Rex Stout - Nero Wolfe 24 (22 page)

“I was too busy to phone.” I glanced at Chisholm. “Maybe I should report privately.”

“This is getting to be a goddam farce,” Chisholm
growled. His tie was crooked, his eyes were bloodshot, and he had a smear of mustard at the side of his mouth.

“No,” Wolfe said—to me, not to Chisholm. “Go ahead. But be brief.”

I obeyed. With the training and experience I have had, I can report a day of dialogue practically verbatim; but he had said to be brief, so I condensed it, but included all the essentials. When I finished he was scowling at me.

“Then you don’t know whether Gale was actually involved or not. When he failed with Mr. and Mrs. Moyse he may have quit trying.”

“I doubt it.”

“You could have resolved the doubt. You were sitting on him. Or you could have brought him here.”

I might have made three or four cutting remarks if an outsider hadn’t been present. I stayed calm. “Maybe I didn’t make it clear,” I conceded generously. “It was ten to one he had phoned for help—the kind of help that would leave no doubts to resolve—and it might come any second. Not that I was scared, I was too busy, but I wanted to see you once more so I could resign. I resign.”

“Bosh.” Wolfe put his hands on the leather seat for leverage and raised himself to his feet. “Very well. I’ll have to try it.” He moved.

Chisholm put in, “Inspector Hennessy said to notify him immediately if Goodwin showed up.”

Wolfe wheeled on him, snarling. “Am I working for you? Yes! By heaven, I am! Notify Mr. Hennessy? Hah!” He turned and strode through the door that led to Art Kinney’s office.

“It’s a farce,” Chisholm muttered and followed him.

I fell in behind.

They were all in there. The four who were famous athletes, first-string Giants, didn’t look very athletic. Their sap had started draining with the first inning of that awful ball game, and it hadn’t stopped for more than ten hours. Lew Baker, catcher, and Con Prentiss, shortstop, were perched on a desk. Joe Eston, third baseman, and Nat Neill, center fielder, were on chairs.

Art Kinney, manager, was standing over by a window. Doc Soffer was seated at Kinney’s desk, bent over, with his elbows on his knees and his face covered by his hands.
Beaky Durkin was propped against a table, saggy and bleary-eyed.

“It had better be good,” someone said—I didn’t know who, because I was placing a chair for Wolfe where he could see them all without spraining his neck. When he was in it, with nothing to spare between the arms, I crossed to a vacant seat over by the radio. Chisholm was there, at my right.

Wolfe’s head moved from side to side and back again. “I hope,” he said grumpily, “you’re not expecting too much.”

“I’m through expecting,” Kinney muttered.

Wolfe nodded. “I know how you feel, Mr. Kinney. All of you. You are weary and low in spirit. You have been personally and professionally humiliated. You have all been talked at too much. I’m sorry I have to prolong it, but I had to wait until the police were gone. Also, since I have no evidence, I had to let them complete their elaborate and skilled routine in search of some. They got none. Actually they have nothing but a druggist that Mr. Goodwin got for them.”

“They’ve got Bill Moyse,” Con Prentiss rumbled.

“Yes, but on suspicion, not on evidence. Of course I admit, because I must, that I am in the same fix. I too have a suspicion but no evidence, only mine is better grounded. I suspect one of you eight men of drugging the drinks and killing Ferrone. What I—”

They made enough noise to stop him. He showed them a palm.

“If you please, gentlemen. I have a question to put. I suspect one of you, but I have no evidence and no way of getting any speedily. That is why I asked Mr. Chisholm to keep you here for consultation with me after the departure of the police. I wanted to ask you: do you want to help? I would like to tell you the reason for my suspicion and ask you to help me get evidence to support it. I think you can if you will. Well?”

“One of us?” Joe Eston demanded.

It was interesting to see them. Naturally they all had an impulse—anyhow, all but one—to look around at faces, but no two of them handled it exactly alike. Chisholm looked straight and full at each in turn. Beaky Durkin sent quick little glances here and there. Doc Soffer, frowning
and pursing his lips, turned his head slowly left to right.

“Go ahead, damn it!” Kinney blurted. “Have you got something or not?”

“Yes, I have something,” Wolfe assured him, “but I don’t know how good it is. Without your help it is no good at all.”

“We’ll help if we can. Let’s hear it.”

“Well. First the background. Were the two events—the drugging of the drinks and the murder—connected? The reasonable supposition is yes, until and unless it is contradicted. If they were connected, how? Did Ferrone drug the drinks, and did one of his teammates discover it and, enraged, go for him with the bat? It seems unlikely.” Wolfe focused on Beaky Durkin. “Mr. Durkin, most of what you told me has been corroborated by others, but you knew Ferrone better than anyone else. You discovered him and got him here. You were his roommate and counselor. You told me that because of his brilliant performance this season his salary for next year would be doubled; that his heart was set on winning today’s game and the series; that winning or losing meant a difference of some two thousand dollars to him personally; that his series money would pay his debts with some to spare; and that, knowing him intimately, you are positive that he could not have been bribed to drug the drinks. Is that correct?”

“It sure is.” Durkin was hoarse and cleared his throat. “Nick was a swell kid.” He looked around as if ready for an argument, but nobody started one.

“I know,” Wolfe said, “that the police got no impeachment of that. Do any of you dispute it?”

They didn’t.

“Then, without evidence, it is idiotic to assume that he drugged the drinks. The alternative, supposing that the two events were connected, is the reverse—that someone drugged the drinks and Ferrone knew or suspected it and was going to expose him, and was killed. That is how I see it. Call him X. X could have—”

“To hell with X,” Kinney blurted. “Name him!”

“Presently. X could have put the drugged drinks in the cooler any time during the late morning, as opportunity offered. What led Ferrone to suspect him of skulduggery may not be known, but conjecture offers a wide choice.
Ferrone’s suspicion may have been only superficial, but to X any suspicion whatever was a mortal menace, knowing as he did what was going to happen on the ball field. When Ferrone questioned him he had to act. The two were of course in this room together, at the time the rest of you were leaving the clubroom for the field or shortly after. X was, as so many have been, the victim of progressive exigency. At first he needed only money, and to get it he stooped to scoundrelism; but it betrayed him into needing the life of a fellow man.”

“Cut the rhetoric,” Chisholm snapped. “Name him.”

Wolfe nodded. “Naming him is easy. But it is pointless to name him, and may even expose me to an action for slander, unless I so expound it as to enlist your help. As I said, I have no evidence. All I have is a fact about one of you, a fact known to all of you and to the police, which seems to me to point to guilt, but I admit that other interpretations are conceivable. You are better judges of that than I am, and I’m going to present it for your consideration. How can I best do that?”

He aimed his gaze at Baker and Prentiss, who were perched on a desk, raised a hand slowly, and scratched the tip of his nose. His eyes moved to pin Doc Soffer. His head jerked to the left to focus on Chisholm, and then to the right, to Beaky Durkin.

He spoke. “I’ll illustrate my meaning. Take you, Mr. Durkin. You have accounted for yourself, but you have been neither contradicted nor corroborated. You say you left the clubhouse shortly before the team did and went to your seat in the grandstand.”

“That’s right.” Durkin was still hoarse. “And I didn’t kill Nick.”

“I didn’t say you did. I am merely expounding. You say you remained in your seat, watching the game, until the third inning, when you were sent for by Mr. Chisholm to come to the clubhouse. That too is neither contradicted nor corroborated. Certainly you were there when you were sent for, but there is no proof that you had been there continuously since the game started and even before.”

“I don’t know about proof, but I was. I can probably find the guy that was sitting next to me.”

“You didn’t leave your seat once during that time?”

“I did not.”

Wolfe looked around. “Well, gentlemen. That’s the fact I can’t explain. Can you?”

They were gawking at him. “Do we have to?” Baker demanded.

“Someone does.” Wolfe’s voice sharpened. “Consider the situation. Consider the relationship of those two men. The discovery of Ferrone is Durkin’s proudest achievement as a baseball scout. He fosters him and treasures him. Today—now yesterday—at the game that will be the climax of Ferrone’s triumphant season, Durkin is in the clubroom and sees Ferrone there in uniform, with the others, young, sound, mighty, valiant. He leaves the clubhouse and goes to a seat in the grandstand, and soon he sees the team cross the field to the dugout, but no Ferrone. Durkin keeps his seat. Before long the loudspeaker announces that Garth, not Ferrone, will play second base. Durkin keeps his seat. The players take the field, and the game starts, with no Ferrone. Durkin keeps his seat. They play the first inning badly. Durkin keeps his seat. They play the second inning badly. Durkin keeps—”

“Good God!” Art Kinney yelled, moving.

“Exactly.” Wolfe lifted a hand. “Please, gentlemen, keep your seats. It is clearly fantastic. The announcement that Garth would play second base could have been taken by Durkin merely as a blunder, but when they took the field without Ferrone his disquiet and consternation would have been insupportable. The one thing he couldn’t possibly have done was to stay in his seat. Why did you, Mr. Durkin?”

“I couldn’t think—” He tried to clear his throat and sounded as if he were choking. “There was nothing I could do. What could I do?”

“I don’t know. I said I can’t explain what you did do, but I can try. Suppose the nonappearance of Ferrone was no surprise to you, because you knew where he was and what had happened to him. Suppose, further, you were in a state of severe systemic shock because you had murdered him. I submit that that explanation of your keeping your seat is plausible. Is any other? Can you offer one?”

Durkin took two steps. “Look here,” he said, “you can’t sit there and accuse me of a thing like that. I don’t have to
stay here and take it, that kind of thing. I don’t have to, and I’m not going to.”

He started for the door, but Lew Baker was suddenly there in his path and speaking. “Back up, Beaky. I said back up!”

Beaky did so, literally. He backed until his rump hit the edge of the table, and felt for the edge with his hands, one on each side, and gripped it.

Wolfe was grim. “I was supposing, Mr. Durkin, not accusing. But I am now ready to accuse, and I do. I explained, when I was calling you X, how and why you acted.” His eyes moved. “Gentlemen, I ask you to look at him. Look at his face, his eyes. Look at his hands, clutching the table in dismay and despair. Yes, I accuse him. I say that that man drugged your drinks, caused you to lose your game, and, threatened with exposure, murdered your teammate.”

They were making sounds, and they were on their feet, including Art Kinney.

“Wait!” Wolfe said sharply, and they turned to him. “I must warn you, you approach him at your peril, for I have no proof. It will be gratifying to crush him, to press a confession out of him, but a confession is not evidence, and we need some. I suggest that you try for it. He did it for money, and surely he was paid something in advance, unless he is pure fool. Where is it? Certainly not on his person, since you have all been searched, but it is somewhere, and it would do admirably. Where is it?”

Lew Baker got to him ahead of the others. He told him in a thin, tight voice, so tight it twanged, “I wouldn’t want to touch you, Beaky, you dirty rat. Where is it? Where’s the jack?”

“Lew, I swear to God—”

“Skip it. You swearing to God! You fixed us, did you? And Nick—you fixed him. I’d hate to touch you, but if I do, God help you!”

The others were there, Kinney and Doc Soffer with them, crowding in on Durkin, who had pulled back onto the table, still gripping the edge. I went to the end of the table and stood. They were strong and hard, and their nervous systems had had a tough day. Aside from the killing of Nick Ferrone, whom they may or may not have loved, this was the bird who had made them play ball like half-witted
apes in the most important game of their lives, to an audience of fifty million. If they really cut loose there could be another corpse in that room.

“Give me room, fellows,” Nat Neill said. “I’m going to plug him.”

Durkin didn’t flinch. His jaw was quivering, and his eyes looked sick, but he didn’t flinch.

“This is wrong,” Con Prentiss said. “He wants us to hurt him. He’d like to be knocked cold. He’s not a coward, he’s just a snake. Did you see his eyes when you said you’d plug him? That’s what he wants.”

“It’s a moral question,” Joe Eston said. “That’s the way to handle it; it’s a moral question.”

Art Kinney shouldered between two of them to get his face within ten inches of Durkin’s. “Look, Beaky. You’ve been in baseball thirty years. You know everybody in the majors, and we know you. What do you think’s going to happen? Where could you light? We’ve got you here now, and we’re going to keep you. I’ll send for the whole damn team. How will you like that?”

“I want a lawyer,” Durkin said in a sudden burst.

“By God!” Neill roared. “He wants a lawyer! Get out of the way! I’m going to clip him!”

“No, Beaky, no lawyers,” Kinney said. “I’ll send for the boys, and we’ll lock the doors. Where’s the money? We know you got it. Where is it?”

Durkin’s head went forward, down. Kinney put a fist under his chin and yanked it up and held it. “No, you don’t. Look at me. We’ve got you, but even if we didn’t, where could you go? Where you going to sleep and eat? You’re done, Beaky. Where’s the money?”