The Doorbell Rang (6 page)

“I won’t tolerate this.”

I raised an eyebrow. “I could write it.”

“Pfui. Two points. One, the risk is extremely slight. Two, we can use it. As you talk you can insert comments or statements at will which I am to disregard, notifying me by raising a finger. I shall do the same. Of course making no reference to Mr Cramer; we can’t risk that; and maintaining our conclusion that the FBI killed that man, and we intend to establish it.”

“But actually we don’t.”

“Certainly not.” He turned and went.

So I was foxed. His house, his office, and his chair. But I had to admit, as I mounted the steps, that pigheaded as he was, it wasn’t a bad idea. If they really had an electronic ear on the office, which I didn’t believe, it might even be a damned good idea. When I entered the office he was back at his desk and I went to mine, and as I sat he said, “Well?”

He should have had a finger raised. He never wastes breath by saying “Well?” when I return from an errand; he merely puts the book down, or the beer glass, and is ready for me to speak.

I raised a finger. “Your guess that they might have hit on the FBI theory at the Gazette, and be working on it, wasn’t so good.” I lowered the finger. “Lon Cohen didn’t mention it, so I didn’t. They haven’t got a theory. He let me go through the files, and we talked, and I got a dozen pages of names and assorted details, some of which might possibly be useful.” I raised a finger. “I’ll type it up at the usual five dollars a page.” I lowered the finger. “Next I phoned Mrs David Althaus from a booth, and she said she would see me, and I went. Park Avenue in the Eighties, tenth-floor apartment, all the trimmings you would expect. Pictures okay. I won’t describe her because you’ll see her. She quotes Leviticus and Aristotle.” Finger raised. “I wanted to quote Plato but couldn’t work it in.” Finger lowered. “I had asked her on the phone to ask Marian Hinckley to come, and she said she would be there soon. She said she had understood me to say on the phone that her son had been killed by an agent of the FBI and was that correct. From there on you had better have it verbatim.”

I gave it to him, straight through, knowing that I had said nothing we wouldn’t be willing for the FBI to hear. Leaning back with his eyes closed, he wouldn’t have been able to see a raised finger, so I couldn’t make any insertions. When I finished he grunted, opened his eyes, and said, “It’s bad enough when you know there’s a needle in the haystack. When you don’t even-“

The doorbell rang. Going to the hall for a look, I saw a G-man on the stoop. Not that I recognized him, but it must be-the right age, the broad shoulders, the manly mug with a firm jaw, the neat dark gray coat. I went and opened the door the two inches allowed by the chain bolt and said, “Yes, sir?”

He blurted through the crack, “My name’s Quayle and I want to see Nero Wolfe!”

“Spell it, please?”

“Timothy Quayle! Q,U,A,Y,L,E!”

“Mr Wolfe is engaged. I’ll see.”

I went to the office door. “One of the names in my notebook. Timothy Quayle. Senior editor at Tick-Tock magazine. The hero type. He slugged a reporter who was annoying Marian Hinckley. She must have phoned him about you soon after I left.”

“No,” he growled.

“It’s half an hour till dinner. Are you in the middle of a chapter?”

He glowered at me. “Bring him.”

I returned to the front, slid the bolt, and swung the door open, and he entered. As I was shutting the door he told me I was Archie Goodwin, and I conceded it, took care of his coat and hat, and led him to the office. Three steps in he stopped to glance around, aimed the glance at Wolfe, and demanded, “Did you get my name?”

Wolfe nodded. “Mr Quayle.”

He advanced to the desk. “I am a friend of Miss Marian Hinckley. I want to know what kind of a game you’re playing. I want an explanation.”

“Bah,” Wolfe said.

“Don’t bah me! What are you up to?”

“This is ridiculous,” Wolfe said. “I like eyes at a level. If you can only blather at me, Mr Goodwin will put you out. If you will take that chair, change your tone, and give me an acceptable reason why I should account to you, I may listen.”

Quayle opened his mouth and shut it again. He turned his head to look at me, there on my feet, apparently to see if I was man enough. I would have liked it just as well if he had decided I wasn’t, for after that night and day I would have welcomed an excuse to twist another arm. But he vetoed it, went to the red leather chair and sat, and scowled at Wolfe. “I know about you,” he said. Not so blathery, but not at all sociable. “I know how you operate. If you want to hook Mrs Althaus for some change, that’s her lookout, but you’re not going to drag Miss Hinckley in. I don’t intend-“

“Archie,” Wolfe snapped. “Put him out. Fritz will open the door.” He pushed a button.

I stepped to about arm’s length from the red leather chair and stood looking down at the hero. Fritz came, and Wolfe told him to hold the front door open, and he went.

Quayle’s situation was bad. With me standing there in front of him, if he started to leave the chair I could get about any hold I wanted while he was coming up. But my situation was bad too. Removing a 180-pound man from a padded armchair is a problem, and he had savvy enough to stay put, leaning back. But his feet weren’t pulled in enough. I started my hands for his shoulders, then dived and got his ankles and yanked and kept going, and had him in the hall, on his back, before he could even try to counter, and then the damn fool tried to turn to get hand leverage on the floor. At the front door I braked when Fritz got his arms and held them down.

“There’s snow on the stoop,” I said. “If I let you up and give you your hat and coat, just walk out. I know more tricks than you do. Right?”

“Yes. You goddam goon.”

“Goodwin. You left out the D, W, I, but I’ll overlook it. All right, Fritz.”

We let go, and he scrambled to his feet. Fritz got his coat from the rack, but he said, “I want to go back in. I’m going to ask him something.”

“No. You have bad manners. We’d have to bounce you again.”

“No you wouldn’t. I want to ask him something.”

“Politely. Tactfully.”

“Yes.”

I shut the door. “You can have two minutes. Don’t sit down, don’t raise your voice, and don’t use words like ‘goon.’ Lead the way, Fritz.”

We filed down the hall and in, Fritz in front and me in the rear. Wolfe, whose good ears hear what is said in the hall, gave him a cold eye as he stopped short of the desk, surrounded by Fritz and me.

“You wanted an acceptable reason,” he told Wolfe. “As I said, I am a friend of Miss Hinckley. A good enough friend so that she called me on the phone to tell me about Goodwin-what he said to her and Mrs Althaus. I advised her not to come here this evening, but she’s coming. At nine o’clock?”

“Yes.”

“Then I’m going-” He stopped. That wasn’t the way. It came hard, but he managed it. “I want to be here. Will you& May I come?”

“If you control yourself.”

“I will.”

“Time’s up,” I said, and took his arm to turn him.

At ten minutes past nine in the evening of that long day I went to the kitchen. Wolfe was at the center table with Fritz, arguing about the number of juniper berries to put in a marinade for venison loin chops. Knowing that that could go on and on, I said, “Excuse me. They’re all here, and more. David Althaus, the father, came along. He’s the bald one, to your right at the back. Also a lawyer named Bernard Fromm, to your left at the back. Long-headed and hard-eyed.”

Wolfe frowned. “I don’t want him.”

“Of course not. Shall I tell him so?”

“Confound it.” He turned to Fritz. “Very well, proceed. I say three, but proceed as you will. If you put in five I won’t even have to taste it; the smell will tell me. With four it might be palatable.” He gave me a nod and I headed for the office, and he followed.

He circled around Mrs Althaus in the red leather chair and stood while I pronounced names. There were two rows of yellow chairs, with Vincent Yannack, Marian Hinckley, and Timothy Quayle in front, and David Althaus and Bernard Fromm in the rear. That put Quayle nearest me, which had seemed advisable. Wolfe sat, sent his eyes left to right and back again, and spoke. “I should tell you that it may be that with an electronic eavesdropping device agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation hear everything that is said in this room. Mr Goodwin and I think it unlikely, but it is quite possible. I feel that you-“

“Why would they?” Fromm the lawyer. The courtroom tone, cross-examination.

“That will appear, Mr Fromm. I feel that you should be aware of that possibility, however remote. Now I beg you to indulge me. I’m going to talk a while. I can expect you to help further my interest only if I can demonstrate that your interest runs with mine. You are the father, the mother, the fiancee, and the associates of a man who was murdered seven weeks ago, and the murderer has not been exposed. I intend to expose him. I intend to establish that Morris Althaus was killed by an agent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. That intention-“

They made two demands simultaneously. Yarmack demanded, “How?” and Fromm demanded, “Why?”

Wolfe nodded. “That intention stands on two legs. Recently I undertook a job which made it necessary for me to make inquiries regarding certain activities of the FBI, and they retaliated immediately by trying to have me deprived of my license as a private investigator. They may succeed; but even if they do, as a private citizen I can pursue an investigation in my private interest, and it will certainly be in my interest to discredit their pretension that they are faultless champions of law and justice. That’s one leg. The other leg is my long-standing grievance against the Homicide Squad of the New York Police Department. They too have pretensions. On numerous occasions they have hampered my legitimate activities. They have threatened more than once to prosecute me for withholding evidence or obstructing justice. It would be gratifying to me to reciprocate, to demonstrate that they know or suspect that the FBI is implicated in a murder and they are obstructing justice. That would also-“

“You’re talking plenty,” Fromm cut in. “Can you back it up?”

“By inference, yes. The police and the District Attorney know that Morris Althaus had been collecting material for an article about the FBI, but they found no such material in his apartment. Mr Yarmack. I believe you were involved in that project?”

Vincent Yarmack was more my idea of a senior editor than Timothy Quayle-round sloping shoulders, tight little mouth, and eyes so pale you had to guess they were there behind the black-rimmed cheaters.

“I was,” he said in a voice that was close to a squeak.

“And Mr Althaus had collected material?”

“Certainly.”

“Had he turned it over to you, or was it in his possession?”

“I thought it was in his possession. But I have been told by the police that there was nothing about the FBI in his apartment.”

“Didn’t you draw an inference from that?”

“Well& one inference was obvious, that someone had taken it. It wasn’t likely that Morris had put it somewhere else.”

“Mrs Althaus told Mr Goodwin this afternoon that you suspected it was the FBI. Is that correct?”

Yarmack turned his head for a glance at Mrs Althaus, and back to Wolfe. “I may have given her that impression in a private conversation. This conversation isn’t very private, according to you.”

Wolfe grunted. “I said the eavesdropping is possible but not verified. If you drew that inference, certainly the police would.” His eyes moved. “Wouldn’t they, Mr Fromm?”

The lawyer nodded. “Presumably. But that doesn’t warrant a conclusion that they are obstructing justice.”

“A conclusion, no. A surmise, yes. If not obstruction, at least nonfeasance. As a member of the bar, you are aware of the tenacity of the police and the District Attorney in an unsolved murder case. If they-“

“I don’t practice criminal law.”

“Pfui. Surely you are aware of what every child knows. If they were not satisfied with the assumption that the FBI is responsible for the disappearance of that material and therefore was probably involved in the murder, they would certainly he exploring other possibilities-for instance, Mr Yarmack. Are they, Mr Yarmack'Are they harassing you?”

The editor stared. “Harassing me'What about?”

“The possibility that you killed Morris Althaus and took that material. Don’t erupt. Many murders have prompted less plausible theories. He told you of a discovery he had made and evidence he had obtained which, perhaps unknown to him, was in some way a mortal threat to you, and you removed him and the evidence. An excellent theory. Surely-“

“Tommyrot. Absolute tommyrot.”

“To you, perhaps. But surely, in a muddle with an unsolved murder, they would dog you; but they don’t. I am not accusing you of murder, sir, not at the moment; I am merely showing that the police are either shirking or slighting their duty. Unless you have given them an impregnable alibi for the night of November twentieth. Have you?”

“No. Impregnable, no.”

“Have you, Mr Quayle?”

“Nuts,” Quayle said. Bad manners again.

Wolfe eyed him. “You are here by sufferance. You wanted to know what I am up to. I am making that clear. Impelled solely by my private interest, I hope to disclose the implication of the FBI in a murder and the failure of the police to do their duty. In that effort I must guard against the danger of being balked by circumstance. Yesterday I received in confidence information strongly indicating the guilt of the FBI, but it is not conclusive. I dare not ignore the possibility that the apparent inaction of the police is merely tactical, that they and the FBI both know the identity of the murderer, and that they are holding off until they have decisive evidence. I must be fully satisfied on that point before I move. You can help to satisfy me, and if instead you choose to flout me I don’t want you here. Mr Goodwin has ejected you once and he can do so again if necessary. He would be even more effective with an audience; he likes an audience as well as I do. If you prefer to stay, I asked you a question.”

Quayle’s jaw was set. The poor guy was in a fix. Seated next to him, so close he could have reached out and touched her, was the girl for whom and before whom he had pitched into a nosy newshound, begging Lon Cohen’s pardon, and now he was being crowded by a nosy bloodhound. I expected him to turn his head, either to her to show that for her sake he could swallow even his pride, or to me to show that I was really no problem, but he stayed focused on Wolfe.

“I told you I would control myself,” he said. “All right. I have no impregnable alibi for the night of November twentieth. That answers your question, and now I ask one. How do you expect Miss Hinckley to help to satisfy you?”

Wolfe nodded. “That’s reasonable and relevant. Miss Hinckley, manifestly you are willing to help or you wouldn’t be here. I have suggested a theory to account for the guilt of Mr Yarmack; now one for Mr Quayle. That’s simple. Millions of men have killed a fellow man because of a woman-to spite her or bereave her or get her. If Mr Quayle killed your fiance do you want him exposed?”

She lifted her hands and let them drop. “But that’s ridiculous.”

“Not at all. To the family and friends of most murderers the imputation seems ridiculous, but that doesn’t make it so. I am not imputing guilt to Mr Quayle; I am merely considering possibilities. Have you any reason to suppose that your betrothal to Mr Althaus displeased him?”

“You can’t expect me to answer that.”

“I’ll answer it,” Quayle blurted. “Yes. It displeased me.

“Indeed. By right'Was it a trespass?”

“I don’t know about ‘right.’ I had asked Miss Hinckley to marry me. I had ex- I had hoped she would.”

“Had she agreed to?”

The lawyer cut in. “Take it easy, Wolfe. You mentioned trespass. I think you’re trespassing. I’m here at the request of Mr Althaus, my client, and I’m not entitled to speak on behalf of Miss Hinckley or Mr Quayle, but I think you’re overreaching. I know your reputation. I know you’re not a jobber, and I won’t challenge your bona fides unless I have reason, but as an attorney-at-law I have to say you’re spreading it pretty thick. Or perhaps I mean thin. Mr Althaus, and his wife, and I as his attorney, certainly want to see justice done. But if you have received information strongly indicating the guilt of the FBI, why this inquisition?”

“I thought I made that plain.”

“As an explanation of a position, yes, or as a brief for prudence. Not as an excuse for an inquisition of persons. Next you will be asking me if Morris had caught me committing a felony.”

“Had he?”

“I’m not going to fill a role in a burlesque. I repeat, you’re overreaching.”

“Then I’ll pull in, but I shall not abandon prudence. I’ll ask you this, a routine question in any case of death by violence: If the FBI didn’t kill Morris Althaus, who did'Assume that the FBI is definitely cleared and I am the District Attorney. Who had reason to want that man dead'Who hated him or feared him or had something to gain'Can you suggest a name?”

“No. I have considered that, naturally. No.”

Wolfe’s eyes went right and left. “Can any of you?”

Two of them shook their heads. No one said anything.

“The question is routine,” Wolfe said, “but it is not always futile. I ask you to reflect. Without regard for slander; you will not be quoted. Surely Morris Althaus did not live thirty-six years without giving offense to anyone. He offended his father. He offended Mr Quayle.” He looked at Yarmack. “Were the articles he wrote for your magazine innocuous?”

“No,” the editor said. “But if they hurt anyone enough for them to murder him I shouldn’t think they would wait until now.”

“One of them had to wait,” Quayle said. “He was in jail.”

Wolfe switched editors. “For what?”

“Fraud. A shady real-estate deal. Morris did a piece we called ‘The Realty Racket,’ and it started an investigation, and one of them got nailed. He was sent up for two years. That was two years ago, a little less, but with time off for good behavior he must be out by now. But he’s no murderer, he wouldn’t have the guts. I saw him a couple of times when he was trying to get us to leave his name out. He’s just a small-time smoothie.”

“His name?”

“I don’t- Yes, I do. Does it matter'Odell. Something Odell. Frank, that’s it. Frank Odell.”

“I don’t understand-” Mrs Althaus began, but it came out hoarse and she cleared her throat. She was looking at Wolfe. “I don’t understand all this. If it was the FBI, why are you asking all these questions'Why don’t you ask Mr Yarmack what Morris had found out about the FBI'I have asked him, and he says he doesn’t know.”

“I don’t,” Yarmack said.

Wolfe nodded. “So I assumed. Otherwise you would be harassed not only by the police. Had he told you nothing of his discoveries and conjectures?”

“No. He never did. He waited until he had a first draft. That was how he always worked.”

Wolfe grunted. “Madam,” he told Mrs Althaus, “as I said, I must be satisfied. I should ask a thousand questions-all night, all week. The Federal Bureau of Investigation is a formidable foe, entrenched in power and privilege. It is not rodomontade but merely a statement of fact to say that no individual or group in America would undertake the job I have assigned myself. If an agent of the FBI killed your son there is not the slightest chance that he will be brought to account unless I do it. Therefore the choice of procedure is exclusively mine. Is that overreaching, Mr Fromm?”

“No,” the lawyer said. “It would be unrealistic not to agree with you about the FBI. When I learned that nothing about them was found in the apartment I made the obvious assumption, and I told Mr Althaus that I thought it very unlikely that the murderer would ever be caught. The FBI is untouchable. Goodwin told Mrs Althaus that a man told you yesterday that he knows that an FBI agent killed her son, and that he supported it with information, and I came here intending to demand the man’s name and the information, but you’re right. The procedure is up to you. I think it’s hopeless, but I wish you luck, and I wish I could help.”

“So do I.” Wolfe pushed his chair back and rose. “It’s possible, if this conversation has been overheard, that one or more of you will be harassed. If so I would like to know. I would like to know of any development that comes to your knowledge, however trivial. Whether the conversation was overheard or not, this house is under surveillance, and the FBI now knows that I am concerning myself with the murder of Morris Althaus. The police do not, as far as I know, and I request you not to tell them; that would only make it more difficult. I apologize for not offering you refreshment; I was preoccupied. Mr Althaus, you have not spoken. Do you wish to?”

“No,” David Althaus said-his one and only word.

“Then good evening.” Wolfe walked out.

As they left their chairs and moved toward the hall I stood.

The gentlemen could help the ladies with their coats; I wasn’t needed. I must have been about as low as you can get, for it didn’t occur to me that it would be a pleasure to hold Miss Hinckley’s coat until I heard the front door open, and then it was too late. I stayed put until I heard it close and then went and bolted it. They were down on the sidewalk.