Rex Stout_Nero Wolfe 07 (27 page)

When I reached them he was still sitting in his chair with a beer bottle in each hand and she was on the floor back of his chair, flat on the floor, with her legs twitching spasmodically. I looked at him for blood and didn’t see any. Fred Durkin busted in from the front room. Fritz came running from the kitchen. Father and son stood there white and speechless. I couldn’t see anything wrong with Wolfe, but I asked him in a voice that sounded funny to me:

“Did she get you?”

“No!” he bellowed. He couldn’t get up because her body against his chair kept him from shoving it back to make room.

I knelt down to take a look at her. Her legs had stopped twitching. I couldn’t feel any heart. It was close quarters, with her there between Wolfe’s chair and the wall, and I squirmed around to get on the other side of her. As I did so I heard a voice from the middle of the room:

“Excuse me for walking right in, Mr. Wolfe, but the door was standing open. I was on my way uptown and I dropped in to say that we may expect a ruling from the attorney general on that point in about a week—the matter of registration as the agent of a foreign principal when the—”

I raised myself up enough to see the face of Stahl the G-man looking polite but stern. Then I sat back on my heels and howled with laughter.

W
olfe said in a tone of exasperation, “Fritz tells me nothing on your tray was touched. Confound it, you have to eat something!”

Carla shook her head. “I can’t. I’m sorry. I can’t.”

I had brought her down to the office. The clock on the wall said 11:20. The chairs were back in place.

Wolfe sighed. “It’s nearly midnight. Mr. Goodwin is yawning. You may go now whenever you want to. Or I’ll ask one or two questions if you feel like telling the truth.”

“I can tell the truth—now.”

“It would have been just as well …”His massive shoulders went up a sixteenth of an inch and down again. “I would like to know if you were aware that that woman was a maniac.”

“But she wasn’t—” Carla stopped for repairs to her voice. “I never had any idea …” Her hand fluttered and dropped again to her lap.

“Were you in fact her friend?”

“Not—no, not her friend. It wasn’t like that. When Mrs. Campbell died I was left dependent on the Donevitch family. Then Prince Stefan married her and she came there and in no time she was head of things.
She treated me as well as I could expect, since I was not a Donevitch. I didn’t dislike her. I was a little afraid of her and so was everybody else, even Prince Stefan. When she decided to come to America she selected me to come with her, and I thought then that the reason she did that was because she knew about you and she thought she might need to use you. One reason I thought that was because she told me to bring that adoption paper along—”

“Yes. Excuse me. Get it, Archie.”

I went to the safe and dug it out and handed it to him. He unfolded it to glance at it, folded it up again, and passed it over to her. She looked at it a second as if she was afraid it might bite, and then reached out and took it.

“I came with her because I had to—and anyway I wanted to,” she went on in a better voice. “It was an adventure to come to America. I knew all about—what she was coming for. She trusted me. I knew she would do dangerous things—but I never thought of anything like murder as a thing she would do. When Ludlow was killed I suspected she had done it, but I didn’t know. I asked her last night, and she told me I was a fool. Then when I went there this morning and saw Faber, of course I knew she had done that and the other one too. I was frightened and I couldn’t think. I couldn’t answer questions about her—I couldn’t betray her—but I couldn’t lie for her any more either. I tried to run away—and I couldn’t use my head—and in a strange country—and I was stupid—”

She stopped, and her hand fluttered and fell to her lap again.

In a moment Wolfe said gruffly, “It is faintly encouraging that you are aware that you were stupid.”

She offered no comment. He demanded:

“What are you going to do?”

“I …” She shook her head. “I don’t know.”

“Well, I suppose you are legally my daughter. That puts some responsibility on me.”

Her chin went up. “I’m not asking any—”

“Pfui! Don’t. I know. Confound it, you’ve been dependent on someone all your life, haven’t you? Are you going back to Yugoslavia?”

“No.”

“Oh. You’re not.”

“No.”

“What do you want to do, stay in America?”

“Yes.”

“As a spy for the Donevitch gang?”

There was a flash in her eye. “No!”

“Where are you going to sleep tonight? In that apartment on 38th Street?”

“Why, I …” A shiver went over her. “No,” she said, “I … I don’t think I could. I couldn’t go back there. Somewhere else. Anywhere. I have a little money.” She got to her feet. “I can go—”

“Nonsense. You’d get run over or fall into a hole. You haven’t eaten anything and your brain isn’t working. I hope it turns out that you’ve got one. I’ll have Fritz fix up another tray for you—”

“No, I couldn’t, really I couldn’t …”

“Well, you must sleep and in the morning you must eat. You are in no condition now, anyway, to make any sort of intelligent decision. We’ll discuss it tomorrow. If you decide to stay in America and not to tear that paper up I suppose your name will be Carla Wolfe. In that case—Archie, what the devil are you grinning about? Baboon! Take Miss—take my—take her upstairs to the south room! And tell her if she under
takes to use the fire escape not to tumble through my window as she goes by!”

I arose. “Come on, Miss my Carla.”

Ten minutes later I went back to the office. I hadn’t heard the elevator so I knew he was still there. Not only was he still there but he had just received a fresh consignment of beer.

I took a good stretch accompanied by a yawn. “Well,” I observed good-naturedly, “that was a damn profitable case. You turned loose of about four centuries not counting loss of brain tissue, and what you got out of it was one shapely responsibility and nothing else.”

He put down his empty glass and said nothing.

“There is one thing,” I announced, “that I would like to have cleared up now, once and for all. I was at fault in one respect and only one. I should not have left the front door ajar when I went down to the sidewalk when Cramer called me. Aside from that, I couldn’t help it. The nervy little devil had come along to the Barretts’ chauffeur five minutes before we went out and told him she was supposed to meet his employer there, and he opened the door for her so she could wait inside the car. Two dicks saw it, though they didn’t recognize her in the dim light, and they kindly said nothing about it. She was out of the car, behind my back, and starting up the steps before I knew she was there. There wasn’t a chance in the world of catching her.”

Wolfe shrugged. “I managed without you,” he murmured in an absolutely insufferable tone.

I gritted my teeth, and as soon as I had got it swallowed, yawned. “Okay,” I said sleepily. “There are, however, one or two little questions. What was in the envelope you gave that dick to give her?”

“Nothing. Only a sentence saying that she was not my client, and, under the terms as stated, never had been.”

“And what was it she said as she went out?
‘Teega mee bornie roosa,’
or something like that.”

“That was her native tongue.”

“Yeah. What does it mean?”

“‘Over my dead body.’”

“Is that so.” I humphed. “She called the turn then. I guess that’s all I need, except maybe one thing. Such items as her claiming your help by using Carta’s adoption paper for herself—I get all that. But I’ll be darned if I can see why Ludlow said she went to the locker room to get his cigarettes. Him a British spy and her a Balkan princess? Why did he—”

“He didn’t. She went to the locker room to steal something from his coat. Probably that paper which she sent here the next morning to be hid in a safe place, because he had previously stolen it from her. And he was letting her know that he knew that.”

Wolfe sighed, pushed back his chair, and manipulated himself to his feet. “I’m going to bed.” He got halfway to the door, but stopped again. “By the way, remind me tomorrow to ask Mr. Cramer for that hundred dollars. I wish I could cure myself of those idiotic romantic gestures.”

“Oh, that hundred?” I patted my pocket. “I’ve already got it. That was the first thing I did.”

Now, for the first time ever, enjoy a peek into the life of Nero Wolfe’s creator, Rex Stout, courtesy of the Stout Estate. Pulled from Rex Stout’s own archives, here are rarely seen, some never-before-published memorabilia. Each title in “The Rex Stout Library” will offer an exclusive look into the life of the man who gave Nero Wolfe life.

Over My Dead Body

Following is a short review of
Over My Dead Body
from the
Saturday Review
.

Their verdict? “Swell”!