by Rex Stout
I went and sat with her on a bench in the sun, but she didn’t mix me a drink because three men were gathered around the refreshment cart and one of them attended to it—James U. Sperling, Junior. He was probably a year or two older than Madeline and resembled his father hardly at all. There was nothing about his slender straightness or his nice smooth tanned skin or his wide spoiled mouth that would have led anyone to say he looked like a miner. I had never seen him before but had heard a little of him. I couldn’t give you a quote, but my vague memory was that he was earnest and serious about learning to make himself useful in the corporation his father headed, and he frequently beat it to Brazil or Nevada or Arizona to see how mining was done, but he got tired easy and had to return to New York to rest, and he knew lots of people in New York willing to help him rest.
The two men with him at the refreshment cart were guests. Since our objective was confined to Rony and Gwenn I hadn’t bothered with the others except to be polite, and I wouldn’t be dragging them in if it wasn’t that later on they called for some attention. Also it was beginning to look as if they could stand a little attention right then, on account of a situation that appeared to be developing, so the field of my interest was spreading out a little. If I ever saw a woman make a pass, Mrs. Paul Emerson, Connie to her friends and enemies, was making one at Louis Rony.
First the two men. One of them was just a super, a guy some older than me named Webster Kane. I had gathered that he was some kind of an economist who had done some kind of a job for Continental Mines Corporation, and he acted like an old friend of the family. He had a big well-shaped head and apparently didn’t own a hairbrush, didn’t care what his clothes looked like, and was not swimming but was drinking. In another ten years he could pass for a senator.
I had welcomed the opportunity for a close-up of the other man because I had often heard Wolfe slice him up and feed him to the cat. At six-thirty P.M. on WPIT, five days a week, Paul Emerson, sponsored by Continental Mines Corporation, interpreted the news. About once a week Wolfe listened to him, but seldom to the end; and when, after jabbing the button on his desk that cut the circuit, Wolfe tried some new expressions and phrases for conveying his opinion of the performance and the performer, no interpreter was needed to clarify it. The basic idea was that Paul Emerson would have been more at home in Hitler’s Germany or Franco’s Spain. So I was glad of a chance to take a slant at him, but it didn’t get me much because he confused me by looking exactly like my chemistry teacher in high school out in Ohio, who had always given me better marks than I had earned. Also it was a safe bet that he had ulcers—I mean Paul Emerson—and he was drinking plain soda with only one piece of ice. In swimming trunks he was really pitiful, and I had taken some pictures of him from the most effective angles to please Wolfe with.
It was Emerson’s wife, Connie, who seemed to be heading for a situation that might possibly have a bearing on our objective as defined by Wolfe. She couldn’t have had more than four or five years to dawdle away until her life began at forty, and was therefore past my deadline, but it was by no means silly of her to assume that it was still okay for her to go swimming in mixed company in broad daylight. She was one of those rare blondes that take a good tan, and had better legs and arms, judged objectively, than either Gwenn or Madeline, and even from the other side of the wide pool the blue of her eyes carried clear and strong. That’s where she was at the moment, across the pool, sitting with Louis Rony, getting her breath after showing him a double knee lock that had finally put him flat, and he was no matchstick. It was a new technique for making a pass at a man, but it had obvious advantages, and anyway she had plenty of other ideas and wasn’t being stingy with them. At lunch she had buttered rolls for him. Now I ask you.
I didn’t get it. If Gwenn was stewing about it she was keeping it well hid, though I had noticed her casting a few quick glances. There was a chance that she was counterattacking by pretending she would rather help me take pictures than eat, and that she loved to watch me dive, but who was I to suspect a fine freckled girl of pretending? Madeline had made a couple of cracks about Connie’s routine, without any sign that she really cared a damn. As for Paul Emerson, the husband, the sour look on his undistinguished map when his glance took in his wife and her playmate didn’t seem to mean much, since it stayed sour no matter where he was glancing.
Louis Rony was the puzzle, though. The assumption was that he was making an all-out play for Gwenn, either because he was in love with her or because he wanted something that went with her; and if so, why the monkeyshines with the mature and beautifully tanned blonde? Was he merely trying to give Gwenn a nudge? I had of course done a survey on him, including the contrast between his square-jawed rugged phiz and the indications that the race of fat and muscle would be a tie in another couple of years, but I wasn’t ready for a final vote. From my research on him, which hadn’t stopped with Bascom’s reports, I knew all about his record as a sensational defender of pickpockets, racketeers, pluggers, fences, and on down the line, but I was holding back on whether he was a candidate for the throne Abe Hummel had once sat on, or a Commie trying out a new formula for raising a stink, or a lieutenant, maybe even better, in one of Arnold Zeck’s field divisions, or merely a misguided sucker for guys on hot spots.
However, the immediate puzzle about him was more specific. The question for the moment wasn’t what did he expect to accomplish with Connie Emerson, or what kind of fuel did he have in his gas tank, but what was all the fuss about the waterproof wallet, or bag, on the inside of his swimming trunks? I had seen him give it his attention, not ostentatiously, four times altogether; and by now my curiosity had really got acute, for the fourth time, right after the knee-lock episode with Connie, he had gone so far as to pull it out for a look and stuff it back in again. My eyes were still as good as ever, and there was no doubt about what it was.
Naturally, I did not approve of it. At a public beach, or even at a private beach or pool where there is a crowd of strangers and he changes with other males in a common room, a man has a right to guard something valuable by putting it into a waterproof container and keeping it next to his hide, and he may even be a sap if he doesn’t. But Rony, being a house guest like the rest of us, had changed in his own room, which wasn’t far from mine on the second floor. It is not nice to be suspicious of your hosts or fellow guests, and even if you think you ought to be there must have been at least a dozen first-class hiding places in Rony’s room for an object small enough to go in that thing he kept worrying about. It was an insult to everybody, including me. It was true that he kept his worry so inconspicuous that apparently no one else noticed it, but he had no right to take such a risk of hurting our feelings, and I resented it and intended to do something about it.
Madeline’s fingers touched my arm. I finished a sip of my Tom Collins and turned my head.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah what?” she smiled, opening her eyes.
“You touched me.”
“No, did I? Nothing.”
It was evidently meant as a teaser, but I was watching Gwenn poise for a back flip, and anyway there was an interruption. Paul Emerson had wandered over and now growled down at me.
“I forgot to mention it, Goodwin, I don’t want any pictures unless they have my okay—I mean for publication.”
I tilted my head back. “You mean any at all, or just of you?”
“I mean of me. Please don’t forget that.”
“Sure. I don’t blame you.”
When he had made it to the edge of the pool and fallen in, presumably on purpose, Madeline spoke.
“Do you think a comparative stranger like you ought to take swipes at a famous character like him?”
“I certainly do. You shouldn’t be surprised, if you know my repertory so well. What was that crack, anyhow?”
“Oh—when we go in I guess I’ll have to show you something. I should control my tongue better.”
On the other side Rony and Connie Emerson h
ad got their breath back and were making a dash for the pool. Jimmy Sperling, whom I preferred to think of as Junior, called to ask if I could use a refill, and Webster Kane said he would attend to it. Gwenn stopped before me, dripping again, to say that the light would soon be right for the west terrace and we ought to put on some clothes, and didn’t I agree with her?
It was one of the most congenial jobs of detecting I had had in a long while, and there wouldn’t have been a cloud in sight if it hadn’t been for that damn waterproof wallet or bag that Rony was so anxious about. That called for a little work, but it would have to wait.
Chapter 4
Hours later, in my room on the second floor, which had three big windows, two three-quarter beds, and the kind of furniture and rugs I will never own but am perfectly willing to use as a transient without complaining, I got clean and neat for dinner. Then I retrieved my keys from where I had hid them behind a book on a shelf, took my medicine case from the caribou bag, and unlocked it. This was a totally different thing from Rony’s exhibition of bad manners, since I was there on business, and the nature of my business required me to carry various unusual items in what I called my medicine case. All I took from it was a tiny, round, soft light brown object, which I placed tenderly in the little inner coin pocket inside the side pocket of my jacket. I handled it with tweezers because it was so quick to dissolve that even the moisture of my fingers might weaken it. I relocked the medicine case and returned it to the bag.
There was a knock on my door and I said come in. It opened and Madeline entered and advanced, enveloped in a thin white film of folds that started at her breasts and stopped only at her ankles. It made her face smaller and her eyes bigger.
“How do you like my dress, Archie?” she asked.
“Yep. You may not call that formal, but it certainly—” I stopped. I looked at her. “I thought you said you liked the name Andy. No?”
“I like Archie even better.”
“Then I’d better change over. When did Father confide in you?”
“He didn’t.” She opened her eyes. “You think I think I’m sophisticated and just simply impenetrable, don’t you? Maybe I am, but I wasn’t always. Come along, I want to show you something.” She turned and started off.
I followed her out and walked beside her along the wide hall, across a landing, and down another hall into another wing. The room she took me into, through a door that was standing open, was twice as big as mine, which I had thought was plenty big enough, and in addition to the outdoor summer smell that came in the open windows it had the fragrance of enormous vases of roses that were placed around. I would just as soon have taken a moment to glance around at details, but she took me across to a table, opened a bulky leather-bound portfolio as big as an atlas to a page where there was a marker, and pointed.
“See? When I was young and gay!”
I recognized it instantly because I had one like it at home. It was a clipping from the Gazette of September ninth, 1940. I have not had my picture in the paper as often as Churchill or Rocky Graziano, or even Nero Wolfe, but that time it happened that I had been lucky and shot an automatic out of a man’s hand just before he pressed the trigger.
I nodded. “A born hero if I ever saw one.”
She nodded back. “I was seventeen. I had a crush on you for nearly a month.”
“No wonder. Have you been showing this around?”
“I have not! Damn it, you ought to be touched!”
“Hell, I am touched, but not as much as I was an hour ago. I thought you liked my nose or the hair on my chest or something, and here it was only a childhood memory.”
“What if I feel it coming back?”
“Don’t try to sweeten it. Anyway, now I have a problem. Who else might possibly remember this picture—and there have been a couple of others—besides you?”
She considered. “Gwenn might, but I doubt it, and I don’t think anyone else would. If you have a problem, I have a question. What are you here for? Louis Rony?”
It was my turn to consider, and I let her have a poker smile while I was at it.
“That’s it,” she said.
“Or it isn’t. What if it is?”
She came close enough to take hold of my lapels with both hands, and her eyes were certainly big. “Listen, you born hero,” she said earnestly. “No matter what I might feel coming back or what I don’t, you be careful where you head in on anything about my sister. She’s twenty-two. When I was her age I was already pretty well messed up, and she’s still as clean as a rose—my God, I don’t mean a rose, you know what I mean. I agree with my dad about Louis Rony, but it all depends on how it’s done. Maybe the only way not to hurt her too much is to shoot him. I don’t really know what he is to her. I’m just telling you that what matters isn’t Dad or Mother or me or Rony, but it’s my sister, and you’d better believe me.”
It was the combination of circumstances. She was so close, and the smell of roses was so strong, and she was so damned earnest after dallying around with me all afternoon, that it was really automatic. When, after a minute or two, she pushed at me, I let her go, reached for the portfolio and closed it, and took it to a tier of shelves and put it on the lowest one. When I got back to her she looked a little flushed but not too overcome to speak.
“You darned fool,” she said, and had to clear her throat. “Look at my dress now!” She ran her fingers down through the folds. “We’d better go down.”
As I went with her down the wide stairs to the reception hall it occurred to me that I was getting my wires crossed. I seemed to have a fair start on establishing a personal relationship, but not with the right person.
We ate on the west terrace, where the setting sun, coming over the tops of the trees beyond the lawn, was hitting the side of the house just above our heads as we sat down. By that time Mrs. Sperling was the only one who was calling me Mr. Goodwin. She had me at her right, probably to emphasize my importance as the son of a business associate of the Chairman of the Board, and I still didn’t know whether she knew I was in disguise. It was her that Junior resembled, especially the wide mouth, though she had filled in a little. She seemed to have her department fairly under control, and the looks and manners of the help indicated that they had been around quite a while and intended to stay.
After dinner we loafed around the terrace until it was about dark and then went inside, all but Gwenn and Rony, who wandered off across the lawn. Webster Kane and Mrs. Sperling said they wanted to listen to a broadcast, or maybe it was video. I was invited to partake of bridge, but said I had a date with Sperling to discuss photography plans for tomorrow, which was true. He led me to a part of the house I hadn’t seen yet, into a big high-ceilinged room with four thousand books around the walls, a stock ticker, and a desk with five phones on it among other things, gave me a fourth or fifth chance to refuse a cigar, invited me to sit, and asked what I wanted. His tone was not that of a host to a guest, but of a senior executive to one not yet a junior executive by a long shot. I arranged my tone to fit.
“Your daughter Madeline knows who I am. She saw a picture of me once and seems to have a good memory.”
He nodded. “She has. Does it matter?”
“Not if she keeps it to herself, and I think she will, but I thought you ought to know. You can decide whether you had better mention it to her.”
“I don’t think so. I’ll see.” He was frowning, but not at me. “How is it with Rony?”
“Oh, we’re on speaking terms. He’s been pretty busy. The reason I asked to see you is something else. I notice there are keys for the guest-room doors, and I approve of it, but I got careless and dropped mine in the swimming pool, and I haven’t got an assortment with me. When I go to bed I’ll want to lock my door because I’m nervous, so if you have a master key will you kindly lend it to me?”
There was nothing slow about him. He was already smiling before I finished. Then he shook his head. “I don’t think so. There are certain standards�
�oh, to hell with standards. But he is here as my daughter’s guest, with my permission, and I think I would prefer not to open his door for you. What reason have you—”
“I was speaking of my door, not someone else’s. I resent your insinuation, and I’m going to tell my father, who owns stock in the corporation, and he’ll resent it too. Can I help it if I’m nervous?”
He started to smile, then thought it deserved better than that, and his head went back for a roar of laughter. I waited patiently. When he had done me justice he got up and went to the door of a big wall safe, twirled the knob back and forth, and swung the door open, pulled a drawer out and fingered its contents, and crossed to me with a tagged key in his hand.
“You can also shove your bed against the door,” he suggested.
I took the key. “Yes, sir, thank you, I will,” I told him and departed.
When I returned to the living room, which was about the size of a tennis court, I found that the bridge game had not got started. Gwenn and Rony had rejoined the party. With a radio going, they were dancing in a space by the doors leading to the terrace, and Jimmy Sperling was dancing with Connie Emerson. Madeline was at the piano, concentrating on trying to accompany the radio, and Paul Emerson was standing by, looking down at her flying fingers with his face sourer than ever. At the end of dinner he had taken three kinds of pills, and perhaps had picked the wrong ones. I went and asked Madeline to dance, and it took only a dozen steps to know how good she was. Still more relationship.
A little later Mrs. Sperling came in, and she was soon followed by Sperling and Webster Kane. Before long the dancing stopped, and someone mentioned bed, and it began to look as if there would be no chance to dispose of the little brown capsule I had got from my medicine case. Some of them had patronized the well-furnished bar on wheels which had been placed near a long table back of a couch, but not Rony, and I had about decided that I was out of luck when Webster Kane got enthusiastic about nightcaps and started a selling campaign. I made mine bourbon and water because that was what Rony had shown a preference for during the afternoon, and the prospect brightened when I saw Rony let Jimmy Sperling hand him one. It went as smooth as if I had written the script. Rony took a swallow and then put his glass on the table when Connie Emerson wanted both his hands to show him a rumba step. I took a swallow from mine to make it the same level as his, got the capsule from my pocket and dropped it in, made my way casually to the table, put my glass down by Rony’s in order to have my hands for getting out a cigarette and lighting it, and picked the glass up again, but the wrong one—or I should say the right one. There wasn’t a chance the maneuver had been observed, and it couldn’t have been neater.
