Rex Stout - Nero Wolfe 39 Read online

  PHILIP HORAN, salesman, in his middle thirties, married, two or three children. I include him because a) he was seldom at the office before four in the afternoon but had been seen there Monday morning by one of the girls, b) he had expected to get the job Mercer had given Ashby and was known to be sore about it, and c) he had asked one of the girls, an old-timer who had been with the firm as long as he had, to find out what had happened and was happening between Ashby and Elma Vassos, and had kept after her about it.

  FRANCES COX, receptionist. Elma said she was thirty, so she was probably twenty-seven or twenty-eight I do know a few things about women. I include her because if she had seen Pete entering Ashby’s room she might have seen someone else on the move, and that might be useful.

  DENNIS ASHBY, dead. He had told Elma a year back that he was thirty-eight. Had started with Mercer’s Bobbins long ago, Elma didn’t know how long, as a stock clerk. Small and not handsome. When I asked Elma to name the animal he was most like, she said a monkey. He had spent about half of his time out of the office, out promoting. He had had no secretary; when he had wanted a stenographer he had called one in from the rumpus, and he had handled his appointments himself, with the assistance of Frances Cox, the receptionist. He had kept a battery of files in his own room. The girls had called him the Menace, naturally, with his name Dennis, but also because they meant it Elma had no knowledge of any seduction he had actually achieved, but there had been much talk.

  JOAN ASHBY, the widow. I include her because the widow of a murdered man must always be included. She had once worked at Mercer’s Bobbins, but had quit when she married Ashby, before Elma had got her job there. Elma had never seen her and knew next to nothing about her. Ashby had told Elma across a restaurant table that his marriage had been a mistake and he was trying to get his wife to agree to a divorce.

  ELMA VASSOS. One point: when I asked her why she had gone to dinners and shows with a married man she said, “I told my father he had asked me, and he told me to go. He said every girl is so curious about married men she wants to be with one somewhere, and she does, and I might as well go ahead and have it over with. Of course, my father knew me.”

  As for Monday morning, Elma had been in Busch’s room from nine-forty to ten-fifteen, taking dictation from him, and then in the rumpus with the crew. About half past eleven John Mercer had entered with a man, a stranger, and called them together, and the man had asked if any of them had been in Ashby’s room that morning, or had seen anyone entering or leaving it, and had got a unanimous no; and then Mercer had told them what had happened.

  Even with my extremely acute understanding of attractive young women, I didn’t suspect that she was holding out on me, except maybe on one detail, near the end, when I asked who she thought had lied to the cops about her and Ashby. She wouldn’t name anyone even as a wild guess. I told her that was ridiculous, that any man or woman alive, knowing that someone or ones of a group had smeared him, would darned well have a notion who it was, but nothing doing. If any of them had it in for her she didn’t know it, except Ashby, and he was dead.

  At a quarter of eleven I was at my desk typing that part, nearly finished, when the house phone buzzed and I turned and got it Wolfe rarely interrupts himself in the plant rooms to buzz me. Since he eats breakfast in his room and goes straight up to the roof, I hadn’t seen him, so I said good morning.

  “Good morning. What are you doing?”

  “Typing my conference with Miss Vassos. The substance. Not verbatim. About done.”

  “Well?”

  “Nothing startling. Some facts that might help. As for believing her, it’s now fifty to one.”

  He grunted. “Or better. What could conceivably have led her to come to me with her story if it weren’t true? Confound it. Where is she?”

  “In her room. Of course she isn’t going to work.”

  “Has she eaten? A guest, welcome or not, must not starve.”

  “She won’t. She ate. She phoned the DA’s office to ask when she can have the body. She’ll do.”

  “The account in the Times supports her conclusion that the police assume that her father killed Ashby and committed suicide—not, of course, explicitly. You have read it?”

  “Yes. So has she.”

  “But the Times may be wrong, and certainly she may be. It’s possible that Mr. Cramer is finessing, and if so we can leave it to him. You’ll have to find out. Conclusively.”

  “Lon Cohen may know.”

  “That won’t do. You’ll have to see Mr. Cramer. Now.”

  “If he’s finessing he won’t show me his hand.”

  “Certainly not. It will take dexterity. Your intelligence, guided by experience.”

  “Yeah. That’s me. I’ll go as soon as I finish typing this—five minutes. You’ll find it in your drawer.” I hung up, beating him to it.

  It took only three minutes. I put the original in his desk drawer and the carbon in mine, went to the kitchen to tell Fritz I was leaving, got my coat from the hall rack, and departed. It’s a good distance for a leg-stretcher from the old brownstone to Homicide South, but my brain likes to take it easy while I’m walking and I had to consult it about approaches, so I went to Ninth Avenue and flagged a taxi.

  The dick at the desk, who was not my favorite city employee, said Cramer was busy but Lieutenant Rowcliff might spare me a minute, and I said no thank you and sat down to wait. It was close to noon when I was escorted down the hall to Cramer’s room and found him standing at the end of his desk. As I entered he rasped, “So your client bought a one-way ticket. Want to see him?”

  It seldom pays to prepare an approach. It depends on the approachee. The frame of mind he was in, it was hopeless to try smoothing him, so I switched. “Nuts,” I said offensively. “If you mean Vassos, he wasn’t a client, he was just a bootblack. You owe Mr. Wolfe something and he wants it Elma Vassos, the daughter, slept in his house last night.”

  “The hell she did. In your room?”

  “No. I snore. She came and fed him a line that her life was in danger. Whoever killed Ashby and her father, she didn’t know who, was going to kill her. Then the morning paper has it different Not spelled out, but it’s there, that Vassos killed Ashby and when you started breathing down his neck he found a cliff and jumped off. So you knew about it when you came to see Mr. Wolfe Monday, you knew then about Ashby and Elma Vassos. Why didn’t you say so? If you had, when she came last night she wouldn’t have got in. So you owe him something. When he turns her out he wants to make a little speech to her, and he wants to know who gave you the dope on her and Ashby. Off the record, and you won’t be quoted.”

  He threw his head back and laughed. Not an all-out laugh, just a ha-ha. He stretched an arm to touch my chest with a forefinger. “Slept in his house, huh? Wonderful! I’d like to hear his speech, what will he call her? Not trollop or floozy, hell have some fancy word for it And he has the nerve—on out, Goodwin.”

  “He wants to know—”

  “Nuts. Beat it.”

  “But dammit—”

  “Out.”

  I went; and since there was now nothing to work the brain on, I walked back to 35th Street Wolfe was at his desk with the book he was on, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, by Shirer. A tray on his desk held beer bottle and a glass, and beside it was the report I had typed of my talk with Elma. I went to my desk and sat, and waited until he finished a paragraph and looked up.

  “We’ll have to bounce her,” I said “You will. I would prefer to marry her and reform her, but Cramer would take my license away. Do you want it in full?”

  He said yes, and I gave it to him. At the end I said, “As you see, it didn’t take any dexterity. The first thing he said, ‘So your client bought a one-way ticket,’ was enough. He is not finessing. You can’t blame him for laughing, since he honestly believes that you have a floozy for a house guest. As for his refusing to name—”

  “Shut up.”

  I leaned back and crossed my leg
s. He glowered at me for five seconds, then closed his eyes. In a moment he opened them. “It’s hopeless,” he said through his teeth.

  “Yes, sir,” I agreed. “I suppose I could disguise myself as a bootblack and take Pete’s box and try to—”

  “Shut up! I mean it’s intolerable. Mr. Cramer cannot be permitted to flout…” He put the book down without marking his place, which he never did. “There’s no way out I could have shined my shoes myself. I considered this possibility after reading your report, and here it is. Get Mr. Parker.”

  I didn’t have to look at the book for the number of Nathaniel Parker, the lawyer. I turned to the phone and dialed it, and got him, and Wolfe lifted his receiver.

  “Good morning, sir. Afternoon. I need you. I am going to advise a young woman who has consulted me to bring actions against a corporation and five or six individuals, asking for damages, say a million dollars from each of them, on account of defamatory statements they have made. Slander, not libel, since as far as I know the statements have been made orally and not published. She is here in my house. Can you come to my office? … No, after lunch will do. Three o’clock? Very well, I’ll expect you.”

  He hung up and turned to me. “We’ll have to keep her. You will go with her to her home to get whatever she needs—not now, later. Mr. Cramer expects me to turn her out, does he? Pfui. She would be dead within twenty-four hours, and that would clean the slate for him. Tell Fritz to take her lunch to her room. I will not be rude to a guest at my table, and the effort to control myself would spoil the meal.”

  4

  I asked Parker once how many law books he had in his office, and he said about seven hundred. I asked how many there were in print in the English language, and he said probably around ten thousand. So I suppose you can’t expect to give a lawyer an order for a lawsuit the way you give a tailor an order for a suit of clothes. But they sure do make a job of it. Parker came on the dot at three, and they barely got it settled in time for Wolfe to keep his afternoon date with the orchids. At three minutes to four Wolfe got to his feet and said, “Then tomorrow as early as may be. You’ll proceed as soon as Archie phones you that he has explained the matter to Miss Vassos.”

  Parker shook his head. “The way you operate. You actually haven’t mentioned it to her?”

  “No. It would have been pointless to mention it until I learned if it was feasible.”

  Wolfe went to the hall to take the elevator to the roof, Parker went along, and I went to hold his coat and let him out. Then I mounted two flights to the South Room and knocked on the door, heard a faint “Come in,” and did so. Elma was sitting on the edge of the bed running her fingers through her hair. “I guess I fell asleep,” she said. “What time is it?”

  I would have been willing to help her with the hair. Any man would; it was nice hair. “Four o’clock,” I said. “Fritz says you ate only two of his Creole fritters. You don’t care for shrimps?”

  “I’m sorry. He doesn’t like me, and I don’t blame him, I’m a nuisance.” She sighed, deep.

  “That’s not it. He suspects any woman who enters the house of wanting to take it over.” I pulled a chair around and sat. “There have been developments. I went to see a cop, an inspector named Cramer, and you’re right. They think your father killed Ashby and then himself. You are now Mr. Wolfe’s client That stack of bills in the safe is still your property, but I have taken a dollar from it as a retainer. Do you approve?”

  “Of course—but take all of it. I know it’s nothing …”

  “Skip it That’s no inducement for him. And don’t thank him. He would rather miss a meal than have anyone think he’s a softy, that he would wiggle a finger to help anyone. Don’t even hint at it. The idea is that Cramer has flouted him, his word, and therefore he will make a monkey of Cramer, and I admit that that may be the main point So he has to prove that your father didn’t kill Ashby, and the only way he can do that is to find out who did. The question is how. He would have to send me to that building to go over the set-up and see people, and to invite some of them to come to his office, since he never leaves the house on business, but he can’t expect the impossible even of me. They would toss me out, and they wouldn’t come. So he must—”

  “Some of the girls might come. And Mr. Busch might.”

  “Not enough. We need the ones who wouldn’t. So he must drop a bomb. You are going to sue six people for damages, a million dollars each. Slander. He was going to have you sue the corporation too, but the lawyer vetoed it. The lawyer is preparing the papers and will go ahead as soon as you phone him to. His name is Nathaniel Parker and he’s good. It isn’t expected that any of the cases will ever get to a court or that you will collect anything, that’s not the idea. The idea is that the fur will begin to fly. Do you want to consult anybody before you tell Parker to go ahead? Do you know a lawyer?”

  “No.” Her fingers were clasped tight. “Of course I’ll do anything Mr. Wolfe says. Who are the six people?”

  “One, John Mercer. Two, Andrew Busch. Three, Philip Horan. Four, Frances Cox. Five, Mrs. Ashby. Six, Inspector Cramer. Anything Cramer says in his official capacity is privileged, but there’s a point of law. He may have said something to a reporter, and he told me you’re a floozy, or implied it. At least it will be a threat to get him on the witness stand under oath and ask him who told him what about you and Ashby, and just having him summoned will be a pleasure for Mr. Wolfe and you might as well humor him. You’re not listening.”

  “Yes, I am. I don’t think I—Can’t you leave Mr. Busch out?”

  “Why should we?”

  “Because I don’t think he said anything like that about me. I’m sure he wouldn’t.”

  “Neither did some of the others, probably. It’s even conceivable that none of those five did. This is only to get in there, to get at them.”

  She nodded. “I know, I understand that, but I wouldn’t want Mr. Busch to think that I think he might slander me. If what you want—if Mr. Wolfe wants to talk to him, I’m pretty sure he would come if I asked him.”

  I eyed her. “There seems to be an angle you didn’t mention this morning. When you told me about Busch you didn’t say he would come if you whistled.”

  “I’m not saying it now!” She was indignant. “All I’m saying, he’s a nice man, and he’s decent, and he wouldn’t do that!”

  “Have you seen much of him out of the office?”

  “No. After Mr. Ashby, I decided I wouldn’t make any dates with any man in the office, married or not.”

  “Okay, we’ll exclude Busch, with the understanding that you’ll produce him if and when we need him.” I got up. “We’ll go down to the office and phone Parker, and then we’ll go and get whatever you want for an indefinite stay. It may be two days and it may be two months. When Mr. Wolfe—”

  “Stay here two months? I can’t!”

  “You can and will if necessary. If you got killed it would be next to impossible for Mr. Wolfe to get back at Cramer, and that would sour him for good and he would be unbearable. If you want to do things to your face and hair, not that I see anything wrong with them, I’ll be down in the office.” I went.

  Waiting to call Parker until she came down, since he would want to hear his client’s voice as evidence that she existed, I had a notion to buzz the plant rooms and ask Wolfe if he wanted to see Andrew Busch at six o’clock, but since he would probably have insisted on Busch getting a summons along with the others I decided against it I’m a softy. Elma came down much sooner than most girls would have after a nap, and I dialed and got Parker, told him it was all set but that Busch was to be crossed off, and put Elma on. He asked her if he was to proceed on her behalf as he had been instructed by Wolfe, and she said yes, and that was it I told her I had another call to make, dialed the number of the Gazette, got Lon Cohen, and asked him if his offer of a grand for a piece on Pete Vassos was still open. He said he’d have to see the piece first.

  “We haven’t got time to write it,
” I said. “We’re busy. But if you want something for nothing, Miss Elma Vassos, his daughter, has engaged the services of Nero Wolfe, the famous private detective, and is staying at his house, and is not accessible. On his advice, she has engaged Nathaniel Parker, the famous counselor, to bring an action against five people: John Mercer, Philip Horan, Frances Cox, Mrs. Dennis Ashby, and Inspector Cramer of the NYPD. She is asking for a million dollars for damages for slander from each of them. They will be served tomorrow, probably in time for your first edition. I’m giving you this, exclusive, on instructions from Mr. Wolfe. Parker has been told that you’ll probably be phoning him for confirmation, and you’ll get it Yours truly. See you in court.”

  “Wait a minute, hold it! You can’t just—”

  “Sorry, I’m busy. No use calling back because I won’t be here. Print now, pay later.”

  I hung up and went to the kitchen to tell Fritz we were leaving, and by the time I got to the hall rack Elma had her hat and coat on. Since her place was downtown we went to Eighth Avenue for a taxi. She was all right at walking. Walking with a girl, you can tell pretty well if you’d want to dance with her. Not if she keeps step, she may not have the legs for that, but if she naturally stays with you without doing a barnacle.

  Another mark for her, she didn’t apologize for the neighborhood she lived in as the cab turned into Graham Street and stopped in front of Number 314. At that, it wasn’t as bad in the December dark as it would have been in daylight; no street is. Dirt doesn’t look so dirty. But I must say the vestibule she led me into would have appreciated some attention, and when she used her key and we entered, the inside was no better. She said, “Up three flights,” and went to the stairs, and I followed. I admit I thought she was overdoing it a little. She might at least have said something like, “When I got a job I thought we ought to move, but my father didn’t want to,” just casually. Not a word.