Rex Stout_Nero Wolfe 07 (17 page)

“Archie?”

“Yeah. Open up.”

The door swung open and I entered. After one glance at my cargo Fritz staggered back a step.

“
Grand Dieu!
Is she dead?”

“Naw, she’s not even sick. Lock the door.”

The door to the office was standing open and I went through sidewise to keep from knocking her head against the jamb. Wolfe was there reading a book. He looked up and saw what I had, made a face, dog-eared a page and closed the book, and sat and shook his head. A glance at the couch showed me that it was still covered with the maps which he had spread all over it three days previously with instructions that they were not to be touched, so I put her down on the floor, in the middle of the rug, straightened my back to
remove a kink, pointed an unwavering finger at her, and said casually: “Madame Zorka.”

He folded his arms. “What’s the matter with her?”

“Nothing.”

“Did you hit her?”

“No.”

“Don’t be an ass. You don’t carry women around and lay them on the floor when there’s nothing wrong with them. Is she unconscious?”

“I don’t think so. Her contention is that she is in a drunken stupor, but I think she’s playing charades. I found her in a penthouse love nest on Madison Avenue. Barrett furnishes the nest and Belinda Reade the love. You know? Belinda was there and Zorka was her guest. Zorka denied that she had made any phone call to this office and she refused to leave. I made a phone call to work up pressure and she came. She is almost certainly listening carefully to what we are saying. She’ll smother in here with that fur coat buttoned up.”

I stooped and unfastened the coat and flung it open. Wolfe got to his feet, walked around the desk, and stood frowning down at her.

“She has no stockings on.”

“Right.”

“What’s that thing she wearing? A dress?”

“Oh, heavens, no. I think it’s a drinking gown.”

“And you think she’s shamming?”

“I do.”

“Well.” He turned and called, “Fritz!” Fritz was right there. Wolfe told him, “Bring a dozen ice cubes.”

I knelt down beside the patient and felt her pulse, and then pried open her eyelid and took a look at the iris, and announced that it would be perfectly safe to proceed with the experiment. Wolfe, looking down at me, nodded gravely. Fritz appeared with the dish of
ice cubes and Wolfe told him to give them to me. I took a cube and laid it on her cheek and it slid off. I picked it up and carefully placed it at the base of her neck, in the little depression where the shoulder began, and it stayed nicely. Then I gently but firmly lifted her arm, held it up with my left hand, and with my right hand got another cube and as modestly as possible worked it under the edge of the red robe until it was snug in her arm pit; and let the arm down.

The reaction was so sudden and violent it startled me into spilling the rest of the cubes all over the rug, and her knees in my belly nearly spilled me too. She didn’t stop at sitting up, but scrambled to her feet, with Wolfe retreating to make room for her. She shook herself, more of a spasm than a shake, and the ice cube emerged from under the hem of the gown to the floor. She goggled around at us, perceived a chair, and sank into it.

“What—what—” she stammered.

“Wrong line,” I told her. “Say, ‘Where am I?’”

She groaned and pressed both palms against her forehead. Wolfe, having waited until Fritz had retrieved all the cubes, moved back to his chair and lowered his fundament. He regarded her sourly for a full minute of silence and then spoke to me.

“And what,” he demanded resentfully, “would you suggest that we do with her?”

“Search me. It was you that wanted her.”

“I don’t want her like that.”

“Send her home.” I added emphatically, “In a taxi.”

“We can’t send her home. The police are looking for her, and one will be posted at her door, and I want to talk to her first.”

“Go ahead and talk to her.”

“I want to ask her some questions. Is she capable of coherence?”

“Capable, yes. But I doubt if she’ll cohere, with ice or without. Go on and try it.”

He looked at her. “Madame Zorka, I am Nero Wolfe. I would like to discuss something with you. When were you last in Yugoslavia?”

With her face covered with her hands, she shook her head, moaned, and muttered something not even as intelligible as gribblezook.

“But, madame,” Wolfe said patiently. “I’m sorry you don’t feel well, but that is a very simple question.” Then he spouted some lingo at her, a couple of sentences, that may have been words but not to me. She didn’t even shake her head.

“Don’t you understand Serbo-Croat?” he demanded.

“No,” she muttered. “Zat I do not onderstand.”

He kept at it for a solid hour. When he wanted to be, he could be as patient as he was big, and apparently on that occasion he wanted to be. I took it all down in my notebook, and I never filled as many pages with less dependable information. There was no telling, when he got through, whether she had ever been in Yugoslavia, how and when she had acquired the name Zorka, or whether she had actually ever been born or not. It seemed to be tentatively established that she had once resided in a hotel in Paris, at least for one night, that her couturière enterprise had been installed within the year on the street floor of the Churchill with the help of outside capital, that her native tongue was not Serbo-Croat, that she was not on intimate terms with Neya Tormic or Carla Lovchen, that she had known Percy Ludlow only slightly, and that she had taken up fencing to keep her
weight down and was not an expert. Wolfe did succeed in extorting an admission that she had made the phone call to our office, but it was an empty triumph; she couldn’t remember what she had said! She just simply couldn’t remember.

At twenty minutes past four Wolfe arose from his chair with a sigh and said to me: “Put her to bed in the south room, above mine, and lock the door.”

She rose too, steadying herself with her hand on the edge of his desk, and declared, “I want to go home.”

“The police are there laying for you. As I told you, I have informed them of your phone call. They’ll take you to headquarters and be much more insistent than I have been. Well?”

“All right.” She groaned.

“Good night, madame. Good night, Archie.” He stalked out.

It was two flights to the floor above his, and I was in no mood to elevate her that far by brute force, so I trotted up and got the elevator after he had ascended, and took it down and got her. Fritz, half asleep and half displeased, went along to make sure that the bed was habitable and that towels and accessories were at hand; and for the honor of the house he brought with him the vase of cattleyas from Wolfe’s desk. She may have had no nightie or slippers or toothbrush, but by golly she had orchids. Fritz turned the bed down and, me steering her, she got seated on the edge of it.

Fritz said, “She’s forlorn.”

“Yep.” I asked her, “Do you want me to help you off with your coat or anything?”

She shook her head.

“Shall I open the window?”

Another shake.

We left her there. From the outside I locked the door and put the key in my pocket. It was ten to five, and a dingy November dawn was feebly whimpering “Let there be light,” at my windows when I finally hit the mattress.

At eight o’clock in the morning, bathed and dressed but bleary-eyed and grouchy, I took a pot of coffee up to her. When my third and loudest knock got no response, I used the key and went in. She wasn’t there. The bed was just as Fritz had turned it down. The window on the left, the one that opened onto the fire escape, was standing wide-open.

I
descended a flight to Wolfe’s room, tapped on the door, and entered. He was in bed, propped up against three pillows, just ready to attack the provender on the breakfast table which straddled his mountainous ridge under the black silk coverlet. There was orange juice, eggs
au beurre noir
, two slices of broiled Georgia ham, hashed brown potatoes, hot blueberry muffins, and a pot of steaming cocoa.

He snapped at me, “I haven’t eaten!”

“Neither have I,” I said bitterly. “I’m in no better humor than you are, so let’s call it a tie. I just went up to take our guest some coffee—”

“How is she?”

“I don’t know.”

“Is she asleep?”

“I don’t know.”

“What the devil—”

“I was starting to tell you and you interrupted me. Please don’t interrupt. She’s gone. She didn’t even lie down. She went by the window and the fire escape, and presumably found her way to 34th Street by the passage we use sometimes. Since she descended the fire escape, she went right past that
window”—I pointed—“facing you, and it must have been daylight.”

“I was asleep.”

“So it seems. I thought maybe with a woman in the house, and possibly a murderess, you might have been on the qui vive—”

“Shut up.”

He took some of the orange juice, frowned at me half a minute, and took some more.

“Phone Mr. Cramer. Give him everything.”

“Including my trip to the love nest?”

He grimaced. “Don’t use terms like that when my stomach’s empty. Including everything about Madame Zorka, Mr. Barrett, and Miss Reade, except the subject of my threat to Mr. Barrett.”

“Bosnian forests.”

“All of that to be deleted. If he wants a transcript of our talk with Madame Zorka, furnish it; he’s welcome to it. He has resources for investigating those people and for finding Madame Zorka. If he wants to see me, eleven o’clock.”

“Your daughter’s coming at eleven.”

“Then noon for Mr. Cramer if he wants it.” He swallowed more orange juice. “Phone Seven Seas Radio and ask if they have anything for me. If they haven’t, tell them to rush it to me when it comes. Make an appointment for me to talk with Mr. Hitchcock in London at nine o’clock.”

“Do you want a record—”

“No. Who is downstairs?”

“No one has come yet. They ought to be here any minute.”

“When Saul comes, put the envelope in the safe. I’ll see them as soon as I’m through talking to Mr.
Hitchcock. Send Saul up first, then Fred, then Orrie. Have you had your breakfast?”

“You know damn well I haven’t.”

“Good heavens. Get it.”

I went down to the kitchen and did that, after first calling Seven Seas Radio and arranging for a wire to London at nine. With my breakfast I consumed portions of the
Times
, specializing on the report of the Ludlow murder. They had my name spelled wrong, and they were pretty stale for a paper that had gone to press at midnight, for they said that the police were looking for me. As Cramer had predicted, they had the low-down on Ludlow’s being an agent of the British government, but there wasn’t any hint of Montenegro or Bosnian forests or Balkan princesses. On an inside page there was a spread of pictures and a two-column piece about the murder in Paris that the
col de mort
had figured in some years before.

When Saul and Fred and Orrie came I shooed them into the front room to wait, since I had jobs to do. After my second cup of coffee and what preceded it, I felt better and was almost cheerful by the time I got Inspector Cramer on the wire to relate the sad story. He hadn’t had much more sleep than me, and was naturally disgruntled when he learned that we had had Zorka in our clutches for a couple of hours without bothering him about it, and he got rude and vulgar at the news that she had left before breakfast, but I applied the salve by reminding him how many presents he was getting absolutely gratis. He had no news to speak of himself, or if he had he wasn’t handing it out, but he said he would drop in around noon if he could make it, and in the meantime he would like me to type a report, not only of our session with Zorka, but also of the one with Barrett and of my visit
on Madison Avenue. That was sweet of him. I felt a lot like a hard morning at the alphabet piano, no I didn’t.

As it turned out, I didn’t get much typing done. The talk with Hitchcock in London took place at nine o’clock as scheduled, and of course I didn’t listen in, since Wolfe had said no record. Then I sent Saul up to meet Wolfe in the plant rooms, having first procured the envelope and stowed it away in the safe. The instructions for Saul must have been complicated, for fifteen minutes passed before he came back down and calmly requested fifty bucks expense money. I whistled and asked who he was going to bribe and he said the District Attorney. Wolfe rang me on the house phone and said to keep Fred in storage for the present and to send Orrie Cather up. Orrie’s schedule must have been a simple one, for he returned in no time at all, marched over to me and said:

“Give me about three thousand dollars in threes.”

“With pleasure. I’m busy. How much in cold cash?”

“Nothing, my dear fellow.”

“Nothing?”

“Right. And please don’t disturb me. I shall be spending the day on research at the public library. Hold yourself in readiness—”

He dodged the notebook I threw, and danced out.

I put a sheet in the typewriter and started, without any enthusiasm, on the report for Cramer, but had only filled a third of a page when it occurred to me that it would be fun to locate Zorka without moving from my desk. I pulled the phone over and dialed a number. The ringing signal was in my ear a long while before there was a voice. It sounded disconsolate.

“Hullohullohullo!”

I made mine vigorous but musical. “Hello, Belinda?”

“Yes. Who is this?”

“Guess.”

“I’m in no condition to guess.”

“It’s Archie. Archie the good-looking bum. I want to warn—”

“How did you get this number? It’s private and it’s not listed.”

“I know, but I can read, can’t I? I saw it on your phone when I used it. I want to say three things. First, that I think you’re very very beautiful and if you ever ask me to come and read aloud to you I will. Second, I forgot to thank you for the drinks. Third, I want to warn you about Zorka. About a thousand cops are looking for her, and if they come and find her there it will get you in a lot of trouble, and I’d be glad to—”

“What are you talking about? How are they going to find her here when you took her away?”