by Rex Stout
“Okay,” I said curtly, “you got a poke in and made me blink. Round one for you. Round two. Your Mr. Kates may be as loyal as What’s-his-name, the boy that stood on the burning deck, but he’s a sap. Nero Wolfe is tricky, that I admit, but the idea that he would cover a murderer because he happened to belong to something out of the alphabet that signed checks is plain loony. Look at the record and show me where he ever accepted a substitute, no matter who said it was just as good. Here’s a free tip: if you think or know a BPR man did it, and don’t want him caught, bounce me out immediately and keep as far away from Wolfe as you can get. If you think an NIA man did it and you’d like to help, put on some shoes and get your hat and coat and come to his office with me. As far as I’m concerned you don’t need to bother about the hat.” I looked at Kates. “If you did it yourself, with some motive not to be mentioned for the sake of common decency, you’d better come along and confess and get it over with.”
“I told you!” Kates told her triumphantly. “See how he led up to that?”
“Don’t be silly.” Miss Gunther, annoyed, looked at him. “I’ll explain it to you. Finding that I am smarter than he is, he decided to pick on you, and he certainly got documentation for his statement that you’re a sap. In fact, you’d better be going. Leave him to me. I may see you at the office tomorrow.”
Kates shook his head bravely and firmly. “No!” He insisted. “He’ll go on that way! I’m not going to—”
He continued, but there’s no more use my putting it down than there was his saying it, for the hostess had got up, crossed to a table, and picked up his hat and coat. It seemed to me that in some respects she must have been unsatisfactory as a confidential secretary. A man’s secretary is always moving around, taking and bringing papers, ushering in callers and out again, sitting down and standing up, and if there is a constant temptation to watch how she moves it is hard to get any work done.
Kates lost the argument, of course. Within two minutes the door had closed behind him and Miss Gunther was back on the couch among the cushions. Meanwhile I had been doing my best to concentrate, so when she possibly smiled at me and told me to go ahead and teach her the multiplication table, I arose and asked if I might use her phone.
Her brows went up. “What am I supposed to do? Ask who you want to call?”
“No, just say yes.”
“Yes. It’s right over—”
“I see, thanks.”
It was on a little table against a wall, with a stool there, and I pulled out the stool and sat with my back to her and dialed. After only one buzz in my ear, because Wolfe hates to hear bells ring, I got a hello and spoke:
“Mr. Wolfe? Archie. I’m up here with Miss Gunther in her apartment, and I don’t believe it’s a good plan to bring her down there as you suggested. In the first place she’s extremely smart, but that’s not it. She’s the one I’ve been dreaming about the past ten years, remember what I’ve told you? I don’t mean she’s beautiful, that’s merely a matter of taste, I only mean she is exactly what I have had in mind. Therefore it will be much better to let me handle her. She began by making a monkey of me, but that was because I was suffering from shock. It may take a week or a month or even a year, because it is very difficult to keep your mind on your work under these circumstances, but you can count on me. You go on to bed and I’ll get in touch with you in the morning.”
I arose from the stool and turned to face the couch, but she wasn’t there. She was, instead, over toward the door, in a dark blue coat with a fox collar, standing in front of a mirror, adjusting a dark blue contraption on her head.
She glanced at me. “All right, come on.”
“Come on where?”
“Don’t be demure.” She turned from the mirror. “You worked hard trying to figure out a way of getting me down to Nero Wolfe’s office, and you did a good job. I’ll give you Round Two. Some day we’ll play the rubber. Right now I’m taking on Nero Wolfe, so it will have to be postponed. I’m glad you don’t think I’m beautiful. Nothing irritates a woman more than to be thought beautiful.”
I had my coat on and she had the door open. The bag under her arm was the same dark blue material as the hat. On the way to the elevator I explained, “I didn’t say I didn’t think you were beautiful. I said—”
“I heard what you said. It stabbed me clear through. Even from a stranger who may also be my enemy, it hurt. I’m vain and that’s that. Because it just happens that I can’t see straight and I do think I’m beautiful.”
“So do—” I began, but just in time I saw the corner of her mouth moving and bit it off. I am telling this straight. If anyone thinks I was muffing everything she sent my way I won’t argue, but I would like to point out that I was right there with her, looking at her and listening to her, and the hell of it was that she was beautiful.
Driving down to Thirty-fifth Street, she kept the atmosphere as neighborly as if I had never been within ten miles of the NIA. Entering the house, we found the office uninhabited, so I left her there and went to find Wolfe. He was in the kitchen, deep in a conference with Fritz regarding the next day’s culinary program, and I sat on a stool, thinking over the latest development, Gunther by name, until they were finished. Wolfe finally acknowledged my presence.
“Is she here?”
“Yep. She sure is. Straighten your tie and comb your hair.”
Chapter 11
IT WAS A QUARTER past two in the morning when Wolfe glanced at the wall clock, sighed, and said, “Very well, Miss Gunther, I am ready to fulfill my part of the bargain. It was agreed that after you had answered my questions I would answer yours. Go ahead.”
I hadn’t been distracted much by gazing at beauty because, having been told to get it in the notebook verbatim, my eyes had been busy elsewhere. It was fifty-four pages. Wolfe had been in one of his looking-under-every-stone moods, and the stuff on some of the pages had no more to do with Boone’s murder, from where I sat, than Washington crossing the Delaware. Some of it might conceivably help. First and foremost, of course, was her own itinerary for last Tuesday. She knew nothing about the conference which had prevented Boone from leaving Washington on the train with the others, and admitted that that was surprising, since she was his confidential secretary and was supposed to know everything and usually did. Arriving in New York, she had gone with Alger Kates and Nina Boone to the BPR New York office, where Kates had gone into the statistical section, and she and Nina had helped department heads to collect props to be used as illustrations of points in the speech. There had been a large collection of all sorts of things, from toothpicks to typewriters, and it wasn’t until after six o’clock that the final selection had been made: two can openers, two monkey wrenches, two shirts, two fountain pens, and a baby carriage; and the data on them assembled. One of the men had conveyed them to the street for her and found a taxi, and she had headed for the Waldorf, Nina having gone previously. A bellboy had helped her get the props to the ballroom floor and the reception room. There she learned that Boone had asked for privacy to go over his speech, and an NIA man, General Erskine, had taken her to the room, to be known before long as the murder room.
Wolfe asked, “General Erskine?”
“Yes,” she said, “Ed Erskine, the son of the NIA President.”
I snorted.
“He was a B.G.,” she said. “One of the youngest generals in the Air Force.”
“Do you know him well?”
“No, I had only seen him once or twice and had never met him. But naturally I hate him.” At that moment there was no question about it; she was not smiling. “I hate everybody connected with the NIA.”
“Naturally. Go ahead.”
Ed Erskine had wheeled the baby carriage to the door of the room and left her there, and she had not stayed with Boone more than two or three minutes. The police had spent hours on those two or three minutes, since they were the last that anyone except the murderer had spent with Boone alive. Wolfe spent two pages of my notebook
. Boone had been concentrated and tense, even more than usual, which was not remarkable under the circumstances. He had jerked the shirts and monkey wrenches out of the baby carriage and put them on the table, glanced at the data, reminded Miss Gunther that she was to follow a copy of the speech as he talked and take notes of any deviation he made from the text; and then had handed her the leather case and told her to get. She had returned to the reception room and had two cocktails, two quick ones because she felt she needed them, and then had joined the exodus to the ballroom and had found table number eight, the one near the dais reserved for BPR people. She was eating her fruit cocktail when she remembered about the leather case, and that she had left it on the window sill in the reception room. She said nothing about it because she didn’t want to confess her carelessness, and just as she was starting to excuse herself to Mrs. Boone and leave the table, Frank Thomas Erskine, on the dais, had spoken into the microphone:
“Ladies and gentlemen, I regret the necessity of giving you this news, thus abruptly, but I must explain why no one can be allowed to leave this room …”
It was an hour later when she finally got to the reception room, and the leather case was gone.
Boone had told her the case contained cylinders he had dictated in his Washington office that afternoon, and that was all she knew. It wasn’t remarkable that he hadn’t told her what the dictation was about, because he seldom did. Since he used other stenographers for all routine stuff, it was understood that any cylinders he turned over to her personally were important and probably confidential. There were twelve such cases in use in Boone’s office, each holding ten cylinders, and they were constantly going back and forth among him and her and other stenographers, since Boone had done nearly all of his dictating on the machine. They were numbered, stamped on top, and this one had been number four. The machine that Boone had used was the Stenophone.
Miss Gunther admitted that she had made a mistake. She had not mentioned the missing case to anyone until Wednesday morning, when the police had asked her what had been in the leather case which she had had with her when she came to the reception room for a cocktail. Some NIA louse had of course told the police about it. She had told the police that she had been ashamed to confess her negligence, and anyway her silence had done no harm, since the case could have had no connection with the murder.
“Four people,” Wolfe murmured, “say that you took the case with you from the reception room to the ballroom.”
Phoebe Gunther nodded, unimpressed. She was drinking Bourbon and water and smoking a cigarette. “You believe them or you believe me. It wouldn’t surprise me if four of that kind of people said they looked through the keyhole and saw me kill Mr. Boone. Or even forty.”
“You mean NIA people. But Mrs. Boone isn’t one.”
“No,” Phoebe agreed. She lifted her shoulders, kept them up a second, and let them down. “Mr. Kates told me what she said. Mrs. Boone doesn’t like me. Yet—I rather doubt if that’s true—I think maybe she does like me, but she hated having her husband depend on me. You notice she didn’t actually lie about it; she didn’t say she saw me have the case when I left the reception room.”
“What did Mr. Boone depend on you for?”
“To do what he told me to.”
“Of course.” Wolfe was merely murmuring. “But what did he get from you? Intelligent obedience? Loyalty? Comfortable companionship? Happiness? Ecstasy?”
“Oh, for the lord’s sake.” She looked mildly disgusted. “You sound like a congressman’s wife. What he got was first-class work. I’m not saying that during the two years I worked for Mr. Boone I was always fresh out of ecstasy, but I never took it to the office with me, and anyway I was saving it up until I met Mr. Goodwin.” She gestured. “You’ve been reading old-fashioned novels too. If you want to know whether I was on terms of sinful intimacy with Mr. Boone, the answer is no. For one thing, he was too busy, and so was I, and anyhow he didn’t strike me that way. I merely worshiped him.”
“You did?”
“Yes, I did.” She gave the impression that she meant it. “He was irritable and he expected too much, he was overweight and he had dandruff, and he nearly drove me crazy trying to keep his schedule under control, but he was honest clear through and the best man in Washington, and he was up against the dirtiest gang of pigs and chiselers on earth. So since I was born weak-minded to begin with, I merely worshiped him, but where he was getting ecstasy I really don’t know.”
That would seem to cover the ecstasy angle. It was around that point, as I filled page after page in my notebook, that I took a sounding of how much of it I believed, and when I found my credibility gauge mounting up into the nineties and still ascending, I disqualified myself for bias.
She had a definite opinion about the murder. She doubted if any number of NIA members were in cahoots on it, probably not even two of them, because they were too cagey to conspire to commit a murder that would be a nationwide sensation. Her idea was that some one member had done it himself or hired it done, and it had to be one whose interests had been so damaged or threatened by Boone that he was willing to disregard the black eye the NIA would get. She accepted Wolfe’s theory that it was now desirable, from the standpoint of the NIA, that the murderer be caught.
“Then doesn’t it follow,” Wolfe asked, “that you and the BPR would prefer not to have him caught?”
“It may follow,” she admitted. “But I’m afraid that personally I’m not that logical, so I don’t feel that way.”
“Because you worshiped Mr. Boone? That’s understandable. But in that case, why didn’t you accept my invitation to come and discuss it last evening?”
She either had it ready or didn’t need to get it ready. “Because I didn’t feel like it. I was tired and I didn’t know who would be here. Between the police and the FBI, I have answered a thousand questions a thousand times each and I needed a rest.”
“But you came with Mr. Goodwin.”
“Certainly. Any girl who needed a rest would go anywhere with Mr. Goodwin, because she wouldn’t have to use her mind.” She didn’t even toss me a glance, but went on, “However, I didn’t intend to stay all night, and it’s after two, and what about my turn?”
That was when Wolfe looked at the clock and sighed and told her to go ahead.
She shifted in the chair to change pressure, took a couple of sips from her glass and put it down, leaned her head back against the red leather, getting a very nice effect, and asked as if it didn’t matter much one way or the other:
“Who approached you from the NIA, what did they say, what have you agreed to do, and how much are they paying you?”
Wolfe was so startled he almost blinked at her. “Oh, no, Miss Gunther, nothing like that.”
“Why not?” she demanded. “Then it wasn’t a bargain at all.”
He considered, realizing what he had let himself in for. “Very well,” he said, “let’s see. Mr. Erskine and his son, and Mr. Breslow and Mr. Winterhoff came to see me. Later Mr. O’Neill also came. They said many things, but the upshot was that they hired me to investigate. I have agreed to do so and to attempt to catch the murderer. What—”
“No matter who it is?”
“Yes. Don’t interrupt. What they pay will depend on the expenses incurred and what I decide to charge. It will be adequate. I don’t like the NIA. I’m an anarchist.”
He had decided to make the best of it by being whimsical. She ignored that.
“Did they try to persuade you that the murderer is not an NIA member?”
“No.”
“Did you get the impression that they suspect any particular person?”
“No.”
“Do you think one of the five who came to see you committed the murder?”
“No.”
“Do you mean you are satisfied that none of them did commit it?”
“No.”
She made a gesture. “This is silly. You aren’t playing fair. You say nothing but no.�
��
“I’m answering your questions. And so far I haven’t told you a lie. I doubt if you could say as much.”
“Why, what did I tell you that wasn’t true?”
“I have no idea. Not yet. I will have. Go ahead.”
I broke in, to Wolfe. “Excuse me, but I have no precedent for this, you being grilled by a murder suspect. Am I supposed to take it down?”
He ignored me and repeated to her, “Go ahead. Mr. Goodwin was merely making an opportunity to call you a murder suspect.”
She was concentrating and also ignored me. “Do you think,” she asked, “that the use of the monkey wrench, which no one could have known would be there, proves that the murder was unpremeditated?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because the murderer could have come armed, have seen the wrench, and decided to use it instead.”
“But it might have been unpremeditated?”
“Yes.”
“Has any NIA man said anything to you that indicated that he or any of them might know who took that leather case or what happened to it?”
“No.”
“Or where it is now?”
“No.”
“Have you any idea who the murderer is?”
“No.”
“Why did you send Mr. Goodwin after me? Why me, instead of—oh, anyone?”
“Because you had stayed away and I wanted to find out why.”
She stopped, sat erect, sipped at her glass again, draining it, and brushed her hair back.
“This is a lot of nonsense,” she said emphatically. “I could go on asking you questions for hours, and how would I know that a single thing you told me was the truth? For instance, I would give I don’t know what for that case. You say that as far as you know no one knows what happened to it or where it is, and it may be in this room right now, there in your desk.” She looked at the glass, saw it empty, and put it down on the check-writing table.
Wolfe nodded. “That is always the difficulty. I was under the same handicap with you.”
