The Doorbell Rang

by Rex Stout

  Her eyes were wide but her mouth was closed. I decided to marry her in spite of her pile. As I took her coat Fred and Orrie headed for the stairs, to hang around outside the South Room and not let Jarvis and Kirby come down and interrupt the conversation.

  At the kitchen end of the hall there is an alcove on the left, and around the corner in the alcove there is a hole in the wall at eye level. On the alcove side of the hole there is a sliding panel, and on the office side the hole is covered by a trick picture of a waterfall. If you stand in the alcove and open the panel you have a view of most of the office through the waterfall, and of course you can hear.

  Taking Mrs. Bruner to the alcove, followed by Saul, I slid the panel and showed her the hole. “As I said,” I told her, “Wragg is coming and will be in the office with Mr. Wolfe and me. Mr. Panzer will bring the stool from the kitchen, and you’ll sit here on it, and he’ll stand here. It will last anywhere from ten minutes to two hours, I don’t know. You won’t understand everything you hear, but you’ll understand enough. If you feel a cough or sneeze coming, go to the kitchen fast on your toes. Saul will motion to you if—”

  The doorbell rang. I stuck my head around the alcove corner, and there he was on the stoop, five minutes ahead of time. I told Saul to get the stool, and as he headed for the kitchen I started down the hall. At the door I looked back, got a nod from him at the alcove corner, and opened the door.

  Richard Wragg was forty-four years old. He lived in an apartment in Brooklyn with a wife and two children and had been with the FBI fifteen years. Detectives know things. He was about my height, with a long face and a pointed chin, and would be bald on top in four years, or maybe three. He didn’t offer to shake, but he turned his back as I peeled his coat off, so he trusted me to a certain extent. When I ushered him to the office and to the red leather chair he stood and looked the room over, and I thought he was too interested in the picture of the waterfall, but perhaps not. He was still standing when the sound of the elevator came and Wolfe entered and stopped short of his desk to say, “Mr. Wragg? I’m Nero Wolfe. Be seated.” As he went to his chair Wragg sat down, found he was only on the edge, and slid back.

  Their eyes met. From my angle I couldn’t see Wolfe’s, but Wragg’s were straight and steady.

  “I know about you,” Wragg said, “but I’ve never met you.”

  Wolfe nodded. “Some paths don’t cross.”

  “But now ours have. I assume that this is being recorded.”

  “No. There is equipment, but it isn’t turned on. We might as well ignore such matters. I have assumed for a week that everything said in this house was overheard. You may have a device on your person. I might have my recorder going—though, as I say, I haven’t. Let’s ignore it.”

  “We haven’t bugged this house.”

  Wolfe’s shoulders went up an eighth of an inch and down. “Ignore it. You wanted to see me?”

  Wragg’s fingers were curled over the ends of the chair arms. At ease. “As you expected. We don’t need to waste time shadow-boxing. I want the credentials you took from two of my men last night by force.”

  Wolfe turned a hand over. Also at ease. “But you are shadow-boxing. Retract that ‘by force.’ The force was initiated by them. They entered my house by force. I merely met force with force.”

  “I want those credentials.”

  “Do you retract your ‘by force’?”

  “No. I acknowledge that your retort was valid. Give me the credentials and we’ll talk on even terms.”

  “Pfui. Are you a dunce, or do you take me for one? I have no intention of talking on even terms. You came to see me because I constrained you to, but if you came to talk nonsense you may as well leave. Shall I describe the situation as I see it?”

  “Yes.”

  Wolfe turned his head. “Archie. Mrs. Bruner’s letter engaging me.”

  I went to the safe and got it. As I returned Wolfe nodded at Wragg, and I handed it to him. I stood there, and when he had read it I put out a hand. He read it again, slower, and handed it over without looking up at me, and I went to my desk and put it in a drawer.

  “Quite a document,” he told Wolfe. “For the record, if there was any espionage of Mrs. Bruner or her family or associates, which I am not admitting, it was in connection with a security check.”

  Wolfe nodded. “You say that, of course. A routine lie. I am describing the situation. Your men departed last night, leaving their credentials in my possession, because they dared not call on the police to rescue them. They knew that if a citizen charged them with the crime of entering his house illegally, and pushed the charge, the sympathy of the New York police and the District Attorney would be with the citizen. You know it too. You will not take legal steps to recover the credentials, so they will not be recovered. I shall keep them. I suggest an exchange. You engage to stop all surveillance of Mrs. Bruner and her family and associates, including the tap on her telephone, and I—”

  “I haven’t conceded the surveillance.”

  “Bah. If you—no. It’s simpler to rephrase it. Disregarding the past, you engage that from six o’clock today there will be by your bureau no surveillance of Mrs. Bruner or her family or associates, or her house, which includes a wiretap, and no surveillance of Mr. Goodwin or me, or my house. I engage to leave the credentials where they are, in my safe-deposit box, to take no action against your men for their invasion of my premises, and to make public no disclosure of it. That’s the situation, and that’s my offer.”

  “Do you mean engage in writing?”

  “Not unless you prefer it.”

  “I don’t. Nothing in writing. I’ll agree to the surveillance part, but I must have the credentials.”

  “You won’t get them.” Wolfe pointed a finger at him. “Understand this, Mr. Wragg. I’ll surrender the credentials only if ordered to by a court, and I’ll contest the order with all my resources and those of my client. You may—”

  “Damn it, you have four witnesses!”

  “I know. But judges and juries are sometimes whimsical. They may capriciously doubt the credibility of witnesses, even five of them—counting me. It would be fatuous for you to question my good faith. I have no desire to enter into a mortal feud with your bureau; my sole purpose is to do the job I have been hired for. As long as you harass or annoy neither my client nor me, I shall have no use either for the credentials or for my witnesses.”

  Wragg looked at me. I thought he was going to ask me something, but no, I was just a place to give his eyes a rest from Wolfe while he answered some question he had asked himself. It took him a while. Finally he went back to Wolfe.

  “You’ve left something out,” he said. “You say your sole purpose is to do the job you’ve been hired for. Then why have you been investigating a homicide we have no connection with? Why has Goodwin gone twice to see Mrs. David Althaus, and twice to Morris Althaus’s apartment, and why did you have those six people here last Thursday evening?”

  Wolfe nodded. “You think one of your men shot Morris Althaus.”

  “I do not. That’s absurd.”

  Wolfe got testy. “Confound it, sir, can’t you talk sense? What could they have conceivably been after when they invaded my house? You suspected that I had somehow discovered that three of your men had been in Morris Althaus’s apartment the night he was killed, as indeed I had. They had reported to you that he was dead when they arrived, but you didn’t believe them. At least you doubted them. I don’t know why; you know them; I don’t. And you suspected or feared that I had not only learned that they were there but had also secured evidence that they, one of them, had killed him. Talk sense.”

  “You still haven’t told me why you were investigating a homicide.”

  “Isn’t that obvious? Because I had learned that your men had been there.”

  “How did you learn that?”

  Wolfe shook his head. “That’s reserved.”

  “Have you been in touch with Inspector Cramer?”
/>   “No. I haven’t seen or spoken with him for months.”

  “Or the District Attorney’s office?”

  “No.”

  “Are you going to continue the investigation?”

  A corner of Wolfe’s mouth went up. “You know Mr. Wragg, I am both able and willing to relieve your mind, but first I must be assured that I have done my job. Have you accepted my offer? Do you assure me that from six o’clock this afternoon there will be no surveillance of any kind by your bureau of Mrs. Bruner or anyone connected with her?”

  “Yes. That’s settled.”

  “Satisfactory. Now I ask you to make another engagement. I want you to return here, when requested by me, and bring the bullet which one of your men picked up on the floor of Morris Althaus’s apartment.”

  It probably wasn’t easy to faze Richard Wragg. You don’t get to be the top G-man at the most important spot, next to Washington, if you faze easy. But that got him. His mouth came open. It took him only two seconds to close it, but he had been fazed.

  “Now you’re not talking sense,” he said.

  “But I am. If you’ll bring me that bullet when I ask for it, it is next to certain—I am tempted to say certain—that I can establish that Althaus was not killed by one of your men.”

  “God, you’re raw.” Wragg’s mouth wasn’t open now. His eyes were narrowed to slits. “If I had such a bullet I might bring it just to call you.”

  “Oh, you have it.” Wolfe was patient. “What happened that night in Althaus’s apartment? A person I’ll call X—I could give a better name, for now X will do—shot him with his own gun. The bullet went through him to the wall and fell to the floor. X departed, taking the gun. Soon your three men arrived, entering just as they entered this house last night. Shall I go into detail?”

  “Yes.”

  “Here they didn’t ring the bell because it was known, so they thought, that the house was empty. It had been under surveillance for a week. They rang Althaus’s bell, and probably his telephone, but he didn’t answer because he was dead. After they had searched the apartment and got what they had come for, it occurred to them that you would suspect that one of them had killed him, and as evidence that they hadn’t they took the bullet, which was there on the floor. They violated a law of the State of New York, but they had already violated one, why not another? They took it and gave it to you with their report.”

  He flipped a hand. “Possibly their bringing the bullet, instead of convincing you of their innocence, had the opposite effect, but I won’t speculate about your mental processes, why you didn’t believe them. As I said, you know your men. But of course you still have the bullet, and I’m going to want it.”

  Wragg’s eyes had stayed narrow. “Listen, Wolfe. You trapped us once, damn you. You trapped us good. But not again. If I had that bullet I wouldn’t be sap enough to give it to you.”

  “You will be a sap if you don’t.” Wolfe made a face. There are a few slang words he likes and uses, but “sap” isn’t one of them, and he had uttered it. He straightened his face. “I concern myself with this because I have an obligation—to the person from whom I learned that your men were there that night—and I don’t like obligations. Exposing the murderer will cancel that debt and, incidentally, relieve your mind. Wouldn’t you like it to be established that Althaus was not killed by one of your men? Bring me that bullet, and it will be. I make another offer: bring me that bullet, and if your men are not cleared within a month by disclosure of the murderer I’ll give you those credentials. It shouldn’t take a month, probably not even a week.”

  Wragg’s eyes were open. “You’ll return the credentials?”

  “Yes.”

  “You say ‘disclosure.’ Disclosed to whom?”

  “To you. Disclosed sufficiently to convince you that your men are innocent—of murder, that is.”

  “You make an offer. What guarantee would I have?”

  “My word.”

  “How good is your word?”

  “Better than yours. Much better, if that book is to be believed. No man alive can say that I have ever dishonored my word.”

  Wragg ignored the dig. “When would you want the bullet—if I had it?”

  “I don’t know. Possibly later today. Or tomorrow. I would want to receive it from your hands.”

  “If I had it.” Wragg stood up. “I have some thinking to do. I’m promising nothing. I’ll—”

  “But you are. You have. No surveillance of my client or me.”

  “That, yes. I mean—you know what I mean.” He moved, then stopped and turned. “You’ll be here all day?”

  “Yes. But if you telephone, my line is tapped.”

  He didn’t think that was funny. I doubt if he would have thought anything whatever was funny. As I followed him to the hall and held his coat and handed him his hat, he didn’t even know I was there. When I turned from shutting the door behind him I saw the client entering the office, Saul at her heels, and I decided not to marry her. She should have waited for me to come and escort her. When I reached the office there was a tableau. Mrs. Bruner and Saul were standing side by side at Wolfe’s desk, looking down at him, and he was leaning back with his eyes closed. It was a nice picture, and I stopped at the door to enjoy it. Half a minute. A full minute. That was enough, since she had appointments, and as I crossed to them I asked, “Could you hear all right?”

  Wolfe’s eyes opened. Not answering me, she told him, “You’re an incredible man. Utterly incredible. I didn’t really think you could do it. Incredible. Is there anything you couldn’t do?”

  He straightened up. “Yes, madam,” he said, “there is. I couldn’t put sense in a fool’s brain. I have tried. I could mention others. You understand why it was desirable for you to come. The letter you signed says ‘if you get the result I desire.’ Are you satisfied?”

  “Of course I am. Incredible.”

  “I find it a little hard to believe, myself. Please sit down. There is something I must tell you.”

  “There certainly is.” She went to the red leather chair. Saul went to a yellow one and I to mine. She asked, “What was the trap you set?”

  Wolfe shook his head. “Not that. That can wait. Mr. Goodwin will give you the details at your and his convenience. I must tell you not what has been done but what should now be done. You are my client and I must protect you from embarrassment. How discreet are you?”

  She frowned. “Why do you ask that?”

  “Please answer it. How discreet are you? Can you be trusted with a secret?”

  “Yes.”

  His head turned. “Archie?”

  Damn him anyway. It was all right to embarrass me. What if I changed my mind again and decided to marry her?

  “Yes,” I said, “if I know where you’re headed, and I think I do.”

  “Of course you do.” To her: “I wish to save you the embarrassment of having your secretary taken from your office by the police, perhaps in your presence, to be questioned regarding a murder which she probably committed.”

  He had only fazed Wragg, but that staggered the client. Her mouth didn’t drop open; she just stared, speechless.

  “I say probably,” Wolfe said, “but it is barely short of certainty. The victim was Morris Althaus. Mr. Goodwin will give you the details of this too, but not now, not until the situation has been resolved. I would have preferred not to give you even the bare fact now, but as my client you merit my protection. I wish to make a suggestion.”

  “I don’t believe it,” she said. “I want the details now.”

  “You won’t get them.” He was curt. “I have had a trying week, and night, and day. If you make this difficult too I’ll leave the room and you’ll leave the house, and probably question Miss Dacos. That will alarm her and she’ll skedaddle, and after the police find her and bring her back they will have questions for you—civil questions, but many of them. Do you want that?”

  “No.”

  “Do you think I would make
so grave an accusation idly?”

  “No.”

  “Then I have a suggestion.” He looked at the wall clock. Five minutes past noon. “What time does Miss Dacos go to lunch?”

  “It varies. She eats there, in the breakfast room, usually around one o’clock.”

  “Then Mr. Panzer will go with you now. Tell her you are going to have the office redecorated—painted, plastered, whatever suits—and you won’t need her the remainder of this week. Mr. Panzer will start the preparations immediately. She, your secretary, is going to be taken, but at least she won’t be taken from your house. I do not want a murderer taken into custody in the house of my client. Do you?”

  “No.”

  “Nor would you have wanted the disagreeable surprise of sitting in your office with your secretary and having the police suddenly appear and drag her out.”

  “No.”

  “Then you may thank me at your convenience for preventing it. You’re not in a humor to thank anyone for anything at the moment. Shall Mr. Panzer go in your car with you, or separately? You could discuss it with him on the way. He is not a fool.”

  She looked at me and back at Wolfe. “Can Mr. Goodwin go?”

  Saul has not yet heard the last of that. It didn’t change my decision about marriage because I prefer to do the courting myself, but it gave me one on Saul. Wolfe told her no, Mr. Goodwin had work to do, and the poor woman had to settle for Saul. He brought her coat from the front room and held it for her, and I admit I had a pang. By the time they got to Seventy-fourth Street she would be appreciating him. Not wanting to intrude, I didn’t go to the hall with them.

  When the sound came of the front door closing Wolfe cocked his head at me and demanded, “Say something.”

  “Bejabers,” I said. “Will that do? A guy I know named Birnbaum uses it to show he’s not prejudiced. Bejabers.”

  “Satisfactory.”

  “All of that.”

  “Our telephone is still tapped. Will you see Mr. Cramer before lunch?”

  “After would be better. He’ll be in a better humor. It will take them only an hour or so to get the warrant.”

  “Very well. But don’t—Yes, Fred?”