by Josh Pachter
“I see in you, Mr. Himmler, a growing American fascism that frightens me more than German or Italian fascism did, simply because it is occurring in the nation I have adopted for my own. How this trend can be stymied I do not know, Mr. Himmler, but I do know that I have the ammunition I need now—the legal ammunition—to put a stop to the activities of one American fascist, and a far more influential one than many people would like to believe.”
I’d had enough. Enough ingratitude and enough abuse from the soft slobs who thought good could clobber bad with marshmallow knuckles. I remembered the one judge who revoked my license, all the terrible things he’d said about me, the names he’d called me. Could I take all that from another judge?
No! I am my judge, and I am my jury. I’d show them.
I pulled out my .45. They all froze there as I aimed it. Archie Goodwin made a step toward me, but too slow.
I shot myself in the belly. With glazed eye, I watched my own guts spill out on the floor of Wolfe’s office. I fell to my knees, life leaving me in a steady, warm flow. The red puddle on the carpet of Wolfe’s office spread—the wider it spread, the thinner was my hold on life.
I heard Wolfe say, “Himmler! How could you?”
I had only a second before I was a corpse talking, but I got it in.
“It was easy,” I said.
EPILOGUE
I guess it’s pretty obvious that Mack Himmler wasn’t around to finish this account, so I wrote the last scene myself, doing the best I could to imitate his writing style. I think I did a fairly good job of it, but I don’t think my stomach could stand writing that way all the time.
To clear up one loose end, I’m not completely sure just what Wolfe meant when he asked Himmler, “How could you?” I think it probably baffled him that anyone could commit suicide on an empty stomach. Wolfe, who is almost insanely civilized, had planned to invite Himmler to stay for lunch, and the idea of anybody, even a fascist pig, missing a meal troubles him greatly.
Most of you probably know that Mack Himmler used to go under another name and you may have wondered why he decided to switch to an alias. Lon Cohen, a newspaper friend of mine, tells me a photographer once snapped Himmler sitting on a motorcycle and published the shot with a kind of unfortunate caption. He growled “Nobody calls me a Commie” and changed his name legally to Himmler. I don’t know if that’s really true, but it makes a good story.
That’s about as long as an epilogue really has any business being, and I’ve got to go back to helping Wolfe save America from J. Edgar Hoover and Mayor Daley.
Archie Goodwin
The Frightened Man
by O. X. Rusett
EDITOR’S NOTE: If you’re not already familiar with O. X. Rusett’s “The Frightened Man,” you may as you read it find yourself wondering what it’s doing in the pastiche section of this book. “If it’s a pastiche,” you may protest, “then where is Nero Wolfe?” When “The Frightened Man” was first published in EQMM in 1970, the author provided an explanatory note at its end, and you’ll find that note reprinted in this volume, too. But first please read the story!
I was mad at Foler that day, which was nothing new, but I didn’t know what to do about it, which was. Usually I can find some effective way to needle him, but at the moment I’d drawn a blank.
Which explains why I almost forgot to be observant when I answered the door to admit a shriveled little man who looked like a wrinkled pear—I was still preoccupied with how to get back at Foler. But a natural talent for observation honed to a fine edge by long training doesn’t get derailed that easily, and I could see that the little man was disturbed and that his left hand was tightly clutching something inside his coat pocket. I half hoped he’d let go when I took the coat from him; but no, he just transferred the fist to the pocket of his jacket.
I ushered in the client—I was already thinking of him as one although he hadn’t told me his business with us, had just handed me his card, which read “Chet Telin, Theatrical Agent.” I knew Foler wouldn’t be in the office for a while, and naturally it was Owen Foler he wanted to see. I’m Woodie Charing, and a pretty good detective myself, but that’s not usually enough for our clients.
This one was so itchy, though, that he did talk to me after all.
“This is urgent, Mr. Charing. I think someone in my household intends to kill me, and I’m running out of time. When will Mr. Foler be here?”
His voice didn’t sound like a wrinkled pear—if wrinkled pears could talk, of course. It was deep and resonant, really surprising. The kind of guy who could make it big on radio and be killed by television. While I was at it, I did some more observing. He was expensively dressed, which was a definite plus, implying a fat fee, and he did look scared. I relented.
“Mr. Foler should be able to see you shortly,” I said reassuringly. “In the meantime, you’re safe here.”
He glanced around as if he expected to see a sinister relative pop out from behind a picture frame, but he nodded. I headed for the kitchen extension, not wanting him to hear the delicate way I would state his problem to Foler. Brent Firrenz was there, doing something with pots and pans that produced a tantalizing aroma.
I telephoned upstairs to the plant rooms.
“There’s a rich bozo here who expects to be bumped off,” I told the telephone. “I think he has a threatening note in his pocket. It looks like money for us.”
A grunt, as I could have predicted, came over the telephone.
“I’ll be down at six. Tell him to wait, and I’ll see him then.”
I could have predicted that, too. Foler always stays with his orchids till six, with some exceptions too rare to mention, and the mere threat of murder certainly isn’t one of them. It was now twenty of six, which was why I had informed Mr. Telin that Foler would be there soon.
I went back and conveyed the message again, and sat down at my desk to wait. Eventually the numerous pounds-worth that was Foler hove in and seated itself behind the other desk. He glanced at Telin’s card, which I had thoughtfully put there.
“Well, Mr. Telin, what can I do for you?” he asked, in a not particularly gracious manner.
“Mr. Foler, I think someone in my household is trying to kill me. I want you to find out who it is in time to—uh—prevent it.”
He had trouble with that one, but I suppose the prospect of having one’s life taken away isn’t pleasant.
“What makes you think so?” Foler asked.
“This note.” And, sure enough, he finally drew the fist out of his pocket and handed over what was in it. Foler looked, raised his eyebrows a hundredth of an inch, and handed it to me.
It was one of those paste-up jobs of letters cut from newspapers, and it said: Your time has run out. You will die.
“It didn’t occur to you, Mr. Telin, that this might be a practical joke?” Foler asked.
“It did not. There is much bitterness toward me at home. In a way I own them all, and they resent it.” There was something slightly European about his speech.
“Who are the people concerned?”
“First, my wife. Sue Pos is the name she goes by on her television interview program. My sister Tressi is a television actress. I’m agent for both of them. My brother Charim—that is a stage name, too—is a—er—a lecturer in philosophy, you might say. Sheree Pouke keeps house for me. She has been with my family since my childhood. That is all—four of them.”
“What do you want me to do?”
He thought about that one. It was as if he had expected that, when he got through naming them, Foler would pick one, and it hadn’t occurred to him until Foler asked that it wouldn’t be that easy.
“Can you come over and talk to them?”
I smiled to myself. The little man didn’t know what he was asking. Foler never, and I mean never, goes out. At least, like with the plants, the exceptions are too
rare to count.
Foler merely said that would be impossible, and Telin should get them all over here. The client raised some objections to that—he was really afraid to go home with someone on the loose wanting to murder him, and I couldn’t blame him. So, after setting the fee—to my entire satisfaction—it was agreed that I would go with him, collect the whole kit and caboodle, and bring them back with me. That left Foler with nothing to do in the meantime but drink beer, but that couldn’t be helped.
Telin has a Rolls-Royce and a chauffeur outside (hired by the day—not part of the household), which made up a little for my having to miss the dinner that Brent was cooking, and we glided smoothly through New York to one of the last of the Manhattan mansions.
He used his key when we got to the door, and let us both in. The hallway was dark, and Telin hadn’t taken more than a few steps when he stumbled, knocking me off balance since I was right behind him. He must have pressed a light switch, for the foyer suddenly sprang into view, revealing what Telin had stumbled over.
Lying kind of bunched up in front of us was a man—or rather what was left of him, which was the lifeless body. One look was enough to see that the vital force was no longer in it, and the bullet hole in the forehead showed why.
I shot a quick glance at Telin, who looked merely puzzled, as at some inexplicable but at the same time unimportant question. Well, after all, it wasn’t his corpse, and that was what he was afraid of.
“Do you often find a dead body in your foyer?” I couldn’t resist asking.
“What? No, of course not,” he spoke absently. “I don’t understand it. I don’t even know who he is.” He seemed really perplexed, though he might have brought us in deliberately as some kind of fall guys—murderers will do the screwiest things—and I couldn’t rule it out.
In any event, I wasn’t too pleased. I could guess the attitude of the police at my being on the spot, and it wasn’t a pleasant prospect. They never will understand that I’m as honest and helpful as a Boy Scout.
Still, there was nothing for it but to call them, and I asked the way to the nearest phone. It was in a room full of people, and I looked them over as I muttered into the mouthpiece. After one curious glance, they paid no attention to me, but clustered around Telin and asked him where he’d been. He sank wearily onto a sofa and didn’t tell them. He didn’t tell them about our interesting discovery in the foyer, either.
It is a measure of how perturbed I was that I didn’t give the two women in the room more than a quick look. Usually I’m happy if a case has even one, but I didn’t like the way this case was shaping up. One of the women was petite, a little shorter than I like them, but generously enough endowed to make up for it. The other was tall and dark and willowy. There was a man there, too, if you could call him that—as small and shriveled as Telin himself, wearing nothing but a sheet, so help me. He didn’t look the type for playing ghosts and besides, it was way past Halloween.
I called Foler and reported, and then I was introduced to the cast of characters. The small woman was Mrs. Telin, or Sue Pos, whichever you prefer, and she had intelligence to match her looks. She didn’t act very friendly toward her husband, and took a dim view of my being there, too.
The tall one was warmer. She had a brilliant smile for me, and I would have liked to pursue the matter further, but business came first.
The other little man, speaking in a funny singsong, identified himself as a guru. So that was the brother, the lecturer in philosophy. Since I had the idea that gurus came from India and the Telins from Europe, I wondered how much of a fakir he was.
Our visit was cut short by the arrival of the police. I had taken the time to have them all look at the body, and to explore it myself before that. I found a name, Ed Dobaday, on an envelope, and little else. He was young and good-looking, in a sleazy sort of way. There wasn’t a clue as to how he had made his living—though, whatever it was, he wouldn’t be doing it anymore.
They all insisted they’d never seen him before, but beautiful Tressi wasn’t very convincing. The guru I don’t count; he wasn’t convincing when it said it was raining, even though it was.
While I had been trying to get a line on these people, Telin had slipped out of the room. I let him go. It must have been to alert the housekeeper, because the first I saw of her she was ushering in the police, and she must have let them in through the foyer, but she didn’t look surprised.
She was really a dish—she made the other women look pale. She had vivid good looks—jet-black hair and snapping black eyes fringed with thick lashes. You could hardly call her the old-family-retainer type.
I got the kind of greeting from the force I expected—you’d think my old friends, Inspector Price Cromarsten and Sergeant Buster P. Binsley, would have welcomed another professional on the spot, but they never looked at it that way, and gave me a cold “Hello, Woodie” for openers.
I’ll skip the next part, because it didn’t get us very far, except that the police found a large pile of cut-up newspapers in an unused storeroom, from which the threatening note had been composed.
Eventually the police left and I was able to get the whole crowd over to Foler—my original mission, and one that had a lot more point now. I managed a few minutes alone with him to make a fast report before I brought them into our office.
I got them seated, enjoying the look on Foler’s face when he had three women facing him, when he hates to have even one.
“You are here,” he began bluntly, “for two reasons. One, somebody threatened to kill Telin, and the fact that someone else is dead doesn’t cancel that out, as far as we know.
“Second, a man named Ed Dobaday was found dead in your house. You all had the opportunity to kill him, and killing seems to have been on someone’s mind.”
Telin—our client, that is, not the guru—looked interested. He was pretty tough in his own way. He might be scared of being killed, but he wasn’t letting it reduce him to open panic. Under the nervousness, there seemed to be an assurance he would find out what he needed to know, and the would-be killer would never succeed. Meantime, he was analytically cold toward the rest of them.
“Mrs. Telin,” Foler invited, “Woodie tells me you have a good interview program on television. That takes insight. Suppose you start, telling us about all of you.”
That was a switch. He didn’t usually like to hear from women, but Telin seemed already to have told us all he wanted to, and the other male was a little outré for Foler’s tastes, swathed in his sheet as he still was.
“I haven’t been married to Chet very long.” It was a beautiful husky voice. “He was my agent—that’s how I knew him—and we were married two years ago. He and Tressi and Charim came over from Poland five years ago. With Sheree, of course.” She flashed the housekeeper a cool hostile glance. “He did well as an agent almost at once—really launched Tressi on her career. I myself owe everything to him.” She sounded as if she meant it, but only partly.
“Charim went to school for a while, but dropped out of sight and then turned up as a guru. He’s been lecturing on the West Coast—showed up a week ago, without bag or baggage, for a visit. As you may imagine, he’s rather a nonconformist.”
“I am interested in inner harmony,” interrupted the odd singsong. “Material things do not matter.”
“You are interested in material food,” snapped Sheree Pouke. “Caviar, no less.” She had a strong accent. “And you are all the time going out, in good material clothes. Meester Foler”—she turned to him—“I do not understand thees. I live always with the Telins. They take me in as an orphan. I repay by running the house here. I love Meester Telin. That one,” she amended, nodding toward her employer.
“Miss Telin, we haven’t heard from you,” Foler said.
The tall girl slowly uncrossed and recrossed her legs, which was wasted on Foler but not on me. “My brother has been very good to m
e,” she said slowly. “Perhaps his ambitions are hard to live up to, sometimes, but no one would want to kill him.”
“That’s not what he says,” probed Foler, but he got no takers. Blank faces returned his questioning look. “Miss Telin,” he rapped out next, “where have you seen the dead man before?”
“But I—” she started, then changed her tactics. “Oh, what’s the difference? He’s a TV actor, too—not very successful. I haven’t seen him around for a long time, and I heard he’d gone to Hollywood to have a try at movies. I hardly knew him.”
I started to speak, but when I saw Foler’s lips moving, pushing in and out, in and out, I changed my mind. When he does that, he’s really thinking, and I’m not about to disturb the process.
He looked as if he had the answers, and then the phone rang. He picked it up, and I lifted my extension. The voice of Alan Spurze, who does a lot of investigation for us and is the best in the business, came crackling over the wire. Foler must have called him after I made my report from the Telin house.
“Yes, that’s what I expected,” Foler grunted, when he had heard the report. “Thanks.”
He faced them again.
“Dobaday was also a petty crook. His specialty was blackmail. Any comment? No? Pfui. Then I’ll tell you what happened.
“Telin thought his life had been threatened. Any of you might have wanted to kill him. But there was always another possibility, and it’s the true one. That note was never intended for Telin. You found it in your pocket?”
Telin nodded, surprised.
“Very well. We’ve heard that this faker here”—and he meant faker with an e, not an i—“has been going out well dressed. I take it that doesn’t mean a bed sheet. But he arrived only in that costume of his—no bag or baggage.
“It’s a reasonable assumption that he’s been wearing his brother’s clothes. They’re the same size. Think about the note being in Charim’s pocket, and see where that gets us.
