Rex Stout (27 page)

“Just now, a couple of minutes ago.”

“He did. I don’t like that. I’m coming. Get on the sidewalk in front and keep your eyes open.”

“What’s the idea, there’s no rush—”

But Chick had banged the receiver down and was headed for the door. Alma started after him.

“Chick! What is it?”

“Of all the dirty rotten luck—Lincoln Lee at the garage—”

He was gone. She stared at the open door and Chick’s hat and raincoat on the chair. When she spoke there was a sob in her voice for the first time in years, since she had become a real intellectual: “Dear God … don’t let anything happen …”

This time, on the same itinerary, Chick made no concessions to minor contingencies. At crossings pedestrians scooted, calling curses; no cars sloshed past; the little sedan circled around stopped street cars without halting, oblivious to maledictions. At Tenth and Massachusetts a policeman yelled; Chick did not hear him. At the acute left turn into Maryland Avenue he skidded, touched the curb, got traction again, and went on. Only three more blocks.

As Chick stopped and got out he saw Sam Carr standing in the wide entrance talking to a man in overalls. Chick walked over, making himself not run. Sam greeted him:

“Good lord, has that bus got wings on it?”

Chick grinned. “Is he still here?”

Sam Carr nodded. “A crazy man busted out of the office a minute ago and hotfooted it down the street, but it wasn’t Lee. Lee left the office with another guy and I guess he went upstairs. Anyway he hasn’t come out. No cars have left. This gentleman says he doesn’t know Lee by sight.”

“Yeah.” Chick looked at the man in overalls. “Where’s the stairs?”

The man jerked a thumb. “Over yonder.”

Sam Carr asked, “What’s all the uproar? Who stole your hat? I’m hanging onto him. You might as well have had another plate of caviar.”

“I don’t like it. I don’t like his coming here. I’m going upstairs. You wait here. Don’t let any cars out. Don’t let anyone leave.”

“All right, if you’ve got all that curiosity—”

Chick was gone. Inside, to the right as the man had indicated, and to the corner where he found the stairs. As he went up, fast and faster, two steps at a time, he left urgency to his muscles and listened to his brain:
This brings me into it, damn it, but surely by a good trail. God, I hope I’m seeing this right, I hope I’m not blowing the whole thing up.
The last flight; he took it on the bound. At the top he did not need to halt for a glance to get his bearings; there was the light streaming from the open door; and there was a yell from someone inside, “Drop it!” At the yell Chick leaped for the door, and as he did so whipped his pistol from his pocket. From the threshold he saw Lincoln Lee’s arm out horizontal, steady, and Grier starting to jump him, late. There was no time for the nicety of popping a wrist or a shoulder. With the muzzle pointed at the middle of Lincoln Lee’s back, Chick pulled the trigger twice.

Lee sagged, went down, and was still. There had been no report from his automatic; it dropped from his hand and clattered on the floor. Grier staggered back, bumped into the table and hung there with his rump on its edge. Chick, advancing, said, “Stick ’em up,” but Grier didn’t move. Chick reached him and felt over his chest, his belt, his hips, and said, “Just hold that. Don’t move.”

With his left hand Chick pulled the telephone over and took off the receiver; he was thinking grimly,
By God, we’ll just end this little comedy right now.
He gave the operator a number; and in the moment of waiting, seeing that there was nothing to fear from Grier, he performed the only act of pure bravado that he was ever guilty of. He looked at the man gagged and tied in the chair not five feet away, and stuck his tongue out at him.

“Hello.”

“Hello, Secret Service? This is Moffat. Yeah. I’ve got a
message for Secretary Wardell.—All right, then Chief Skinner.—Sure, I know that, didn’t I say I have a message? Tell him to send a car and a couple of men to the Maryland Avenue Garage, top floor. I’ve found the President here.—I’m talking English.—Yeah, the President of the United States of America.”

Chief Skinner sat at his desk in his private office in the Bureau of Secret Service. It was six o’clock Friday afternoon. A bottle of bourbon, nearly empty, and a whiskey glass were handy at his elbow on the desk. The whites surrounding the doubting gray irises of his eyes were bloodshot, his hair was a good deal of a mess, and he needed a shave. It had stopped raining around two o’clock, and a shift in the wind had herded the clouds across Maryland and Delaware into the ocean; now the late afternoon sun was shining, slanting in through the windows onto the desk, the bourbon and the glass, and passing there into the face of Chick Moffat who sat in a chair facing the Chief.

Chick was saying, “All right, but I’d like to go home and wash up. I have a date for dinner, and I want to be back home again by nine o’clock, in time for the radio.”

Skinner blinked at him. “Then how about tomorrow morning? I’m drunk now anyway.”

Chick grinned. “I’ll be on duty at the White House. I’ve got to guard the President.”

“Yeah. I see. Look here, Moffat. You may be a hero, but I’m going to have a little conversation with you anyhow.”

“I thought we’d already had one. And I’ve written my report.”

The Chief nodded, but the nod was interrupted by an idea occurring to him. He turned to the desk and picked up the bottle of bourbon, filled the glass and upped it and swallowed it. He cleared his throat, twice, slid back into his chair, and regarded Chick more doubtfully than ever.

“Moffat. I’m too old and too drunk to take any fooling. I hate to be fooled even when I’m sober. Here’s the situation; let us recap—let’s go over it. Two hours ago Secretary
Wardell called me to the White House and took me to see the President, who was lying on a couch in his study drinking tea. The President tells me that he doesn’t wish to show any vindictiveness, and he doesn’t want me to. Vindictiveness is out. If I find that floor man from the top floor of the garage, I’m just to straighten his necktie and give him a bag of candy. Grier is not to be prosecuted, he’s to be thanked for being so anxious to save the President’s life. And so on and so on. The only thing he didn’t tell me was to bury Lincoln Lee at Arlington and put a marble slab over him. The Unknown Kidnapper.”

“That would be nice.”

The Chief cleared his throat and blinked. “Sure it would. The idea is that tolerance is the best weapon with disaffected minorities. That’s what he said, unless they commit an overt act. He doesn’t want to consider the kidnapping an overt act, since he got back safe and sound. He said that in spite of my great ability it would probably be impossible—what’d you say?”

“Nothing, sir.”

“No. I mean yeah. He said that in spite of my great ability it would probably be impossible to fasten the guilt where it really belongs. He said that he would inform the Cabinet of the details of the affair so far as he knows them, but that for the Secret Service to attempt an investigation of the few clues he could furnish would only lead to this and that. In short, Moffat, let’s see if you can take this without choking: President Stanley does not intend to tell me a single solitary teeny-weeny thing about how he was kidnapped. He will inform the Cabinet of the details of the affair so far as he knows them! He will inform Secretary Brownell, and Brownell will cook up a nice little dish for the newspapers.”

Chick said, “I’ve got that down all right.”

“Sure you have.” The Chief turned to the desk, poured another glass of bourbon, and drank it. He cleared his throat and turned back to Chick; frowned, moved his brows up and down a couple of times, and frowned again. “I’m getting drunk only because I desire to let you know that nobody is going to make a fool of me.”

“I already know that, Chief. I’d like to go home and wash up.”

“You may. In a moment. Moffat, you’re a low double-faced
blackguard. You’re a slippery atrocious liar. You’re a treacherous unprincipled viper.”

“Yes, sir.”

“You know you are. I’ve asked Sam Carr a couple of questions. This morning you drove through traffic over two miles in four minutes to get to the Maryland Avenue Garage. You had a White House pass signed Thursday by Secretary Brownell, who bought chloroform Monday night. In working on this case I’ve run across eight or nine things that I couldn’t account for unless I wanted to suppose that instead of being kidnapped by violence the President had just decided that he needed a holiday. Well, in that case who did he visit? Now try making a fool of me.”

Chick did not appear amused. He looked at the bottle of bourbon and back at Skinner. He finally said, “Look here, Chief. Let’s say you’re sick. Just for the sake of argument, let’s say you’re pretty damn sick. How many other people do you think have got the same disease?”

Skinner nodded approvingly. “That’s more like it, Moffat. As long as we understand each other. Nobody.”

“You’re sure of that?”

“I am. Good and sure.”

“Wardell?”

“Hell, no. He’s so mixed up he still suspects the Japs.”

“How drunk are you?”

“Don’t worry about me. I’m just as drunk as I want to be. I’m going home and eat five beefsteaks and sleep five days and nights.”

“Aren’t you going to hear the President on the radio?”

“I can read it in the morning.—Good night, Moffat. Of course I could have just kept my mouth shut, but I’m not a national hero like you, I’m just a detective.”

The clock said eight-fifty, the one on the mantel of the living-room of the Delling home, which was just across a vacant lot from the drugstore, but the correct time was two minutes till nine. Viola Delling knew that, she knew her clock was eight minutes slow, so she had the radio already on.

 … 
are listening to a program sponsored by the Olympus Chemical Corporation, makers of Nightcharm, the fruit laxative with candy in it, loved by children and good for father and moth
 …

“I hope no one is late.” Viola Delling was offering a plate of cookies around the group; the colored girl was refilling glasses with grape juice. “I hope there are no interruptions; this is an historic occasion, whatever we may think—I mean, it is a moment crucial to our great nation, particularly to me, since I may say that it was permitted to me to glance behind the curtain screening the great events …”

Harriet Green snickered. “You mean you got arrested.”

Viola Delling smiled at her complacently, but it was noticed that the plate of cookies got tipped at such an angle that two or three of them slid off to the floor. “I was detained as an important witness.”

“Sure. That’s why detectives came around to all of us asking funny questions about you.”

 … 
this is the Federal Broadcasting System. We wish to thank the Piedmont Tobacco Company, makers of Buckingham cigarettes, for relinquishing their radio time at this hour in order to permit us
 …

Mrs. Orcutt, plump and beaming, had stuffed the rest of her cookie in her mouth in order to pinch Harriet Green’s arm. “Hold your tongue, Harriet. Of course she was arrested, but aren’t you a guest in her home drinking her grape juice? My boy, Val, wasn’t arrested at all. They just kept him in the hospital until this afternoon on account of his head. He’s gone down …”

 … 
will talk to you from his study in the White House in Washington, and in a moment now you will hear him
 …

“S-s-s-sh.” “Here he is.” “Be quiet.” The admonitions were chiefly directed at Mrs. Orcutt, who nodded complacently and reached for another cookie. Viola Delling put the plate down, breathed, “An historic occasion,” and sat.

Citizens of the United States, my friends.

The voice was conversational, pleasant, unforced. Marion Vawter coughed and everyone glared at her.

I hope you will not think that I take advantage too frequently of the opportunity which this modern invention, the radio, offers for talking to you. I know that you all have your own personal affairs and problems pressing upon you, and that I am one among many public servants whom you hire to
manage the routine and direct the policies of your government. As the executive head of that government, I try constantly not only to exert my own powers and abilities in what I conceive to be its best interests, but also to lead it in the direction of your own conceptions of right and justice. So long as you know pretty well what I am trying to do, and I know pretty well what you think of it, it will work all right that way; but it sometimes happens that complications develop which fill me with an uneasy conviction that we no longer perfectly understand each other, and I need to make sure that my intentions and purposes are clear in your minds, so that you may in turn inform me and others of your public servants of your opinions in the matter. The radio offers the simplest and quickest means to that end.

I wish to talk to you this evening about war. Most of the great nations, of Europe and Asia, who are linked with us and our sister countries in this hemisphere in the complexities of what we call modern civilization, have been engaged for more than a year in a fierce and cruel and deadly conflict. Even if it were proper for me to do so, I could not comment intelligently on the problems of right and wrong, the questions of aggression and defense, which the conflict has raised: or, if I might manage a sensible comment, I certainly could not furnish an intelligent decision. I cannot answer the query, who started the war and who is responsible for it? It is sure only that they are fighting.

There was a crash, and a gasp of dismay. Mrs. Orcutt, nodding, had dropped her glass half full of grape juice. She exclaimed, “Oh, I
beg
your pardon. I …”

“S-s-s-s-s-sh.” She subsided, muttering.

That is the fact. They are fighting, and the vibrations from that gigantic collision are shaking the world—our world too, for part of it is ours. We are part of the structure, political and economic, to which the impulse has been applied, and inevitably we feel it. Wherever on the surface of the earth cannon shots are fired and bombs are dropped from airplanes, something owned by an American citizen will be destroyed; wherever a ship is sunk American property will be engulfed; wherever a government crumbles and falls American investments are endangered.