Prisoner's Base (19 page)

I ran downstairs to the office, got a gun and dropped it in my pocket, fixed the phone to ring on Fritz’s and Wolfe’s extensions, returned to the hall and descended to the semi-basement, entered Fritz’s room, and gave him a shake. He let out a yelp.

“Out on an errand,” I told him. “I’ll be back when you see me.”

He warned me to be careful, as he usually does when I leave the house on business, but I didn’t hear it all because I was on my way, out through the area door and up four steps to the sidewalk. I headed east at a trot. At that time of night taxis on Tenth Avenue are none too frequent, and I made for Thirty-fourth Street and finally got one. Tenth Avenue was no good, with its staggered lights, so I had him go east to Park, and up Park. He did all right, as he should have with the finif I gave him in his pocket, and with that avenue as nearly open as it ever gets. When we turned into Eightieth Street, with the tires squeaking, it was 2:23, just twenty-six minutes since I heard her put the phone down. As we rolled to the curb in front of the address, I
had the door open and was on the sidewalk before the car stopped. I had told the driver to wait, and had shown him my license to clear the way for some hasty request if I had to make one.

There wasn’t a soul in sight. I went to the entrance door and tried it; it was locked. As I rattled it, peering in, a man in uniform appeared from around a corner, approached, touched the glass with his forehead, and looked out at me.

“What do you want?” he called.

“I want in!”

“For what?”

“To see Mrs. Jaffee. I’m expected.”

“At this time of night? Nuts. What’s your name?”

It was hopeless. This one had never seen me; he had not been on duty when I came Wednesday morning. He was obviously an underbrained dope. It would take minutes to explain, and he wouldn’t believe me. If I persuaded him to ring her on the house phone and there was no answer, he would probably say she was asleep. I took the gun from my pocket, let him see what it was, knocked a hole in the glass with it, reached through and opened the door, and entered. As I did so I heard the engine of the taxi roaring, and a glance over my shoulder showed it stalling off. That boy had fast reflexes.

I was pointing the gun at the dope, and he was standing with his arms straight up as far as he could reach. There wasn’t a chance in a million that he was accoutered, but I gave him a few quick pats to make sure. “Have you seen Mrs. Jaffee in the last half-hour? Or heard her? Talk fast. Have you?”

“No! She came—”

“Into the elevator. Step on it! Sixth floor.”

He obeyed. We started up. “You’re crazy,” he said. “That hackie will have a cop here in no time.”

I saved my breath. The cage stopped. “On out,” I told him, “and to Six B.” He hooked the door open and preceded me along the hall. At the door of 6B he put his thumb to the button.

“I’ll do that,” I said. “You get out your keys and open the door.”

“But I’m not supposed—”

That dope never knew how close he was to getting slammed down with a hunk of metal. I knew damned well I was too late, and it would have helped a little to clop eight or nine people, beginning with him. But as I gave the gun a jerk he went for his keys. For the record, I pressed a finger against the bell button and kept it there while he was unlocking the door. When he had it open I pushed him through ahead of me, but only two steps in he stopped, and I quit pushing.

She was lying off to the right, about halfway to the entrance to the living room, her body in a twisted position, one leg straight out and one bent. Her face was in full view from where we stood, and there was no question about being too late, as was natural in a case of throttling. She was not recognizable.

The dope made a movement, and I grabbed his arm and whirled him around.

“Christ Almighty,” he said, and it looked as if he were about to blubber.

“Take the elevator down,” I told him, “and stay there. The cops will want it.”

I shoved him out and closed the door and turned. There was no time for a job, but a glance was enough. She had followed instructions all right, but had never reached the outside door. Three paces from where she lay a closet door was standing open. He had been ambushed there, and, as she passed, had swung the door open and hit her with a bronze tiger, a bookend. It was
there on the floor. He had then finished up with a doubled cord from a Venetian blind, also there on the floor. Everything was right there.

I went to her and squatted and tried to push the tongue back in, but it was too swollen. That and the eyes were plenty, but I picked a few fibers from the rug and put them over her nostrils and counted ten slowly. No. I got up and went to the living room and crossed to the table where the phone was. Yes, she had followed instructions; she had not rung off.

I picked up the receiver and cradled it, waited ten seconds, picked it up again, got the dial tone, and dialed a number. After only three rounds Wolfe’s voice came. He was a sound sleeper, but it didn’t take a sledgehammer to wake him.

“Hello?” He was as indignant as I had been.

“Archie. Get this, because we may be interrupted. Sarah Jaffee phoned me. Her keys were missing from her bag, and the elevator man had let her in. I said I would go up to her and told her what to do meanwhile. I came, and I’m phoning from her apartment. She did what I told her to, but she’s here on the floor dead. Hit on the head and then strangled. The next time she’s in danger she should phone someone else. I don’t know when I’ll be home.”

“Archie.”

“Yes, sir.”

“I said it is vainglorious to reproach yourself for lack of omniscience. That is also true of omnipotence. Report in as you can.”

“Right. Happy dreams.”

I pressed the knob down and held it for a moment, let it up, and dialed WA 9-8241. There I got a break, and I never needed one more—Sergeant Purley Stebbins
was on duty. I will not claim that Purley loves me, but at least he will listen sometimes. I got him.

“Yeah, Goodwin?” he growled.

“I have information for you,” I told him, “but first I would appreciate an answer to one question. Have you got tails tonight on any of the suspects in the Eads case?”

“Who wants to know?”

“All right, skip it. Get this quick. There were ten people at our place tonight. The five from Softdown—Helmar, Brucker, Quest, Pitkin, and Miss Duday. Also Sarah Jaffee and her attorney, Parker. Also Eric Hagh—the ex-husband. He flew in today—”

“I know he did.”

“Hagh and his lawyer, Irby. Also Andy Fomos. They left a little after midnight. Sometime during the evening one of them took the keys to Sarah Jaffee’s apartment out of her bag. She didn’t miss them until she got home, and she phoned me, and I’m here now in her apartment. Whoever took her keys came and got in and waited for her, and at two minutes to two he conked her and strangled her, and she’s dead. She’s here on the floor. I’m telling it like this because it’s now just two-thirty-six, and thirty-eight minutes isn’t much time for getting out of this building and getting somewhere, and if you get a move on—”

“Is this straight, Goodwin?”

“Yes.”

“You’re in the Jaffee apartment now?”

“Yes.”

“By God, you stay there!”

“Drop that phone and get your hands up!”

It was a little confusing, with two city employees giving me commands at once, one on the phone and one in person but behind my back. Purley Stebbins had
hung up, so that was all right. I turned, lifting my hands plenty high enough to show that they were empty, because there is no telling how a random flatfoot will act just after discovery of a corpse. He may have delusions of grandeur.

Evidently he was alone. He advanced, with his gun poked out, and it was no wonder if his hand was not perfectly steady, for it was a ticklish situation for a solitary cop, knowing as he did that I was armed. Probably he also knew of Sarah Jaffee’s connection with Softdown and Priscilla Eads, since it had been in the papers, and if so why shouldn’t I be the strangler the whole force was looking for and therefore good for a promotion and a barrel of glory, dead or alive?

“Look,” I said, “I’ve just been talking to Sergeant Purley Stebbins of Manhattan—”

“Save it.” He was dead serious. “Turn around, go to the wall, slow, put your palms up high against the wall, and keep ‘em there.”

I did as I was told. It was a routine arrangement for a solo frisk, and when I was in position I expected to feel the muzzle in my back and his hand going through me, but no. Instead, I heard him dialing the phone, and in a moment his voice. “This is Casey, gimme the lieutenant…. Lieutenant Gluck? Casey again. I came on up to the Jaffee apartment alone without waiting. I walked right in on him cold, and he’s here, and I’ve got him covered…. No, I know that, but I’ve got him and I’ll keep him until they come….”

That was the kind of specimen, flushed by the hackie, who had me with my palms pressed against the wall.

D
uring the eighty-hour period from ten minutes to two Friday morning, when Sarah Jaffee phoned me that her keys were missing, until nine o’clock Monday morning, when I phoned Wolfe from the office of the police commissioner, I had maybe five hours’ sleep, not more.

The first two hours of those eighty I spent in the apartment of the late Sarah Jaffee, mostly—after some grownups had arrived and rescued me from Casey—seated at the table in the alcove where I had breakfasted with Sarah Wednesday morning, answering questions put to me by a captain named Olmstead from Manhattan Homicide West, who was a comparative stranger. The third strangling of course had the whole department sizzling, and the scientists had a high old time that night in that apartment. The murderer’s use of the bronze tiger bookend and the cord, which had been cut from a Venetian blind in the alcove, showed that he had not confined his movements to the foyer, and there wasn’t a square inch anywhere in the place that didn’t get powdered for prints and inspected with a glass under a strong light.

At 4:30
A.M.
I was transported to the Nineteenth
Precinct station on East Sixty-seventh Street, put into an upstairs room with a lieutenant and another dick with a stack of stenographer’s notebooks, and told to give a complete account of the meeting in Wolfe’s office, including all words and actions of everyone there. That took four hours, and during the fourth and last the three of us disposed of a dozen ham sandwiches, six muskmelons, and a gallon of coffee, paid for by me. When it was over I got permission to use a phone and called Wolfe.

“I’m calling from a desk phone in a police station,” I told him, “and a lieutenant is at my elbow and a sergeant is on an extension, so don’t say anything incriminating. I am not under arrest, though I am technically guilty of breaking and entering because I knocked the glass out of a door and went in. Except for that I have nothing to report, and I don’t know when I’ll be home. I have given them a complete account of last night in our office, and they’ll certainly be after you for one.”

“They already have been. Lieutenant Rowcliff will be here at eleven o’clock, and I have agreed to admit him. Have you had breakfast?”

He wouldn’t overlook that. I told him yes.

After that the lieutenant and sergeant left me, and I sat for a solid hour in a room with a uniformed patrolman. It began to look as if history was getting set to repeat itself, except for handcuffs, when a dick entered and told me to come on, and I preceded him down and out to the sidewalk, and darned if he didn’t have a taxi waiting. It took us to 155 Leonard Street, and the dick took me in and upstairs to a room, and who should enter to visit me but my friend Mandelbaum, the assistant DA who had chatted with me Tuesday afternoon to no avail.

Four hours later we were still, as far as I could see,
short on avail. I had the highly unsatisfactory feeling that I had been examined down to the last flick about something that had happened somewhere sometime, just to see if I passed, but that it had nothing to do with getting the sonofabitch I was after. I knew how to be patient well enough when I had to be, and I had gone along the best I could, but more than twelve hours had passed since I had opened the door and seen her lying there with her tongue sticking out, and I had answered enough questions.

At the end of the four hours Mandelbaum shoved his chair back, got up, and told me, “That seems to be it for now. I’ll get it typed, and I’ll get a copy of your statement uptown. This evening or in the morning—more likely in the morning—I’ll ring you to ask you to run down and look it over, so stay near your phone or keep in touch.”

I was frowning at him. “You mean I go?”

“Certainly. Under the circumstances your forceful entry to that building must be regarded as justified, and since you have agreed to pay the amount of the damage, there will be no complaint. Stay in the jurisdiction, of course, and be available.” He looked at his wrist. “There’s someone waiting for me.” He turned to go.

I was having an experience that was not new to me. I had suddenly discovered that a decision had been made, by me, upon full consideration, without my knowing it. This time, though, it took me a second to accept it, because it was unprecedented. An officer of the law was telling me to go on home to Nero Wolfe, and I didn’t want to or intend to.

“Hold it,” I said urgently, and he stopped, I appealed to him. “I’ve given you all I’ve got. I want something—not much. I want to see Inspector Cramer,
and now. He’s busy, and I don’t know where he is, and it might take me until tomorrow to get to him. You fix it for me.”

He was alert. “Is it about this case?”

“Yes.”

“Why won’t I do?”

“Because he can say yes to this, and you can’t.”

He might have been disposed to debate it if he hadn’t been late for another customer. He glanced at his wrist again, went to the phone, and got busy. Even for him, the assistant DA on the Eads and Fomos case, it proved to be a job, but after ten minutes on the phone he told me, “He’s in a conference at the Commissioner’s office. Go there and send your name in and wait.”