Rex Stout - Prisoner's Base

“Listen, bud,” he demanded aggressively, “do I look like I know much?”

I hedged. “At first sight, no.”

“Right. I don’t know one single thing about anything. So don’t ask me.”

That seemed to settle it, and I sat. People, the assortment you expect and always get at 24 °Centre Street, kept passing by along the corridor, both directions. I was at the point where I was shifting on the hard bench every thirty seconds instead of every two minutes when I saw a captain in uniform marching past and called to him. “Captain!”

He stopped, whirled, saw me, and approached.

“Captain,” I said, “I appeal to you. My name is Archie Goodwin, Nine-fourteen West Thirty-fifth Street, which is Nero Wolfe’s address. This officer must of course stick to me or I might escape. I appeal to you to send me a photographer. I want a picture of me in these things” — I lifted my manacled hands — “for evidence. A double-breasted ape named Rowcliff had me fettered, and I intend to sue him for false arrest and exposing me to shame, degradation, and public scorn.”

“I’ll see what I can do,” he said sympathetically and went.

I had of course stopped the captain and appealed to him as a diversion, just for something to do, and it was totally unexpected when, some twenty minutes later, a sergeant walked up to me and asked my name. I told him.

He turned to my chaperon. “What’s this man’s name?”

“He told you, Sergeant.”

“I’m asking you!”

“I don’t know of my own knowledge, Sergeant. Up at Homicide they said his name was Archie Goodwin, like he told you.”

The sergeant made a noise, not complimentary, glanced at my cuffs, produced a ring of keys and used one, and my hands were free. I had never seen that captain before and haven’t seen him since, and I don’t know his name, but if you ever get struck in an alcove at headquarters with handcuffs on, ask for a captain around fifty to fifty-five with a big red nose and a double chin, wearing metal-rimmed glasses.

A little later another sergeant came with orders, and I was escorted down and out, to Leonard Street, up to the District Attorney’s layout, and to a room. There at last some attention was paid to me, by a Homicide dick named Randall, whom I knew a little, and an assistant DA I had never seen before, named Mandelbaum. They pecked at me for an hour and a half, and there was nothing in it for anybody, except that I got the impression that there would be no charge. When they left they didn’t even bother about a sentinel, merely telling me to stick. The third or fourth time I looked at my watch after their departure it was a quarter to six.

As I said, I was bored and disillusioned and hungry. An encounter with Rowcliff was enough to ruin a day anyhow, and that was only one item of the record. I had to meet Lon Cohen at seven-thirty to buy him a steak as promised, and afterward I had to go home and pack a bag before finding a hotel room. That was okay, but there was no telling what frame of mind they had pestered Wolfe into, and if I went home he would probably be laying for me. Also I didn’t mind sleeping in a hotel room, but what about when I left it in the morning? What were my plans? I shrugged that off, thinking I would get some kind of lead from Lon, and decided to call him then instead of waiting until seven. There was no phone in the room where I was, so I got up and went out to the corridor, glanced right and left, and started left. There were doors on both sides, all closed. I preferred one standing open, with a phone in sight, and kept going. No luck. But nearly at the end of the corridor the last door on the left was ajar, a three-inch crack, and as I approached it I heard a voice. That was the event I have referred to as occurring at fourteen minutes to six — my hearing that voice, coming from that room. At twelve paces it was audible, at five paces it was recognizable, and when I got my ear within six inches of the crack the words were quite plain.

“This whole performance,” Nero Wolfe was saying, “is based on an idiotic assumption, which was natural and indeed inevitable, since Mr. Rowcliff is your champion ass — the assumption that Mr. Goodwin and I are both cretins. I do not deny that at times in the past I have been less than candid with you — I will acknowledge, to humor you, that I have humbugged and hoodwinked to serve my purpose — but I still have my license, and you know what that means. It means that on balance I have helped you more than I have hurt you — not the community, which is another matter, but you, Mr. Cramer, and you, Mr. Bowen, and of course you others too.”

So the DA himself was in the audience.

“It means also that I have known where to stop, and Mr. Goodwin has too. That is our unbroken record, and you know it. But what happens today? Following my customary routine, at four o’clock this afternoon I go up to my plant rooms for two hours of relaxation. I have been there but a short time when I hear a commotion and go to investigate. It is Mr. Rowcliff. He has taken advantage of the absence of Mr. Goodwin, whom he fears and petulantly envies, and has entered my house by force and—”

“That’s a lie!” Rowcliff’s voice came. “I rang and—”

“Shut up!” Wolfe roared, and it seemed to me that the door moved to narrow the crack a little. In a moment he went on, not roaring but not whispering either, “As you all know, a policeman has no more right to enter a man’s home that anyone else, except under certain adequately defined circumstances. But such a right is often usurped, as today when my cook and housekeeper unlatched the door and Mr. Rowcliff pushed it open against resistance, entered, brushed my employee aside, and ignored all protests while he was illegally mounting three flights of stairs, erupting into my plant rooms, and invading my privacy.”

I leaned against the jamb and got comfortable.

“He was ass enough to suppose I would speak with him. Naturally I ordered him out. He insisted that I must answer questions. When I persisted in my refusal and turned to leave him, he intercepted me, displayed a warrant for my arrest as a material witness in a murder case, and put a hand on me.” The voice suddenly went lower and much colder. “I will not have a hand put on me, gentlemen. I like no man’s hand on me, and one such as Mr. Rowcliff’s, unmerited, I will not have. I told him to give me his instructions under the authority of the warrant, in as few words as possible, without touching me. I am not bragging of my extreme sensitiveness to hostile touch, since it is shared by all the animals; I mention it only as one of the reasons why I refused to speak to Mr. Rowcliff. He took me into custody under the warrant, conducted me out of my house, and, in a rickety old police car with a headstrong and paroxysmal driver, brought me to this building.”

I bit my lip. While the fact that he too had been arrested and bandied was not without its charm, the additional fact that I was responsible made it nothing to titter about. Therefore I did not titter. I listened.

“I had assumed, charitably, that some major misapprehension, possibly even excusable, had driven Mr. Rowcliff to this frenzied zeal. But I learned from you, Mr. Bowen, that it was merely an insane fit of nincompoopery. To accuse Mr. Goodwin of impersonating a policeman is infantile; I don’t know what he said or did, and I don’t need to; I know Mr. Goodwin, and he couldn’t possibly be so fatuous. To accuse him, acting on my account, of giving false information may not be infantile, but it is pointless. You suspect that I have been hired by someone involved, either innocently or guiltily, in the death of Miss Eads and Mrs. Fomos, that I wish to conceal that fact, and that Mr. Goodwin went to that place today as my agent and, denying it, is lying.”