Triple Jeopardy

by Rex Stout

  He marched into the office, across the hall from the dining room, went to his oversized chair behind his desk, sat, and got himself adjusted for comfort. Parker took the red leather chair. As I crossed to my desk I started talking, to get the jump on him.

  "It will help," I said, not aggressively but pointedly, "if we first get it settled about my leaving that room with my gun there in the drawer. I do not--"

  "Shut up!" Wolfe snapped.

  "In that case," I demanded, "why didn't you leave me in the coop? I'll go back and--"

  "Sit down!"

  I sat.

  "I deny," he said, "that you were in the slightest degree imprudent. Even if you were, this has transcended such petty considerations." He picked up a sheet of paper from his desk. "This is a letter which came yesterday from a Mrs. E. R. Baumgarten. She wants me to investigate the activities of a nephew who is employed by the business she owns. I wish to reply. Your notebook."

  He was using what I call his conclusive tone, leaving no room for questions, let alone argument. I got my notebook and pen.

  "Dear Mrs. Baumgarten." He went at it as if he had already composed it in his mind. "Thank you very much for your letter of the thirteenth, requesting me to undertake an investigation for you. Paragraph. I am sorry that I cannot be of service to you. I am compelled to decline because I have been informed by an official of the New York Police Department that my license to operate a private detective agency is about to be taken away from me. Sincerely yours."

  Parker ejaculated something and got ignored^ I stayed

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  deadpan, but among my emotions was renewed regret that I had missed Wolfe's and Cramer's talk.

  Wolfe was saying, "Type it at once and send Fritz to mail it. If any requests for appointments come by telephone refuse them, giving the reason and keeping a record."

  "The reason given in the letter?"

  "Yes."

  I swiveled the typewriter to me, got paper and carbon in, and hit the keys. I had to concentrate. This was Cramer's farthest north. Parker was asking questions, and Wolfe was grunting at him. I finished the letter and envelope, had Wolfe sign it, went to the kitchen and told Fritz to take it to Eighth Avenue immediately, and returned to the office.

  "Now," Wolfe said, "I want all of it. Go ahead."

  Ordinarily when I start giving Wolfe a full report of an event, no matter how extended and involved, I just glide in and keep going with no effort at all, thanks to my long and hard training. That time, having just got a severe jolt, I wasn't so hot at the beginning, since I was supposed to include every word and movement, but by the time I had got to where I opened the window it was coming smooth and easy. As usual, Wolfe soaked it all in without making any interruptions.

  It took all of an hour and a half, and then came questions, but not many. I rate a report by the number of questions he has when I'm through, and by that test this was up toward the top. Wolfe leaned back and closed his eyes.

  Parker spoke. "It could have been any of them, but it must have been Koven. Or why his string of lies, knowing that you and Goodwin would both contradict him?" The lawyer haw-hawed. "That is, if they're lies--considering your settled policy of telling your counselor only what you think he should know."

  "Pfui." Wolfe's eyes came open. "This is extraordinarily intricate, Archie. Have you examined it any?"

  "I've started. When I pick at it, it gets worse instead of better."

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  "Yes. I'm afraid you'll have to type it out. By eleven tomorrow morning?"

  "I guess so, but I need a bath first. Anyway, what for? What can we do with it without a license? I suppose it's suspended?"

  He ignored it. "What the devil is that smell?" he demanded.

  "Disinfectant. It's for the bloodhounds in case you escape." I arose. "I'll go scrub."

  "No." He glanced at the wall clock, which said 3:45� fifteen minutes to go until he was due to join Theodore and the orchids up on the roof. "An errand first. I believe it's the Gazette that carries the Dazzle Dan comic strip?"

  "Yes, sir."

  "Daily and Sunday?" Yes, sir.

  "I want all of them for the past three years. Can you get them?"

  "I can try."

  "Do so."

  "Now?"

  "Yes. Wait a minute�confound it, don't be a cyclone! You should hear my instructions for Mr. Parker, but first one for you. Mail Mr. Koven a bill for recovery of his gun, five hundred dollars. It should go today."

  "Any extras, under the circumstances?"

  "No. Five hundred flat." Wolfe turned to the lawyer. "Mr. Parker, how long will it take to enter a suit for damages and serve a summons on the defendant?"

  "That depends." Parker sounded like a lawyer. "If it's rushed all possible and there are no unforeseen obstacles and the defendant is accessible for service, it could be merely a matter of hours."

  "By noon tomorrow?"

  "Quite possibly, yes."

  "Then proceed, please. Mr. Koven has destroyed, by slander, my means of livelihood. I wish to bring an action 156

  demanding payment by him of the sum of one million dollars."

  "M-m-m-m," Parker said. He was frowning.

  I addressed Wolfe. "I want to apologize," I told him, "for jumping to a conclusion. I was supposing you had lost control for once and buried it too deep in Cramer. Whereas you did it purposely, getting set for this. I'll be damned."

  Wolfe grunted.

  "In this sort of thing," Parker said, "it is usual, and desirable, to first send a written request for recompense, by your attorney if you prefer. It looks better."

  "I don't care how it looks. I want immediate action."

  "Then we'll act." That was one of the reasons Wolfe stuck to Parker; he was no dilly-dallier. "But I must ask, isn't the sum a little flamboyant? A full million?"

  "It is not flamboyant. At a hundred thousand a year, a modest expectation, my income would be a million in ten years. A detective license once lost in this fashion is not easily regained."

  "All right. A million. I'll need all the facts for drafting a complaint."

  "You have them. You've just heard Archie recount them. Must you stickle for more?"

  "No. I'll manage." Parker got to his feet. "One thing, though, service of process may be a problem. Policemen may still be around, and even if they aren't I doubt if strangers will be getting into that house tomorrow."

  "Archie will send Saul Panzer to you. Saul can get in anywhere and do anything." Wolfe wiggled a finger. "I want Mr. Koven to get that. I want to see him in this room. Five times this morning I tried to get him on the phone, without success. If that doesn't get him I'll devise something that will."

  "He'll give it to his attorney."

  "Then the attorney will come, and if he's not an imbecile I'll give myself thirty minutes to make him send for his client or go and get him. Well?"

  Parker turned and left, not loitering. I got at the typewriter

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  to make out a bill for half a grand, which seemed like a waste of paper after what I had just heard.

  t midnight that Tuesday the office was a sight. It has often been a mess, one way and another, including the time the strangled Cynthia Brown was lying on the floor with her tongue protruding, but this was something new. Dazzle Dan, both black-and-white and color, was all over the place. On account of our shortage in manpower, with me tied up on my typing job, Fritz and Theodore had been drafted for the chore of tearing out the pages and stacking them chronologically, ready for Wolfe to study. With Wolfe's permission, I had bribed Lon Cohen of the Gazette to have three years of Dazzle Dan assembled and delivered to us, by offering him an exclusive. Naturally he demanded specifications.

  "Nothing much," I told him on the phone. "Only that Nero Wolfe is out of the detective business because Inspector Cramer is taking away his license."

  "Quite a gag," Lon conceded.

  "No gag. Straight."

  "You mean it?"

 
"We're offering it for publication. Exclusive, unless Cramei's office spills it, and I don't think they will."

  "The Getz murder?"

  "Yes. Only a couple of paragraphs, because details are not yet available, even to you. I'm out on bail."

  "I know you are. This is pie. We'll raid the files and get it over there as soon as we can."

  He hung up without pressing for details. Of course that meant he would send Dazzle Dan COD, with a reporter. When the reporter arrived a couple of hours later, shortly after Wolfe had come down from the plant rooms at six o'clock, it wasn't just a man with a notebook, it was Lon Cohen himself. He came to the office with me, dumped a big heavy carton on the floor by my desk, removed his coat and 158

  dropped it on the carton to show that Dazzle Dan was his property until paid for, and demanded, "I want the works. What Wolfe said and what Cramer said. A picture of Wolfe studying Dazzle Dan--"

  I pushed him into a chair, courteously, and gave him all we were ready to turn loose of. Naturally that wasn't enough; it never is. I let him fire questions up to a dozen or so, even answering one or two, and then made it clear that that was all for now and I had work to do. He admitted it was a bargain, stuck his notebook in his pocket, and got up and picked up his coat.

  "If you're not in a hurry, Mr. Cohen," muttered Wolfe, who had left the interview to me.

  Lon dropped the coat and sat down. "I have nineteen years, Mr. Wolfe. Before I retire."

  "I won't detain you that long." Wolfe sighed. "I am no longer a detective, but I'm a primate and therefore curious. The function of a newspaperman is to satisfy curiosity. Who killed Mr. Getz?"

  Lon's brows went up. "Archie Goodwin? It was his gun."

  "Nonsense. I'm quite serious. Also I'm discreet. I am excluded from the customary sources of information by the jackassery of Mr. Cramer. I--"

  "May I print that?"

  "No. None of this. Nor shall I quote you. This is a private conversation. I would like to know what your colleagues are saying but not printing. Who killed Mr. Getz? Miss Lowell? If so, why?"

  Lon pulled his lower lip down and let it up again. "You mean we're just talking."

  "Yes."

  "This might possibly lead to another talk that could be printed."

  "It might. I make no commitment." Wolfe wasn't eager.

  "You wouldn't. As for Miss Lowell, she has not been scratched. It is said that Getz learned she was chiseling on royalties from makers of Dazzle Dan products and intended to hang it on her. That could have been big money."

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  "Any names or dates?"

  "None that are repeatable. By me. Yet."

  "Any evidence?"

  "I haven't seen any."

  Wolfe grunted. "Mr. Hildebrand. If so, why?"

  "That's shorter and sadder. He has told friends about it. He has been with Koven for eight years and was told last week he could leave at the end of the month, and he blamed it on Getz. He might or might not get another job at his age."

  Wolfe nodded. "Mr. Jordan?"

  Lon hesitated. "This I don't like, but others are talking, so why not us? They say Jordan has painted some pictures, modern stuff, and twice he has tried to get a gallery to show them, two different galleries, and both times Getz has somehow kiboshed it. This has names and dates, but whether because Getz was born a louse or whether he wanted to keep Jordan�"

  "I'll do my own speculating, thank you. Mr. Getz may not have liked the pictures. Mr. Koven?"

  Lon turned a hand over. "Well? What better could you ask? Getz had him buffaloed, no doubt about it. Getz ruled the roost, plenty of evidence on that, and nobody knows why, so the only question is what he had on Koven. It must have been good, but what was it? You say this is a private conversation?"

  "Yes."

  "Then here's something we got started on just this afternoon. It has to be checked before we print it. That house on Seventy-sixth Street is in Getz's name."

  "Indeed." Wolfe shut his eyes and opened them again. "And Mrs. Koven?"

  Lon turned his other hand over. "Husband and wife are one, aren't they?"

  "Yes. Man and wife make one fool."

  Lon's chin jerked up. "I want to print that. Why not?"

  "It was printed more than three hundred years ago. Ben Jonson wrote it." Wolfe sighed. "Confound it, what can I 160

  do with only a few scraps?" He pointed at the carton. "You want that stuff back, I suppose?"

  Lon said he did. He also said he would be glad to go on with the private conversation in the interest of justice and the public welfare, but apparently Wolfe had all the scraps he could use at the moment. After ushering Lon to the door I went up to my room to spend an hour attending to purely personal matters, a detail that had been too long postponed. I was out of the shower, selecting a shirt, when a call came from Saul Panzer in response to the message I had left. I gave him all the features of the picture that would help and told him to report to Parker's law office in the morning.

  After dinner that evening we were all hard at it in the office. Fritz and Theodore were unfolding Gazettes, finding the right page and tearing it out, and carrying off the leavings. I was banging away at my machine, three pages an hour. Wolfe was at his desk, concentrating on a methodical and exhaustive study of three years of Dazzle Dan. It was well after midnight when he pushed back his chair, arose, stretched, rubbed his eyes, and told us, "It's bedtime. This morass of fatuity has given me indigestion. Good night."

  Wednesday morning he tried to put one over. His routine was breakfast in his room, with the morning paper, at eight; then shaving and dressing; then, from nine to eleven, his morning shift up in the plant rooms. He never went to the office before eleven, and the detective business was never allowed to mingle with the orchids. But that Wednesday he fudged. While I was in the kitchen with Fritz, enjoying griddle cakes, Darst's sausage, honey, and plenty of coffee, and going through the morning papers, with two readings for the Gazette's account of Wolfe's enforced retirement, Wolfe sneaked downstairs into the office and made off with a stack of Dazzle Dan. The way I knew, before breakfast I had gone in there to straighten up a little, and I am trained to observe. Returning after breakfast, and glancing around before starting at my typewriter, I saw that half of a pile of Dan was gone. I don't think I had ever seen him quite so hot under the collar. I admit I fully approved. Not only did I not make

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  an excuse for a trip up to the roof to catch him at it, but I even took the trouble to be out of the office when he came down at eleven o'clock, to give him a chance to get Dan back unseen.

  My first job after breakfast had been to carry out some instructions Wolfe had given me the evening before. Manhattan office hours being what they are, I got no answer at the number of Levay Recorders, Inc., until 9:35. Then it took some talking to get a promise of immediate action, and if it hadn't been for the name of Nero Wolfe I wouldn't have made it. But I got both the promise and the action. A little after ten two men arrived with cartons of equipment and tool kits, and in less than an hour they were through and gone, and it was a neat and nifty job. It would have taken an expert search to reveal anything suspicious in the office, and the wire to the kitchen, running around the baseboard and on through, wouldn't be suspicious even if seen.

  It was hard going at the typewriter on account of the phone ringing, chiefly reporters wanting to talk to Wolfe, or at least me, and finally I had to ask Fritz in to answer the damn thing and give everybody a brush-off. A call he switched to me was one from the DA's office. They had the nerve to ask me to come down there so they could ask me something. I told them I was busy answering Help Wanted ads and couldn't spare the time. Half an hour later Fritz switched another one to me. It was Sergeant Purley Stebbins. He was good and sore, beefing about Wolfe having no authority to break the news about losing his license, and it wasn't official yet, and where did I think it would get me refusing to cooperate with the DA on a murder when I had discovered the body, and I could have my cho
ice of coming down quick or having a PD car come and get me. I let him use up his breath.

  "Listen, brother," I told him, "I hadn't heard that the name of this city has been changed to Moscow. If Mr. Wolfe wants to publish it that he's out of business, hoping that someone will pass the hat or offer him a job as doorman, that's his affair. As for my cooperating, nuts. You have already got me sewed up on two charges, and on advice of 162

  counsel and my doctor I am staying home, taking aspirin and gargling with prune juice and gin. If you come here, no matter who, you won't get in without a search warrant. If you come with another warrant for me, say for cruelty to animals because I opened that window, you can either wait on the stoop until I emerge or shoot the door down, whichever you prefer. 1 am now hanging up."

  "If you'll listen a minute, damn it."

  "Good-by, you double-breasted nitwit."

  I cradled the phone, sat thirty seconds to calm down, and resumed at the typewriter. The next interruption came not from the outside but from Wolfe, a little before noon. He was back at his desk, analyzing Dazzle Dan. Suddenly he pronounced my name, and I swiveled.

  "Yes, sir."

  "Look at this."

  He slid a sheet of the Gazette across his desk, and I got up and took it. It was a Sunday half-page, in color, from four months back. In the first frame Dazzle Dan was scooting along a country road on a motorcycle, passing a roadside sign that read:

  PEACHES RIGHT FROM THE TREE! AGGIE GHOOL AND HAGGIE KROOL

  Frame two, D.D. had stopped his bike alongside a peach tree full of red and yellow fruit. Standing there were two females, presumably Aggie Ghool and Haggie Krool. One was old and bent, dressed in burlap as near as I could tell; the other was young and pink-cheeked, wearing a mink coat. If you say surely not a mink coat, I say I'm telling what I saw. D.D. was saying, in his balloon, "Gimme a dozen.

  Frame three, the young female was handing D.D. the peaches, and the old one was extending her hand for payment. Frame four, the old one was giving D.D. his change from a bill. Frame five, the old one was handing the young one a coin and saying, "Here's your ten per cent, Haggie," and the young one was saying, "Thank you very much, Aggie." Frame