The Rubber Band (3 page)

She pointed to one of the doors, and I headed for it I was reaching out for the knob when she screeched at me, “You can’t go in there like that! Mr. Muir is out.”

I called to her, “Do tell. If you want to interrupt Mr. Perry in his conference, go to the directors’ room and give the alarm. I’m investigating.”

I went on in, shut the door, found the wall switch, and turned on the lights. As I did so, a door in another wall opened, and Miss Barish appeared. She stood and looked without saying anything.

I observed, “I thought I told you to go home.”

“I can’t.” Her color wasn’t working either way. “When Mr. Muir is here I’m not supposed to go until he dismisses me. He is in conference.”

“I see. That your room? May I come in?”

She stepped back and I entered– It was a small neat room with one window and the usual stenographic and filing equipment. I let the eyes rove, and then asked her, “Would you mind leaving me here for a minute with the door shut, while you go to Muir’s desk and open and dose a couple of drawers? I’d like to see how much din it makes.”

She said, “I was typing.” “So you were. All right, forget it. Come and show me which drawer the money was in.”

She moved ahead of me, led the way to Muir’s desk, and pulled open one of the drawers, the second one from the top on the right. There was nothing in it but a stack of envelopes. I reached out and closed it, then opened and closed it again, grinning as I remembered Perry’s suggestion about fingerprints. Then I left the desk and strolled around a little. It was just a vice-president’s office, smaller and modester than Perry’s but still by no means a pigpen. I noticed one detail, or rather three, a little out of the ordinary. There was no portrait of Abraham Lincoln nor replica of the Declaration of Independence on the walls, but there were three different good-sized photographs of three different good-looking women, hanging framed.

I turned to Miss Barish, who was still standing by the desk. “Who are all the handsome ladies?”

“They are Mr. Muir’s wives.”

“Nol Honest to God? Mostly dead?”

“I don’t know. None of them is with him now.”

“Too bad. It looks like he’s sentimental.”

She shook her head. “Mr. Muir is a sensual man.”

She was having another frank spell. I glanced at my watch. It was a quarter to six, giving me another five minutes, so I thought I might as well use them on her. I opened up, friendly, but although she seemed to be willing to risk a little more chat with me, I didn’t really get any facts. All I learned was what I already knew, that she had no reason to suppose that Clara Fox had lifted the jack, and that if there was a frame-up she wasn’t in on it. When the five minutes was up I turned to go, and at that moment the door opened and Muir came in.

Seeing us, he stopped, then came on again, to his desk. “You may go, Miss Barish. If you want to talk with me, Goodwin, sit down.”

Miss Barish disappeared into her room. I said, “I won’t keep you now, Mr. Muir. I suppose you’ll be here in the morning?”

“Where else would I be?”

That kind of childishness never riles me. I grinned at the old goat, said, “Okay,” and left him.

Outside in the corridor, down a few paces toward the directors’ room, a group of four or five men stood talking. I saw Perry was among them, and approached. He saw me and came to meet me.

I said, “Nothing more tonight, Mr. Perry. Let’s let Mr. Muir have a chance to cool off. I’ll report to Nero Wolfe.”

Perry frowned. “He can phone me at my home any time this evening. It’s in the book.”

“Thanks. I’ll tell him.”

As I passed Miss Vawter on my way out, still sitting in the corner with her magazine, I said to her out of the side of my mouth, “See you at the Rainbow Room.”

Down on the sidewalk the shades of night were not keeping the metropolitan bipeds from the swift completion of their appointed rounds. Striding north toward 3^ th Street, I let the brain skip from this to that and back again, and decided that the spot Clara Fox was standing on was probably worse than hot, it was sizzling. Had she lit the fire herself? I left that in unfinished business.

I got home just at six o’clock and, knowing that Wolfe wouldn’t be down for a few minutes yet, I went to the office to see if the Wyoming wonder had thought of any new suspicions and if his colleagues had shown up.

The office was empty. I went through to the front room to see if he had moved his base there, but it was empty too. I beat it to the kitchen. Fritz was there, sitting with his slippers off, reading that newspaper in French.

I asked him, “What did you do with him?”

“Qui? Aui, Ie monsieur—” Fritz giggled. “Excuse me, Archie. You mean the gentleman who was waiting.”

“Yeah, him.”

“He received a telephone call.” Fritz leaned over and began pulling on his slippers. “Time already for Mr. Wolfe!”

“He got a phone call here?”

Fritz nodded. “About half an hour after you left. More maybe. Wait till I look.” He went to the stand where the kitchen phone extension was kept, and glanced at his memo pad. “That’s right. Five-twenty-six. Twenty-six minutes past five.”

“Who was it?”

Fritz’s brows went up. “Should I know, Archie.” He thought he was using slang. “A gentleman said he wished to speak to Mr. Scovil in case he was here, and I went to the office and asked if it was Mr. Scovil, and he talked from your desk, and then he got up and put on his hat and went out.”

“Leave any message?”

“No. I had come back to the kitchen, closing the office door for his privacy but leaving this one open as you said, and he came out and went in a hurry. He said nothing at all.” I lifted the shoulders and let them drop. “He’ll be back. He wants to see a kind of a man named Nero Wolfe. What’s on the menu?”

Fritz told me, and let me take a sniff at the sauce steaming on the simmer plate; then I heard the elevator and went back to the office. Wolfe entered, crossed to his chair and got himself lowered, rang for beer and took the opener out of the drawer, and then vouchsafed me a glance.

“Pleasant afternoon, Archie?”

“No, sir. Putrid. I went around to Perry’s office.”

“Indeed. A man of action must expect such vexations. Tell me about it.”

“Well, Perry left here just after I came down, but about eight minutes after that he phoned and instructed me to come galloping. Having the best interests of my employer in mind I went.”

“Notwithstanding the physical law that the contents can be no larger than the container.” Fritz arrived with two botdes of beer; Wolfe opened and poured one, and drank. “Go on.”

“Yes, sir. I disregard your wit, because I’d like to show you this picture before the company arrives, and they’re already ten minutes late. By the way, the company we already had has departed. He claimed to be part of the six-o’clock appointment and said he would wait, but Fritz says he got a phone call and went in a hurry. Maybe the appointment is off. Anyhow, here’s the Perry puzzle….”

I laid it out for him, in the way that he always liked to get a crop of facts, no matter how trivial or how crucial. I told him what everybody looked like, and what they did, and what they said fairly verbatim. He finished the first botde of beer meanwhile, and had the second well on its way when I got through. I ratded it off and then leaned back and took a sip from a glass of milk I had brought from the kitchen.

Wolfe pinched his nose. “Ptui! Hyenas. And your conclusions?”

“Maybe hyenas. Yeah.” I took another sip. “On principle I don’t like Perry, but it’s possible he’s just using all the decency he has left after a life of evil. You have forbidden me to use the word louse, so I would say that Muir is an insect. Clara Fox is the ideal of my dreams, but it wouldn’t stun me to know that she lifted the roll, though I’d be surprised.”

Wolfe nodded. “You may remember that four years ago Mr. Perry objected to our bill for an investigation of his competitors’ trade practices. I presume that now he would like us to shovel the mud from his executive offices for twelve dollars a day. It is not practicable always to sneer at mud; there’s too much of it. So it gives the greater pleasure to do so when we can afford it. At present our bank balance is agreeable to contemplate. Pfui!” He lifted his glass and emptied it and wiped his lips with his handkerchief.

“Okay,” I agreed. “But there’s something else to consider. Perry wants you to phone him this evening. If you take the case on we’ll at least get expenses, and if you don’t take it on Clara Fox may get five years for grand larceny and I’ll have to move to Ossining so as to be near her and take her tidbits on visiting day. Balance the mud-shoveling against the loss of my services—but that sounds like visitors. I’ll finish my appeal later.”

I had heard the doorbell sending Fritz into the hall and down it to the door. I glanced at the clock: 6:30; they were half an hour late. I remembered the attractive telephone voice, and wondered if we were going to have another nymph, cool and sweet in distress, on our hands.

Fritz came in and shut the door behind him, and announced callers. Wolfe nodded. Fritz went out, and after a second in came a man and two women. The man and the second woman I was barely aware of, because I was busy looking at the one in front. It certainly was a nymph cool and sweet in distress. Evidently she knew enough about Nero Wolfe to recognize him, for with only a swift glance at me she came forward to Wolte’s desk and spoke.

“Mr. Wolfe? I telephoned on Saturday. I’m sorry to be late for the appointment. My name is Clara Fox.” She turned. “This is Miss Hilda Lindquist and Mr. Michael Walsh.”

Wolfe nodded at her and at them. “It is bulk, not boorishness, that keeps me in my chair.” He wiggled a finger at me. “Mr. Archie Goodwin. Chairs, Archie?”

I obliged, while Clara Fox was saying, “I met Mr. Goodwin this afternoon, in Mr. Perry’s office.” I thought to myself, you did indeed, and for not recognizing your voice I’ll let them lock roe in the cell next to yours when you go up the river.

“Indeed.” Wolfe had his eyes half closed, which meant he was missing nothing. “Mr. Walsh’s chair to the right, please. Thank you.”

Miss Fox was taking off her gloves. “First I’d like to explain why we’re late. I said on the telephone that I couldn’t make the appointment before Monday because I was expecting someone from out of town who had to be here. It was a man from out west named Harlan Scovil. He arrived this morning, and I saw him during the lunch hour, and arranged to meet him at a quarter past five, at his hotel, to bring him here. I went for him, but he wasn’t there. I waited and … well, I tried to make some inquiries. Then I met Miss Lindquist and Mr. Walsh, as agreed, and we went back to Mr. Scovil’s hotel again. We waited until a quarter past six, and decided it would be better to come on without him.”

“Is his presence essential?”

“I wouldn’t say essential. At least not at this moment. We left word, and he may join us here any second. He must see you too, before we can do anything. I should warn you, Mr. Wolfe, I have a very long story to tell.”

She hadn’t looked at me once. I decided to quit looking at her, and tried her companions. They were just barely people. Of course I remembered Harlan Scovil telling Anthony D. Perry that he wasn’t Mike Walsh.

Apparently this bird was. He was a scrawny little mick, built wiry, over sixty and maybe even seventy, dressed cheap but dean, sitting only half in his chair and keeping an ear palmed with his right hand. The Lindquist dame, with a good square face and wearing a good brown dress, had size, though I wouldn’t have called her massive, first because it would have been only a half-truth, and second because she might have socked me. I guess she was a fine woman, of the kind that would be more apt to be snapping a coffee cup in her fingers than a champagne glass. Remembering Harlan Scovil to boot, it looked to me as if, whatever game Miss Fox was training for, she was picking some odd numbers for her team.

Wolfe had told her that the longer the story the sooner it ought to begin, and she was saying, “It began forty years ago, in Silver City, Nevada. But before I start it, Mr. Wolfe, I ought to tell you something that I hope will make you interested. I’ve found out all I could about you, and I understand that you have remarkable abilities and an equally remarkable opinion of their cash value to people you do things for.”

Wolfe sighed. “Each of us must choose his own brand of banditry, Miss Fox.”

“Certainly. That is what I have done. If you agree to help us, and if we are successful, your fee will be one hundred thousand dollars.”

Mike Walsh leaned forward and blurted, “Ten per cent! Fair enough?”

Hilda Undquist frowned at him. Clara Fox paid no attention. Wolfe said, “The fee always depends. You couldn’t hire me to hand you the moon.”

She laughed at him, and although I had my notebook out I decided to look at her in the pauses. She said, “I won’t need it. Is Mr. Goodwin going to take down everything? With the understanding that if you decide not to help us his notes are to be given to me?”

Cagey Clara. The creases of Wolfe’s cheeks unfolded a little. “By all means.”

“All right.” She brushed her hair back. “I said it began forty years ago, but I won’t start there. I’ll start when I was nine years old, in 1918, the year my father was killed in the war, in France. I don’t remember my father much. He was killed in 1918, and he sent my mother a letter which she didn’t get until nearly a year later, because instead of trusting it to the army mail he gave it to another soldier to bring home. My mother read it then, but I never knew of it until seven years later, in 192,6, when my mother gave it to me on her deathbed. I was seventeen years old. I loved my mother very dearly.”

She stopped. It would have been a good spot for a moist film over her eyes or a catch in her voice, but apparently she had just stopped to swallow. She swallowed twice, ha the pause I was looking at her. She went on.

“I didn’t read the letter until a month later. I knew it was a letter father had written to mother eight years before, and with mother gone it didn’t seem to be of any importance to me. But on account of what mother had said, about a month after she died I read it. I have it with me. I’ll have to read it to you.”

She opened her alligator-skin handbag and took out a folded paper. She jerked it open and glanced at it, and back at Wolfe. “May I?”

“Do I see typewriting?”

She nodded. “This is a copy. The original is put away.” She brushed her hair back with a hand up and dipping swift like a bird. “This isn’t a complete copy. There is—this is—just the part to read.

“So, dearest Lola, since a man can’t tell what is going to nap-pen to him ‘here, or when, I’ve decided to write you about a little incident that occurred last week, and make arrangements to he sure it gets to you, in case I never get home to tell you about it. Ill have to begin away hack.

“I’ve told you a lot of wild tales about the old days in Nevada. I’ve told you this one too, hut I’ll repeat it here hriefty. It was at Silver City, in 189?. I was 25 years old, so it was 10 years before I met you. I was broke, and so was the gang of youngsters I’m telling about. They were all youngsters but one. We weren’t friends, there was no such thing as a friend around there. Most of the bunch of 2000 or so that inhabited Silver City camp at that time were a good deal older than us, which was how we happened to get together—temporarily. Everything was temporaryi “The ringleader of our gang was a kid we called Rubber on account of the way he bounced back up when he got knocked down. His name was Cole-man, but I never knew his first name, or if 1 did 1 can’t remember it, though I’ve often tried. Because Rubber was our leader, someone cracked a joke one day that we should call ourselves The Rubber Band, and we did. Pretty soon most of Silver City was calling us that.

“One of the gang, a kid named George Rowley, shot a man and killed him. From what I heard—I didn’t see it—he had as good a right to shoot as was usually needed around there, but the trouble was that the one he killed happened to he a member of the Vigilance Committee. It was at night, 24 hows after the shooting, that they decided to hang him. Rowley hadn’t had sense enough to make a getaway, so they took him and shut him up in a shanty until daylight, with one of their number for a guard, an Irishman. As Harlan Scovil would say—I’ll never forget Harlan—he was a kind of a man named Mike Walsh.

“Rowley went after his guard, Mike Walsh. I mean talking to him. Finally, around midnight, he persuaded Mike to send for Rubber Cole-man. Rubber had a talk with him and. Mike. Then there was a lot of conspiring, and Rubber did a lot of dickering with Rowley. We were gathered in the dark in the sagebrush out hack of John’s Palace, a shack out at the edge of the city—”

Clara Fox looked up. “My father underscored the word city.”

Wolfe nodded. “Properly, no doubt.”

She went on: “—and we had been drinking some and were having a swell time. Around two o’clock Rubber showed up again and lit matches to show us a paper George Rowley had signed, with him and Mike Walsh as witnesses. I’ve told you about it. I cant give it to you word for word, hut this is exactly what it said. It said that his real name wasnt George Rowley, and that he wasn’t giving his real name in writing, hut that he had told it to Rubber Coleman. It said that he was from a wealthy family in England, and that if he got out of Silver City alive he would go hack there, and some day he would get a share of the family pile. It said it wouldn’t be a major share because he wasn’t an oldest son. Then it hereby agreed that whenever and whatever he got out of his family connections, he would give us half of it, provided we got him safe out of Silver City and safe from pursuit, before the time came to hang him.

“We were young, and thought we were adventurers, and we were half drunk or maybe more. I doubt if any of us had any idea that we would ever get hold of any of the noble English wealth, except possibly Rubber Cole-man, but the idea of the night rescue of a member of our gang was all to the good. Rubber had another paper ready too, all written up. It was headed, PLEDGE OF THE RUBBER BAND, and we all signed it. It had already been signed by Mike Walsh. In it we agreed to an equal division of anything coming from George Rowley, no matter who got it or when.