Prisoner's Base (2 page)

She shook her head. “A friend of mine was here a long while ago, and then of course I’ve read about it.” She looked around, twisting her head to the right and then to the left. “I wouldn’t have come if I hadn’t known a good deal about it, and about Nero Wolfe and you.” She leveled the eyes at me, and, finding it difficult to meet them casually, I met them consciously. She went on, “I thought it would be better to tell you about it first because I’m not sure I would know how to put it to Nero Wolfe. You see, I’m trying to work something out. I wonder—do you know what I think I need right now?”

“No. What?”

“A Coke and rum with some lime and lots of ice. I don’t suppose you’ve got Meyer’s?”

It seemed to me she was crowding a little, but I said sure, we had everything, and got up to step to Wolfe’s desk and ring for Fritz. When he had come and got the order, and I was back in my chair, she spoke again. “Fritz looks younger than I expected,” she said.

I leaned back and clasped my hands behind my head. “You’re welcome to a drink, even a Coke and rum,” I told her, “and I’m enjoying your company, that’s okay, but if you want me to tell you how to put something to Mr. Wolfe maybe you’d better start.”

“Not till I’ve had the drink,” she said firmly.

She not only had the drink, she made herself at home. After Fritz had brought it and she had taken a couple of sips, she murmured something about its being warm and removed the jacket and dropped it on the seat of the red leather chair. Furthermore, she took off the straw thing she had on her head, fingered her hair back, and got a mirror from her bag and gave herself a brief look. Then, with her glass in her hand, and sipping intermittently, she moved to my desk for a glance at the germination cards, crossed to the big globe and gave it
a gentle spin, and went to the shelves and looked at titles of books. When her glass was empty she put it on a table, went to her chair and sat, and gave me the eyes.

“I’m beginning to get myself together,” she told me.

“Good. Don’t rush it.”

“I won’t. I’m not a rusher. I’m a very cautious girl—believe me, I am. I never rushed but one thing in my life, and that one was enough. I’m not sure I’m over it yet. I think maybe I should have another drink.”

I decided against it. I couldn’t deny that the effect Coke and rum had on her was pleasant; it tuned her up and emphasized her charms, which were fair enough without the emphasis. But this was office hours, and I wanted to find out if she had any potential as a client. So I decided to dodge the drink problem with a polite suggestion, but before I had it framed she demanded, “Does the door of the south room on the third floor have a bolt on the inside?”

I frowned at her. I was beginning to suspect she was something we couldn’t use, like for instance a female writer getting material for a magazine piece on a famous detective’s home, but even so she was not the kind to be led out by the ear and rolled off the stoop down the steps to the sidewalk. There was no good reason, considering the eyes, why she shouldn’t be humored up to a point.

“No,” I said. “Why, do you think it needs one?”

“Maybe not,” she conceded, “but I thought I’d feel better if it had. You see, that’s where I want to sleep.”

“Oh? You do? For about how long?”

“For a week. Possibly a day or two more, but certainly for a week. I would rather have the south room than the one on the second floor because it has its own bath. I know how Nero Wolfe feels about women, so I knew I’d have to see you first.”

“That was sensible,” I agreed. “I like gags, and I’ll bet this is a pip. How does it go?”

“It is not a gag.” She wasn’t heated, but she was earnest. “For a certain reason I had to be—I had to go away. I had to go somewhere and stay there until June thirtieth—some place where no one would know and no one could possibly find me. I didn’t think a hotel would do, and I didn’t think—anyhow, I thought it over and decided the best place would be Nero Wolfe’s house. Nobody knows I came; nobody followed me here, I’m sure of that.”

She got up and went to the red leather chair for her bag, which she had left there with her jacket. Back in her seat, she opened the bag and took out a purse and let me have the eyes again. “One thing you can tell me,” she said, as if I not only could but naturally would, “—about paying. I know how he charges just for wiggling his finger. Would it be better for me to offer to pay him or to go ahead and pay you now? Would fifty dollars a day be enough? Whatever you say. I’ll give you cash instead of a check, because that way he won’t have to pay income tax on it, and also because a check would have my name on it, and I don’t want you to know my name. I’ll give it to you now if you’ll tell me how much.”

“That won’t do,” I objected. “Hotels and rooming houses have to know names. We can make one up for you. How would Lizzie Borden do?”

She reacted to that crack as she had to the Coke and rum—she flushed a little. “You think it’s funny?” she inquired.

I was firm. “So far,” I declared, “the over-all effect is comical. You aren’t going to tell us your name?”

“No.”

“Or where you live? Anything at all?”

“No.”

“Have you committed a crime or been accessory to one? Are you a fugitive from justice?”

“No.”

“Prove it.”

“That’s silly! I don’t have to prove it!”

“You do if you expect to get bed and board here. We’re particular. Altogether four murderers have slept in the south room—the last one was a Mrs. Floyd Whitten, some three years ago. And I am personally interested, since that room is on the same floor as mine.” I shook my head regretfully. “Under the circumstances, there’s no point in continuing the chinning, which is a pity, since I have nothing special to do and you are by no means a scarecrow, but unless you see fit to open up—”

I stopped short because it suddenly struck me that in any case I could do better than shoo her out. Even if she couldn’t be cast as a client, I could still use her.

I looked at her. “I don’t know,” I said doubtfully. “Tell me your name.”

“No,” she said positively.

“Why not?”

“Because—what good would it do unless you checked on it? How would you know it was my real name? And I don’t want you checking on it. I don’t want anyone to have the faintest idea where I am for a week—until June thirtieth.”

“What happens on June thirtieth?”

She shook her head, smiling at me. “You’re good at asking questions, I know that, so I’m not going to answer any at all. I don’t want you to do anything, or Nero Wolfe either, except to let me stay here for a week, right in that room, for my meals too. I think I’ve already talked too much. I think I should have said—no, I guess that wouldn’t have worked.” She laughed a
little, a low running ripple. “If I had said I had read about you and seen a picture of you, and you fascinated me, and I wanted to be near you for one wonderful week, you’d have known I was lying.”

“Not necessarily. Millions of women feel like that, but they can’t afford the fifty bucks a day.”

“I said I would pay more. Whatever you say.”

“Yeah, I know. Let’s get this settled. Are you going to stick to this—no naming or identifying?”

“I certainly intend to.”

“Then you’d better leave Mr. Wolfe to me.” I glanced at my wrist. “He’ll be coming down in three-quarters of an hour.” I left my chair. “I’ll take you up and leave you there, and when he comes down I’ll tackle him. With no tag on you it’s probably hopeless, but I may be able to persuade him to listen to you.” I picked up her jacket and turned. “It might help if he saw the cash. Sometimes the sight of money has an effect on people. Say three hundred and fifty, as you suggested? With the understanding, of course, that it’s not a deal until Mr. Wolfe accepts it.”

Her fingers were quick and accurate as they ticked off seven new fifties from the stack she got from her purse. She had enough left. I stuck our share in my pocket, went to the hall for the suitcase and hatbox, and led the way up the stairs, two flights. The door to the south room was standing open. Inside I put the luggage down, went and pulled the cords of the Venetian blinds for light, and cranked a window open.

She stood, taking a look around. “It’s a big room,” she said approvingly. She lifted a hand as if to touch my sleeve, but let it drop. “I appreciate this, Mr. Goodwin.”

I grunted. I was not prepared to get on terms with her. Putting the suitcase on the rack at the foot of one of
the twin beds, and the hatbox on a chair, I told her, “I’ll have to watch you unpack these.”

Her eyes widened. “Watch me? Why?”

“For the kick.” I was slightly exasperated. “There are at least a thousand people in the metropolitan area who think Nero Wolfe has lived long enough, and one or more of them might have decided to take a hand. His room, as you apparently know, is directly below this. What I expect to find is a brace and bit in the suitcase and a copperhead or rattler in the hatbox. Are they locked?”

She regarded me to see if I was kidding, decided I wasn’t, and stepped over and opened the suitcase. I was right there. On top was a blue silk negligee, which she lifted and put on the bed.

“For the kick,” she said indignantly.

“It hurts me worse than it does you,” I assured her. “Just pretend I’m not here.”

I’m not a lingerie expert, but I know what I like, and that was quite a collection. There was one plain white folded garment, sheer as gossamer, with the finest mesh I had ever seen. As she put it on the bed I asked politely, “Is that a blouse?”

“No. Pajama.”

“Oh. Excellent for hot weather.”

When everything was out of the suitcase I picked it up for a good look, pressing with my fingertips on the sides and ends, inside and out. I wasn’t piling it on; among the unwanted articles that had been introduced into that house in some sort of container were a fer-de-lance, a tear-gas bomb, and a cylinder of cyanogen. But there was nothing tricky about the construction of the suitcase, or the hatbox either; and as for the contents, you couldn’t ask for a prettier or completer display of the personal requirements of a young woman for a quiet
and innocent week in a private room of the house of a private detective.

I backed off. “I guess that’ll do,” I granted. “I haven’t inspected your handbag, nor your person, so I hope you won’t mind if I lock the door. If you sneaked down to Mr. Wolfe’s room and put a cyanide pill in his aspirin bottle, and he took it and died, I’d be out of a job.”

“Certainly.” She hissed it. “Lock it good. That’s the kind of thing I do every day.”

“Then you need a caretaker, and I’m it. How about a drink?”

“If it isn’t too much bother.”

I said it wasn’t and left her, locking the door with the key I had brought along from the office. Downstairs, after stopping in the kitchen to tell Fritz we had a guest locked in the south room, to ask him to take her up a drink, and to give him the key, I went to the office, took the seven fifties from my pocket, worked them into a fan, and put them under a paperweight on Wolfe’s desk.

A
t one minute past six, when the sound came of Wolfe’s elevator descending, I got so busy with things on my desk that I didn’t have time to turn my head when he entered the office. I followed him by ear—crossing to his chair behind his desk, getting his four thousand ounces seated and adjusted in comfort, ringing for beer, grunting as he reached for the book he was reading, left there by him two hours earlier, his place marked by a counterfeit ten-dollar bill which had been autographed in red ink by a former Secretary of the Treasury in appreciation of services rendered. I also caught, by ear, Wolfe speaking to Fritz when he brought the beer.

“Did you put this money here, Fritz?”

Of course that forced me. I swiveled. “No, sir, I did.”

“Indeed. Thank you, Fritz.” He got his eighteen-carat opener from the drawer, uncapped a bottle, and poured. Fritz departed. Wolfe let the foam subside a little, not too much, lifted the glass, and took two healthy swallows. Putting the glass down, he tapped the new non-counterfeit fifties, still in a fan under the paperweight, with a fingertip, and demanded, “Well? Flummery?”

“No, sir.”

“Then what?”

I bubbled with eager frankness. “I admit it, sir, what you said Friday about my excessive labors and the bank balance—that really hurt. I felt I wasn’t doing my share, with you sweating it out four hours a day up with the orchids. I was sitting here this afternoon mulling over it, some of the hardest mulling I’ve ever done, when the doorbell rang.”

He was reacting to my opening as expected. Turning to his place in the book, he started reading. I went right on.

“It was a human female in her twenties, with unprecedented eyes, a fine wholesome figure, a highly polished leather suitcase, and a hatbox. She tooted her knowledge of the premises and you and me, bragging about her reading. I brought her in here and we chatted. She wouldn’t tell her name or anything else about herself. She wants no advice, no information, no detective work, no nothing. All she wants is board and room for one week, with meals served in her room, and she specified the south room, which, as you know, is on the same floor as mine.”

I made a little gesture signifying modesty. With his eyes on the book, he didn’t see it, but I made it anyway. “With your trained mind, naturally you have already reached the conclusion that I was myself compelled to accept, on the evidence. Not only has she read about me, she has seen my picture, and she can’t stand it not to be near me—as she put it, for one wonderful week. Luckily she is supplied with lettuce, and she paid for the week in advance, at fifty bucks a day. That’s where that came from. I told her I was taking it only tentatively, awaiting your okay, and took her up to the
south room and helped her unpack, and locked her in. She’s there now.”

He had turned in his chair for better light on his book, practically turning his back on me. I went on, unruffled. “She said something about having to go somewhere and stay until June thirtieth, where no one could find her, but of course she had to put some kind of face on it. I made no personal commitments, but I won’t object to some sacrifice of time and convenience, provided I average eight hours’ sleep. She seems educated and refined and will probably want me to read aloud to her, so I’ll have to ask you to lend me some books, like
Pilgrim’s Progress
and
Essays of Elia.
She also seems sweet and unspoiled and has fine legs, so if we like her and get used to her one of us could marry her. However, the immediate point is that, since I am responsible for that handy little contribution of cash, you may feel like signing a replacement for the check I tore up Friday.”