“This is getting to be quite a habit,” I told him as I swung the front door open.
“Yeah, isn’t it?” he muttered without enthusiasm, brushing by me and taking aim on the office, his unbuttoned overcoat flapping in his wake. Normally, I make unannounced callers cool their heels on the stoop until I check with Wolfe, but given my current attitude, I felt it served Wolfe right to get a little surprise. By the time I reached the office doorway, Cramer already was sinking into the red leather chair, with Wolfe registering neither surprise nor anger.
“Something funny’s going on,” Cramer snarled. “Maybe you or Goodwin can help explain it.”
“I’ll help in any way I can, sir,” Wolfe replied softly. I knew he was fuming inside but wasn’t about to let me have the satisfaction of letting it show.
Cramer leaned forward and laid a thick, ruddy hand on the corner of Wolfe’s desk. “I’ll take you up on that offer. I got two calls yesterday from Mills/Lake/Ryman, one from Lake and the other from Sara Ryman, and they each wanted to add something to what they’d told me earlier. Interesting, eh?”
“I can hardly be expected to reply without knowing what they said,” Wolfe answered, his voice still soft and almost friendly.
“So that’s the way it’s going to be, huh? Okay, I’ll play along. Lake phoned to say he’d once applied for a job at Colmar and Conn. Said he didn’t feel it was worth mentioning at the time we talked, but he’d been thinking and decided I should know.”
“A prudent decision,” Wolfe observed.
“Glad you think so. I hadn’t been off the line with Lake for more than twenty minutes when the Ryman woman calls to tell me she went out with Swartz for a while a year or so back. Her spiel was that it had slipped her mind when we had our little chat.”
“Improbable,” Wolfe said, leaning back.
Right on schedule, Cramer pulled out a cigar. “Damn right. It’s also improbable that these two would choose to call me with revelations on the same day without some urging by a third party.”
“I do not have sufficient information to frame a response, sir.”
“Well, here’s a piece of information that you already have. Our friend Goodwin here visited Mills/Lake/Ryman Thursday afternoon. He was there for more than three hours.” I wasn’t surprised to hear the agency was being watched by the police; what surprised me was that I hadn’t spotted them when I entered or left.
“What point do you wish to make?” Wolfe asked, no longer playing Mr. Nice Guy.
Cramer spat a word and started gnawing on his stogie. “You know goddamn well,” he huffed. “Goodwin got them both to call.”
“Is that what they told you?”
“No, but it’s obvious by the timing. It’s a hell of a situation when the two of you can turn off and on the flow of information to the police whenever you damn well feel like it. This isn’t some kind of game, although to watch you working, one would think so. What I want to know is, how much else have you talked them into withholding until it suits your purposes? This is … ”
Cramer let the sentence trail off because he realized he now held the attention of only half his audience—me. Wolfe had leaned back as far as the big chair would allow, eyes closed, and his lips were pushing out and in, out and in.
“What the hell!” Cramer said, waving his cigar as if it were an orchestra conductor’s baton. “Is he having some kind of a fit?”
“Hardly, although he can’t hear you,” I told him, trying to suppress the excitement in my voice. “And he’ll be this way for a while—count on it. But when he surfaces, things will start to get interesting.”
“Balls!” the inspector roared, getting to his feet. “As if I haven’t got enough craziness, your boss goes catatonic on me, or pretends to. Well, I haven’t got time for this garbage right now.”
Cramer barreled into the hallway, with me trailing so close that I could feel his slipstream against my face. I watched him yank open the front door and slam it behind him, sending vibrations down the hall. Then, after seeing him squeeze into the back seat of the unmarked car idling at the curb, I slid the chain bolt on and returned to the office, where Wolfe was still doing his lip exercise.
In fact, he went on for another twenty-nine minutes—I always make it a point to time these things. I plunked down in my desk chair, reviewing all the information I’d laid before Wolfe in the last few days and trying to sort out what triggered his burst of mental activity. I was still sorting when he opened his eyes, blinking twice.
“So.” He said it with finality, nodding.
“That’s all you have to say—so?”
“Confound it, don’t mock me,” he retorted, his hands continuing to grip the chair arms. “It’s bad enough that I’ve been blind to the obvious.”
“Yeah, well believe it or not, I’m still blind, or at least slightly nearsighted. Tell you what: I’ll quit mocking you if you let me in on what you learned while you were doing those push-ups with your lips.”
I got a glower, but then I got answers, or at least conjectures that made sense. And then I received orders, the kind I like. “I want them here tomorrow night at nine, all of them,” Major General Wolfe decreed.
“Yessir. By them, you mean … ?”
“Messrs. Mills, Lake, Foreman, and Conn, the Foreman sons, and Mesdames Ryman and Burkett.”
“And Cramer, of course?”
“Will Mr. Cramer be back in his office?” Wolfe asked.
“Easily. You were under for quite a while.”
“Get him,” Wolfe said. “I will extend the invitation.”
SEVENTEEN
CRAMER WAS BACK IN HIS office all right, and some lackey put me right through to him. Wolfe picked up his phone while I stayed on the line. After two minutes of snorting and swearing and trying to pump Wolfe about what he was going to spring, Cramer agreed to show up at the brownstone tomorrow, along with Purley Stebbins. “It’s short notice, you know,” he grumbled. “You may not have plans on evenings, but some of us do.”
“Indeed? Does your attendance here force you to cancel an engagement?” Wolfe asked in an innocent tone. His reply was one of Cramer’s favorite words, uttered right before the line went dead on his end. Wolfe cradled the receiver, dipping his chin in my direction to indicate that he had done his part, and that the rest was up to me.
It wasn’t easy. Everyone on the guest list—repeat, everyone—already was booked up for Tuesday night, which meant I had to put my powers of persuasion to a test. For instance, Rod Mills, who wanted to know right then what was going on, begged off because of a date at the opera. I said that Wolfe would play genius only in his office and only Tuesday night, and that Mills’s biggest client—who I hadn’t called yet—would be there. “Foreman’s coming?” he said incredulously. “I’ll be damned. You talked to my partners yet?” I told him I hadn’t and asked if he’d do the honors with them and Annie Burkett.
“It’s short notice,” he echoed Cramer. “One or more of them’s surely busy.”
“Under the circumstances, being here would seem to be far more important than whatever else is on their calendars. After all, you’re breaking a date for the opera. By the way, what do those tickets run these days?” Mills saw my logic and, after making one more unsuccessful stab at getting a preview of tomorrow’s agenda, said he’d talk to them and get back to me.
Next I called Acker Foreman’s office, knocking twice on the desktop in the hope that he was in town. The knocks worked. The receptionist relayed me to Foreman’s secretary, who put me on hold. I waited for two minutes that seemed like an hour, assaulted by the syrupy elevator music of an FM station that apparently is used to punish callers who don’t have the clout to get straight through. Halfway through “There Is a Rose in Spanish Harlem,” Foreman’s gravelly voice exploded onto the line. “Goodwin! What do you want?” Nobody ever said he was gracious.
I explained the plan for tomorrow. “Can’t be there—neither can the boys,” he spat. “We’re flying down
to Virginia in the morning for a two-day retreat with Cherr-o-key’s regional sales managers at my place in the mountains. Been planned for weeks. Sorry. What’s Wolfe got—tell me now.” The tone indicated that he wasn’t used to being thwarted.
“Hold the line a moment please,” I said, cupping the mouthpiece and turning to Wolfe, who was reading. “Foreman. Says he can’t make it because of a business meeting in Virginia. Want to talk to him?”
He looked at me as if I’d just called one of his Paphiopedilum Bellatulum a posy, then got on the line. “Mr. Foreman, this is Nero Wolfe. Mr. Goodwin informs me you have a commitment for tomorrow night.”
“He informs you right. What’s going on? Don’t beat around the bush.”
“What’s going on, sir, as Mr. Goodwin told you, is that at nine o’clock tomorrow, I will elucidate on how your company’s advertising found its way over to Colmar and Conn.”
“Elucidate now,” Foreman ordered. “I have the time.”
“I do not, nor do I have the inclination,” Wolfe countered curtly. “My invitation stands.”
“And I have a meeting.”
“Cancel it.” Wolfe has a pretty good I’m-not-used-to-being-thwarted tone of his own.
I could hear Foreman let out air, then pull it in. He used an obscenity, then did some more breathing exercises. “All right, but this better be worth it, or by God, you’ll wish you were back in Montenegro.” Before Wolfe could respond, the line went dead and he scowled at the receiver.
“Bravo,” I said. “You out-tough-talked him, although you had to be impressed that he’s done some research on you. But I’ll give seven-to-five he can’t name the capital of Montenegro.”
That earned me another look, so I turned back to the assignment at hand. Harlowe Conn took my call and sounded surprised—as well as irritated—at getting an invite.
“Really, Mr. Goodwin, this whole business doesn’t really concern me in the least, you know. And besides, my wife and I have been invited to dinner at Willard Morgan’s.”
“Okay, I’m impressed that you sup with U.S. Senators, but believe it or not, this is more important. And it does concern your agency.”
“Is Mr. Wolfe going to identify Andy’s murderer?”
“I can’t answer that, because he hasn’t told me—I’m just hired help here.”
“And I’m the pretender to the French throne,” Conn remarked. By golly, the fellow had an honest-to-goodness sense of humor. “I’d like to talk to Wolfe.”
“Sorry, he’s not available,” I answered. “But he asked me to tell you that a bunch from Mills/Lake/Ryman will be present, along with Acker Foreman. None of those folks have a lot of love for Colmar and Conn, of course, so somebody probably should be on hand to defend and protect the good name of your agency.”
That got silence, too, although Conn was smoother than Foreman—I couldn’t hear him breathing. And he didn’t take as long to dope things out. “All right, I’ll be there,” he muttered, staying on the line long enough for me to give him our address.
Less than five minutes after I hung up, Rod Mills checked in, saying that Lake, Sara Ryman, and Annie Burkett would be coming with him. “They all had something else to do,” he complained, “but I leaned on them. This had—”
“I know, this had better be worth it,” I retorted. “I’ve heard the line before. I can tell you that Mr. Wolfe has worked very hard on your case, and he is not one to waste his energy.” Mills grumbled something about the high cost of private detectives and the conversation was terminated by mutual agreement.
“Well, I got them all,” I said, swiveling to face Wolfe.
“Incorrect,” he answered, lowering his book. “I called Mr. Cramer. And you turned Mr. Foreman over to me.”
“Picky, picky. All right, one way or another, they’re all coming. What next?”
“Instructions,” Wolfe said. I reached for my notebook and pen, but didn’t really need them. This one didn’t have a lot of wrinkles or fancy stuff.
EIGHTEEN
TUESDAY BEGAN UNEVENTFULLY, UNLESS YOU count the sleet storm that already was off to a good start before I rolled out of bed. By the time I’d showered and shaved and bounced down to the kitchen for breakfast, the thing was a full-blown traffic snarler. “It is awful, Archie,” Fritz said as I attacked my first wheatcake and tried to read the Times. “On the radio news, they said many businesses are telling their people to stay home today because of how bad the weather is.”
“Look, I know what’s really eating you,” I answered. “You know that Wolfe has decreed a meeting for tonight, one that might wrap up a case and bring some welcome dollars into our treasury. And you think that if the sky keeps on spewing out ice cubes, our guests might not want to desert home and hearth. Well, put that out of your mind—they’re all Manhattan dwellers, none more than a fifteen-minute cab ride away. They’ll be here, count on it.”
Fritz looked dubious, and as the day wore on, I began to get a little dubious myself. It wasn’t until after dark that the storm let up, and by six, it had stopped completely, although the scraping of snow-plow blades on Thirty-fifth Street indicated that the fun wasn’t over yet.
Wolfe usually adjourns to the office with coffee after dinner, but on those rare occasions when he stages one of his bravura performances, he retires to his bedroom upstairs long enough for Fritz and me to set the stage. This consists of lining up the proper number of chairs in front of his desk, some of which are brought across from the dining room, and of stocking the small table in the corner with a variety of libations.
By the time Wolfe came down in the elevator at eight-forty-five, everything was set. He surveyed the scene, settled in behind his desk with The Discoverers, and rang for beer.
“We haven’t had a single cancellation, so apparently the elements haven’t discouraged any of them,” I told him. Wolfe shot a glance at the frosted pane on the window and shuddered. To him, it was unthinkable that otherwise sane adults would consider leaving the safety and comfort of home in these conditions. But then, you won’t catch him leaving the safety and comfort of home even when it’s seventy-five degrees and sunny.
The doorbell rang first at eight-fifty-six, and I went down the hall to do the honors. It was Cramer and Stebbins, each of whom looked as if he’d just lost a C-note on the Super Bowl. I ushered them in with a flourish, which clearly wasn’t appreciated, and stood in the entrance hall as they peeled off their overcoats and hung them on hooks.
“Anybody here yet?” Cramer growled.
“Nope, you’re the first, which gives you a rare chance to exchange pleasantries with Mr. Wolfe,” I said brightly. That earned me a pair of scowls before Cramer started off in the direction of the office with Purley a step behind like a loyal aide-de-camp. I went as far as the doorway with them and turned back when the bell rang again. Fritz came into the hall from the kitchen, but I waved him off. “I’ve got this one,” I said, “but stand by in case there’s a traffic jam.”
Through the one-way glass, Rod Mills looked every bit as glum as Cramer and Stebbins had. This had all the makings of a rollicking evening. “Come on in,” I said heartily.
“Now can you tell me what’s going on?” he asked plaintively as I helped him off with his lined trenchcoat.
“Nope, sorry,” I answered, smiling. “This is Mr. Wolfe’s show, and he likes to run it his way.”
“Well I think it’s crazy to keep me in the dark,” he brayed. “After all, I am the client here.”
“Not precisely accurate,” I answered, maintaining my smile. “Your firm, Mills/Lake/Ryman, is the client, not an individual.” I was reminded by the look I got that being right does not guarantee popularity. Mills turned in the direction of the office, and I followed close behind.
“Mr. Mills,” Wolfe said, dipping his chin slightly. “I believe you know Mr. Cramer and Mr. Stebbins.”
“What are they doing here?” he snapped. “Goodwin never said anything about police coming. Is this what we get whe
n we pay for Nero Wolfe?”
I would have enjoyed hearing Wolfe’s response to that one, but the doorbell rang again, so duty called. This time, there really was a traffic jam. The stoop was crowded, so I called to Fritz and let the hordes in. Annie Burkett was the first one, followed by Sara Ryman, Boyd Lake, and Harlowe Conn. I concentrated on helping the women off with their coats, leaving the men to Fritz. Nobody seemed the least bit chatty.
“Awful out there, isn’t it?” I said to Annie, admiring her light blue knit dress and getting a whiff of a pleasant fragrance that I didn’t know. I made a mental note to find out what it was and get some for Lily.
“Terrible,” she answered, unsmiling.
“How banal,” sneered Sara Ryman, who looked pretty good herself in a brown number. “We’re more or less coerced into coming here to discuss grim business, and what do we get first thing in the door but chitchat about the weather.”
“It’s a tried and true icebreaker at parties, mixers, and other gatherings, according to a book I read,” I said with a grin. “Let’s all go into the office.” Conn, obviously self-conscious in the presence of hostile competitors, dropped behind them. Once in the office, I introduced Conn to Wolfe. He and the other three from M/L/R were as dismayed as Mills had been to find the police present. The women didn’t say anything, and neither did Conn, but Boyd Lake piped up.
“The police, eh? So that means we’re not only going to have idea-stealing on the agenda tonight, but murder as well, right?”
Wolfe considered him without enthusiasm and sent a sharp look my way, which meant he wanted them all seated. I put Conn in a first-row chair, the one farthest from me, and filled the four second-row seats with the M/L/R crew, Annie closest to me, then Mills, Sara Ryman, and Lake. As is the custom at these soirees, Cramer and Stebbins anchored the back row.
Fade to Black (The Nero Wolfe Mysteries Book 5) Page 15
