by Rex Stout
I decided to stand pat. “I like it-” I started, and stopped, hearing the sound of a car coming. I turned my head to look, because the sound of a car coming got on my nerves after my recent experience with it, and also because it might be a police car if Rowcliff had decided not to wait till eleven o’clock for another try at Wolfe. But it was only a taxicab. They often came through there late at night, on their way to the nest, a company garage around the corner.
I turned back to them. “I like it here. Even if I had ideas, which I haven’t, my gun’s empty, so relax. I emptied it-”
I didn’t duck or dive, I just dropped, flat on the sidewalk, and started rolling. I was thinking I mustn’t bang my head against the stone of the stoop.
This time I didn’t see the man in the taxicab at all, even enough of a glimpse to see if he had something white over his face, I was moving too fast, rolling to get around the corner. I had, as I remember it, no sign of an impulse to reach for my gun. If I thought at all I suppose I was thinking that if a man in a taxicab wanted to make holes in Perrit and the face it was nothing to me. I had, and have, no notion what they were doing, but later examination showed that some of the noise I heard was made by them, using their own ammunition.
That noise stopped. The noise of the taxi moving from the scene tapered off. I stuck my head around the corner of the stoop, saw a form as flat as mine had been and much quieter, and scrambled to my feet. There were two forms, the other one around the other corner of the stoop, and it was twitching a little. I saw it still had a gun in its hand, so I stepped over and kicked it out and away. I knelt, first to one and then to the other, for a brief inspection, and finding it likely that no one would ever again consider it dangerous to turn his back on them, mounted the stoop to the front door and pushed the button for Fritz, my private rings. But the rings weren’t needed. Before my finger left the button the door opened for the crack of two inches allowed by the chain of the bolt and a voice came through.
“Archie?”
“Me, Fritz. Open-”
“Do you need help?”
“I need help to get in. Open up.”
He slid the bolt and I pushed and entered. “Did you kill somebody?” he inquired.
Wolfe’s bellow sounded from the hall one flight up. “Archie! What the devil is it now?”
His tone implied that I owed him apologies, past due, for interfering with his sleep.
“Corpses on the sidewalk in front, and it might have been me!” I called to him bitterly, and went to the office and dialed Rhinelander 4-1445, the 19th Precinct Station House.
IX
So Rowcliff didn’t have to wait until eleven o’clock for a go at Wolfe, after all. Very few performances were beyond the range of Wolfe’s special strain of gall, but keeping himself inaccessible with Dazy Perrit and a hired man shot down in front of his house while chatting with me would really have been out of bounds. At four-five A.M. he received Rowcliff and a sergeant in his bedroom. I missed that interview because I was occupied at the time, in the office with a committee of the squad, by request. I learned later that Wolfe had given them a peep under the lid but by no means removed it. He told them that Perrit had said he was being blackmailed by his daughter and wanted him to invent a way to make her stop, that he, Wolfe, had accepted the job, that the daughter had come to the office at Perrit’s command, and that he, Wolfe, had threatened to inform the police of Salt Lake City, where she was wanted, if she didn’t behave herself.
The other items he kept, such as Violet being a phony and the kind of lever she was using to heist her father. He left Beulah out entirely. I learned this later, and didn’t know then how far he was going, so down in the office with the committee I backed away from everything but the outdoor facts, adding nothing to my popularity but not really endangering my health.
The understanding had been that a specified number could enter for conversation with Wolfe and me, but that the house was not to be used for a command post, so the turmoil out front, complete with spotlights, was not allowed to spill over the sill, and Fritz was standing by. I was taken out twice, first to go all over it on the spot, and the second time to try to catch me in contradictions, but no one ever even suggested that I should go for a ride. From the way they acted it wasn’t hard to tell why: they were sorry for me. I hadn’t had time to analyze the situation enough to realize how awful right they were.
That went on long after daylight was showing, until the sun was entering at the window beyond Wolfe’s desk. As soon as they were all gone, including Rowcliff and the sergeant from Wolfe’s room, Fritz went to the kitchen and started breakfast. I mounted one flight, knocked on the door, was told to enter, and did so. Wolfe, in yellow silk pajamas and yellow slippers with turned-up toes, was coming out of the bathroom. “Well,” I began, “I hope to God-”
The phone rang. Whenever I left the office I plugged in extensions. Wolfe’s instrument, on his bedside table, was bright yellow and I didn’t like it. I crossed over and got it and told the transmitter, “Nero Wolfe’s office.”
“Archie? Saul. I want the boss.”
I told Wolfe, “Saul Panzer.”
He nodded, approaching. “Good. Go up to your room and look at your face. It needs washing.”
“So would yours if you had spent the night rolling around on sidewalks. You mean you have private business with Saul? Have you got him working on something?”
“Certainly. Mr. Perrit’s job.”
“Since when?”
“I phoned him last evening while you were taking Miss Page home. Go and wash your face.”
I went. Usually I resented it when Wolfe froze me out of operations with one of the men he used, but now I was too played out to bother, and besides, Saul was different. It was hard to resent anything about a guy as good as Saul Panzer. At the mirror in my bathroom I saw that there was no question about my face, so I attended to it, deciding to postpone shaving until after breakfast, and then went back down one flight to Wolfe’s room. He had finished his private talk with Saul and was sitting in his underwear, putting on his socks. “What do you want to discuss?” I asked him.
“Nothing.”
I stared indignantly. “Well, by God.”
He grunted. “At the moment there is nothing to discuss. You’re out of it. I told Mr. Rowcliff that I engaged to make Mr. Perrit’s daughter stop blackmailing him, and that I threatened her with exposure to the police, and that’s all. He’s an imbecile. He intimated that I am liable to prosecution for attempting to blackmail the daughter.” Wolfe straightened up. “By the way, I suppose it would be futile to call that number, Lincoln six-three two three two, now that Mr. Perrit is dead?”
“I’m out of it,” I said through my teeth and went down to the kitchen for breakfast. Out of it! Look who was calling Rowcliff an imbecile! I even forgot to taste the first three pancakes as they went down. My breakfast was interrupted four times by phone calls. Of course that would go on all day. Only one of the four, the last one, required reporting to Wolfe, which suited me fine, since I wished to keep communication with him at the lowest possible minimum. By that time he had finished breakfast and gone up to the plant room, so I gave him a buzz on the house phone. “A man called,” I told him, “and said his name is L. A. Schwartz and he’s Dazy Perrit’s lawyer. He wanted to come to see you immediately. I told him eleven o’clock. I have his number. If you regard him as out of it too, I can ring him and tell him not to come.”
“Eleven will do,” Wolfe said. “Did you try that Lincoln number? Mr. Perrit said between seven and ten.”
“No,” I said and hung up.
For the next hour and three-quarters my main job would have been to stay awake if it hadn’t been for the phone. Stalling journalists had got to be routine with me over the years, but it took time to handle it so they wouldn’t get down on us. One of the calls was a sample of what might be expected from life from then on as long as it lasted. A guy with a hoarse voice, so hoarse I wished he would take ti
me out to clear his throat, said he was a friend of Dazy Perrit’s and he would like to ask me a couple of questions, and would I meet him at the Seven-Eleven Club some time that afternoon? I told him I was tied up at the office but if he would give me his name and number I would ring him if I found I could make it. He said he didn’t know where he would be, so skip it and he would try again. Then he said, “It was too bad you wasn’t tied up at the office last night,” and hung up.
Another call came from Saul Panzer just before eleven. I put it through to Wolfe and was instructed to stay off the line, an instruction I didn’t need since I was out of it. Before they were through talking the doorbell rang again, for about the tenth time since the cops had left, and this time it was not a gate-crasher to be shooed off but a customer with a reserved seat. I allowed L. A. Schwartz to enter, told him Wolfe would soon appear, and herded him to the office and to a chair. I wouldn’t have picked him for Dazy Perrit’s lawyer. For one thing, he wore old-fashioned nose-pinchers for glasses, which didn’t seem to be the thing. He was sixty, skinny, and silent. I thought I might keep myself awake another five minutes by striking up a conversation, but I got a total of not more than ten words out of him. He sat with his briefcase on his lap and every thirty seconds pulled at the lobe of his right ear. I had abandoned him by the time the sound of Wolfe’s elevator came.
On his way across to his desk Wolfe halted to acknowledge the introduction, made by me in spite of being out of it, purely for the sake of appearances. Then he went to his chair, sat and got himself adjusted, leaned back, and took in the visitor with half-closed eyes.
“Well, sir?” he asked.
Schwartz blinked against the light from the window. “I must apologize,” he said, “for being urgent about this appointment, but I felt there should be no delay.”
He sounded formal. “I gathered from Mr. Perrit last evening that you had not explicitly given your assent, and therefore-”
“May I ask, assent to what?”
“To your appointment, in his will, as executor of his estate and in effect the guardian of his daughter. Did you?”
“Utterly”-Wolfe wiggled a finger at him-“preposterous.”
“I was afraid of that,” Schwartz said regretfully. “It will complicate matters. I’m afraid it’s partly my fault, drafting the documents in such haste. There is a question whether the fifty thousand dollars provided for that purpose will go to the executor if the executor is not you but someone appointed by a court.”
Wolfe grunted. His eyes opened and then half closed again. “Tell me about it,” he said.
X
Schwartz opened the flap of his briefcase, then let it drop back again, and kept it on his lap.
“In the past,” he said, “I have attended to a few little matters for Mr. Perrit of a purely legal nature. I know law, but on account of my temperament I am not a successful lawyer. Last evening he came to my home-a modest little apartment on Perry Street-he has never been to my office-and asked me to draw up some papers at once, in his presence. Luckily I have a typewriter at home but it isn’t very good and you’ll have to overlook typographical deficiencies. It took a long while because I am not fast on a typewriter, and also because of the special conditions to be covered. It’s a difficult business, extremely difficult, to convey property by testament to a daughter without naming her and indeed without identifying her in any way.” The lawyer blinked. “I should tell you right off that there will be no problems of administration. The property consists exclusively of government bonds and cash in banks, a little over a million dollars. In that respect there are no intricacies. All other property owned by Mr. Perrit, including his interest in various enterprises, goes to others-his associates-in another document. Your functions are limited strictly to the legacy to his daughter. There are only two other provisions in the document under consideration: fifty thousand dollars to you as executor, and the same amount to me. The witnesses to it were a man who owns a delicatessen and a young woman who runs a rental library, both of whom are known to me. I have the original in my possession. Mr. Perrit took a copy.”
Wolfe lifted a hand. “Let me see it.”
Schwartz blinked again. “In a moment, yes, sir. I should explain that the large sum left to me was not to compensate me for drawing up some papers. It was Mr. Perrit’s way of insuring my performance of an act mentioned nowhere in writing, but only orally. I drafted another document of which no copy was made. It was put into an envelope along with other sheets of paper on which Mr. Perrit had written something, I don’t know what, and the envelope was sealed with wax. I was given the function and the responsibility, in the event of Mr. Perrit’s death, of delivering the envelope to you personally at the earliest possible moment, together with the information, already delivered, regarding the will. I would put it this way: of the fifty thousand dollars left to me, one hundred dollars was for drafting the documents, another hundred was for making the delivery to you-reasonable sums-and the remainder was to pay me for not opening the envelope and examining the contents. He misjudged me entirely. One-tenth that amount, even one-fiftieth, would have been enough.”
He opened his briefcase, took out folded papers, and put them on Wolfe’s desk.
“That’s the will, which I must take with me for probate.” He produced a bulky envelope with red blotches of wax and put it beside the papers. “That’s the envelope.”
He sat back and pulled at his ear.
Wolfe reached for the envelope and papers. First he went through the will, thoroughly-he is never a fast reader-then handed it to me and slit the envelope with his paper knife. As he finished with a page of the contents of the envelope he slid it across to my reach; apparently I was back in again. I read faster than he does, so I was only a couple of minutes behind him at the end.
The will was certainly involved. It was hard for me to tell whether the cash and bonds were left to Nero Wolfe or to the unnamed and unidentified “my daughter,” but I’m not a lawyer and I suppose it was legally hers, though it seemed to me to leave room for a lot of antics by him if his mind worked that way. The other document drawn up by Schwartz, the one in the envelope, was very technical. It contained a long list of bonds and balances in banks, and its chief purpose seemed to be to make them available to Wolfe if, as, and when he felt like taking them over. In places it sounded like a power of attorney, and in other places like blessings and absolution for Wolfe no matter what he did. If Dazy Perrit had sat around while Schwartz composed all that and typed it out, one of the problems the police were working on-how and where Perrit had spent the hours preceding his death-was certainly solved. But he hadn’t merely sat. He had done some composing too, namely, the papers he had written on himself and put in the envelope. I read that last and slowest. It began:
391 Perry St,
N.Y. City,
Oct. 7, 1946, 9.42 PM.
Mr. Nero Wolfe, Esq.
909 W. 35 St, N.Y. City,
Dear Sir,
If this is a wrong one I’m pulling its the worst mistake I ever made but I think I can count on you after seeing you today and sizing you up. I don’t think I’m going to die but what if I do thats my problem my daughter has got to be protected I mean she has got to get what belongs to her and thats my problem.
There was a line and a half crossed out and then he went on. I have it in front of me now, but it covers seven pages and what the hell. All it amounted to was this, that the fifty thousand bucks was to pay Wolfe for seeing that Beulah got the cash and bonds, for keeping it all under his hat, and for using his best judgment as to how much Beulah should be told, and, if so, when. Then there were-a lot of facts, about who the mother was and so on, and the last two pages might have been classed as philosophy. Dazy Perrit’s philosophy. The two other papers in the envelope were a marriage certificate, dated St. Louis, September 4, 1924, and a birth certificate, dated July 26,1925.
I folded things up again and stuck them in the envelope. “Put it in the safe,” Wolfe
said.
I did so.
Schwartz quit pulling at his ear and began talking. “There might be some reluctance about handling money accumulated by the methods used by Mr. Perrit. But it would be a great responsibility to deprive a young woman-”
He stopped because Wolfe was waving it away with a finger. “Bah,” Wolfe said. “If an oil marauder or a steel bandit gets respect for his wishes regarding the disposal of his loot, why shouldn’t Mr. Perrit?”
“Then you accept the-ah-office?”
“I do.”
Instead of looking relieved and satisfied, the lawyer frowned. “In that case, I have a question. With the daughter dead, how do you propose to perform the functions of your office?”
“That, sir, is my affair. I don’t-” Wolfe stopped himself, cocking an eye. “No. I’m wrong. Since Mr. Perrit trusted you he would expect me to give you this much satisfaction: the daughter is not dead. Beyond that Mr. Perrit left it to me, and so will you.”
“I see.” Schwartz blinked. “I hope you’ll forgive me if I mention another detail. My personal interest is concerned, because fifty thousand dollars is for me an extremely large sum, and if I don’t get it through you I may not get it at all. I understand that your assistant-this gentleman here-was present when Miss Perrit was killed, and was also present when Mr. Perrit and his companion were killed, and that he, your assistant, was not injured. I do not know whether you fully realize the inferences that will be drawn and the consequences that may reasonably be expected. Those inferences will be greatly strengthened when this will-” he tapped a finger on his briefcase, to which the will had been returned-“is probated and becomes public knowledge, as the law requires. With over a million dollars entrusted to your hands and you accountable to no one. Mr. Perrit’s associates will inevitably draw those inferences, which will seem obvious to them, and they-”
