Rex Stout: Before I Die

She cut it off and started staring again. Suddenly the stare changed, her whole face changed. “Aw, for the love of Christ,” she said contemptuously. “You think I’m that dumb? Dazy thinks I’m that dumb? I give it to you and you hand it to him and he gets off cheap, wouldn’t that be sweet. And he thought I would fall for that?”

She uncrossed her knees and leaned forward. “Listen,” she said earnestly. “I’ve got what it takes, see? You think it don’t take guts to face up to Dazy Perrit and make him fork it over? Wait till I show you.” She began unfastening her dress. “I was at the theater tonight, but you notice I’m wearing sleeves and I’ll show you why.”

She had the fastenings loose and was wriggling it down from her shoulders. Down it came, revealing pink doings, and revealing also a bare arm which she extended. “What do you think of that?” she demanded.

It was quite an exhibit. The black and purple blotches began a few inches below the elbow and continued up to the shoulder curve. Curious as to what he had done it with, I got up and stepped over for a close-up, and she obligingly kept her arm up for me. I couldn’t tell; it might have been fingers or fists, or he might have used something.

“That’s not all,” Violet said on a mixed note of pride and grievance. “There’s other places, but you’d have to pay to see them. And I took it. I told him, listen, I said, if you hurt me enough, don’t think I’ll just go baby. You can’t lock me up, you can’t lock up your daughter, can you? If you hurt me enough I’ll spill it plenty where it will do the most good and I’ll clear out, and try and find me, you or anyone else. So you can let up, see?”

She had the dress back over her shoulders and was starting to fasten it. “He let up. I’ve got Dazy Perrit right, and I’m the only one that ever did that and lived to tell it. And now he thinks he can get most of it back through you with this lousy runaround!” She pronounced the word with which she had declared her position at the start.

Wolfe made another face. “But Miss Murphy.” His tone was even. “You’ll have to think this through. Though my assurance that Mr. Perrit and I didn’t cook this up is worthless to you, I do give that assurance. The point is that even if you are ninety-nine per cent convinced that Mr. Perrit arranged for me to take this line, dare you risk that one per cent? What if I’m acting on my own hook? You would discover it too late. To me you’re no asset at all unless you get money from Mr. Perrit and give most of it to me. I have no stake in you; your fate is of no concern to me. If you get money from Mr. Perrit and don’t give me my share, you’ll never know what minute or where you’ll feel that hand on your shoulder.”

“I wouldn’t be there,” Violet said harshly.

Wolfe sighed. “You’re not thinking straight. Certainly you’d be there. You’ll have to be, if you go on chousing Mr. Perrit. Incidentally, it will be useless for you to repeat this conversation to him. Naturally I have prepared for that, and he won’t believe a word of it.”

“The hell he won’t. He told you to say it.”

“No. He didn’t.” Wolfe pushed his chair back from the desk. “If you knew me better, Miss Murphy, you would believe me when I say that this is strictly my own idea. This is my own scheme, conceived and executed by me alone, and I expect to profit from it. So will you; I’m not trying to freeze you out. Mr. Perrit makes a lot of money. You can keep ten thousand out of every hundred thousand you get.”

Wolfe arose and walked past her to the door. There he turned. “A word of caution, Miss Murphy. Your natural impulse would be to get all you can and disappear. Mr. Perrit might possibly decide not to find you, for obvious reasons. I wouldn’t. I would find you. I am fully as vain as Mr. Perrit. I will not be diddled.”

He went.

Violet had not turned around to see him out. She now sat with her eyes on his chair as if he were still in it. A corner of her lips was screwed around and up. She didn’t seem to be in anything like a panic, merely trying to think straight. Finally she turned her eyes to me and spoke, not as to an enemy:

“My God, he’s fat.”

I nodded at her approvingly. “You’re a brave little woman and I admire you. Luckily you don’t have to toss in or boost the pot now and here. You’ve got time to sleep on it, which is a good idea. Shall I take you home and tuck you in?”

She smiled at me and I grinned back.

“You don’t look like a grifter,” she said. “You look healthy and handsome.”

“Inside,” I said, “I am clean but mean.” I stood up. “I don’t offer to drive you home because I noticed you’ve got your own car. But I can go along just for the air.”

She left her chair, crossed to me, put four fingers carefully and precisely at the top of my forehead, and ran them back over and down my scalp, giving me a comb.

“Air,” she said. “Baby, do I need air!”

“We’ll share it,” I told her. “Ninety per cent for you and ten for me.”

I got my hat and topcoat from the hall, escorted her out, opened the door of her coupé for her, and went around to the other side and climbed in. What I was actually after was not air, nor yet more hair-combing, but insurance against bodily injury. I wasn’t condemning Wolfe for not informing Dazy Perrit before pulling that on her, since he might have thought it up just before she came, or even after she came, but all the same I didn’t care for the sketch as it now stood. If she bounced into the penthouse and blurted it out to Perrit, which she was certainly capable of, there was no way of telling how he might react. Common sense would have told him what Wolfe was up to, trying to get nine out of ten to hand back to him, but the trouble was that there was nothing common about a bird like Perrit, not even sense. Probably he didn’t think there was an honest man on earth. So there I was in her coupe with her.

She was a first-rate driver, fully half as good as me. As she slowed down for a red light at Fortieth Street I said, “Miss Murphy, you’re sunk.”

“Cut out the Murphy,” she snapped. Then she reached to pat me on the knee. “Just call me Angel Food.”

I didn’t have much time, since the penthouse was on Seventy-eighth Street, not more than a few minutes away at that time of night, and I didn’t really intend to go up with her and tuck her in.

“I don’t like angel food,” I told her. “I’ll call you Maple Delight. But you’re absolutely sunk if you try to bull it through. I speak frankly because I admire you in more ways than one, and also because I enjoy life and don’t care to leave it at this point. If you go on putting the bee on Perrit and don’t give Wolfe his nine-tenths, you’re through. Wolfe is a hyena, a vulture, and a jackal. If you do give Wolfe his nine-tenths, Perrit will find it out sooner or later, and then not only will Wolfe get it, which might or might not be a calamity, but I am liable to get it too. Even if I’m not as healthy and handsome as you thought I was there for a minute. I do have my skin on straight and I like it that way.”

“Go on talking.” She didn’t take her eyes from her driving. “You haven’t said anything yet, but your voice goes through me. I won’t even want a drink.”

We were at Fifty-first Street. I went on, “So to show you how selfish I am, I’ve got a suggestion. You haven’t got a chance of cleaning up, not one in a million. You’re squeezed in between Dazy Perrit and Nero Wolfe, and that’s no set-up for a Sherman tank, let alone a lady. The big haul is out for good, and you might as well face it and show you’ve got brains as well as guts.”

I patted her thigh. “So take it, Maple Delight. First, you can keep the screw on Perrit, handing most of it over to Wolfe, but you’d be a sucker if you did. It wouldn’t be worth your measly percentage. Second, you can slide out and away, and my opinion is no good on that because I don’t know how hard you’d find it to make a living. Of course you’d have to travel, which would be a disadvantage if you like New York. Third, and this is my suggestion, you can tell Perrit — or I’ll do it if you want me to — that the gyp is out, you are merely his loving and obedient daughter, but it would be nice to have the weekly handout stepped up to three centuries instead of one.”