Nero Wolfe 16 - Even in the Best Families

by Rex Stout

  “First,” Archer said, “repeat what you told us last night about Mrs. Rackham’s visit to Wolfe’s office with Leeds.”

  “But,” I objected, “that’ll take half an hour, and you’re busy. That’s routine. I assure you it won’t vary.”

  “Go ahead. I want to hear it, and I have questions.”

  I yawned thoroughly, rubbed my eyes with the heels of my palms, and started. At first it was fuzzy, but it flowed easy after a minute or two, and it would have been a pleasure to have them compare it with a record from the previous recital if there had been one.

  Archer had some questions, and Dykes one or two. At the end Archer asked me, “Will you swear to that, Goodwin?”

  “Sure, glad to. If you’ll pay the notary fee.”

  “Go and type it, Cheney.”

  The skinny guy got up, with his notebook, and left. After the door was closed Archer spoke.

  “You might as well know it, Goodwin; you’ve been contradicted. Mr. Rackham says you’re lying about his wife’s conversation with Wolfe.”

  “Yeah? How does he know? He wasn’t there.”

  “He says that she couldn’t possibly have said what you report because it wasn’t true. He says that there was no question or misunderstanding about money between them. He also says that she told him that she suspected her financial affairs were being mishandled by Mr. Hammond of the Metropolitan Trust Company, and that she was going to consult Nero Wolfe about it.”

  “Well.” I yawned. “That’s interesting. Leeds is on my side. Who’s on his?”

  “No one so far.”

  “Have you tried it out on Leeds?”

  “Yes. As you say, he’s on your side. He has signed a statement. So has Mr. Rackham.”

  “What does Hammond say?”

  “I haven’t—” Archer paused, regarding me. “Perhaps I shouldn’t have told you that. You will keep it to yourself. It’s a delicate matter, to approach a responsible officer of a reputable bank on a thing like that.”

  “Right,” I agreed. “It’s also a delicate matter to call a millionaire a damn liar—that is, delicate for you. Not for me. I hereby call him a damn liar. I suppose he is a millionaire? Now?”

  Archer and Dykes exchanged glances.

  “Save it if you want to,” I said understandingly. “Leeds will tell me. If he knows. Does he?”

  “Yes. The will was read to the family today. I was present. There are a number of bequests to servants and distant relatives. Mrs. Frey gets this place and a million dollars. Leeds gets half a million. Lina Darrow gets two hundred thousand. The rest goes to Mr. Rackham.”

  “I see. Then he’s a millionaire, so it’s delicate. Even so, he’s a damn liar and it’s two to one. I’ll sign that statement in triplicate if you want it. Beyond that what can I say?”

  “I want to make it three to one.” Archer leaned to me. “Listen, Goodwin. I have great respect for Nero Wolfe’s talents. I have reason to, as you know. But I do not intend to let his whims interfere with the functions of my office. I want a statement from him supporting yours and Leeds’, and I mean to have it without delay. I sent a man to get it. This morning at eleven o’clock he was told that Wolfe wasn’t available and that you weren’t there and your whereabouts were not known. That was when an alarm was spread for you. I had a phone call from my man an hour ago. He had gone back to Wolfe’s house and had been told that Wolfe was out of the city, and that was all he could get.”

  Archer made a hand into a fist, resting on the table. “I won’t stand for it, Goodwin. This is the toughest one I’ve had in my county since I took office, and I won’t stand for it. Whatever else he is, he’s a fat conceited peacock and it’s time somebody called him. There’s a phone you can use. Two hours from now, unless he’s here and talking to me, there’ll be a warrant for his arrest as a material witness. There’s the phone.”

  “I doubt if you could paste material witness on him. He hasn’t been anywhere near here.”

  “Nuts,” Ben Dykes growled. “Don’t be a sap. She takes troubles to him Friday and gets murdered Saturday.”

  I decided to take the plunge. The way I felt, it would have been a pleasure to let them go ahead with a warrant, but if I tried to stall I would need a very fancy excuse tomorrow when they saw the ad in the Gazette. So I thought what the hell, now is as good a time as any, and told them.

  “I can’t phone him because I don’t know where he is.”

  “Ha, ha,” Dykes said. “Ha ha ha.”

  “Yes,” I admitted, “it could be a gag. But it isn’t. I don’t know whether he’s out of the city or not. All I know is that he left the house last night, while I was up here, and he hasn’t come back—no, that isn’t true. I also know that he called on a friend of his named Vukcic and arranged for his plants to be moved out and his cook to take another job. And he gave Vukcic a power of attorney. And he sent an ad to the Gazette announcing his retirement from the detective business.”

  Dykes did not ha-ha again. He merely sat and frowned at me. Archer, his lips puckered, had his eyes focused on me, but as if he was trying to see not me but through me. That went on for seconds, and I got uncomfortable. I can meet a pair of eyes all right, but not two pairs at once, one in front and one off to the left.

  Finally Dykes turned his head to tell Archer, “This makes it nice.”

  Archer nodded, not taking his regard from me. “It’s hard to believe, Goodwin.”

  “I’ll say it is. For him to—”

  “No, no. It’s hard to believe that Wolfe and you would try anything as fantastic as this. Obviously he was absolutely compelled to. You phoned him from Leeds’ place last night, as soon as you could get to a phone after Mrs. Rackham was murdered. That was—”

  “Excuse me,” I said firmly. “Not as soon as I could get to a phone after Mrs. Rackham was murdered. As soon as I could get to a phone after I found out she had been murdered.”

  “Very well. We’re not in court.” He was leaning at me. “That was shortly after midnight. What did you say to him?”

  “I told him what had happened. I reported, as fully as I could in the time I had, everything from my arrival here up to then. If the operator listened in you can check with her. I asked if I should limit my talk with the cops to events here and leave the rest for him to tell, and he said no, I should withhold nothing, including all details of Mrs. Rackham’s talk with him. That was all. As you know, I followed instructions.”

  “Jesus,” Dykes said. “Son, it looks like your turn to sweat has come.”

  Archer ignored him. “And after telling you to withhold nothing from the police, Wolfe suddenly decides, in the middle of the night, that he has had enough of detective work, sends an ad to a newspaper announcing his retirement, calls on a friend to arrange for the care of his orchids—and what did he do then? I was so engrossed I may have missed something.”

  “I don’t know what he did. He walked out. He disappeared.”

  I was aware, of course, of how it sounded. It was completely cuckoo. It was all rayon and a yard wide. I damn near made it even worse by telling them about the sausage and the tear gas, of course without letting on that we knew who had sent it, but realized in time how that would go over in the circumstances. That would have made a hit. But I had to say or do something, and decided to produce evidence, so I reached to my pocket for it.

  “He left notes on the table in his bedroom,” I said, “for Fritz and Theodore and me. Here’s mine.”

  I handed it to Archer. He read it and passed it to Dykes. Dykes read it twice and returned it to Archer, who stuck it in his pocket.

  “Jesus,” Dykes said again, looking at me in a way I didn’t like. “This is really something. I’ve always thought Nero Wolfe had a lot on the ball, and you too in a way, but this is about the worst I ever saw. Really.” He turned to Archer. “It’s plain what happened.”

  “It certainly is.” Archer made a fist. “Goodwin, I don’t ask you to tell me. I’ll tell you. When you foun
d Mrs. Rackham there dead, you and Leeds agreed on a tale about the visit to Nero Wolfe. Leeds came here to break the news. You went to his place to phone Wolfe and report, both the murder and the tale you and Leeds had agreed on—or maybe Wolfe knew that already, since you had pretended to investigate the dog poisoning. In any case, Wolfe knew something that he didn’t dare to try to cover and that, equally, he didn’t dare to reveal. What made it unbearably hot was the murder. So he arranged to disappear, and we haven’t got him, and it may take a day or a week to find him. But we’ve got you.”

  The fist hit the table, not hard. “You know where Wolfe is. You know what he knows that he had to run away from. It is vital information required by me in my investigation of a murder. Surely you must see that your position is untenable, you can’t possibly get away with it. Twenty Nero Wolfes couldn’t bring you out of this with a whole skin. Even if he’s cooking up one of his flashy surprises, even if he walks into my office tomorrow with the murderer and the evidence to convict him, I will not stand for this. There is no written record of what you said last night. I’ll get the stenographer back in here and we’ll tear up his notebook and what he has typed, and you can start from scratch.”

  “Better grab it, son,” Dykes said, perfectly friendly. “Loyalty to your employer is a fine thing, but not when he’s got a screw loose.”

  I yawned. “My God, I’m sleepy. I wouldn’t mind this so much if I was helping out with a fix, good or bad, but it’s a shame to get stuck with the truth. Ask me tomorrow, ask me all summer, I refuse to tell a lie. And I do not know where Mr. Wolfe is.”

  Archer stood up. “Get a material witness warrant and lock him up,” he said, almost squeaking, and marched out.

  Chapter 8

  The jail at White Plains uses a gallon of strong disinfectant, diluting it, of course, every day including Sunday. I can back that statement up with two pieces of evidence: the word of the turnkey on the second-floor cell block, whose name is Wilkes, given to me personally, and my sense of smell, which is above average.

  I had no opportunity to make a tour of inspection during the twenty hours I was there, that Easter Sunday and the day following, but except for the smell I found nothing to write to the newspapers about, once you grant that society must protect itself against characters like me. My cell—or rather, our cell, since I had a mate—was as clean as they come. There was something about the blankets that made you keep them away from your chin, but that could have been just prejudice. The light was nothing wonderful, but good enough to read by for thirty days.

  I didn’t really get acquainted with my surroundings or my mate until Monday, I was so darned sleepy when they finally finished with me down below and showed me up to my room. They had been insistent but not ferocious. I had been allowed to phone Fritz that I wouldn’t be home, which was a good thing, as there was no telling what he would have done with no word from me coming on top of Wolfe’s fadeout, and also to try to call Nathaniel Parker, the only lawyer Wolfe has ever been willing to invite to dinner; but that was no go because he was away for the weekend. When at last I stretched out on the cot, I was dead to the world ten seconds after my head hit the pillow, consisting of my pants wrapped in my shirt.

  It was the pants, or rather the coat and vest that went with them, that made my stay pleasanter than it might have been right from the start. I had had perhaps half as much sleep as I could have used when a hell of a noise banged at me and I lifted my head and opened my eyes. Across the cell on another cot, so far away that I would have had to stretch my arm full length to touch him, was my cellmate—a broad-shouldered guy about my age, maybe a little older, with a mop of tousled black hair. He was sitting up, yawning.

  “What’s all the racket?” I asked. “Jail break?”

  “Breakfast and check-up in ten minutes,” he replied, getting to his feet, with socks on, to the floor. “Stupid custom.”

  “Boneheads,” I agreed, twisting up to sit on the edge of the cot.

  Going to the chair where his wardrobe was, his eye fell on my chair, and he stepped to it for a look at the coat and vest. He fingered the lapel, looked inside at the lining, and inspected a buttonhole. Then, without comment, he returned to his side, two whole steps, and started to dress. I followed suit.

  “Where do we wash?” I inquired.

  “After breakfast,” he replied, “if you insist.”

  A man in uniform appeared on the other side of the bars and used his hands, and the cell door swung open.

  “Wait a minute, Wilkes,” my mate told him, and then asked me, “You cleaned out?”

  “Naturally. This is a modern jail.”

  “Would bacon and eggs suit you?”

  “Just right.”

  “Toast white or rye?”

  “White.”

  “Our tastes are similar. Make it two, Wilkes. Two of everything.”

  “As you say,” the turnkey said distinctly, and went. My mate, getting his necktie under his shirt collar, told me, “They won’t allow exceptions to the turnout and check-up, but you can pass up the garbage. We’ll eat here in privacy.”

  “This,” I said earnestly, “is the brotherhood of man. I would like this breakfast to be on me when I get my wallet back.”

  He waved it away. “Forget it.”

  The turnout and check-up, I discovered, were not to be taken as opportunities for conversation. There were around forty of us, all shapes and sizes, and on the whole we were frankly not a blue-ribbon outfit. The smell of the breakfast added to the disinfectant was enough to account for the expressions on the faces, not counting whatever it was that had got them there, and it was a relief to get back to my cozy cell with my mate.

  We had our hands and faces washed, and he had his teeth brushed, when the breakfast came on a big clean aluminum tray. The eats were barely usable if you took Fritz’s productions as a standard, but compared with the community meal which I had seen and smelled they were a handsome feast. My mate having ordered two of everything, there were two morning Gazettes, and before he even touched his orange juice he took his paper and, with no glance at the front page, turned to sports. Finishing his survey of the day’s prospects, he drank some orange juice and inquired, “Are you interested in the rapidity of horses?”

  “In a way.” I added earnestly, “I like the way you talk. I enjoy being with cultured people.”

  He gave me a suspicious look, saw my honest candid countenance, and relaxed. “That’s natural. Look at your clothes.”

  We were on the chairs, with the little wooden table between us. It was comfortable enough except that there was no room to prop up our morning papers. He flattened his out, still open at sports, on the end of the cot, and turned to it while disposing of a bite of food. I arranged mine, front page, on my knee. In the picture of Mrs. Rackham the poor woman looked homelier than she had actually been, which was a darned shame even though she wasn’t alive to see it. Wolfe’s name and mine both appeared in the subheads under the three-column spread about the murder. I glanced at the bottom, followed the instruction to turn to page four, and there saw more pictures. The one of Wolfe was only fair, making him look almost bloated, but the one of me was excellent. There was one of a Doberman pinscher standing at attention. It was captioned Hebe, which I doubted. The play in the text on Wolfe and me was on his sudden retirement from business and absence from the city, and on my presence at the scene of the murder and arrest as a material witness. There was also a report of an interview with Marko Vukcic, a Gazette exclusive, with Lon Cohen’s by-line. I would have given at least ten to one that Lon had used my name in getting to Marko.

  With the breakfast all down, including the coffee, which was pretty good, I was so interested in my reading that I didn’t notice that my mate had finished with sports and proceeded to other current events. What got my attention was the feeling that I was being scrutinized, and sure enough I was. He was looking at me, and then at his page four, and back at me again.

  I grinned at him. �
��Pretty good likeness, huh? But I don’t think that’s the right dog. I’m no expert, but Hebe isn’t quite as slim as that.”

  He was regarding me with a new expression, not particularly matey. “So you’re Nero Wolfe’s little Archie.”

  “I was.” I gestured. “Read the paper. Apparently I am now my own little Archie.”

  “So I bought a meal for a shamus.”

  “Not at all. Didn’t I say it was on me when I get my wallet back?”

  He shook his head. “I wouldn’t have believed it. With them clothes? I supposed you had got snagged in the raid on the Covered Porch. It gets worse all the time, the dicks. Look at this, even here in the can I meet a guy with a suit of clothes like that, and he’s a dick!”

  “I am not a dick, strictly speaking.” I was hurt. “I am a private eye. I said I liked the way you talk, but you’re getting careless. I also noticed you were cultured, and that should have put me on my guard. Cultured people are not often found in the coop. But nowadays dicks are frequently cultured. They tossed me in here because they think I’m holding out on a murder, which I’m not, and the fact that it has been tried before doesn’t mean they wouldn’t try it again. Putting you in here with me wasn’t so dumb, but you overplayed it, buying me a breakfast first pop. That started me wondering.”

  He was on his feet, glaring down at me. “Watch it, loose-lip. I’m going to clip you.”

  “What for?”

  “You need a lesson. I’m a plant, am I?”

  “Nuts. Who’s insulted now?” I gestured. “You call me a name, I call you a name. I take it, you take it. Let’s start over.”

  But he was too sensitive to make up as quick as all that. He undid his fist, glared at me some more, sidled between his chair and his cot, and got comfortable on the cot with his Gazette. With his head toward the corridor he was getting as good light as there was, and I followed his example, folding one of the blankets for a pillow and spreading my handkerchief on it. Two hours and ten minutes passed without a word from either cot. I happen to know because as I stretched out I glanced at my watch, wondering how soon I could reasonably expect Parker to show up with a crowbar to pry me loose, and it was twenty past nine; and, after giving that Gazette as good a play as a newspaper ever got, I had just looked at my watch for the twentieth time and seen 11:30 when he suddenly spoke.