Rex Stout - Nero Wolfe 29

by Three for the Chair

  It was a medium-sized room with three large windows, all weather-dirty. In the center was a big walnut table surrounded by chairs, and against the walls were a desk and a smaller table and more chairs. A man seated at one end of the big table, with a stack of folders at his right, motioned us to chairs at his left. The one who had brought us closed the door and took a nearby chair against the wall.

  The man at the table gave us a look, neither cordial nor hostile. “I guess there’s no question of identity with you,” he told Wolfe, meaning either that he was famous or that no one else was so big and fat, take your pick. He glanced at a folder open before him on the table. “I have your statements here, yours and Mr. Goodwin’s. I thought it would expedite matters to have you in together. I am Albert Hyatt, special deputy of the secretary of state for this inquiry. The proceeding is informal and will remain so unless circumstances arise that seem to call for a record.”

  I was taking him in. Not far from forty, one way or the other, he was smooth all over—smooth healthy skin, smooth dark hair, smooth pleasant voice, smooth brisk manner, and smooth gray gabardine. I had of course checked on the two deputies who were handling the inquiry and had reported to Wolfe that this Hyatt was a partner in a big law firm with offices in midtown New York, that he had mixed a good deal in politics, that he had some reputation as a trial man, which meant that he liked to ask people questions, and that he was a bachelor.

  He glanced at the folder again. “In April of last year, nineteen-fifty-five, you arranged for a tap on the private telephone of Otis Ross, at his apartment on West Eighty-third Street, Manhattan, New York City. Is that correct?”

  “I have so stated,” Wolfe conceded grumpily.

  “So you have. Under what circumstances did you make that arrangement?”

  Wolfe moved a finger to aim it at the folder. “If that’s my statement before you, and Mr. Goodwin’s, you have it there.”

  “Yes, I have your statement, but I’d like to hear it. Please answer the question.”

  Wolfe started to make a face, realized it wouldn’t help matters any, and suppressed it. “On April fifth, nineteen-fifty-five, a man called on me at my office, gave his name as Otis Ross, and said he wanted to have his home telephone tapped. I told him I never dealt with marital difficulties. He said that his difficulty wasn’t marital, that he was a widower, that he had diversified business and financial interests and handled them from his home, that he had recently begun to suspect his secretary of double dealing, that he was away frequently for a day or two at a time, that he wanted to find out whether his suspicions of his secretary were warranted, and to that end he wanted his phone tapped.”

  Wolfe tightened his lips. He hated to be reminded of that affair, let alone retell it. For a second I thought he was going to balk, but he went on. “I knew, of course, that it was legally permissible for a man to have his own wire tapped, but I declined the job on the ground that I had had no experience in that line. Mr. Goodwin, who was present, as he always is at conversations in my office, interposed to say that he knew of a man who could handle the technical problem. He so interposed for two reasons: first, because of the novelty and diversion a wiretapping operation would offer him personally; and second, because he thinks it necessary to badger me into earning fees by taking jobs which I would prefer to reject. I confess that he is sometimes justified. Would you like him to interpose now for corroboration?”

  Hyatt shook his head. “When you’re through. Go ahead.”

  “Very well. Mr. Ross put a thousand dollars in cash on my desk—ten hundred-dollar bills—as a retainer and advance for expenses. He said he couldn’t pay by check because his secretary must not know he had hired me, and also, for the same reason, no reports or other matter could be mailed to him; he would call for them at my office or make other arrangements to get them. And I was not to phone him at his home because he suspected that his secretary, on occasion, impersonated him on the telephone. Therefore he wanted reports of all conversations on his wire, since when he himself was presumed to be speaking at his end it might actually be his secretary.”

  Wolfe tightened his lips again. He was having to squeeze it out. “Naturally not only had my curiosity been aroused, but also my suspicions. It would have been useless to ask him for documentary evidence of his identity, since documents can be forged or stolen, so I told him that I must be satisfied of his bona fides, and I suggested that Mr. Goodwin might call on him at his home. You don’t need to tell me how witless that suggestion was; I have told myself. He acquiesced at once, having, of course, anticipated it, saying only that it should be at an hour when his secretary would not be on the premises, since he—that is, his secretary—might possibly recognize Mr. Goodwin. So it was arranged. At nine o’clock that evening Mr. Goodwin went to the address on West Eighty-third Street and up to Mr. Ross’s apartment. He gave the maid who admitted him a name—an alias that had been agreed upon—and asked to see Mr. Ross, and was taken by her to the living room, where he found my client seated under a lamp, reading a book and smoking a cigar.”

  Wolfe tapped the table with a fingertip. “I designate him ‘my client’ deliberately because I earned the ignominy—confound it, he was my client! After Mr. Goodwin conversed with him ten minutes or so he came home and reported, and it was decided to proceed with the operation. Mr. Goodwin got in touch with the man he knew of that evening, and arrangements were made for the morrow. Do you want the details of that?”

  “No, you can skip that.” Hyatt passed a palm over his smooth dark hair. “It’s in Goodwin’s statement.”

  “I know very little about it anyway. The tap was made, and Mr. Goodwin had a new toy. He couldn’t spend much time with it, since I need him at the office more or less continually, and most of the listening was done by men provided by the technician. I didn’t even look at the reports, for which Mr. Ross called at my office every day—at an hour when I was busy upstairs, so I didn’t see him. On the fifth day Mr. Goodwin asked him for another thousand dollars, and got it, in cash. That left very little for me after paying the cost of the outside tap and maintaining surveillance. You know what an outside tap is?”

  “Certainly. Practically all illegal taps are outside jobs.”

  “That may be.” Wolfe upturned a palm. “But I didn’t know this was illegal until the eighth day of the operation. On April thirteenth Mr. Goodwin spent two hours at the place where the tap was being monitored, and heard Mr. Ross himself on the wire in a long conversation. Whether it was actually Mr. Ross or was his secretary impersonating him, it sounded sufficiently unlike our client to arouse Mr. Goodwin’s interest. From reports he had read and passed on to our client he had gathered a good deal of information about Mr. Ross’s interests and activities—for example, that he had recently been appointed chairman of the Charity Funds Investigating Committee by the governor. He left and went to a phone booth, called Mr. Ross, got the same voice, told him he was a newspaper reporter, from the Gazette, made an appointment, went to the West Eighty-third Street address, and saw him and talked with him. He also saw the secretary. Neither of them was our client. I had been flummoxed.”

  Wolfe swallowed bile. “Utterly flummoxed,” he said bitterly. “Mr. Goodwin came home and reported to me, and we considered the situation. We decided to wait until the client came that afternoon, at five-thirty as usual, for the daily report—though of course we canceled the tap at once. It seemed likely that there would be no alternative to turning him over to the police, with a full account of my fatuity, but I couldn’t do that until I got my hands on him.”

  Wolfe swallowed again. “And he didn’t come. I don’t know why. Whether he had learned somehow either that we had canceled the tap, or that Mr. Goodwin had called on Mr. Ross—but speculation is bootless. He didn’t come. He never did come. For a month most of Mr. Goodwin’s time, for which I pay, was spent in trying to find him, without success, and Mr. Goodwin is a highly competent and ingenious man. Nor could he find the maid who had admitted hi
m to the apartment. After a week had passed with no result I made an appointment to call on Mr. Ross at his home, and did so, and told him all about it. He was ruffled, naturally, but after some discussion he agreed that there was no point in informing the authorities until and unless I found the culprit. Mr. Goodwin was with me, and together we gave him an exhaustive description of our client, but he was unable to identify him. As for the maid, she had been with him only a short time, had left without notice, and he knew nothing about her.”

  Wolfe stopped, sighed deep, and let it out. “There it is. After a month Mr. Goodwin could no longer spend all his time on it, since he had other duties, but he has by no means forgotten that client and neither have I. We never will.”

  “I suppose not.” Hyatt was smiling. “I may as well tell you, Mr. Wolfe, that personally I credit your story.”

  “Yes, sir. You may.”

  “I hope so. But of course you realize its weakness. No one but you and Mr. Goodwin ever saw this client of yours. No one else has any knowledge of what passed between you, and you can’t find him and can’t identify him. Frankly, if you should be charged with illegal interception of communications, and if the district attorney proceeded against you and you came to trial, it’s quite possible you would be convicted.”

  Wolfe’s brows went up a sixteenth of an inch. “If that’s a threat, what do you suggest? If it’s merely a reproach, I have earned it and much more. Lecture me as you will.”

  “You deserve it,” Hyatt agreed. He smiled again. “I would enjoy it, too, but I won’t indulge myself. The fact is, I think I have a surprise for you, and I only wanted to get acquainted with you before I confronted you with it.” His eyes went to the man seated against the wall. “Corwin, there’s a man in room thirty-eight across the hall. Bring him in here.”

  Corwin got up and opened the door and went, leaving the door open. The sound came of his heavy footsteps in the hall, then of a door opening, then footsteps again, much fainter, then a brief silence, and then his voice calling, “Mr. Hyatt! Come here!”

  It was more of a yelp than a call. It sounded as if somebody had him by the throat. So when Hyatt jumped up and headed for the door I moved too and followed him out and across the hall to an open door down a few steps, and into the room. I was at his elbow when he stopped beside Corwin at the far end of a table to look down at a man on the floor. The man was in no condition to return the look. He was on his back, with his legs nearly straight making a V, and was dressed all right, including a necktie, only the necktie wasn’t under his shirt collar. It was knotted tight around the skin of his neck. Although his face was purple, his eyes popping, and his tongue sticking out, I recognized him at once. Corwin and Hyatt, staring down at him, probably didn’t know I was there, and in a second I wasn’t. Stepping out and back to the other room, where Wolfe sat at the table glowering, I told him, “It’s a surprise all right. Our client’s in there on the floor. Someone tied his necktie too tight and he’s dead.”

  II

  I had known, of course, that that bozo had sunk a blade right in the center of Wolfe’s self-esteem, but I didn’t realize how deep it had gone until that moment. Evidently when he heard me say our client was in there his ears stopped working. He came up out of his chair and took a step toward the door, then stopped, turned, and glared at me.

  “Oh,” he said, coming to. “Dead?”

  “Right. Strangled.”

  “It would be no satisfaction to see him dead.” He looked at the door, at me, sat down, flattened his palms on the table top, and closed his eyes. After a little he opened them. “Confound that wretch,” he muttered. “Alive he gulled me, and now dead he gets me into heaven knows what. Perhaps if we went … but no. I am merely frantic.” He stood up. “Come.” He started for the door.

  I got in front of him. “Hold it. I want to go home too, but you know damn well we can’t scoot.”

  “I do indeed. But I want a look at our confreres. Come.”

  I stood aside and let him lead the way out and down the hall and into the room we had come from. Entering behind him, I shut the door. The two females were still in their corner, but the three men were gathered in a group, apparently having broken the ice. They all looked around at us, and Jay Kerr sang out, “What, still at large? How is he?”

  Wolfe stood and took them in. So did I. At that point there was no particular reason to assume that one of them had tied our client’s necktie, but the client had unquestionably been connected with wiretapping, and they had all been summoned to answer questions about wiretapping. So Wolfe and I took them in. None of them trembled or turned pale or licked his lips or had a fit.

  Wolfe spoke. “Ladies and gentlemen, we are fellow members of a professional association, and therefore you might expect me to share with you any information I may have of our common concern. But I have just learned of an event in this building this morning that will cause Mr. Goodwin and me to suffer inconvenience and possibly serious harassment. I have no reason to suppose that any of you were involved in it, but you may have been; and if you weren’t, you would gain nothing by hearing it from me, so I’ll let someone else tell you about it. You won’t have long to wait. Meanwhile, please understand that I mean no offense in staring around at you. I am merely interested in the possibility that one of you is involved. If you—”

  “What the hell!” Steve Amsel snorted. His quick black eyes had lit at last. “You got a point?”

  “It’s a good script and I like it,” Jay Kerr said. “Go right on.” His voice was thin and high, but that was no sign that he had strangled a man. It was just his voice.

  Harland Ide, the banker type, cleared his throat. “If we’re not involved,” he said drily, “we are not concerned. You say in this building this morning? What kind of an event?”

  Wolfe shook his head, and stood and stared around. Still no one had a fit. Instead, they talked, and the general feeling seemed to be one of relief that they had been given something to talk about. Steve Amsel suggested that Dol Bonner and Sally Colt should get Wolfe between them and worm it out of him, but the ladies politely declined.

  Wolfe was still standing, still taking them in, when the door popped open and Albert Hyatt appeared. Seeing Wolfe, he stopped short and said, “Oh, here you are.” A strand of his smooth hair had got loose. He looked at me. “You too. You came in behind me and saw him, didn’t you?”

  I told him yes.

  “And left in a hurry?”

  “Sure. You had told Mr. Wolfe you had a surprise for him, and I wanted to tell him what it was.”

  “You recognized him?”

  “I did. The client Mr. Wolfe told you about.”

  Wolfe put in, “I would have appreciated the favor of seeing him alive.”

  “Perhaps. Of course you have told these people?”

  “No, sir.”

  “You haven’t?”

  “No.”

  Hyatt’s eyes went around. “Apparently you’re all here. Jay Kerr?”

  “That’s me,” Kerr admitted.

  “Harland Ide?”

  “Here.”

  “Steven Amsel?”

  Amsel raised a hand.

  “Theodolinda Bonner?”

  “I’m here, and I’ve been here more than two hours. I am quite willing to—”

  “One moment, Miss Bonner. Sally Colt?”

  “Here.”

  “All right. The hearing I am conducting on behalf of the secretary of state is temporarily suspended, but you will all stay in this room. A dead body has been discovered in a room on this floor. A man presumably murdered. That is of course a matter for the police, and they will want to see you. I can’t say now when the hearing will be resumed, and you will regard your summonses to appear today as in abeyance but not canceled. Don’t leave this room until the police come.” He turned to go. A voice stopped him.

  “Who is the murdered man?” It was Harland Ide.

  “The police will tell you. That’s not my province, thank
God.”

  “Mr. Hyatt.” Dol Bonner’s voice was clear and crisp. She was on her feet. “You are Mr. Hyatt?”

  “I am.”

  “Miss Colt and I had a very early breakfast, and we’re hungry. We are going to get something to eat.”

  Damn plucky, I thought. She must have known that a murderer is supposed to feel empty and want a big meal after killing a man. Hyatt told her she’d have to wait until the police came, ignored a protest from Steve Amsel, and left, closing the door.

  They looked around at one another. I was disappointed in them. I had on various occasions been cooped up with an assortment of people on account of a murder, but that was the first time they were exclusively private detectives, and you might have thought they would be a little quicker on the ball than most. No. It would have taken an average group maybe a minute to absorb the shock of Hyatt’s announcement and hop on Wolfe and me, and that was about what it took them. Steve Amsel got to it first. He was about half Wolfe’s size, and, facing him close, he had to tilt his head back to give his quick black eyes a straight line.

  “So that was the event. Murder.” He didn’t make it “moider” but something in between. “Okay. Who was it?”

  Jay Kerr joined in. “Yeah, Goodwin recognized him. Name him.”

  Dol Bonner approached, expectantly, with Sally trailing behind her elbow. Harland Ide said, “If I heard correctly, Mr. Wolfe, he was a client of yours?”

  They were hemming Wolfe in, and he backed up a step. “I can’t tell you who he was,” he said, “because I don’t know. Neither does Mr. Goodwin. We don’t know his name.”