by Rex Stout
But first William Magnus. Rae Kallman phoned while I was at my breakfast table in the kitchen, on my fourth homemade Creole pork sausage and my third Creole fritter. She had discovered that she had Magnus's phone number in a notebook at home, and she had called him early, to get him before he left. By now he had gone for a day at school. He would have no free time until four-thirty, and we could expect him a little before five. As I resumed with the sausage and fritters I considered the fact that Miss Kallman was cooperating beyond the call of duty; she had promised only to supply his address and phone number. Sometimes—not often, but it does happen—such a little detail has a point. Had she wanted to brief him, and if so, why? A corner of my mind was still considering it in the office as I opened the morning mail.
When luck rang the doorbell at 9:55 I didn't know it was luck, even after I went to the hall and saw him on the stoop. Peter Vaughn was merely the long and lanky specimen who was still trying to hang on to the notion that he had been going to marry Susan Brooke after she got rid of her kink. As a candidate for the tag, at least 100 to 1. But when I opened the door and saw him closer, it was obvious that something really sharp was biting him. His bony face looked even narrower, and he had to unclamp his jaw to speak, to say that he knew Wolfe wasn't available at that hour, but he would rather see me anyway. That was grease, or it wasn't. I took him to the office and moved a chair up to face mine. He sat, clamped his jaw again, and rubbed his eyes, which were red and puffy, first with his fingertips and then with the heels of his palms.
"I haven't slept for four nights," he said.
I nodded. "You look it." Four nights had passed since he had been there with his future in-laws. If I had been Wolfe I would have asked if he had eaten. Being me, I asked, "How about a drink? Or coffee?"
"No, thanks." He tried to eye me, but it was mostly blinks. "I know a couple of men who know about you, and it's because of what they said that I would rather see you than Wolfe. They said you're tough but straight, and you're more human than Wolfe."
"At least I try."
He didn't hear it. He was in the kind of condition when you're so concentrated on what you want to say that nothing anyone else says can get in.
"I'm in one hell of a squeeze," he said. "I'm stuck. First I ought to tell you, I don't owe Kenneth and Dolly Brooke anything. They don't owe me anything, either. I met them through Susan, about three years ago. I only knew them, I only kept knowing them and seeing them, on account of her. So I don't feel— Wait a minute. I didn't say this is confidential. It is."
I shook my head. "Not if it connects up with murder. I mustn't make liars of the men who told you I'm straight. Put it this way: nothing you tell me will be disclosed unless it has to be in order to nail a murderer. Everything else is, and will stay, confidential. Is that plain?"
"Yes." A muscle at the side of his neck was twitching. "I suppose … All right. I admit I'm thinking of me. I lied to the police."
"If I had a dime for every lie I've told them I'd be on my yacht in the Caribbean. What is it you don't feel?"
"What?"
"You said, 'I don't feel,' and stopped."
"I don't— Oh. Yes. I don't feel that there's any question of loyalty. I don't owe them any loyalty. I said I'm thinking of me, and I am, but the trouble is I have a conscience. That's an old-fashioned word, and I'm not religious, but I don't know what else to call it. That's why I haven't been able to sleep. What I can't stand— You remember, when we were here Friday evening, we tried to get Wolfe to tell us why he thinks that man is innocent, and he wouldn't. I want you to tell me why. Confidentially. Just for me."
It was beginning to sound promising. What was eating him might be something we could use, and the odds had at least doubled that he wasn't it. I made an effort. "If it would get you some sleep," I said, "I wish I could tell you. But if I did, people would no longer call me straight. Dunbar Whipple is Nero Wolfe's client, and I work for Nero Wolfe. But look at it. You read that piece in the Gazette. Mr. Wolfe has never taken a murder suspect for a client if he thought there was any chance that he was guilty. He knows Whipple is innocent. So do I. The only way he can prove it is to get the murderer. That's all I can tell you or your conscience."
He kept trying to focus on me without blinking. "I can't stand it," he said, "and I don't intend to. An innocent man convicted of murder because I didn't have the guts …" He shut his eyes tight and jerked his head from side to side.
"Look," I said, "let's get down to cases. What did you lie to the police about?"
"About where I was. That evening. I lied to Wolfe too. I wasn't at the club all evening. I left right after dinner and was gone for more than two hours."
My lips parted to say "Where did you go?" but it didn't get out. I don't know what stopped it. You never know where a hunch comes from; if you did it wouldn't be a hunch. I took three seconds to look at it, liked it, and said, "Sure. You went and baby-sat for Dolly Brooke while she went and got her car and went for a ride."
It stopped the blinks. He stared. "How in the name of …"
I grinned at him. "You have just heard a detective detect. I knew that she had got the car from the garage around a quarter to eight and returned about an hour and a half later. I doubted if she would leave an eight-year-old alone in the apartment. You come and make a big point of not owing them any loyalty and then say you lied about where you were that evening. So I detect." I turned a palm up. "Simple. Now that the beans are spilled, let's use the broom. Where did she go in the car?"
He still wasn't blinking. "So you knew. I didn't need … I'm a damn fool. How did you find out?"
"Confidential information. We respect confidences, including yours. Where did—"
"Did you know when we were here? Friday?"
"No. We got it last night. Where did she go in the car?"
"I didn't need to come." He got to his feet, none too steady. "You already knew." He turned and was going.
I moved and was between him and the door. "Now you're a damn fool," I told him. "The only question is would you rather tell me or the police."
He was blinking again. "You said you respect confidences."
"Nuts. You know what I said. We would prefer to tell the police nothing, about you or anyone else, until we can name the murderer, but you're not leaving until either (a) you answer my questions or (b) I get a cop here and you answer his questions. Take your pick."
He didn't size me up. He stood and blinked at me, but not to decide if he could rush me. He was contemplating the situation, not me. I let him take his time. Finally he turned, not too sure of his legs, walked back to the chair, and sat. Back in my chair, I asked him, not demanding, just wanting to know, "Where did she go in the car?"
"If I tell you that," he said, "I ought to tell you all about it."
"Fine. Go ahead."
He took a while to decide where to start. "You know I was going to marry Susan."
"If that's the way you want to put it, yes."
"That's exactly the way I want to put it. We knew about that apartment. We all knew—her mother, Kenneth, Dolly, and I. We knew she was emotionally involved in the civil rights movement. Her mother and Dolly thought she was also emotionally involved with that man, Dunbar Whipple, but I didn't. I thought I understood Susan, and I still think so. You don't think so, do you?"
There was no point to rubbing salt in. "I don't count. I didn't know her. All I want is to get a murderer."
"Well, I knew her. I understood her. Her mother and Dolly kept saying I ought to do something, but I thought it was better just to let her work her way through it. They kept harping about that apartment and the disgrace, the scandal, Susan would bring on the family. Then about a month ago Dolly said if I wouldn't do something she would. She didn't tell Kenneth because she knew he wouldn't approve, but she told me. Some evening when Kenneth was staying at the laboratory Mother Brooke would come and stay with the boy, and she would go up there and see what was going on. In one way I didn't approve ei
ther, but in another way I did, because I thought she would find there was nothing wrong. You see the situation?"
I only nodded. What a situation for a grown man with a brain supposedly in working order. I wasn't thinking of color; that was an unimportant detail.
"All right," he said, "that's how it was. That evening, that Monday evening, I got a phone call as I was eating dinner at the club. It was Dolly. Mother Brooke couldn't come because she was sick, and Dolly wanted me to come and stay with the boy. I suppose I should have refused, but—anyway, I went. I got there a little after eight. She left right away, and—"
"Hold it. Our information is that she got the car from the garage about a quarter to eight."
"Then your information is wrong. She left the house about ten after, and the garage is four blocks away. My God, do you think I don't know? When I know what happened? When I've been over it and over it a thousand times?"
"Okay, you know."
"God knows I do. Give her ten minutes to get to the garage and get the car, and ten more to One Hundred and Twenty-eighth Street, and—"
"Maybe not enough. Fifteen."
"No. Straight up Park Avenue and across, nothing to it at that time in the evening. I drove it and timed it twice yesterday. Nine minutes both times, and I didn't push. So she got there just after half past eight, out of the car and to the building. She went up the two flights and stood at the door of the apartment a few minutes, listening. She didn't hear anything, and she knocked on the door and then stood some more, and then knocked again, and nothing happened. I'm telling you what she told me. She went down and stood across the street, and pretty soon Dunbar Whipple came and entered the building. She wanted—"
"Did she know Whipple?"
"She had met him. Susan had taken her to a couple of ROCC meetings. She wanted to go back in and up to the apartment, but she was afraid to. She went back to the car, which she had double-parked around the corner, and drove to the garage and came home. If you allow twenty-five minutes for that, Whipple got to the apartment at five minutes after nine. It was exactly half past when she got home."
"And told you what had happened."
"Yes."
"What was her—uh—attitude?"
"She was excited. She thought she had proved something, but I didn't. I thought obviously Susan wasn't there, since Dolly had knocked twice and she hadn't answered. A girl who works for the ROCC lived in that building, Susan had told me about her, and Whipple could have been going to see her. We got into an argument about it, and I left and went back to the club."
I regarded him. He was really a pitiful sight. "Tell me something. Just curiosity. Why were you so hot to know why we think Whipple is innocent when you already knew damn well he is?"
"I didn't know it."
"Certainly you did. Only two alternatives. Either Susan was already dead when Dolly arrived, since she didn't answer the door, or she did answer the door and let Dolly in, and Dolly killed her. In either case she wasn't alive at five minutes past nine. Don't tell me you hadn't figured that."
"Of course I had. But it wasn't certain. Sometimes people don't go to the door when there's a knock."
"Nuts. No wonder you had conscience trouble. You think Dolly killed her and you baby-sat for her while she did it."
"I haven't said so and I'm not going to." He was blinking again. If his eyelashes had been wings he would have been around the world by now. He asked, "What are you going to do?"
I looked at my watch: 10:43. "Nothing, for seventeen minutes. Mr. Wolfe comes down from the plant rooms at eleven. I would advise— Oh, a question. Did you tell her you were going to spill it?"
"No. It would have been … tough. She would have tried to talk me out of it."
"Are you going to tell her you have spilled it?"
"No."
"Good. Don't. I advise you to flop. Now that it's off your chest you can probably do twelve hours. We have an extra room with a good bed. In your condition you might get run over crossing the street."
He shook his head. "I'm going home. God, the sound of that, going home!" He got to his feet and put a hand on the chair back for help. "I don't want Wolfe to see me. I couldn't take him right now. Can't you tell me what you're going to do?"
"I have no idea. Mr. Wolfe is the cook, I only wait on table. As for your lying to the police, forget it. They expect it. If nobody ever lied to them, most of them would have been out of jobs long ago." I rose. "If it has to be that you hear from them, you'll hear from me first." I touched his arm. "Come along. Get home in one piece if possible."
The guy was just about out on his feet. After I got his coat on him, and his hat, and opened the door, I wanted to convoy him down the stoop, but if he couldn't manage that he would never make it home, so I stood out in the raw March wind and watched him to Tenth Avenue, where he would sooner or later get a taxi headed uptown. Of course the trouble was the letup after getting rid of a ten-ton load.
Even after he had reached the corner I stayed on the stoop, for the air, while I asked myself if I should have kept him for more digging. For instance, granting that Dolly had killed her, had it been planned or offhand? I might have asked him if Dolly was good at mimicking, and if he had ever heard her imitate Susan's voice, perhaps to him on the phone. Wolfe would have. I might have asked him what Dolly had said when she came back, tried to get her exact words. If she had just committed a murder, smashed her sister-in-law's skull with a club, almost certainly her tongue had made some little slip, and probably more than one. I had collected four or five might-haves when a bellow came from inside.
"What are you doing out there?"
I bellowed back, "Breathing!" went in, shut the door, and followed him to the office. It was useless to try to start conversation until he had put a spray of Phalaenopsis Aphrodite in the vase and glanced through the mail. It's some kind of compulsion. I suspect that he always hopes to find a letter from a collector in Honduras or somewhere, saying that he has found a clear solid blue orchid and is sending it to Wolfe by air, no charge, to show his appreciation for something or other.
It wasn't there that morning. I open the mail. He put it aside and turned to me. "Mr. Magnus?"
"He'll be here this afternoon. Miss Kallman had it all arranged when she phoned while I was at breakfast, very much on the job, which may mean something and may not. But something more interesting; I know where Dolly Brooke went in her car that evening."
"You do."
"Yes, sir. Peter Vaughn came and we talked nearly an hour. He just left. I don't think you need it verbatim, so I'll just tell it."
I did so. Not word for word, but I covered all the points. After the first few sentences he leaned back with his chin down and closed his eyes, as he always does when all he needs is his ears. When I finished, explaining that I had let him go because I was human, as he had said, he held it for another minute and then opened his eyes.
He grunted. "You are not more human than I am. You are merely more susceptible, more sociable, and more vulnerable."
"Just words. Shall we settle it now?"
"No. We have something more urgent to settle. Is it possible that Mr. Vaughn's account is gammon?"
"Not a chance. He's wide open. I wouldn't even name odds."
"Did that woman kill her?"
"I pass. Again no odds, for a different reason. I may understand women better than Vaughn does, I hope I do, but I pass as it stands now. The only visible motive is a little limp. If she did it to keep scandal from the family name, what about this scandal? Pass."
He straightened up. "Whether she did or not, we could have Mr. Whipple released from custody today. Tomorrow at the latest."
"Sure. If she sticks to the line she gave Vaughn, and she had better. She'll have to. As I told Vaughn, it's obvious that Susan wasn't in there alive when Whipple arrived. Shall I get Cramer? I promised Vaughn nothing."
He made a face. "I don't like it."
"You wouldn't. You're on record that the only way to clea
r Whipple is to produce the murderer, and she may not be it. We have found an out for him, but we can't be sure he would stay out. She might change the script and say she didn't enter the building, and we can't prove she did. I don't like it either."
"You just said she would have to stick to the line she gave Vaughn."
"I'm more vulnerable than you are. I talk too fast. As soon as I said it I realized it wasn't true."
He growled. "Confound it." He made fists and rested them on the edge of his desk. He looked at the left one, saw nothing helpful, looked at the right one, saw no better, and looked at me. "When can you get her here?"
"Oh, thirty minutes or thirty hours. When do you want her?"
"I don't know."
"Tell me when you do. Of course I'll have to pry her loose, and I only have one pry. On the way she'll have plenty of time to decide what line to take."
He scowled at me. I scowled back, but his face gives him the advantage. Finding that that wasn't getting us anywhere, he leaned back and closed his eyes, and his lips started working. They pushed out, then drew in, and kept at it—out and in, out and in … man at work, or possibly genius at work. I never interrupt the lip act because I can't; he's not there. It may last anywhere from half a minute to half an hour; I always time it, since there's nothing else to do. That time it was four minutes. He opened his eyes and asked, "Can Saul be here at two o'clock?"
"Yes. I rang him before breakfast. He had a chore for this morning, but he'll be free around noon and will call."
"Tell him two o'clock. Get Mr. Whipple."
Everything pertaining to a current operation is kept in a locked drawer, and I had to use a key to get the extension number at the university. Then there was a wait because he was in another room. When I had him, Wolfe got on. Naturally Whipple had questions about last night's meeting, and Wolfe tolerated him as much as he would a client who was going to get a fat bill. Not more. He stopped him by saying he hadn't called to report.
