Prisoner's Base (23 page)

“It became more than hypothesis when Mrs. Jaffee was killed. The killer had got her keys from her bag here that evening, and, so far as was known, no one else, of those present, had the slightest motive for killing Mrs. Jaffee. And my contradiction was resolved. Mrs. Jaffee had realized that Eric Hagh was not the man whose picture had been sent her by her friend six years ago, but she had not denounced him because it was not in her character to do so. She had revealed her character
with some clarity to Mr. Goodwin. She didn’t like to get involved with anyone or anything. She had never gone to a stockholders’ meeting of the corporation whose dividends were her only source of income. She came here Thursday to lend her name to a legal action only because she was under great obligation to Mr. Goodwin. No, she did not denounce the impostor, but indubitably she made him aware that she knew he was not Eric Hagh. She may have done so merely by the way she looked at him, or she may have asked him some naive and revealing question. In any case, he knew he was in deadly peril from her, and he acted quickly and audaciously—and with dexterity, taking her keys from her bag. No, he is not a bungler, but—”

A voice broke in. It was Dewdrop Irby, and his voice was good and loud, with no oil at all in it, “I want to state at this time, for the record, that I had no—”

“Shut up!” Cramer barked at him.

“But I want—”

“You’ll get what you want. I’ll deliver it personally.”

Wolfe asked, “Shall I finish?”

“Yes.”

“As I said, I got out of bed and sat in a chair. It took little consideration for me to conclude that my hypothesis had been violently, tragically, and completely validated. I did not phone your office, Mr. Cramer, because it is not my habit to make the police a gift, unasked, of the product of my brain, because I was personally concerned, and because I knew how badly Mr. Goodwin’s self-esteem had been bruised and I thought he would be gratified if we, not you, got the murderer. I did phone not long after getting the news from Mr. Goodwin—though not to you—and at three o’clock in the morning succeeded in reaching a man in Caracas whom I know a little and can trust within reason. Five hours later he
called me back to say that Eric Hagh was new to Caracas and apparently had no background there.”

“I could have told you that,” Cramer grumbled. “He has been living at the Orinoco Hotel for two months.”

“It’s a pity I didn’t ask you and save twenty dollars. While waiting for the report from Caracas, I had phoned Saul Panzer. He had come and eaten breakfast with me, and I had supplied him with money from my emergency cash reserve. From here he went to a newspaper office and got pictures of the man calling himself Eric Hagh, and from there he went to Idlewild Airport. At ten o’clock he boarded a plane for South America.”

“Not for Caracas,” Purley Stebbins objected. He was still standing with his gun in hand. “Not at ten o’clock.”

“He didn’t go to Caracas. He went to Cajamarca, Peru. The document signed by Priscilla Eads Hagh was written there. At Cajamarca he found people who had known Hagh, and two who also remembered Mrs. Hagh, and he learned, one, that Hagh was a professional gambler; two, that he had not been in Cajamarca for three years; and three, that the pictures he had with him were not of Hagh. He flew to Lima, engaged the interest of the police by a method not utterly unknown in our own city, and within twelve hours had collected enough items to phone me. The items included—you tell them, Saul. Briefly.”

Saul gave his voice a little more volume than usual, because he wasn’t facing the bulk of his audience. He had his eyes straight at Eric Hagh and had no intention of shifting them.

“They had all known Eric Hagh,” he said. “Hagh had been a gambler working up and down the coast for years. As far as they knew he had been in the States only twice, once for a spell in Los Angeles and once in
New Orleans, and from New Orleans he brought back a rich American bride. They all knew about the paper he had, signed by his wife, giving him half her property. Hagh had shown it around, bragging about it. He said it had been her idea to give it to him, but he was too proud a man to sponge on a woman and he was keeping it as a souvenir. They said he had meant it; he was like that. I couldn’t ask him because he was dead. He had been caught in a snow slide in the mountains three months ago, on March nineteenth. Nobody knew what had happened to the document.”

Saul cleared his throat. He’s always a little husky. “The man I had pictures of, the man I’m looking at now—his name is Siegfried Muecke. Twenty-six people in Lima recognized him from the pictures. He was first seen there about two years ago, and no one knows where he came from. He is also a professional gambler, and he went around a good deal with Hagh. He was with him in the mountains, working a tourist resort with him, when Hagh was killed by a snow slide. Nobody has seen Siegfried Muecke around Lima since Hagh’s death. Do you want more details?”

“Not at present, Saul,” Wolfe told him.

Purley Stebbins was moving. He passed in front of Helmar and between Brucker and Quest, and around me, and posted himself directly behind Siegfried Muecke, who was now fairly well seen to, with Saul at his left, Purley at his rear, and me at his right.

Wolfe was going on. “Mr. Muecke’s preparations for his coup, crossing the Andes to Caracas so as to operate from a base where he and Mr. Hagh were both unknown, can of course be traced. At Caracas he selected a lawyer, with some care probably, and decided to present his claim in a letter—not to the former Mrs. Hagh, but to the trustee of the property, Mr. Helmar.
At some point he also decided that effective pursuit of the claim would require his presence in New York, and of course it would be fatal to his plans if either Miss Eads or Mrs. Fomos ever got a glimpse of him. There was only one way to solve that difficulty: they must die.”

“But not until after June thirtieth,” Bowen objected.

Wolfe nodded. “That’s a point, certainly, but it’s not inexplicable. Looking at his face, which appears rigid in paralysis, I doubt if he’ll explain for us, not now at least. I offer alternatives: some incident may have alarmed him and precipitated action, or he may not have known that if Miss Eads died before June thirtieth the Softdown stock, the bulk of her fortune, would go to others. I think the latter more likely, since he was offered, through Mr. Irby, a cash settlement of one hundred thousand dollars and wouldn’t even discuss it.

“Another point should soon be clarified, whether Mr. Muecke is persuaded to help or not. Did he arrange for the murders of Miss Eads and Mrs. Fomos, or did he commit them himself? That can of course be established by inquiry in Caracas and of airline personnel I think, you’ll find that he did them himself. You should be able to verify his first flight to New York, and surely you will have no trouble with his return to Caracas, since he must have left New York on Tuesday to be in Caracas to speak with Mr. Irby on the telephone on Wednesday. Also, he had to leave Caracas again Wednesday afternoon or evening to get back to New York Thursday, and we know he did that.”

Wolfe’s eyes fixed on Muecke, and he spoke to him for the first time. “For myself, Mr. Muecke, there is no room for doubt. You set your pattern and kept to it with pigheaded constancy. You waylaid Mrs. Jaffee, and
struck and strangled her, exactly as you had done with Miss Eads, and previously with Mrs. Fomos. I said you were no bungler, but the truth is—Archie!”

I had noticed once before, when he had slammed the door in my face, that Andy Fomos could move fast when he wanted to. He was out of his chair and across the room to our little group like a flying saucer. Apparently his idea was to do something to Muecke with his bare hands, as his personal comment on what Muecke had done to Mrs. Fomos, but there was no time to analyze ideas, including my own. Now, at leisure, I can and I have, and to complete the record I report the results.

The question is, since the worst Andy Fomos could have done was to disfigure Muecke superficially, why did I want to interfere? Why didn’t I give him gangway and even block Purley? Why did I haul off and plug Andy’s iron jaw with so much behind it that he sailed through the air before he stretched out, and my wrist and knuckles were stiff for a week? The answer is, if I had touched Muecke I would have killed him, but I had to touch somebody or something, and Andy Fomos, bless his hundred and ninety pounds that made it really satisfactory, gave me the excuse.

Then Cramer was there, and Skinner, and I sidestepped to make room, and stood, licking blood from my knuckles and watching Purley get handcuffs on Siegfried Muecke.

Now, for the first time ever, enjoy a peek into the life of Nero Wolfe’s creator, Rex Stout, courtesy of the Stout estate. Pulled from Rex Stout’s own archives, here is rarely seen, or never-before-published memorabilia. Each title in the Rex Stout Library will offer an exclusive look into the life of the man who gave Nero Wolfe life.

Prisoner’s Base

Prisoner’s Base
was originally titled
Dare-Base.
These are the original typewritten sheets of the title and first page of this Nero Wolfe mystery from October 24, 1952.