Death Times Three SSC (25 page)

I glanced at my watch. 9:20. "When did they come?" "About an hour ago. I was taking in the salad and cheese."

"When and how did you leave here?" Leach demanded.

So he had had a man out front. "It could be like this," I told him. "I came in and saw you at the files and didn't recognize you, and naturally I went for you. My best is a kidney punch. You'd be back to normal in a few days. Mr. Brenner would be glad to corroborate me. Has he done the safe, Fritz?"

"Yes. Mr. Wolfe was here."

"Too bad I missed it. I'll be right back."

I went outside first to pay the hackie and dismiss him. Returning, I glanced in at the office and then mounted three flights to the plant rooms. The lights were all on. It was a joke. To do a thorough job on those thousands of pots and the beds of coke, looking for something as small as a wad of bills, would have taken six men six days. The two T-men were in the potting room, going through a bale of osmundine. Theodore was perched on a stool, grinning at them.

"They looking for thrips?" he asked me.

"No," I told him. "The Hope diamond. If they leave a mess keep track of your time cleaning it up. We'll want to send a bill. Keep an eye on them."

He said he would, and I left. One flight down I found no one in my room, and no visible sign of disturbance, and proceeded to the south room, which was a spare. One was there, lifting the mattress to put it back on the bed.

"That's wrong side up," I said.

"It's the way it was," he said.

"I know, but we turn it every Monday, and this is Monday. Turn it over, please."

He straightened to look at me. "No wonder. You're Archie Goodwin."

"Yeah. Have you done the other room on this floor? My room?"

"I have."

"Did you find the secret drawer?"

He bent to straighten the mattress, turning his back. Apparently he didn't care to chat, so I left, descended another flight, and turned right. The door at the end was open, and I crossed the sill. Wolfe was in the big chair by a window, his eyes on a man who was at the shelves on the far wall, removing books to look in back of them. I approached.

"I've made the rounds," I said. "Quite a crew. Leach is going through the files. The one on my floor will probably want to help me pack my suitcase. I'll be at the Churchill, but I don't know the room number yet."

He growled, a low growl in his throat. "Bah," he said.

"Yes, sir. I agree."

"How much longer will they be?"

"I couldn't say. Ten minutes or an hour or all night. I can ask Leach."

"No. Ask him nothing and tell him nothing. Your post is in the hall until they go. There are five of them." "Yeah, I counted."

"Let me know when they have left. I have phoned Mr. Parker. He will learn in the morning their grounds for getting the search warrant. As they leave ask each of them if he has taken anything, in Fritz's presence." He turned his head to glare at the man by the shelves, who had dropped a book.

I would have preferred to roam around, keeping in touch with the various sectors of the operation, making comments as they occurred to me, but in the circumstances it seemed best to humor him, so I went down to the office and used the phone to cancel the dancing date. Then, telling Fritz to stay put and disregarding questions from Leach, not even looking at him, I stepped to the hall for patrol duty.

It was 10:28 when they left--that is, when they were actually out and I had closed the door. The last quarter of an hour had been spent in a conference in the office of the whole quintet and in Leach trying to think of a question I would reply to. Having found that I wouldn't even tell him if it was still snowing, having gone up to Wolfe's room and found the door locked, and having got no response when he knocked, he came back down, collected his gang from the office, and herded them out. I went and buzzed Wolfe's room on the house phone to notify him, and then to the kitchen for a glass of milk. When I returned to the office Wolfe was there, telling Fritz to bring beer. Ordinarily ten o'clock is his beer deadline, but this was an emergency.

He sat and sent his eyes around, to the book shelves, the globe, the safe, the files, and me. "Is there any chance," he asked, "that we can be heard?"

"Very slim if any." I stood with the milk. "Fritz was here all the time. Not unless they invented something new last week."

"You did your errand?"

"Yes. Okay."

"Sit down." Fritz came with the beer, and Wolfe opened the bottle and poured. He likes plenty of foam. "I want a complete report from the beginning. From the time that woman appeared this morning."

"Why? What's the use? It's my problem."

"Not anymore. Now it's mine. My house has been invaded, my privacy has been outraged, and my belongings have been pawed. Sit down."

I moved to get one of the yellow chairs. He snapped, "Don't be flippant! Sit at your desk!" "It's not mine," I objected.

"Pfui. Confound it, sit down!"

I did so.

When Wolfe says he wants a complete report he means it--all the words, all the actions, and the music if any. At one time it had been a strain, but after all the years of practice I could rattle it off with no trouble at all. I

left nothing out, not even the detail that Tammy Baxter didn't arrange her legs like an actress when she sat. When I got to the end I said, "Before you start with questions I have one. I'm just curious. Why did you fire me? I have reported in full. What did I do or say that was out of line? Why fire me?"

"I didn't."

I stared. "What?"

"I merely said, 'If you go, stay.' That was ambiguous. You are never ambiguous when you quit, and neither am I when I discharge you. You were merely headstrong, as usual." He wiggled a finger to flip it away. "That has no pertinence to the problem. I suppose you have made assumptions?"

"Plenty. That Hattie Annis found the counterfeit money in a room in her house and therefore knew who it belonged to. That the Secret Service knew or suspected that someone in that house was passing counterfeits, but they didn't know who, and they were holding off because what they want is the guy that makes it. That the roomer knew or suspected that Hattie Annis had taken the money, and followed her here, and killed her. He might or might not have known that she didn't have it, that she had given me the package: that doesn't matter. With her dead it couldn't be proved that he had had it."

"Don't expound. I'm awake. Just your assumptions."

"This one has an alternative. Either that it couldn't be Tammy Baxter, since Hattie Annis told her she was coming here, or that it is Tammy Baxter and she followed Hattie Annis here and then had the nerve to wait until I came back and feed me a line, to find out how much I had been told. The second has the edge. Since you're awake you caught what she said: 'She said she was going to take something--she was going to see Nero Wolfe about something.' If she was straight, why the dodge?"

"Of course. What else?"

"That a T-man tailed Hattie Annis here and saw her hand me the package. That one limps, because why didn't he stay on her, and if he stayed on her why didn't he see the driver of the car that killed her? Also if both a T-man and the roomer tailed her here why didn't they bump? I haven't bought that one, but I have this: that the Secret Service has passed on something to the cops. I don't know what or how much, but something. Purley Stebbins wouldn't go up to Forty-seventh Street in a snowstorm to tackle that bunch about a hit-and-run unless he had reason to think one of them was involved. Excuse me for expounding."

"Anything else?"

"That'll do for now."

"When it was your problem you were going to deal with it. How?"

"I was going to take a girl to the Flamingo and dance a couple of hours. I always find that stimulating. I hadn't decided how. Now that it's your problem I think you'll find that you need to be stimulated too. There is absolutely no--"

The doorbell rang. I got up, went to the hall, took a look through the one-way glass panel, saw a familiar red round face and a pair of broad shoulders, and turned to tell Wolfe, "Inspector Cramer."

Only then did I realize how hard the raid of the T-men had hit him, when he did something he had never done before. He arose and came to the hall and on to the front door, made sure the chain bolt was on, opened the door the two inches the chain would allow, and growled at the crack, "Yes?"

"Yes," Cramer growled back. "Open up."

"It's bedtime. What do you want?"

"I want in!"

"Have you a warrant?"

"Nuts. I don't need a warrant to ask you a few questions--and Goodwin."

"At this hour of the night you do. We will be available at eleven in the morning if we are not engaged." "I had nothing to do with that warrant!"

What followed was as unprecedented as Wolfe's answering the doorbell. I had seen and heard those two tangle many times, but it had never gone beyond words and looks and gestures. There and then it was brawn and bulk. Wolfe tried to shut the door and found it was obstructed. He flattened his palms on it and pushed. Nothing doing. I have never asked Cramer whether he had his shoulder or his foot against it, or his toe in the crack. If the latter, he must have regretted it. Wolfe turned and put his back against the frame, set his heels, and heaved, and the door slammed shut.

"Fine," I said. "It's a three-way jostle now--the Secret Service, the New York Police Department, and us. Fine."

He went to the elevator, opened the door, and turned. "Turn off the doorbell and the telephone. Don't leave the house in the morning. Tell Fritz."

"Yes, sir."

"Can you make a package like the one she gave you? In appearance?"

"Approximately. Near enough for the naked eye." "Do so in the morning. Goodnight."

"What do I put in it?"

"Anything that will serve. Paper."

"What do I do with it?"

"I don't know. We'll see in the morning. Bring it to my room at half past eight."

He entered the elevator, which groaned as usual at the load, and pulled the door to. I went to the office to try the safe door, take a look at the files, and flip the switches, then to the kitchen to tell Fritz we were breaking off relations with the world, and then up to my room for some privacy.

Fritz takes Wolfe's breakfast up to his room on a tray 17 x 26, and I eat mine in the kitchen. Tuesday morning, as I disposed of orange juice, griddle cakes, sausage, eggs poached with a puree of anchovy paste and sherry, and coffee, with the morning paper on the rack, the counterfeit package of counterfeits was at my elbow. Fritz being a paper and string hoarder had made it simple, and for the contents all I had needed was typewriter paper and the office paper cutter. It wasn't identical, but it was close to it, and the ordinary white string was exactly the same.

I had had to hunt for Hattie Annis in the Times. They had given her a measly three inches on page 17, and there was no hint that it was anything but an everyday hit-and-run. It said that the driver had been so muffled up that no good description of him or her had been obtained.

At 8:28 I took the last swallow of coffee, picked up the package, arose, told Fritz the eggs had been even better than usual and went up to Wolfe's room. He was at the table by a window, fully dressed, dipping honey from a jar onto a muffin. I displayed the package and he frowned at it.

"Nine thousand dollars?" he demanded.

"Right. The dimensions are perfect. I have a suggestion. Make another one and mail one to Leach and one to Cramer."

"I have a better one."

He described it. Whether it was better than mine would depend on how it worked out, but at least it was worth trying. He is as good at giving instructions as I am at reporting, and I rarely have to ask any questions, but that time there was one. If a situation developed where authority was needed, which should I call, Cramer or Leach? He wouldn't say. He wouldn't concede that any situation could be desperate enough to justify calling either of them, which left it up to me. I went down and got my coat and hat, stuck the package in my coat pocket, and left the house the back way. Either of the enemy forces might have a sentry out front, or even both, and I didn't want to bother with shaking a tail. The snow had stopped during the night and the sun was edging over the top of the buildings across 34th Street. I flagged a taxi and told the driver 47th and Eighth Avenue.

I rather doubted if anyone would be up and around so early at the castle of culture, but evidently recent events had caused some changes in routine. Five seconds after I pushed the button in the vestibule there were steps inside. The door opened and Paul Hannah was there. He blinked. "My eye," he said. "Rubbing against culture at this hour?"

"I'm a fanatic," I told him. I stepped in. "I got interrupted yesterday by that sergeant. I know it's early, but there's something I want to clear up."

A voice came down from above, Tammy Baxter's: "Who is it, Paul?"

I called up, "Archie Goodwin! Good morning! I know I'm a nuisance, but it can't be helped. Is there any chance of having a conference?"