The Golden Spiders

by Rex Stout

  Kuffner’s fist hit the chair arm. “You can’t decline! You can’t!”

  “No?”

  “No! I have a right to demand this as the representative of Mrs. Fromm’s interests! You have no right to decline! It’s improper interference with my legitimate function!”

  Wolfe shook his head. “If there were no other reason for my refusal it would be enough that I’m afraid to deal with you. You’re much too agile for me. Only minutes ago it was improper interference for me to offer to sell the information; now it’s improper interference for me to refuse to sell it. You have me befuddled, and I must at least have time to get my bearings. I know how to reach you.” He glanced at the clock. “You’ll be late for the funeral.”

  That was true. Kuffner glanced at his wrist and arose. He was obviously, from his face, deciding that he must depart in a favorable light. He smiled at me and then at Wolfe.

  “I apologize,” he said, “for being too free with my accusations. I hope you’ll make allowances. This is by far the worst situation I’ve ever had to deal with. By far. I’ll be expecting and hoping to hear from you.”

  By the time I got back from showing him out Wolfe had crossed the hall to the dining room.

  Chapter 11

  At six-thirty that afternoon I sat on a hard wooden chair in the office of Assistant District Attorney Mandelbaum, a smallish room, making a speech.

  The audience of three was big enough for the room. At his desk was Mandelbaum, middle-aged, plump, to be classified as bald in two years. At his elbow was a Homicide dick named Randall, tall and narrow, with nothing covering his bones but his skin at the high spots. Jean Estey, in a chair near the end of the desk, around the corner from me, was in a dark gray dress which didn’t go too well with her greenish-brown eyes, but presumably it was the best she had had in stock for the funeral.

  The conference, consisting mostly of questions by Mandelbaum and answers by Miss Estey and me, had gone on for ten minutes or so when I felt that the background had been laid for my speech, and I proceeded to make it.

  “I don’t blame you,” I told Mandelbaum, “for wasting your time, or even mine, because I know that nine-tenths of a murder investigation is barking up empty trees, but hasn’t this gone on long enough? Where are we? No matter what the facts are, I bow out. If Miss Estey made it all up, you don’t need me to help you try to find out why. If she’s telling the truth and I made her that offer on my own, you told Mr. Wolfe about it on the phone, and he’s the one to put me through the wringer, not you. If Wolfe sent me to make her the offer, as you prefer to believe, what’s all the racket about? He could put an ad in the paper offering to sell a transcript of his talk with Mrs. Fromm to anyone who would pay the price, which might not be very noble and you wouldn’t like it, but what would the charge read like? I came down here at your request, and now I’d like to go home and try to convince my employer that I’m not a viper in his bosom.”

  It wasn’t quite that easy, but after another five minutes I was allowed to depart without shooting my way out. Jean Estey didn’t offer to kiss me goodbye.

  I really did want to get home, because I would have to eat dinner early in order to keep a date with Orrie Cather. Around five o’clock he had showed up at the office with a report that seemed to justify annoying Wolfe in the plant rooms, and I had taken him up. Wolfe was grumpy but he listened. The salesman at Boudet’s had never seen spider earrings, gold or otherwise, but he had given Orrie a list of names of people connected with manufacturers, importers, wholesalers, and retailers, and Orrie had gone after them, mostly by phone. By four o’clock he had been about ready to report that there had never been a spider earring in New York, when a buyer for a wholesaler suggested that he speak to Miss Grummon, the firm’s shopper.

  Miss Grummon said yes, she had seen one pair of spider earrings, and she didn’t care to see more. One day a few weeks ago—she couldn’t give the exact date—walking along Forty-sixth Street, she had stopped to inspect a window display and there they were, two big golden spiders in a green-lined case. She had thought them horrid, certainly not a design to suggest to her employers, and had been surprised to see them displayed by Julius Gerster, since most of the items offered in his small shop showed excellent taste.

  So far fine. But Orrie had made straight for Gerster’s shop and had stubbed his toe. He claimed he had made a good approach, telling Gerster he had seen the earrings in the window and wanted to buy them, but Gerster had clammed up from the beginning. He didn’t deny that there had once been a pair of spider earrings in his shop, but neither did he admit it. His position, stated in the fewest possible words, was that he had no recollection of such an item, and if he had displayed it he didn’t remember how or to whom they had been disposed of. Orrie’s position, stated to Wolfe and me in enough words, was that Gerster was a goddam liar and that he wanted permission to pour gasoline on him and light him.

  So Orrie and I were to call on Mr. Gerster at his home that evening, not by appointment.

  During the day there had been various other occurrences not worth detailing—calls from Saul Panzer and Fred Durkin, who had found nothing to bring in, and nudges from Lon Cohen. One non-occurrence should be mentioned: there had been no word of a replevin by James Albert Maddox. Our lawyer, Parker, was feeling slighted.

  I met Orrie at eight o’clock at the corner of Seventy-fourth and Columbus, and we walked east to the number, nearly to Central Park West, through a monotonous drizzle that had started in late afternoon. If New York apartment houses can be divided into two classes, those with canopies and those without, this one was in between. The stanchions were there, from the entrance to the curb, but there was no covering canvas. In the lobby we told the doorman “Gerster,” and kept going to the elevator. The elevator man said it was 11F.

  The door was opened by an eighth-grader about the age and build of Pete Drossos, but very neat and clean. The instant I saw him I ditched the strategy we had decided on and elected another. I said to Orrie, “Thanks for bringing me up. See you later.” It took him about a second to get it, which wasn’t bad. He said, “Don’t mention it,” and headed for the elevator. The boy had told me good evening, and I returned it, gave him my name, and said I wanted to see Mr. Julius Gerster. He said, “I’ll tell him, sir. Please wait,” and disappeared. I didn’t cross the sill. Soon a man came, clear up to me before speaking. He was some shorter than me, and older, with a small tidy face and black hair brushed back smooth, fully as neat and clean as his son—at least I hoped it was his son.

  He asked politely but coolly, “You wanted to see me?”

  “I would like to if it’s convenient. My name’s Goodwin, and I work for Nero Wolfe, the detective. I want to ask you something about the murder of a boy—a twelve-year-old boy named Peter Drossos.”

  His expression didn’t change. As I was to see, it never changed. “I know nothing about the murder of any boy,” he declared.

  I contradicted him. “Yes, you do, but you don’t know you do. What you know may be essential to the discovery of the boy’s murderer. Mr. Wolfe thinks it is. May I come in for five minutes and explain?”

  “Are you a policeman?”

  “No, sir. Private detective. The boy was willfully run over by a car. It was a brutal murder.”

  He stepped aside. “Come in.”

  He took me not to the front, from where he had come, but along the hall in the other direction, into a small room with all its walls covered with books and pictures. There were a little desk in a corner, a chess table by a window, and two upholstered chairs. He motioned me to one, and, when I was seated, took the other.

  I told him about Pete, not at great length, but enough for him to get the picture complete—his session with Wolfe and me, his second visit the next day only a few hours before Stebbins came with the news of his death, and Mrs. Drossos’s call to bring the message and the four dollars and thirty cents. I didn’t ham it, I just told it. Then I went after him.

  “There a
re complications,” I said, “that I won’t go into unless you want them. For instance, Mrs. Damon Fromm was wearing gold spiders for earrings when she was killed Friday night. But what I’m asking your help on is who killed the boy. The police have got nowhere. Neither has Mr. Wolfe. In his opinion the best chance to start a trail is the earrings that Pete said the woman in the car was wearing. We can’t find anyone who has ever seen any woman with such earrings—except Mrs. Fromm, of course—and Mr. Wolfe decided to try starting at the other end. He put a man on it, a man named Cather, to dig up someone who had ever sold spider earrings. By this afternoon Cather was about ready to decide there was no such person or firm in New York, and then he hit it. A reliable person, who can be produced if necessary, told him that she saw a pair in the window of your shop a few weeks ago. He went to see you, and you said you had no memory of it.”

  I paused to give him a chance to comment, but he offered none. His small tidy face displayed no reaction whatever.

  I went on. “Of course I could raise my voice and get tough. I could say that it’s unbelievable that you recently had an item as unusual as that in your shop but don’t remember anything about it. You could say it may be unbelievable but it’s true. Then I could say that your memory will have to be warmed up, and since I have no way of applying heat I’ll have to turn it over to someone who has, Inspector Cramer of the Homicide Squad, though I would hate to do that.”

  I leaned back, at ease. “So I don’t say it. I would rather put it to you on the merits. That boy was deliberately murdered by someone he had done no harm to. That was five days ago, and no trail has been found. Possibly one never will be found unless we can find the woman who was driving that car. She was wearing spider earrings, and apparently only one pair like that has ever been seen in New York, and it was seen in your window less than a month ago. I ask you, Mr. Gerster, does that have no effect on your memory?”

  He passed the tip of his tongue over his lips. “You make it very difficult, Mr. Goodwin.”

  “Not me. The man who killed Pete made it difficult.”

  “Yes, of course. I knew nothing about that. I don’t usually read about murders in newspapers. I did read a little about the death of Mrs. Fromm, including the detail that she was wearing spider earrings. You’re quite right; they were unique. A man in Paris who picks up oddities for me included that one pair in a shipment which I received late in April. They were made by Lercari.”

  “You put them in your window?”

  “That’s right. This afternoon, when that man asked—what did you say his name is?”

  “Cather.”

  “Yes. When he asked about them I preferred not to remember. I suspected that he was a policeman engaged in the investigation of Mrs. Fromm’s death, though I didn’t know why the earrings were important, and I have a deep aversion to any kind of notoriety. It would be very unpleasant to see my name in a headline. I shall be most grateful if you can keep it from appearing, but I ask for no promise. If any public testimony is required it will have to be given. I sold the earrings in the afternoon of Monday, May eleventh. A woman passing by saw them in the window and came in and bought them. She paid one hundred and forty dollars, with a check. It was Mrs. Damon Fromm.”

  It would have been an experience to play poker with that bird. I asked, “No doubt about it?”

  “None. The check was signed ‘Laura Fromm,’ and I recognized her from pictures I had seen. I felt compelled to tell you this, Mr. Goodwin, after what you told me about the murder of that boy, though I realize that it won’t help any, since Mrs. Fromm was the woman in the car and she is dead.”

  I could have told him that Mrs. Fromm was not the woman in the car, but I had promised my grandmother that I would never spout just to show people how much I knew, so I skipped it. I thanked him and told him I didn’t think it would be necessary for his name to appear in headlines, and got up to go. When, at the door, I extended a hand and he took it courteously, his face had precisely the same expression as when he had first confronted me.

  Orrie rejoined me down in the lobby. He waited till we were out on the sidewalk, in the drizzle again, to ask, “Did you crack him?”

  “Sure, nothing to it. He said he would have been glad to tell you this afternoon but he caught you stashing a bracelet in your pocket. Mrs. Fromm bought them May eleventh.”

  “I’ll be damned. Where does that leave us?”

  “Not my department. Wolfe does the thinking. I just run errands that you have flubbed.”

  We flagged a taxi on Central Park West, and he went downtown with me.

  Wolfe was in the office looking at television, which gives him a lot of pleasure. I have seen him turn it on as many as eight times in one evening, glare at it from one to three minutes, turn it off, and go back to his book. Once he made me a long speech about it which I may record some day. As Orrie and I entered he flipped the switch.

  I told him. At the end I added, “I admit I took a risk. If the boy had been not his son but a nephew he would like to choke, I would have been sunk. I wish to recommend that if we peddle this to the cops we leave his name out. And Orrie wants to know where this leaves us.”

  He grunted. “So do I. Saul phoned. He has started something, but he doesn’t know what.”

  “I told you I saw him at the Assadip office.”

  “Yes. His name is Leopold Heim and he is living at a cheap hotel on First Avenue—it’s here on my pad. He had a brief talk with Miss Wright, and one with her assistant, a Mr. Chaney. He appealed to them for help. He entered the country illegally and is in terror of being caught and deported. They told him that they cannot be accessory to a violation of law and advised him to consult a lawyer. When he said he knew no lawyer they gave him the name of Dennis Horan. That finnan haddie was too salty, and I’m thirsty. Will you have some beer, Orrie?”

  “Yes, thanks, I will.”

  “Archie?”

  “No, thank you. Beer likes me, but I don’t like it.”

  He pressed a button on the rim of his desk and resumed. “Saul went to Mr. Horan’s office and told him of his plight. Horan questioned him at length, taking many notes, and said that he would look into it as soon as possible and that Saul would hear from him. Saul went to his hotel room and stayed all afternoon. At six o’clock he went out for something to eat, and returned. Shortly before eight he had a caller, a man. The man gave no name. He said he had been aware for some time of Saul’s predicament, and he sympathized with him and wanted to help. Since both the police and the FBI had to be dealt with, it would be costly. He estimated that the total amount required to prevent either exposure or harassment might go as high as ten thousand dollars.”

  He opened a drawer to get the gold opener, which bore an inscription from an ex-client, opened one of the bottles Fritz had brought, and poured.

  When Fritz had opened Orrie’s bottle, Wolfe continued, “Of course Saul protested in despair that it was impossible for him to procure such a sum. The man was prepared to make concessions. He said that it need not be paid in a lump; that weekly or monthly installments would be acceptable; that Saul could have twenty-four hours to explore expedients; and that an attempt to clear out would be disastrous. He said he would return at the same hour tomorrow, and left. Saul followed him. To attempt such a feat, following such a man in those circumstances, would of course be foolhardy for the most highly skilled operative, and even for Saul I would think it hazardous, but he managed it. He followed him to a restaurant on Third Avenue near Fourteenth Street. The man is now in the restaurant, eating. Saul phoned from across the street twenty minutes ago.”

  Wolfe drank beer. I had intended, when he was finished, to mix myself a healthy tall one to counteract the memory of the cold drizzle, but now I vetoed it. I could see Saul, and feel with him, in some little hole out of the drizzle, on Third Avenue, keeping his eyes peeled across the street past the El pillars, hoping to God his man wasn’t phoning some pal to come for him in a car. Since it was Saul, the chances
were that he already had a taxi parked down the block, but even so …

  “I can take the sedan,” I suggested, “and run Orrie over to Saul, and I’ll lay back with the car. We three could hang onto Houdini.”

  Orrie gulped his beer down, stood up, and rumbled, “Let’s go.”

  “I suppose so.” Wolfe was frowning. Men willing, even eager, to go outdoors and brave the hubbub of the streets always discomposed him. At night, so much the worse; and at night in the rain it was outlandish. He sighed. “Go ahead.”

  The phone rang. He didn’t reach for it, so I took it at my desk. “Nero Wolfe’s residence, Archie Goodwin speak—”

  “This is Fred, Archie. The boss ought to hear it too.”

  “Can you make it snappy?”

  “No, it’ll take a while, and I’m going to need you. I’m up—”

  “Hold it a second.” I turned. “It’s Fred, and he sounds hot. You go on. The best bet on a taxi is Tenth Avenue. If Fred doesn’t need me worse than Saul I’ll join you soon. If he does I won’t.”

  Wolfe gave Orrie the address, and he beat it, and Wolfe picked up his phone.

  I told the receiver, “Okay, Fred, Mr. Wolfe is on.”

  Wolfe demanded, “Where are you?”

  “In a booth in a drugstore on Ninth Avenue. Fifty-fifth Street. I think I’m onto something. This morning I saw that guy at the Gazette that Archie sent me to, and he gave me a lot of stuff on Matthew Birch. Birch had several personal habits to choose from, but his main hangout was a dump on Ninth Avenue, Danny’s Bar and Grill, between Fifty-fourth and Fifty-fifth. Danny’s name is Pincus, and he runs a book. The place didn’t open until eleven, and it was dead the first hour, and Danny didn’t show until after one. I didn’t camp, but I was in and out, asking everybody I saw about Birch. Of course the cops have been there often the past few days, and they probably thought I was just one more, until finally I decided what the hell. I told a little group that my name was O’Connor, and what was eating me about Birch was that I had been told that my wife had been seen in a car with him last Tuesday afternoon, not many hours before he was killed. A dark gray Cadillac with a Connecticut plate. I said the car had been parked in front of Danny’s Bar and Grill.”