanding that you come clean, for the record if possible. Who has hired Wolfe?” “Not yet,” I told him. “You’ll get it as soon as it’s ripe if it hasn’t got worms. You know us, we return favors with interest. If I Pay you a visit could I talk with whoever forked on it?” “You’d better phone ahead.” “I will. Thanks and love from all of us.” I ducked out through the lobby to the street, down the block to a place I had spotted, bought three ham sandwiches and a quart of milk, and transported them to the building and up to my place of employment on the thirty-fourth floor.

  There in my room I ate my lunch without being disturbed. By the time it was all down I had arrived at a couple of decisions, the first one being that it was just as well I hadn’t obeyed my impulse to walk out of the Fountain of Health with nothing to show for my trouble but an apple.

  CHAPTER Ten

  Having two things to do, it would have been in character for me to save the best till the last, and I had it programmed that way, but it didn’t work. The idea was to phone Jasper Pine to arrange to run up to see him at three o’clock, but when I tried it all I got was the word from a Mr. Stapleton that Mr. Pine would not be available until four-fifteen. That compelled me to shift. But before making a call on Miss Livsey I thought it would be well to get in a piece of equipment I needed, so I did what I had been told to do when the occasion arose, called Extension 637 and said I needed a stenographer. In two minutes, not more, one entered with a notebook. She was nothing like my non-speller, but neither was she any evidence against my theory that there was a strong preference at Naylor-Kerr for females who were easy to look at.

  After I had got her name I told her, “I have nothing against you, quite the contrary. The trouble is I don’t want you, just your typewriter. Could you bring it in here and let me use it?” From the look on her face it might have been thought I had asked her to bring Mr. Kerr Naylor in handcuffs and set him on my lap. She tried to be nice about it, but what I had asked for was not done and could not be done. I let her go and went to work on the phone, and it wasn’t too long before I had a typewriter, with paper and other accessories. Then I emerged to the arena, crossed to the other side, found the door next to Rosenbaum’s on the left standing open, and entered.

  I pushed the door shut, crossed to a chair near the end of her desk, and sat down. Her room was twice as big as mine, but there was just as little free space in it on account of the rows of files. The light from the window filtering through the top layer of her fine brown hair made it look as if someone had crowned her with a wreath of shiny silk mesh. She gave the typewriter a rest and let me have her full face.

  “It was simply stinking,” I said. “Mr. Naylor eats oats and shredded bark.” No smile for that, but she nodded. “Yes, he’s famous for that. Someone should have warned you.” “But they didn’t, including you. Are you crowded for time?” “No, I only have eight or nine more letters.” She glanced at her wrist. “It’s only three o’clock.” “Good.” I tipped my chair back, with my hands in my pockets, to show how informal I was. “I guess the best way to start is just to follow the routine.

  How long have you been working here?” “Three years. Well—two years and eight months. I’m twenty-four years old, nearly twenty-five, I get fifty dollars a week, and I can do over a hundred words a minute.” “That’s wonderful. What are the three things you dislike most, or like least, about your job?” “Oh, now, really.” Still no smile, but there was a little curving twist to her lips. “May I ask one?” “Go ahead.” “Why did you invite me to lunch?” “Well—what do you want, candor?” “I like it.” “I do too. One look at you, and I seemed to be paralyzed all over, as in a dream. The two sides of my nature there fighting for control. One, the base and evil side, wanted to be alone with you on an island. The other side wanted to write a poem. The lunch thing was a compromise.” “That’s pretty good,” she said, with some sign of appreciation but not enthusiastically. “If that’s candor, let’s have some double talk. Why? You wanted to ask me about Waldo Moore, didn’t you?” “What makes you think so?” “Why, my lord. You practically broadcast it! Asking that girl about him—it was all over the place in no time.” “Okay, say I did. What did I want to ask you about him?” “I don’t know, but here I am, ask me.” “You shouldn’t be a stenographer,” I said admiringly. “You should be a personnel expert or a college president or a detective’s wife. You’re perfectly correct, it would be difficult for me to question you about Moore without giving you a hint of where I got on and what my ticket says. So I won’t try. You and Moore were engaged to marry, weren’t you?” “Yes.” “A long time?” “No, just about a month, a little less.” “And of course his death was an awful blow.” “Yes.” “Would you mind telling me in a general way what kind of a guy he was?” “Why—” She hesitated. “That’s a strange question. He was the kind of guy I wanted to marry.” I nodded. “That settles it for you,” I agreed, “but I’ve only known you about twenty minutes altogether, so it leaves me hazy. You understand, of course, that this is just you and me talking. I represent no authority of any kind and your tongue is yours. Had he been married before?” “No.” “How long had you known him?” “I met him soon after he came to work here.” “What was he—tall, short, handsome, ugly, fat, thin—” She opened a drawer of her desk and got her handbag, took a leather fold out of it, and opened the fold and handed it over.

  So she was still carrying his photograph. I gave it a good look. To my eyes he was nothing remarkable one way or another— about my age and build, high forehead, lots of hair worn smooth over his dome. He could have been catalogued as the kind of specimen seen buying motorboats in ads if it hadn’t been for the chin, which started back for his throat too soon.

  “Thanks,” I said, handing it back to her. “That clinches it that he didn’t make a play for you as a last resort. First, you are not a last resort. Second, he was apparently nice to look at. I suppose that was the opinion of those who knew him?” “Yes. Every woman who saw him was attracted to him. There wasn’t a girl in the place who wouldn’t have been glad to get him.” I frowned at her. That didn’t sound like my Miss Livsey, that vulgar boasting, but I had never assumed that she was without any defect at all. I followed it up.

  “Then a lot of them must have been after him. Unless you reject the theory that girls have been known to chase—” “Of course they do. They did.” “Did it make him very mad?” “No, he loved it.” “Did it make you mad?” She smiled. However, it was not precisely the sort of smile Rosenbaum had had in mind. I smiled back at her.

  She asked, “Now we’re getting down to it, aren’t we?” “I don’t know,” I said. “Are we?” As soon as her words were out she had caught her lower lip with her teeth. After holding on for a moment, not long, the teeth let go. “That was silly,” she declared. “No, I don’t think it made me mad. In a way I enjoyed it and in a way I didn’t. Go ahead.” I took my hands from my pockets and clasped them back of my head and regarded her. “I would like very much to go ahead, Miss Livsey, if I only knew which way.

  Say we try another door. Have you ever had any reason to suppose or suspect that Moore’s death was anything but a hit-and-run accident?” “No,” she said bluntly.

  “But there’s been gossip about it, hasn’t there?” “There certainly has.” “What started the gossip?” “I don’t know what started it back in December, when it happened—I guess it just started itself, the way gossip does. Then it died down, it stopped entirely as far as I know, that was quite a while ago, and just last week it started up again.” “Do you know what started it again?” She looked at me, made sure she had her eyes into mine, and asked, “Do you?”
“I’ll say yes if you will.” “It’s a go. Yes.” “Same here. Have you any idea why he put that word on that report?” “No. I don’t know and I can’t imagine. I know I’d like to—” She bit it off.

  “What?” She didn’t say what. She didn’t say anything. She was visibly, for the first time in niy three encounters with her, having feelings about something. I wouldn’t have called her cold, that word simply didn’t fit her and never would, but even the name of Moore and talking of him had put nothing you could call emotion into her face or voice. Now she was letting something show. She didn’t exhibit anything as trite as quivering lips or eyes blinking to keep tears back, but a sort of loosening of her face muscles indicated that some strict discipline had met more than it could handle.

  Suddenly and abruptly she got up, crossed to me, and put her hand, her open palm, on top of my head and patted it several times. I got more the impression of a melon being tested to see if it was firm than of a woman caressing a man, but that might have been only my modesty. I didn’t budge.

  She backed up a step and stood looking down at me, and my clasped hands let my head go back so as to meet her look.

  “It’s a funny thing,” she said, half puzzled and half irritated. “I used to be able to handle men any way I wanted to. I’m not bragging, but I really could, I knew how to get anything I wanted from men, you know, little things, you know how girls are—and now I want something from you, and look at me! It isn’t you either—I mean there’s nothing wrong with you, you’re quite good-looking and there’s nothing wrong with you at all. I don’t know whether you’re a policeman or what you are, but whatever you aree you’re a man.” She stopped.

  “Every inch,” I agreed warmly. “I could suggest better how you ought to go about it if I knew what you want. First tell me that.” “Well, for one thing, I want to keep my job here.” “Done. I’ll attend to that in my report. Next?” Her voice muscles were loose too now. “That’s ridiculous,” she stated, not offensively. “I don’t know who you are or what you are, but I do know you’re trying to find out something about the death of the man I was going to marry, and it’s getting to be more than I can stand. I want to forget all about it, I want to forget about him—I do, I really do! You don’t know what hundreds of girls together in a place like this—you don’t know what they can be like when they get started talking—it’s horrible, just horrible! Why Mr. Naylor started it going again—I don’t know. I can’t stand it much longer and I’m not going to, but I like it here and I have to have a job—I like my work and I like my boss, Mr.

  Rosenbaum—” She went to her chair and sat down, with her two fists resting on the desk in front of her, and addressed not me but the world: “Oh, damn it!” “I still don’t know,” I protested, “what you want from me.” “Certainly you know.” She almost glared at me. “You can stop the talk. You can show that Mr. Naylor is nothing but a silly old fool. You can settle it, once and for all, that Waldo was killed by a hit-and-run driver and that’s all there is to it!” “I see. That’s what you want.” Her eyes had come back to me, and mine were at a slant to meet them. We went on looking at each other, and I had a distinct feeling, whether shared by her or not I didn’t know, that we were beginning to get acquainted. When a girl has patted a man’s head, and sat and let him look for ten seconds or more, and looked back at him, with no words exchanged, she can no longer maintain the attitude that he is a complete stranger.

  “I’m not a policeman,” I said. “Whatever I am, I can’t settle it how and why he got killed, because that was settled nearly four months ago, the night of December fourth. It’s all down somewhere, all settled, and all I can do is try to dig up enough of it to satisfy everybody concerned. It helps to know that you’re already satisfied.” “You’re working for Mr. Naylor,” she declared, her tone and look indicating that in all her long association with me she would never have supposed me capable of sinking so low.

  “No.” I was emphatic. “I’m not.” “You’re really not?” “Really and positively.” “But then—” She stopped, frowning at me but not for me. “But he has talked to you about Waldo, hasn’t he?” “He has indeed. He’s a great talker.” “What did he say?” “That Moore was murdered.” “Oh, I know that.” The frown was still there. “He put that on the report. The whole floor knows about it, which was what he wanted, that was why he had a floor girl type the reports instead of his secretary. What else did he say?” “About Moore, nothing of any importance. He just says murdered. It’s an eeday feex.” “What else did he say about anything?” “Oh, my God. That eating cooked vegetables brought on the war. That a man who eats meat—” “You know perfectly well what I mean!” she was actually scolding me. “What did he say about me?” “Not a peep. Not a single word. He made only one remark that could possibly be construed as a reference to you. This morning, standing out there at the end of the arena, he said he doubted if there was a virgin in the room, but since you have your own office it probably didn’t apply to you.” The question of virginity apparently wasn’t troubling her. She insisted, “He really hasn’t mentioned me?” “Not yet.” I looked at my wrist, let the front legs of my chair come down to the floor, and stood up. “You have your letters to do, and I have some chores myself. I’m sorry it can’t all be settled the way you want it right now, I honestly am sorry. You say you really want to forget all about Moore?” “Yes! I do!” “Okay, we’ll keep that on the agenda.”

  CHAPTER Eleven

  The first chore on my list consisted of manual labor, with the typewriter in my room as the tool for it, so I went there and started to work.

  I had asked, among other items, for some coated stock, letter size, and while the stuff they had sent was nothing to brag about, I inspected it again and decided it would serve. It was a quarter to four, only half an hour till my date with Jasper Pine, and therefore I had to step on it. Making a club sandwich of three sheets of the coated stock and two of carbon paper, I inserted them in the machine and typed in the upper right-hand corner in caps: >REPORT FROM THE OFFICE OF NERO WOLFE March 19 1947 Four spaces down, in the middle, I put: CONFIDENTIAL TO NAYLOR-KERR, INC.

  914 William Street New York City

  There wasn’t time to do it up brown, giving all the little details, the way it should be done for most clients to make them feel they’re getting something for their dough, but I made it fairly comprehensive and in my opinion adequate. It conveyed the information that Kerr Naylor had introduced Moore’s name in the first three minutes, that he had invited me to lunch and flushed me by calling me by my right name, that he insisted Moore had been murdered but refused to furnish an specifications of anything, that he had agreed to go to see Wolfe, that he said he had told Deputy Police Commissioner O’Hara that Moore had been murdered, and that he also said that Moore had been recommended for employment by his sister. In addition to all that on Naylor my report had a summary of my talk with Dickerson, the head of the Correspondence Checkers Section, a statement that word had got around in the department that I was investigating Moore’s death, and a one-sentence paragraph to the effect that I had talked with one Hester Livsey, who had been engaged to Moore, without any result worth mentioning. The only incident the report passed up entirely was my brief interview with the non-speller, which didn’t seem to me to be relevant—and of course the phone call to Lon Cohen at the Gazetee, which seemed to be a little too relevant.

  Through at the typewriter, I signed the original, folded it and stuck it in my pocket, and did likewise with one of the carbons. The other carbon I didn’t fold. I went and unlocked the filing cabinet, opened the drawer I was using, removed all the folders, and with my handkerchief gave a good wipe to the inside of the metal drawer, sides and ends and bottoms. As I replaced the folders, which were made of green slick-surfaced cardboard, I wiped each one, all four surfaces. Inside the third folder from the top, on top of the papers that were already in it, I placed the second carbon of the report I had just typed, and on top of the report I care
fully deposited four grains of tobacco which I had removed from the end of a cigarette. I put them in four selected spots and gently lowered the cardboard of the folder onto them. Closing the drawer, I wiped the whole front of the cabinet, and then I was confronted with a question which I would have liked to consider a little if it hadn’t been twelve minutes past four and me due upstairs in three minutes. Should I just leave it unlocked, or leave the key there in the lock? I voted for the former and stuck the key in my pocket.

  I hotfooted it to the outside hall and the elevators, and, as I got off at the thirty-sixth floor, found myself faced by another question which I should have had an answer all ready for but had overlooked in the rush. For the veteran receptionist in the lobby of the executive offices, who was I? The day before, calling on Pine, I had been Goodwin. Was I now to be Truett and expect her to look straight at my intelligent face and think it credible that I didn’t know my own name? Impossible. I walked up to her desk and told her that Mr. Goodwin had an appointment with Mr. Pine for four-fifteen.

  Then I had to sit and wait over ten minutes. Usually I am a good waiter, unruffled and relaxed, but that time it irritated me because I could have done a much better job of wiping if I hadn’t hurried. However, it couldn’t be helped, and I sat till I was summoned.

  Pine looked tired, busy, and harassed. He stayed behind his desk and started talking before I got across to him.

  “I can only give you a few minutes,” he said brusquely. “I already had a full schedule and things are piled up. What is it?” I handed him the original of the report and stayed on my feet. “Of course you could take it and read it later, but I thought maybe—” I chopped it off because he had started reading. He raced through it, three times as fast as Wolfe ever reads, and then went back and gave some of the paragraphs a second look. A sharp glance came at me. “I knew Mr. Naylor had called on the Deputy Commissioner of Police.” “Sure,” I conceded heartily. “You didn’t mention it, but a man can’t mention everything. Which reminds me, I’ve got a little problem. When Mr. Wolfe reads a copy of this, you see I know him pretty well, the first thing he’ll ask will be whether you knew Mr. Naylor’s sister had asked him to give Moore a job, and if so why you didn’t tell me.” I thought it was more diplomatic to say “Mr.