Gambit (6 page)

“No.” It came out a croak, and she repeated it. “No.”

“Do you want Mr. Wolfe to go on with it'And me?”

“Yes.”

“Then I have a sugges -“

“Now come off it, Sally.” Kalmus had turned to face her. “You stubborn little imp. If your dad were here - anyway he is, by proxy.” He tapped his chest. “Me.

It’s an order, from him, by him, and for him. You can’t disobey an order from your dad.”

“Yes I can.” She had drawn back when he stepped close. “I would even if he were here and told me himself. He trusts you and I don’t.”

“Nonsense. You’re not qualified to judge my professional competence. You don’t even -“

“It’s not just your professional competence. I don’t trust you. Tell him,

Archie.”

I told his back, “Miss Blount considers that if her father is convicted and sentenced you can make a set at his wife, and she thinks that that may be affecting your judgment. It was on account of that -“

He had whirled and pulled a fist back, his right, and was starting it for my face. Anna Blount made a grab for his arm and missed. The nephew took a step and stopped. I could have ducked and jabbed him in the kidney, but he was so slow it was simpler to side-step and get his wrist as it came and give it a good twist.

It hurt, but the damn fool started his left, and I jerked him around and as he went down to his knees I sent my eyes to Farrow, who had taken another step.

“I wouldn’t,” I said. “I’m probably in better condition and I’ve had more practice.” I looked at Kalmus, who was scrambling up. “If you must hit somebody,

hit Miss Blount. I was merely telling you what she thinks. That’s why she came to Nero Wolfe, and that’s why she won’t let go.” I turned to her. “I was saying,

I have a suggestion. It’s not going to be very pleasant for you here. If you’d like to spend the night with some friend, and if you want to pack a bag, I’ll be glad to take you. I’ll wait downstairs. Of course if you prefer to stay here and take it -“

“No.” She moved. “I’ll pack a bag.” She headed for the arch, and I followed.

From behind, Mrs. Blount said something, but we kept going. In the foyer she said, “I won’t be long. You’ll wait?’ I said I would, took my hat and coat, let myself out, and pushed the elevator button.

I put it at fifty-fifty, an even chance that either her mother or Kalmus, or both, would talk her out of leaving, and down in the lobby I considered alternatives. My watch said 10:41. I would give her half an hour, and then I would go back up, or I would go to a phone booth on Madison Avenue and ring her,

or I would go home, report to Wolfe, and let him use his intelligence guided by experience. But she saved me the trouble of deciding. I had just looked at my watch and seen 10:53 when the elevator door closed, and in a couple of minutes it opened again, and there she was, in the pallid mink, with a matching turban,

and luggage - not just an overnight bag, amedium-size brown leather suitcase.

Her face was glum but grim, with her jaw set. The hallman was coming for the suitcase, but I was there first. I asked him to get a taxi, and when he was outside I asked her if she had phoned someone, and she said no, she hadn’t decided where to go. She was going on, but the hallman got a break on a snowy night. A cab pulled up at the curb outside, and I ushered her out, let the flunky put the luggage in with the driver, handed him a quarter, got in after the client, told the hackie the first stop would be the nearest phone booth, and we rolled. Sally started to say something, but I put a finger to my lips and shook my head. The hackie might not only know the address of Matthew Blount who was booked for murder, he might even have recognized his daughter from her picture in the paper, and there was no point in letting him in on the latest development. He turned right on Seventy-eighth Street, right again on Madison,

and in a couple of blocks stopped in front of a drugstore.

I leaned forward to poke a dollar bill at him. “Here,” I said, “go in and blow it. Aspirin,cigarettes, lipstick for your wife, whatever you need. We’re going in conference. I’ll come in for you, say ten minutes, maybe less.”

“Can’t,”he said. The law.”

“Nuts. If a cop shows I’ll tell him it’s an emergency.” I got out my card case and showed him my license. He gave it a look, said, “Oh. How-do-you-do,” took the dollar, climbed out, and went.

Sally gave me her face. “I’m glad you did that,” she blurted. “I’m glad.”

“Sure,” I said, “I thought we could use a little privacy. Taxi drivers talk too much. Now if you’ve decided -“

“I don’t mean that. I mean I’m glad you told my mother. And him. I wanted to,

but I couldn’t. Now they know. How did you know?”

“The deductive process. I’m a licensed detective, so I’m allowed to guess. Have you decided where you’re going?”

“Yes, I’m going to a hotel - some little hotel. You know about hotels, don’t you?”

“Yeah. But… haven’t you any friends with an extra bed?”

“Of course I have. I was going to phone one, but then I thought what would I say'All of a sudden like this, eleven o’clock at night… I’d have to give some reason, and what could I say'With all the talk…” She shook her head. “I’m going to a hotel.”

“Well.” I gave it a look. “That might be even worse. You could use another name,

but if someone spots you and the papers get onto it, talk about talk. Good headlines. BLOUNT’S DAUGHTER FLEES HOME IN MIDDLE OF NIGHT. Also possibly that I escorted you. The hallman. I showed the cab driver my license.”

“Oh. That would be awful.” she eyed me. Silence. My hand was there on the seat between us, and she touched it. “It was your suggestion,” she said.

“Ouch,” I said. “But so it was. Okay. As you may know, I live where I work, in Nero Wolfe’s house. There’s a room above his on the third floor which we call the south room. It has a good bed, two windows, its own bath, hot and cold running water, a Kashan rug fifteen by eleven, and a bolt on the door. The best cook in New York, Fritz Brenner, would get your breakfast, which you could eat either from a tray in your room or in the kitchen with me. His sour milk griddlecakes are beyond any -“

“But I couldn’t,” she blurted. “I might have to stay … I don’t know how long…”

“It’s cheaper by the month. We’ll take it out of the twenty-two grand. Anyway,

you couldn’t pay a hotel bill, you’ve even sold your jewelry. Of course you’ll never live it down, shacking up with three unmarried men, and one of them a Frenchman, but you can’t sleep in the park.”

“You’re making a joke of it, Archie. It’s no joke.”

The hell it isn’t. That a girl wearing a ten-thousand-dollar coat, with her own bed in a sixteen-room Fifth Avenue apartment, with a flock of friends so-called,

with credit in any hotel in town, needs a safe place to sleep'Certainly it’s a joke.”

She tried to smile and nearly made it. “All right,” she said. “Some day maybe I can laugh at it. All right.”

I got out and headed for the drugstore to get the hackie.

At a quarter past nine Tuesday morning, seated with Sally at the side table in the kitchen, I passed her the guava butter for her third griddlecake. I had told her the household morning routine when I had taken her and the suitcase up to the south room an hour after midnight - Wolfe, breakfast in his room at 8:15 from a tray taken up by Fritz, and to the plant rooms at nine o’clock for two hours with the orchids; and me, breakfast in the kitchen whenever I got down for it, no set time, and then, unless there was an outside errand, to the office for dusting, putting fresh water in the vase on Wolfe’s desk, opening the mail,

finishing with the morning Times if I hadn’t done so at breakfast, and performing whatever chores were called for.

Wolfe had done pretty well, for him. He had been at his desk with African Genesis when I had entered with Sally at eleven-thirty, and at least he hadn’t got up and marched out when I announced that we had a house guest. After a growl and a couple of deep breaths he had put his book down, and when I asked if he wanted just a summary or the whole crop, verbatim, he said verbatim. It’s more satisfactory to report a lot of conversation in the presence of someone who was in on it, just as a kid named Archie, years ago out in Ohio, got a bigger kick climbing to the top of the tree if a girl was there watching. Or fifteen or twenty girls. When I was through and he had asked a few questions, he told the client about the caller we had had earlier in the evening, Ernst Hausman, her godfather - not verbatim, but the gist of it. The end of that was for me too,

since the phone call from Sally had come just as Wolfe was conjecturing that Hausman had put the arsenic in the chocolate himself. He had not broken down and confessed. After a few rude remarks he had got up and gone.

Wolfe had had no instructions and no comments before going up to bed.

The Times had a two-inch paragraph on page twenty-seven, saying that Archie Goodwin had told a Times reporter that Nero Wolfe had been retained in connection with the Jerin murder case, but that Daniel Kalmus, Matthew Blount’s attorney, had stated that he had not engaged Wolfe’s services and he doubted if anyone had.

At breakfast Sally and I had decided a) that it was desirable for her mother to know where she was, b) that she would phone to tell her, c) that she would go out and around at will but would be in her room at eleven o’clock, in case Wolfe wanted her when he came down from the plant rooms, d) that she would help herself to any of the books on the shelves in the office except African Genesis,

e) that she would not go along when I walked to the bank to deposit the twenty-two grand, and f) that she would join us in the dining room for lunch at 1:15.

I was at my desk at eleven o’clock when the sound came of the elevator, which Wolfe always uses and I never do. He entered, with the day’s desk orchids as usual, said good morning, went and put the branch of Laelia gouldiana in the vase, sat, glanced through the morning mail, focused on me and demanded, “Where is she?”

I swiveled. “In her room. Breakfast with me in the kitchen. Good table manners.

She phoned her mother to tell her where she is, went to Eighth Avenue to buy facial tissues because she doesn’t like the brand we have, returned, and took three books from the shelves with my permission. I have been to the bank.”

He left his chair and went across to the shelves for a look. I doubt if he could really tell, from the vacant spaces among the twelve hundred or so books, which ones she had taken, but I wouldn’t have bet on it either way. He went back to his desk, sat, narrowed his eyes at me, and spoke. “Not another coup for you.

Not this time.”

“Maybe not,” I conceded. “But when Mrs. Blount said you could keep whatever her daughter had paid you it looked ticklish, so I spilled it. Or do you mean my telling Kalmus?”

“Neither one. I mean your bringing her here. You did it, of course, to press me.

Pfui. Knowing I would sooner have a tiger in my house than a woman, you thought I would -“

“No, sir. Not guilty.” I was emphatic. “I start pressing, or trying to, only when you’re soldiering, and you’ve had this only twenty-four hours. I brought her because if she went to a hotel there was no telling what might happen. She might cave in. She might even lam. I told Mrs. Blount you only keep money you earn. It would be embarrassing not to have the client available to return the fee to when you decide you can’t earn it, I admit you have stirred up some dust by having me toss it to Lon Cohen, you even got an offer of fifty grand from maybe the murderer, but what next'Hope for a better offer from one of the others?”

He made a face. “I’ll speak with Miss Blount after lunch. I must first see them - Mr. Yerkes, Mr. Farrow, Dr Avery, and if possible, Mr. Kalmus. It may not be -

“

“Avery wasn’t a messenger.”

“But he was at the hospital with Jerin until he died. He told Mr. Blount that even at the Gambit Club he had considered the possibility of poison and looked around; he had gone down to the kitchen. If there is any hope of getting -“

The doorbell rang. I rose and went to the hall for a look through the one-way glass panel in the front door, stepped back into the office, and said, “More dust. Cramer.”

He grunted. “Why'He has his murderer.”

“Yeah. Maybe for Miss Blount. To take her as an accessory.”

“Pah. Bring him.”

Going to the front, I took a couple of seconds to observe him through the one-way glass before opening the door. With Inspector Cramer of Homicide West there are signs I am familiar with - the set of his broad burly shoulders, the redness of his big round face, the angle of his old felt hat. When it’s obvious,

as it often is, that he intends to dingdong, I open the door a crack and say something with a point to it, such as, “A man’s house is his castle.” But that time he looked fairly human, so I swung the door wide and greeted him without prejudice, and, entering, he let me take his coat and hat, and even made a remark about the weather before proceeding to the office. You might have thought we had signed up for peaceful coexistence. In the office, of course he didn’t offer Wolfe a hand, since he knows how he feels about shaking, but, as he lowered his big fanny onto the red leather chair, he said, “I suppose I should have phoned, but you’re always here. I wish to God I could always be somewhere.

What I want to ask, the Jerin case. Matthew Blount. According to the papers,

you’ve been hired to work on it. According to Goodwin.”

“Yes,” Wolfe said.

“But according to Blount’s attorney you haven’t been hired. Who’s right?”

“Possibly both of us.” Wolfe turned a palm up. “Mr. Cramer. There are alternatives. Mr. Kalmus has hired me but prefers not to avow it, or Mr. Blount has hired me independently of his attorney, or someone else had hired me. In any case, I have been hired.”

“By whom?”

“By someone with a legitimate interest.”

“Who?”

“No.”

“You’re working on it?”

“Yes.”

“You refuse to tell me who hired you?”

“Yes. That has no bearing on your performance of your duty or the demands of justice.”

Cramer got a cigar from a pocket, rolled it between his palms, and stuck it in his mouth. Since he never lights one, the palm-rolling is irrelevant and immaterial. He looked at me, went back to Wolfe, and said, “I think I know you as well as anybody else, except maybe Goodwin. I don’t believe Kalmus would hire you and then say he hadn’t. What possible reason could he have to deny it'I don’t believe Blount would hire you without his lawyer’s approval. What the hell, if it was like that he’d get another lawyer. As for someone else, who'The wife or daughter or nephew wouldn’t unless Blount and Kalmus approved, and neither would anyone else. I don’t believe it. Nobody has hired you.”

A corner of Wolfe’s mouth was up. “Then why bother to pay me a call?”

“Because I know you. Because you may be on to something. You had Goodwin pass that to his friend Lon Cohen, that you had been hired, to start something that would result in your being hired and getting a fee. I don’t know what you expected to start, I don’t know why you played it like that instead of going to Kalmus with it, whatever you’ve got, but the point is that you’ve got something or you wouldn’t have played it at all. You’ve got something that you think will get you a fat fee, and the only way to get a fat fee would be to spring Blount.

So what have you got?”

Wolfe’s brows were up. “You actually believe that, don’t you?”

“You’re damn right I do. I think you know something that you think will get Blount out, or at least that there’s a good chance. Understand me, I don’t object to your copping a fee. But if there’s any reason to think Blount didn’t murder Paul Jerin I want to know it. We got the evidence that put him in, and if there’s anything wrong with it I have a right to know it. Do you have any kind of an idea that I would like to see an innocent man take a murder rap?”

“That you would like to, no.”

“Well, I wouldn’t.” Cramer pointed the cigar at Wolfe and waggled it. “I’ll be frank. Do you know that Blount went down to the kitchen for the chocolate and took it up to Jerin?”

“Yes.”

“Do you know that when Jerin drank most of it and got sick Blount went and got the pot and cup and took them down to the kitchen and rinsed them out, and got fresh chocolate and took it up?”

“Yes.”

“Then is he the biggest goddam fool on earth?”

“I haven’t met him. Is he?”

“No. He’s a very intelligent man. He’s anything but a fool. And he’s level-headed. Some men fixed like him, men of wealth and standing, have the idea that they can do anything they please, and get away with it, because they’re above suspicion, but not him. He’s not like that, not at all. So I took it easy - or rather, I didn’t. It was hard to believe that such a man had put poison in the chocolate and took it to Jerin and then went and got the cup and pot and rinsed them out. I don’t have to spell that out.”

“No.”

“So we covered it good, every angle. We eliminated the possibility that the arsenic had been in something else, not in the chocolate, and I mean eliminated.

We established that no one besides Blount and those four men, the messengers,

had entered that room, the library, after the chess games started, and the games had been going for about seven minutes when Blount went to see about the chocolate - and I mean established. So that left it absolutely that the arsenic had been put in the chocolate by one of seven men: the four messengers, the cook, the steward, and Blount. Okay. Which one of them, or which ones, had some kind of connection with Jerin'I put eleven of my men on that angle, and the District Attorney put eight from the Homicide Bureau. For that kind of job there are no better men anywhere. You know that.”

“They’re competent,” Wolfe conceded.

“They’re better than competent. We got Blount’s connection right away, from Blount himself. Of course you know about that. The daughter.”

“Yes.”

“But we kept the nineteen men on the other six. In four days and nights they didn’t get a smell. Even after the District Attorney decided it had to be Blount and charged him, I kept nine of my men on the others. A full week. Okay. You know how it is with negatives, you can’t nail it down, but I’ll bet a year’s pay to one of the flowers in that vase that none of those six men had ever met Paul Jerin or had any connection with him or his.”

“I won’t risk the flower,” Wolfe said.

“You won’t?”

“No.”

“Then do you think one of them happened to have arsenic with him and put it in the chocolate just because he didn’t like the way Jerin played chess?”

“No.”

“Then what kind of game are you playing'What can you possibly have that makes you think you can spring Blount?”

“I haven’t said I have anything.”

“Nuts. Damn it, I know you!”

Wolfe cleared his throat. “Mr. Cramer. I admit that I know something you don’t know about one aspect of this matter. I know who hired me and why. You have concluded that no one had hired me, that, having somehow learned of a circumstance not known to you, I am arranging to use it for my private gain.

You’re wrong; you are incomparably better acquainted than I am with all the circumstances - all of them surrounding the death of Paul Jerin. But you don’t believe me.”

“I do not.”

“Then there’s nothing more to say. I’m sorry I have nothing for you because you put me in your debt. You have just furnished me with a fact which suggests an entirely different approach to the problem. It will save me -“

“What fact?”

Wolfe shook his head. “No, sir. You wouldn’t believe me. You wouldn’t accept my interpretation of it. But I’m obliged to you, and I don’t forget an obligation.

If and when I learn something significant I’ll stretch a point to share it with you as soon as may be. At present I have nothing to share.”

“Like hell you haven’t.” Cramer got to his feet. He threw the cigar at my wastebasket, twelve feet away, and missed as usual. “One little point, Wolfe.

Anyone has a right to hire you to investigate something, even a homicide. But if you haven’t been hired, and I know damn well you haven’t, if you’re horning in on your own, that’s different. And if you are in possession of information the law is entitled to - I don’t have to tell you.” He turned and marched out.

I got up and went to the hall, decided he wouldn’t properly appreciate help with his coat, and stood and watched until he was out and the door was closed.

Turning back to the office, I started, “So he gave you…,” and stopped. Wolfe was leaning back with his eyes shut and his lips pushed out. He drew his lips in, then out again, in and out, in and out. I stood and regarded him. That is supposed to be a sign that he’s hard at work, but I hadn’t the dimmest idea what he was working on. If it was the fact Cramer had just furnished, which one'

Running over them in my mind, I stood and waited. The lip exercise is not to be interrupted. I had decided it was going to take a while and was starting for my desk when he opened his eyes, straightened up, and issued a command: ‘Bring Miss Blount.”