Prisoner's Base (6 page)

I was not being completely cuckoo. I was a trained and experienced detective, there had been a murder that I was interested in and wanted to know more about, and the closest I could get to it at the moment was this room in which Priscilla had expected to sleep and eat her breakfast. I hadn’t the slightest expectation of finding anything helpful, and so wasn’t disappointed when I didn’t; and I did find something at that. On a shelf in the bathroom was a toothbrush and a soiled handkerchief. I took them to my room and put them on my dresser, and I still have them, in a drawer where I keep a collection of assorted professional relics.

There was no point in going up to the plant rooms and starting a squabble, so I went down to the office and opened the morning mail and fiddled around with chores. Somewhat later, when I became aware that I was entering a germination date of
Cymbidium holfordianum
on the card of
Cymbidium pauwelsi
, I decided I wasn’t in the mood for clerical work, returned things to the files, and sat and stared at my toes. There were four thousand things I wanted to know, and there were people I might have started asking, like Sergeant Purley Stebbins or Lon Cohen of the
Gazette
, but after all this was Nero Wolfe’s office and phone.

At eleven o’clock he came down, entered and crossed to his desk, got himself settled in his chair, and glanced through the little stack of mail I had put there under a paperweight. There was nothing of much interest and certainly nothing urgent. He cocked his head, focused on me, and stated, “It would have been like you to come up at ten o’clock for instructions as arranged.”

I nodded. “I know, but Cramer didn’t leave until five after, and I knew how you would react. Do you care to hear the details?”

“Go ahead.”

I gave him what I had got from Cramer. When I had finished he sat frowning at me with his eyes half closed, through a long silence. Finally he spoke. “You reported in full to Mr. Cramer?”

“I did. You said to unload.”

“Yes. Then Mr. Helmar will soon know, if he doesn’t already, of our stratagem, and I doubt if it’s worth the trouble to communicate with him. He wanted his ward alive and well, so he said, and that’s out of the question.”

I disagreed, not offensively. “But he’s our only contact, and, no matter how sore he is, we can start with him. We have to start somewhere with someone?”

“Start?” He was peevish. “Start what? For whom? We have no client. There’s nothing to start.”

The simple and direct thing to do would have been to blow my top, and it would have been a satisfaction—but then what? I refused to boil, and kept my voice even. “I don’t deny,” I told him, “that that’s one way to look at it, but only one, and there is at least one other. Like this. She was here and wanted to stay, and we kicked her out, and she got killed. I should think that would have some bearing on your self-esteem, which you were discussing last night. I should think that you do have something to start—a murder investigation. And you also have a client—your self-esteem.”

“Nonsense!”

“Maybe.” I stayed calm. “I would like to explain at length why I think it’s up to us to get the guy that killed Priscilla Eads, but I don’t want to waste your time or my breath just for the hell of it. Would it do any good?”

“No.”

“You won’t even consider it?”

“Why should I?” He fluttered a hand. “I am under no onus and am offered no reward. No.”

“Okay,” I stood up. “I guess I knew how it would be.
You realize that I have my personal problem, and it’s different from yours. If I had turned her down and put her out yesterday afternoon as soon as I found out what she wanted, would she be in the morgue now? I doubt it. When you came down and I sprung her on you, you told me to get her out of the house before dinner. If I had, would she be in the morgue now? Probably not. It was absolutely my fault that she didn’t leave until nearly midnight, and she decided to go home, it doesn’t matter why. It may have been just to change her clothes and luggage, or she may have decided not to play—anyhow, she went home, and she got it. That’s my personal problem.”

“Archie.” He was gruff. “No man can hold himself accountable for the results of his psychological defects, especially those he shares with all his fellow men, such as lack of omniscience. It is a vulgar fallacy that what you don’t know can’t hurt you; but it is true that what you don’t know can’t convict you.”

“It’s still my personal problem. I can get along without omniscience, but I can’t get along with a goddam strangler going around being grateful to me for sending his victim to him, and I don’t intend to try. I’ll quit if you prefer it, but I’d rather take an indefinite leave of absence, starting now—without pay, of course. You can get Saul in. I’ll move to a hotel, but I suppose you won’t mind if I drop in occasionally in case I need something.”

He was glowering at me. “Do I understand you? Do you intend to go single-handed for the murderer of Miss Eads?”

“I don’t know about single-handed. I may need some hired help, but I’m going for him.”

“Pfui.” He was contemptuous. “Poppycock. Is Mr. Cramer such a bungler? And his men? So inept that you must assume their functions?”

I stared at him. “I’ll be damned. That, from you?”

He shook his head. “It won’t do, Archie. You’re trying to coerce me, and I won’t have it. I will not undertake a major and expensive operation, with no chance of income, merely because you have been piqued by circumstance. Your bluff won’t work. It would of course be folly for you to try any—what’s that for?”

I was too busy to answer him. With my jacket off, I had got a shoulder holster from a drawer and was strapping it on. That done, I took a Marley .32 and a box of cartridges, filled the cylinder, put the gun in the holster, and put my jacket back on. It was an effective retort to Wolfe, but that was not the sole reason for it. Ever since a certain regrettable experience some years back, I never left the house on an errand connected with a murder case without taking a gun, so I was merely following habit.

I faced Wolfe. “I’ll do my best to see that everybody understands that I’m not working for you. Some of them won’t believe it, but I can’t help that. I’ll come back for some things, and if I can’t make it until late I’ll phone to tell you what hotel I’m at. If you decide you’d rather have me quit, okay. I haven’t got time to discuss it now because I want to catch a guy before lunch.”

He sat with his lips pressed tight, scowling. I turned and went. Passing the hall rack, I snared my straw hat, not that I don’t hate to monkey with a hat in summer, but I might need the tone. Descending the seven steps of the stoop, I turned east as if I knew exactly where I was headed for, walked to Tenth Avenue and turned downtown, and at the corner of Thirty-fourth Street entered a drugstore, mounted a stool at the soda fountain, and ordered a chocolate egg malted with three eggs.

There was no guy I wanted to catch before lunch. I
had got away from there because I knew I had to as soon as I saw there was no chance of harassing Wolfe into taking a hand. I didn’t blame him; he had no personal problem like mine. I wasn’t fussing about the problem. That was settled. Until further notice I had only one use for my time and faculties: to find out who the strangler was that I had sent Priscilla Eads to in a taxi, and wrap him up for delivery to the proper address, with or without help. I had no great ideas about galloping down Broadway on a white horse with his head on the point of a spear. I just wanted to catch the sonofabitch, or at least help.

I considered the notion of helping. I could go to Inspector Cramer, explain my problem, and offer to stick strictly to orders if he would take me on as a special for the case. I might have done it but for the fact that Rowcliff would probably be giving some of the orders. Nothing on earth could justify a man’s deliberately putting himself under orders from Rowcliff. I gave that up. But then what? If I went to Priscilla’s apartment I wouldn’t be let in. If I got to Perry Helmar, supposing I could, he wouldn’t speak to me. I had to find a crack somewhere.

When I had finished the malted, and a glass of water for a chaser, I went to a phone booth, dialed the number of the
Gazette
, and got Lon Cohen.

“First,” I told him, “this call is strictly personal. Nero Wolfe is neither involved nor interested. With that understood, kindly tell me all facts, surmises, and rumors connected directly or indirectly with Miss Priscilla Eads and her murder.”

“The paper costs a nickel, son. I’m busy.”

“So am I. I can’t wait for the paper. Did she leave any relatives?”

“None in New York that we know of. A couple of aunts in California.”

“Have you got any kind of a line that you can mention on the phone?”

“Yes and no. Nothing exclusive. You know about her father’s will?”

“I know absolutely nothing.”

“Her mother died when she was an infant, and her father when she was fifteen. The cash and securities he left her, and the insurance, were nothing spectacular, but he set up a trust of ninety per cent of the stock of Softdown, Incorporated, a ten-million-dollar towel and textile business. The trustee was his friend and lawyer, Perry Helmar. Eighty per cent of the income of the trust was to go to Priscilla, and on her twenty-fifth birthday the whole works was to become her property. In case she died before her twenty-fifth birthday, the stock was to become the property of the officers and employees of the corporation. They were named in a schedule that was part of the will, with the amount to go to each one. Most of it went in big gobs to less than a dozen of them. Okay, she was killed six days before her twenty-fifth birthday. That is obviously a line, but it’s certainly not exclusive.”

“I’ll bet it’s not. The damn fool—I mean the father. What about the guy she married? I hear she ran away with him. Who was she running from? Her father was dead.”

“I don’t know—maybe the trustee; he was her guardian. That wasn’t here. She met him somewhere on a trip, down South I think. There’s very little on it in New York. What do you mean, Wolfe is neither involved nor interested?”

“Just that. He isn’t.”

“Ha-ha. I suppose you’re calling for a friend. Give him my regards. Have you got your dime’s worth?”

“For now, yes. I’ll buy you a steak at Pierre’s at seven-thirty.”

He made a smacking noise. “That’s the best offer I’ve had today. I hope I can make it. Ring me at seven?”

“Right. Much obliged.”

I hung up, pulled the door open, and got out a handkerchief and wiped my brow and behind my ears. The booth was hot. I stepped out, found the Manhattan phone book, looked up an address, went out and crossed Thirty-fourth Street, and got a taxi going east.

T
he headquarters of Softdown, Incorporated, at 192 Collins Street, in the middle of the ancient jungle between City Hall Park and Greenwich Village, was not an office or a floor, it was a building. Its four-storied front may once have been cream-colored brick, but you would have had to use a chisel or a sand-blaster to find out. However, the two enormous street-floor windows, one on either side of the entrance, were so bright and clean they sparkled. Behind one was a vast geometrical array of bathtowels, in a dozen colors and twice that many sizes, and behind the other was a crazy old contraption with a placard resting on one of its crosspieces which said:

Both sides of the double door were standing open, and I entered. The left half of the wide and deep room was partitioned off all the way back, with a string of doors, but the right half was open, with an army of tables, piled with merchandise. Only four or five people were in sight, scattered around. An opening in the first
eight feet of partition had the word
INFORMATION
above it, but the old war mare inside, seated at a switchboard, looked too damn skeptical, and I went on by, to the right, to where a rotund and ruddy type stood scratching the top of his ear. I showed him my case, open to display my license card with its photograph, and snapped, “Goodwin. Detective. Where’s the boss?”

He barely glanced at it. “Which boss?” he squeaked. “What do you want?”

Another skeptic. “Relax,” I told him in an official tone. “I’m on an errand connected with the death of Priscilla Eads. I want to talk with everyone here who will own part of this business because she died, preferably starting at the top. Would it be better to start with you? Your name, please?”

He didn’t bat an eye. “You want to see Mr. Brucker,” he squeaked.

“I agree. Where is he?”

“His office is down at the end, but right now he’s upstairs in the conference room.”

“And the stairs?”

He jerked a thumb. “Over there.”

I went in the direction indicated and through a door. Everything about the stairs was contemporary with the building except the treads and risers, which were up-to-date rough-top plastic. The second floor was visibly a busier place than the first. There were row after row of desks with typewriters and other machines, cabinets and shelves, and of course the girls, easily a hundred of them. There is no more agreeable form of research than the study of animated contour, color, and motion in a large business office, but that day I was preoccupied. I crossed to a dark-eyed smooth-skinned creature manipulating a machine bigger than her, and asked where the conference room was, and she pointed
to the far end of the room, away from the street. I went there, found a door in a partition, opened it and passed through, and closed the door behind me.

The partition was well soundproofed, for as soon as I shut the door the clatter and hum of the big room’s activity became just a murmur. This room was of medium size, square, with a fine old mahogany table in the middle, and chairs to match all the way around it. At the far side was a stairhead. One of the five people seated in a cluster at the end of the table could have been Hargreaves of the 1768 spinning jenny, or anyhow his son, with his pure white hair and his wrinkled old skin trying to find room enough for itself with the face meat gone. He still had sharp blue-gray eyes, and they drew me in his direction as I displayed my case and said, “Goodwin. Detective. About the murder of Priscilla Eads. Mr. Brucker?”