Rex Stout (13 page)

Lewis Wardell sat and looked at him, and finally said, “It will go to the Cabinet. I’ll take it myself. You’re a damn fool not to give it up. If you let go now you might come out alive.”

“The Cabinet is sitting now. We’ll go together.”

“Oh no, we won’t.” Wardell pushed a button on the desk. “I’ll go alone, and I’ll make sure right now that it won’t be hushed up. A little publicity might help.—One last chance, Brownell. Will you talk?”

“You’re wasting time, and you’re making an ass of yourself.”

A man entered the room. Wardell turned to him. “Send two men in here.” A telephone on the desk rang, and Wardell, asking the clerk to wait, turned to answer it. There was a little trouble getting the conversation started, but after some impatience Wardell said, “Yes, I get it now, Erasmus Hospital. What is it?” Then he did little but listen, with an ejaculation or two and a few questions; and when he finally replaced the receiver he turned again to the clerk:

“Make it four men, and move.”

The clerk moved. Wardell said, “This may mean life or death for you, Brownell, do you realize that? Will you talk?”

The President’s Secretary only looked at him. The Chief of the Secret Service cleared his throat and shifted his feet around, his grey eyes looking more doubtful than ever. Four men entered; and inside, stood in a line.

Wardell said, “I don’t know your names.” He looked at one. “You, come here.” The man stepped forward. “This is Mr. Harry Brownell, Secretary to President Stanley. Take him to the District jail and lock him up, have him well guarded, and let him see no one without permission from me. Be sure those instructions are followed.”

The man took a step; Brownell moved to meet him, without a word, and they went. Chief Skinner sighed. Wardell called another man forward:

“Across the hall, Room Nine, is a woman, Viola Delling. A
detective, a New York man, is with her. Lock her up downstairs, if there’s any room left. If not, take her to jail. Then you and the New York man find out everything you can about her, particularly whom she has seen and where she has been the past week. He knows where she came from; he got her. Also get a line on her husband. She’ll raise hell, but I don’t want to see her. Take her away. Remember we’re under martial law and civil rights are suspended.”

The man turned and left. Wardell spoke to the two remaining: “Do you know Washington? Do you know where Erasmus Hospital is?”

They nodded.

“At that hospital, in the accident ward, is a young man named Val Orcutt. Bring him here as quick as you can; take a car if you’ve got one, or a taxi. He’s had a crack on the skull, so handle him carefully; if he gets amnesia again he won’t be much good to us. Do you know what amnesia is?”

One of the men said, “You forget things.”

“Just so. Be careful with him.”

The men went.

Wardell got out of his chair, bent and flexed his arms and drew his shoulders back with his chest out, breathing. “Damn it,” he said, “I’m groggy.”

The Chief nodded. “There’s a quart of bourbon in the drawer there.”

“No, thanks. How about some cheese sandwiches and coffee?”

“I could manage some.”

After the clerk had been summoned and the order for sandwiches and coffee given, Wardell said to Skinner:

“I suppose there’s some newspaper men out front. Would you go out and tell them Harry Brownell has been arrested? The news might start something somewhere.”

“It will,” the Chief agreed as he got up for the errand.

At a few minutes before noon Chick Moffat was going down the sidewalk, neither briskly nor leisurely, merely going, nearing the entrance to the Department of Justice. He had
been assigned that morning—one in a hundred—to the task of finding Val Orcutt, the driver of the grocery truck, and on phoning in from Isherwood for instructions on a lead, had been told that the quarry had been flushed and he should report at headquarters. Almost at his destination, though, chance intervened to delay him, for as he was about to turn in at the entrance he heard his name called, in a voice that swung him around in the middle of a step.

It was Alma Cronin, on the sidewalk. “Chick! Thank goodness.”

“Me too.” He grinned. “I’ll thank anybody you say. Who are you running from?”

“I’m running to, not from. Don’t you ever go home any more? I tried to get you on the phone a dozen times last night, and again this morning.”

“You would pick last night for wanting me. I’m finding the President. I went to bed at dawn and slept a hundred and forty minutes.”

They had moved to the edge of the sidewalk not to get bumped. Chick looked down at her, and she looked up at him, and there was more color in their faces and life in their eyes than there had been two minutes before.

She said, “I wasn’t wanting you. I mean, I wanted to ask you something.”

“I get the difference. Much obliged. Did you try Information at the Union Depot?”

“No. It’s something very … I’m on my way now to see Mr. Wardell. I tried first to see Mr. Brownell, and couldn’t find him. I could ask you now, I suppose, but here on the sidewalk …”

“Let’s go to lunch.”

Alma said she was supposed to be back at the White House at one o’clock, and Chick said that would be double his usual allowance of thirty minutes for eating. Her hesitation was brief. Chick said he knew a place nearby where they cooked lamb chops with chives and floated them in a swell brown sauce, and marched her off. Two blocks away and a little down a side street they entered a revolving door. It was one of those places—there are not many—where the kitchen is so close that all the smells fill the air, and the cooking so good that your appetite thanks your nose.

After they had ordered Chick said, “Do you want to ask me something now or save it for coffee?”

Alma looked around. It was early, and there were not many in the restaurant; the adjoining tables were not occupied. She said, “I didn’t want to ask you on the phone. I wanted to see you. I’m half afraid to talk about it, even to you. I had no idea people could be the way they are.”

“What’s wrong with people?”

“Everything. They’re such awful cowards. Me too, I suppose I can’t blame them. Did you know that a lot of the White House staff are under arrest? That Secret Service men searched it this morning from top to bottom? Everyone talks in a whisper when they talk at all. This morning when I went to work someone was following me, I’m sure of it.”

“That was only me, being handy in case you wanted to ask me something.”

“Don’t joke, Chick. It’s no joke. It’s terrible.”

“Well … I’ve followed so many people, and nearly always nowhere.—Here’s the lamb chops. I tried to do them this way at home once, but they burnt on me. Of course it’s terrible, and it’s apt to be worse before it’s better, but you have nothing to do with it. Thank God. Push your plate.”

He transferred the chops, spooned sauce over them, fixed his own, and ordered beer. They ate, and discussed the chops.

Alma looked around again. She leaned forward. “What I wanted to ask you, Chick. I want to know what to do.” Her voice was low; she lowered it more. “Last night around eleven o’clock, about half an hour after I got back from being questioned by your colleagues, a man came to my place and offered me five thousand dollars to steal Mrs. Stanley’s diary and give it to him by noon today. He said the last two weeks of it was all he wanted. When I said no he offered ten thousand.”

Chick chewed and swallowed. “H-m-m,” he said. “So the First Lady keeps a diary.”

“Of course. Everyone knows that. There have been pieces about it in the papers.”

“Well … congratulations. That’s a pretty good haul. It’s enough to get married on if you happen to be inclined that way.”

“Don’t be silly. After I said no to his first offer I had a few seconds to think in. I pretended to hesitate. He urged me. I said that even if I decided to do it there would be no opportunity before noon, but there might be later. He said it
would have to be today. I told him he could come to my place at eight o’clock this evening, and maybe I would have it and maybe I wouldn’t. He said he would come.”

Chick asked, “Why was it silly for me to mention your being inclined to get married?”

“Because this is something serious.”

“Getting married is serious.”

“Is it? I know nothing about it. Chick. What shall I do? Shall I tell Mrs. Stanley? Shall I go to Mr. Wardell without telling her?”

“Look here.” Chick laid down his knife and fork. “I’ve been waiting for an opening to get your ideas on marriage for over three months, and now that we’ve got the subject started we might as well dispose of it. There’s nothing inherently silly about marriage, is there?”

Alma, meeting his gaze, looked exasperated; but she felt the exasperation going, and, in an effort to save it, she let her eyes fall. She stuck her fork into a chop and sliced at it. “Inherently? No.”

“It really isn’t a damn bit silly, is it?”

“I suppose not. How do I know? I see no reason to think it silly. Do you?”

“Good. Me? Good Lord, no. I think it’s simply swell, I think …” She looked up; and since his gaze was still upon her he got the shock of her eyes all at once, like the sudden flood of sunlight after the darkness of a cave. He gasped. The words that he had been expecting to come next, naturally in the sequence, got lost somewhere below his throat and it seemed unlikely that they would be available. He said, “Well … I’m glad that’s settled. It’s nice to have that settled. What kind of a looking man was it that offered you ten thousand dollars?”

Alma smiled. The smile was saying, though only to herself,
He is absolutely a darling and I love him and I want him, but if I catch myself descending to guile at this juncture may I fry in hell.
She said, “He was big and strong with blond hair and dirty finger nails, and he wore a brown necktie.”

She thought triumphantly,
Show me any female guile in that!

Chick asked, “What are you going to do?”

“That’s what I’m asking you. Whatever you tell me to.” With the last word of that Alma clamped her teeth on her
lower lip, sharply, and Chick wondered why. He signaled to the waiter and ordered coffee; and then said:

“You haven’t told Mrs. Stanley?”

“I’ve told no one.”

“Good girl. This thing’s an ungodly mess and there’s no use your getting mixed up in it without reason. It’s even possible there’s no connection—”

“Shouldn’t I tell Mr. Wardell?”

“What for? So someone can hide in your closet and jump him when he comes?”

“If jumping is necessary, yes.”

Chick nodded. “Of course that’s the card to draw to. But you might be letting yourself in for it. For what, I don’t know; but everyone’s gone crazy. It might be better just to warn Mrs. Stanley to lock the diary up and when your friend calls this evening tell him nothing doing.”

The restaurant was filling up. A newsboy had entered and was passing among the tables, offering an extra with black headlines four inches high. Chick bought one and unfolded it, holding it so that Alma could see with him:

PRESIDENT’S SECRETARY ARRESTED
BROWNELL BOUGHT CHLOROFORM

Alma said, “Good heavens. No!”

Chick said, “I told you everyone’s crazy. You keep out of it.”

“I don’t want to. I mean, I want to be in it.” Alma had started stirring her coffee, and forgot to stop. “You see, Chick, this thing is maturing me. Like young plants when they open up the windows to prepare them for going outdoors; I’m being hardened off. After all I’m only twenty-four, and I didn’t know much about people. I had studied ideas and systems a lot, like Communism and Social Credit and Capitalism and the housing problem and international finance and war, and apparently I thought that people were just another idea. This kidnapping the President, and the martial law, and the fear and suspicion in everybody’s faces, and the jealousy and hate coming out—I’ve only been on the edge of it, looking on, but it’s showing me that people aren’t just another idea, they’re far more—or far less, I don’t know which. They’re animals with blood in them, and they don’t only talk and write books and play bridge, they really do
things. Hateful and terrible things, and maybe sometimes grand things. It’s exciting and it scares me to realize that I’m one of the animals and I have to live with them. I thought I hated war, but I see now that I merely disliked the idea of war. Now I do hate war, anyway I think I do, and I know I hate the obscene pigs who have kidnapped the President for fear he would keep us out of war. That’s why I say I want to be in it. I have no idea what Mrs. Stanley’s diary has got to do with it, but it must have something. So I want to help catch this man, and if they beat him up to make him tell who sent him I wouldn’t like to see it but I wouldn’t have an ounce of regret and I’d do it again.”

She stopped. Chick said, “You through? That was quite a talk.”

“I’m through. Don’t be smart.”

“I’m not smart. I said it was quite a talk because I meant it. You see, I don’t know about ideas. I was brought up among people, the kind you mention. The next-door neighbor on one side beat his kids, and the one on the other side paid fifteen dollars for a dog to get one big enough to lick ours. I’m the same with ideas as I am with booze, I know when to let them alone. I’m not anti-war and I’m not pro-war; if there’s a fight I suspect I’ll be in it. I’m just an animal.”

He said it not apologetically, but not proudly either. Alma exclaimed, “Chick! Why, Chick.—All right, you’re just an animal. There are lots of kinds.”

“Sure.” Chick grinned. “Now about purloining this diary. I’m glad you’ve decided to turn down the ten thousand, because if you ever decided to marry an animal and it happened to be me, it wouldn’t work. I couldn’t ever marry for money. But you say you want to catch this millionaire, and I say you want to keep out of it. How would it be if I came and hid in your closet at a quarter to eight, and then walk out and sit on him, if you object to jumping, while you beat him up.”

“Chick. I don’t object to the words you use.”

“I thought probably you thought it was vulgar when I said
jump him.
I gathered that.”