Rex Stout_Nero Wolfe 07 (8 page)

I was, of course, on 49th Street. My impulse was to hoof it around a couple of corners to 48th Street and get the roadster, but it was parked only a few yards from the entrance to Miltan’s, so I voted unanimously for discretion and hopped into a taxi. On its cushion, bumping along downtown on Park Avenue, I maintained the discretion by not attempting to explore my overcoat pocket, considering that if things got complicated and aggravating enough the taxi driver might be asked questions about what he had seen in his mirror. So I just sat and let him bump me down to 35th Street and cross-town to the number of Wolfe’s house.

As I passed through the front hall I tossed my hat on a hook but kept my overcoat on. In the office, Wolfe sat at his desk, and in front of him was the metal box that was kept on a shelf in the safe, to which he alone had a key, and which he had never opened in my presence. I had always supposed that it contained papers too private even for me, but for all I knew it might have been stuffed with locks of hair or the secret codes of the Japanese army. He put something into it and shut the lid and frowned at me.

“Well?” he demanded.

I shook my head. “No soap. I might have been able to bring her if I had had a chance to exert my charm, but on account of circumstances beyond my control—”

“Circumstances forcing you to return here alone?”

“Not exactly forcing, no, sir. You may remember that on the phone I mentioned a bird named Percy Ludlow who said that your daughter was getting his cigarettes out of his coat at his request. Well, somebody murdered him.”

Wolfe glared. “I am not in a mood for buffoonery.”

“Neither am I. I ruined my coat falling off of a fence on purpose. At two minutes after six, Miss Lovchen and Miss Tormic were upstairs giving fencing lessons and various other people were doing other things. Miss Tormic was supposed to be giving a lesson to Percy Ludlow. I was downstairs in the office with Mr. and Mrs. Miltan. We heard yells and ran up two flights into a commotion of assorted people. In the fencing room at the end we found Percy Ludlow on the floor with an épée running through him from front to back and eight inches beyond. Miltan stayed there on guard and his wife went to the office to phone for the police and I took charge of the front door. The first two cops on the scene were radio patrol, the next three were precinct bums, and the homicide squad arrived around 6:24.”

“Well?”

“That’s all.”

“All?” Wolfe was as nearly speechless as I had ever seen him. “You—” He sputtered. “You were right there, inside there, and you deliberately ran away—”

“Wait a minute. Not deliberately. A cop relieved me at the door and another one took me with him to the office, where the inmates had gathered. I happened to be standing near the rack where I had hung my coat and I noticed that the pocket was bulging open on account of something in it. When I had hung the coat up the pocket had been empty. Maybe someone had merely mistaken it for the wastebasket. On
the other hand, there was a murderer in the room, and Miss Tormic had presumably been fencing with the victim, and I was there as the representative of Miss Tormic. The attitude that might be adopted by the homicide squad in face of those facts would certainly be distasteful, in case there was a general search and the object in my pocket wasn’t wastepaper. So I descended to the basement and left by the back door and fell over a fence and took a taxi.”

“And what was the object?”

“I don’t know.” I removed my coat and spread it on his desk. “I thought it would be more fun to look at it with you. To the tips of my fingers it felt like a piece of canvas.” I was widening the mouth of the pocket and peeping in. “Yep, it’s canvas.” I inserted fingers and thumb and eased it out. It was rolled tight. As I unrolled it, it became a heavy canvas gauntlet, with reinforced palm, and a little metal dingus slid off onto the desk.

“Let’s don’t touch that,” I suggested, and bent over to inspect it. At its middle it was about a quarter of an inch thick. At one end it had three claws, or fingers, and at the other it tapered to a single point, sharp as an ice pick. I straightened up with a nod.

“Uh-huh, I thought so.”

“What the devil is it?”

“My God, look at it! It’s the
col de mort
!”

“Confound you, Archie—”

“Okay, but let it alone.” I told him about the disappearance of the curio from Miltan’s cabinet and the history of it. He listened with his lips compressed.

When I was through he demanded, “And you think this was used—”

“I know damn well it was. The end of the épée that killed Ludlow was blunt, and Miltan said it couldn’t
possibly have been thrust through him that way. So this thing was removed afterwards. It looks as if it would slide right off. I doubt if I need to point out those stains on the glove where this was wrapped up in it.”

“Thank you. I can see.”

“And you can also see that it is a woman’s glove. It looks big on account of the way it’s made, but it’s not big enough—”

“I can see that too.”

“And you can see that if I had stayed there and that contraption had been found in my pocket, or if I had tried to hide it—”

I stopped because his lips were working and he had shut his eyes. It didn’t take long, maybe thirty seconds, then he reached for the button and pushed it. When Fritz appeared he was in a cap and apron similar to those worn by the man in the court who hadn’t seen my wife’s cat.

“Turn out the light in the hall and do not answer the door,” Wolfe told him.

“Yes, sir.”

“If the phone rings, answer it in the kitchen. Archie is not here and you don’t know where he is or when he will return. I am engaged and cannot be disturbed. Draw the heavy curtains in the front and the dining room, but first—is there a full loaf of the Italian round?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Bring it, please, with a small knife and a roll of waxed paper.”

When Fritz left I followed him, to hang my coat in the hall and shoot the bolt on the front door. As I returned I flipped the light switch, and in a moment Fritz returned with the required articles on a tray.
Wolfe told him to stand by and then attacked the loaf of bread with the knife, which of course was like a razor, as Fritz’s knives always were. He described a circle four inches in diameter in the center of the loaf, and then dug in, excavating a neat round hole clear to the bottom crust but leaving the crust intact. Next he picked up the
col de mort
with the tips of his fingers, placed it on the palm of the glove, rolled the glove up tight, wrapped it in some waxed paper, and stuffed it into the hole in the loaf. He filled the extra space with wads of paper, and spread a sheet of paper smoothly over the top. With his swift and dexterous fingers, the entire operation consumed not over three minutes.

He told Fritz, “Make a chocolate icing, at once, and cover this well. Put it in the refrigerator. Dispose of the bread scraps.”

“Yes, sir.” Fritz picked up the tray and departed.

I said sarcastically, “Bravo. It’s wonderful how your mind works. If that had been me I would just have gone up and chucked it in my bureau drawer. Of course it’s more picturesque to disguise it as a cake, but it’s an awful waste of chocolate, and who do you think is going to come looking for it? Do you think I’d have brought it here if anyone had any suspicion that I had it?”

“I don’t know. But someone knows that you had it and that you brought it away—the person who put it there. Who had an opportunity to do that?”

“Everybody. They were all there in the office. While I was on guard at the street door.”

“When you removed the coat from the rack and started off with it, were you looking at people’s faces?”

“No, I was being nonchalant. There were two cops there and I had to get out of the room with it.”

“You say Miss Tormic was supposed to be fencing
with Mr. Ludlow. Why supposed? Isn’t it known whether she was or not?”

“It may be known, but not by me. I was down in the office with Mr. and Mrs. Miltan when the porter found the body and started a squawk. After that I had no chance to talk with Miss Tormic or anybody else.”

The telephone rang. I plugged in the kitchen extension and we heard, faintly, Fritz’s voice taking the call.

Wolfe leaned back and sighed. “Very well,” he muttered. “Tell me about it. From the moment you got there until you left. No omissions.”

I did so.

A
t a quarter to ten we finally left the dining table, returned to the office, switched on the lights, and sat down to wait. Various developments had occurred. The doorbell had rung three times, unheeded, and the phone somewhat oftener. At the finish of the salad I had left Wolfe alone with the green tomato pie and gone to the darkened front room for a peek around the window curtain. Two men in plain clothes were on the sidewalk, standing there with their hands in their pockets looking chilly and frustrated. I gave them a Bronx cheer and went to the kitchen and used the phone. Johnny Keems and Orrie Cather were out, and I left a message for them to call the office. I got Fred Durkin and Saul Panzer and told them I was just making contact and they were to await possible orders, and informed Saul about the envelope he would receive in the morning mail. I took it for granted that the number which had been jotted on his memo pad by Fritz, who had been answering the phone as instructed, was the number of the Miltan studio, but I verified it anyway by looking in the book, and told Fritz to call it and convey the message that Mr. Wolfe and Mr. Goodwin were now both at home
and at leisure. Then I went back to the dining room and joined Wolfe at coffee.

Our wait, after we returned to the office, was a short one. We hadn’t been there more than five minutes when the doorbell called me to the front. As I opened the door I was expecting a brace of sergeants at the most, and was really surprised when I saw a single familiar figure confronting me, with a felt hat cocked over one of the half-buried irate eyes and an unlit cigar tilted up from a corner of the wide determined mouth.

“Honored,” I declared, standing aside to give him passage. “Deeply honored.”

“Go to hell,” Inspector Cramer growled, entering. I shut the door and took his hat and coat and disposed of them, and followed him into the office.

Wolfe offered a hand, greeted him nicely, and said this was a pleasure he hadn’t had for some months.

“Yeah. Quite a pleasure.” Cramer sat down, took the cigar from his mouth, scowled at me, replaced the cigar at a better angle, and spoke.

“Where you been, Goodwin?” He was practically snarling. Before I could reply he went on, “Forget it. If I already knew you’d tell me and if I didn’t you wouldn’t.” He removed the cigar again and leaned at me. “You’re the most damn contrary pest within my knowledge. Twenty times I’ve had you under my feet when I was busy and had no use for you. Now I go to look at a murder and I am told that an important witness has calmly took his hat and coat and departed, and by God, it turns out to be you! The one time you’re supposed to be there you’re not! I’ve told you before that I’d throw you in the jug for a nickel. This time I’d do it for nothing!”

I inquired, “Did you find Arthur?”

“We found—none of your damn business what we found. What did you run away for?”

“Because I wanted to.” I requisitioned a friendly grin for him. “Look, Inspector, you know perfectly well you’re just being rhetorical. I ran away to keep from losing my job. Mr. Wolfe had sent me there on an errand with instructions to report back when the errand was finished. It was finished, and as you know, Mr. Wolfe doesn’t take an excuse. By the way, I left my car there, parked on 48th—”

“Nuts. Why did you beat it?”

“I’m telling you. I would have been kept there till midnight, and for nobody’s benefit, because there were a dozen people there who knew more than I did about the murder, and at least one of them a lot more.” I let my voice rise a little in indignation. “I helped out all I could, didn’t I? Didn’t I guard the front door until the radio and precinct guys—”

I stopped short.

“Uh-huh.” Cramer nodded grimly. “Just occurred to you, huh? Brain slowed up on you? I thought of that a long while ago, all by myself. What was it, Goodwin? What was it that happened between the time the precinct men arrived and the time you took your overcoat from the rack?”

“Nothing happened.”

“Yes, it did. I want to know what it was.”

“Nothing, except that when a cop relieved me at the door there was nothing I could do to help, and you know damn well what Mr. Wolfe is like if I let anything interfere with his business.”

He glared at me. Then he slid back to a more comfortable position in the big leather chair, looked at Wolfe, and slowly shook his head. “I’m tired out,” he said resentfully. “I was up most of last night on that
Arlen case, and I was going to bed at eight o’clock, and now here’s this, and I find you’re in on it even before it happens, and you can guess how pure and simple that makes it seem like.”

“I can assure you,” Wolfe said sympathetically, “that Mr. Goodwin’s errand was neither to prevent nor to provoke murder. We really didn’t know there was to be one.”

“Oh, I know all about his errand. Driscoll’s diamonds. To hell with that. Let’s be reasonable. There was Goodwin, alone right at the front door for six or seven minutes after he came downstairs with Mrs. Miltan, before the radio men got there. Then they left him alone again until the precinct men arrived. He knew from the beginning what a murder investigation means for those on the premises when the squad gets on the job. If he wanted to get away and get to you to report, all he had to do was walk right out and get in his car and go. Instead of that, he waits until the precinct men come and one of them is stationed at the door, then he goes to the office and stands there and looks around, and all of a sudden he grabs his hat and coat, sneaks down to the basement, pulls a gun and scares the daylights out of a colored porter who—”

“He had no daylights left in him.”

“Shut up. Tells the porter to stay where he is, takes a ladder to the rear court and climbs the fence and talks about his wife’s cat and pretends to fall off, beats it through a kitchen and a restaurant on 49th Street, and jumps a taxi and tells the driver he likes to go fast. And he tells me nothing happened between the time the precinct men came and the time he reached for his coat! I ask you, what does that sound like?”