Rex Stout - Nero Wolfe - Too Many Women

by Too Many Women (lit)

  “I think,” I said, “that the crucial point in this case will come in about a month or six weeks, when we’ll have to decide whether to stop and send in our bill or go on a while longer. It will depend on two things—how much we need the money, and how much Naylor-Kerr will pay for nothing. That’s the problem that confronts us and we must somehow solve it.” “Then you don’t think Mr. Moore was murdered.” “I don’t know. There are at least two hundred people who might have murdered him. If one of them did, and if there were any possible way of finding out which one, naturally I have my favorites. I have mentioned Pine. I like the idea of him because it is always gratifying to call a bullheaded bluff, and if it was him he certainly tried one when he hired you. But if he’s the sort of bird who takes it in his stride when his wife keeps two-legged pets on account of her owning stock in the company that pays his salary, what would ever work him up to murder? Anyhow, she had given Moore the boot. My real favorite is Kerr Naylor.” “Indeed.” “Yes, sir. On account of psychology. Wait till you see him Monday. His last ten incarnations he was a cat, and he always held the world’s record for mouse-playing. Add that to the well-known impulse of a murderer to confess, and what have you got? Although it has all been filed away as a hit-and-run, with the hit-runner not found and not likely to be at this late day, he has got that impulse, so he tells the world, including a Deputy Commissioner of Police, that it was murder. That satisfies the impulse without costing him anything, and also it carries on the tradition of his cat ancestry. Baby, what fun! In this case the mouse is the people in his department, the president of the firm and the Board of Directors, the cops—everybody but him. “Yep, he’s my favorite.” “Any others?” I started to wave a hand but called it back on a word from my shoulder. “Plenty.

  Dickerson, for the honor of the Section. Rosenbaum, hipped on Miss Livsey and wanting to save her from a two-bit Casanova. And so on. But this is all academic. We might reach some kind of a conclusion, but what if we do? The waves have washed all the foot-prints away, and as I said before, all we’ll be able to solve is the question when to quit and render a bill. The only consolation is that I’ll get a wife out of it. I’m going to make Miss Livsey forget Waldo.” “Confound it.” Wolfe reached for his beer glass and saw that it was empty, lifted the bottle and found it empty too, and glared at both of them. “I suppose we’d better go to bed. Are you in pain?” “Pain? Why? I thought we might sit and talk a while. This is a very difficult case.” “It may be. Tomorrow I’d like to see Mrs. Pine. She can come at eleven in the morning, or right after lunch. You can arrange it through Mr. Pine.” He gripped the edge of his desk with both hands, the customary preliminary to getting to his feet.

  The phone rang. I swiveled my chair, not groaning, and lifted the instrument.

  “Nero Wolfe’s office, Archie Goodwin speaking.” “Oh, Mr. Goodwin? My husband has told me about you. This is Cecily Pine, Mrs.

  Jasper Pine.” “Yes, Mrs. Pine.” “I just got home from a theater supper, and my husband told me about your inquiry regarding Waldo Moore. I would like to help, if I can in any way, and I don’t think these things should be put off, so I’ll drive down there now. I have the address.” I tried to keep my voice friendly and sociable. “I’m afraid it would be better to make it tomorrow, Mrs. Pine. It’s pretty late, and Mr. Wolfe—” But he ruined it. He had got on his extension, and broke in, “This is Mr. Wolfe, Mrs. Pine. I think it would be better to come now. An excellent idea. You have the address?” She said she had and would leave right away, and only had to come from Sixty-seventh Street. Wolfe and I hung up.

  “It’s unfortunate,” Wolfe said. “You should be in bed, but it may be necessary for you to take notes.” “I’m not sleepy,” I said through my teeth. “I was hoping she would call.”

  CHAPTER Fourteen

  Considering what I knew of her, I could hardly believe my eyes when I opened the door and let her in. Probably I had unconsciously been expecting something on the order of Hedy Lamarr as she would be with the wrinkles of age, and therefore the sight of her pink smooth-skinned wholesome face and her medium-sized housewife’s chassis, a little plump maybe, but certainly not fat, gave me a shock.

  “You’re Archie Goodwin,” she said in a low-pitched educated voice.

  I admitted it.

  She was openly staring at me, and advanced a step to see better. “What on earth,” she asked, “has happened to your face? It’s all red and bruised!” “Yeah. I got in a fight with a man and he hit me with his fist. Both fists.” “Good heavens! It looks simply awful. Have you got any beefsteak?” I did not believe, considering everything, that she was speaking from experience. She had simply read about it. I told her that it wasn’t bad enough to rate beefsteak at ninety cents a pound, adding pointedly that all I needed was a good long night’s sleep, and ushered her into the office.

  Wolfe was on his feet, having probably got up to stretch. Mrs. Pine crossed to him to shake hands, declined the red leather chair because she preferred straight ones, accepted the one I placed for her, let me take her coat of platinum mink or aluminum sable or whatever it was, and sat down.

  “You really ought to do something for your face,” she told me.

  The funny thing was that her harping on it didn’t irritate me. She gave me the distinct impression that it really made her feel uncomfortable for me to be uncomfortable, and how could I resent that? So we discussed my face until Wolfe finally dived into an opening.

  “You wanted to see me, madam, did you?” She turned to him, and her manner changed completely, possibly because he didn’t have bruises and red spots.

  “Yes, I did,” she said crisply. “I thoroughly disapprove of what my husband has done, engaging you to investigate the death of Waldo Moore. What good can it possibly do?” “I’m sure I don’t know.” Wolfe was leaning back, with his forearms paralleled on the arms of his chair. “That’s a question for your husband. If you don’t like his engaging me you should persuade him to disengage me.” “I can’t. I’ve been trying to. He’s being extremely stubborn about it, and that’s why I came to see you.” Good for Jasper, I thought, but who the hell stuck a ramrod down his spine?

  Mrs. Pine went on. “I suppose, of course, my husband has committed himself—or rather, the firm. If you withdraw from it, now, there’ll be no difficulty about that. I’ll pay whatever it comes to.” “What good would that do you?” Wolfe inquired testily. I won’t go so far as to say that he never liked women, but he sure didn’t like women who picked up the ball and started off with it. “Your husband would hire someone else. Besides, madam, while I like to charge high prices for doing something, I haven’t formed the habit of charging for doing nothing, and I won’t start with you. No.

  Obviously you’re accustomed to getting what you want, but there must be some other way of doing it. What is it you want?” Mrs. Pine turned to me. For a second I thought she was going to revert to my face, but instead she asked, “What’s he like, Archie? Is he as stubborn as he sounds?” The Archie from her came perfectly natural. “From him,” I told her, “I would call that almost flabby.” “Good heavens.” She regarded Wolfe with interest but with no sign of dismay. “I presume,” she said abruptly, “you know that Waldo Moore was at one time a close friend of mine?” Wolfe nodded. “I have been told so. By Mr. Goodwin. He got his information from a newspaperman. Apparently it is known.” “Yes, of course. That’s the advantage of not trying to hide things; things that people know about are taken for granted. But permitting people to know about them, and permitting them to be publicly discussed in newspapers—that’s a very different thing. Do you suppose for a moment, Mr. Wolfe, that I am going to sit and do nothing while you make pictures for tabloids out of my private life?

  While you make a public sensation out of the death of Waldo Moore?” “Certainly not, madam.” Wolfe was still testy. “It’s quite plain that you aren’t going to sit and do nothing. You aren’t now. You’ve come here to see me at half-past two in the morning. By
the way, you must have asked that same question of your husband. What did he say?” “He says it will not become a public sensation. He says that all he is after is to stop the gossip at the office and make it impossible for my brother to start it again. But I don’t care to run that risk and I don’t intend to.” “What does your brother say? Have you discussed it with him?” That pricked her skin. Since I had not yet been told to take notes I was able to give her face my full attention, and that was the first sign it showed of needing to go into conference. She pressed her lips together and said nothing.

  It occurred to me that it seemed to run in the family, since at my so-called lunch with Kerr Naylor the first and only time he had paused to think had been when his sister had been inserted into the conversation.

  She finally spoke. “I don’t know what is in my brother’s mind—not exactly. He won’t tell me, though he usually does. He is a—very peculiar man. He dislikes my husband and all of the other top men in the company —all except one or two.” Wolfe grunted. “Does he dislike you?” “Why, no. No!” “Then why doesn’t he stop his flummery about murder when you ask him to?” “He doesn’t—” She stopped, then went on, “That’s interesting, I hadn’t thought of it that way, but my brother says exactly what my husband says, that there’s no danger of it’s becoming public. But I don’t care what they say, there’s still a risk, and I have always believed in doing anything within reason to avoid unnecessary risks. If my husband and my brother are both going to act like spoiled brats—actually making idiots of themselves in my opinion—then I’ll have to take things into my own hands.” She looked at me, and immediately became a different woman. “It seems a little chilly in here, Archie. May I have my coat?” I thought no wonder, since she was still dressed for the theater, with nothing above the bra line but skin. For her age, which must surely have been mine plus ten, the skin was absolutely acceptable. I got the coat and draped it over her shoulders, and she smiled up at me for thanks, and I went and upped the thermostat a notch.

  She resumed on Wolfe. “The best way, I thought, would be to deal directly with you. Perhaps you’re quite right—if you simply quit, as I asked, my husband would engage someone else. Then why not let him have what he wants? Apparently he wants you to investigate, and my brother does too, so why not? You will be paid whatever has been agreed on, and in addition I will give you my personal check, and you can’t possibly object that I am paying you for nothing, because you will give me your guarantee that the investigation will not—let’s see—that no publicity will result. It doesn’t matter how we put it so long as we understand what we mean. The check could be for—ten thousand dollars?” Wolfe was shaking his head at her. “For heaven’s sake,” he muttered incredulously. “Do you realize you’re offering to pay me to keep a secret?” Her eyes widened. “I am not! What secret?” “I don’t know. Yet. But your husband—or his firm, in which you are the largest stockholder—is paying me to discover something, and you want to pay me to conceal it if and when I discover it. You called your husband and brother idiots, but what do you call yourself? You offer ten thousand dollars. You assume that I am capable of double-dealing. If I am, why should I stop there?

  Why not a hundred thousand, a million? Madam, you’re an imbecile.” She ignored the compliment and was concentrating on the logic. “That’s silly,” she said scornfully. “Would I have come to you like this if I hadn’t known your reputation? That would be blackmailing, and you’re not a crook!” Wolfe was speechless, which was one more piece of evidence that he didn’t understand women half as well as he did men. I got her with no trouble at all.

  Her position was simply that if he double-crossed Naylor-Kerr, Inc., there would be nothing crooked about it because that was what she wanted, whereas if he double-crossed or blackmailed her he would be a snide, a louse, and a blackguard; and she knew his reputation, and he wasn’t.

  Seeing there was no meeting of minds and one wasn’t likely, I put in, “Look, Mrs. Pine, it won’t work that way, really it won’t. You can’t bribe him or threaten him.” She gazed at me, and evidently I wasn’t Archie any more, at least not at the moment.

  “I haven’t tried to threaten him,” she stated.

  “I know you haven’t. I just put that in.” She looked at Wolfe, and then back at me. “But—” She was inspecting an idea. “It should be possible to have his license revoked. With the taxes I pay and the people I know, I should be able to do that. Doesn’t a detective have to have a license?” That nearly made me speechless too, but somebody had to keep up our end. “He sure does,” I told her, “and I’m one too. You might try that, Alice, but I doubt if you’ll get anywhere.” “My name is Cecily.” “I know it is. I meant Alice in Wonderland. You remind me of her.” “That’s a wonderful book,” she declared. “I read it over again just recently.

  Are you men partners?” “No, I work for him.” “I don’t see why. I don’t see how you can stand him. How much would it take for you to go into business for yourself?” “Pfui,” Wolfe interposed. “This is tommy-rot. You would find, madam, if you made the slightest effort, that I am a reasonable man. Do you want a suggestion from me?” “I don’t know,” she said reasonably. “Tell me what it is first.” “It’s this. You’ll never accomplish anything with this sort of cackle—not with Mr. Goodwin or me. Anyway, even if I accepted your ridiculous offer, you might be wasting your money. Your assumptions may not be sound. Evidently you assume that if we do a competent job of investigating Mr. Moore’s death it is certain, or at least highly probable, that a public scandal will result. What makes you so sure of that?” She looked at him appreciatively. “That’s quite clever,” she said generously.

  “If I really were sure and told you why, it would be a great help to you. But I’m not sure at all. I just don’t want to run the risk.” “Do you share your brother’s opinion that Mr. Moore was murdered?” “Certainly not. It was an accident.” “Had you seen Mr. Moore that day? The day he was killed?” “No. I hadn’t seen him for months.” She laughed. It came from her throat on out, as if something had really struck her as funny. “He was going to get married! To a girl at the office named Livsey, Hester Livsey. He phoned me one day to tell me about it. Of course you can’t realize how grotesque that was because you didn’t know him.” “Did you advise him not to marry?” “Heavens, no. It wouldn’t have done any good. If I had known the girl I might have given her some advice, but not Waldo.” Mrs. Pine turned to me. “Is this a habit of his, Archie? He said he had a suggestion for me, and instead he cross-examines me.” “Yeah,” I agreed. “He doesn’t do it deliberately. His mind jumps the track.” “The suggestion,” Wolfe told her, ignoring me, “is a contingent one. It’s no good unless you’ve been telling the truth. If you have no knowledge of facts the disclosure of which would cause a sensation, and all you’re after is insurance against a risk, why not trust to my discretion? I have some, and I would gain neither pleasure nor profit from starting a public uproar unnecessarily. Why not help me get it over with? Its kernel is your brother’s tenacity, his fondness for the notion of murder—or at least for the word. I suppose you know your brother better than anyone else does. Why not help with him? Why not start now by telling us about him? For instance, I understand that you asked him to give Mr. Moore a job. Did he have any objection to that?” It was a fair try, but it didn’t work. Apparently Wolfe hadn’t noticed that she was allergic to talk of her brother, but that doesn’t seem likely, since he notices everything. At any rate, it was no go. She didn’t abruptly end the interview—on the contrary, she seemed quite willing to sit and chat all night —but she was utterly disinclined to furnish us with a biography of her brother.

  The most specific statement Wolfe could drag out of her was that her brother was peculiar, and she had already told us that, and we knew it anyway.

  Finally Wolfe got hold of the edge of his desk, pushed his chair back, and stood up. Mrs. Pine arose too, and I went and helped her on with her coat.

  In the hall
, with my hand on the knob of the front door, she stood where I couldn’t open it without banging her toe, and told me sympathetically, “I hope your face is better tomorrow.” “Thanks. So do I.” “And you didn’t answer my question about how much it would take for you to start your own business.” “That’s right, I didn’t. I’ll figure it up.” “Do you like symphony concerts?” “Yes, some, when I’m lying down. I mean on the radio.” She laughed. “Anyway, it’s nearly April. Boating? Golf? Baseball?” “Baseball. I go as often as I can get away.” “It’s a wonderful game, isn’t it? Yankees or Giants?” “Both. Either one, whichever’s in town.” “I’ll send you season tickets. Frankly, Archie, I think my brother is crazy.

  Don’t tell Mr. Wolfe I said that.” “I never tell him anything.” “Then that’s our first secret. Good night.” I escorted her out, down the stoop and to the curb, but didn’t get to open the car door for her because her chauffeur was already attending to that. As I reascended the steps I was telling myself that I mustn’t forget to phone Lon Cohen in the morning and inform him that the job was practically mine but nothing doing on his ten per cent because I was landing it strictly on merit.

  Back in the house I made a beeline for the stairs, taking no chances, but found it desirable to mount one step at a time. My room was two flights up. On the first landing I turned and yelled back down, “I’m going up and figure how much it will set her back to furnish my office! Good night!”

  CHAPTER Fifteen

  The next morning, Thursday, the arena of the stock department was a different place as far as I was concerned. Whenever I showed my face, coming and going, the change could be seen, felt, and tasted. Wednesday morning I had been a combination of a new male, to be given the once over and labeled, and an intruder from outside who could be expected to regard the lovely little darlings merely as units of personnel. Thursday morning I was a detective after a murderer. That’s what they all thought, and they all showed it. Whether Kerr Naylor had started another ball rolling, or whether it was just seepage from various leaks, I didn’t know, but the reaction that greeted me wherever I went left no doubt of the fact.