Rex Stout - Nero Wolfe 25 (16 page)

“We can discuss that later. I’ll call you.”

He was off. Wolfe cradled the receiver, pushed the phone to one side, heaved a sigh clear down to where a strip of his yellow shirt showed between his vest and pants, as usual, leaned back, and shut his eyes.

“Of course you know,” I said, “that that will bring us company.”

“It can’t be helped,” he muttered.

Since the phone numbers of LBA and the Churchill were in my head, the only ones I had to scribble in my notebook were
Clock
magazine and Hansen’s and Heery’s offices. That done, I went to the kitchen, where Fritz was putting some lamb hearts to soak in sour milk and an assortment of herbs and spices, asked if I could use his phone, and started in. Four of them—Wheelock, Younger, Heery, and Buff—had already been invited and would get a reminder call later. Presumably Rollins had also been invited, but that had to be checked. I got two of them without much difficulty, O’Garro and Assa, on one call, but had a hell of a time with the others. Four different calls to Gertrude Frazee’s room, eighteen-fourteen, at the
Churchill, in a period of forty minutes, got me no answer. Three calls failed to land Rudolph Hansen, but he finally called back, and of course had to speak to Wolfe. I stood pat that he couldn’t, and though he refused to accept the invitation to the meeting, I knew nothing could keep him away. I also got Harold Rollins, who told me in one short superior sentence that he would be present and hung up.

Susan Tescher was a tough one. First
Clock
told me she was in conference. Then
Clock
said she wasn’t there today. I asked for Mr. Knudsen, the tall and bony one, but he had stepped out. I asked for Mr. Schultz, the tall and broad one, and he was engaged. I asked for Mr. Hibbard, the tall and skinny one, of the legal staff, and darned if I didn’t get him. I told him about the meeting, and who would be there, and said that if Miss Tescher didn’t come she might find herself tomorrow morning confronted with a
fait accompli
, knowing as I did that any lawyer would feel that a guy who used words like
fait accompli
was a man to be reckoned with. As I was starting to dial the Churchill number for another stab at Miss Frazee, the doorbell rang. I went to the hall for a look through the panel, then opened the door to the office. Apparently Wolfe hadn’t moved a muscle.

I announced, “Stebbins.”

He opened his eyes. “At least it’s better than Mr. Cramer. Bring him in.”

I went and unbolted the door, swung it wide, and said hospitably, “Hello there. We’ve been waiting for you.”

“I’ll bet you have.” He marched on by me, making quite an air wash, and on by the rack, removing his hat as he entered the office. By the time I attended to the door and caught up he was standing in front of
Wolfe’s desk and talking. “… the copy of the contest answers that Goodwin made last Wednesday. Where is it?”

If you want to see Purley Stebbins at his worst you should see him with Nero Wolfe. He knows that on the record of the evidence, of which there is plenty, Wolfe is more than a match for him and Cramer put together, and by his training and experience evidence is all that counts, but he can’t believe it and he won’t. The result is that he talks too loud and too fast. I have seen Purley at work with different kinds of characters, taking his time with both his head and his tongue, and he’s not bad at all. He hates to come at Wolfe, so he always comes himself instead of passing the buck.

Wolfe muttered at him, “Sit down, Mr. Stebbins. As you know, I don’t like to stretch my neck.”

That was the sort of thing. Purley would have liked to say, “To hell with your neck,” and nearly did, but blocked it and lowered himself onto a chair. He never took the red leather one.

Wolfe looked at me. “Archie, tell him about the copy you made.”

I obliged. “Last Wednesday I went to the safe deposit vault with Buff, O’Garro, and Heery. They got the box and opened it. I cut the two envelopes open, one with the verses and one with the answers, and made copies on four sheets from my notebook. The originals were returned to the envelopes, and the envelopes to the box, and the box to the vault. I came straight home with my copies and put them in the safe as soon as I got here, and they’ve been there ever since and are there now.”

“I want to see them,” Purley rasped.

Wolfe answered him. “No, sir. It would serve no
purpose unless you handled and inspected them, and if you got hold of them you wouldn’t let go. It would be meaningless anyway. Since Mr. Buff decided to tell about them we knew you would be coming, and if anything had happened to them Mr. Goodwin could have made duplicates and put them in the safe. No. We tell you they are there.”

“They’ve been there all the time since Goodwin put them there last Wednesday?”

“Yes. Continuously.”

“You haven’t had them out once?”

“No.”

Purley turned his big weathered face to me. “Have you?”

“Nope.—Wait a minute, I have too. An hour ago. Buff was on the phone and asked where they were, and Mr. Wolfe told me to take a look to make sure. I took them out and glanced over them, and put them right back. That was the only time I’ve had them out of the safe since I put them in.”

His head jerked back to Wolfe and he barked, “Then what the hell did you get ’em for?”

Wolfe nodded. “That’s a good question. To answer it adequately I would have to go back to that day and recall all of my impressions and surmises and tentative designs, and I’m busy and haven’t time. So I’ll only say that I had certain vague notions which never ripened. That will have to do you.”

Purley’s jaw was working. “What I think,” he said.

“I beg your pardon?”

“I said, what I think. So does the Inspector. He wanted to come, but he was late for an appointment with the Commissioner, so he sent me. We think you sent the copies of the answers to the contestants.” He clamped the jaw. He released it. “Or we think you
might have, and we want to know. I don’t have to tell you what it means to this murder investigation, whether you did it or not—hell, I don’t have to tell you anything. I ask you a straight question: did you send copies of those answers to the contestants?”

“No, sir.”

“Do you know who did?”

“No, sir.”

Purley came to me. “Did you send them?”

“No.”

“Do you know who did?”

“No.”

“I think you’re both lying,” he growled. That was an instance. He was talking too fast.

Wolfe lifted his shoulders and dropped them. “After that,” he said, “conversation becomes pointless.”

“Yeah, I know it does.” Purley swallowed. “I take it back. I take it back because I want to ask a favor. The Inspector told me not to. He said if Goodwin typed those copies he wouldn’t have used his machine here, and he may be right, but I hereby request you to let me type something on that typewriter”—he aimed a thumb—”and take it with me. Well?”

“Certainly,” Wolfe agreed. “It’s rather impudent, but I prefer that to prolonging the conversation. I’m busy and it’s nearly lunch time. Archie?”

I pulled the machine to me, rolled some paper in, and vacated the chair, and Purley came and took it and started banging. He used forefingers only but made fair time. I stood back of his shoulder and watched him run it off:

When he had rolled it out and was folding it I said helpfully, “By the way, I’ve got an old machine up in my room that I use sometimes. You should have a sample of that too. Come on.”

That was a mistake, because if I hadn’t said it I probably would have had the pleasure of hearing him thank Wolfe for something, which would have been a first. Instead, “Hang ’em on your nose and snap at ’em,” he told me, retrieved his hat from the floor beside his chair, and tramped out. By the time I got to the hall he had the front door open. He didn’t pull it shut after him, which I thought was rather petty for a sergeant. I went and closed and bolted it, and returned to the office.

Wolfe was at the bookshelves, returning Casanova and Dorothy Osborne and the others to their places. Since it was only ten minutes to lunch time, he couldn’t have been expected to get back to work. I stood and watched him.

“Apparently,” I said, “the rules have been changed, but you might have told me. It has never been put into words, but I have always understood that when you want to keep something to yourself you may choke me off with a smoke screen but you don’t tell me a direct lie. You may lie to others in my presence, and often have, but not to me when we’re alone. So I believed you when you said the contestants getting the answers in the mail was a surprise to you. I’m not griping, I’m just saying I think it would be a good idea to let me know when you change the rules.”

He finished slipping the last book in, nice and even
with the edge of the shelf, and turned. “I haven’t changed the rules.”

“Then have I been wrong all along? Is it okay for you to tell me a direct lie when we’re alone?”

“No. It never has been.”

“And it isn’t now?”

“No.”

“You haven’t lied to me about the answers?”

“No.”

“I see. Then I’d better keep everybody off your neck this afternoon. If you haven’t already got a program for tonight’s meeting, and evidently you haven’t, I’m glad it’s up to you and not me.”

I went to my desk and rolled the typewriter back in place, to have something to do. I like to think I can see straight, and during the past hour or so I had completely sold myself on the idea that I knew now what Saul Panzer’s errand had been; and I don’t like to buy a phony, especially from myself. Pushing the typewriter stand back, I banged it against the edge of my desk, not intentionally, and Wolfe looked at me in surprise.

B
y four o’clock everybody was set for the evening party with one exception. Wheelock, Younger, Buff, and Heery had been reminded. O’Garro, Assa, Rollins, and Hansen didn’t need to be. As for Susan Tescher, Hibbard had called and said she would be present provided he could come along, and I said we’d be glad to have him. The exception was Gertrude Frazee. I tried her five times after lunch, three times from the kitchen and twice from my room, and didn’t get her.

When, at four o’clock, Fritz and I heard Wolfe’s elevator ascending to the roof, we went to the office and made some preliminary preparations. There would be ten of them, eleven if I got Frazee, so chairs had to be brought from the front room and dining room. Wolfe had said there should be refreshments, so a table had to be placed at the end of the couch, covered with a yellow linen cloth, with napkins and other accessories. Fritz had already started on canapés and other snacks and filling the vacuum bucket with ice cubes. There was no need to check the supply of liquids, since Wolfe does that himself at least once a week. He hates to have anybody, even a policeman or
a woman, ask for something he hasn’t got. When we had things under control Fritz returned to the kitchen and I went to my desk and got at the phone for another try for Frazee.

By gum, I got her, no trouble at all. Her own voice, and she admitted she remembered me. She was a little frosty, asking me what I wanted, but I overlooked it.

“I’m calling,” I said, “to ask you to join us at a gathering at Mr. Wolfe’s office at nine o’clock this evening. The other contestants will be here, and Mr. Heery, and members of the firm of Lippert, Buff and Assa.”

“What’s it for?”

“To discuss the situation as it stands now. Since the contestants have received a list of the answers from some unknown source, there must be—”

“I haven’t received any answers from any source, known or unknown. I’m expecting word Wednesday morning from my friends at home, and I’ll have my answers in by the deadline. I’ve heard enough of this trick.”

She was gone.

I cradled the phone, sat and gave it a thought, buzzed the plant rooms on the house phone, and got Wolfe.

“Do you want Miss Frazee here tonight?” I asked him.

“I want all of them here. I said so.”

“Yeah, I heard you. Then I’ll have to go get her. She just told me on the phone that she hasn’t received any answers and she’s heard enough of this trick. And hung up. If she’s clean, she tore up the envelope and paper and flushed them down the toilet, and she’s standing pat. Do you want her?”

“Yes. Phone again?”

“No good. She’s not in a mood to chat.”

“Then you’ll have to go.”

I said okay, went to the kitchen to ask Fritz to come and bolt after me, got my hat and coat, and left.

The clock above the bank of elevators at the Churchill said five-seventeen. On the way up in the taxi I had considered three different approaches and hadn’t cared much for any of them, so my mind was occupied and I didn’t notice the guy who entered the elevator just before the door closed and backed up against me. But when he got out at the eighteenth, as I did, and crossed over to the floor clerk and told her, “Miss Frazee, eighteen-fourteen,” I took a look and recognized him. It was Bill Lurick of the
Gazette
, who is assigned to milder matters than homicide only when there are no homicides on tap. I thought, By God, she’s been croaked, and stepped on it to catch up with him, on his way down the hall, and told him hello.

He stopped. “Hi, Goodwin. You in on this? What’s up?”

“Search me. I’m taking magazine subscriptions. What brought you?”

“Always cagey. The subtle elusive type. Not me, ask me a question I answer it.” He moved on. “We got word that Miss Gertrude Frazee would hold a press conference.”

Of course that was a gag, but when we turned the corner and came to eighteen-fourteen, and I got a look inside through the open door, it wasn’t. There were three males and one female in sight, and I knew two of them: Al Riordan of the Associated Press and Missy Coburn of the
World-Telegram
. Lurick asked a man standing just inside if he had missed anything, and the man said no, she insisted on waiting until the
Times
got there, and Lurick said that was proper, they wouldn’t start Judgment Day until the
Times
was set to cover. A man approached down the hall and exchanged greetings, and entered, and somebody said, “All right, Miss Frazee. This is Charles Winston of the
Times.”