Rex Stout - Prisoner's Base

“I know damn well he is,” a voice blurted — Rowcliff’s.

“The arrangement,” Wolfe said curtly, “was that I was to speak without interruption. I say the accusation is pointless. If Mr. Goodwin is lying on instructions from me, do you suppose I didn’t consider the probabilities? It is likely that I’ll be halted or deflected by such inanities as putting handcuffs on him — yes, Mr. Rowcliff actually flaunted that — or dragging me down here in an unsafe vehicle? You suspect that I have a client; that I know something you don’t know and would like to; and that you can bully it out of me. You can’t, because I haven’t got it. But you’re correct in thinking I have a client. I admit it. I have.”

Rowcliff’s voice ejaculated something that sounded like a cry of triumph. I thought to myself, At last here it is. The sonofagun has got himself a customer!

Wolfe was going on. “I didn’t have a client this morning, or even an hour ago, but now I have. Mr. Rowcliff’s ferocious spasms, countenanced by you gentlemen, have made the challenge ineluctable. When Mr. Goodwin said that I was not concerned in this matter and that he was acting solely in his own personal interest, he was telling the truth. As you may know, he is not indifferent to those attributes of young women that constitute the chief reliance of our race in our gallant struggle against the menace of the insects. He is especially vulnerable to young women who possess not only those more obvious charms but also have a knack of stimulating his love of chivalry and adventure and his preoccupation with the picturesque and the passionate. Priscilla Eads was such a woman. She spent some time with Mr. Goodwin yesterday; he locked her in a bedroom of my house. Within three hours of her eviction by him at my behest, she was brutally murdered. I will not say that the effect on him amounted to derangement, but it was considerable. He bounded out of my house like a man obsessed, after telling me that he was going single-handed after a murderer, and after arming himself. It was pathetic, but it was also humane, romantic, and thoroughly admirable, and your callous and churlish treatment of him leaves me with no alternative. I am at his service. He is my client.”

Rowcliff’s voice blurted incredulously, “You mean Archie Goodwin is your client?”

The dry cutting voice of Bowen, the DA, put in, “All that rigmarole was leading up to that?”

I pushed the door open and stepped in.

Eight pairs of eyes came at me. Besides Wolfe, Bowen, Cramer, and Rowcliff, there were the two who had been pecking at me previously, and two others, strangers. I crossed toward Wolfe. It had been desirable to let him know that I had heard what he said before witnesses, but it was equally desirable to make it plain that his new client had the warmest appreciation of the honor.

“I’m hungry,” I told him. “I had a soda-fountain lunch and I could eat a porcupine with quills on. Let’s go home.”

His reaction was humane, romantic, and thoroughly admirable. As if we had rehearsed it a dozen times, he arose without a word, got his hat and stick from a nearby table, came and gave me a pat on the shoulder, growled at the audience, “A paradise for puerility,” and turned and headed for the door. I followed. No one moved to intercept us.

Since I knew the building better than he did, I took the lead in the corridor and got us downstairs and out to the street. In the taxi he sat with his lips pressed tight, gripping the strap. There was no conversation. At the curb in front of home I paid the driver, got out and held the door for him, preceded him up the stoop, and used my key, but the key was not enough. The door opened an inch and was stopped by the chain bolt, so I had to ring for Fritz. After he had come and let us in, Wolfe instructed us, “Never again an unbolted door. Never!” To Fritz: “You proceeded with the kidney?”

“Yes, sir. You didn’t phone.”

“The dumplings and burnt sugar?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Satisfactory. Beer, please. I’m so dry I crackle.”

His hat and stick disposed of, he went to the office, and I tagged. For hours I had been sweaty where the leather holster kept my skin from breathing, and it was a relief to get rid of the thing. That attended to, I did not sit at my desk. Instead I went to the red leather chair — the chair where a thousand clients had sat, not to mention thousands who had never attained cliency. I lowered myself into it, leaned back, and crossed my legs. Fritz came with beer, and Wolfe opened, poured, and drank.

He looked at me. “Buffoon,” he stated.

I shook my head. “No, sir. I sit here not as a gag but to avoid misunderstanding. As a client, the closer to you the better. As an employee, nothing doing until my personal problem is solved. If you meant what you said down there, tell me how much you want for a retainer, and I’ll give you a check. If not, all I can do is bound out of your house like a man obsessed.”

“Confound it, I’m helpless! I’m committed!”

“Yes, sir. How about a retainer?”

“No!”

“Would you care to hear how I spent the day?”

“Care to? No. But how the devil can I escape it?”

I reported in full. Gradually, as he progressed to his third glass of beer and on through it, the wrinkles of his scowl smoothed out some. Apparently he was paying no attention to me, but I had long ago learned not to worry about that. It would all be available any time he needed it. When I finished he grunted.

“How many of those five people could you have here at eleven in the morning?”

“As it stands now? With no more bait?”

“Yes.”

“I wouldn’t bet on one, but I’m ready to try. I might get something useful from Lon Cohen if I buy him a thick enough steak — and by the way, I ought to call him.”

“Do so. Invite him to dine with us.”

On the face of it that suggestion was gracious and generous, and maybe it was, but the situation was complicated. If we had been engaged on the case in the usual manner, and, after dope, I had taken Lon to Pierre’s for a feed, it would of course have gone on the expense account and we would have been reimbursed. But this was different. If I listed it as an expense Wolfe was stuck unless he billed me as client. If I didn’t list it I was stuck and there could be no deduction on an income-tax report, either Wolfe’s or mine, which wouldn’t do at all.

So I phoned Lon, and he came and ate kidneys mountain style, and carameled dumplings, instead of a Pierre steak, which was convenient and economical but had its drawback — namely, that I usually dispose of six of those dumplings and this time was limited to four; and Wolfe had to be content with seven instead of ten. He took it like a man, filling the gap with an extra helping of salad and cheese.

Back in the office after dinner, I had to hand it to Lon. He was full of food as good as a man can hope for anywhere, and wine to go with it, but he was not blurry. My phoning him twice and the invitation to dine had him set either to take or to give, whichever was on the program, and as he relaxed in one of the yellow chairs, sipping B & B, his eyes darted from Wolfe to me and back again.

Wolfe’s chest billowed with a deep sigh. “I’m in a pickle, Mr. Cohen,” he declared. “I am committed to investigate a murder and I have no entree. When Archie told you today that I was not interested in the death of Miss Eads it was the truth, but now I am, and I need a toehold. Who killed her?”

Lon shook his head. “I was intending to ask you. Of course you know it’s out that she was here yesterday, that she left here not long before she was killed, so everybody takes it for granted that you’re working on it. Since when have you needed an entree?”