The Red Box

by Rex Stout

  “Pleasant afternoon, Archie?”

  I grunted. “That was one hell of a tea. Dudley Frost was the only one who had any, and he wasn’t inclined to divvy so I sent him home. I only got one real hot piece of news, that no one but a fool jests at death. How does that strike you?”

  Wolfe grimaced. “Tell me about it.”

  I read it to him from the notebook, filling in the gaps from memory, though I didn’t need much because I’ve condensed my symbols until I can take down the Constitution of the United States on the back of an old envelope, which might be a good place for it. Wolfe’s beer arrived, and met its fate. Except for time out for swallowing, he listened, as usual, settled back comfortably with his eyes closed.

  I tossed the notebook to the back of my desk, swiveled, and pulled the bottom drawer out and got my feet up. “That’s the crop. That one’s in the bag. What shall I start on now?”

  Wolfe opened his eyes. “Your French is not even ludicrous. We’ll return to that. Why did you frighten Mr. Frost away by talk of a search warrant? Is there a subtlety there too deep for me?”

  “No, just momentum. I asked him that question about the red box to get a line on the other two, and as I went along it occurred to me it might be fun to find out if he had anything at home he didn’t want anyone to see, and anyway what good was he? I got rid of him.”

  “Oh. I was about to credit you with superior finesse. It would have been that, to get him away on the chance that there might be a remark, a glance, a gesture, not to be expected in his presence. In fact, that is exactly what happened. I congratulate you anyhow. As for Mr. Frost—everyone has something at home they don’t want anyone to see; that is one of the functions of a home, to provide a spot to keep such things. —And you say they haven’t the red box and don’t know where it is.”

  “I offer that opinion. The look Gebert shot at Frost when I hinted Frost had it, and the look Mrs. Frost gave Gebert, as I told you. It’s a cinch that what they think is in the box means something important to them. It’s a good guess that they haven’t got it and don’t know where it is, or they wouldn’t have been so quick on the trigger when I hinted that. As for Frost, God knows. That’s the advantage a guy has that always explodes no matter what you say, there’s no symptomatic nuances for an observer like me.”

  “You? Ha! I am impressed. I confess I am surprised that Mrs. Frost didn’t find a pretext as soon as you entered, to take her daughter to some other room. Is the woman immune to trepidation? Even common curiosity …”

  I shook my head. “If it’s common, she hasn’t got it. That dame has got a steel spine, a governor on her main artery that prevents acceleration, and a patent air-cooling system for her brain. If you wanted to prove she murdered anyone you’d have to see her do it and be sure to have a camera along.”

  “Dear me.” Wolfe came forward in his chair to pour beer. “Then we must find another culprit, which may be a nuisance.” He watched the foam subside. “Take your book and look at your notes on Mr. Gebert’s vaudeville. Where he quoted Norboisin; read that sentence.”

  “You’d like some more fun with my French?”

  “No, indeed; it isn’t fun. Since your shorthand is phonetic, do as well as you can with your symbols. I think I know the quotation, but I want to be sure. It has been years since I read Norboisin, and I haven’t his books.”

  I read the whole paragraph, beginning “My dear Calida.” I took the French on high and sailed right through it, ludicrous or not, having had three lessons in it altogether: one from Fritz in 1930, and two from a girl I met once when we were working on a forgery case.

  “Want to hear it again?”

  “No, thanks.” Wolfe’s lips were pushing in and out. “And Mrs. Frost calls it babbling. It would have been instructive to be there, for the tone and the eyes. Mr. Gebert was indeed sardonic, to tell you in so many words who killed Mr. McNair. Was it a lie, to be provoking? Or the truth, to display his own alertness? Or a conjecture, for a little subtlety of his own? I think, the second. I do indeed. It runs with my surmises, but he could not know that. And granted that we know the murderer, what the devil is to be done about it? Probably no amount of patience would suffice. If Mr. Cramer gets his hands on the red box and decides to act without me, he is apt to lose the spark entirely and leave both of us with fuel that will not ignite.” He drank his beer, put the glass down, and wiped his lips. “Archie. We need that confounded box.”

  “Yeah. I’ll go get it in just a minute. First, just to humor me, exactly when did Gebert tell us who killed McNair? You wouldn’t by any chance be talking just to hear yourself?”

  “Of course not. Isn’t it obvious? But I forget—you don’t know French. Ardemment means ardently. The quotation translates, ‘At least, I die ardently.’ ”

  “Really?” I elevated the brows. “The hell you say.”

  “Yes. And therefore—but I forget again. You don’t know Latin. Do you?”

  “Not intimately. I’m shy on Chinese too.” I aimed a Bronx cheer in a sort of general direction. “Maybe we ought to turn this case over to the Heinemann School of Languages. Did Gebert’s quotation fix us up on evidence too, or do we have to dig that out for ourselves?”

  I overplayed it. Wolfe compressed his lips and eyed me without favor. He leaned back. “Some day, Archie, I shall be constrained … but no. I cannot remake the universe, and must therefore put up with this one. What is, is, including you.” He sighed. “Let the Latin go. Information for your records: this afternoon I telephoned Mr. Hitchcock in London; expect it on the bill. I asked him to send a man to Scotland for a talk with Mr. McNair’s sister, and to instruct his agent, either in Barcelona or in Madrid, to examine certain records in the town of Cartagena. That means an expenditure of several hundred dollars. There has been no further report from Saul Panzer. We need that red box. It was already apparent to me who killed Mr. McNair, and why, before Mr. Gebert permitted himself the amusement of informing you; he really didn’t help us any, and of course he didn’t intend to. But what is known is not necessarily demonstrable. Pfui! To sit here and wait upon the result of a game of hide-and-seek, when all the difficulties have in fact been surmounted! Please type out a note of that statement of Mr. Gebert’s while it is fresh; conceivably it will be needed.”

  He picked up his book again, got his elbows on the arms of his chair, opened to his page, and was gone.

  He read until dinnertime, but even Seven Pillars of Wisdom did not restrain his promptness in responding to Fritz’s summons to table. During the meal he kindly explained to me the chief reason for Lawrence’s amazing success in keeping the Arabian tribes together for the great revolt. It was because Lawrence’s personal attitude toward women was the same as the classic and traditional Arabian attitude. The central fact about any man, in respect to his activities as a social animal, is his attitude toward women; hence the Arabs felt that essentially Lawrence was one of them, and so accepted him. His native ability for leadership and finesse did the rest. A romantic they would not have understood, a puritan they would have rudely ignored, a sentimentalist they would have laughed at, but the contemptuous realist Lawrence, with his false humility and his fierce secret pride, they took to their bosoms. The goulash was as good as any Fritz had ever made.

  It was after nine o’clock when we finished with coffee and went back to the office. Wolfe resumed with his book. I got at my desk with the plant records. I figured that after an hour or so of digestion and this peaceful family scene I would make an effort to extract a little Latin lesson out of Wolfe, and find out whether Gebert really had said anything or if perchance Wolfe was only practicing some fee-faw-fum, but an interruption came before I had even decided on a method of attack. At nine-thirty the phone rang.

  I reached for it. “Hello, this is the office of Nero Wolfe.”

  “Archie? Fred. I’m talking from Brewster. Better put Mr. Wolfe on.”

  I told him to hold it and turned to Wolfe. “Fred calling from Brewster. Fifteen cents
a minute.”

  At that, he stopped to put in his bookmark. Then he got his receiver up, and I told Fred to proceed, and opened my notebook.

  “Mr. Wolfe? Fred Durkin. Saul sent me to the village to phone. We haven’t found any red box, but there’s been a little surprise at that place. We finished with the house, covered every inch, and started outdoors. It’s the worst time of year for it, because when it thaws in the spring it’s the muddiest time of the year. After it got dark we were working with flashlights, and we saw the lights of a car coming down the road and Saul had us put our lights out. It’s a narrow dirt road and you can’t go fast. The car turned in at the gate and stopped on the driveway. We had put the sedan in the garage. The lights went out and the engine stopped and a man got out. There was only one of him, so we kept still, behind some bushes. He went to a window and turned a flashlight on it and started trying to open it, and Orrie and I stepped out between him and the car, and Saul went toward him and asked him why he didn’t go in the door. He took it cool, he said he forgot his key, then he said he didn’t know he’d be interrupting anyone and started off. Saul stopped him and said he’d better come in first and have a drink and a little talk. They guy laughed and said he would and they went in, and Orrie and I went in after them, and we turned on the lights and sat down. The guy’s name is Gebert, G-E-B-E-R-T, a tall slender dark guy with a thin nose—”

  “Yeah, I know him. What did he say?”

  “Not a hell of a lot of anything. He talks but he don’t say anything. He says this McNair was a friend of his, and there’s some things belonging to him in the place, and he thought he might as well drive out and get them. He ain’t scared and he ain’t easy. He’s a great smiler.”

  “Yeah, I know. Where is he now?”

  “Why, he’s out there. Saul and Orrie have got him. Saul sent me to ask what you want us to do with him—”

  “Turn him loose. What else can you do? Unless you’re hungry and want to make soup of him. Saul won’t get anywhere with that bird. You can’t keep him—”

  “The hell we can’t keep him. I ain’t through, wait till I tell you. We had been in there with that Gebert ten or fifteen minutes, when there was a noise out front and I hopped out to take a look. It was two cars, and they stopped by the gate. They piled out and came in the yard after me, and by God if they didn’t pull guns. You might have thought I was Dillinger. I saw state troopers’ uniforms. I let out a yell to warn Saul to lock the door and then I met the attack. I was surrounded by who do you think? Rowcliff, that mutt of a lieutenant from the Homicide Squad, and three other dicks, and two troopers, and a little runt with spectacles that told me he was an assistant district attorney of Putnam County. Huh? Was I surrounded?”

  “Yes. At last. Did they shoot you?”

  “Sure, but I caught the bullets and tossed them back. Well, it seems that what they came for was to look for that red box. They went to the door and wanted in. Saul left Orrie there inside the door and went to a window and talked to them through the glass. Of course he asked to see a search warrant and they didn’t have any. There was some gab back and forth, then the troopers announced they were going in after Saul because he was trespassing, and he held the paper that Mr. Wolfe signed up against the window and they put a flashlight on it. There was more talk, and then Saul told me to drive to the village and phone you, and Rowcliff said nothing doing until he searched me for the red box, and I told him if he touched me I’d skin him and hang him up to dry. But I couldn’t get the sedan out because Gebert’s car was in the driveway and the others blocked the road at the gate, so we declared a truce and Rowcliff took his car and we both came to Brewster in it. It’s only about three miles. We left the rest of the gang sitting there on the porch. I’m in a booth in a restaurant and Rowcliff’s down the street in a drug store phoning headquarters. I’ve got a notion to grab his car and go back without him.”

  “Okay. Damn good idea. Does he know Gebert’s there?”

  “No. If Gebert’s shy about cops, of course he don’t want to leave. What do we do? Toss him out? Let the cops in? We can’t go out and dig, all we can do is sit there and watch Gebert smile, and it’s as cold as an Englishman’s heart and we haven’t got a fire. Good God, you ought to hear those troopers talk, I guess out there in the wilds they catch bears and lions with their hands and eat ’em raw.”

  “Hold it.” I turned to Wolfe. “I suppose I go for a drive?”

  He shuddered. I presume he calculated that there must be at least a thousand jolts between 35th Street and Brewster, and ten thousand cars to meet and pass. The lurking dangers of the night. He nodded at me.

  I told Fred, “Go on back. Keep Gebert, and don’t let them in. I’ll be there as soon as I can make it.”

  Chapter 13

  It was a quarter to ten by the time I got away and around the corner to the garage on Tenth Avenue and was sailing down the ramp in the roadster, and it was 11:13 when I rolled into the village of Brewster and turned left—following the directions I had heard Helen Frost give Saul Panzer. An hour and twenty-eight minutes wasn’t bad, counting the curves on the Pines Bridge Road and the bum stretch between Muscoot and Croton Falls.

  I followed the pavement a little over a mile and then turned left again onto a dirt road. It was as narrow as a bigot’s mind, and I got in the ruts and stayed there. My lights showed me nothing but the still bare branches of trees and shrubbery close on both sides, and I began to think that Fred’s jabber about the wilds hadn’t been so dumb. There was an occasional house, but they were dark and silent, and I went on bumping so long, a sharp curve to the left and one to the right and then to the left again, that I began wondering if I was on the wrong road. Then, finally, I saw a light ahead, stuck to the ruts around another curve, and there I was.

  Besides a few rapid comments from Wolfe before I started, I had trotted the brain around for a survey of the situation during the drive, and there didn’t seem to be anything very critical about it except that it would be nice to keep the news of Gebert’s expedition to ourselves for a while. They were welcome to go in and look for the red box all they wanted to, since Saul, with the whole afternoon to work undisturbed, hadn’t found it. But Gebert was worth a little effort, not to mention the item that we had our reputation to consider. So I stopped the roadster alongside the two cars that were parked at the edge of the road and leaned out and yelled:

  “Come and move this bus! It’s blocking the gate and I want to turn in!”

  A gruff shout came from the porch: “Who the hell are you?” I called back:

  “Haile Selassie. Okay, I’ll move it myself. If it makes a ditch, don’t blame me.”

  I got out and climbed into the other car, open with the top down, a state police chariot. I heard, and saw dimly in the dark, a couple of guys leave the porch and come down the short path. They jumped the low palings. The front one was in uniform and I made out the other one for my old friend Lieutenant Rowcliff. The trooper was stern enough to scare me silly:

  “Come out of that, buddie. Move that car and I’ll tie you in a knot.”

  I said, “You will not. Get it? It’s a pun. My name is Archie Goodwin, I represent Mr. Nero Wolfe, I belong in there and you don’t. If a man finds a car blocking his own gate he has plenty of right to move it, which is what I’m going to do, and if you try to stop me it will be too bad because I’m mad as hell and I mean it.”

  Rowcliff growled, “All right, get out, we’ll move the damn thing.” He muttered at the cossack. “You might as well. This bird’s never been tamed yet.”

  The trooper opened the door. “Get out.”

  “You going to move it?”

  “Why the hell shouldn’t I move it? Get out.”

  I descended and climbed back in the roaster. The trooper started his car and eased it ahead, into the road, and off again beyond the entrance. My lights were on him. I put my gear in, circled through the gate onto the driveway, stopped back of a car there which I recognized for the convertibl
e Gebert had parked in front of Wolfe’s house the day before, and got out and started for the porch. There was a mob there sitting along the edge of it. One of them got smart and turned on a flash and spotted it on my face as I approached. Rowcliff and the trooper came up and stood at the foot of the steps.

  I demanded, “Who’s in charge of this gang? I know you’re not, Rowcliff, we’re outside the city limits. Who’s got any right to be here on private property?”

  They looked at each other. The trooper stuck out his chin at me, and asked, “Have you?”

  “You’re darned tooting I have. You’ve seen a paper signed by the executor of the estate that owns this. I’ve got another one in my pocket. Well, come on, who’s in charge? Who’s responsible for this outrage?”

  There was a cackle from the porch, a shadow in the corner. “I’ve got a right to be here, ain’t I, Archie?”

  I peered at it. “Oh, hi, Fred. What are you doing out here in the cold?”

  He ambled toward me. “We didn’t want to open the door, because this bunch of highbinders might take a notion—”

  I snorted. “Where would they get it from? —All right, nobody’s in charge, is that it? Fred, call Saul—”

  “I’ll take the responsibility!” A little squirt had popped up and I saw his spectacles. He squealed, “I’m the Assistant District Attorney of this county! We have a legal right—”

  I did some towering over him. “You have a legal right to go home and go to bed. Have you got a warrant or a subpoena or even a cigarette paper?”

  “No, there wasn’t time—”

  “Then shut up.” I turned to Rowcliff and the trooper. “You think I’m being tough? Not at all, I’m just indignant and I have a right to be. You’ve got a nerve, to come to a private house in the middle of the night and expect to go through it, without any evidence that there has ever been anything or anyone criminal in it. What do you want, the red box? It’s Nero Wolfe’s property, and if it’s in there I’ll get it and put it in my pocket and walk out with it, and don’t try to play tag with me, because I’m sensitive about coming in contact with people.” I brushed past them and mounted the porch, crossed to the door and rapped on it: