Archie Meets Nero Wolfe (25 page)

The cabbie stopped a half block from the Farnham Hotel. “That’s it,” he said, pointing to an imposing five-story brick-and-stone building. Cather, Durkin, Bascom, and I climbed out and stood on the sidewalk, waiting for Panzer.

“I still say this is a cockeyed plan that will land us all in the soup,” Cather carped, as he had been doing all the way up in the taxi. “We don’t even know that these two are even in their room now.”

“True,” Bascom said, “but nobody else, you included, has come up with a better idea.”

“I agree,” Durkin added. “What’ve we got to lose?”

“Maybe our licenses,” Cather shot back. “Anybody stop to think about that?”

“We’ll be okay,” Bascom assured. As the oldest among us by a generation, he tended to have a calming effect. We went into a coffee shop for a quick lunch at a table by the front window, keeping watch for the big Heron. We were just finishing when the sedan pulled up and Panzer climbed out, looking around.

I went to the front door of the café and waved him in. “Are we set?” he asked.

“Huh! As set as we’re gonna be,” Cather groused. “What did Wolfe think of this crazy scheme?”

“He raised his eyebrows when I started describing the operation,” Panzer said, “but then, the farther I got into it, the more he seemed to feel it had a chance of working. Do all of you think you’ll recognize the brothers?” We nodded.

“All right, everyone know his role?” Panzer asked. More nods all around, and after the bill was paid, we soberly trooped out, crossing the street to the hotel.

The high-ceilinged lobby still bore hints of a previous elegance, including elaborate chandeliers, fluted columns, and a ten-foot-high painted mural, albeit faded, of the Manhattan skyline in an earlier era. Three ancient characters sat in overstuffed chairs, two reading newspapers and the other one apparently asleep. The young, bespectacled desk clerk was seated, talking on the telephone, and he didn’t notice us as we walked to the stairway, bypassing the lone elevator and its uniformed operator.

Panzer remained in the lobby fingering a police-style whistle while the rest of us climbed the stairs. I stopped at the second floor, and I knew that Durkin would go to three, Bascom to four, and Cather to five. We were set. The wait couldn’t have been more than thirty seconds, but it seemed longer. Then, from the bottom of the stairwell came the screech of the whistle.

“Fire!” I yelled down the corridor, “fire from upstairs! Get out, get out, everyone!” Doors began opening as I ran down the stairs, hearing the others on the floors above me yelling the same words. “The fire’s coming down from above!” I shouted as I raced through the lobby and headed for the front door.

I recognized Fred Durkin’s booming voice, and I think I caught Bascom’s as well. Out on the street, I met up with Panzer, and we watched as people began surging through the entrance, many of them disheveled and distraught. One man was frantically buttoning his pants, while a gray-haired woman in bedroom slippers clutched a bathrobe to her gaunt frame.

Durkin, Bascom, and Cather were among the first outside, and we gathered across the street, watching the faces of the panicked hotel guests as they burst into the sunlight, free from what they thought was an inferno.

“There they are!” Cather barked, pointing to a pair of lean, dark-haired men who muscled their way out of the building, elbowing one old pensioner to the ground in the process. The Bagleys, and it surely was them, walked across the street, cursing and laughing. They stood apart from the rest of the horde of hotel guests and onlookers, which was perfect for us. We eased over toward them without being noticed. They, like everyone else, had focused their attention on the building, looking up for smoke or flames.

They never realized we were behind them until each one felt something jab him in the small of the back. “Just take it real easy,” Orrie Cather said, pressing his revolver against the taller of the brothers. “One peep or one movement out of you, and you are as dead as yesterday’s newspaper. In case you haven’t figured it out, this roscoe has a silencer on it, so the only noise if I plug you will be the sound of your skinny carcass hitting the concrete.”

Fred Durkin didn’t say as much as Cather when he talked to the second brother from behind, but apparently the words, which I couldn’t hear, were effective, because the guy appeared to be terrified. All of us then closed in around the Bagleys, who were frisked. They each had an automatic, both of which Bascom pocketed. We then began moving them toward the Heron sedan when two fire engines, sirens wailing, careened around a corner and pulled up in front of the hotel.

The timing could not have been better for us. The arrival of the engines and their crew of firefighters distracted the crowd, none of whom paid us the least bit of attention as we moved the brothers down the block, surrounding them as we pushed and pulled them toward the auto.

“You guys don’t look like cops,” the taller one snarled, “and this sure don’t look like no police cruiser to me.”

“Don’t worry about it. As far as you’re concerned, we might as well be cops,” Panzer shot back. “Orrie, get the bracelets.” Cather pulled two sets of handcuffs from his pocket and started to put them on one of the brothers, who jerked back and cocked a fist as if to take a swing. I hit him in the temple with the butt of my Webley and he let out a yowl, which couldn’t be heard more than ten feet away because of the sirens from the fire engines.

“Easy, Archie,” Panzer said. “I’m sure these boys will behave now.” They did, allowing themselves to be cuffed. They then got pushed into the Heron.

“Okay, here’s how this works,” Panzer told them as, side by side, they glowered in the backseat. “We are taking you away, never mind to where, and my friend, here,” he gestured toward Cather, “will be riding up front with me but watching you every second. And he’s the nervous type, especially when he has a gun in his hand, so you won’t want to do anything to upset him. Do you understand me?”

Both brothers were sweating now. “We’ve got money, lots of it, so ... maybe we can work something out, huh?”

“We’ll talk about that money a little later,” Panzer said, walking away from the auto to talk to us while Cather slid into the front seat with pistol drawn, leering at the Bagleys. “I’m taking these boys to Wolfe’s place,” Saul told Durkin, Bascom, and me. “Be someplace where I can reach all three of you, okay?”

“How ’bout my office?” Del said, scribbling his phone number on a sheet and handing it to Saul.

“Good. Oh, and call Gore and tell him he can take off from that lawyer’s office now. We’re going to need all of you later, so tell Bill to go to your place, too.”

“What’s the plan?” I asked.

“You’ll know soon enough, Archie. All of you will, as soon as I know myself, but I think Mr. Wolfe is going to stage one of his shows, probably tonight.” With that, he climbed behind the wheel of the Heron and drove off with two shackled brothers and an itchy-fingered operative glowering at them from the front seat.

I turned to Durkin and Bascom. “What are these shows of Wolfe’s that Saul’s talking about?”

Both men grinned. “Be prepared for an interesting and unusual evening,” was all Durkin would say, and Del just nodded his agreement.

W
ilda brewed a late afternoon pot of coffee for the four of us, and we sat in Bascom’s office sipping from mugs. For me, it was another educational session about the world of private operatives in New York, as the trio of old hands traded stories.

“So there I was, on the southbound Staten Island Ferry shadowing this weasel who had been lifting the purses of women passengers on the boats,” Bill Gore said. “The ferry company had hired me to catch him, because up to then, he’d been so damned sneaky he hadn’t been nailed. Also, the guy was good with disguises, so it seemed from victims’ reports like he never looked the same twice.”

“That being the case, how did you know you were even tailing the right guy?” Bascom asked.

Gore grinned. “Damned good question, Del. I’d been on the case about a week by this time, and I kept seeing somebody wandering all over the ferry, pacing from one end to the other and back again, except that it was always a different man, or so I thought. I got suspicious because all these guys were about the same size, and I finally figured all of them were the same person.

“Anyhow, I felt that I really had him this time. I saw him moving toward a fairly large woman who was standing at the rail with her purse on the deck at her feet. He edged over next to her and bent down to pick up the purse. As he grabbed for it, she turned, screamed, and drove her knee up hard, into his crotch. The next scream was his, louder, and he doubled over as she stamped on his hand with her high-heeled shoe, cursing him with words some sailors might not even know.”

“So you earned your money,” Durkin said.

“Not quite. They did pay me for my time, all right, but the woman got the money I would have been given for catching him in the act. How could I argue, though? She was on him like a flash. One tough customer.”

“Yeah, and you wouldn’t have wanted to fight her for the dough,” Bascom observed. “Not after what she did to the dip.”

“Reminds me of a case I was on a few years back,” Durkin said. “There was this forger who had—” He got interrupted by the ringing telephone.

Bascom picked up his instrument before Wilda could answer in the outer office. “Saul! Yeah, we’re all here. Yeah, right, Bill left that sleazy lawyer Harding pretty shaken up, worried that the Bagleys will come after him for giving them away. ... No, I guess he doesn’t have to worry about that happening, all right. ... When? ... Eight thirty, Wolfe’s? ... All of us? ... We’ll be there.”

He cradled the receiver and swiveled to face us. “All right, the show is on, boys. We are to be at Wolfe’s at eight thirty for instructions. The guests will be arriving at nine.”

“Guests?” I asked.

“Oh, yes, Archie, quite a few. I’m sure you’ll find it an interesting night.”

F
ritz Brenner swung open the brownstone’s door and invited us in. He wore a worried look on his puss. “Everything okay?” Durkin asked.

“Bad business,” Fritz said, shaking his head. “Bad men, bad business.” I assumed he was talking about the Bagleys, but he may have meant all us trooping in and disturbing the sanctity of the Wolfean abode.

We went down the hall to the office, which was filled with chairs. “Looks like there’s going to be a lecture here tonight,” I observed.

“In a sense, you’re right,” Saul Panzer said. He was sitting in one of the yellow chairs making notes on a pad.

“Is it fair to say that Nero Wolfe will be the one doing the lecturing?”

“Absolutely, Archie, and as you can see, he’s going to have quite an audience. I’m just figuring out where everyone’s going to sit.”

“Everyone being ...?”

“The Williamsons, for starters, father, mother, son. Then, their entire household staff. And we certainly don’t want to forget Inspector Cramer, who will be bringing Sergeant Stebbins with him.”

“That’s a new name to me.”

“Ah, so you haven’t met Purley Stebbins yet.” Saul turned to Durkin. “Do you think Archie is in for a treat?”

“I wouldn’t call it a treat,” Fred said. “What do you guys think?” Del Bascom gave the thumbs-down sign and Bill Gore just shook his head.

“That answers that,” I said. “Where’s Wolfe?”

“Oh, he’ll be the last one in,” Durkin said. “He likes to make a big entrance.”

“Okay. What about Orrie Cather?”

Panzer smiled thinly. “He’s down in the basement, with a couple of our other guests. In fact, Bill and Fred, why don’t you go down and keep him company? I have the feeling Orrie’s not in love with the idea of being the solo jailer for those cretins.” The two big men shrugged, indicating their lack of interest, but lumbered out of the office as instructed.

“I’ve only sat in on a couple of Wolfe’s big evenings before,” Del Bascom said. “How do you figure this one will go?”

“I’m not about to hazard a guess,” Panzer said. “I was in here earlier when Mr. Wolfe called to invite Cramer, and I could hear the inspector yelling through the receiver from ten feet away, so our local homicide chief is not going to arrive here in the best of moods.”

Bascom snorted. “When is Cramer ever in a good mood?”

“Nice point, Del. Never in my memory, at least not when he’s sitting in this office.”

“Why does he even bother coming here?” I asked.

“He feels he can’t afford not to,” Panzer said. “The two have had their differences to say the least, but Cramer knows damn well how smart Mr. Wolfe is, and how often in the last few years he has helped do the department’s work for them. I’m not overly fond of the inspector, but I don’t envy him, either.”

“How does the guy hold his job?”

“One thing you should know, Archie, is that Cramer is by no means a dummy. As Mr. Wolfe has observed on occasion, including right here the other night, the inspector is brave, honest, and intelligent most of the time. When he’s in this room, however, he tends to blow his stack.”

“And he may really blow it tonight,” Bascom said.

“That wouldn’t be a surprise,” Panzer agreed. “Okay, I think we’re ready for the crowd. As you can see, Fritz has set up the bar cart, and chances are, it will get some customers.”

At five before nine, the doorbell rang, and Fritz ushered into the office an already-angry Inspector Cramer, who was accompanied by a shambling, bony-faced guy with big ears, a square jaw, and a glum expression.

“Inspector, Sergeant,” Panzer said. “Purley, you know Del Bascom, but I don’t believe that you’ve met Archie Goodwin, who’s working with us.”

Purley Stebbins nodded grimly at me, saying nothing. I returned the nod and the grim expression, also saying nothing.

“Where’s Wolfe, dammit?” Cramer barked. “And why all these chairs? I thought this was to be a meeting with Williamson.”

As if in answer to the inspector’s question, the doorbell rang again, and Burke Williamson’s voice could be heard in the hallway. He did not sound happy.