Rex Stout - Nero Wolfe 17 (8 page)

“Have you brothers or sisters?”

“Two younger sisters. In college.”

“Have you any other relatives that you see or correspond with frequently?”

Bernard looked at Cynthia. “Do you want me to go on with this autobiography?”

“She has no opinion in the matter,” Wolfe said curtly, “because she doesn’t know what I’m after. You may or may not have guessed. But can you object that my questions are offensive?”

“No, they’re only silly.”

“Then humor me—or humor Miss Nieder through me. Any other relatives that you see or correspond with frequently?”

“None whatever.”

“I’m about through. I won’t name any names, because the only ones I know are already eliminated. For help in making important decisions, manifestly it is not Mr. Demarest you turn to, since he has had to rationalize the change he has noticed in you. Nor Miss Zarella nor Mr. Roper, since their attitude toward Mr. Groodwin’s invitation to come here this evening had no effect on yours. I’ll have to put it in general terms: is there a banker, or lawyer, or friend, or any other person or persons, on whose judgment you frequently rely for guidance in your business? Anyone at all?”

“No special person. I discuss things with people, naturally—including Mr. Demarest—”

“Ha! Not Mr. Demarest. He has noticed a change in you. This is your last chance, Mr. Daumery, to drag somebody in.”

“I don’t have to drag anybody in. I’m of sound mind and body and over twenty-one.”

“I know you are, and of a decisive and aggressive temperament, and that’s why I’m making progress.” Wolfe wiggled a finger at him. “One last question. Yesterday Miss Nieder suggested, frivolously I
thought, that you might find counsel in the stars or a crystal ball. Do you?”

Bernard croaked at Cynthia, “Where the hell did you get that idea?”

“I said she was being frivolous,” Wolfe told him. “Do you? Or tea leaves or a fortune-teller?”

“No!”

Wolfe nodded. “That’s all, Mr. Daumery. Thank you again. That satisfies me.”

He took them all in, “You have a right to know, I think, who it was that was killed in the Daumery and Nieder office last evening. It was Mr. Paul Nieder, the former partner in the business.”

Everybody stared at him. If I had had a pin handy I would have tried dropping it.

“What did you say?” Demarest demanded.

“By my mother’s milk,” Polly Zarella cried, springing to her feet, “it was! It was Paul! When they made me look at him I saw he had Paul’s hands, Paul’s wonderful artist hands, only I knew it couldn’t be!” At Wolfe’s desk, glaring at him ferociously, she drummed on the desk with her fists. “How?” she demanded. “Tell me how!”

I had to get up and help out or she might have climbed over the desk and drummed on Wolfe’s belly, which would have stopped the party. The others were reacting too, but not as spectacularly as Polly. My firmness in getting her back in her chair had a quieting effect on them too, and Wolfe’s words could come through.

“You’ll want to know all about it, of course, and
eventually you will, but right now I have a job to do. Since, as I say, Mr. Nieder was killed last night, it follows that he didn’t kill himself over a year ago. He only pretended to. A week ago today Miss Nieder saw him in your showroom, disguised with a beard and glasses and slick parted hair. She recognized him, but he departed before she could speak to him. When she entered that office last evening the body was there on the floor, and she confirmed the identification by recognizing scars on his leg. Further particulars must wait. The point is that this time he was killed indeed, and I think I know who killed him.”

His eyes went straight at Bernard.

“Where is he, Mr. Daumery?”

Bernard was not himself. He was trying hard to be but couldn’t make it. He was meeting Wolfe’s hard gaze with a fascinated stare, as if he were entering the last stage of being hypnotized.

“Where is he?” Wolfe insisted.

The best Bernard could do was a “Who?” that didn’t sound like him at all.

Wolfe slowly shook his head. “I’m not putting anything on,” he said dryly. “When Mr. Goodwin told me what happened this afternoon this possibility occurred to me, along with many others, but up to half an hour ago, when I got my head battered in by being told that you four people spent last evening together, I had no idea of where my target was. Then, after a little consideration, I decided to explore, and now I know. Your face tells me. Don’t reproach yourself. The attack was unexpected and swift and everything was against you.”

Wolfe extended a hand with the palm up. “Even if I didn’t know, but still only guessed, that would be
enough. I would merely give it to the police as a suspicion deserving inquiry, and with their trained noses and their ten thousand men how long do you think it would take them to find him? Another fact that may weigh with you: he is a murderer. Even so, you are a free agent in every respect but one; you will not be permitted to leave this room until either you have told me where he is or I have given the police time to start on his trail and cover my door.”

Demarest chuckled. “Unlawful restraint with witnesses,” he commented.

Wolfe ignored it and gave the screw another turn on Bernard. “Where is he, Mr. Daumery? You can’t take time to think it over, to consult him on this one. Where is he?”

“This is awful,” Bernard said hoarsely. “This is an awful thing.”

“He can’t do this!” came suddenly from the red leather chair. Cynthia’s concentrated gaze at Bernard was full of a kind and degree of sympathy that I had hoped never to see her spend on a rival. “He can’t threaten you and keep you here! It’s unlawful!” Her head jerked to Wolfe and she snapped at him, “You stop it now!”

“It’s too late, my dear child,” Demarest told her. “You hired him—and I must admit you’re getting your money’s worth.” His head turned. “You’d better tell him, Bernard. It may be hard, but the other way’s harder.”

“Where is he, Mr. Daumery?” Wolfe repeated.

Bernard’s chin lifted a little. “If you’re right,” he said, still hoarse, “and God knows I hope you’re not, it’s up to him. The address is Eight-sixteen East Ninetieth Street. I want to phone him.”

“No,” Wolfe said curtly. “You will be unlawfully
restrained if you try. What is it, an apartment building?”

“Yes.”

“Elevator?”

“Yes.”

“What floor?”

“The tenth. Apartment Ten C. I rented it for him.”

“Is he there now?”

“Yes. I was to phone him there when I left here. I said I would go to see him, but he said I might be followed and I had better phone from a booth.”

“What is the name?”

“Dickson. George Dickson.”

“That’s his name?”

“Yes.”

“Thank you. Satisfactory. Archie.”

“Yes, sir?”

“Give Fritz a revolver and send him in. I don’t know how some of these minds might work. Then get Mr. Dickson and bring him here. Eight-one-six East—”

“Yeah, I heard it.”

“Don’t alarm him any more than you have to. Don’t tell him we know who got killed last night. I don’t want you killed, and I don’t want a suicide.”

“Don’t worry,” Demarest volunteered, “about
him
committing suicide. What I’m wondering is how you expect to prove anything about a murder. You’ve admitted that half an hour ago you didn’t even know he existed. He’s tough and he’s anything but a fool.”

I was at a drawer of my desk, getting out two guns and loading them—one for Fritz and one for me. So I was still there to hear Ward Roper’s contribution.

“That explains it,” Roper said, the bitterness all
gone, replaced by a tone of pleased discovery. “If Paul was alive up to last night, he designed those things himself and got them to us through Cynthia! Certainly! That explains it!”

I didn’t stay for the slapping, if any.

“There’s no hurry,” Wolfe told me as I was leaving. “I have things to do before you get back.”

For transportation I had my pick of the new Cadillac, the subway, or a taxi. It might not be convenient to have my hands occupied with a steering wheel, and escorting a murderer on a subway without handcuffs is a damn nuisance, so I chose the taxi. The driver of the one I flagged on Tenth Avenue had satisfactory reactions to my license card and my discreet outline of the situation, and I elected him.

Eight-sixteen East Ninetieth Street was neither a dump nor a castle of luxury—just one of the big clean hives. Leaving the taxi waiting at the curb, I entered, walked across the lobby as if I were in my own home, entered the elevator, and mumbled casually, “Ten please.”

The man moved no muscle but his jaw. “Who do you want to see?”

“Dickson.”

“I’ll have to phone up. What’s your name?”

“Tell him it’s a message from Mr. Bernard Daumery.”

The man moved. I followed him out of the elevator and around a corner to the switchboard, and watched him plug in and flip a switch. In a moment he was
speaking into the transmitter, and in another moment he turned to me.

“He says for me to bring the message up.”

“Tell him my name is Goodwin and I was told to give it to him personally.”

Apparently Dickson didn’t have to think things over. At least there was no extended discussion. The man pulled out the plug, told me to come ahead, and led me back to the elevator. He took me to the tenth floor and thumbed me to the left, and I went to the end of the hall, to the door marked IOC. The door was ajar, to a crack big enough to stick a peanut in, and as my finger was aiming for the pushbutton a voice came through.

“You have a message from Mr. Daumery?”

“Yes, sir, for George Dickson.”

“I’m Dickson. Hand it through to me.”

“I can’t. It’s verbal.”

“Then say it. What is it?”

“I’ll have to see you first. You were described to me. Mr. Daumery is in a little trouble.”

For a couple of seconds nothing happened, then the door opened wide enough to admit ten bags of peanuts abreast. Since he had certainly had his hoof placed to keep it from opening, I evened up by promptly placing mine to keep it from shutting. The light was nothing wonderful, but good enough to see that he was a husky middle-aged specimen with a wide mouth, dark-colored deepset eyes, and a full share of chin.

“What kind of trouble?” he snapped.

“He’ll have to tell you about it,” I said apologetically. “I’m just a messenger. All I can tell you is that I was instructed to ask you to come to him.”

“Why didn’t he phone me?”

“A phone isn’t available to him right now.”

“Where is he?”

“At Nero Wolfe’s office on West Thirty-fifth Street.”

“Who else is there?”

“Several people. Mr. Wolfe, of course, and men named Demarest and Roper, and women named Zarella and Nieder—that’s all.”

The dark eyes had got darker. “I think you’re lying. I don’t think Mr. Daumery sent for me at all. I think this is a put-up job and you can get out of here and stay out.”

“Okay, brother.” I kept the foot in place. “Where did I get your name and address, from a mailing list? You knew Mr. Daumery was at Nero Wolfe’s, since he phoned you around seven o’clock to ask your advice about going, and he told you who else was invited, so what’s wrong with that? Why do you think he can’t use a phone, because he don’t speak English? Even if it were a put-up job as you say, I don’t quite see what you can do except to come along and unput it, unless you’d rather do it here. They’ve got the impression that your help is badly needed. My understanding was that if I didn’t get there with you by eleven o’clock they would all pile into a taxi, including Mr. Daumery, and come here to see you. So if you turn me down all I can do is push on inside and wait with you till they arrive. If you try to bounce me, we’ll see. If you call on that skinny elevator pilot for help, we’ll still see. If you summon cops, I’ll try my hardest to wiggle out of it by explaining the situation to them. That seems to cover it, don’t you think? I’ve got a taxi waiting out front.”

From the look in his eye I thought it likely that he was destined to take a poke at me, or even make a dash for some tool, say a window pole, to work with. There was certainly no part of me he liked. But, as Demarest had said, he was anything but a fool. Most men would have needed a good ten minutes alone in a quiet corner to get the right answer to the problem this bird suddenly found himself confronted with. Not Mr. Dickson. It took him a scant thirty seconds, during which he stood with his eyes on me but his brain doing hurdles, high jumps, and fancy dives.

He wheeled and opened a door, got a hat from a shelf and put it on, emerged to the hall as I backed out, pulled the door shut, marched to the elevator, and pushed the button.

By the time we had descended to the sidewalk, climbed into the taxi, been driven to Wolfe’s address, mounted the stoop and entered, and proceeded to the office, he had not uttered another word. Neither had I. I am not the kind that shoves in where he isn’t wanted.

We were back again to the headline we had started with:
MAN ALIVE
. This time, however, I did not regard it as a letdown. I took it for granted that by the time I got back everyone there would know who was coming with me, even if one or two of them hadn’t caught on before I left. I thought it would be interesting to see how they would welcome, under those difficult circumstances, their former employer and associate on his return from a watery grave, but he took charge of the script himself as he entered the office. He strode
across to face Bernard and glare down at him. Bernard scrambled to his feet.

Dickson asked, his tone cold and biting, “What the hell’s the matter with you? Can’t you handle anything at all?”

“Not this I can’t,” Bernard said, and he was by no means whimpering. “This man Wolfe is one for you to handle, and I only hope to God you can!”

Without moving his shoulders, Dickson pivoted his head to take them in. “Well, I’m back,” he announced. “I would have been back soon anyway, but this bright nephew of mine has hurried it up a little. Ward, you’re looking like a window display in a fire sale. Still putting up with them, Polly? Now you’ll have to put up with me again. Cynthia, I hear you’re on the way to lead the whole pack.” His head pivoted some more. “Where’s Henry? I thought he was here.”