by Rex Stout
"I don't know any. For instance, say she types a story or an article for a man. Does she tell you about him-what he looked like and how he talked? Or does she tell you what the story or article was about?"
The frown had not gone. "Would that be not proper?"
"Not at all. It's not a question of being proper, it's just that I want to make it personal, talking with her family and friends."
"Is it there will be an article about her?"
"Yes." That was not a lie. Far from it.
"Is it her name will be printed?"
"Yes."
"My daughter never talks about her work to me or her father or her sisters, only one thing, the money she makes. She tells about that because she gives me a certain part, but not for me, for the family, and one sister is in college. She does not tell me what men look like or about her work. If her name is going to be printed everybody ought to know the truth."
"You're absolutely right, Mrs. Abrams. Do you know-"
"You said you will talk with her family and friends. Her father will be home at twenty minutes to seven. Her sister Deborah is here now, doing her homework, but she is only sixteen-too young? Her sister Nancy will not be here today, she is with a friend, but she will be here tomorrow at half-past four. Then you want friends. There is a young man named William Butterfield who wants to marry her, but he is-"
She stopped short, with a twinkle in her eye. "If you will pardon me, but that is maybe too personal. If you want his address?"
"Please."
She gave me a number on Seventy-sixth Street. "There is Hulda Greenberg, she lives downstairs on the second floor,
Two C. There is Cynthia Free, only that is not her real name. You know about her."
"I'm sorry, I'm afraid I don't."
"She acts on the stage."
"Oh, sure. Cynthia Free."
"Yes. She went to high school with Rachel, but she quit. I will not speak against her. If my daughter is once a friend she is always a friend. I will be getting old now, but what will I have? I will have my husband and Deborah and Nancy, and enough friends I have, many friends, but I know I will always have my Rachel. If her name is to be printed that must be part of it. I will tell you more about her, Mr. Goodwin, if you will come in and sit-oy, the phone. Excuse me, please?"
She turned and trotted inside. I stayed put. In a moment I heard her voice, faintly.
"Hello… This is Mrs. Abrams… Yes… Yes, Rachel is my daughter… Who is it you say?…" -r'
There was no doubt about its being my move.The o.±y question was whether to leave the door standing open or close it. It seemed better to close it. I reached for the knob, pulled it to quickly but with no bang, and headed for the stairs.
Out on the sidewalk, glancing at my wrist and seeing 5:24, I went to the corner for a look, saw a drugstore down a block, walked there, found a phone booth, and dialed the number. Fritz answered and put me through to the plant rooms.
When Wolfe was on I told him, "I've had a talk with Rachel's mother. She says her daughter never discusses her work at home. We were using the present tense because she hadn't got the news yet. She wants to see her Rachel's name in print, and thanks to that son of a bitch I missed by three minutes, she will. I didn't tell her because it would have wasted time. Tomorrow, when she knows that discussing her daughter's work may help to find the guy that killed her, she might possibly remember something, though I doubt it. I have some names, but they're scattered around town. Tell the boys to call me at this number." I gave it to him.
He spoke. "Mr. Cramer insists on seeing you. I gave him the information, and he sent for the notebook, but he wants to see you. He is sour, of course. You might as well go down there. After all, we are collaborating."
"Yeah. On what? Okay, I'll go. Don't overdo."
I waited in the booth to corner it. When the calls came I gave William Butterfield to Saul, Hulda Greenberg to Fred,
and Cynthia Free to Orrie, telling them all to collect additional names and keep going. Then I hiked to the subway.
Down at Homicide on West Twentieth Street I learned how sour Cramer was. Over the years my presence has been requested at that address many times. When it's a case of our having something he would like to get, or he thinks it is, I am taken inside at once to his own room. When it's only some routine matter, I am left to Sergeant Purley Stebbins or one of the bunch. When all that is really wanted or expected is a piece of my hide, I am assigned to Lieutenant Rowcliff. If and when I am offered a choice of going to heaven or hell it will be simple; I'll merely ask, "Where's Rowcliff?" We were fairly even-he set my teeth on edge about the same as I did his-until one day I got the notion of stuttering. When he gets worked up to a certain point he starts to stutter. My idea was to wait till he was about there and then stutter just once. It more than met expectations. It made him so mad he had to stutter, he couldn't help it, and then I complained that he was mimicking me. From that day on I have had the long end and he knows it.
I was with him an hour or so, and it was burlesque all the way, because Wolfe had already given them my story and there was nothing I could add. Rowcliff's line was that I had overstepped when I searched her desk and took the notebook, which was true, and that I had certainly taken something besides the notebook and was holding out. We went all around that, and back and forth, and he had a statement typed for me to sign, and after I signed it he sat and studied it and thought up more questions. Finally I got tired.
"Look," I told him, "this is a lot of bull and you know it. What are you trying to do, b-b-b-break my spirit?"
He clamped his jaw. But he had to say something. "I'd rather b-b-b-break your goddam neek," he stated. "Get the hell out of here."
I went, but not out. I intended to have one word with Cramer, Down the hall I took a left turn, strode to the door at the end, and opened it without knocking. But Cramer wasn't there, only Purley Stebbins, sitting at a table working with papers.
"You lost?" he demanded.
"No. I'm giving myself up. I just c-c-c-cooked Rowcliff and ate him. Aside from that, I thought someone here might want to thank me. If I hadn't been there today, the precinct boys
would probably have called it a jump or a fall, and no one would have ever gone through that book and found those entries."
Purley nodded. "So you found the entries."
"So I did."
"And took the book home to Wolfe."
"And then, without delay, turned it over."
"By God, so you did. Thank you. Going?"
"Yes. But I could use a detail without waiting for the morning paper. What's in the lead on how Rachel Abrams got out of the window?"
"Homicide."
"By flipping a coin?"
"No. Finger marks on her throat. Preliminary, the M.E. says she was choked. He thinks not enough to kill her, but we won't know until they're through at the laboratory."
"And I missed him by three minutes."
Purley cocked his head. "Did you?"
I uttered a colorful word. "One Rowcliff on the squad is enough," I told him and beat it. Out in the anteroom I went to a phone booth, dialed, got Wolfe, and reported, "Excuse me for interrupting your dinner, but I need instructions. I'm at Homicide on Twentieth Street, without cuffs, after an hour with Rowcliff and a word with Purley. From marks on her throat the dope is that she was choked and tossed out the window. I told you so. I divided the three names Mrs. Abrams gave me among the help, and told them to get more and carry on. There should be another call on the family either tonight or tomorrow, but not by me. Mrs. Abrams might open up for Saul, but not for me, after today. So I need instructions."
"Have you had dinner?"
"No."
"Come home."
I went to Tenth Avenue and flagged a taxi. It was still drizzling.
6
WOLFE does not like conferences with clients. Many's the time he has told me not to let a client in. So when, that evening, following instructions, I phoned Wellman at his
hotel and asked him to call at the office the next morning at eleven, I knew it looked as bad to Wolfe as it did to me.
Eight days had passed since we had seen our client, though we had had plenty of phone calls from him, some local and some from Peoria. Apparently the eight days hadn't done him any good. Either he was wearing the same gray suit or he had two of them, but at least the tie and shirt were different. His face was pasty. As I hung his coat on the rack I remarked that he had lost some weight. When he didn't reply I thought he hadn't heard me, but after we had entered the office and he and Wolfe had exchanged greetings and he was in the red leather chair, he apologized.
"Excuse me, what did you say about my weight?"
"I said you had lost some."
"I guess so. I haven't been eating much and I don't seem to sleep. I go back home and go to the office or the warehouse, but I'm no darned good, and I take a train back here, and I'm no good here either." He went to Wolfe. "He told me on the phone you didn't have any real news but you wanted to see me."
Wolfe nodded. "I didn't want to, I had to. I must put a question to you. In eight days I have spent-how much, Archie?"
"Around eighteen hundred bucks."
"Nearly two thousand dollars of your money. You said you were going through with this even if it pauperized you. A man should not be held to a position taken under stress. I like my clients to pay my bills without immoderate pangs. How do you feel now?"
Wellman looked uncomfortable. He swallowed. "I just said I don't eat much."
"I heard you. A man should eat." Wolfe gestured. "Perhaps I should first describe the situation. As you know, I regard it as
established that your daughter was murdered by the man who, calling himself Baird Archer, phoned for an appointment with her. Also that he killed her because she had read the manuscript she told about in her letter to you. The police agree."
"I know they do." Wellman was concentrating. "That's something. You did that."
"I did more. Most of your money has been spent in an effort to find someone who could tell us something about either the manuscript or Baird Archer, or both. It missed success by a – narrow margin. Yesterday afternoon a young woman named r Rachel Abrams was murdered by being pushed from a window of her office. Mr. Goodwin entered her office three minutes later. This next detail is being withheld by the police and is not for publication. In a notebook in her desk Mr. Goodwin found entries showing that last September a Baird Archer paid her ninety-eight dollars and forty cents for typing a manuscript. Of course that clinches it that your daughter was killed because of her knowledge of the manuscript, but I was already acting on that assumption, so it doesn't help any. We are-"
"It proves that Baird Archer did it!" Wellman was excited. "It proves that he's still in New York! Surely the police can find him!" He came up out of the chair. "I'm going-"
"Please, Mr. Wellman." Wolfe patted the air with a palm. "It proves that the murderer was in that building yesterday afternoon, and that's all. Baird Archer is still nothing but a name, a will-o'-the-wisp. Having missed Rachel Abrams by the merest tick, we still have no one alive who has ever seen or heard him. As for finding his trail from yesterday, that's for the police and they do it well; we may be sure that the building employees and tenants and passers-by are being efficiently badgered. Sit down, sir."
"I'm going up there. To that building."
"When I have finished. Sit down, please?"
Wellman lowered himself, and nearly kept going to the floor when his fanny barely caught the edge of the leather. He recovered and slid back a few inches.
"I must make it plain," Wolfe said, "that the chance of success is now minute. I have three men interviewing Miss Abrams' family and friends, to learn if she spoke to any of them about Baird Archer or his manuscript, but they have already talked with the most likely ones and have got nothing. Mr. Goodwin has seen everyone at the office of Scholl and Hanna who could possibly have what we're after, and he has
also called on other publishers. For a week the police, with far greater resources than mine, have been doing their best to find a trace of either Baird Archer or the manuscript. The outlook has never been rosy; now it is forlorn."
Wellman's glasses had slipped down on his nose, and he pushed them back. "I asked about you before I came here," he protested. "I thought you never gave up."
"I'm not giving up."
"Excuse me. I thought you sounded like it."
"I'm merely describing the situation. Forlorn is not too strong a word. It would indeed be desperate but for one possibility. The name Baird Archer was first seen on a sheet of paper in the handwriting of Leonard Dykes. It would not be poopery to assume that when he wrote that list of names, obviously invented, he was choosing a pseudonym for a manuscript of a novel, whether written by him or another. But it is a fact, not an assumption, that he included that name in a list he compiled, and that that was the name of Miss Abrams' client, and it was also the name on the manuscript read by your daughter, and the name given by the man who phoned her for an appointment. If I make this too elaborate it is because I must make sure that it is completely clear."
"I like it clear."
"Good." Wolfe sighed. He was not enjoying himself. "I undertook to learn about thai manuscript through your daughter's associates or the person who typed it, and I have met defeat. I've been licked. The only connection with Baird Archer that has not been explored is that of Leonard Dykes, and it is certainly flimsy, the bare fact that he wrote that name down; but to explore it is our only hope."
"Then go ahead."
Wolfe nodded. "That's why I needed to see you. This is February twenty-seventh. Dykes was fished out of the water on New Year's Day. He had been murdered. The police rarely skimp on a murder, and the law office where Dykes worked assuredly saw a great deal of them. Mr. Goodwin has been permitted to see the file. People there were even asked then about Baird Archer, along with the other names on that list Dykes had written. Dykes had few intimacies or interests outside the office where he worked. Then, eight days ago, I showed the police that the name of Baird Archer connected Dykes's death with that of your daughter, and of course they again went after the people in that law office and are still
after them. All possible questions have probably been asked, not once but over and over, of those people. It would be useless for me to open an inquiry there in the conventional manner. They wouldn't even listen to my questions, let alone answer them."
Wellman was concentrating. "You're saying you can't do it." "No. I'm saying the approach must be oblique. Young women work in law offices. Mr. Goodwin may have his equal in making the acquaintance of a young woman and developing it into intimacy, but I doubt it. We can try that. However, it will be expensive, it will probably be protracted, and it may be futile-for your purpose and mine. If there were only one young woman and we knew she had information for us, it Would be simple, but there may be a dozen or more. There's no telling what it will cost, or how long it will take, or whether we'll get anything. That's why I had to ask you, shall we try it or do you want to quit?"
Wellman's reaction was peculiar. He had been concentrating on Wolfe, to be sure he got it clear, but now he had shifted to me, and his look was strange. He wasn't exactly studying me, but you might have thought I had suddenly grown an extra nose or had snakes in my hair. I sent my brows up. He turned to Wolfe.
"Do you mean-" He cleared his throat. "I guess it's a good thing you asked me. After what I said here that day you have a right to think I would stand for anything, but that's a little too-with my money-a dozen young women-first one and then another like that-"
"What the devil are you suggesting?" Wolfe demanded. I not only kept my face straight, I stepped in, for three good reasons: we needed the business, I wanted to get a look at Baird Archer, and I did not want John R. Wellman to go back and tell Peoria that New York detectives debauched stenographers wholesale on order.
"You misunderstand," I told Wellman. "Much obliged for the
compliment, but by intimacy Mr. Wolfe meant holding hands. He's right that sometimes I seem to get along with young women, but it's because I'm shy and they like that. I like what you said about its being your money. You'll have to take my word for it. If things start developing beyond what I think you would approve, I'll either remember it's your money and back off or I'll take off of the expense account all items connected with that subject."
"I'm not a prude," Wellman protested.
"This is farcical!" Wolfe bellowed.
"I'm not a prude," Wellman insisted manfully, "but I don't know those young women. I know this is New York, but some of them may be virgins."
"Absolutely possible," I agreed. I reproved Wolfe. "Mr. Wellman and I understand each other. His money is not to be used beyond a certain point, and he'll take my word for it. That right, Mr. Wellman?"
"I guess that'll do," he conceded. Meeting my eyes, he decided bis glasses needed cleaning, removed them, and wiped them with his handkerchief. "Yes, that'll do."
Wolfe snorted. "There is still my question. The expense, the time it will take, the slender prospect of success. Also it will be in effect an investigation of the death of Leonard Dykes, not of your daughter. The approach will be oblique in more ways than one. Well, sir? Do we proceed or quit?"
"We proceed." Our client, still our client, put his glasses back on. "If I might-I would like to be assured that our relations are confidential. I wouldn't want my wife or my pastor to know about this-uh-this development."
Wolfe was looking as if he might bellow again, so I put in fast, "They won't, not from us. No one will."
"That's good. Do you want another check?"
Wolfe said we didn't, not just yet. That seemed to dispose of all the issues, but Wellman wanted to ask some questions, chiefly about Rachel Abrams and the building where her office was. Apparently he intended to go up there and poke around, and I was all for it, anything to get him outside before he got to worrying again about virgins, or Wolfe's resentment at having to confer with a client got out of hand.
After showing Wellman out I returned to the office. Wolfe was leaning back, scowling, running a fingertip around a race track on the arm of his chair.
