Three for the Chair

by Rex Stout

  He frowned at her. Sometimes he honestly tries to speak to a woman without frowning at her, but he seldom makes it. “Possibly none, madam. But among us we pretend to a considerable batch of gumption, and we may even have it. If so, we might as well use it, since our only alternative is to sit and brood, hoping that Mr. Groom has either brains or luck. Have you people compared notes at all?”

  He got three noes and two headshakes.

  “Then it’s about time. You don’t even know whether one or more of you can safely be eliminated. Assuming that one of us killed him, do you know what the time limits are? … You don’t. Evidently you haven’t had the privilege, as I have, of hearing Mr. Hyatt’s story. The murder was committed between nine-thirty, when Mr. Hyatt left Donahue alone in the room, and ten o’clock, when Mr. Goodwin and I arrived. Assuming that one of us killed him – an assumption we must accept unless we find an excuse for discarding it. Therefore if one or more of you can establish that you arrived in room forty-two before nine-thirty, and stayed there, you’re out of it. Can you?”

  “Not me,” Dol Bonner said. “Miss Colt and I were there first, at twenty minutes to ten. About five minutes later Mr. Ide came, and in another four or five minutes Mr. Amsel. Next was Mr. Kerr, and you and Mr. Goodwin came last, just before ten o’clock. I resented it when you were called in because we got there first and I thought we should be called first.”

  “Then we’re still intact. When I said the limits are nine-thirty and ten o’clock I ignored the possibility that when Mr. Goodwin and Miss Colt went for coffee one of them, or both, stopped in at room thirty-eight and killed him. Does anyone want to explore it?”

  Sally Colt started to titter. It was a flaw in her, but I made allowances because it could have been the first time she had been at close quarters with a murder, and naturally she was strung tight. I came to the rescue. “Cross it off. I didn’t, she didn’t, and we didn’t.”

  “Miss Colt?”

  “Don’t be silly!” Her voice was louder than necessary, and she lowered it. “No. Mr. Goodwin is correct.”

  “Good. He often is.” Wolfe shifted in his chair. His rump had taken a lot of punishment since six o’clock that morning. “Presumably the police theory is that one of us, going along the hall on arrival, caught sight of Donahue, who could have opened the door of the room to look out, and proceeded to finish him. Under that theory we’re at the crux. There couldn’t have been time for a prolonged conversation unless the murderer entered the building much earlier than he arrived at room forty-two, and in that case the police will probably get him without any help from us. The point is that in all probability the mere sight of Donahue on those premises was enough to make the murderer resolve on his death forthwith. Do any of you qualify? I have reported to you fully and candidly on my association with that man. Did any of you have dealings with him?”

  “I did,” Dol Bonner said.

  “Yes, Miss Bonner? Will you elaborate?”

  “Certainly. I’ve told the police, so why not you?” There was an edge of scorn on her voice, either for Wolfe or for the others, no telling. “First, though, I left something out, not deliberately. When Miss Colt and I got to the third floor of that building I went to the women’s room and she went on to room forty-two. It was twenty minutes to ten when I joined her there. The police know that too, of course. Also I heard a police detective telling a man – I think it was the district attorney – that all of us had recognized the body.”

  “Indeed.” Wolfe’s frown was about gone. “All of you?”

  “That’s what he said.” Her eyes went to Ide, to Amsel, to Kerr, and back to Wolfe. “About my dealings with him, they were almost identical with yours. He came to my office last April and gave his name as Alan Samuels, and wanted me to arrange for a wiretap on the telephone at his home – a house in the Bronx – with exactly the same arrangement he made with you. I didn’t have an Archie Goodwin to nudge me on, but I thought it wouldn’t hurt any for me to learn something about wiretapping if I could do it legitimately, and I agreed to handle it if he would establish his identity. He showed me some papers – a driver’s license and some letters – but I told him that wasn’t enough.”

  She stopped to swallow. Evidently she wasn’t any prouder of her performance than Wolfe was of his. “He said he had an account in a bank around the corner – my office is at Fiftieth and Madison – and asked me to go there with him. I had an appointment and couldn’t leave the office, so I asked Miss Colt to go.” She turned. “Sally, that’s your part.”

  Sally wasn’t looking very gay. “You want me to tell it?”

  Dol Bonner said yes, and Sally gave Wolfe her eyes. From my angle, in the electric light, the blue in them didn’t show; they looked almost as black as Amsel’s. “Miss Bonner told me what was required,” she said, “and I went with him around the corner to the Madison Avenue branch of the Continental Trust Company. He took me through the gate in the railing to where there were four men at desks, and went to one of the desks. There was a little stand on the desk with a name on it, Frederick Poggett. The client called the man at the desk Mr. Poggett, and shook hands with him, and told him that in connection with a business transaction he needed to establish his identity, and would Mr. Poggett please identify him. Mr. Poggett said of course, and turned to me and said, ‘This gentleman is Mr. Samuels, a customer of our bank.’ I said, ‘Alan Samuels?’ and he said yes, and then told the client that if it was a matter of credit he would be glad to verify his balance. The client said that wouldn’t be necessary, and we left. We went back to the office and I reported to Miss Bonner.”

  She stopped and looked at Dol Bonner, who nodded and took the ball. “In my case, Mr. Wolfe, it wasn’t his secretary he suspected, it was his brother who was living in his house, but that’s just a detail. He paid me in cash, a thousand dollars, and I found out how to arrange for the tap and did so. He was to come to the office at five o’clock every day for the report. The morning after he had got the fifth report he phoned to say that he didn’t need the tap any longer and asked if he owed me anything. I told him yes, another five hundred dollars, and in an hour or so he came in and paid it.”

  She made a little gesture. “I never did suspect him. I still say there was no reason to. But when all the publicity about wiretapping started, and then when we were told to report under oath any and all connections we had had with wiretapping, I went to the bank and spoke with Mr. Poggett, taking Miss Colt with me. He remembered the incident, of course. After going to look at the records, he told me that Alan Samuels had opened a checking account at the bank on February eighteenth, giving a business address on Lexington Avenue. He, Poggett, had attended to it. He wouldn’t tell me either the amount or the references Samuels had given, but he did tell me that the balance had been withdrawn, closing the account, on April twentieth, which was the day after Samuels had canceled the tap, and I did get the Lexington Avenue address out of him. Of course I suspected I had been taken in, and I – do you want me to go on? My efforts to trace him?”

  “Not unless you found him. Did you?”

  “No. I never did. The next time I saw him was in that room today. Dead.”

  “You didn’t see him alive first?”

  “I did not.”

  “Wouldn’t it have been a simple matter to check on your suspicion – either confirm it or allay it?”

  “Oh.” She was taken aback. “I left that out. Of course. I went myself to the address in the Bronx. A man named Alan Samuels lived there, but he wasn’t the same man.”

  “Did you tell him of your – uh, inadvertent invasion of his privacy?”

  “No. I admit I should have, but I didn’t. I was sick about it, and I was sick of it.”

  “Did you inform yourself about him – his occupation, his standing, his interests?”

  “No. What good would that do?”

  “What is his address?”

  “I don’t …” She hesitated. “Is that important?”

 
; Wolfe was frowning at her again. “Come, Miss Bonner. When a Bronx phone book will probably supply it?”

  She flushed a little. “It merely seems to me that it’s immaterial. Twenty-nine seventy Borchard Avenue, the Bronx.”

  Wolfe turned. “Archie. Get Mr. Cohen. Give him that name and address and tell him we would like to have such information as is readily available. Within an hour if possible.”

  I got up and went to the phone. The number of the Gazette was one I didn’t have to consult my notebook for. I told them to go right ahead, that I was used to phoning under difficulties, but they politely kept silence. At that evening hour I had New York in twenty seconds, got Lon, and made the request, but it took two minutes to get rid of him. He wanted an exclusive on how we had got arrested and on the kind of knot I had used on Donahue’s necktie, and I had to get rude and hang up on him. As I returned to my chair Wolfe invited the audience, “Do any of you want to ask Miss Bonner any questions?”

  Apparently they didn’t.

  “I think,” he said, “that we can best show our appreciation of Miss Bonner’s candor by reciprocating it. Mr. Ide? Mr. Amsel? Mr. Kerr?”

  Ide sat and pinched the skin over his Adam’s apple. Amsel, his arms still folded on the back of his chair, kept his eyes at Wolfe. Jay Kerr made a noise, but it was only a minor belch.

  “I can understand,” Wolfe said, “that by your vocation and training you have developed a high regard for discretion, but I hope you haven’t made a fetish of it. According to Miss Bonner, all of you recognized the dead man. In that case, not only had you met him, but also you had met him under circumstances that made you think it hazardous, or at least imprudent, to pretend to no knowledge of him. As Miss Bonner said, what you have told the police can surely be told here, unless you have reason to fear –”

  “What the hell,” Jay Kerr blurted. “Sure, I knew the bastard.”

  “There’s ladies here,” Amsel reproached him.

  “They’re not ladies, they’re fellow members. Why, wasn’t he a bastard? Look how he played Wolfe and Dol Bonner, two professionals of the highest standards. A skunk. I’ll be glad to ante all I know about him, but I want a drink first.”

  “I beg your pardon,” Wolfe apologized, and he meant it. “Away from home I’m not myself, and I even neglect the amenities. Archie? If you please?”

  VI

  FOR DOL BONNER it was brandy and coffee, for Sally rum and coke, another flaw, for Ide tea with lemon, for Amsel double bourbon with water, for Kerr double scotch on the rocks, for Wolfe two bottles of beer, and for me double milk. I like a drink occasionally, but not when I’m out on bail. Then I need all my faculties.

  Kerr had said he wanted a drink first, so while we waited for the supplies to come up Wolfe went back to some details with Dol Bonner, such as the date Donahue had first called on her, but that was just to pass the time. Or maybe not. I was glad Fritz wasn’t there. He suspects every woman who ever crosses the threshold of wanting to take over his kitchen, not to mention the rest of the house. He would have been squirming. Dol Bonner’s caramel-colored eyes and long dark lashes were by no means her only physical attractions, and she was the right age, she had shown some sense and had done a pretty good job of reporting, and she was a companion in misery, having also been made a monkey of by Donahue. Of course if Wolfe hung a murder on her she would no longer be a danger, but I noticed that he had stopped frowning at her. Oh well, I thought, if she hooks him and Sally hooks me we can all solve cases together and dominate the field.

  After the drinks had come and been distributed, and Wolfe had taken a couple of healthy gulps of beer, he focused on Jay Kerr. “Yes, sir? You were going to tell us.”

  Kerr was sipping his scotch. “He played me too. Good. Only not the same pattern exactly. What was eating him was his wife. He wanted his home tapped, an apartment in Brooklyn. He wanted full reports on all voices, male and female, because he thought there might be a male around when he was away that shouldn’t be there. I can tell you and Miss Bonner too, you got gypped. He gave me two thousand at the go and another pair later.”

  “Thank you. I’ll demand more next time. When was this?”

  “It was early April when he contacted me. After two weeks, sixteen days if I remember right, he called the tap off and settled up.”

  “What was his name? The name he gave.”

  Kerr took a sip, swallowed, and made a face. “This whiskey don’t taste right, but that’s not the whiskey’s fault. I had cabbage for dinner. About his name, well, the name he gave was Leggett. Arthur M. Leggett.”

  “That sounds familiar. L-e-g-g-e-double-t?”

  “That’s right.”

  “I’ve seen it. Archie?”

  “Yeah,” I agreed. “He’s the head of something.”

  “He’s the president,” Dol Bonner said, “of the Metropolitan Citizens League.”

  That woman was getting on my nerves. Now she was giving him information he had asked me for and hadn’t got, and they weren’t even engaged yet. Wolfe thanked her courteously. Courtesy is okay, but I hoped he wasn’t making a fetish of it. He asked Kerr, “How did he establish his identity?”

  “He didn’t.”

  Kerr took another sip and made another face, and Wolfe turned to me and said sharply, “Taste that whiskey.”

  I had had the same idea myself. It was beginning to look as if we might have a murderer with us, and not only that, it hadn’t been long since a guy named Assa, right in our office, had swallowed a drink that had been served to him by me and had dropped dead. Cyanide. Wolfe didn’t want a rerun of that one, and neither did I. I went and asked Kerr to let me taste it, and he said what the hell but handed it over. I took in a dribble, distributed it with my tongue, let it trickle down, repeated the performance with a thimbleful, and handed it back to him.

  “Okay,” I told Wolfe. “It must be the cabbage.”

  He grunted. “You say he didn’t establish his identity, Mr. Kerr? Why not?”

  “Why should he?” Kerr demanded. “Do you know how many husbands in the metropolitan area get suspicious about their wives every week on an average? Hundreds. Thousands! Some of them come to me for help. A man comes and wants to pay me for expert service. Why should I doubt if he knows who he is? If I tried to check on all of them I’d spend all my time on it.”

  “You must have heard that name, Arthur M. Leggett. A man of your widespread – uh, activities.”

  Kerr jerked his chin up. “Look, are you a cop? Or one of us?”

  “I’m one of us.”

  “Then be yourself. Let the cops tell me what names I must have heard. Don’t worry, they have and they will. And I reported the tap in my statement to the secretary of state, because it was ethical and because I knew I had to. I knew they had two of the technicians singing, and I would have been sunk if they connected me with a job I hadn’t reported.”

  Wolfe nodded. “We have no desire to harass you, Mr. Kerr. We only ask that you contribute your share to our pool of information. You had no suspicion that your client was not Arthur M. Leggett?”

  “No.”

  “And never have had?”

  “No.”

  “Then when you were taken to view the corpse today you must have identified it as Arthur M. Leggett.”

  “I did.”

  “I see.” Wolfe considered a moment. “Why not? And naturally, when you learned that wasn’t his name you were shocked and indignant, and now you have severe epithets for him. You’re not alone in that. So have I; so has Miss Bonner; and so, doubtless, have Mr. Ide and Mr. Amsel.” He emptied his beer glass, refilled it, kept his eye on it long enough to see that the rising foam didn’t break at the edge, then looked up. “Have you, Mr. Ide?”

  Ide put his cup and saucer down on my suitcase, there on the rack, which I had invited him to use for a table. He cleared his throat. “I want to say, Mr. Wolfe, that I feel better than I did when I entered this room.”

  “Good. Since it’s my room,
and Mr. Goodwin’s, I am gratified.”

  “Yes, sir. The fact is, my experience with that man was very similar to yours and Miss Bonner’s, and I have deeply regretted it. He imposed on me as he did on you, and in the same pattern. If I gave you all the details it would be mostly a repetition of what you and Miss Bonner have said.”

  “Nevertheless, we’d like to hear them.”

  “I see no point in it.”

  Ide’s voice had sharpened a little, but Wolfe stayed affable. “One or more of the details might be suggestive. Or at least corroborative. When did it happen?”

  “In April.”

  “How much did he pay you?”

  “Two thousand dollars.”

  “Did he give his name as Donahue?”

  “No. Another name. As I said, the pattern was very similar to the one he used with you.”

  “How did he establish his identity?”

  “I prefer not to say. I mishandled it badly. I omitted that detail from my statement to the secretary of state. I suppose Mr. Hyatt will insist on it at the hearing, but I don’t think the whole thing will be published, and I’m not going to publish it by telling it here. I was going to say, the reason I feel better is that now I have the consolation of knowing that I’m not the only one he made a fool of.”

  “You have indeed. We have all qualified for dunce’s caps.” Wolfe drank some beer and passed his tongue over his lips. “How did it end? Did you get onto him, or did he call it off as he did with Miss Bonner and Mr. Kerr?”

  “I prefer not to say.” From the expression on Ide’s bony face, with its long hawk’s nose, he would prefer to switch to some harmless topic like the weather. “I’ll say this much, the tap was discontinued after ten days, and that ended my association with him. Like you and Miss Bonner and Mr. Kerr, I never saw him again until today, and then he was a corpse.”