Rex Stout - Nero Wolfe 10 (6 page)

“All it takes is intelligence, and you’ve got that.” I got out my wallet, extracted five twenties, and handed them to him. “I would do it myself, only I must do something else. And this is important, remember this: don’t try to report to me until Thursday morning at nine o’clock, and then report by telephone, no matter where you are, and then either to Nero Wolfe or to me. Nobody else.” I finished my drink. “You’ve got to do this, Roy. I’ll make a phone call and then we’ll go. Well? Have you got it in you?”

He nodded. “I’ll do my best.”

“Good for you. I’ll be back in a minute.”

I went to the phone booth and dialed the number again.

“Lily, my angel? Me. Get this. In twenty minutes,
maybe less, I’ll be on the sidewalk at the Madison Avenue entrance of the Ritz, and Roy Douglas will be with me. He’s the guy that was there when you arrived at Wolfe’s house. I’ll point you out to him and he’ll follow you, tail you. I want him out of town for a day or so, and this is the only way I can work it. When you take a taxi to the railroad station—”

“I’m not going to a railroad station. I’m going to the Worthington at Greenwich, and I’m going to drive—”

“No. Take a train. This is part of the deal, or the deal’s off. Be sure he doesn’t loose you. When you buy your ticket at Grand Central, be sure he’s close enough to hear where to, and be sure he makes the train. Take a day coach, no parlor car. He’ll stay at the Worthington too. Keep an eye on him, but don’t let him know you know he’s tailing you. Don’t do any horseback riding or anything to frustrate him. We’ll be there in twenty minutes. Make it as soon after as you can, because I’m busy—”

“Wait a minute! Archie! You’re batty. Have you been there? To Ann’s apartment?”

“Certainly not. No time—”

“Then where did you get that Roy Douglas?”

“Caught up with him before he got there. No time for explanations. See you Saturday, if not before.”

When I got back to the table, the darned fool was having another drink. I called the waiter and paid for it.

Then Roy said, “I can’t do it. I can’t go. I forgot about my birds. I have to take care of my birds.”

Another complication, as if I didn’t already have enough to contend with. I got him out of there and into a taxi, and on the way uptown I managed to sell him the idea that I would get in touch with Miss Leeds before 8:00 in the morning and arrange with her to tend the pigeons. The chief trouble now was that he was
more than half lit, and what with that and the shock he had had it was a question how much comprehension he had left, so I carefully repeated all the instructions and made sure he knew which pocket the hundred bucks were in.

At that, he seemed to have things fairly under control when we got out at the Ritz. It worked like a charm. We hadn’t been waiting more than ten minutes when Lily came out, with only three pieces of luggage, which for her was practically a paper bag. As she waited for the taxi door to be opened I saw her get me out of the corner of her eye, and I handed Roy into another taxi, shook his hand and told him I trusted him, and instructed the driver to hang onto the taxi in front at any cost. I stood and watched them roll off.

My watch said 7:45. I entered the Ritz and sent a telegram to Miss Leeds, signing it Roy Douglas, asking her to take care of my pigeons. I wanted to get back to 35th Street as soon as possible, because it was an open question whether the note I had written to Ann would be discovered by the first squad man that got there, or hours later when the medicals started on the p.m., and I simply had to be home when the phone rang or a visitor arrived. But one little errand had first call, because it was urgent. After all, Roy Douglas was Ann’s fianće, and although it seemed incredible that he could have been coolheaded enough to sit and chin with me about pigeons just after strangling his sweetheart, I had to make sure if I didn’t want to make a double-breasted boob of myself. So I went for a phone book and a phone.

It took nearly three-quarters of an hour. First I dialed the number of the National Bird League on the chance that someone might be working late, but there was no answer. Then I went to it. I tried the
Times
and
Gazette
, and finally found someone on the
Herald Tribune
who gave me the name and address of the president of the National Bird League. He lived in Mount Kisco. I phoned there, and he was in Cincinnati, but his wife gave me the name and address of the secretary of the League. I got her, a Brooklyn number, and by gum she had been away from the office that afternoon, attending a meeting, and I had to put all I had on the ball to coax out of her the name and phone number of another woman who worked in the office. At last I had a break; the woman was at home, and apparently bored, for I didn’t have to coax her to talk. She worked at the desk next to Ann Amory, and they had left the office together that afternoon at a couple of minutes after five. So it was worth all the trouble, since that was settled. Roy had got to Wolfe’s house at 4:55, before Ann had even left the office. It was gratifying to know I hadn’t slipped the murderer a hundred bucks to take a trip to the country.

I took a taxi down to 35th Street, stopping on the way to pick up a couple of sandwiches and a bottle of milk, and found that luck was with me there too. All was serene. They had gone to bed. The house was dark. I would have liked to enjoy the sandwiches in the kitchen, but didn’t want the doorbell to ring, so I sneaked in and got a glass, turning on no light, and went back to the stoop, closing the door, and sat there on the top step to eat my dinner. Everything was going smooth as silk.

They were pretty good sandwiches. As time wore on I began to get chilly. I didn’t want to stamp around on the stoop or pace the sidewalk, since Fritz slept in the basement and I didn’t know how soundly he slept during training, so I stood and flapped my arms to work up a circulation. Then I sat on the step again. I looked at my watch and it was 10:40. An hour later I looked again
and it was 10:55. Having been afraid before I got there that some squad man might discover the note first thing, now I began to wonder if the damn laboratory was going to wait till morning to start the p.m. and keep me out all night. I stood up and flapped my arms some more.

It was nearly midnight when a police car came zipping down the street and rolled to a stop right in front, and a man got out. I knew him before he hit the sidewalk. It was Sergeant Stebbins of the Homicide Squad. He crossed the sidewalk and started up the steps, and saw me, and stopped.

I said cheerfully, “Hello, Purley. Up so late?”

“Who are you?” he demanded. He peered. “Well, I’ll be damned. Didn’t recognize you in uniform. When did you get to town?”

“Yesterday afternoon. How’s crime?”

“Just fine. What do you say we go in and sit down and have a little conversation?”

“Sorry, can’t. Don’t talk loud. They’re all asleep. I just stepped out for a breath of air. Gee, it’s nice to see you again.”

“Yeah. I want to ask you a few questions.”

“Shoot.”

“Well—for instance. When did you last see Ann Amory?”

“Aw, hell,” I said regretfully. “You would do that. Ask me the one question I’m not answering tonight. This is my night for not answering any questions whatever about anybody named Ann.”

“Nuts,” he growled, his bass growl that I had been hearing off and on for ten years. “And I don’t mean peanuts. Is it news to you that she’s dead? Murdered?”

“Nothing doing, Purley.”

“There’s got to be something doing. She’s been murdered. You know damn well you’ve got to talk.”

I grinned at him. “What kind of got?”

“Well, to start with, material witness. You talk, or I take you down, and maybe I do anyway.”

“You mean arrest me as a material witness?”

“That’s what I mean.”

“Go ahead. It will be the first time I’ve ever been arrested in the city of New York. And by you! Go ahead.”

He growled. He was getting mad. “Goddamn it, Archie, don’t be a sap! In that uniform? You’re an officer, ain’t you?”

“I am. Major Goodwin. You didn’t salute.”

“Well, for God’s sake—”

“No good. Final. Regarding Ann Amory, anything about Ann Amory, I don’t open my trap.”

“All right,” he said. “I’ve always thought you were cuckoo. You’re under arrest. Get in that car.”

I did so.

There was one little chore left before I could sit back and let nature take its course. Arriving at Centre Street, and asserting my right to make one phone call, I got a lawyer I knew out of bed and gave him some facts to relay to Bill Pratt of the
Courier
. At 3:45 in the morning, after spending three hours in the company of Inspector Cramer, two lieutenants, and some assorted sergeants and other riffraff, and still refusing to utter a syllable connected in any way with the life or death of Ann Amory, I was locked into a cell in the beautiful new city prison, which is not as beautiful inside as outside.

I
t had cost me two bucks to get it smuggled in to me, but it was worth it. Wednesday noon I sat on the edge of my cot in my cell gazing admiringly at it, a front page headline in the early edition of the
Courier:

As the schoolboy said to the teacher, good—hell, it’s perfect. The “Army Major” was plenty disgraceful, and the “Nero Wolfe’s Former Assistant” was superb. Absolutely degrading. As added attractions, there were pictures of both Wolfe and me on the second page. The article was good too. Bill Pratt hadn’t failed me. It gave me a good appetite, so I relinquished another two bucks to send out for a meal that would fit the occasion. After that was disposed of, I stretched out on the cot for a nap, having got behind on my sleep the last two nights.

The opening of the cell door woke me up. I blinked at a guard as he gave me a sign to emerge, rubbed my
eyes, stood up, shook myself, enjoyed a yawn, and followed the guard. He led me to an elevator, and, when we got downstairs, through the barrier out of the prison section, then along corridors and into an anteroom, and through that into an office. I had been there before. Except for one object it was familiar: Inspector Cramer at the big desk, Sergeant Stebbins standing near by ready for anything that didn’t require mental activity, and a guy with a notebook at a little table at one side. The unfamiliar object, in those surroundings, was Nero Wolfe. He was in a chair by a corner of Cramer’s desk, and I had to compress my lips to keep from grinning with satisfaction when I saw that he was no longer dressed for training. He was wearing the dark blue cheviot with a pin stripe, with a yellow shirt and a dark blue tie. Really snappy. The suit didn’t fit him any more, but that didn’t bother me now.

He looked at me and didn’t say a word. But he looked.

Cramer said, “Sit down.”

I sat, crossed my legs, and looked surly.

Wolfe took his eyes from me and snapped, “Repeat briefly what you’ve told me, Mr. Cramer.”

“He knows it all,” Cramer growled. He had fists on his desk. “At 7:10 last evening Mrs. Chack returned to her apartment at 316 Barnum Street and found her granddaughter, Ann Amory, there on the floor dead, strangled, with a scarf around her neck. A radio car arrived at 7:21, the squad at 7:27, the medical examiner at 7:42. The girl had been dead from one to three hours. The body was removed—”

Wolfe wiggled a finger. “Please. The main points. About Mr. Goodwin.”

“He knows them too. Found on the body, underneath the dress, was the note I have shown you, in
Goodwin’s handwriting, signed
ARCHIE
. The paper had been torn from a notebook which was found on his person, now in my possession. Three sets of Goodwin’s fingerprints, fresh and recent, were on objects in the apartment. A strand of hair, eleven hairs, found behind the scarf which was around the body’s throat, with which she was strangled, has been compared with Goodwin’s hair and they match precisely. Goodwin was at that address Monday evening and had an altercation with Mrs. Chack, and took Ann Amory to the Flamingo Club, and left with her hastily on account of a scene with a woman whose name is—not an element in the case. He went to 316 Barnum Street again yesterday and made inquiries of a man named Furey, Leon Furey, and apparently he spent most of the afternoon snooping around the neighborhood. We’re still checking that. So the neighborhood is acquainted with him, and two people saw him walking east on Barnum Street, not far from Number 316, between six-thirty and seven o’clock, in company with a man named Roy Douglas, who lives at—”

“That will do,” Wolfe snapped. His eyes moved. “Archie. Explain this at once.”

“Confronted with this evidence,” Cramer rumbled, “Goodwin refuses to talk. He submitted to a search without protest, with that notebook in his pocket. He permitted us to make a microscopic comparison of the strand of hair with his. But he won’t talk. And by God,” he hit the desk with one of the fists, “you have the gall to come down here, the first time you have ever honored us with a visit, and threaten to have the police department abolished!”

“I merely—” Wolfe began.

“Just a minute!” Cramer roared. “I’ve been taking your guff for fifteen years, and Goodwin has been riding
for a fall for at least ten. Here it is. He is not now charged with murder. He is detained as a material witness. But it’s going to take a lot of comedy to laugh off that strand of hair. It’s exactly the kind of thing that could have happened without him knowing it, the girl grabbing at him and seizing his hair, and then when he got the scarf around her, trying to get her fingers behind it to pull it away and leaving the hair there. You’re smart, Wolfe, as smart a man as I ever knew. All right, try to figure out any other conceivable way how Goodwin’s hair got behind that scarf. That’s why we’re prepared to oppose any application for release on bail.”

Cramer pulled a cigar from his pocket, conveyed it to his mouth, and sank his teeth in it.

“It’s all right, boss,” I told Wolfe, trying to smile as if I were trying to smile bravely. “I don’t think they’ll ever convict me. I’m pretty sure they can’t. I’ve got a lawyer coming to see me. You go on home and forget about it. I don’t want you to break training.”