Rex Stout - Nero Wolfe 24 (19 page)

“No.”

“Then you regard him as vulnerable on opportunity?”

“Yes.”

“Are you holding Mr. Chisholm for the same reason?”

Chisholm made a noise. Skinner and Hennessy stared. Skinner said, “We’re not holding Mr. Chisholm.”

“You should be, for consistency,” Wolfe declared. “This afternoon, when I reached my seat in the stands—of which only the front edge was accessible to me—at twenty minutes past one, the Mayor and others were there in a nearby box, but Mr. Chisholm was not. He arrived a few minutes later. He has told me that when he arrived with his party, including the Mayor, about one o’clock, he had the others escorted to the stands and the box, that he started for the clubhouse for a word with his employees, that he was delayed by the crowd and decided it was too late, that he went on a private errand to a men’s room and then proceeded to the box. If the others are vulnerable on opportunity, so is he.”

They made remarks, all three of them, not appreciative. Wolfe put the bottle to his lips, tilted it and his head, and swallowed beer. Paper cups had been supplied, but he hates them.

He put the bottle down empty. “I was merely,” he said mildly, “commenting on the murder as a specialist. As for my job, learning who drugged the drinks, I haven’t even made a start. How could I in this confounded hubbub? Trampled by an army. I have been permitted to sit here and talk to people, yes, with a succession of your subordinates standing behind me, breathing down my neck. One of them was chewing gum! Pfui. Working on a murder and chewing gum!”

“We’ll bounce him,” Hennessy said dryly. “The commissioner has asked you, what’s the play with those four men?”

Wolfe shook his head. “Not only those four. I included others in my request to Mr. Chisholm—Doctor Soffer, Mr. Kinney, Mr. Durkin, and of course Mr. Chisholm himself. I am not arranging a parlor game. I make a living as a professional detective, and I need their help on this job
I’ve undertaken. I think I know why, engrossed as you are with the most sensational case you’ve had in years, you’re spending all this time chatting with me; you suspect I’m contriving a finesse. Don’t you?”

“You’re damn right we do.”

Wolfe nodded. “So I am.”

“You are?”

“Yes.” Wolfe suddenly was peevish. “Haven’t I sat here for five hours, submerged in your pandemonium? Haven’t you all the facts that I have, and many more besides? Haven’t you a thousand men to command—indeed, twenty thousand—and I one? One little fact strikes me as apparently it has not struck you, and in my forlorn desperation I decided to test my interpretation of it. For that test I need help, and I ask Mr. Chisholm to provide it, and—”

“We’ll be glad to help,” Skinner cut in. “Which fact, and how do you interpret it?”

“No, sir.” Wolfe was positive. “It is my one slender chance to earn a fee. I intend—”

“We may not know this fact.”

“Certainly you do. I have stated it explicitly during this conversation, but I won’t point at it for you. If I did you’d spoil it for me, and, slender as it is, I intend to test it. I am not beset with the urgency of murder, as you are, but I’m in a fix. I don’t need a motive strong enough to incite a man to murder, merely one to persuade him to drug some bottled drinks—mildly, far from lethally. A thousand dollars? Twenty thousand? That would be only a fraction of the possible winnings on a World Series game—and no tax to pay. The requisitions of the income tax have added greatly to the attractions of mercenary crime. As for opportunity, anyone at all could have slipped in here late this morning, before others had arrived, with drugged bottles of that drink and put them in the cooler—and earned a fortune. Those twenty men you let go, Mr. Hennessy—of how many of them can you say positively that they did not drug the drinks?”

The inspector was scowling at him. “I can say that I don’t think any of them killed Ferrone.”

“Ah, but I’m not after the murderer; that’s your job.” Wolfe upturned a palm. “You see why I am driven to a
forlorn finesse. It is my only hope of avoiding a laborious and possibly fruitless—”

What interrupted him was the entry of a man through the door to the locker room. District Attorney Megalech was as masterful as they come, although bald as a door-knob. He strode across and told Skinner and Hennessy he wanted to speak with them, took an elbow of each, and steered them to and through the door to Kinney’s office. Chisholm, uninvited, wheeled and followed them.

Wolfe reached for a sandwich and took a healthy bite. I arose, brushed off crumbs, shook my pants legs down, and stood looking down at him. I asked, “How good is this fact you’re saving up?”

“Not very.” He chewed and swallowed. “Good enough to try if we got nothing better. Evidently they have nothing at all. If they had—but you heard them.”

“Yeah. You told them they have all the facts you have, but they haven’t. The one I gave you about Mrs. Moyse? That’s not the one you’re interpreting privately?”

“No.”

“She might be still around, waiting. I might possibly get something better than the one you’re saving. Shall I go try?”

He grunted. I took it for a yes, and moved. Outside the door to the hall and stairs stood one in uniform with whom I had already had a few little words. I addressed him. “I’m going down to buy Mr. Wolfe a pickle. Do I need to be passed out or in?”

“You?” He used only the right half of his mouth for talking. “Shoot your way through. Huh?”

“Right. Many thanks.” I went.

It was dumb to be so surprised, but I was. I might have known that the news that the Giants had been doped out of the game and the series, and that Nick Ferrone, the probable rookie of the year, had been murdered, would draw a record mob. Downstairs inside the entrance there were sentries, and outside a regiment was stretched into a cordon. I was explaining to a sergeant who I was and
telling him I would be returning, when three desperate men, one of whom I recognized, came springing at me. All they wanted was the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. I had to get really rude. I have been clawed at by newspapermen more than once, but I had never seen them quite as hungry as they were outside the Polo Grounds that October night. Finding they wouldn’t shake loose, I dived through the cordon and into the mob.

It looked hopeless. The only parked cars in sight on the west side of Eighth Avenue were police cars. I pushed through to the fringe of the throng and made my way two blocks south. Having made inquiries of two Giants hours previously, I knew what I was looking for, a light blue Curtis sedan. Of course there was a thin chance that it was still around, but if it was I wanted it. I crossed the avenue and headed for the parking plaza. Two cops at the end of the cordon gave me a look, but it wasn’t the plaza they were guarding, and I marched on through. In the dim light I could see three cars over at the north end. Closer up, one was a Curtis sedan. Still closer, it was light blue. I went up to it. Two females on the front seat were gazing at me through the window, and one of them was my glommee. The radio was on. I opened the door, swung it wide, and said hello.

“Who are you?” she demanded.

“My name’s Archie Goodwin. I’ll show credentials if you are Mrs. William Moyse.”

“What do you want?”

“Nothing if you’re not Mrs. Moyse.”

“What if I am?”

She was rapidly erasing the pleasant memory I had of her. Not that she had turned homely in a few hours, but her expression was not only unfriendly but sour, and her voice was not agreeable. I got out my wallet and extracted my license card. “If you are,” I said, “this will identify me,” and proffered it.

“Okay, your name’s Goodman.” She ignored the card. “So what?”

“Not Goodman.” I pronounced it again. “Archie Goodwin. I work for Nero Wolfe, who is up in the clubhouse. I just came from there. Why not turn off the radio?”

“I’d rather turn you off,” she said bitterly.

Her companion, the redhead who had been with her in the box, reached for the knob, and the radio died. “Look, Lila,” she said earnestly, “you’re acting like a sap. Invite him in. He may be human. Maybe Bill sent him.”

“What did Walt tell us?” Lila snapped at her. “Nero Wolfe is there working with the cops.” She came back at me. “Did my husband send you? Prove it.”

I bent a knee to put a foot on the edge of the frame, not aggressively. “That’s one reason,” I said, “why Mr. Wolfe can’t stand women. The way they flop around intellectually. I didn’t say your husband sent me. He didn’t. He couldn’t even if he wanted to, because for the past hour he has been kept in the locker room, conversing with a gathering of Homicide hounds, and still is. Mr. Wolfe sent me, but in a way it’s a personal problem I’ve got, and no one but you can help me.”

“You’ve got a personal problem. You have. Take it away.”

“I will if you say so, but wait till I tell you. Up to now they have only one reason for picking on your husband. The players left the clubhouse for the field in a bunch, all but one of them. One of them left later and got to the dugout five or six minutes after the others, and it was Bill Moyse. They all agreed on that, and Bill admits it. The cops figure that he had seen or heard something that made him suspect Nick Ferrone of doping the drinks—you know about that? That the Beebright was doped?”

“Yes. Walt Goidell told me.”

“And that he stayed behind with Ferrone to put it to him, and Nick got tough and he got tougher, with a baseball bat. That’s how the cops figure it, and that’s why they’re after Bill, as it stands now. But I have a private reason, which I have kept private except for Nero Wolfe, to think that the cops have got it twisted. Mr. Wolfe is inclined to agree with me, but he hasn’t told the cops because he has been hired by Chisholm and wants to earn a fat fee. My private slant is that if Bill did kill Ferrone—please note the ‘if’—it wasn’t because he caught Ferrone doping the drinks, but the other way around. Ferrone caught Bill doping the drinks, and was going to spill it, and Bill killed him.”

She was goggling at me. “You have the nerve—” She didn’t have the words. “Why, you dirty—”

“Hold it. I’m telling you. This afternoon at the game I was in a box. By the sixth inning I had had plenty of the game and looked around for something to take my mind off it, and I saw an extremely attractive girl. I looked at her some more. I had a feeling that I had seen her before but couldn’t place her. The score was eleven to one, and the Giants were flat on their faces, and that lovely specimen was exactly what my eyes needed, except for one flaw. She was having a swell time. Her eyes showed it, her whole face and manner showed it absolutely. She liked what was happening out on the field. There was that against her, but I looked at her anyhow.”

She was trying to say something, but I raised my voice a little. “Wait till I tell you. Later, after the game, in the clubhouse, Bill Moyse said his wife was waiting for him, and someone made a crack about showing me her picture. Then it clicked. I remembered seeing a picture of his bride in the Gazette, and it was the girl I had seen in the stands. Again later, I had a chance to ask some of the players some questions, and I learned that she usually drove to games in Bill’s light blue Curtis sedan and waited for him after the game. It seemed to me interesting that it made the wife of a Giant happy to see the Giants getting walloped in the deciding game of a World Series, and Mr. Wolfe agreed, but he needed me there in the clubhouse. Finally he sent me to see if she was still around, and here I am. You see our problem. Why were you tickled stiff to see them losing?”

“I wasn’t.”

“It’s perfectly ridiculous,” the redhead snorted.

I shook my head. “Rejected. That won’t do. Mr. Wolfe accepts my judgment on girls. A pretty girl or a homely girl, a smart girl or a dumb girl, a sad girl or a happy girl—he knows I know. I have told him you were happy. If I go back and report that you flatly deny it, I don’t see how he can do anything but tell the cops, and that will be bad. They’ll figure that you wanted the Giants to lose because you knew Bill did, and why. Then of course they’ll refigure the murder and get a new answer—that Ferrone found out that Bill had doped the drinks, and Bill killed him. They’ll start on Bill all over again, and if they—”

“Stop it!” She was hoarse. “For God’s sake!”

“I was only saying, if they—”

The redhead put in, leaning to the steering wheel and sticking out her chin. “How dumb can you get?” she demanded.

“It’s not a ques—”

“Phooey! You say you know girls! Do you know baseball girls? I’m one! I’m Helen Goidell, Walt’s wife. I would have liked to slap Lila this afternoon, sitting there gloating, much as I love her, but I’m not a sap like you! She’s not married to the Giants, she’s married to Bill! Lew Baker had batted two-thirty-two in the first six games of the series, and he had made two errors and had three bases stolen on him, and still they wouldn’t give Bill a chance! Lila had sat through those six games praying to see Bill walk out, and not once! What did she care about the series or the difference between winner’s and loser’s take? She wanted to see Bill in it! And look at Baker this afternoon! If he had been doped, all right, but Lila didn’t know it then! What you know about girls, you nitwit!”

She was blazing. I did not blaze back.

“I’m still willing to learn,” I said, not belligerently. “Is she right, Mrs. Moyse?”

“Yes.”

“Then I am too, on the main point? You were pleased to see the Giants losing?”

“I said she was right.”

“Yeah. Then I’ve still got a problem. If I accept your version and go and report to Wolfe accordingly, he’ll accept it too. Whether you think I know girls or not, he does. So that’s some responsibility for me. What if you’re a lot smoother and trickier than I think you are? Your husband is suspected of murder, and they’re still working on him. What if he’s guilty and they could squeeze out of you what they need to hook him? Of course eventually they’ll get to you and either squeeze it out or not, but how will I look if they do? That’s my problem. Have you any suggestions?”

Lila had none. She wasn’t looking at me. She sat with her head lowered, apparently gazing at her hands, which were clasped together.