Rex Stout_Nero Wolfe 46 (9 page)

“No butter today, thank you. All right. There’s lemon-sherry pudding and I want to enjoy it, so I’ll go
to the bedroom and get it done.” She pushed her chair back and rose. “Friday, October eighteenth.”

“Right.”

She went. My watch said 2:21. If she got names, I wouldn’t enjoy
my
lemon-sherry pudding, so it was advisable to get that done, and I pushed the button and Mimi came. Her eyes went down to my plate and up to me. “You ate more than half of it, Mr. Goodwin. What do you think?”

“To be honest, Mimi, I don’t know. When I’ve got a job on my mind I forget to taste. I’ll have to come again.”

She nodded. “I knew you were working on something, I can tell. Shall I do an omelet?”

I said no thanks, just the pudding and coffee, and she took my plate. In four minutes she was back, and I burned my tongue on the coffee because my stomach sent up word that it wanted help. Of course the pudding was no stranger. Mimi is good at puddings and parfaits and pastries. Also at coffee.

I was licking my spoon when Lily came, talking as she entered. “Don’t get up. I got one name.” She sat. “That woman is really low, I don’t know why. He was twice her age, at least that, and I supposed she married him just to get in out of the rain. Didn’t she?”

“I don’t know, I never met her. You got a name?”

“Yes, just one. She said she didn’t know who the others were, but one of them was a man she knew.” She handed me a paper, light green, a sheet from her 5-by-8 memo pad. “She called him Benny. He’s an engineer, with NATELEC, Bassett’s company. More coffee?”

“No, thanks. You show promise. We’ll raise your pay and—”

“I’ll do better as I go along. You skip. You’re not
yourself when you’d rather be somewhere else.” She picked up her spoon.

“I would
not
rather—I don’t need to tell you what I’d rather.” I stood. “I’ll tell you everything someday, and I hope you like it.” I skipped.

In the elevator I looked at the slip. Benjamin Igoe. That was all, and I should have asked her how to pronounce it. On the sidewalk I stood for half a minute, then headed west and turned downtown on Madison. I had to decide how to handle it—using my intelligence guided by experience, as Wolfe put it. By Fifty-fifth Street it was decided, but my legs would get me there as soon as a taxi or a bus, so I kept going. It was five past three when the doorman at Rusterman’s saluted and opened for me, so the lunch rush would be over and Felix could and would listen.

That was all he had to do, listen, except for pronouncing it. I spelled it, and he thought probably Eego, but I preferred Eyego, and since I had been born in Ohio and he had been born in Vienna, I won. When that was settled and he was thoroughly briefed, I went to the bar and ordered an Irish with water on the side. Even after the coffee my stomach still seemed to think something was needed, and I made it Irish to show Lily there was no hard feeling. Then I went and consulted the phone book for the address of National Electronics Industries. Third Avenue, middle Forties, which was a relief. It might have been Queens. I left by the side door.

They had three floors of one of the newer steel-and-glass hives. The directory on the lobby wall said Research and Development on the eighth, Production on the ninth, and Executive on the tenth. He might be anything from stock clerk to Chairman of the Board, but you might as well start at the top, so I went to the
tenth but was told that Mr. Eyego was in Production. So I pronounced it right. On the ninth a woman with a double chin used a kind of intercom that was new to me and then told me down the hall to the last door on the right.

It was a corner room with four windows, so he wasn’t a stock clerk, though you might have thought so from his brown overalls with big pockets full of things. He was standing over by a filing cabinet. I had never seen a more worried face. That might have been expected, since the president of his company had died only five days ago, but those brow wrinkles had taken at least five years. So it was a surprise when he said in a good strong baritone, “A message from Nero Wolfe? What the hell. Huh?”

My voice went up a little without being told to. “I said message, but it’s really a question. It’s a little complicated, so if you can spare a few minutes—”

“I can never spare a few minutes, but my mind needs something to take it off of the goddam problems. All right, ten minutes.” He looked at his watch. “Let’s sit down.”

There was a big desk near a window, but that was probably where the goddam problems were, and he crossed to a couch over by the far wall. He sat and crossed his legs in spite of the loaded pockets, and I pulled a chair around to face him.

“I’ll try to keep it brief, but you’ll need a little background. For a couple of years Nero Wolfe was in charge of Rusterman’s restaurant as trustee, and a man named Felix Mauer was under him. Now Felix is in charge, but he often asks Nero Wolfe for advice, and Mr. Wolfe and I often eat there. We ate lunch there yesterday, and Felix—”

“Huh. A waiter from that restaurant was killed in Wolfe’s house, a bomb, and you found the body. Huh?”

“Right. That’s why we were there yesterday, to ask questions. The waiter’s name was Pierre Ducos, and he waited on you at dinner in an upstairs room at Rusterman’s on Friday, October eighteenth. Twelve days ago. Harvey H. Bassett was the host. You remember it?”

“Of course I remember it. It was the last meal I ever ate with him.”

“Do you remember the waiter?”

“I never remember people. I only remember diffractions and emissions.”

“Mr. Wolfe and I knew Pierre well, and he knew us. When he came there late Monday night, he told me a man was going to kill him. He also told me about the dinner on October eighteenth, and he told me he saw one of the guests hand Bassett a slip of paper and Bassett put it in his wallet, and that was all. He said he wanted to tell Nero Wolfe the rest of it because he was the greatest detective in the world. I took him upstairs to a bedroom, and apparently you know what happened then, like a couple of million other people. Well, there you are. That dinner had been eleven days ago, and why did he tell me about that and about the slip of paper one of you handed Bassett? That’s why I’m here, and it brings me to the question I want to ask: did you hand Bassett a slip of paper, and what was on it?”

“No. Huh.”

“Did you see one of the others hand him one?”

“No. Huh.” He seemed to be scowling at me, but it could have been just the wrinkles.

“Then I have to ask a favor, or rather Nero Wolfe does. We asked Felix who the guests were at that dinner, and the only one he could name was you. He said someone had told him who you were, Benjamin Igoe,
the well-known scientist. I don’t know if you like to be called a scientist, but that’s what Felix was told.”

“I don’t believe it. Goddam it, I am
not
well known.”

“Maybe you are and don’t know it. That’s what Felix told me. You can call him and ask him.”

“Who told him that?”

“He didn’t say. He’s there now. Give him a ring.” I thought he probably would, there and then. Nine men out of ten would have, or maybe only seven or eight.

But not him. He just said, “Huh. By god, if I’m famous it’s about time I found out. I’m sixty-four years old. You want a favor?”

“Nero Wolfe does. I’m just the errand boy. He wants—”

“You’re a licensed private investigator. Well known.”

“You can’t believe what you read in the paper. I am
not
well known.” I wanted to say huh but didn’t. “Mr. Wolfe wants the names of all the men who were at that dinner, but if you never remember people, of course you can’t tell me.”

“I remember the
names
of everything, including people.” He proved it. “Did Pierre Ducos tell you what we talked about?”

I shook my head. “He only told me what I told you.”

“We talked about tape recorders. That’s what Harvey had us together for. Did you know Harvey Bassett?”

“No. Of course I had heard of him, he was well known too.”

“I knew him all my life, most of it, we were at college together. He was three years older than me. I was a prodigy. Huh. No more. I took physics, and he took business. He made a billion dollars more or less, but up to the day he died he couldn’t tell an electron from a kilovolt. Also he was unbalanced. He had obsessions.
He had one about Richard Nixon. That was why he had us there. He made the equipment for electronic recording, or rather that was one of the things we made and he sold, and he thought Nixon had debased it. Polluted it. He wanted to do something about it but didn’t know what. So he had us—”

He bit it off and looked at his watch. “Goddam it, twelve minutes.” He jumped up, more like twenty-four than sixty-four. He moved, but I grabbed his arm and said firmly, “Goddam it, the names.”

“Oh. Did I say I would?” He crossed to the desk, sat, got a pad of paper and a pen, and wrote, fast, so fast that I knew it wouldn’t be legible. But it was. I had stepped over, and he tore it off and handed it to me, and a glance was enough. All five of them.

“Mr. Wolfe will be grateful,” I said, and meant it. “
Damn
grateful. He never leaves his house, and almost certainly he will want to tell you so and have a talk. Is there any chance you would drop in on him, perhaps on your way home?”

“I doubt it. I suppose I might. My kind of work, I never know what I’m going to do. Huh. You get out of here.”

Turning, I said, “Huh.” I didn’t really
say
it, it just came out. And I walked out.

Also I walked the ten blocks down to Thirty-fifth Street and across town to the old brownstone. As I mounted the stoop it was half past four and Wolfe would be up in the plant rooms, and I hung up my coat and went to the office, sat, and looked at the list. He had written not only the names, but also what they did. If my time hadn’t been up, he might have included ages and addresses. I tossed it on the desk and sat and looked at the picture. It was now an entirely new ballgame. By tossing Richard Nixon into that dinner party
he had put a completely new face on it. Knowing Wolfe as I did, that was obvious. It was so obvious that it took me only ten minutes to decide what to do first, and I did it. I got at the phone and dialed a number.

It took more than half an hour to get all three of them. Actually I only got Fred; for Saul and Orrie I had to leave urgent messages. Then I pulled the typewriter around and made five copies of the list of names. I don’t have to type it here for you because I already have. Then I typed the conversation with Igoe, verbatim, one carbon. I usually don’t read things over, but I did that, and was on the second page when the elevator rattled coming down and clanked at the bottom, and Wolfe came.

He went to his desk and sat and said, “You’re back.” He rarely says things that are obvious, but he says that fairly often because it’s a miracle that I’m not limping or bleeding after spending hours out in the concrete jungle.

“Yes, sir. I’ll try to cover it all before dinner. I saw Felix and Lon Cohen and Miss Rowan and Felix again and one of the guests at that dinner named Benjamin Igoe, an electronics engineer with NATELEC, Bassett’s company, and you’ll want it all, but I prefer to give you the last one first. Igoe. I’ve typed my talk with him for the record.” I swiveled to get it from my desk, swiveled again, and got up and handed it to him.

Three pages. He read the last page twice, looked at me with his eyes half shut, and said, “By God.”

I stared at him. I may have gaped. He never says by god, and he said it with a capital G. So I didn’t say anything.

He did. “Was he gibbering? Was it flummery?”

“No, sir. It was straight.”

“He gave you their names.”

“Right.” It was in my hand, the one he had written, not a typed copy, and I passed it to him. He read it twice too. He put it down on his desk and then picked it up for another look. “I am not easily overwhelmed,” he said. “If I could have them here now, all of them, I would pretermit dinner. I have occasionally asked you to bring people when I knew no one else could, but this—these six—not even you.”

“I agree. So before I typed that conversation I did something. I used the telephone. More than once. And got results. You may have one guess.”

He looked at me, straight, then closed his eyes. In about a minute, maybe a little more, he opened them and asked, “When will they come?”

“Nine o’clock. Fred sure, and Saul and Orrie probable. As you know, they like doing errands for you.”

“Satisfactory,” he said. “I’ll taste my dinner. I haven’t tasted food for two days.”

I
forget who once called them the Three Musketeers. Saul was in the red leather chair, and Fred and Orrie were in the two yellow ones I had moved up to face Wolfe’s desk. Saul had brandy, Orrie had vodka and tonic, Fred had bourbon, I had milk, and Wolfe had beer.

Saul Panzer was two inches shorter, much less presentable with his big ears and unpressed pants, and in some ways smarter than me. Fred Durkin was one inch shorter, two inches broader, heavier-bearded, and in some ways a little more gullible. Orrie Cather was half an inch taller, a lot handsomer, and a little vainer. He was still sure he should have my job and thought it was conceivable that someday he would. He also thought he was twice as attractive to all women under forty, and I guess he was. He could say let’s look at the record.

I had been doing most of the talking for more than an hour, and their notebooks were more than half full. I had given them the crop, saving nothing, with a little help from Wolfe in spots, but of course omitting irrelevant items such as the luncheon menu at Lily Rowan’s. That had also been skipped when reporting to Wolfe before dinner. His real opinion of her wasn’t anything
near as low as he liked to pretend it was, but he didn’t need another minus for her.

I took a sip of milk and said, “Now questions, I suppose.”

“No,” Wolfe said. His eyes moved left to right and back, to take them in. “I must first tell you the situation. Archie doesn’t need to be told; he was aware of it before I was. What Mr. Igoe told him. He sees me every day, and hears me. He knew that for the first time in my life I had an itch that could not be relieved—that I hankered for something I couldn’t get. He knew that I would have given all of my orchids—well, most of them—to have an effective hand in the disclosure of the malfeasance of Richard Nixon. I once dictated to him a letter offering my services to Mr. Jaworski, and he typed it, but it wasn’t sent. I tore it up.”