Rex Stout_Nero Wolfe 46 (16 page)

I said, “Much traffic?”

He said, “Of course. There always is.”

As I hung up his coat I decided not to wait until tomorrow for the ultimatum. After dinner in the office, when Fritz had gone with the coffee tray. Wolfe went to the kitchen, and I went up to my room to stand at the window and consider how to word it.

That meal stands out as the one I enjoyed least of all the ones I have had at that table. I really thought it might be the last one, but I used my knife and fork as usual, and chewed and swallowed, and heard what he said about things like the expressions on people’s faces as they stood in line in front of the voting booths. When we went to the office and sat and Fritz came with the coffee, I still hadn’t decided how to start the ultimatum, but that didn’t bother me. I knew from long experience that it would go better if I let it start itself.

There were a couple of swallows left of my second cup when the doorbell rang and I went for a look. It was a gang, and I went part way down the hall to make sure before I returned to the office and said, “It’s four of the six. Vilar, Judd, Hahn, and Igoe. No Ackerman or Urquhart.”

“None of them telephoned?”

“Yes. None.”

“Bring them.”

I went. I couldn’t tell, as I swung the door open and they entered and got their coats off, what to expect. Evidently they hadn’t come merely to deliver an ultimatum, for in the office Judd went to the red leather chair and the others moved up yellow ones. And Judd
told Wolfe, “You don’t look like you’ve just spent time in jail.”

“I have spent more time in a dirtier jail,” Wolfe said. “In Algiers.”

“Yes? I have never been in jail. Yet. Two of us wanted to come this morning, but I wanted to get more facts. I haven’t got them—not enough. Perhaps you can supply them. I understand that you and Goodwin aren’t talking, not at all, and neither are the men you hired, but we are being asked about a slip of paper one of us handed Bassett at that dinner, and there has been another murder, and we are even being asked where we were Saturday morning, when that woman was killed. You said you wouldn’t go to the District Attorney, and apparently you haven’t. You didn’t go, you were taken. We want to know what the hell is going on.”

“So do I.”

“Goddam it,” Igoe blurted, “you’ll talk to us!”

“I will indeed.” Wolfe sent his eyes around. “I’m glad you came, gentlemen. I suppose Mr. Ackerman and Mr. Urquhart didn’t want to enter this jurisdiction, and I don’t blame them. As for the slip of paper, Lucile Ducos knew about it, but she was killed. Evidently Marie Garrou, the maid, also knew about it, possibly by eavesdropping, and she has talked. So you are being harassed, and that’s regrettable. But I don’t regret hunting you up and entangling you, because one of you supplied information that I may find useful. Two of you. Mr. Igoe told Mr. Goodwin that Mr. Bassett had obsessions—his word—and Mr. Hahn told me that one of his obsessions, a powerful one, centered on his wife.”

When I heard him say that, I knew. It came in a flash, like lightning. It wasn’t a guess or a hunch, I
knew
. I’m aware that you probably knew a while back and you’re surprised that I didn’t, but that doesn’t
prove that you’re smarter than I am. You are just reading about it, and I was in it, right in the middle of it. Also, I may have pointed once or twice, but I’m not going back and make changes. I try to make these reports straight, straight accounts of what happened, and I’m not going to try to get tricky.

I’ll try to report the rest of that conversation, but I can’t swear to it. I was there and I heard it, but I had a decision to make that couldn’t wait until they had gone. Obviously Wolfe was standing mute to me. Why? Damn it,
why
? But that
could
wait, and the decision couldn’t. The question was, should I let him know that I now knew the score? And something happened that had happened a thousand times before: I discovered that I was only pretending to try to decide. The decision had already been made by my subconscious—I call it that because I don’t know any other name for it. I was not going to let him know that I knew. If that was the way he wanted to play it, all right, it took two to play and we would see who fumbled first.

Meanwhile they were talking, and I have changed my mind. I said I would try to report the rest of that conversation, but I would be faking it. If anyone had said anything that changed the picture or added to it, I would report that, but they didn’t. Wolfe tried to get Hahn and Igoe started again on Mrs. Bassett, but no. Evidently they had decided they shouldn’t have mentioned her. They had come to find out why Wolfe had dragged them in, and specifically they wanted to know—especially Judd and Vilar—about Pierre Ducos, who had died there in Wolfe’s house when no one was there but us, and about his daughter. At one point I expected Wolfe to walk out on them, but he stuck and let them talk. He had admitted—stated—that it was regrettable that they were being harassed and that
they had supplied useful information. Also, of course, they might possibly supply more, but they didn’t. I knew they didn’t, now that I had caught up.

It was a little past ten o’clock when I returned to the office after seeing them out, and I had made another decision. It would be an hour before he went up to bed, and if he started talking, it would be a job to handle my voice and my face. So instead of sitting I said, “I can catch the last half-hour of a hockey game if I hurry. Unless I’m needed?” He said no and reached for a book, and I went to the hall and reached for my coat. Outside, the wind was playing around looking for things to slap, and I turned my collar up, walked to the drugstore at the corner of Eighth Avenue, went in and to the phone booth, and dialed a number.

“Hello?”

“This is the president of the National League for Prison Reform. When would it be convenient to give me half an hour to discuss our cause?”

“Have you bathed and shaved?”

“No. I’m Exhibit A.”

“All right, come ahead. Use the service entrance.”

I got a break. Getting a taxi at that time of night may take anything from a minute to an hour, and here one came as I reached the curb.

Of course it was also a break that Lily was at home with no company. She had been at the piano, probably playing Chopin preludes. That isn’t just a guess; I can tell by her eyes and the way she uses her voice. Her voice sounds as if it would like to sing, but she doesn’t know it. She told me to go to the den and in a couple of minutes came with a tray—a bottle of champagne and two glasses.

“I put it in the freezer when you phoned,” she said, “so it should be about right.” She sat. “How bad was it?”

“Not bad at all. I sat on the cot and shut my eyes and pretended I was in front of the fire at The Glade with you in the kitchen broiling a steak.” I pushed on the cork. “No glass for Mimi?”

“She’s gone to a movie. How bad
is
it?”

“I wish I knew. I think we’ll come out alive, but don’t ask for odds.” The cork came, and I tilted the bottle and poured. The den has a door to the terrace, and I went and opened it and stood the bottle outside. She said, “To everybody, starting with us,” and we touched glasses and drank.

I sat. “Speaking of odds, if florist shops had been open I would have brought a thousand red roses. I gave you a thousand to one that Doraymee wouldn’t regret telling you about Benjamin Igoe, and I’m pretty sure it was a bad bet. So I owe you an apology.”

“Why will she regret it?”

“I’ll tell you someday, I hope soon. I phoned and asked if I could come for three reasons. One, I like to look at you. Two, I had to apologize. Three, I thought you might be willing to answer a question or two about Doraymee.”

“She doesn’t like to be called that.”

“All right, Dora Bassett.”

“What kind of a question? Will she regret it if I answer?”

“She might. It’s like this. Her husband was murdered. Your favorite waiter was murdered. His daughter was murdered. It’s possible that it would help to find out who did it if you would tell me exactly what Dora Bassett said when she asked you about me. That’s the question I want to ask. What did she say?”

“I told you. Didn’t I?”

“Just if you had seen me since her husband died.
And the second time, had I found out who put the bomb in Pierre’s coat.”

“Well, that was it.”

“Do you remember her exact words?”

“You know darned well I don’t. I’m not a tape recorder like you.”

“Did she mention Nero Wolfe?”

“I think so. I’m not sure.”

“Did she mention anyone else? Saul Panzer or Fred Durkin or Orrie Cather?”

“No. She was asking about you. Listen, Escamillo. I don’t like this, and you know it. I told you once I don’t like to think of you as a private detective, but I realize I wouldn’t like to think of you as a stockbroker or a college professor or a truckdriver or a movie actor. I just like to think of you as Archie Goodwin. I like that a lot, and you know it.”

She drank champagne, emptied her glass. I put down my glass, bent down to take her slipper off—blue silk or something with streaks of gold or something—poured a couple of ounces of champagne in it, lifted it to my mouth, and drank.

“That’s how I like you,” I said. “Hereafter I would leave my license as a detective at home if I had one. It’s been suspended.”

W
hen I went to bed and to sleep Tuesday night, I knew I was going to do something in the morning but didn’t know what. I only knew that when Wolfe came down, either from the plant rooms at eleven or later for lunch, I wouldn’t be there. When I opened my eyes and rolled out Wednesday morning, I knew exactly where I would be at eleven o’clock and what I would be doing. It’s very convenient to have a Chairman of the Board who decides things while you sleep. At eleven o’clock I would be in the bedroom of the late Lucile Ducos, determined to find something. There
had
to be something; otherwise it might take weeks, even months.

I would have liked to go right after breakfast, but it was advisable not to tackle the white apron, now known as Marie Garrou, until she had had time to give Grandpa Ducos his breakfast and get him and his wheelchair to the window in the front room, and at least get a good start on the rest of the daily routine. So as I finished my second cup of coffee I told Fritz I would leave at ten-thirty on a personal errand, and would he please tell Wolfe, who had gone up to the plant rooms, that I wouldn’t be there for lunch. He asked if he should
answer the phone, and I said sure, we still had our freedom of speech.

The office had been neglected for several days and needed attention. The film of dust on the chairs that hadn’t been used. The stack of junk mail that had accumulated. The smell of the water in the vase on Wolfe’s desk. And a dozen other details. So I didn’t get away at ten-thirty. It was twenty minutes of eleven when I got ten double sawbucks from the cash box, wrote “11/6 AG 200” in the book, and closed the door of the safe. As I turned for a look around to see if I had missed anything, the doorbell rang.

It’s true that there had been several pictures of her in the
Gazette
and one in the
Times
, but I assert that I would have known her anyway. It was so fit, so
natural
, for Mrs. Harvey Bassett to show, that when a woman was there on the stoop it had to be her. I had gone two miles at eleven o’clock at night to ask Lily Rowan a question about her, and there she was.

I went and opened the door and said, “Good morning,” and she said, “I’m Dora Bassett. You’re Archie Goodwin,” and walked in and kept going, down the hall.

Any way you look at it, surely I was glad to see her, but I wasn’t. For about twelve hours I had known that seeing her would certainly be on the program, but I would choose the time and place. Since Wolfe had gone up to the plant rooms, he would come down at the usual hour, and it was twelve minutes to eleven. If I followed precedent I would either go up there or go and buzz him from the kitchen, but precedent had been ignored for more than a week. So when I entered the office I didn’t even glance at her—she was standing in the middle of the room—as I crossed to my desk. I sat and reached for the house phone and pushed the button.

He answered quicker than usual. “Yes?”

“Me. Mrs. Harvey H. Bassett just came. I didn’t invite her. Perhaps you did.”

“No.” Silence. “I’ll be down at once.”

As I hung up she said, “I didn’t come to see Nero Wolfe. I came to see you.”

I looked at her. So that was Doraymee. The front of her mink or sable or sea-otter coat—it has got to the point where I can’t tell cony from coonskin—was open, showing black silk or polyester. She was small but not tiny. Her face was small too, and if it hadn’t been so made up, perhaps for the first time since she had lost her husband, it would probably have been easy to look at.

I stood up. “He’s coming down, so you’ll see both of us. I’ll take your coat?”

“I want to see
you
.” She tried to smile. “I know a lot about you, from your books and from Lily Rowan.”

“Then you must have known Mr. Wolfe’s schedule, to the office at eleven o’clock. He’ll want to meet you, naturally.” I moved. “I might as well take your coat.”

She looked doubtful, then turned for me to get it. I put it on the couch, and when I turned she was in the red leather chair. As I went to my chair she said, “You’re taller than I expected. And more—more—
rougher
. Lily thinks you’re graceful.”

That simply wasn’t so. Lily did
not
think I was graceful. Was she trying to butter me and be subtle about it? I didn’t have time to decide how to reply because the elevator had hit the bottom and I had to make sure my face was ready for Wolfe. He was not going to have the satisfaction of knowing I had caught up until I was ready.

He went to his desk and turned the chair so he would be facing her. As he sat she said, louder and stronger than before, “I came to see Archie Goodwin.”

He said, just stating a fact, “This is my office, Mrs. Bassett.”

“We could go to another room.”

I didn’t have the slightest idea of his game plan. He might have merely wanted to have a look at her and hear her voice, and intended to get up and go to the kitchen. So I told her, “I work for Mr. Wolfe, Mrs. Bassett.” If it sounded sarcastic to him, fine. “I would tell him whatever you said to me. Go ahead.”