Rex Stout - Nero Wolfe 27 (14 page)

“I do realize it. It’s awful, but I do.” Her lips tightened. In a moment she spoke. “And I want to help! All night I was trying to think, and one thing I thought of—what Sidney said in his letter about something that would shock me. You said yesterday it’s not simple to disinherit a wife, but couldn’t he have done it some other way? Couldn’t he have signed something that would give someone a claim on the estate, perhaps the whole thing? Isn’t there some way he could have arranged for the—shock?”

“Conceivably,” Wolfe admitted. “But there would have had to be an authentic transfer of ownership and possession, and there wasn’t. Or if he established a trust it would have had to be legally recorded, and the estate would never have been distributed. You’ll have to do better than that.” He cleared his throat explosively and straightened up. “Very well. I must tackle them. Will you please have them here at six o’clock, madam? All of them?”

Her eyes widened at him. “Me? Bring them here?”

“Certainly.”

“But I can’t! How? What could I say? I can’t tell
them that you think one of them killed Sidney, and you want—No! I can’t!” She came forward in the chair. “Don’t you see it’s just impossible? Anyhow, they wouldn’t come!”

Wolfe turned. “Archie. You’ll have to get them. I prefer six o’clock, but if that isn’t feasible after dinner will do.” He glanced up at the wall clock. “Phone Mr. Parker and make an appointment for Mrs. Karnow. Phone Saul and tell him I want him here as soon as possible. Then lunch. After lunch, proceed.” He turned to the client. “Will you join us, madam? Fritz’s rice-and-mushroom fritters are, if I may say so, palatable.”

Since this is a democracy, thank God, please prepare to vote. All those in favor of my describing in full detail my efforts to the utmost, lasting a good five hours, to fill Wolfe’s order for three males and two females, say aye. I hear none. Since my eardrums are sensitive I won’t ask for the noes.

Then I’ll sketch it. James M. Beebe, I found, was not one of the machines in one of the huge legal factories that occupy so many floors in so many of New York’s skyscrapers. He was soloing it in a modest space on the tenth floor of a midtown building. The woman in the little anteroom, the only visible or audible employee, with a typewriter on her left and a telephone on her right, said Mr. Beebe would be back soon, and, if you call thirty-five minutes soon, he was.

The inner room he led me to must have been a little cramped with a conference of six people. Its furniture was adequate but by no means ornate. Beebe, who had looked runty alongside Mrs. Savage, could not be
called impressive seated at his desk, with a large percentage of the area of his thin face taken up by the black-rimmed glasses. When I showed him my credentials, a note signed by Caroline Karnow saying that Nero Wolfe was acting for her, and told him that Wolfe would like to discuss the situation with those chiefly concerned at his office that afternoon or evening, he said that he understood that the police investigation was making progress, and that he questioned the wisdom of an investigation of a murder by a private detective.

Wise or not, I said, Mrs. Karnow surely had the right to hire Wolfe if she wanted to. He conceded that. Also surely the widow of his former friend and client might reasonably expect him to cooperate in her effort to discover the truth. Wasn’t that so?

He looked uncomfortable. He saw that a pencil on his desk was not in its proper place, and moved it, and studied it a while to decide if that was the best spot after all. At length he came back to me.

“It’s like this, Mr. Goodwin,” he piped. “I sympathize deeply with Mrs. Karnow, of course. But any obligation I am under is not to her, but to my late friend and client, Sidney Karnow. I certainly will do anything I can to help discover the truth, but it is justifiable to suppose that in employing Nero Wolfe Mrs. Karnow’s primary purpose, if not her sole purpose, is to save Paul Aubry. As an officer of the law I cannot conscientiously participate in that. I am not Aubry’s attorney. I beg you to understand.”

I kept after him. He stood pat. Finally, following instructions from Wolfe, I put a question to him.

“I suppose,” I said, “you won’t mind helping to clear up a detail. At a conference in this room last Friday afternoon Aubry left one of his business cards on
your desk. It was there when he left. What happened to it?”

He cocked his head and frowned. “Here on my desk?”

“Right.”

The frown deepened. “I’m trying to remember— yes, I do remember. He suggested I might phone him later, and he put it there.”

“What happened to it?”

“I don’t know.”

“Did you phone him?”

“No. As it turned out, there was no occasion to.”

“Would you mind seeing if the card is around? It’s fairly important.”

“Why is it important?”

“That’s a long story. But I would like very much to see that card. Will you take a look?”

He wasn’t enthusiastic about it, but he obliged. He looked among and under things on top of his desk, including the blotter, in the desk drawers, and around the room some—as, for instance, on top of a filing cabinet. I got down on my knees to see under the desk. No card.

I scrambled to my feet. “May I ask your secretary?”

“What’s this all about?” he demanded.

“Nothing you would care to participate in. But the easiest way to get rid of me is to humor me on this one little detail.”

He lifted the phone and spoke to it, and in a moment the door opened and the employee entered. He told her I wanted to ask her something, and I did so. She said she knew nothing about any card of Paul Aubry’s. She had never seen one, on Beebe’s desk or
anywhere else, last Friday or any other day. That settled, she backed out, pulling the door with her.

“It’s a little discouraging,” I told Beebe. “I was counting on collecting that card. Are you sure you don’t remember seeing one of the others pick it up?”

“I’ve told you all I remember—that Aubry put a card on my desk.”

“Was there an opportunity for one of them to pick it up without your noticing?”

“There might have been. I don’t know what you’re trying to establish, Mr. Goodwin, but I will not be led by you to a commitment, even here privately. Probably during the meeting here on Friday I had occasion to leave this chair to get something from my files. I won’t say that gave someone an opportunity to remove something from my desk, but I can’t prohibit you from saying so.” He got to his feet. “I’m sorry I can’t be more helpful.”

“So am I,” I said emphatically.

I arose and turned to go, but halfway to the door his voice came. “Mr. Goodwin.”

I turned. He had left his chair and was standing at the end of the desk, stiff and straight. “I’m a lawyer,” he said in a different tone, “but I am also a man. Speaking as a man, I ask you to consider my position. My friend and client has been murdered, and the police are apparently convinced that they have the murderer in custody. Nero Wolfe, acting for Mrs. Karnow, wants to prove them wrong. His only hope of success is to fasten the guilt elsewhere. Isn’t that the situation?”

“Roughly, yes.”

“And you ask me to cooperate. You mentioned a conference in this office last Friday. Besides myself, there were five people here—you know who they were. None of them was, or is, my client. They were all
dismayed by the return of Sidney Karnow alive. They were all in dread of personal financial calamity. They all asked me, one way or another, to intercede for them. I have of course given this information to the police, and I see no impropriety in my giving it also to Nero Wolfe. Beyond that I have absolutely no information or evidence that could possibly help him. I tell you frankly, if Paul Aubry is guilty I hope he is convicted and punished; but if one of the others is guilty I hope he—or she—is punished, and if I knew anything operant to that end I certainly would not withhold it.”

He lifted a hand and dropped it. “All I’m trying to say—as a lawyer I’m not supposed to be vindictive, but as a man perhaps I am a little. Whoever killed Sidney Karnow should be punished.” He turned and went back to his chair.

“A damn fine sentiment,” I agreed, and left him.

On the way to the next customer I found a booth and phoned Wolfe a report. All I got in return was a series of grunts.

The house Mrs. Savage had bought was in the Sixties, over east of Lexington Avenue. I am not an expert on Manhattan real estate, but after a look at the narrow gray brick three-layer item my guess was that it had set her back not more than a tenth of her three hundred thousand, not counting the mortgage. When there was no answer to my rings I felt cheated. I hadn’t expected anything as lavish as a dolled-up butler, but not even a maid to receive detectives?

It was only a ten-minute walk to the Park Avenue address of Mr. and Mrs. Norman Horne. My luck stayed stubborn. The hallman said they were both out, phoned up at my request, and got no answer.

I like to walk around Manhattan, catching glimpses of its wild life, the pigeons and cats and girls, but that
day I overdid it, back and forth between my two objectives. Finally, from an ambush in a hamburger hell on Sixty-eighth Street, where I was sipping a glass of milk, I saw Aunt Margaret navigate the sidewalk across the street and enter the gray brick. I finished the milk, crossed over, and pushed the button.

She opened the door a few inches, thought she saw a journalist, said, “I have nothing to say,” and would have closed the door if it hadn’t been for my foot.

“Wait a minute,” I objected. “We’ve been introduced—by your daughter, this morning. The name is Archie Goodwin.”

She let the door come another inch for a better view of me, and the pressure of my foot kept it going. I crossed the threshold.

“Of course,” she said. “We were rude to you, weren’t we? The reason I said I have nothing to say, they tell me that’s what I must say to everybody, but it’s quite true that my daughter introduced you, and we were rude. What do you want?”

She sounded to me like a godsend. If I could kidnap her and get her down to the office, and phone the rest of them that we had her and she was being very helpful, it was a good bet that they would come on the run to yank her out of our clutches.

I gave her a friendly eye and a warm smile. “I’ll tell you, Mrs. Savage. As your daughter told you, I work for Nero Wolfe. He thinks there are some aspects of this situation that haven’t been sufficiently considered. To mention only one, there’s the legal principle that a criminal may not profit by his crime. If it should be proved that Aubry killed your nephew, and that Mrs. Karnow was an accessory, what happens to her half of the estate? Does it go to you and your son and daughter, or what? That’s the sort of thing Mr. Wolfe wants
to discuss with you. If you’ll come on down to his office with me, he’s waiting there for you. He wants to know how you feel about it, and he wants your advice. It will only take us—”

A roar came from above. “What’s going on, Mumsy?”

Heavy feet were descending stairs behind Mrs. Savage in a hurry. She turned. “Oh, Dickie? I supposed you were asleep.”

He was in a silk dressing gown that must have accounted for at least two Cs of Cousin Sidney’s dough. I could have choked him. He had been there all the time. After ignoring all my bell ringing for the past two hours, here he was horning in just when I was getting a good start on a snatch.

“You remember Mr. Goodwin,” his mother was telling him. “Down at that place this morning? He wants to take me to see Nero Wolfe. Mr. Wolfe wants to ask my advice about a very interesting point. I think I should go, I really do.”

“I don’t,” Dick said bluntly.

“But Dickie,” she appealed, “I’m sure you agree that we should do all we can to get this awful business over and done with!”

“Sure I do,” he conceded. “God knows I do. But how it could help for you to go and discuss it with a private detective—No, I don’t see it.”

They looked at each other. The mutual resemblance was so remarkable that you might say they had the same face, allowing for the difference in age; and also they were built alike. Her bulk was more bone and meat than fat, and so was his.

When she spoke I got a suspicion that I had misjudged her. Her tone was new, dry and cool and meaningful. “I think I ought to go,” she said.

He appealed now. “Please, Mumsy. At least we can talk it over. You can go later, after dinner.” He turned to me. “Could she see Wolfe this evening?”

“She could,” I admitted. “Now would be better.”

“I really am tired,” she told me. Her tone was back to what might have been normal. “All this awful business. After dinner would be better. What is the address?”

I got my wallet, took out a card, and handed it to her. “By the way,” I observed, “that reminds me. At that meeting last Friday at Mr. Beebe’s office, Aubry put one of his cards on Beebe’s desk and left it there. Do you happen to remember what became of it?”

Mrs. Savage said promptly, “I remember he took out a card, but I don’t—”

“Hold it,” Dick barked at her, gripping her arm so hard that she winced. “Go upstairs.”

She tried to twist loose, found it wouldn’t work, and leveled her eyes at him to stare him off. That didn’t work either. His eyes were as level as hers, and harder and meaner. Four seconds of it was enough for her. When he turned her around she didn’t resist, and without a word she walked to the stairs and started up. He faced me and demanded, “What’s this about a card?”

“What I said. Aubry put one on Beebe’s desk—”

“Who says he did?”

“Aubry.”

“Yeah? A guy in for murder? Come again.”

“Glad to. Beebe says so too.”

Dick snorted. “That little louse? That punk?” He lifted a hand to tap my chest with a finger, but a short backward step took me out of range. “Listen, brother. If you and your boss think you can frame an out for Aubry don’t let me stop you, but don’t come trying to work my mother in, or me either. Is that plain?”

“I merely want to know—”

“The way out,” he said rudely, and strode to the door and opened it. Since I stay where I’m not wanted only when there is a chance of gaining something, I took advantage of his courtesy and passed on through to the sidewalk.