The Rubber Band/The Red Box 2-In-1 (23 page)

It was only Johnny Keems whom I had sent home over an hour before. Wondering what for, I let him in. He said, “Have you seen it?”

I said, “No, I’m blind. Seen what?”

He pulled a newspaper from his pocket and stuck it at me. “I was going to a movie on Broadway and they were yelling this extra, and I was nearby so I thought it would be better to run over with it than to phone—”

I had looked at the headlines. I said, “Go to the office. No,
go to the kitchen. You’re on the job, my lad. Satisfactory.” I went to the dining-room and moved Wolfe’s coffee cup to one side and spread the paper in front of him. “Here,” I said, “here’s that development you’re awaiting.” I stood and read it with him while Clara Fox sat and looked at us.

At seven o’clock a
Gazette
reporter, walking down Madison Avenue, seeing a crowd collected at 55th Street, stopped to investigate. Finding that it was only two cars with shattered windshields and other minor damages from a collision, he strolled on, turning into 55th. Not far from the corner he saw a man stepping off the curb to cross the street. He recognized the man as Purley Stebbins, a city detective, and was struck by something purposeful in his gait. He stopped, and saw Stebbins push open the door of a board fence where a building is being constructed.

The reporter crossed the street likewise, through curiosity, and entered the enclosure after the detective. He ventured further, and saw Stebbins grasping by the arm a man elegantly attired in evening dress, while the man tried to pull away. Then the reporter saw something else: the body of a man on the ground.

Advancing close enough to see the face of the man in evening dress and recognizing him at once, the reporter was quick-witted enough to call sharply, “Lord Clivers!”

The man replied, “Who the devil are you?”

The detective, who was feeling the man for a weapon, instructed the reporter to telephone headquarters and get Inspector Cramer. The body was lying in such a position that the reporter had to step over it to get at the telephone
on the wall of a wooden shed. Meanwhile Stebbins had blown his whistle and a few moments later a patrolman in uniform entered. Stebbins spoke to him, and the patrolman leaned over the body and exclaimed, “It’s the night watchman, old Walsh!”

Having phoned police headquarters, the reporter approached Lord Clivers and asked him for a statement. He was brushed aside by Stebbins, who commanded him to leave. The reporter persisting, Stebbins instructed the patrolman to put him out, and the reporter was forcibly ejected.

The superintendent of the construction, reached on the telephone, said that the name of the night watchman was Michael Walsh. He knew of no possible connection between Walsh and a member of the British nobility.

No information could be obtained from the suite of Lord Clivers at the Hotel Portland.

At 7:30 Inspector Cramer and various members of the police force had arrived on the scene at 55th Street, but no one was permitted to enter the enclosure and no information was forthcoming.

There was a picture of Clivers, taken the preceding week on the steps of the White House.

I was raving. If only I had gone up there! I glared at Wolfe: “Be prudent! Don’t expose ourselves! I could have been there in ten minutes after that phone call! Great God and Jehosaphat!”

I felt a yank at my sleeve and saw it was Clara Fox. “What is it? What—”

I took it out on her. I told her savagely, “Oh, nothing much. Just another of your playmates bumped off. You haven’t got much of a team left. Mike Walsh shot and killed dead, Clivers standing there—”

Wolfe had leaned back and closed his eyes, with his lips working. I reached for the paper and pushed it at her. “Sure, go ahead, hope you enjoy it.” As she leaned over the paper I heard her breath go in. I said, “Of all the goddam wonderful management—”

Wolfe cut in sharply, “Archie!”

I muttered, “Go to hell everybody,” and sat down and bobbed my head from side to side in severe pain. The cockeyed thing had busted wide open and instead of going where I belonged I had sat and eaten guinea chicken Brazilisomething and listened to Wolfe hum folk tunes. Not only that, it had
busted at the wrong place and Nero Wolfe had made a fool of himself. If I had gone I would have been there before Cramer or anyone else.…

Wolfe opened his eyes and said quietly, “Take Miss Fox upstairs and come to the office.” He lifted himself from his chair.

So did Clara Fox. She arose with her face whiter than before and looked from one to the other of us. She announced, I’m not going upstairs. I … I can’t just stay here. I’m going … I’m going …”

“Yes.” Wolfe lifted his brows at her. “Where?”

She burst out, “How do I know where? Don’t you see I … I’ve got to do something?” She suddenly flopped back into her chair and clasped her hands and began to tremble. “Poor old Mike Walsh … why in the name of God … why did I ever …”

Wolfe stepped to her and put his hand on her shoulder. “Look here,” he snapped. “Do you wonder I’d rather have ten thousand orchids than a woman in my house?”

She looked up at him, and shivered. “And it was you that let Mike Walsh go, when you knew—”

“I knew very little. Now I know even less. —Archie, bring Saul.”

“Johnny is here—”

“No. Saul.”

I went to the kitchen and got him. Wolfe asked him: “How long will it take to get Hilda Lindquist here?”

Saul considered half an instant. “Fifty minutes if I phone. An hour and a half if I go after her.”

“Good. Telephone. You had better tell her on the phone that Mike Walsh has been killed, since if she sees a
Gazette
on the way she might succumb also. Is there someone to bring her?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Use the office phone. Tell her not to delay unnecessarily but there is no great urgency. Wipe the spot of grease of of the left side of your nose.”

“Yes, sir,” Saul went, pulling his handkerchief from his pocket.

Clara Fox said, in a much better tone, “I haven’t succumbed.” She brushed back her hair, but her hand was none too steady. “I didn’t mean, when I said you let Mike Walsh go—”

“Of course not.” Wolfe didn’t relent any. “You weren’t in a condition to mean anything. You still are not. Archie and
have one or two things to do. You can’t leave this house, certainly not now. Will you go upstairs and wait till Miss Lindquist gets here? And don’t be conceited enough to imagine yourself responsible for the death of Michael Walsh. Your meddlings have not entitled you to usurp the fatal dignity of Atropos; don’t flatter yourself. Will you go upstairs and command patience?”

“Yes.” She stood up. “But I want … if someone should telephone for me I want to talk.”

Wolfe nodded. “You shall. Though I fancy Mr. Horrocks will be too occupied with this involvement of his chief for social impulses.”

But it was Wolfe’s off day; he was wrong again. A phone call from Horrocks, for Clara Fox, came within fifteen minutes. In the interim Wolfe and I had gone to the office and learned from Saul that he had talked to Hilda Lindquist and she was coming, and Wolfe had settled himself in his chair, disposed of a bottle of beer, and repudiated my advances. Horrocks didn’t mention the predicament of his noble uncle; he just asked for Clara Fox, and I sent Saul up to tell her to take it in Wolfe’s room, since there was no phone in hers. I should have listened in as a matter of business, but I didn’t, and Wolfe didn’t tell me to.

Finally Wolfe sighed and sat up. “Try for Mr. Cramer.”

I did so. No result. They talked as if, for all they knew, Cramer might be up in Canada shooting moose.

Wolfe sighed again. “Archie. Have we ever encountered a greater jumble of nonsense?”

“No, sir. If only I had gone—”

“Don’t say that again, or I’ll send you upstairs with Miss Fox. Could that have ordered the chaos? The thing is completely ridiculous. It forces us to measures no less ridiculous. We shall have to investigate the movements of Mr. Muir since six o’clock this evening, to trust Mr. Cramer with at least a portion of our facts, to consider afresh the motivations and activities of Lord Clivers, to discover how a man can occupy two different spots of space at the same moment, and to make another long distance call to Nebraska. I believe there is no small firearm that will shoot fifteen hundred miles, but we seem to be confronted with a determination and ingenuity capable of almost anything, and before we are through with this we may need Mr. Lindquist badly. Get that farm—the name is Donvaag?”

I nodded and got busy. At that time of night, going on ten o’clock, the lines were mostly free, and I had a connection
with Plainview, Nebraska, in less than ten minutes. It was a person to person call and a good clear connection; Ed Donvaag’s husky voice, from his farmhouse out on the western prairie, was in my ear as plain as Francis Horrocks’ had been from the Hotel Portland. Wolfe took his line.

“Mr. Donvaag? This is Nero Wolfe … That’s it. You remember I talked to you this afternoon and you were good enough to go after Mr. Lindquist for a conversation with me.… Yes, sir. I have to ask another favor of you. Can you hear me well? Good. It will be necessary for you to go again to Mr. Lindquist tonight or the first thing tomorrow morning. Tell him there is reason to suspect that someone means him injury and may attempt it.… Yes. We don’t know how. Tell him to be circumspect—to be careful. Does he eat candy? He might receive a box of poisoned candy in the mail. Even, possibly, a bomb. Anything. He might receive a telegram saying his daughter has died—with results expected from the shock to him.… No, indeed. His daughter is well and there is nothing to fear for her.… Well, this is a peculiar situation; doubtless you will hear all about it later. Tell him to be careful and to suspect anything at all unusual.… You can go at once? Good. You are a good neighbor, sir. Goodnight.”

Wolfe rang off and pushed the button for beer. He sighed. “That desperate fool has a good deal to answer for. Another four dollars. —Three? Oh, the night rate. —Bring another, Fritz. —Archie, give Saul the necessary facts regarding Mr. Muir and send him out. We want to know where he was from six to eight this evening.”

I went to the kitchen and did that. Johnny Keems was helping Fritz with the dishes and Saul was in my breakfast corner with the remainder of the dish of ripe olives. He didn’t write anything down; he never had to. He pointed his long nose at me and absorbed the dope, nodded, took a twenty for expenses, gathered up the last of the olives into a handful, and departed. I let him out.

Back in the office, I asked Wolfe if he wanted me to try for Cramer again. He shook his head. He was leaning back with his eyes closed, and the faint movement of his lips in and out informed me that he was in conference with himself. I sat down and put my feet on my desk. In a few minutes I got up again and went to the cabinet and poured myself a shot of bourbon, smelled it, and poured it back into the bottle. It wasn’t whiskey I wanted. I went to the kitchen and asked
Johnny some more questions about the layout up at 55th Street, and drank a glass of milk.

It was ten o’clock when Hilda Lindquist arrived. There was a man with her, but when I told him Saul wasn’t there he didn’t come in. I told him Saul would fix it with him and he beat it. Hilda’s square face and brown dress didn’t look any the worse for wear during the twenty-four hours since she had gone off, but her eyes were solemn and determined. She said of course the thing was all off, since they had caught the Marquis of Clivers and he would be executed for murder, and her father would be disappointed because he was old and they would lose the farm, and would she be able to get her bag which she had left at the hotel, and she would like to start for home as soon as there was a train. I told her to drive in and park a while, there was still some fireworks left in the bag, but by the way she turned her eyes on me I saw that she might develop into a real problem, so I put her in the front room and asked her to wait a minute.

I ran up to the south room and said to Clara Fox: “Hilda Lindquist is downstairs and I’m going to send her up. She thinks the show is over and she has to go back home to her poor old dad with her sock empty, and by the look in her eye it will take more than British diplomacy to keep her off of the next train. Nero Wolfe is going to work this out. I don’t know how and maybe he don’t either this minute, but he’ll do it. Nero Wolfe is probably even better than I think he is, and that’s a mouthful. You wrote the music for this piece, and half your band has been killed, and it’s up to you to keep the other half intact. Well?”

I had found her sitting in a chair with her lips compressed tight and her hands clenched. She looked at me. “All right. I will. Send her up here.”

“She can sleep in here with you, or in the room in front on this floor. You know how to ring for Fritz.”

“All right.”

I went down and told Squareface that Clara Fox wanted to speak to her, and shooed her up, and heard them exchanging greetings in the upper hall.

There was nothing in the office but a gob of silence; Wolfe was still in conference. I would have tried some bulldozing if I had thought he was merely dreaming of stuffed quail or pickled pigs’ feet, but his lips were moving a little so I knew he was working. I fooled around my desk, went over Johnny’s diagrams again in connection with an idea that had occurred to me, checked over Horstmann’s reports and entered them
in the records, reread the
Gazette
scoop on the affair at 55th Street, and aggravated myself into such a condition of uselessness that finally, at eleven o’clock sharp, I exploded: