Rex Stout - Nero Wolfe 17 (6 page)

Cynthia and I were sitting in Bernard Daumery’s office, waiting for him to finish with some customers in the showroom. It had been his uncle Jean’s room, and was large, light, and airy, with good rugs and furniture, and the walls even more covered with drawings and photographs than in the showroom. We had decided to start with Bernard.

“The trouble with him,” Cynthia was telling me with a frown, “is that he can’t bear to decide anything. Especially if it’s important, you might think he had to wait to see what the stars say or maybe a crystal ball. Then when he does make up his mind he’s as stubborn as a mule. The way I do when I want him to agree about something, I act as if it wasn’t very important—”

The door came open and a man was there. He shut the door and approached her.

“I’m sorry, Cynthia, it was Miss Dougherty of Bullock’s-Wilshire, and Brackett was with her. She thinks you’re better than ever, and she’s lost her head completely over those three—Oh! Who—?”

“Mr. Goodwin of Nero Wolfe’s office,” Cynthia told him. “Mr. Daumery, Mr. Goodwin.”

I got up to offer a hand and he took it.

“Nero Wolfe the detective?” he asked.

I told him yes. His exuberance about Miss Dougherty of Bullock’s-Wilshire evaporated without a trace. He sent Cynthia a look, shook his head, though not apparently at her, went to a chair, not the one at his desk, and sat. Cynthia’s statistics had informed me that he was four years younger than me, and I might as well concede them to him. On account of the intimate way he had beamed at Cynthia on entering, naturally I looked upon him as a rival, but to be perfectly fair to him he was built like a man, he knew where to get clothes and how to wear them, and he was not actually ugly.

Now the exuberance was gone. “This godawful mess,” he glummed. “Where does Nero Wolfe come in?”

“I went to see him,” Cynthia said. “I’ve hired him.”

“What for? To do what?”

“Well—I need somebody, don’t I? After the way the police acted with me? When they know I came here last night and apparently no one else did?”

“But that’s absolutely idiotic! Why shouldn’t you come here?”

“All right, I should. But I think they came within an inch of arresting me.”

“Then you need a lawyer. Where’s Demarest? Did he send you to Nero Wolfe?”

Cynthia shook her head. “I haven’t seen him, but I’m going to as soon as—”

“Damn it, you should have seen him first!”

“I’m not taking your time,” Cynthia declared, “to ask you what I should have done. I’ll tend to that, thank you. I want to ask you to do something.”

I thought she was making a bad start and needed help. “May I join in?” I inquired pleasantly.

Bernard scowled at me. “This thing is absolutely crazy,” he complained. “What we ought to do is ignore it! Simply ignore it!”

“Yeah,” I agreed, “that would be innocent and brave, but it might get complicated. If one of you gets charged with murder and locked up it would take a master ignorer—”

“Good God, why should we? How could we? Why would any of us kill a man we never saw or heard of before? The thing for the police to do is find out how he ever got in here—that’s their problem.”

“I completely agree,” I assured him heartily. “The trouble is you’ve got a logical mind and some cops haven’t. So the fact remains that one of you, especially one of you that has a key to this place, is apt to get arrested for murder, and right now the odds strongly favor Miss Nieder because they know she used her key last night. Getting convicted is something else, but she would rather not even be arrested right in the middle of the showings of the fall line. May I go on a minute?”

“We’re busy as the devil,” Bernard muttered.

“I’ll be brief. Miss Nieder has hired Mr. Wolfe. She will consult her lawyer, Demarest, within the hour. But meanwhile—”

The door swung open and a man entered. He too shut the door behind him, half turning to close it gently, and then spoke as he advanced.

“Good afternoon, Cynthia. Good afternoon, Bernard. What on earth is going on here?” He saw me. “Who are you, sir, an officer of the law? So am I, in a way. My name is Demarest—Henry R. Demarest, Counselor.” He was coming to me to shake on it, and I stood up and obliged.

“Goodwin, Archie,” I said, “assistant to Nero Wolfe, private detective.”

“Oho!” His brows went up. “Nero Wolfe, eh?” He turned to the others and I had his broad back and the pudgy behind of his neck. “What is all this? A dead man found on the premises and I have to learn it from a policeman asking me about my key? May I ask why I was not informed?”

“We were busy,” Bernard said gruffly. “And not with business. The whole police force was here.”

“I tried to phone you last night,” Cynthia said, “but you weren’t at home, and today you were out at lunch, and I have arranged with Nero Wolfe to keep me from being convicted of murder, and Mr. Goodwin came here with me. I was nearly arrested because I came here last night and stayed fifteen minutes.”

Demarest nodded. He had deposited his hat on Bernard’s desk and his fanny on Bernard’s chair the other side of the desk, which seemed a little arbitrary. He nodded again at Cynthia.

“I know. A friend at the District Attorney’s office has given me the particulars. But my dear child, you should have called on me at once. I should have been beside you! You went to Nero Wolfe instead? Why?”

He irritated me. Also Cynthia sent me a glance
which I interpreted to mean that hired help are supposed to earn their pay, so I horned in.

“Maybe I can answer that, Mr. Demarest. In fact that’s what I was about to do when you entered. You know how it stands now, do you?”

“I know how it stood thirty minutes ago.”

“Then you’re up with us. I was explaining to Mr. Daumery that Miss Nieder would prefer not to be arrested. Primarily that’s what sent her to Mr. Wolfe. I was going on to explain what she can expect of Mr. Wolfe. She won’t have to pay him for an all-out job. On a case like this that would mean checking on everybody who entered or left the building last evening after hours, which would be quite a chore itself, considering how careless elevator men get. Things like that are much better left to the police, and a lot of similar jobs, for instance the fingerprint roundup, the laboratory angles, checking alibis, and so on. Naturally the five people who have keys to this place are special cases. Their alibis will get it good, and they’ll be tailed day and night, and all the rest of it. We’ll let the city pay for all that, not Miss Nieder. That’s what Mr. Wolfe won’t do.”

“It doesn’t leave much, does it?” Demarest inquired.

“Enough to keep him occupied. Apparently you’ve heard of him, Mr. Demarest, so you probably know he goes about it his way. That’s what he’s doing now, and that’s why I’m here. He sent me to arrange a little meeting at his office tonight. Miss Nieder, Miss Zarella, Mr. Daumery, Mr. Roper, and you. You are the five who have keys. Half-past eight would suit him fine if it would suit you. Refreshments served.”

Bernard and Demarest made noises. The one from
Bernard was an impatient grunt, but the one from Demarest sounded more like a chuckle.

“We’re summoned,” the lawyer said.

I grinned at him. “I wouldn’t dream of putting it that way.”

“No, but we are.” He chuckled again. “We who have keys. I offer a comment. You said that Wolfe’s primary function, as Miss Nieder sees it, is to prevent her arrest. Obviously he intends to perform it by getting someone else arrested—and tried and convicted. That may prove to be a difficult and expensive undertaking, and possibly quite unnecessary. I would engage, with the situation as it is now, to get the same result with one-tenth the effort and at one-tenth the expense. It’s only fair to her, isn’t it, to give her that alternative?”

He turned. “It’s your money, Cynthia. What about it? Do you want to pay Wolfe to do it his way?”

For a second I thought she was weakening. But she was only deciding how to put it.

“Yes, I do,” she declared firmly. “I never had a detective working for me before, and if you can’t hire a detective when you’re suspected of murder when can you hire one?”

Demarest nodded. “I thought so,” he said in a satisfied tone. “Just what I thought. Did you say eight-thirty, Goodwin?”

“That would be best. Mr. Wolfe works better when he isn’t looking forward to a meal. You’ll come?”

“Certainly I’ll come. To save energy. I like to economize on energy, and it will take less to attend that meeting than it would to argue Miss Nieder out of it.” He smiled at her. “My dear child! I want a private talk with you.”

“Maybe it can wait a few minutes?” I suggested. “Until I finish arranging this? How about it, Mr. Daumery? You’ll be with us?”

Bernard was sunk in gloom or something—anyhow, he was sunk. He was hunched in his chair, his eyes going from Cynthia to Demarest to me to Cynthia.

“Okay?” I prodded him.

“I don’t know,” he muttered. “I’ll think it over.”

Cynthia emitted a little snort.

Demarest regarded Bernard with exasperation. “As usual. You’ll think it over. What is there to think about?”

“There’s this business to think about,” Bernard declared. “It’s bad enough already, with a murdered man found here in the office. We would practically be admitting our connection with it, wouldn’t we, the five of us going to discuss it with a detective?”

“I’ve hired the detective personally,” Cynthia snapped.

“I know you have, Cynthia.” His tone implied that he was imploring her to make allowances for the air spaces in his skull. “But damn it, we have to consider the business, don’t we? It may be inadvisable. I don’t know.”

“How long would you need to think?” I asked pleasantly. “It’s five o’clock now, so there isn’t a lot of time. Say an hour and a half? By six-thirty?”

“I suppose so.” He sounded uncertain. He looked around at us as if he were a woodchuck in a hole and we were terriers digging to get him. “I’ll let you know. Where’ll you be?”

“That depends,” I replied for us. “There are two more to invite—Miss Zarella and Mr. Roper. It might
help if you would get them in here. Would that require thinking over too?”

Demarest chuckled. Cynthia sent me a warning glance, to caution me against aggravating him.

Bernard retorted with spirit. “You do your thinking and I’ll do mine.” He got up and went to his desk. “Would you mind using another chair, Mr. Demarest?”

Demarest moved out. Bernard sat down and picked up the phone transmitter, and told it, “Please ask Mr. Roper and Miss Zarella to come in here.”

They entered together.

I had seen Polly Zarella before. It was she who, the preceding afternoon, had emerged from the door on the left and given the signal that started the show. She still resembled my mother only in point of age. Her lipstick supply was holding out, and so was her shoulder padding, though she had on a different dress. Seeing her on the street, I would have tagged her for a totally different role from the one she filled—Cynthia having informed me that she was a scissors-and-needle wizard, in charge of all Daumery and Nieder production, and a highly important person.

After I had been introduced Bernard invited them to sit. Then he said, “I’m sorry to take your time, but this day is all shot to hell anyhow. Mr. Goodwin wants to ask you something.”

They aimed their eyes at me. I grinned at them engagingly.

“You’re busy and I’ll cut it short. More trouble and fuss, all on account of a dead man. The cops are making
it hot for Miss Nieder because she was here last night and said she wasn’t when they first brought it up. Now she’s in a fix, and she has hired my boss, Nero Wolfe, to get her out. Mr. Wolfe would like to have a talk with five people, the five who carry keys to this place—the five who are here now. He sent me to ask if you will come to his office this evening at half-past eight. Miss Nieder will of course be there. Mr. Demarest is coming. Mr. Daumery is thinking it over and will let us know later. It will be in the interest of justice, it will help to clear up this muddle and let you get back to work, and it will be a favor to Miss Nieder. Will you come?”

“No,” Polly Zarella said emphatically.

“No?” I inquired courteously.

“No,” she repeated. “I losed much time today. I will be here all evening with cutters cutting.”

“This is pretty important, Miss Zarella.”

“I do not think so.” She said “zink.” “He was here, he is gone, and we forget it. I told that to the policemen and I tell it to you. Miss Nieder is not dangered. If she was dangered I would fight it off with these hands”—she lifted them as claws—“because she is the best designer in America or Europe or the world. But she is not. No.”

She got up and started for the door. Cynthia, darting to her feet, intercepted her and caught her by the arm.

“I think you ought to wait,” I said, “for Mr. Roper’s vote. Mr. Roper?”

Ward Roper cleared his throat. “It doesn’t seem to me,” he offered, in the sort of greasy voice that makes me want to take up strangling, “that this is exactly the proper step to take, under the circumstances.”

Seeing that Polly’s exit was halted, I was looking
at Roper. Getting along toward fifty, by no means too old to strangle, he was slender, elegant, and groomed to a queen’s taste if you let him pick the queen. His voice fitted him to a T.

“What’s wrong with it?” I asked him.

He cocked his head to one side to contemplate me. “Almost everything, I would say. I understand and sympathize with Mr. Daumery’s desire to think it over. It assumes that we, the five of us, are involved in this matter, which is ridiculous. One may indeed be involved, deeply involved, but not the other four. Not the rest of us.”

“What the hell are you getting at?” Bernard demanded with heat.

“Nothing, Bernard. Nothing specific. Just a comment expressing my reaction.”

Plainly it was no time for diplomacy. I arose and stepped to a spot nearer Cynthia, where I could face them all without neck-twisting.

“This is a joke,” I declared offensively, “and if you ask me, a rotten one.” I focused on Bernard. “Have you got around to your thinking, Mr. Daumery? Made up your mind?”