by Rex Stout
“Do you mean,” I inquired, “that suspicion is centered on you? How come?”
“Not on me as—as a murderer, I don’t suppose so, but on me as a liar, and you and Wolfe. Even though she left me a great deal of money—I’m not thinking about being arrested for murder.”
“Who do you think ought to be?”
“I don’t know.” He gestured. “You’re trying to change the subject. It’s not a question of me and what I think, it’s you and what you’re going to do. From what I’ve heard of Wolfe, I doubt if it would help for you to tell him what I’ve said; I’ve got to see him and tell him myself. If he has really got to hide from somebody or something, do it however you want to. Blindfold me and put me face down in your car. I’ve got to see him. My cousin would have wanted me to, and he took her money.”
I was half glad there for a moment that I did not know where Wolfe was. I had no admiration for Leeds’ preference in pets, since I would put a woman ahead of a Doberman pinscher any day, and there was room for improvement in him in a few other respects, but I couldn’t help but admit he had a point and was not being at all unreasonable. So if I had known where Wolfe was I would have had to harden my heart, and as it was all I had to harden was my voice. It struck me then, for the first time, that maybe I shouldn’t be so sore at Wolfe after all.
Leeds hung on for another quarter of an hour, and I prolonged it a little myself by trying to get something out of him about the progress the cops had made, without success. He went away mad, still calling me a liar, which kept it unanimous. What he got from me was nothing. What I got from him was that Mrs. Rackham’s funeral would be the next morning, Wednesday. Not a profitable way to spend most of an hour, for either of us.
I spent what was left of the afternoon looking into the matter of sausage. Within ten minutes after the package had been opened that day, Wolfe had phoned both Mummiani and the Fleet Messenger Service and got a blank as expected; but on the outside chance that I might at least get a bone for my curiosity to gnaw on I made a trip to Fulton Street and one uptown. At Mummiani’s no one knew anything. Since Wolfe had been getting Darst’s sausage from them for years, and in that time their personnel had come and gone, any number of outsiders could know about it. At the Fleet Messenger Service they were willing to help but couldn’t. They remembered the package because Wolfe had phoned about it, but all I learned was that it had been left there by a youth who might have been playing hookey from the eighth grade, and I didn’t even bother to listen to the description, such as it was.
Fed up with an empty house and the phone ringing and being called a liar, I put in a call myself from a drugstore booth, and made personal arrangements for dinner and a show.
Wednesday morning a visitor came that I let in. I had formed the habit, since returning from jail, of hearing the doorbell ring, going to the hall, observing through the one-way glass panel who it was out on the stoop, making a face, and returning to the office. If the bell kept ringing long enough to be a nuisance I flipped the switch that turned it off. This time, around eleven Wednesday morning, instead of making a face I went and opened the door and said, “Well, hello! Coming in?”
A chunky specimen about my height, with wrinkled pink skin and gray hair and sharp gray-blue eyes, grunted a greeting and stepped over the sill. I said it was cold for April, and he agreed. As I hung his topcoat on the rack I told myself that I must be more restrained. The fact that I was alone in the house was no reason to give Inspector Cramer of Manhattan Homicide the impression that I was glad to see him. Wolfe or no Wolfe, I could keep up appearances.
I let him lead the way to the office. This time I sat at my own desk. I was tempted to take Wolfe’s chair again just to see how he would react, but it would have put me at a disadvantage, I was so used to dealing with him, in the red leather chair, from my own angle.
He eyed me. “So you’re holding the fort,” he growled.
“Not exactly,” I objected. “I’m only the caretaker. Or maybe I’m going down with the ship. Not that those who have left are rats.”
“Where’s Wolfe?”
“I don’t know. Next, you call me a liar. Then I say I have been, but not now. Then you—”
“Nuts. Where is he, Archie?”
That cleared the atmosphere. Over the years he had called me Goodwin fifty times to one Archie. He called me Archie only when he wanted something awful bad or when he had something wrapped up that Wolfe had given him and his humanity overcame him. So we were to be mellow.
“Listen,” I said, friendly but firm. “That routine is all right for people like district attorneys and state cops and the representatives of the press, but you’re above it. Either I don’t know where he is, or I do know but I’m sitting on it. What’s the difference? Next question.”
He took a cigar from his pocket, inspected it, rubbed it between his palms, and inspected it again. “It must be quite a thing,” he remarked, not growling. “That ad in the paper. The plants gone. Fritz and Theodore gone. Vukcic listing the house for sale. I’m going to miss it, I am, never dropping in to see him sitting here thinking he’s smarter than God and all His angels. Quite a thing, it must be. What is it?”
I said slowly and wearily, “Either I don’t know what it is, or I do know but—”
“What about the sausage that turned into tear gas? Any connection?”
I am always ready for Inspector Cramer, in the light of experience guided by intelligence, and therefore didn’t bat an eye. I merely cocked my head a little, met his gaze, and considered the matter until I was satisfied. “I doubt if it was Fritz,” I stated. “Mr. Wolfe has him too well trained. But in the excitement Sunday morning, Mr. Wolfe being gone, Fritz told Theodore, and you got it out of Theodore.” I nodded. “That must be it.”
“Did the tear gas scare him out of his skin? Or out of his house, which is the same thing. Was that it?”
“It might have, mightn’t it? A coward like him?”
“No.” Cramer put the cigar between his teeth, tilted up. “No, there are plenty of things about Wolfe I can and do object to, but he’s not a coward. There might have been something about that tear gas that would have scared anybody. Was there?”
“As far as I know, it was just plain tear gas, nothing fancy.” I decided to shove a little. “You know, it’s nice to have you here any time, just for company, but aren’t you spreading out some? Your job is homicide, and the tear gas didn’t even make us sick, let alone kill us. Also your job is in the County of New York, and Mrs. Rackham died in Westchester. I enjoy talking with you, but have you got credentials?”
He made a noise that could have been a chuckle. “That’s more like it,” he said, not sarcastically. “You’re beginning to sound natural. I’ll tell you. I’m here at the request of Ben Dykes, who would give all his teeth and one ear to clear up the Rackham case ahead of the state boys. He thinks that Archer, the DA, may have swallowed the idea that you and Leeds are lying too deep, and he came to me as an expert on Nero Wolfe, which God knows I am. He laid it all out for me and wanted my opinion.”
He shifted the cigar to a new angle. “The way it looked to me, there were three possibilities. First, the one that Archer has sold himself on, that you and Leeds are lying, and that what Mrs. Rackham really told Wolfe when she came here, together with her getting murdered the next day, somehow put Wolfe on a spot that was too hot for him, and he scooted, after fixing with you to cover as well as you could. I told Dykes I would rule that out, for various reasons—chiefly because neither you nor Wolfe would risk that much on a setup that depended on a stranger like Leeds sticking to a lie. Shall I analyze it more?”
“No, thanks, that’ll do.”
“I thought so. Next, the possibility that when you phoned Wolfe right after the body was found you told him something that gave him a line on the murderer, but it’s tricky and he had to go outdoors to get his evidence, preparing to grandstand it for the front page. I told Dykes I would rule that out too. Wolfe is quite
capable of a play like that, sure he is, but if that’s all it amounted to, why move the plants out and put Fritz to work in a restaurant and list the house for sale? He’s colorful, but not that colorful. Mrs. Rackham only paid him ten thousand, about what I make a year. Why should he spend it having his orchids carted around?”
Cramer shook his head. “Not for my money. That leaves the third possibility: that something really did scare him. That there was something about Mrs. Rackham’s murder, or anyhow connected with it, that he knew he couldn’t handle sitting there in that chair, but for some reason he had to handle it. So he scooted. As you say, you either don’t know where he is or you know and won’t tell—and that’s no help either way. Now I’ve got a lot to say about this possibility. You got time to listen?”
“I’ve got all day, but Fritz isn’t here to get our lunch.”
“We’ll go without.” He clasped his hands behind his head and shifted his center of gravity. “You know, Archie, sometimes I’m not as far behind as you think I am.”
“Also sometimes I don’t think you’re as far behind as you think I do.”
“That’s possible. Anyhow, I can add. I think he got word direct from Arnold Zeck. Did he?”
“Huh? Who’s Arnold Zeck? Did you just make it up?”
I knew that was a mistake the instant it was out of my mouth. Then I had to try to keep it from showing on my face, the realization that I had fumbled it, but whether that was a success or not—and I couldn’t very well look in a mirror to find out—it was too late.
Cramer looked pleased. “So you’ve been around all these years, a working detective, meeting the people you do, and you’ve never heard of Arnold Zeck. Either I’ve got to believe that, or I touched a tender spot.”
“Sure I’ve heard of him. It just didn’t click for a second.”
“Oh, for God’s sake. It’s affecting you already, having Wolfe gone. That wasn’t just a shot in the dark. One day two years ago I sat here in this chair. Wolfe sat there.” He nodded at Wolfe’s chair. “You were where you are now. A man named Orchard had been murdered, and so had a woman named Poole. In the course of our long talk Wolfe explained in detail how an ingenious and ruthless man could operate a blackmail scheme, good for at least a million a year, without sticking his neck out. Not only could; it was being done. Wolfe refused to name him, and since he wasn’t behind the murders it was out of my territory, but a thing or two I heard and a couple of things that happened gave me a pretty clear idea. Not only me—it was whispered around: Arnold Zeck. You may perhaps remember it.”
“I remember the Orchard case, certainly,” I conceded. “I didn’t hear the whispering.”
“I did. You may also remember that a year later, last summer, Wolfe’s plant rooms got shot up from a roof across the street.”
“Yes. I was sitting right here and heard it.”
“So I understand. Since no one was killed that never got to me officially, but naturally I heard things. Wolfe had started to investigate a man named Rony, and Rony’s activities were the kind that might lead a first-class investigator like Wolfe in the direction of Arnold Zeck, maybe up close to Zeck, possibly even clear to him. I thought then that Wolfe had got warned off, by Zeck himself or someone near him, and he had disregarded it, and for a second warning they messed up his orchids. Then Rony got killed, and that was a break for Wolfe because it put him and Zeck on the same side.”
“Gosh,” I remarked, “It sounds awful complicated to me.”
“I’ll bet it does.” Cramer moved the cigar—getting shorter now, although he never lit one—to the other side of his mouth. “All I’m doing is showing you that I’m not just hoping for a bite, and I don’t want to string it out. It was a good guess that Wolfe had jostled up against Arnold Zeck in both the Orchard case and the Rony case, and now what happens? Not long after Mrs. Rackham calls on him and hires him to check on her husband’s income, someone sends him a cylinder of tear gas—not a bomb to blow out his guts, which it could have been, just tear gas, so of course it was for a warning. And that night Mrs. Rackham gets murdered. You tell him about it on the phone, and when you get home he’s gone.”
Cramer took the cigar from his mouth and pointed it at me. “I’ll tell you what I believe, Archie. I believe that if Wolfe had stayed and helped, the murderer of Mrs. Rackham would be locked up by now. I believe that he had reason to think that if he did that, helped to catch the murderer, he would have to spend the rest of his life trying to keep Arnold Zeck from getting him. I believe that he decided that the only way out was for him to get Zeck. How’s that?”
“No comment,” I said politely. “If you’re right you’re right, and if you’re wrong I wouldn’t want to hurt your feelings.”
“Much obliged. But he did get a warning from Zeck—the tear gas.”
“No comment.”
“I wouldn’t expect any. Now here’s what I came for. I want you to give Wolfe a personal message from me, not as a police officer but as a friend. This is between you and me—and him. Zeck is out of his reach. He is out of anybody’s reach. It’s a goddam crime for an officer of the law to have to say a thing like that, even privately, but it’s true. Here’s a murder case, and thank God it’s not mine. I’m not pointing at Ben Dykes or the DA up there, I’m not pointing at any person or persons, but if the setup is that Barry Rackham is tied in with one or more of Zeck’s operations, and if Rackham killed his wife, I say he will never burn. I don’t say at what point Zeck will get his hand in, or who or what he will use, but Rackham will never burn.”
Cramer hurled his cigar at my wastebasket and missed it by a foot. Since it wasn’t lit I ignored it. “Hooray for justice,” I cheered.
He snarled, but apparently not at me. “I want you to tell Wolfe that. Zeck is out of his reach. He can’t get him.”
“But,” I objected, “granting that you’ve got it all straight, which I haven’t, that’s a hell of a message. Look at it from the other end. He is not out of Zeck’s reach, not if he comes home. I know he doesn’t go out much, but even if he never did people have to come in—and things, like packages of sausage. Not to mention that the damage they did to the plants and equipment last year came to thirty-eight thousand bucks. I get the idea that he is to lay off of Zeck, but that’s only what he doesn’t do. What does he do?”
Cramer nodded. “I know. That’s it. He’s so damn bullheaded. I want you to understand, Archie, why I came here. Wolfe is too cocky to live. He has enough brass and bluster to outfit a thousand sergeants. Sure, I know him; I ought to. I would love to bloody his nose for him. I’ve tried to often enough, and someday I will and enjoy it. But I would hate to see him break his neck on a deal like this where he hasn’t got a chance. It’s a good guess that in the past ten years there have been over a hundred homicides in this town that were connected in one way or another with one of the operations Arnold Zeck has a hand in. But not in a single case was there the remotest hope of tying Zeck up with it. We couldn’t possibly have touched him.”
“You’re back where you started,” I complained. “He can’t be reached. So what?”
“So Wolfe should come back where he belongs, return what Mrs. Rackham paid him to her estate, let the Westchester people take care of the murder, which is their job anyhow, and go on as before. You can tell him I said that, but by God don’t quote me around. I’m not responsible for a man like Zeck being out of reach.”
“But you never strained a muscle stretching for him.”
“Nuts. Facts are facts.”
“Yeah, like sausage is tear gas.” I stood up so as to look down my nose at him. “There are two reasons why your message will not get to Mr. Wolfe. First, he is to me as Zeck is to him. He’s out of my reach. I don’t know where he is.”
“Oh, keep it up.”
“I will. Second, I don’t like the message. I admit that I have known Mr. Wolfe to discuss Arnold Zeck. I once heard him tell a whole family about him, only he was calling him X. He was describing th
e difficulties he would be in if he ever found himself tangled with X for a showdown, and he told them that he was acquainted, more or less, with some three thousand people living or working in New York, and there weren’t more than five of them of whom he could say with certainty that they were in no way involved in X’s activities. He said that none might be or that any might be. On another occasion I happened to be inquiring about Zeck of a newspaperman, and he had extravagant notions about Zeck’s payroll. He mentioned, not by name, politicians, barflies, cops, chambermaids, lawyers, private cops, crooks of all types, including gunmen—maybe housewives, I forget. He did not specifically mention police inspectors.”
“Just forgot, perhaps.”
“I suppose so. Another thing, those five exceptions that Mr. Wolfe made out of his three thousand acquaintances, he didn’t say who they were, but I was pretty sure I could name three of them. I thought probably one of the other two was you, but I could have been wrong. You have made a point of how you would hate to see him break his neck where he hasn’t got a chance. You took the trouble to come here with a personal message but don’t want to be quoted, which means that if I mention this conversation to anyone but Mr. Wolfe you’ll call me a liar. And what’s the message? That he should lay off Zeck, that’s what it amounts to. If in earning the fee Mrs. Rackham paid him he is liable to hurt somebody Zeck doesn’t want hurt, he should return the fee. The way it looks from here, sending a message like that to the best and toughest detective on earth is exactly the kind of service Zeck would pay good money for. I wouldn’t say—”
I didn’t get to say what I wouldn’t say. Cramer, out of his chair and coming, had a look on his face that I had never seen before. Time and again I had seen him mad at Wolfe, and me too, but never to the point where the pink left his cheeks completely and his eyes looked absolutely mean.
