Rex Stout - Nero Wolfe 17 (3 page)

Wolfe was nodding at her. “Excellent,” he declared.

At 2:55 that Monday afternoon in June I entered the building at 496 Seventh Avenue and took an elevator to the twelfth floor.

Since that was only a ten-minute walk from Wolfe’s place my choice would have been to hoof it, but Wolfe was proceeding to spend chunks of the two grand even before he got it. He had called in Saul Panzer, the best free-lance operative on earth, and Saul and I went together in a taxi driven by our old pal Herb Aronson, whom we often used. Saul and Herb stayed at the curb in the cab, with the flag down. It had developed that Cynthia didn’t want Uncle
Paul’s whiskers yanked off in any public spot, and therefore he would have to be tailed. Tailing in New York, if you really mean it, being no one-man job, we were setting it up right, with me on foot and Saul on wheels.

Cynthia had filled in a few gaps before leaving our office. She had inherited her uncle’s half of the business under a will he had left, but was not yet in legal possession because of the law’s attitude about dead people who leave no remains. There had been no serious doubt of his being pressure-cooked in the geyser, though no one had actually seen him jump in, since his clothes had been found at the geyser’s rim, and the farewell letters in the pocket of the coat, one to his lawyer and one to his niece, had unquestionably been in his handwriting. But the law was chewing its cud. Apparently Jean Daumery, up to the moment he had fallen off the boat and got drowned, had done likewise, and, in the six weeks since his death, his nephew Bernard had carried on with the chewing. That was the impression I got from a couple of Cynthia’s remarks about her current status at Daumery and Nieder’s. She was stall modeling, and most of the designing was being done by a guy named Ward Roper, whose name she pronounced with a good imitation of the inflection Winston Churchill used in pronouncing Mussolini.

She had got in another dig or two at Helen Daumery, replying to Wolfe’s casual questions. It was possible, she said, that Jean Daumery had known what was going on between his wife and his business partner, but it was doubtful because Helen had been an extremely slick article. And when Wolfe inquired about Helen’s death and Cynthia told him that it happened
on a country lane where Helen and her husband were out for a Sunday morning ride on their own horses, and the husband was the only eyewitness, she added that whoever or whatever was in charge of accidents might as well get the credit for that one, and that anyway Jean Daumery was dead too.

So it still looked as if we were fresh out of murders as far as Cynthia was concerned. To get any attention from Wolfe a murder must be attached to a client with money to spend and a reason for spending it. Cynthia didn’t fit. As for her uncle, he wasn’t dead. As for Helen Daumery, Cynthia wasn’t interested a nickel’s worth. As for Jean Daumery, Cynthia was stringing along with the Florida people who had decided there was nothing wrong.

Therefore there was no tingle in me as I got off the elevator at the twelfth floor.

Double doors were standing open, with a few human beings gathered there. As I approached, a bulky female who had been in my elevator swept past me and was going on through, but a man sidestepped to cut her off and asked politely, “What is your firm, please?”

The woman glared at him. “Coats and suits for Driscoll’s Emporium, Tulsa.”

The man shook his head. “Sorry, there’s no place for you.” His face suddenly lit up with a cordial smile, and I thought unexpected grace was about to drop on her until I saw that the smile was for another one from my elevator, a skinny dame with big ears.

“Good after
noon
, Miss Dixon,” the smiler said, serving it with sugar. “Mr. Roper was asking about you just a minute ago.”

Miss Dixon nodded indifferently and went on in. I maneuvered around Driscoll’s Emporium, who was looking enraged but impotent, and murmured at the man in a refined voice.

“My name is. Goodwin, British Fabrics Association. Miss Cynthia Nieder invited me. Shall I wait while you check with her?”

He looked me over and I took it without flinching, wearing, as I was, a tropical worsted tailored by Breslow and a shirt and tie that were fully worthy. “It isn’t necessary,” he finally conceded and motioned me through.

The room was so nearly packed that it took a couple of minutes to find an empty seat far enough front to be sure of catching Cynthia’s signal, which was to be brushing her hair back on the right side with her left hand. I saw no point in pretending I wasn’t there, and before sitting down I turned in a slow complete circle, giving the audience the eye as if I were looking for a friend. There were close to two hundred of them, and I was surprised to see that nearly a third of them were men, though Cynthia had explained that they would be not only buyers from all over the country, but also merchandise executives, department heads, presidents, vice-presidents, fashion writers, fabrics people, and miscellaneous.

I saw no one with whiskers.

Also before sitting I picked up, from the chair, a pad of paper and a pencil. The pad consisted of sheets with
DAUMERY AND NIEDER
and the address neatly printed in an upper corner. I was supposed, as I soon learned from watching my neighbors, to use it for making notes about the numbers I wanted to buy. On my right was a plump gray-haired specimen with
sweat below her ear, and on my left was a handsome woman with an extremely good mouth, fairly young but not quite young enough. Neither had given me more than an indifferent glance.

The room was high-ceilinged, and the wood-paneled walls were pretty well covered with drawings and photographs. Aside from that, and us on our chairs, there was nothing but a large raised platform, in the open space between the front row of seats and the wall beyond. That wall had two doors, twenty feet apart. I had been seated only a minute or two when the door on the left opened and a woman emerged. She was old enough to be my mother but wasn’t. My mother wouldn’t use that much lipstick in a year, and her shoulders would never get that much padding no matter what high fashion said.

The woman stood a moment, looking us over, turned to signal to someone through the open door, closed the door, and went to a chair near the end of the front row that had evidently been held for her. She was no sooner seated than the door opened again and out came the girl that I was waiting to marry. I put my teeth together to keep from whistling. I got the impression that she was the girl they were all waiting to marry, seeing how concentrated and alert everyone became the second she appeared, and then I realized what this meant to the buyers. For them it was the make or break. It meant their jobs. They had just so many thousands to spend, on so many numbers, and it was up to them to pick the winners or else.

Anyone could have picked the girl with one eye shut, but they weren’t picking girls. She stepped up on the platform, came to the front edge, walking in a highly trained manner, extended her arms to the
sides, full out, and said in a clear and friendly voice, “Six-forty-two.” Six-forty-two was a dress and coat, looking like wool and I suppose it was, sort of confused about colors like a maple tree in October. She gave it the works. She walked to the right and then to the left, threw her arms around to show that the seams would hold even if you got in a fight or wore it picking apples, and turned around to let us see the back. She said “Six-forty-two” four times altogether, at appropriate intervals, distinctly and amiably, with just the faintest suggestion in her voice and manner that she wouldn’t dream of letting that out except to the few people she was very fond of; and when she took the coat off and draped it over her arm and lifted her chin to smile at the back row, there was some clapping of hands.

She left by the other door, the one on the right, and immediately the one on the left opened and out came the girl I was waiting to marry, only this was a blonde, and she had on a gray fur evening wrap lined in bright red, and what she said was “Three-eighty and Four-nineteen.” The 380, I gathered from neighbors’ mutterings, was the wrap, and the 419 was the simple red evening gown that was disclosed when she ditched the wrap. It was fairly simple in front at the top, just covering essentials, but at the back it got even simpler by simply not starting until it hit the waistline. The woman on my right whispered to the one on her other side, “The hell of that is I’ve got a customer that would love it but I wouldn’t dare let her buy it.”

To clear up one point, they had there that afternoon six of the girls I was waiting to marry, if you count Cynthia Nieder, and I don’t see why you
shouldn’t. Each of them made around a dozen appearances, some more, some less, and as for picking and choosing, if the buyers were as far up a stump as I was by the time it was over the only way they could possibly handle it was to send in an order for one of each.

As I explained to Wolfe in the office that evening, after I had reported a blank and we were conversing, “Imagine it! After the weddings I will of course have to take a good-sized apartment between Fifth and Madison in the Sixties. On a pleasant autumn evening I’ll be sitting in the living room reading the newspaper. I’ll toss the paper aside and clap my hands, and in will come Isabel. She will have on a calf-exposing kitchen apron with a double hemline and will be carrying a plate of ham sandwiches and a pitcher of milk. She will say seductively, ‘Two-ninety-three,’ make interesting motions and gestures without spilling a drop, put the plate and pitcher on a table at my elbow, and go. In will come Francine. She will be wearing slim-silhouette pajamas with padded shoulders and a back-flaring hipline. She’ll walk and wave and whirl, say ‘Nine-thirty-one’ four times, and light me a cigarette and dance out. Enter Delia. She’ll be dressed in a high-styled bra of hand-made lace with a billowing sweep to the—”

“Pfui,” Wolfe said curtly. “Enter another, naked, carrying a basket full of bills, your checkbook, and a pen.”

He has a personal slant on women.

Back to the show. It lasted over two hours, and for some of the numbers the applause was unrestrained, and it looked to me as if the Daumery and Nieder profits were likely to go on swelling up. Cynthia, in
my opinion, was the star, and others seemed to agree with me. The numbers she modeled got much more applause than the rest of the line, and I admit I furnished my share, which was as it should be since I was her guest. Remarks from my neighbor on the right, who was evidently in the know, informed me that Cynthia’s numbers had all been designed by herself, whereas the others were the work of Ward Roper, who had been Paul Nieder’s assistant and was merely a good imitator and adapter.

In the office that evening I explained that to Wolfe, too, partly because I knew it would bore and irritate him, and partly because I wanted to demonstrate that I hadn’t been asleep although my report of results had had no bodice at all and a very short skirt.

A breath and a half had done it. “I got in by following Cynthia’s instructions, found a seat in the fifth row, and sat down after doing a survey of the two hundred customers and seeing no whiskers. Miss Nieder made fourteen appearances and did not signal me. When she came out front after the show she was immediately encircled by people, and I beat it, again following instructions, went down to the sidewalk, told Saul nothing doing, and handed Herb Aronson a ten-dollar bill.”

Wolfe grunted, “What next?”

“That requires thought, which is your department. We can’t sick the cops on him because the client doesn’t want that. We can buy a gross of combs and comb the city. Or we can try again at their next show for buyers, which, as you know, will be Thursday morning at ten. Or you may remember what the client said about her uncle’s private file.”

Wolfe poohed. “She doesn’t even know whether it exists. She thinks Jean Daumery took it and locked it
up, and that the nephew, Bernard Daumery, is hanging onto it. She thinks she may possibly be able to find it.”

“Okay, you admit she thinks, so why not you? You’re merely objecting, not thinking. Think.”

That was before dinner. If he did put his brain in motion there were no visible or audible results. After dinner, back in the office again, he started reading a book. That disgusted me, because after all we had a case, and for the sake of appearances I started in on a blow-by-blow account of the Daumery and Nieder show. The least I could do was to make it hard for him to read. I went on for over an hour, covering the ground, and then branched out into commentary.

“Imagine it!” I said. “After the weddings I will of course have to take a good-sized apartment …”

I’ve already told about that.

The next morning, Tuesday, he was still shirking. When we have a job on he usually has breakfast instructions for me before he goes up to the plant rooms for his nine-to-eleven session with Theodore and the orchids, but that day there wasn’t a peep out of him, and when he came down to the office at eleven o’clock he got himself comfortable in his chair behind his desk, rang for Fritz to bring beer—two short buzzes —and picked up his book. Even when I showed him the check from Cynthia which had come in the morning mail, two thousand smackers, he merely nodded indifferently. I snorted at him and strode to the hall and out the front door, on my way to the bank to make a deposit. When I got back he was on his second bottle of beer and deep in his book. Apparently his idea was to go on reading until Thursday’s show for buyers.

For one o’clock lunch in the dining room, which was across the hall from the office, Fritz served us with chicken livers and tomato halves fried in oil and trimmed with chopped peppers and parsley, followed by rice cakes and honey. I took it easy on the livers because of my attitude toward Fritz’s rice cakes. I was on my fifth cake, or maybe sixth, when the doorbell rang. During meals Fritz always answers the door, on account of Wolfe’s feeling that the main objection to atom bombs is that they may interrupt people eating. Through the open door from the dining room to the hall I saw Fritz pass on his way to the front, and a moment later his voice came, trying to persuade someone to wait in the office until Wolfe had finished lunch. There was no other voice, but there were steps, and then our visitor was marching in on us—a man about Wolfe’s age, heavy-set, muscular, red-faced, and obviously aggressive.