Rex Stout_Nero Wolfe 07 (12 page)

“Any trail?”

“They’re after it.”

“Pfui.” Wolfe looked around at us. “Well. Here we are. Under the circumstances, the best thing we can do is to proceed without her.”

“Go ahead,” Cramer said grimly.

Wolfe leaned back and half closed his eyes and Miss Tormic was possibly unaware that he was watching her like a hawk. “As I say, Madame Zorka phoned here at 11:21. She stated that shortly after the murder was discovered, when everyone was together up there in the office, she saw Miss Tormic put something into the pocket of Mr. Goodwin’s coat, which was hanging on a rack. She hadn’t mentioned the incident to the police and her conscience was bothering her because she thinks murder is terrible. So she had decided to phone Mr. Goodwin and tell him that she intended to inform the police at once—”

Cramer barked at Neya, “What did you put in Goodwin’s pocket?”

She kept her eyes leveled at Wolfe and paid no attention to him.

Wolfe said in his tone of authority, “Just a moment. I arranged this meeting and I’m handling it. Archie told Madame Zorka he would get Miss Tormic and go to see her. Of course he was stalling. He went to the hall to investigate, and there was something in the
pocket of his overcoat which he had not put there. He didn’t take it out. He left it there undisturbed, and it was decided to phone you and get Miss Tormic and Madame Zorka down here. That’s all so far. Archie, go get the coat.”

I went to the hall and removed it from the hanger and took it back and laid it on Wolfe’s desk, with the guilty pocket uppermost.

Wolfe said, “Please, Mr. Cramer. It seemed preferable that you should have the first look at it.”

Even when he said that he didn’t look at Cramer, but kept watching Neya. Cramer advanced and stuck his hand in the pocket and pulled the thing out. I was right at his elbow, beside myself with curiosity as to what it might be. He stared at the rolled-up bunch of canvas clenched in his fist, then put it down on the desk and unrolled it. The stains were now the color of dark mahogany. As the little metal doodad was disclosed to our gaze I permitted myself an ejaculation of astonishment.

Wolfe said, “I suspected that. Your two missing objects, Mr. Cramer. Aren’t they?”

Cramer said to me through his teeth, “So that’s why you took a powder.”

I gave him a cold hard eye. “Guess again. You heard what Mr. Wolfe said—”

He wheeled on Neya. “You!” he said with his jaw still clamped. “Let’s have it.” He grabbed the glove, with the
col de mort
nested in the palm, and stuck it under her nose. “Did you put that in Goodwin’s pocket?”

She nodded her head. “Yes, I did.”

That undamped his jaw. He goggled at her and I guess I joined him. She was all right. Her hands were clasped tight on her lap and she sat stiff, but she
certainly showed no signs of hysteria. Cramer opened his mouth to speak, then shut it again, tramped to the door and pulled it open and bellowed:

“Stebbins! Come here!”

Purley came trotting, with a startled and embarrassed look on his big face because he was trying to chew and swallow at the same time. Cramer motioned to the chair he had been occupying and growled, “Sit down there and take your notebook.”

“Wait a minute,” Wolfe put in. “Are you charging Miss Tormic?”

“No.” Cramer didn’t look at him. “I’m asking her. Any objections? If so, I can take her downtown.”

“None at all. I prefer it here. We’re four to two.”

“I don’t care if you’re a hundred to two.” Cramer exhibited the objects to the sergeant. “Put down that I showed her this canvas gauntlet and this steel thing with a point and asked her if she put them in Goodwin’s overcoat pocket and she replied, ‘Yes, I did.’” He confronted Neya Tormic. “Now. You state that you put these two things into Goodwin’s overcoat pocket while it was hanging on a rack in the office of Miltan’s studio not long after Ludlow’s dead body was discovered. Is that right?”

“Yes.”

“Did you kill Percy Ludlow?”

She said in a good clear voice, “You’ve asked me that before and I said no.”

Carla Lovchen blurted, “She can explain—”

“Shut up please!—Do you still say no?”

“Yes.”

“Did you take this steel thing off of the end of the épée after it had gone through Ludlow’s chest?”

“No.”

“Did you take it off the épée with this glove on
your hand and then discover there was blood on the glove and you would have to get rid of both of them?”

“No. I never—”

“When did you take this thing out of the cabinet in Miltan’s office?”

“I didn’t take it out.”

“You put these two things in Goodwin’s pocket, didn’t you?”

“Yes.”

“You had them then, didn’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Where did you get them?”

“I found them in the pocket of my robe—the green robe I put on over my fencing costume.”

“What do you mean, you found them?”

“I just mean that. Isn’t that a good word? Found?”

“Sure, it’s a swell word. It’s a beaut. How and when and why did you find them?”

“Just a moment, Mr. Cramer.” It was Wolfe, in a tone that meant business. “Miss Tormic is a stranger in this country. Either I advise her to say nothing whatever and I get a lawyer for her, or I will tell her one or two things myself. At this point.”

“What do you want to tell her?”

“You will hear it.” Wolfe wiggled a finger. “Miss Tormic. It is unlikely that you will be charged with murder as long as the alibi furnished by Mr. Faber is unimpeached. That is, remains good. You can, however, be put under arrest as a material witness—a device to prevent you from running away—and then be released under a bond to appear when needed. You have been asked to give a circumstantial account of your connection with the instrument of murder, which you have admitted was in your possession shortly after the crime was committed. Your words are being
taken down by a stenographer. If you give that account, you will be committed to it as the truth, so it had better be the truth. If you refuse to give it, you will probably be arrested as a material witness. You must decide for yourself. Have I made it clear?”

“Yes,” she said, and smiled at him. “I think I understand that all right. There’s no reason why I shouldn’t tell the truth—it’s the only thing I can do, now.” She shifted her eyes to Cramer. “It was in the office when we were all in there, waiting for the police to come. I put my hand in the pocket of my robe and there was something in there. It’s a big pocket, quite big. I started to pull it out to see what it was, but the feel of it told me it must be a fencing glove. I tried to think what to do. I knew it shouldn’t be there—I mean I knew I hadn’t put it there. For a minute I was scared, but I made myself think. Mr. Ludlow had been killed in the fencing room where I had been fencing with him, and there I was with a wadded-up glove in my pocket, and if we were searched …” She upturned a palm. “I looked around for a place to put it and saw Mr. Goodwin’s coat. I knew it must be his, because the others were all upstairs in their lockers, and I knew he had come there anyway to get me out of trouble—so I went over to it and when I thought no one was looking I took it out of my pocket and put it in his.”

“Very
much obliged—”

“Shut up, Goodwin! Do you realize what you’re trying to tell me, Miss Tormic?”

“I … I think I do.”

“You’re trying to tell me that you had a bulky thing like that in your pocket and didn’t know it.”

“So am I,” I put in. “The same goes for me.”

“I know damn well it does! Did I ask you to close your trap? What about it, Miss Tormic?”

She shook her head. “I don’t know—of course I was excited. It’s a loose robe and it’s a big pocket. I had it on—you saw it.”

“Yeah, I saw it. So you admit you concealed evidence of a crime?”

“Is that … wrong?”

“Hell, no. Oh, my, no. And do you know who put it in your pocket?”

“No.”

“Of course you don’t. Or when?”

“No.” Neya frowned. “I have thought about that. I left the robe in the locker room, lying on a bench, when I went to the end room to fence. After I left Mr. Ludlow there and met Mr. Faber in the hall, I stopped in the locker room to leave my pad and glove and mask, and put on the robe and went with Mr. Faber to the alcove. Whoever put the glove in my pocket, I don’t think they did it until afterwards, because I think I would have noticed it. After the porter started to yell, we were all running around and jostling against each other—and I suppose someone did it then … that’s the only way I can explain how it might have happened—”

“And you knew nothing about it.”

“I knew nothing about it until I felt something in my pocket there in the office.”

“And you were scared. You were just simply perfectly innocent.”

“Yes. I was. I am.”

“Sure. But though you were perfectly innocent, you didn’t tell the police about it, and you weren’t going to tell about it, and you never would have told about it, if Madame Zorka hadn’t reported that she
saw you do it and you were afraid to deny it!” He was yapping into her face at a range of thirty inches. “Huh?”

“I—” She swallowed. “I think I might. But the way I thought about it, I thought Mr. Goodwin would find it in his pocket and turn it over to you, and it wouldn’t matter whether you knew it had ever been in my pocket or not.”

“Then you thought wrong. Mr. Goodwin doesn’t turn things over to the police. Mr. Goodwin climbs a fence and runs home to papa and says see what I got, and papa says—”

“Nonsense!” Wolfe cut in sharply. “We’ll dispose of that point now. You know what I told you; I don’t need to repeat it. Granted that your supposititious assumption is correct, that Archie knew it was in his pocket and ran away with it, and that we concealed it from you, you can’t possibly establish it as a fact, so why the devil waste time harping on it? Especially in view of a fact that is established, that when Madame Zorka’s phone call caused us to investigate the overcoat pocket, we immediately communicated with you.”

“You had to!”

Wolfe grimaced. “I don’t know. Had to? Ingenuity can nearly always create an alternative if none exists. Anyway, we did. And if we hadn’t, but had proceeded without you, your two missing objects would still be missing, for when Archie and Miss Tormic called on Madame Zorka she would have been gone, and the compulsion of her threatened exposure would have been removed. So you owe your possession of those two objects to us. You owe your knowledge of a suspicious circumstance, Madame Zorka’s flight with a bag and suitcase, to us. And you owe your knowledge of the manner in which the criminal disposed of the
glove and
col de mort
to the courageous candor of my client.”

Cramer, standing, stared down at him, and as far as I could see his face was not glowing with gratitude.

He said, “So she’s your client, is she?”

“I told you so.”

“You said tentatively. You said you’d decide when you had met her.”

“I have met her.”

“All right, you’ve met her. Is she your client?”

“She is.”

Cramer hesitated, then turned slowly and looked down at Neya. His gaze had concentration, but no acute hostility; and I suppressed a grin. I knew what was eating him. He was well aware that the time had yet to come when he would successfully pin a murder charge on any man, woman or child whom Nero Wolfe had accepted as a client, and he was strongly tempted to call it a day then and there as far as Neya Tormic was concerned and throw in another line. He even, half unconsciously, favored Carla Lovchen with a sidewise suspicious glance, but he returned to Neya and, after a moment, wheeled again to Wolfe.

“Faber gives her an alibi. Okay. But you don’t need to be told that an alibi works both ways. What if Faber thought she needed one and so he provided it? And she thought she needed it to, and accepted it and confirmed it? Without maybe realizing that while Faber was giving her an alibi, what he was really doing was arranging one for himself?”

Wolfe nodded. “An old trick, but still a good one. That’s quite possible, of course. Will you have some beer?”

“No.”

“You, Miss Tormic, Miss Lovchen?”

He got their declinations, pressed the button and went on. “This thing’s messy, Mr. Cramer. It looks as if I’m going to have to find out who killed Mr. Ludlow, unless you do it first yourself. You certainly aren’t going to get anywhere badgering my client. Look at her. I’ll have a little talk with her after you leave, and one thing I shall tell her is to hang onto the Faber alibi, for the present, even if it was fabricated by him. True, it protects Faber, but it also protects her. If and when you can point a suspicion at Faber, especially a motive, let me know and we’ll discuss the alibi business.”

“You suspect her of lying yourself!”

“Not specifically. Anyone would tell a lie, at least by acquiescence, rather than stand trial for murder. By the way, about this Mr. Faber. You are entirely wrong in your suspicion that he wasn’t a stranger to me. I never saw him or heard of him in my life before today. Is he by any chance another confidential government agent?”

Cramer eyed him. “How did you know that if he was such a stranger to you?”

“I didn’t. Mere conjecture. If I had known it I wouldn’t have asked. Not British, is he?”

“No.”

“Of course not. He might as well display an emblem on an arm band. Archie and I don’t like him. It’s a pity my client’s alibi depends on him; I would prefer to establish her innocence without that. Do you suppose the attack on Ludlow was the eagle clawing the lion?”

“I don’t suppose. It was a human being murdering a man.”

“Yes, it was that, all right.” Wolfe glanced up at the clock. “It’s well past midnight, and I want to have a
little talk with Miss Tormic. Is there anything else you want to ask her?”

“She’s an alien. I ought to have her under bond.”

“She won’t skip, at least not tonight, and we can arrange for the bond tomorrow if you insist on it.”

Cramer grunted. “She’s important. She had the murder weapon in her possession. I’d like to have her come to my office tomorrow morning at nine o’clock and see Lieutenant Rowcliff.”