Death Times Three SSC (4 page)

"Miss Duncan, Mr. Wolfe," I said, and sat down.

"She wants to ask you something."

Wolfe, not even glancing at her, glared at me. "Confound you!" he muttered. "I'm engaged. I'm busy." He transferred it to the visitor: "Miss Duncan, you are the victim of my assistant's crack-brained impudence. So am I. I see people only by appointment." She smiled at him. "I'm sorry, but now that I'm here it won't take long--"

"No." His eyes came back to me. "Archie, when you have shown Miss Duncan out, come back here." He was obviously completely out of control. As for that, I was somewhat edgy myself, after the three days I had just gone through, and it looked to me as if a little cooling off might be advisable before any further interchange of sentiments. So I arose and told him firmly, "I'll run along down to the laboratory. Maybe I can give Miss Duncan a lift." I picked up the jar. "Do you want me to wait--?"

"Where did you get that?" Amy Duncan said.

I looked at her in astonishment. "Get it? This jar?"

"Yes. Where did you get it?"

"Bought it. Sixty-five cents."

"And you're taking it to a laboratory? Why? Does it taste funny? Oh, I'll bet it does! Bitter?"

I gawked at her in amazement. Wolfe, upright, his eyes narrowed at her, snapped, "Why do you ask that?"

"Because," she said, "I recognized the label. And taking it to a laboratory--that's what I came to see you about! Isn't that odd? A jar of it right here--"

On any other man Wolfe's expression would have indicated a state of speechlessness, but I have never yet seen him flabbergasted to a point where he was unable to articulate. "Do you mean to say," he demanded, "that you were actually aware of this infamous plot? That you knew of this unspeakable insult to my palate and my digestion?"

"Oh, no! But I know it has quinine in it."

"Quinine!" he roared.

She nodded. "I suppose so." She stretched a hand toward me. "May I look at it?" I handed her the jar. She removed the lid, took a tiny dab of the contents on the tip of her little finger, licked it off with her tongue, and waited for the effect. It didn't take long. "Br-r-uh!" she said, and swallowed twice. "It sure is bitter. That's it, all right." She put the jar on the desk. "How very odd--"

"Not odd," Wolfe said grimly. "Odd is not the word. You say it has quinine in it. You knew that as soon as you saw it. Who put it in?"

"I don't know. That's what I came to see you for, to ask you to find out. You see, it's my uncle--May I tell you about it?"

"You may."

She started to wriggle out of her coat, and I helped her with it and got it out of her way so she could settle back in her chair. She thanked me with a friendly little smile containing no trace of quinine, and I returned to my desk and got out a notebook and flipped to a blank page.

"Arthur Tingley," she said, "is my uncle. My mother's brother. He owns Tingley's Tidbits. And he's such a pigheaded--" She flushed. "Well, he is pigheaded. He actually suspects me of having something to do with that quinine, just because--for no reason at all!

"Are you saying," Wolfe demanded incredulously, "that the scoundrel, knowing that his confounded tidbits contain quinine, continues to distribute them?"

"No," she shook her head, "he's not a scoundrel. That's not it. It was only a few weeks ago that they learned about the quinine. Complaints began to come in, and thousands of Jars were returned from all over the country. He had them analyzed, and lots of them contained quinine. Of course, it was only a small proportion of the whole output--it's a pretty big business. He tried to investigate it, and Miss Yates--she's in charge of production--took all possible precautions, but it's happened again in recent shipments."

"Where's the factory?"

"Not far from here. On West Twenty-sixth Street near the river."

"Do you work there?"

"No, I did once, when I first came to New York, but I--I quit."

"Do you know what the investigation has disclosed?"

"Nothing. Not really. My uncle suspects--I guess he suspects everybody, even his son Philip, his adopted son. And me! It's simply ridiculous! But chiefly he suspects a man--a vice-president of P. & B., the Provisions & Beverages Corporation. Tingley's Tidbits is an old-established business--my great-grandfather founded it seventy years ago--and P. & B. has been trying to buy it, but my uncle wouldn't sell. He thinks they bribed someone in the factory to put in the quinine to scare him into letting go. He thinks that Mr. --the vice-president I spoke of--did it."

"Mr.--?"

"Mr. Cliff. Leonard Cliff."

I glanced up from my notebook on account of a slight change in the key of her voice.

Wolfe inquired, "Do you know Mr. Cliff?"

"Oh, yes." She shifted in her chair. "That is, I--I'm his secretary."

"Indeed." Wolfe's eyes went shut and then opened again halfway. "When you left your uncle's employ you came to terms with the enemy?"

She flared up. "Of course not!" she said indignantly. "You sound like my uncle! I had to have a job, didn't I? I was born and brought up in Nebraska. Three years ago my mother died, and I came to New York and started to work in my uncle's office. I stuck it out for two years, but it got--unpleasant, and either I quit or he fired me, it would be hard to say which. I got a job as a stenographer with P. & B., and six weeks ago I was promoted and I'm now Mr. Cliff's secretary. If you want to know why it got so unpleasant in my uncle's office "

"I don't. Unless it has a bearing on this quinine business."

"It hasn't. None whatever."

"But you are sufficiently concerned about the quinine to come to me about it. Why?"

"Because my uncle is such a--" She stopped, biting her lip. "You don't know him. He writes to my father, things about me that aren't so, and my father writes and threatens to come to New York--it's such a mess! I certainly didn't put quinine in his darned Tidbits! I suppose I'm prejudiced, but I don't believe any investigating he does will ever get anywhere, and the only way to stop it is for someone to investigate who knows how." She flashed a smile at him. "Which brings me to the embarrassing part of it. I haven't got much money--"

"You have something better," Wolfe grunted.

"Better?"

"Yes. Luck. The thing you want to know is the thing I had determined to find out before I knew you existed. I had already told Mr. Goodwin that the blackguard who poisoned that pate is going to regret it." He grimaced. "I can still taste it. Can you go now with Mr. Goodwin to your uncle's factory and introduce him?"

"I--" She glanced at her watch and hesitated. "I'll be awfully late getting back to the office. I only asked for an hour--"

"Very well. Archie, show Miss Duncan out and return for instructions."
...

It was barely three o'clock when I reached the base of operations, and the jar in my pocket was only half full, for I had first gone downtown to the laboratory and left a sample for analysis.

The three-story brick building on West 26th Street was old and grimy-looking, with a cobbled driveway for trucks tunneled through its middle. Next to the driveway were three stone steps leading up to a door with an inscription in cracked and faded paint:

TINGLEY'S TIDBITS OFFICE

As I parked the roadster and got out, I cocked an admiring eye at a Crosby town car, battleship gray, with license GJ88, standing at the curb. "Comes the revolution," I thought, "I'll take that first." I had my foot on the first stone step leading up to the office when the door opened and a man emerged. I had the way blocked. At a glance, it was hard to imagine anyone calling him Uncle Arthur, with his hard, clamped jaw and his thin, hard mouth, but, not wanting to miss my quarry, I held the path and addressed him: "Mr. Arthur Tingley?"

"No," he said in a totalitarian tone, shooting a haughty glance at me as he brushed by, with cold, keen eyes of the same battleship gray as his car. I remembered, just in time, that I had in my pocket a piece of yellow chalk which I had been marking orchid pots with that morning. Circling around him, I beat him to the car door which the liveried chauffeur was holding open and with two swift swipes chalked a big X on the elegant enamel.

"Don't monkey with that," I said sternly, and, before either of them could produce words or actions, beat it up the stone steps and entered the building.

It sure was a ramshackle joint. From a dingy hall a dilapidated stair went up. I mounted to the floor above, heard noises, including machinery humming, off somewhere, and through a rickety door penetrated a partition and was in an anteroom. From behind a grilled window somebody's grandpa peered out at me, and by shouting I managed to convey to him that I wanted to see Mr. Arthur Tingley. After a wait I was told that Mr. Tingley was busy, and would be indefinitely. On a leaf of my notebook I wrote, "Quinine urgent," and sent it in. That did it. After another wait a cross-eyed young man came and guided me through a labyrinth of partitions and down a hall into a room.

Seated at an old, battered roll-top desk was a man talking into a phone, and in a chair facing him was a woman older than him with the physique and facial equipment of a top sergeant. Since the phone conversation was none of my business, I stood and listened to it, and gathered that someone named Philip had better put in an appearance by five o'clock or else. Meanwhile I surveyed the room, which had apparently been thrown in by the Indians when they sold the island. By the door, partly concealed by a screen, was an old, veteran marble-topped washstand. A massive, old-fashioned safe was against the wall across from Tingley's desk. Wooden cupboards, and shelves loaded down with the accumulation of centuries, occupied most of the remaining wall space.

"Who the hell are you?"

I whirled and advanced. "A man by the name of Goodwin. Archie. The question is, do you want the Gazette to run a feature article about quinine in Tidbits, or do you want to discuss it first?"

His mouth fell open. "The Gazette?"

"Right. Circulation over a million."

"Good God!" he said in a hollow and helpless tone. The woman glared at me.

I was stirred by compassion. He may have merited his niece's opinion of him, expressed and implied, but he was certainly a pathetic object at that moment.

I sat down. "Be of good cheer," I said encouragingly. "The Gazette hasn't got it yet. That's merely one of the possibilities I offer in case you start shoving. I represent Nero Wolfe."

"Nero Wolfe, the detective?"

"Yes. He started to eat--"

The woman snorted. "I've been expecting this. Didn't I warn you, Arthur? Blackmail." She squared her jaw at me. "Who are you working for? P. & B.? Consolidated Cereals?"

"Neither one. Are you Miss Yates?"

"I am. And you can take--"

"Pardon me." I grinned at her. "Pleased to meet you. I'm working for Nero Wolfe. He took a mouthful of Liver Pate Number Three, with painful consequences. He's very fussy about his food. He wants to speak to the person who put in the quinine."

"So do I," Tingley said grimly.

"You don't know. Do you?"

"No."

"But you'd like to know?"

"You're damn' right I would."

"Okay. I come bearing gifts. If you hired Wolfe for this job, granting he'd take it, it would cost you a fortune. But he's vindictive. He wishes to do things to this quinine jobber. I was sent here to look around and ask questions."

Tingley wearily shook his head. He looked at Miss Yates. She looked at him. "Do you believe him?" Tingley asked her.

"No," she declared curtly. "Is it likely?"

Of course not," I cut her off. "Nothing about Nero Wolfe is likely, which is why I tolerate him. It's not likely, but that's how it is. You folks are comical. You're having the services of the best detective in the country offered to you gratis, and listen to you. I'm telling you, Wolfe's going to get this quinine peddler. With your cooperation, fine. Without it, we'll have to start by opening things up with a little publicity, which is why I mentioned the Gazette."

Tingley groaned. Miss Yates's shrewd eyes met mine. "What questions do you want to ask?"

"All I can think of. Preferably starting with you two."

"I'm busy. I ought to be out in the factory right now. Did you say you had an appointment, Arthur?"

"Yes." Tingley shoved back his chair and got up. "I have--I have to go somewhere." He got his hat from a hook on the wall beside his desk, and his coat from another one. "I'll be back by four-thirty." He struggled into his coat and confronted me. His hat was on crooked. "If Miss Yates wants to talk to you, she can tell you as much as I could. I'm about half out of my senses. If this is an infernal trick of that P. & B. outfit--" He darted to his desk, turned a key in a bottom drawer, pocketed the key, and made for the door. On the threshold he turned: "You handle it, Gwen."

So her name was Gwendolyn, or maybe Guinevere. It certainly must have been given to her when she was quite young--say sixty years ago. She was imperturbably and efficiently collecting an assortment of papers Tingley had left scattered on his desk and anchoring them under a cylindrical chunk of metal with a figure 2 on it, a weight from an old-fashioned balance scale. She straightened and met my gaze: