Rex Stout - Nero Wolfe 24 (2 page)

I gave him an eye and decided to believe nothing he said. He just wasn’t built for it.

He was proceeding. “I am no longer wild; I’m too old; but I was wild when young. Though my father didn’t approve of me and finally refused to see me, he didn’t let me starve—in fact, he was fairly generous. But when he died—I was thirty-six then; that was twenty years ago—he left everything to my sister, Beryl, with a request that she consider my needs. She did so, up to a point, until she died a year ago. She was born knowing how to behave, my sister was. I was abroad when she died—I have lived mostly abroad—but of course I flew over for the funeral.”

He shrugged like a Frenchman, or anyhow not like an American. “Out of all the millions she had inherited from our father, she left me nothing. Not a cent, not a sou. It all went to her husband, Theodore Huck, with a request that he consider my needs, worded exactly like the request in my father’s will. As I said, my sister knew how to behave. I had a talk with Huck and suggested that it would be simpler to transfer a lump sum to me—say a million or even
half a million—but he thought not. He said he knew what Beryl’s wishes were and felt bound to carry them out, and he agreed to send me the same amount she had been sending the last two years, a thousand dollars a month. I didn’t do what I should have done.”

He wanted a question, and Wolfe obliged. “What should you have done?”

“I should have killed him. He sat there in his wheelchair—his arteries have gone bad, and he can’t walk—he sat there in my father’s house, the owner of it, and he said he would send me a thousand a month from the money my father had made. It was an invitation to murder. If I had killed him, with due precaution of course, under my sister’s will I would have received for the rest of my life an annual income of some forty thousand dollars. The idea did occur to me, but I’m no good at all with any kind of intricacy, and though I have never learned how to behave, my instinct of self-preservation is damned keen.”

He gestured. “That’s what brought me here, that instinct. If for any reason this creature, this brother-in-law, this Theodore Huck in a wheelchair, stopped considering my needs, I would shortly die of starvation. I am incapable of sustaining life, even my own—especially my own. So when, at my rooms in Paris, I received a communication warning me of possible danger, I took a plane to New York. My brother-in-law made me welcome at my father’s house—damned gracious of him—and I’ve been there nearly two weeks now, and I’m stumped, and that’s why I’m here. There are three—”

He stopped abruptly, aimed the quick little gray eyes at me, sent them back to Wolfe, and said, “This is confidential.”

Wolfe nodded. “Things discussed in this room usually are. Your risk, sir.”

“Well.” He screwed his pinched little mouth, making it even smaller. He shrugged. “Well. I think the warning I got was valid. There are three women in that house with him, besides the cook and maids: the housekeeper, Mrs. Cassie O’Shea, who is a widow; a nurse, Miss Sylvia Marcy; and a so-called secretary, Miss Dorothy Riff. They’re all after him, and I think one of them is getting him, but I don’t know which one and I can’t find out. The trouble is, I have
developed a formula for getting on terms with women, but in this case I can’t use it and I’m lost. I need to know as soon as possible which one of those women is landing my brother-in-law.”

Wolfe snorted. “So you can intervene? With your formula?”

“Good God, no.” Lewent was shocked. “It would be a damned nuisance, and anyway there would soon be another one and I would have time for nothing else. Also I would like to get back to Europe before the holidays. I merely want to engage her sympathetic interest. I want to secure her friendship. I want to make absolutely certain that she will be permanently well disposed toward me after she lands Huck. That will take me three weeks if it is Miss Marcy or Miss Riff, four if it is Mrs. O’Shea. It is not a sordid familial flimflam. It’s a perfectly legitimate inquiry. Isn’t it?”

“I suppose so,” Wolfe conceded. “But it’s fantastic.”

“Not at all. It’s practical and damned sensible. My income for the rest of my life depends entirely on the goodwill of my brother-in-law. If he marries, especially if he marries a woman considerably younger than he is, how long will his goodwill last—twelve thousand dollars’ worth, year after year—if his wife hasn’t got it too?”

Wolfe grunted. “What precisely would be my engagement?”

“To find out as soon as possible which one of them is hooking him.” Lewent aimed a thumb at the little stack he had put on Wolfe’s desk. “That thousand dollars is yours, succeed or fail, but it will have to cover everything because it’s all I can afford. It might seem hardly worth your while, but actually, since you never leave this house on business, it will take little of your time and talent. The work will be done by Mr. Goodwin, and you have to pay his salary anyhow, and the expense will be negligible—taxi fares to and from my father’s house on Sixty-ninth Street, now owned by Theodore Huck. I know something of Goodwin’s record and prowess, and one trip, one day, might be all he would require—with consultation with you, of course. He can go up there with me now.”

I didn’t throw him a kiss. I can take a compliment raw,
with no chaser, as well as the next one, but I hope I have learned how to behave, and I had a weekend date.

Wolfe’s scowl had deteriorated to a mild frown. “You say you received a warning. From whom?”

“From Paul Thayer, Huck’s nephew. Huck lets him live there in the house. He’s as useless as I am—he composes music that no one will listen to. He hopes to inherit some of my father’s money from Huck, and he got alarmed and wrote me.”

“What alarmed him?”

“Some little things and one big thing. A man with cases came from Tiffany’s and was with Huck in his study for nearly an hour. That could mean only one thing: Huck was buying something expensive for a woman—one of those three.”

“Why? There are other women.”

Lewent shook his head. “Not for Huck. He can’t walk, and he hasn’t been out of the house more than two or three times since my sister died. No woman ever comes to see him. It’s one of those three. You might think Paul or I could discover which one, but it’s not so simple. He has his meals in his room or his study, and we see very little of him. Paul has tried approaching the women on it, and I have made a few little efforts in that direction myself, but it’s a delicate business.”

“Make friends with all three of them.”

“It couldn’t be done. They’re too jealous of one another.”

“Wait until you see one of them wearing the gift from Tiffany’s. That will settle it.”

“It would settle me too. It would be too damned obvious. None of them is a numskull.”

“But,” Wolfe objected, “it will be equally obvious if she is flushed by Mr. Goodwin—in consultation with me.”

“I don’t expect him to flush her. I don’t want him to.” Lewent slid forward on the smooth leather seat. “My God, can’t you find out things without people knowing it? I couldn’t take Goodwin into that house to cross-examine them about their relations with Huck, even if I wanted to. It is my father’s house, but Huck owns it. We’ll have to use a subterfuge, especially for Goodwin to talk with Huck. I just decided—”

He was stopped by a noise from Wolfe—an explosive noise, half grunt and half snort. It was meant for a stopper. Lewent’s quick little gray eyes widened in startled inquiry. “What’s the matter?”

“You.” Wolfe was mildly disgusted. “I might conceivably engage to pry into the amatory designs of a wealthy widower if I were hard put and the bait was spectacular, but as it is you’re wasting your time. And mine. Good day, sir.”

It sounded positively final. Lewent’s pinched little mouth worked from side to side and up and down. “You mean you won’t do it.”

“That’s right.”

“I didn’t think you would, but I thought I’d try it that way.” He clasped his hands together. “So here goes. Now this is confidential.”

“You said that before.”

“I know I did, but this is different. My sister died here in New York, at my father’s house, of ptomaine poisoning from something she ate. Huck cabled me in Paris, and I flew home for the funeral, as I said. I never had any suspicions about it until two things happened. First, Odelette, my mistress in Toulouse, tried to poison me when she was mad with jealousy, showing me that anyone may commit murder if the motive is good enough; and second, I was warned by Paul Thayer that Huck was being bagged by one of these women. That started me thinking, and I went to a library and read up on ptomaines. Those women were all present when my sister was poisoned. I believe that one of them murdered her.”

“On what evidence?”

“None. I believe that she already had Huck or was sure she could get him. I’ve been here nearly two weeks, and I firmly believe that, but what can I do? I don’t even dare ask any questions of anyone. Of course the police would laugh at me. Naturally I thought of you, but the most I could scrape up was a thousand dollars, and that’s small change for you, so I decided to try to get you started on it by not mentioning murder and just saying what I wanted—well, you heard me.”

He gestured. “I want to head her off, and I think maybe I can if I can find out which one it is.”

“How will you head her off without evidence?”

“That’s up to me. Leave that to me, if once I know her. For an absolutely legitimate purpose, I want to pay in advance for a thousand dollars’ worth of Goodwin’s time and talent and consultation with you as required. Ten hours of Goodwin and ten minutes of you? Whatever it is, I want to buy it.”

Abruptly Wolfe rolled his chair back and arose. “I have an important phone call to make,” he told Lewent, “and will leave you with Mr. Goodwin. Since, as you say, the work will be done by him, I won’t be needed, even for the decision whether to take the job.”

He marched across to the door to the hall and was gone, but not, as I knew, to make a phone call. Not wanting to refuse to take money, but not caring to shoulder the blame for spoiling my weekend for the sake of a measly grand, he was putting it up to me. As for him, he would go to the kitchen, open a bottle of beer, and make suggestions to Fritz about preparations for lunch. As for me, I was stuck. If I shooed Lewent out it would be months before I could again open my trap to ride Wolfe for turning down jobs. So I got the little stack which the little man had put on Wolfe’s desk, counted it, and found that it was twenty fifties.

“Okay,” I told him, “I’ll give you a receipt. First I think our approach to Huck will stand some discussion. Do you agree?”

He did, and I sat, and we discussed.

Lewent’s father’s house of granite, on Sixty-ninth Street between Fifth and Madison, had apparently not had its face washed since little Herman had been born there back in the nineteenth century, but inside there had unquestionably been changes. For one thing, the self-service elevator was so modern and so large that I guessed it had been installed since the present owner had been condemned to a wheelchair on account of his bum arteries.

Though Lewent had insisted that we should delay the operation until Theodore Huck’s lunch hour was past, and
therefore it was after two o’clock when we arrived and were let in by a female viking who could have carried Herman around in her apron, I was still nursing the hope that I might earn the grand that day and evening and have my weekend. So when the viqueen had taken our hats I wasted no time for a glance at the luxuries of the big entrance hall as Lewent led the way to the elevator. We left it one flight up and turned right down the hall, which was some narrower but longer than the one downstairs. I was surprised at the thickness of the rugs in a mansion whose master did all his moving in a wheelchair.

The surprise left when we entered a large high-ceilinged room at the rear of the house and I saw the wheelchair. He could have parked it in a trailer camp and lived in it if it had had a roof. The seat was roomy enough for Nero Wolfe. At the sides were shelves, trays and compartments. A large metal box at the rear, low, was presumably a motor housing. A fluorescent light was attached to the frame at Huck’s left, shining on a magazine Huck was reading.

Lewent said, “This is Mr. Goodwin, as I phoned you,” and turned and went.

Theodore Huck said nothing. Tossing the magazine on a table nearby, he pressed a button, and the footrest of the chair came up, smoothly, until his legs, which were under a large plaid shawl, were straight and horizontal. He pressed another button, and the chair’s back receded until he was half reclining. He pressed another button, and the part of his legs were on began to move from side to side, not very gently. He closed his eyes. I lowered myself onto a chair and did a sweeping take of the room, which was his study, with the parts of the wall left visible by pictures and rows of books showing old wood panels, and then went back to him. The upper half of him was perfectly presentable for a guy his age, with a discernible waistline, good broad shoulders, a face with all features in proportion and correctly placed, and his full share of hair that had been dark but was now mostly gray. I had plenty of time to take him in, for he stayed put for a good five minutes, with his legs going from side to side on the moving frame. Finally the motion stopped, he pressed buttons, his legs went down and his torso up, and he reached to pull the edge of the plaid shawl above his hips.

He looked at me, but I couldn’t meet him because he seemed to be focusing about a foot below my chin. “I do that sixteen times a day,” he said. “Every hour while I’m awake. It helps a little. A year ago I could barely stand, and now I can take five or six steps. Your name’s Goodwin?”

“Right.”

“My brother-in-law said you wanted to see me.”

I nodded. “That’s not strictly accurate, but it will do. He wanted me to see you. My name’s Archie Goodwin, and I work for Nero Wolfe, the detective, and your—”

“Oh! You’re that Goodwin?”

“Right. Your brother-in-law called at Mr. Wolfe’s office today and wanted to engage his services. He says that his sister—”

A door off to the right opened, and a young woman my age came stepping in, with papers in her hands. She was fair, with gray-green eyes, and as a spectacle there wasn’t a thing wrong with her, at a glance. Halfway across to the wheelchair she stopped and inquired, “Will you sign the letters now, Mr. Huck?”