Rex Stout - Nero Wolfe - Second Confession Read online

  “See? When I was young and gay!” I recognized it instantly because I had one like it at home. It was a clipping from the Gazette of September ninth, 1940. I have not had my picture in the paper as often as Churchill or Rocky Graziano, or even Nero Wolfe, but that time it happened that I had been lucky and shot an automatic out of a man's hand just before he pressed the trigger.

  I nodded. “A born hero if I ever saw one.” She nodded back. “I was seventeen. I had a crush on you for nearly a month.” “No wonder. Have you been showing this around?” “I have not! Damn it, you ought to be touched!” “Hell, I am touched, but not as much as I was an hour ago. I thought you liked my nose or the hair oft my chest or something, and here it was only a childhood memory.” “What if I feel it coming back?” “Don't try to sweeten it. Anyway, now I have a problem. Who else might possibly remember this picture—and there have been a couple of others—besides you?” She considered. “Gwenn might, but I doubt it, and I don't think anyone else would. If you have a problem, I have a question. What are you here for? Louis Rony?” It was my turn to consider, and I let her have a poker smile while I was at it.

  “That's it,” she said!

  “Or it isn't. What if it is?” She came close enough to take hold of my lapels with both hands, and her eyes were certainly big. “Listen, you born hero,” she said earnestly. “No matter what I might feel coming back or what I don't, you be careful where you head it on anything about my sister. She's twenty-two. When I was her age I was already pretty well messed up, and she's still as clean as a rose—my God, I don't mean a rose, you know what I mean. I agree with my dad about Louis Rony, but it all depends on how it's done. Maybe the only way not to hurt her too much is to shoot him. I don't really know what he is to her. I'm just telling you that what matters isn't Dad or Mother or me or Rony, but it's my sister, and you'd better believe me.” It was the combination of circumstances. She was so close, and the smell of roses was so strong, and she was so damned earnest after dallying around with me all afternoon, that it was really automatic. When, after a minute or two, she pushed at me, I let her go, reached for the portfolio and closed it, and took it to a tier of shelves and put it on the lowest one. When I got back to her she looked a little flushed but not too overcome to speak.

  “You darned fool,” she said, and had to clear her throat. “Look at my dress now!” She ran her fingers down through the folds. “We'd better go down.” As I went with her down the wide stairs to the reception hall it occurred to me that I was getting my wires crossed. I seemed to have a fair start on establishing a personal relationship, but not with the right person.

  We ate on the west terrace, where the setting sun, coming over the tops of the trees beyond the lawn, was hitting the side of the house just above our heads as we sat down. By that time Mrs Sperling was the only one who was calling me Mr Goodwm. She had me at her right, probably to emphasize my importance as the son of a business associate of the Chairman of the Board, and I still didn't know whether she knew I was in disguise. It was her that Junior resembled, especially the wide mouth, though she had filled in a little. She seemed to have her department fairly under control, and the looks and manners of the helps indicated that they had been around quite a while and intended to stay.

  After dinner we loafed around the terrace until it was about dark and then went inside, all but Gwenn and Rony, who wandered off across the lawn. Webster Kane and Mrs Sperling said they wanted to listen to a broadcast, or maybe it was video. I was invited to partake of bridge, but said I had a date with Sperling to discuss photography plans for tomorrow, which was true He led me to a part of the house I hadn't seen yet, into a big high-ceilinged room with four thousand books around the walls, a stock ticker, and a desk with five phones on it among other things, gave me a fourth or fifth chance to refuse a cigar, invited me to sit, and asked what I wanted. His tone was not that of a host to a guest, but of a senior executive to one not yet a junior executive by a long shot. I arranged my tone to fit.

  “Your daughter Madeline knows who I am. She saw a picture of me once and seems to have a good memory.” He nodded. “She has. Does it matter?” “Not if she keeps it to herself, and I think she will, but I thought you ought to know. You can decide whether you had better mention it to her.” “I don't think so. I'll see.” He was frowning, but not at me. “How is it with Rony?” “Oh, we're on speaking terms. He's been pretty busy. The reason I asked to see you is something else. I notice there are keys for the guest-room doors, and I approve of it, but I got careless and dropped mine in the swimming pool, and I haven't got an assortment with me. When I go to bed I'll want to lock my door because I'm nervous, so if you have a master key will you kindly lend it to me?”

  There was nothing slow about him. He was already smiling before I finished. Then he shook his head. “I don't think so. There are certain standards—oh, to hell with standards. But he is here as my daughter's guest, with my permission, and I think I would prefer not to open his door for you. What reason have you—” “I was speaking of my door, not someone else's. I resent your insinuation, and I'm going to tell my father, who owns stock in the corporation, and he'll resent it too. Can I help it if I'm nervous?” He started to smile, then thought it deserved better than that, and his head went back for a roar of laughter. I waited patiently. When he had done me justice he got up and went to the door of a big wall safe, twirled the knob back and forth, and swung the door open, pulled a drawer out and figured its contents, and crossed to me with a tagged key in his hand.

  “You can also shove your bed against the door,” he suggested.

  I took the key. “Yes, sir, thank you, I will,” I told him and departed.

  When I returned to the living-room, which was about the size of a tennis court, I found that the bridge game had not got started. Gwenn and Rony had rejoined the party. With a radio going, they were dancing in a space by the doors leading to the terrace, and Jimmy Sperling was dancing with Connie Emerson. Madeline was at the piano, concentrating on trying to accom- pany the radio, and Paul Emerson was standing by, looking down at her flying fingers with his face sourer than ever. At the end of dinner he had taken three kinds of pills, and perhaps had picked the wrong ones. I went and asked Madeline to dance, and it took only a dozen steps to know how good she was. Still more relationship.

  A little later Mrs Sperling came in, and she was soon followed by Sperling and Webster Kane. Before long the dancing stopped, and someone mentioned bed, and it began to look as if there would be no chance to dispose of the little brown capsule I had got from my medicine case. Some of them had patronized the well-furnished bar on wheels which had been placed near a long table back of a couch, but not Rony, and I had about decided that I was out of luck when Webster Kane got enthusiastic about nightcaps and started a selling campaign. I made mine bourbon and water because that was what Rony had shown a preference for during the afternoon, and the prospect brightened when I saw Rony let Jimmy Sperling hand him one. It went as smooth as if I had written the script. Rony took a swallow and then put his glass on the table when Connie Emerson wanted both his hands to show him a rumba step. I took a swallow from mine to make it the same level as his, got the capsule from my pocket and dropped it in, made my way casually to the table, put my glass down by Rony's in order to have my hands for getting out a cigarette and lighting it, and picked the glass up again, but the wrong one—or I should say the right one. There wasn't a chance the manoeuvre had been observed, and it couldn't have been neater.

  But there my luck ended. When Connie let him go Rony went to the table and retrieved his glass, but the damn fool didn't drink. He just held on to it.

  After a while I tried to prime him by sauntering over to where he was talking with Gwenn and Connie, joining in, taking healthy swallows from my glass, and even making a comment on the bourbon, but he didn't lift, it for a sip. The damn camel. I wanted to ask Connie to get a knee lock on him so I could pour it down his throat. Two or three of them were saying good ni
ght and leaving, and I turned around to be polite. When I turned back again Rony had stepped to the bar to put his glass down, and when he moved away there were no glasses there but empty ones. Had he suddenly gulped it down? He hadn't. I went to put my glass down, reached across for a pretzel, and lowered my head enough to get a good whiff of the contents of the ice bucket. He had dumped it in there.

  I guess I told people good night; anyway I got up to my room. Naturally I was sore at myself for having bungled it, and while I undressed I went back over it carefully. It was a cinch he hadn't seen me switch the glasses, with his back turned and no mirror he could have caught it in. Neither had Connie, for her view had been blocked by him and she only came up to his chin. I went over it again and decided no one could have seen me, but I was glad Nero Wolfe wasn't there to explain it to. In any case, I concluded in the middle of a deep yawn, I wouldn't be using Spelling's master key. Whatever reason Rony might have had for ditching the drink, he sure had ditched it, which meant he was not only undoped but also alerted...and therefore...therefore something, but what...therefore...the thought was important and it was petering out on me.

  I reached for my pyjama top but had to stop to yawn, and that made me furious because I had no right to yawn when I had just fumbled on a simple little thing like doping a guy...only I didn't feel furious at all...I just felt awful damn sleepy.

  I remember saying to myself aloud through gritted teeth, “You're doped you goddam dope and you get that door locked,” but I don't remember locking it. I know I did, because it was locked in the morning.

  CHAPTER Five

  All day Sunday was a nightmare. It rained off and on all day. I dragged myself out of bed at ten o'clock with a head as big as a barrel stuffed with wet feathers, and five hours later it was still the size of a keg and the inside was still swampy. Gwenn was keeping after me to take interiors with flashbulbs, and I had to deliver. Strong black coffee didn't seem to help, and food was my worst enemy. Sperling thought I had a hangover, and he certainly didn't smile when I returned the master key and refused to report events if any. Madeline thought there was something funny about it, but the word funny has different meanings at different times. There was one thing, when I got roped in for bridge I seemed to be clairvoyant and there was no stopping me. Jimmy suspected I was a shark but tried to conceal it. About the worst was when Webster Kane decided I was in exactly the right condition to start a course in economics and devoted an hour to the first lesson.

  I was certainly in no shape to make any headway in simple fractions, let alone economics or establishing a relationship with a girl like Gwenn. Or Madeline either. Sometime during the afternoon Madeline got me alone and started to open me up for a look at my intentions and plans—or rather, Wolfe's—regarding her sister, and I did my best to keep from snarling under the strain. She was willing to reciprocate, and I collected a few items about the family and guests without really caring a damn. The only one who was dead set against Rony was Sperling himself. Mrs Sperling and Jimmy, the brother, had liked him at first, then had switched more or less to Sperling's viewpoint, and later, about a month ago, had switched again and taken the attitude that it was up to Gwenn. That was when Rony had been allowed to darken the door again. As for the guests, Connie Emerson had apparently decided to solve the problem by getting Rony's mind off Gwenn and on to someone else, namely her; Emerson seemed to be neither more nor less sour on Rony than on most of his other fellow creatures; and Webster Kane was judicious. Kane's attitude, of some importance because of his position as a friend of the family, was that he didn't care for Rony personally but that a mere suspicion didn't condemn him. He had had a hot argument with Sperling about it.

  Some of the stuff Madeline told me might have been useful in trying to figure who had doped Rony's drink if I had been in any condition to use it, but I wasn't. I would have made myself scarce long before the day was done but for one thing. I intended to get even, or at least make a stab at it.

  As for the doping, I had entered a plea of not guilty, held the trial, and acquitted myself. The possibility that I had taken my own dope was ruled out; I had made that switch clean. And Rony had not seen the switch or been told of it; I was standing pat on that. Therefore Rony's drink had been doped by someone else, and he had either known it or suspected it. It would have been interesting to know who had done it, but there were too many nominations. Webster Kane had been mixing, helped by Connie and Madeline, and Jimmy had delivered Rony's drink to him. Not only that, after Rony had put it down on the table I had by no means had my eyes fixed on it while I was making my way across. So while Rony might have a name for the supplier of the dose I had guzzled, to me he was just X.

  That, however, was not what had me hanging on. To hell with X, at least for the present. What had me setting my jaw and bidding four spades, or trotting around after Gwenn with two cameras and my pockets bulging with flashbulbs, when I should have been home in bed, was a picture I would never forget: Louis Rony pouring into a bucket the drink I had doped for him, while I stood and gulped the last drop of the drink someone else had doped for him. He would pay for that or I would never look Nero Wolfe in the face again.

  Circumstances seemed favourable. I collected the information cautiously and without jostling. Rony had come by train on Friday evening and been met at the station by Gwenn, and had to return to town this evening, Sunday; and no one was driving in. Paul and Connie Emerson were house guests at Stony Acres for a week; Webster Kane was there for an indefinite period, Preparing some economic something for the corporation; Mom and the girls were there for the summer; and Sperling Senior and Junior would certainly not go to town on Sunday evening. But I would, waiting until late to miss the worst of the traffic, and surely Rony would prefer a comfortable roomy car to a crowded train.

  I didn't ask him. Instead, I made the suggestion, casually, to Gwenn. Later I made it pointedly to Madeline, and she agreed to drop a word in if the occasion offered. Then I got into the library alone with Sperling, suggested it to him even more pointedly, and asked him which phone I could use for a New York call, and told him the call was not for him to hear. He was a little difficult about it, which I admit he had a right to be, but by that time I could make whole sentences again and I managed to sell him. He left and closed the door behind him, and I got Saul Panzer at his home in Brooklyn and talked to him all of twenty minutes. With my head still soggy, I had to go over it twice to be sure not to leave any gaps.

  That was around six o'clock, which meant I had four more hours to suffer, since I had picked ten for the time of departure and was now committed to it, but it wasn't so bad. A little later the clouds began to sail around and you could tell them apart, and the sun even took a look as us just before it dropped over the edge; and what was more important, I risked a couple of nibbles at a chicken sandwich and before I was through the sandwich was too, and also a piece of cherry pie and a glass of milk. Mrs Sperling patted me on the back and Madeline said that now she would be able to get some sleep.

  It was six minutes past ten when I slid behind the wheel of the convertible, asked Rony if he had remembered his toothbrush, and rolled along the plaza into the curve of the drive.

  “What's this,” he asked, “a forty-eight?” “No,” I said, “forty-nine.” He let his head go back to the cushion and shut his eyes.

  There were enough openings among the clouds to show some stars but no moon. We wound along the drive, reached the stone pillars, and eased out on to the public road. It was narrow, with an asphalt surface that wouldn't have been hurt by a little dressing, and for the first mile we had it to ourselves, which suited me fine. Just beyond a sharp turn the shoulder widened at a spot where there was an old shed at the edge of thick woods, and there at the roadside, headed the way we were going, a car was parked. I was going slow on account of the turn, and a woman darted nut and blinked a flashlight, and I braked to a stop. As I did so the woman called, “Got a jack mister?” and a man's voice came, “My Jack broke, you got
one?” I twisted in the seat to back off the road on to the grass. Rony muttered at me, “What the hell,” and I muttered back, “Brotherhood of man.” As the man and woman came toward us I got out and told Rony, “Sorry, but I guess you'll have to move; the jack's under the seat.” The woman, saying something about what nice people we were, was on his side and opened the door for him, and he climbed out. He went out backwards, facing me, and just as he was clear something slammed against the side of my head and I sank to the ground, but the grass was thick and soft. I stayed down and listened. It was only a few seconds before I heard my name.

  “Okay, Archie.” I got to my feet, reached in the car to turn off the engine and lights, and circled around the hood to the other side, away from the road. Louis Rony was stretched out flat on his back. I didn't waste time checking on him, knowing that Ruth Bradv could give lectures on the scientific use of a persuader, and anyhow she was kneeling at his head with her flashlight.

  “Sorry to break into your Sunday evening, Ruth darling.” “Nuts to you, Archie my pet. Don't stand talking. I don't like this, out here in the wilderness.” “Neither do I. Don't let him possum.” “Don't worry. I've got a blade of grass up his nose.” “Good. If he wiggles tap him again.” I turned to Saul Panzer, who had his shirt sleeves rolled up. “How are the wife and children?” “Wonderful.” “Give 'em my love. You'd better be busy the other side of the car, in case of traffic.” He moved as instructed and I went to my knees beside Ruth. I expected to find it on him, since it wouldn't have been sensible for him to take such pains with it when he went swimming and then carelessly pack it in his bag, which had been brought down by one of the helps. And I did find it on him. It was not in a waterproof container but in a cellophane envelope, in the innermost compartment of his alligator-skin wallet. I knew that must be it, because nothing else on him was out of the ordinary, and because its nature was such that I knelt there and goggled, with Ruth's flashlight focused on it.