by Rex Stout
Wolfe made a tent with his fingers, the tips together, his elbows on the chair arms. “Indeed,” he said. “I have no use for your arm, but some information might be helpful. When did you last see Mr. Hazen?”
“I want to know where that gun is. I know she left it here, she told me so.”
“When did she tell you?”
“This afternoon. I was there when she came home.”
“What else did she tell you?”
“Not much-there wasn’t time. We were interrupted. I knew Hazen had a gun in a drawer in his room, and I had looked to see if it was there and it wasn’t, and I asked her if she knew where it was. Have the police got it?”
“No. I’ll indulge you further, Mr. Weed. The bullet that killed Mr. Hazen wasn’t fired by that gun. If you already knew that it’s no news for you; if you didn’t, it should relieve-”
“How do you know it wasn’t?”
“Enough for you that I do. Now you indulge me. When did you last see Mr. Hazen?”
“This morning. At the morgue. I went there to identify him, by request. Alive, I saw him last at his house, last night.”
“At what hour?”
“Around half past nine. Five or ten minutes either way. The police wanted it more exact, but that’s as close as I can come.”
“The circumstances?”
“There were people there for dinner. Do you want their names?”
“Yes.”
“They were clients of Hazen’s. Mrs. Victor Oliver, a widow. Mrs. Henry Lewis Talbot, the wife of the banker. Ambrose Perdis, the shipping tycoon. Jules Khoury, the inventor. And Mr. and Mrs. Hazen and me. Seven. After dinner Hazen told Lucy-his wife-that we were going to discuss a business matter and she left. I left soon after that, and that was the last I saw him alive, there with them.”
“How did you spend the next six hours?”
“I walked to the Overseas Press Club-it’s a short walk-and was there until around midnight, and then I went home and went to bed. And stayed in bed.”
“You were associated with Mr. Hazen in his business?”
“I was in his employ.”
“In what capacity?”
“Mostly I write stuff. Handouts, plugs, the usual junk. Also I was supposed to use my contacts. I was a newspaperman when Hazen hired me a little more than a year ago.”
“If they were going to discuss a business matter why did you leave?”
“I wasn’t needed. Or wanted.”
“Then why were you there at all?” Weed put his hands on the chair arms, levered his fanny up, settled farther back, and took a breath. He rubbed his chair arms with his palms. “You don’t think Lucy killed him,” he said. “Or you wouldn’t be working for her. But even if she didn’t she’s in one hell of a jam. If you’re half as good as you’re supposed to be��� I don’t know. Maybe I ought to give you a different answer than the one I gave the District Attorney when he asked why I was there. The right answer. Even if it makes you think I killed him. I didn’t.”
“If you did, Mr. Weed, you’re doomed in any case, no matter what answers you give.”
“Okay, then here’s why I was there. Exclusive for you. Hazen liked to have me in the same room with his wife because he knew how I felt about her. God only knows how he knew, I certainly tried not to show it and I thought I did pretty well, and I’m sure she doesn’t know, but he did. He was a remarkable man. He had a sixth sense about people, and maybe a seventh and an eighth, but he also had blind spots. He actually didn’t know how his wife felt about him, or if he did he was even more remarkable than I thought.”
“Did you know?”
“Of course.”
“She told you?”
“My God, no. I doubt if she even told her best friend. Don’t think that the way I feel about her made me imagine it. I saw her when he touched her, how she tried to cover up. So that’s why I was invited to dinner last night. I don’t think he expected or hoped to see me squirm, he didn’t have to, he knew how I felt. Of course he was a sadist, but he was a damned subtle one. I was onto him, in a way, after I had been with him a couple of months, but I didn’t leave because I��� I had met her.”
“And your feeling for her was returned?”
“Certainly not. I was just a guy that worked for her husband.”
“Rather a forlorn situation for you.”
“Yeah. That’s the right word, forlorn. I told you because you asked why I was there, and I’ve got a little idea how you work, and you’re working for her. Another thing you might want to know, I think there was something screwy about his business. I know the public-relations game is mostly just a high-grade racket, but even so. Take the four people who were there last night. Why did Mrs. Victor Oliver, the sixty-year-old widow of a millionaire broker, pay him two thousand dollars a month? She needs public relations like I need a hole in the head. The same for Mrs. Talbot-twenty-five hundred a month. Maybe her husband, the banker, could use a P.R. expert, granted that there is one, but why her? Jules Khoury’s amounts vary, sometimes a couple of thousand, sometimes more. Possibly an inventor likes to stand in well with the public, though I don’t see why, and during the time I’ve been there Khoury has got damn little for his money. Ambrose Perdis is the screwiest of all. For his business, his shipping corporations, he uses one of the big P.R. operators, the Codray Associates, but personally he has paid Hazen more than forty thousand dollars this past year. I’m not supposed to know all this. I got curious and I got at the records one day.”
Wolfe grunted. “A man who hires another man to forge distinction for him deserves as little as he gets. Are you suggesting that Mr. Hazen extorted those sums?”
“I don’t know, but he didn’t earn them. I admit that very few P.R. operators do earn what they get. If any.”
“Did he have any clients other than those four?”
“Sure, about a dozen. Fifteen altogether, as of yesterday. His total take was over a quarter of a million a year.”
Wolfe looked up at the clock. “It will be my dinner time in five minutes. If my assumption that Mrs. Hazen didn’t kill her husband is correct, and if you didn’t, who did?”
That question gets a helpful answer about once in a hundred times. It was obvious that Weed had given it no brain room at all before he rang our doorbell, because he had either thought that Lucy had done it or known that he had, so he had no guesses ready. He was more than willing; the idea appealed to him; but he had to start from scratch, and five minutes wasn’t enough. He thought that Wolfe should forget about dinner, though he didn’t say so, which was just as well. He said he would return after dinner, but Wolfe said no, if he would leave his phone number he would hear from us. He would have left the bills there on Wolfe’s desk if I hadn’t handed them to him.
By the time we had finished dinner and were back in the office, with coffee, I had no personal worry. If the bullets had matched we would have heard from Cramer by then. Wolfe got at the letters to sign, still on his desk, and as he finished the last one and I took it he spoke. “Did Mr. Weed shoot him?”
I shook my head. “No comment. I’d have to flip a coin. He cleared up one point, anyway, about her. You said that no one wants to kill a man merely because she despises him. Sure. So what was eating her? Weed. He says she doesn’t know how he feels about her and the feeling is not returned. Nuts. Either he lies or he’s simple. Of the ten thousand women I have fallen in love with, every single one of them knew it before I did. As for Weed shooting him, I am split. It would be tough to send her a bill for nailing him, but if he didn’t you’ve got a job. Where do you start? Apparently Hazen was the kind of specimen-”
The doorbell rang. Could Cramer possibly have held off so long? No. It would be Weed, to help some more. No. It was a more familiar figure, a tall thin middle-aged man in a dark gray overcoat that had been cut to give him more shoulder, but not overdoing it. Nathaniel Parker had his clothes made by Stover. When I opened the door and greeted and admitted him he headed
for the office, keeping his coat on and his homburg in his hand, and I followed.
He was one of the eight men, not counting me, that Wolfe shook hands with. He declined Wolfe’s invitation to be seated, saying that he was an hour and a half late for a dinner appointment. “I stopped in instead of phoning,” he said, “because I had to deliver this.” He took a key from his pocket and handed it to me. “That’s the key to Mrs. Hazen’s house. Also this.” From his inside pocket he took a folded paper. “That’s authority from her to enter and get something. What you’re to get, if you want to, is an iron box-she said iron but I suppose it’s tin or steel-that is under the bottom drawer of the chest in Hazen’s bedroom. You remove the drawer and pry up the board that it slides in on, and the box is underneath. She doesn’t know what’s in it. One day about a year ago Hazen lifted the board and showed her the box, and told her that if he died she was to get the box, have it opened by a locksmith, and bum the contents without looking at them. I thought you might want to have a look, and she is willing. You’ll be acting for her, through her attorney.”
Wolfe grunted. “I’ll use my discretion.”
“I know you will. If you don’t want to tell me what was in it you’ll say it was empty. I’d like to be present when it’s opened, but I have an appointment. As for her, what did she tell you this morning?”
“Ask her.”
“I did. She wouldn’t tell me. She said she would disclose it only if you told her to. If she is charged with homicide I’ll want to know that or I’ll step out. She has been there more than five hours, and they’ll probably keep her another five. If she is held as a material witness I can do nothing about bail until morning. I have an appointment with Hazen’s lawyer at nine-thirty. He has the will. Anything else now?”
Wolfe said no, and he went. I escorted him out, returned to the office, and asked, “Any special instructions?”
“No. Will the police be there?”
“I shouldn’t think so. It’s only where he lived, he wasn’t shot there. Do I wear gloves?”
“No. You have her authority.”
Ever since a difficulty I got into some years ago I
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have made it a practice to have a gun along when I am on an errand that may interfere with a murderer’s program. I took off my jacket, got a shoulder holster and a Mariey, which I loaded, from the drawer, put them where they belonged, put the jacket back on, checked that Lucy’s key was in a pocket and her authority in another one, and went to the hall for my coat and hat.
Chapter 5
I stood across the street from the Hazen house, on 37th Street between Park and Lexington, for a look. It was brick, painted gray with green trim, four stories, narrower than Wolfe’s brownstone, with the entrance three steps down from the sidewalk. I noted those details just for the record, but they weren’t important. What was important was that there was a tiny sliver of light at the lower part of the right edge of one of the three windows on the third floor-a sliver that you might leave if you weren’t quite thorough enough when you arranged a drape.
I didn’t know where Hazen’s room was; that could be it. It could be a Homicide man looking things over, but it wasn’t probable; they had had ten hours. It could be the maid who slept in, but why, at 9:30 at night? Her room certainly wasn’t third floor front. Whoever it was and whatever he was doing, I decided not to interrupt him by ringing. I crossed over, descended the three steps, used the key, opened the door with care, entered, closed it with more care, and stood and listened while my eyes adjusted to the dark. For half a minute there was no sound from any direction; then there was something like a bump from up above, followed by a voice, male, very faint. Unless he was talking to himself
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there was more than one. Thinking there might be occasion for activity, I took off my overcoat and put it on the floor, and my hat, and then tiptoed along the hall, feeling my way, found the stairs, and started up.
Halfway up I stopped. Had there been another voice, a soprano? There had. There was. Then the baritone again. I went on up, with more care now and slower, keeping to the end of the steps next the wall. In the hall on the second floor there was a little light coming from above, enough to catch outlines. Up the second flight I went even slower, since each step might bring me within range. The voices had stopped, but there were tapping sounds. On the fourth step I could get my eyes to the level of the floor by stretching. The hall was the same as the floor below, and the light was coming from a half-open door at its front end. All I could see inside was a chair and part of a bed and drapes over a window, and the back of a woman’s head over the back of the chair, silvery hair under a black pancake hat.
I might have stayed put until the voices came again, and now I could get words, but a staircase is not a good tactical position, the light was on them, not me, and at the top I would be nearly out of range through the opening. I moved. As I put my weight on the next to last step the tapping stopped and the baritone came. “There’s no sense in this.” I made the landing and across to the wall. The soprano came. “There certainly isn’t, Mr. Khoury.” I started along the wall toward the door. Another female voice came, pitched lower. “I don’t think it’s here. It could be in Lucy’s room, that would be like him.” Then another man’s voice, a deeper one. “All right, we’ll try it,” and the door swung wide and the man was there, on the move.
I’m not proud of the next two seconds. I was alerted and he wasn’t, and I think I am fairly fast. My excuse is that I was in the middle of a careful step, putting my toe down, but anyway he was at me before I was set, and he damn near toppled me. When you’re thrown off balance by impact you only make it worse if you try to get purchase on your way down, so I let myself go, brought
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my knees up to my chin as I hit the floor, rolled to get my feet at his middle, and let him have it. He was plenty heavy, but it tore him loose and sent him bouncing off the wall. As I sprang to my feet another man was through the door and coming. I sidestepped and ducked, jerking my right back, and hooked him in the kidney. He doubled up and hugged himself, and I kept going to the corner, whirled, had the Marley in my hand, and showed it.
“Come right ahead,” I said, “if you want your skull cracked.”
The first man, the heavy one, was propped against the wall, panting. The smaller one was trying to straighten up. There was a woman in the doorway, the one who had been in the chair, and another one behind her.
“Also,” I said, “this thing is loaded, so don’t try reaching for a cigarette. Inside, everybody, and take it easy. I would prefer to get you in the shoulder or leg, but I’m not a very good shot.”
The heavy man said, “Who are you?”
“Billy the Kid. Come on, into the room, and no gym-nastics. Go to the far side and face the wall.”
They moved. As they approached the door the women backed off, and they entered and I followed. The woman with silvery hair started to chatter at me, but I wiggled the gun and told her to go to the wall. When they were there I went over the men from be-hind, felt no weapons, told them to stay put, and sidestepped to the bed. There were coats and hats on it, and the women’s bags. I had the men tagged; the husky one was Ambrose Perdis, the shipping magnate, whose picture I had seen here and there, and I had heard the other one called Khoury; but I needed introductions to the women. As I opened one of the bags and dumped its contents on the bed Perdis turned around and I spoke. “Hold it. I’m giving you a break. Shall I come and slap you with the gun? Turn around.”
He turned. A leather case from the bag was stuffed with credentials-driver’s license, credit cards, others.
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Some of them said Anne Talbot and others Mrs. Henry Lewis Talbot. That was the young woman, whose attractions, both from the front and the rear, were so obvious that they had caught my eye even though my eyes were busy. There was a leather keyfold and I snapped it open to inspect the k
eys, and compared one of them with the key to the house which I had in my pocket. It didn’t match. I returned the items to the bag one by one and picked up the other bag and dumped it. The woman with silvery hair was Mrs. Victor Oliver. There was no key in her bag like the one I had, and nothing of interest. I examined the pockets of the coats, all four of them, and found no key.
As I stepped around the end of the bed I allowed myself a grin at a detail I had observed; they all had gloves on-not rubber ones secured for the occasion, just gloves. “Now that I know your names,” I said, “it’s only fair that you should know mine. Archie Goodwin. I work for a man you may have heard of, Nero Wolfe, the private detective. He has been hired by Mrs. Barry Hazen, and I have her key to the house and her written authority to enter. I need to know which one of you has a key and I’m going to find out. You may turn around, but stay where you are. You will take off your clothes and pile them on the floor, including your shoes and socks or stockings, but I think not your underwear. I’ll see.”
They were facing me at four paces. Anne Talbot said, “I won’t. It’s outrageous.” She was extremely easy to look at.
“Pooh,” I said. “Pretend you’re at the beach or a pool. Do you want me to peel you? Don’t think I wouldn’t.”
“We have no key,” Mrs. Oliver said. She was easy to look away from, with her flabby jowl and little yellow eyes set deep. “The maid let us in. She has gone out, but when she comes back you can ask her.”
“She’ll deny it,” Jules Khoury said. He was the baritone, a wiry swarthy specimen with no hips.
“Look,” I said, “you’re four to one. If you make me do it the hard way it will be rough. I’ll give you two
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minutes to get your clothes off.” I raised my wrist to see my watch without dropping my eyes. “Start with the gloves. I want them too.”
