Rex stout nero wolfe 0.., p.26
Rex Stout - Nero Wolfe 06 - Some Buried Caesar, page 26
part #6 of Nero Wolfe Series
“Shall I ask him?”
“Yes. No. Very well.”
I went and let him in. From the way he grunted a greeting, if it could be called a greeting, and from the expression on his face, he had not come to give Wolfe a medal. Cramer’s big red face and burly figure never inspire a feeling of good-fellowship, but he had his ups and downs, and that morning he was not up. He preceded me to the office, gave Wolfe the twin of the greeting he had given me, lowered himself into the red leather chair, and aimed a cold stare at Wolfe. Wolfe returned it.
“Why did you put that ad in the paper?” Cramer demanded.
Wolfe turned away from him and fingered in the little stack of papers on his desk that had just been removed from envelopes. “Archie,” he said, “this letter from Jordan is farcical. He knows quite well that I do not use Brassavolas in tri-generic crosses. He doesn’t deserve an answer, but he’ll get one. Your notebook. ‘Dear Mr. Jordan. I am aware that you have had ill success with—’”
“Save it,” Cramer rasped. “Okay. Putting an ad in the paper is not a felony, but I asked a civil question.”
“No,” Wolfe said with finality. “Civil?”
“Then put it your way. You know what I want to know. How do you want me to ask it?”
“I would first have to be told why you want to know.”
“Because I think you’re covering something or somebody that’s connected with a homicide. Which has been known to happen. From what you told Stebbins yesterday, you have no interest in the killing of that boy, and you have no client. Then you wouldn’t spend a bent nickel on it, not you, and you certainly wouldn’t start an inquiry that might make you use up energy. I might have asked you flat, who’s your client, but no, I stick to the simple fact why did you run that ad. If that’s not civil, civilize it and then tell me.”
Wolfe took in a long-drawn sigh and let it out. “Archie. Tell him, please.”
I obliged. It didn’t take long, since he already had Purley’s report, and I had merely to explain how we had decided to disburse Pete’s money, to which I had added $1.85 of my own. Meanwhile Cramer’s hard gray eyes were leveled at me. I had often had to meet those eyes and stall or cover or dodge, so they didn’t bother me any when I was merely handing it over straight.
When he had asked a couple of questions and had been answered, he moved the eyes to Wolfe and inquired abruptly, “Have you ever seen or heard of a man named Matthew Birch?”
“Yes,” Wolfe said shortly.
“Oh. You have.” A gleam showed in the gray eyes for a fraction of a second. If I hadn’t known them so well I wouldn’t have caught it. “I intend to make this civil. Would you mind telling me when and where?”
“No. In the Gazette day before yesterday, Wednesday. As you know, I never leave this house on business, and leave it as seldom as may be for anything whatever, and I depend on newspapers and the radio to keep me informed of the concerns and activities of my fellow beings. As reported, the body of a man named Matthew Birch was found late Tuesday night—or Wednesday, rather, around three A.M.—in a cobbled alley alongside a South Street pier. It was thought that a car had run over him.”
“Yeah. I’ll try to frame this right. Except for newspaper or radio items connected with his death, had or have you ever seen or heard of him?”
“Not under that name.”
“Damn it, under any name?”
“Not to my knowledge.”
“Have you any reason to suppose or suspect that the man found dead in that alley was someone you had ever seen or heard of in any connection whatever?”
“That’s more like it,” Wolfe said approvingly. “That should settle it. The answer is no. May I ask one? Have you any reason to suppose or suspect that the answer should be yes?”
Cramer didn’t reply. He tilted his head until his chin touched the knot of his tie, pursed his lips, regarded me for a long moment, and then went back to Wolfe. He spoke. “This is why I came. With the message the boy sent you by his mother, and the way the car jumped him from a standstill and then tore off, already it didn’t look like any accident, and now there are complications, and when I find complicated trouble and you even remotely involved I want to know exactly where and how you got on—and where you get off.”
“I asked about reasons, not about animus.”
“There’s no animus. Here’s the complication. The car that killed the boy was found yesterday morning, with that floater Connecticut plate still on it, parked up on One hundred and eighty-sixth Street. Laboratory men worked on it all day. They cinched it that it killed the boy, but not only that, underneath it, caught tight where an axle joins a rod, they found a piece of cloth the size of a man’s hand. That piece of cloth was the flap torn from the jacket which was on the body of Matthew Birch when it was found. The laboratory is looking for further evidence that it was that car that killed Birch, but I’m no hog and I don’t need it. Do you?”
Wolfe was patient. “For a working hypothesis, if I were working on it, no.”
“That’s the point. You are working on it. You put that ad in.”
Wolfe’s head wagged slowly from side to side to punctuate his civilized forbearance. “I’ll stipulate,” he conceded, “that I am capable of flummery, that I have on occasion gulled and hoaxed you, but you know I eschew the crudeness of an explicit lie. I tell you that the facts we have given you in this matter are guileless and complete, that I have no client connected with it in any way, and that I am not engaged in it and do not intend to be. I certainly agree—”
The phone ringing stopped him. I got it at my desk. “Nero Wolfe’s office, Archie Goodwin speaking.”
“May I speak to Mr. Wolfe, please?” The voice was low, nervous, and feminine.
“I’ll see if he’s available. Your name?”
“He wouldn’t know my name. I want to see him—it’s about his advertisement in the Times this morning. I want to make an appointment with him.”
I kept it casual. “I handle his appointments. May I have your name, please?”
“I’d rather—when I come. Could I come at twelve o’clock?”
“Hold the wire a minute.” I consulted my desk calendar, turning to a page for next week. “Yes, that’ll be all right if you’re punctual. You have the address?”
She said she did. I hung up and turned to report to Wolfe. “A character who probably wants to look at the orchids. I’ll handle it as usual.”
He resumed to Cramer. “I certainly agree that the evidence that the boy and Matthew Birch were killed by the same car is a noteworthy complication, but actually that should make it simpler for you. Even though the license plate is useless, surely you can trace the car itself.”
Cramer’s expression had reverted to the cold stare he had started with. “I have never had any notion,” he stated, “that you are a crude liar. I have never seen you crude.” He arose. In Wolfe’s presence he always made a point of getting upright from a chair with the leverage of his leg muscles only, because Wolfe used hands and arms. “No,” he said, “not crude,” and turned and marched out.
I went to the hall to see the door close behind him and then returned to the office and my desk.
“The letter to Mr. Jordan,” Wolfe instructed me.
“Yes, sir.” I got my notebook. “First, though, I still say it was one in a million, but the one turned up this time. That was a woman on the phone about the ad. No name, and I didn’t want to press her with company present. She made an appointment for noon today.”
“With whom?”
“You.”
His lips tightened. He released them. “Archie. This is insufferable.”
“I know damn well it is. But considering that Cramer wasn’t being civilized, I thought it might be satisfactory to have a little chat with her before phoning him to come and get her.” I glanced up at the wall clock. “She’ll be here in twenty minutes—if she comes.”
He grunted. “‘Dear Mr. Jordan…”’
Chapter 4
She came. She was much more ornamental in the red leather chair than Inspector Cramer, or, for that matter, most of the thousands of tenants I had seen in it, but she sure was nervous. At the door, after I opened it and invited her in, I thought she was going to turn and scoot, and so did she, but she finally made her legs take her over the sill and let me conduct her to the office.
The scratch on her left cheek, on a slant down toward the corner of her mouth, was faint but noticeable on her smooth fair skin, and it was no wonder that Pete, looking straight at her face, had taken in the spider earrings. I agreed with him that they were gold, and they were fully as noticeable as the scratch. In spite of the scratch and the earrings and the jerky nervousness, on her the red leather chair looked good. She was about my age, which was not ideal, but I have nothing against maturity if it isn’t overdone.
When Wolfe asked her, not too grumpily, what he could do for her, she opened her bag and got out two pieces of paper. The bag was of soft green suede, the same as the jacket she wore over a dark green woolen dress, and also the cocky little pancake tilted to one side of her head. It was an ensemble if I ever saw one.
“This,” she said, “is just a clipping of your advertisement.” She returned it to the bag. “This is a check made out to you for five hundred dollars.”
“May I see it, please?”
“I don’t—not yet. It has my name on it.”
“So I would guess.”
“I want to ask you—some things before I give you my name.”
“What things?”
“Well, I—about the boy. The boy I asked to get a cop.” Her voice wouldn’t have been bad at all, in fact I might have liked it, if it hadn’t been so jumpy. She was getting more nervous instead of less. “I want to see him. Will you arrange for me to see him? Or it would be—just give me his name and address. I think perhaps that would be enough for the five hundred dollars—I know you charge high. Or I might want—but first tell me that.”
Wolfe invariably kept his eyes, when they were open, directly at the person he was talking to, but it had struck me that he was giving this visitor a specially keen inspection. He turned to me. “Archie. Please look closely at the scratch on her cheek.”
I got up to obey. She had alternatives: sit and let me look, cover her face with her hands, or get up and go; but before she had time to choose I was there, bending over, with my eyes only a foot from her face.
She started to say something, then checked it as I straightened up and told Wolfe, “Made with something with a fine sharp point. It could have been a needle, but more likely a small scissors point.”
“When?”
“The best guess is today, but it could have been yesterday I suppose. Not possibly three days ago.” I stayed beside her.
“This is impudent!” she blurted. She left the chair. “I’m glad I didn’t tell you my name!” She couldn’t sweep out without sweeping through me.
“Nonsense.” Wolfe was curt. “You couldn’t possibly have imposed on me, even without the evidence of the scratch, unless you had been superlatively coached. Describe the boy. Describe the other occupants of the car. What time did it happen? What did the boy say? Exactly what did he do? And so on. As for your name, that is no longer in your discretion. Mr. Goodwin takes your bag, by force if necessary, and examines its contents. If you complain, we are two to one. Sit down, madam.”
“This is contemptible!”
“No. It’s our justifiable reaction to your attempt to humbug us. You are not under duress, but if you go you leave your name behind. Sit down and we’ll discuss it, but first the name.”
She may have been over-optimistic to think she could breeze into Nero Wolfe’s office and fool him, but she wasn’t a fool. She stood surveying the situation, all signs of nervousness gone, came to a conclusion, opened her bag, and got out an object which she displayed to Wolfe. “My driving license.”
He took it and gave it a look and handed it back to her, and she seated herself. “I’m Laura Fromm,” she said, “Mrs. Damon Fromm. I am a widow. My New York residence is at Seven-forty-three East Sixty-eighth Street. Tuesday, driving a car on Thirty-fifth Street, I told a boy to get a cop. I gathered from your advertisement that you can direct me to the boy, and I will pay you for it.”
“So you don’t admit this is an imposture.”
“Certainly not.”
“What time of day was it?”
“That’s not important.”
“What was the boy doing when you spoke to him?”
“Neither is that.”
“How far away was the boy when you spoke to him, and how loudly did you shout?”
She shook her head. “I’m not going to answer any questions about it. Why should I?”
“But you maintain that you were driving the car and told the boy to get a cop?”
“Yes.”
“Then you’re in a pickle. The police want to question you about a murder. On Wednesday a car ran over the boy and killed him. Intentionally.”
She gawked. “What?”
“It was the same car. The one you were driving Tuesday when the boy spoke to you.”
She opened her mouth and closed it. Then she got words out. “I don’t believe it.”
“You will. The police will explain to you how they know it was the same car. There’s no question about it, Mrs. Fromm.”
“I mean the whole thing—you’re making it up. This is—worse than contemptible.”
Wolfe’s head moved. “Archie, get yesterday’s Times.”
I went for it to the shelf where the papers are kept until they’re a week old. Opening it to page eight and folding it, I crossed and handed it to Laura Fromm. Her hand was shaking a little as she took it, and to steady it while she read she called on the other hand to help hold it.
She took plenty of time for the reading. When her eyes lifted, Wolfe said, “There is nothing there to indicate that Peter Drossos was the boy you had accosted on Tuesday, but you don’t need to take my word for that. The police will tell you about it.”
Her eyes darted back and forth, from Wolfe to me and back again, and then settled on me. “I want—could I have some gin?”
She had let the newspaper drop to the floor. I picked it up and asked, “Straight?”
“That will do. Or a Gibson?”
“Onion?”
“No. No, thank you. But double?”
I went to the kitchen for the ingredients and ice. As I stirred I was thinking that if she was hoping for any cooperation from Wolfe it was too bad she had asked for gin, since in his book all gin drinkers were barbarians. That was probably why, when I took the tray in and put it on the little table beside her chair, he was leaning back with his eyes closed. I poured and served. First she swigged it, then had a few sips, and then swigged again. Meanwhile she kept her eyes lowered, presumably to keep me from looking in through them to watch her mind work.
Finally she emptied the glass the second time, put it on the tray and spoke. “A man was driving the car when it struck the boy.”
Wolfe opened his eyes. “The tray, Archie?”
The smell of gin, especially with lunch only half an hour away, was of course repulsive. I took the vile object to the kitchen and returned.
“… but though that isn’t conclusive,” Wolfe was saying, “since in a man’s clothes you could pass for a man if you avoided scrutiny, I admit it is relevant. Anyhow, I am not assuming that you killed the boy. I tell you merely that by being drawn to me by that advertisement, and coming rigged in those earrings and that bogus scratch, you have put your foot in it, and if you stick to it that you were driving that car on Tuesday you will have fully qualified as a feeble-minded donkey.”
“I wasn’t.”
“That’s better. Where were you Tuesday afternoon from six-thirty to seven?”
“At a meeting of the Executive Committee of the Association for the Aid of Displaced Persons. It lasted until after seven. It was one of the causes my husband was interested in, and I am going on with it.”
“Where were you Wednesday afternoon from six-thirty to seven?”
“What has that—oh. The boy was—yes. That was day before yesterday.” She paused, not for long. “I was having cocktails at the Churchill with a friend.”
“The friend’s name, please?”
“This is ridiculous.”
“I know it is. Almost as ridiculous as that scratch on your cheek.”
“The friend’s name is Dennis Horan. A lawyer.”
Wolfe nodded. “Even so you are in for some disagreeable hours. I doubt if you have been willfully implicated in murder. I have had some experience watching faces, and I don’t think your shock on hearing of the boy’s death was feigned; but you’d better get your mind arranged. You’re going to get it. Not from me. I don’t ask why you tried this masquerade, because I’m not concerned, but the police will be insistent about it. I won’t attempt to hold you here for them; you may go. You will hear from them.”
Her eyes were brighter and her chin was higher. It doesn’t take gin long to get in a kick. “I don’t have to hear from them,” she said with assurance. “Why do I?”
“Because they’ll want to know why you came here.”
“I mean why do you have to tell them?”
“Because I withhold information pertinent to a crime only under dictation by my interest.”
“I haven’t committed any crime.”
“That’s what they’ll want you to establish, but that won’t satisfy their curiosity.”
She looked at me, and I returned it. I may not be a Nero Wolfe at reading faces, but I too have had some experience at it, and I swear she was sizing me up, trying to decide if there was any way of lining me up with her in case she told Wolfe to go sit on a tack. I made it easy for her by looking manly, staunch and virtuous, but not actually hostile. I saw it on her face when she gave me up. Leaving me as hopeless, she opened the green suede bag, took from it a leather fold and a pen, opened the fold on the little table, and bent over it to write. Having written, she tore a small blue rectangle of paper from the fold and left her chair to put it in front of Wolfe on his desk.
