Prisoner's Base (3 page)

I got it from a drawer, where I had it ready, and got up to put it on his desk. He put his book down, took his pen from the stand, signed the check, and slid it across to me.

He regarded me with what looked like amiable appreciation. “Archie,” he told me, “that was an impressive performance. Friday I spoke hastily and you acted hastily, and the
fait accompli
of that torn check had us at an impasse. It was an awkward problem, and you have solved it admirably. By contriving one of your fantastically and characteristically puerile inventions, you made the problem itself absurd and so disposed of it. Admirable and satisfactory.”

He removed the paperweight from the fifties, picked them up, jiggled the edges even, and extended his hand with them, telling me, “I didn’t know we had
fifties in the emergency cash reserve. Better put them back. I don’t like money lying around.”

I didn’t take the dough. “Hold it,” I said. “We’re bumping.”

“Bumping?”

“Yes, sir. That didn’t come from the safe. It came from a visitor as described, now up in the south room. I invented nothing, puerile or not. She’s a roomer for a week if you want her. Shall I bring her down so you can decide?”

He was glaring at me. “Bah,” he said, reaching for his book.

“Okay, I’ll go get her.” I started for the door, expecting him to stop me with a roar, but he didn’t. He thought he knew I was playing him. I compromised by going to the kitchen to ask Fritz to come in a minute, and let him precede me back to the office. Wolfe didn’t glance at us.

“A little point of information,” I told Fritz. “Mr. Wolfe thinks I’m exaggerating. Our lady visitor you took a drink to up in the south room—is she old, haggard, deformed, ugly, and crippled?”

“Now, Archie,” Fritz reproved me. “She is quite the opposite. Precisely the opposite!”

“Right. You left her locked in?”

“Certainly. I brought you the key. You said she would probably have her dinner—”

“Yeah, we’ll let you know. Okay, thanks.”

Fritz darted a look at Wolfe, got none in return, wheeled, and left. Wolfe waited for the sound of the kitchen door closing, then put his book down and spoke. “It’s true,” he said in a tone that would have been fitting if he had just learned that I had been putting thrips on his plants. “You have actually installed a woman in a room of my house?”

“Not installed exactly,” I objected. “That’s too strong a word. And it implies that I have personal—”

“Where did you get her?”

“I didn’t get her. As I told you, she came. I wasn’t inventing. I was reporting.”

“Report it in full. Verbatim.”

That order was easy, compared to some I have had to fill. I gave him words and actions complete, from opening the front door to let her in through to locking the south room door to keep her in. He leaned back with his eyes closed, as he usually does when I’m reporting at length. When I finished he had no questions, not one. He merely opened his eyes and snapped at me, “Go up and give her back her money.” He glanced at the wall clock. “It’ll be dinnertime in twenty minutes. Get her out of the house in ten. Help her pack.”

Here I hit a snag. Looking back at it, it would seem that my natural and normal course would have been to obey instructions. My double mission had been accomplished. I had taken a backhanded crack at his being so damn particular about accepting jobs and clients, and also I had got a replacement for my check. She had served my purpose, so why not bounce her? But evidently something about her, maybe the way she packed a suitcase, had made an impression on me, for I found myself taking a line.

I told Wolfe that, acting as his agent, I had practically promised her that he would see her. He only grunted. I told him that he could probably get her to can the mystery and tell her name and describe her troubles, and if so the resulting fee might provide for my salary checks for a year. Another grunt.

I gave up. “Okay,” I said, “she’ll have to find some bacalhau somewhere else. Maybe East Harlem—there’s
a lot of Portuguese around there. I shouldn’t have mentioned it to her.”

“Bacalhau?” he demanded.

“Yeah. I happened to mention we were having it for dinner, and she asked what it was and I told her, and she said salt cod couldn’t possibly be fit to eat no matter how it was cooked, not even if it was an adaptation of a Portuguese recipe by you and Fritz.” I shrugged. “Skip it. She may be a murderess anyhow. What’s the difference if we break a precedent by turning her out hungry just at mealtime? What if I did sell her on salt cod and now have to evict her unfed? Who am I?”

I got up and picked up the seven fifties from his desk. “This,” I said regretfully, “puts us back where we started. Since this is to be returned to her, I have contributed nothing to the bank account, and the situation regarding my salary check snaps back to last Friday. That leaves me no alternative,” I reached to my desk for the check he had signed as replacement, took it at the middle of its top edge with thumbs and forefingers—

“Archie!” he roared. “Don’t tear that!”

I still do not know what the decision would have been about the roomer upstairs if it had been left to us. Because Wolfe did not like the idea of sending anyone from his house hungry, because of his instinctive reaction to the challenge that salt cod couldn’t be made edible, and because of my threat to tear up another check, the roomer was not bounced before dinner, and the tray that was prepared for the south room was inspected personally by Wolfe before Fritz took it up. But except for the preparation and dispatch of the tray, no decision was put into words; the question was ignored. Wolfe and I ate together in the dining room as usual; the salt cod with Portuguese trimmings was so
good that I had no room for the veal and not much for the walnut pudding; and when we were through with coffee and I followed Wolfe back into the office I assumed that the first item on the agenda would be Miss or Mrs. X. But he didn’t even call a meeting. After a full meal, which our dinner always is, it takes him four or five minutes to get adjusted in his chair to his complete satisfaction. With that accomplished that Monday evening, he opened his book and started to read.

I had nothing to complain about, since it was certainly his move. She was still up there, fed and locked in, and it was up to him. He could just pass it and let her stay, which was unthinkable, or he could have me bring her down for a talk, which he would hate, or he could tell me to put her out, which might or might not get my prompt cooperation. In any case, I didn’t intend to give him an opening, so when he started reading I sat regarding him silently for a couple of minutes and then got up and headed for the door.

His voice came at me from behind. “You’re not going out?”

I turned and was bland. “Why not?”

“That woman you smuggled in. The arrangement was that you would get rid of her after dinner.”

It was a barefaced lie; there had been no such arrangement, and he knew it. But he had unquestionably squared off and feinted with a jab, and it was my turn. The disposal of our roomer would probably have been settled quickly and finally if it hadn’t been for an interruption. The doorbell rang. It was only two steps from where I stood to the hall, and I took them.

After dark I never open the outside door to a ring without first flipping on the stoop light and taking a look through the one-way panel. That time a glance was enough. He was alone, about twice my age, tall and
bony with a square jutting jaw, with a dark gray felt hat firmly on his head and a briefcase under his arm. I pulled the door open and asked him how he did. Ignoring that question, he said his name was Perry Helmar and that he wanted to see Nero Wolfe, urgently. Ordinarily, when Wolfe is in the office and a stranger calls, I let the caller wait while I go in to check, but now, welcoming a chance to give Wolfe another tack to sit on, and also perhaps to postpone a showdown on the roomer until bedtime, I invited the guy in, hung his hat on the rack, and escorted him to the office.

I thought for a second that Wolfe was going to get up and march out without a word. I have known him to do that more than once, upon deciding that someone, not always me, is not to be borne, The idea did dart into his mind—I know that look only too well—but it wasn’t strong enough to overcome his reluctance to leave his chair. So he sat and surveyed the visitor with a resentful scowl.

“I should explain,” Helmar explained, “that I came to you immediately not only because I know something of your record and reputation, but also because I know my friend Dick Williamson’s opinion of you—Richard A. Williamson, the cotton broker. He says you once performed a miracle for him.”

Helmar paused politely to give Wolfe a chance to insert an acknowledgment of this flattering preamble. Wolfe did so by inclining his head a full eighth of an inch.

“I don’t ask for a miracle,” Helmar resumed, “but I do need speed, boldness, and sagacity.” He was in the red leather chair beyond the end of Wolfe’s desk, with his briefcase on the little table at his elbow. His voice was a raspy oratorical baritone, hard and bony like him. He was going on. “And discretion—that is essential. You have it, I know. As for me, I am a senior partner in
a law firm of the highest repute, with offices at Forty Wall Street. A young woman for whom I am responsible has disappeared, and there is reason to fear that she is doing something foolish and may even be in jeopardy. She must be found as quickly as possible.”

I opened a drawer to get out a notebook, and reached for my pen. What could be sweeter? A missing person, and a senior member of a Wall Street firm of high repute so bothered that he came trotting to us at night without even stopping to phone in advance. I glanced at Wolfe and suppressed a grin. His lips were tightened in resigned acceptance of the inevitable. Work was looming, work that he could probably find no rational excuse for rejecting, and how he hated it!

“I have a definite proposal,” Helmar was saying. “I will pay you five thousand dollars and necessary expenses if you will find her, and put me in communication with her, by June twenty-ninth—six days from now. I will pay double that, ten thousand, if you will produce her in New York, alive and well, by the morning of June thirtieth.”

My eyes were on him in fitting appreciation when he spoke of five grand, and then ten grand; but I lowered them to my notebook when I heard that date, June 30. It could have been a coincidence, but I had a good sharp hunch that it wasn’t, and I have learned not to sneer at hunches. I lifted my eyes enough to get Wolfe’s face, but there was no sign that the date had smacked him as it had me.

He sighed good and deep, surrendering with fairly good grace to the necessity of work. “The police?” he inquired, not hopefully.

Helmar shook his head. “As I said before, discretion is essential.”

“It usually is, for people who hire a private detective.
Tell me about it briefly. Since you’re a lawyer you should know what I need to decide whether 111 take the job.”

“Why shouldn’t you take it?”

“I don’t know. Tell me about it.”

Helmar shifted in his chair and leaned back, but not at ease. I decided that his lacing and unlacing of his fingers was not merely a habit; he was on edge. “In any case,” he said, “this is confidential. The name of the young woman who has disappeared is Priscilla Eads. I have known her all her life and am her legal guardian, and also I am the trustee of her property under the will of her father, who died ten years ago. She lives in an apartment on East Seventy-fourth Street, and I was to call there this evening to discuss some business matters with her. I did so, arriving a little after eight, but she wasn’t there, and the maid was alarmed, as she had expected her mistress home for an early dinner and there had been no word from her.”

“I don’t need that much,” Wolfe said impatiently.

“Then I’ll curtail it. I found on her writing desk an envelope addressed to me. Inside was a handwritten note.” He reached for his briefcase and opened it. “Here it is.” He took out a folded sheet of blue-tinted paper, but put it down to get a spectacle case from a pocket and put on black-rimmed glasses. He retrieved the paper, “It reads, ‘Dear Perry—’”

He stopped, lifting his chin to glance at me and then at Wolfe. “She has called me by my first name,” he stated, “ever since she was twelve years old and I was forty-nine. Her father suggested it.”

Apparently he invited comment, and Wolfe obliged. “It is not actionable,” he muttered.

Helmar nodded. “I only mention it. It reads:

“Dear Perry:

I hope you won’t be too mad at me for standing you up. I’m not going to do anything loony. I just want to be sure where I stand. I doubt if you will hear from me before June 30th, but you will then all right. Please, and I mean this, please don’t try to find me.

Love, Pris.”

Helmar folded the note and returned it to the briefcase. “Perhaps I should explain the significance of June thirtieth. That will be my ward’s twenty-fifth birthday, and on that day, under the terms of her father’s will, the trust terminates and she takes complete possession of the property. That is the basic position, but there are complications, as there always are. One is that the largest single item of the property is ninety per cent of the stock of a large and successful corporation, and there is some feeling among part of the managing and directing personnel about my ward’s taking control. Another is my ward’s former husband.”

Wolfe frowned. “Alive?” he demanded. He refuses to touch marital messes.

“Yes.” Helmar was frowning too. “That was my ward’s one disastrous blunder. She ran away with him when she was nineteen, to South America, and left him three months later, and divorced him in nineteen forty-eight. There was no further communication between them, but two weeks ago I received a letter from him, sent to me as the trustee of the property, claiming that, under the provisions of a document she had signed shortly after their marriage, half of the property legally belonged to him. I doubt—”

I horned in. I had stood the suspense long enough. “You say,” I blurted, “her name is Priscilla Eads?”

“Yes, she took her maiden name. The husband’s name is Eric Hagh. I doubt—”