Rex Stout - Nero Wolfe 24 (4 page)

The room was comparatively small, and no inch was being wasted. There was a single bed, a grand piano, two small chairs, and a few tons of books and portfolios on shelves and tables and stacked on the floor. Thayer, who was about my age and built like a bull, thought he would bust my knuckles as we shook, and then decided not to when I reacted. I had told Lewent on the way up that it might be better if I had Thayer to myself, and he had agreed, so he left us. Thayer flopped on the bed, and I took a chair.

“You sure have bitched it up,” he stated.

“Yeah? How?”

He waved a hand. “Do you know anything about music?”

“No.”

“Then I won’t put it in musical terms. Your idea of busting in with the fantasy of one of them sequestering a bale of kale intended for Lewent is sublimely cuckoo.”

“That’s a pity. I offered it as a substitute for Lewent’s fantasy of one of them poisoning your aunt.”

He threw his head back and haw-hawed. He was chock full of gusto. When he could speak he said, “Not my aunt really—yes, I suppose she was, since my Uncle Theodore married her. She died in great pain, and I was strongly affected by it. I couldn’t eat properly for weeks. But the idea of one of those gals giving her poison—absolutely, you know, Herman the Midget is an imp of prodigious fancy!
Dear God, such witless malice! Nevertheless, I am his staunch ally. He and I are one. Would you like to know how ardently I covet a few of the Lewent millions, now in the grasp of my Uncle Theodore?”

I told him I would love to, but he didn’t hear me. He bounced to his feet, strode to the piano bench and sat, held his hands poised above the keyboard with the fingers spread, and tilted his head back with his eyes closed. Suddenly down his hands went, both to his left, and the air was split with a clap of thunder. Other claps and rumblings followed; then his hands started working their way to the right, and there was screeching and squealing. Abruptly it stopped, and he whirled to face me.

“That’s how I covet that money. That’s how I feel.”

“Bad,” I said emphatically.

“Don’t I know it. Say I had five million. With the income from it I could put a thirty-piece orchestra on the air an hour a week in a dozen key cities, playing the music of the future. I have some of it already written. If you think I’m touched, you’re damn right I’m touched! So were Beethoven and Bizet touched, in their day. And the recordings. Dear God, the recordings I’ll make! I mean I would make. Instead of reveling in that paradise, here I am. I spoke of millions. Would you like to hear the actual facts of my personal financial status?”

He turned and bent his head over the keyboard, and started two fingers of his right hand dancing over the black keys. He kept in one octave and touched so delicately that with my head cocked I could barely hear the faint discordant jangle. It set my teeth on edge, and I raised my voice. “I could lend you a buck.”

He stopped. “Thanks. I’ll let you know. Of course I eat here, so I won’t starve. Would you care for a comment from Miss Marcy?”

He used both hands this time, and what came out was no jangle but a very pretty running coo. It was Miss Marcy to a T, with her variations and changes of pace, and he did it without any sign of a tune.

“Check,” I said when he stopped. “I’d know her with my eyes shut. Beautiful.”

“Thanks. Did Lewent tell you that I’m infatuated with Miss Riff?”

“No. Are you?”

“Oh, yes. If I played that for you, how I feel about Miss Riff, you’d be overcome, though I admit she isn’t. That’s why I wrote Lewent to come, because I was afraid she was going for my uncle, and I still am, I’m shivering with terror. And now, between you, you and he have bitched it up.”

I told him that I disagreed and explained why. For one thing, I said, Lewent felt that getting the three suspects stirred up against him would not handicap him but help him. As soon as we found out which one it was he was going to start working on her, and he much preferred hostility to indifference as a base to start from. Thayer argued the point, but it was hard to hear him because he kept accompanying himself on the piano, and I requested him to move back to the bed, which he did. After more talk I decided I was wasting my time, since he couldn’t furnish even a respectable guess on the question I was supposed to get answered, so I left him and moseyed back downstairs.

On the landing one flight down a maid in uniform with lipstick an inch thick gave me a sidewise glance, and I thought of wrangling her into the sewing room and pumping her, but decided to reserve it. On the floor below that I was tempted. Off to the right was the door to Lewent’s room, and the big door straight ahead, which had been widened to admit the wheelchair, as Lewent had informed me, led to Huck’s room. I could go and knock on it and, if I got a response, enter and ask him something. If there was no response, I could enter and take a look. A man who has been properly trained can do a lot of looking in five minutes, and it might be something quite simple, like a picture or a note in a drawer between shirts. But I reserved that too and descended another flight.

That was the floor Huck’s study was on, but I couldn’t use him at the moment, and there was no sight or sound of anyone, so I continued my downward journey and was on the ground floor. No one was in sight there either, but a sound came through where a door was standing half open, and I went and passed in. I have a habit of not making an uproar when I move. On a TV screen a man and woman were glaring at each other, with her breathing
hard and him saying something. On a chair with her back to me sat Mrs. O’Shea, sipping a liquid from a glass and looking at the TV. I stepped across to a chair not far from her, sat, and focused on the screen. She knew I was there, certainly, but gave no sign. For some twenty minutes we sat and watched and listened to the story unfold. When it ended and the commercial started she went and turned it off.

“Good reception,” I said appreciatively.

She eyed me. “You have your full share of gall, don’t you? Did you want to see me?”

“I thought we might have a little private talk.”

“Not now. I’ll be busy in the kitchen for half an hour.”

“Then later. By the way, Mr. Lewent invited me to stay for dinner, but under the circumstances I think I should ask you if it will be inconvenient.”

“Mr. Lewent is Mr. Huck’s guest, and if he invited you—of course. Mr. Huck eats in his room.”

I told her yes, I knew that, and she left. In a moment I followed. Thinking it advisable to let Lewent know that he had invited me to stay for dinner, I went back up two flights of stairs and to his door, and knocked. No result. I knocked louder, and still no result. As I stood there the door of the elevator, ten paces down the hall, slid open, and out came the wheelchair. Huck, seeing me, stopped his vehicle and called, “You still here?”

“Yes, sir. If you don’t mind.”

“Why should I?”

He touched a button, and off it scooted, to the door of his room. He opened it and rolled through, and the door swung shut. I looked at my wristwatch, lifting it to close range in the dim light; it was two minutes past five. Thinking that Lewent might be taking a nap, I knocked again and, getting no response, I gave it up and went back to the stairs, descended, left the house, walked to Madison and down a block to a drugstore, went into a phone booth, and dialed a number.

Wolfe answered. I reported. “No progress. No nothing, except that if you get sick I’ve got a line on a nurse that can coo it out of you. I will not be home to dinner, God help me. I am calling to tell you that and to consult you.”

“What about?”

“My brain. It must be leaking or I would never have let myself in for this.”

He grunted and hung up. I dialed another number, got Lily Rowan, and told her I had decided I’d rather stay home and do crossword puzzles than keep my weekend date with her. She finally wormed it out of me that I was stuck on a case, if you could call it that, and said she would hold her breath until I rang her again.

Back at the house, admitted by the viqueen, I asked her where Miss Riff was. She didn’t know. Miss Marcy? She didn’t know. Mr. Lewent? She didn’t know. I thanked her warmly and made for the stairs, wondering where the hell the client had got to. Probably sound asleep, and I resented it. On the third floor I knocked good and loud on his door, waited five seconds, turned the knob, and entered. I darned near walked on him. He was lying just inside, barely clear of the swing of the door, flat on his back, with one leg bent a little and the other one straight. I closed the door, squatted, unbuttoned his vest, and got a hand inside his shirt. Nothing. His head was at a queer angle. I slipped my fingertips under it, and at the base of the skull, or rather where there should have been a base, there was no resistence to pressure at all. The smashed edge of the skull was halfway up. But I couldn’t feel any break in the skin, and there was no blood on my fingers.

I stood up and looked down at him, with my hands shoved in my pants pockets and my jaw set. After enough of that I stepped to where the little hall ended and the room proper began, and sent my eyes around slowly and thoroughly. Then I went and knelt by Lewent’s head, with my knees spread, gripped his shoulders, and raised his torso till it was erect. There was nothing under him. I had a good look at the back of his head, then let him back down as before, got up and went and took his ankles and lifted his legs, and made sure there was nothing under that half of him. I moved to the door, held my ear to the crack for ten seconds, heard nothing, opened it and slipped through and pulled it shut, headed for the stairs, descended to the ground floor, and, no one appearing, let myself out.

At the drugstore on Madison Avenue I got dimes for a half-dollar before I went to the phone booth.

When Wolfe heard my voice on the phone he was peevish on principle, since I’m not supposed to disturb him when he is up in the plant rooms, and this was the second time in twenty minutes. I was peevish too, but not on principle.

“Hold it,” I told him. “I am about to ask a favor. Twenty minutes ago I reported no progress, but I was wrong. We can’t possibly disappoint our client, because he’s dead. Murdered.”

“Pfui.”

“No phooey. I’m telling you—from a booth in a drugstore. I found the body, and I want to ask a favor.”

“Mr. Lewent is dead?”

“Yes. In order to ask the favor I’ll have to lead up to it—not a full report, but the high spots.”

“Go ahead.”

I did. I gave him no conversations verbatim, but described the cast of characters and the setting, and covered movements and events up to opening the door of Lewent’s room. At that point I got particular.

“It would stand some questions,” I told him. “The first ten feet inside the door it’s not a room at all, merely a passage less than four feet wide. Beyond that is the room proper. The body is in that passage, diagonal, with the feet toward the door. When the door is opened wide its edge comes within ten inches of Lewent’s right foot. There’s a runner the length of the passage, an Oriental, not fastened down, and it’s in place. The body’s on it, of course. There is nothing disarranged in either the room or the passage. Everything is just as it was when I was there an hour earlier.”

“Except Mr. Lewent.” Wolfe’s tone was dry and disgusted.

“Yeah. He was hit in the back of the head at the base of the skull with something heavy and hard enough to smash the whole bottom of the skull. The thing was comparatively smooth, because the skin is not broken, only bruised. No blood. I am not a laboratory, but on a bet there was only one blow and it came from beneath, traveling upward. The weapon is not in the passage—”

“Under him.”

“No. I lifted him and put him back. Nor is it open to view in the room. Won’t that stand some questions?”

“It will indeed. No doubt the police will ask them.”

“I’m coming to that. I was not seen entering that room or leaving it. I might as well come on home, or, better still, go and keep my weekend date, if it weren’t for one thing—the grand Lewent paid us. I’ve only been here three hours, and I doubt if I’ve been earning three hundred and and thirty-three dollars and thirty-three cents an hour, considering what’s happened. Our client may not have been one of nature’s top products, but to come here to do a job for him and just fiddle around while someone croaked him and then find his corpse is not my idea of a masterpiece. I don’t like it. I won’t like the remarks that will occur to Cramer and Stebbins if I phone the cops to say that Mr. Wolfe has had a client murdered while my back was turned and will they please come and take over. Nor will you.”

“I won’t hear them. Is there an alternative?”

“Yes. That’s the favor I’m asking. My feelings are hurt.”

“Naturally.”

“I resent the assumption that it is perfectly okay to kill a client of yours practically in my presence. I want to ram that assumption down somebody’s throat. I had already told Mrs. O’Shea that I am staying for dinner, and I ask your permission to do so. One of those people is stretched good and tight, waiting for the body to be found, and if I’m half as good as I think I am I’ll see it or hear it or feel it. Anyhow I want to try.”

“How sure are you that you’re clear?”

“Completely. For a hair of my head on a rug, or a fingerprint, I was in there before. As for being seen, not a chance. I will mention that if you feel you owe Lewent some return for what he paid us, for which I could cite a couple of precedents, we’re more likely to deliver this way than with the cops in command. And of course I can find the body any time I want to if that seems to be called for.”

He grunted. “You won’t be home to dinner.”

I told him no and hung up, and sat a while, getting my mind arranged. The probability of the murderer’s giving himself away while under the suspense of waiting for
someone to find the body would be reduced by about nine-tenths if any word or look of mine aroused a suspicion that I already knew. Or would it? It might be better. Finally I left the booth, walked back to the house and rang the bell, and was admitted by the viqueen. She was as stolid as ever, so presumably there had been no discovery while I was out. As I started for the stairs down to the kitchen, intending to find Mrs. O’Shea, my name was called, and I turned to see Dorothy Riff coming through a door.