Rex Stout - If Death Ever Slept

“This whole affair. You shouldn’t have gone there in the first place.”

“Maybe not. You suggested it.”

“I did not suggest it. I raised difficulties.”

I crossed my legs. “If you want to try to settle that now,” I said, “okay, but you know how things like that drag on, and I need instructions. I should have called headquarters and told them where to find something interesting, but didn’t, because I thought you might possibly have a notion.”

“I have no notion and don’t intend to have one,” Wolfe said.

“Then I’ll call. From a booth. They say they can’t trace a local dial call, but there might be a miracle. Next, do I get back up there quick, I mean to Jarrell’s, and if so what’s my line?”

I said I have no notion. Why should you go back there at all?”

I uncrossed my legs. “Look,” I said, “you might as well come on down. I could go back just to return his ten grand and tell him we’re bowing out, if that’s what you want, but it’s not quite so simple and you know it. When the cops learn that Eber was Jarrell’s secretary and got fired, they’ll be there asking questions. If they learn that Jarrell hired you and you sent me to take his place — don’t growl at me, they’ll think you sent me no matter what you think — you know what will happen, they’ll be on our necks. Even if they don’t learn that, we have a problem. We know that a thirty-eight revolver was taken from Jarrell’s desk yesterday afternoon, and we know that Eber was there yesterday morning and it made a stir, and if and when we also know that the bullet that killed him came from a thirty-eight, what do we do, file it and forget it?”

He grunted. “There is no obligation to report what may be merely a coincidence. If Mr. Jarrell’s gun is found and it is established that Eber was killed by a bullet from it, that will be different.”

“Meanwhile we ignore the coincidence?”

“We don’t proclaim it.”

“Then I assume we keep the ten grand and Jarrell is still your client. If he turns out to be a murderer, what the hell, many lawyers’ clients are murderers. And I’m back where I started, I need instructions. I’ll have to go—”

The phone rang. I swiveled and got it, and I noticed that Wolfe reached for his too, which he rarely does unless I give him a sign.

“Nero Wolfe’s residence, Archie Goodwin speaking.”

“Where the hell are you? This is Jarrell.”

“You know what number you dialed, Mr. Jarrell. I’m with Mr. Wolfe, reporting and getting instructions about your job.”

“I’ve got instructions for you myself. Nora says you left at five-thirty. You’ve been gone over four hours. How soon can you be here?”

“Oh, say in an hour.”

“I’ll be in the library.”

He hung up. I cradled it and turned.

“He reminds me of you a little,” I said — just an interesting fact, nothing personal. “I was about to say, I’ll have to go back up there and I need to know what for. Just hang around or try to start something? For instance, it would be a cinch to put the bee on Jarrell. You couldn’t ask for a better setup for blackmail. I tell him that if he makes a sizable contribution in cash, say half a million, we’ll regard the stolen gun as a coincidence and forget it. If he doesn’t we’ll feel that we must report it. Of course I’ll have to wait until the news is out about Eber, but if—”

“Shut up.”

“Yes, sir.”

He eyed me. “You understand the situation. You have expounded it.”

“Yes, sir.”

“This may or may not affect the job you undertook for Mr. Jarrell — don’t interrupt me — very well, that we undertook. Murder sometimes creates only ripples, but more frequently high seas. Assuredly you are not going back there to take women to lunch at Rusterman’s or to taverns to dance. I offer no complaint for what has been done; I will concede that we blundered into this mess by a collaboration in mulishness; but if it was Mr. Jarrell’s gun that was used to kill Eber, and it isn’t too fanciful to suppose that it was, we are in it willy-nilly, and we should emerge, if not with profit, at least without discomfiture. That is our joint concern. You ask if you should start something up there. I doubt if you’ll need to; something has already started. It is most unlikely that the murder had no connection with that hive of predators and parasites. I can’t tell you how to proceed because you’ll have to wait on events. You will be guided by your intelligence and experience, and report to me as the occasion dictates. Mr. Jarrell said he has instructions for you. Have you any notion what they’ll be?”

“Not a glimmer.”

“Then we can’t anticipate them. You will call police headquarters?”

“Yes, on my way.”

“That will expedite matters. Otherwise there’s no telling when the body would be found.”

I was on my feet. “If you phone me there,” I told him, “keep it decent. He has four phones on his desk, and I suspect two of them.”

“I won’t phone you. You’ll phone me.”

“Okay,” I said, and went.

Passing the gantlet of the steely eyes of the lobby sentinel, mounting in the private elevator, and using my key in the tenth-floor vestibule, I found that the electronic security apparatus hadn’t been switched on yet. Steck appeared, of course, and said that Mr. Jarrell would like to see me in the library. The eye I gave him was a different eye from what it had been. It could even have been Steck who had worked the rug trick to get hold of a gun. He had his duties, but he might have managed to squeeze it in.

Hearing voices in the lounge, I crossed the reception hall to glance in, and saw Trella, Nora, and Roger Foote at a card table.

Roger looked up and called to me. “Pinochle! Come and take a hand!”

“Sorry, I can’t. Mr. Jarrell wants me.”

“Come when you’re through! Peach Fuzz ran a beautiful race! Beautiful! Five lengths back at the turn and only a head behind at the finish! Beautiful!”

A really fine loser, I was thinking as I headed for the corridor. You don’t often meet that kind of sporting spirit. Beautiful!

The door of the library was standing open. Entering, I closed it. Jarrell, over by the files with one of the drawers open, barked at me, “Be with you in a minute,” and I went to the chair at an end of his desk. A Portanaga with an inch of ash intact was there on a tray, and the smell told me it was still alive, so it couldn’t have been more than ninety seconds since he left his desk to go to the files. That’s the advantage of being a detective with a trained mind; you collect all kinds of useless facts without even trying.

He came and sat, picked up the cigar and tapped the ash off, and took a couple of puffs. He spoke. “Why did you go to see Wolfe?”

“He pays my salary. He likes to know what he’s getting for it. Also I had told him on the phone about your gun disappearing, and he wanted to ask me about it.”

“Did you have to tell him about that?”

“I thought I’d better. You’re his client, and he doesn’t like to have his clients shot, and if somebody used the gun to kill you with and I hadn’t told him about it he would have been annoyed. Besides, I thought he might want to make a suggestion.”

“Did he make one?”

“Not a suggestion exactly. He made a comment. He said you’re an ass. He said you should have corralled everybody and got the cops in to find the gun.”

“Did you tell him I’m convinced that my daughter-in-law took it?”

“Sure. But even if she did, and if she intends to use it on you, that would still be the best way to handle it. It would get the gun back, and it would notify her that you haven’t got a hole in your head and don’t intend to have one.”