by Rex Stout
A: Pass. No bone. A dozen possible reasons.
Q: Wouldn’t he have been a sap to have Dinah type the notes on that typewriter?
A: No. The state of mind Mrs. Vail would be in when she got the note by mail, he knew she wouldn’t inspect the typing. When he got back he would destroy the notes. He would say he had promised Mr. Knapp he would and he was afraid not to. She had to use some typewriter, and buying or renting or borrowing one might have been riskier. Using that one and destroying the notes, there would be no risk at all. He wanted to take the notes from me.
Q: Could Ralph Purcell or Andrew Frost or Noel Tedder be Mr. Knapp?
A: No. Mrs. Vail knows their voices too well.
Q: Friday, if not sooner, Jimmy will have to open up. Where and how they took him, and kept him, and turned him loose. With the cops and the FBI both at him, won’t he be sure to slip?
A: No. He’ll say they blindfolded him and he doesn’t know where they took him and kept him. Last night, early this morning, they took him somewhere blindfolded and turned him loose.
Q: Then how are they going to uncover it so you can check it with these guesses and get your medal? How would you?
I was working on that one when the sound of the elevator came. Wolfe entered, crossed to his desk, sat, and said, “Report?”
I took my feet down and pulled my spine up. “Yes, sir. It’s Dinah Utley. I told District Attorney Clark Hobart that I had seen her yesterday afternoon when she came here in connection with a job Mrs. Vail had hired you to do. When he asked me what the job was it would have been rude just to tell him to go to hell, so I said that if he would tell me when and where and how Dinah Utley had died, and if I relayed it to you, you would decide what to do. Of course there’s no point in relaying it, since you said we don’t care what happened to her and are not concerned. I have informed Mrs. Vail and told her we’ll stand pat until eleven a.m. Friday.”
I swiveled, pulled the typewriter around, inserted paper and carbons, got the notebook from my pocket, and hit the keys. Perfect harmony. It helps a lot, with two people as much together as he and I were, if they understand each other. He understood that I was too strong-minded to add another word unless he told me to, and I understood that he was too pigheaded to tell me to. Of course I had to keep busy; I couldn’t just sit and be strong-minded. I typed the texts of the two notes and other jottings I had made in my book, then went and opened the safe and got the note Mr. Knapp had sent by mail. It seemed likely that Jimmy Vail would be wanting it, and it was quite possible that developments would make it desirable for us to have something to show someone. I clipped the note to the edge of my desk pad, propped the pad against the back of a chair, got one of the cameras—the Tollens, which I have better luck with—and took half a dozen shots. All this time, of course, Wolfe was at his book, with no glance at me. I had returned the note to the safe and put the camera away, and was putting the film in a drawer, when the doorbell rang. I went to the hall door for a look, turned, and told Wolfe, “Excuse me for interrupting. Ben Dykes, head of the Westchester County detectives. He was there this afternoon. He’s a little fatter than when you saw him some years ago at the home of James U. Sperling near Chappaqua.”
He finished a sentence before he turned his head. “Confound it,” he muttered. “Must I?”
“No. I can tell him we’re not concerned. Of course in a week or so they might get desperate and take us to White Plains on a warrant.”
“You haven’t reported.”
“I reported all you said you wanted.”
“That’s subdolous. Let him in.”
As I went to the front I was making a mental note not to look up “subdolous.” That trick of his, closing an argument by using a word he knew damn well I had never heard, was probably subdolous. I opened the door, told Dykes he had been expected as I took his coat and hat, which was true, and ushered him to the office. Three steps in, he stopped for a glance around. “Very nice,” he said. “Nice work if you can get it. You don’t remember me, Mr. Wolfe.” Wolfe said he did remember him and told him to be seated, and Dykes went to the red leather chair.
“I didn’t think it was necessary to get a local man to come along,” he said, “since all I’m after is a little information. Goodwin has told you about Dinah Utley. When he was up there he was the last one who had seen her alive as far as we knew, him and you when she was here yesterday afternoon, but since then I’ve spoken with two people who had seen her after that. But you know how it is with a murder, you have to start somewhere, and that’s what I’m doing, trying to get a start, and maybe you can help. Goodwin said Dinah Utley came here yesterday because Mrs. Vail told her to. Is that right?”
“Yes.”
“Well, of course I’m not asking what Mrs. Vail wanted you to do for her, I understand that was confidential, and I’m only asking about Dinah Utley. I’m not even asking what you said to her, I’m only asking what she said to you. That may be important, since she was murdered just eight or nine hours after that. What did she say?”
A corner of Wolfe’s mouth was up a little. “Admirable,” he declared. “Competent and admirable.”
Dykes got his notebook out. “She said that?”
“No. I say it. Your demand couldn’t be better organized or better put. Admirable. You have the right to expect a comparable brevity and lucidity from me.” He turned a hand over. “Mr. Dykes. I can’t tell you what Miss Utley said to me yesterday without divulging what Mrs. Vail has told me in confidence. Of course that wasn’t a privileged communication; I’m not a member of the bar, I’m a detective; and if what Mrs. Vail told me is material to your investigation of a murder I withhold it at my peril. The question, is it material, can be answered now only by me; you can’t answer it because you don’t know what she told me. To my present knowledge, the answer is no.”
“You’re withholding it?”
“Yes.”
“You refuse to tell me what Dinah Utley said to you yesterday?”
“Yes.”
“Or anything about what she came here for?”
“Yes.”
Dykes stood up. “As you say, at your peril.” He glanced around. “Nice place you’ve got here. Nice to see you again.” He turned and headed for the door. I followed him out and down the hall. As I held his coat for him he said, “At your peril too, Goodwin, huh?” I thanked him for warning me as I gave him his hat, and asked him to give Captain Saunders my love.
When I returned to the office Wolfe had his book open again. Always he is part mule, but sometimes he is all mule. He still didn’t know when or where or how Dinah Utley had died, and he knew I did know, and he had no idea how much or little risk he was running to earn the rest of that sixty grand, but by gum he wasn’t going to budge. He wasn’t going to admit that we cared what had happened to her because he had been childish enough to tell me we didn’t.
At the dinner table, in between bites of deviled grilled lamb kidneys with a sauce he and Fritz had invented, he explained why it was that all you needed to know about any human society was what they ate. If you knew what they ate you could deduce everything else—culture, philosophy, morals, politics, everything. I enjoyed it because the kidneys were tender and tasty and that sauce is one of Fritz’ best, but I wondered how you would make out if you tried to deduce everything about Wolfe by knowing what he had eaten in the past ten years. I decided you would deduce that he was dead.
After dinner I went out. Wednesday was poker night, and that Wednesday Saul Panzer was the host, at his one-man apartment on the top floor of a remodeled house on 38th Street between Lexington and Third. You’ll meet Saul further on. If you’ve already met him you know why I would have liked to have an hour alone with him, to give him the picture and see if he agreed with me about Jimmy Vail. It was just as well I couldn’t have the hour, because if Saul had agreed with me I would have had a personal problem; it would no longer have been just my private guess. Jimmy Vail was responsible for our holding it back
until Friday, and if he had killed Dinah Utley he was making monkeys of us. Of course that would serve Wolfe right, but how about me? It affected my poker, with Saul right there, but four other men were there also so I couldn’t tell him. Saul, who misses nothing, saw that I was off my game and made remarks about it. It didn’t affect his game any. He usually wins, and that night he raked it in. When we quit at the usual deadline, two o’clock, he had more than a hundred bucks of my money, and I was in no mood to stay and confide in him as an old and trusted friend.
Thursday, the morning after a late session of hard, tight poker, I don’t turn out until nine or nine-thirty unless something important is cooking, but that Thursday I found myself lying on my back with my eyes wide open before eight. It was getting on my nerves. I said aloud, “Goddam Jimmy Vail anyhow,” swung my legs around, and got erect.
I like to walk. I liked to walk in woods and pastures when I was a kid in Ohio, and now I like to walk even more on Manhattan sidewalks. If you don’t walk much you wouldn’t know, but the angle you get on people and things when you’re walking is absolutely different from the one you get when you’re in a car or in anything else that does the moving for you. So after washing and shaving and dressing and eating breakfast and reading about Dinah Utley in the Times, nothing I didn’t already know, I buzzed the plant rooms on the house phone to tell Wolfe I was going out on a personal errand and would be back by noon, and went.
Of course you don’t learn anything about people in general by walking around taking them in; you only learn things about this one or that one. I learned something that morning about a girl in a gray checked suit who caught her heel in a grating on Second Avenue in the Eighties. No girl I had ever known would have done what she did. Maybe no other girl in the world would. But I shouldn’t have got started about walking. I mentioned walking only to explain how it happened that at a quarter past eleven I entered a drugstore at the corner of 54th Street and Eighth Avenue, sat at the counter, and requested a glass of milk. As it was brought and I took a sip, a Broadway type came in and got on the stool next to me and said to the soda jerk, “Cuppa coffee, Sam. You heard about Jimmy Vail?”
“Where would I hear about Jimmy Vail?” Sam demanded, getting a cup. “All I hear is step on it. What about Jimmy Vail?”
“He died. It was on the radio just now. Found him dead on the floor with a statue on top of him. You know I used to know Jimmy before he married a billion. Knew him well.”
“I didn’t know.” Sam brought the coffee. “Too bad.” A customer came to a stool down the line, and Sam moved.
I finished the glass of milk before I went to the phone booth. I may have gulped it some, but by God I finished it. I wasn’t arranging my mind; there was nothing in it to arrange; I was just drinking milk. When I went to the phone booth I got out a dime and started my hand to the slot but pulled it back. Not good enough. A voice on a phone is all right up to a point, but I might decide to go beyond that point, and a little more walking might help. I returned the dime to my pocket, departed, walked seven blocks crosstown and ten blocks downtown, entered the marble lobby of a building, and took an elevator.
I gave the receptionist on the twentieth floor a nod and went on by. Lon Cohen’s room, with his name on the door but no title, was two doors this side of the Gazette’s publisher’s. I don’t remember a time that I have ever entered it and he wasn’t on the phone, and that time was no exception. He darted a glance at me and went on talking, and I took the chair at the end of his desk and noted that he showed no sign of being short on sleep, though he had left Saul’s place the same time I had, a little after two. His little dark face was neat and smooth, and his dark brown, deep-set eyes were clear and keen. When he had finished on the phone he turned to me and shook his head.
“Sorry, I’ve banked it. I guess I could spare a ducat.”
He had been the only winner last night besides Saul. “I wouldn’t want to strap you,” I said. “A dime would see me through the week. But first, what about Jimmy Vail?”
“Oh.” He cocked his head. “Is Wolfe looking for a job, or has he got one?”
“Neither one. I’m interested personally. I was taking a walk and heard something. I could wait and buy a paper, but I’m curious. What about him?”
“He’s dead.”
“So I heard. How?”
“He was found—you know about the Harold F. Tedder library.”
“Yeah. Statues.”
“He was found there a little after nine o’clock this morning by his stepdaughter, Margot Tedder. On the floor, with Benjamin Franklin on him. Benjamin Franklin in bronze, a copy of the one in Philadelphia by John Thomas Macklin. That would be a beautiful picture, but I don’t know if we got one. I can phone downstairs.”
“No, thanks. How did Benjamin Franklin get on him?”
“If we only knew that and knew it first. You got any ideas?”
“No. What do you know?”
“Damn little. Nothing. I can phone downstairs and see if anything more is in, but I doubt it. We’ve got five men on it, but you know how the cops are, and the DA, when it’s people in that bracket. They don’t even snarl, they just button their lips.”
“You must know something. Like how long he’d been dead.”
“We don’t. We will in time for the three-o’clock.” The phone buzzed. He got it said “Yes” twice and “No” four times, and returned to me. “Your turn, Archie. Your fee’s showing, or Wolfe’s fee is. Yesterday morning the body of Mrs. Vail’s secretary is found in a ditch in Westchester. This morning the body of her husband is found in her library, and here you come—not on the phone, in person. So of course Wolfe has been hired by someone. When? Yesterday? About the secretary?”
I eyed him. “I could give you a whole front page.”
“I’ll settle for half. Don’t pin me to the wall with your steely eyes. I’m sensitive. You know who killed the secretary.”
“No. I thought I did, but not now. What I’ve got may break any minute—or it may not. If I give it to you now you’ll have to save it until I give the word—unless it breaks, of course. This is personal. Mr. Wolfe doesn’t even know I’m here.”
“Okay. I’ll save it.”
“You don’t mean maybe.”
“No. I’ll save it unless it breaks.”
“Then get pencil and paper. Jimmy Vail was expected home from the country Sunday night but didn’t come. Monday morning Mrs. Vail got a note in the mail saying she could have him back for five hundred grand and she would get a phone call from Mr. Knapp. I have a photograph of the note, taken by me, and I may let you have a print if you’ll help me mark a deck of cards so I can win my money back from Saul. How would you like to run a good picture of that note, exclusive?”
“I’d help you mark ten decks of cards. A hundred. Is this straight, Archie?”
“Yes.”
“My God. That ‘Knapp’ is beautiful. How did he spell it?”
I spelled it. “He phoned Monday afternoon and told her to get the money, put it in a suitcase, put the suitcase in the trunk of her blue sedan, and Tuesday evening drive to Fowler’s Inn on Route Thirty-three, arriving at ten o’clock. She did so. At Fowler’s Inn she was called to the phone and was told, probably the same voice, to look in the phone book where Z begins. There was a note there giving instructions. I haven’t—”
“Beautiful,” Lon said. His pencil was moving fast.
“Not bad. Don’t interrupt, I’m in a hurry. I haven’t got a picture of that note, but I have the text, taken from the original by me. The notes were typewritten. Following the instructions, she drove around a while and got to The Fatted Calf around eleven o’clock. There she got another phone call and was told to look in the phone book where U begins. Another note, same typewriting—I have the text. More instructions. Following them, she took Route Seven to Route Thirty-five, Route Thirty-five to Route One Twenty-three, and Route One Twenty-three to Iron Mine Road, which is all rock and a yard wide. She turned i
nto it. When a car—”
“Dinah Utley,” Lon said. “The secretary. Her body was found on Iron Mine Road.”
“Don’t interrupt. When a car behind her blinked its lights she stopped and got out and got the suitcase from the trunk. A man with only his eyes uncovered came from the other car, took the suitcase, and told her to go straight home, stop nowhere, and say nothing, which she did. Around seven-thirty yesterday morning her husband phoned her from their place in the country and said the kidnapers had let him go in one piece and he would come to town as soon as he cleaned up and ate. He also said they had told him to keep the lid on for forty-eight hours or he would regret it, and he was going to and expected her to. I don’t know exactly when he arrived at the house on Fifth Avenue, but it must have been around ten o’clock.”
I stood up. “Okay, that’s it. I’ve got to go. If your sheet prints even a hint of it before I give the word, I’ll write a letter to the editor and feed your eyes to the cat. If and when I give the word, there is to be no mention of Nero Wolfe or me. If it breaks, about the kidnaping, before I give the word, you’ll still be out in front with a lot of facts the others won’t have. I’ll be seeing you.”
“Wait a minute!” Lon was up. “You know how hot this is. It could burn my ass to cinders.”
“It sure could. Then you couldn’t help me mark a deck.”
“How solid is it?”
“It isn’t. There’s an alternative. Either it’s good as gold, every word, or Mrs. Jimmy Vail is unquestionably a double-breasted liar and almost certainly a murderer. If the latter, she’ll be in no position to burn even your ears, let alone your ass. If she killed Dinah Utley, who killed Jimmy? Benjamin Franklin?” I turned to go.
“Damn it, listen!” He had my arm. “Was Dinah Utley with Mrs. Vail Tuesday night in the blue sedan?”
“No. For either alternative, that’s positive. Dinah’s own car was there at Iron Mine Road. That’s the crop for now, Lon. I just wanted to burn a bridge. You could ask questions for an hour, but I haven’t got an hour.”
