by Ellery Queen
“Nuts. I said it the way I felt it. You actresses are all alike. I was getting a sociable feeling about you and look what you’ve done to it. What do you want?”
She laughed a little ripple. “I’m not an actress, I’m only going to be. I don’t want anything much, just to ask about my landlady. Miss Annis—Hattie Annis. Has she been here?”
I raised a brow. “Here? When?”
“This morning.”
“I’ll ask.” I turned my head and sang out, “Fritz!” and when he appeared in the doorway to the hall I inquired, “Did anyone besides this lady come while I was out?”
“No, sir.” He always sirs me when there is company, and I can’t make him stop.
“Any phone calls?”
“No, sir.”
“Okay. Thank you, sir.” He went, and I told Tammy or Tamiris. “Apparently not. You say your landlady?”
She nodded. “That’s funny.”
“Why, did you tell her to come?”
“No, she told me. She said she was going to take something—she was going to see Nero Wolfe about something. She wouldn’t say what, and after she left I began to worry about her. She never got here?”
“You heard what Fritz said. Why should you worry?”
“You would too if you knew her. She almost never leaves the house, and she never goes more than a block away. She’s not a loony, really, but she’s not quite all there, and I should have come with her. We all feel responsible for her. Her house is an awful dump, but anybody in show business, or even trying to be, can have a room for five dollars a week, and it doesn’t have to be every week. So we feel responsible. I certainly hope—” She stood up, letting it hang. “If she comes will you phone me?”
“Sure.” She gave me the number and I jotted it down, and then went to hold her coat. My feelings were mixed. It would have been a pleasure to relieve her mind, but of what? What if her real worry was about the Hope diamond, which she had had under her mattress, and she knew or suspected that Hattie Annis had snitched it? I would have liked to put her in the front room, supplied with magazines, to wait until the landlady arrived, but you can’t afford to be sentimental when the fate of a million-dollar diamond is at stake, so I let her go.
Another consideration was that it would be enough of a job to sell Wolfe on seeing Hattie Annis without also accounting for the presence of another female in the front room. He can stand having one woman under his roof temporarily, but not two at once.
At eleven o’clock on the nose the sound of the elevator came, then its usual clang as it jolted to a stop at the bottom, and he entered, told me good morning, went to his desk, got his seventh of a ton deposited in the oversized custom-built chair, fingered through the mail, glanced at his desk calendar, and spoke.
“No check from Brigham?”
“Yes, sir, it came.” I swiveled to face him. “Without comment. I took it to the bank. Also my weakness has cropped up again, but with a new slant.”
He grunted. “Which weakness?”
“Women. One came, a stranger, and I told her to come back at eleven fifteen. The trouble is, she’s a type that never appealed to me before. I hope to goodness my taste hasn’t shifted. I want your opinion.”
“Pfui. Flummery.”
“No, sir. It’s a real problem. Wait till you see her.”
“I’m not going to see her.”
“Then I’m stuck. She has a strange fascination. Nobody believes in witches casting spells any more. I certainly don’t, but I don’t know. As for what she wants to see you about, that’s simple. She has got something that she thinks is good for a reward, and she’s coming to you instead of the police because she hates cops. I don’t know what it is or where she got it. That part’s easy, you can deal with that in two minutes, but what about me? Have I got a screw loose?”
“Yes.” He picked up the top item from the little pile of mail, an airmail letter from an orchid hunter in Venezuela, and started to read it. I swung my chair around and started sharpening pencils that didn’t need it. The noise of the sharpener gets on his nerves. I was on the fourth pencil when his voice came.
“Stop that,” he growled. “A witch?”
“She must be.”
“I’ll give her two minutes.”
You can appreciate what I had accomplished only if you know how allergic he is to strangers, especially women, and how much he hates to work, especially when a respectable check has just been deposited. Besides that satisfaction I had something to look forward to, seeing his expression when I escorted Hattie Annis in. I thought I might as well go and retrieve the package from under the couch and put it in my desk drawer, but vetoed it. It could stay put till she came. Wolfe finished the letter from the orchid hunter and started on a circular from a manufacturer of a humidifier.
Eleven seventeen and the bell didn’t ring. At 11:20 Wolfe looked up to say that he had some letters to give me but didn’t like to be interrupted, and I said neither did I. At 11:25 he got up and went to the kitchen, probably to sample the chestnut soup, in which he and Fritz had decided to include tarragon for the first time.
At 11:30 I went to the front room and got the package. Nuts to her, if she couldn’t be punctual for an appointment. She would get her package back, at the door, and that would be all. I was straightening up after fishing it from under the couch when the bell rang, and I had it in my hand when I went to the hall.
It was her all right, but through the one-way glass panel I noticed a couple of changes as I stepped to the door: there was a button on her coat where one had been missing, and her face needed washing even more than it had before. Her whole right cheek was a dark smudge. Touched by the button, I decided to hear her excuse for being late, if any, but as I opened the door she collapsed. No moan, no sound at all, she just crumpled.
I jumped and grabbed her, so she didn’t go clear down, but she was out, dead weight. I tightened my right arm around her to free my left to toss the package into the hall and then gathered her up, crossed the sill, and kicked the door shut.
As I was turning to the front room Wolfe’s voice came. “What the devil is that?”
“A woman,” I said, and kept going. On her feet I would have guessed her at not more than a hundred and fifteen pounds, but loose and sagging she was a good deal heavier. I put her on the couch, on her back, straightened her legs, and took a look. She was breathing shallow, but not gasping. I slipped a hand under her middle and lifted, and stuffed a couple of cushions beneath her hips. As I took her wrist and put a finger on her pulse Wolfe’s voice came at my back.
“Get Doctor Vollmer.”
I turned my head. He had meant it for Fritz, who had appeared at the door. “Hold it,” I said. “I think she just fainted.”
“Nonsense,” Wolfe snapped. “Women do not faint.”
I had heard that one before. His basis for it was not medical but personal; he is convinced that unless she has a really good excuse, like being slugged with a club, any woman who passes out is merely putting on an act—a subhead under his fundamental principle that every woman is always putting on an act. Ignoring it, I checked her pulse, which was weak and slow but not too bad, asked Fritz to bring my overcoat and open a window, and went to the lavatory for the smelling salts. I was waving the bottle under her nose and Fritz was spreading the coat over her when her eyes opened. She blinked at me and started to lift her head, and I put my hand on her brow.
“I know you,” she said, barely audible. “I must have made it.”
“Only to the door,” I told her. “You flopped on the stoop and I carried you in. Lie still. Shut your eyes and catch up on your breathing.”
“Brandy?” Fritz asked me.
“I don’t like brandy,” she said.
“Tea?”
“I don’t like tea. Where’s my bag?”
“Coffee,” I told Fritz. “She must like something.” He went. Wolfe had disappeared. “Sniff this.” I told her, handing her the bottle, and went to the hall
. The package was over by the rack, and her handbag was on the floor near the wall. I didn’t know how it got there, and I still don’t, but since I reject Wolfe’s fundamental principle I assume that a fainting woman can hang onto something.
Returning to the patient I was just in time to keep her from rolling off the couch. She was trying to pull the cushions out from under her middle. When I put a hand on her shoulder she protested. “Pillows are for heads, Buster. Can’t you tell my head from my fanny? Give me the bag.”
I handed it to her and she turned onto her side, propping on her elbow, to open it. Apparently her concern was for a particular item, for after a brief glance inside she was closing it, but I said, “Here, put this in,” and offered the package.
She didn’t take it. “So I’m still alive,” she said. “I’m froze stiff, but I’m alive. Don’t Nero Wolfe believe in heat?”
“It’s seventy in here,” I told her. “When you faint your blood does something. Here’s your package.”
“Did you open it?”
“No.”
“I knew you wouldn’t. I’m still dizzy.” Her head went back down. “You’re such a detective, maybe you can tell me what he was going to do if he killed me. He would have had to stop the car and get out to get the bag. Wouldn’t he?”
“I should think so. If it was the bag he wanted.”
“Of course it was.” She took a deep breath, and another. “He thought the package was in it. Anyhow, it was your fault I was there, what you said about the button. I’ve been intending to sew that button on for a month, and when you said to have one put on and charge it to you, that was too much. I hadn’t done anything about my clothes on account of a man for twenty years, and here was a man offering to buy me a button. So I went home and sewed it on.”
She stopped to breathe. I stuck the package in my pocket. “Where is home?” I asked.
“Forty-seventh Street. Between Eighth and Ninth. So that’s why I was there, but you keep your head, Buster. Don’t offer to buy me some hair dye. When I left I was going to take a Ninth Avenue bus to come back here, and walking along Forty-seventh Street the car came on the sidewalk behind me and hit me here.” She touched her right hip. “Bumping up over the curb must have spoiled his aim. It didn’t hit me hard enough to knock me down, so I must have stumbled when I jumped. Anyhow, I fell, and I must have rolled over more than once because I was walking near the curb and I came against a building. Is that Nero Wolfe?”
The door to the office had opened and Wolfe was there, scowling at us. I told her yes, and told him, “Miss Hattie Annis. She’s telling me why she was late for her appointment. She went to her house on Forty-seventh Street, and coming back a car climbed the curb and hit her. I know there’s no chair here big enough for you, but she ought to stay flat a little longer.”
“I am capable of standing for two minutes,” he said stiffly.
“You don’t look it,” Hattie said. “You would do fine for Falstaff.”
“Finish it,” I told her. “And the car went on?”
“It must have. When I got up it was gone. A man and a woman helped me up, and another man stopped, but nothing was broke and I could walk. So I walked. I didn’t want to try climbing on a bus. I kept in close to the buildings, and I stopped to rest about every block, and the last two blocks I didn’t think I would make it, but I did. How did you know I was there if I fainted?”
“You rang the bell. I caught you before you hit bottom.”
“And you carried me in and I missed it. Carried by a man and didn’t know it. What’s life up to?”
Wolfe came in a step. “Madam. I told Mr. Goodwin I would give you two minutes.”
She had lifted her head and I had put a cushion under it. “I appreciate it,” she said. “A wonderful day. Buster carries me in and Falstaff gives me two minutes—and here’s another one with coffee!”
Fritz coming with the coffee eased the situation. To Wolfe anyone having food or drink in his house is a guest, and guests have to be humored, within reason. He couldn’t tell me to bounce her while I was bringing a stand for the tray and Fritz was filling her cup. So he stood and scowled. When she had taken a sip he spoke.
“Mr. Goodwin said you have something that you think is good for a reward. What is it?”
She had sat up and taken off the woolen gloves. She took another sip. “That’s good coffee,” she said. “First I’ll tell you how I got it. I own that house on Forty-seventh Street. I was born in it.” Another sip. “Do you happen to know that all stage people are crazy?”
Wolfe grunted. “They have no monopoly.”
“Maybe not, but theirs is a special kind. I’m not saying I like them but they give me a feeling. My father owned a theater. My house is only an eight-minute walk from Times Square, and I only need one room and a kitchen, so they can live there whether they can pay or not. Five of them are living there now—three men and two girls—and they use the kitchen. They’re supposed to make their beds and keep their rooms decent, and some of them do. I never go in their rooms. My room is the second floor front—”
“If you please.” Wolfe was curt. “To the point.”
“I’ll get there, Falstaff. Let the lady talk.” She took a sip. “Good coffee. The ground floor front is the parlor. Nobody goes in there much since my mother died years ago, but once a week I go in and look around, and when I went in yesterday afternoon a mouse ran out from under the piano and went in back of the bookshelves. Do you believe a mouse could run up a woman’s leg?”
“No.” Wolfe was emphatic.
“Neither do I. I got my umbrella from the hall and poked behind the shelves, but he didn’t come out. There’s no back to the shelves, so if I took the books out I’d have him. The bottom shelf has a History of the Thirteen Colonies in ten volumes and a set of Macaulay with the backs coming off. I took them all out, but the mouse wasn’t there. He must have moved while I was getting the umbrella. But in back of the books was a little package I had never seen before, and I opened it, and that’s what I’ve got. If I took it to the cops, goodbye. We can split the reward three ways, you and me and Buster here.”
“What’s in it?”
Her head turned. “Open it, Buster.”
I took it from my pocket, sat on a chair, untied the string, and unwrapped the paper. It was a stack of new twenty-dollar bills. I flipped through it at a corner and then at another corner. All twenties.
“Imagine handing that to the cops,” Hattie said. “Of course he knew I had it and he tried to kill me.”
Wolfe grunted. “How much, Archie?”
“About two inches thick. Two hundred and fifty to the inch. Ten thousand dollars, more or less.”
“Madam. You say he tried to kill you. Who?”
“I don’t know which one.” She put her cup down and picked up the pot to pour. “It could be one of the girls, but I’d rather not. If he hadn’t tried to kill me I would just as soon—”
The doorbell rang. After putting the lettuce and paper and string on the chair I went to the hall and took a look. It was a medium-sized round-shouldered stranger in a dark gray overcoat and a snap brim nearly down to his ears. Before opening the door I shut the one to the front room.
“Yes, sir?”
He took a leather fold from a pocket, flipped it open, and offered it. I took it. Treasury Department of the United States. Secret Service Division. Albert Leach. In the picture he had no hat on, but it was probably him. I handed it back.
“My name is Albert Leach,” he said.
“Check,” I said.
“I’d like to speak with Mr. Wolfe and Mr. Goodwin.”
“Mr. Wolf isn’t available. I’m Goodwin.”
“May I come in?”
It was a little ticklish. Of course I had smelled a rat the second I saw his credentials. The walls and doors on that floor were all soundproofed, but with Wolfe and Hattie in there together there was no telling, and I didn’t want him inside. But it had started to snow and the s
toop had no roof, and I certainly wanted to know what was on his mind.
I gave him room and he stepped in. “I’m sorry,” I said, “but Mr. Wolfe is busy and I’m helping him with something, so if you’ll tell me—”
“Certainly.” He had removed his hat. His hair was going, but it would be a couple of years before he could be called bald. “I want to ask about a woman named Baxter. Tamiris Baxter or Tammy Baxter. Is she here?”
“No. Around twenty-five? Five feet four, light brown hair, hazel eyes, hundred and twenty pounds, fur coat and fuzzy turban?”
He nodded. “That fits her.”
“She was here this morning. She came at twenty minutes past ten, uninvited and unexpected, and left at ten thirty.”
“Has she been back?”
“No.”
“Has she phoned?”
“No.”
“Another woman named Annis, Hattie Annis. Has she been here?”
I cocked my head. “You know, Mr. Leach, I don’t mind being polite, but what the hell. Mr. Wolfe is a licensed private detective and so am I, and we don’t answer miscellaneous questions just to pass the time. I’ve heard of Hattie Annis because Miss Baxter asked if she had been here, and I told her no. She asked me to phone her if she came, but I probably won’t. What if this Hattie Annis comes and hires Mr. Wolfe to do a job? She might not want anyone to know she had been here. So skip it.”
“I’m an officer of the law, Goodwin. I’m an agent of the United States government.”
“So you are. And?”
“I want to know if Hattie Annis has been here today.”
“Ask her. Miss Baxter gave me the phone number. Do you want it?”
“I have it.” He put his hat on. “I know your reputation, Goodwin, and Wolfe’s. You may get away with fancy tricks with the New York Police Department, but I advise you not to try any with the Secret Service.” He turned and went, leaving the door open.
I shut the door and then went to the office. I got the best magnifying glass from a drawer of Wolfe’s desk and a new twenty-dollar bill from the safe, and proceeded to the front room. Wolfe was still standing, scowling down at her, and she was talking. She broke off as I entered and turned to me. “You’re just in time, Buster. He’s trying to tell me there may be no reward, and I never heard of—what are you doing?”
