Rex Stout - The League of Frightened Men

I got off the running-board and back a step. Dora Chapin had come out of the 203 entrance and was headed for the taxi. She had on another coat and another furpiece, but the face was the same, and so were the little gray eyes. She was carrying an oblong package about the size of a shoebox, and I supposed that was dainties for her husband’s Sunday dinner. She didn’t seem to have noticed me, let alone recognize me; then she stopped with one foot on the running-board and turned the eyes straight at me, and for the first time I saw an expression in them that I could give a name to, and it wasn’t fondness. You could call it an inviting expression if you went on to describe what she was inviting me to. I stepped into it anyway. I said:

“Mrs. Chapin. Could I ride with you? I’d like to tell you—”

She climbed inside and slammed the door to. Pitney Scott stepped on the starter, put the gear in, and started to roll. I stood and watched the taxi go, not very jubilant, because it was her I had come down there to see.

I walked to the corner and phoned Wolfe I wouldn’t be home to lunch, which I didn’t mind much because the eggs and cream and sausages I had shipped on at ten o’clock were still undecided what to do about it; bought a Times and went to the roadster and made myself comfortable. Unless she had some kind of pull that Inspector Cramer didn’t know about, they wouldn’t let her stay very long at the Tombs.

At that I had to wait close to an hour and a half. It was nearly two o’clock, and I was thinking of hitting up the delicatessen where Fred Durkin had been a tenant for most of the week, when I looked up for the eightieth time at the sound of a car and saw the taxi slowing down. I had decided what to do. With all that animosity in Dora’s eyes I calculated it wouldn’t pay to try to join her downstairs and go up with her; I would wait till she was inside and then persuade Pitney Scott to take me up. With him along she might let me in. But again I didn’t get the break. Instead of stopping at the entrance Scott rolled down a few yards, and then they both got out and both went in. I stared at them and did a little cussing, and decided not to do any more waiting. I got out and entered 203 for the first and last time, and went to the elevator and said fifth floor. The man looked at me with the usual mild and weary suspicion but didn’t bother with questions. I got out at the fifth and rang the bell at 5C.

I can’t very well pretend to be proud of what happened that afternoon at Paul Chapin’s apartment. I pulled a boner, no doubt of that, and it wasn’t my fault that it didn’t have a result that ended a good deal more than the Chapin case, but the opinion you have of it depends entirely on how you use it. I can’t honestly agree that it was quite as dumb as one or two subsequent remarks of Wolfe’s might seem to indicate. Anyway, this is how it happened.

Dora Chapin came to the door and opened it, and I got my foot inside the sill. She asked me what I wanted, and I said I had something to ask Pitney Scott. She said he would be down in half an hour and I could wait downstairs, and started to shut the door, and got it as far as my foot. I said:

“Listen, Mrs. Chapin. I want to ask you something too. You think I’m against your husband, but I’m not, I’m for him. That’s on the level. He hasn’t got many friends left, and anyway it won’t hurt you to listen to me. I’ve got something to say. I could say it to the police instead of you, but take it from me you wouldn’t like that nearly as well. Let me in. Pitney Scott’s here.”

She threw the door wide open and said, “Come in.”

Maybe the shift in her welcome should have made me suspicious, but it didn’t. It merely made me think I had scared her, and also made me add a few chips to the stack I was betting that if her husband hadn’t croaked Dr. Burton, she had. I went in and shut the door behind me, and followed her across the hall, and through a sitting-room and dinning-room and into the kitchen. The rooms were big and well furnished and looked prosperous; and sitting in the kitchen at an enamel-top table was Pitney Scott, consuming a hunk of brown fried chicken. There was a platter of it with four or five pieces left. I said to Dora Chapin:

“Maybe we can go in front and leave Mr. Scott to enjoy himself.”

She nodded at a chair and pointed to the chicken: “There’s plenty.” She turned to Scott: “I’ll fix you a drink.”

He shook his head, and chewed and swallowed. “I’ve been off for ten days now, Mrs. Chapin. It wouldn’t be funny, take my word for it. When the coffee’s ready I’d appreciate that.—Come on — you said Goodwin, didn’t you? — come on and help me. Mrs. Chapin says she has dined.”

I was hungry and the chicken looked good, I admit that, but the psychology of it was that it looked like I ought to join in. Not to mention the salad, which had green peppers in it. I got into the chair and Scott passed the platter. Dora Chapin had gone to the stove to turn the fire down under the percolator. There was still a lot of bandage at the back of her neck, and it looked unattractive where her hair had been shaved off. She was bigger than I had realized in the office that day, fairly hefty. She went into the dining-room for something, and I got more intimate with the chicken after the first couple of bites and started a conversation with Scott. After a while Dora Chapin came back, with coffee cups and a bowl of sugar.

Of course it was in the coffee, she probably put it right in the pot since she didn’t drink any, but I didn’t notice a taste. It was strong but it tasted all right. However, she must have put in all the sleeping tablets and a few other things she could get hold of, for God knows it was potent. I began to feel it when I was reaching to hand Scott a cigarette, and at the same time I saw the look on his face. He was a few seconds ahead of me. Dora Chapin was out of the room again. Scott looked at the door she had gone through, and tried to get up out of his chair, but couldn’t make it. That was the last I really remember, him trying to get out of his chair, but I must have done one or two things after that, because when I came out of it I was in the dining-room, halfway across to the door which led to the sitting-room and the hall.

When I came out of it, it was dark. That was the first thing I knew, and for a while it was all I knew, because I couldn’t move and I was fighting to get my eyes really open. I could see, off to my right, at a great distance it seemed, two large oblongs of dim light, and I concentrated on deciding what they were. It came with a burst that they were windows, and it was dark in the room where I was, and the street was lit. Then I concentrated on what room I was in.

Things came back but all in a jumble. I still didn’t know where I was, though I was splitting my head fighting for it. I rolled over on the floor and my hand landed on something metal, sharp, and I shrunk from it; I pulled myself to my knees and began to crawl. I bumped into a table and a chair or two, and finally into the wall. I crawled around the wall with my shoulder against it, detouring for furniture, stopping every couple of feet to feel it, and at last I felt a door. I tried to stand up, but couldn’t make it, and compromised by feeling above me. I found the switch and pushed on it, and the light went on. I crawled over to where there was some stuff on the floor, stretching the muscles in my brow and temples to keep my eyes open, and saw that the metal thing that had startled me was my ring of keys. My wallet was there too, and my pad and pencil, pocketknife, fountain pen, handkerchief — things from my pockets.

I got hold of a chair and pulled myself to my feet, but I couldn’t navigate. I tried, and fell down. I looked around for a telephone, but there wasn’t any, so I crawled to the sitting-room and found the light switch by the door and turned it on. The phone was on a stand by the further wall. It looked so far away that the desire to lie down and give it up made me want to yell to show I wouldn’t do that, but I couldn’t yell. I finally got to the stand and sat down on the floor against it and reached up for the phone and got the receiver off and shoved it against my ear, and heard a man’s voice, very faint. I said the number of Wolfe’s phone and heard him say he couldn’t hear me, so then I yelled it and that way got enough steam behind it. After a while I heard another voice and I yelled: