Too Many Women nwo-12

by Rex Stout

  “Okay, phooey. Go on from there.” “Archie,” Wolfe asked me casually, “you went to a movie Friday evening?” “Yes, sir.” “What time did you leave here?” “Right around eight-thirty.” “Then you couldn’t have opened the door for Mr. Naylor.” Wolfe pushed a button on his desk, and in a moment the door to the hall opened and Fritz appeared.

  Wolfe addressed him, “Fritz, do you remember that Friday evening after dinner Archie went out? To the movies?” “Yes, sir.” “And that somewhat later, around a quarter to eleven I think, Mr. Cramer called?” “Yes, sir.” “That should identify the evening sufficiently. Did the doorbell ring soon after Archie left?” “Yes, sir.” “You answered it?” “Yes, sir.” “Who was it?” “He didn’t tell me his name. It was a man.” “What did he want?” “He asked for Mr. Goodwin.” “Go on, finish it.” “I told him Mr. Goodwin was out. He asked if Mr. Wolfe was in and I told him yes. After thinking to himself a brief period he asked when Mr. Goodwin would be back and I said probably some time after eleven. I asked him if he wished to leave his name and he said no. He had turned and was going down the steps when I closed the door.” Cramer made a sound which Wolfe ignored. “What time was this?” “It was eight-forty-five when I got back to the kitchen. I made a note, as always-God in heaven!” “What’s the matter?” “I forgot to tell Archie about it! When he returned Inspector Cramer was here, and then he was gone all night and slept late Saturday-this is extremely bad, sir-” “Not at all. It wouldn’t have mattered. Did you tell me about it?” “No, sir. You were reading those three books, and he hadn’t left his name-” “Describe the man.” “He was short, shorter than me, and he wore a coat and hat. He had a small face and looked pinched and worried, as if he wasn’t a good eater.” “All right, Fritz, that’s all, thank you.” Fritz went, closing the door to the hall behind him. Wolfe turned to Cramer.

  “Well, sir?” Cramer shook his head. “No,” he said emphatically. “Even with Fritz coached like that I still say you’re crazy. How did you know about Naylor taking a cab and why did you phone-” Wolfe cut him off. “Don’t start shouting at me again. You’ll never learn, I suppose, how to detect when I’m lying and when I’m not. Saturday afternoon a man came to this office and told me he had seen Mr. Naylor taking that taxicab. I questioned him and was satisfied that the facts he gave me were authentic, and I immediately phoned your office and gave those facts to Mr. Stebbins. What the devil is obreptitious about that?” “Who was the man that came to your office?” “No, sir. You don’t need that.” “Excuse me, Inspector,” Purley Stebbins put in.

  Cramer glared at him. “What is it?” “Why, if we want any part of this that item won’t worry us. If we buy this it wasn’t Goodwin, so it was one of the boys that do jobs for Wolfe-Gore, Gather, Durkin, Panzer, or Keems. It stands to reason he was tailing Naylor. So either you can bear down on that, or if he’s too damn stubborn we can send out and collect ’em-” The phone rang. I whirled my chair and got it. It was Saul Panzer, desiring, he said to speak to Wolfe.

  “Sure,” I said, in a tone you would use to a client you expected to send a nice bill to, “he’s right here, Mr. Platt. By the way, while I’m on the wire, that big downtown law firm that says all it wants is justice, not to mention names, you know, they’re going to try to serve a summons on you and it would be good policy for you to duck it, anyhow for a day or two. There are lots of places you can go besides home. Don’t you agree?” “Nothing simpler,” Saul said, “if I understand you. Who’s there, Cramer?” “Yes, I suppose they’re going to be quite insistent about it. Here’s Mr. Wolfe.”

  Wolfe got on. He followed me on the Mr. Platt. Since he signaled me to hang up, meaning that his arrangements with Saul were still none of my business, I got as little out of the conversation as Cramer and Purley did, which was nothing at all. Wolfe’s end was mostly grunts. Purley sneezed. The three of us sat and waited for him, looking at him, until an event occurred which caused us to move our eyes elsewhere.

  The door to the hall came open and Rosa Bendini was there among us.

  It was a fairly embarrassing situation, with Wolfe still busy on the phone and the two public servants and me sitting staring at her as she stood just inside the door in that cherry-colored thing which, whatever its name might be, was certainly not intended for street wear. I thought of saying something like, “Mabel dear, we’re discussing business with these gentlemen so go back to your room and wait for me,” or something like, “We’re engaged at present, Miss Carmichael, but we’ll see you shortly,” but the first seemed indecent and the second illogical, and no satisfactory substitute got to my tongue in time.

  Wolfe, finished, dropped the phone back in its cradle and snapped at her, “What do you mean, coming in here dressed like that? Go back upstairs until I’m ready for you!” His effort, it seemed to me, was no improvement on the ones I had rejected. But no effort would have been good enough. She hadn’t merely blundered in. She came forward, on past Cramer and Purley, clear to me. She might easily have had it in mind to resume her former seat on my lap, so by the time she reached me I was standing up.

  “You promised you’d be with me when they are,” she said. That was not strictly true, but close enough for a woman, especially for one who was scared to death of cops. “There’s a police car out in front, so I came to the hall and listened, and that’s who they are, and I knew I’d never get a better chance, with you here and Mr. Wolfe too.” She turned and told Cramer and Purley right to their faces, “My name is Rosa Bendini, or it’s Mrs. Harold Anthony, either one will do, and I live at Four-eighteen Bank Street, second floor, and when a cop came for me Friday night I was there in bed all the time. Now what do you want to ask me?” One thing I approved of, she didn’t hook onto my arm or try to climb into my pocket. She just wanted to say it with me there.

  “This,” Cramer declared in as gloaty a tone as I had ever heard from him, “is really rich. How long have you had her hid here, Wolfe? Wasn’t there time enough to train her?” “Mr. Cramer, you’re an imbecile,” Wolfe told him for his information.

  I broke in, thinking the best thing now was to mess it up good. “I bolixed it up,” I said regretfully. “Like a damn fool, I told her to bust in when I sneezed, and then Purley sneezed.” I glared at Purley. “How the hell could I know you had a cold?” “Okay.” Cramer rose, still gloating. “I suppose you have some things here, Miss Bendini? Some clothes?” “Yes, but I-” “You have three minutes to change, unless you want to travel around like that.

  Go and change.” “No,” Wolfe said. His forefinger was tapping on the desk, which meant he was ready to pick up tigers and knock their heads together. “Stay here, Miss Bendini.” His eyes darted to Cramer. “Have you a warrant? Or are you charging her?” “Nuts. Murder. Material witness.” “Witness to what?” “I’ll tell her, not you.” “Bah. Miss Bendini. I advise you not to leave here unless you are taken by force. Make them carry you.” I intervened for several reasons. First, Wolfe was not following a program but was simply so mad he couldn’t see. Second, Rosa had gone so white and rigid that I doubted if she could walk, especially accompanied by a cop, and I didn’t regard it as desirable to let her be carried out of our house in the costume she had on. Third, while I hadn’t promised her, I had unquestionably given her an inducement.

  “Look,” I said to Cramer, “why all the war paint? If you do carry her out, and if she proves to be no more material than I am, with Mr. Wolfe as sore as he is you’ll get blisters. If you don’t like conversing with her here I’ll make an offer, take it or leave it. She changes her clothes, and Purley and I drive her downtown in Mr. Wolfe’s car, and I am present, not too talkative, during your talk with her. I’ll stay as long as she does. When the time comes, unless you are prepared to charge her, she leaves with me. What the hell, I was with you all Friday night, wasn’t I? Well?” “You might,” Wolfe said testily, “ask my permission, Archie.” “This is Sunday.” I told Cramer, “It’s no deal unless you say yes out loud so eve
rybody can hear you. I would prefer to see you carry her and let Mr. Wolfe see what the law can do, but Miss Bendini is like a sister to me. Yes?” “Yes,” Cramer snarled.

  I was thinking, as I went for the car, that one of the leading roles had bounced back to us again-the last to see Naylor alive. For a while it had been me. Then Saul Panzer, who had passed it on to the taxi driver. Now it was once more back in the family, with Fritz ticketed for it. Who next?

  CHAPTER Twenty-Five

  I missed Sunday dinner but not supper.

  It was no wonder that under the circumstances Cramer thought he had hooked a real fish and had also made a monkey out of Wblfe. But after half an hour with Rosa and me in his office, beginning to suspect that he had merely got caught on a snag, he left us to Lieutenant Rowcliff and beat it for Centre Street.

  Rowcliff didn’t care much for the assignment, since his opinion of me is a perfect match for mine of him. He shot questions at Rosa for an hour or so in his correspondence-school grammar, meanwhile trying to keep me from contributing any kind of sound, let alone a word, and halted only when he was interrupted by the return of a squad man who had been sent to Washington Heights to check with the in-laws.

  Not only had father-in-law and mother-in-law verified Rosa’s story, but husband-in-law came back with the squad man to try to raise some hell. He wasn’t going to let his wife be abused and would see to it personally that she wasn’t.

  Knowing what had led up to his wife’s departure from his parental apartment in the Sunday dawn, I regarded him with awe. I had noticed on the Naylor-Kerr stationery that the motto of the firm was ANYTHING IN THE WORLD, ANYWHERE IN THE WORLD. It struck me that the motto of the male personnel of the stock department appeared to be PROTECT THE WOMAN. Or if they wanted it to have eight words like the firm’s it could be PROTECT YOUR WOMAN NO MATTER WHOSE SHE IS.

  That left Rowcliff with nothing to discuss with Rosa except the time she had spent in bed Friday night, especially the hours from ten to twelve, which gave him limited space to turn around in. He sent a man down to Bank Street to see the janitor and the other tenants, but all they could say was that they hadn’t happened to see Miss Bendini come home Friday evening. Finally, around seven o’clock, he adjourned sine die, and I drove Rosa, with her luggage, to her home address, having phoned Wolfe and been told that there was no reason to suppose she had saved anything for him. The husband went with us and then came away with me, and I let him out at a subway station. Knowing by now that his wife’s relations with me were purely on a business basis, he even wanted to buy me a drink.

  I spent Sunday evening in the office with my typewriter. Wolfe was there too, but sight was the only one of my five senses that knew about it. When Saul Panzer phoned to make another classified report to Wolfe I arranged for him to meet me downtown in the morning instead of coming to Wolfe’s place. The authorities, looking for him, had phoned his home a few times, and he was going to spend the night at a friend’s apartment. It was just possible that they were eager enough about it to keep an eye on our address, and I still thought it would be polite to give Hester Livsey a chance to do some explaining in a congenial atmosphere.

  I fully expected Saul’s check on her to be nothing more than a formality, and so it was. Monday morning I met him and took him with me to the lobby of the building on William Street, and chose a strategic point for overlooking the arriving throng and the stampede for the elevators. I recognized a few of the faces as the feet trotted, walked, marched, and click-clicked on the way to another week’s paycheck. At two minutes to nine I was thinking we had missed her and would have to proceed upstairs, where it would be more awkward and would require arranging, when Saul suddenly pinched me and muttered at me: “To the right, thirty feet, turning now, same hat and coat, behind the tall man with glasses, going on the elevator-” “Okay,” I said as she was swallowed up in the elevator and its door started to close. “How many coats do you think she has? She’s an honest working girl.” “It’s none of my business,” Saul said.

  “Meaning, not her honesty, but her name. Yes, you have heard the name. If you happen to be phoning Wolfe and he happens to ask, you can tell him yes, and also tell him I’ll bring her to see him but I don’t know when. I have to find out whether I’m still working here or not. There’s to be a directors’ meeting-you’re not listening.” “I’m looking. Do you know that man”- his eyes were pointing-“gray coat and hat, big and broad, fleshy face, now his back is to us-he’s stepping on the elevator-” “Yeah, I know him. Why?” “I’ve seen him.” “I wouldn’t doubt it.” The combination of Saul’s eyes and the filing equipment in his skull is the equal of any card system yet invented. “You probably saw him August seventeenth, nineteen hundred and thirty-eight, crossing Madison Avenue against a light-” “No. I saw him Friday, twice. When Naylor met the woman at First Avenue and Fifty-second Street that man was standing across the street in a doorway looking at them. An hour later, when they parted at Second Avenue and Fifty-seventh Street, he was standing forty feet away, again in a doorway, and when the woman walked downtown on Second Avenue he started after her. That’s all I saw because Naylor was on his way and I was tailing him.” “Is this certified?” “For me it is.” “Then me too. In case this head-flattener is going on with his career and picks me next, the man’s name is Sumner Hoff. He works for Naylor-Kerr and his office is in the stock department. File it.” “I will. Is that all here?” I said it was, and Saul went.

  I took an elevator to the thirty-fourth floor, not knowing what to expect. It was quite possible that a delegation of executives would be waiting for me, to tell me to get the hell out and stay out. But nobody at all was waiting for me.

  It is true that when I got to the arena, skirted it, and started down the long aisle, I was on the receiving end of plenty of assorted glances, but that was only more of the same as last week. I left my coat and hat in my room, emerged immediately, crossed to the other side of the arena, opened the door of Hester Livsey’s room, entered, and shut the door behind me.

  “What do you want?” she demanded.

  She had straightened up from dusting off her desk. She looked nervous, unhappy, and annoyed. Fritz would have said that she did not have the appearance of a good eater. I did not entirely lose the impression that she was in some kind of trouble that no one but me could understand and no one but me could help her out of, but the most vulgar eye could have seen at a glance that she was in trouble.

  That much of it I would have to share.

  My name,” I said, “is Archie Goodwin and I work for Nero Wolfe.” “I know that. What do you want?” Evidently everybody in the stock department knew everything. “I’m afraid,” I told her, “that I can’t make my answer quite as direct and to the point as your question. I can tell you what I want, but I’ll have to leave it more or less blank why I want it. I want to date you up-to meet me at five o’clock this afternoon and go to Nero Wolfe’s office with me. He wants to have a talk with you-” “What about?” “You’re so damn gruff,” I complained. “I can’t tell you what about except that it’s connected with the murder of Kerr Naylor, and you could guess that with both eyes shut. Let me try it that way first, just ask you, will you do it?” “Certainly not. Why should I?” “In that case that comes next, why you should. I would have liked it much better without that, but I can’t have everything. Mr. Wolfe has learned a certain fact which has to do with you and Kerr Naylor, and he wants to ask you about it. The nature of the fact is such-” “What is it?” I shook my head. “Its nature is such that if you don’t go and let him ask you about it he will be obliged to give the fact to the police and then there will be no question of letting. You won’t go, you’ll be taken, and the asking atmosphere will be different.” “My God,” she said in a tone with no expression at all, as if she were too stunned to feel anything.

  It irritated me. “It’s a good thing for you I’m not a policeman,” I declared.

  “You’d better think up a better entrance
than that for them if it goes that far.

  Your chin’s sagging.” She came to me, abruptly and swiftly, put her hands on me, her open palms flat against my chest so I had to brace myself, raised her face to me, and half commanded, half implored, “What-is-the-fact?” She nearly got the desired result at that. But I stopped it before it reached my tongue and shook my head firmly. “Nope. You’ll get it from Mr. Wolfe.” “You won’t tell me?” “No.” “There isn’t any. I don’t believe it. There isn’t any fact.” “The hell there isn’t.” I was disgusted with her for not doing better. “You’re just like glass to look through. You have just told me that there’s not one fact, but two and maybe more, and you’ve got to know which one Wolfe has.” She had certainly uncovered herself, but she was not floored, and she now showed that she could grab a nettle. She went to the rack in the corner and got her coat and stuck an arm in it.

  “I’ll go now,” she said.

  “You can’t.” I went to relieve her of the coat. “The one appointment Mr. Wolfe wouldn’t break is the one with the orchids from nine to eleven in the morning.” I glanced at my wrist. “We can leave in an hour and a quarter. I’ll meet you in the lobby at a quarter to eleven.” But she knew what she wanted. “I’m not going to just sit here,” she said, “and if I tried to take dictation-I couldn’t. We can go now and wait for him. Wait here a minute while I tell Mr. Rosenbaum.” Having her coat, I hung it up, and explained that anyway I had an errand in the building that had to be attended to before I could leave. She gave in, but only because she couldn’t help it. I got out of there, not being absolutely sure how I would react if she snapped out of it and started to work on me in earnest. She agreed to meet me in the lobby at 10:45, and I returned to my room, picked up the phone, and called Wolfe and told him to expect us at eleven. I also told him of Saul’s recognition of Sumner Hoff. Then I got the Naylor-Kerr switchboard and gave the extension number of the office of the president.