Rex Stout_Nero Wolfe 07 (22 page)

“You’re in debt to Mr. Barrett, then.”

“Debt?” She frowned. “Oh, debt. Yes, very much.”

Wolfe nodded. “I sympathize with you, madame. I hate being in debt. Some people don’t seem to mind it. By the way, those people in Yugoslavia—those who might be in danger if you told us the rest of your name—are they relatives of yours?”

“Yes, some. Some relatives.”

“Are you Jewish?”

“Oh, no. I am very old Yugoslavian family.”

“Indeed. Nobility?”

“Well …” She pulled her shoulders up and together, and released them again.

“I see. I won’t press that. The danger to your relatives—would that be on account of your activities in New York?”

“But I have no activities in New York, except my business.”

“Then I don’t understand how revealing your name would place your relatives in peril.”

“Zat ees … eet would be suspect.”

“What would be suspect?”

She shook her head.

Cramer growled, “We known damn well she’s not
normal. I could have told you that much. When we went through her apartment this morning—’

Zorka’s head jerked around at him and she squeaked in indignation, “You went through my apartment!”

“Yes, ma’am,” he said calmly. “And your place of business. Anybody that stages the kind of performance you did last night can expect some unwelcome attention. You’re lucky you’re not down at headquarters right now phoning for your kind friend to furnish bail for you, and that’s exactly where you’ll be when we’re through here maybe.” He resumed to Wolfe, “There’s not a thing, not a scratch of anything, at her home or office either, that takes you back further than a year ago, the time she came to New York. That’s why I say we already knew she wasn’t normal.”

“Did you find a passport?”

“No. That’s another thing—”

“Where is your passport, madame?”

She looked at him. She wet her lips twice. “I am in zees country legally,” she declared.

“Then you must have a passport. Where is it?”

For the first time her eyes had a cornered look. “I weel explain … to zee propaire officaire …”

“There’s nothing improper about me,” Cramer said grimly.

Zorka spread out her hands. “I lost eet.”

“I’m afraid the water’s getting hot,” said Wolfe. “Now about last night. Why did you phone here and say that you saw Miss Tormic putting something in Mr. Goodwin’s pocket?”

“Because I did see eet.”

“Then why hadn’t you told the police about it?”

“Because I thought not to make trouble.” She edged forward in her chair. “Now look. Zat happen
precisely zee way I say. I thought not to make trouble. Zen I sink, murder ees so horrible, I have no right. Zen I phone you and say I weel tell zee police. Zen I sink, Mr. Barrett ees friend of Mees Tormic, so to be fair I should tell heem what I do, and I phone heem. Of course he know how I am refugee, how I escape, how I must not put people in danger—”

“By the way, where did you first meet Mr. Barrett?”

“I meet heem in Paris.”

“Go ahead.”

“So he say, good God, zee police kestion me so much, zey must know everysing about me, so dangerous to me and to so many people, so why do I not go veesit Mees Reade, so I pack my bags—”

There was a knock at the door and Fritz entered. He advanced and spoke over a dick’s shoulder:

“Mr. Panzer, sir.”

“Tell him I’m engaged with Madame Zorka and Mr. Cramer.”

“I did so, sir. He said he would like to see you.”

“Send him in.”

Cramer bellowed, “So it was Donald Barrett that got you to take a powder—”

“Just a moment,” Wolfe begged him. “I think we’re getting a reinforcement.”

Nobody seeing Saul Panzer for the first time would have regarded him as a valuable reinforcement for anything whatever, but they would have been wrong. A lot of people had underrated him, and a lot of people had paid for it. He had left his old brown cap and coat in the hall and, as he stood there absorbing a couple of million details of the little group with one quick glance, everything about him looked insignificant but his big nose.

Wolfe asked him, “Results, Saul?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Definite?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Indeed. Let us have them.”

“I was going to bring her birth certificate along, but I thought that might make trouble, so I took a copy—”

He retreated a step, because Zorka had leaped to her feet, confronted him, and practically shrieked at him, “You didn’t! You couldn’t—”

A dick reached for her elbow and Cramer bawled, “Sit down!”

“But he—if he—”

“I said sit down!”

She backed up, stumbled on the other dick’s foot, recovered her balance, and dropped into her chair. Her shoulders sagged, and she sat that way.

Saul said, “I didn’t have to make any expenditures of the kind you contemplated, but I spent three dollars and ninety cents on a phone call. I thought it was justified.”

“No doubt. Go ahead.”

Saul took his step back. “First I went to Madame Zorka’s apartment. There were four city detectives there making a search, and the maid was sitting in a bedroom crying. I had already decided what to do if I found that, so I merely went in—”

He stopped, with a glance at Cramer and the dicks.

“Go on, don’t mind them,” Wolfe told him. “If it ruins a modus operandi for you, you’ll invent an even better one for next time.”

“Thank you, sir. I went in for a minute only, establishing a friendly basis, and got the maid to look at me. Then I went to Madame Zorka’s place of
business on 54th Street. There were more city detectives there, but aside from that it didn’t look promising, and I decided to leave it as a last resort. From a certain source I got three leads on friends and associates, and I spent nearly four hours on that line, counting lunch, but got nothing at all.

“I then, at 2:15, returned to the apartment. I learned downstairs that two of the detectives were still there, so I waited until they left, which was at 2:35, and then went up. I rang the bell and the maid opened the door and I went in. On account of the impression created at my visit in the morning, she took it for granted that I was a city detective, though I did not say so. I merely went in and started searching—”

Cramer growled, “By God, impersonating—”

“Oh, no, Inspector.” Saul looked shocked. “I wouldn’t impersonate an officer. But I did suspect the maid made a mistake and took me for one, for otherwise she might have objected to my searching the place. I thought if she had it fixed in her mind that I was a city detective, she probably wouldn’t believe me anyway if I tried to tell her I wasn’t, so I didn’t try. And if you won’t regard it as impertinent, I’d like to compliment you on the job your men did. You would hardly know the place had been touched, the way they left things, and they must have gone through every inch. And the fact that they had been over it made it unnecessary for me to do any of the superficial things. I could concentrate on the long chance that there was some trick they had missed. It wasn’t much of a trick at that, only a false bottom in a leather hatbox. Underneath it I found her birth certificate and a few letters and things. I left it all there after taking a copy of the certificate, and then I went out to a phone booth
and made a long distance call to Ottumwa, Iowa. To her mother. Just to make sure—”

Zorka blurted at him, “You—you phoned my mother …”

“Yes, ma’am, I did. It’s all right, I didn’t scare her or anything, I made it all right. Having found out from the birth certificate that your name is Pansy Bupp, and having read a letter—”

“What’s that?” Wolfe demanded. “Her name is what?”

“Pansy Bupp.” He pulled a piece of paper from his pocket. “P, A, N, S, Y, B, U, P, P. Her father is William O. Bupp. He runs a feed store. She was born at Ottumwa on April 9, 1912—”

“Give me that paper.”

Saul handed it over. Wolfe glared at it, ate it with his eyes, and transferred the glare to her, and it was one of the few times on record that I would have called his tone a snarl as he shot at her:

“Why?”

She snarled back, “Why what?”

“Why that confounded drivel? That imbecile flummery?”

She looked as if she would like to stick a knife through him. “What do you think would happen,” she demanded, “to a Fifth Avenue couturière if it came out that her name was Pansy Bupp?” Her voice rose to an indignant wail. “What do you think
will
happen?”

Wolfe, beside himself with fury, wiggled a whole hand at her. “Answer me!” he roared. “Is your name Pansy Bupp?”

“Yes.”

“Were you born in Ottumwa, Iowa?”

“Yes.”

“When did you leave there?”

“Why, I … I took trips to Denver—”

“I’m not speaking of trips to Denver! When did you leave there?”

“Two years ago. Nearly. My father gave me money for a trip to Paris—and I got a job there and learned to design—and I met Donald Barrett and he suggested—”

“Where did you get the name Zorka?”

“I saw it somewhere—”

“Have you ever been in Yugoslavia?”

“No.”

“Or anywhere in Europe besides Paris?”

“No.”

“Is what you said last night—about the reason for your phoning here and then running away to Miss Reade’s place—is that the truth?”

“Yes, it is. Like a fool, an utter fool”—she gulped—“I let my conscience bother me because it was murder. If I hadn’t done that, none of this …” She flung out her hands. “Oh, can it be—can’t this be—” Her chin was quivering.

“Miss Bupp!” Wolfe thundered. “Don’t you dare! Archie, get her out of here! Get her out of the house!”

“Zat weel be a plaizhoore,” I said.

W
olfe looked up at the wall clock and said, “Ten minutes to four. I’ll have to leave you pretty soon to go up to my plants.”

We were comparatively peaceful again. The two dicks had departed with Miss Bupp, and Lieutenant Rowcliff had been phoned to expect her at headquarters for a little talk.

Cramer said, “It
could
be a frame, you know. We’ve tried some of her friends and associates too. We heard she was a Turk, a Hungarian, a Russian Jew, and maybe part Jap. It won’t hurt any to check it up.”

Wolfe shook his head, grimaced, and muttered, “Ottumwa, Iowa.”

“I guess so,” the inspector admitted. “Does that shove you off onto a siding?”

“No. It merely …” Wolfe shrugged.

“It merely leaves you still waiting at the station, huh?” Getting no answer, he regarded Wolfe a moment and then went on, “As far as I’m concerned, I’m still playing these. If you go up to your plants, I go along. If you go to the kitchen to mix salad dressing—”

“You don’t mix salad dressing in the kitchen. You do it at the table and use it immediately.”

“All right. No matter what you go to the kitchen for, I go too. It’s plainer than ever that you know where the kernel is in this nut and I don’t. Take the fact of Donald Barrett chasing this Zorka Bupp away so we couldn’t get at her. I would get fat trying to put the screws on Donald Barrett, with both the commissioner and the district attorney having a bad attack of bashfulness. Wouldn’t I? But you don’t even waste time with Donald. You have his old man, John P., himself, coming right here and walking right into your office. That goes to show.”

Wolfe looked at me. “Archie. Find out if Theodore failed to understand that when I send a gentleman to look at orchids—”

Cramer snorted. “Don’t bother. I didn’t sneak downstairs and take a peek. Rowcliff told me on the phone that he had received a report that John P. Barrett had been seen entering this address at 2:55 this p.m.”

“Were you having Mr. Barrett followed?”

“No.”

“I see. You have a regiment watching this house.”

“I wouldn’t say a regiment. But I’ve said and I say again that right now I’m more interested in this house than any other building in the borough of Manhattan. If you want me out of it you’ll have to call the police. By the way, another thing Rowcliff told me, they’ve found Belinda Reade. She’s at a matinee at the Lincoln Theater. Do we want her in here?”

“I don’t.”

“Then I don’t either. The boys’ll take care of her. If she can account satisfactorily for—is that for me?”

I nodded, and vacated my chair for him to take another phone call. This was a comparatively short one. He emitted a few grunts and made a few unilluminating
remaries, and hung up and returned to his chair. No sooner had I got back into mine than the house phone buzzed. As I pulled it over to me I heard Wolfe asking Cramer if there was anything new and the inspector replying that there was nothing worth mentioning and then, over the house phone, in response to my hello, Fred Durkin’s voice was in my ear.

“Archie? Come up here.”

I said with irritation, “Damn it, Fritz, I’m busy.” Then I waited a minute and said, “Okay, okay, quit running off your face,” and got up and beat it to the hall, shutting the door behind me. I went quickly but noiselessly up one flight of stairs, opened the door of Wolfe’s room, and entered. Fred Durkin was there on a chair beside the bed, within reach of the phone, where he had been instructed to place himself two hours previously.

He started to grumble, “This is one hell of a job—”

“Don’t crab, my boy. From each according to his ability. What is it, Lovchen?”

He nodded. “I didn’t call you when he got the report on Zorka, because he told them to bring her here, but—”

“What about Lovchen?”

“Her tail phoned in to headquarters.” Fred looked at a pad of paper he had scribbled on. “They followed her to Miltan’s this morning, and she left there at 10:53 and went back to 404 East 38th Street—”

“The hell she did. Anyone with her?”

“No, she was alone. She stayed in there only about ten minutes. At 11:15 she came out and went to Second Avenue and took a taxi. She got out at the Maidstone Building on 42nd Street. They were a little behind her as she entered the building, and she popped into an elevator just as the door was closing and they missed
it. They couldn’t find out from the elevator boy what floor she got off at, and anyway, as you know and I know, that would be bad tailing because she could have taken to the stairs and gone up or down. There are four different rows of elevators to watch in that building, and they were afraid to leave to go to a phone, but just now a cop passed by and they flagged him and had him send in a report. They’re sure she hasn’t left the building and they want help because the rush hour will be on at five o’clock.”