The Red Box (12 page)

I had trouble with that. McNair was urgent and wasn’t going to be put off. The others had stopped talking. I made it reassuring but firm, and finally managed it. I hung up and told Wolfe:

“Okay.”

He was making preparations to rise. He shoved his chair back, got his hands on its arms for levers, and up came the mountain. He stood and distributed a glance and put on his crispest tone:

“Gentlemen. It is nearly four o’clock and I must leave you. —No, permit me. Miss Frost has kindly accepted my invitation to come to my plant rooms and see my orchids. She is … she and I have concluded a little agreement. I may say that I am not an ogre and I resent your silly invasion of my premises. You gentlemen are leaving now, and certainly she is free
to accompany you if she chooses to do that. —Miss Frost?”

She stood up. Her lips were compressed, but she opened them to say, “I’ll look at the orchids.”

They all began yapping at once. I got up and prepared for traffic duty in case of a jam. Llewellyn broke loose from his lawyer and started toward her, ready to throw her behind his saddle and gallop off. She gave them a good brave stare:

“For heaven’s sake, shut up! Don’t you think I’m old enough to take care of myself? Lew, stop that!”

She started off with Wolfe. All they could do was take it and look foolish. The lawyer friend pulled at his little pink nose. Perren Gebert stuck his hands in his pockets and stood straight. Llewellyn strode to the door, after the orchid lovers had passed through, and all we could see was his fine strong back. The sound of the elevator door closing came from the hall, and the whirr of its ascending.

I announced, “That’ll be all for the present, and I don’t like scenes. They get on my nerves.”

Lew Frost whirled and told me, “Go to hell.”

I grinned at him. “I can’t plug you, because you’re our client. But you might as well beat it. I’ve got work to do.”

The plump one said, “Come on, Lew, we’ll go to my office.”

Perren Gebert was already on the move. Llewellyn stood aside and glared him full of holes as he passed. Then Leach went and nudged his friend along. I tripped by to open the front door for them; Llewellyn was continuing with remarks, but I disdained them. He and his attorney went down the stoop to the sidewalk and headed east; Gebert had climbed into a neat little convertible which he had parked back of the
roadster and was stepping on the starter. I shut the door and went back in.

I switched on the house phone for the plant room and pressed the button. In about twenty seconds Wolfe answered, and I told him:

“It’s quiet and peaceful down here now. No fuss at all.”

His murmur came at me: “Good. Miss Frost is in the middle room, enjoying the orchids … reasonably well. When Mr. McNair phones, tell him six o’clock. If he insists on coming earlier, let him, and keep him. Let me know when he is there, and have the office door closed. She left her vanity case on my desk. Send Fritz up with it.”

“Okay.”

I switched off and settled to wait for McNair’s call, reflecting on the relative pulling power of beauty in distress and two million iron men and how it probably depended on whether you were the romantic type or not.

T
wo hours later, at six o’clock, I sat at my desk pounding the typewriter with emphasis and a burst of speed, copying off the opening pages of one of Hoehn’s catalogues. The radio was turned on, loud, for the band of the Hotel Portland Surf Room. Together the radio and I made quite a din. Boyden McNair, with his right elbow on his knee and his bent head resting on the hand which covered his eyes, sat near Wolfe’s desk in the dunce’s chair, yclept that by me on the day that District Attorney Anderson of Westchester sat in it while Wolfe made a dunce of him.

McNair had been there nearly an hour. He had done a lot of sputtering on the phone and had refused to wait until six o’clock, and had finally appeared a little after five, done some sputtering, and then settled down because there wasn’t anything else to do. He had his bottle of aspirin along in his pocket and had already washed a couple of them down, me furnishing the water and also offering phenacetin tablets as an improvement, without any sale. He wouldn’t take a drink, though he certainly looked as if he needed one.

The six o’clock radio and typewriter din was for the purpose of covering any sound of voices that might
come from the hall as Nero Wolfe escorted his guest, Miss Frost, from the elevator to the front door and let her out to the taxi which Fritz had ordered from the kitchen phone. Of course I couldn’t hear anything either, so I kept glancing at the office door without letting my fingers stop, and at length it opened and Wolfe entered. Observing the
mise en scène
, he winked at me with his right eye and steered for his desk. He got across and deposited in his chair before the visitor knew he was there. I arose and turned off the radio and quiet descended on us. McNair’s head jerked up. He saw Wolfe, blinked, stood up and looked around.

“Where’s Miss Frost?” he demanded.

Wolfe said, “I’m sorry to have kept you waiting, Mr. McNair. Miss Frost has gone home.”

“What?” McNair gaped at him. “Gone home? I don’t believe it. Who took her? Gebert and Lew Frost were here …”

“They were indeed.” Wolfe wiggled a finger at him. “I entreat you, sir. This room has been filled with idiots this afternoon, and I would enjoy some sanity for a change. I am not a liar. I put Miss Frost into a cab not ten minutes ago, and she was going straight home.”

“Ten minutes … but I was here! Right here in this chair! You knew I wanted to see her! What kind of a trick—”

“I know you wanted to see her. But I didn’t want you to, and she is perfectly safe if she gets through the traffic. I do not intend that you shall see Miss Frost until I’ve had a talk with you. It was a trick, yes, but I’ve a right to play tricks. What about your own tricks? What about the outright lies you have been
telling the police since the day Molly Lauck was murdered? Well, sir? Answer me!”

McNair started twice to speak, but didn’t. He looked at Wolfe. He sat down. He pulled his handkerchief from his pocket and then put it back again without using it. Sweat showed on his forehead.

Finally he said, in a thin cool voice, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Of course you know.” Wolfe pinned him down with his eyes. “I’m talking about the box of poisoned candy. I know how Miss Frost became aware of its contents. I know that you have known from the beginning, and that you have deliberately withheld vital information from the police in a murder case. Don’t be an idiot, Mr. McNair. I have a statement signed by Helen Frost; there was nothing else for her to do. If I told the police what I know you would be locked up. For the present I don’t tell them, because I wish to earn a fee, and if you were locked up I couldn’t get at you. I pay you the compliment of assuming that you have some brains. If you poisoned that candy, I advise you to say nothing, leave here at once, and beware of me; if you didn’t, talk to the point, and there will be no dodging the truth.” Wolfe leaned back and murmured, “I dislike ultimatums, even my own. But this has gone far enough.”

McNair sat motionless. Then I saw a shiver in his left shoulder, a quick little spasm, and the fingers of his left hand, on the arm of his chair, began twitching. He looked down at them, and reached over with his other hand and gripped and twisted them, and the shoulder had another spasm, and I saw the muscles jerking in the side of his neck. His nerves were certainly shot. His eyes moved around and fell on the
empty glass standing on the edge of Wolfe’s desk, and he turned to me and asked as if it were a big favor:

“Could I have a little more water?”

I took the glass and went and filled it and brought it back, and when he didn’t lift his hand to take it I put it down on the desk again. He paid no attention to it.

He muttered aloud, but to no one in particular. “I’ve got to make up my own mind. I thought I had, but I didn’t expect this.”

Wolfe said, “If you were a clever man you’d have done that before the unexpected forced you.”

McNair took out his handkerchief and this time wiped off the sweat. He said quietly, “Good God, I’m not clever. I’m the most complete fool that was ever born. I’ve ruined my whole life.” His shoulder twitched again. “It wouldn’t do any good to tell the police what you know, Mr. Wolfe. I didn’t poison that candy.”

Wolfe said, “Go on.”

McNair nodded. “I’ll go on. I don’t blame Helen for telling you about it, after the way you trapped her yesterday morning. I can imagine what she was up against here today, but I don’t hold that against you either. I’ve got beyond all the ordinary resentments, they don’t mean anything. You notice I’m not even trying to find out what Helen told you. I know if she told you anything she told you the truth.”

He lifted his head to get Wolfe straighter in the eye. “I didn’t poison the candy. When I went upstairs to my office about twelve o’clock that day, to get away from the crowd for a few minutes, the box was there on my desk. I opened it and looked in it, but didn’t take any because I had a devil of a headache. When Helen came in a little later I offered her some, but thank God she didn’t take any either, because there
were no caramels in it. When I went back downstairs I left it on my desk, and Molly must have seen it there later, and took it. She … liked to play pranks.”

He stopped and wiped his brow again. Wolfe asked:

“What did you do with the paper and twine the box was wrapped with?”

“There wasn’t any. It wasn’t wrapped.”

“Who put it on your desk?”

“I don’t know. Twenty-five or thirty people had been in and out of there before 11:30, looking at some Crenuit models I didn’t want to show publicly.”

“Who do you think put it there?”

“I haven’t any idea about it.”

“Who do you think might want to kill you?”

“No one would want to kill me. That’s why I’m sure it was meant for someone else and was left there by mistake. Anyway, there’s no more reason to suppose—”

“I’m not supposing.” Wolfe sounded disgusted. “You are certainly on solid ground when you say you’re not clever. But surely you’re not halfwitted. Consider what you’re telling me: you found the box on your desk, you have no suspicion as to who put it there, you are convinced it was not intended for you and have no idea who it was meant for, and yet you have carefully concealed from the police the fact that you saw it there. I have never heard such nonsense; a babe in arms would laugh at you.” Wolfe sighed deeply. “I shall have to have beer. I imagine this will require all my patience. Will you have some beer?”

McNair ignored the invitation. He said quietly. “I’m a Scotsman, Mr. Wolfe. I’ve admitted I’m a fool. In some vital ways I’m weak. But maybe you know how stubborn a weak man can be sometimes? I can be
stubborn.” He leaned forward a little and his voice got thinner. “What I’ve just told you about that box of candy is what I’m going to tell until I die.”

“Indeed.” Wolfe surveyed him. “So that’s it. But you don’t seem to realize that while nothing more formidable than my patience may confront you, something more disagreeable is sure to. If I do not clear this thing up reasonably soon I shall have to tell what I know to the police; I shall owe that to Mr. Cramer, since I have accepted his cooperation. If you stick to the absurd rigamarole you have told me, they will assume you are guilty; they will torment you, they will take you to their dungeon and harass you endlessly, they may even beat you with their fists, though that is not likely with a man of your standing, they will destroy your dignity, your business, and your digestion. In the end, with luck and perseverance, they might even electrocute you. I doubt if you’re fool enough to be as stubborn as all that.”

“I’m stubborn enough,” McNair asserted. He leaned forward again. “But look here. I’m not fool enough not to know what I’m doing. I’m tired and I’m worn out and I’m all in, but I know what I’m doing. You think you’ve forced me to admit something by getting Helen here and bullying her, but I would just as soon as have admitted that to you anyhow. Then here’s another thing. I’ve just practically told you that part of my story about that box isn’t true, but that I’m going to stick to it. I didn’t need to do that, I could have told you the story and made you think I expected you to believe it. I did it because I didn’t want you to think I’m a bigger fool than I am. I wanted you to have as good an opinion of me as possible under the circumstances, because I want to ask you to do me a very important favor. I came here to see Helen, that’s true,
and to see how … how she was, but I also came to ask this favor of you. I want you to accept a legacy in my will.”

Wolfe didn’t surprise easily, but that got him. He stared. It got me too; it sounded offhand, as if McNair was actually going to try to bribe Nero Wolfe to turn off the heat, and that was such a novel idea that I began to admire him. I focused my lamps on him with renewed interest.

McNair went on, “What I want to leave you is a responsibility. A … a small article, and a responsibility. It’s astonishing that I have to ask this of you. I’ve lived in New York for twelve years, and I realized the other day, when I had occasion to consider it, that I have not one friend I can trust. Oh, trust ordinarily, sure, several of them, but not trust with something vital, something more important than my life. But today at my lawyer’s I had to name such a person, and I named you. That’s astonishing, because I’ve only met you once, for a few minutes yesterday morning. But you seemed to me to be the kind of man that … that will be needed if I die. Last night and this morning I made some inquiries, and I think you are. It has to be a man with nerve, and one that can’t be made a fool of, and he has to be honest clear through. I don’t know anyone as good as that, and it had to be done today, so I decided to take a chance and name you.”

McNair slid forward in his chair and put both hands on the edge of Wolfe’s desk, gripping it, and I saw the muscles in his neck moving again. “I made provisions for you to get paid for it, and it will be a fair-sized estate, my business is in good shape, and I’ve been careful with investments. For you it will just be another job, but for me, if I’m dead, it will be of the most vital importance. If I could only be sure … 
sure … Mr. Wolfe, that would let my spirit rest. I went to my lawyer’s office this afternoon and made my will over, and I named you. I left you … this job. I should have come to you first, but I didn’t want to take any chance of not having it down in black and white and signed. Of course I can’t leave it that way without your consent. You’ve got to give it, then I’ll be all right.” His shoulder began to jerk, and he gripped the edge of the desk tighter. “Then let it come.”