Rex Stout - Nero Wolfe 17 (21 page)

I stepped back, keeping a guard up for defense only.

“Lookit,” I said, “I’d just as soon go on if you really want to, but why do you want to? It’s more fun when I know what it’s for.”

“You double-crossing sonofabitch,” he said, not panting.

“Okay, but it’s still vague. Who did I cross? Pitcairn? The daughter? Who?”

“You made him think you were with him and then you helped get him framed.”

“Oh. You think we crossed Andy?”

“I know damn well you did.”

“Listen, brother.” I let my guard down. “You know what you are? You’re the answer to a prayer. You’re what I wanted for Christmas. You’re dead wrong, but you’re wonderful. Come in and have a talk with Nero Wolfe.”

“I wouldn’t talk with that crook.”

“You were looking at him through a window. What for?”

“I wanted to see what you were up to.”

“That’s easy. You should have asked. We were up to absolutely nothing. We were sunk up to our ears. We were phut. We were and are crazy for Andy. We wanted to take him home with us and pamper him, and they wouldn’t let us.”

“That’s a goddam lie.”

“Very well. Then you ought to come in and tell Mr.
Wolfe to his face that he’s a double-crosser, a crook, and a liar. You don’t often get such a chance. Unless you’re afraid. What are you afraid of?”

“Nothing,” he said, and wheeled and marched to the kitchen door, opened it, and went in. I was right behind.

Wolfe’s voice boomed from the other room. “Archie! Where the devil—”

We were with him. He had finished with the phone. He shot a glance at Gus and then at me.

“Where did you get him?”

I waved a hand. “Oh, out there. I’ve started deliveries.”

It took a good ten minutes to convince Gus Treble that we were playing it straight, and though Wolfe used a lot of his very best words and tones, it wasn’t words that put it over, it was logic The major premise was that Wolfe wanted Andy in his plant rooms, quick. The minor was that Andy couldn’t be simultaneously in Wolfe’s plant rooms and in the coop at White Plains, or in the death house at Sing Sing. Gus didn’t have to have the conclusion written out for him, but even so it took ten minutes. The last two were consumed by my recital, verbatim, of the conversation with Joseph G. and Sybil just before leaving the greenhouse.

Gus was seated at the desk, turned to face Wolfe, and I was straddling a straight-backed chair.

“Last July,” Gus said, “that Noonan beat up a friend of mine, for nothing.”

Wolfe nodded. “There you are. A typical uniformed
blackguard. I take it, Mr. Treble, that you share my opinion that Mr. Krasicki didn’t kill that woman. And I heard you tell those men that you didn’t, so I won’t pester you about it. But though you answered freely and fully all questions concerning yourself, you were manifestly more circumspect regarding others. I understand that. You have a job here and your words were being recorded. But it won’t do for me. I want to get Mr. Krasicki out of jail, and I can do so only by furnishing a replacement for him. If you want to help you can, but not unless you forget your job, discard prudence, and tell me all you know about these people. Well, sir?”

Gus was scowling, which made him look old enough to vote. In the artificial light he looked paler than he had outdoors in the morning, and his rainbow shirt looked brighter.

“It’s a good job,” he muttered, “and I love it.”

“Yes,” Wolfe agreed sympathetically, “Mr. Krasicki told me you were competent, intelligent, and exceptionally talented.”

“He did?”

“Yes, sir. He did.”

“Goddam it.” Gus’s scowl got blacker. “What do you want to know?”

“About these people. First, Miss Lauer. I gathered that you were not yourself attracted by her.”

“Me? Not that baby. You heard what I told them. She was out for a sucker.”

“You mean out for money?”

“No, not money. I don’t think so. Hell, you know the kind. She liked to see males react, she got a kick out of it. She liked to see females react too. Even Neil Imbrie, old enough to be her father, you should have seen her giving him the idea when his wife was there.
Not that she was raw; she could put it in a flash and then cover. And what she could do with her voice! Sometimes I myself had to walk off. Anyhow I’ve got a girl at Bedford Hills.”

“Wasn’t Mr. Krasicki aware of all this?”

“Andy?” Gus leaned forward. “Listen. That was one of those things. From the first day he glimpsed her and heard her speak, he got drowned. He didn’t even float, he just laid there on the bottom. And him no fool, anything but, but it hit him so quick and hard he never got a chance to analyze. Once I undertook to try a couple of words, very careful, and the look he gave me! It was pathetic.” Gus shook his head. “I don’t know. If I had known he had talked her into marrying him I might have fumigated her myself, just as a favor to him.”

“Yes,” Wolfe agreed, “that would have been an adequate motive. So much for you. You mentioned Mr. Imbrie. What about him? Assume that Miss Lauer also gave him the idea when his wife was
not
there, that he reacted like a male, as you put it, that developments convinced him that he was in heaven, that she told him last evening of her intention to go away and marry Mr. Krasicki, and that he decided she must die. Are those assumptions permissible?”

“I wouldn’t know. They’re not mine, they’re yours.”

“Come come,” Wolfe snapped. “I’m not Mr. Noonan, thank God. Prudence will get us nowhere. Has Mr. Imbrie got that in him?”

“He might, sure, if she hooked him deep enough.”

“Have you any facts that contradict the assumptions?”

“No.”

“Then we’ll keep them. You understand, of course,
that there are no alibis. There were four hours for it: from eleven o’clock, when Miss Lauer said good night to Mr. Krasicki and left him, to three o’clock, when you and Mr. Krasicki entered the greenhouse to fumigate. Everyone was in bed, and in separate rooms except for Mr. and Mrs. Imbrie. Their alibi is mutual, but also marital and therefore worthless. His motive we have assumed. Hers is of course implicit in the situation as you describe it, and besides, women do not require motives that are comprehensible by any intellectual process.”

“You said it,” Gus acquiesced feelingly. “They roll their own.”

I wondered what the girl at Bedford Hills had done now. Wolfe went on.

“Let’s finish with the women. What about Miss Pitcairn?”

“Well—” Gus opened his mouth wide to give his lips a stretch, touched the upper one with the tip of his tongue, and closed up again. “I guess I don’t understand her. I feel as if I hate her, but I don’t really know why, so maybe I don’t understand her.”

“Perhaps I can help?”

“I doubt it. She puts up a hell of a front, but one day last summer I came on her in the grove crying her eyes out. I think it’s a complex, only she must have more than one. She had a big row with her father one day on the terrace, when I was working there in the shrubs and they knew it—it was a couple of weeks after Mrs. Pitcairn’s accident and he was letting the registered nurse go and sending for a practical nurse which turned out later to be this Dini Lauer—and Miss Pitcairn was raising the roof because she thought she ought to look after her mother herself. She screamed fit to be tied, until the nurse
called down from an upstairs window to please be quiet. Another thing, she not only seems to hate men, she says right out that she does. Maybe that’s why I feel I hate her, just to balance it up.”

Wolfe made a face. “Does she often have hysterics?”

“I wouldn’t say often, but of course I’m hardly ever in the house.” Gus shook his head. “I guess I don’t understand her.”

“I doubt if it’s worth an effort. Don’t try. What I’d like to get from you, if you have it, is not understanding but a fact. I need a scandalous fact about Miss Pitcairn. Have you got one?”

Gus looked bewildered. “You mean about her and Dini?”

“Her and anyone or anything. The worse the better. Is she a kleptomaniac or a drug addict? Does she gamble or seduce other women’s husbands or cheat at cards?”

“Not that I know of.” Gus took a minute to concentrate. “She fights a lot. Will that help?”

“I doubt it. With what weapons?”

“I don’t mean weapons; she just fights—with family, friends, anyone. She always knows best. She fights a lot with her brother. As far as he’s concerned, it’s a good thing somebody knows best, because God knows he don’t.”

“Why, does he have complexes too?”

Gus snorted. “He sure has got something. The family says he’s sensitive—that’s what they tell each other, and their friends, and him. Hell, so am I sensitive, but I don’t go around talking it up. He has a mood every hour on the hour, daily including Sundays and holidays. He never does a damn thing, even pick flowers. He’s a four-college man—he got booted out of
Yale, then Wilhams, then Cornell, and then something out in Ohio.”

“What for?” Wolfe demanded. “That might help.”

“No idea.”

“Confound it,” Wolfe complained, “have you no curiosity? A good damning fact about the son might be even more useful than one about the daughter. Haven’t you got one?”

Gus concentrated again, and when a minute passed without any sign of contact on his face, Wolfe insisted, “Could his expulsion from those colleges have been on account of trouble with women?”

“Him?” Gus snorted again. “If he went to a nudist camp and they lined the men up on one side and the women on the other, he wouldn’t know which was which. With clothes on I suppose he can tell. Not that he’s dumb, I doubt if he’s a bit dumb, but his mind is somewhere else. You asked if he has complexes—”

There was a knock at the door. I went and opened it and took a look, and said, “Come in.”

Donald Pitcairn entered.

I had surveyed him before, but now I had more to go on and I checked. He didn’t look particularly sensitive, though of course I didn’t know which mood he had on. He had about the same weight and volume as me, but it’s no flattery to say that he didn’t carry them the same. He needed tuning. He had dark deep-set eyes, and his face wouldn’t have been bad at all if he had felt better about it.

“Oh, you here, Gus?” he asked, which wasn’t too bright.

“Yeah, I’m here,” Gus replied, getting that settled.

Donald, blinking in the light, turned to Wolfe. His idea was to make it curt. “We wondered why it took
so long to pack Andy’s things. That’s what you said you wanted to do, but it doesn’t look as if you’re doing it.”

“We were interrupted,” Wolfe told him.

“I see you were. Don’t you think it would be a good idea to go ahead and pack and get started?”

“I do, yes. We’ll get at it shortly. I’m glad you came, Mr. Pitcairn, because it provides an opportunity for a little chat. Of course you are under—”

“I don’t feel like chatting,” Donald said apologetically, and turned and left.

The door closed behind him and we heard his steps across the porch.

“See?” Gus demanded. “That’s him to a T. Papa told him to come and chase you out, and did you hear him?”

“Yes, I heard him. With sensitive people you never know.” Wolfe sighed. “We’d better get on, since I want to get back to the house before Mr. Pitcairn decides to come at us himself. What about him? Not what he’s like, I’ve seen him and spoken with him, but the record—what you know of it. I got the impression this afternoon that he does not share his son’s confusion about the sexes. He can tell a woman from a man?”

“I’ll say he can.” Gus laughed shortly. “With his eyes shut. From a mile off.”

“You say that as if you could prove it.”

Gus had his mouth open to go on, but he shut it. He cocked an eye at Wolfe, tossed me a glance, and regarded Wolfe again.

“Oh,” he said. “Now you want me to prove things.”

“Not at all. I don’t even insist on facts. I’ll take surmises—anything you have.”

Gus was considering, rubbing the tips of his thumbs with his forefingers and scowling again. Finally he made a brusque gesture. “To hell with it,” he decided. “I was sore at you for crossing Andy, and you don’t owe him anything, and here look at me. There’s other jobs. He choked a girl once.”

“Mr. Pitcairn did?”

“Yes.”

“Choked her to death?”

“Oh, no, just choked her. Her name’s Florence Hefferan. Her folks used to live in a shack over on Greasy Hill, but now they’ve got a nice house and thirty acres down in the valley. I don’t think it was Florence that used the pliers on him, or if she did her old man made her. I know for a fact it took twenty-one thousand dollars to get that thirty acres, and also Florence was by no means broke when she beat it to New York. If it didn’t come from Pitcairn, then where? There are two versions about the choking. One is that he was nuts about her and he was jealous because he thought the baby she was going to have wasn’t his—that’s what Florence told her best friend, who is a friend of mine. The other is that he was sore because he was being forced to deliver some real dough—that came from Florence too, later, after she had gone to New York, I guess because she thought it sounded better. Anyhow I know he choked her enough to leave marks because I saw them.”

“Well.” Wolfe was looking as pleased as if someone had just presented him with thirty acres of orchids. “When did this happen?”

“About two years ago.”

“Do you know where Miss Hefferan is now?”

“Sure, I can get her address in New York.”

“Good.” Wolfe wiggled a finger. “I said I wouldn’t insist on proof, and I won’t, but how much of this is fact and how much gossip?”

“No gossip at all. It’s straight fact.”

“Has any of it ever been published? For instance, in a newspaper reporting a proceeding in a court?”

Gus shook his head. “It wasn’t in a court. How would it get in a court when he paid forty or fifty thousand to keep it out?”

“Just so, but I wanted to be sure. Were these facts generally known and discussed in the neighborhood?”

“Well—not known, no.” Gus gestured. “Of course there was some talk, but only two or three really knew what happened, and I happened to be one of them because of my friend being Florence’s best friend. And I didn’t help start any talking. I’ve never opened my trap about it until now, and I told you only to help Andy, but damned if I see how it’s going to.”