The Rubber Band/The Red Box 2-In-1

by Rex Stout

  “No. My mother held my arm. My uncle ran to him, and a man that was there, and I called to Lew and he came and ran there too. Then mother told me to stay where I was, and she walked to them, and other people began to come. I stood there, and in about a minute Lew came to me and said they thought Perren was dead and told me to get a taxi and go home and they would stay. The taxi he had stopped was standing there and he put me in it, but after it started I didn’t want to go home and I told the driver to come here. I … I thought perhaps …”

  “You couldn’t be expected to think. You were in no condition for it.” Wolfe leaned back. “So. You don’t know what Mr. Gebert died of.”

  “No. There was no sound … no anything …”

  “Do you know whether he ate or drank anything at the chapel?”

  Her head jerked up. She swallowed. “No, I’m sure he didn’t”

  “No matter.” Wolfe sighed. “That will be learned. You say that after Mr. Gebert jumped back from his car he yelled. Did he yell anything in particular?”

  “Yes … he did. My mother’s name. Like calling for help.”

  One of Wolfe’s brows went up. “I trust he yelled it ardently. Forgive me for permitting myself a playful remark; Mr. Gebert would understand it, were he here. So he yelled ‘Calida.’ More than once?”

  “Yes, several times. If you mean … my mother’s name …”

  “I meant nothing really. I was talking nonsense. It appears that, so far as you know, Mr. Gebert may have died of a heart attack or a clot on the brain or acute misanthropy. But I believe you said it made you afraid. What of?”

  She looked at him, opened her mouth, and closed it again. She stammered. “That’s why … that’s what …” and stopped. Her hands unclasped and fluttered up, and down again. She took another try at it: “I told you … I’ve been afraid …”

  “Very well.” Wolfe showed her a palm. “You needn’t do that. I understand. You mean that for some time you have been apprehensive of something malign in the relations of those closest and dearest to you. Naturally the death of Mr. McNair made it worse. Was it because—but forgive me. I am indulging one of my vices at a bad time—bad for you. I would not hesitate to torment you if it served our end, but it is useless now. Nothing more is needed. Did you intend to marry Mr. Gebert?”

  “No. I never did.”

  “Did you have affection for him?”

  “No. I told you … I didn’t really like him.”

  “Good. Then once the temporary shock is past you can be objective about it. Mr. Gebert had very little to recommend him, either as a sapient being or as a biological specimen. The truth is that his death simplifies our task a little, and I feel no regret and shall pretend to none. Still his murder will be avenged, because we can’t help ourselves. I assure you, Miss Frost, I am not trying to mystify you. But since I am not yet ready to tell you everything, I suppose it would be best to tell you nothing, so I’ll confine myself, for this evening, to one piece of advice. Of course you have friends—for instance, that Miss Mitchell who attempted loyalty to you on Tuesday morning. Go there, now, without informing anyone, and spend the night. Mr. Goodwin can drive you. Tomorrow—”

  “No.” She was shaking her head. “I won’t do that. What you said … about Perren’s murder. He was murdered. Wasn’t he?”

  “Certainly. He died ardently. I repeat that because I like it. If you make a conjecture from it, all the better as preparation for you. I do not advise your spending the night with a friend on account of any danger to yourself, for there is none. In fact, there is no danger left for anyone, except as I embody it. But you must know that if you go home you won’t get much sleep. The police will be clamoring for minutiae; they are probably bullying your family at this moment, and it would only be common sense to save yourself from that catechism. Tomorrow morning I could inform you of developments.”

  She shook her head again. “No.” She sounded decisive. “I’ll go home. I don’t want to run away … I just came here … and anyhow, mother and Lew and my uncle … no. I’ll go home. But if you could only tell me … please, Mr. Wolfe, please … if you could tell me something so I would know …”

  “I can’t. Not now. I promise you, soon. In the meantime—”

  The phone rang. I swiveled and got it. Right away I was in a scrap. Some sap with a voice like a foghorn was going to have me put Wolfe on the wire immediately and no fooling, without bothering to tell me who it was that wanted him. I derided him until he boomed at me to hold it. After waiting a minute I heard another voice, one I recognized at once:

  “Goodwin? Inspector Cramer. Maybe I don’t need Wolfe. I’d hate to disturb him. Is Helen Frost there?”

  “Who? Helen Frost?”

  “That’s what I said.”

  “Why should she be? Do you think we run a night shift? Wait a minute, I didn’t know it was you, I think Mr. Wolfe wants to ask you something.” I smothered the transmitter and turned: “Inspector Cramer wants to know if Miss Frost is here.”

  Wolfe lifted his shoulders half an inch and dropped them. Our client said, “Of course. Tell him yes.”

  I told the phone, “No, Wolfe can’t think of anything you’d be likely to know. But if you mean Miss Helen Frost, I just saw her here in a chair.”

  “Oh. She’s there. Some day I’m going to break your neck. I want her up here right away, at her home—no, wait. Keep her. I’ll send a man—”

  “Don’t bother. I’ll bring her.”

  “How soon?”

  “Right now. At once. Without delay.”

  I rang off and whirled my chair to face the client. “He’s up at your apartment. I suppose they all are. Do we go? I can still tell him I’m shortsighted and it wasn’t you in the chair.”

  She rose. She faced Wolfe and she was sagging a little, but then she straightened out the spine. “Thank you,” she said. “If there really isn’t anything …”

  “I’m sorry, Miss Frost. Nothing now. Perhaps tomorrow. I’ll get word to you. Don’t resent Mr. Cramer more than you must. He unquestionably means well. Good night.”

  I got up and bowed her ahead and through the office door, and snared my hat in the hall as I went by.

  I had put the roadster in the garage, so we had to walk there for it. She waited for me at the entrance, and after she got in and I turned into Tenth Avenue, I told her:

  “You’ve been getting lefts and rights both, and you’re groggy. Lean back and shut your eyes and breathe deep.”

  She said thank you, but she sat straight and kept her eyes open and didn’t say anything all the way to 65th Street. I was thinking that presumably I would make a night of it. Ever since she had busted in on us with the news, I had been kicking myself for having been in such a hell of a hurry to get away from 73rd Street; it had happened right there at Gebert’s car, parked in front of mine, not five minutes after I left. That had been luck for you. I could have been right there, closer than anyone else …

  I didn’t get to make a night of it, either. My sojourn at the Frost apartment as Helen’s escort was short and sour. She handed me her key to the door to the entrance hall, and as soon as I got it open there stood a dick. Another one was in a chair by the mirrors. Helen and I started to go on by, but got blocked. The dick told us:

  “Please wait here a minute? Both of you.”

  He disappeared into the living room, and pretty soon that door opened again and Cramer entered. He looked preoccupied and unfriendly.

  “Good evening, Miss Frost. Come with me, please.”

  “Is my mother here? My cousin—”

  “They’re all here. —All right, Goodwin, much obliged. Pleasant dreams.”

  I grinned at him. “I’m not sleepy. I can stick around without interfering—”

  “You can also beat it without interfering. I’ll watch you do that.”

  I could tell by his tone there was no use; he would merely have gone on being adamant. I ignored him. I bowed to our client:

  “Good n
ight, Miss Frost.”

  I turned to the dick: “Look sharp, my man, open the door.”

  He didn’t move. I reached for the knob and swung it wide open and went on out, leaving it that way. I’ll bet by gum he closed it.

  Chapter 17

  The next morning, Saturday, there was no early indication that the detective business of Nero Wolfe had any burden heavier than a feather on either its mind or its conscience. I had my figure laved and clothed before eight o’clock, rather expecting a pre-breakfast summons to some sort of action from the head of the firm, but I might as well have snoozed my full 510 minutes. The house phone stayed silent. As usual, Fritz took a tray of orange juice, crackers and chocolate to Wolfe’s room at the appointed moment, and there was no indication that I was scheduled for anything more enterprising than slitting open the envelopes of the morning mail and helping Fritz empty the wastebasket.

  At nine o’clock, when I was informed by the hum of the elevator that Wolfe was ascending for his two hours with Horstmann in the plant rooms, I was seated at the little table in the kitchen, doing the right thing by a pile of toast and four eggs cooked in black butter and sherry under a cover on a slow fire, and absorbing the accounts in the morning papers of the sensational death of Perren Gebert. It was a new one on me. The idea was that when he started to enter his car he had bumped his head against a sauce dish full of poison which had been perched on a piece of tape stuck to the cloth of the top above the driver’s seat, and the poison had spilled on him, most of it going down the back of his neck. The poison wasn’t named. I decided to finish with my second cup of coffee before going to the shelves in the office for a book on toxicology to glance over the possibilities. There couldn’t be more than two or three that would furnish results as sudden and complete as that, applied externally.

  A little after nine o’clock a phone call came from Saul Panzer. He asked for Wolfe and I put him through to the plant rooms; and then, to my disgust but not my surprise, Wolfe shooed me off the line. I stretched out my legs and looked at the tips of my shoes and told myself that the day would come when I would walk into that office carrying a murderer in a suitcase, and Nero Wolfe would pay dearly for a peek. Soon after that, Cramer phoned. He was also put through to Wolfe, and this time I kept my line and scribbled it in my notebook, but it was a waste of paper and talent. Cramer sounded tired and bitter, as if he needed three drinks and a good long nap. The gist of his growlings was that they were on the rampage at the District Attorney’s office and about ready to take drastic action. Wolfe murmured sympathetically that he hoped they would do nothing that would interfere with Cramer’s progress on the case, and Cramer told Wolfe where to go. Kid stuff.

  I got out a book on toxicology, and I suppose to an ignorant onlooker I would have appeared to be a studious fellow buried in research, but as a matter of fact I was a caged tiger. I wanted to get in a lick somewhere, so much that it made my stomach ache. I wanted to all the more, because I had scored a couple of muffs on the case, once when I had failed to bring Gebert away from that gang of gorillas up at Glennanne, and once when I had beat it from 73rd Street three minutes before Perren Gebert got his right there on the spot.

  It was the humor I was in that made me not any too hospitable when, around ten o’clock, Fritz brought me the card of a visitor and I saw it was Mathias R. Frisbie. I told Fritz to show him in. I had heard of this Frisbie, an Assistant District Attorney, but had never seen him. I observed, when he entered, that I hadn’t missed much. He was the window-dummy type—high collar, clothes pressed very nice, and embalmed stiff and cold. The only thing you could tell from his eyes was that his self-esteem almost hurt him.

  He told me he wanted to see Nero Wolfe. I told him that Mr. Wolfe would be engaged, as always in the morning, until eleven o’clock. He said it was urgent and important business and he required to see him at once. I grinned at him:

  “Wait here a minute.”

  I moseyed up three flights of stairs to the plant rooms and found Wolfe with Theodore, experimenting with a new method of pollenizing for hybrid seeds. He nodded to admit I was there.

  I said, “The drastic action is downstairs. Name of Frisbie. The guy that handled the Clara Fox larceny for Muir, remember? He wishes you to drop everything immediately and hurry down.”

  Wolfe didn’t speak. I waited half a minute and then asked pleasantly, “Shall I tell him you’re stricken dumb?”

  Wolfe grunted. He said without turning, “And you were glad to see him. Even an Assistant District Attorney, and even that one. Don’t deny it. It gave you an excuse to pester me. Very well, you’ve pestered me. Go.”

  “No message?”

  “None. Go.”

  I ambled back downstairs. I thought Frisbie might like to have a few moments to himself, so I stopped in the kitchen for a little chat with Fritz regarding the prospects for lunch and other interesting topics. When I wandered into the office Frisbie was sitting down, frowning, with his elbows on the arms of his chair and his fingertips all meeting each other, properly matched.

  I said, “Oh, yes. Mr. Frisbie. Since you say you must talk with Mr. Wolfe himself, can I get you a book or something? The morning paper? He will be down at eleven.”

  Frisbie’s fingertips parted. He demanded, “He’s here, isn’t he?”

  “Certainly. He’s never anywhere else.”

  “Then—I won’t wait an hour. I was warned to expect this. I won’t tolerate it.”

  I shrugged. “Okay. I’ll make it as easy as I can for you. Do you want to look at the morning paper while you’re not tolerating it?”

  He stood up. “Look here. This is insufferable. Time and time again this man Wolfe has had the effrontery to obstruct the operations of our office. Mr. Skinner sent me here—”

  “I’ll bet he did. He wouldn’t come again himself, after his last experience—”

  “He sent me, and I certainly don’t intend to sit here until eleven o’clock. Owing to an excess of leniency with which Wolfe has too often been treated by certain officials, he apparently regards himself as above the law. No one can flout the processes of justice—no one!” The high color had got higher. “Boyden McNair was murdered three days ago right in this office, and there is every reason to believe that Wolfe knows more about it than he has told. He should have been brought to see the District Attorney at once—but no, he has not even been properly questioned! Now another man has been killed, and again there is good reason to believe that Wolfe has withheld information which might have prevented it. I have made a great concession to him by coming here at all, and I want to see him at once. At once!”

  I nodded. “Sure, I know you want to see him, but keep your shirt on. Let’s make it a hypothetical question. If I say you’ll have to wait until eleven o’clock, then what?”

  He glared. “I won’t wait. I’ll go to my office and I’ll have him served. And I’ll see that his license is revoked! He thinks his friend Morley can save him, but he can’t get away with this kind of crooked underhanded—”

  I smacked him one. I probably wouldn’t have, except for the bad humor I was in anyway. It was by no means a wallop, merely a pat with the palm at the side of his puss, but it tilted him a little. He went back a step and began to tremble, and stood there with his arms at his sides and his fists doubled up.

  I said, “They’re no good hanging there at your knees. Put ’em up and I’ll slap you again.”

  He was too mad to pronounce properly. He sputtered, “You’ll re—regret this. You’ll—”

  I said, “Shut up and get out of here before you make me mad. You talk of revoking licenses! I know what’s eating you, you’ve got delusions of grandeur, and you’ve been trying to hog a grandstand play ever since they gave you a desk and a chair down there. I know all about you. I know why Skinner sent you, he wanted to give you a chance to make a monkey of yourself, and you didn’t even have gump enough to know it. The next time you shoot off your mouth about Nero Wolfe being crooked and underhanded I
won’t slap you in private, I’ll do it with an audience. Git!”

  In a way I suppose it was all right, and of course it was the only thing to do under the circumstances, but there was no deep satisfaction in it. He turned and walked out, and after I had heard the front door close behind him I went and sat down at my desk and yawned and scratched my head and kicked over the wastebasket. It had been a fleeting pleasure to smack him and read him out, but now that it was over there was an inclination inside of me to feel righteous, and that made me glum and in a worse temper than before. I hate to feel righteous, because it makes me uncomfortable and I want to kick something.

  I picked up the wastebasket and returned the litter to it piece by piece. I took out the plant records and opened them and put them back again, went to the front room and looked out of the window onto 35th Street and came back, answered a phone call from Ferguson’s Market which I relayed to Fritz, and finally got myself propped on my coccyx again with the book on toxicology. I was still fighting with that when Wolfe came down from the plant rooms at eleven o’clock.

  He progressed to his desk and sat down, and went through his usual motions with the pen, the mail, the vase of orchids, the button to subpoena beer. Fritz came with the tray, and Wolfe opened and poured and drank and wiped his lips. Then he leaned back and sighed. He was relaxing after his strenuous activities among the flower pots.

  I said, “Frisbie got obnoxious and I touched him on the cheek with my hand. He is going to revoke your license and serve you with different kinds of papers and maybe throw you into a vat of lye.”

  “Indeed.” Wolfe opened his eyes at me. “Was he going to revoke the license before you hit him or afterward?”

  “Before. Afterward he didn’t talk much.”

  Wolfe shuddered., “I trust your discretion, Archie, but sometimes I feel that I am trusting the discretion of an avalanche. Was there no recourse but to batter him?”