Rex Stout - Nero Wolfe 14

by Trouble in Triplicate

  “But listen,” Helen Vardis spoke up, “those abditor—”

  “Miss Vardis! Please. I don’t want to hear that word again! Mr. Goodwin used it repeatedly because he knew it would annoy me, but I don’t have to stand it from strangers and I won’t. I’m speaking to Mr. Groll. Well, sir?”

  Joe said firmly, “I wouldn’t know about how much sense I’ve got, but it happened exactly the way you’ve heard it. As for my waiting for witnesses, I didn’t. I only waited until I was sure Blaney was out of range, up at his Westchester place, and then Goodwin was there and I asked him to come along on the spur of the moment. As for its being remotely credible what you said, there’s nothing Blaney wouldn’t do because he’s crazy. He’s a maniac. You don’t know him, so you don’t know that.”

  Wolfe grunted. “The devil I don’t. I do know that. How long have those hiding places been in existence?”

  “Some of them for years. Some are more recent.”

  Wolfe tapped the desk calendar with a finger. “How long has this been there?”

  “Oh—” Joe considered. “Four or five years. It was there before I got in the Army. Look here, Mr. Wolfe, you seem to forget that when I saw those things tonight I had no idea what they were, and I still haven’t. You seem to know they’re the same as the loads in those cigars, and if you do okay, but I don’t.”

  “Neither do I.”

  “Then what the hell? Maybe they’re full of Chanel Number Five or just fresh air.”

  Wolfe nodded. “I was coming to that. If I show them to Mr. Cramer he’ll take them away from me, and also he’ll arrest you as a material witness, and I may possibly need you. We’ll have to find out for ourselves.”

  He pushed a button, and in a moment Fritz entered. Wolfe asked him, “Do you remember that metal percolator that someone sent us and we were fools enough to try?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Did you throw it out?”

  “No, sir, it’s in the basement.”

  “Bring it here, please.”

  Fritz went. Wolfe picked up a capsule and frowned at it and then turned to me. “Archie. Get me a piece of newspaper, the can of household oil, and a piece of string.”

  Under the circumstances I would have preferred to go out for a walk, but there was a lady present who might need protection, so I did as I was told. When I got back Fritz was there with the percolator, which was two-quart size, made of thick metal. We three men collected at Wolfe’s desk to watch the preparations, but Helen stayed in her chair. With my scissors Wolfe cut a strip of newspaper about two by eight inches, dropped oil on it and rubbed it in with his finger, and rolled it tight into a long, thin, oiled wick. Then he held one end of it against the end of the capsule thread, overlapping a little, and Joe Groll, ready with the piece of string, tied them together. Wolfe opened the lid of the percolator.

  “No,” Joe objected. “That might stop it. Anyhow, we don’t want this glass here.”

  He finished the job with his swift sure fingers, while Wolfe and Fritz and I watched. Removing the glass cap and the inside contraption from the percolator, he lowered the capsule through the hole, hanging on to the free end of the oiled wick with one hand while with the other he stuffed a scrap of newspaper in the hole just tight enough to keep the wick from slipping on through. Wolfe nodded approvingly and leaned back in his chair. About two inches of the wick was protruding.

  “Put it on the floor.” Wolfe pointed. “Over there.”

  Joe moved, taking a folder of matches from his pocket, but I intercepted him. “Wait a minute. Gimme.” I took the percolator. “The rest of you go in the hall. I’ll light it.”

  Fritz went, and so did Helen, but Joe merely backed to a corner and Wolfe didn’t move from his chair.

  I told Wolfe, “I saw Poor’s face and you didn’t. Go in the hall.”

  “Nonsense. That little thing?”

  “Then I’ll put a blanket over it.”

  “No. I want to see it.”

  “So do I,” Joe said. “What the hell. I’ll bet it’s a dud.”

  I shrugged. “I hope Helen has had a course in first aid.” I put the percolator on the floor over by the couch, about five paces from Wolfe’s desk, lit a match and applied it to the end of the wick, and stood back and watched. An inch of the wick burned in three seconds. “See you at the hospital,” I said cheerily, and beat it to the hall, leaving the door open a crack to see through.

  It may have been ten seconds, but it seemed like three times that, before the bang came, and it was a man-size bang, followed immediately by another but different kind of bang. Helen grabbed my arm, but not waiting to enjoy that I swung the door open and stepped through. Joe was still in the corner, looking surprised. Wolfe had twisted around in his chair to gaze at a bruise in the plaster of the wall behind him.

  “The percolator lid,” he muttered. “It missed me.”

  “Yeah.” I moved across to observe angles and directions. “By about an inch.” I stooped to pick up the percolator lid, bent out of shape. “This would have felt good on your skull.”

  Fritz and Helen were back in, and Joe came over with the percolator in his hand. “Feel it,” he said. “Hot. Look how it’s twisted. Some pill, that is. Dynamite or TNT would never do that, not that amount. I wonder what’s in it?” He sighed. “Do you smell anything? I don’t.”

  “It’s outrageous,” Wolfe declared. I looked at him in surprise. Instead of being relaxed and thankful for his escape, he was sitting straight in his chair, which meant he was ready to pop with fury. “That thing nearly hit me in the head. This settles it. Against Mr. Poor there may have been a valid grievance. Against me, none.”

  “Well, for God’s sake.” I regarded him without approval. “That’s illogical. Nobody aimed it at you. Didn’t I tell you to go in the hall? However, if it made you mad enough to do a little work, fine, here’s Joe and Helen, you can start on them.”

  “No.” He got to his feet. “I’m going to bed.” He bowed to Helen. “Good night, Miss Vardis.” He tilted his head a hundredth of an inch at Joe. “Good night, sir. Archie, put these remaining capsules in the safe.” He marched to the door and was gone.

  “Quite a guy,” Joe remarked. “He didn’t bat an eye when that thing went off and the lid flew past his ear.”

  “Yeah,” I growled. “He has fits. He’s having one now. Instead of taking you two apart and turning you inside out, which is what he should have done, he didn’t even tell you where to head in. Do you tell the police about tonight or not? I would say, for the present, not. Come on. Taxis are hard to find around here, and I’ve got to put the car away anyhow. I’ll drop you somewhere.”

  We went. When I got back, some time later, I made a little discovery. Opening the safe to follow my custom of checking the cash last thing at night, I found two hundred bucks gone and an entry in the book for that amount in Wolfe’s handwriting which said, “Saul Panzer, advance on expenses.”

  So anyhow Saul was working.

  IX

  Friday morning, having nothing else to do, I solved the case. I did it with cold logic. Everything fitted perfectly, and all I needed was enough evidence for a jury. Presumably that was what Saul Panzer was getting. I do not intend to put it all down here, the way I worked it out, because first it would take three full pages, and second I was wrong. Anyway I had it solved when, a little before nine o’clock, I was summoned to Wolfe’s room and given an errand to perform with detailed instructions. It sent me to Twentieth Street, so I went to the garage for the car and headed south.

  I would just as soon have dealt with one of the underlings, but Cramer himself was in his office and said to bring me in. As I sat down he whirled his chair a quarter turn, folded his arms, and asked conversationally, “What have you two liars got cooked up now?”

  I grinned at him. “Why don’t you call Wolfe a liar to his face someday? Do it while I’m there.” I took two of the capsules, with threads attached, from my vest pocket, put them on his desk, and
inquired, “Do you need any more of these?”

  He picked one of them up and gave it a good look, then the other one, put them in a drawer of his desk, folded his arms again, and looked me in the eye to shrivel me.

  “All right,” he said quietly. “Go on. They came in the mail, in a package addressed to Wolfe with letters cut out of a magazine.”

  “No, sir, not at all. Where I spent the night last night I was idly running my fingers through her lovely hair and felt something, and there they were.” Cramer was strictly a family man and had stern ideas. Seeing I had him blushing, I went on, “Actually it was like this.”

  I told him the whole story, straight and complete.

  He had questions, both during the recital and at the end, and I answered what I could. The one I had expected him to put first, he saved till the last.

  “Well,” he said, “for the present we’ll assume that I believe you. You know what that amounts to, but we’ll assume it. Even so, how are you on figures? How much are two and one?”

  “I’m pretty good. Two plus one plus one equals four.”

  “Yes? Where do you get that second plus one?”

  “So you can add,” I conceded. “Mr. Wolfe thought maybe you couldn’t. However, so can we. Four capsules were found. Two are there in your drawer. One, as I told you, was used in a scientific experiment in Wolfe’s office and damn near killed him. He’s keeping the other one for the Fourth of July.”

  “Like hell he is. I want it.”

  “Try and get it.” I stood up. “Search warrant, subpoena, replevin, riot squad, tear gas, shoot the works. Standing in with G-2 as he does, he could get a carload of those things if he wanted them, but apparently he has taken a liking to this one nice bright little capsule. My God, you’re hard to please. Your men search Blaney and Poor’s without finding a single abditory, and I had to go and do it for you, and we’re splitting fifty-fifty on the capsules. And you beef. May I go now?”

  “Beat it. I’ll get it.”

  I turned with dignity and went.

  When I got back to Wolfe’s Fritz met me in the hall to tell me there was a woman in the office, and when I entered I found it was Martha Poor.

  I sat down at my desk and told her, “Mr. Wolfe will be engaged until eleven o’clock.” I glanced at my wrist. “He’ll be down in forty minutes.”

  She nodded. “I know. I’ll wait.”

  She didn’t look exactly bedraggled, nor would I say pathetic, but there was certainly nothing of the man-eater about her. She seemed older than she had on Tuesday. Anyone could have told at a glance that she was having trouble, but whether it was bereavement or bankruptcy was indicated neither by her clothes nor her expression. She merely made you feel like going up to her, maybe putting your hand on her shoulder or patting her on the arm, and asking, “Anything I can do?” It occurred to me that if she had been old enough to be my mother there would have been no question about how I felt, but she positively was not. If I had wanted to pass the time by deciding what I might want her for when she stopped being in trouble, it would not have been for a mother.

  Of course, since at that time I still had the case solved, and all I needed was evidence, there were about a dozen things I would have liked to ask her, but it seemed advisable to wait and let Wolfe do it. I reached that conclusion while I was sitting with my back to her, entering plant germination records, and that reminded me of a minor point I hadn’t covered. I went to the kitchen and asked Fritz if he had told Wolfe who had come to see him, and Fritz said he hadn’t, he had left that to me. So I returned to the office, buzzed the plant rooms, got Wolfe, and told him, “Returned from mission. I gave them to Cramer himself, and he says he’ll get the other one. Mrs. Poor is down here waiting to see you.”

  “Confound that woman. Send her away.”

  “But she—”

  “No. I know what she wants. I studied her. She wants to know what I’m doing to earn that money. Tell her to go home and read that receipt.”

  The line died. I swung my chair around and told Martha, “Mr. Wolfe says for you to go home and read the receipt.”

  She stared. “What?”

  “He thinks you came to complain because he isn’t earning the money your husband paid him, and the idea of having to earn money offends him. It always has.”

  “But—that’s ridiculous. Isn’t it?”

  “Certainly it is.” I fought back the impulse to step over and pat her on the shoulder. “But my advice is to humor him, much as I enjoy having you here. Nobody alive can handle him but me. If he came down and found you here he would turn around and walk out. If you have anything special to say, tell me and I’ll tell him. He’ll listen to me because he has to, or fire me, and he can’t fire me because then he would never do any work at all and would eventually starve to death.”

  “I shouldn’t think—” She stopped and stood up. She took a step toward the door, then turned and said, “I shouldn’t think a cold-blooded murder is something to joke about.”

  I had to fight back the impulse again. “I’m not joking,” I declared. “Plain facts. What did you want to say to him?”

  “I just wanted to talk with him. He hasn’t come to see me. Neither have you.” She tried to smile, but all she accomplished was to start her lip quivering. She stopped it. “You haven’t even phoned me. I don’t know what’s happening. The police asked me about two of my hairs being in that box of cigars, and I suppose they have told Mr. Wolfe about it, and I don’t even know what he thinks or what he told the police …”

  I grinned at her. “That’s easy. He made a speech to the jury, demonstrating that those hairs in the box were evidence that you did not kill your husband.” I went to her and put a hand on her arm, like a brother. “Listen, lady. Isn’t the funeral this afternoon?”

  “Yes.”

  “Okay, go and have the funeral, that’s enough for you for one day. Leave the rest to me. I mean, if anything occurs that it would help you to know about, I’ll see that you know. Right?” She didn’t pull anything corny like grasping my hand with hers firm and warm or gazing at me with moist eyes filled with trust. She did meet my eyes, but only long enough to say, “Thank you, Mr. Goodwin,” and turned to go. I went to the front door and let her out.

  After Wolfe came down the relations between us were nothing to brag about. Apparently he had nothing to offer, and I was too sore to start in on him. I had brought him Helen and Joe, and except for having fun with that capsule like a kid with a firecracker, he hadn’t bothered to disturb one cell of his celebrated brain. Martha had come on her own, and he wouldn’t even see her. As for Blaney, I had to admit I couldn’t blame him much on that, but the fact remained that he had walked out without doing a lick of work.

  He passed the time until lunch going through catalogues, and at two-thirty P.M., with a veal cutlet and half a bushel of Fritz’s best mixed salad stowed in the hold, he returned to the office and resumed with catalogues. That got interrupted before long, but not by me. The bell rang, and I went to the front and it was Saul Panzer. I took him to the office.

  Wolfe greeted him and then told me, “Archie. Go up and help Theodore with the pollen lists.”

  There was nothing new about it, but that didn’t make me like it any better. When the day finally comes that I tie Wolfe to a stake and shoot him, one of the fundamental reasons will be his theory that the less I know the more I can help, or to put it another way, that everything inside my head shows on my face. It only makes it worse that he doesn’t really believe it. He merely can’t stand it to have anybody keep up with him at any time on any track. I am being fair about it. I admit that even under ideal circumstances it wouldn’t happen very often, but it would ruin a good meal for him if it ever happened at all.

  I did my best with Theodore and the pollen lists, not wanting to take it out on them. The conference with Saul seemed to be comprehensive, since a full hour passed before the house phone in the potting room buzzed. Theodore answered it, and told me that
I was wanted downstairs.

  When I got there Saul was gone. I had a withering remark prepared, thinking to open up with it, but had to save it for some other time. Wolfe was seated behind his desk, leaning back with his eyes closed, and his lips were moving, pushing out and then in again, out and in.…

  So I sat down and kept my mouth shut. The brain had actually got on the job, and I knew better than to make remarks, withering or not, during the performance of miracles. The first result, which came in ten or twelve minutes after I entered, did not however seem to be very miraculous. He opened his eyes halfway, grunted, and muttered, “Archie. Yesterday you showed me an article in a paper about a man’s body found in an orchard near White Plains, but I didn’t look at it. Now I want it.”

  “Yes, sir. There was more this morning—”

  “Have they identified the body?”

  “No, sir. The head was smashed—”

  “Get it.”

  I obeyed. Newspapers were kept in the office for three days. I opened it to the page and handed it to him. He would read a newspaper only one way, holding it out wide open, no folding, with his arms stretched. I had never tried to get him to do it more intelligently because it was the only strenuous exercise he ever got and was therefore good for him. He finished the Thursday piece and asked for Friday’s, and finished that.

  Then he told me, “Get the district attorney of Westchester County. What’s his name? Fraser.”

  “Right.” I got busy with the phone. I had no trouble getting the office, but then they gave me the usual line about Mr. Fraser being in conference and I had to put on pressure. Finally the elected person said hello.