Thomas Godfrey (Ed) (80 page)

A cell
in my brain tried to get the right of way for the question, considering this
development, how big a raise should I get after New Year’s? but I waved it to
the curb.

I
thought over other aspects. He had worn the gloves so I couldn’t recognize his
hands. Where did he get them? What time had he got to Bottweill’s and who had
seen him? Did Fritz know where he was going? How had he got back home? But
after a little of that I realized that he hadn’t sent me up to my room to ask
myself questions he could answer, so I went back to considering whether there
was anything else he wanted me to think over alone. Deciding there wasn’t,
after chewing it thoroughly, I got
Here and Now
and the gloves from the dresser, went to the stairs and
descended, and entered the office.

From
behind his desk, he glared at me as I crossed over.

“Here
it is,” I said, and handed him the book. “And much obliged for the gloves.” I
held them up, one in each hand, dangling them from thumb and fingertip.

“It is
no occasion for clowning,” he growled.

“It
sure isn’t.” I dropped the gloves on my desk, whirled my chair, and sat. “Where
do we start? Do you want to know what happened after you left?”

“The
details can wait. First where we stand. Was Mr. Cramer there?”

“Yes.
Certainly.”

“Did
he get anywhere ?”

“No.
He probably won’t until he finds Santa Claus. Until they find Santa Claus they
won’t dig very hard at the others. The longer it takes to find him the surer
they’ll be he’s it. Three things about him: nobody knows who he was, he beat
it, and he wore gloves. A thousand men are looking for him. You were right to
wear the gloves, I would have recognized your hands, but where did you get
them?”

“At a
store on Ninth Avenue. Confound it, I didn’t know a man was going to be
murdered!”

“I
know you didn’t. May I ask some questions?”

He
scowled. I took it for yes. “When did you phone Bottweill to arrange it?”

“At
two-thirty yesterday afternoon. You had gone to the bank.”

“Have
you any reason to think he told anyone about it?”

“No.
He said he wouldn’t.”

“I
know he got the costume, so that’s okay. When you left here today at twelve-thirty
did you go straight to Bottweill’s?”

“No. I
left at that hour because you and Fritz expected me to. I stopped to buy the
gloves, and met him at Rusterman’s, and we had lunch. From there we took a cab
to his place, arriving shortly after two o’clock, and took his private elevator
up to his office. Immediately upon entering his office, he got a bottle of
Pernod from a drawer of his desk, said he always had a little after lunch, and
invited me to join him. I declined. He poured a liberal portion in a glass,
about two ounces, drank it in two gulps, and returned the bottle to the drawer.”

“My
God.” I whistled. “The cops would like to know
that.”

“No
doubt. The costume was there in a box. There is a dressing room at the rear of
his office, with a bathroom—”

“I
know. I’ve used it.”

“I
took the costume there and put it on. He had ordered the largest size, but it
was a squeeze and it took a while. I was in there half an hour or more. When I
re-entered the office it was empty, but soon Bottweill came, up the stairs from
the workshop, and helped me with the mask and wig. They had barely been
adjusted when Emil Hatch and Mrs. Jerome and her son appeared, also coming up
the stairs from the workshop. I left, going to the studio, and found Miss Quon
and Miss Dickey and Mr. Kiernan there.”

“And
before long I was there. Then no one saw you unmasked. When did you put the
gloves on?”

“The
last thing. Just before I entered the studio.”

“Then
you may have left prints. I know, you didn’t know there was going to be a
murder. You left your clothes in the dressing room? Are you sure you got
everything when you left?”

“Yes.
I am not a complete ass.”

I let
that by. “Why didn’t you leave the gloves in the elevator with the costume?”

“Because
they hadn’t come with it, and I thought it better to take them.”

“That
private elevator is at the rear of the hall downstairs. Did anyone see you
leaving it or passing through the hall?”

“No.
The hall was empty.”

“How
did you get home? Taxi?”

“No.
Fritz didn’t expect me until six or later. I walked to the public library,
spent some two hours there, and then took a cab.”

I
pursed my lips and shook my head to indicate sympathy. That was his longest and
hardest tramp since Montenegro. Over a mile. Fighting his way through the
blizzard, in terror of the law on his tail. But all the return I got for my
look of sympathy was a scowl, so I let loose. I laughed. I put my head back and
let it come. I had wanted to ever since I had learned he was Santa Claus, but
had been too busy thinking. It was bottled up in me, and I let it out, good. I
was about to taper off to a cackle when he exploded.

“Confound
it,” he bellowed, “marry and be damned!”

That
was dangerous. That attitude could easily get us onto the aspect he had sent me
up to my room to think over alone, and if we got started on that anything could
happen. It called for tact.

“I beg
your pardon,” I said. “Something caught in my throat. Do you want to describe
the situation, or do you want me to?”

“I
would like to hear you try,” he said grimly.

“Yes,
sir. I suspect that the only thing to do is to phone Inspector Cramer right now
and invite him to come and have a chat, and when he comes open the bag. That
will—”

“No. I
will not do that.”

“Then,
next best, I go to him and spill it there. Of course—”

“No.”
He meant every word of it.

“Okay,
I’ll describe it. They’ll mark time on the others until they find Santa Claus.
They’ve got to find him. If he left any prints they’ll compare them with every
file they’ve got, and sooner or later they’ll get to yours. They’ll cover all
the stores for sales of white cotton gloves to men. They’ll trace Bottweill’s
movements and learn that he lunched with you at Rusterman’s, and you left
together, and they’ll trace you to Bottweill’s place. Of course your going
there won’t prove you were Santa Claus, you might talk your way out of that,
and it will account for your prints if they find some, but what about the
gloves? They’ll trace that sale if you give them time, and with a description
of the buyer they’ll find Santa Claus. You‘re sunk.”

I had
never seen his face blacker.

“If
you sit tight till they find him,” I argued, “it will be quite a nuisance.
Cramer has been itching for years to lock you up, and any judge would commit
you as a material witness who had run out. Whereas if you call Cramer now, and
I mean now, and invite him to come and have some beer, while it will still be a
nuisance, it will be bearable. Of course he’ll want to know why you went there
and played Santa Claus, but you can tell him anything you please. Tell him you
bet me a hundred bucks, or what the hell, make it a grand, that you could be in
a room with me for ten minutes and I wouldn’t recognize you. I’ll be glad to
cooperate.”

I
leaned forward. “Another thing. If you wait till they find you, you won’t dare
tell them that Bottweill took a drink from that bottle shortly after two o’clock
and it didn’t hurt him. If you told about that after they dug you up, they
could book you for withholding evidence, and they probably would, and make it
stick. If you get Cramer here now and tell him he’ll appreciate it, though
naturally he won’t say so. He’s probably at his office. Shall I ring him?”

“No. I
will not confess that performance to Mr. Cramer. I will not unfold the morning
paper to a disclosure of that outlandish masquerade.”

“Then
you’re going to sit and read
Here and Now
until they come with a warrant?”

“No.
That would be fatuous.” He took in air through his mouth, as far down as it
would go, and let it out through his nose. “I’m going to find the murderer and
present him to Mr. Cramer. There’s nothing else.”

“Oh.
You are.”

“Yes.”

“You
might have said so and saved my breath, instead of letting me spout.”

“I
wanted to see if your appraisal of the situation agreed with mine. It does.”

“That’s
fine. Then you also know that we may have two weeks and we may have two
minutes. At this very second some expert may be phoning Homicide to say that he
has found fingerprints that match on the card of Wolfe, Nero—”

The
phone rang, and I jerked around as if someone had stuck a needle in me. Maybe
we wouldn’t have even two minutes. My hand wasn’t trembling as I lifted the
receiver, I hope. Wolfe seldom lifts his until I have found out who it is, but
that time he did.

“Nero
Wolfe’s office, Archie Goodwin speaking.”

“This
is the District Attorney’s office, Mr. Goodwin. Regarding the murder of Kurt
Bottweill. We would like you to be here at ten o’clock tomorrow morning.”

“All
right. Sure.”

“At
ten o’clock sharp, please.”

“I’ll
be there.”

We
hung up. Wolfe sighed. I sighed.

“Well,”
I said, “I’ve already told them six times that I know absolutely nothing about
Santa Claus, so they may not ask me again. If they do, it will be interesting
to compare my voice when I’m lying with when I’m telling the truth.”

He
grunted. “Now. I want a complete report of what happened there after I left,
but first I want background. In your intimate association with Miss Dickey you
must have learned things about those people. What?”

“Not
much.” I cleared my throat. “I guess I’ll have to explain something. My
association with Miss Dickey was not intimate.” I stopped. It wasn’t easy.

“Choose
your own adjective. I meant no innuendo.”

“It’s
not a question of adjectives. Miss Dickey is a good dancer, exceptionally good,
and for the past couple of months I have been taking her here and there, some
six or eight times altogether. Monday evening at the Flamingo Club she asked me
to do her a favor. She said Bottweill was giving her a runaround, that he had
been going to marry her for a year but kept stalling, and she wanted to do
something. She said Cherry Quon was making a play for him, and she didn’t
intend to let Cherry take the rail. She asked me to get a marriage-license
blank and fill it out for her and me and give it to her. She would show it to
Bottweill and tell him now or never. It struck me as a good deed with no risk
involved, and, as I say, she is a good dancer. Tuesday afternoon I got a blank,
no matter how, and that evening, up in my room, I filled it in, including a
fancy signature.”

Wolfe
made a noise.

“That’s
all,” I said, “except that I want to make it clear that I had no intention of
showing it to you. I did that on the spur of the moment when you picked up your
book. Your memory is as good as mine. Also, to close it up, no doubt you
noticed that today just before Bottweill and Mrs. Jerome joined the party
Margot and I stepped aside for a little chat. She told me the license did the
trick. Her words were, ‘Perfect, simply perfect.’ She said that last evening,
in his office, he tore the license up and put the pieces in his wastebasket.
That’s okay, the cops didn’t find them. I looked before they came, and the
pieces weren’t there.”

His
mouth was working, but he didn’t open it. He didn’t dare. He would have liked
to tear into me, to tell me that my insufferable flummery had got him into this
awful mess, but if he did so he would be dragging in the aspect he didn’t want
mentioned. He saw that in time, and saw that I saw it. His mouth worked, but
that was all. Finally he spoke.

“Then
you are not on intimate terms with Miss Dickey.”

“No,
sir.”

“Even
so, she must have spoken of that establishment and those people.”

“Some,
yes.”

“And
one of them killed Bottweill. The poison was put in the bottle between two-ten,
when I saw him take a drink, and three-thirty when Kiernan went and got the
bottle. No one came up in the private elevator during the half-hour or more I
was in the dressing room. I was getting into that costume and gave no heed to
footsteps or other sounds in the office, but the elevator shaft adjoins the
dressing room, and I would have heard it. It is a strong probability that the
opportunity was even narrower, that the poison was put in the bottle while I
was in the dressing room, since three of them were in the office with Bottweill
when I left. It must be assumed that one of those three, or one of the three in
the studio, had grasped an earlier opportunity. What about them?”