Rex Stout - Prisoner's Base

“Right. Happy dreams.”

I pressed the knob down and held it for a moment, let it up, and dialed WA 9-8241. There I got a break, and I never needed one more — Sergeant Purley Stebbins was on duty. I will not claim that Purley loves me, but at least he will listen sometimes. I got him.

“Yeah, Goodwin?” he growled.

“I have information for you,” I told him, “but first I would appreciate an answer to one question. Have you got tails tonight on any of the suspects in the Eads case?”

“Who wants to know?”

“All right, skip it. Get this quick. There were ten people at our place tonight. The five from Softdown — Helmar, Brucker, Quest, Pitkin, and Miss Duday. Also Sarah Jaffee and her attorney, Parker. Also Eric Hagh — the ex-husband. He flew in today—”

“I know he did.”

“Hagh and his lawyer, Irby. Also Andy Fomos. They left a little after midnight. Sometime during the evening one of them took the keys to Sarah Jaffee’s apartment out of her bag. She didn’t miss them until she got home, and she phoned me, and I’m here now in her apartment. Whoever took her keys came and got in and waited for her, and at two minutes to two he conked her and strangled her, and she’s dead. She’s here on the floor. I’m telling it like this because it’s now just two-thirty-six, and thirty-eight minutes isn’t much time for getting out of this building and getting somewhere, and if you get a move on—”

“Is this straight, Goodwin?”

“Yes.”

“You’re in the Jaffee apartment now?”

“Yes.”

“By God, you stay there!”

“Drop that phone and get your hands up!”

It was a little confusing, with two city employees giving me commands at once, one on the phone and one in person but behind my back. Purley Stebbins had hung up, so that was all right. I turned, lifting my hands plenty high enough to show that they were empty, because there is no telling how a random flatfoot will act just after discovery of a corpse. He may have delusions of grandeur.

Evidently he was alone. He advanced, with his gun poked out, and it was no wonder if his hand was not perfectly steady, for it was a ticklish situation for a solitary cop, knowing as he did that I was armed. Probably he also knew of Sarah Jaffee’s connection with Softdown and Priscilla Eads, since it had been in the papers, and if so why shouldn’t I be the strangler the whole force was looking for and therefore good for a promotion and a barrel of glory, dead or alive?

“Look,” I said, “I’ve just been talking to Sergeant Purley Stebbins of Manhattan—”

“Save it.” He was dead serious. “Turn around, go to the wall, slow, put your palms up high against the wall, and keep ‘em there.”

I did as I was told. It was a routine arrangement for a solo frisk, and when I was in position I expected to feel the muzzle in my back and his hand going through me, but no. Instead, I heard him dialing the phone, and in a moment his voice. “This is Casey, gimme the lieutenant... Lieutenant Gluck? Casey again. I came on up to the Jaffee apartment alone without waiting. I walked right in on him cold, and he’s here, and I’ve got him covered... No, I know that, but I’ve got him and I’ll keep him until they come...”

That was the kind of specimen, flushed by the hackie, who had me with my palms pressed against the wall.

During the eighty-hour period from ten minutes to two Friday morning, when Sarah Jaffee phoned me that her keys were missing, until nine o’clock Monday morning, when I phoned Wolfe from the office of the police commissioner, I had maybe five hours’ sleep, not more.

The first two hours of those eighty I spent in the apartment of the late Sarah Jaffee, mostly — after some grownups had arrived and rescued me from Casey — seated at the table in the alcove where I had breakfasted with Sarah Wednesday morning, answering questions put to me by a captain named Olmstead from Manhattan Homicide West, who was a comparative stranger. The third strangling of course had the whole department sizzling, and the scientists had a high old time that night in that apartment. The murderer’s use of the bronze tiger bookend and the cord, which had been cut from a Venetian blind in the alcove, showed that he had not confined his movements to the foyer, and there wasn’t a square inch anywhere in the place that didn’t get powdered for prints and inspected with a glass under a strong light.

At 4:30 A.M. I was transported to the Nineteenth Precinct station on East Sixty-seventh Street, put into an upstairs room with a lieutenant and another dick with a stack of stenographer’s notebooks, and told to give a complete account of the meeting in Wolfe’s office, including all words and actions of everyone there. That took four hours, and during the fourth and last the three of us disposed of a dozen ham sandwiches, six muskmelons, and a gallon of coffee, paid for by me. When it was over I got permission to use a phone and called Wolfe.

“I’m calling from a desk phone in a police station,” I told him, “and a lieutenant is at my elbow and a sergeant is on an extension, so don’t say anything incriminating. I am not under arrest, though I am technically guilty of breaking and entering because I knocked the glass out of a door and went in. Except for that I have nothing to report, and I don’t know when I’ll be home. I have given them a complete account of last night in our office, and they’ll certainly be after you for one.”

“They already have been. Lieutenant Rowcliff will be here at eleven o’clock, and I have agreed to admit him. Have you had breakfast?”

He wouldn’t overlook that. I told him yes.

After that the lieutenant and sergeant left me, and I sat for a solid hour in a room with a uniformed patrolman. It began to look as if history was getting set to repeat itself, except for handcuffs, when a dick entered and told me to come on, and I preceded him down and out to the sidewalk, and darned if he didn’t have a taxi waiting. It took us to 155 Leonard Street, and the dick took me in and upstairs to a room, and who should enter to visit me but my friend Mandelbaum, the assistant DA who had chatted with me Tuesday afternoon to no avail.

Four hours later we were still, as far as I could see, short on avail. I had the highly unsatisfactory feeling that I had been examined down to the last flick about something that had happened somewhere sometime, just to see if I passed, but that it had nothing to do with getting the sonofabitch I was after. I knew how to be patient well enough when I had to be, and I had gone along the best I could, but more than twelve hours had passed since I had opened the door and seen her lying there with her tongue sticking out, and I had answered enough questions.

At the end of the four hours Mandelbaum shoved his chair back, got up, and told me, “That seems to be it for now. I’ll get it typed, and I’ll get a copy of your statement uptown. This evening or in the morning — more likely in the morning — I’ll ring you to ask you to run down and look it over, so stay near your phone or keep in touch.”

I was frowning at him. “You mean I go?”

“Certainly. Under the circumstances your forceful entry to that building must be regarded as justified, and since you have agreed to pay the amount of the damage, there will be no complaint. Stay in the jurisdiction, of course, and be available.” He looked at his wrist. “There’s someone waiting for me.” He turned to go.

I was having an experience that was not new to me. I had suddenly discovered that a decision had been made, by me, upon full consideration, without my knowing it. This time, though, it took me a second to accept it, because it was unprecedented. An officer of the law was telling me to go on home to Nero Wolfe, and I didn’t want to or intend to.