Rex Stout - The Golden Spiders

The door swinging open stopped me. It swung wide, and a man trotted in. As he appeared he started to say something to Miss Estey, but, becoming aware that she had company, cut it off, stopped short, and proceeded to take me in.

When it seemed that neither was she performing introductions nor was he asking strangers’ names, I broke the ice. “My name’s Archie Goodwin. I work for Nero Wolfe.” Seeing how he was taking me in, I added, “I’m in disguise.”

He approached with a hand out, and I arose and took it. “I’m Paul Kuffner.”

In size he had been shortchanged, the top of his head being about level with the tip of my nose. With his thin brown mustache trimmed so it wasn’t quite parallel with the thick lips of his wide mouth, I wouldn’t have called him well designed to make the sort of impression desirable for a handler of public relations, but I admit I’m prejudiced about a mustache trying to pass as a plucked eyebrow.

He smiled at me to show that he liked me, that he approved of everything I had ever said or done, and that he understood all my problems perfectly. “I’m sorry,” he said, “that I have to break in like this and take Miss Estey away, but there are some urgent matters. Come upstairs, Miss Estey?”

It was a fine job. Instead of that he could have said, “Get out of this house and give me a chance to ask Miss Estey what the hell you’re trying to put over,” which was what he meant. But no, sir, he liked me too much to say anything that could possibly hurt my feelings.

When Miss Estey had got up and crossed to the door and passed through, and he had followed her to the sill, he turned to tell me, “It was a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Goodwin. I’ve heard a great deal about you, and Mr. Wolfe, of course. Sorry our meeting had to be at so difficult a moment.” He stepped out of sight, but his voice carried in to me. “Oh, Peckham! Mr. Goodwin’s going. See if he wants you to stop a cab for him.”

A nice clean fast job. Apparently with that mustache he was in disguise too.

I got back to the house in time to hear the briefing. Saul and Orrie were already there, sitting waiting, but Fred hadn’t arrived. After greeting them, I reported to Wolfe, who was at his desk.

“I saw her and had a chat with her, but.”

“Why the deuce are you arrayed like that?”

“I’m a mortician.”

He made a face. “That abominable word. Tell me about it.”

I obeyed, giving it in full, but that time he had questions. None of them got him anything, since I had delivered all the facts, and the impression I had got of Jean Estey and Paul Kuffner wasn’t any help, even to me, let alone him, and when Saul went to answer the doorbell and brought Fred in, Wolfe dropped me at once and had them move chairs up to a line fronting his desk.

That trio was no great treat to look at. Saul Panzer, with his big nose lording it over his narrow face, in his brown suit that should have been pressed after he got caught in the rain, could have been a hackie or a street sweeper, but he wasn’t. He was the smartest operative in the metropolitan area, and his talent for tailing, which Wolfe had praised to Pete Drossos, was only one little part of him. Any agency in town would pay him three times the market.

In bulk Fred Durkin would have made nearly two Sauls, but not in ability. He could tail all right, and you could count on him for any ordinary chore, but if he ran into something fancy he was apt to get twisted. You could trust him to hell and back.

As for Orrie Cather, when he confronted you with his confident dark brown eyes and a satisfied smile on his wavy lips, you had no doubt that his main concern was whether you realized how handsome he was. Of course that irritated any customer he tackled, but it also gave the impression that it wasn’t necessary to watch your step, which might be dangerous, since his real concern was his reputation as a working detective.

Wolfe leaned back, rested his forearms on the arms of the chair, drew in a bushel of air, and audibly let it out. “Gentlemen,” he said, “I am up to my thighs in a quagmire. Customarily, when I enlist your services, it is enough to define your specific tasks, but this time that won’t do. You must be informed of the total situation in all its intricacy, but first a word about money. Less than twelve hours after the client gave me a check for ten thousand dollars, she was murdered. Since no successor to the cliency is in view, that’s all I’ll get. If it is unavoidable I am prepared, for a personal reason, to spend the major portion, even the entire sum, on the expense of the investigation, but not more. I don’t ask you to be niggardly in your expenditures, but I must forbid any prodigality. Now here it is.”

Beginning with my ushering Pete Drossos into the dining room Tuesday evening, and ending with my report of my talk with Jean Estey, which Fred had not heard, he went right through it, omitting nothing. They sat absorbing it, each in his manner — Saul slumped and relaxed, Fred stiff and straight, with his eyes fastened on Wolfe as if he had to listen with them too, and Orrie with his temple propped against his fingertips for a studio portrait. As for me, I was trying to catch Wolfe skipping some detail so I would have the pleasure of supplying it when he was through, but nothing doing. I couldn’t have done a better job myself.

He glanced up at the clock. “It’s twenty past seven, and dinner’s ready. We’re having fried chicken with cream gravy and mush. We won’t discuss this at the table, but I wanted you to have it in your minds.”

It was going on nine by the time we were back in the office, having discussed all of five chickens, with accessories, so fully that they were settled for good. Wolfe, after getting arranged in his chair, scowled at me and then at them.

“You don’t look very alert,” he said peevishly.

They didn’t jerk to attention. While none of them had had as much of him as I had, they knew how he hated to work during the hour or so after dinner, and what was eating him wasn’t that they weren’t alert but that he didn’t want to be.

“We can go downstairs,” I suggested, “and play some pool while you digest.”

He snorted. “My stomach,” he asserted, “is quite capable of handling its affairs without pampering. Has any of you gentlemen a pressing question before I go on?”

“Maybe later,” Saul suggested.

“Very well. It is, as you see, hopeless. It is excessively complex, but no sources of information are available to us. Archie can try with others as he did with Miss Estey, but he has no lever. The police will tell me nothing. On occasion, in the past, I have had tools wherewith to pry things out of them, but not this time. Since they know everything I know, I have nothing to bargain with. Of course we know presumptively what they’re doing. They’re finding out, or trying to, whether any woman known to Mrs. Fromm had a scratch on her cheek Tuesday evening or Wednesday. If they find her that could settle it; but they may not find her, since what that boy called a scratch, staring at her as he did, might have been a slight mark that she could have rendered practically unnoticeable as soon as she got a chance. Also the police are trying to find a woman known to Mrs. Fromm who wore spider earrings, and again, if they succeed, that could settle it.”

Wolfe upturned a palm. “And they’re trying to trace the car that killed the boy and Matthew Birch. They’re examining every inch of Mrs. Fromm’s car. They’re rechecking Birch’s movements and connections and associates. They’re piecing together, minute by minute, everything Mrs. Fromm did and said after she left this office yesterday. They’re badgering not only those who were with Mrs. Fromm last evening, but everyone who can be remotely suspected of knowledge of a pertinent fact. They’re checking on the whereabouts of all possible culprits — for Tuesday evening when a woman told Peter Drossos to get a cop, for later that evening when Birch was killed, for Wednesday evening when the boy was killed, and for yesterday evening when Mrs. Fromm was killed. They’re asking who had reason to fear or hate Mrs. Fromm or will profit in any way by her death. In those activities they are using a hundred men, or a thousand — all of them trained, and some of them competent.”