Too Many Women nwo-12

by Rex Stout

  CHAPTER Twenty-Three

  It is a simple thing to make a swivel-chair swivel a half-turn and to pick up a phone, but sometimes the simple things are the hardest. I did not perform that maneuver. Instead, I wet my upper lip with my tongue, then my lower lip, and then got the tip of the tongue between my teeth and experimented to see how hard I had to bite to produce pain.

  “Well?” Wolfe demanded. “What’s the matter?” I gave the tongue its freedom. “I am reminded,” I said, “of the famous remark of Ferdinand Bowen up at Sing Sing when they told him to walk to the chair they had got ready for him. He muttered at them, ‘The idea is repugnant to me.’ Not that I regard the fix I’m in as identical, but I am strongly disinclined-” “What’s repugnant about it?” “I like the way the sun shines through Miss Livsey’s hair.” “Pfui. Phone Mr. Stebbins.” “Also, while it is true I pronounced her name, all I had was a description and I think it should be verified by having Saul look at her before we toss her into the fire.” “We’re not engaged to catch the murderer of Mr. Naylor. I’m not going to pay transportation to Westport for Saul and you.” “You don’t have to. He can see her Monday down at the office.” “It would be improper to withhold information-” “Listen to you! Will you please listen to you?” My voice was up without needing any instructions. “One of the main reasons you love to get information is so you can keep it from the cops, and you know it! You’re just being pigheaded, and if you phone Stebbins yourself, which you won’t because exercise is bad for you, I’ll withdraw my identification. From Saul’s description I would guess that it was the Duchess of Brimstone, who is in this country-” “Archie.” Wolfe was glaring. “Has that girl enravished you? Has she cajoled you into frenzy?” “Yes, sir.” That took the edge off him instantly. He leaned back, nodded to himself, made a circle with his lips, and exhaled with a sort of hiss that was the closest he ever got to a whistle.

  “Monday will do,” he declared, as if no one but a fool could think otherwise. “I was impetuous.” He looked at the clock on the wall, which said two minutes to four, time for his afternoon session with the orchids. He engineered himself out of his chair and was erect. “You can come here Monday morning, Saul, and go downtown with Archie. For the present-come up to the plant rooms with me. I have one or two suggestions for you.” They left, Saul for the stairs and Wolfe for his elevator. Their destination reminded me that I had got behind on the germination and blooming records, and I opened a desk drawer to get the accumulation of memos from Theodore.

  CHAPTER Twenty-Four

  I had got behind on sleep too, and I caught up that night, Saturday. But not quite to the extent that Wolfe thought I did. Soon after he had gone up to the roof with Saul my mind had informed me that it was too restless to concentrate on germination records, at least of plants, and I had gone and got the car and driven to Twentieth Street to see what was stirring. Sergeant Purley Stebbins had not thought it necessary, just because for some hours I had enjoyed the important role of last man to see the victim alive, to open all the books for me, but I was allowed to hang around long enough to get an impression that nothing startling had developed. Of course a couple of them took a stab at trying to filter out of me the dope on how Wolfe had learned about Naylor taking a taxi on Fifty-third Street, but I had insisted that I had had nothing whatever to do with it, which was perfectly true. The taxi driver had not yet been collected, though the number of his cab had of course led them straight to where he should have been. He had gone to Connecticut to fish for shad, and a courier had been sent to get him, and I only hoped to God he wouldn’t find him walking back and forth on a river bank with Hester Livsey.

  It was because of her that Wolfe thought I got more sleep Saturday night than I really did. Saturday nights I usually take some person of an interesting sex to a hockey or basketball game, or maybe a fight at the Garden, but that one I worked in the office a while after dinner and then announced that I was sleepy.

  Taking some doughnuts, blackberry jam, and a pitcher of milk upstairs with me, I sat in the chair I had selected and paid for myself and went over matters. On account of Saul’s description of her clothes, particularly the dark brown hat with a white cloth flower, I knew darned well it had been Hester Livsey he had seen with Naylor. I deny I was in a frenzy, but when a girl has patted a man’s head he should be willing to go to a little trouble to see that she gets a break. Besides, it isn’t often that at first sight, in the very first minute, a girl gives you the feeling that no one on earth but you knows how beautiful she is, and that too seemed to me to be worthy of consideration.

  I thought she should have a chance to wipe off the smudge, in case it hadn’t made a stain that wouldn’t come out, and I well knew what the wiping process would be like if we turned her over to Cramer and his bozos. It could be that her walkie-talkie with Naylor had concerned a private matter not connected with what was about to happen to him, and if it had, and if she chose to keep it to herself, she was as likely a prospect as I had ever seen for an all-day and all-night conference with men, coming at her in shifts, who think nothing of taking their coats off in front of ladies. What I had come to my room to consider was whether to go get the car and drive to Westport and have some conversation with her. I decided against it finally, and undressed and went to bed, because if it turned out wrong in the end it would be Wolfe who would have to save the pieces, not me.

  Next morning, Sunday, I was in the kitchen finishing breakfast, enjoying the last two swallows of my second cup of coffee and reading the paper, when the doorbell rang. Fritz went to answer it, and when, a moment later, I heard a female voice in the hall I tossed the paper down and went to see.

  “A lady, Archie,” Fritz told me.

  “Yeah, that’s what you always think. Hello there.” It was Rosa Bendini, Mrs. Harold Anthony, and she was good and scared if I know what emotions look like.

  She came down the hall to me and practically demanded, “For God’s sake put your arms around me!” I didn’t regard the request as offensive per se, but Fritz was there, on his way back to the kitchen, and in his Swiss-French way he can be a very tenacious kidder. So I tried to hold her off and spoke sharply, but she kept uttering sounds, possibly even words, and was determined to crawl inside of me. Fritz was staying as an impartial observer. She wasn’t keeping her voice down, we were at the foot of the stairs, and Wolfe was in his room one flight up, eating his breakfast. I picked her up, carried her into the office, deposited her in the red leather chair, and told her roughly: “You look like you just escaped from night court and the chase is hot. Is your husband out front?” “My husband?” She slid forward to the edge of the chair. “Is he here?” “I don’t know, I was asking you, and stay in that chair. After you ran out on me the other night I knocked him flat and made him tame.” I thought it might give her some perspective and steady her to refer to the past. “Have you seen him since?” She didn’t answer that. Apparently her husband was the least of her troubles.

  But she slid back again until enough of her fanny was on the chair so she could sit instead of squat, and said so the words could be heard: “The police are after me!” “I’ll shoot the first six and then start throwing rocks. How far back are they?”

  She bounced out of the chair and was on my lap before I could even brace myself, requesting me for the second time to put my arms around her, and it seemed less trouble to comply than to argue with her. I gathered her in and held her, and she encircled my neck, twisting her body around so as to make the contact more comprehensive. There have been occasions on which I have held a creature like that and as time passed she has begun to tremble, but this time it was the other way around. She was trembling at first, but gradually it tapered off, and after a while she was warm and quiet against me, with her face burrowing into the side of my neck, which I kept relaxed for her.

  Finally she lifted the face an inch to murmur at my ear, “I was so scared I was going to go jump off a pier. I always have been scared of the cops, ever since
I can remember, I guess because they came and arrested my brother when I was a little kid.” She kept close against me. “When I got home and the janitor and Isabel-she’s the girl that lives across the hall-when they told me the police had been there three times and they might come back any minute-no, hold me tight, I don’t mind if it’s hard to breathe-I didn’t even go in my room, I just scooted. I ran towards the subway, I don’t know where I thought I was going, and after I got on an uptown express I remembered about Nero Wolfe, so I got off at Thirty-third Street and came here to see him. And you were here! How did that happen? Now you ought to kiss me.” I held her firm enough to keep her from changing position. “I never kiss people before noon except the one I had breakfast with. Then you just got home?” “Yes. Then let’s eat breakfast. Oh, I know how you happened to be here! That piece in the paper! Your name’s Archie Goodwin and you’re Nero Wolfe’s brilliant lieutenant!” “Right. Here you are in the house you didn’t want to come to with me, and look at you. Where were you Friday night and Saturday and Saturday night?” She bit me on the neck.

  “Ouch,” I said. “That’s where your husband hit me before I got him. Where were you?” She kissed where she had bit.

  “Come on, girlie,” I said realistically.

  “You’re going to tell the cops or else, so you might as well practice on me.” That was a mistake. She actually started to tremble. I squeezed all the breath out of her to make her stop and told her with authority, “I go through cops like the wind through Wall Street and it’s quite possible I can arrange to be with you when they are. If so, I ought to know what the score is. Where were you?” She was scared again, and I had to quiet her down and then drag it out of her.

  The way she told it, she had gone home early Friday evening to her room-and-bath in Greenwich Village, around nine o’clock, because the man who had taken her out to dinner had got a completely false idea of their program for the evening. She had been asleep for hours when the bell-ringing and door-knocking started, hadn’t answered at first because she was too startled and had suspected it was her dinner host, and later, having crept to the door and heard the caller questioning the girl across the hall, had crawled back into bed and shivered, awake, until morning, afraid of cops. Between six and seven she had got up, dressed, packed a bag, sneaked out, taken the subway to Washington Heights, and gone to the apartment where her husband lived with his parents. The parents had advised her to let the police know where she was so they could come and ask their questions and have it over with, but they hadn’t insisted on it, and it looked as if she had picked a good hole until late Saturday night, or Sunday morning rather, when the husband had got the notion of doing some insisting on a purely personal matter and had gone to her bedroom with that in mind. That situation had developed to a point where the whole household was up and around, and she would have been ordered out into a snowstorm if it had been snowing. She had dressed and packed her bag and got out, and after a spell of random subway riding had collected enough spunk to go to her own address for a reconnaissance.

  The news that it had indeed been the cops, and they had been there three times, had finished the spunk, and here she was.

  It took a while to tell it. When she got to the end we were no longer glued together, but she was still perched on my lap.

  I was irritated. “Damn it,” I said, “you haven’t got a thing for the very hours they’re after, from ten to twelve Friday night. In bed alone, when you could easily have had a witness. Virtue never pays. Did your husband tell you he had been down to headquarters?” “Yes, he told me all about it.” “Did he admit I lammed him?” “Yes,1 wish I had stayed.” “At present you have more important wishes to wish. You’re in for it, girlie, but I’ll see what I can do. What do you like for breakfast? Juice, oatmeal, eggs, ham-” “I like everything except fish. But could I have a bath first? My bag’s in the hall.” That meant that by the time she was through eating it would probably be eleven o’clock and Wolfe would be finished with the plants and downstairs, so when I took her up to the spare room, the south one on the same floor as mine, I first saw that towels and other luxuries were in place and then gave her the kiss to which I had morally committed myself, just to have that out of the way. This time the trembling came where it belonged. I returned to the office, got Wolfe on the house phone and told him about our guest, and then went to the kitchen and arranged with Fritz for her breakfast.

  In spite of the companionship record Rosa and I were building up, and in spite of her dimples and her wholehearted way of making me feel at home, I had not adopted the idea that there was nothing much to her character but truth and innocence. It was not vet settled that our professional connection with the death of Moore was ended, and the death of Naylor certainly went with it; therefore I saw no reason why Wolfe shouldn’t do a little work for a change and spend his two hours between plant time and lunch time on one of his thorough exploring jobs with Rosa as the jungle. I sold the idea, stated somewhat differently, to her as she ate breakfast.

  It started off nicely, shortly after eleven, with Wolfe behind his desk in the office and Rosa in the red leather chair. She was wearing a very informal cherry-colored rayon something.

  “That’s a frightful combination,” Wolfe growled. “That garment and that chair.” “Oh, I’m sorry!” She moved to a yellow one, the one Saul Panzer liked.

  That put them on a basis of mutual understanding, and the prospect for an interesting conversation looked bright, but it didn’t get very far. Wolfe had covered nothing but some preliminary details, such as precisely the kind of work an assistant chief filer does, when the doorbell rang. Formerly on occasions calling for discretion, as for instance a fugitive from justice sitting in the office, I had had to finger the curtain back enough to make a slit to see through, but recently we had had a one-way glass panel installed. I still had to persuade myself each time, looking through, that I could see him but he couldn’t see me. Having done so, I returned to the office and told Wolfe: “It’s Mr. Cross. Do you want to see him?” “No. Tell him I’m busy.” “He might have an orchid for you.” I was displeased and allowed my voice to show it.

  “Confound it.” Wolfe compressed his lips. “Very well. If you don’t mind. Miss Bendini? Please go up to your-to that room? This shouldn’t take long.” She was up and out like a flash. Going to the hall, I waited until she had mounted the two flights and the door to the south room had been opened and closed. Meanwhile the bell had rung again.

  I went and pulled the front door open and protested, “My God, you might give a man time to untwist his ankles.” Inspector Cramer, with Sergeant Purley Stebbins at his heels, wasn’t even polite enough to give me a nod, after all the help I had been to him Friday night. They marched down the hall and into the office, with me in their rear.

  “Good morning,” Wolfe said curtly.

  “Godalmighty,” Cramer yawped, “so you’re at it again!” “Am I? At what?” “This,” Cramer yawped, “can take one minute or it can take hours! It’s up to you which! What did Kerr Naylor come here for Friday night, what time did he leave, and where did he go?” “That won’t take even a minute, Mr. Cramer. Mr. Naylor wasn’t here Friday night.

  I don’t like your manner. I seldom do. Good day, sir.” “Are you saying-” For a moment Cramer was speechless. “Naylor didn’t come to see you at twenty minutes to nine Friday night, the night he was killed?” “No, sir. That’s twice, and that’s enough. You may-” “By God, you’re crazy!” Cramer whirled. “He’s off his nut, Stebbins!” “Yes, sir.” “Bring that man in here.” Purley strode out. Cramer strode to the red leather chair and sat down. I kept my eye on Wolfe, not to miss a signal to take steps to keep Purley and that man, whoever he was, on the outside, but got none. Wolfe had evidently decided that the most exasperating thing he could do was look bored, and was doing so. The only sound was Cramer breathing, enough for all three of us, until footsteps came from the hall. A man entered with Purley behind him. The man was middle-aged an
d starting to go bald and had shoulders as broad as a barn. He was absolutely out of humor. Purley moved a chair up for him and he plumped himself down.

  “This,” Cramer said distinctly and impressively, “is Carl Darst. Friday evening he was hacking with Sealect cab number nine-forty-three, license number WX one-nine-seven-four-four-zero. Darst, who did you pick up on Fifty-third Street between First and Second Avenue?” “The guy you showed me a picture of.” Darst’s voice was husky and not affable.

  “He yelled at me. I wish to God he hadn’t. My one Sunday-” “And the man whose body you saw at the morgue?” “Yeah, I guess so. It was hard-sure, it was him.” “That was Kerr Naylor. So was the photograph I showed you. Where did you take him to?” “He told me Nine-fourteen West Thirty-fifth Street and that’s where I took him.”

  “That’s this address where we are now?” “Yes.” “What happened when you got here?” “When he paid me he said he wasn’t sure there would be anybody home, so would I wait till he found out, and I waited until he went up the steps and rang the bell, and the door opened and he started talking to someone, and then I shoved off. I didn’t wait until he went inside because he didn’t ask me to.” “But the door opened for him and he spoke with someone?” “Yeah, I can say that much.” “All right, go out to the car and stay there. I may want you in here again. Do you want to ask him any questions, Wolfe?” Wolfe, still bored, shook his head indifferently. Darst got up and left, but Sergeant Stebbins stayed put. Cramer waited until the sound of the front door closing behind Darst came to us and then spoke with the calm assurance of a man who has cards to spare.

  “So I say you’re crazy. This is completely Cockeyed and if you can brush this one off I want to hear it. Try telling me that the fact that Naylor came and rang your bell and the door was opened doesn’t prove that he came on in, and then I ask you please to tell me, in that case, how did you happen to know that he got in a cab on Fifty-third Street at half-past eight? Wait a minute, I’m not through. That sounds like good reasoning, don’t it? But if it is, why in the name of God did you phone my office to tell about his taking a taxi, and even give us the number of the cab? Knowing it would be pie to find it. I say you’re crazy. Usually when you’re staging a runaround at least I have a general idea which direction you’re going, but this time you’ll have to spell it out. I would love to hear you.” “Pfui,” Wolfe muttered.