Rex Stout - The League of Frightened Men

“It might be called that. Is it merely poetry, or is it also technical information?”

“I don’t know.” Cabot’s eyes fell. I watched him and thought to myself, he’s actually embarrassed; so there’s kinks in your love-life too, huh, smoothie? He went on, “I couldn’t say; I doubt if any of us could. You’d have to ask his doctor.”

A new voice cut in. Julius Adler and Alex Drummond had come over a few minutes before and stood listening; Adler, I suppose, because he was a lawyer and therefore didn’t trust lawyers, and Drummond since he was a tenor. I never saw a tenor that wasn’t inquisitive. At this point Drummond horned in with a giggle:

“Or his wife.”

Wolfe snapped at him, “Whose wife?”

“Why, Paul’s.”

If I had seen Wolfe astonished only three times in seven years, which is what I would guess, this was the fourth. He even moved in his chair. He looked at Cabot, not at Drummond, and demanded, “What is this nonsense?”

Cabot nodded. “Sure, Paul has a wife.”

Wolfe poured a glass of beer, gulped half of it, let it settle a second, and swallowed the rest. He looked around for his handkerchief, but it had dropped to the floor. I got him one out of the drawer where I kept them, and he wiped his lips.

He said, “Tell me about her.”

“Well...” Cabot looked for words. “Paul Chapin is full of distortions, let us say, and his wife is one of them. Her name was Dora Ritter. He married her three years ago, and they live in an apartment on Perry Street.”

“What is she like and who was she?”

Cabot hesitated again, differently. This time he didn’t seem to be looking for words, he was looking for a way out. He finally said, “I don’t see — I really don’t see that this is going to help you any, but I suppose you’ll want to know it. But I’d rather not — you’d better get it from Burton himself.” He turned and called, “Lorry! Come over here a minute.”

Dr. Burton was with the group at the table, talking and working on a highball. He looked around, made some remark to Farrell the architect, and crossed to Wolfe’s desk. Cabot said to him:

“Mr. Wolfe has just asked me who Paul’s wife was. Maybe I’m being more delicate than the circumstances require, but I’d rather you’d tell him.”

Burton looked at Wolfe and frowned. He looked at Cabot, and his voice sounded irritated: “Why not you, or anybody? Everybody knows it.”

Cabot smiled. “I said maybe I was overdelicate.”

“I think you were.” Burton turned to Wolfe. “Dora Ritter was a maid in my employ. She is around fifty, extremely homely, disconcertingly competent, and stubborn as a wet boot. Paul Chapin married her in 1931.”

“What did he marry her for?”

“I am as likely to tell you as he is. Chapin is a psychopath.”

“So Mr. Hibbard informed me. What sort of maid was she?”

“What sort?”

“Was she in your office, for instance?”

Burton was frowning. “No. She was my wife’s maid.”

“How long have you known her and how long has Chapin known her?—Wait.” Wolfe wiggled a finger. “I must ask you to bear with me, Dr. Burton. I have just received a shock and am floundering in confusion. I have read all of Paul Chapin’s novels, and so naturally supposed myself to be in possession of a fairly complete understanding of his character, his temperament, his processes of thought and his modes of action. I thought him incapable of following any of the traditional channels leading to matrimony, either emotional or practical. Learning that he has a wife, I am greatly shocked; I am even desperate. I need to have disclosed everything about her that is discoverable.”

“Oh. You do.” Burton looked at him, sizing him up, with sour steadiness. “Then I might as well disclose it myself. It was common gossip.” He glanced at the others. “I knew that, though naturally it didn’t reach my ears. If I show reluctance, it is only because it was... unpleasant.”

“Yes.”

“Yes, it was. I presume you don’t know that of all of us, this group, I was the only one who knew Paul Chapin before the college days. We came from the same town — I more or less grew up with him. He was in love with a girl. I knew her — one of the girls I knew, that was all. He was infatuated with her, and he finally, through persistence, reached an understanding with her before he went away to college. Then the accident occurred, and he was crippled, and it was all off. In my opinion it would have been off anyway, sooner or later, without the intervention of an accident. I didn’t go home for my vacations; I spent my summers working. It wasn’t until after I was through with medical school that I went back for a visit, and discovered that this girl had become... that is... I married her.”

He glanced aside at Cabot’s cigarette case thrust at him by the lawyer, shook his head, turned back to Wolfe and went on, “We came to New York. I was lucky in my profession; I have a good bedside manner and a knack with people’s insides, especially women. I made a lot of money. I think it was in 1923 that my wife engaged Dora Ritter — yes, she was with us eight years. Her competence was a jewel in a nigger’s ear—”

“Ethiope.”

“Well, that’s a nigger. One day Paul came to me and said he was going to marry my wife’s maid. That was what was unpleasant. He made a nasty scene out of if.”

Wolfe inclined his head. “I can imagine him explaining that the action contemplated was by way of a paraphrase on the old institution of whipping-boy.”

Dr. Burton jerked his head up, startled, and stared at him. “How the devil did you know that?”

“He said that?”

“Those words. He said paraphrase.”

“I suspected he would have lit on that.” Wolfe scratched his ear, and I knew he was pleased. “Having read his novels, I am not unacquainted with his style of thought and his taste in allusion.—So he married her. She, of course, having but one jewel and the rest all slag, would not be finicky. Do they make a happy pair? Do you ever see her?”

“Not frequently.” Burton hesitated, then went on, “I see her very seldom. She comes once or twice a week to dress my wife’s hair, and occasionally to sew. I am usually not at home.”

Wolfe murmured, “It is a temptation to cling to competence when we find it.”

Burton nodded. “I suppose so. My wife finds it impossible to forgo the indulgence. Dora is an expert hag.”

“Well.” Wolfe took some beer. “Thank you, doctor. It has often been said, you will find romance in the most unlikely spots. Mr. Chapin’s no longer upsets me, since it fits my presumptions. By the way, this probably clears up another little point. Permit me.—Archie, would you ask Mr. Farrell to join us?”

I went and got Farrell and brought him over. He was brisk; the Scotch was putting some spring into him. He gave Wolfe an amiable look.

“Mr. Farrell. Earlier this evening you remarked to Dr. Burton that it was a wonder he was not the first. I suppose that you meant, the first victim of Mr. Chapin’s campaign. Did that remark mean anything in particular?”

Farrell looked uncomfortable. “Did I say that?”

“You did.”

“I don’t remember it. I suppose I thought I was cracking a joke, I don’t know.”

Wolfe said patiently, “Dr. Burton has just been telling me the exegesis of Chapin’s marriage and the former occupation of his wife. I thought perhaps—”

“Oh, he has.” Farrell shot a glance at Burton. “Then what are you asking me for?”

“Don’t be testy, Mr. Farrell; let me save your life in amity. That was the basis of your remark?”

“Of course. But what the devil have Lorrie Burton’s private affairs got to do with it? Or mine or anybody’s? I thought what we are going to pay you for is to stop—”