Rex Stout - The League of Frightened Men

“What flavor do you want?”

“I... if it were good rye...” He leaned toward me and a look came into his eyes. Then he jerked back. His voice got harsh and not friendly at all. “Can’t you take a joke? I don’t drink when I’m driving. Is that woman hurt much?”

“I don’t think so, her head’s still on. The doctor’ll fix her up. Do you take her places often? Or her husband?”

He was still harsh. “I take her when she calls me, her husband too. I’m a taxi-driver. Mr. Paul Chapin. They give me their trade when they can, for old time’s sake. Once or twice they’ve let me get drunk at their place, Paul likes to see me drunk and he furnishes the liquor.” He laughed, and the harshness went. “You know, you take this situation in all its aspects, and you couldn’t ask for anything more hilarious. I’m going to have to stay sober so as not to miss any of it. I winked at you because you’re in on it now, and you’re going to be just as funny as all the rest.”

“That won’t worry me any, I always have been pretty ludicrous. Does Chapin get drunk with you?”

“He doesn’t drink. He says it makes his leg hurt.”

“Did you know that there’s a reward of five thousand dollars for finding Andrew Hibbard?”

“No.”

“Alive or dead.”

It looked to me as if, just stabbing around, I had hit something. His face had changed; he looked surprised, as if confronted with an idea that hadn’t occurred to him. He said, “Well, he’s a valuable man, that’s not too much to offer for him. At that, Andy’s not a bad guy. Who offered the reward?”

“His niece. It’ll be in the papers tomorrow.”

“Good for her. God bless her.” He laughed. “It is an incontrovertible fact that five thousand dollars is a hell of a lot of more money than a nickel. How do you account for that? I want a cigarette.”

I got a packet out and lit us both up. His fingers weren’t steady at all, and I began to feel sorry for him. So I said, “Just figure it out. Hibbard’s home is up at University Heights. If you drove downtown somewhere — say around the Perry Street neighborhood, I don’t know just where — and from there to One Hundred Sixteenth Street, ordinarily what would you get for it? Let’s see — two, eight miles — that’d be around a dollar and a half. But if going uptown you happened to have your old classmate Andrew Hibbard with you — or just his corpse, maybe even only a piece of it, say, his head and a couple of arms — instead of a dollar-fifty you’d get five grand. As you see, it all depends on your cargo.” So as not to take my eyes off him, I blew cigarette smoke out of the corner of my mouth. Of course, riding a guy who needed a drink bad and wouldn’t take it was like knocking a cripple’s crutch from under him, but I didn’t need to remind myself that all’s fair in love and business. Basic truths like that are either born right in a man or they’re not.

At that he had enough grip on himself to keep his mouth shut. He looked at his fingers trembling holding the cigarette, so long that I finally looked at them too. Finally he let his hand fall to his knee, and looked at me and began to laugh. He demanded, “Didn’t I say you were going to be funny?” His voice went harsh again. “Listen, you. Beat it. Come on, now, beat it. Go back in the house or you’ll catch cold.”

I said, “All right, how about that drink?”

But he was through. I prodded at him a little, but he had gone completely dumb and unfriendly. I thought of bringing out some rye and letting him smell it, but decided that would just screw him down tighter. I said to myself, anon, and passed him up.

Before going in the house I went around back of the taxi and got the license number.

I went to the kitchen. Wolfe was still there, in the wooden chair with arms where he always sat to direct Fritz and to eat when he was on a relapse.

I said, “Pitney Scott’s out front. The taxi-driver. He brought her. He paid me a nickel for his share, and he says that’s all it’s worth. He knows something about Andrew Hibbard.”

“What?”

“You mean what does he know? Search me. I told him about the reward Miss Hibbard, my client, is offering, and he looked like get thee behind me, Satan. He’s shy, he wants to be coaxed. My surmise is that he may not exactly know where Hibbard or his remains has been cached, but he thinks he might guess. He’s got about seven months to go to pink snakes and crocodiles. I tried to get him to come in for a drink, but he fought that off too. He won’t come in. He may not be workable at the present moment, but I was thinking of suggesting that you go out and look at him.”

“Out?” Wolfe raised his head at me. “Out and down the stoop?”

“Yeah, just on the sidewalk, you wouldn’t have to step off the curb. He’s right there.”

Wolfe shut his eyes. “I don’t know, Archie. I don’t know why you persist in trying to badger me into frantic sorties. Dismiss the notion entirely. It is not feasible. You say he actually gave you a nickel?”

“Yes, and where’s it going to get you to act eccentric with a dipsomaniac taxi-driver even if he did go to Harvard? Honest to God, sir, sometimes you run it in the ground.”

“That will do. Definitely. Go and see if Mrs. Chapin has been made presentable.”

I went. I found that Dr. Vollmer had finished with his patient in the bathroom and had her back in a chair in the office, with her neck bandaged so that she had to hold it stiff whether she wanted to or not. He was giving her instructions how to conduct herself, and Fritz was taking away basins and rags and things. I waited till the doc was through, then took him to the kitchen. Wolfe opened his eyes at him. Vollmer said:

“Quite a novel method of attack, Mr. Wolfe. Quite original, hacking at her from behind like that. He got into one of the posterior externals; I had to shave off some of her hair.”

“He?”

The doctor nodded. “She explained that her husband, to whom she has been married three years, did the carving. With a little caution, which I urged upon her, she should be all right in a few days. I took fourteen stitches. Her husband must be a remarkable and unconventional man. She is remarkable too, in her way: the Spartan type. She didn’t even clench her hands while I was sewing her; the fingers were positively relaxed.”

“Indeed. You will want her name and address for your record.”

“I have it, thanks. She wrote it down for me.”

“Thank you, doctor.”

Vollmer went. Wolfe got to his feet, pulled at his vest in one of his vain attempts to cover the strip of canary yellow shirt which encircled his magnificent middle, and preceded me to the office. I stopped to ask Fritz to clean off the inside of the furpiece as well as he could.

By the time I joined them Wolfe was back in his chair and she was sitting facing him. He was saying to her:

“I am glad it was no worse, Mrs. Chapin. The doctor has told you, you must be careful not to jerk the stitches loose for a few days. By the way, his fee — did you pay him?”

“Yes. Five dollars.”

“Good. Reasonable, I should say. Mr. Goodwin tells me your cab is waiting. Tell the driver to go slowly; jolting is always abominable, in your present condition even dangerous. We need not detain you longer.”

She had her eyes fixed on him again. Getting washed off and wrapped up hadn’t made her any handsomer. She took a breath through her nose and let it out again so you could hear it.

She said, finally, “Don’t you want me to tell you about it? I want to tell you what he did.”

Wolfe’s head went left and right. “It isn’t necessary, Mrs. Chapin. You should go home and rest. I undertake to notify the police of the affair; I can understand your reluctant delicacy; after all, one’s own husband to whom one has been married three years... I’ll attend to that for you.”