Rex Stout (19 page)

In two hours’ questioning after the departure of Lewis
Wardell on Wednesday afternoon, Chief Skinner had extracted from Val Orcutt nothing whatever. He had finally given up and sent him back to the hospital under guard, but he had not been satisfied. He had reported to Wardell, “The boy is honest, but there’s something wrong with him. He’s honest, and he hasn’t got anything to scrape off his conscience, but there’s a filter in his throat he has to push his words through. The cop found him in the park just as he said, and the doctor thinks he had amnesia, but his being so careful when he talks makes me itch. I asked him some cute questions, and his frown
may
have been only because his head hurt. I didn’t chastise him with scorpions; shall I do that?”

“Would it do any good?”

“No. He’s tough. If he’s buried something he won’t be digging it up. After all he did get cracked on the head. Of all the things we’re curious about, the one we really would like to find out is where the President is, and I doubt if the boy knows that.”

Mrs. Orcutt and her husband had been investigated; nothing. Viola Delling and her husband the druggist, likewise; nothing. She, confronted with Brownell’s denial that he had bought chloroform in her store, had been indignant, positive, and scornful. The articulation of her scorn had got her into hot water, when she protested that it was preposterous to question her good faith since she had patriotically furnished all the assistance in her power to prosecute the search for a President of whose policies she did not and could not wholeheartedly approve. Ha, they said, ha, you admit it then, you disapprove his policies! That gave her a difficult and unpleasant hour, but in the end they conceded the probability that she had not kidnapped the President.

A thousand other sales of chloroform were investigated, as well as doctors and hospitals in that connection; the bruise on Val Orcutt’s head was examined by a dozen doctors for a possible hint of the weapon used; an effort was made to check up on every conveyance seen on Tuesday morning within five blocks of the empty house on Fifteenth Street Northeast, where the truck had been found abandoned; a thousand false scents were started, pursued, and reluctantly given up; the telephone call to Kempner, manager of Callahan’s, which Val Orcutt said had not been made by him, had been traced to a booth in a cigar store and a score of men were working on that. All possibilities were being clutched at, not with the
desperate indiscrimination of the proverbial drowning man and his straw, but with all the acumen and determination of an army of the most highly trained and competent investigators in America.

So far as they or Wardell or Chief Skinner could tell, they were on Thursday noon as far from the solution of the mystery as they had been when they began. Three main lines were being followed:

The suggestion which Senator Corcoran had to offer, when finally Lewis Wardell granted him fifteen minutes, was with regard to the third line of inquiry, motive. Corcoran wanted, he said, to do two things: lodge a protest and make a suggestion. He did not criticize the imposition of martial law on the District; no doubt that had been necessary and indeed essential; but he did vehemently object to the arrogance and violence with which the honor and reputation of prominent citizens were being attacked. It was unreasonable, unjust, and futile. The emergency created by the crime against the person of the President should not be taken advantage of for the establishment of a dictatorship attempting to justify itself by brutality, abuse, and calumny. So far as he knew, there was no reason to suppose—

Wardell stopped him. “Nonsense. How would you like to have my job? You’ve had dealings with me, Senator, you know it isn’t my habit when I’m criticized to yell shut up. But that’s all you’ll get out of me now: shut up and let me alone.”

Corcoran insisted; he was speaking not only in the interest of the citizens involved, but of the country as a whole; even—especially—with regard to the welfare of this administration—

“Shut up!” A thousand fruitless endeavors, sixty sleepless hours and a dozen quarts of black coffee had ruined Wardell’s nerves as well as his appearance. “I’m telling you, shut up and get out!”

With his protest thus tabled, Corcoran had eight minutes left for his suggestion. He proceeded with it, beginning with the exposition with which Representative Binns had prepared the way for his sally of wit. If the target of suspicion was to be determined by reference to motive, it seemed to him clear that a grave error had been made and much valuable time lost. Who could have reasonably expected to gain by the kidnapping of the President? Those who desired war? Obviously not. They had their goal in sight. The President would have addressed the Congress on Tuesday noon and, no matter what he said, before adjournment that day Congress would have declared war. Of the correctness of that statement Corcoran was convinced, but even admitting that it was doubtful his argument held good. With the President left undisturbed in the exercise of his office, the worst that could be said of the position of the war supporters was that they stood better than an even chance of victory; whereas now they stood no chance at all, unless and until the President was returned. It was true that was chiefly because the citizens of the nation were foolishly but overwhelmingly convinced that war supporters were responsible for the kidnapping; but would not whoever committed the crime foresee that? Apparently they were clever enough. This logic was so unassailable, said Corcoran, that it was even being suggested in one or two quarters that the whole thing was an Administration plot, executed with the connivance of the Cabinet; the President was in the White House; the arrest of Brownell and similar activities were red herrings—

Wardell snorted. “Rot. What are you doing, suggesting—”

Not at all, the Senator hastened to say with obvious sincerity. Even granting the wish and the intention, which he did not, such a plot, with so many persons involved, would have collapsed within six hours. But the suggestion, ridiculous as it was, showed, as a weather vane shows the wind, the direction where logic pointed. The kidnappers of the President were not the supporters of war, they were its enemies.

“Neat,” said Wardell. “Thanks. It is neat, too, your saying
supporters
of war; you can’t very well support a war till you have it; personally I prefer
instigators
of war. Say I accept
your logic, what do I do next, start after the Carnegie Foundation for Peace?”

Corcoran ignored the sarcasm. He observed that his fifteen minutes was up, and rose from his chair. He would take, he said, but a few seconds to add that there were two elements in the community, both sufficiently capable of violent and audacious action, whose interests were being served by the present situation: the representatives of four European governments and one Asiatic, and the Communists. The governments did not want us in the war on the side we should certainly take; the Communists didn’t want us in at all.

Wardell said, “Neat. Your time’s up.”

Senator Corcoran went.

That interview turned the third line of inquiry into a farce. Wardell was not persuaded by Corcoran’s analysis to dismiss from consideration any of the previous suspects, but the possibility of its correctness could not be ignored. He called in the Chief of the Secret Service and various other lieutenants, and fresh dispositions were made. An investigation was set on foot of the activities of the representatives of the five foreign governments; that was unquestionably farcical, both sides under suspicion at once, but logic and farce have slept together on various occasions. It appeared now that any person in the country might have had reason, or thought he had, to kidnap the President; as to motive, all were in the same boat; detection must look for opportunity, competence, and the requisite boldness and pugnacity.

They went after the Communists. Where yesterday Gray Shirts had been herded into the basement rooms of the Department of Justice, the jails, and their own kitchens and living-rooms, and questioned, threatened, and entreated, today the Communists got it. With the same lack of result, and at least an equal display of contempt, defiance, and derision on the part of the new suspects. Trails were started, minor “subversive” activities were uncovered, stool pigeons were betrayed, headquarters were found and raided—and that was the sum of it. If the Communists had the President, it became clear that they had adequately arranged to guard the mystery as perfectly as their political forbears had guarded the execution of the Russian Czar.

But not even in Washington and New York were the Communists run to cover as the Gray Shirts had been the day before. This pursuit remained official, orderly, and organized.
You can usually pretty well tell, if you have time and resources enough and are good at research, where a hundred million people got an idea; so many newspaper and magazine articles, so many scenes in the movies, so many radio talks, so many inspired preachers and lecturers; but it would be impossible to say how the American people became invincibly persuaded in a few short hours that a “war gang” had kidnapped their President. Spontaneous combustion does start fires, and it probably started that one. At all events, they knew it; and when Senator Corcoran’s suggestion propelled Lewis Wardell willy-nilly into the middle of a farce, and Wardell conscripted a thousand investigators and a million suspects for its cast of characters, it got little attention from the citizens of the United States either as participators or as spectators. They were busily engaged with the drama as it had at first unfolded itself to them; they had their villain spotted and they were after him. Any day would be a good one for chasing Communists; at the moment they had more pressing business on hand.

At one o’clock Thursday afternoon a handful of Senators and Representatives were gathered in the office of Senator Reid. They had repaired there, singly and inconspicuously, a few minutes past noon; for both houses, following the example of the day before, had convened at twelve and immediately adjourned. They were in Reid’s office, with the door closed; outside, in the hall, with the back of his chair squarely against the closed door, sat Reid’s confidential secretary, instructed that no person whatsoever was to be permitted to enter. All who had been made privy to the meeting had arrived.

The portent and gravity of the matter under consideration can be best conveyed by mentioning that the vigilant solicitude on the face of Senator Wilcox made him look like a statesman. To look like a statesman was no trick at all for a Tilney, a Jackman or a Corcoran, for nature had fashioned them properly to begin with, they had had a great deal of practice, and they actually had some statesman in them. But though Wilcox might have been thought, on this occasion or that, to have
displayed the appearance of a panther, a wolf, a hyena, or a fox, it had never occurred to anyone that he resembled a statesman; and the present shocked concern exhibited on that face was an eloquent tribute to the consequence of the crisis he and his colleagues had gathered to discuss.

Sumner Horner, Speaker of the House, with hunched shoulders and chin on his broad chest, his left hand deep in his trousers pocket and his right forefinger wagging its well-known emphasis, was speaking to the group in general and Senator Corcoran in particular: “I’ll go along if that’s what you decide. I’m not sure I’m right and I don’t see how the hell anyone can be sure he’s right. I’ll go along, on one condition: that we pledge ourselves to maintain this group for the period of the emergency, to act as a unit on majority decisions, to have as our sole purpose the preservation of parliamentary government, and to keep our proceedings inviolably confidential. Each must take his oath on that, or we achieve nothing but futility.”

Senator Allen snorted. “Confidential? The reason we’re here is because Reid was at a confidential meeting this morning, and he told Corcoran all about it within an hour. In a time like this the only thing you can trust a man not to tell is what he doesn’t know.”

“That’s convenient for you,” Senator Sterling observed drily. “You, at least, need suffer no dislocation of habits.”

“Bill!” Bronson Tilney was in a chair, his arms folded, his legs stretched out, his exhausted brown eyes moving only to necessity. They moved to reproach Sterling. “If you want to call Allen a lowdown Catiline, find a better time. Didn’t he make a point that deserves an answer? I agree with Horner. A pledge won’t hurt us, it may even furnish a little cohesion.”

Reid, too, was in a chair; he never stood for long when it could be avoided, probably because when sitting it was not so apparent that he had been able to achieve only one inch over five feet. He said to Allen, “I gave no pledge to Drew or Cullen or anyone. Not that I wouldn’t betray a confidence on occasion. I have my virtues, but they are my servants and know their place.” To Tilney: “Does that mean that you consent to an adjournment
sine die
? Is that the way to do it?”

“I don’t know.” Tilney slowly shook his head. “I don’t know, Tom.” He looked around. “Gentlemen, I’m not an intriguer, you know that, I haven’t the capacity for it.—Tom, I don’t know. I have reached the age where the startling becomes the
incredible. I cannot believe that men like Martin Drew and Daniel Cullen are plotting with United States army officers to expell Congress from its halls and seize the government. Oh, I know they are; you have told me so; but I can’t believe it.”

Wilcox muttered to Representative Morton, “He’s too old for this; why did they drag him in?”