by Rex Stout
“Oh, you have. Goody. Before or after Cramer carts us off to the D.A.‘s office?”
Wolfe chuckled. “Is that his intention? Then it must be before. Is Miss Tracy with him?”
“Yes. The youthful Updegraff is in the kitchen. He’s going to marry Anne provided your experiment doesn’t land him in the coop for murder.”
“I thought you were affianced to Miss Tracy.”
“That’s off. If I married her he’d stand around in front of the house and make me nervous. He’s started it already.”
“Well, that saves us the trouble of sending for him. Keep him. When Mr. Hewitt arrives send him up to me immediately. Go down and get Mr. Dill on the phone and put him through to me. On your way make sure that Miss Lasher is in her room and going to stay there and not have hysterics. Except for Mr. Dill, and Mr. Hewitt when he comes, don’t disturb me. I have some details to work out. And by the way, do not mention ciphogene.”
His tone and look of smug self-satisfaction were absolutely insufferable. Not only that, as I well knew, they were a sign of danger for everyone concerned. When he was in that mood God alone could tell what was going to happen.
I went back through the plant rooms to the door to the stairs with my fingers crossed.
Chapter 9
It was nearly an hour later, 11:45, and I was alone in the office, when the door to the front room opened and Anne and Cramer entered. She looked mad and determined, and Cramer didn’t appear to be exactly exultant, so I gathered that no great friendship had burst its bud.
“Where’s Updegraff?” Cramer asked.
“Upstairs.”
“I want to see Wolfe.”
I buzzed the house phone, got an answer, held a brief conversation, and told the Inspector:
“He says to come up. Hewitt and Dill are up there.”
“I’d rather see him down here.”
That irritated me, and anyway I was already jumpy, waiting for Wolfe’s experiment to start exploding. “My God,” I said, “you’re fussy. On arrival you insist on going upstairs right through me or over me. Now you have to be coaxed. If you want him down here go up and get him.”
He turned. “Come, Miss Tracy, please.”
She hesitated. I said, “Fred’s up there. Let’s all go.”
I led the way and they followed. I took the elevator because the stairway route went within ten feet of the door to the south room and Rose might pick that moment to sneeze.
I was half expecting to see one of the peony-growers tied up and the other three applying matches to his bare feet, but not at all. We single-filed through twenty thousand orchids in the four plant rooms and entered the potting room, and there they were in the fumigating room, with the lights turned on, chatting away like pals. In the potting room Theodore was sloshing around with a hose, washing old pots.
“Good morning, Mr. Cramer!” Wolfe called. “Come in!”
Theodore was so enthusiastic with the hose that spray was flying around, and we all stepped into the fumigating room. Fred and Dill were there, seated on the lower tier of a staggered bench, and Wolfe was showing Hewitt a sealed joint in the wall. He was leaning on the handle of an osmundine fork, like a giant shepherd boy resting on his staff, and was expounding with childish enthusiasm:
“��� so we can stick them in here and close the door, and do the job with a turn of the valve I showed you in the potting room, and go on with our work outside. Twice a year at the most we do the whole place, and we use ciphogene for that, too. It’s a tremendous improvement over the old methods. You ought to try it.”
Hewitt nodded. “I think I will. I’ve been tempted to, but I was apprehensive about it, such deadly stuff.”
Wolfe shrugged. “Anything you use is dangerous. You can’t kill bugs and lice and eggs and spores with incense. And the cost of installation is a small item, unless you include a sealed chamber, which I would certainly advise-”
“Excuse me,” Cramer said sarcastically.
Wolfe turned. “Oh, yes, you wanted to speak to me.” He sidled around the end of a bench, sat down on a packing box, gradually giving it his weight, and kept himself upright with nothing to lean against, holding the osmundine fork perpendicular, with the handle-end resting on the floor, like Old King Cole with his scepter. He simpered at the Inspector, if an elephant can simper.
“Well, sir?”
Cramer shook his head. “I want you and Goodwin and Miss Tracy. So does the District Attorney. At his office.”
“You don’t mean that, Mr. Cramer.”
“And why the hell-why don’t I mean it?”
“Because you know I rarely leave my home. Because you know that citizens are not obligated to regulate their movements by the caprice of the District Attorney or to dart around frantically at your whim. We’ve had this out before. Have you an order from a court?”
“No.”
“Then if you have questions to ask, ask them. Here I am.”
“I can get an order from a court. And the D.A. is sore and probably will.”
“We’ve had that out before, too. You know what you’ll get if you try it.” Wolfe shook his head regretfully. “Apparently you’ll never learn. Confound you, you can’t badger me. No one on earth can badger me except Mr. Goodwin. Why the devil do you rile me by trying it? It’s a pity, because I’m inclined to help you. And I could help you. Do you want me to do you a favor?”
If the man who knew Wolfe best was me, next to me came Inspector Cramer. Over and over again through the years, he tried bluster because it was in his system and had to come out, but usually he knew when to drop it. So after narrowing his eyes at Wolfe without answering, he kicked a packing box a couple of feet to where there was more leg room, sat down and said calmly:
“Yeah, I’d love to have you do me a favor.”
“Good, Archie, bring Miss Lasher up here.”
I went. On my way downstairs I thought, so here she
goes to the wolves. I didn’t like it. I wasn’t especially fond of her, but my pride was hurt. It wasn’t like Wolfe; it wasn’t like us at all.
She was standing looking out of a window, biting her nails. The minute she saw me she started on a torrent. She couldn’t stand it any longer, cooped up like that, she had to get out of there, she had to use a telephone-
“Okay,” I said, “come up and say good-bye to Wolfe.”
“But where am I going-what am I doing-”
“Discuss it with him.”
I steered her up the one flight and through to the potting room. I had left the door to the fumigating room nearly closed so she couldn’t see the assemblage until she was on the threshold, and as I opened it and ushered her in I took a better hold on her arm as a precaution in case she decided to go for Wolfe’s eyes as souvenirs. But the reaction was the opposite of what I expected. She saw Cramer and went stiff. She stood stiff three seconds and then turned her head to me and said between her teeth:
“You lousy bastard.”
They all stared at her.
Especially Cramer. Finally he spoke not to her but to Wolfe, “This is quite a favor. Where did you get her?”
“Sit down, Miss Lasher,” Wolfe said.
“You might as well,” I told her. “It’s a party.”
Her face white and her lips tight, she went and dropped onto a bench. The others were all sitting on benches or packing boxes.
“I told you this morning,” Wolfe said, “that unless you told me what you saw in that corridor I would have to turn you over to the police.”
She didn’t say anything and didn’t look as if she intended to.
“So, your name’s Lasher,” Cramer growled. “You might as well-”
“I think,” Wolfe put in, “I can save you some time. Details can be supplied later. Her name is Rose Lasher. Yesterday at the Flower Show she saw Miss Tracy and Mr. Gould in Mr. Dill’s exhibit. She wished to discuss an extremely important matter with Miss Tracy, so-”
“With me?” It popped ou
t of Anne. She looked indignant. “There was nothing she could possibly-”
“Please, Miss Tracy.” Wolfe was peremptory. “This will go better without interruptions. So, to intercept Miss Tracy on her exit, Miss Lasher found her way to the corridor and hid among the shrubs and packing cases along the rear wall opposite the door labeled ‘Rucker and Dill.’ That was at or about half past three. She remained concealed there until after half past four, and she was watching that door. Therefore she must have seen whatever went on there during that hour or more.”
There were stirrings and sounds, then silence, except for the hissing of Theodore’s hose in the potting room and the slapping and sloshing of the water against the pots. Wolfe told me to shut the door, and I did so, and then sat on the bench next to W. G. Dill.
“Okay,” Cramer said dryly, “details later. What did she see?”
“She prefers not to say. Will you tell us now, Miss Lasher?”
Rose’s eyes moved to him and away again, and that was all.
“Sooner or later you will,” Wolfe declared. “Mr. Cramer will see to that. He can be-persuasive. In the meantime, I’ll tell you what you saw, at least part of it. You saw a man approach that door with a cane in his hand. He was furtive, he kept an eye on the corridor in both directions, and he was in a hurry. You saw him open the door and close it again, and kneel or stoop, doing something with his hands, and when he went away he left the cane there on the floor, its crook against the crack at the bottom of the door. You saw that, didn’t you?”
Rose didn’t even look at him.
“Very well. I don’t know what time that happened, except that it was between four and four-twenty. Probably around four o’clock. The next episode I do know. At twenty minutes past four you saw three men come along the corridor. They saw the cane and spoke about it. One of them picked it up, brushed a loop of green string from the crook, and handed it to one of the others. I don’t know whether you saw the string or not. I’m certain that you didn’t know that it was part of a longer string that had been tied to the trigger of a revolver, and that by picking up the cane the man had fired the revolver and killed Harry Gould. Nor did you know their names, though you do now. Mr. Goodwin picked up the cane and handed it to Mr. Hewitt. The man with them was myself.”
Wolfe took something from his vest pocket, with his left hand, because his right was holding the osmundine fork for support. “Here’s the piece of string that was looped on the cane. Not that I would expect you to identify it. I may as well say here that the cane was handed to Mr. Hewitt because it was his property.”
He handed the string to Cramer.
I was sunk. Ordinarily, in such circumstances, I would have been watching faces and movements, and hearing what sounds were made or words blurted, but this time he had me. He looked as if he was in his right mind, with all the assured arrogance of Nero Wolfe salting away another one, but either he was cuckoo or I was. He was not only spilling the beans; he was smashing the dish. In any conceivable case it was good-bye orchids. I looked at Hewitt.
And Hewitt should have been half astonished and half sore, and he wasn’t. He was pale, and he was trying to pretend he wasn’t pale. He was staring at Wolfe, and he licked his lips-the end of his tongue came out and went in, and then came out again.
Uh-uh, I thought. So that’s it. But my God, then-Cramer was looking at the string. W. G. Dill asked, “May I see it?” and held out a hand, and Cramer gave it to him but kept his eyes on it.
“Of course,” Wolfe said, “the point is, not who picked the cane up, but who put it there. Miss Lasher, who saw him do it, could tell us but prefers not to. She claims she didn’t see him. So we’ll have to get at it by indirection. Here are some facts that may help-but it isn’t any too comfortable in here. Shall we move downstairs?” “No,” Hewitt said. “Go ahead and finish.” “Go ahead,” Cramer said. He reached for the string and Dill handed it to him and he stuffed it in his pocket.
“I’ll make it as brief as possible,” Wolfe promised. “Harry Gould had an employer. One day he found a garage job-card in one of his employer’s cars-possibly it had slipped under a seat and been forgotten-I don’t know. Anyhow he found it and he kept it. I don’t know why he kept it. He may have suspected that his employer had been on a trip with a woman, for the card was from a garage in Salamanca, New York, which is quite a distance from Long Island. A man with the blackmailing type of mind is apt to keep things. It is understandable that he kept the card. It is less understandable that his employer had been careless enough to leave it in the car.” Wolfe turned his head suddenly and snapped at Hewitt: “Was it just an oversight, Mr. Hewitt?” But Hewitt had stuff in him at that. He was no longer pale and he wasn’t licking his lips. His eyes were steady and so was his voice:
“Finish your story, Mr. Wolfe. I am inclined-but no matter. Finish your story.”
“I prefer to use your name instead of clumsy circumlocutions like ‘his employer.’ It’s neater.”
“By all means keep it neat. But I warn you that merely because I acknowledged ownership of that cane-”
“Thank you. I appreciate warnings. So I’ll say Hewitt hereafter. The time came when Harry Gould’s suspicions regarding the card became more definite. Again I don’t know why, but my surmise is that he learned about the loss of the most valuable plantation of broad-leaved evergreens in the country-the rhodalea plantation of the Updegraff Nurseries of Erie, Pennsylvania-by an attack of the Kurume yellows. He knew that Hewitt was inordinately proud of his own broad-leaved evergreens, and that he was capable of abnormal extremes in horticultural pride and jealousy. He also, being a gardener, knew how easy it would be, with a bag or two of contaminated peat mulch, to infect another plantation if you had access to it. At any rate, his suspicion became definite enough to cause him to go to Salamanca, which is in the western part of New York near the Pennsylvania border, not far from Erie, and see the proprietor of the Nelson Garage. That was in December. He learned that when Hewitt had gone there with his car months before, damaged in an accident, he had been accompanied not by a woman, but by a man of a certain description, with a cast in his eye. He went to Erie and found the man among the employees of the Updegraff Nurseries. His name was Pete Arango.”
Fred Updegraff started up with an ejaculation.
Wolfe showed him a palm. “Please, Mr. Updegraff, don’t prolong this.” He turned. “And Mr. Hewitt, I’m being fair. I’m not trying to stampede you. I admit that much of this detail is surmise, but the main fact will soon be established beyond question. I sent a man to Salamanca last night, partly to learn why Harry Gould had so carefully preserved an old garage job-card, and partly because he had written on the back of it that name Pete Arango, and I knew that Pete Arango was in the employ of the Updegraff Nurseries. My man phoned me this morning to say that he will be back here at one o’clock, and the proprietor of the Nelson Garage will be with him. He’ll tell us whether you were there with Pete Arango. Do you suppose you’ll remember him?”
“I’ll-” Hewitt swallowed. “Go ahead.”
Wolfe nodded. “I imagine you will. I wouldn’t be surprised if Gould even got a written confession from Pete Arango that you had bribed him to infect the rhodalea plantation, by threatening to inform Mr. Updegraff that he had been at Salamanca, not far away, in your company. At least he got something that served well enough to put the screws on you. You paid him something around five thousand dollars. Did he turn the confession over to you? I suppose so. And then-may I hazard a guess?”
“I think,” Hewitt said evenly, “you’ve done too much guessing already.”
“I’ll try one more. Gould saw Pete Arango at the Flower Show, and the temptation was too much for him. He threatened him again, and made him sign another confession, and armed with that made another demand on you. What this time? Ten thousand? Twenty? Or he may even have got delusions of grandeur and gone to six figures. Anyhow, you saw that it couldn’t go on. As long as ink and paper lasted for Pete Arango to write
confessions with, you were hooked. So you-by the way, Mr. Updegraff, he’s up there at your exhibit, isn’t he, and available? Pete Arango? We’ll want him when Mr. Nelson arrives.”
“You’re damn right he’s available,” Fred said grimly.
“Good.”
Wolfe’s head pivoted back to Hewitt. He paused, and the silence was heavy on us. He was timing his climax, and just to make it good he decorated it.
“I suppose,” he said to Hewitt in a tone of doom, “you are familiar with the tradition of the drama? The three traditional knocks to herald the tragedy?”
He lifted the osmundine fork and brought it down again, thumping the floor with it, once, twice, thrice.
Hewitt gazed at him with a sarcastic smile, and it was a pretty good job with the smile.
“So,” Wolfe said, “you were compelled to act, and you did so promptly and effectively. And skillfully, because, for instance, Mr. Cramer has apparently been unable to trace the revolver, and no man in the world is better at that sort of thing. As Honorary Chairman of the Committee, naturally you had the run of the exhibit floors at any hour of the day; I suppose you chose the morning, before the doors were opened to the public, to arrange that primitive apparatus. I don’t pretend to be inside of your mind, so I don’t know when or why you decided to use your own cane as the homicide bait for some unsuspecting passer-by. On the theory that-”
The door opened and Theodore Horstmann was on the threshold.
“Phone call for Mr. Hewitt,” he said irritably. Theodore resented his work being interrupted by anything whatever. “Pete Arando or something?”
Hewitt stood up.
Cramer opened his mouth, but Wolfe beat him to it by saying sharply, “Wait! You’ll stay here, Mr. Hewitt! Archie-no, I suppose he would recognize your voice. Yours too, Mr. Cramer. Mr. Dill. You can do it if you pitch your voice low. Lead him on, get him to say as much as you can-”
Hewitt said, “That phone call is for me,” and was moving for the door. I got in front of him. Dill arose, looking uncertain.
