Rex Stout - Nero Wolfe 24 (20 page)

“You sound almost human,” Helen Goidell said.

“That’s deceptive,” I told her. “I turn it on and off. If I thought she had something Mr. Wolfe could use I’d stop at nothing, even hair-pulling. But at the moment I really don’t think she has. I think she’s pure and innocent and wholesome. Her husband is another matter. For her sake, I hope he wiggles out of it somehow, but I’m not taking any bets. The cops seem to like him, and I know cops as well as I do girls.” I removed my foot from the car frame. “So long, and so forth.” I turned to go.

“Wait a minute.” It was Lila. I turned back. Her head was up.

“Is this straight?” she asked.

“Is what straight?”

“You’re going to tell Mr. Wolfe you’re satisfied about me?”

“Well. Satisfied is quite a word. I’m going to tell him I have bought your explanation of your happiness at the game—or rather, Mrs. Goidell’s.”

“You could be a liar.”

“Not only could be, I often am, but not at the moment.”

She regarded me. “Shake hands with me.”

I raised a paw. Her hand was cold, but her grip was firm, and in four seconds our temperatures had equalized. She let go.

“Maybe you can tell me about Bill,” she said. “They don’t really think he killed Nick Ferrone, do they?”

“They think maybe he did.”

“I know he didn’t.”

“Good for you. But you weren’t there, so you don’t have a vote.”

She nodded. She was being hard and practical. “Are they going to arrest him? Will they really charge him with murder?”

“I can’t say. They may have decided while we’ve been talking. They know the whole town will be rooting for someone to be locked up, and Bill is the leading candidate.”

“Then I’ve got to do something. I wish I knew what he’s telling them. Do you know?”

“Only that he’s denying he knows anything about it. He says he left the clubhouse after the others had gone because
he went back to the locker room to change to other shoes.”

She shook her head. “I don’t mean that. I mean whether he told them—” She stopped. “No. I know he didn’t. He wouldn’t. He knows something, and I know it too, about a man trying to fix that game. Only he wouldn’t tell, on account of me. I have to go and see someone. Will you come along?”

“To see who?”

“I’ll tell you on the way. Will you come?”

“Where to?”

“In the Fifties. Eighth Avenue.”

Helen Goidell blurted, “For God’s sake, Lila, do you know what you’re saying?”

If Lila replied I missed it, for I was on my way around the car. It had taken me no part of a second to decide. This sounded like something. It was a little headstrong to dash off with a damsel, leaving Wolfe up there with mass-production sandwiches, warm beer, and his one measly little fact he was saving up, but this might be really hot.

By the time I got around to the other door Helen had it open and was getting out. Her feet on the ground, she turned to speak.

“I don’t want any part of this, Lila. I do not! I wish to God I’d gone with Walt instead of staying with you!”

Lila was trying to get a word in, but Helen wasn’t interested. She turned and trotted off toward the gate and the street. I climbed in and pulled the door shut.

“She’ll tell Walt,” Lila said.

I nodded. “Yeah. But does she know where we’re going?”

“No.”

“Then let’s go.”

She started the engine, levered to reverse, and backed the car. “To hell with friends,” she said, apparently to herself.

Under ordinary circumstances she was probably a pretty good driver, but that night wasn’t ordinary for her. As we
swung right into 155th Street, there was a little click at my side was we grazed the fender of a stopped car. Rolling up the grade of Coogan’s Bluff, we slipped between two taxis, clearing by an inch, and both hackmen yelled at her.

Stopping for a light at the crest, she turned her head and spoke. “It’s my Uncle Dan. His name is Gale. He came last night and asked me—”

She fed gas and we shot forward, but a car heading uptown and squeezing the light was suddenly there smack in our path. With a lightning reflex her foot hit the brake, the other car zipped by with at least a foot to spare, she fed gas again, and the Curtis jerked forward.

I asked her, “Taking the West Side Highway?”

“Yes, it’s quicker.”

“It will be if you make it. Just concentrate on that and let the details wait.”

She got to the highway without any actual contact with other vehicles, darted across to the left lane, and stepped on it. The speedometer said fifty-five when she spoke again.

“If I go ahead and tell you, I can’t change my mind. He wanted me to persuade Bill to fix the game. He said he’d give us ten thousand dollars. I didn’t even want to tell Bill, but he insisted, so I did. I knew what Bill would say—”

She broke off to do some expert weaving, swerving to the middle lane, then on to the right, then a sprint, then swinging to the middle again just ahead of a tan convertible, and so back to the left again in front of a couple of cars that had slowed her down to under fifty.

“Look,” I told her, “you could gain up to two minutes this way with luck, but getting stopped and getting a ticket would take at least ten. You’re driving—okay, but don’t try to talk too. You’re not that good. Hold it till we’re parked.”

She didn’t argue, but she held the pace. I twisted around to keep an eye on the rear through the window, and stayed that way clear to Fifty-seventh Street. We rolled down the cobbled ramp and a block south turned left on Fifty-sixth Street, had a green light at Eleventh Avenue, and went through. A little short of Tenth Avenue we turned in to the curb and stopped. Lila reached for the handbrake and gave it a yank.

“Let’s hear it,” I said. “Enough to go on. Is Uncle Dan a gambler?”

“No.” Her face turned to me. “I’m trembling. Look, my hand’s trembling. I’m afraid of him.”

“Then what is he?”

“He runs a drugstore. He owns it. That’s where we’re going to see him. I know what Helen thinks—she thinks I should have told, but I couldn’t. My father and mother died when I was just a kid, and Uncle Dan has been good to me—as good as he could. If it hadn’t been for him I’d have been brought up in an orphans’ home. Of course Bill wanted to tell Art Kinney last night, but he didn’t on account of me, and that’s why he’s not telling the cops.”

“Maybe he is telling them, or soon will.”

She shook her head. “I know Bill. We decided we wouldn’t tell, and that settled it. Uncle Dan made me promise we wouldn’t tell before he said what he wanted.”

I grunted. “Even so he was crowding his luck, telling you two about the program before signing you up. If he explained the idea of doping the Beebright, why—”

“But he didn’t! He didn’t say how it was to be done, he just said there was an easy way of doing it. He didn’t tell us what it was; he didn’t get that far, because Bill said nothing doing, as I knew he would.”

I eyed her. “You sure of that? He might have told Bill and not you.”

“He couldn’t. I was there with them all the time. Certainly I’m sure.”

“This was last night?”

“Yes.”

“What time?”

“Around eight o’clock. We had dinner early with Helen and Walt Goidell, and when we got home Uncle Dan was there waiting for us.”

“Where’s home?”

“Our apartment on Seventy-ninth Street. He spoke to me alone first, and then insisted I had to ask Bill.”

“And Bill turned him down flat?”

“Of course he did!”

“Bill didn’t see him alone later?”

“Of course not!”

“All right, don’t bite. I need to know. Now what?”

“We’re going to see him. We’re going to tell him that we have to tell the cops, and we’re going to try to get him to come along. That’s why I wanted you with me, because I’m afraid of him—I mean I’m afraid he’ll talk me out of it. But they’ve got to know that Bill was asked to fix the game and he wouldn’t. If it’s hard on Uncle Dan that’s too bad, but I can’t help it; I’m for Bill. I’m for Bill all the way.”

I was making myself look at her, for discipline. I was having the normal male impulses at the sight and sound of a good-looking girl in trouble, and they were worse than normal because I was partly responsible. I had given her the impression that the cops were about set to take her Bill on the big one, which was an exaggeration. I hadn’t mentioned that one reason they were keeping him was his recent reactions to the interest Nick Ferrone had shown in her, which of course had no bearing on anyone’s attempt to fix a ball game. True, she had been in a mess before I had got to her, but I had shoved her in deeper. What she needed now was understanding and sympathy and comforting, and since her friend Helen had deserted her I was all she had. Which was I, a man or a detective?

Looking at her, I spoke. “Okay,” I said, “let’s go see Uncle Dan.”

The engine was running. She released the handbrake, fed gas, and we rolled. Three minutes got us to Eighth Avenue, where we turned downtown. The dash clock said five past eleven, and my wristwatch agreed. The traffic was heavy in both directions, and she got in the right lane and crawled along. Two blocks down she pulled in at the curb, where there was plenty of space, set the brake, turned off the lights, killed the engine, and removed the key and put it in her bag.

“There it is.” She pointed. “Gale’s Pharmacy.”

It was ten paces down. There were neons in the window, but otherwise it looked drab.

“We’ll probably get a ticket for parking,” I told her.

She said she didn’t care. I got out and held the door, and she joined me on the sidewalk. She put a hand on my arm.

“You’re staying right with me,” she stated.

“Absolutely,” I assured her. “I’m good with uncles.”

As we crossed to the entrance and went inside I was
feeling not fully dressed. I have a routine habit of wearing a gun when I’m on a case involving people who may go to extremes, but, as I said, I do not go armed to ball games. However, at first sight of Daniel Gale I did not put him in that category. His drugstore was so narrow that a fat man would have had to squeeze to make the passage between the soda fountain stools and the central showcases, and that made it look long, but it wasn’t. Five or six customers were on the stools, and the jerk was busy. A chorus boy was inspecting himself in the mirror of the weight machine. At the cosmetics counter on the other side, the left, a woman was being waited on by a little guy with a pale tight-skinned face and rimless specs who needed a shave.

“That’s him,” Lila whispered to me.

We stood. Uncle Dan, concentrating on the customer, hadn’t seen us. Finally she made her choice and, as he tore off paper to wrap the purchase, his eyes lifted and got Lila. Also he got me, beside her. He froze. He held it, rigid, for four seconds, then came to, went on with the little wrapping job, and was handed a bill by the customer. While he was at the cash register Lila and I crossed to the counter. As he handed the woman her change Lila spoke.

“Uncle Dan, I’ve got to tell you—”

She stopped because he was gone. Without speaking, he turned and made for the rear and disappeared behind a partition, and a door closed. I didn’t like it, but didn’t want to start a commotion by hurdling the counter, so I stepped to the end and circled, and on to the door that had closed, and turned the knob. It was locked. There I was, out at first, unless I was prepared to smash the door in.

The soda jerk called, “Hey, Mac, come out of that!”

“It’s all right,” Lila told him. “I’m his niece. He’s my Uncle Dan—I mean Mr. Gale is.”

“I never saw you before, lady.”

“I never saw you either. How long have you been here?”

“I been here two months, and long enough. Leave me be your uncle, huh? You, Mac, come out here where you belong! Whose uncle are you?”

A couple of the fountain customers gave him his laugh. A man coming in from the street in a hurry approached and called to me, “Gimme some aspirin!” The door I was
standing by popped open, and Uncle Dan was there, against me in the close quarters.

“Aspirin!” the man demanded.

“Henry!” Gale called.

“Right here!” the soda jerk called back.

“Wait on the gentleman. Take over for a while; I’ll be busy. Come here, Lila, will you?”

Lila moved, circled the end of the counter into the narrow aisle, and approached us. There wasn’t room enough to be gallant and let her pass, and I followed Gale through the door into the back room ahead of her. It was small, and the stacks of shipping cartons and other objects took most of what space there was. The rows of shelves were crammed with packaged merchandise, except those along the right wall, which held labeled bottles. Gale stopped near the door, and I went on by, and so did Lila.

“We don’t want to be disturbed,” Gale said, and bolted the door.

“Why not?” I inquired.

He faced me, and from a distance of five arms’ length, with Lila between us, I had my first good view of the eyes behind the specs. I had never seen a pair like them. They not only had no pupils, they had no irises. For a second I thought they were glassies, but obviously he could see, so evidently he had merely been short-changed. Whoever had assembled him had forgotten to color his irises. It didn’t make him look any handsomer.

“Because,” he was telling me, “this is a private matter. You see, I recognized you, Mr. Goodwin. Your face is not as well known as your employer’s, but it has been in the papers on several occasions, and you were in my mind on account of the news. The radio bulletins have included the detail that Nero Wolfe and his assistant were present and engaged by Mr. Chisholm. So when I saw you with my niece I recognized you and realized we should talk privately. But you’re an impulsive young man, and for fear you may not like what I say, I make conditions. I shall stay here near the door. You will move to that packing case back of you and sit on it, with your hands in sight and making no unnecessary movements. My niece will put the chair here in front of me and sit on it, facing you, between you and me. That way I will feel free to talk.”

I thought he was batty. As a setup against one of my impulses, including a gun if I had had one, it made no sense at all. I backed up to the packing case and lowered myself, resting my hands on my knees to humor him. When Lila saw me complying she moved the chair, the only one there, as directed, and sat with her back to him. He, it appeared, was going to make a phone call. He did touch the phone, which was on a narrow counter at his right under the shelves of bottles, but only to push it aside. Then he picked up a large bottle of colorless liquid, removed the glass stopper, held it to his nose, and sniffed.