Fer-De-Lance (4 page)

"No. Confound it, Archie, stop supposing aloud in my presence; if it is inevitable that in the end you are to be classed with--for instance--Mr. O'Grady, let us at least postpone it as long as possible."

"O'Grady did a good job this morning, two hours from a coat label and a laundry mark to that phone call."

Wolfe shook his head. "Cerebrally an oaf. But your questions?"

"They can wait. What is it at White Plains if it's not Maffei?"

Wolfe gave me his substitute for a smile, an unusually prolonged one for him. Finally he said, "A chance to make some money. Does the name Fletcher M. Anderson mean anything to you without referring to your files?"

"I hope so." I snorted. "No thanks for a bravo either. Nineteen-twenty-eight. Assistant District Attorney on the Goldsmith case. A year later moved to the country and is now District Attorney for Westchester County. He would admit that he owes you something only if the door were closed and he whispered in your ear. Married money."

Wolfe nodded. "Correct. The bravo is yours, Archie, and I shall manage without the thanks. At White Plains you will see Mr. Anderson and deliver a provocative and possibly lucrative message. At least that is contemplated; I am awaiting information from a caller who is expected at any moment." He reached across his rotundity to remove the large platinum watch from his vest pocket and glance at it. "I note that a dealer in sporting goods is not more punctual than a skeptic would expect. I telephoned at nine; the delivery would be made at eleven without fail; it is now eleven-forty. It really would be well at this point to eliminate all avoidable delay. It would have been better to send you--Ah!"

It was the buzzer. Fritz passed the door down the hall; there was the sound of the front door opening and another voice and Fritz's in question and answer. Then heavy footsteps drowning out Fritz's, and there appeared on the threshold a young man who looked like a football player bearing on his shoulder an enormous bundle about three feet long and as big around as Wolfe himself. Breathing, he said, "From Corliss Holmes."

At Wolfe's nod I went to help. We got the bundle onto the floor and the young man knelt and began untying the cord, but he fumbled so long that I got impatient and reached in my pocket for my knife. Wolfe's murmur sounded from his chair, "No, Archie, few knots deserve that," and I put my knife back. Finally he got it loose and the cord pulled off, and I helped him unroll the paper and burlap, and then stood up and stared. I looked at Wolfe and back again at the pile on the floor. It was nothing but golf clubs, there must have been a hundred of them, enough I thought to kill a million snakes, for it had never seemed to me that they were much good for anything else.

I said to Wolfe, "The exercise will do you good."

Still in his chair, Wolfe told us to put them on the desk, and the young man and I each grabbed an armload. I began spreading them in a long row on the desk; there were long and short, heavy and light, iron, wood, steel, chromium, anything you might think of. Wolfe was looking at them, each one as I put it down, and after about a dozen he said, "Not these with iron ends. Remove them. Only those with wooden ends." To the young man, "You do not call this the end?"

The young man looked amazed and superior. "That's the head."

"Accept my apologies--your name?"

"My name? Townsend."

"Accept my apologies, Mr. Townsend. I once saw golf clubs through a shop window while my car was having a flat tire, but the ends were not labeled. And these are in fact all varieties of a single species?"

"Huh? They're all different."

"Indeed. Indeed, indeed. Plain wooden faces, inset faces, bone, composition, ivory--since this is the head I presume that is the face?"

"Sure, that's the face."

"Of course. And the purpose of the inset? Since everything in life must have a purpose except the culture of Orchidacese."

"Purpose?"

"Exactly. Purpose."

"Well--" The young man hesitated. "Of course it's for the impact. That means hitting the ball, it's the inset that hits the ball, and that's the impact."

"I see. Go no further. That will do nicely. And the handles, some wood, really fine and sensitive, and steel--I presume the steel handles are hollow."

"Hollow steel shaft, yes, sir. It's a matter of taste. That one's a driver. This is a brassie. See the brass on the bottom? Brassie."

"Faultless sequitur," Wolfe murmured. "That, I think, will be all, the lesson is complete. You know, Mr. Townsend, it is our good fortune that the exigencies of birth and training furnish all of us with opportunities for snobbery. My ignorance of this special nomenclature provided yours; your innocence of the elementary mental processes provides mine. As to the object of your visit, you can sell me nothing; these things will forever remain completely useless to me. You can reassemble your bundle and take it with you, but let us assume that I should purchase three of these clubs and that the profit on each should be one dollar. Three dollars? If I give you that amount will it be satisfactory?"

The young man had, if not his own dignity, at least that of Corliss Holmes. "There is no obligation to purchase, sir."

"No, but I haven't finished. I have to ask a favor of you. Will you take one of these clubs--here, this one--and stand there, beyond that chair, and whirl it about you in the orthodox manner?"

"Whirl it?"

"Yes; club, strike, hit, whatever you call it. Pretend that you are impacting a ball."

Beyond snobbery, the young man was now having difficulty to conceal his contempt. He took the driver from Wolfe, backed away from the desk, shoved a chair aside, glanced around, behind, and up, then brought the driver up over his shoulder and down and through with a terrific swish.

Wolfe shuddered. "Ungovernable fury," he murmured. "Again, more slowly?"

The young man complied.

"If possible, Mr. Townsend, more slowly yet?"

This time he made it slow motion, a cartoon, derisive, but Wolfe watched it keenly and soberly. Then he said: "Excellent. A thousand thanks, Mr. Townsend. Archie, since we have no account at Corliss Holmes, will you please give Mr. Townsend three dollars? A little speed now, if you don't mind. The trip I mentioned is imminent and even urgent."

After the quiet weeks that had passed it made my heart jump to hear Wolfe ask for speed. The young man and I had the package together again in no time; I went to let him out the front door, and then back to the office. Wolfe was sitting there with his lips fixed to whistle, but with no sound that could be heard six feet away; you only knew the air was going in and out by his chest rising and falling. Sometimes, when close enough to him, I had tried to hear if he really thought he was doing a tune, but without success. He stopped as I came in and said: "This will only take a minute, Archie. Sit down. You won't need your notebook."

When I'm driving I don't see much of anything except the road, for I have the type of mind that gets on a job and stays there until it's time for another one. That day I hit a good clip, too; on account of the traffic it took a long while to get to Woodlawn, but from there to White Plains my clock covered just twenty-one minutes. But in spite of my type of mind and the hurry I was in I enjoyed the Parkway out of the corner of my eye. Lots of the bushes were covered with flowers, the new crop of leaves on the trees was waving easy in the breeze like a slow dance, and the grass was thick and green. I thought to myself that they couldn't make a carpet if it cost ten thousand dollars that would be as nice to walk on as that grass.

The hurry didn't help any. When I got to the courthouse there was nothing but bad luck. Anderson was away and wouldn't be back until Monday, four days. In the Adirondacks, they said, but wouldn't give me his address; it wouldn't have been a bit unpleasant to head the roadster for Lake Placid and step on it. His chief assistant, whose name, Derwin, I had never heard before, was still out to lunch and wouldn't be back for half an hour. No one around seemed to care about being helpful.

I went down the street to a phone and got Wolfe in New York. He said to wait for Derwin and try it on him; and I didn't mind having time for a couple of sandwiches and a glass of milk before he was expected back. When I returned Derwin was in his office, but I had to wait for him twenty minutes, I suppose for him to finish picking his teeth. The place was certainly dead.

When I consider the different kinds I've seen it seems silly to say it, but somehow to me all lawyers look alike. It's a sort of mixture of a scared look and a satisfied look, as if they were crossing a traffic-filled street where they expect to get run over any minute but they know exactly the kind of paper to hand the driver if they get killed and they've got one right in their pocket. This Derwin looked like that; otherwise he seemed very respectable, well-dressed and well-fed, somewhere around forty, under rather than over, with his dark hair brushed back slick and his face happy and pleased-looking.

I laid my panama on a corner of his desk and took a chair before I said: "I'm sorry to have missed Mr. Anderson. I don't know if you'll be interested in my message, but I'm pretty sure he would."

Derwin was leaning back in his chair with a politician's smile. "If it is connected with the duties of my office, I certainly will, Mr. Goodwin."

"It's connected all right. But I'm at a disadvantage since you don't know my employer, Nero Wolfe. Mr. Anderson knows him."

"Nero Wolfe?" Derwin wrinkled his forehead. "I've heard of him. The private detective, you mean of course. This is only White Plains, you see, the provinces begin a little farther north."

"Yes, sir. Not that I would call Nero Wolfe a private detective. As a description--well, for one thing it's a little too active. But that's the man I work for."

"You have a message from him?"

"Yes, sir. As I say, the message was for Mr. Anderson, but I telephoned him half an hour ago and he said to give it to you. It may not work out the same, for I happen to know that Mr. Anderson is a rich man, and I don't know that much about you. Maybe you're like me, maybe your salary is the only rope that holds Saturday and Sunday together for you."

Derwin laughed, just a trick laugh, for in a second his face was solemn and businesslike. "Maybe I am. But although I am not particularly rushed this afternoon, I am still waiting for the message."

"Yes, sir. It's like this. Last Sunday afternoon, four days ago, Peter Oliver Barstow, president of Holland University, died suddenly while playing golf on the links of the Green Meadow Club over toward Pleasantville. You know about that?"

"Of course. It was a loss to the community, to the whole country in fact. Of course."

I nodded. "His funeral was Tuesday and he was buried at Agawalk Cemetery. Mr. Nero Wolfe wants to bet you--he would rather bet Mr. Anderson but he says you'll do--that if you'll have the body lifted and an autopsy made you'll find proof of poison. He will bet ten thousand dollars and will deposit a certified check for that amount with any responsible person you name."

I just grinned as Derwin stared at me. He stared a long time, then he said, "Mr. Nero Wolfe is crazy."

"Oh no," I said. "Whatever you bet on, don't bet on that. I haven't finished yet with Nero Wolfe's bet. The rest of it is that somewhere in Barstow's belly, probably just below the stomach, somewhere between one and three inches in from the skin, will be found a short, sharp, thin needle, probably of steel but possibly of very hard wood. It will be pointing upward, approximately at an angle of forty-five degrees if not deflected by a bone."

Derwin kept staring at me. When I stopped he tried his trick laugh again, but it didn't work so well. "This is about as big a bunch of nonsense as I've ever heard," he said. "I suppose there is a point to it somewhere, if you're not crazy too."

"There's a point all right." I reached in my pocket for the check Wolfe had given me. "There are very few people in the world who would risk ten thousand on a bunch of nonsense, and you can take it from me that Nero Wolfe isn't one of them. Peter Oliver Barstow was murdered, and he's got that needle in him. I say it, Nero Wolfe says it, and this ten grand says it. That's a lot of testimony, Mr. Derwin."

The lawyer was beginning to look not nearly as happy and pleased as he had when I went in. He got up from his chair and then sat down again. I waited. He said, "It's preposterous. Absolutely preposterous."

"Wolfe isn't betting on that." I grinned. "He's just betting that it's true."

"But it can't be. It's merely preposterous and-and monstrous. Whatever the stunt may be you're trying to pull, you've hit the wrong man; I happen to be acquainted with the Barstow family and therefore know the facts. I won't recite them to you; such idiotic nonsense. Do you know who signed the death certificate? I don't suppose--"

"Sure," I put in, "Dr. Nathaniel Bradford. Coronary thrombosis. But if all the doctors in the world were as good as him, and if they all said coronary thrombosis, Nero Wolfe's money is still right here ready to talk."

I had seen the change come over Derwin's face; he had got over his shock and was now ready to be clever. His voice was sharp. "See here, what's your game?"

"No game at all. None. Except to win ten grand."

"Let me see that check."

I handed it to him. He looked it over thoroughly and then pulled his desk telephone over, took off the receiver and in a moment spoke to someone: "Miss Ritter, please get me the Thirty-fourth Street branch of the Metropolitan Trust Company." He sat and looked at the check and I folded my arms and got patient. When the bell rang he took the phone again and began asking questions, plenty of them; he certainly made sure there could be no mistake. When he hung up I said pleasantly: "Anyway we're getting started, now that you know it's real dollars."

He paid no attention, but just sat frowning at the check. Finally he said in a shrewd voice, "Do you mean that you are actually empowered to wager this money on that proposition as you stated it?"

"Yes, sir. That check is made out to me, and certified. I can endorse it just like that. If you want to phone Wolfe, the number is Bryant nine, two-eight-two-eight. In order to avoid any misunderstanding, I would suggest that you have your stenographer type a memorandum of the details for us to sign. I should tell you that Wolfe undertakes to furnish no reasons or suggestions or clues and will not discuss the matter. It's a bet, that's all."

"Bet, hell. You're not expecting any bet. Who do you expect to bet with you, Westchester County?"

I grinned. "We hoped for Mr. Anderson, but lacking him we're not particular. Anyone with ten thousand dollars; Wolfe wouldn't care; a chief of police or a newspaper editor or maybe some prominent Democrat with a strong sense of civic duty."

"Indeed!"

"Yes, sir, indeed. My instructions are to do my best to get the money covered before dark."

Derwin got up, kicking his chair back. "Hah! Bet? Bluff."

"You think so, sir? Try me. Try covering it."

Evidently he had decided something, for with my words he was crossing the room. At the door he turned to say, "Will you wait here for me ten minutes? I imagine you will, since I have your check in my pocket."

It wasn't endorsed. He was gone before I could toss a nod at him. I settled down to wait. How was it going, I wondered. Had I passed up any advantages? Would it have been better to postpone my last threat for more stubbornness if he had it in him? How could I force him to act quick? And after all, did this third-rater have the authority or the guts to undertake a thing like this with his boss gone? What Wolfe wanted was quick action; of course I knew he no more expected a bet than I expected him to give me the ten grand for my birthday; he was after an autopsy and that needle. I could see now how he had guessed the needle, but how he had ever connected it with Carlo Maffei in the first place--I stopped myself to switch back to the immediate job. If this Derwin laid down and played dead on me, where would I go next? Between four and six I would have to use my own judgment; I wouldn't dare to interrupt Wolfe with a phone call while he was upstairs with the damn plants. It was now two-fifty. Derwin had been gone ten minutes. I began to feel silly. What if he left me sitting there holding my fingers all afternoon, and him with the check? If I let a third-rate brief-shark do that to me I'd never be able to look Wolfe in his big fat face again. I should never have let him out of my sight, certainly not without getting the check back. I jumped out of my chair and crossed the room, but at the door I calmed down and took it easy; softly I turned the knob and pulled and stuck my head out. There was a dinky hall leading to the outer office, and I could hear the girl on the telephone.

"No, operator, person-to-person. No one but Mr. Anderson will do."

I waited till she had hung up, then I went on out and over to her desk. "Would it be much bother to tell me where Mr. Derwin has gone to?"

She seemed interested in me; she took a good look. But she answered straight enough. "He's in Mr. Anderson's room telephoning."

"You wouldn't lie to me just for practice?"

"I don't need any practice, thanks."

"All right. If you don't mind, I'll try one of these chairs. It was awful in there all alone."

I sat down within three feet of the entrance door, and I had no sooner got disposed than the door opened and a man came in, a husky, busy-looking man in a blue suit and black shoes, with a stiff straw hat. From where I sat, as he went toward the girl with his back to me, it was easy to see that he had a gun on his hip. The girl said, "Howdedo, Mr. Cook, Mr. Derwin's in Mr. Anderson's room." When the man had gone on through another door I said to the girl, "Ben Cook maybe?" She nodded without looking at me, and I grinned, and sat and waited.

It was all of fifteen minutes more before the door of Anderson's room opened again and Derwin appeared and called to me, "Come in here, Goodwin."

I went. When I got inside and saw that they had actually staged me it was too funny not to laugh. Ben Cook was in a chair that had been drawn alongside the one by the desk--that one of course for Derwin--and one had been placed just right for me, quite close and facing them and the light.

"Amused, huh," the husky man grunted. Derwin waited till he was back in his chair to inform me. "This is the chief of police."

I was pretending to blink at the light. "Don't tell me," I said. "Do you think Ben Cook's reputation stops at Bronx Park?"

Derwin went stern on me. Lord, it was funny. He even went so far as to shake a finger at me. "Goodwin, I've been pretty busy for half an hour, and now I'm ready to tell you what comes next. You'll tell us what you know, if anything, while we're waiting for Wolfe. What reason have you-"

I hated to interrupt the show, but I couldn't help it. It was involuntary. "Waiting for Wolfe? Here?"

"Certainly, here. If he knows what's good for him, and I think I made that plain on the telephone."

I didn't laugh. I just said, "Listen, Mr. Derwin. This is one of your bad days. You never had a chance at so many rotten bets in your life. Nero Wolfe is about as apt to come here as I am to tell you who killed Barstow."

"Yeah?" It was Ben Cook. "You'll tell us plenty. Plenty."

"Maybe. But I won't tell you who killed Barstow, because I don't know. Now if you want to ask about roads, for instance-"

"Cut it out." Derwin got sterner. "Goodwin, you have made a most startling accusation in a most sensational manner. I won't pretend that I have a lot of questions ready for you, because I obviously have nothing to base them on. I have just one question, and I want a prompt and complete answer. For what reason and for what purpose did your employer send you here today?"

I sighed and looked solemn. "I've told you, Mr. Derwin, to get a bet down."

"Come on, act as if you had some sense. You can't get away with that, you know damn well you can't. Come on. Let's hear it."

Ben Cook said, "Don't try to be bright. You'd be surprised how we treat bright boys up here sometimes."

I could have kept it going all night, I suppose, if I had wanted to, but time was passing and they gave me a pain. I said, "Listen a minute, gentlemen. Of course you're peeved and that's too bad, but I can't help it. Let's say I tell you to go to hell and get up and walk out, what are you going to do-? Yes, Chief, I know it's only a short distance to the station, but I'm not going that way. Honest, you're acting like a pair of dumb flatfeet. I'm surprised at you, Mr. Derwin. Nero Wolfe offers to let you in right at the beginning of a big thing, and the first thing you do is spill it to Ben Cook and the next is to drive me to take it away from both of you and toss it to the wolves. You can't touch me, don't be silly. Nero Wolfe would love a suit for false arrest, and I never go to police stations except to visit friends unless you can show me a warrant, and think how funny it would be after the reporters got my story and then the proof followed of Barstow's murder. As a matter of fact, I'm beginning to get a little bit sore and I've got half a mind to demand that check back and walk out on you. Get this: I'll tell you exactly nothing. You understand that maybe? Now you can give me that check or talk sense yourself."