Rex Stout - Nero Wolfe 24 (10 page)

She answered it. “My name’s Susan Maturo, and I’m a registered nurse.”

“Thanks. You know mine, and I’m a registered detective.”

She nodded. “That’s why I want to ask you something. If I hired Nero Wolfe to investigate a—a matter, how much would it cost?”

I raised my shoulders half an inch and let them down. “It all depends. The kind of matter, the amount of time taken, the wear and tear on his brain, the state of your finances.…”

I paused, letting it hang, to return a rude stare that was being aimed at us by another arrival, a thin tall bony specimen in a brown suit that badly needed pressing, with a bulging briefcase under his arm. When my gaze met his he
called it off and turned and strode to the elevator, without any exchange with Nils Lamm.

I resumed to Susan Maturo. “Have you got a matter, or are you just researching?”

“Oh, I’ve got a matter.” She set her teeth on her lip—nice teeth, and not a bad lip—and kept them that way a while, regarding me. Then she went on, “It hit me hard, and it’s been getting worse in me instead of better. I began to be afraid I was going batty, and I decided to come to this Leo Heller and see what he could do, so I came this morning, but I was sitting up there in his waiting room—two people were already there, a man and a woman—and it went all through me that I was just being bitter and vindictive, and I don’t think I’m really like that—I’m pretty sure I never have been—”

Apparently she needed some cooperation, so I assured her, “You don’t look vindictive.”

She touched my sleeve with her fingertips to thank me. “So I got up and left, and then as I was leaving the elevator I heard that man saying your name and who you are, and it popped into my head to ask you. I asked how much it would cost to have Nero Wolfe investigate, but that was premature, because what I really want is to tell him about it and get his advice about investigating.”

She was dead serious and she was all worked up, so I arranged my face and voice to fit. “It’s like this,” I told her, “for that kind of approach to Mr. Wolfe, with no big fee in prospect, some expert preparation is required, and I’m the only expert in the field.” I glanced at my wrist and saw 10:19. “I’ve got a date, but I can spare five minutes if you want to brief me on the essentials, and then I’ll tell you how it strikes me. What was it that hit you?”

She looked at me, shot a glance at Nils Lamm, who couldn’t have moved out of earshot in that lobby if he had wanted to, and came back to me. Her jaw quivered, and she clamped it tight and held it for a moment, then released it and spoke. “When I start to talk about it, it sticks in my throat and chokes me, and five minutes wouldn’t be enough, and anyway I need someone old and wise like Nero Wolfe. Won’t you let me see him?”

I promised to try. I told her that it would be hard to find any man in the metropolitan area more willing to help an
attractive girl in distress than I was, but it would be a waste of time and effort for me to take her in to Wolfe cold, and though I was neither old nor wise she would have to give me at least a full outline before I could furnish either an opinion or help. She agreed that that was reasonable and gave me her address and phone number, and we arranged to communicate later in the day. I went and opened the door for her, and she departed.

On the way up in the elevator my watch said 10:28, so I wasn’t on time after all, but we would still have half an hour before Heller’s business day began. On the fifth floor a plaque on the wall facing the elevator was lettered
LEO HELLER, WAITING ROOM
, with an arrow pointing right, and at that end of the narrow hall a door bore the invitation,
WALK IN
. I turned left, toward the other end, where I pushed a button beside a door, noticing as I did so that the door was ajar a scanty inch. When my ring brought no response, and a second one, more prolonged, didn’t either, I shoved the door open, crossed the sill, and called Heller’s name. No reply. There was no one in sight.

Thinking that he had probably stepped into the waiting room and would soon return, I glanced around to see what the lair of a probability wizard looked like, and was impressed by some outstanding features. The door, of metal, was a good three inches thick, either for security or for soundproofing, or maybe both. If there were any windows they were behind the heavy draperies; the artificial light came indirectly from channels in the walls just beneath the ceiling. The air was conditioned. There were locks on all the units of a vast assembly of filing cabinets that took up all the rear wall. The floor, with no rugs, was tiled with some velvety material on which a footfall was barely audible.

The thick door was for soundproofing. I had closed it, nearly, on entering, and the silence was complete. Not a sound of the city could be heard, though the clang and clatter of Lexington Avenue was nearby one way and Third Avenue the other.

I crossed for a look at the desk, but there was nothing remarkable about it except that it was twice the usual size. Among other items it held a rack of books with titles that were not tempting, an abacus of ivory or a good imitation,
and a stack of legal-size working pads. Stray sheets of paper were scattered, and a single pad had on its top sheet some scribbled formulas that looked like doodles by Einstein. Also a jar of sharpened lead pencils had been overturned, and some of them were in a sort of a pattern near the edge of the desk.

I had been in there ten minutes, and no Heller; and when, at eleven o’clock by schedule, Wolfe came down to the office from his morning session with the orchids, it was desirable that I should be present. So I went, leaving the door ajar as I had found it, walked down the hall to the door of the waiting room at the other end, and entered.

This room was neither air-conditioned nor soundproofed. Someone had opened a window a couple of inches, and the din was jangling in. Five people were here and there on chairs; three of them I had seen before: the big guy in the dark blue topcoat and homburg, the brisk female in mink who called herself Agatha Abbey, and the tall thin specimen with a briefcase. Neither of the other two was Leo Heller. One was a swarthy little article, slick and sly, with his hair pasted to his scalp, and the other was a big blob of an overfed matron with a spare chin.

I addressed the gathering. “Has Mr. Heller been in here?”

A couple of them shook their heads, and the swarthy article said hoarsely, “Not visible till eleven o’clock, and you take your turn.”

I thanked him, left, and went back to the other room. Still no Heller. I didn’t bother to call his name again, since even if it had flushed him I would have had to leave immediately. So I departed. Down in the lobby I again told Nils Lamm I’d see what I could do about an autograph. Outside, deciding there wasn’t time to walk it, I flagged a taxi. Home again, I hadn’t been in the office more than twenty seconds when the sound came of Wolfe’s elevator descending.

That was a funny thing. I’m strong on hunches, and I’ve had some beauts during the years I’ve been with Wolfe, but that day there wasn’t the slightest glimmer of something impending. You might think that was an ideal spot for a hunch, but no, not a sign of a tickle. I was absolutely blithe as I asked Wolfe how the anti-thrips campaign was
doing, and later, after lunch, as I dialed the number Susan Maturo had given me, though I admit I was a little dampened when I got no answer, since I had the idea of finding out someday how she would look with the frown gone.

But still later, shortly after six o’clock, I went to answer the doorbell and through the one-way glass panel saw Inspector Cramer of Manhattan Homicide there on the stoop. There was an instant reaction in the lower third of my spine, but I claim no credit for a hunch, since after all a homicide inspector does not go around ringing doorbells to sell tickets to the Policemen’s Annual Ball.

I let him in and took him to the office, where Wolfe was drinking beer and scowling at three United States senators on television.

Cramer, bulky and burly, with a big red face and sharp and skeptical gray eyes, sat in the red leather chair near the end of Wolfe’s desk. He had declined an offer of beer, the TV had been turned off, and the lights had been turned on.

Cramer spoke. “I dropped in on my way down, and I haven’t got long.” He was gruff, which was normal. “I’d appreciate some quick information. What are you doing for Leo Heller?”

“Nothing.” Wolfe was brusque, which was also normal.

“You’re not working for him?”

“No.”

“Then why did Goodwin go to see him this morning?”

“He didn’t.”

“Hold it,” I put in. “I went on my own, just exploring. Mr. Wolfe didn’t know I was going, and this is the first he’s heard of it.”

There were two simultaneous looks of exasperation—Cramer’s at Wolfe, and Wolfe’s at me. Cramer backed his up with words. “For God’s sake. This is the rawest one you ever tried to pull! Been rehearsing it all afternoon?”

Wolfe let me go temporarily, to cope with Cramer. “Pfui. Suppose we have. Justify your marching into my house to demand an accounting of Mr. Goodwin’s movements.
What if he did call on Mr. Heller? Has Mr. Heller been found dead?”

“Yes.”

“Indeed.” Wolfe’s brows went up a little. “Violence?”

“Murdered. Shot through the heart.”

“On his premises?”

“Yeah. I’d like to hear from Goodwin.”

Wolfe’s eyes darted to me. “Did you kill Mr. Heller, Archie?”

“No, sir.”

“Then oblige Mr. Cramer, please. He’s in a hurry.”

I obliged. First telling about the phone call the day before, and Wolfe’s refusal to take on anything for Heller, and my calling Heller back, I then reported on my morning visit at Thirty-seventh Street, supplying all details, except that I soft-pedaled Susan Maturo’s state of harassment, putting it merely that she asked me to arrange for her to see Wolfe and didn’t tell me what about. When I had finished, Cramer had a few questions. Among them:

“So you didn’t see Heller at all?”

“Nope.”

He grunted. “I know only too well how nosy you are, Goodwin. There were three doors in the walls of that room besides the one you entered by. You didn’t open any of them?”

“Nope.”

“One of them is the door to the closet in which Heller’s body was found by a caller, a friend, at three o’clock this afternoon. The medical examiner says that the sausage and griddle cakes he ate for breakfast at nine-thirty hadn’t been in him more than an hour when he died, so it’s practically certain that the body was in the closet while you were there in the room. As nosy as you are, you’re telling me that you didn’t open the door and see the body?”

“Yep. I apologize. Next time I’ll open every damn door in sight.”

“A gun had been fired. You didn’t smell it?”

“No. Air-conditioned.”

“You didn’t look through the desk drawers?”

“No. I apologize again.”

“We did.” Cramer took something from his breast pocket. “In one drawer we found this envelope, sealed.
On it was written in pencil, in Heller’s hand, ‘Mr. Nero Wolfe.’ In it were five one-hundred-dollar bills.”

“I’m sorry I missed that,” I said with feeling.

Wolfe stirred. “I assume that has been examined for fingerprints.”

“Certainly.”

“May I see it, please?”

Wolfe extended a hand. Cramer hesitated a moment, then tossed it across to the desk, and Wolfe picked it up. He took out the bills, crisp new ones, counted them, and looked inside.

“This was sealed,” he observed dryly, “with my name on it, and you opened it.”

“We sure did.” Cramer came forward in his chair with a hand stretched. “Let me have it.”

It was a demand, not a request, and Wolfe reacted impulsively. If he had taken a second to think he would have realized that if he claimed it he would have to earn it, or at least pretend to, but Cramer’s tone of voice was the kind of provocation he would not take. He returned the bills to the envelope and put it in his pocket.

“It’s mine,” he stated.

“It’s evidence,” Cramer growled, “and I want it.”

Wolfe shook his head. “Evidence of what? As an officer of the law, you should be acquainted with it.” He tapped his pocket with a fingertip. “My property. Connect it, or connect me, with a crime.”

Cramer was controlling himself, which wasn’t easy under the circumstances. “I might have known,” he said bitterly. “You want to be connected with a crime? Okay. I don’t know how many times I’ve sat in this chair and listened to you making assumptions. I’m not saying you never make good on them, I just say you’re strong on assumptions. Now I’ve got some of my own to offer, but first here are a few facts. In that building on Thirty-seventh Street, Heller lived on the fourth floor and worked on the fifth, the top floor. At five minutes to ten this morning, on good evidence, he left his living quarters to go up to his office. Goodwin says he entered that office at ten-twenty-eight, so if the body was in the closet when Goodwin was there—and it almost certainly was—Heller was killed between nine-fifty-five and ten-twenty-eight. We
can’t find anyone who heard the shot, and the way that room is proofed we probably never will. We’ve tested it.”

Cramer squeezed his eyes shut and opened them again, a trick of his. “Very well. From the doorman we’ve got a list of everyone who entered the place during that period, and most of them have been collected, and we’re getting the others. There were six of them. The nurse, Susan Maturo, left before Goodwin went up, and the other five left later, at intervals, when they got tired waiting for Heller to show up—according to them. As it stands now, and I don’t see what could change it, one of them killed Heller. Any of them, on leaving the elevator at the fifth floor, could have gone to Heller’s office and shot him, and then to the waiting room.”

Wolfe muttered, “Putting the body in the closet?”

“Of course, to postpone its discovery. If someone happened to see the murderer leaving the office, he had to be able to say he had gone in to look for Heller and Heller wasn’t there, and he couldn’t if the body was there in sight. There are marks on the floor where the body—and Heller was a featherweight—was dragged to the closet. In leaving, he left the door ajar, to make it more plausible, if someone saw him, that he had found it that way. Also—”