Rex Stout - Nero Wolfe 10 (3 page)

“I hope, Archie, you will understand—”

I didn’t wait to hear it. If I had stayed there a second longer I would simply have had to cut loose.

A
t Sam’s Place, at the corner, I went first to the phone booth and called Colonel Ryder at Governor’s Island to tell him I was on the job, and then settled myself at a table with a plate of beef stew and two glasses of milk.

As I ate the stew I considered the situation. It was not only tough, it was probably impossible. What had happened was quite plain: Wolfe had simply put his brains away in a drawer for the duration. He wasn’t going to do any thinking, because that was just work, whereas dieting and going outdoors every day and walking fast, getting ready to shoot some Germans—that was heroic. And he had already gone so far with it, and he was so damn bullheaded, that it looked hopeless. After mulling it over, I would have crossed it off and got my bags and headed for Governor’s Island, but for two things: first, I had told the general I knew how to handle him; and second, it looked as if he was going to kill himself if I didn’t stop him. If even one cell of his brain had been working—but it wasn’t.

I thought of appealing for help, to Marko Vukcic or Raymond Plehn or Lewis Hewitt, or even Inspector Cramer, but of course that was no good. Any kind of
appeal or argument would only make him stubborner, since he was refusing to think. The only thing that would turn the trick was to manage somehow to get his brain going. I knew from experience what a job that was, and he had never been in a condition to compare with the one he was in now. Futhermore I was handicapped by having been away for two months and not knowing who had called at the office or tried to, or whether there had been any current events.

That, I thought, was one possibility, so after I had paid my check I went to the phone booth and called Inspector Cramer. He said he thought I was in the Army, and I said I thought so too, and then I asked him: “You got any good crimes on hand? Murders or robberies or even missing persons?”

That didn’t get me anywhere. Either he had nothing promising or he wasn’t telling me. I went out to the sidewalk and stood there scowling at a taxi driver. It was cold, darned cold for the middle of March, and flurries of snow were scooting around, and I had no overcoat. As a forlorn hope, because there was nothing else to do, I climbed in the taxi and told the driver to take me to 316 Barnum Street. It wasn’t actually a hope at all, just a stab in the dark because there wasn’t any light.

There was nothing about the outside of the building to warn me of the goofy assortment of specimens inside, merely an ordinary-looking old brick structure of four stories, the kind that had once been a private house but somewhere around the time I was born had been made into flats, with the vestibule fitted up with mailboxes and bell buttons. The card in one of the slots said
Pearl O. Chack
and beneath it in smaller letters,
Amory
. I pushed the button, shoved the door open when the click sounded, and was proceeding along the hall when a door toward the rear was suddenly flung open and somebody’s
female ancestor appeared on the threshold. If you had deducted for skin and bones there wouldn’t have been more than 20 pounds left of her for tissue and internal parts all together. Straggling ends of white hair made a latticework for her piercing black eyes to see through, and there was no question about her being able to see. As I headed for her she snapped at me before I got there.

“What do you want?”

I produced a smile. “I would like to see—”

She chopped me off. “She sent you! I know she did! I thought it was her. She plays that trick sometimes. Goes out and rings the bell, thinking I won’t suspect it’s her. She wants to tell me she thinks I killed her mother. I know what she wants! If she ever says that to me once, just once, I’ll have her arrested! You tell her that! Go up and tell her that now!”

She was drawing back and shutting the door. I got a foot on the sill. “Just a minute, lady. I’ll go up and tell her anything you want me to. You mean Miss Amory? Ann Amory?”

“Ann? My granddaughter?” The black eyes darted at me through the white latticework. “Certainly not! You’re not fooling me—”

“I know I’m not, Mrs. Chack, but you’ve got me wrong. I want to see your granddaughter, that’s all. I came to see Ann. Is she—”

“I don’t believe it!” she snapped, and banged the door shut. I could have stopped it with my foot, but it seemed doubtful if that was the proper course under the circumstances, and besides, I had heard noises upstairs. Immediately after the door banged there were footsteps coming down, and by the time I had moved to the foot of the stairs a young man was there at my level.
Evidently he had intended to say something, but at sight of the uniform changed to something else.

“Oh,” he said in surprise, “the Army? I expected—”

He stopped, looking at me. As to clothes he was careless and maybe not even too clean in a bright light, but otherwise you might have expected to find his picture as a back on a football team. Except he was a little light for it.

“Not at present on duty,” I said. “Why, what did you expect, the Navy?”

He laughed. “I just meant I didn’t expect to see an Army officer. Not here. And I heard you asking to see Miss Amory, and I didn’t know she knew any Army officers.”

“Do you know Miss Amory?”

“Sure I know her. I live here. Two flights up.” He extended a hand. “My name’s Leon Furey.”

“Mine’s Archie Goodwin.” We shook hands. “Do you happen to know if Miss Amory is at home?”

“She’s up on the roof.” He was taking me in. “Not the Archie Goodwin that works for Nero Wolfe?”

“That used to. Before I changed clothes. What is Miss Amory doing—”

A voice cut in from up above:

“Who is it, Leon? Bring him up!”

It was a borderline husky voice, the kind that requires further evidence before deciding the question, man or woman. The young man’s head pivoted for a quick look up the stairs and then turned back to me, and his face broke into a grin. It seemed likely that he regarded it as an engaging grin, or maybe even charming. The vote for him in the Larchmont Women’s Club would have stood about 92 to 11. He came closer to me and lowered his voice.

“I suppose you know you’re in a bughouse? My
advice is to beat it. I’ll take a message for Miss Amory—”

“Leon!” the voice came down. “Bring him up here!”

“I’d like to see Miss Amory now,” I said, and started to by-pass Leon, but he shrugged his shoulders with masculine charm and started back upstairs, with me following. In the hall one flight up, standing in an open door, was the owner of the voice. The clothes, a brown woolen dress that might have been worn at the inauguration of McKinley, apparently settled the man or woman question, but aside from that she was built to play end or tackle on the same team with Leon. Also she stood more like a soldier than I did or was likely to.

“What’s this?” she demanded as we approached. “I don’t know you. Come in here.”

Leon called her “Miss Leeds,” and informed her that I was Archie Goodwin, formerly Nero Wolfe’s assistant, now Major Goodwin of the United States Army, but there was no knowing whether she got it, because she had her back turned, marching inside the apartment, taking it for granted we would follow, which we did. The furniture of the big room she led us into must have dated from McKinley’s childhood, and there was plenty of it. I sat down because she told me to as if she meant it, taking in the museum with a glance. To finish it off, there was a marble-topped table in the center of the room, with nothing on it but a dead hawk with its wings stretched out. Not a stuffed hawk, just a dead one, just lying there. I guess I stared at it, because she said, “He kills them for me.”

I asked politely, “Are you a taxidermist, Miss Leeds?”

“Oh, no, she likes pigeons,” Leon said in an informative tone. He was sitting on a piano stool with a plush top. “There are seventy thousand pigeons in Manhattan, and about ninety hawks, and they kill the pigeons. The hawks keep coming. They live on the ledges of buildings, and I kill them for Miss Leeds. I got that one—”

“That’s none of your business,” Miss Leeds told me brusquely. “I heard you talking to Mrs. Chack and asking for Ann Amory. I want you to understand that I do not wish any investigation into the death of my mother. It is not necessary. Mrs. Chack is crazy. Both crazy and malicious. She tells people that I think she killed my mother, but I don’t. I don’t think anyone killed my mother. She died of old age. I have explained thoroughly that no investigation is necessary, and I want it understood—”

“He’s not a policeman,” Leon put in. “He’s an Army officer, Miss Leeds.”

“What’s the difference?” she demanded. “Army or police, it’s all the same.” She was regarding me sternly. “Do you understand me, young man? You tell the mayor I want this stopped. I own this house and I own nine houses on this block and I pay my taxes, and I don’t intend to be annoyed. My mother wrote the mayor and she wrote the papers a thousand times what they ought to do. They ought to keep the hawks out of the city. I want to ask you what is being done about that. Well?”

I should have smiled at her, but she just wasn’t anything to smile at. So I looked her in the eye and said, “Miss Leeds, you want facts. Okay, here’s three facts. One. This is the first I ever heard of hawks. Two. This is the first I ever heard of your mother. Three. I came here to see Ann Amory, and Leon tells me she’s up on
the roof.” I stood up. “If I see any hawks up there, I’ll catch ’em alive and wring their necks. And I’ll tell the mayor what you said.”

I walked out to the hall and along that to the next flight of stairs.

T
he hall above and the one above that were each lit by a single unshaded bulb in a wall socket, but when I opened the door at the stairs to the roof, and passed through and closed it behind me, I was in darkness. I felt my way up with my feet on the wooden treads, found a latch at the top and opened a door, and was on the roof. Blinking at flakes of snow the wind was tossing around, and seeing nothing anywhere that might have been called Ann Amory, I headed for what looked like a penthouse to my left. Light was showing at the edges of a shaded window, and when I got to the door I could make out a sign painted on it:

Since it said keep out, naturally my impulse was to go on in, but I restrained it and knocked. A man’s voice came asking who it was, and I called that it was company for Miss Amory, and the door swung open.

That house seemed to be inhabited exclusively by conclusion-jumpers. Without giving me a chance to introduce
myself the young man who had opened the door, and closed it again after I entered, began telling me that he couldn’t possibly spare any more for at least four months, that he was willing and eager to do anything he could to help win the war but he had already sent me 40 birds and had to keep his stock for breeding, and he didn’t see why the Army didn’t understand.

Meanwhile I was surveying. Boxes and bags were stacked around, and shelves were cluttered with various kinds of items that I had never seen before. A door in the far wall had a sign on it:
Do Not Open
. A wire cage, more like a coop, with a pigeon in it, was on a table, and on a chair by the table was a girl. She was looking up at me with wide-open brown eyes. As for the young man, he wasn’t in Leon Furey’s class as a physical specimen, and they had short-changed him a little on his chin, but he would pass. I stopped him in the middle of his speech.

“You’re wasting it, brother. I’m not a pigeon collector. My name is Archie Goodwin and I came to see Miss Amory.” I put out a hand. “You’re Roy Douglas?” We shook. “Nice chilly place you’ve got here. Miss Amory?”

“I don’t know you,” the girl said in the kind of voice I like, “do I?”

“You do now,” I assured her. “Anyhow, you don’t need to, because I’m only a messenger boy. Lily Rowan wants you to come and have dinner with her, and sent me to get you.”

“Lily Rowan?” The brown eyes looked puzzled. “But why—she sent you for me?”

“Right.” I made it casual. “Since you know Lily, you may be surprised she didn’t send a brigadier general, but there was nothing around but majors.”

Ann laughed, and it was the kind of laugh I like. Then she looked at the pigeon in the coop, and at
Roy, and back at me. “I don’t know,” she said uncertainly. “I’ve already had dinner. You mean she wants to see me?” She got up. “I suppose I’d better—” She made up her mind. “But I can go—You don’t need to bother—”

I got her out of there. Evidently Roy did not regard the proceeding with enthusiasm, and neither did the pigeon, but she came, after a little more discussion. Roy lighted us down to the top floor with a flashlight and then returned to his loft. On the ground floor I waited in the hall while Ann went in to speak to her grandmother and get a coat, and when she required less than five minutes for it I liked that too. On the street she didn’t take my arm and she didn’t try to keep step. So far she was batting a thousand. We got a taxi at the corner.

The next test was a little stiffer. As we turned uptown on Fifth Avenue I said, “Now it can be told. Here was the situation. I wanted a private talk with you. I couldn’t talk with you in the presence of Roy and the pigeon. I knew we couldn’t have a talk in your apartment because I had met your grandmother. If I had asked you to go somewhere with me, you would have refused. So I invented an invitation from Lily Rowan. Now what are we going to do?”

Her eyes were wide open at me. “Do you mean— But how did you know—”

“Just a minute. The question was rhetorical. I suppose you’ve heard of Nero Wolfe, the detective. I worked for him up to two months ago, when I joined the Army. Today Lily Rowan told me that you asked her to send you to a lawyer, and she has been trying to arrange for you to see Nero Wolfe, but Mr. Wolfe has been occupied. I think I can fix it. He is a very busy man, if you’ll just tell me what it’s about—”

“Oh,” she said. She gazed at me. Finally she shook her head. “I don’t—I couldn’t tell you.”