Rex Stout - Nero Wolfe 02 (31 page)

I was doing pretty well with my eight, having hooked five of them in a little over half an hour, when, at a quarter to four, while I was looking in the book for the number of the Players’ Club, on the trail of Roland Erskine, the phone rang. I answered, and it was Wolfe. As soon as I heard his voice I thought to myself, uh-huh, here we go, the party’s up the flue. But it didn’t appear that that was the idea. He said to me:

“Archie? What luck at Mrs. Burton’s?”

“All negatives. Burton didn’t phone, and nobody took any gloves.”

“But perhaps the maid saw them?”

“Oh, you knew that too. She did. She saw Mrs. Chapin pick them up and put them down again.”

“Excellent. I am telephoning because I have just made a promise and I wish to redeem it without delay. Take Mr. Chapin’s box from the cabinet, wrap it carefully, and convey it to his apartment and deliver it
to Mrs. Chapin. I shall probably be at home by your return.”

“Okay. You got any news?”

“Nothing startling.”

“I wouldn’t expect anything startling. Let’s try a plain straightforward question. Did you get the confession signed or didn’t you?”

“I did.”

“It’s really signed?”

“It is. But I forgot to say: before you wrap Mr. Chapin’s box take out a pair of gloves, gray leather, and keep them. Please get the box to Mrs. Chapin at once.”

“Okay.”

I hung up. The fat devil had put it over. I had no idea what items of ammunition he had procured from Dora Chapin, and of course he had the advantage that Chapin was already in the Tombs with a first degree murder charge glued on him, but even so I handed it to him. I would say that that cripple was the hardest guy to deal with I had ever run across, except the perfume salesman up in New Rochelle who used to drown kittens in the bathtub and one day got hold of his wife by mistake. I would have loved to see Wolfe inserting the needle in him.

Wolfe had said without delay, so I let the last three victims wait. I wrapped the box up and drove down to Perry Street with it, removing a pair of gloves first in accordance with instructions and putting them in a drawer of my desk. I parked across the street from 203 and got out. I had decided on the proper technique for that delivery. I went across to where the elevator man was standing inside the entrance and said to him:

“Take this package up to Mrs. Chapin on the fifth
floor. Then come back here and I’ll give you a quarter.”

He took the package and said, “The cop was sore as a boil yesterday when he found you’d gone. How’re you feeling?”

“Magnificent. Run ahead, mister.”

He went, and came back, and I gave him a quarter. I asked him, “Did I break anything on your vertical buggy? The lever wouldn’t work.”

He grinned about a sixteenth of an inch. “I’ll bet it wouldn’t. Naw, you didn’t break it.”

So I kept Wolfe’s promise for him and got the package delivered without running any unnecessary risk of being invited in for tea, and all it cost me was two bits, which was cheap enough.

Wolfe returned before I got back home. I knew that in the hall, seeing his hat and coat there. Since it was after four o’clock he would of course be upstairs with the plants, but all of his traipsing around had me nervous, and before going to the office I went up the three flights. I had hardly seen the orchids for more than brief glances for nearly a week. Wolfe was in the tropical room, going down the line looking for aphids, and from the expression on his face I knew he had found some. I stood there, and pretty soon he turned and looked at me as if I was either an aphid myself or had them all over me. There was no use attempting any conversation. I beat it downstairs to resume at the telephone.

I only got two of the remaining three, couldn’t find Roland Erskine anywhere. As it was, we had done pretty good. A telegram had come from Boston saying that Collard and Gaines would be there, and Mollison was coming down from New Haven. I suspected that
Wolfe would have handled the long distance babies himself even if I hadn’t been in bed.

Wolfe didn’t come to the office directly from the plant-rooms at six o’clock as usual. Apparently he had stopped in his room, for when he appeared around six-thirty he was lugging a stack of books and I saw they were Paul Chapin’s novels. He put them on his desk and sat down and rang for beer.

I told him Mrs. Chapin had the box, and read him the notes of my afternoon call on Mrs. Burton. He gave me some instructions for the evening, which I made notes of because he liked to have everything down, and then he got playful. He made a lot of random remarks and I took them like a gentleman, and then because it was getting on towards dinner I observed that it was about time I got acquainted with the mystery of the pair of gloves on the foyer table. To my surprise he agreed with me.

He said: “That was the contribution of Mrs. Chapin. She furnished other information too, but nothing as interesting as that. She arrived at the Burton apartment, as you know, at six-thirty. The maid called Rose let her in. As she passed through the foyer she saw a pair of gloves on the table, and she stopped to pick them up. She says she intended to take them in to Mrs. Burton, but it would not be charitable to surmise that she had in mind starting a new treasure box for her husband; and that it is supported by the reasons she gives for returning the gloves to the table. She gives two reasons: that the maid had turned and was looking at her, and that the gloves seemed a little heavier than any she had known Mrs. Burton to wear. At any rate, she left them there. But when she went through the foyer, alone, on the way out, she thought to look at them again to satisfy
herself whether they were Mrs. Burton’s or not. The gloves were gone. She even looked around for them. They were gone.”

“I see. And that proves she didn’t croak Burton.”

“It does. And it identifies the murderer. If it should turn out that factual corroboration is needed of Mrs. Chapin’s innocence, which seems unlikely, it can be established that at half past seven she was receiving a summons from a policeman at Park Avenue and Fiftieth Street for passing a red light. Not to mention the probability that the hallman and doorman saw her leaving the building before the event occurred. But none of that should be needed.”

“Uh-huh. I suppose you got her confidence by giving her some orchids.”

“No. But as a matter of fact, I promised her some. Make a note of that for tomorrow. I got her confidence by telling her the truth, that the conviction of her husband for murder would cost me many thousands of dollars. You see, what happened—what time is it?— Good. She was convinced, as was Chapin himself, that I was responsible for his predicament. Not knowing the nature of my agreement with his friends, he thought I had framed him. Having seen me, he could not of course suppose that I myself had performed the acrobatics in the foyer. Do you know who did that? You. Yes, indeed, you did the killing, I merely devised it. Mrs. Chapin, believing that, seized an opportunity. With you and Pitney Scott fast asleep, she went through your pockets, took his cap and jacket, sat down and wrote a note, and drove the taxicab here. She handed the envelope to Fritz at the door and returned to the cab. The note was brief and quite clear, I can quote it verbatim:
Archie Goodwin will be dead in two hours unless you get in my taxi and go
where I drive you.
And it was signed with her name, Dora Chapin. Admirably forthright. What persuaded me that some sort of action was called for was the presence in the envelope of the leather case you had seemed to like.”

He paused for a glass of beer. I grunted, and thought I ought to say something, but all I could think of was, “Yeah, I liked it. And you’ve still got it.”

He nodded, and resumed. “The only aspect of the episode that was really distressing came from Mrs. Chapin’s romantic idea of what constitutes a remote and secluded spot. Since I was committed to follow her, a bush in a corner of Central Park would have done her just as well, but that infernal female ass bounced that cab far beyond the limits of the city. I learned subsequently that she had in mind an isolated wood somewhere on the edge of Long Island Sound where she and her husband had gone last summer to have a picnic. It became unendurable. I lowered the glass between us and shouted at the back of her ear that if she did not stop within three minutes I would call for help at every passing car and every visible human being. I convinced her. She turned into a byroad and soon stopped under a clump of trees.

“This will amuse you. She had a weapon. A kitchen knife!—By the way, that carving she exhibited to us last Wednesday was done on her own initiative; her husband disapproved. At that time the game was still on of establishing Mr. Chapin in the minds of his friends as a dangerous and murderous fellow, without involving him in any demonstrable guilt. He already suspected that I might uncover him, and his wife’s bloody neck was a red herring, though her own idea.—Well. She could not very well have expected to kill me with a knife, since none could be long enough to
reach a vital spot; I suppose no gun was available, or perhaps she mistrusts them as I do. Perhaps she meant merely to hack me into acquiescence; and of course she had in reserve my anxiety as to the peril of your situation. At all events, her purpose was to force me to reveal the skulduggery by which her husband had been entrapped. I was to write it. She had pen and paper with her. That attention to detail endeared her to me.”

“Yeah. And?”

He drank beer. “Nothing much. You know my fondness for talking. It was an excellent opportunity. She was calm from the outset. She and I have much in common—for instance, our dislike of perturbation. It would have been instructive to see her using the knife on the back of her neck that day, I would wager she did it much as one trims a chop. After I had explained the situation to her, we discussed it. The moment arrived when it seemed pointless to continue our conference in that cold, dark forbidding spot, and besides, I had learned what had happened to you. She seemed so uncertain as to what she had used to flavor your coffee that I thought it best to reach a telephone with as little delay as possible.—Ah! Mr. Hibbard, I trust the long afternoon has been fairly tolerable.”

Hibbard walked in, looking a little groggy, still wearing my brown necktie. Behind him came Fritz, to announce dinner.

T
hey piled in early. By nine o’clock ten of them had already arrived, checked off on my list, and I was doing the honors. Four of them I hadn’t seen before: Collard and Gaines from Boston, Irving from Philadelphia and Professor Mollison of Yale. Mike Ayers, stony sober on arrival, helped me get drinks around. At nine sharp Leopold Elkus joined the throng. I had no idea what Wolfe had told him to get him there; anyway there he was, and what he wanted to drink was a glass of port, and I restrained an impulse to tell him there was no nitroglycerin in it. He recognized me and acted gracious. Some more came, among them Augustus Farrell, who had phoned on Saturday that he was back from Philadelphia and had landed the commission for Mr. Allenby’s library. Wolfe, surmising that what he was really phoning about was the twenty bucks due him for Wednesday’s work, had had me mail him a check.

They didn’t seem as subdued as they had a week before. They took to the drinks with more gusto, and gathered in groups and talked, and two or three of them even came up to me and got impatient. Collard, the Boston textile man who owned the cliff that Judge
Harrison had fallen off of, told me he hoped to see the last act of the opera, and I said I was sorry but I myself had had to give up that hope long ago. I overheard Elkus telling Ferdinand Bowen that it appeared likely that Nero Wolfe was in an advanced stage of megalomania, and tried to get Bowen’s reply but missed it.

There were fifteen of them present at a quarter past nine, which was the time Wolfe had told me he would make his entrance.

It was a good entrance all right. He did it in perfect style. I was watching for him, not to miss it. He came in, three paces in, and stood there, until they had all turned to look at him and the talking had stopped. He inclined his head and used his resonance: “Good evening, gentleman.” Then he faced the door and nodded at Fritz, who was standing on the threshold. Fritz moved aside, and Andrew Hibbard walked in.

That started the first uproar. Pratt and Mike Ayers were the quickest to react. They both yelled “Andy!” and jumped for him. Others followed. They encircled him, shouted at him, grabbed his hands and pounded him on the back. They had him hemmed in so that I couldn’t see any of him, to observe what kind of psychology he was taking it with. It was easy to imagine, hearing them and looking at them, that they really liked Andy Hibbard. Maybe even Drummond and Bowen liked him; you’ve got to take the bitter along with the sweet.

Wolfe had eluded the stampede. He had got to his desk and lowered himself into his chair, and Fritz had brought him beer. I looked at him, and was glad I did, for it wasn’t often he felt like winking at me and I wouldn’t have wanted to miss it. He returned my look
and gave me the wink, and I grinned at him. Then he drank some beer.

The commotion went on a while longer. Mike Ayers came over to Wolfe’s desk and said something which I couldn’t hear on account of the noise, and Wolfe nodded and replied something. Mike Ayers went back and began shooing them into chairs, and Cabot and Farrell helped him. They subsided. Pratt took Hibbard by the arm and steered him to one of the big armchairs, and then sat down next to him and took out his handkerchief and wiped his eyes.

Wolfe started the ball rolling. He sat pretty straight, his forearms on the arms of his chair, his chin down, his eyes open on them.

“Gentlemen. Thank you for coming here this evening. Even if we should later come to disagreement, I am sure we are in accord as to the felicitous nature of our preamble. We are all glad that Mr. Hibbard is with us. Mr. Goodwin and I are gratified that we were able to play the Stanley to his Livingstone. As to the particular dark continent that Mr. Hibbard chose to explore, and the method of our finding him, those details must wait for another occasion, since we have more pressing business. I believe it is enough at present to say that Mr. Hibbard’s disappearance was a venture on his own account, a sally in search of education. That is correct, Mr. Hibbard?”